Part 4

It was well known that General Cartier de Chalmot remained a faithful royalist in the depths of his heart. It was not so well known that one day in the year 1893 his heart had received one of those shocks which can only be compared with what Christians describe as the workings of grace, and which bring with the force of a thunderbolt deep and unlooked-for peace to a man’s innermost being. This event took place at five o’clock in the evening of the 4th of June in the drawing-rooms of the prefecture. There, among the flowers that Madame Worms-Clavelin had herself arranged, President Carnot, on his way through the town, had received the officers of the garrison. General Cartier de Chalmot, being present with his staff, saw the President for the first time, and instantly, for no apparent reason, on no explicable grounds, was pierced through and through by a terrible admiration. In a second, before the gentle gravity and honest inflexibility of the head of the State, all his prejudices fell away. He forgot that this sovereign was a civilian. He revered and loved him. He suddenly felt himself bound with ties of sympathy and respect to this man, sad and sallow like himself, but august and serene like a ruler. He uttered with a soldierly stutter the official compliment which he had learnt by heart. The President answered him: “I thank you in the name of the Republic and of our country which you loyally serve.” At this, all the devotion to an absent prince which General Cartier de Chalmot had stored up for twenty-five years welled forth from his heart towards the President, whose quiet face remained surprisingly immobile, and who spoke in a melancholy voice with no movement of cheek or lips, on which his black beard set a seal. On this waxen face, in these slow, honest eyes, on this feeble breast, across which blazed the broad red ribbon of his order, in the whole figure of this suffering automaton, the general perceived both the dignity of the leader, and the affliction of the ill-fated man who has never laughed. With his admiration there was mingled a strain of tenderness.

A year later he heard of the tragic end of this President for whose safety he would willingly have died, and whom he henceforth pictured in his thoughts as dark and stiff, like the flag rolled round its staff in the barracks and covered with its case.

From that time he had ignored the civil rulers of France. He cared to know nothing save of his military superiors, whom he obeyed with melancholy punctiliousness. Pained at the idea of answering the venerable Abbé de Lalonde by a refusal, he bethought himself for a moment, and then gave his reasons.

“A matter of principle. I never ask anything of the government. You agree with me, don’t you? … For from the moment that one lays down a rule for oneself …”

The chaplain looked at him with an expression of sadness that seemed as though thrown over his happy old face.

“Oh! how could I agree with you, general—I who beg of everybody? I am a hardened beggar. For God and the poor, I have pleaded with all the powers of the day, with King Louis Philippe’s ministers, with those of the provisional government, with Napoleon III.’s ministers, with those of the _Ordre Moral_ and those of the present Republic. They have all helped me to do some good. And since you know the Minister of Religion …”

At this moment a shrill voice called in the passage:

“Poulot! Poulot!”

And a stout lady in a morning wrapper, her white hair crowned with hair-curlers, entered the room with a rush. It was Madame Cartier de Chalmot, who was calling the general to déjeuner.

She had already shaken her husband with imperious tenderness, and exclaimed once more: “Poulot!” before she became aware of the presence of the old priest crushed up against the door.

She apologised for her untidy dress. She had had so much to do this morning! Three daughters, two sons, an orphan nephew and her husband—seven children to look after!

“Ah! madame,” said the abbé, “it is God himself who has sent you! You will be my providence.”

“Your providence, monsieur l’abbé!”

In her grey dressing-gown her figure revealed the ample dignity of classic motherhood. On her beaming moustachioed face shone a matronly pride; her large gestures expressed at once the briskness of a housewife habituated to work and the ease of a woman accustomed to official deference. The general disappeared behind her. She was his household goddess and his guardian angel, this Pauline who carried on her brave, energetic shoulders all the burden of this poverty-stricken, ostentatious house, who played the part of seamstress to the family, as well as cook, dressmaker, chambermaid, governess, apothecary, and even milliner with a frankly gaudy taste, and yet showed at big dinners and receptions an imperturbable good breeding, a commanding profile, and shoulders that were still beautiful. It was commonly said in the division that if the general became Minister of War, his wife would do the honours of the hôtel in the Boulevard Saint-Germain[F] in capital fashion.

