Joseph Lacrisse was totally ignorant of all questions concerning civic affairs, even to the attributions of municipal councils. This ignorance was useful to him. His eloquence was thereby the freer and more stirring. Anselme Raimondin, on the contrary, lost himself in the mazes of detail. He was accustomed to the use of business expressions, and to technical discussions; he had a love of figures, and a passion for documents, and although he knew his public he laboured under certain illusions with regard to the intelligence of the electors who had nominated him. He had a certain amount of respect for them; he dared not lie too grossly, and did his best to enter into explanations. All this made him appear cold, obscure and tedious.
He was no simpleton. He knew where lay his interests, and he understood minor politics. For two years his district had been submerged by Nationalist newspapers, posters and pamphlets; and he told himself that when the moment came he, too, could pretend to be a Nationalist, that it wasn’t so difficult to demolish traitors and acclaim the National Army. He had not feared his enemies sufficiently, thinking that he could always do as they did, in which he was mistaken. Joseph Lacrisse had an inimitable genius for expressing the Nationalist ideal. He had hit upon one special sentence which he frequently employed, and which always seemed new and beautiful. It was this: “Citizens, let us all rise to defend our admirable Army against a handful of cosmopolitans who have sworn to destroy it.” This was just the thing to say to the electors of the Grandes-Écuries. Repeated nightly, the sentence aroused the whole meeting to great and formidable enthusiasm. Anselme Raimondin did not hit upon anything nearly so good; if patriotic phrases occurred to him he did not deliver them in the right tone, and they produced no effect.
Lacrisse covered the walls with tricolour posters. Anselme Raimondin also made use of tricolour posters, but either the colours were too washy or the sun faded them; at all events, his posters had a pallid appearance. Everything played him false, every one abandoned him. He lost his assurance; he humbled himself, showed himself prudent and humble. He shrank from notice; he became almost imperceptible.
Again, when he stood up to speak in the dancinghall of some third-rate drinking-house he seemed like a pale phantom from which proceeded a feeble voice drowned by pipe-smoke and the interruptions of the audience. He recalled his past. He had always been a fighter, he said. He stood up for the Republic; this remark, like the preceding one, caused no sensation, had no sonorous echo. The electors of the Grandes-Écuries ward wanted the Republic to be defended by Joseph Lacrisse, who had conspired against her. That was what they wanted.
The meeting did not discuss both sides of the question. Only once was Raimondin invited to put in an appearance at a Nationalist meeting. He went; but he was not allowed to speak; and was utterly crushed by a resolution put and carried amid darkness and disorder, for the landlord had cut off the gas as soon as the people started breaking up the benches. The meetings in the Grandes-Écuries ward, as in all the other wards of Paris, were only moderately rowdy. The people now and then displayed the languid violence peculiar to their day, which is the most noticeable characteristic of our political manners. The Nationalists, according to their habit, hurled forth the same monotonous insults in which the expressions “Spy,”
“Traitor” and “Rogue” had a feeble, exhausted sound. Their slogans told of an extreme physical and moral enervation, a vague discontent combined with profound lethargy, and a definite inability to think out the simplest problems. There were many insults and few blows. It was unusual if more than two or three per night were wounded or knocked about, counting both parties. Lacrisse’s wounded were taken to the Nationalist chemist Delapierre, next door to the riding-school, and Raimondin’s to the Radical chemist Job, opposite the market-place, and by midnight there was not a soul left in the streets.
On Sunday, May the 6th, at six o’clock, Joseph Lacrisse, accompanied by his friends, was awaiting the result of the ballot in an empty shop decorated with flags and placards. This was their chief Committee Room. The pork-butcher, Monsieur Bonnaud, arrived, and announced that Lacrisse was elected by two thousand three hundred and nine votes against one thousand five hundred and fourteen for Monsieur Raimondin.
“Citizen,” said Bonnaud, “we are much gratified. It is a victory for the Republic.”
“And for honest men,” replied Lacrisse, adding with dignified benevolence: “I thank you, Monsieur Bonnaud, and I beg you to thank in my name our valiant friends.” Then, turning to Henri Léon who stood beside him, he whispered, “Léon, do me a favour, will you? Wire our success at once to Monseigneur.”
