Complete Works of Anatole France

by Anatole France

  Having been often beaten by her respected father, and being, moreover, a simple, untamed being herself, Euphémie fully understood an act of violence. Had M. Bergeret broken the two house brooms on Madame Bergeret’s guilty back, she would have quite approved of his act. One broom, it is true, had lost half its bristles, and the other, older still, had no more hair than the palm of the hand, and served, with the aid of a dishcloth, to wash down the kitchen tiles. But when her master persisted in a mood of prolonged and sullen spite, the peasant girl considered it hateful, unnatural and positively fiendish. What brought home to Euphémie all M. Bergeret’s crimes with still greater force, was that his behaviour made her work difficult and confusing. For since Monsieur refused to take his meals with Madame, he had to be served in one place and she in another, for although M. Bergeret might stubbornly refuse to recognise his wife’s existence, yet she could not sustain even non-existence without sustenance of some sort. “Its like an inn,” sighed the youthful Euphémie. Then, since M. Bergeret no longer supplied her with housekeeping money, Madame Bergeret used to say to Euphémie: “You must settle with your master.” And in the evening Euphémie would tremblingly carry her book to her master, who would wave her off with an imperious gesture, for he found it difficult to meet the increased expenditure. Thus lived Euphémie, perpetually overwhelmed by difficulties with which she could not cope. In this poisoned air she was losing all her cheerfulness: she was no longer to be heard in the kitchen, mingling the noise of laughter and shouts with the crash of saucepans, with the sizzling of the frying-pan upset on the stove, or with the heavy blows of the knife, as on the chopping-block she minced the meat, together with one of her finger-tips. She no longer revelled in joy, or in noisy grief. She said to herself: “This house is driving me crazy.” She pitied Madame Bergeret, for now she was kindly treated. They used to spend the evening, sitting side by side in the lamp-light, exchanging confidences. It was with her heart full of all these emotions that Euphémie said to M. Bergeret:

  “I am going away. You are too wicked. I want to leave.”

  And again she shed a flood of tears.

  M. Bergeret was by no means vexed at this reproach. He pretended, in fact, not to hear it, for he had too much sense not to be able to make allowances for the rudeness shown by an ignorant girl. He even smiled within himself, for in the secret depths of his heart, beneath layers of wise thoughts and fine sayings, he still retained that primitive instinct which persists even in modern men of the gentlest and sweetest character, and which makes them rejoice whenever they see they are taken for ferocious beings, as if the mere power of injuring and destroying were the motive force of living things, their essential quality and highest merit. This, on reflection, is indeed true, since, as life is supported and nourished only upon murder, the best men must be those who slaughter most. Then again, those who, under the stimulus of racial and food-conquering instincts, deal the hardest knocks, obtain the reputation of magnanimity, and please women, who are naturally interested in securing the strongest mates, and who are mentally incapable of separating the fruitful from the destructive element in man, since these two forces are, in actual fact, indissolubly linked by nature. Hence, when Euphémie in a voice as countrified as a fable by Æsop, told him he was wicked, M. Bergeret, by virtue of his philosophical temperament, felt flattered and fancied he heard a murmur which filled out the gaps in the maid’s simple speech, and said: “Learn, Lucien Bergeret, that you are a wicked man, in the vulgar sense of the word — that is to say, you are able to injure and destroy; in other words, you are in a state of defence, in full possession of life, on the road to victory. In your own way, you must know, you are a giant, a monster, an ogre, a man of terror.” But, being a sceptical man and never given to accepting men’s opinions unchallenged, he began to ask himself if he were really what Euphémie said. At the first glance into the inner recesses of his nature he concluded that, on the whole, he was not wicked; that, on the contrary, he was full of pity, highly sensitive to the woes of others, and full of sympathy for the wretched; that he loved his fellow-men, and would have gladly satisfied their needs by fulfilling all their desires, whether innocent or guilty, for he refused to trammel his human charity with the nets of any moral system. and for every kind of misery he had compassion at his call. And to him everything that harmed no one was innocent. In this way his heart was kinder than it ought to have been, according to the laws, the morals, and the varying creeds of the nations. Looking at himself in this way, he perceived the truth — that he was not wicked, and the thought caused him some bewilderment. It pained him to recognise in himself those contemptible qualities of mind which do nothing to strengthen the life-force.

