Chapter M: LANTAIGNE: “Certainly, I will live with her in submission (1)

and obedience. In rebelling against her, I should act according to her principles, and contrary to my own. By being seditious I should resemble her, and I should no longer resemble myself.

“It is unlawful to return evil for evil. Sovereignty is hers. Whether she decrees ill or does not decree, hers is the guilt. Let it rest with her! My duty is to obey. I shall do it. I shall obey. As a priest and, if it please God, as a bishop, I shall refuse nothing to the Republic of what I owe her. I call to mind that Saint Augustine, in Hippo, then besieged by the Vandals, died a bishop and a Roman citizen. For myself, the lowest member of this illustrious Church of the Gauls, after the example of the greatest of the doctors, I will die in France, a priest and a French citizen, praying God to scatter the Vandals.”

The elm-trees on the Mall began to incline their shadow towards the east. A fresh breeze coming from a region of distant storm stirred among the leaves. Whilst a ladybird travelled over the sleeve of his coat, M. Bergeret replied to Abbé Lantaigne in a tone of the greatest affability.

“Monsieur l’abbé, you have just traced, with an eloquence only to be found on your lips, the characteristics of democratic rule. This government is very much as you describe it. And yet it is the one I prefer. In it all bonds are loosened, which weakens the State, but relieves individuals and ensures a certain ease of life and a liberty which unfortunately local tyrannies counteract. It is true that corruption appears to be greater in it than in monarchies. That springs from the number and diversity of the people who are raised to power. But this corruption would be less visible if the secret of it were better kept. The lack of secrecy and the want of continuity render all enterprise impossible in a democratic Republic. But, since the enterprises of monarchies have most often ruined the nations, I am not very sorry to live under a government incapable of great designs. What rejoices me especially in our Republic is the sincere desire which she shows not to provoke war in Europe. She rejoices in militarism, but is not at all bellicose. In considering the chances of a war, other governments have nothing to fear save defeat. Ours fears equally—and justly so—both victory and defeat. This salutary fear secures us peace, which is the greatest of blessings.

“The worst fault of the present _régime_ is that it costs very dear. It makes no outward show: it is not ostentatious. It is gorgeous neither in its women nor its horses. But, with its humble appearance and neglected exterior, it is expensive. It has too many poor relations, too many friends to provide for. It is a spendthrift. The most grievous point is that it lives on an exhausted country, whose powers are waning and which no longer thrives. And the administration has great need of money. It is aware that it is in difficulties. And its difficulties are greater than it fancies. They will increase still more. The evil is not new. It is the one which killed the old _régime_. I am going, monsieur l’abbé, to tell you a great truth: as long as the State contents itself with the revenues supplied by the poor, as long as it has enough from the subsidies which are assured to it with mechanical regularity by those who work with their hands, it lives happy, peaceful, and honoured. Economists and financiers are pleased to acknowledge its honesty. But as soon as this unhappy State, driven by need, makes a show of asking for money from those who have it, and of levying some slight toll on the rich, it is made to feel that it is committing a horrible outrage, is violating all rights, is wanting in respect to a sacred thing, is destroying commerce and industry, and crushing the poor by touching the rich. No one hides his conviction that discredit is at hand. And it sinks beneath the genuine contempt of the good citizen. Yet ruin comes slowly and surely. The State touches capital: it is lost.

“Our ministers are jesting at us when they speak of the clerical or the socialist peril. There is but one peril, the financial peril. The Republic is beginning to recognise this. I pity her, I shall regret her. I was reared under the Empire, in love for the Republic. ‘She is justice,’ my father, professor of rhetoric at the college of Saint-Omer, used to say to me. He did not know her. She is not justice, but she is ease. Monsieur l’abbé, if you had a soul less exalted, less serious, and more given to jesting thoughts, I should confide to you that the present Republic, the Republic of 1896, delights me and touches me by its modesty. She acquiesces in not being admired. She exacts but a trifling respect, and even renounces esteem. It is enough for her to live. That is her sole desire; it is a lawful one. The humblest beings cling to life. Like the woodcutter of the fabulist, like the apothecary of Mantua, who so greatly astonished that young fool of a Romeo, she fears death, and it is her only fear. She mistrusts princes and soldiers. In danger of death, she would be very ill to handle. Fear would make her abandon her own nature and would render her ferocious. That would be a pity. But as long as they make no attempt on her life, and as long as they only attack her honour, she is good-natured. A government of this kind suits me and gives me confidence. So many others were merciless through self-esteem! So many others made sure of their rights, their grandeur, and their prosperity by cruelties! So many others have poured out blood for their prerogative and their majesty! She has no self-esteem; she has no majesty. A fortunate lack which keeps her innocuous to us! Provided that she lives, she is content. She rules laxly, and I should be tempted to praise her for that more than for all the rest. And since she governs laxly, I forgive her for governing badly. I suspect men at all times of having much exaggerated the necessity of government and the benefits of a strong administration. Certainly strong administrations make nations great and prosperous. But the nations have suffered so much all through the centuries for their grandeur and prosperity, that I fancy they would renounce it. Glory has cost them too dear for them to resent the fact that our present rulers have only procured for us the colonial variety of it. If the uselessness of all government should at last be discovered, the Republic of M. Carnot would have paved the way for this priceless discovery. And one ought to feel some gratitude towards it for that. Taking everything into consideration, I feel much attached to our institutions.”

Thus spoke M. Bergeret, professor of literature at the University.