Shouts were heard from the street.
“Long live Déroulède! Long live the Army! Long live the Republic! Down with the Jews!” Lacrisse entered his carriage amid the cheers of the crowd that barred his passage. Baron Golsberg the Jew, was standing at the carriage door; he seized the new councillor’s hand:
“I gave you my vote, Monsieur Lacrisse. You understand, I gave you my vote, because, I tell you, anti-Semitism is mere humbug — you know it as well as I do — mere humbug, while Socialism is a serious matter.”
“Yes, yes. Good-bye, Monsieur Golsberg.”
But the Baron still held on.
“Socialism is the danger. Monsieur Raimondin favoured concessions to the Collectivists. That’s why I voted for you, Monsieur Lacrisse.”
And still the crowd yelled:
“Hurrah for Déroulède! Hurrah for the Army! Down with the Dreyfusards! Down with Raimondin! Death to the Jews!”
The coachman succeeded in making a way through the mass of electors.
Joseph Lacrisse found Madame de Bonmont at home, alone. She was excited and triumphant, having already heard the news.
“Elected!” she cried, her arms extended and her gaze directed heavenward.
And the word “elected” on the lips of so pious a lady seemed full of mystical meaning.
She put her beautiful arms around him and drew him to her.
“What makes me happiest is that you owe your election to me.”
She had contributed nothing to his expenses. It is true that money had not been wanting, and Joseph Lacrisse had drawn upon more than one banking account; but the gentle Elisabeth had given nothing, and Joseph Lacrisse could not understand what she meant. She explained herself:
“I had a candle burnt every day before St. Anthony; that is why you got in. St. Anthony grants all requests. Father Adéodat told me so, and I have proved it several times.”
She covered his face with kisses, and a beautiful idea occurred to her, which reminded her of the customs of chivalry.
“My dear,” she asked him, “do not municipal councillors wear a scarf? an embroidered scarf, isn’t it? I’ll embroider one for you.”
He was very tired and fell exhausted into a chair, but kneeling at his feet she murmured:
“I love you.”
And only the darkness heard the rest.
The same evening, in his modest apartments — the apartments of “a child of the quarter,” as he called them — Anselme Raimondin heard the result of the election. There were some dozen bottles of wine and a cold pâté on the dining-room table. His failure amazed him.
“It was only what I expected,” he said.
And he swung round in a pirouette, but he was clumsy and twisted his ankle.
“It’s your own fault,” said Dr. Maufle, by way of consolation. The Doctor was president of his Committee, an old Radical, with the face of a Silenus. “You allowed the Nationalists to poison the whole ward; you hadn’t the pluck to stand up against them. You made no attempt to unmask their falsehoods. On the contrary, like them, with them, you told every lie you could think of. You knew the truth, and you dared not undeceive the electors while there was still time. You’ve funked it, and you are beaten, and it serves you right!”
Anselme Raimondin shrugged his shoulders.
“You are a silly old fool, Maufle. You don’t understand the ins and outs of this election. Yet it’s c
lear enough. My failure was due to one thing only: the discontent of the small shopkeepers who are being crushed out of existence between the big shops and the co-operative societies. They are suffering and they made me pay for it. That’s all.” Then, with a faint smile, he added:
“They’ll find themselves nicely taken in.”
CHAPTER XXIV
MEETING his pupils Goubin and Denis, on one of the paths of the Luxembourg garden, Monsieur Bergeret said:
“I have good news for you, gentlemen. The peace of Europe will not be disturbed. The Trublions themselves have assured me of it.” And Monsieur Bergeret went on to relate the following story:
“I met Jean Coq, Jean Mouton, Jean Laiglon and Gilles Singe at the Exhibition, where they were listening to the creaking of the footbridges. Jean Coq came up to me, and said sternly: ‘Monsieur Bergeret, you said that we wanted war, and that we should make war, that Jean Mouton and I were going to land at Dover with an army and occupy London, and that then I should ‘take Berlin and various other capitals. You said this, I know. You said it with malicious intent to harm us and make the French nation believe that we desire war. Understand, monsieur, that this is a lie. Our tendencies are not war-like; they are military, which is quite another thing. We desire peace, and when we have established the Imperial Republic in France we shall not go to war.’
