Part 11

“Just look for a moment at the portraits of our statesmen that Madame Fusellier, the stationer, keeps in her shop-window. Tell me if there is a single one of them who looks as if he were made to unleash the dogs of war and lay the world waste. Their talents match their power, for both are but mediocre. They are not made to be the perpetrators of great crimes, for, thank God! they are not great men. Hence, we can sleep in peace. Besides, although Europe is armed to the teeth, I believe she is by no means inclined to war. For in war there breathes a generous spirit unpopular nowadays. True, they set the Turks fighting the Greeks: that is, they bet on them, as men bet on cocks or horses. But they will not fight between themselves. In 1840 Auguste Comte foretold the end of war and, of course, the prophecy was not exactly and literally fulfilled. Yet possibly the vision of this great man penetrated into the far-distant future. War is, indeed, the everyday condition of a feudal and monarchical Europe, but the feudal system is now dead and the ancient despotisms are opposed by new forces. The question of peace or war in our days depends less on absolute sovereigns than on the great international banking interests, more influential than the Powers themselves. Financial Europe is in a peaceful temper, or, if that be not quite true, she certainly has no love for war as war, no respect for any sentiment of chivalry. Besides, her barren influence is not destined to live long and she will one day be engulfed in the abyss of industrial revolution. Socialistic Europe will probably be friendly to peace, for there will be a socialistic Europe, Monsieur Lantaigne, if indeed that unknown power which is approaching can be rightly called Socialism.”

“Sir,” answered Abbé Lantaigne, “only one Europe is possible, and that is Christian Europe. There will always be wars, for peace is not ordained for this world. If only we could recover the courage and faith of our ancestors! As a soldier of the Church militant, I know well that war will only end with the consummation of the ages. And, like Ajax in old Homer, I pray God that I may fight in the light of day. What terrifies me is neither the number nor the boldness of our enemies, but the weakness and indecision which prevail in our own camp. The Church is an army, and I grieve when I see chasms and openings right along her battle-front; I rage when I see atheists slipping into her ranks and the worshippers of the Golden Calf volunteering for the defence of the sanctuary. I groan when I see the struggle going on all around me, amidst the confusion of a great darkness propitious to cowards and traitors. The will of God be done! I am certain of the final triumph, of the ultimate conquest of sin and error at the last day, which will be the day of glory and justice.”

He rose with firm and steady glance, yet his heavy face was downcast. His soul within him was sorrowful, and not without good reason. For under his administration the high seminary was on its way to ruin. There was a financial deficit, and now that he was being prosecuted by Lafolie the butcher, to whom he owed ten thousand, two hundred and thirty-one francs, his pride lived in perpetual dread of a rebuke from the Cardinal-Archbishop. The mitre towards which he had stretched out his hand was eluding his grasp and already he saw himself banished to some poor country benefice. Turning towards M. Bergeret, he said:

“The most terrible storm-cloud is ready to burst over France.”

XIII

Just now M. Bergeret was on his way to the restaurant, for every evening he spent an hour at the Café de la Comédie. Everybody blamed him for doing so, but here he could enjoy a cheery warmth which had nothing to do with wedded bliss. Here, too, he could read the papers and look on the faces of people who bore him no ill-will. Sometimes, too, he met M. Goubin here—M. Goubin, who had become his favourite pupil since M. Roux’s treachery. M. Bergeret had his favourites, for the simple reason that his artistic soul took pleasure in the very act of making a choice. He had a partiality for M. Goubin, though he could scarcely be said to love him, and, as a matter of fact, M. Goubin was not lovable. Thin and lank, poverty-stricken in physique, in hair, in voice, and in brain, his weak eyes hidden by eye-glasses, his lips close-locked, he was petty in every way, and endowed, not only with the foot, but with the mind of a young girl. Yet, with these characteristics, he was accurate and painstaking, and to his puny frame had been fitted vast and powerful protruding ears, the only riches with which nature had blessed this feeble organism. M. Goubin was naturally qualified to be a capital listener.