Abbé Lantaigne rose, drew out from his pocket his blue-checkered handkerchief, passed it over his lips, returned it to his pocket, smiled, contrary to his custom, secured his breviary under his arm, and said:

“You express yourself pleasantly, Monsieur Bergeret. Just so did the rhetors talk in Rome when Alaric entered it with his Visigoths. Yet under the terebinth trees of the Esquiline the rhetors of the fifth century let fall thoughts of less vanity. For then Rome was Christian. You are that no longer.”

“Monsieur l’abbé,” replied the professor, “be a bishop and not the head of the University.”

“It is true, Monsieur Bergeret,” said the priest with a loud laugh, “that if I were head of the University I should forbid you to be a teacher of youth.”

“And you would do me a great service. For then I should write in the papers, like M. Jules Lemaître, and who knows whether, like him …”

“Well! well! you would not be out of place among the wits. And the French Academy has a partiality for freethinkers.”

He spoke and walked away with a firm, straight, heavy tread. M. Bergeret remained alone in the middle of the bench, which was now three-parts covered by shade. The ladybird which had been fluttering its wing-cases on his shoulder for a moment flew away. He began to dream. He was not happy, for he had an acute mind whose points were not always turned outwards, and very often he pricked himself with the needle-points of his own criticism. Anæmic and bilious, he had a very weak digestion and enfeebled senses, which brought him more disgust and suffering than pleasure and happiness. He was reckless in speech, and in unerringness and precision his tactlessness attained the same results as the most practised skill. With cunning art he seized every opportunity of injuring himself. He inspired the majority of people with a natural aversion, and being sociable and inclined to fraternise with his fellows, he suffered from that fact. He had never succeeded in moulding his pupils, and he delivered his lectures on Latin literature in a gloomy, damp, deserted cellar, in which he was buried through the Dean’s burning hatred of him. The University buildings were, however, spacious. Built in 1894, “these new premises,” according to the words of M. Worms-Clavelin at the opening, “testified to the zeal of the government of the Republic for the diffusion of learning.” They boasted an amphitheatre, decorated by M. Léon Glaize with allegorical paintings representing Science and Literature, where M. Compagnon gave his much-belauded lectures on mathematics. The other gownsmen in their red or yellow taught different subjects in handsome, well-lighted rooms. M. Bergeret alone, under the bedel’s ironic glance, had to descend, followed by three students, into a dusky, subterranean hole. There, in the heavy, noisome air, he expounded the _Æneid_ with German scholarship and French subtlety; there, by his literary and moral pessimism, he afflicted M. Roux, of Bordeaux, his best pupil; there, he opened up new vistas, whose aspect was terrifying; there, one evening he pronounced those words now become famous, but which ought rather to have perished, stifled in the shadow of the vault: “Fragments of differing origins, soldered clumsily on to each other, made up the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. Such are the models of composition that have been imitated by Virgil, by Fénelon, and in general, in classic literatures, by writers of narratives in verse or in prose.”

M. Bergeret was not happy. He had received no honorary distinction. It is true that he despised honours. But he felt that it would have been much finer to despise them while accepting them. He was obscure and less well known in the town for works of talent than M. de Terremondre, author of a Tourist Guide; than General Milher, a distinguished miscellaneous writer of the department; less even than his pupil, M. Albert Roux, of Bordeaux, author of _Nirée_, a poem in _vers libres_. Certainly he despised literary fame, knowing that that of Virgil in Europe rested on a double misconception, one absurd and the other fabulous. But he suffered at having no intercourse with writers who, like MM. Faguet, Doumic, or Pellissier, seemed akin to him in mind. He would have liked to know them, to live with them in Paris, like them to write in reviews, to contradict, to rival, perhaps to outstrip them. He recognised in himself a certain subtlety of intellect, and he had written pages which he knew to be pleasing.

He was not happy. He was poor, shut up with his wife and his three daughters in a little dwelling, where he tasted to the full the inconveniences of domestic life; and it harassed him to find hair-curlers on his writing-table, and to see the margins of his manuscripts singed by curling-tongs. The only secure and pleasant place of retreat that he had in the world was that bench on the Mall shaded by an ancient elm, and the old-book corner in Paillot’s shop.

He meditated for a moment on his sad condition; then he rose from his bench and took the road which leads to the bookseller’s.

XIV

When M. Bergeret entered the shop, Paillot, the bookseller, with a pencil thrust behind his ear, was collecting his “returns.” He was stacking up the volumes whose yellow covers, after long exposure to the sunlight, had turned brown and become covered with fly-marks. These were the unsaleable copies, which he was sending back to the publishers. M. Bergeret recognised among the “returns” several works that he liked. He felt no chagrin at this, having too much taste to hope to see his favourite authors winning the votes of the crowd.

He sank down, as he was accustomed to do, in the old-book corner, and through mere habit took up the thirty-eighth volume of _l’Histoire Générale des Voyages_. The book, bound in green leather, opened of its own accord at p. 212, and M. Bergeret once more read these fatal lines:

“a passage to the North. ‘It is to this check,’ said he, ‘that we owe the opportunity of being able to visit the Sandwich Isles again …’”

And M. Bergeret sank into melancholy.

M. Mazure, the archivist of the department, and M. de Terremondre, president of the Society of Agriculture and Archæology, who both had their rush-bottomed chairs in the old-book corner, came in opportunely to join the professor. M. Mazure was a paleographer of great merit. But his manners were not elegant. He had married the servant of the archivist, his predecessor, and appeared in the town in a straw hat with battered crown. He was a radical, and published documents concerning the history of the county town during the Revolution. He enjoyed inveighing against the royalists of the department; but having applied for academic honours without having received them, he began invectives against his political friends, and particularly against M. Worms-Clavelin, the _préfet_.

