A DEPUTY MAGISTRATE
In a salon of the Tuileries the ministers had assembled in council, under the presidency of the Emperor. Napoleon III. was silently making marks with a pencil on a plan of an industrial town. His long, sallow face, with its melancholy sweetness, had a strange appearance amid the square heads of the men of affairs and the bronzed faces of the men of toil. He half raised his eyelids, glanced with his gentle, vague look round the oval table, and asked:
“Gentlemen, is there any other matter to be discussed?”
His voice issued from his thick moustaches a little muffled and hollow, and seemed to come from very far off.
At this moment the Keeper of the Seals made a sign to his colleague of the Home Department which the latter did not seem to notice.—At that time the Keeper of the Seals was M. Delarbre, a magistrate in virtue of his birth, who had displayed in his high judicial functions a becoming pliability, abruptly laid aside now and then for the rigidity of a professional dignity that nothing could bend. It was said that, after having become an ultramontane and a member of the Empress’s party, the jansenism of those great lawyers, his ancestors, sometimes bubbled up in his nature. But those who had access to him considered him to be merely punctilious, a trifle fanciful, indifferent to the great questions which his mind did not grasp, and obstinate about the trifles which suited the pettiness of his intriguing character.
The Emperor was preparing to rise, with his two hands on the gilt arms of his chair. Delarbre, seeing that the Home Secretary, his nose in his papers, was avoiding his look, took it upon himself to challenge him.
“Pardon me, my dear colleague, for raising a question which, although it started in your department, none the less concerns mine. But you have yourself declared to me your intention of apprising the Council of the extremely delicate situation in which a magistrate has been placed by the préfet of a department in the West.”
The Home Secretary shrugged his broad shoulders slightly and looked at Delarbre with some impatience. He had the air, at once jovial and choleric, which belongs to great demagogues.
“Oh,” said he, “that was gossip, ridiculous tittle-tattle, a rumour which I should be ashamed to bring to the notice of the Emperor, were it not that my colleague, the Minister of Justice, seems to attach an importance to it which, for my part, I have not succeeded in discovering.”
Napoleon began sketching once more. “It has to do with the préfet of Loire-Inférieure,” continued the minister. “This official is reputed, in his department, to be a gallant squire of dames, and the reputation for gallantry which has become attached to his name, combined with his well-known courtesy and his devotion to the government, has contributed not a little to the popularity which he enjoys in the country. His attentions to Madame Méreau, the wife of the procureur-général, have been noticed and commented on. I grant that M. Pélisson, the préfet, has given occasion for scandalous gossip in Nantes, and that severe charges have been laid to his account in the bourgeois circles of the county town, especially in the drawing-rooms frequented by the magistracy. Assuredly M. Pélisson’s attitude towards Madame Méreau, whose position ought to have protected her from any such equivocal attentions, would be regrettable, if it were continued. But the information I have received enables me to state that Madame Méreau has not been actually compromised and that no scandal is to be anticipated. A little prudence and circumspection will suffice to prevent this affair having any annoying consequences.”
Having spoken in these terms, the Home Secretary closed his portfolio and leant back in his chair.
The Emperor said nothing.
“Excuse me, my dear colleague!” said the Keeper of the Seals drily, “the wife of the procureur-général of the court of Nantes is the mistress of the préfet of Loire-Inférieure; this connection, known throughout the whole district, is calculated to injure the prestige of the magistracy. It is important to call the attention of His Majesty to this state of things.”
“Doubtless,” replied the Home Secretary, his gaze turned towards the allegories on the ceiling, “doubtless, such facts are to be regretted; yet one must in no way exaggerate; it is possible that the préfet of Loire-Inférieure may have been a little imprudent and Madame Méreau a little giddy, but …”
The minister wafted the rest of his ideas towards the mythological figures which floated across the painted sky. There was a moment’s silence, during which one could hear the impudent chirping of the sparrows perched on the trees in the garden and on the eaves of the château.
M. Delarbre bit his thin lips and pulled his austere but coquettish moustaches. He replied:
“Excuse my persistence; the secret reports which I have received leave no doubt as to the nature of the relationship between M. Pélisson and Madame Méreau. These relations were already established two years ago. In fact, in the month of September 18— the préfet of Loire-Inférieure got the procureur-général an invitation to hunt with the Comte de Morainville, deputy for the third division in the department, and during the magistrate’s absence he entered Madame Méreau’s room. He got in by way of the kitchen-garden. The next day the gardener saw traces that the wall had been scaled and informed the police. Inquiry was made; they even arrested a tramp, who, not being able to prove his innocence, endured several months of precautionary imprisonment. He had, it is true, a very bad record and no special points of interest about him. Still to this day the procureur-général persists, supported by a very small proportion of the public, in believing him to be guilty of house-breaking. The position, I repeat, is rendered by this fact no less annoying and prejudicial to the prestige of the magistracy.”
The Home Secretary poured over the discussion, according to his wont, certain massive phrases calculated to close and suppress it by their weight. He held, said he, his préfets in the palm of his hand; he would be able to lead M. Pélisson easily to a just appreciation of things, without taking any drastic measure against an intelligent and zealous official, who had succeeded in his department, and who was valuable “from the point of view of the electoral position.” No one could say that he was more interested than the Home Secretary in maintaining a good understanding between the officials of the departments and the judicial authority.
Still the Emperor kept that dreamy look in which he was usually wrapped when silent. He was evidently thinking of past events, for he suddenly said: “Poor M. Pélisson! I knew his father. He was called Anacharsis Pélisson. He was the son of a republican of 1792; himself a republican, he used to write in the opposition papers during the July administration. At the time of my captivity in the fortress of Ham, he addressed a friendly letter to me. You cannot imagine the joy which the slightest token of sympathy gives a prisoner. After that we went on our separate paths. We never saw one another again. He is dead.”
The Emperor lit a cigarette and remained wrapped in his dream for a moment. Then rising:
“Gentlemen, I will not detain you.”
With the awkward gait of a great winged bird when it walks, he returned to his private apartments; and the ministers went out, one after the other, through the long suite of rooms, beneath the solemn gaze of the ushers. The marshal who was the Minister of War held out his cigar-case to the Keeper of the Seals.
“Monsieur Delarbre, shall we take a little walk outside? I want to stretch my legs.”
Whilst they were both walking down the Rue de Rivoli, by the railing that borders the Terrasse des Feuillants:
“Speaking of cigars,” said the marshal, “I only like very dry one-sou cigars. The others seem like sweetmeats to me. Don’t you know …”
He cut short his thought, then:
“This Pélisson that you were talking about just now in the Council, isn’t he a little dried up, swarthy man, who was sous-préfet at Saint-Dié five years ago?”
Delarbre replied that Pélisson had indeed been sous-préfet in the Vosges.
“So I said to myself: I knew Pélisson. And I remember Madame Pélisson very well. I sat next to her at dinner at Saint-Dié, when I went there for the unveiling of a monument. Don’t you know …”
“What kind of woman is she?” asked Delarbre.
“Tiny, swarthy, thin. A deceptive thinness. In the morning, in a high-necked dress, she looked a mere wisp. At table in the evening, in a low-necked dress with flowers in her bosom, very charming.”
“But morally, marshal?”