  With praiseworthy thoroughness, he next set himself to inquire whether he had not thrown off his kindly temper and his peaceable disposition in certain matters, and particularly in this affair of Madame Bergeret. He saw at once that on this special occasion he had acted in opposition to his general principles and habitual sentiments, and that on this point his conduct presented several marked singularities of which he noted down the strangest.

  “Chief singularities: I feign to consider her a criminal, and I act as if I had really fallen into this vulgar error. And all the time that her conscience condemns her for having committed adultery with my pupil, M. Roux, I myself regard her adultery as an innocent act, since it has harmed no one. Hence Madame Bergeret’s morality is higher than mine, for, although she believes herself guilty, she forgives herself, while I, who do not consider her guilty at all, refuse to forgive her. My judgment of her is immoral, but merciful; my conduct, however, is moral, but cruel. What I condemn so pitilessly is not her act, which I consider to be merely ridiculous and unseemly: it is herself that I condemn, as being guilty, not of what she has done, but of what she is. The girl Euphémie is in the right: I am wicked!”

  He patted himself on the back, and revolving these new considerations, said again to himself:

  “I am wicked because I act. I knew, before this experience happened to me, that there is no such thing as an innocent action, for to act is to injure or destroy. As soon as I began to act, I became a malefactor.”

  He had an excellent excuse for speaking thus to himself, since all this time he had been performing a systematic, continuous, and consistent act, in making Madame Bergeret’s life unbearable to her, by depriving her of all the comforts needed by her homely common nature, her domesticated character, and her gregarious mind. In a word, he was engaged in driving from his house a disobedient and troublesome wife who had done him good service by being unfaithful to him.

  The opportunity she gave he seized gladly, doing his work with wonderful vigour, considering the weak character he showed in ordinary affairs. For, although M. Bergeret was usually vacillating in purpose and without a will of his own, at this crisis he was driven on by desire, by an invincible Lust. For it is desire, far stronger than will, that, having created the world, now upholds it. In this undertaking of his, M. Bergeret was sustained by unutterable desire, by a masterful Lust to see Madame Bergeret no more. And this untempered, transparent desire had the happy force of a great love, for it was ruffled by no feeling of hatred.

  All this time Euphémie stood waiting for her master to answer her, or, at any rate, to hurl furious words at her. For on this point she agreed with Madame Bergeret, and considered silence far more cruel than insult and invective.

  At last M. Bergeret broke the silence. He said in a quiet voice: “I discharge you. You will leave this house in a week’s time.”

  Euphémie’s sole response was a plaintive, animal cry. For a moment she stood motionless. Then, thunderstruck, heart-broken and wretched, she returned to her kitchen and gazed at the saucepans, now dented like battle-armour by her valiant hands. She looked at the chair which had lost its seat — without causing her any inconvenience, however, for the poor girl hardly ever sat down; at the cistern whose waters had often swamped the house at night by overflowing from a tap left full o
n; at the sink with its wastepipe perpetually choked; at the table notched by the chopping-knife; at the cast-iron stove all eaten away by the fire; at the black coal-hole; at the shelves adorned with paper-lace; at the blacking-box and the bottle of brass-polish. And standing in the midst of all these witnesses of her weary life, she wept.

