Complete Works of Anatole France

by Anatole France

  “But is it quite necessary that I should come and see your — ?”

  “My Baudouins? It is indispensable.”

  “Is it really?”

  “Listen and judge for yourself, dear lady. I do not deny that your husband’s name has a certain prestige among the rural population, especially in the parts where he is little known. But I cannot disguise the fact that when I proposed to add his name to our list I met with opposition. This opposition still exists. You must give me strength to overcome it. I must draw from your — your friendship the irresistible will to In short, I feel that if you do not give me your sympathy I shall not have the necessary energy to—”

  “But is it quite proper for me to go and see your — ?”

  “Oh, in Paris!”

  “If I do, of course it will be for the sake of the country and the Army. We must save France.”

  “That is my opinion.”

  “Remember me to Madame Panneton.”

  “I will not forget, dear madame. Until to-morrow.”

  CHAPTER XIX

  IN Monsieur Felix Panneton’s little house there was a large room which had formerly been used as a studio by the fashionable painter, and which the new inmate had furnished with the magnificence of a great collector of curios and the discretion of an accomplished lover of women. Artistically and in methodical order Monsieur Panneton had strewn the room with couches, sofas and divans of all shapes and kinds.

  Looking from right to left as you went in, you would first of all notice a little blue silk settee the arms of which, shaped like a swan’s neck, reminded one of the time when Bonaparte in Paris, like Tiberius of old in Rome, was bent on improving the manners and customs of society. Then came another rather bigger couch upholstered in Beauvais cloth with tapestry-covered ends; then a settee in three divisions, covered in silk; then a little wooden settee à la capucine with a covering of Turkish tapestry; then a large sofa of gilded wood upholstered in crimson figured velvet with cushions of the same, which had belonged to Mademoiselle Damours; then a broad, low, luxuriously stuffed divan of flame-coloured silk; and finally a tottering mass of soft cushions on a very low Oriental divan which, bathed in a dim rose-coloured light, stood on the left near the Baudouin room.

  As she entered the room, each charming visitor could thus take in with a glance the varied seats and choose the one that best suited her moral character and her present state of mind. Panneton, from the first, observed his new friends, noticed their expressions, took some trouble to discover their tastes, and was careful to ensure that they should sit only where they wished to sit. The more chaste of his lady friends went straight to the little blue settee, placing a gloved hand on the swan’s neck. There was also a high straight-backed arm-chair of gilded wood and Genoa velvet, the former throne of a Duchess of Modena and Parma; that was for the haughty beauties. The Parisian ladies seated themselves calmly on the Beauvais couch; the foreign princesses generally preferred one of the two sofas. Thanks to the judicious arrangement of these aids to conversation, Panneton knew at a glance what he had to do. He was in a position to observe all the conventions, careful not to attempt too sudden a transition in the necessary succession of his attitudes, and was able to spare both his visitor and himself those long and useless pauses between the preliminary courtesies and the inspection of the Baudouins. His proceedings thereby gained a certainty and a mastery which did him honour.

  Madame de Gromance gave immediate proof of a tact for which Panneton was grateful. Without so much as a glance at the throne of Parma and Modena, and leaving on the right the Napoleonic swan’s neck, she sat on the flowered Beauvais sofa like a Parisienne. Clotilde had languished among the smaller landed gentry of the department and had had attentions paid to her by some rather underbred young men; but the meaning of life was dawning upon her. She had racked her brains over money matters and was beginning to understand what social duty entailed. She did not dislike Panneton excessively. Partially bald, with very black hair brushed smoothly over his temples, and large prominent eyes, he looked like a lovesick apoplectic, and made her feel rather inclined to laugh, satisfying that craving for the comic element in love of which she had always been conscious. No doubt she would have preferred a magnificent young man, but she was inclined to facile gaiety and the sort of amusement which a man derives from jokes of a rather highly salted nature and a certain kind of ugliness. After a moment of very natural shyness she felt that it would not be so terrible, nor even very tedious.

  Everything went well. The transit from the Beauvais to the settee and from the settee to the big sofa took place with all due decorum. They judged it needless to linger on the Oriental cushions and went straight into the Baudouin room.

  When Clotilde thought of looking at it the room, like the erotic painter’s pictures, was strewn with women’s garments and fine linen.

