Dieudonat

by Edmond Haraucourt

  The first six months were very difficult. When winter came, the Bastard made a semblance of shivering under the snow and the north wind. When the buds swelled and the flowers bloomed, he changed his theme; perfidiously, he recalled that nature, like art and more than art, her imitator and disciple, engenders life at the expense of life, and only fashions beauty by occasioning suffering.

  Dieudonat knew that, and the aphorism was banal, but the formula arrived at the point of spoiling spring; it installed itself as an obsession. Solitude is not good for people whose conscience labors them and incites them to monomania; every time the anchorite’s gaze fell upon the petrified man—which is to say, a hundred times a day—the obsession was renewed; the vicinity of the marble ended up becoming a symbol of universal dolor.

  From then on, the location ceased to be magnificent; populated by visible or invisible crimes, it gave the impression at all times of a guilty individual caught at fault; serenity was no longer resident there; its meditation became crushing. The months passed, the seasons did likewise. Every day, and during every hour of the day, the thought of the poor ascetic turned on itself like the shadow of a sundial, and no longer marked anything but the passage of time.

  That same time passed over the marmoreal brother; the patinas of the heavens had soon burnished it, and the masterpiece obtained its normal destiny; turtle-doves acquired the habit of alighting on it; they adopted as a perch that image of fury, which they insulted with petty excrements, with a perfect tranquility. The other birds imitated them, and the clearing soon became so accustomed to the presence of a sublime morsel that no one lent it any attention any longer. Only the author still had eyes to see it, and those eyes became sadder and sadder.

  “That intelligent man is ripe for an important stupidity,” said the Devil. “Let’s give him some help!”

  And the Devil set to work.

  XIV. His past catches up with him

  People get used to anything, even remorse for their sins; at length, Dieudonat was scarcely suffering any longer from his crime, but he was enormously bored.

  “I imagine... I’m imagining? In other words, I’m a scatterbrain. And what am I doing in this oasis? Being happy? No, since I sense the time approaching when I won’t have any of that any longer. My duty? Even less, since I’ve discovered that the superiority of humans is in devotion to charity and I’ve exiled myself far from people: voluntary isolation, the worship of oneself, is an egotism, and I’d be wrong to dissimulate it from myself; to retire to a desert in order to engrave inscriptions in honor of pity and fraternity there is incontestably illogical, in spite of which I might once have said to excuse myself. God judged it good to invest me with a power, and I judge it better not to make use of it; am I sure that I have the right to do that?

  “All the same, when I arrived here and the solitude pleased me I found good arguments to demonstrate that it was imposed on me by pity for others; now it wearies me I find it incompatible with charity and I demonstrate that too. Is my logic, therefore, only the sly advocate of my tastes and preferences, the unacknowledged or unconscious servant of my caprices? Cleverer men than me have said so. I’ve meditated too much on all these vain problems for years; I’ve lost myself in them, I don’t know any more. Where is the truth? What is it necessary to do? Where is duty?”

  He was tormenting himself mistakenly, forgetting two laws of fatality, which were about to take the trouble of remembering themselves to him and tracing his conduct for him.

  By virtue of one, any force that resides within us will be exercised, with or without our consent; if it is laudable for us to restrict its usage, it is not our prerogative to abolish its existence, and sooner or later there will be an imperious revolt against which the authority of our reason risks remaining impotent.

  The other law of fatality, to which he had given too much care, is one that attaches us indissolubly to our past actions, and which makes our existence into a long chain, each link of which commands all the others. Some imperceptible gesture made twenty years ago, of which we have not retained the memory will soon necessitate the gesture that will be imposed upon us, and which we shall make even if it displeases us, because it is the normal prolongation of what happened twenty years before.

  He experienced the effects of both these verities at a single stroke.

  One day, he was reflecting, in his fashion, sitting in front of his grotto when he saw a woman at the edge of the wood: a sordid and very mature woman, who came out from between the trees and traversed the clearing; she came toward him, treading down the long grass, where her footsteps left a trail.

