Complete Works of Anatole France

by Anatole France

  This poor old man believed himself guilty of having mystically offended Constable 64, just as the little boy learning his first Catechism believes himself guilty of Eve’s sin. His sentence had taught him that he had cried: “Mort aux vaches!” He must, therefore have cried “ Mort aux vaches!” in some mysterious manner, unknown to himself. He was transported into a supernatural world. His trial was his apocalypse.

  If he had no very clear idea of the offence, his idea of the penalty was still less clear. His sentence appeared to him a solemn and superior ritual, something dazzling and incomprehensible, which is not to be discussed, and for which one is neither to be praised nor pitied. If at that moment he had seen President Bourriche, with white wings and a halo round his forehead, coming down through a hole in the ceiling, he would not have been surprised at this new manifestation of judicial glory. He would have said: “This is my trial continuing!”

  On the next day his lawyer visited him:

  “Well, my good fellow, things aren’t so bad after all! Don’t be discouraged. A fortnight is soon over. We have not much to complain of.”

  “As for that, I must say the gentlemen were very kind, very polite: not a single rude word. I shouldn’t have believed it. And the cipal was wearing white gloves. Did you notice?”

  “Everything considered, we did well to confess.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Crainquebille, I have a piece of good news for you. A charitable person, whose interest I have elicited on your behalf, gave me fifty francs for you. The sum will be used to pay your fine.”

  “When will you give me the money?”

  “It will be paid into the clerk’s office. You need not trouble about it.”

  “It does not matter. All the same I am very grateful to this person.” And Crainquebille murmured meditatively: “It’s something out of the common that’s happening to me.”

  “Don’t exaggerate, Crainquebille. Your case is by no means rare, far from it.”

  “You couldn’t tell me where they’ve put my barrow?”

  VI

  CRAINQUEBILLE IN THE LIGHT OF PUBLIC OPINION

  AFTER his discharge from prison, Crainquebille trundled his barrow along the Rue Montmartre, crying: “Cabbages, turnips, carrots!” He was neither ashamed nor proud of his adventure. The memory of it was not painful. He classed it in his mind with dreams, travels and plays. But, above all things, he was glad to be walking in the mud, along the paved streets, and to see overhead the rainy sky as dirty as the gutter, the dear sky of the town. At every corner he stopped to have a drink; then, gay and unconstrained, spitting in his hands in order to moisten his horny palms, he would seize the shafts and push on his barrow. Meanwhile a flight of sparrows, as poor and as early as he, seeking their livelihood in the road, flew off at the sound of his familiar cry: “Cabbages, turnips, carrots!” An old house wife, who had come up, said to him as she felt his celery:

  “What’s happened to you, Père Crainquebille? We haven’t seen you for three weeks. Have you been ill? You look rather pale.”

  “I’ll tell you, M’ame Mailloche, I’ve been doing the gentleman.”

  Nothing in his life changed, except that he went oftener to the pub, because he had an idea it was a holiday and that he had made the acquaintance of charitable folk. He returned to his garret rather gay. Stretched on his mattress he drew over him the sacks borrowed from the chestnut-seller at the corner which served him as blankets and he pondered: “Well, prison is not so bad; one has everything one wants there. But all the same one is better at home.”

  His contentment did not last long. He soon perceived that his customers looked at him askance.

  “Fine celery, M’ame Cointreau!”

  “I don’t want anything.”

  “What! nothing! do you live on air then?”

  And M’ame Cointreau without deigning to reply returned to the large bakery of which she was the mistress. The shopkeepers and caretakers, who had once flocked round his barrow all green and blooming, now turned away from him. Having reached the shoemaker’s, at the sign of l’Ange Gardien, the place where his adventures with justice had begun, he called:

  “M’ame Bayard, M’ame Bayard, you owe me sevenpence halfpenny from last time.”

  But M’ame Bayard, who was sitting at her counter, did not deign to turn her head.