“I told Jean Coq that I was quite ready to believe him, and, what was more, that I saw that I had been mistaken and that my mistake was obvious; that Jean Coq, Jean Mouton, Jean Laiglon and Gilles Singe had sufficiently proved their love of peace by refusing to go and fight in China, whither they had been invited by beautiful white placards. ‘From that time forth,’ said I, ‘I realized the truly civil nature of your military sentiments, and the strength of your love for your country. You could not leave the soil of France. I beg you to accept my apologies, Monsieur Coq. I rejoice to see that you are as peacefully disposed as I.’
“Jean Coq looked at me with that eye that causes the world to tremble: ‘I am peacefully disposed, Monsieur Bergeret, but, thank God, not as you are. The peace I desire is not your peace. You are slavishly content with the peace that is forced upon us to-day. Our spirit is too great to endure it without impatience. This feeble enervating peace which satisfies you, cruelly wounds the pride of our hearts. When we are the masters we shall make another peace; a terrible, clanking, spurred and booted, equestrian peace! We shall make a pitiless, savage peace, a threatening, horrible, blazing peace; a peace worthy of us; a peace which, more frightful than the most frightful war, will freeze the world with terror and kill all the English by inhibition. That, Monsieur Bergeret, is our manner of being pacific. In two or three months’ time our peace will burst upon the world and will set it in a blaze.’ “After this speech I was forced to admit that the Trublions were peacefully disposed, and thus was confirmed the truth of the oracle written upon an ancient sycamore leaf by the sibyl of Panzoust:
“‘Toi qui de vent te repais,
Troublion, ma petite outre,
Si vraiment tu veux la paix,
Commence par nous la f..’”
CHAPTER XXV
MADAME DE BONMONT’S salon had been unusually lively and brilliant since the victory of the Nationalists in Paris and the election of Joseph Lacrisse for the ward of the Grandes-Écuries. The widow of the great Baron received at her house the flower of the new party. An old Rabbi of the Faubourg St. Antoine believed that the gentle Elisabeth attracted to herself the enemies of the chosen people by a special decree of the God of Israel. The hand, he thought, that placed Esther in the bed of Ahasuerus had been pleased to gather together the chiefs of the anti-Semites and the princes of the Trublions in the house of a Jewess. It is true that the Baronne had renounced the faith of her fathers, but who can fathom the designs of Jehovah! In the eyes of the artists, who, like Frémont, bethought themselves of the mythological figures in the palaces of Germany, her sumptuous beauty, the beauty of a Viennese Erigone, seemed symbolical of the Nationalist vintage.
Her dinners diffused an atmosphere of delight and power, and the smallest luncheon party at her house had a truly national significance. Thus, this morning she had gathered together at her table the most famous defenders of the Church and Army. There was Henri Léon, Vice-President of the Royalist Committees of the South-West, who had come to congratulate the Nationalists elected in Paris; Captain de Chalmot, the son of General Cartier de Chalmot, with his young American wife, who twittered to such an extent as she expressed her Nationalist propensities that one would have thought the very birds in their cages were taking part in our human disputes; Monsieur Tonnellier, the suspended professor of the fifth form at the Lycée Sully, who, as every one knows, had been convicted of defending, to his young pupils, an assault committed upon the person of the President of the Republic, had been condemned to pay a fine and was forthwith received in the best society, where he behaved very well, except that he was rather given to playing upon words; Frémont, an old Communard and an Inspector of the Fine Arts, who as he grew older became wonderfully reconciled to bourgeois and capitalist society, assiduously frequenting the houses of wealthy Jews, the guardians of the treasures of Christian art, and would gladly have lived under the dictatorship of a horse so long as he could spend the day caressing, with his delicate hands, finely wrought bibelots of precious material; and the old Comte Davant, dyed, waxed and varnished, handsome still, a trifle morose, who remembered the golden age of the Jews when he supplied the great financiers with furniture by Riesener and bronzes by Thomyres. When acting as the Baron’s collector he had gathered together fifteen millions’ worth of old furniture and objects of art. To-day, ruined by unfortunate speculation, he lived among the sons, regretting the fathers, a sad, bitter old man, one of the most insolent of parasites, insolence, as he well knew, being a parasite’s main passport to favour. She had also invited Jacques de Cadde, one of the promoters of the Henry subscription list; Philippe Dellion, Astolphe de Courtrai, Hugues Chassons des Aigues, President of the Nationalist Committee of Celle-Saint-Cloud, and Jambe-d’Argent in breeches and waistcoat of homespun, the white armlet with the golden lilies on his arm, and a wild shock of hair under his round hat, which, like his chaplet of olive-stones, he never removed. He was a Montmartre singer, by name Dupont, who having become a Chouan was received in the best society. He was taking a snack, with an old flint-gun between his legs, drinking copiously. Since the Affair a new classification had occurred in aristocratic French Society.
