“Peacefully!”
“Certainly. It was necessary to expedite a few agents who weren’t very obliging at the bank when the Governor was taken down to the vaults. We’ll have to hope that’ll be all. We’re not muzjiks. The people’s revolution will have clean hands. It’s not like yours, meaning no reproach.”
“Mine?” I exclaim.
“That’s right—the bourgeois one…89…93…the Rights of Man, the humbug. It’s us who are claiming them, the Rights of Man...”
Octave is in full swing, he’s opening his generous heart. Nevertheless, a little snigger causes me some anxiety.
“There’s a few we’d like to stick up against the wall, though, like the others…your Blum, for example.48 In the meantime, our delegate to Justice has just opened the prisons. It’s not that we like murderers, if there are any in there, but it’s necessary to make room, isn’t it?”
We have reached the Arc de la Grande Armée.
I salute our past.
Where have the times gone when France shed her blood for the emancipation of peoples? What has become of that epic of liberty, served by arms, which Rude’s sublime stone renders so present?49 How far we have traveled since them, and how uncomprehending these people seem of our memories! What do I, an old liberal, have in common with the violent and determined man marching beside me?
Nevertheless, I ask him: “In sum, Octave, tell me where your revolution is heading? What are you going to do with Paris, and how will you hold on to it?”
“It’s quite simple.” Determined is definitely the right word. “What’s demolished isn’t rebuilt. You’re asking me what our plans are? The factories are ours, virtually, as you say; how are you going to take them back? And you’ll see that we’re practical. Our locksmiths will get busy first thing in the morning. All the apartments whose shutters we see closed will be occupied by families from Saint-Ouen, Saint-Denis and Pantin. There’s no lack of tenants. As for those that are still inhabited, we’ll share.”
I make a fearful gesture.
“We don’t want to be disagreeable to anyone,” Octave adds. “In your place, for example, where there are so many bedrooms and drawing rooms full of books, I want you to have someone good. I’ll send you my wife and kid. That way, you won’t be inconvenienced.”
I dare not testify my gratitude, having a horror of children who touch books and disturb papers. But Octave continues, benevolently: “You can also have my sister-in-law—only two small kids. “He adds, maliciously: “You’re worried that she’ll be in the way? She’s not difficult. You’ll be quite snug.”
And as my savior leaves me in the hands of my tearful concierge, he adds, with one last smile: “You’ll like my brother-in-law. He’s one of you—a type-setter at L’Humanité. There’s someone who’ll appreciate your library!”50
Pierre de Nolhac: Babel at Ferney
(1932)
The League of Nations triumphed. Its work was applauded; peace reigned over the world, the terrible war threatened for so long had been avoided. Nationalisms had calmed down; raw materials were distributed as well as they could be; the borders were almost fixed; budgets were almost equilibrated; and the peoples, on the whole, were almost content.
For those fortunate results, believers thanked Providence; skeptics attributed them to the force of circumstances, and the League of Nations, attributed the honor, as is only just, to the League of Nations.
There was one slight shadow over the scene of felicity: at the moment when the 595th session opened, there was no significant question on the agenda. Success had exhausted them all, and the functionaries, whose number had been vastly increased by all the work surrounding that powerful organization, were searching in vain for a pretext to increase their salaries. The ingrate nations thought that they were paid well enough by the shine of the services they had rendered to humanity.
The question of prestige was more serious, and the Supreme Council was preoccupied by it. What subject of discourse was going to animate the sessions in the Palais des Nations, before their audience of elite men and sparkling ladies? How could it be demonstrated that speech was still necessary as the ornamentation of truth? The older members had difficulty resigning themselves to not opening a great debate.
Remaining loquacious after having once been eloquent, the venerable Permanent President continued to maintain the moral authority of France in spite of the somnolence to which his advanced age gave him the right. But that mind, fertile in resources for so many years, admitted that the crisis was redoubtable.51
They turned to the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, which, as everyone knows, includes the most agile intelligences in the world, but even the ICIC recognized its impotence. It had given so much effort to the difficult coordinations that its glorious mill had never ceased to grind. It was presently occupied in unifying a system of punctuation in the various typographies of the world, but that affair of periods and commas, important as it was, could only impassion serious minds.
It was, however, from that direction that salvation came. The thirty-third sub-committee of the ICIC had just found a viable claim.
The Free State of Greenland was bemoaning the poverty of its artistic collections. Its newly-constructed museum, built at great expense of the rarest woods, only enclosed at present a few polar bear skins, admittedly magnificent. No esthetic information could be derived from such remains. Was it not just, however, that a young nation, avid for progress, should savor more elevated enjoyments? It appealed to the spirit of solidarity that now united human beings, and made energetic pleas for its fair share of common treasures.
How could such a moving request be refused? How could that cry for beauty uttered from beyond the sixty-fifth degree of north latitude go unanswered?
