“Papa, that’s collectivism,” said Pauline quietly.
“The most precious gifts,” replied Monsieur Bergeret, “are common to all men and have always been so. Air and light are the common property of all that breathes and sees the light of day. After the secular labours of egoism and avarice, in spite of the violent efforts of individuals to seize and keep wealth, the individual possessions enjoyed by the wealthiest among us are little when compared with those that belong without distinction to mankind in general. And even in our society do you not notice that the most beautiful and splendid possessions, such as roads, rivers, forests, which were once royal, libraries and museums, belong to all? Not a single rich man has a greater claim than I to an old oak-tree at Fontainebleau or a picture in the Louvre. And they are more mine than the rich man’s if I can appreciate them better. Collective property, dreaded like some remote monster, is already among us in a thousand familiar forms. When prophesied, it alarms, in spite of the fact that we already enjoy many of the advantages which it affords.
“The Positivists who meet in the house of Auguste Comte, under the leadership of the venerable Monsieur Pierre Laffitte, are in no hurry to become Socialists. But one of them made the judicious remark that all property springs from a social source. Nothing could be truer, for all property acquired by individual effort was created, and subsists, only by the co-operation of the whole community. And since private property springs from a social source we neither forget its origin nor corrupt its essence if we offer it to the community and entrust it to the State upon which it necessarily depends. And what is the State?”
Mademoiselle Bergeret hastened to answer that question:
“The State, papa, is a wretched cross-grained person sitting behind a counter-rail. You must see that no one will want to strip himself naked for such as he.”
“I understand,” said Monsieur Bergeret with a smile. “I have always tried to understand, and in so doing I have wasted much precious energy. I am discovering late in life that not to understand is a great faculty. It sometimes helps you to the conquest of the world. If Napoleon had been as intelligent as Spinoza he would have lived in a garret and written four books. I understand. But to return to this wretched cross-grained man behind the counter-rail, you trust your letters to him, Pauline, letters that you would not trust to the Tricoche Agency. He manages a portion of your property, not the least in extent or in value. He looks gloomy to you, but when he becomes everything he will cease to be anything, or rather he will only be ourselves. Annihilated by his universality, he will cease to appear tiresome. One is no longer wicked, my daughter, when one ceases to exist. What makes him unpleasant to-day is that he encroaches on individual property, that he goes along filing and scratching, taking a little bite from the fat and a big bite from the thin. That makes him unbearable. He is greedy; he is needy. In my Republic he will be without desires, like the gods. He will have all and nothing. We shall not notice him because he will be like ourselves, indistinguishable from ourselves; will be as though he didn’t exist. And when you say that I sacrifice the individual to the State, the living man to an abstraction, I am, on the contrary, subordinating the abstraction to reality, to the State which I suppress, by identifying it with the activities of the whole social organism.
“Even were my Republic never to exist I should be glad that I had played with this idea of it. It is permissible to build in Utopia. And Auguste Comte himself, who flattered himself that he built only on the data of positive science, placed Campanella in the calendar of great men.
“The dreams of philosophers have in all ages raised up men of action who have set to work to realize those dreams. Our thought creates the future. Statesmen work on the plans which we leave behind us. No, my child, I am not building in Utopia. My dream, which in no way belongs to me, but is, at this very moment, the dream of thousands upon thousands of souls, is true and prophetic. All societies whose organs no longer correspond to the functions for which they were created, and whose members are not recompensed according to the useful work which they accomplish, die. Deep-rooted disturbances and inward disorder precede and proclaim their end.
“Feudal society was strongly constituted. When the clergy ceased to represent learning, and the nobility to defend the labourer and artisan by the sword, and these two orders became merely swollen and dangerous members, the whole body perished. An unexpected and necessary revolution carried off the patriot. Who can maintain that in modern society the organs correspond with their functions and that all the members are nourished in proportion to the useful work which they perform? Who can maintain that there is a fair distribution of wealth?
Who, I say, can believe in the permanence of unrighteousness?”
“And how can we put an end to it, papa? How can we change the world?”
“By the force of speech, my child. Nothing is more powerful than speech. The linking of powerful arguments and noble thoughts forms a chain that nothing can break. Speech, like the sling of David, lays low the violent and causes the mighty to fall. It is an invincible weapon, without which the world would belong to armed brutes. What keeps them in abeyance? Merely thought, naked and weaponless.
“I shall not see the new State. All changes in the social order, as in the natural order, are slow and almost imperceptible. A geologist of profound understanding, Charles Lyell by name, demonstrated that those fearful traces of the glacial period, those monstrous rocks carried into the valleys, the flora and the furry beasts of cold countries succeeding to the flora and fauna of hot countries, those apparent tokens of cataclysmic upheaval, were in reality only the effect of prolonged and multiple action, and that those great changes, produced with the merciful deliberation of natural forces, were not even suspected by the innumerable generations of living creatures that existed during their accomplishment. Social transformations operate in the same way, insensibly and incessantly. The timid man fears, as he would a future cataclysm, a change which began before he was born, which is going on before his unconscious eyes, and which will become noticeable only in a century’s time.”
