Part 2

At that moment a visitor came into the study. It was a well-built man in the prime of life, with handsome sunburnt features. Captain Aspertini of Naples was a student of philology and agriculture and a member of the Italian Parliament who for the last ten years had been carrying on a learned correspondence with M. Bergeret, after the style of the great scholars of the Renaissance and the seventeenth century, and whenever he visited France he made it his practice to come and see his correspondent. Savants the world over held a high opinion of Carlo Aspertini for having deciphered a complete treatise by Epicurus on one of the charred scrolls from Pompeii. Although his energies were now absorbed in agriculture, politics and business, he was still passionately devoted to the art of numismatics and his sensitive hands still itched to have the fingering of medals. Indeed, there were two attractions which drew him to * * *—the pleasure of seeing M. Bergeret and the delight of looking once more at the priceless collection of ancient coins bequeathed to the town library by Boucher de La Salle. He also came to collate the letters of Muratori which were preserved there. The two men greeted each other with great pleasure, for a common love of knowledge had made them fellow-citizens. Then, when the Neapolitan perceived that they had a soldier with them in the study, M. Bergeret hastened to inform him that this Gallic warrior was a budding philologist, inspired by enthusiasm for the Latin tongue.

“This year, however,” said M. Bergeret, “he is learning in a barrack-square to put one foot before the other, and in him you see what our witty commandant, General Cartier de Chalmot, calls the primary tool of tactics, commonly known as a soldier. My pupil, M. Roux, is a warrior, and having a high-bred soul, he feels the honour of the position. Truth to tell, it is an honour which he shares at this identical moment with all the young men of haughty Europe. Your Neapolitans, too, rejoice in it, since they became part of a great nation.”

“Without wishing in any way to show disloyalty to the house of Savoy, to which I am genuinely attached,” said the captain, “I feel that military service and taxation weigh so heavily on the Neapolitans as to make them sometimes regret the happy days of King Bomba and the pleasure of living ingloriously under an easy-going government. Neither tax nor conscription is popular with the Neapolitan. What is wanted is that statesmen should really open their eyes to the necessities of national life. But, as you know, I have always been an opponent of megalomaniac politics and have always deplored those great armaments which hinder all progress in Europe, whether it be intellectual, moral, or material. It is a great, a ruinous folly which can only culminate in farce.”

“I foresee no end to it at all,” replied M. Bergeret. “No one wishes it to end save certain thinkers who have no means of making their ideas known. The rulers of states cannot desire disarmament, for such a movement would render their position difficult and precarious and would take an admirable tool of empire out of their hands. For armed nations meekly submit to government. Military discipline shapes them to obedience, and in a nation so disciplined, neither insurrections, nor riots, nor tumults of any kind need be feared. When military service is obligatory upon all, when all the citizens either are, or have been, soldiers, then all the forces of social life are so calculated as to support power, or even the lack of it. This fact the history of France can prove.”

Just as M. Bergeret reached this point in his political reflections, from the kitchen close by there burst out the noise of grease pouring over on the fire; from this the professor inferred that the youthful Euphémie, according to her usual practice on gala days, had upset her saucepan on the stove, after rashly balancing it on a pyramid of coal. He had learnt by now that such an event must recur again and again with the inexorable certainty of the laws that govern the universe. A shocking smell of burnt meat filled the study, while M. Bergeret traced the course of his ideas as follows:

“Had not Europe,” said he, “been turned into a barrack, we should have seen insurrections bursting out in France, Germany, or Italy, as they did in former times. But nowadays those obscure forces which from time to time uplift the very pavements of our city find regular vent in the fatigue duty of barrack-yards, in the grooming of horses and the sentiment of patriotism.