  “Ah, there are the Baudouins, you have two of them.”

  “Just so.”

  He had the Jardinier galant and the Carquois épuisé, two little water-colours for which he had paid 60,000 francs apiece at the Godard sale, and which cost him considerably more than that because of the use to which he put them. Calm once more, and a little melancholy even, he gazed with the eye of a connoisseur at the slender, graceful, supple figure of the woman before him, and, finding her beautiful, was conscious of a little feeling of pride, which grew as she gradually reassumed her social characteristics together with her garments.

  She demanded the list of candidates.

  “Panneton, manufacturer; Dieudonné de Gromance, landed proprietor; Dr. Fornerol; Mulot, explorer.”

  “Mulot?”

  “Young Mulot. He was running up bills in Paris, so his father sent him round the world. Désiré Mulot, explorer. That sounds well, an explorer candidate! The electors hope he will open up new fields for their goods. Above all, they feel flattered.” Madame de Gromance was becoming serious. She wanted to hear the address to the senatorial electors. He outlined it and repeated some parts which he knew by heart.

  “First, we promise general pacification. Brécé and the pure Nationalists have not sufficiently insisted on pacification. Then we absolutely demolish the nameless party.”

  She asked what the nameless party was.

  “For us it’s the party of our adversaries; for our adversaries it is ourselves. There can be no mistake about that. We demolish the traitors, the creatures who have sold themselves. We fight against the power of gold — that is useful for the poor ruined aristocracy. Enemies of all reaction, we repudiate political adventure. France is resolved on peace, but the day when she draws the sword from the scabbard, etc. The country that regards with pride and affection her admirable national Army — I shall have to alter that sentence a little.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it is in both the other addresses, word for word; the Nationalists have it and so have the enemies of the Army.”

  “And you promise me that Dieudonné will get in.”

  “Dieudonné or Goby.”

  “What! Dieudonné or Goby? If you were not any surer than that you ought to have told me. Dieudonné or Goby! To hear you one would think it was all one which got in.”

  “It isn’t all one, but in either case Brécé goes under.”

  “Brécé is one of our friends, you know.”

  “And one of mine! In either case, as I said before, Brécé and his list will go under, and having contributed to his downfall the prefect and the Government will be under obligations to Monsieur de Gromance. After the elections, no matter how they result, you will come and see my Baudouins again and I will make of your husband — whatever you will.”

  “An ambassador.”

  At the scrutiny of the 28th of January, the list of Nationalist candidates, Comte de Brécé, Colonel Despautères, Lerond, ex-magistrate, La folie, butcher, obtained an average of about a hundred votes. The Progressive Republicans, Felix Panneton, manufacturer, Dieudonné de Gromance, landed proprietor, Mulot, explorer,
and Dr. Fornerol, obtained an average of a hundred and thirty votes. Laprat-

  Teulet, implicated in the Panama affair, only succeeded in obtaining a hundred and twenty votes. The other three retiring Senators obtained an average of two hundred votes.

  At the second scrutiny Laprat-Teulet’s votes fell to sixty. —

  At the third scrutiny Goby, Mannequin and Ledru, the three retiring Radical Senators, and Felix Panneton, Republican Progressive, were elected.

  CHAPTER XX

  LOOK at the scene before you,” said Monsieur Bergeret to his disciple Monsieur Goubin, who was polishing his eyeglass, as they stood on the steps of the Trocadero. “Look at the domes, minarets, spires, belfries, towers and pediments; the roofs of thatch, slate, glass, tile, wood, hide and coloured earthenware; the Italian and Moorish terraces, the palaces, temples, pagodas, kiosks, huts, hovels, and tents; the fountains and fire-works; the harmony and contrast of all these human habitations, the marvels of workmanship, the wonderful playthings of industry, the prodigious diversions of modern genius, which has brought together in this spot the arts and crafts of the whole world.”

  “Do you think,” queried Monsieur Goubin, “that France will derive any profit from this huge Exhibition?”

