His skill—was it deliberate?—had consisted of maintaining an opinion that served him in all parties, and, as the saying has it, keeping the pot boiling. Thus, for the popular party, Ernest Paris was “red”; for the bourgeois party, of which he was the issue, and which he had never left, he was “good.” That bourgeois patrician had never denied his ancestry. The son of a petty bookseller, he hid that so little that he had relived his childhood for his readers, with the numerous qualities and flaws of his milieu. Between the shopkeeper and the bourgeois there is only a difference of accumulated fortune; between the man that is struggling to acquire it and the man that is struggling to conserve it. Ernest Paris had had difficult debuts. Although he had not known poverty, he had, at least, known straitened circumstances—which, for an intellectual, is often worse. He had remained within his nature, in spite of his apparent prodigality, the economical spirit of his race.
In his home, curious works of art abounded, piled up rather than chosen judiciously. Ernest Paris, the demolisher of beliefs, had, without anyone really knowing why, a mania for religious trinkets, and excused it with a so-called love of beauty—but it was often nothing but the testimony of a grotesque superstition. Again, in that mania, he gave proof of a certain experience; he rarely allowed himself be taken for a ride. In any case, he never surpassed moderation; his expenditure was proportionate to his income.
Fundamentally, Ernest Paris was a great bourgeois; his natural distinction, his inexhaustible and always agreeable loquacity, and the apparent suppleness of his ideas, always ended up with the almost pessimistic conclusion that life is an incomprehensible phenomenon, that is it necessary to extract all possible pleasure from it, and not to attach an importance to human actions that they do not merit. In practice, if not in theory, therefore, he was frankly conservative of his acquired fortune, and he was never prodigal in philanthropic or social endeavors. Ernest Paris remained bourgeois, and, by virtue of that, perfectly “blue.”
Apart from his witty religious satires and his whimsical portraits of lewd and riotous monks, the writer never attacked the recognized religions of his homeland head-on; he maintained the tradition of the frivolous storytellers of the eighteenth century, and by means of that adroit method, conserved relations with the Church, whose spirit of tradition he admired, deep down. Perhaps, in fact, if France had possessed a Gallic Church, he would have accommodated himself to it in spite of his mocking and critical mind, not out of belief but for the pleasure of debating texts, priests often possession first-rate erudition. From the Church to monarchy by divine right there is only a single step; each of them only admits one unique leader. That unity of command, of direction, one senses in the majority of his books.
One recalls the indiscreet question that was put to him one day: “Are you a Republican, my dear Master?”
He replied: “Do you take me for an imbecile, Monsieur?”
Ernest Paris was, before anything else, aristocratic, and more so than the nobility itself, for aristocracy in him was natural, not acquired by ancestral heredity. On many occasions, he allowed a glimpse, not of his love, but his marked preference for a regime of unique authority, an authoritarian monarchy in which there would have been only one responsibility. “One can hate a bad king,” he said, “so one can detest a thousand idiots.” Thus, by taste and by instinct, that ideologue was “white.”
And it is, no doubt, that trilogy of opinions, that tricolor mind, which made his success and his glory. The chameleon entered fully into the spirit of his age, in which each political clan adopts labels but no longer has a flag. And it was that diffusion in colors which caused the general emotion, when people learned of his death. Yes, his strength came from the fact that he had laughed at many venerable things, that he had disputed everything without ever constructing anything. In sum, he had not acted. As a man of letters, he had something good to furnish everyone’s dream, in accordance with his ideas. He had never exposed himself to bringing the ideal of his books into conflict with the realities of life, making his writings—which anyone could loot according to his temperament—flowers beaten down by the rain, ears of corn battered by the storm: in short, ravaged dreams.
