“Monsieur Lacrisse, that is a poetical letter.”
“That is true,” returned Lacrisse.
And a long look passed between them.
After this nothing further memorable was said as they sat in the summer’s night before the flowers and candles of the little restaurant table.
The time came for them to go. As Monsieur Joseph Lacrisse placed her cloak round the Baronne’s plump shoulders, she held out her hand to Monsieur de Terremondre, who was saying goodbye. He was walking to Neuilly, where he was staying for the time being.
“It is quite near, only a quarter of a mile. I am sure, madame, that you don’t know Neuilly. I have discovered, at Saint-James, the remnant of an old park, with a group by Lemoyne in a trellis-work arbour. I must show it to you some day.”
And already his tall strongly-built figure was receding along the path that lay bathed in the blue moonlight.
The Baronne offered to give the Gromances a lift in the carriage which her brother Wallstein had sent for her from the club.
“Get in with me, there is plenty of room for three.”
But the Gromances were people of discretion. They hailed a cab which had stopped outside the restaurant gates and got into it before she had time to stop them. She and Joseph Lacrisse were left standing alone by the open door of the carriage. “Would you like a lift, Monsieur Lacrisse?”
“I am afraid I shall be in your way.”
“Not in the least. Where shall I drop you?”
“At the Étoile.”
They started along the blue road bordered by black foliage, in the silent night.
And the drive came to an end.
The Baronne asked as the carriage stopped, in the voice of one awakening from a dream:
“Where are we?”
“At the Étoile, alas!” replied Joseph Lacrisse.
And when he had left her, the Baronne, bowling along the Avenue Marceau, alone in the now chilly carriage, held a torn white carnation between her bare fingers. With half-closed eyes and parted lips, she still felt the eager yet gentle embrace which, pressing the royal letter against her bosom, had filled her with the sweetness of love and the pride of glory. She felt that this letter endowed her little private adventure with a national greatness and the majesty of the history of France.
CHAPTER XI
IN a house in the Rue de Berri, at the back of the courtyard, there was a little entresol which was lit by a trickle of daylight as dismal as the stone walls between which it found its difficult way. Henry de Brécé, son of the Duc Jean de Brécé, president of the Executive Committee, was seated at his desk with a sheet of paper before him on which he was turning a round blot of ink into a balloon, by the addition of netting, ropes and a car. On the wall behind him was nailed a large photograph of the Prince, looking extremely feeble in his vulgar solemnity and heavy-witted youth. Tricoloured flags spangled with fleurs de Us surrounded the portrait. In the corners of the room banners were displayed on which loyal ladies had embroidered golden lilies and royalist mottoes. At the back of the room several cavalry sabres were fixed to the wainscot, with a cardboard scroll bearing the inscription: “Vive l’armée!” Below them, held in place by pins, was a caricature of Joseph Reinach as a gorilla. A chest for papers, a strong box, a couch and four chairs and a writing-desk in some black wood composed the furniture of this room, which looked both comfortable and business-like. Propagandist pamphlets were piled in heaps against the walls.
Joseph Lacrisse, secretary of the Departmental Committee of Young Royalists, was standing by the fireplace silently conning the list of affiliated members. Henri Léon, vice-president of the Royalist Committees of the South-West, was seated astride a chair, where, with stony gaze and knitted brows, he was unfolding his ideas. He was considered irrelevant and gloomy, a regular skeleton at the feast, but his inherited financial abilities made him of value to his associates. He was the son of that Léon-Léon, the banker of the Spanish Bourbons, who had come to grief in the smash of the Union générale.
“We are being hemmed in, I don’t care what you say, we are being hemmed in, I feel it. Day by day the circle is closing upon us. When Méline was with us we had air and space, as much space as we wanted. We were free to do as we liked.”
He jerked his elbows and moved his arms about as though to demonstrate the ease with which people manoeuvred in those happy days which were no more. He continued:
“With Méline we had everything. We Royalists held the Government, the army, the magistracy, the administrations and the police.”
“We still have all that,” said Henri de Brécé, “and public opinion is more than ever with us now that the Government is so unpopular.”