  “She may reap great advantages from it,” replied Monsieur Bergeret, “provided it does not fill her with a barren and hostile pride. All this is only the decoration and envelope, it is the study of what it contains that will give us the opportunity of considering more minutely the exchange and circulation of products, their consumption at fair prices, the increase of work and wages and the emancipation of the worker. And do you not admire, Monsieur Goubin, one of the first kind offices of the Universal Exhibition, in scaring away Jean Coq and Jean Mouton? Where are they now? You neither see nor hear them nowadays, and formerly one saw nothing else. Jean Coq led the way, with his head high, his calves prominent. Jean Mouton followed him, fat and curly-headed. The whole city re-echoed to the sound of their cock-a-doodle-doo and baa-baa-baa, for they were eloquent. One day this winter I overheard Jean Coq say, ‘We must have a war. This Government has made it inevitable by its cowardice!’ And Jean Mouton replied:— ‘I’d rather have a naval war.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Jean Coq, ‘a sea-fight would be consistent with the enthusiasm of the Nationalists. But why not have war on land as well as on sea? Who’s to stop us?’

  ‘No one,’ replied Jean Coq. ‘I should like to see anyone try to stop us! But we must first exterminate all traitors and spies, all Jews and Freemasons. That is essential.’

  ‘That’s just what I think,’ replied Jean Mouton. ‘And I will not go to war until our land has been cleared of all her enemies.’

  “Jean Coq is hot-headed, Jean Mouton mild and peaceful, but they both know only too well how to whet the national energies not to attempt by every means in their power to assure to their country the benefits of war at home and abroad.

  “Jean Coq and Jean Mouton are Republicans. Jean Coq votes at every election for the Imperialist candidate, and Jean Mouton for the Royalist, but they are both of them Republican Plebiscitarians, and can imagine nothing better for the consolidation of their chosen Government than to deliver it over to the hazards of an obscure and disorderly suffrage; in which they show themselves to be clever fellows. For it is, of course, a profitable thing, if you have a house, to stake it at dice against a truss of hay, because by so doing you run the chance of winning your own house, which of course would be a great advantage.

  “Jean Coq is not pious, neither is Jean Mouton a clerical, although he is no Freethinker, but they venerate and cherish the monks who grow rich by the sale of miracles and who publish seditious, insulting and slanderous newspapers. And you know as well as I do how such people abound in this country of ours and how they prey upon it.

  “Jean Coq and Jean Mouton are patriots. You think you, too, are a patriot, and I know that you are attached to your country by the tender and invincible ties of sentiment and reason. You are mistaken, however, and if it be your wish to live at peace with the world you are in league with the enemy. Jean Coq and Jean Mouton will prove that by falling upon you with their cudgels to the war-cry of ‘France for the French F ‘France for the French F is the slogan of Jean Coq and Jean Mouton, and as it is evident that these words exactly describe the position of a great nation in the midst of other nations, and express the necessary conditions of life, the universal law of exchange, the commerce of ideas and of products, just as they contain a great economical doctrine and a profound philosophy, Jean Coq and Jean Mouton have made up their minds to shut out all foreigners in order to keep France for the French, thus, by a stroke of genius, extending to human beings the system which Monsieur Méline applied only to the products of agriculture and industry, for the greater profit of a small number of landed proprietors. And this idea of Jean Coq’s, of closing the country to men of other nations, enforces, by its modest beauty, the admiration of quite a host of small middle-class people and coffee-house keepers.