Being insulting by nature, his professional practice of discovering secrets disposed him to slander and calumny. Nevertheless he was good company, especially at table, where he used to sing drinking songs.

“You know,” said he to M. de Terremondre and M. Bergeret, “that the _préfet_ uses the house of Rondonneau junior for assignations with women. He has been caught there. Abbé Guitrel also haunts the place. And, appropriately enough, the house is called, in a land-survey of 1783, the House of the Two Satyrs.”

“But,” said M. de Terremondre, “there are no women of loose life in the house of Rondonneau junior.”

“They are taken there,” answered Mazure, the archivist.

“Talking of that,” said M. de Terremondre, “I have heard, my dear Monsieur Bergeret, that you have been shocking my old friend Lantaigne, on the Mall, by a cynical confession of your political and social immorality. They say that you know neither law nor curb …”

“They are mistaken,” replied M. Bergeret.

“... that you are indifferent in the matter of government.”

“Not at all! But, to tell the truth, I do not attach any special importance to the form of the State. Changes of government make little change in the condition of individuals. We do not depend on constitutions or on charters, but on instincts and morals. It serves no purpose at all to change the name of public necessities. And it is only the crazy and the ambitious who make revolutions.”

“It is not above ten years ago,” replied M. Mazure, “that I would have risked a broken head for the Republic. To-day I could see her turn a somersault, and only laugh and cross my arms. The old republicans are despised. Favour is only granted to the turncoats. I am not referring to you, Monsieur de Terremondre. But I am disgusted. I have come to think with M. Bergeret. All governments are ungrateful.”

“They are all powerless,” said M. Bergeret; “and I have here in my pocket a little tale which I should very much like to read to you. I have founded it on an anecdote which my father often related to me. It proves that absolute power is powerlessness itself. I should like to have your opinion on this trifle. If you do not disapprove of it, I shall send it to the _Revue de Paris_.”

M. de Terremondre and M. Mazure drew their chairs up to that of M. Bergeret, who pulled a note-book from his pocket and began to read in a weak, but clear voice:

A DEPUTY MAGISTRATE

In a salon of the Tuileries the ministers had assembled …

“Allow me to listen,” said M. Paillot, the bookseller. “I am waiting for Léon, who is not back yet. When he is out, he never comes back. I am obliged to tend the shop and serve the customers. But I shall hear at least a part of the reading. I like to improve my mind.”

“Very well, Paillot,” said M. Bergeret, and he resumed:

A DEPUTY MAGISTRATE

In a salon of the Tuileries the ministers had assembled in council, under the presidency of the Emperor. Napoleon III. was silently making marks with a pencil on a plan of an industrial town. His long, sallow face, with its melancholy sweetness, had a strange appearance amid the square heads of the men of affairs and the bronzed faces of the men of toil. He half raised his eyelids, glanced with his gentle, vague look round the oval table, and asked:

“Gentlemen, is there any other matter to be discussed?”

His voice issued from his thick moustaches a little muffled and hollow, and seemed to come from very far off.

At this moment the Keeper of the Seals made a sign to his colleague of the Home Department which the latter did not seem to notice.—At that time the Keeper of the Seals was M. Delarbre, a magistrate in virtue of his birth, who had displayed in his high judicial functions a becoming pliability, abruptly laid aside now and then for the rigidity of a professional dignity that nothing could bend. It was said that, after having become an ultramontane and a member of the Empress’s party, the jansenism of those great lawyers, his ancestors, sometimes bubbled up in his nature. But those who had access to him considered him to be merely punctilious, a trifle fanciful, indifferent to the great questions which his mind did not grasp, and obstinate about the trifles which suited the pettiness of his intriguing character.

The Emperor was preparing to rise, with his two hands on the gilt arms of his chair. Delarbre, seeing that the Home Secretary, his nose in his papers, was avoiding his look, took it upon himself to challenge him.

“Pardon me, my dear colleague, for raising a question which, although it started in your department, none the less concerns mine. But you have yourself declared to me your intention of apprising the Council of the extremely delicate situation in which a magistrate has been placed by the _préfet_ of a department in the West.”

The Home Secretary shrugged his broad shoulders slightly and looked at Delarbre with some impatience. He had the air, at once jovial and choleric, which belongs to great demagogues.

“Oh,” said he, “that was gossip, ridiculous tittle-tattle, a rumour which I should be ashamed to bring to the notice of the Emperor, were it not that my colleague, the Minister of Justice, seems to attach an importance to it which, for my part, I have not succeeded in discovering.”

Napoleon began sketching once more. “It has to do with the _préfet_ of Loire-Inférieure,” continued the minister. “This official is reputed, in his department, to be a gallant squire of dames, and the reputation for gallantry which has become attached to his name, combined with his well-known courtesy and his devotion to the government, has contributed not a little to the popularity which he enjoys in the country. His attentions to Madame Méreau, the wife of the _procureur-général_, have been noticed and commented on. I grant that M. Pélisson, the _préfet_, has given occasion for scandalous gossip in Nantes, and that severe charges have been laid to his account in the bourgeois circles of the county town, especially in the drawing-rooms frequented by the magistracy. Assuredly M. Pélisson’s attitude towards Madame Méreau, whose position ought to have protected her from any such equivocal attentions, would be regrettable, if it were continued. But the information I have received enables me to state that Madame Méreau has not been actually compromised and that no scandal is to be anticipated. A little prudence and circumspection will suffice to prevent this affair having any annoying consequences.”