It was immediately evident that the greatest principles were involved. Several countries adhered without hesitation to a better division of the world’s works of art. Iceland, Patagonia and the New Hebrides supported the Greenland claim. Official wireless messages criss-crossed the planet, and it was easy to anticipate that a majority of less favored nations would rapidly constitute and aliment their plaints with numerous deliberations.
The report that was urgently demanded was a great success. In the midst of an attentive emotion, the delegate of independent Manchuria read a paper that he had had the delicacy of writing in Japanese in order that it might be better understood. It concluded firmly in favor of the request: “The League of Nations has brought about the equitable division of wheat, gold and radium; it remains for it to complete that of the wealth of art, which is no less indispensable to human life.”
Elected with enthusiasm, imbued with the pure doctrine of the ICIC, the new Committee for the Wealth of Art promised the League of Nations a considerable plenary session.
Whence came the ingenious idea of basing the high commissioners charged with elaborating the plan for the great reform at Ferney?52 Perhaps it was some erudite and rancorous memory who remembered having seen Voltaire ranged among the adversaries of the League of Nations His remark was, in fact, rather unfortunate: “I shall believe in perpetual peace on the day the hawks cease to eat pigeons.”
The opportunity had arisen to inflict on the shade of the Seigneur de Ferney the spectacle of universal concord.
A simpler reason sufficed for the public. It seemed to everyone that it was necessary to isolate the deliberations from the various pressures of already-overexcited opinion. Nowhere was serenity better assured than in that old philosopher’s hermitage, not far from Geneva, which remained a temple of human wisdom.
On that spring afternoon, reporters from all the world’s newspapers, contained with great difficulty by the gendarmerie, were crowding the streets of the village, impatient to telephone, cable or send their sensational inexactitudes by wireless telegraph.
Inside the house, when the magnesium flashed, the photographic plates recorded a picturesque audience. Through the French Windows opening to the garden, th
e card-table was visible at which the great man had played whist with the whole of Europe. All around, on the Louis XV armchairs, the representatives of the powers displayed their coats. Secretaries and interpreters made a crown of smiles. Standing out in a graceful group against the pale background of the wood paneling, a dozen stenographers were touching up their lipstick. History would learn, by virtue of the indiscretion of the camera, that the envoy of the Chicago Times, hidden under a banquette, was taking clandestine notes.
Having tossed back his fine white hair, the Permanent President rose to his feet for the inaugural speech. “Messieurs,” he said, “I declare the memorable meeting open.” And the stenographers, pencils in hand, felt themselves swooning at the first chords of the melody
“Let me first thank you all for having chosen, for this historic discussion, a corner of French soil which will forever know the memory of a powerful philosopher. The democracy of my country has always honored the illustrious Voltaire as a precursor, for no one served the immortal principles of the Revolution better.”
“What revolution is he talking about?” one delegate whispered in the ears of his neighbors, but none of them was able to reply.
Having evoked in emotional terms the Calas and Dreyfus affairs, the orator declared himself to be a partisan of the renationalized redivision of art, the privilege of which could not be retained by nations that had no other entitlement than their antiquity.
“France, Messieurs, is determined to remain at the head of the irresistible movement that is drawing minds toward a better justice. A great producer of a sublime aliment, she is ready to be generous to the fraternal hands that are extended toward us. Messieurs, no one in this enclosure”—his gesture amplified the small philosophical drawing room—is in any doubt that it will aid the definitive solidification of the peace of peoples, for which you have worked untiringly...”
The unexpected adverb announced a cadence that the orator was not given the time to complete. He sat down in the midst of a noisy ovation, while, behind its wall, the press rejoiced in that good omen.
Less optimistic, the neighborhood sparrows, alarmed by the racket, prudently flew over the Swiss frontier.
The representative of the Iberian Federation, having risen to his feet, gave a magnificent assurance that the artistic treasures of his land, accumulated over centuries, would all be at the assembly’s disposal.
Such a sumptuous gesture provoked a flood of generous declarations. Nations that possessed nothing but their good will were seen distributing it with lavish eloquence.
Such effusions testified once again to the native bounty of the human species. But, ignorance being the mother of ingratitude, no one thought about the posthumous revenge offered to Jean-Jacques53 in the very house of the rival who had maltreated him so many times.
“We shall pass on to the drafting of the articles,” pronounced the President—who, with that duty accomplished, closed his eyes and quietly absented himself.
Gazes were transferred to the Scandinavian spectacles of an eminent jurist, celebrated for the clarity of his style and his fluent command of the Genevese idiom. His formula was ready.
“Article One. The esthetic contingent applied to the museums of each people is based on the numerical coefficient of its national agglomeration.”
No one could have put it better. While the crowded translators multiplied misinterpretations in various languages, the customary epithets—charming, excellent, decisive—circulated around the armchairs.
One sole opposition as manifest: the Italian delegate, a young descendant of the Doges, declared the question untimely and badly posed—but that attitude, clearly Fascist, did not provoke any storm.
The Reich took responsibility for transporting the works of art; its technical power of organization was imposing, and it retained a team of disposable generals whose had been in charge of occupied regions during the Great War.