[F] Where the French War Office is situated.

The energy of the general’s wife spread freely over into the outer world and flourished vigorously in pious and charitable works. Madame Cartier de Chalmot was lady patroness of three crêches and a dozen charities recommended by the Cardinal-Archbishop. Monseigneur Charlot showed a special predilection for this lady, and said to her sometimes, with his man-of-the-world smile: “You are a general in the army of Christian charity.” And, being a professor of orthodoxy, Monseigneur Charlot never failed to add: “And there is no charity outside the Christian charity; for the Church alone is in a position to solve the social problems whose difficulties perplex the minds of all and cause special anxiety to our paternal heart.”

This was just what Madame Cartier de Chalmot thought. She was lavishly, glaringly pious, and not free from the rather loud magnificence that was aptly accented by the sound of her voice and the flowers in her hats. Her faith, voluminous and decorative like the bosom which enshrined it, made a splendid show in drawing-rooms. By the breadth of her religious sentiments she had done much harm to her husband. But neither of them paid any heed to this. The general also believed in the Christian creed, although this would not have prevented him from having the Cardinal-Archbishop arrested on a written order from the Minister of War. Yet he was regarded with suspicion by the democracy. And the _préfet_, M. Worms-Clavelin himself, though little of a fanatic, regarded General Cartier de Chalmot as a dangerous man. This was his wife’s fault. She was ambitious, but the soul of honour and incapable of betraying her God.

“How can I be your providence, monsieur l’abbé?”

And when she heard that the point at issue was the raising to the bishopric of Tourcoing of Abbé Lantaigne, a man of such noble, steadfast piety, she caught fire and showed her courage.

“Those are the bishops we want. M. Lantaigne ought to be nominated.”

The old chaplain began to make use of this happy valiancy.

“Then, madame, induce the general to write to the Minister of Religion, who turns out to be his friend.”

She shook the crown of curlers on her head vigorously.

“No, monsieur l’abbé. My husband will not write. It is useless to persist. He thinks that a soldier ought never to ask for anything. He is right. My father was of this opinion. You knew him, monsieur l’abbé, and you know that he was a fine man and a good soldier.”

The old Army chaplain smote his forehead.

“Colonel de Balny! Yes, of course, I knew him. He was a hero and a Christian.”

General Cartier de Chalmot interposed:

“My father-in-law, Colonel de Balny, was chiefly commendable for having mastered in their entirety the regulations of 1829 on cavalry manœuvres. These regulations were so complicated that few officers mastered them in their completeness. They were afterwards withdrawn, and Colonel de Balny conceived such a disgust at this that it hastened his end. New regulations were imposed, possessing the unquestionable advantage of simplification. Yet I question whether the old state of things was not preferable. You must exact much from a cavalryman in order to get a little out of him. It is the same with the foot-soldier.”

And the general began anxiously to manipulate his division of cards drawn up in the boxes.

Madame Cartier de Chalmot had heard these same words very often. She always made the same reply to them. Once more this time she said:

“Poulot! how can you say that papa died of chagrin, when he fell down in an apoplectic fit at a review?”

The old chaplain, by a crafty wile, brought the conversation back to the subject which interested him.

“Ah! madame, your excellent father, Colonel de Balny, would have certainly appreciated the character of M. Lantaigne, and he would have offered up prayers that this priest might be raised to a bishopric.”

“I also, monsieur l’abbé, will offer up prayers for that,” answered the general’s wife. “My husband cannot, ought not to make any application. But if you think that my intervention will be useful, I will drop a word to Monseigneur. He doesn’t terrify me at all, our Archbishop.”