“Morally. … I am not an imbecile, am I, now? Well! I have never understood anything about a woman’s morals. All that I can tell you is that Madame Pélisson passed for a sentimentalist. They said she had a warm heart for handsome men.”
“She gave you a hint to that effect, my dear marshal?”
“Not the least in the world. She said to me at dessert, ‘I dote on eloquence. A noble speech carries me away.’ I could not apply that remark to myself. It is true that I had that morning delivered an address. But I had got my aide-de-camp, a short-sighted artillery officer, to write it out for me. He had written so small that I could not read it. … Don’t you know? …”
They had reached the Place Vendôme. Delarbre held out his little withered hand to the marshal, and stole under the archway of the Ministry.
The following week, at the breaking up of the Council, when the ministers were already withdrawing, the Emperor laid his hand on the shoulder of the Keeper of the Seals.
“My dear Monsieur Delarbre,” said he to him, “I have heard by chance—in my position, one never learns anything save by chance—that there is a deputy magistrate’s post vacant at the Nantes bar. I beg that you will consider for that post a very deserving young doctor of law, who has written a remarkable treatise on Trade Unions. His name is Chanot, and he is the nephew of Madame Ramel. He is to beg an audience of you this very day. Should you propose him to me for it, I shall sign his nomination with pleasure.”
The Emperor had pronounced the name of his foster-sister tenderly, for he had never lost his affection for her, although, a republican of republicans, she repelled his advances, refused, poor widow as she was, the master’s offers, and raged openly in her garret against the coup d’état. But yielding at last, after fifteen years, to the persistent kindness of Napoleon III., she had come to beg, as earnest of reconciliation, a favour from the prince—not for herself, but for her nephew young Chanot, a doctor of law, and, according to his professors, an honour to the Schools. Even now it was an austere favour that Madame Ramel demanded of her foster-brother; admission to the open court for young Chanot could scarcely be considered an act of partiality. But Madame Ramel was keenly anxious that her nephew should be sent to Loire-Inférieure, where his relatives lived. This fact recurred to Napoleon’s mind, and he impressed it on the Minister of Justice.
“It is very important,” said he, “that my candidate should be nominated at Nantes, for that is his native place and where his parents live. That is an important consideration for a young man whose means are small and who likes family life.”
“Chanot … hard-working, meritorious, and with small means …” answered the minister.
He added that he would use his best endeavours to act in accordance with the desire expressed by His Majesty. His only fear was lest the procureur-général should have already submitted to him a list of proposed nominees, among whom, naturally, the name Chanot would not occur. This procureur-général was, indeed, M. Méreau, concerning whom there had been a discussion in the preceding Council. The Keeper of the Seals was particularly anxious to act very handsomely towards him. But he would strain every nerve to bring this affair to an issue that conformed with the intentions expressed by His Majesty.
He bowed and took his leave. It was his reception day. As soon as he had entered his study, he asked his secretary, Labarthe, whether there were many people in the ante-room. There were two presidents of courts, a councillor of the Appeal Court, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Nicomedia, a crowd of judges, barristers, and priests. The minister asked if there was any one there called Chanot. Labarthe searched in the silver salver, and discovered, among the pile of cards, that of Chanot, doctor of law, prizeman of the Faculty of Law, Paris. The minister ordered him to be called first, merely requesting that he should be conducted by the back passages, in order not to offend the magistrates and clergy.
The minister seated himself at his table and murmured quite to himself:
“‘A sentimentalist,’ said the marshal, ‘with a warm heart for handsome men who speak well.’ …”
The usher introduced into the study a huge, tall young man, stooping, spectacled, and with a pointed skull. Every part of his uncouth frame expressed at once the timidity of the recluse and the boldness of the thinker.
The Keeper of the Seals examined him from head to foot and saw that he had the cheeks of a child and no shoulders. He signed to him to sit down. The suitor, having perched himself at the edge of the chair, shut his eyes and began to pour forth a flood of words.
“Monsieur le Ministre, I come to beg from your noble patronage the privilege of admission to the magistracy. Possibly Your Excellence may consider that the reports I have gained in the various examinations which I have undergone, and a prize which has been awarded to me for a work on Trade Unions, are sufficient qualifications, and that the nephew of Madame Ramel, foster-sister of the Emperor, is not altogether unworthy …”
The Keeper of the Seals stopped him with a wave of his little yellow hand.
“Doubtless, Monsieur Chanot, doubtless an august patronage, which would never have been mistakenly bestowed on an unworthy recipient, has been secured for you. I know it, the Emperor takes much interest in you. You desire a chair as judge-advocate, Monsieur Chanot?”
“Your Excellence,” replied Chanot, “would put the finishing touch to my wishes by nominating me deputy magistrate at Nantes, where my family live.”
Delarbre fixed his leaden eyes on Chanot and said drily:
“There is no vacancy at the bar of Nantes.”
“Excuse me, Your Excellency, I thought …”
The minister rose.
“There is none there.”
And whilst Chanot was making clumsily for the door and looking for an exit in the white panels as he made his bow, the Keeper of the Seals said to him, with a persuasive air and almost in a confidential tone:
“Trust me, Monsieur Chanot, and dissuade your aunt from making any new solicitations which, far from being of any profit to you, will only do you harm. Rest assured that the Emperor takes an interest in you, and rely on me.”
As soon as the door was shut the minister called his secretary.
“Labarthe, bring me your candidate.”
At eight o’clock in the evening Labarthe entered a house in the Rue Jacob, mounted the staircase as far as the attics, and called from the landing:
The door of a little garret opened. Inside on a shelf there were several law-books and tattered novels; on the bed a black velvet mask with a fall of lace, a bunch of withered violets, and some fencing foils. On the wall a bad portrait of Mirabeau, a copper-plate engraving. In the middle of the room a big bronzed fellow was brandishing dumb-bells. He had frizzled hair, a low forehead, hazel eyes full of laughter and sweetness, a nose that quivered like the nostrils of a horse, and in his pleasantly gaping mouth strong white teeth.
“I was waiting for you,” said he.
Labarthe begged him to dress himself. He was hungry. What time would they get their dinner?
Lespardat, having laid his dumb-bells on the floor, pulled off his jersey, and showed the herculean nape that carried his round head on his broad shoulders.
“He looks at least twenty-six,” thought Labarthe.
As soon as Lespardat had put on his coat, the thin cloth of which allowed one to follow the powerful, easy play of the muscles, Labarthe pushed him outside.
“We shall be at Magny’s in three minutes. I have the minister’s brougham.”
As they had matters to discuss, they asked for a private room at the restaurant.
After the sole and the pré-salé, Labarthe attacked his subject bluntly:
“Listen to me carefully, Lespardat. You will see my chief to-morrow, your nomination will be proposed by the procureur-général of Nantes on Thursday, and on Monday submitted for the signature of the Emperor. It is arranged that it shall be given to him unexpectedly, at the moment when he will be busy with Alfred Maury in fixing the site of Alesia. When he is studying the topography of the Gauls in the time of Cæsar, the Emperor signs everything they want him to. But understand clearly what is expected from you. You must win the favour of Madame la préfète. You must win from her the ultimate favour. It is only by this consummation that the magistracy will be avenged.”
Lespardat swallowed and listened, pleased and smiling in his ingenuous self-conceit.