CHAPTER XVIII
MONSIEUR FELIX PANNETON was sauntering up the Champs-Élysées on his way to the Arc de Triomphe, calculating the chances of his election to the Senate. His candidature had not yet been announced. And Monsieur Panneton reflected, like Bonaparte: “To act, to calculate, to act...” Two lists had already been offered to the electors of the department. The four retiring Senators, Laprat-Teulet, Goby, Mannequin and Ledru, were presenting themselves for re-election. The Nationalist candidates were the Comte de Brécé, Colonel Despautères, Monsieur Lerond the ex-magistrate, and Lafolie the butcher.
It was difficult to say which of the two lists would win the day. The retiring Senators found favour in the eyes of the peace-lovers because of their long experience of legislation, and because they were guardians of those liberal yet authoritative traditions which dated back to the foundation of the Republic and were connected with the legendary name of Gambetta. They won the public favour by intelligently-rendered services and abundant promises, and they had a large and well-disciplined body of supporters. These public men, who had lived in stirring times, remained faithful to their doctrine with a firmness that embellished the sacrifices which circumstances forced them to make to the exigencies of public opinion. Opportunists in former days, they now called themselves Radicals. At the time of the Affair they had all four testified to their profound respect for the court-martial, and in one of them this respect was mingled with genuine emotion.
The ex-attorney Goby could never speak of military justice without shedding tears. The oldest of them, Laprat-Teulet, a Republican who had taken part in the great conflicts of the heroic days, spoke of the Army in such loving and impassioned terms that, at any other period, his hearers would have judged his expressions more applicable to some poor orphan girl than to an institution so strong in men and in millions. These four Senators had voted for the law of deprivation and had expressed to th
e General Council the pious hope that the Government would take stringent measures to check the Revisionist agitation. These were the Dreyfusards of the department, and as there were no others they were furiously opposed by the Nationalists. They blamed Mannequin for being the brother-in-law of a councillor in the Court of Appeal. As for Laprat-
Teulet, who headed the list, he was greeted with insults and venomous abuse that bespattered them all. Truth to tell, he had done a stroke or two of business on his own account. People recalled the time when, finding himself mixed up in the Panama affair and threatened with arrest, he had grown a long beard that gave him a venerable appearance and was wheeled about in a little chair by his pious wife and his daughter, the latter, dressed as a nun. Every day, as part of this humble and saintly procession, he would pass by beneath the elm-trees of the Mall and have himself put in the sun, a poor paralytic who traced figures in the dust with the tip of his walking-stick, while with cunning skill he prepared his defence, which a verdict of “insufficient cause” had rendered useless. Since then he had recovered, but the fury of the Nationalists was hot against him. He was a Panamist, so they called him a Dreyfusard. “This man,” said Ledru to himself, “will ruin the whole lot of us.” He mentioned his apprehensions to Worms-Clavelin:
“Would it not be possible, monsieur le préfet, to make Laprat-Teulet, a man who has rendered such signal service to the Republic and the country, understand that the time has come for him to retire into private life?”
The prefect replied that they must think twice before decapitating the Republican list.
However, the newspaper La Croix, introduced into the department by Madame Worms-Clavelin, carried on a ferocious campaign against the retiring Senators. It supported the Republican list, which was cleverly constructed. Monsieur de Brécé rallied the Royalists, who were fairly strong in the department; Monsieur Lerond, as ex-magistrate and a clerical advocate, was favoured by the clergy; and Colonel Despautères, in himself an unimportant old man, represented the honour of the Army. He had praised the forgers and was among the subscribers to the fund for the widow of Colonel Henry. The butcher Lafolie pleased the working-people, who were half peasants, living on the outskirts of the town. It was believed that the Brécé list would obtain more than two hundred votes and that it might go right through. Monsieur Worms-Clavelin was uneasy, and when La Croix published the manifesto of the Nationalist candidates he became extremely anxious. It attacked the President of the Republic, called the Senate a poultry-run and a pigsty, and referred to the Cabinet as the “Ministry of Treason.”
“If these fellows get in, I’m done,” thought the prefect, and he remarked gently to his wife:
“You were wrong, my dear, to favour the diffusion of La Croix in the department.”
“What else could I do?” she replied. “As a Jewess, I was obliged to exaggerate my Catholic opinions. And up to now that has helped us a good deal.”
“True,” replied the prefect; “but we have perhaps gone a little too far.”
Monsieur Lacarelle, secretary to the prefecture, whose famous resemblance to Vercingetorix inclined him to Nationalism, spoke in favour of the Brécé list, and Monsieur Worms-Clavelin, a prey to gloomy meditation, forgot his cigars and left them, with chewed ends and still alight, on the arms of the chairs.
Just at this time Monsieur Felix Panneton called to see him.
Monsieur Felix Panneton, the younger brother of Monsieur Panneton de La Barge, was an army contractor. No one could suspect his love of the Army whose heads and feet he covered. He was a Nationalist, but a Government-Nationalist. He was a Nationalist with Monsieur Loubet and Monsieur Waldeck-Rousseau. He did not disguise the fact, and when he was told that such a thing was impossible he replied:
“It isn’t impossible; it isn’t even difficult; the main thing was the idea.”