“Doubtless a word from your mouth …” murmured the old man. “... The ear of Monseigneur Chariot will be open to it.”

The general’s wife announced that she would be seeing the Archbishop at the inauguration of the Pain de Saint Antoine, of which she was president, and that there …

She interrupted herself:

“The cutlets! … Excuse me, monsieur l’abbé …”

She rushed out on to the landing and shouted orders to the cook from the staircase. Then she reappeared in the room.

“And there I shall draw him aside, and beg him to speak to the nuncio in favour of M. Lantaigne. Is that the right way to go to work?”

The old chaplain made as if to take her hands, yet without actually doing so.

“That’s just the way, madame. I am sure that the good Saint Anthony of Padua will be with you and will help you to persuade Monseigneur Charlot. He is a great saint. I mean Saint Anthony. … Ladies ought not to believe that he devotes himself exclusively to finding the jewels which they have lost. In heaven he has something better to do. To beg him for bread for the poor, that is assuredly far worthier. You have realised that, dear madame. The Pain de Saint Antoine is a fine work. I must inform myself more fully about it. But I shall take good care not to breathe a word of it to my good sisters.”

He was referring to the Dames du Salut, to whom he was chaplain.

“They have already too many undertakings. They are excellent sisters, but too much absorbed in trifling duties, and far too petty, the poor ladies.”

He sighed, recalling the time when he was a regimental chaplain, the tragic days of the war, when he accompanied the wounded stretched out on an ambulance litter and gave them a drop of brandy. For it was by doles of tobacco and spirits that he was in the habit of carrying on his apostolic labours. He again gave way to his love of talking about the fighting round Metz and told some anecdotes. He had several concerning a certain sapper, a native of Lorraine called Larmoise, a man full of resources.

“I did not tell you, general, how this great devil of a sapper used to bring me a bag of potatoes every morning. One day I asked him where he picked them up. Says he: ‘In the enemy’s lines.’ ‘You villain,’ I say to him. Thereupon he explains to me how he has found some fellow-countrymen among the German guards. ‘Fellow-countrymen?’ ‘Yes, fellow-countrymen, fellows from home. We are only separated by the frontier. We embraced one another, we talked about our relatives and friends. And they said to me: ”You can take as many potatoes as you like.”’”

And the chaplain added:

“This simple incident made me feel better than any reasoning how cruel and unjust war is.”

“Yes,” said the general, “these annoying intimacies occasionally occur at the points of contact of two armies. They must be sternly repressed, having due regard, of course, to the circumstances.”

VII

On the promenade along the ramparts that evening Abbé Lantaigne, head of the high seminary, fell in with M. Bergeret, a professor of literature who was considered a man of remarkable, but eccentric character. M. Lantaigne forgave him his scepticism and chatted with him willingly, whenever he met him under the elm-trees on the Mall. On his side, M. Bergeret had no objection to studying the mind of an intelligent priest. They both knew that their conversations on a seat in the promenade were equally displeasing to the dean of the Faculty and to the Archbishop. But Abbé Lantaigne knew nothing about worldly prudence, and M. Bergeret, very weary, discouraged, and disillusioned, had given up caring for fruitless considerations of policy.

Sceptical within the bounds of decorum and good taste, the assiduous devotions of his wife and the endless catechisms of his daughters had resulted in his being impeached of clericalism in the ministerial bureaux, whilst certain speeches that had been attributed to him were used against him, both by professing Catholics and professional patriots. Foiled in his ambitions, he still meant to live in his own way, and having failed to learn how to please, tried discreetly to displease.

On this peaceful and radiant evening M. Bergeret, seeing the head of the high seminary coming along his usual road, advanced several paces to meet the priest and joined him under the first elm-trees on the Mall.

“To me the place is happy where I meet you,” said Abbé Lantaigne, who loved, before a university man, to air his harmless literary affectations.