“But,” said he, “what notion has budded in Delarbre’s head? I thought he was a puritan.”
Labarthe, raising his knife, stopped him.
“First of all, my friend, I beg that you will not compromise my chief, who must remain ignorant of all that’s going on here. But since you have brought in Delarbre’s name, I will tell you that his puritanism is a jansenist puritanism. He is a great-nephew of Deacon Pâris. His maternal great-uncle was that M. Carré de Montgeron who defended the fanatics of Saint-Médard’s Cloister[K] before the Parliament. Now the jansenists love to practise their austerities in nooks and crannies; they have a taste for diplomatic and canonical blackguardism. It is the effect of their perfect purity. And then they read the Bible. The Old Testament is full of stories of the same kind as yours, my dear Lespardat.”
[K] In 1730 miracles were claimed by the jansenists to have been worked in the cemetery of St. Médard, Paris, at the grave of François de Pâris, a young jansenist deacon. The spot became a place of pilgrimage, and was visited by thousands of jansenist fanatics.
Lespardat was not listening. He was floating in a sea of naïve delight. He was asking himself: “What will father say? What will mother say?” thinking of his parents, grocers of large ambitions and little wealth at Agen. And he vaguely associated his budding fortune with the glory of Mirabeau, his favourite hero. Since his college days he had dreamt of a destiny rich with women and feats of oratory.
Labarthe recalled his young friend’s attention to himself.
“You know, monsieur le substitut, you are not irremovable. If after a reasonable interval you have not made yourself very agreeable to Madame Pélisson—I mean completely agreeable—you fall into disgrace.”
“But,” asked Lespardat frankly, “how much time do you give me to make myself excessively pleasing to Madame Pélisson?”
“Until the vacation,” answered the minister’s secretary gravely. “We give you, in addition, all sorts of facilities, secret missions, furloughs, &c. Everything except money. Above all, we are an honest administration. People don’t believe it. But later on they will find that we were no jobbers. Take Delarbre: he has clean hands. Besides, the Home Office, which is on the husband’s side, controls the Secret Service Money. Do not count on anything save your two thousand four hundred francs of salary and your handsome face to captivate Madame Pélisson.”
“Is she pretty, this préfète of mine?” demanded Lespardat.
He asked this question carelessly, without exaggerating the importance of it, placidly, as behoves a very young man who finds all women beautiful. By way of reply, Labarthe threw on the table the photograph of a thin lady in a round hat, with a double bandeau falling on her brown neck.
“Here,” said he, “is the portrait of Madame Pélisson. It was ordered by the Cabinet from the Prefecture of Police, and they sent it on after they had stamped it with a warranty stamp, as you see.”
Lespardat seized it eagerly with his square fingers.
“She is handsome,” said he.
“Have you a plan?” asked Labarthe. “A methodical scheme of operations.”
“No,” answered Lespardat simply.
Labarthe, who was keen-witted, protested that it was, however, necessary to foresee, to arrange, not to allow oneself to be taken unawares by any contingencies.
“You are certain,” added he, “to be invited to the balls at the prefecture, and you will, of course, dance with Madame Pélisson. Do you know how to dance? Show me how you dance.”
Lespardat rose, and, clasping his chair in his arms, took one turn of a waltz with the deportment of a graceful bear.
Labarthe watched him very gravely through his eyeglass.
“You are heavy, awkward, without that irresistible suppleness which …”
“Mirabeau danced badly,” said Lespardat.
“After all,” said Labarthe, “perhaps it is only that the chair does not inspire you.”
When they were both once more on the damp pavement of the narrow Rue Contrescarpe, they met several girls who were coming and going between the Carrefour Buci and the wine-shops of the Rue Dauphine. As one of these, a thick-set, heavy girl, in a dingy black dress, was passing sadly by under a street lamp with slack gait, Lespardat seized her roughly by the waist, lifted her, and made her take with him two turns of a waltz across the greasy pavement and into the gutter, before she had any idea what was happening.
Recovering from her astonishment, she shrieked the foulest insults at her cavalier, who carried her away with irresistible verve. He himself supplied the orchestra, in a baritone voice, as warm and seductive as military music, and whirled so madly with the girl that, all bespattered with mud and water from the street, they collided with the shafts of prowling cabs and felt on their neck the breath of the horses. After a few turns, she murmured in the young man’s ear, her head sunk on his breast and all her anger gone:
“After all, you are a pretty fellow, you are. You ought to make them happy, didn’t you?—those girls at Bullier’s.”
“That’s enough, my friend,” cried Labarthe. “Don’t go and get run in. My word, you will avenge the magistracy!”
In the golden light of a September day four months later, the Minister of Justice and Religion, passing with his secretary under the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli, recognised M. Lespardat, the deputy magistrate of Nantes, at the very moment when the young man was hurrying into the Hôtel du Louvre.
“Labarthe,” asked the minister, “did you know that your protégé was in Paris? Has he then nothing to keep him in Nantes? It seems to me that it is now some time since you have given me any confidential information about him. His start interested me, but I don’t know yet whether he has quite lived up to the high opinion you formed of him.”
Labarthe took up the cudgels for the substitut; he reminded the minister that Lespardat was on regular leave; that at Nantes he had immediately gained the confidence of his chiefs at the bar, and that he had at the same time won the good graces of the préfet.
“M. Pélisson,” added he, “cannot get on without him. It is Lespardat who organises the concerts at the prefecture.”
Then the minister and his secretary continued their walk towards the Rue de la Paix, along the arcades, stopping here and there before the windows of the photograph shops.
“There are too many nude figures exposed in these shop-fronts,” said the minister. “It would be better to take away their license from these shops. Strangers judge us by appearances, and such spectacles as these are calculated to injure the good name of the country and the government.”
Suddenly, at the corner of the Rue de l’Échelle, Labarthe told his chief to look at a veiled woman who was coming towards them with a rapid step. But Delarbre, glancing at her for a moment, considered her very ordinary, far too slender, and not at all elegant.
“She is clumsily shod,” said he; “she is from the provinces.”
When she had passed them:
“Your Excellency is quite right,” said Labarthe. “That is Madame Pélisson.”
At this name the minister, much interested, turned round eagerly. With a vague feeling of his own dignity, he dared not follow her. But he showed his curiosity in his look.
Lebarthe spurred it on.
“I’ll wager, monsieur le ministre, that she won’t go very far.”
They both hastened their steps, and saw Madame Pélisson follow the arcades, skirt the Place du Palais-Royal, and then, throwing uneasy glances to left and right, disappear into the Hôtel du Louvre.
At that the minister began to laugh from the depths of his throat. His little leaden eyes lighted up. And he muttered between his teeth the words which his secretary guessed rather than heard:
“The magistracy is avenged.”
On the same day the Emperor, then in residence at Fontainebleau, was smoking cigarettes in the library of the palace. He was leaning motionless, with the air of a melancholy sea-bird, against the case in which is kept the Monaldeschi coat of mail. Viollet-le-Duc and Mérimée, both his intimate friends, stood by his side.
He asked:
“Why, Monsieur Mérimée, do you like the works of Brantôme?”
“Sire,” replied Mérimée, “in them I recognise the French nation, with her good and bad qualities. She is never worse than when she is without a leader to show her a noble aim.”
