Part 6

The monks arrived one by one, their hoods on their heads, arms folded on their breasts. On entering they greeted Croniamantal and took their accustomed places. As they came in, Father Karel informed Croniamantal of their name and what country they came from. The table was soon filled and Croniamantal counted fifty-six of them. The Abbé, an Italian with narrow eyes, said grace and the repast began, but Croniamantal anxiously awaited the arrival of Tristouse.

A bouillon was served in which there swam little brains of birds and sweet peas...

* * *

"Our two French guests have just left," said a French monk who had been the prior of Crepentois. "I could not hold them here: the companion of my nephew was just singing in the garden in his pretty soprano voice. He almost fainted at hearing some one in the convent sing the close of the song. They left just now and took the train, for their automobile was not ready. We shall send it on to them by rail. They did not impart to me the destination of their journey, but I think that the pious children are bound for Marseilles. At least, I think I heard them talk of that town."

Croniamantal, pale as a sheet, rose, then:

"Excuse me, good fathers," he said, "but it was wrong of me to accept your hospitality. I must go away, do not ask me the reason. But I shall keep a fond memory of the simplicity, the gaiety, the liberty that reign here. All that is dear to me to the highest degree, why, why, alas, can I not profit of it?"

XVI. PERSECUTION

At this time prizes for poetry were being awarded every day. Thousands of societies had been founded for this purpose and their members lived on the fat of the land, while making upon fixed dates large benefices to poets. But the 26th of January was the day upon which the largest associations, companies, boards of directors, academies, committees, juries, etc., of the whole world bestowed their awards. Upon this day 8,019 prizes for poetry were distributed, the total of which aggregated 50,005,225 francs.[14] On the other hand, since the taste for poetry had never spread among any class of the population of any country, public opinion had risen powerfully against the poets who were called parasites, lazy, useless, and so forth. The 26th of January of this year passed without incident, but on the following day the great newspaper, La Voix, published at Adelaide (Australia) in the French language, contained an article by the distinguished agricultural chemist Horace Tograth (a German born at Leipzig), whose discoveries and inventions had frequently seemed to border on the miraculous. The article, entitled _The Laurel_, contained a sort of chronology of the culture of the laurel in Judea, in Greece, in Italy, in Africa and in Provence. The author gave counsel to those who had laurel trees in their gardens, indicating the multiple usage of the laurel, as a food, in art, in poetry, and its rôle as a symbol of poetic glory. He then began to talk of mythology, making allusions to Apollo and the fable of Daphné. Finally, Horace Tograth changed his tone brusquely and concluded his article as follows:

"And furthermore, I say candidly, this useless tree is still too common, and we have less glorious symbolisms to which people attribute the famous savour of the laurel. The laurel holds too large a place upon our overpopulated earth, the laurels are unworthy of living. Each one of them takes the place of two in the sun. Let them be chopped down, and let their leaves be feared as a poison. Hitherto symbols of poetry and literary science, they are nothing more today than that death-glory which is to glory as death is to life, and as the hand of glory is to the key.

"True glory has abandoned poetry for science, philosophy, acrobatics, philanthropy, sociology, etc. ...Poets are good for nothing more nowadays than to receive money which they do not earn, since they scarcely ever work and most of them (except for the minstrels) have no talent and no excuse whatsoever. As to those who have some gifts, they are even more obnoxious, for if they receive nothing they make more noise than a regiment and din our ears with their being persecuted. None of these people have any _raison d'être._ The prizes which are awarded them are stolen from workers, inventors, scientists, philosophers, acrobats, philanthropists, sociologists, and so forth. The poets must disappear. Lycurgus would have banished them from the Republic, we too must banish them. Otherwise, the poets, lazy fiefs, will become our princes and while doing nothing, live off our work, oppressing us, and mocking us. In short, we must rid ourselves immediately of the poets' tyranny.

"If the republics and the kings, if the nations do not take care, the race of poets, too privileged, will increase in such proportions and so rapidly that in a short time no one will want to work, invent, teach, do dangerous feats, heal the sick and improve the lot of unfortunate men."