In the world of letters there was a great sigh of relief; that old man, in truth, was becoming inconvenient. He wrote, in a classic French, novels and short stories that were interesting and amusing, and, to complete the horror, sold well, justifying formidable print runs. Why, then, write, in our era, in the language of Racine and Voltaire, combining it with the erudition of Montaigne and the truculence of Rabelais? It was utterly rococo! The human intellect ought to evolve, like everything else.
If, politically, one is cramped by frontiers, the mind surpasses them and goes to eek its nourishment where it finds it. Before the war, it was fashionable to admire the literature of the North-East. The Latin spirit was obscured and intoxicated by beer grain alcohol and vodka; there was a triumph of dense and indigestible German philosophy. Today, it is more cosmopolitan; one mashes up all styles and genres in the wash-tub, and makes literary cocktails to the sound of jazz. Perhaps, eventually, those cocktails will end up becoming sublime, but for the present, they are only ephemeral. All so-called originality is seeking to set fire to a petard that will light a torch.
Thus, in the world of scribblers, there was relief as the disappearance of that old encumbrance Ernest Paris. Since the master was dead, that did not prevent all hypocrisies expanding in elegiac condolences and genuflections of every sort.
In sum, it was not mourning coming from the heart of the nation, but a political dolor made to order, the material of all interests and all opinions.
In those circumstances, on what side ought the government to line up in order to give the funeral celebrations the necessary solemnity, and, at the same time, content everyone? There was a great meeting of the Cabinet in order to resolve that delicate question. Naturally, the Panthéon had to open its doors to the great man, but what attitude ought the central power to strike, to regulate the affair?
It was public opinion that dictated the ordinance. In fact, the great industrial centers, having become since the war the nucleus of workers’ demands, gave the signal. Already organized for a long time as free communes of a sort, in a state that had remained conservative, the miners of Carmaux and Anzin, and the factories of the North and the East, sent deputations that positively took possession of the movement, and the government followed them, nervously, but with sufficient skill to reap the benefit. It was sublime stupidity and grandiloquence, but the popular party was flattered by that apparent condescension, and declared itself satisfied.
And, in sum, it had reason to be.
In order to ornament the length of the journey on foot from the Villa Saïd, at the bottom of the very recent Avenue Foch, to the Panthéon, at the top of the Montagne Sante-Geneviève, someone had the idea of transporting the body by night to the statue of Voltaire outside the Institut, whose ever-young smile would look down on the departure of the funeral cortege.
The civil ceremony was combined with a military manifestation; Ernest Paris was a Grand-Croix de la Légion d’honneur, and the holder of numerous other honorific distinctions. Thus, the man who, before his death, had abhorred militarism, was afflicted, after his death, with a military parade. Thus, the individual who had shown himself throughout his life to be indecisive, shifting in all the winds of opinion, had to be accompanied on the final stage of his journey by a funeral as fantastic as himself—for one truly does not know what grotesque decorators preside over the disposition and the staging of funeral pomp.
It was before the façade of the sumptuous and slightly pretentious palace constructed by Le Vau, Lambert and Orbay that the stages and cubic inventions were installed. To tell the truth, they clashed passably well with the sumptuous academicism of the Louvre and the Mazarin chapel, but the spirit of the day most have been satisfied, under the fallacious pretext that it created something new—as if the straight line had not existed forever!
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There were, therefore, simple black and red drapes, extended flat and without pleats, from one end to the other of the square where the stature of the Republic, sword in hand, seemed to be the sole protester, by virtue of her presence, against the general bad taste.
At the entrance to the Rue de Seine, which it masked, the official tribune displayed its rigid line extending from the Rue Bonaparte to the Institut. It was in the Rues de Seine and Mazarine that the carriages and automobiles of the guests of note were lined up. Turning its back on the École des Beaux-Arts, a raised platform was set up for the official orators who were to speak in celebration of the illustrious Academician. The habitual plumed carriage of funeral pomp had been set aside, replaced by a brief rectangle forming a platform, supported by long and solid wooden shafts that were to bear the group of miners and metallurgists who had come for the obsequies. That platform, draped in red, hid the cart on which the coffin of Ernest Paris had been placed. The ensemble, aiming at the colossal, had the effect of shrinking the human ants who were swarming in that classic space, too vast for their stature.