In a few very vague phrases they made a mutual confession of the great pity aroused in them both by the world in which they lived. It was Abbé Lantaigne alone who deplored the decay of this ancient city, so rich, during the Middle Ages, in knowledge and thought, and now subject to a few petty tradesmen and freemasons. In frank opposition to this, M. Bergeret said:

“In days gone by men were just what they are now; that is to say, moderately good and moderately bad.”

“Not so!” answered M. Lantaigne. “Men were vigorous in character and strong in doctrine when Raymond the Great, surnamed the balsamic doctor, taught in this town the epitome of human knowledge.”

The professor and the priest sat down on a stone bench where two old men, pale-faced and decrepit, were already sitting without saying a word. In front of this bench, green meadows, wreathed in light mist, stretched gently downwards to the poplars that fringed the river.

“Monsieur l’abbé,” said the professor, “I have, like everybody else, turned over the pages of the _Hortus_ and the _Thesaurus_ of Raymond the Great in the municipal library. Moreover, I have read the new book that Abbé Cazeaux has devoted to the balsamic doctor. Now, what struck me in that book …”

“Abbé Cazeaux is one of my pupils,” interrupted M. Lantaigne. “His book on Raymond the Great is based on facts, which is praiseworthy; it is founded on theology, which is still more praiseworthy and rare, for theology is lost in this decadent France, which was the greatest of the nations as long as she was the most theological.”

“This book of M. Cazeaux’s,” answered M. Bergeret, “appeared to me to be interesting from several points of view. For want of a knowledge of theology I lost myself in it more than once. Yet I fancied I could see in it that the blessed Raymond, rigidly orthodox monk as he was, claimed for the teacher the right of professing two contradictory opinions on the same subject, the one theological and in accordance with revelation, the other purely human and based on experience or reason. The balsamic doctor, whose statue adorns so sternly the courtyard of the Archbishop’s palace, maintained, according to what I have been able to understand, that one and the same man may deny, as an observer or as a disputant, the truths which, as a Christian, he believes and confesses. And it seemed to me that your pupil, M. Cazeaux, approved of a system so strange.”

Abbé Lantaigne, quite animated by what he had just heard, drew his red silk handkerchief from his pocket, unfurled it like a flag, and with flushed face and mouth wide open flung himself fearlessly on the challenge thrown down.

“Monsieur Bergeret, as to whether one can have, on the same subject, two distinct opinions, the one theological and of divine origin, the other purely rational or experimental and of human origin, that is a question which I answer in the affirmative. And I am going to prove to you the truth of this apparent contradiction by a most common instance. When, seated in your study, before your table loaded with books and papers, you exclaim, ‘It is incredible! I have just this moment put my paper-knife on this table and now I do not see it there. I see it, I’m sure I see it, and yet I no longer see it,’ when you think in this way, Monsieur Bergeret, you have two contradictory opinions with respect to the same object, one that your paper-knife is on the table because it ought to be there: that opinion is based on reason; the other that your paper-knife is not on the table, because you do not see it there: that opinion is based on experience. There you have two irreconcilable opinions on the same subject. And they are simultaneous. You affirm at the same time both the presence and the absence of the paper-knife. You exclaim, ‘It is there, I am sure of it,’ at the very moment you are proving it is not there.”

And, having finished his demonstration, Abbé Lantaigne waved his chequered, snuff-besprinkled silk handkerchief, like the flaming banner of scholasticism.

But the professor of literature was not convinced. He had no difficulty in showing the emptiness of this sophism. He replied quite gently in the rather weak voice that he habitually husbanded, that, in looking for his paper-knife, he experienced fear and hope, by turns and not simultaneously, the result of an uncertainty which could not last; for it ended by his making sure whether the knife was on the table or not.