“Really,” said the Emperor, “does one find that in Brantôme?”
“One also finds in him,” answered Mérimée, “the influence of women in the affairs of state.”
At that moment Madame Ramel entered the gallery. Napoleon had given orders that she should be allowed to come to him whenever she presented herself. At the sight of his foster-sister he showed as much delight as his expressionless, sorrowful face was capable of displaying.
“My dear Madame Ramel,” asked he, “how is your nephew getting on at Nantes? Is he satisfied?”
“But, sire,” said Madame Ramel, “he was not sent there. Another was nominated in his place.”
“That’s strange,” murmured His Majesty thoughtfully.
Then, placing his hand on the academician’s shoulder:
“My dear Monsieur Mérimée, I am supposed to rule the fate of France, of Europe, and of the world. And I cannot get a nomination for a substitut of the sixth class, at a salary of two thousand four hundred francs.”
XV
Having finished his reading, M. Bergeret folded up his manuscript and put it in his pocket. M. Mazure, M. Paillot, and M. de Terremondre nodded three times in silence.
Then the last-named placed a hand on Bergeret’s shoulder:
“What you have just read to us, my dear sir,” said he, “is truly …”
At this moment Léon flung himself into the shop and exclaimed with a mixture of excitement and importance:
“Madame Houssieu has just been found strangled in her bed.”
“How extraordinary!” said M. de Terremondre.
“From the state of the body,” added Léon, “it is believed that death took place three days ago.”
“Then,” remarked M. Mazure, the archivist, “that would make it Saturday that the crime was committed.”
Paillot, the bookseller, who had remained silent up till now, with his mouth wide open out of deference to death, now began to collect his thoughts.
“On Saturday, about five o’clock in the afternoon, I plainly heard stifled cries and the heavy thud produced by the fall of a body. I even said to these gentlemen” (he turned towards M. de Terremondre and M. Bergeret) “that something extraordinary was going on in Queen Marguerite’s house.”
No one supported the claim that the bookseller was making that he alone, by the keenness of his senses and the penetration of his mind, had suspected the deed at the moment when it was taking place.
After a respectful silence, Paillot began again:
“During the night between Saturday and Sunday I said to Madame Paillot: ‘There isn’t a sound from Queen Marguerite’s house.’”
M. Mazure asked the age of the victim. Paillot replied that Madame Houssieu was between seventy-nine and eighty years of age, that she had been a widow fifty years, that she owned landed property, stocks and shares, and a large sum of money, but that, being miserly and eccentric, she kept no servant, and cooked her victuals herself over the fireplace in her room, living alone amidst a wreckage of furniture and crockery, covered with the dust of a quarter of a century. It was actually more than twenty-five years since any one had wielded a broom in Queen Marguerite’s house. Madame Houssieu went out but seldom, bought a whole week’s supply of provisions for herself, and never let any one into the house save the butcher-boy and two or three urchins who ran errands for her.
“And the crime is supposed to have been committed on Saturday afternoon?” asked M. de Terremondre.
“So it is believed, from the state of the body,” replied Léon. “It appears that it is a ghastly sight.”
“On Saturday, in the afternoon,” replied M. de Terremondre, “we were here, merely separated by a wall from the horrible scene, and we were chatting about passing trifles.”
There was again a long silence. Then some one asked if the assassin had been arrested, or if they even knew who it was. But, in spite of his zeal, Léon could not answer these questions.
A shadow, which grew ever deeper and deeper and seemed funereal, began to fall across the bookseller’s shop. It was caused by the dark crowd of sightseers swarming in the square in front of the house of crime.
“Doubtless they are waiting for the inspector of police and the public prosecutor,” said Mazure, the archivist.
Paillot, who was gifted with an exquisite caution, fearing lest the eager people would break the window-panes, ordered Léon to close the shutters.
“Don’t leave anything open,” said he, “save the window which looks on the Rue des Tintelleries.”
This precautionary measure seemed to bear the stamp of a certain moral delicacy. The gentlemen of the old-book corner approved of it. But since the Rue des Tintelleries was narrow, and since on that side the panes were covered with notices and drawing-copies, the shop became plunged in darkness.
The murmur of the crowd, till then unnoticed, spread with the shadow and became continuous, hollow, solemn, almost terrible, evidencing the unanimity of the moral condemnation.
Much moved, M. de Terremondre gave fresh expression to the thought which had struck him:
“It is strange,” said he, “that while the crime was being committed so near us, we were talking quietly of unimportant affairs.”
At this M. Bergeret bent his head towards his left shoulder, gave a far-away glance, and spoke thus:
“My dear sir, allow me to tell you that there is nothing strange in that. It is not customary, when a criminal action is going on, that conversations should stop of their own accord around the victim, either within a radius of so many leagues or even of so many feet. A commotion inspired by the most villainous thought only produces natural effects.”
M. de Terremondre made no reply to this speech, and the rest of his hearers turned away from M. Bergeret with a vague sense of disquietude and disapproval.
Still the professor of literature persisted:
“And why should an act so natural and so common as murder produce strange and uncommon results? To kill is common to animals, and especially to man. Murder was for long ages regarded in human civilisation as a courageous action, and there still remain in our morals and institutions certain traces of this ancient point of view.”
“What traces?” demanded M. de Terremondre.
“They are to be found in the honours,” replied M. Bergeret, “which are paid to soldiers.”
“That is not the same thing,” said M. de Terremondre.
“Certainly it is,” said M. Bergeret. “For the motive force of all human actions is hunger or love. Hunger taught savages murder, impelled them to wars, to invasions. Civilised nations are like hunting-dogs. A perverted instinct drives them to destroy without profit or reason. The unreasonableness of modern wars disguises itself under dynastic interest, nationality, balance of power, honour. This last pretext is perhaps the most extravagant of all, for there is not a nation in the world that is not sullied with every crime and loaded with every shame. There is not one of them which has not endured all the humiliations that fortune could inflict on a miserable band of men. If there yet remains any honour among the nations, it is a strange means of upholding it to make war—that is to say, to commit all the crimes by which an individual dishonours himself: arson, robbery, rape, murder. And as for the actions whose motive power is love, they are for the most part as violent, as frenzied, as cruel as the actions inspired by hunger; so much so that one must come to the conclusion that man is a mischievous beast. But it still remains to inquire why I know this, and whence it comes that the fact arouses grief and indignation in me. If nothing but evil existed, it would not be visible, as the night would have no name if the sun never rose.”
M. de Terremondre, however, had extended enough deference to the religion of tenderness and human dignity by reproaching himself with having conversed in a gay and careless fashion at the moment of the crime and so near the victim. He began to regard the tragic end of Madame Houssieu as a familiar incident which one might look at straightforwardly and of which one might deduce the consequences. He reflected that now there was nothing to prevent his buying Queen Marguerite’s house as a storehouse for his collections of furniture, china, and tapestry, and thus starting a sort of municipal museum. As a reward for his zeal and munificence, he counted on receiving, along with the applause of his fellow-countrymen, the Cross of the Legion of Honour, and perhaps the title of correspondent of the Institute.
He had in the Academy of Inscriptions two or three comrades, old bachelors like himself, with whom he sometimes lunched in Paris in some wine-shop, and to whom he recounted many anecdotes about women. And there was no correspondent for the district.