“The rank of corporal supplies an admirable outlet for the energies of young heroes who, had they been left in freedom, would have been building barricades to keep their arms lissom. I have only this moment been told of the sublime speeches made by a certain Sergeant Lebrec. Were he dressed in the peasant’s blouse this hero would be thirsting for liberty, but clad in a uniform, it is tyranny for which he yearns, and to help in the maintenance of order the thing for which he craves. In armed nations it is easy enough to preserve internal peace, and you will notice that, although in the course of the last twenty-five years, Paris has been a little agitated on one occasion, it was only when the commotion was the work of a War Minister. That is, a general was able to do what a demagogue could not have done. And the moment this general lost his hold on the army, he also lost it on the nation, and his power was gone. Therefore, whether the State be a monarchy, an empire, or a republic, its rulers have an interest in keeping up obligatory military service for all, in order that they may command an army, instead of governing a nation.

“And, while the rulers have no desire for disarmament, the people have lost all wish for it, too. The masses endure military service quite willingly, for, without being exactly pleasurable, it gives an outlet to the rough, crude instincts of the majority and presents itself as the simplest, roughest and strongest expression of their sense of duty. It overawes them by the gorgeous splendour of its outward paraphernalia and by the amount of metal used in it. In short, it exalts them through the only ideals of power, of grandeur and of glory, which they are capable of conceiving. Often they rush into it with a song; if not, they are perforce driven to it. For these reasons I foresee no termination to this honourable calling which is brutalising and impoverishing Europe.”

“There are,” said Captain Aspertini, “two ways out of it: war and bankruptcy.”

“War!” exclaimed M. Bergeret. “It is patent that great armaments only hinder that by aggravating the horrors of it and rendering it of doubtful issue for both combatants. As for bankruptcy, I foretold it the other day to Abbé Lantaigne, the principal of our high seminary, as we sat on a bench on the Mall. But you need not pin your faith on me. You have studied the history of the Lower Empire too deeply, my dear Aspertini, not to be perfectly aware that, in questions of national finance, there are mysterious resources which escape the scrutiny of political economists. A ruined nation may exist for five hundred years on robbery and extortion, and how is one to guess what a great people, out of its poverty, will manage to supply to its defenders in the way of cannon, muskets, bad bread, bad shoes, straw and oats?”

“This argument sounds plausible enough,” answered Aspertini. “Yet, with all due deference to your opinion, I believe I can already discern the dawn of universal peace.”

Then, in a sing-song voice, the kindly Neapolitan began to describe his hopes and dreams for the future, to the accompaniment of the heavy thumping of the chopper with which the youthful Euphémie was preparing a mince for M. Roux on the kitchen table just the other side of the wall.

“Do you remember, Monsieur Bergeret,” said Captain Aspertini, “the place in _Don Quixote_ where Sancho complains of being obliged to endure a never-ending series of misfortunes and the ready-witted knight tells him that this protracted wretchedness is merely a sign that happiness is at hand? ‘For,’ says he, ‘fortune is a fickle jade and our troubles have already lasted so long that they must soon give place to good-luck.’ The law of change alone....”

The rest of these optimistic utterances was lost in the boiling over of the kettle of water, followed by the unearthly yells of Euphémie, as she fled in terror from her stove.

Then M. Bergeret’s mind, saddened by the sordid ugliness of his cramped life, fell to dreaming of a villa where, on white terraces overlooking the blue waters of a lake, he might hold peaceful converse with M. Roux and Captain Aspertini, amid the scent of myrtles, when the amorous moon rides high in a sky as clear as the glance of a god and as sweet as the breath of a goddess.

But he soon emerged from this dream and began once more to take part in the discussion.

“The results of war,” said he, “are quite incalculable. My good friend William Harrison writes to me that French scholarship has been despised in England since 1871, and that at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Dublin it is the fashion to ignore Maurice Raynouard’s text-book of archæology, though it would be more helpful to their students than any other similar work. But they refuse to learn from the vanquished. And in order that they may feel confidence in a professor when he speaks on the characteristics of the art of Ægina or on the origins of Greek pottery, it is considered necessary that he should belong to a nation which excels in the casting of cannon. Because Marshal Mac-Mahon was beaten in 1870 at Sedan and General Chanzy lost his army at the Maine in the same year, my colleague Maurice Raynouard is banished from Oxford in 1897. Such are the results of military inferiority, slow-moving and illogical, yet sure in their effects. And it is, alas, only too true that the fate of the Muses is settled by a sword-thrust.”

