Complete Works of Anatole France

by Anatole France

  “This room,” replied Mademoiselle Bergeret, “is not a garret. It is lighted by a big window and is to be your study.”

  On hearing this, Monsieur Bergeret looked at the four walls in alarm, like a man on the brink of a precipice.

  “What is the matter?” asked his sister uneasily.

  But he did not reply. The little square room, hung with light paper, seemed to him dark with the unknown future. He entered with a slow and fearful step as though he were entering upon a hidden destiny. Then, measuring on the floor the position of his work-table, he said:

  “I shall sit there. It is a mistake to be too sentimental over the past and the future. They are nothing but abstract ideas, which were not originally possessed by primitive man; he acquired them only after long effort, to his great misfortune. The thought of the past in itself is sufficiently painful. I do not think any one would be willing to begin life again if he had to go over precisely the same ground. That there are delightful hours and exquisite moments I do not deny, but they are pearls and precious stones sparsely sprinkled on the harsh and dismal web of life. The course of the years is, for all its brevity, of tedious slowness, and if it be sometimes sweet to remember it is because we are able to make our minds dwell upon certain moments. And even then the sweetness is pale and melancholy. As for the future, we dare not look it in the face, so threatening is its gloomy countenance. And when you told me a moment since, Zoe, that this was to be my study, I saw myself in the future, and I could not bear the sight. I am not without courage, I think, but I am given to reflection, and reflection and fearlessness are not the best of friends.”

  “The most difficult thing of all,” put in Zoe, “was to find three bedrooms.”

  “It is certain,” rejoined Monsieur Bergeret, “that humanity, in its youth, did not conceive of the future and the past as we do. Now these ideas that devour us have no reality outside ourselves.

  We know nothing of life, and the theory of its development through time is pure illusion. It is by some infirmity of our senses that we do not see to-morrow realised as we see yesterday. We can very well conceive of beings so organized as to be capable of the simultaneous perception of phenomena which to us appear to be separated from | one another by an appreciable interval of time. We ourselves do not perceive light and sound in the order of time. We ourselves take in at a single glance, when we raise our eyes to the sky, aspects which are by no means contemporaneous. The beams of light from the stars seem indistinguishable to our eyes, yet they mingle in them, in a fraction of a second, centuries and thousands of centuries. With instruments other than those we now possess we might see ourselves lying dead in the very midst of our own life. For, as time does not in reality exist, and as the succession of facts is only an appearance, all facts are realized simultaneously and there is no such thing as the future. The future has already been; we merely discover it. Now, perhaps, you have some idea, Zoe, why I stopped short at the door of the room where I am to live. Time is a pure idea, and space is no more real than time.”

  “That may be,” remarked Zoe, “but it is very expensive in Paris at any rate. You must have noticed that while you were house-hunting. I don’t expect you care to see my room; come, Pauline’s will interest you more.”

  “Let us go and see them both,” said Monsieur Bergeret, as he obediently promenaded his animal mechanism through the little square rooms hung with flowered paper, pursuing the course of his reflections the while.

  “The savages,” he said, “make no distinction between past, present and future. Languages, which are undoubtedly the oldest monuments of the human race, permit us to go back to the days when our ancestors had not yet accomplished this metaphysical operation. Monsieur Michel Bréal, who has just published an admirable essay on the subject, shows that the verb, so rich to-day in its resources for marking the priority of an action, had originally no means of expressing the past, and in order to perform this function forms were employed which implied a double affirmation of the present.”

  As he spoke, he returned to the room which was to be his study, which had at first sight seemed, in its emptiness, to be filled with the shadows of the ineffable future.

  Mademoiselle Bergeret opened the window.

  “Look, Lucien.”

  And, seeing the bare tops of the trees, Monsieur Bergeret smiled.

  “These black boughs,” he said, “will assume, in the timid April sunlight, the purple hue of their buds; then they will break forth into soft green foliage. That will be delightful. It will, indeed, be charming. Zoe, you are full of wisdom and kindness, a worthy steward and a most endearing sister. Let me kiss you.”