Having spoken in these terms, the Home Secretary closed his portfolio and leant back in his chair.

The Emperor said nothing.

“Excuse me, my dear colleague!” said the Keeper of the Seals drily, “the wife of the _procureur-général_ of the court of Nantes is the mistress of the _préfet_ of Loire-Inférieure; this connection, known throughout the whole district, is calculated to injure the prestige of the magistracy. It is important to call the attention of His Majesty to this state of things.”

“Doubtless,” replied the Home Secretary, his gaze turned towards the allegories on the ceiling, “doubtless, such facts are to be regretted; yet one must in no way exaggerate; it is possible that the _préfet_ of Loire-Inférieure may have been a little imprudent and Madame Méreau a little giddy, but …”

The minister wafted the rest of his ideas towards the mythological figures which floated across the painted sky. There was a moment’s silence, during which one could hear the impudent chirping of the sparrows perched on the trees in the garden and on the eaves of the château.

M. Delarbre bit his thin lips and pulled his austere but coquettish moustaches. He replied:

“Excuse my persistence; the secret reports which I have received leave no doubt as to the nature of the relationship between M. Pélisson and Madame Méreau. These relations were already established two years ago. In fact, in the month of September 18— the _préfet_ of Loire-Inférieure got the _procureur-général_ an invitation to hunt with the Comte de Morainville, deputy for the third division in the department, and during the magistrate’s absence he entered Madame Méreau’s room. He got in by way of the kitchen-garden. The next day the gardener saw traces that the wall had been scaled and informed the police. Inquiry was made; they even arrested a tramp, who, not being able to prove his innocence, endured several months of precautionary imprisonment. He had, it is true, a very bad record and no special points of interest about him. Still to this day the _procureur-général_ persists, supported by a very small proportion of the public, in believing him to be guilty of house-breaking. The position, I repeat, is rendered by this fact no less annoying and prejudicial to the prestige of the magistracy.”

The Home Secretary poured over the discussion, according to his wont, certain massive phrases calculated to close and suppress it by their weight. He held, said he, his _préfets_ in the palm of his hand; he would be able to lead M. Pélisson easily to a just appreciation of things, without taking any drastic measure against an intelligent and zealous official, who had succeeded in his department, and who was valuable “from the point of view of the electoral position.” No one could say that he was more interested than the Home Secretary in maintaining a good understanding between the officials of the departments and the judicial authority.

Still the Emperor kept that dreamy look in which he was usually wrapped when silent. He was evidently thinking of past events, for he suddenly said: “Poor M. Pélisson! I knew his father. He was called Anacharsis Pélisson. He was the son of a republican of 1792; himself a republican, he used to write in the opposition papers during the July administration. At the time of my captivity in the fortress of Ham, he addressed a friendly letter to me. You cannot imagine the joy which the slightest token of sympathy gives a prisoner. After that we went on our separate paths. We never saw one another again. He is dead.”

The Emperor lit a cigarette and remained wrapped in his dream for a moment. Then rising:

“Gentlemen, I will not detain you.”

With the awkward gait of a great winged bird when it walks, he returned to his private apartments; and the ministers went out, one after the other, through the long suite of rooms, beneath the solemn gaze of the ushers. The marshal who was the Minister of War held out his cigar-case to the Keeper of the Seals.

“Monsieur Delarbre, shall we take a little walk outside? I want to stretch my legs.”

Whilst they were both walking down the Rue de Rivoli, by the railing that borders the Terrasse des Feuillants:

“Speaking of cigars,” said the marshal, “I only like very dry one-sou cigars. The others seem like sweetmeats to me. Don’t you know …”

He cut short his thought, then:

“This Pélisson that you were talking about just now in the Council, isn’t he a little dried up, swarthy man, who was _sous-préfet_ at Saint-Dié five years ago?”

Delarbre replied that Pélisson had indeed been _sous-préfet_ in the Vosges.

“So I said to myself: I knew Pélisson. And I remember Madame Pélisson very well. I sat next to her at dinner at Saint-Dié, when I went there for the unveiling of a monument. Don’t you know …”

“What kind of woman is she?” asked Delarbre.

“Tiny, swarthy, thin. A deceptive thinness. In the morning, in a high-necked dress, she looked a mere wisp. At table in the evening, in a low-necked dress with flowers in her bosom, very charming.”

“But morally, marshal?”

“Morally. … I am not an imbecile, am I, now? Well! I have never understood anything about a woman’s morals. All that I can tell you is that Madame Pélisson passed for a sentimentalist. They said she had a warm heart for handsome men.”

“She gave you a hint to that effect, my dear marshal?”

“Not the least in the world. She said to me at dessert, ‘I dote on eloquence. A noble speech carries me away.’ I could not apply that remark to myself. It is true that I had that morning delivered an address. But I had got my aide-de-camp, a short-sighted artillery officer, to write it out for me. He had written so small that I could not read it. … Don’t you know? …”

They had reached the Place Vendôme. Delarbre held out his little withered hand to the marshal, and stole under the archway of the Ministry.

* * * * *

The following week, at the breaking up of the Council, when the ministers were already withdrawing, the Emperor laid his hand on the shoulder of the Keeper of the Seals.