“It’s no longer the same thing. With Méline we were pseudo-official, we were supporters of the Government, we were Conservatives; the conditions were ideal for conspiracy. Don’t make any mistake about that. France as a whole is conservative, and domestic and changes alarm her. Méline did us the enormous service of making us appear reassuring; we appeared to be kindly and benign, as benign as he himself appeared. He told the people that we were the true Republicans, and the people believed him. You had only to look into his face; you couldn’t suspect him of a jest. Through him we were accepted by public opinion, and that in itself is no small service.”
“Méline was a good sort,” sighed Henri de Brécé, “We must at least do him that justice.”
“He was a patriot,” said Joseph Lacrisse.
“With such a minister,” continued Henri Léon, “we had everything, we were everything and we could do everything. We had no need to conceal ourselves. We were not outside the Republic; we were above it, and we dominated it from the full height of our patriotism. We were everything; we were France herself! I must admit that the Republic is good enough at times, though I’m not smitten with the hussy. Under Méline the police — I don’t exaggerate — were exquisitely agreeable. During a Royalist demonstration which you very kindly organized, Brécé, I yelled ‘Vive la police’ till I was hoarse! And I meant it. The enthusiasm with which they clubbed the Republicans! Gerault-Richard was put in gaol for shouting ‘Vive la République!’ Ah, Méline spoiled us, made life too pleasant for us. A wet-nurse, positively! He rocked us to sleep. That’s a fact. General Decuir himself used to say, ‘Now that we’ve got all we can possibly want, what’s ‘the good of upsetting the whole caboodle and getting a nasty spill in doing it?’ Thrice-happy days when Méline led the dance! Nationalists, Monarchists, anti-Semites and Plebiscitarians, we all danced in unison to the sound of his rustic fiddle.
“We were all countrified and content. When Dupuy came along I was less pleased; with him things were not so honest and above-board; we were not so sure of ourselves. Of course he didn’t want to harm us, but he was not a true friend. He was not the kindly village fiddler leading the wedding procession. He was a fat coachman jogging us along in his cab. And we tore along, hanging on anyhow, always in danger of being upset. He had a hard hand on the reins. You will be telling me that his clumsiness was feigned; yes, but feigned clumsiness is tremendously like the real thing. Besides, he never knew where he wanted to go. There are people like that, fellows who don’t know your address but drive you indefinitely along impossible roads, winking maliciously as they do it. It unnerves one.”
“I don’t defend Dupuy,” said Henri de Brécé.
“I don’t attack him. I watch him, study him and classify him. I don’t dislike him; he’s been of great service to us. Don’t forget it. If it were not for him, we should all be doing time to-day. Oh yes, I mean it. I’m referring to Faure’s funeral, the great day fixed for simultaneous action. Well, my dear friends, after the failure of the great coup we should have been done for, had it not been for Dupuy.”
“It wasn’t us he wanted to spare,” said Joseph Lacrisse, with his nose in his ledger.
“I know that. He saw at a glance that he couldn’t do anything because there were some generals mixed up in the busines
s. It was too big for him. But that doesn’t alter the fact that we owe him a jolly big candle.”
“Bah!” said Henri de Brécé. “We should have been acquitted, like Déroulède.”
“It’s possible, but Dupuy allowed us plenty of time to pull ourselves together after the funeral stampede, and I confess I am grateful to him for that. On the other hand, without ill will, possibly without intending it, he has done us a great deal of harm. Suddenly, just when we least expected such a thing, he appeared to be furiously angry with us. He made out that he was defending the Republic. His position demanded the attitude; I recognize that. It wasn’t a serious matter, but it had a bad effect. I get tired of telling you the same thing; that this country is conservative at heart. Unlike Méline, Dupuy did not tell people that we were the Republicans, that we were the Conservatives; for that matter, no one would have believed him if he had. During his ministry we lost something of our authority over the country. We were no longer on the side of the government. We were no longer reassuring; professional Republicans began to feel anxious about us. That was to our credit, but it was dangerous. Our position was not so good under Dupuy as under Méline, and it is worse today, under Waldeck-Rousseau, than it was under Dupuy. That’s the truth, the bitter truth.”