An enormous stir greeted this article. It was telegraphed or telephoned everywhere, all the newspapers reproduced it. A few literary journals followed their quotations from Tograth's article with mocking reflections as to the scientist; there were doubts as to his mental state. They laughed at the terror which he manifested over the lyric laurel. However, the journals of commerce and information made great ado about his warnings. They even said that the article in _La Voix_ was a work of genius.

The article by Horace Tograth had been a singular pretext, admirably fitted to fan the blaze of hatred for poetry. It made its appeal through the traditional sense of the supernatural, whose memory lies in all well born men, and to the instinct for preservation which all beings feel. That was why nearly all Tograth's readers were thunderstruck, aghast, and wanted to lose no occasion to obliterate poets, who, because of the great numbers of prizes they received, were the subjects of the jealousy of all classes of the population. The majority of the newspapers advocated that the government take measures leading to the prohibition of all poetry prizes.

In the evening, in a later edition of _La Voix_, the agricultural chemist, Horace Tograth, published a new article, which, like the other, telephoned or telegraphed everywhere, carried popular emotion to a climax in the press, among the public and the governments. The scientist concluded as follows:

"World, choose between thy life and poetry; if serious measures are not taken, civilization is done for. Thou must not hesitate. From tomorrow on begins the new era. Poetry will exist no longer, the lyres too heavy for old inspirations will be broken. The poets will be massacred."

* * *

During the night, life went on just as usual in all the cities of the globe. The article, telegraphed everywhere, had been published in the special editions of the local newspapers and snatched up by the hungry public. The people all sided with Tograth. Ring-leaders descended into the streets and, mingling with the aroused mobs, excited them further. But most governments held sittings that very night and passed legislation which provoked an indescribable enthusiasm. France, Italy, Spain and Portugal decreed that all poets established on their territory should be imprisoned at once pending the determination of their lot.

Foreign poets who were absent and sought to re-enter the country risked being condemned to death. It was cabled that the United States of America had decided to electrocute any man who avowed his profession to be that of poetry.

It was telegraphed that in Germany also a decree had been passed ordering all poets in verse or prose found on the imperial territory to be incarcerated until further orders. In fact, all of the States on earth, even those who possessed nothing but meager little bards lacking in all lyricism took measures against the very name of poetry. Only England and Russia were exceptions. The laws went into effect at once. All poets who were found on French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese territory were arrested on the following day, while the literary magazines appeared all garbed in black, lamenting the new terror. Dispatches toward noon told how Aristenetius Southwest, the great Negro poet of Haiti, had been cut into pieces and devoured by an infuriated populace of negroes and mulattoes. At Cologne, the Kaiserglocke had sounded all night and in the morning Herr Professor Doktor Stimmung, author of a medieval epic in forty-eight cantos, having gone out to take the train for Hanover, was set upon by a troop of fanatics who beat him with sticks, crying: "Death to the poet!"

He took refuge in the cathedral and remained locked in there with a few beadles, by the excited population of Drikkes, Hanses, and Marizibills. These last particularly, were beside themselves with rage, invoking the Virgin, Saint Ursula and the Three Royal Magi in _platdeutsch._ Their paternosters and pious oaths were interspersed with admirably vile insults to the professor-poet, who owed his reputation chiefly to the unisexuality of his morals. His head to the ground, he was nearly dying of fear under the big wooden statue of Saint Christopher. He heard the sounds of masons walling up all the gates of the cathedral and resigned himself to die of hunger.

Toward two o'clock it was telegraphed that a sexton poet of Naples had seen the blood of Saint January boil up in the holy phial. The sacristan had gone out to proclaim the miracle and had hastened to the harbor front to play buck-buck. He won all that he desired at this game and a knife thrust in the breast to the bargain.

Telegrams everywhere announced the arrests of poets, one after another, and the electrocution of the American poets was made known early in the afternoon.