M. Bergeret was in the habit of talking to M. Goubin, while they sat with two large beer-glasses in front of them, amidst the noise of the dominoes clicking on the marble tables all around them. At eleven o’clock the master rose and the pupil followed his example. Then they walked across the empty Place du Théâtre and by back ways until they reached the gloomy Tintelleries.

In such fashion they proceeded one night in May when the air, which had been cleared by a heavy storm of rain, was fresh and limpid and full of the smell of earth and leaves. In the purple depths of the moonless, cloudless sky hung points of light that sparkled with the white gleam of diamonds. Amid them, here and there, twinkled bright facets of red or blue. Lifting his eyes to the sky, M. Bergeret watched the stars. He knew the constellations fairly well, and, with his hat on the back of his head and his face turned upwards, he pointed out Gemini with the end of his stick to the vague, wandering glance of M. Goubin’s ignorance. Then he murmured:

“Would that the clear star of Helen’s twin brothers Might ’neath thy barque the wild waters assuage, Would that to Pœstum o’er seas of Ionia ...”[9]

[9] “Oh! soit que l’astre pur des deux frères d’Hélène Calme sous ton vaisseau la vague ionienne, Soit qu’aux bords de Pœstum ...”

Then he said abruptly:

“Have you heard, Monsieur Goubin, that news of Venus has reached us from America and that the news is bad?”

M. Goubin tried obediently to look for Venus in the sky, but the professor informed him that she had set.

“That beautiful star,” he continued, “is a hell of fire and ice. I have it from M. Camille Flammarion himself, who tells me every month, in the excellent articles he writes, all the news from the sky. Venus always turns the same side to the sun, as the moon does to the earth. The astronomer at Mount Hamilton swears that it is so. If we pin our faith to him, one of the hemispheres of Venus is a burning desert, the other, a waste of ice and darkness, and that glorious luminary of our evenings and mornings is filled with naught but silence and death.”

“Really!” said M. Goubin.

“Such is the prevailing creed this year,” answered M. Bergeret. “For my part, I am not far from being convinced that life, at any rate in the form which it presents on earth, is the result of a disease in the constitution of the planet, that it is a morbid growth, a leprosy, something loathsome, in fact, which would never be found in a healthy, well-constituted star. By life I mean, of course, that state of activity manifested by organic matter in plants and animals. I derive pleasure and consolation from this idea. For, indeed, it is a melancholy thing to fancy that all these suns that flame above our heads bring warmth to other planets as miserable as our own, and that the universe gives birth to suffering and squalor in never-ending succession.

“We cannot speak of the planets attendant on Sirius or Aldebaran, on Altaïr or Vega, of those dark masses of dust that may perchance accompany these points of fire that lie scattered over the sky, for even that they exist is not known to us, and we only suspect it by virtue of the analogy existing between our sun and the other stars of the universe. But if we try to form some conception of the planets in our own system, we cannot possibly imagine that life exists there in the mean forms which she usually presents on our earth. One cannot suppose that beings constructed on our model are to be found in the weltering chaos of the giants Saturn and Jupiter. Uranus and Neptune have neither light nor heat, and therefore that form of corruption which we call organic life cannot exist on them. Neither is it credible that life can be manifested in that star-dust dispersed in the ether between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, for that dust is but the scattered material of a planet. The tiny ball Mercury seems too blazing hot to produce that mouldy dampness which we call animal and vegetable life. The moon is a dead world, and we have just discovered that the temperature of Venus does not suit what we call organic life. Thus, we can imagine nothing at all comparable with man in all the solar system, unless it be on the planet Mars, which, unfortunately for itself, has some points in common with the earth. It has both air and water; it has, alas! maybe, the materials for the making of animals like ourselves.”

“Isn’t it true that it is believed to be inhabited?” asked M. Goubin.

“We have sometimes been disposed to imagine so,” answered M. Bergeret. “The appearance of this planet is not very well known to us. It seems to vary and to be always in confusion. On it canals can be seen, whose nature and origin we cannot understand. We cannot be absolutely certain that this neighbour of ours is saddened and degraded by human beings like ourselves.”

