Complete Works of Anatole France

by Anatole France

  “We must make for Villeneuve!” said the General. “At last we know what we have to do, and a good thing too.”

  The Villeneuve road was so encumbered with artillery, ammunition wagons and gunners asleep and wrapped in their great cloaks, that it was very difficult for the car to thread its way. A canteen-woman sitting in a cart decorated with Chinese lanterns hailed the motorists and offered them coffee and liqueurs.

  “We won’t say no,” replied the General.

  “We have swallowed dust enough during the manœuvres.”

  “They drank a liqueur and pressed on to Villeneuve, which was occupied by the infantry.

  “But where is my brigade?” cried the General, who was growing anxious.

  They questioned eagerly all the officers they met. But no one could give them news of the Decuir brigade.

  “What! no news? Then it is not at Villeneuve? Incredible!”

  “Gentlemen,” they heard in a woman’s voice, shrill and bell-like. They looked up and beheld a head studded with curl-papers; it belonged to the postmistress.

  “Gentlemen, there are two Villeneuves. This is Villeneuve-sur-Claine. Perhaps it is Villeneuve-la-Bataille that you want.

  “Perhaps,” said the Baron.

  “That is a long way off,” said the postmistress. You must go first to Montil. . . . Do you know Montil?”

  “Yes,” replied the Baron, “we know Montil.”

  “Then you go on to Saint-Michel-du-Mont; you take the main road and . . . .”

  From the window of a neighbouring house with gilded scutcheons came out a head wrapped in a comforter:

  “Gentlemen . . . .”

  And the notary of Villeneuve-sur-Claine gave his advice:

  “To reach Villeneuve-la-Bataille, you would do better to cross through the Forest of Tongues. . . . You go to La Croix du Perron, you turn to the right . . .”

  “That’s enough. I know the Forest of Tongues,” said the Baron, “I have hunted there with the Brécés. . . . Thank you, sir. . . . Thank you, Mademoiselle.”

  “Don’t mention it,” said the postmistress.

  “At your service, gentlemen,” said the notary.

  “What if we went to the inn and had a cocktail?” said the Baron.

  “I should like something to eat,” said Lacrisse. “I am done up.”

  “Courage, gentlemen,” said the General. “We will make up for it at Villeneuve-la-Bataille.”

  And they started. They passed through Vély, La Roche, Les Saules, Meulette, La Taillerie and entered the Forest of Tremble. A dazzling light ran before them into the shades of night and of the forest. They reached La Croix-du-Perron, then the Roi-Henri cross-roads. They fled wildly through the silence and solitude. They saw the deer glide by and the lights in the charcoal-burners’ huts. Suddenly in a deep cutting the ominous noise of an explosion made them shudder. The car skidded and knocked up against a tree.

  “What is the matter?” asked the General, who had been thrown head over heels.

  Lacrisse groaned; he was lying on a bed of fern.

  But Ernest, lantern in hand, was saying dismally:

  “The tyre has burst. . . . But worse than that the front wheel is twisted.”

  ÉMILE

  MADEMOISELLE BERGERET was silent. She smiled, which was unusual.

  “Why are you laughing, Zoé?” asked Monsieur Bergeret.

  “I was thinking of Émile Vincent.”

  “What Zoé! You can think of that excellent man, whom we have just lost, whom we loved and whom we mourn, and you can laugh!”

  “I laugh because I can see him again as he used to be, and the old memories are the strongest. But you should know, Lucien, that all smiles are not joyful any more than all tears are sorrowful. It takes an old maid to explain that.”

  “I am not unaware, Zoé, that laughter is the result of nervous agitation. Madame de Custine as she bade adieu in the prison to her husband condemned to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal, was seized with a fit of uncontrollable laughter at the sight of a prisoner walking past her in dressing-gown and night-cap, with his face painted and a candle in his hand.”

  “That is not at all the same thing,” said Zoé.

  “No,” replied Monsieur Bergeret. “But I remember what happened to me when I heard of the death of poor Demay who used to sing comic songs at the cafés concerts. It was one evening during a reception at the Prefecture. Worms-Clavelin said: ‘Demay is dead.’