“My dear sir,” said Aspertini, “I am going to answer you with all the frankness permissible in a friend. Let us first grant that French thought circulates freely through the world, as it has always done. And although the archæological manual of your learned countryman Maurice Raynouard may not have found a place on the desks of the English Universities, yet your plays are acted in all the theatres of the world; the novels of Alphonse Daudet and of Émile Zola are translated into every language; the canvases of your painters adorn the galleries of two worlds; the achievements of your scientists win renown in every quarter of the globe. And if your soul no longer thrills the soul of the nations, if your voice no longer quickens the heart-beats of mankind, it is because you no longer choose to play the part of apostles of brotherhood and justice, it is because you no longer utter the holy words that bring strength and consolation; it is because France is no longer the lover of the human race, the comrade of the nations; it is because she no longer opens her hands to fling broadcast those seeds of liberty which once she scattered in such generous and sovereign fashion that for long years it seemed that every beautiful human idea was a French idea; it is because she is no longer the France of the philosophers and of the Revolution: in the garrets round the Panthéon and the Luxembourg there are no longer to be found young leaders, writing on deal tables night after night, with all the fire of youth, those pages which make the nations tremble and the despots grow pale with fear. Do not then complain that the glory which you cannot view without misgivings has passed away.

“Especially, do not say that your defeats are the sources of your misfortunes: say, rather, that they are the outcome of your faults. A nation suffers no more injury from a battle lost than a robust man suffers from a sword-scratch received in a duel. It is an injury that only produces a transient illness in the system, a perfectly curable weakness. To cure it, all that is needed is a little courage, skill and political good sense. The first act of policy, the most necessary and certainly the easiest, is to make the defeat yield all the military glory it is capable of producing. For in the true view of things, the glory of the vanquished equals that of the conquerors, and it is, in addition, the more moving spectacle. In order to make the best of a disaster it is desirable to fête the general and the army which has sustained it, and to blazon abroad all the beautiful incidents which prove the moral superiority of misfortune. Such incidents are to be found even in the most headlong retreats. From the very first moment, then, the defeated side ought to decorate, to embellish, to gild their defeat, and to distinguish it with unmistakably grand and beautiful symbols. In Livy it may be read how the Romans never failed to do this, and how they hung palms and wreaths on the swords broken at the battles of the Trebbia, of Trasimene and of Cannæ. Even the disastrous inaction of Fabius has been so extolled by them that, after the lapse of twenty-two centuries, we still stand amazed at the wisdom of the Cunctator, the Lingerer, as he was nicknamed. Yet, after all, he was nothing but an old fool. In this lies the great art of defeat.”

“It is by no means a lost art,” said M. Bergeret. “In our own days Italy showed that she knew how to practise it after Novara, after Lissa, after Adowa.”

“My dear sir,” said Captain Aspertini, “whenever an Italian army capitulates, we rightly reckon this capitulation glorious. A government which succeeds in throwing a glamour of poetry over a defeat rouses the spirit of patriotism within the country and at the same time makes itself interesting in the eyes of foreigners. And to bring about these two results is a fairly considerable achievement. In the year 1870 it rested entirely with you Frenchmen to produce them for yourselves. After Sedan, had the Senate, the Chamber of Deputies, and all the State officials publicly and unanimously congratulated the Emperor Napoleon and Marshal Mac-Mahon on not having despaired of the salvation of their country when they gave battle to the enemy, do you not think that France would have gained a radiant halo of glory from the defeat of its army? At the same time it would have given forcible expression of its will to conquer. And pray believe, dear Monsieur Bergeret, that I am not impertinent enough to be trying to give your country lessons in patriotism. In doing that, I should be putting myself in a wrong position. I am merely presenting you with some of the marginal notes that will be found, after my death, pencilled in my copy of Livy.”