“Of course,” said Henri de Brécé, pulling his moustache, “of course the Waldeck-Millerand Ministry is actuated by the worst intentions, but I repeat it’s unpopular and it won’t last.”
“It may be unpopular,” returned Henri Léon, “but are you quite sure it won’t last long enough to do us harm? Unpopular governments last as long as popular ones. To begin with, no government is ever really popular. To govern is to displease. We are among ourselves and there is no need to mince matters. Do you for one moment imagine that we shall be popular when we form the government? Do you imagine, Brécé, that the people will weep with emotion when they see you attired as king’s chamberlain with a key hanging down your back? And you, Lacrisse, do you suppose you’ll be cheered in the working-class districts during a strike, when you are, say, prefect of police? Look at yourself in the glass and then tell me whether you look like an idol of the people. Don’t let us deceive ourselves. We say that the Waldeck-Millerand Cabinet is composed of idiots; we are quite right to say so, but we should be wrong to believe it.”
“What ought to encourage us,” said Joseph Lacrisse, “is the weakness of a government which cannot enforce obedience.”
“All our governments have been weak for many a long year,” said Henri Léon, “but they have always been strong enough to defeat us.”
“The Waldeck Ministry has not a single police-commissary at its disposal,” said Joseph Lacrisse. “Not one!”
“So much the better for us,” said Henri Léon, “for one would be enough to jug all three of us. I tell you the circle is closing in. Consider these words of a philosopher; they are worth the trouble: ‘Republicans govern badly, but they defend themselves well.’”
But Henri de Brécé, bending over his desk, was turning a second blot of ink into a beetle by the addition of a head, two antennae and six legs. He gave a satisfied glance at his work, looked up and remarked:
“We still hold trump cards, the Army, the Church—”
Henri Léon interrupted him:
“The Army, the Church, the magistracy, the bourgeoisie, the butcher boys — in other words, the whole excursion train of the Republic. The train is travelling nevertheless, and will continue to do so until the driver stops the engine.”
“Ah,” sighed Joseph Lacrisse, “if only we had President Faure with us still.”
“Félix Faure,” resumed Henri Léon, “joined us out of sheer vanity. He became a Nationalist in order to get invitations to hunt with the Brécés, but he would have turned against us as soon as he saw us on the verge of success. It was not in his interest to restore the monarchy. Dame! What could the monarchy have offered him? We could not have offered him a Lord High Constable’s bâton. We may regret him, for he loved the army; we may mourn him, but we must not allow ourselves to be inconsolable. He was not the driver; Loubet is not the driver either; the President of the Republic, whoever he may be, is never master of his engine. To me the ghastly part of it is that the Republican train is controlled by a phantom driver. He is invisible, and yet the train rushes on. It positively frightens me.