  When she was close, she stopped in order to say: “It’s me. Don’t you recognize me?”

  “No, woman.”

  ”That’s not astonishing; you’ve never seen me before. However, you’re the cause of my misfortune and I’ve come to tell you that. Let me speak. I had a husband and three children, and we lived in ease. Then you quarreled with your father; with regard to what, I don’t care and I don’t know anything about it, but after your quarrel, the tax collectors were hanged. My husband was one of them, he was hanged, and I was left alone with my three children, without a sou. The harm you’ve done, it’s necessary to repair.”

  “I can’t resuscitate your husband, poor woman.”

  “I’m not asking as much as that. Render me what he earned, and I’ll call it quits.”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “Money? You have as much as you want, and more than you need to live, since you only have to make a sign for anything you wish for to come to you, money like everything else. Make the sign and pay me.”

  “It doesn’t please me to make use of that power.”

  “Yes? That proves your good heart, in truth. What about your conscience? Doesn’t your conscience say anything to you?”

  “The harm that I might have done to others...”

  “It scarcely counts, eh? And when it’s done, you turn your back. ‘Goodbye, all, and die at your ease.’ You go to the mountain, on the edge of a spring, quite tranquilly, with the little birds. Very convenient! And me, I’ve come to say to you: ‘Where is your conscience?’”

  Dieudonat began to lower his head, and became ashamed. The woman took advantage of that, and spoke more clearly.

  “This is it: there’s no bread in the house. I’ve sold everything in order to feed my children, and I have nothing more to sell except my eldest, who’s coming up to sixteen. If she turns bad in order to nourish her old mother, it will be your fault, and you’ll take that to paradise, with all rest.”

  The anchorite started with horror. “How much do you need to save that virgin soul?”

  “My husband earned two hundred us a year.”

  “Have your two hundred écus, then. I wish it. So be it.”

  Immediately, the widow felt her pocket become heavy and she plunged her hand into her rags in order to draw out the money, which she began to count, crouching in the wild grass. Dieudonat contemplated her sadly.

  Finally, the old woman raised her head again.

  “Well, my good lord, that doesn’t settle the account, you see. My husband earned that per year, but he had another ten years to live, the poor dear man. It’s necessary to pay me the ten years.”

  “You can come back next year.”

  “And what if you’re dead? What if I can no longer walk? Think a little, you who are goodness itself and so learned; who knows where you and I will be next year, in ten years or in twenty? It’s necessary to be reasonable, my Prince, and pay me my twenty years right away.”

  “You claimed that your husband only had ten years to live.”

  “Ten years? One can see that you didn’t know Victor. He was as solid as an oak, and built to last for a century, the stout fellow! I’d be losing out if I didn’t ask you for twenty years.”

  “Be careful; excessive wealth is harmful.”

  “You ought to blush to bargain away the days of a worthy functionary that you’ve a
lready caused to die horribly. Reimburse me my twenty years and we’ll say no more about it.”

  So saying, the widow held out her skirt. The resigned prince made a sign, formed a wish, and four thousand écus weighed down the fustian.

  “Thank you very much,” said the beggar.

  She turned her back and went away, limping, because the burden was heavy. For a long time, the prince watched the meager silhouette drawing away with an apron full of future; the figure testified veritably to an ill-contained joy, and the philosopher became slightly anxious.

  He became even more anxious when the good women, having reached the edge of the clearing, went into the trees and thought that she was invisible. Then, in spite of the weight of the years and the money, she started to dance entrechats that made the coins sing, and Dieudonat, marveling at that sudden cure, undertook a meditation on the power of metals.

  That was a relatively new theme, at least for an ascetic; it amused him momentarily, but desires to move racked his legs, as if the approach of a human creature had awakened in him an appetite for agitation. He started walking, and laughing.