Hence he had already reached the point of depreciating the coveted house.
“It won’t stand upright much longer,” said he, “that house of Queen Marguerite. The beams of the floors used to fall in flakes of touchwood on the poor old octogenarian. It will be necessary to spend an immense sum in putting it in repair.”
“The best thing,” said Mazure, the archivist, “would be to pull it down and remove the frontage to the courtyard of the museum. It would really be a pity to abandon Philippe Tricouillard’s shield to the wreckers.”
They heard a great commotion among the crowd in the square. It was the noise of the people whom the police were driving back to clear a passage for the magistrates into the house of crime.
Paillot pushed his nose out of the half-open door.
“Here,” said he, “comes the examining judge, M. Roquincourt, with M. Surcouf, his clerk. They have gone into the house.”
One after the other the academicians of the old-book corner had slipped out behind the bookseller on to the pavement of the Rue des Tintelleries, from which they watched the surging movements of the people who crowded the Place Saint-Exupère.
Among the mob Paillot recognised M. Cassignol, the president in chief. The old man was taking his daily constitutional. The excited crowd, in which he had got entangled during his walk, impeded his short steps and feeble sight. He went on, still upright and sturdy, carrying his withered, white head erect.
When Paillot saw him, he ran up to him, doffed his velvet cap, and, offering him his arm, invited him to come and sit down in the shop.
“How imprudent of you, Monsieur Cassignol, to venture into such a crowd! It’s almost like a riot.”
At the word riot, the old man had a vision, as it were, of the century of revolution, three parts of which he had seen. He was now in his eighty-seventh year, and had already been on the retired list for twenty-five years.
Leaning on the bookseller, Paillot, he crossed the doorstep of the shop and sat down on a rush-bottomed chair, in the midst of the respectful academicians. His malacca cane, with its silver top, trembled under his hand between his hollow thighs. His spine was stiffer than the back of his chair. He drew off his tortoiseshell spectacles to wipe them, and it took him a long time to put them on again. He had lost his memory for faces, and although he was hard of hearing, it was by the voice that he recognised people.
He asked concisely for the cause of the crowds which had gathered in the square, but he hardly listened to the answer given him by M. de Terremondre. His brain, sound but ossified, steeped as it were in myrrh, received no new impressions, although old ideas and passions remained deeply embedded in it.
MM. de Terremondre, Mazure, and Bergeret stood up in a circle round him. They were ignorant of his story, lost now in the immemorial past. They only knew that he had been the disciple, the friend, and the companion of Lacordaire and Montalembert, that he had opposed, as far as the precise limits of his rights and his office permitted, the establishment of the Empire, that in former days he had been subjected to the insults of Louis Veuillot,[L] and that he went every Sunday to mass, with a great book under his arm. Like all the town, they recognised that he retained his old-world honesty and the glory of having maintained the cause of liberty throughout his whole life. But not one of them could have told of what type was his liberalism, for none of them had read this sentence in a pamphlet, published by M. Cassignol in 1852, on the affairs of Rome: “There is no liberty save that of the man who believes in Jesus Christ, and in the moral dignity of man.” It was said that, still remaining active in mind at his age, he was classifying his correspondence and working at a book on the relations between Church and State. He still spoke fluently and brightly.
[L] Louis Veuillot, author and journalist, born 1813, and much given to duels, both with words and swords.
During the conversation which he followed with difficulty, on hearing a mention of the name of M. Garrand, the public prosecutor of the Republic, he remarked, looking down at the knob of his stick as though it were the solitary witness of those bygone days that still survived:
“In 1838 I knew at Lyons a public prosecutor for the Crown who had a high idea of his duties. He used to maintain that one of the attributes of public administration was infallibility, and that the king’s prosecutor could no more be in the wrong than the king himself. His name was M. de Clavel, and he left some valuable works on criminal cross-examination.”
Then the old man was silent, alone with his memories in the midst of men.
Paillot, on the doorstep, was watching what was going on outside.
“Here is M. Roquincourt coming out of the house.”
M. Cassignol, thinking only of past events, said:
“I started at the bar. I was under the orders of M. de Clavel, who used again and again to repeat to me: ‘Grasp this maxim thoroughly: The interests of the prisoner are sacred, the interests of society are doubly sacred, the interests of justice are thrice sacred.’ Metaphysical principles had in those days more influence on men’s minds than they have nowadays.”
“That’s very true,” said M. de Terremondre.
“They are carrying away a bedside-table, some linen, and a little truck,” said Paillot. “These are doubtless articles to be used in evidence.”
M. de Terremondre, no longer able to restrain himself, went forward to watch the loading of the truck. Suddenly, knitting his brows, he exclaimed:
“Sacrebleu!”
Then, seeing Paillot’s inquiring look, he added:
“It’s nothing! nothing!”
Cunning collector that he was, he had just caught sight of a water-jug in porcelaine à la Reine among the articles attached, and he was making up his mind to inquire about it after the trial from Surcouf, the registrar, who was an obliging man. In getting together his collections he used artifice. “One must rise to the occasion,” he used to say to himself. “Times are bad.”
“I was nominated deputy at twenty-two years of age,” resumed M. Cassignol. “At that time my long, curly hair, my beardless, ruddy cheeks, gave me a look of youth that rendered me desperate. In order to inspire respect I had to affect an air of solemnity and to wear an aspect of severity. I carried out my duties with a diligence that brought its reward. At thirty-three years of age I became attorney-general at Puy.”
“It is a picturesque town,” said M. Mazure.
“In the performance of my new duties I had to inquire into an affair of little interest, if one only took account of the nature of the crime and the character of the accused, but which had indeed its own importance, since it was a matter that involved the death sentence. A fairly prosperous farmer had been found murdered in his bed. I pass over the circumstances of the crime, which yet remain fixed in my memory, although they were as commonplace as possible. I need only say that, from the opening of the inquiry, suspicions fell on a ploughman, a servant of the victim. This was a man of thirty. His name was Poudrailles, Hyacinthe Poudrailles. On the day following the crime he had suddenly disappeared, and was found in a wine-shop, where he was spending pretty freely. Strong circumstantial evidence pointed to him as the author of this murder. A sum of sixty francs was found on him, for the possession of which he could not account; his clothes bore traces of blood. Two witnesses had seen him prowling round the farm on the night of the crime. It is true that another witness swore to an alibi, but that witness was a well-known bad character.
“The examination had been very well managed by a judge of consummate ability. The case for the prosecution was drawn up with much skill. But Poudrailles had made no confession. And in court, during the whole course of the cross-examination, he fenced himself about with a series of denials from which nothing could dislodge him. I had prepared my address as public prosecutor with all the care of which I was capable and with all the conscientiousness of a young man who does not wish to appear unfitted for his high duties. I brought to the delivery of it all the ardour of my youth. The alibi furnished by the woman Cortot, who pretended that she had kept Poudrailles in her house at Puy during the night of the crime, was a great obstacle to me. I set myself to break it down. I threatened the woman Cortot with the penalties attaching to perjury. One of my arguments made a special impression on the mind of the jury. I reminded them that, according to the report of the neighbours, the watch-dogs had not barked at the murderer. That was because they knew him. It was, then, no stranger. It was the ploughman; it was Poudrailles. Finally I called for the death penalty, and I got it. Poudrailles was condemned to death by a majority of votes. After the reading of the sentence, he exclaimed in a loud voice: ‘I am innocent!’ At this a terrible doubt seized me. I felt that, after all, he might be speaking the truth, and that I did not myself possess that certainty with which I had inspired the minds of the jury. My colleagues, my chiefs, my seniors, and even the counsel for the defence came to congratulate me on this brilliant success, to applaud my youthful and formidable eloquence. These praises were sweet to me. You know, gentlemen, Vauvenargues’ dainty fancy about the first rays of glory. Yet the voice of Poudrailles saying, ‘I am innocent’ thundered in my ears.