“Then there is another thing,” he continued, “and that is the general indifference of the public. Speaking of that, reminds me of a very significant remark once made by Citizen Bissolo. It was when the anti-Semites and ourselves were organizing spontaneous manifestations against Loubet. Our crowds went down the boulevards shouting ‘Panama! Resign! Long live the Army!’ It was magnificent. Young Ponthieu and General Decuir’s two sons headed the crowd, with glossy silk hats, white carnations in their buttonholes, and gold-headed canes in their hands. And the toughest hooligans of Paris made up the procession. We had seen to that, and as it was a case of good pay and no risk we had our pick. They would have been sorry to miss such a lark. Lord! what voices they had, and what fists, and what cudgels I “A counter-manifestation quickly made its appearance; a smaller and more insignificant crowd, though warlike and determined enough, advanced to meet us amid shouts of ‘Long live the Republic! Down with the priests P with an occasional solitary cry for Loubet that seemed surprised to find itself in the air. Before it was over this unexpected disturbance aroused the anger of the police, who at that moment were barricading the boulevard and looking just like an austere border of black wool on a brightly variegated carpet. Soon, however, this black border, actuated by a movement of its own, hurled itself upon the van of the countermanifestation, while another body of police harassed them from the rear. In this way the police had soon dispersed the partisans of Monsieur Loubet, dragging the unrecognizable débris off to the insidious depths of the Drouot police-station. That was the way they did things in those troublous times. Was Monsieur Loubet, at the Élysée, ignorant of the methods employed by his police for enforcing in the streets of Paris respect for the head of the State? Or, if he knew of them, was he unable and unwilling to alter them? I do not know. Did he realize that his unpopularity, real and undoubted as it was, was fading into insignificance, almost disappearing in fact, before the strange and agreeable spectacle which was offered nightly to a witty and intelligent people? I do not think so, for in that case the man would have been a terrifying person; he would have been a genius, and I should no longer feel confident of sleeping outside the King’s door at the Élysée this winter. No, I believe Loubet was once again so fortunate as to be unable to do anything. Anyhow, it is certain that the police, who acted spontaneously and solely out of the goodness of their hearts, succeeded, by their sympathetic repression, in shedding over the advent of the President a little of that popular rejoicing which had been totally lacking. In so doing, if one considers the matter, they did us more harm than good, for they pleased the public, while it was to our advantage that the general discontent should increase.
“However, one night, one of the last of that eventful week, when the expected manœuvre was taking place from point to point, and the countermanifestation found itself attacked simultaneously in the van and in the rear by the police and in flank by us, I saw Bissolo extricate himself from the menaced van of the Republicans and, with long strides and a desperate wriggling of his little body, reach the corner of the Rue Drouot, where I was standing with a dozen or so roughs who in response to my orders were shouting ‘Panama! Resign!’ It was a nice quiet little corner! I beat time, and my men pronounced each syllable with great distinctness— ‘Pa-na-ma!’ It was really done with taste. Bissolo took refuge between my legs. He feared me far less than the police; and he was right. For two years Citizen Bissolo and I had met face to face in all our manifestations: we had headed the processions at the beginning and end of every meeting. We had exchanged every imaginable sort of political insult: ‘Hypocrite! Time-server! Forger! Traitor! Assassin! Outcast!’ That sort of thing bi
nds people together and creates a mutual sympathy. Besides, it pleased me to see a Socialist, almost a Libertarian, standing up for Loubet, who is in his own fashion a Moderate. I said to myself: ‘The President must hate being acclaimed by Bissolo, a dwarf with a voice of thunder, who at all public meetings demands the nationalization of capital. Bourgeois that he is, the President would surely prefer a bourgeois like myself for a supporter. But he can feel in his pockets.’ Panama! Panama! Resign! Resign! Long live the Army! Down with the Jews! Long live the King!
“All this made me treat Bissolo with courtesy. I had only to say ‘Hullo, here’s Bissolo,” and my dozen costers would promptly have cut him in pieces, but that wouldn’t have done any good. I said nothing. We were very quiet; we stood beside one another and watched the march past of Joubet’s supporters driven to the police-station in the Rue Drouot. Most of them, having previously been clubbed, staggered along beside the police like so many drunkards. Among them was a Socialist deputy, a very handsome man with a big beard; his sleeves had been tom off; there was a young apprentice sobbing and crying ‘Mother! Mother!’ and the editor of some trashy daily with two black eyes and his nose streaming with blood. And the Marseillaise! ‘Qu’un sang impur.’... I noticed one man who was far more respectable and far more sorry for himself than the rest. He looked like a professor, a serious, middle-aged man. He had evidently made an attempt to explain his point of view; he had tried subtle and persuasive arguments on the police. Otherwise the way in which they were kicking him in the back with their hobnailed boots and banging him with their fists was quite inexplicable. And as he was very tall, very thin, anything but strong, and weighed very little, he skipped about under these blows in the most ridiculous fashion. He displayed a comical tendency to make his escape upwards. His bare head had a most pitiable appearance. He had that submerged expression which comes over a short-sighted man when he has lost his glasses. His face expressed the infinite distress of a being whose only contact with the outside world comes through sturdy fists and hobnailed boots.
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 171