  On the next day — that is, as they used to say, l’en demai, which happened to be market-day — M. Bergeret set out early to call on Deniseau, who kept a registry office for country servants in the Place Saint-Exupère. In the waiting-room he found a score of country girls waiting, some young, some old, some short, ruddy and chubby-cheeked, others tall, yellow and wizened, all differing in face and figure, but all alike in one respect — that is, in the anxious fixity of their gaze, for they all saw their own fate in the person of every caller who happened to open the door. For a moment M. Bergeret stood looking at the group of girls who waited to be hired. Then he passed on into the office adorned with calendars, where Deniseau sat at a table covered with dirty registers and old horse-shoes that served as paper-weights.

  He told the man that he required a servant, and apparently he wanted one with quite unusual qualities, for after ten minutes’ conversation he came out in very low spirits. Then, as he crossed the waiting-room a second time, he caught sight of a woman in a dark corner whom he had not noticed the first time. It was a long, thin shape that he beheld, ageless and sexless, crowned by a bald, bony head, with a forehead set like an enormous sphere on a short nose that seemed nothing but nostril. Through her open mouth her great horse-teeth were visible in all their nakedness, and under her drooping lip there was no chin to speak of. She stayed in her corner, neither moving nor looking, perhaps realising that she would not easily find anyone to hire her, and that others would be taken in preference to her. Yet she seemed quite satisfied with herself and quite easy in her mind. She was dressed like the women of the low-lying, agueish lands, and to her wide-brimmed, knitted hat clung pieces of straw.

  For a long time M. Bergeret stood looking at her with saturnine admiration. Then, pointing her out to Deniseau, he said: “The one over there will suit me.”

  “Marie?” asked the man in a tone of surprise.

  “Marie,” answered M. Bergeret.

  XVII

  NOW that M. Mazure, the archivist, had at last attained to academic honours, he began to regard the government with genial tolerance. But, as he was never happy unless he was at variance with someone, he now turned his wrath against the clericals, and began to denounce the scheming of the bishops. Meeting M. Bergeret in the Place Saint-Exupère, he warned him of the peril threatening from the clerical party.

  “Finding it impossible,” said he, “to overturn the Republic, the curés now want to divert it to their own ends.”

  “That is the ambition of every party,” answered M. Bergeret, “and the natural result of our democratic institutions, for democracy itself consists entirely in the struggle of parties, since the nation itself is not at one either in sentiments or interests.”

  “But,” answered M. Mazure, “the unbearable part of this is that the clericals should put on the mask of liberty in order to deceive the electors.” To this M. Bergeret replied:

  “Every party which finds itself shut out from the Government demands liberty, because to do so strengthens the opposition and weakens the party in power. For the same reason the party in power curtails liberty as much as possible and it passes, in the sacred name of the sovereign people, the most despotic laws. For there is no charter which can safeguard liberty against the acts of the sovereign nation. Democratic despotism theoretically has no limits, but in actual fact, and considering only the present period, I grant that its power is not boundless. Democracy has given us ‘the black laws,’ but it never puts them in force.”

  “Monsieur Bergeret,” said the archivist, “let me give you a piece of good advice. You are a Republican: then don’t fire on your own friends. If we don’t look out, we shall fall back into the rule of the Church. Reaction is making terrible progress. The whites are always the whites; the blues are always the blues, as Napoleon said. You are a blue, Monsieur Bergeret. The clerical party will never forgive you for calling Jeanne d’Arc a mascotte, and even I can scarcely pardon you for it, for Jeanne d’Arc and Danton are my two special idols. You are a free-thinker.

  Then join us in our anti-clerical campaign! Let us unite our forces! It is union alone that can give us the strength to conquer. The highest interests are at stake in the fight against the church party.”