  Monsieur Bergeret kissed his sister, repeating: “You are a good creature, Zoe.”

  And Mademoiselle Bergeret’s reply was:

  “Our father and mother were both good.” Monsieur Bergeret would have embraced her a second time, but she protested:

  “You’ll make my hair untidy, Lucien, and that I can’t bear.”

  Monsieur Bergeret stretched out his hand as he stood by the open window.

  “Look, Zoe, to the right. On the site of those ugly buildings used to be the Pépinière. There, our elders have told me, was a maze of paths bordered by green trelliswork windows among the shrubs. Our father used to walk there when he was a young man. He used to read the philosophy of Kant and the novels of George Sand, seated on a bench behind the statue of Velléda. A dreaming Velléda, with hands folded over her mystic sickle, and crossed legs, who was the object of much generous and youthful adoration. The students used to sit at her feet discussing love, justice and liberty. They did not enlist in those days in the party of untruth, injustice and tyranny.

  “The Empire destroyed the Pépinière. It was an evil deed, for there is a soul even in inanimate things. The noble ideas of many young men perished with the gardens. How many beautiful dreams and stupendous hopes have taken shape under the shadow of Maindron’s romantic Velléda! To-day our students have palaces with a bust of the President of the Republic over the mantelpiece in the principal room. Who will restore to them the winding alleys of the Pépinière, where they were wont to discuss the establishment of peace and happiness and the liberty of the world? Who will give back to them the garden where, amid the joyous songs of the birds, they repeated the generous sayings of their masters, Quinet and Michelet?”

  “No doubt they were enthusiastic enough,” said Mademoiselle Bergeret, “but in the end they became doctors and lawyers in their own provinces. One must resign oneself to the mediocrity of life. You know well enough, it is very difficult to live, and one must not expect too much of one’s fellow-creatures. Anyhow, do you like the rooms?”

  “Yes, and I’m sure Pauline will be delighted. She has a charming room.”

  “She has, but young girls are never delighted with anything.”

  “Pauline is not unhappy with us.”

  “No, indeed. She is very happy, but she does not realize it.”

  “I am going to the Rue Saint-Jacques,” announced Monsieur Bergeret, “to ask Roupart to put up some shelves in my study.”

  CHAPTER VII

  MONSIEUR BERGERET had a great liking and esteem for craftsmen. As he did not indulge in any elaborate appointments, he rarely employed workmen, but, when he did employ one, he tried to enter into conversation with him, being sure of hearing something worth listening to.

  So he extended a gracious welcome to Roupart, the carpenter, who came one morning to put up some bookshelves in his study.

  Riquet, as was his custom, lay in the depths of his master’s arm-chair, peacefully slumbering. But the immemorial recollection of the perils which surrounded his wild forbears in the forests makes the domestic dog sleep lightly. It should further be said that this hereditary readiness to awaken promptly was fostered in Riquet by the sense of duty. Riquet regarded himself as a watch-dog Firmly convinced that his mission in life was to guard the house, he was proud and happy in his vocation.

  Unfortunat
ely, however, he thought of all houses as being what they are in the country or the fables of La Fontaine, standing betwixt courtyard and garden, of which a dog could make the circuit, sniffing a soil redolent of the odours of cattle and manure. He had formed no idea of the plan of the flat occupied by his master on the fifth story of a great block of buildings. So, unacquainted with the limits of his domain, he was not quite clear as to what he had to guard. And he was a ferocious guardian. Supposing that the appearance of this stranger clad in patched blue trousers, smelling of perspiration and carrying his load of planks, was imperilling the house, he leaped from his chair and proceeded to bark at the man, retreating before him with heroic deliberation. Monsieur Bergeret bade him be silent, and he regretfully obeyed, sad and surprised to see his devotion useless and his signals disregarded. His earnest gaze, turned upon his master, seemed to say:

  “So you allow this anarchist to enter, dragging his infernal machine behind him. Well, come what may, I’ve done my duty.”

