Complete Works of Anatole France

by Anatole France

  I had hardly concluded this mental invocation when I felt inspired with fresh courage. And my thoughts harking back by a natural inclination to my dear Amélie, I realized all in a moment what my duty was, and resolved to fulfil it. I had disclosed my feelings to Amélie; was I not bound to make the same declaration to Madame Berthemet?

  I was only a few paces from the door, for in my self-communing I had naturally drifted towards the house which contained my Amélie. I entered and made my avowal.

  Madame Berthemet smilingly replied that my conduct was very praiseworthy. Then, adopting a graver tone, she said —

  “I am going to make you my confidant since I cannot otherwise satisfy you. Do not delude yourself; you must abandon all hope. My daughter is beloved by the Chevalier de St. Ange, and I believe that she is not insensible to his devotion. I should be glad enough, however, if she were to dismiss him from her thoughts. For our fortunes are on the wane from day to day, and the Chevalier’s love is consequently put to a test which the most ardent sentiments are not always proof against.”

  The Chevalier de St. Ange! I shuddered at the name. I had a rival, and that rival the most fascinating of poets, the most attractive of novelists. Birth, connections, good looks, talents, he possessed everything calculated to smooth his path. Only the previous evening I had observed in a lady’s hands a tortoiseshell box, with a portrait in miniature, mounted on the lid, of the Chevalier de St. Ange, in the uniform of a dragoon.

  As I caught sight of it I envied him, as did every other man of his acquaintance, his manly elegance and inimitable grace. Every morning I could hear my neighbour, the mercer’s wife, singing at her doorstep the immortal ballad known as The Pledge —

  Thou who shouldst never have seen the light,

  Pledge, beloved, that my fault endears

  Never, ah never, thou luckless wight,

  Frailty of mine to thine eyes bring tears.

  But a little while since I had been reading with delight the philosophical romance which opened the doors of the French Academy to the Chevalier de St. Ange; that admirable Cynégyre which leaves far behind it the Numa Pompilius of Monsieur Florian. “Your Cynégyre,” said the venerable Monsieur Sedaine to the Chevalier de St. Ange, as he received him into the illustrious company, “your Cynégyre was dedicated to the manes of Fénelon, and the offering was not unworthy of the altar.” Such was my rival — the impassioned author of The Pledge — a man of whom people spoke in one breath with Fénelon and Voltaire! I could not overcome my embarrassment; astonishment numbed my distress.

  “What, Madame!” I exclaimed, “the Chevalier de St. Ange!” — .

  “Yes,” rejoined Madame Berthemet, shaking her head, “a brilliant writer. But do not imagine for a moment that he is personally the man you would conjecture from his heroical poems. Alas! as our fortunes diminish his love ebbs with them.”

  She added kindly that she regretted that her daughter’s choice had not fallen upon me.

  “Talents,” she said, “do not make for happiness. On the contrary, men endowed with extraordinary powers, poets and orators, ought to live single.

  What need of companions have they who cannot mate with their equals. Their genius alone is sufficient to foster egoism. One cannot be an eminent man without incurring the penalties.”

  But I was no longer heedful of her remarks. I could not shake off my astonishment. Her disclosure had killed my love. I had never hoped for its return, and, without hope, love is not endued with any considerable vitality. Mine died at the utterance of a single word.

  The Chevalier de St. Ange! Shall I admit it? Although my heart bled, my self-esteem experienced a sort of satisfaction at the thought that, forestalled by such a rival, anybody else, no matter who, would have met the same fate as myself. I pressed a hundred kisses on Madame Berthemet’s hands, and left her house calmly, silently, slowly, a mere shadow of the ardent lover who had entered but an hour before, determined to make a clean breast of his scruples and his passion to the mother of Amélie. I was disconsolate. Not that I suffered. I was simply filled with surprise, shame, and fear at the discovery that I could outlive what had seemed the best part of me, my love.