  “Jean Coq and Jean Mouton are not evil; they are only the innocent enemies of the human species. Jean Coq is the more ardent, Jean Mouton the more melancholy, but they are simple fellows both, and believe what their newspapers tell them. This throws a dazzling light upon their innocence, for it is not easy to believe what their newspapers tell them. I take you all to witness, all you famous impostors, you forgers of all time; you egregious liars, distinguished tricksters, notorious creators of fictitious errors and illusions; you whose time-honoured frauds have enriched literature, sacred and profane, by so many dubious volumes; authors of apocryphal Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Syrian and Chaldean writings which have so long deceived learned and ignorant alike; you, false Pythagoras, false Hermes-Trismegistus, false Sanchoniathon, fallacious editors of the Orphic poems and the Sibylline books; false Enoch, false Esdras, pseudo-Clement and pseudo-Timothy; and you lord abbots who, to assure yourselves of the possession of your lands and privileges, forged in the reign of Louis IX the charters of Clotaire and Dagobert; and you, doctors of canon law, who based the pretensions of the Holy See on a heap of sacred decretals composed by yourselves; and you, wholesale manufacturers of historical memoirs: — Soulavie, Courchamps, Touchard-Lafosse, lying Weber, lying Bourrienne; you, sham executioners and sham police-agents, who wrote the sordid memoirs of Samson and Monsieur Claude; and you, Vrain-Lucas, who with your own hand traced a letter said to be written by Mary Magdalene, and a note from the hand of Vercingetorix, I call you all to witness; and you whose whole life was a work of simulation; lying Smerdis, lying Neros, lying Maids of Orleans, who would have deceived the very brothers of Joan of Arc; lying Martin Guerre, lying Demetrius and fictitious Dukes of Normandy; I call you to witness, workers of spells, makers of miracles that seduced the mob: Simon the Magician, Apollonius of Tyana, Cagliostro, Comte de Saint-Germain; I call you to witness, travellers returning from far-off countries, who had every facility for lying and took full advantage of it; you who beheld the Cyclopes and the Læstrygones, the Magnetic Mountain, the Roc and the Fish-Bishop; and you, Sir John Maundeville, who saw in Asia devils vomiting fire; and you, makers of stories and fables and tales — Mother Goose, Tyl Eulenspiegel, Baron Munchausen! — and you, chivalrous and picturesque Spaniards, most notable babblers, I call you to witness! Bear witness, all of you! You have not accumulated, in the long course of the centuries, so many lies as Jean Coq and Jean Mouton read in their newspapers in a single day! And after that, how can we be surprised that they have so many bogies in their heads!”

  CHAPTER XXI

  FINDING himself implicated in the proceedings instituted against the authors of the plot against the Republic, Joseph Lacrisse put his person and his papers in a safe place. The police commissary whose duty it was to seize the correspondence of the Royalist Committee was too much of a gentleman not to give the members of the Committee due notice of his visit. He gave them twenty-four hours’ warning, thus bringing his natural courtesy into line with his legitimat
e anxiety to do his duty properly, for in common with the majority he believed that the Republican Ministry would soon be overthrown, and that a Ribot or Méline Cabinet would take its place. When he appeared at the headquarters of the Committee all the drawers and pigeon-holes were empty. They were sealed by the magistrate. He also sealed a Bottin for 1897, an automobile catalogue, a packet of cigarettes and a fancing glove which were found on the mantelpiece. In this manner he obeyed the legal formalities, on which we must congratulate him; one should always observe the legal formalities. His name was Jonquille. He was a distinguished magistrate and a clever man; in his youth he had composed songs for cafés-concerts. One of his works, Les Cancrelats dans le pain, achieved a great success at the Champs-Élysées in 1885.

  After the surprise caused by these unexpected proceedings, Joseph Lacrisse reassured himself. He soon saw that the conspirators under the present Government run less risk than under the First Empire or the Monarchy, and that the Third Republic is by no means bloodthirsty. Madame de Bonmont alone looked upon him as a victim, loving him the more for it, for she was generous. She showed her love by tears and sobs and fits of nerves, so that he spent a never-to-be-forgotten fortnight with her in Brussels. This was the extent of his exile. He benefited by one of the first verdicts pronounced by the Supreme Court. I do not complain of this, and if it had listened to me the Supreme Court would have condemned no one. Since they dared not prosecute all the offenders, it was not in very good taste to condemn only those of whom they were least afraid; to condemn them, moreover, for actions that were not, or at any rate did not seem, sufficiently distinguished from the actions for which they had already been prosecuted. Again, that the only persons implicated in an Army plot should have been civilians might well appear strange. To all of which some excellent people have replied: “People must do the best they can for themselves.” Joseph Lacrisse had lost none of his energy. He was ready to mend the broken threads of the plot, but that was soon recognized to be impossible, although the majority of the police commissaries who had received search warrants would have treated the Royalists with the same delicacy as Monsieur Jonquille. The irony of chance or the imprudence of the conspirators placed in their hands, in spite of themselves, enough documentary evidence to reveal the secret organization of the Committees to the Attorney-General of the Republic. They could no longer plot in safety, and had lost all hope of seeing the King return with the swallows.