  Then he went back to his chair and slept again. Monsieur Bergeret, abandoning the scholiasts of Virgil, entered into conversation with the carpenter. First he questioned him as to the purchasing, cutting and polishing of different woods and the joining of the planks. He loved to obtain fresh information and he realized the excellence of the vulgar tongue.

  His face to the wall, Roupart answered him between intervals of long silence, during which he took measurements. It was then that he discussed panelling and the making of joints.

  “A tenon and mortice joint needs no glue if the work is properly done.”

  “Is there not also such a thing as a dovetail joint?” inquired Monsieur Bergeret.

  “It’s an old-fashioned affair; they don’t make ’em now,” replied the carpenter.

  Thus the professor learned something by listening to the artisan. Having made sufficient headway with his work, the carpenter turned to Monsieur Bergeret. His sunken, large-featured face, his brown complexion, his hair matted over his forehead, and his little goatee, grey with dust, gave him the look of a bronze figure. His smile, which was gentle, but came with difficulty, showed his white teeth and gave him a youthful look.

  “I know you, Monsieur Bergeret.”

  “Do you really?”

  “Oh yes, I know you. That was something a bit out of the common what you did, and no mistake. You don’t mind my mentioning it, I hope?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “Well, then, you did something quite out of the common. You cut your own class, refused to have any truck with the brass hats and sky pilots.”

  “I hate forgers, my friend,” replied Monsieur Bergeret. “Surely that is permissible in a philologist. I have made no secret of my opinions, but I have not gone out of my way to spread them. How did you get to know of them?”

  “I will tell you. One sees all sorts of people at the workshop in the Rue Saint-Jacques. All sorts and conditions, big and little. One day I was planing some wood, and I heard Pierre say: ‘That low-down cur of a Bergeret.’ And Paul asks him, ‘Won’t somebody smash his jaw for him?’ And then I realized that you were on the right side in the Affair. There aren’t many like you in this part of Paris.”

  “And what do your friends say?”

  “There aren’t many Socialists hereabouts, and the few there are don’t agree. Last Saturday at the club there was a lot of tag-rag and bobtail and the whole lot of us started quarrelling. Old Fléchier, who fought in 1870, a Communard, who was deported — he’s a man, he is — he got up on the platform and said: ‘Citizens, keep your hair on! The intellectual bourgeois are no less bourgeois than the military bourgeois. Let the capitalists scratch each other’s eyes out. Fold your arms and keep your eyes on the anti-Semites. At present they are drilling with sham guns and wooden swords, but when the time comes to expropriate the capitalists I don’t see why we shouldn’t make a start with the Jews.’

  “That pretty well brought the house down. But, I ask you, should an old Communard, a good revolutionary, talk in that way? I am not educated like old Fléchier, who has read Marx, but I could see well enough that his arguments were all wrong. It seems to me that Socialism, which stands for truth, should also stand for justice and kindliness, that everything just and kindly must come from it as naturally as the apple comes from the apple-tree. I take it that when we fight against injustice we are fighting for ourselves, for the working-classes, because it’s on us that all injustice lies so heavy. In my opinion, everything that is equitable is a beginning of Socialism. Like Jaurès, I believe that to take sides with the upholders of violence and falsehood is to turn one’s back upon the social revolution. I know nothing of Jews or Christians. I recognize only men — and there again the only distinction I make is between the just and the unjust. Jews or Christians, it is difficult for the rich to be just; but when the laws are just, men will be just too. Even now the Collectivists and Anarchists are preparing for the future by fighting against tyranny and inspiring the people with hatred of war and love for their fellow-men. Even now we can do something. It’ll keep us from dying desperate with the bitterness of rage in our hearts. For sure enough we shan’t see the triumph of our ideas, and when Collectivism is established all over the world I shall have been carried feet foremost from my garret a long while before. But there! I’m jawing and the time’s going.”

  He pulled out his watch, and seeing that it was eleven o’clock he put on his waistcoat, picked up his tools, and ramming his cap on the back of his head, said, without turning round:

  “It’s a sure thing that the middle classes are rotten. The Dreyfus case showed that plainly enough.”

  With that, he went off to his dinner.