  “That excellent dame was scarcely sympathetic, and I dare not affirm that she had a husband, or children, but I’m quite sure that she’s joyful, and that joy is my work.”

  He supped with a good appetite, and lay down with a heart lighter than usual; that evening, his bed of hay and ferns was soft and scented.

  “I haven’t wasted my day, since I’ve done a little good, and my day would be better still if it’s true that in doing good, I’ve repaired harm.”

  A voice whispered to him: “The old woman lied to you, fool.”

  “No, not at all! I’ll believe the old woman. I want to believe her, and I gain by it, for my wellbeing this evening is undeniable, and I’d be ill-advised to spoil it. I’ve satisfied my conscience, eh? The old woman insinuated it to me just now, and it wasn’t stupid; who knows whether our conscience isn’t simply the sum of our actions? I glimpse there a plausible definition: ‘The conscience is the total of the Past.’”

  Delighted to have found another formula, he became drowsy before having debated the matter, and when the time came to discover that the aphorism was just as false as another, he was snoring.

  XV. And he manufactures the future

  The swing had been set in motion. Five days later a city-dweller presented himself, pot-bellied, puffed up and dressed in great luxury; servants parted the branches ahead of him, and he strode with majesty. He came straight toward the anchorite, who then observed his hooked nose and his face illuminated by satisfaction.

  “Good day, Prince!” cried the visitor.

  He spoke familiarly, with certainty, and his accent denoted a foreign origin.

  He went on: “Bad news, Prince! I’m ruined, and I’ve come to inform you of it, convinced in advance that you won’t tolerate that collapse, which will be a national disaster tomorrow, and which is your past work.”

  “Please?”

  “I’m appealing to your conscience.”

  “Oh. You too?”

  “Me: baron Kraff. I’ll introduce myself. My establishment is known the world over. At my bank, as you know, thousands of cultivators, petit bourgeois and meager rentiers deposit their savings, very modest, in truth, but one does what one can and no one can live beyond his means. In brief, my safe is that of the little people, who had confidence in me. But I too had confidence in your father and you, and now, blow after blow, your departure and the disappearance of Prince Ludovic—I’m not reproaching you for anything; everyone defends his interests as best he can—turned the political situation upside-down. The market dropped, I bet on a rise: general crash! I’ve struggled for eighteen months, having a solid back, but I’m at the end. I’ve lost forty-three millions, all the money of the petty purses. Your late mother…”

  “My mother is dead!”

  “Exactly: of chagrin and terror, during the massacres at the convent.”

  “My mother...”

  “Evidently, evidently, it’s a very regrettable decease, and no one deplores it more than me, since I was just about to remind you of the concern that the excellent Duchess had for poor people; if we had the good fortune of still possessing her, she wouldn’t fail to intercede with you in favor of the poor; for it’s necessary not to dissimulate that if I go under definitively, you’ll have bankruptcies throughout the country, suicides of fathers of families, the ruination of industry and the famine of those it employs, the cessation of commerce, the death of credit, and a hundred cadavers a day. Will you consent to prescribe that hecatomb? That’s the whole question.”

  “Is it possible that…?”

  “I’ve brought you the newspapers. Consult them; from the present, deduce the future. After which, you decide.”

  The banker sat down on the somewhat hard stone, and unfolded his newspapers; his index finger pointed to the columns of numbers. He developed a few technical explanations concerning reports, arbitrages, transfers, the raising and lowering of prices, capital and interest, and demonstrated clearly that the Prince had to save the innumerable existences that he had compromised.

  By dint of listening to that man, the anchorite began to sense under his cranium the intense burn of numbers, and his thoughts became torpid; he was no longer listening, attentive only to that host of victims, whom he could rescue or allow to perish, at his discretion. Certain people require, in order to resist their pity, as much courage as others require to help people in difficulties. Dieudonat did not have the strength to refuse his intervention; he made a gesture, murmured a wish, and the capital was created.