Above all that there was, on one side, the ironic mouth of the bronze Voltaire, leaning on his cane, sly and simian, seeming still to be mocking human stupidity, and on the other, Condorcet, disdaining the masquerade, deliberately turning his back on it.
The weather, gray and rainy on that July morning, was punctuated, at moments, by brief rays of sunlight, which came, as if regretfully, to shine their divine light on the assembly of vanities. Would not the great ironist, with a few mordant satires, have flayed that pompous and grotesque ceremony? Once, chatting with one of his colleagues of the Académie, he had pronounced these words, in accordance with his epicurean character:
“Let us spare the living these mortuary allegories in drapes and plumes, all these gross and ridiculous symbols. No speeches in the field of the silent goddess. In my testament I shall say that I want to be buried as simply as possible, without ostentation and above all without speeches, for I have discoursed too much about everything and about nothing, for my soul, if it is immortal—which I strongly doubt—to find pleasure in hearing the lies and the stupidities of official jabbering, in which everyone strives, above, for oratorical effect. No! No noise, no flowers, no speeches: peace silence, repose, dreamless sleep, and then forgetfulness, the great forgetfulness of others and oneself.”
But not only did people not want to forget you, Ernest Paris, it was necessary that you serve their purpose. It was necessary that, in your glory, they should could carve out a little morsel, that they should clutch a little of the tinsel of your celebrity, and ornament themselves for a day with a fraction of your radiance.
Now, thousands and thousands of spectators are stifling one another in order to see and hear better, around the official tribunes, and the enormous red and black flags under which the coffin will roll toward the Panthéon.
XIII. The Internationale
The Minister of Public Education, Jean Foudre, the député for the Basse-Pyrénées, representing the government, was the first to speak.
“To retrace the life of the illustrious writer would certainly be too easy a task. What always characterized Ernest Paris was his profound love for humanity, for the concord of nations. He would have rejoiced to see his perishable body carried in triumph by these noble representatives of the working class, these artisans of peace, fighting now for peace as they fought during the world war for the cause of right and liberty. In the name of France I deposit on the coffin this olive branch, the symbol of concord.”
Discreet applause and flattering murmurs underlined the end of the Minister’s speech. Among the members of the Institute, Jean Fortin suddenly looked at his neighbor.
“Damn! Nora, the dancer from the Folies, in full mourning, on that balcony, with her retinue, Borel and Maud—can you see them at that window directly behind the hearse, Monsieur? They’ve got a fine spot!”
“Are you forgetting that that’s our Célimène’s house? What is more natural than her inviting her friends to the spectacle?”
Meanwhile, a member of the Académie Française, in a green coat, took up his position at the funeral tribune, coughed, and in a weak but clear voice, said things about Ernest Paris, his talent, his genius—he did not have genius himself—and eventually concluded, in a stormy tone:
“If ever a time comes when poor, weary humanity no longer produces such prodigious educators, it will search in the work of the ancients, in the work of Ernest Paris, the miracle of rejuvenation, for the fortification necessary to its intellectual life; and believe me, it is in his work that it will find the most magnificent cordial of vitality and true good sense. Any litterateur who does not have an education is useless; a way with words has been given to him in order to raise the mentality and intellect of his contemporaries toward the summits. Ernest Paris applied himself to that, and he succeeded, not by example—he was weak and indecisive—but by the magic of his pen, inspired by the most profound love of humanity. Ernest Paris, you who have never doubted the dawn toward which the human ship is bound, in the midst of so much darkness, we shall follow your sacred standard through the tempests of the future...”
At this point, the factory-workers and miners, perhaps thinking that he was making an appeal to their collaboration, unfurled a few red flags and brandished them, shouting: “Vive l’Internationale!”