M. Bergeret had reached his door. He stopped and said:

“I would fain believe that organic life is an evil peculiar to this wretched little planet of ours. It is a ghastly idea that in the infinitude of heaven they eat and are eaten in endless succession.”

XIV

The cab which was carrying Madame Worms-Clavelin into Paris passed through the Porte Maillot between the gratings crowned in civic style with a hedge of pike-heads. Near these lay dusty custom-house officers and sunburnt flower-girls asleep in the sun. As it passed, it left, on the right, the Avenue de la Révolte, where low, mouldy, red-bedaubed inns and stunted arbours face the Chapel of Saint-Ferdinand, which crouches, lonely and dwarfish, on the edge of a gloomy military moat covered with sickly patches of scorched grass. Thence it emerged into the melancholy Rue de Chartres, with its everlasting pall of dust from the stone-cutting yards, and passed down it into the beautiful shady roads that open into the royal park, now cut up into small, middle-class estates. As the cab rumbled heavily along the causeway down an avenue of plane-trees, every second or so, through the silent solitude, there passed lightly-clad bicyclists who skimmed by with bent backs and heads cutting the air like quick-moving animals. With their rapid flight and long, swift, bird-like movements, they were almost graceful through sheer ease, almost beautiful by the mere amplitude of the curves they described. Between the bordering tree-trunks Madame Worms-Clavelin could see lawns, little ponds, steps, and glass-door canopies in the most correct taste, cut off by rows of palings. Then she lost herself in a vague dream of how, in her old age, she would live in a house like those whose fresh plaster and slate she could see through the leaves. She was a sensible woman and moderate in her desires, so that now she felt a dawning love of fowls and rabbits rising in her breast. Here and there, in the larger avenues, big buildings stood out, chapels, schools, asylums, hospitals, an Anglican church with its gables of stern Gothic, religious houses, severely peaceful in appearance, with a cross on the gate and a very black bell against the wall and, hanging down, the chain by which to ring it. Then the cab plunged into the low-lying, deserted region of market-gardens, where the glass roofs of hot-houses glittered at the end of narrow, sandy paths, or where the eye was caught by the sudden appearance of one of those ridiculous summer-houses that country builders delight to construct, or by the trunks of dead trees imitated in stoneware by an ingenious maker of garden ornaments. In this Bas-Neuilly district one can feel the freshness of the river hard by. Vapours rise there from a soil that is still damp with the waters which covered it, up to quite a late period, according to the geologists—exhalations from marshes on which the wind bent the reeds scarcely a thousand or fifteen hundred years ago.

Madame Worms-Clavelin looked out of the carriage window: she had nearly arrived. In front of her the pointed tops of the poplars which fringe the river rose at the end of the avenue. Once more the surroundings were varied and bustling. High walls and zigzag roof-ridges followed one another uninterruptedly. The cab stopped in front of a large modern house, evidently built with special regard to economy and even stinginess, in defiance of all considerations of art or beauty. Yet the effect was neat and pleasant on the whole. It was pierced with narrow windows, among which one could distinguish those of the chapel by the leaden tracery that bound the window-panes. On its dull, plain façade one was discreetly reminded of the traditions of French religious art by means of triangular dormer windows set in the woodwork of the roof and capped with trefoils. On the pediment of the front door an ampulla was carved, typifying the phial in which was contained the blood of the Saviour that Joseph of Arimathæa had carried away in a glove. This was the escutcheon of the Sisters of the Precious Blood, a confraternity founded in 1829 by Madame Marie Latreille, which received state recognition in 1868, thanks to the goodwill of the Empress Eugénie. The Sisters of the Precious Blood devoted themselves to the training of young girls.