“My dear Monsieur Delarbre,” said he to him, “I have heard by chance—in my position, one never learns anything save by chance—that there is a deputy magistrate’s post vacant at the Nantes bar. I beg that you will consider for that post a very deserving young doctor of law, who has written a remarkable treatise on Trade Unions. His name is Chanot, and he is the nephew of Madame Ramel. He is to beg an audience of you this very day. Should you propose him to me for it, I shall sign his nomination with pleasure.”

The Emperor had pronounced the name of his foster-sister tenderly, for he had never lost his affection for her, although, a republican of republicans, she repelled his advances, refused, poor widow as she was, the master’s offers, and raged openly in her garret against the _coup d’état_. But yielding at last, after fifteen years, to the persistent kindness of Napoleon III., she had come to beg, as earnest of reconciliation, a favour from the prince—not for herself, but for her nephew young Chanot, a doctor of law, and, according to his professors, an honour to the Schools. Even now it was an austere favour that Madame Ramel demanded of her foster-brother; admission to the open court for young Chanot could scarcely be considered an act of partiality. But Madame Ramel was keenly anxious that her nephew should be sent to Loire-Inférieure, where his relatives lived. This fact recurred to Napoleon’s mind, and he impressed it on the Minister of Justice.

“It is very important,” said he, “that my candidate should be nominated at Nantes, for that is his native place and where his parents live. That is an important consideration for a young man whose means are small and who likes family life.”

“Chanot … hard-working, meritorious, and with small means …” answered the minister.

He added that he would use his best endeavours to act in accordance with the desire expressed by His Majesty. His only fear was lest the _procureur-général_ should have already submitted to him a list of proposed nominees, among whom, naturally, the name Chanot would not occur. This _procureur-général_ was, indeed, M. Méreau, concerning whom there had been a discussion in the preceding Council. The Keeper of the Seals was particularly anxious to act very handsomely towards him. But he would strain every nerve to bring this affair to an issue that conformed with the intentions expressed by His Majesty.

He bowed and took his leave. It was his reception day. As soon as he had entered his study, he asked his secretary, Labarthe, whether there were many people in the ante-room. There were two presidents of courts, a councillor of the Appeal Court, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Nicomedia, a crowd of judges, barristers, and priests. The minister asked if there was any one there called Chanot. Labarthe searched in the silver salver, and discovered, among the pile of cards, that of Chanot, doctor of law, prizeman of the Faculty of Law, Paris. The minister ordered him to be called first, merely requesting that he should be conducted by the back passages, in order not to offend the magistrates and clergy.

The minister seated himself at his table and murmured quite to himself:

“‘A sentimentalist,’ said the marshal, ‘with a warm heart for handsome men who speak well.’ …”

The usher introduced into the study a huge, tall young man, stooping, spectacled, and with a pointed skull. Every part of his uncouth frame expressed at once the timidity of the recluse and the boldness of the thinker.

The Keeper of the Seals examined him from head to foot and saw that he had the cheeks of a child and no shoulders. He signed to him to sit down. The suitor, having perched himself at the edge of the chair, shut his eyes and began to pour forth a flood of words.

“Monsieur _le Ministre_, I come to beg from your noble patronage the privilege of admission to the magistracy. Possibly Your Excellence may consider that the reports I have gained in the various examinations which I have undergone, and a prize which has been awarded to me for a work on Trade Unions, are sufficient qualifications, and that the nephew of Madame Ramel, foster-sister of the Emperor, is not altogether unworthy …”

The Keeper of the Seals stopped him with a wave of his little yellow hand.

“Doubtless, Monsieur Chanot, doubtless an august patronage, which would never have been mistakenly bestowed on an unworthy recipient, has been secured for you. I know it, the Emperor takes much interest in you. You desire a chair as judge-advocate, Monsieur Chanot?”

“Your Excellence,” replied Chanot, “would put the finishing touch to my wishes by nominating me deputy magistrate at Nantes, where my family live.”

Delarbre fixed his leaden eyes on Chanot and said drily:

“There is no vacancy at the bar of Nantes.”

“Excuse me, Your Excellency, I thought …”

The minister rose.

“There is none there.”

And whilst Chanot was making clumsily for the door and looking for an exit in the white panels as he made his bow, the Keeper of the Seals said to him, with a persuasive air and almost in a confidential tone:

“Trust me, Monsieur Chanot, and dissuade your aunt from making any new solicitations which, far from being of any profit to you, will only do you harm. Rest assured that the Emperor takes an interest in you, and rely on me.”

As soon as the door was shut the minister called his secretary.

“Labarthe, bring me your candidate.”

* * * * *

At eight o’clock in the evening Labarthe entered a house in the Rue Jacob, mounted the staircase as far as the attics, and called from the landing:

“Are you ready, Lespardat?”

The door of a little garret opened. Inside on a shelf there were several law-books and tattered novels; on the bed a black velvet mask with a fall of lace, a bunch of withered violets, and some fencing foils. On the wall a bad portrait of Mirabeau, a copper-plate engraving. In the middle of the room a big bronzed fellow was brandishing dumb-bells. He had frizzled hair, a low forehead, hazel eyes full of laughter and sweetness, a nose that quivered like the nostrils of a horse, and in his pleasantly gaping mouth strong white teeth.

“I was waiting for you,” said he.

Labarthe begged him to dress himself. He was hungry. What time would they get their dinner?

Lespardat, having laid his dumb-bells on the floor, pulled off his jersey, and showed the herculean nape that carried his round head on his broad shoulders.

“He looks at least twenty-six,” thought Labarthe.

As soon as Lespardat had put on his coat, the thin cloth of which allowed one to follow the powerful, easy play of the muscles, Labarthe pushed him outside.