“There is nothing, monsieur l’abbé,” added he, “nothing in this instance of the boxwood knife that is applicable to the contradictory judgment which the blessed Raymond, or M. Cazeaux, or you yourself, might form on such or such a fact recorded in the Bible, when you state that it is at the same time both true and false. Allow me, in my turn, to give you an instance. I choose,—not, of course, in order to ensnare you, but because this incident comes of its own accord into my mind,—I choose the story of Joshua causing the sun to stand still. …”

M. Bergeret passed his tongue over his lips and smiled. For in truth he was, in the secret places of his soul, a Voltairean:

“... Joshua causing the sun to stand still. Will you tell me, straight out, monsieur l’abbé, that Joshua made the sun stand still and did not make it stand still?”

The head of the high seminary had by no means an air of embarrassment. Splendid controversialist as he was, he turned to his opponent with flashing eyes and heaving breast.

“After every reservation has been expressly made with respect to the true interpretation, both literal and spiritual, of the passage in Judges which you attack and against which so many unbelievers have blindly dashed themselves before you, I will reply to you fearlessly. Yes, I have two distinct opinions as to the interpretation of this miracle. I believe as a natural philosopher, for reasons drawn from physics, that is to say, from observation, that the earth turns round a motionless sun. And as a theologian I believe that Joshua caused the sun to stand still. There is here a contradiction. But this contradiction is not irreconcilable. I will prove it to you at once. For the idea which we form of the sun is purely human; it only concerns man and could not be applicable to God. For man, the sun does not turn round the earth. I grant it, and I am willing to decide in favour of Copernicus. But I will not go so far as to force God to become a Copernican like myself, and I shall not inquire whether, for God, the sun turns or does not turn round the earth. To speak truly, I had no need of the text of Judges in order to know that our human astronomy is not the astronomy of God. Speculations as to time, number and space do not embrace infinity, and it is a mad idea to wish to entangle the Holy Spirit in a physical or mathematical difficulty.”

“Then,” asked the professor, “you admit that, even in mathematics, it is permissible to have two contradictory opinions, the one human, the other divine?”

“I will not risk being reduced to that extremity,” answered Abbé Lantaigne. “There is in mathematics an exactitude which practically reconciles it with absolute truth. Numbers, on the contrary, are only dangerous because the reason, being tempted to seek in them for its own principle, runs the risk of going so far astray as to see nothing in the universe save a system of numbers. This error has been condemned by the Church. Yet I will answer you boldly that human mathematics are not divine mathematics. Doubtless, however, it would not be possible for one to contradict the other, and I prefer to believe that you do not wish to make me say that for God three and three can make nine. But we do not know all the properties of numbers, and God does.

“I hear that there are priests, regarded as eminent, who maintain that science ought to agree with theology. I detest this impertinence, I will say this impiety, for there is a certain impiety in making the immutable and absolute truth walk in harmony with that imperfect and provisional truth which is called science. This madness of assimilating reality to appearance, the body to the soul, has produced a multitude of miserable, baneful opinions through which the apologists of this period have allowed their foolhardy feebleness to be seen. One, a distinguished member of the Society of Jesus, admits the plurality of inhabited worlds; he allows that intelligent beings may inhabit Mars and Venus, provided that to the earth there be reserved the privilege of the Cross, by which it again becomes unique and peculiar in the Creation. The other, a man who not without some merit occupied in the Sorbonne the chair of theology which has since been abolished, grants that the geologist can trace the vestiges of preadamites and reduces the Genesis of the Bible to the organisation of one province of the universe for the sojourn of Adam and his seed. O dull folly! O pitiable boldness! O ancient novelties, already condemned a hundred times! O violation of sacred unity! How much better, like Raymond the Great and his historian, to proclaim that science and religion ought no more to be confused with each other than the relative and the absolute, the finite and the infinite, the darkness and the light!”

“Monsieur l’abbé,” said the professor, “you despise science.”

The priest shook his head.

“Not so, Monsieur Bergeret, not so! I hold, on the contrary, according to the example of Saint Thomas Aquinas and all the great doctors, that science and philosophy ought to be held in high esteem in the schools.