In Paris, several young poets of the left bank, who had been spared on account of their lack of notoriety, organized a demonstration extending from the _Closerie des Lilas_ to the _Conciergerie_, where the "prince of poets" was imprisoned.[15]

Troops arrived to disperse the demonstrators. The cavalry charged. The poets drew their firearms and defended themselves but the people rushed in and took a hand in the mêlée. The poets were strangled and so was everyone else who came to their defense.

Thus began the great persecution which swept rapidly throughout the entire world. In America, after the electrocution of the famous poets, they lynched all the negro minstrels and even many persons who had never in their lives written a rhyme; then they fell upon the whites of literary Bohemia. It was learned that Tograth, after having personally directed the persecution in Australia, had embarked at Melbourne.

XVII. ASSASSINATION

Like Orpheus, all the poets felt violent death staring them in the face. Everywhere, publishers had been pillaged and collections of verse burnt. The admiration of all went out to Horace Tograth who, from far off Adelaide (Australia), had succeeded in unloosing this storm which seemed destined to destroy poetry forever. This man's knowledge, they said, bordered on the miraculous. He could drive away clouds or bring on rain anywhere he pleased. Women, once they had seen him, were ready to do his bidding. For the rest, he did not disdain either feminine or masculine virginities. As soon as Tograth had seen what enthusiasms he had evoked in the whole world, he announced that he would visit the principal cities of the globe, after Australia had been rid of its erotic and elegiac poets. And indeed some time later uprisings of the population were heard of in Tokyo, Pekin, Yakutsk, Calcutta, Buenos Ayres, San Francisco, Chicago, upon the appearance of the terrible German, Tograth. Wherever he went, he left an unearthly impression on account of his "miracles" (which he called scientific), and his extraordinary healings, all of which lifted his repute as a scientist and a thaumaturgist to sublime heights.

On May 30, Tograth debarked at Marseilles. The people were massed along the quays; Tograth landed from the steamer in a launch. No sooner was he recognized than cries, shouts, toasts, from innumerable gullets mingled with the sound of the wind, the waves and the sirens of the vessels. Tograth, tall and thin, was standing up in the launch. As it approached the land, the features of the hero could be distinguished more and more clearly. His face was smooth-shaven and blue, his mouth almost lipless, disfigured by an ugly cut; he had a receding chin which gave him the appearance, one might have said, of a shark. His brow rose straight up, very high and very large. Tograth was dressed in a pasty white costume, his shoes also being white and high-heeled. He wore no hat. As soon as he placed his foot upon the soil of Marseilles the furor of the crowd rose to such heights that when the quays were cleared three hundred people were found dead, strangled, trampled, crushed. Several men seized the hero and raised him upon their shoulders while they sang and shouted, and women threw flowers at him all the way to the hotel where a suite had been prepared for him and managers, interpreters and bell-boys were waiting to greet him.

* * *

On the same morning, Croniamantal coming from Brünn had arrived at Marseilles to look for Tristouse who had been there since the evening before with Paponat. All three mingled in the crowd which acclaimed Tograth before the hotel where he was to stop.

"Happy tumult," said Tristouse, "You are not a poet, Paponat, you have learned things which are worth infinitely more than poetry. Is it not true, Paponat, that you are in no way a poet?"

"Indeed, my dear," replied Paponat, "I have rhymed at times in order to amuse myself, but I am not a poet, I am an excellent business man and no one knows better than I how to manage an estate."

"Tonight you must mail a letter to _La Voix_ of Adelaide; you must tell them all that, and so you will be safe."

"I shall not fail to do that," said Paponat. "Did you ever hear of such a thing, a poet! That goes for Croniamantal."

"I hope to God," said Tristouse, "that they will massacre him in Brünn where he expects to find us."

"But there he is right now," whispered Paponat. "He is in the crowd. He is hiding himself and hasn't seen us."

"I wish they would hurry up and massacre him," sighed Tristouse. "I have an idea that that will happen soon."

"Look," exclaimed Paponat, "here comes the hero."