“We shall be at Magny’s in three minutes. I have the minister’s brougham.”

As they had matters to discuss, they asked for a private room at the restaurant.

After the sole and the _pré-salé_, Labarthe attacked his subject bluntly:

“Listen to me carefully, Lespardat. You will see my chief to-morrow, your nomination will be proposed by the _procureur-général_ of Nantes on Thursday, and on Monday submitted for the signature of the Emperor. It is arranged that it shall be given to him unexpectedly, at the moment when he will be busy with Alfred Maury in fixing the site of Alesia. When he is studying the topography of the Gauls in the time of Cæsar, the Emperor signs everything they want him to. But understand clearly what is expected from you. You must win the favour of Madame _la préfète_. You must win from her the ultimate favour. It is only by this consummation that the magistracy will be avenged.”

Lespardat swallowed and listened, pleased and smiling in his ingenuous self-conceit.

“But,” said he, “what notion has budded in Delarbre’s head? I thought he was a puritan.”

Labarthe, raising his knife, stopped him.

“First of all, my friend, I beg that you will not compromise my chief, who must remain ignorant of all that’s going on here. But since you have brought in Delarbre’s name, I will tell you that his puritanism is a jansenist puritanism. He is a great-nephew of Deacon Pâris. His maternal great-uncle was that M. Carré de Montgeron who defended the fanatics of Saint-Médard’s Cloister[K] before the Parliament. Now the jansenists love to practise their austerities in nooks and crannies; they have a taste for diplomatic and canonical blackguardism. It is the effect of their perfect purity. And then they read the Bible. The Old Testament is full of stories of the same kind as yours, my dear Lespardat.”

[K] In 1730 miracles were claimed by the jansenists to have been
worked in the cemetery of St. Médard, Paris, at the grave of
François de Pâris, a young jansenist deacon. The spot became
a place of pilgrimage, and was visited by thousands of
jansenist fanatics.

Lespardat was not listening. He was floating in a sea of naïve delight. He was asking himself: “What will father say? What will mother say?” thinking of his parents, grocers of large ambitions and little wealth at Agen. And he vaguely associated his budding fortune with the glory of Mirabeau, his favourite hero. Since his college days he had dreamt of a destiny rich with women and feats of oratory.

Labarthe recalled his young friend’s attention to himself.

“You know, monsieur _le substitut_, you are not irremovable. If after a reasonable interval you have not made yourself very agreeable to Madame Pélisson—I mean completely agreeable—you fall into disgrace.”

“But,” asked Lespardat frankly, “how much time do you give me to make myself excessively pleasing to Madame Pélisson?”

“Until the vacation,” answered the minister’s secretary gravely. “We give you, in addition, all sorts of facilities, secret missions, furloughs, &c. Everything except money. Above all, we are an honest administration. People don’t believe it. But later on they will find that we were no jobbers. Take Delarbre: he has clean hands. Besides, the Home Office, which is on the husband’s side, controls the Secret Service Money. Do not count on anything save your two thousand four hundred francs of salary and your handsome face to captivate Madame Pélisson.”

“Is she pretty, this _préfète_ of mine?” demanded Lespardat.

He asked this question carelessly, without exaggerating the importance of it, placidly, as behoves a very young man who finds all women beautiful. By way of reply, Labarthe threw on the table the photograph of a thin lady in a round hat, with a double bandeau falling on her brown neck.

“Here,” said he, “is the portrait of Madame Pélisson. It was ordered by the Cabinet from the Prefecture of Police, and they sent it on after they had stamped it with a warranty stamp, as you see.”

Lespardat seized it eagerly with his square fingers.

“She is handsome,” said he.

“Have you a plan?” asked Labarthe. “A methodical scheme of operations.”

“No,” answered Lespardat simply.

Labarthe, who was keen-witted, protested that it was, however, necessary to foresee, to arrange, not to allow oneself to be taken unawares by any contingencies.

“You are certain,” added he, “to be invited to the balls at the prefecture, and you will, of course, dance with Madame Pélisson. Do you know how to dance? Show me how you dance.”

Lespardat rose, and, clasping his chair in his arms, took one turn of a waltz with the deportment of a graceful bear.

Labarthe watched him very gravely through his eyeglass.

“You are heavy, awkward, without that irresistible suppleness which …”

“Mirabeau danced badly,” said Lespardat.

“After all,” said Labarthe, “perhaps it is only that the chair does not inspire you.”

When they were both once more on the damp pavement of the narrow Rue Contrescarpe, they met several girls who were coming and going between the Carrefour Buci and the wine-shops of the Rue Dauphine. As one of these, a thick-set, heavy girl, in a dingy black dress, was passing sadly by under a street lamp with slack gait, Lespardat seized her roughly by the waist, lifted her, and made her take with him two turns of a waltz across the greasy pavement and into the gutter, before she had any idea what was happening.

Recovering from her astonishment, she shrieked the foulest insults at her cavalier, who carried her away with irresistible verve. He himself supplied the orchestra, in a baritone voice, as warm and seductive as military music, and whirled so madly with the girl that, all bespattered with mud and water from the street, they collided with the shafts of prowling cabs and felt on their neck the breath of the horses. After a few turns, she murmured in the young man’s ear, her head sunk on his breast and all her anger gone:

“After all, you are a pretty fellow, you are. You ought to make them happy, didn’t you?—those girls at Bullier’s.”

“That’s enough, my friend,” cried Labarthe. “Don’t go and get run in. My word, you will avenge the magistracy!”