  “I for my part received the tidings in decorous sadness. And, reflecting that never again should I hear that wondrous woman sing: Je cas’ des noisett’s en m’asseyant d’ssus, I tasted to the dregs all the melancholy the thought engendered. I let it drip into my soul and relapsed into silence. The Chief Secretary, Monsieur Lacarelle, exclaimed in his deep voice, through his military moustache: ‘Demay dead! What a loss to the gaiety of France!’ ‘It was in the evening paper,’ said Judge Pilloux. ‘True,’ added General Cartier de Chalmont gently, ‘and I am informed that she died consoled by the rites of the Church.’

  “At the General’s simple words suddenly a strange, incongruous vision flashed before my eyes. I imagined the end of the world as it is described in the ‘Dies Irae,’ according to the testimony of David and the Sibyl. I beheld the age reduced to ashes; I saw the dead issuing forth from their tombs, and, at the angel’s summons, crowding before the Judgment Seat, and the massive Demay mother-naked at the Lord’s right hand. At this conception I burst out laughing in the presence of the astonished officials civil and military. But worse still, the vision obsessed me and I added between bursts of laughter: ‘You will see that by her very presence, she will upset the solemnity of the Last Judgment.’ Never, Zoé, were words less comprehensible, less relevant.”

  “You are absurd, Lucien. I never have those curious visions. I smiled because I imagined our poor friend Vincent just as he was in life. That was all. It was quite natural. I mourn for him with all my heart. We never had a better friend.”

  “I too was very fond of him, Zoé, and I too when I think of him am tempted to smile. It was strange how so much military ardour came to reside in so small a body and how a soul so heroic could dwell in a form so spruce and plump. His life passed quietly in the suburb of a provincial town. He was a brushmaker at Les Tintelleries. But there was room in his heart for something besides his business.”

  “He was even smaller than Uncle Jean,” said Mademoiselle Bergeret.

  “And he was martial, he was civic, he was imperial,” said Monsieur Bergeret.

  “He was a very excellent man,” said Mademoiselle Bergeret.

  “He was in the war of 1870, Zoé. In that year he was twenty. I was only twelve. He seemed to me old and full of years. One day in the Terrible Year, he entered our peaceful provincial dwelling with the clashing of steel. He came to bid us farewell. He was dressed in the startling uniform of a franc-tireur. Protruding from his scarlet belt were the butts of two horse-pistols. And because a smile must enter even into the most tragic moments, the unconscious humour of some unknown armourer had hitched him to an enormous cavalry sword. Do not blame me for the expression, Zoé; it occurs in one of Cicero’s letters. ‘Whoever,’ says the orator, ‘hitched my son-in-law to that sword?’

  “What astonished me most in the equipment of our friend Émile Vincent was this huge sword. To my childish mind it seemed to augur victory. You, Zoé, I believed, were more impressed by his boots, for you looked up from your work and cried: ‘Why it is Puss in Boots!’”

  “Did I say ‘Puss in Boots.’ Poor Émile.”

  “You said ‘Puss in Boots’; and you need not regret it, Zoé. Madame d’Abrantès in her Memoirs relates how a young girl seeing Napoleon, then young and slender, ridiculously accoutred as a General of the Republic, likewise called him ‘Puss in Boots.’ Bonaparte never forgave her for it. Our friend was more magnanimous; the title did not offend him. Émile Vincent and his company were placed under the command of a general who did not like francs-tireurs
, and who thus harangued them: ‘It is not everything to be dressed for a carnival. You must know how to fight.’

  “The caustic speech did not trouble my friend Vincent. He was splendid throughout the campaign. One day he was seen to approach the enemy’s outposts with all the calm of a short-sighted man and a hero. He could not see three steps before him. Nothing could make him retreat. For the remaining thirty years of his life, while he was making carpet-brooms, he lived on the memory of that campaign. He read military newspapers, presided over meetings of his former companions in arms, was present at the unveiling of monuments raised to the soldiers of 1870. When from time to time there were erected on French soil monuments to Vercingetorix, to Jeanne d’Arc, to the soldiers of the Loire, at the head of the workmen in his factory, Émile defiled before them. He made patriotic speeches. And, here Zoé, we approach a scene in the comedy of life, the melancholy humour of which may one day be appreciated. During the Dreyfus Affair it occurred to Émile Vincent to say that Esterhazy was a fraud and a traitor. He said it because he knew it was so and because he was far too candid ever to conceal the truth. From that day he was regarded as the enemy of his country and of the army. He was treated as a traitor and an alien. He suffered from heart disease, and his grief at this treatment aggravated the malady. He died of sorrow and of shock. The last time I saw him he was talking of military tactics and strategy. They were his favourite topic of conversation. Although the campaign of ‘70, in which he had served, was conducted with the greatest disorder and confusion, he was persuaded that the art of war is the finest of all arts. And I fear that I must have vexed him by saying that properly speaking there is no art of war, for the arts that are really employed in campaigns are those of peace; baking, farriery, the maintenance of order, chemistry, etc.”