* * *

The cortège which accompanied Tograth arrived at the hotel, and he was permitted to descend from their shoulders. Tograth turned to the crowd and addressed them:

"Citizens of Marseilles, in thanking you I could employ, if I wished, compliments that are fatter than your world-renowned sardines. I could, if I wished, make a long speech. But words will never quite encompass the magnificence of the reception which you have accorded me. I know that there are maladies in your midst that I might heal not only with my knowledge but with that which scientists have accumulated for myriads of years. Bring forth the sick, and I shall heal them."

A man whose cranium was as bald as that of an inhabitant of Mycona cried:

"Tograth! god-like mortal, all puissant _savantissimo!_ Give me a luxuriant mane of hair."

Tograth smiled and asked that the man approach him: then he touched the denuded head, saying:

"Thy sterile pate shall be covered with an abundant vegetation, but remember always this favor by hating the laurel."

At the same time as the bald man, a little girl approached. She implored Tograth:

"Sweet man, sweet man, look at my mouth, my lover with a blow of his fist has broken several teeth. Return them to me."

The scientist smiled and put his finger into her mouth, saying: "Now thou canst chew, thou hast excellent teeth. But in return, show us what thou hast in thy bag."

The girl laughed, opening her mouth in which the new teeth gleamed; then she opened her bag, excusing herself:

"What a funny idea, before everybody! Here are my keys, here an enamelled photograph of my lover; he really looks better than that."

But the eyes of Tograth were greedy; he had perceived all folded up in her bag several Parisian songs, rhymed and set to Viennese airs. He took these papers and after having scrutinized them, asked:

"These are nothing but songs, hast thou no poems?"

"I have a very lovely one," said the girl. "It was the bell-boy of the Hotel Victoria wrote it for me before he left for Switzerland. But I never showed it to Sossi."

And she proffered Tograth a little rose sheet of paper on which was written a pathetic acrostic.

_My dear beloved, ere I go away, And thy love, Maria, I betray, MARIA Rail and sob, my sweet, once more--again, If you'd come with me to the woods, we twain,(!) All would be sweeter; our parting would not pain._

"It is not only poetry," exclaimed Tograth, "it is idiotic."

And he tore up the paper and threw it into the ditch, while the girl knocked her teeth in fright and cried:

"Sweet man, good man, I did not know that it was bad."

Just then Croniamantal advanced close to Tograth and apostrophized the crowd:

"Carrion, assassins!"

They burst into laughter. They yelled:

"Into the water with him, the rat."

And Tograth, looking Croniamantal in the face, said:

"My good brother, let not my affluence disturb you. As for me, I love the people, even though I stop at hotels which they do not frequent."

The poet let Tograth talk, then he continued to address the crowd:

"Carrion, laugh at me, your joys are numbered, each one of them will be torn from you one by one. And do you know, o people, what your hero is?"

Tograth smiled and the crowd became all attention. The poet continued:

"Your hero, o populace, is Boredom bringing Misery."

A cry of astonishment issued from all the throats. Women crossed themselves. Tograth wanted to speak, but Croniamantal seized him suddenly by the neck, threw him to the ground and held him there with his foot on the man's chest, while he spoke:

"He is Boredom and Misery, the monstrous enemy of man, the Behemoth glutted with debauchery and rape, dripping the blood of marvellous poets. He is the vomit of the Antipodes, and his miracles deceive the clairvoyant no more than the miracles of Simon the Magi did the Apostles. Marseillais, Marseillais, woe that you whose ancestors come from the most purely lyrical land, should unite with the enemies of poetry, with the barbarians of all the nations. What a strange miracle, this, of the German returned from Australia! To have imposed it upon the world and to have been for a moment stronger than creation itself, stronger than immortal poetry."

But Tograth who was able to extricate himself at last, arose, soiled with dust and drunk with rage. He asked:

"Who are you?"

"Who are you, who are you?" cried the crowd.

The poet turned toward the east and in exalted tones said:

"I am Croniamantal, the greatest of living poets. I have often seen God face to face, I have borne the divine rapture which my human eyes tempered. I was born in eternity. But the day has come, and I am here before you."