  The whole of the Rue Montmartre was aware that Père Crainquebille had been in prison, and the whole of the Rue Montmartre gave up his acquaintance. The rumour of his conviction had reached the Faubourg and the noisy corner of the Rue Richer. There, about noon, he perceived Madame Laure, a kind and faithful customer, leaning over the barrow of another costermonger, young Martin. She was feeling a large cabbage. Her hair shone in the sunlight like masses of golden threads loosely twisted. And young Martin, a nobody, a good-for-nothing, was protesting with his hand on his heart that there were no finer vegetables than his. At this sight Crainquebille’s heart was rent. He pushed his barrow up to young Martin’s, and in a plaintive broken voice said to Madame Laure: “It’s not fair of you to forsake me.”

  As Madame Laure herself admitted, she was no duchess. It was not in society that she had acquired her ideas of the prison van and the police-station. But can one not be honest in every station in life? Every one has his self respect; and one does not like to deal with a man who has just come out of prison. So the only notice she took of Crainquebille was to give him a look of disgust. And the old costermonger resenting the affront shouted:

  “Dirty wench, go along with you.”

  Madame Laure let fall her cabbage and cried:

  “Eh! Be off with you, you bad penny. You come out of prison and then insult folk!”

  If Crainquebille had had any self-contro1 he would never have reproached Madame Laure with her calling. He knew only too well that one is not master of one’s fate, that one cannot always choose one’s occupation, and that good people may be found everywhere. He was accustomed discreetly to ignore her customers’ business with her; and he despised no one. But he was beside himself. Three times he called Madame Laure drunkard, wench, harridan. A group of idlers gathered round Madame Laure and Crainquebille. They exchanged a few more insults as serious as the first; and they would soon have exhausted their vocabulary, if a policeman had not suddenly appeared, and at once, by his silence and immobility, rendered them as silent and as motionless as himself. They separated. But this scene put the finishing touch to the discrediting of Crainquebille in the eyes of the Faubourg Montmartre and the Rue Richer.

  VII

  RESULTS

  THE old man went along mumbling:

  “For certain she’s a hussy, and none more of a hussy than she.”

  But at the bottom of his heart that was not the reproach he brought against her. He did not scorn her for being what she was. Rather he esteemed her for it, knowing her to be frugal and orderly. Once they had liked to talk together. She used to tell him of her parents who lived in the country. And they had both resolved to have a little garden and keep poultry. She was a good customer. And then to see her buying cabbages from young Martin, a dirty, good-for-nothing wretch; it cut him to the heart; and when she pretended to despise him, that put his back up, and then …!

  But she, alas! was not the only one who shunned him as if he had the plague. Every one avoided him. Just like Madame Laure, Madame Cointreau the baker, Madame Bayard of l’Ange Gardien scorned and repulsed him. Why! the whole of society refused to have anything to do with him.

  So because one had been put away for a fortnight one was not good enough even to sell leeks! Was it just? Was it reasonable to make a decent chap die of starvation because he had got into difficulties with a copper? If he was not to be allowed to sell vegetables then it was all over with him. Like a badly doctored wine he turned sour. After having had words with Madame Laure, he now had them with every one. For a mere nothing he would tell his customers what he thought of them and in no ambiguous terms, I assure you. If they felt his war
es too long he would call them to their faces chatterer, soft head. Likewise at the wine-shop he bawled at his comrades. His friend, the chestnut-seller, no longer recognized him; old Père Crainquebille, he said, had turned into a regular porcupine. It cannot be denied: he was becoming rude, disagreeable, evil-mouthed, loquacious. The truth of the matter was that he was discovering the imperfections of society; but he had not the facilities of a Professor of Moral and Political Science for the expression of his ideas concerning the vices of the system and the reforms necessary; and his thoughts evolved devoid of order and moderation.

  Misfortune was rendering him unjust. He was taking his revenge on those who did not wish him ill and sometimes on those who were weaker than he. One day he boxed Alphonse, the wine-seller’s little boy, on the ear, because he had asked him what it was like to be sent away. Crainquebille struck him and said:

  “Dirty brat! it’s your father who ought to be sent away instead of growing rich by selling poison.”