Panneton the Nationalist remained loyal to the Government. “There is plenty of time to change,” he thought, “and all those who broke too soon with the Government have had cause to regret it. One is too apt to forget that even a prostrate Ministry has time to deal you a kick and break your jaw.” Such wisdom was the fruit of his common sense. He was ambitious, but did his best to satisfy his ambition without sacrificing his business or his pleasures, which were pictures and women. For the rest, he was a very energetic person, always running to and fro between his factories and Paris, where he had three or four addresses.
The idea of worming his way in between the Radicals and the pure Nationalists having dawned upon him one day, he went to see Monsieur Worms-Clavelin.
“The proposition I am about to make to you, monsieur le préfet, cannot but be agreeable to you. I therefore feel certain beforehand of your consent,” he said. “You are anxious for the success of the Laprat-Teulet list. It is your duty to be so. I respect your feelings in the matter, but I cannot second them. You are afraid of the success of the Brécé list. Nothing more legitimate. In this connection I may be useful to you. I am forming, with three of my friends, a list of Nationalist candidates. The department is Nationalist but it is moderate. My programme will be Nationalist and Republican. I shall have the clergy against me, but the bishops will be on my side. Do not contest my claim. Observe a benevolent neutrality toward me. I shall not take many votes from the Laprat list, but, on the other hand, I shall take a great many from the Brécé list. I will not disguise the fact that I quite expect to go through on the third scrutiny. But this will be to your advantage as well, because the extremists will be left in the cart.”
“Monsieur Panneton,” replied Monsieur Worms-Clavelin, “you have long been assured of my personal sympathies. I thank you for the interesting communication which you have been kind enough to make. I will think it over and act in conformity with the interest of the Republican Party, endeavouring meanwhile to fathom the intentions of the Government.”
He offered Monsieur Panneton a cigar and in a friendly way asked him if he had not just come from Paris, and what he thought of the new piece at the Variétés. He asked this question because he knew that Panneton was keeping one of the actresses there. Felix Panneton was supposed to be a great lover of women. He was a big, ugly man of fifty, dark and bald, with high shoulders and a reputation for wit.
Some days after his interview with Worms-Clavelin, he was walking up the Champs-Élysées thinking of his candidature, which augured fairly well, and of the importance of making a start as soon as possible. But just at the moment of publishing the list, which he headed, one of the candidates, Monsieur de Terremondre, had backed out. Monsieur de Terremondre was too moderate to separate himself from the extremists. Hearing their cries redoubled, he had gone back to them. “Just what I expected,” thought Panneton. “It doesn’t much matter. I will put Gromance in Terremondre’s place. Gromance will do the trick, Gromance the landed proprietor — and every acre that he possesses mortgaged. But that will do him no harm except in his own district. He is in Paris. I’ll go and see him.”
He had reached this point in his reflections when he saw Madame de Gromance coming towards him in a mink coat that came down to her feet. Even under the thick fur she was still slim and dainty. He found her delicious.
“I am delighted to see you, dear lady. How is Monsieur de Gromance?”
“Oh — quite well.”
When people asked her for news of her husband she was always afraid of their doing so in an ill-bred spirit of irony.
“May I walk a little way with you, madame? I want to discuss some serious matters with you.
First—”
“Well?”
“That coat gives you a barbaric appearance, you look like a charming little savage.”
“Are these the serious matters?”
“I’m coming to them. It is absolutely necessary for Monsieur de Gromance to present himself as a candidate for the Senate, The interests of his country demand it. Monsieur de Gromance is a Nationalist, is he not?”
She looked at him with a touch of indignation.
“And is he a Republican?”
“Heavens, yes! I’ll explain. He’s a Royalist. So you understand—”
“Ah, dear lady, those are the best Republicans. We will put the name of Monsieur de Gromance prominently upon our list of Republican Nationalists.”
“And do you think that Dieudonné will get in?”
“Madame, I think so. We have the bishops with us and many senatorial electors who, although Nationalists by conviction, uphold the Government on account of their office or their interests. And in the event of failure, which could only be an honourable failure, Monsieur de Gromance can rely on the gratitude of the Government and the Administration. I’ll tell you a great secret. Worms-Clavelin is on our side.”
“Then I don’t see why Dieudonné—”
“Are you quite sure your husband will accept?”
“Go and see him yourself.”
“You are the only person with any influence over him.”
“Do you think so?”
“I am quite sure of it.”
“Then it’s settled.”
“No, it isn’t settled. There are very delicate details which we can’t settle like this in the street. Come and see me and I will show you my Baudouins. Come to-morrow.”
He whispered the address, the number of a house in a dull deserted street in the Quartier de l’Europe. There, at a respectable distance from his lawful and spacious domicile in the Champs-Élysées, he had a small house, built in former days for a fashionable painter.
“Is there any special hurry?”
“I should say so. Just think, my dear madame, we have only three weeks left for our electoral campaign and Brécé has been working the department for six months.”
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 176