“What will your noble nation bring to the stock to be created for the common find?” asked one delegate.
Dr. Kirtius seemed surprised by that indiscreet question.
“The figure of the population of Germany,” he said, “gives it the right to be among the receiving party, not the donating party. It awaits its share of the generosities of the League of Nations, and in any case, it is poorer than is believed; there are forgeries in the Museum of Berlin. Perhaps we would consent to a few exchanges.”
“The golden tiara of Saitapharnes might be attributed to you,” someone suggested.54
As the doctor did not appear to grasp that compensation, someone told him that German hypercriticism had recently established the authenticity of the ancient sculpting of that marvel, in spite of the claims made by the impostor who said that he had forged it.
That petty argument changed the mood. Each of the nations interrogated thereafter made reservations in its own concern, and when Yugoslavia observed that Belgium held a prodigious amount of beautiful things unjustified by the number of its inhabitants, Baron Claës de Tirlemont took it very ill and said dryly that certain peoples born yesterday ought not to have a voice in the matter.
“There are thirty-five Rubens in the Brussels Museum,” the Balkan insisted. “That’s enough for the entire world!”
A few eyes gleamed with the covetousness that Bossuet called concupiscence. Figures and statistics flew through the air; precisions, albeit fictitious, were launched by connoisseurs.
“Thirty Memlings in Bruges! Forty Jordaens in Antwerp! Is such possessiveness tolerable in our modern societies?”
The worthy Baron exploded. Already apoplectic, he went crimson, and while people hastened to reach his cravat, he murmured: “The barbarians! The barbarians!”
He was carried away in the midst of the tumult. Holland, sensing too many Rembrandts on its conscience, slipped away through the back door, while the President, abruptly reawakened, was congratulated on the serenity of the debate.
Disdainful until then, Great Britain declared, on the contrary, declared that the discussion had become indecent, by virtue of the unjustified presence of petty nations. But Greece retorted bitterly that it was still waiting for the restitution of the Parthenon, which was still turning to dust under the skies of London.
Good conduct buckled. One aggressive voice threw out this menacing aphorism: “Peoples have the right to dispose of the superfluity of others.”
“There will be war tomorrow!” yapped a prophet.
That was all too accurate. They separated in disorder. All hope of a plenary session was lost.
The bees in the garden remained mistresses of the manufacture of sweetness. In his gilded frame, Voltaire smiled without benevolence, and the consternated stenographers dared not read back their scandalous shorthand.
Pierre de Nolhac: A Season in Auvergne
(1932)
Royat, 21 July
This golf course in the mountains is a charming corner of Auvergne. You, my dear husband, who like that game, will be able to play more than one round when you come to look for your darling Claude at the end of the season. The course is superb and descends in a slope toward the valley of Royat, which is hidden from sight, but the view extends all the way to the plain of Limagne, unfurling to infinity. One can see a part of the town of Clermont, dominated by the two steeples of its cathedral, which project upwards on the horizon.
I can imagine you contemplating that peaceful scene, full of light, and see you bounding over the grass, club in hand, to the very place where I am writing. It is a very agreeable chalet, where I am sitting next to the excellent Brazilian family that you know, and who chaperone me at the palace.
I am surrounded by rather pleasant cocktails, which do not prevent me from drinking the delicious local milk. We shall go back down to lie in the sun by means of a beautiful winding path, which run through the fir-trees around an old extinct volcano named Gravenoire. Here and there, quarries open from which the somber stone known as pozzolan is obtained. The entire country in admirable in
its coloration, which would tempt the most daring water colorists...
22 July
My cure has commenced. The carbonated baths are amusing; they project innumerable bubbles over our skin, which warm you up very quickly. My heartbeat will soon regularize, the doctor says. Even when cured, it will still beat more rapidly for you...
23 July
Your friends the Jacques Bardoux came to fetch me in the auto to take me for an excursion to the volcanic hills. We went through a valley streaming with springs to a vast plateau on which the entire row of extinct volcanoes is lined up. The Puy-de-Dôme looms over them all with its imposing mass. One makes the tour through the woods and rapidly becomes familiar with these singular mountains. Some are rounded, others flattened at the top—where, it appears, the extinct mouths of the monsters are—some covered with forests, the others bare and savage. The Auvergnats seem proud to point out to you, from that high Gallic summit, several lakes that are, it appears, ancient craters.
We took tea at Saint-Saturnin, where there is an old château, a Roman church and your friends’ pretty house. They read me the verses of a local poet in which the fields of lava we traversed are described, disordered blocks of which were caught in the last eruption. The local name for it is cheire, which is the same word as sciarra, which designates the same thing in Sicily around Mount Etna.
I have copied the end of the poem for you:
The earth has reflowered on the savage slopes
Of mysterious mountains that were volcanoes,
But the Cheire, witness to the ancient days of the world,
Reveals the secrets that it seeks to hide:
The distant fire, the menacing, groaning wave.
It reminds our thoughts that the profound flame,
Is eating away eternally at its prison of rock.
The Nickel Man Page 32