  “Why did you say such things, Lucien?” asked Mademoiselle Bergeret.

  “Because I was convinced of their truth,” replied her brother. “What is called strategy is really the art practised by Cook’s agency. It consists in crossing rivers by way of bridges and getting the other side of mountains through passes. As for military tactics, the rules are childish. Great Captains pay no attention to them. Although they would never admit it, they leave much to chance. Their art is to create prejudices in their favour. Conquest becomes easy to them when they are believed to be unconquerable. It is only on a plan that a battle assumes that aspect of order and regularity which reveals a dominant will.”

  “Poor Émile Vincent!” sighed Mademoiselle Bergeret. “He was indeed passionately fond of the army. And I agree with you that he must have suffered cruelly when he found military society treating him as an enemy. General Cartier de Chalmot’s wife was very hard on him. She knew better than anyone that he subscribed largely to military charities. And yet she would have nothing to do with him when she heard that he had called Esterhazy a fraud and a traitor. She broke with him in the most undisguised fashion. One day when he came to her house, she went close up to the hall where he was waiting and exclaimed so that he might hear her: ‘Tell him that I am not at home.’ Nevertheless she is not a malicious woman.”

  “No certainly,” replied Monsieur Bergeret. “She acted according to that holy simplicity of which still better examples may be found in earlier times. Only commonplace virtues are left to us nowadays. And poor Émile died of nothing but grief.”

  I crack nuts by sitting on them.

  ADRIENNE BUQUET

  WE were finishing our dinner. at the tavern when Laboullée said to me:

  “I admit that second-sight, hypnotic suggestion from a distance, presentiments subsequently fulfilled, all those phenomena dependent on a condition of the organism at present ill-defined, are not for the most part proved in such a manner as to satisfy the demands of scientific criticism. They nearly all rest on evidence which, though genuine, permits of some uncertainty as to the nature of the phenomena. That the facts about them are vague, I admit. But that they are possible I cannot doubt since I myself have witnessed one. By a happy chance I was myself enabled to make the minutest scrutiny. You may believe me when I tell you that I proceeded methodically and that I was careful to eliminate every possibility of error.”

  As he uttered this sentence, the young doctor with both hands smote his hollow chest padded with pamphlets and inclined towards me across the table his bald head with its projecting forehead.

  “Yes, my good fellow,” he added, “by a wonderful stroke of luck one of those phonomena described by Myers and Podmore as ‘phantoms of the living’ took place in all its phases before the very eyes of a man of science. I observed everything and noted everything down.”

  “I am listening.”

  “The time of the occurrence,” resumed Laboullée, “was the summer of ‘91. My friend, Paul Buquet, of whom I have often spoken to you, was then living with his wife in a little flat in the Rue de Grenelle, opposite the fountain. You did not know Buquet?”

  “I have seen him two or three times. A big fellow, bearded up to the eyes. His wife was dark, pale, large featured with long grey eyes.”

  “Exactly: a bilious temperament, nervous but fairly well balanced. However, when a woman lives in Paris her nerves get the upper hand and — then the deuce is in it. Did you ever see Adrienne?”

  “I met her one evening in the Rue de la Paix, standing with her husband in front of a jeweller’s window, her eyes fixed on some sapphires. A good-looking woman and deucedly well dressed for the wife of a poor wretch buried in the cellars of a manufacturing chemist. Buquet was never successful, was he?

  “For five years Buquet had been working for the firm of Jacob, manufacturers of photographic materials and apparatus in the Boulevard Magenta. From day to day he expected to be made a partner. Although he did not earn his thousands, he had a fairly good position. His prospects were not bad. He was a patient, simple fellow and hard working. He was the kind to succeed in the long run. Meanwhile his wife cost him little. Like a true Parisian, she was an excellent manager, for ever making wonderful bargains in linen, frocks, laces and jewels. She astonished her husband by her cleverness in dressing extremely well on nothing at all and Paul was gratified to see her always looking so nice and wearing such elegant under-linen. But these details cannot interest you.”