  As I crossed the Pont Neuf to regain my deserted faubourg, I saw in the open space, at the foot of the pedestal upon which the statue of Henri IV had recently been erected, a singer from the Academy of Music, who was declaiming in a moving voice the hymn of the Marseillais. The crowd which had collected round him, with bare heads, took up the refrain in chorus, “Aux armes, citoyens!” But when the singer struck up the last verse, “Amour sacré de la Patrie,” in slow and solemn tones, a shiver of unearthly exaltation passed through the crowd. At the line —

  Libertéy liberté chérie...

  I fell on my knees upon the pavement, and beheld all the people around me likewise fallen prostrate. O, my country, my country! what spells do you weave that your children worship you so? Even from out the mire and the blood your image rises radiant. My country! happy are they who die for you. The sun, which was now dipping towards the horizon, surrounded by blood-hued clouds, lit into liquid flame the waters of the most famous of rivers. Hail to you, ultimate illumination of my days of happiness!

  Alack! into what a winter of discontent I passed that night! When I closed the door of my little chamber in the roof of the Duc de Puybonne’s mansion, I felt as though I were cementing the stone over my own tomb.

  “All is over!” I said through my sobs. “I love Amélie no longer. But how is it that I am forced to remind myself of the fact so untiringly? How is it that, loving her no longer, I cannot turn my thoughts away from her? Why do I lament so bitterly the uprooting of my wretched love?”

  Cruel anxieties were added to my personal sorrows. The state of public affairs was driving me to desperation. My destitution was extreme, and, far from cherishing the hope of obtaining work, I was reduced to concealing myself for fear of being arrested as a suspicious character.

  Monsieur Mille had not put in an appearance at the house since the 10th of August. I have no idea where he lodged; but he never missed a single sitting of the Commune, and every day before the municipality, amid enthusiastic applause from the tricoteuses and sans-culottesy he would recite a new patriotic hymn. Indeed he was the most patriotic of poets, and citizen Dorat-Cubières himself, beside him, was a timid Feuillant, under the grave suspicion of the demagogues. I had been engaged in incriminating transactions; moreover, Monsieur Mille made no attempt to visit me, and my own scruples made it an easy duty for me not to go in search of him. Nevertheless, being a good-hearted man, he sent me his collection of songs when the printing was completed. Ah, how slight the resemblance between his second muse and his first! The latter had been powdered, painted, perfumed. The new one resembled a fury, with serpents for locks of hair. I can still recall the song of the sansculottes, which aimed at being very malicious. It began thus —

  Long, long enough, yea far too long

  Dread tyranny has claimed our song,

  And despots swayed our lot.

  Now breaks the dawn of Liberty,

  Of Law, and fair Equality:

  All hail! the Sans-Culottes!

  The trial of the king aroused me to indescribable distress. My days rolled by in horror. One morning there was a knock at the door. I divined somehow that it proceeded from a gentle and friendly hand. I opened, and Madame Berthemet flung herself into my arms.

  “Save me, save us!” she said. “My brother, Monsieur Eustance, my only brother, was scheduled as an émigré and came to seek shelter in my house. He was denounced and arrested. He has been in prison now for five days. Luckily the accusation which hangs over him is vague and ill-founded. My brother was never an émigré. To effect his release, all that is necessary is that some one who can vouch for his unbroken residence in France will give evidence in his favour. I begged the Chevalier de St. Ange to do me this service. He prudently begged to be excused. Well! my friend, my son, that service which it would be perilous t
o him to render me, to you will be still more perilous; yet I come to ask it of you.”

  I thanked her for her request as if it had been a favour. And, indeed, it was so to be regarded, and of a quality so inestimable that an upright man could scarcely be honoured by a greater.

  “Well enough I knew that you would not refuse!” exclaimed Madame Berthemet, embracing me. “But this is not all,” she added. “You will need to procure a second witness; they demand that two shall come forward if my brother is to be released. Oh, my friend, what times we are living in! Monsieur de St. Ange keeps aloof from us; our misfortunes embarrass him; and Monsieur Mille would be afraid to visit folks under suspicion. Who would have thought it, my friend — who would have thought it? Do you remember Federation Day? We were all brimful of enthusiasm about fraternity, and I had on a very becoming dress.”