  A deed and a speech which did him no honour; for, as the chestnut-seller justly remarked, one ought not to strike a child, neither should one reproach him with a father whom he has not chosen.

  Crainquebille began to drink. The less money he earned the more brandy he drank. Formerly frugal and sober he himself marvelled at the change.

  “I never used to be a waster,” he said. “I suppose one doesn’t improve as one grows old.”

  Sometimes he severely blamed himself for his misconduct and his laziness:

  “Crainquebille, old chap, you ain’t good for anything but liftin’ your glass.”

  Sometimes he deceived himself and made out that he needed the drink.

  “I must have it now and then; I must have a drop to strengthen me and cheer me up. It seems as if I had a fire in my inside; and there’s nothing like the drink for quenching it.”

  It often happened that he missed the auction in the morning and so had to provide himself with damaged fruit and vegetables on credit. One day, feeling tired and discouraged, he left his barrow in its shed, and spent the livelong day hanging round the stall of Madame Rose, the tripe-seller, or lounging in and out of the wine-shops near the market. In the evening, sitting on a basket, he meditated and became conscious of his deterioration. He recalled the strength of his early years: the achievements of former days, the arduous labours and the glad evenings: those days quickly passing, all alike and fully occupied; the pacing in the darkness up and down the Market pavement, waiting for the early auction; the vegetables carried in armfuls and artistically arranged in the barrow; the piping hot black coffee of Mère Théodore swallowed standing, and at one gulp; the shafts grasped vigorously; and then the loud cry, piercing as cock crow, rending the morning air as he passed through the crowded streets. All that innocent, rough life of the human pack-horse came before him. For half a century, on his travelling stall, he had borne to townsfolk worn with care and vigil the fresh harvest of kitchen gardens. Shaking his head he sighed:

  “No! I’m not what I was. I’m done for. The pitcher goes so often to the well that at last it comes home broken. And then I’ve never been the same since my affair with the magistrates. No, I’m not the man I was.”

  In short he was demoralized. And when a man reaches that condition he might as well be on the ground and unable to rise. All the passers-by tread him under foot.

  VIII

  THE FINAL RESULT

  POVERTY came, black poverty. The old costermonger who used to come back from the Faubourg Montmartre with a bag full of five-franc pieces, had not a single coin now. Winter came. Driven out of his garret, he slept under the carts in a shed. It had been raining for days; the gutters were overflowing, and the shed was flooded.

  Crouching in his barrow, over the pestilent water, in the company of spiders, rats and half-starved cats, he was meditating in the gloom. Having eaten nothing all day and no longer having the chestnut-seller’s sacks for a covering, he recalled the fortnight when the Government had provided him with food and clothing. He envied the prisoners’ fate. They suffer neither cold nor hunger, and an idea occurred him:

  “Since I know the trick why don’t I use it?”

  He rose and went out into the street. It was a little past eleven. The night was dark and chill. A drizzling mist was falling, colder and more penetrating than rain. The few passers-by crept along under cover of the houses.

  Crainquebille went past the Church of Saint-Eustache and turned into the Rue Montmartre. It was deserted. A guardian of the peace stood on the pavement, by the apse of the church. He was under a gas-lamp, and all around fell a fine rain looking reddish in the gaslight. It fell on to the policeman’s hood. He looked chilled to the bone; but, either because he preferred to be in the light or because he was tired of walking he stayed under the lamp, and perhaps it seemed to him a friend, a companion. In the loneliness of the night the flickering flame was his only entertainment. In his immobility he appeared hardly human. The reflection of his boots on the wet pavement, which looked like a lake, prolonged him downwards and gave him from a distance the air of some amphibious monster half out of water. Observed more closely he had at once a monkish and a military appearance. The coarse features of his countenance, magnified under the shadow of his hood, were sad and placid. He wore a thick moustache, short and grey. He was an old copper, a man of some two-score years. Crainquebille went up to him softly, and in a weak hesitating voice, said: “Mort aux vaches!”