* * * * *

In the golden light of a September day four months later, the Minister of Justice and Religion, passing with his secretary under the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli, recognised M. Lespardat, the deputy magistrate of Nantes, at the very moment when the young man was hurrying into the Hôtel du Louvre.

“Labarthe,” asked the minister, “did you know that your protégé was in Paris? Has he then nothing to keep him in Nantes? It seems to me that it is now some time since you have given me any confidential information about him. His start interested me, but I don’t know yet whether he has quite lived up to the high opinion you formed of him.”

Labarthe took up the cudgels for the _substitut_; he reminded the minister that Lespardat was on regular leave; that at Nantes he had immediately gained the confidence of his chiefs at the bar, and that he had at the same time won the good graces of the _préfet_.

“M. Pélisson,” added he, “cannot get on without him. It is Lespardat who organises the concerts at the prefecture.”

Then the minister and his secretary continued their walk towards the Rue de la Paix, along the arcades, stopping here and there before the windows of the photograph shops.

“There are too many nude figures exposed in these shop-fronts,” said the minister. “It would be better to take away their license from these shops. Strangers judge us by appearances, and such spectacles as these are calculated to injure the good name of the country and the government.”

Suddenly, at the corner of the Rue de l’Échelle, Labarthe told his chief to look at a veiled woman who was coming towards them with a rapid step. But Delarbre, glancing at her for a moment, considered her very ordinary, far too slender, and not at all elegant.

“She is clumsily shod,” said he; “she is from the provinces.”

When she had passed them:

“Your Excellency is quite right,” said Labarthe. “That is Madame Pélisson.”

At this name the minister, much interested, turned round eagerly. With a vague feeling of his own dignity, he dared not follow her. But he showed his curiosity in his look.

Lebarthe spurred it on.

“I’ll wager, monsieur _le ministre_, that she won’t go very far.”

They both hastened their steps, and saw Madame Pélisson follow the arcades, skirt the Place du Palais-Royal, and then, throwing uneasy glances to left and right, disappear into the Hôtel du Louvre.

At that the minister began to laugh from the depths of his throat. His little leaden eyes lighted up. And he muttered between his teeth the words which his secretary guessed rather than heard:

“The magistracy is avenged.”

* * * * *

On the same day the Emperor, then in residence at Fontainebleau, was smoking cigarettes in the library of the palace. He was leaning motionless, with the air of a melancholy sea-bird, against the case in which is kept the Monaldeschi coat of mail. Viollet-le-Duc and Mérimée, both his intimate friends, stood by his side.

He asked:

“Why, Monsieur Mérimée, do you like the works of Brantôme?”

“Sire,” replied Mérimée, “in them I recognise the French nation, with her good and bad qualities. She is never worse than when she is without a leader to show her a noble aim.”

“Really,” said the Emperor, “does one find that in Brantôme?”

“One also finds in him,” answered Mérimée, “the influence of women in the affairs of state.”

At that moment Madame Ramel entered the gallery. Napoleon had given orders that she should be allowed to come to him whenever she presented herself. At the sight of his foster-sister he showed as much delight as his expressionless, sorrowful face was capable of displaying.

“My dear Madame Ramel,” asked he, “how is your nephew getting on at Nantes? Is he satisfied?”

“But, sire,” said Madame Ramel, “he was not sent there. Another was nominated in his place.”

“That’s strange,” murmured His Majesty thoughtfully.

Then, placing his hand on the academician’s shoulder:

“My dear Monsieur Mérimée, I am supposed to rule the fate of France, of Europe, and of the world. And I cannot get a nomination for a _substitut_ of the sixth class, at a salary of two thousand four hundred francs.”

XV

Having finished his reading, M. Bergeret folded up his manuscript and put it in his pocket. M. Mazure, M. Paillot, and M. de Terremondre nodded three times in silence.

Then the last-named placed a hand on Bergeret’s shoulder:

“What you have just read to us, my dear sir,” said he, “is truly …”

At this moment Léon flung himself into the shop and exclaimed with a mixture of excitement and importance:

“Madame Houssieu has just been found strangled in her bed.”

“How extraordinary!” said M. de Terremondre.

“From the state of the body,” added Léon, “it is believed that death took place three days ago.”

“Then,” remarked M. Mazure, the archivist, “that would make it Saturday that the crime was committed.”

Paillot, the bookseller, who had remained silent up till now, with his mouth wide open out of deference to death, now began to collect his thoughts.

“On Saturday, about five o’clock in the afternoon, I plainly heard stifled cries and the heavy thud produced by the fall of a body. I even said to these gentlemen” (he turned towards M. de Terremondre and M. Bergeret) “that something extraordinary was going on in Queen Marguerite’s house.”

No one supported the claim that the bookseller was making that he alone, by the keenness of his senses and the penetration of his mind, had suspected the deed at the moment when it was taking place.

After a respectful silence, Paillot began again:

“During the night between Saturday and Sunday I said to Madame Paillot: ‘There isn’t a sound from Queen Marguerite’s house.’”

M. Mazure asked the age of the victim. Paillot replied that Madame Houssieu was between seventy-nine and eighty years of age, that she had been a widow fifty years, that she owned landed property, stocks and shares, and a large sum of money, but that, being miserly and eccentric, she kept no servant, and cooked her victuals herself over the fireplace in her room, living alone amidst a wreckage of furniture and crockery, covered with the dust of a quarter of a century. It was actually more than twenty-five years since any one had wielded a broom in Queen Marguerite’s house. Madame Houssieu went out but seldom, bought a whole week’s supply of provisions for herself, and never let any one into the house save the butcher-boy and two or three urchins who ran errands for her.