Tograth greeted these last words with a terrible burst of laughter, and the first ranks of the crowd seeing Tograth laugh, took up his laughter, which, in bursts, in rolls, in trills, was soon communicated throughout the entire populace, even to Paponat and Tristouse Ballerinette. All of the open mouths yawned at Croniamantal, who became ill at ease. Interspersed with the laughter were shouts of:

"Into the water with the poet!... Burn him, Croniamantal!... To the dogs with him, lover of the laurel!"

A man who was in the first ranks and carried a heavy club gave Croniamantal a blow, causing him to make a painful grimace which doubled the merriment of the crowd. A stone, accurately thrown, struck the nose of the poet and drew blood. A fish merchant forced his way through the mob and, confronting Croniamantal, said:

"Hou! the raven. I remember you, all right, you're a policeman who wanted to pass for a poet; there, cow; take that, story teller."

And he gave him a terrific slap, spitting in his face. The man whom Tograth had cured of _alopecia_ came to him and said:

"Look at my hair, is it a false miracle or not?"

And lifting his cane, he thrust it so adroitly that he gouged out Croniamantal's right eye. Croniamantal fell over backward, women threw themselves upon him and beat him. Tristouse jumped up and down with joy, while Paponat tried to calm her. But she went over and with the end of her umbrella stuck out Croniamantal's other eye, while he, seeing her in this last moment of sight, cried:

"I confess my love for Tristouse Ballerinette, the divine poesy that consoles my soul."

"Shut up, vermin!" cried the crowd of men, "there are ladies here."

The women went away soon, and a man who was balancing a large knife on his open hand threw it in such a way that it landed right in the open mouth of Croniamantal. Other men did the same thing. The knives stuck in his belly, his chest, and soon there was nothing more on the ground than a corpse bristling with points like the husk of a chestnut.

XVIII. APOTHEOSIS

Croniamantal dead, Paponat brought Tristouse Ballerinette back to the hotel, where she relapsed into nervous fainting-spells. They were in a very old building and by chance Paponat discovered, wrapped up in cardboard, a bottle of water of the Queen of Hungary which dated from the 17th Century. This remedy worked rapidly. Tristouse recovered her senses and immediately went to the hospital to claim the body of Croniamantal which was turned over to her without delay.

She arranged a decent burial for him and placed over his tomb a stone on which there was engraved the following epitaph:

_Walk lightly and your silence keep, To leave untroubled his good sleep._

Then she went back to Paris with Paponat who soon left her for a mannikin of the Champs-Élysées.

Tristouse did not regret him very long. She went into mourning for Croniamantal and climbed up to the Montmartre, to the Bird of Benin's who began to pay court to her, and after he had what he desired they began to talk of Croniamantal.

"I ought to make a statue to him," said the Bird of Benin, "For I am not only a painter but also a sculptor."

"That's right," said Tristouse, "we must raise a statue to him."

"Where?" asked the Bird of Benin; "The government will not grant us any ground. Times are bad for poets."

"So they say," replied Tristouse, "but perhaps it isn't true. What do you think of the Meudon woods?"

"I thought of that, but I dared not say it. Let's go to the Meudon woods."

"A statue of what?" asked Tristouse, "Marble? Bronze?"

"No, that's old fashioned. I must model a profound statue out of nothing, like poetry and glory."

"Bravo! Bravo!" cried Tristouse clapping her hands, "A statue out of nothing, empty, that's lovely, and when will you make it?"

"Tomorrow, if you wish; we shall go and dine, pass the night together, and in the morning we shall go to the Meudon woods where I shall make this profound statue."

* * *

No sooner said, than done. They went and dined with the élite of the Montmartre, returned to sleep at midnight and on the next morning at nine o'clock, after having armed himself with a pick-axe, a spade, a shovel and some boasting-chisels, they took the road for the pretty Meudon woods, where they met the Prince of Poets, accompanied by his little friend, quite happy over the pleasant days he had spent in the City-prison.

In the clearing, the Bird of Benin set to work. In a few hours he had dug a trench of about a meter and a half in breadth and two in depth.

Then they had lunch on the grass.

The afternoon was devoted by the Bird of Benin to sculpturing the interior of the monument to Croniamantal.