“It is not the first time,” said M. Bergeret, “that the commentary on the Decades has been worth more than the text. But go on.”

With a smile Captain Aspertini once more took up the thread of his argument.

“The wisest thing for the country to do is to cast huge handfuls of lilies over the wounds of war. Then, skilfully and silently, with a swift glance, she will examine the wound. If the blow has been a knock-down one, and if the strength of the country is seriously impaired, she will instantly start negotiating. In treating with the victorious side, it will be found that the earliest moment is the most propitious. In the first surprise of triumph, the enemy welcomes with joy any proposal which tends to turn a favourable beginning into a definite advantage. He has not yet had time for repeated successes to go to his head, nor for long-continued resistance to drive him to rage. He will not demand huge damages for an injury that is still trifling, nor, as yet, have his budding aspirations had time to grow. It is possible that even under these circumstances he may not grant you peace on easy terms. But you are sure to have to pay dearer for it, if you delay in applying for it. The wisest policy is to open negotiations before one has revealed all one’s weakness. It is possible then to obtain easy terms, which are usually rendered easier still by the intervention of neutral powers. As for seeking safety in despair and only making peace after a victory, these ideas are doubtless fine enough as maxims, but very difficult to carry out at a time when, for one thing, the industrial and commercial needs of modern life, and for another, the immense size of the armies which have to be equipped and fed, do not permit an indefinite continuance of warfare, and consequently do not leave the weaker side enough time to straighten out its affairs. France in 1870 was inspired by the noblest of sentiments, but if she had acted in accordance with reason, she would have started negotiations immediately after her first reverses, honourable as they were. She had a government which could have undertaken the task, and which ought to have done so, a government which was, indeed, in a better position for bringing it to a successful issue than any that might follow. The sensible thing to have done would have been to exact this last service from it before getting rid of it altogether. Instead, they acted the wrong way about. After having maintained that government for twenty years, France conceived the ill-considered notion of overturning it just at the very moment when it ought to have been useful to her, and of substituting another government for it. This administration, not being jointly liable with the former one, had to begin the war over again, without, however, bringing any new strength to its prosecution. After that a third government tried to establish itself.

“If it had succeeded, the war would have begun again a third time, because the first two unfortunate attempts did not count. Honour, say you, must be satisfied. But you had given satisfaction with your blood to two honours: the honour of the Empire, as well as of the Republic; you were also ready to satisfy a third, the honour of the Commune. Yet it seems to me that even the proudest nation in the world has but one honour to satisfy. You were thrown by this excess of generosity into a state of great weakness from which you are now happily recovering....”

“In fact,” said M. Bergeret, “if Italy had been beaten at Weissenburg and at Reichshoffen, these defeats would have been as valuable to her as the whole of Belgium. But we are a people of heroes, who always fancy that we have been betrayed. That sums up our history. Take note also of the fact that we are a democracy; and that is the state in which negotiations present most difficulties. Nobody can, however, deny that we made a long and courageous stand. Moreover, we have a reputation for magnanimity, and I believe we deserve it. Anyhow, the feats of the human race have always been but melancholy farces, and the historians who pretend to discover any sequence in the flow of events are merely great rhetoricians. Bossuet...”

Just as M. Bergeret was uttering this name the study door opened with such a crash that the wicker-work woman was upheaved by it and fell at the feet of the astonished young soldier. Then there appeared in the doorway a ruddy, squint-eyed wench, with no forehead worth mentioning. Her sturdy ugliness shone with the glow of youth and health. Her round cheeks and bare arms were a fine military red. Planting herself in front of M. Bergeret, she brandished the coal-shovel and shouted:

“I’m off!”

Euphémie, having quarrelled with Madame Bergeret, was now giving notice. She repeated:

“I’m going off home!”