“My doubts still remained with me, and I was forced again and again to go over my speech for the prosecution in my mind.
“Poudrailles’ appeal was dismissed, and my uncertainty increased. At that time it was comparatively seldom that reprieves arrested the carrying out of the death sentence. Poudrailles petitioned in vain for a commutation of the sentence. On the morning of the day fixed for the execution, when the scaffold had already been erected at Martouret, I went to the prison, got them to open the condemned cell to me, and alone, face to face with the prisoner, said to him: ‘Nothing can alter your fate. If there remains in you one good feeling, in the interests of your own soul and to set my mind at rest, Poudrailles, tell me whether you are guilty of the crime for which you are condemned.’ He looked at me for some moments without replying. I still see his dull face and wide, dumb mouth. I had a moment of terrible anguish. At last he bent his head right down and murmured in a feeble but distinct voice: ‘Now that I have no hope left, I may as well tell you that I did it. And I had more trouble than you would believe, because the old man was strong. All the same, he was a bad lot.’ When I heard this final confession I heaved a deep sigh of relief.”
M. Cassignol stopped, gazed fixedly for a long time at the knob of his stick with his faded, washed-out eyes, and then uttered these words:
“During my long career as a magistrate I have never known of a single judicial error.”
“That’s a reassuring statement,” said M. de Terremondre.
“It makes my blood run cold with horror,” murmured M. Bergeret.
XVI
That year, as usual, M. Worms-Clavelin, the préfet, went shooting at Valcombe, at the house of M. Delion, an iron-master and a member of the General Council, who had the finest shooting in the district. The préfet enjoyed himself very much at Valcombe; he was flattered at meeting there many people of good family, especially the Gromances and the Terremondres, and he took a deep joy in winging pheasants. Here he was to be seen pacing the woodland paths in exuberant spirits. He shot with twisted body, with raised shoulders and bent head, with one eye closed and brows knitted, in the style of the inhabitants of Bois-Colombes, the bookmakers and restaurant-keepers, his original shooting companions. He proclaimed noisily, with tactless delight, the birds that he had brought down; and by now and then attributing to himself those that had fallen to his neighbours’ guns, he aroused an indignation which he immediately allayed by the placidity of his temper and by entire ignorance of the fact that any one could possibly be vexed with him. In all his behaviour he united pleasantly enough the importance of an official with the familiarity of a cheerful guest. He flung their titles at men as though they were nicknames, and because, like all the department, he knew that M. de Gromance was an oft-betrayed husband, at every meeting he would give this man of ceremony several affectionate little taps without any apparent reason. Among the company at Valcombe he imagined himself to be popular, and he was not entirely wrong. When, despite his underbred manners and toadying air, his companions had got off scot-free of both shot and impertinences, he was considered dexterous, and they said that, at bottom, he had tact.
This year he had succeeded better than ever in the capitalist circle. It was known that he was opposed to the income tax, which in private conversation he had felicitously described as inquisitorial. At Valcombe, therefore, he was the recipient of the congratulations of a grateful society, and Madame Delion smiled on him, softening for him her steel-blue eyes and her majestic forehead crowned with bandeaux of iron-grey.
On leaving his room, where he had been dressing for dinner, he saw the lissom figure of Madame de Gromance gliding along the dark corridor, with a rustle of clothes and jewels. In the dusk her bare shoulders seemed barer than ever. He frisked forward to overtake her, seized her by the waist and kissed her on the neck. When she freed herself hurriedly, he said to her in reproachful accents:
“Why so cruel to me, Countess?”
Then she gave him a box on the ears which surprised him greatly.
On the ground-floor landing he came upon Noémi, who, very seemly in her dress of black satin covered with black tulle, was slowly drawing her long gloves over her arms. He made a friendly little sign to her with his eye. He was a good husband, and regarded his wife with a good deal of esteem and some admiration.
She deserved it, for she had need of rare tact not to ruffle the anti-Jewish society of Valcombe. And she was not unpopular there. She had even won their sympathy. And what was most astonishing, she did not seem an outsider.
In that great cold provincial salon she assumed an awe-stricken face and a placid demeanour which produced a doubt of her intelligence, but proclaimed her honest, sweet, and good. With Madame Delion and the other women, she admired, approved, and held her tongue. And if a man of some intelligence and experience entered into a tête-à-tête with her, she made herself still more demure, modest, and timid, with downcast eyes; then suddenly she hurled some broad jest at him, which tickled him by its unexpectedness, and which he regarded as a special favour, coming from so prim a mouth and so reserved a mind. She captivated the hearts of the old sparks. Without a gesture, without a movement, without the flutter of a fan, with an imperceptible quiver of her eyelashes and a swift pursing of the lips, she insinuated ideas that flattered them. She made a conquest of M. Mauricet himself, who, great connoisseur as he was, said of her:
“She has always been plain, she is no longer even attractive, but she is a woman.”
M. Worms-Clavelin was placed at table between Madame Delion and Madame Laprat-Teulet, wife of the senator of … Madame Laprat-Teulet was a sallow little woman, whom one always seemed to be looking at through gauze, so soft were her features. As a young girl, she had been steeped in religion as if it had been oil. Now, the wife of a clever man who had married her for her fortune, she wallowed in unctuous piety, while her husband devoted his energies to the anti-clerical and secular parties. She gave herself up to endless petty tasks. And deeply attached as she was to her wedded condition, when a demand was lodged before the Senate for the authorisation of judicial proceedings against Laprat-Teulet and several other senators, she offered two candles in the Church of Saint-Exupère, before the painted statue of Saint Anthony, in order that by his good offices her husband’s opponents might be non-suited. And it was in that way that the affair ended. A pupil of Gambetta, M. Laprat-Teulet had in his possession certain small documents, a photographic reproduction of which he had sent at a timely moment to the Keeper of the Seals. Madame Laprat-Teulet, in the zeal of her gratitude, had a marble slab put up, as a votive-offering, on the wall of the chapel, with this inscription drawn up by the venerable M. Laprune himself: To Saint Anthony from a Christian wife, in gratitude for an unexpected blessing. Since then M. Laprat-Teulet had retrieved his position. He had given serious pledges to the Conservatives, who hoped to utilise his great financial talents in the struggle against socialism. His political position had become satisfactory again, provided he affronted no one and did not seize the reins of power for himself.
And with her waxen fingers Madame Laprat-Teulet embroidered altar-frontals.
“Well, madame,” said the préfet to her, after the soup, “are your good works prospering? Do you know that, after Madame Cartier de Chalmot, you are the lady in the department who presides over the largest number of charities?”