Jumping from the carriage, Madame Worms-Clavelin rang at the door, which was carefully and circumspectly half opened for her. Then she went into the parlour, while the sister who attended to the turnstile gave notice through the wicket that Mademoiselle de Clavelin was wanted to come and see her mother. The parlour was only furnished with horsehair chairs. In a niche on the whitewashed wall there stood a figure of the Holy Virgin, painted in pale colours. There was a certain air of archness about the figure, which stood erect, with the feet hidden and the hands extended. This large, cold, white room carried with it a suggestion of peace, order and rectitude. One could feel in it a secret power, a social force that remained unseen.

Madame Worms-Clavelin sniffed the air of this parlour with a solemn sense of satisfaction, though it was damp, and suffused with the stale smell of cooking. Her own girlhood had been spent in the noisy little schools of Montmartre, amidst daubs of ink and lumps of sweetmeats, and in the perpetual interchange of offensive words and vulgar gestures. She therefore appreciated very highly the austerity of an aristocratic and religious education. In order that her daughter might be admitted into a famous convent, she had had her baptized, for she thought to herself, “Jeanne will then be better bred and she will have a chance of making a better marriage.”

Jeanne had accordingly been baptized at the age of eleven and with the utmost secrecy, because they were then under a radical administration. Since then the Church and the Republic had become more reconciled to each other, but in order to avoid displeasing the bigots of the department, Madame Worms-Clavelin still concealed the fact that her daughter was being educated in a nunnery. Somehow, however, the secret leaked out, and now and then the clerical organ of the department published a paragraph which M. Lacarelle, counsel to the prefecture, blue-pencilled and sent to M. Worms-Clavelin. For instance, M. Worms-Clavelin read:

“Is it a fact that the Jewish persecutor whom the freemasons have placed at the head of our departmental administration, in order that he may oppose the cause of God among the faithful, has actually sent his daughter to be educated in a convent?”

M. Worms-Clavelin shrugged his shoulders and threw the paper into the waste-paper basket. Two days later the Catholic editor inserted another paragraph, as, after reading the first, one would have prophesied his doing.

“I asked whether our Jewish _préfet_, Worms-Clavelin, was really having his daughter educated in a convent. And now that this freemason has, for good reasons of his own, avoided giving me any answer, I will myself reply to my own question. After having had his daughter baptized, this dishonourable Jew sent his daughter to a Catholic place of education.

“_Mademoiselle Worms-Clavelin is at Neuilly-sur-Seine, being educated by the Sisters of the Precious Blood._

“What a pleasure it is to witness the sincerity of jesters like these!

“A lay, atheistic, homicidal education is good enough for the people who maintain them! Would that our people’s eyes were opened to discern on which side are the Tartuffes!”

M. Lacarelle, the counsel to the prefecture, first blue-pencilled the paragraph and then placed the open sheet on the _préfet’s_ desk. M. Worms-Clavelin threw it into his waste-paper basket and warned the meddlesome papers not to engage in discussions of that sort. Hence this little episode was soon forgotten and fell into the bottomless pit of oblivion, into that black darkness of night which, after one outburst of excitement, swallows up the shame and the honour, the scandals and the glories of an administration. In view of the wealth and power of the Church, Madame Worms-Clavelin had stuck energetically to her point that Jeanne should be left to these nuns who would train the young girl in good principles and good manners.

She modestly sat down, hiding her feet under her dress, like the red, white and blue Virgin of the niche, and holding in her finger-tips by the string the box of chocolates she had brought for Jeanne.

A tall girl, looking very lanky in her black dress with the red girdle of the Middle School, burst into the room.

“Good morning, mamma!”

Madame Worms-Clavelin looked her up and down with a curious mixture of motherly solicitude and horse-dealer’s curiosity. Drawing her close, she glanced at her teeth, made her stand upright; looked at her figure, her shoulders and her back, and seemed pleased.

“Heavens! how tall you are!” she exclaimed. “You have such long arms!...”

“Don’t worry me about them, mamma! As it is, I never know what to do with them.”

She sat down and clasped her red hands across her knees. She replied with a graceful air of boredom to the questions which her mother asked about her health, and listened wearily to her instructions about healthy habits and to her advice in the matter of cod-liver oil. Then she asked:

“And how is papa?”