“And the crime is supposed to have been committed on Saturday afternoon?” asked M. de Terremondre.

“So it is believed, from the state of the body,” replied Léon. “It appears that it is a ghastly sight.”

“On Saturday, in the afternoon,” replied M. de Terremondre, “we were here, merely separated by a wall from the horrible scene, and we were chatting about passing trifles.”

There was again a long silence. Then some one asked if the assassin had been arrested, or if they even knew who it was. But, in spite of his zeal, Léon could not answer these questions.

A shadow, which grew ever deeper and deeper and seemed funereal, began to fall across the bookseller’s shop. It was caused by the dark crowd of sightseers swarming in the square in front of the house of crime.

“Doubtless they are waiting for the inspector of police and the public prosecutor,” said Mazure, the archivist.

Paillot, who was gifted with an exquisite caution, fearing lest the eager people would break the window-panes, ordered Léon to close the shutters.

“Don’t leave anything open,” said he, “save the window which looks on the Rue des Tintelleries.”

This precautionary measure seemed to bear the stamp of a certain moral delicacy. The gentlemen of the old-book corner approved of it. But since the Rue des Tintelleries was narrow, and since on that side the panes were covered with notices and drawing-copies, the shop became plunged in darkness.

The murmur of the crowd, till then unnoticed, spread with the shadow and became continuous, hollow, solemn, almost terrible, evidencing the unanimity of the moral condemnation.

Much moved, M. de Terremondre gave fresh expression to the thought which had struck him:

“It is strange,” said he, “that while the crime was being committed so near us, we were talking quietly of unimportant affairs.”

At this M. Bergeret bent his head towards his left shoulder, gave a far-away glance, and spoke thus:

“My dear sir, allow me to tell you that there is nothing strange in that. It is not customary, when a criminal action is going on, that conversations should stop of their own accord around the victim, either within a radius of so many leagues or even of so many feet. A commotion inspired by the most villainous thought only produces natural effects.”

M. de Terremondre made no reply to this speech, and the rest of his hearers turned away from M. Bergeret with a vague sense of disquietude and disapproval.

Still the professor of literature persisted:

“And why should an act so natural and so common as murder produce strange and uncommon results? To kill is common to animals, and especially to man. Murder was for long ages regarded in human civilisation as a courageous action, and there still remain in our morals and institutions certain traces of this ancient point of view.”

“What traces?” demanded M. de Terremondre.

“They are to be found in the honours,” replied M. Bergeret, “which are paid to soldiers.”

“That is not the same thing,” said M. de Terremondre.

“Certainly it is,” said M. Bergeret. “For the motive force of all human actions is hunger or love. Hunger taught savages murder, impelled them to wars, to invasions. Civilised nations are like hunting-dogs. A perverted instinct drives them to destroy without profit or reason. The unreasonableness of modern wars disguises itself under dynastic interest, nationality, balance of power, honour. This last pretext is perhaps the most extravagant of all, for there is not a nation in the world that is not sullied with every crime and loaded with every shame. There is not one of them which has not endured all the humiliations that fortune could inflict on a miserable band of men. If there yet remains any honour among the nations, it is a strange means of upholding it to make war—that is to say, to commit all the crimes by which an individual dishonours himself: arson, robbery, rape, murder. And as for the actions whose motive power is love, they are for the most part as violent, as frenzied, as cruel as the actions inspired by hunger; so much so that one must come to the conclusion that man is a mischievous beast. But it still remains to inquire why I know this, and whence it comes that the fact arouses grief and indignation in me. If nothing but evil existed, it would not be visible, as the night would have no name if the sun never rose.”

M. de Terremondre, however, had extended enough deference to the religion of tenderness and human dignity by reproaching himself with having conversed in a gay and careless fashion at the moment of the crime and so near the victim. He began to regard the tragic end of Madame Houssieu as a familiar incident which one might look at straightforwardly and of which one might deduce the consequences. He reflected that now there was nothing to prevent his buying Queen Marguerite’s house as a storehouse for his collections of furniture, china, and tapestry, and thus starting a sort of municipal museum. As a reward for his zeal and munificence, he counted on receiving, along with the applause of his fellow-countrymen, the Cross of the Legion of Honour, and perhaps the title of correspondent of the Institute.

He had in the Academy of Inscriptions two or three comrades, old bachelors like himself, with whom he sometimes lunched in Paris in some wine-shop, and to whom he recounted many anecdotes about women. And there was no correspondent for the district.

Hence he had already reached the point of depreciating the coveted house.

“It won’t stand upright much longer,” said he, “that house of Queen Marguerite. The beams of the floors used to fall in flakes of touchwood on the poor old octogenarian. It will be necessary to spend an immense sum in putting it in repair.”

“The best thing,” said Mazure, the archivist, “would be to pull it down and remove the frontage to the courtyard of the museum. It would really be a pity to abandon Philippe Tricouillard’s shield to the wreckers.”

They heard a great commotion among the crowd in the square. It was the noise of the people whom the police were driving back to clear a passage for the magistrates into the house of crime.

Paillot pushed his nose out of the half-open door.

“Here,” said he, “comes the examining judge, M. Roquincourt, with M. Surcouf, his clerk. They have gone into the house.”

One after the other the academicians of the old-book corner had slipped out behind the bookseller on to the pavement of the Rue des Tintelleries, from which they watched the surging movements of the people who crowded the Place Saint-Exupère.