She made no answer. He recollected that she was deaf, and, turning towards Madame Delion:
“Tell me, I beg you, madame, about Saint Anthony’s charity. It was this poor Madame Laprat-Teulet who made me think of it. My wife tells me it is a new cult that is becoming the rage in the department.”
“Madame Worms-Clavelin is right, my dear sir. We are all devoted to Saint Anthony.”
Then they heard M. Mauricet, in reply to a sentence lost in the noise, say to M. Delion:
“You flatter me, my dear sir. The Puits-du-Roi, very much neglected since Louis XIV.’s time, is not to be compared with Valcombe for its sport. There is very little game there. Still, a poacher of rare skill, named Rivoire, who honours the Puits-du-Roi with his nocturnal visits, kills plenty of pheasants there. And you’ve no idea what an extraordinary old blunderbuss he shoots them with. It’s a specimen for a museum! I owe him thanks for having one day allowed me to examine it at leisure. Imagine a …”
“I am told, madame,” said the préfet, “that the worshippers address their requests to Saint Anthony in a sealed paper, and that they make no payment until after the blessing demanded has been received.”
“Don’t jest,” replied Madame Delion; “Saint Anthony grants many favours.”
“It is,” continued M. Mauricet, “the barrel of an old musket which has been cut through and mounted on a kind of hinge, so that it rocks up and down, and …”
“I thought,” replied the préfet, “that Saint Anthony’s speciality was finding lost articles.”
“That is why,” answered Madame Delion, “so many requests are made to him.”
And she added, with a sigh:
“Who, in this world, has not lost a precious possession? Peace of heart, a conscience at rest, a friendship formed in childhood or … a husband’s love? It is then that one prays to Saint Anthony.”
“Or to his comrade,” added the préfet, whom the ironmaster’s wines had elated, and who in his innocence was confusing Saint Anthony of Padua with Saint Anthony the hermit.
“But,” asked M. de Terremondre, “this Rivoire is known as the poacher to the prefecture, is he not?”
“You are mistaken, Monsieur de Terremondre,” replied the préfet. “He has a still more honourable appointment as poacher to the Archbishopric. He supplies Monseigneur’s table.”
“He also consents to put his skill at the service of the court,” said President Peloux.
M. Delion and Madame Cartier de Chalmot were conversing together in low tones:
“My son Gustave, dear lady, is going to serve his military term this year. I should so much like him to be placed under General Cartier de Chalmot.”
“Do not set your heart on that, monsieur. My husband hates favouritism, and he is chary of granting leave; he expects lads of good family to show an example of work. And he has imbued all his colonels with his principles.”
“… And the barrel of this musket,” continued M. Mauricet, “corresponds with no recognised bore, so that Rivoire can only make use of undersized cartridges. You can easily imagine …”
The préfet was unfolding certain arguments calculated to bring Madame Delion completely over to the government, and he concluded with this noble thought:
“At the moment when the Czar is coming on a visit to France, it is necessary that the Republic should identify itself with the upper classes of the nation in order to put them in touch with our great ally, Russia.”
Meanwhile, with the calm of a Madonna, Noémi was kissing feet with M. le président Peloux, who had been feeling about for hers under the table.
Young Gustave Delion was saying in a low voice to Madame de Gromance:
“I hope that this time you will not keep me hanging about as you did on the day when you were playing the fool with that dotard of a Mauricet, whilst I had no other amusement in your yellow drawing-room than to potter with the works of the clock.”
“What an excellent woman Madame Laprat-Teulet is!” exclaimed Madame Delion in a sudden outburst of affection.
“Excellent,” said the préfet, swallowing a quarter of a pear. “It is a pity that she is as deaf as a post. Her husband also is an excellent man, and very intelligent. I am glad to see that people are beginning to readjust their views of him. He has gone through a difficult time. The enemies of the Republic wanted to compromise him in order to discredit the government. He has been the victim of schemes that aimed at excluding from Parliament the leading men belonging to the business world. Such an exclusion would lower the level of national representation and would be in all respects deplorable.”
For a moment he remained thoughtful; then he said sadly:
“Besides, no further scandals can be hatched; no more charges are being trumped up. And there we have one of the most grievous results of this campaign of calumny, carried on with unheard-of audacity.”
“Perhaps it is as well!” sighed Madame Delion, thoughtfully and meaningly.
Then suddenly, with a burst of fervour:
“Monsieur le préfet, give us back our dear religious orders, let our Sisters of Charity return to the hospitals and our God to the schools whence you have expelled Him. No longer prevent our rearing our sons as Christians and … we shall be very near to a mutual understanding.”
Hearing these words, M. Worms-Clavelin flung up his hands, as well as his knife, on which was a morsel of cheese, and exclaimed with heartfelt sincerity: “Good God! madame, don’t you see that the streets of the county town are black with curés, and that there are monks behind all the gratings? And as for your young Gustave, damn it! it isn’t I who prevent him from going to mass all day instead of running after the girls!”
M. Mauricet was finishing his description of the marvellous blunderbuss, amid the clatter of voices, the echo of laughter, and the little tinkling taps of silver upon china.
M. le préfet Worms-Clavelin, who was in a hurry to smoke, passed out first into the billiard-room. He was soon joined there by President Peloux, to whom he held out a cigar:
“Have one, do! They are capital.”
And in reply to M. Peloux’s thanks, showing the box of regalias, he answered:
“Don’t thank me; it is one of our host’s cigars.”
This joke was one of his stock ones.
At last M. Delion appeared, leading the bulk of the guests, who with greater gallantry had been chatting for a few minutes with the ladies. He was listening approvingly to M. de Gromance, who was explaining to him how necessary it was in shooting to calculate distances accurately.
“For instance,” he said, “on uneven ground a hare seems relatively distant, whilst, on level ground, it seems nearer by more than fifty metres. It is on this account that …”
“Come,” said M. le préfet Worms-Clavelin, taking down a cue from the rack, “come, Peloux, shall we play a game?”
M. le préfet Worms-Clavelin was a pretty fair stroke at billiards; but M. le président Peloux gave him points. A little Norman attorney who, at the close of a disastrous estate case, had been forced to sell his practice, he had been appointed a judge at the time when the Republic was purging the magistracy. Sent from one end of France to the other, in courts where the knowledge of the law had almost disappeared, his skill in sharp practice made him useful, and his ministerial relations secured him advancement. Yet everywhere a vague rumour of his past pursued him, and people refused to treat him with respect. But luckily he was wise enough to know how to endure persistent rebuffs. He bore affronts placidly. M. Lerond, deputy attorney-general, now a barrister at the bar at …, said of him in the Salle des Pas-Perdus: “He is a man of intelligence who knows the distance between his seat and the prisoner’s dock.” Yet that public approval which he had not sought, and which evaded him, had at length, by a sudden recoil, come of its own accord. For the last two years the whole society of the district had looked upon President Peloux as an upright magistrate. They admired his courage when, smiling placidly between his two pale assessors, he had condemned to five years’ imprisonment three confederate anarchists, guilty of having distributed in the barracks bills exhorting the nations to fraternise.
“Twelve—four,” announced M. le président Peloux.