Madame Worms-Clavelin was almost astonished whenever anyone asked her about her husband, not because she was herself indifferent to him, but because she felt it was impossible to say anything new about this firm, unchangeable, stolid man, who was never ill and who never said or did anything original.

“Your father? What could happen to him? We have a very good position and no wish to change it.”

All the same, she thought it would soon be advisable to look out for a suitable sinecure, either in the treasury, or, perhaps rather, in the Council of State. At the thought her beautiful eyes grew dim with reverie.

Her daughter asked what she was thinking about.

“I was thinking that one day we might return to Paris. I like Paris for my part, but there we should hardly count.”

“Yet papa has great abilities. Sister Sainte-Marie-des-Anges said so once in class. She said: ‘Mademoiselle de Clavelin, your father has shown great administrative talents.’”

Madame Worms-Clavelin shook her head. “One wants so much money to live in style in Paris.”

“You like Paris, mamma, but for my part I like the country best.”

“You know nothing about it, pet.”

“But, mamma, one doesn’t care only for what one knows.”

“There is, perhaps, some truth in what you say.”

“You haven’t heard, mamma?... I have won the prize for history composition. Madame de Saint-Joseph said I was the only one who had treated the subject thoroughly.”

Madame Worms-Clavelin asked gently:

“What subject?”

“The Pragmatic Sanction.”

Madame Worms-Clavelin asked, this time with an accent of real surprise:

“What is that?”

“It was one of Charles VII’s mistakes. It was, indeed, the greatest mistake he ever made.”

Madame Worms-Clavelin found this answer by no means enlightening. But since she took no interest in the history of the Middle Ages, she was willing to let the matter drop. But Jeanne, who was full of her subject, went on in all seriousness:

“Yes, mamma. It was the greatest crime of that reign, a flagrant violation of the rights of the Holy See, a criminal robbery of the inheritance of St. Peter. But happily the error was set right by Francis I. And whilst we are on this subject, mamma, do you know we have found out that Alice’s governess was an old wanton?...”

Madame Worms-Clavelin begged her daughter anxiously and earnestly not to join her young friends in research work of this kind. Then she flew into a rage:

“You are perfectly absurd, Jeanne, for you use words without paying any heed...”

Jeanne looked at her in mysterious silence. Then she said suddenly:

“Mamma, I must tell you that my drawers are in such a state that they are a positive sight. You know you have never been overwhelmingly interested in the question of linen. I don’t say this as a reproach, for one person goes in for linen, another for dresses, another for jewels. You, mamma, have always gone in for jewels. For my part it’s linen that I’m mad about.... And besides, we’ve just had a nine days’ prayer. I prayed hard both for you and for papa, I can tell you! And, then, I’ve earned four thousand nine hundred and thirty-seven days of indulgence.”

XV

“I am rather religiously inclined,” said M. de Terremondre, “but I still think that the words spoken in Notre Dame by Père Ollivier were ill advised. And that is the general opinion.”

“Of course,” replied M. Lantaigne, “you blame him for having explained this disaster as a lesson given by God against pride and infidelity. You think him wrong in describing the favoured people as being suddenly punished for their faithlessness and rebellion. Ought one, then, to give up attempting to trace a cause for such terrible events?”

“There are,” answered M. de Terremondre, “certain conventions which ought to be observed. The mere fact that the head of the State was present made a certain reserve incumbent on him.”

“It is true,” said M. Lantaigne, “that this monk actually dared to declare before the President and the ministers of the Republic, and before the rich and powerful, who are either the authors or accomplices of our shame, that France had failed in her age-long vocation, when she turned her back on the Christians of the East who were being massacred by thousands, and, like a coward, supported the Crescent against the Cross. He dared to declare that this once Christian nation had driven the true God from both its schools and its councils. This is the speech that you consider a crime, you, Monsieur de Terremondre, one of the leaders of the Catholic party in our department.”