  Then, with wide-open mouth, bristling hair and flaming eyes, Riquet rushed at Roupart’s departing heels, pursuing them with frantic barks. It may have been that a bad dream had troubled his light slumber and caused him to take advantage of the enemy’s retreat, or, as his master feigned to believe, that his anger had been aroused by the name which had just been pronounced.

  Alone with Riquet, Monsieur Bergeret addressed him gently in these sorrowful words:

  “You, too, poor little blackamoor, so feeble in spite of your sharp teeth and your deep bark, the apparent strength of which renders your weakness ridiculous and your cowardice amusing — you, too, worship the pomps of the flesh. You bow to the old iniquities and worship injustice out of respect for the social order that gives you food and a roof over your head. You, too, would uphold an illegal judgment obtained by fraud and untruth; you, too, are the plaything of appearances and allow yourself to be seduced by lies. You have been brought up on clumsy falsehoods and your darkened mind feeds on the works of darkness. You deceive and are deceived with delightful thoroughness, and you, too, have your racial hatreds, your cruel prejudices and your contempt for the unfortunate.”

  And as Riquet gazed at his master with a look of innocence Monsieur Bergeret continued still more gently:

  “Yes, I know: you have a vague goodness, the goodness of a Caliban. You are a pious dog; you have your theology and your morality, and you try to do well. But then you know nothing. You keep watch over the house, guarding it even against its friends and those who would make it more beautiful. The workman whom you wanted to drive out of the house has, in his simple fashion, some admirable ideas. But you did not listen to him.

  “Your shaggy ears are turned not to him whose words are wisest but to him who makes the most noise; and the natural fear which in the days of the cave-dwellers was the wise counsellor of your ancestors and of mine — the fear that created the gods and crime — makes you turn from the unfortunate and deprives you of pity. And you do not even want to be just. The white face of the new goddess Justice is strange to you, and you prostrate yourself before the old gods, black like yourself with fear and violence. You admire brute force, thinking it the sovereign power, because you do not know that it destroys itself. You do not know that all chains must fall before a just idea.

&
nbsp; “You do not know that true strength lies in wisdom and that through wisdom alone the nations rise to greatness. You do not know that that which makes the glory of the nations is not the senseless clamour raised in public places, but the noble thought concealed in some garret, which, spreading one day over the whole world, will change its face. You do not know that those who have suffered imprisonment, outrage and exile, for justice’ sake, have honoured their country in the act You do not understand.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  MONSIEUR BERGERET was in his study chatting with his pupil, Monsieur Goubin.

  “I found to-day,” he said, “in a friend’s library, a little book which is extremely rare and perhaps unique. Whether he is ignorant of its existence, or thinks it of little value, Brunet does not mention it in his Manual. It is a little duodecimo entitled: Les charactères et pourtraictures tracés d’après les modelles anticques. It was printed in the year 1538 in the learned Rue Saint-Jacques.”

  “Do you know the author?” inquired Monsieur Goubin.

  “The author is a certain Master Nicole Langelier, a Parisian,” replied Monsieur Bergeret. “His style is not so pleasant as that of Amyot, but it is clear and full of meaning. I enjoyed reading his book, and copied out a chapter that struck me as very curious. Would you care to hear it?”

  “Very much,” replied Monsieur Goubin.

  Monsieur Bergeret took some papers from the table and read the heading:

  “Concerning the Trublions which arose in the time of the Republick.”

  Monsieur Goubin inquired who these Trublions were. Monsieur Bergeret replied that he would no doubt discover that from what followed, and that it was a good plan to read a text before commenting on it. And he read as follows:

  “In those days there appeared in the city folk that uttered loud cries and were named Trublions, inasmuch as they served a chief named Trublion, who was of high lineage but small understanding and full of the arrogance of youth. And the Trublions also had another chief named Tintinnabule who made excellent speeches and marvellous songs and had been cast forth from the republick by the law and usage of ostracism. In truth the said Tintinnabule was adverse to Trublion; when the one pulled up stream the other pulled down. But the Trublions cared nothing for that, being so crazy that they did not know whither they were steering.