  She was in tears when she left me. I descended the stairs almost immediately after her to go in search of a guarantor, and to tell the truth I was considerably puzzled to put my hands on one. As I bowed my head in my hands I realized that I had a beard of eight days’ growth, which might render me an object of suspicion; so I betook myself at once to my barber’s at the corner of the Rue St. Guillaume. This barber was a very worthy fellow named Larisse, as tall as a poplar and as restless as an aspen. When I entered his shop he was attending to a wine merchant of the neighbourhood, who with his face smothered in lather was pouring out all sorts of playful threats.

  “Ah, my fine fellow, you dandifier of fine ladies,” he was saying, “your head will be cut off and stuck on the end of a pike to gratify your aristocratic inclinations. Every enemy of the people must add his quota to the basket, from the fat Capet to the slim Larisse. And, ça ira, so it will be!”

  Monsieur Larisse, paler than moonshine and fluttering like a leaf, observed the utmost precautions as he shaved the chin of the abusive patriot.

  I can affirm that never did barber experience greater terror. And from this circumstance I drew a happy augury for the success of the design I had suddenly conceived. It was my intention, to be plain, to ask Monsieur Larisse to accompany me before the committee as the second guarantor.

  “He is such a coward,” I reflected, “that he will never dare to protest.”

  The wine merchant withdrew muttering fresh threats, and left me alone with the barber, who, still trembling, fastened a napkin round my neck.

  “Ah, monsieur!” he whispered in my ear, in a voice feebler than a sigh, “hell is let loose upon us! Was it for the accommodation of demons like this that I studied the art of hairdressing? The heads which did honour to my skill are now in London or in Coblentz. How is Monseigneur le Duc de Puybonne? He was a good master.”

  I informed him that the Duke was living in London, and giving writing lessons. Indeed, the Duke had managed recently to convey to me a paper in which he told me that he was living, perfectly contented, in London, on four shillings and sixpence a day.

  “It may be so,” replied Monsieur Larisse, “but in London hairdressing is not performed as it is in Paris. The English can make constitutions, but they don’t know how to make wigs, and their powder is not nearly white enough.”

  Monsieur Larisse soon had me shaven. I had not a very harsh beard at that time. Scarcely had he closed his razor than, seizing him by the wrist, I said to him firmly —

  “My dear Monsieur Larisse, you are a valiant man; you are coming with me before the General Assembly of the Section des Postes in the one-time church of St. Eustache. There you will bear witness jointly with me that Monsieur Eustance has never been an émigré.”

  At these words Monsieur Larisse grew pale, and murmured in inanimate tones —

  “But I am not acquainted with Monsieur Eustance.”

  “For that matter, neither am I,” I replied.

  Which was indeed strictly true. I had correctly diagnosed the character of Monsieur Larisse. He was dumbfounded. His very fear thrust him into the perilous emprise. I took him by the arm and he followed me unresistingly.

  “But you are leading me to my death,” he said softly.

  “To glory rather,” I replied.

  I don’t know whether he was familiar with the tragedians, but he was sensible of the honour and appeared flattered. He had some knowledge of literature, for loosing my arm to go into his back shop, he said —

  “A moment, dear sir; let me at least put on my best coat. In the olden times the victims were decked with flowers. I find it recorded in the Almanack for Honest Men.”

  From his chest of drawers he took a blue coat which he flung round his long, mobile body. Thus attired he accompanied me to the General Assembly of the Section des Postes, which was sitting continuously.

  On the threshold of the desecrated church, on the door of which was inscribed the motto, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death,” Monsieur Larisse felt the sweat break out on his forehead; nevertheless he went in. One of the citizens who was sleeping there on a heap of empty bottles, half aroused himself to inquire our business, and then sent us on to the revolutionary committee of the Section.