Slightly disconcerted, Foudre beat a hasty retreat, and disappeared among his colleagues, who congratulated him tranquilly.
But the speeches were not finished. After the Minister of Public Education and the Académie, Comrade Rappoport took the podium, paraded an arrogant glance over the ruling class, and cried, in a thunderous voice:
“Comrades! You have just heard marvelous words, which have justly celebrated the great writer Ernest Paris, but that quality was of no importance for us; what is important to us is that alone, among the mass of the ruling class, he turned to us and extended his hand.
“I, who am speaking, have seen him in his home, in an environment that has nothing in common with our tastes and our ideas. We have just been made to sense that: Ernest Paris was a bourgeois, and they would like to make us believe that he was making fun of us. Damn! I know full well that he was a bourgeois, and a very rich well-to-do bourgeois, but I also know that he was a bourgeois whom disgust for his class had brought him closer to ours, and it’s for that reason that we loved him and recognized him as one of ours.
“Let them”—he designated the benches where Parisian high society was gathered—“try to pass him off as one of their coterie; we know that it isn’t true. Comrade Paris detested the war and militarism that he had seen. He loved peace, because peace alone can bring the triumph of our ideas and the fraternity of peoples—of peoples and the working class, which I represent here, as President of the Internationals of Europe, Messieurs the Bourgeois, Messieurs the War-Profiteers, Messieurs the Exploiters of Peace! And I have come to say to you: ‘Ernest Paris was one of us! Whether he was a bourgeois or not, we shall keep him, for today, with his cadaver, the people are entering the Panthéon!’
“Oh, my brave Messieurs, you thought that the brave worker would always yield to the force of money. The hour has finally sounded! We need a pretext for brandishing the standard of our claims. Ernest Paris has given us one. Come on, Comrades, flags in the air! Forwards! The Internationale!”
In an instant, hundreds of red flags were fluttering in the wind, and like a storm-wind, thousands of voices thundered:
The final conflict is here,
Come together, and tomorrow
The Internationale
Will be the human race...
The porters of the catafalque took hold of their grips, at arm’s length, raised the heavy platform, and began to march while...
XXIV. The Funeral Dance
Marc Vanel had frayed a path through the crowd in order to reach the building in which Cécile Borel lived. The four windows of her drawing room gave access to
light first-floor balconies overlooking the quai.
They were filled by the artiste’s guests. Marc slid a banknote into the hand of the soubrette, telling her not to disturb anyone, and slipped into the drawing room without being noticed. The mistress of the house had reserved a window that she was occupying with Nora and two friends. All attention being directed outwards, no one paid any heed to Dr. Vanel, who was easily able to slip behind the three women.
The red and black cube on which the cart bearing the coffin of Ernest Paris was then directly under the window from which they were watching the spectacle of saddened France. All three were in full mourning dress, and immense widow’s veils in silk muslin formed long harmonious supple pleats around them. Célimène had judged that that set-dressing was strictly necessary and could not fail to attract attention; thus, she was testifying to the late illustrious writer the homage of the Comédie-Française, in her person.
None of the three beauties suspected that Marc Vanel was standing behind them. Then, the doctor extended an imperious hand toward Nora and his eyes, focused at the back of her neck, seemed to radiate magnetic waves that enveloped the young woman and impressed her. She shivered; her eyes, initially staring, slowly closed; an understanding was established between the mind of Marc Vanel and hers; the former gave orders, the latter accepted them meekly.
The spectacle outside, seen from the window, did not lack a certain grandeur; firstly, the staged benches, then the enormous red and black trestle carried by the miners, and also, as far as the eye could see, the thousand faces of the crowd, itself divided into regular sections by the lines of guardsmen whose white harness traced chalky streaks through the black-clad or soberly dressed crowd, further accentuating the cubist harmony of the decoration.
Nora, The Ape-Woman Page 19