  Then he awaited the result of those sacred words. But nothing came of them. The constable remained motionless and silent, with his arms folded under his short cloak. His eyes were wide open; they glistened in the darkness and regarded Crainquebille with sadness, vigilance and scorn.

  Crainquebille, astonished, but still resolute, muttered:

  “Mort aux vaches! I tell you.”

  There was a long silence in the chill darkness and the falling of the fine penetrating rain. At last the constable spoke:

  “Such things are not said.… For sure and for certain they are not said. At your age you ought to know better. Pass on.”

  “Why don’t you arrest me?” asked Crainquebille.

  The constable shook his head beneath his dripping hood:

  “If we were to take up all the addle-pates who say what they oughtn’t to, we should have our work cut out!… And what would be the use of it?”

  Overcome by such magnanimous disdain, Crainquebille remained for some time stolid and silent, with his feet in the gutter. Before going, he tried to explain:

  “I didn’t mean to say: Mort aux vaches! to you. It was not for you more than for another. It was only an idea.”

  The constable replied sternly but kindly:

  “Whether an idea or anything else it ought not to be said, because when a man does his duty and endures much, he ought not to be insulted with idle words.… I tell you again to pass on.”

  Crainquebille, with head bent and arms hanging limp, plunged into the rain and the darkness.

  PUTOIS

  I

  WHEN we were children, our tiny garden, which you could go from end to end of in twenty strides, seemed to us a vast universe, made up of joys and terrors,” said Monsieur Bergeret.

  “Do you remember Putois, Lucien?” asked Zoé, smiling as was her wont, with lips compressed and her nose over her needlework.

  “Do I remember Putois! … Why, of all the figures which passed before my childhood’s eyes, that of Putois remains the clearest in my memory. Not a single feature of his face or of his character have I forgotten. He had a long head. …”

  “A low forehead,” added Mademoiselle Zoé.

  Then antiphonally, in a monotonous voice, with mock gravity, the brother and sister recited the following points of a kind of police description:

  “A low forehead.”

  “Wall-eyed.”

  “Furtive looking.”

  “A crow’s-foot on his temple.”

  “High cheek-bones, red and shiny.”

&nbs
p; “His ears were ragged.”

  “His face was blank and expressionless.”

  “It was only by his hands, which were constantly moving, that you divined his thoughts.”

  “Thin, rather bent, weak in appearance.”

  “In reality of unusual strength.”

  “He could easily bend a five-franc piece between his thumb and forefinger.”

  “His thumb was huge.”

  “He spoke with a drawl.”

  “His tone was unctuous.”

  Suddenly Monsieur Bergeret cried eagerly:

  “Zoé! We have forgotten his yellow hair and his scant beard. We must begin again.”

  Pauline had been listening with astonishment to this strange recital. She asked her father and her aunt how they had come to learn this prose passage by heart, and why they recited it like a Litany.

  Monsieur Bergeret replied gravely:

  “Pauline, what you have just heard is the sacred text, I may say the liturgy of the Bergeret family. It is right that it should be transmitted to you in order that it may not perish with your aunt and me. Your grandfather, my child, your grandfather, Eloi Bergeret, who was not one to be amused with trifles, set a high value on this passage, principally on account of its origin. He entitled it ‘The Anatomy of Putois.’ And he was accustomed to say that in certain respects he set the anatomy of Putois above the anatomy of Quaresmeprenant. ‘If the description written by Xenomanes,’ he said, ‘is more learned and richer in rare and precious terms, the description of Putois greatly excels it in the lucidity of its ideas and the clearness of its style.’ Such was his opinion, for in those days Doctor Ledouble, of Tours, had not yet expounded chapters thirty, thirty-one and thirty-two of the fourth book of Rabelais.”

  “I can’t understand you,” said Pauline.

  “It is because you don’t know Putois, my daughter. You must learn that, in the childhood of your father and your aunt Zoé, there was no more familiar figure than Putois. In the home of your grandfather Bergeret, Putois was a household word. We all, in turn, believed that we had seen him.”