  “My dear Laboullée, I am very interested.”

  “At any rate all this chatter is beside the point. As you know I was Paul Buquet’s schoolfellow. We knew each other in the second class at Louis-le-Grand; and we had not lost sight of one another when, at the age of twenty-six, before he had made his position, he married Adrienne for love, and with nothing but what she stood up in, as we say. Our friendship did not cease with his marriage. Rather, Adrienne was kind to me, and I used often to dine with the young couple. As you know, I am doctor to the actor Laroche; I mix with theatrical folk, who from time to time give me tickets. Adrienne and her husband were very fond of the theatre. When I had a box for the evening I used to go and dine with them and take them afterwards to the Comédie-Française. At dinner time I was always sure to find Buquet, who came home from his factory regularly at half-past six, his wife and their friend Géraud.”

  “Géraud,” I inquired, “Marcel Géraud who was in a bank and who used to wear such beautiful ties?”

  “The very same. He was a constant visitor at the house. Being a confirmed bachelor and sociable, he dined there every day. He used to bring lobsters, pâtés and all kinds of dainties. He was pleasant, amiable and taciturn. Buquet could not get along without him, and we used to take him to the theatre.”

  “How old was he ?”

  “Géraud? I don’t know. Between thirty and forty.…One day when Laroche had given me a box, I went as usual to the Rue de Grenelle, to my friends, the Buquets. I was rather late, and when I arrived dinner was ready. Paul was complaining of being hungry; but Adrienne could not make up her mind to sit down to table in Géraud’s absence. ‘My children,’ I cried, ‘ I have a box in the second row for the Français! They are playing “D
enise”!’ ‘Come,’ said Buquet, ‘let us have dinner quickly and try not to miss the first act.’ The servant put dinner on the table. Adrienne seemed anxious, and it was evident that she turned against every mouthful. Buquet was noisily swallowing vermicelli, catching the threads hanging from his moustache with his tongue. ‘Women are extraordinary,’ he exclaimed. ‘Just fancy, Laboullée, Adrienne is anxious because Géraud has not come to dinner this evening. She imagines all manner of things. Tell her how absurd she is. Géraud may have been detained. He has his business. He is a bachelor; no one has a right to ask him how he spends his time. What surprises me is that he should devote nearly all his evenings to us. It is very good of him. The least we can do is to leave him some liberty. My principle is never to worry about what my friends are doing. But women are different.’ Madame Buquet in a trembling voice rejoined: ‘I am anxious. I fear something may have happened to Monsieur Géraud.’ Meanwhile Buquet was hurrying on the meal. ‘ Sophie!’ he called to the servant, ‘bring in the beef, the salad! Sophie! the cheese! the coffee.’ I observed that Madame Buquet had eaten nothing. ‘Come,’ said her husband, ‘go and dress; and don’t make us lose the first act. A play by Dumas is very different from an operetta of which all you want is to catch an air or two. Every play of Dumas’ is a series of logical deductions, not one of which must be lost. Go, my love; as for me I have only to put on my frock-coat.’ She rose, and slowly, as if almost against her will, passed into her room.

  “We drank our coffee, her husband and I, smoking our cigarettes. ‘That good Géraud,’ said Paul, ‘I am vexed all the same that he isn’t here this evening. He would have been glad to see “Denise.” But can you understand Adrienne’s worrying over his absence? I have tried in vain to make her understand that the good fellow may have business which he does not confide to us. Who can tell? Why it may be a love affair! She won’t understand. Give me a cigarette.’ Just as I was handing him my case, we heard proceeding from the next room a long cry of terror followed by a dull bumpish thud, the sound of something falling. ‘ Adrienne!’ cried Buquet. And he rushed into the bedroom. I followed. We found Adrienne lying full length on the floor, motionless, her face white and her eyes turned up. There was no epileptic or kindred symptom, no foam on the lips. The limbs were extended but not rigid. The pulse was rapid and unequal. I helped her husband to put her into an arm-chair. Almost immediately her circulation was restored; the blood rushed to her face, which was generally of a dull white. ‘ There,’ she said, pointing to her wardrobe mirror, ‘there! I saw him there. As I was fastening my bodice, I saw him in the glass. I turned round, thinking he was behind me. But seeing no one I understood and fell.’