Said M. Bergeret:

“Then go quietly, my child.”

Again and again she shouted:

“I’m off! Madame wants to turn me into a regular beast of burden.”

Then, lowering her shovel, she added in lower tones:

“Besides, things are always happening here that I would rather not see.”

Without attempting to unravel the mystery of these words, M. Bergeret merely remarked that he would not delay her, and that she could go.

“Well, then, give me my wages.”

“Leave the room,” answered M. Bergeret. “Don’t you see that I have something to do besides settling with you? Go and wait elsewhere.”

But Euphémie, once more waving the dull, heavy shovel, yelled:

“Give me my money! My wages! I want my wages!”

II

At six o’clock in the evening Abbé Guitrel got out of the train in Paris and called a cab in the station-yard. Then, driving in the dusk through the murky, rain-swept streets, dotted with lights, he made for Number 5, Rue des Boulangers. There, in a narrow, rugged, hilly street, above the coopers and the cork-dealers, and amidst a smell of casks, lived his old friend Abbé Le Génil, chaplain to the Convent of the Seven Wounds, who was a popular Lenten preacher in one of the most fashionable parishes in Paris. Here Abbé Guitrel was in the habit of putting up, whenever he visited Paris in the hope of expediting the progress of his tardy fortunes. All day long the soles of his buckled shoes tapped discreetly upon the pavements, staircases and floors of all sorts of different houses. In the evening he supped with M. Le Génil. The two old comrades from the seminary spun each other merry yarns, chatted over the rates charged for mass and sermon, and played their game of manille. At ten o’clock Nanette, the maid, rolled into the dining-room an iron bedstead for M. Guitrel, who always gave her when he left the same tip—a brand-new twenty-sou piece.

On this occasion, as in the past, M. Le Génil, who was a tall, stout man, smacked his great hand down on Guitrel’s flinching shoulder, and rumbling out a good-day in his deep organ note, instantly challenged him in his usual jolly style:

“Well, old miser, have you brought me twelve dozen masses at a crown each, or are you, as usual, going to keep to yourself the gold that your pious provincials swamp you with?”

Being a poor man, and knowing that Guitrel was as poor as himself, he regarded this sort of talk as a good jest.

Guitrel went so far as to understand a joke, though, being of a gloomy temperament, he never jested himself. He had, he explained, been obliged to come to Paris to carry out several commissions with which he had been charged, more especially the purchase of books. Would his friend, then, put him up for a day or two, three at the most?

“Now do tell the truth for once in your life!” answered M. Le Génil. “You have just come up to smell out a mitre, you old fox! To-morrow morning you will be showing yourself to the nuncio with a sanctimonious expression. Guitrel, you are going to be a bishop!”

Hereupon the chaplain of the Convent of the Seven Wounds, the preacher at the church of Sainte-Louise, made a bow to the future bishop. Mingled with his ironic courtesy there was, perhaps, a certain strain of instinctive deference. Then once more his face fell into the harsh lines that revealed the temperament of a second Olivier Maillard.[1]

[1] An eccentric priest of the fifteenth century. His sermons were full of denunciations against his enemies. He once attacked Louis XI, who threatened to throw him into the Seine. Maillard replied: “The King is master, but tell him that I shall get to heaven by water sooner than he will by his post-horses.”

“Come in, then! Will you take some refreshment?”

M. Guitrel was a reserved man, whose compressed lips showed his determination not to be pumped. As a matter of fact, it was quite true that he had come up to enlist powerful influence in support of his candidature, but he had no wish to explain all his wily courses to this naturally frank friend of his. For M. Le Génil made, not only a virtue of his natural frankness, but even a policy.

M. Guitrel stammered:

“Don’t imagine ... dismiss this notion that ...”

M. Le Génil shrugged his shoulders, exclaiming, “You old mystery-monger!”

Then, conducting his friend to his bedroom, he sat down once more beneath the light of his lamp and resumed his interrupted task, which was that of mending his breeches.