  “It is just party interest that I see mainly at work in that conflict,” answered M. Bergeret. “But if I were obliged to join a party at all, it must needs be yours, since it is the only one I could help without too much hypocrisy. But, happily, I am not reduced to this extremity, and I am by no means tempted to clip the wings of my mind in order to force it into a political compartment. To tell the truth, I am quite indifferent to your disputes, because I feel how empty they are. The dividing line between you and the clericals is a trifling matter at bottom. They would succeed you in office, provided there were no change in the position of the individual. And in the State it is the position of the individual that alone matters. Opinions are but verbal jugglery, and it is only opinions that separate you from the church party. You have no moral system to oppose to theirs, for the simple reason that in France we have no religious code existing in opposition to a code of civil morality. Those who believe that we have these two opposing systems of morality are merely deceived by appearances. I will prove this to you in a few words.

  “In every era we find that there are habits of life which determine a line of thought common to all men. Our moral ideas are not the fruit of thought, but the result of habit. No one dares openly to resist these ideas, because obedience to them is followed by honours, and revolt against them by humiliation. They are adopted by the entire community without question, independently of religious creeds and philosophic opinions, and they are as keenly upheld by those whose deeds by no means conform to their dictates, as they are by those who constrain themselves to live according to the rules laid down by them. The origin of these ideas is the only point that admits of discussion: so-called free-thinkers believe that the rules which direct their conduct are natural in origin, whilst pious souls discern the origin of the rules they obey in their religion, and these rules are found to agree, or nearly so, not because they are universal, that is, divine and natural, as people delight to say, but, on the contrary, because they are the product of the period and clime, deduced from the same habits, derived from the same prejudices. Each epoch has its predominant moral idea, which springs neither from religion nor from philosophy, but from habit, the sole force that is capable of linking men in the same bond of feeling, for the moment we touch reason we touch the dividing principle in humanity, and the human race can only exist on condition that it never reflects on what is essential to its own existence. Morality governs creeds, which are ever matters of dispute, whilst morality itself is never analysed..

  “And simply because a moral code is the sum-total of the prejudices of the community, there cannot possibly exist two rival codes at the same time and in the same place. I could illustrate this truth by a great number of examples, but none of them could be more to the point than that of the Emperor Julian, with whose works I have lately been making myself somewhat familiar. Julian, who fought on the side of the Pagan gods with such staunchness and magnanimity — Julian, who was a sun-worshipper, yet professed all the moral sentiments of the Christians. Like them, he scorned the pleasures of the flesh and vaunted the efficacy of fasting, because it brings a man into union with the divine. Like them, he upheld the doctrine of atonement and believed in the purifying effect of suffering. He had himself initiated, too, into mysteries which satisfied his keen desire for purity, renunciation and divine love, quite as efficaciously as the mysteries of the Christian religion. In a word, his neo-paganism was, morally, speaking, own brother to the rising cult
of Christianity. And what is there surprising in that? The two creeds were the twin children of Rome and of the East. They both corresponded to the same human habits, to the same deep instincts in the Asiatic and Latin worlds. Their souls were alike, though in name and phraseology they differed from each other. This difference was enough to make them deadly enemies, for it is about mere words that men usually quarrel. It is for the sake of words that they most willingly kill and are killed. Historians are in the habit of asking anxiously what would have become of civilisation, if the philosopher-emperor had conquered the Galilean by winning a victory that he had rightly earned by his constancy and moderation. It is no easy game thus to reconstruct history. Yet it seems clear enough that in this case, polytheism, which had already by the reign of Julian been reduced to a species of monotheism, would have submitted to the new mental habits of the time and would have assumed precisely the same moral form that one sees it taking under Christianity. Look at all the great revolutionary leaders and tell me if there is a single one who showed himself in any way an original thinker, as far as morality is concerned. Robespierre’s ideas of righteousness were to the end those in which he had been trained by the priests of Arras.

  “You are a free-thinker, Monsieur Mazure and you think that man’s object on this planet ought to be to get the maximum amount of happiness out of it. M. de Terremondre, who is a Catholic, believes, on the contrary, that we are all here in a place of expiation in order that we may gain eternal life through suffering. Yet, notwithstanding the contradiction in your creeds, you have both practically the same moral code, because morality is independent of creeds.”