Young Baron Ernest sat facing his mother in the chair set for the master of the house. The conversation turned on politics.
“You are wrong,” said Jacques de Cadde to Philippe Dellion. “Believe me, you are wrong not to employ Father François’ move. No one knows what may happen after the Exhibition and as soon as we begin to hold public meetings.”
“One thing is certain,” said Astolphe de Courtrai, “and that is if we want to do well in the elections in twenty months’ time we must prepare to begin a campaign. I can promise you that I shall be ready, I’m working hard every day at boxing and single-stick.”
“Who’s your trainer?” asked Dellion. “Gaudibert. He has brought French boxing to perfection. It’s astonishing. He has some exquisite foot-work, some coups de savate, quite of his own. He’s a first-class teacher, and understands the tremendous importance of training.”
“Training is everything,” said Jacques de Cadde. “Of course,” continued Courtrai. “And Gaudibert has superior methods of training, a whole system, based on experience. Massage, friction and dieting followed by plenty of nourishment. His motto is: ‘Keep down fat, build up muscle.’ And in six months, my friends, he makes you a first-rate boxer, and gives your punch an elasticity and your kick a suppleness—”
Madame de Chalmot inquired:
“Can you overthrow this feeble Ministry?”
And at the bare idea of the Waldeck Cabinet she indignantly shook her pretty head — the head of an infant Samuel.
> “Do not distress yourself, madame,” said Lacrisse. “This Ministry will be replaced by another just like it.”
“Another Ministry of Republican spendthrifts,” said Monsieur Tonnellier. “France will be ruined.”
“Yes,” said Léon, “another Ministry just like this one. But the new Ministry will be less unpopular, for it will no longer be the Ministry of the Affair. We shall need a campaign of at least six weeks with all our newspapers to make it hateful to the people.”
“Have you been to the Petit Palais, madame?” said Fremont to the Baronne.
She replied that she had been there and had seen some beautiful caskets and some pretty dance-engagement books.
“Émile Moliner,” replied the Inspector of Fine Arts, “has organized an admirable exhibition of French art. The Middle Ages are represented by the most valuable examples. The eighteenth century takes an honourable position too, but there is still space to fill up. You, madame, who possess so many treasures will not refuse us the loan of some of your masterpieces.”
It is true that the great Barorl had left his widow many art treasures. For him the Comte Davant had ransacked all the provincial chateaux on the banks of the Somme, Loire and Rhone, and had wrested from ignorant, needy and whiskered gentlemen portraits of ancestors, historic furniture, gifts from kings to their mistresses, imposing souvenirs of the Monarchy, the treasured possessions of the most illustrious families. In her castle at Montil and her house in the Avenue Marceau she had examples of the work of the finest French cabinetmakers and of the greatest wood-carvers of the eighteenth century: chests of drawers, cabinets for medals, secretaries, clocks of all descriptions, candlesticks and exquisite faded tapestries. But although Frémont, and Terremondre before him, had begged her to send some pieces of furniture, bronzes or hangings to the coming Exhibition, she had always refused. Vain of her riches and anxious to display them she had not intended, on this occasion, to lend anything. Joseph Lacrisse encouraged her in this refusal: “Have nothing to do with their Exhibition. Your things will be stolen or burned. And who knows if they will ever succeed in organizing their international fair? It’s better to have nothing to do with people like that.”
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 179