  Sacks of gold appeared in the grass, and barrels full of coins; by virtue of an infernal malice that would have escaped the ascetic, there were also wads of banknotes, but he financier protested against those.

  “Oh, pardon me! Not that! Paper money is credit on the Treasury, which would refuse the reimbursement and would implicate me in an affair of fraud. Take back your paper, and please substitute for it an equal sum in coin.”

  “As you wish.”

  The magical appearances recommenced in the crushed grass. The Baron, a man accustomed to the return of capital, did not blink before that fortune; from the top of his nose, through his lorgnon, he allowed to fall upon it a gaze of immediate adoption. When he saw that the heap had ceased to grow, he exiled his lenses toward his belly.

  “It’s all there? No, no, let’s not verify it. I trust you.”

  Incontinently, he pivoted toward the wood, made a sign to his first valet, who sent the second valet to search under the foliage for the first secretary, who ordered the cashier to send forth his agents, who brought the coffers prepared in advance.

  “I didn’t doubt you, as you see.”

  He snapped his orders with the edge of his lips, and even the tips of his fingers. Dieudonat admired the briskness that gold gives.

  He’s as arrogant with his clerks as the Archduke with his pages! That self-made man would be as offended as the son of an Emperor, perhaps more so, if I were to insinuate that he’s the cousin of his accountant. I shan’t take the risk again.

  The rich man honored the removal of the funds with his presence, but did not deign to supervise it. He even affected to turn his back, and, the serious affairs being liquidated henceforth. He perceived the landscape.

  “Your residence is charming. Yes, yes, very picturesque. Those rocks, those trees, this tranquility. I envy you. A casino in this corner would flourish. You have a spring?”

  He replaced his lorgnon and discovered the statue of Ludovic.

  “Damn, Prince! You have a pure masterpiece here. I’ll buy it. How much?”

  “I don’t...”

  “I’ll give you twenty thousand…? No…? Thirty! Oh! Where the devil is my head? I forgot that you can make gold at will. I regret it: that piece would look very well on my lawn at the foot of the perron. You must do me the amity, some day, of coming to visit my summer lair; it’s very comfortable. But
how have you been able to transport that figure here? Seriously, do you suspect how admirable it is, and that it’s a murder...”

  “A murder!”

  “To keep it here in this desert, where no one sees it.”

  “I see it, sir.”

  On listening to the individual talk, Dieudonat made the reflection that tact is perhaps not a worldly quality, as is believed in manor houses and drawing rooms, but rather a primordial virtue, closely related to what is called in metaphysics the notion of good and evil.

  The philosopher could, in any case, philosophize at his ease, for the millionaire was no longer occupied with him; he had approached the beautiful marble, of which he made a tour, sniffing it with his trunk bearing two lenses, not without darting an occasional keen glance at his cashiers.

  “No signature? No? Too bad. Do you know the author?”

  “Alas...”

  “Oh, I can guess: a paltry individual of whom you have something to complain? Eh? It doesn’t astonish me. General rule: mistrust artists. But damn it, this one had talent. On the other hand, the big one over the grotto, with the angels...do you like it?”

  “Not much.”

  “Nor me! Your bas-relief, I call that idealist art. Your statue, fine! That’s reality! And I know it! I even perceive, in the face and the costume, and in the attitude to, a rather comical resemblance...”

  “Comical?”

  “To the Bastard. Do you know that malevolent tongues have accused you of having…?”

  “Go on, please!”

  “I don’t occupy myself with politics. That’s a principle. Kings, Princes, I tell you, sort things out between themselves. He aspired to the throne, you aspire to it: one crown, two heads a bad count. Bad, above all, for business. One of the pretenders evaporates? I register the result and I don’t enquire as to the means.”

  “Others than you explain it, don’t they? Tel me everything.”

  “Don’t worry, no one’s talking about it any longer. Your brother wasn’t much liked—a small loss. You’ll reign in peace: an enormous benefit, for you as for us.”