  I knew this committee through having accompanied Monsieur Berthemet there on two occasions. The president of it was a small lodging-house keeper in the Rue de la Truanderie, whose most regular customers were ladies of easy virtue. Amongst the members there were an itinerant knife-grinder, a porter, and a dyer and cleaner named Bistac. It was with the knife-grinder that we had to do. He was seated informally with his sleeves turned up; we found him a good-natured fellow.

  “Citizens,” he said, “from the moment you place before me an attestation in due form, I have no objections to raise, because I am a magistrate and consequently the proper formalities are all I demand. I would only add one word. A man who has intelligence and character ought not to be authorized to leave Paris at a moment like this. Because, you see, citizens—”

  He hesitated, and then, making use of gesture to express his meaning, he stretched out his bare and muscular arm and then moved it to his forehead, which he tapped with a finger, and continued—” It is not of this alone” (here he indicated his arm, the working tool) “that we have need, but of this also” (here he motioned to his forehead, the seat of intellect).

  He then boasted of his natural gifts, and lamented that his parents had not contrived to give him any instruction. Then he set himself to the task of signing our declaration. Despite his good will this was a long process. Whilst, with hands accustomed to the grindstone, he painfully manipulated the pen, Bistac the cleaner came into the room. Bistac had not the genial nature of the grinder. His soul was all Jacobin. At sight of us his forehead puckered and his nostrils swelled: he scented the aristocrat.

  “Who are you?” he demanded of me.

  “Pierre Aubier.”

  “Oh, oh! Pierre Aubier, and I suppose you flatter yourself that you will sleep in your own bed to-night?”

  I put a cool face on the situation, but my companion began to shudder in every limb. His bones rattled so loudly that Bistac’s attention was attracted, and, forgetting me, he turned his scrutiny on to poor Larisse.

  “You have all the marks of a conspirator, in my opinion,” said Bistac in a terrible voice. “What is your profession?”

  “A barber, at your service, citizen.”

  “All barbers are Feuillants!”

  Terror commonly inspired Monsieur Larisse to the most courageous actions. He has since confessed to me that at this moment he had all the difficulty in the world to prevent himself from shouting “Long live the King!” As a matter of fact, he did no such thing, but replied proudly that he owed small thanks to the Revolution, which had suppressed wigs and powder, and that he was tired of living in a continual state of apprehension.

  “Take off my head,” he added. “I should prefer to get my dying over, rather than to live in constant fear.”

  Bistac became perplexed at talk like this.

  Meanwhile, the knife-grinder, who was revolving many confused but kindly thoughts
in his brain, recommended us to withdraw.

  “Off with you, citizens,” he said; “but bear in mind that the Republic has need of this.”

  And he pointed to his forehead.

  Madame Berthemet’s brother was released next day. The mother of Amélie expressed abundance of gratitude and embraced me — it was a way she had. She did better.

  “You have,” said she, “acquired a right to the gratitude of Amélie. I am desirous that my daughter should herself come and express her indebtedness to you. She owes you an uncle. It is less than a mother, it is true; but what commendations does not your courage deserve....”

  She went in search of Amélie.

  Left alone in the drawing-room, I waited. I asked myself whether I had the strength to see her once more. I feared, I hoped. I died a thousand deaths.

  In about five minutes Madame Berthemet reappeared, alone.

  “You must excuse an ungrateful girl,” she said.

  “My daughter refuses to come. ‘I could not endure his presence,’ she declared. ‘The sight of him would be torture to me; henceforth I hate him. By showing greater courage than the man I love, he has gained a cruel advantage. I will never see him again while I live. He is generous: he will forgive me.’”

  After she had repeated this speech to me Madame Berthemet concluded with these words:

  “Forget the ungrateful child!”

  I promised to endeavour to do so, and I kept my word. Events contributed to my success. The Terror reigned. That appalling day, the 31st of May, snatched their last hopes from those of the moderate party.

  Several times I was denounced as a conspirator on the score of the correspondence I maintained with the Duc de Puybonne, and I was continually risking both liberty and life.