Having practised for a long time in the sleepy restaurant of a county town in a rural canton, he had learnt a close professional game. He raked his balls into a little corner of the billiard-table and brought off a series of cannons. M. le préfet Worms-Clavelin played in the broad, splendid, reckless style of the artist-cafés of Montmartre and Clichy. And laying the failure of his rash strokes to the charge of the table, he complained of the hardness of the cushions.
“At la Tuilière,” said M. de Terremondre, “in my cousin Jacques’ house, there is a billiard-table with pockets, which dates from Louis XV.’s time, in a very low vaulted hall, of soft, whitewashed stone, where this inscription is still to be read: ‘Gentlemen are requested not to rub their cues on the walls.’ It is a request to which no one has paid any attention, for the vaulting is pitted with a number of little round holes, whose origin is accurately explained by this inscription.”
M. le président Peloux was asked in several directions at once for details as to the affair in Queen Marguerite’s house. The murder of Madame Houssieu, which had excited all the district, was still arousing interest. Every one knew that a crushing weight of evidence hung over a butcher’s boy of nineteen, named Lecœur, whom folks used to see twice a week entering the old lady’s house with his basket on his head. It was also known that the prosecution was detaining two upholsterers’ apprentices of fourteen and sixteen years of age as accomplices, and it was said that the crime had been committed in circumstances which made the story of it a particularly delicate one.
Being questioned on this point, M. le président Peloux lifted his round, ruddy head from the billiard-table and winked.
“The case is being tried in camera. The scene of the murder has been reconstructed in its entirety. I don’t believe that there is a doubt left as to the acts of debauchery which preceded the crime and facilitated the perpetration of it.”
He took up his liqueur glass, swallowed a mouthful of armagnac, smacked his lips, and said:
“Heavens! what velvet!”
And, when a circle of inquirers crowded round him asking for details, the magistrate, in a low voice, disclosed certain circumstances which provoked murmurs of surprise and grunts of disgust.
“Is it possible?” was the comment. “A woman of eighty!”
“The case,” answered M. le président Peloux, “is not unique. You may take my word for it after my experience as a magistrate. And the young scamps of the faubourgs know much more on this subject than we do. The crime in Queen Marguerite’s house is of a well-known, classified sort; I might call it a classic type. I immediately scented it out as senile debauchery, and I saw quite clearly that Roquincourt, the prosecuting counsel, was following a wrong track. He had naturally ordered the arrest of all the vagabonds and tramps found wandering within a wide circumference. Every one of them aroused suspicions; and what put the crowning touch to his mistake was that one of them, Sieurin, nicknamed Pied-d’Alouette, a regular old gaol-bird, made a confession.”
“How was that?”
“He was bored with solitary confinement. He had been promised a pipe of canteen tobacco if he confessed. He did confess. He told them all they wanted. This Sieurin, who has been sentenced thirty-seven times for vagabondage, is incapable of killing a fly. He has never committed robbery. He is a simpleton, an inoffensive creature. At the time of the crime, the gendarmes saw him on Duroc hill making straw fountains and cork boats for the school children.”
M. le président resumed his game.
“Ninety—forty. … During this time, Lecœur was telling all the girls in the Quartier des Carreaux that he had done the deed, and the keepers of disorderly houses were bringing to the police-inspector Madame Houssieu’s earrings, chain, and rings that the butcher-boy had distributed among their inmates. This Lecœur, like so many other murderers, gave himself up. But Roquincourt, in a rage, left Sieurin, or Pied-d’Alouette, in solitary confinement. He is still there. Ninety-nine … and one hundred.”
“Splendid!” said M. le préfet Worms-Clavelin.
“So,” murmured M. Delion, “this woman of eighty-three had still … It is incredible!”
But Dr. Fornerol, agreeing with President Peloux’s opinion, declared that the case was not as unusual as they fancied, and he supplied the physiological explanation, which was listened to with interest. Then he went on to quote different cases of sexual aberrations and wound up in these words:
“If the devil on two sticks, lifting us up in the air, were to raise the roofs of the town before our eyes, we should see appalling sights, and we should be staggered at the discovery among our fellow-citizens of so many maniacs, degenerates, mad men and mad women.”
“Bah!” said M. Worms-Clavelin, the préfet, “one must not look too closely into that. All these people, taken one by one, are perhaps what you say; but together they form a superb mass of constituents and a splendid county-town population for the department.”
Now, on the raised divan which overlooked the billiard-table, Senator Laprat-Teulet sat caressing his long white beard. He had the majesty of a river.
“For my part,” said he, “I can only believe in goodness. Wherever I cast my eyes, I see virtue and honesty. I have been able to prove by numerous instances that the morals of the French women since the Revolution leave nothing to be desired, especially in the middle classes.”
“I am not so optimistic,” replied M. de Terremondre, “but I certainly did not suspect that Queen Marguerite’s house hid such shameful mysteries behind its walls of crumbling woodwork and beneath the cobweb-curtains of its mullioned windows. I went to see Madame Houssieu several times; she seemed to me a miserly and mistrustful old woman, a little mad, yet like so many others. But, as they used to say in the time of Queen Marguerite:
“She is under the sod.
Her soul be with God![M]
She will no longer, by her lewdness, blot the scutcheon of good Philippe Tricouillard.”
[M] “Elle est sous lame.
Dieu ait son âme!”
At that name a shout of merry laughter burst from their knowing faces. It was the secret joy and inward pride of the town, that emblematic shield, with its witness to the triple virtue and power that put this bourgeois ancestor of theirs on a level with the great condottiere of Bergamo. The people of … loved him, their lusty forebear, the contemporary of the king in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, their ancient alderman Philippe Tricouillard, about whom, to tell the truth, they knew nothing save the gift of nature to which he owed his illustrious surname.
The turn taken by the conversation led Dr. Fornerol to say that several instances had been cited of a similar anomaly, and that certain writers declare that at times this honourable monstrosity is transmitted hereditarily and becomes persistent in a family. Unluckily the line of the worthy Philippe had been extinct for more than two hundred years.
After this remark, M. de Terremondre, who was president of the Archæological Society, related a true anecdote.
“Our departmental archivist,” said he, “the learned M. Mazure, has recently discovered in the garrets of the prefecture some documents relating to a charge of adultery, brought, at the very period when Philippe Tricouillard was flourishing, towards the end of the fifteenth century, by Jehan Tabouret against Sidoine Cloche, his wife, for the reason that the aforesaid Sidoine, having had three children at a birth, Sieur Jehan Tabouret only acknowledged two of them as his, and maintained that the third was by another man, for he averred that he was constitutionally incapable of begetting more than two at a time. And he gave a reason for this, founded on an error then common among matrons, barber-surgeons, and apothecaries, who each as eagerly as the others professed to believe that the normal frame of a man was physiologically incapable of begetting more than twins, and that all over the number of pledges which the father can produce should be disowned. For this reason, poor Sidoine was convicted by the judge of having played the harlot, and for this put naked on an ass, with her head towards the tail, and thus led through the town to the pond at Les Evés, where she was ducked three times. She would scarcely have suffered thus if her wicked husband had been as generously gifted by Dame Nature as good Philippe Tricouillard.”
XVII
In front of Rondonneau’s house-door, the préfet glanced to right and left to see that he was not being spied upon. He had heard that it was said in the town that he went to the jeweller’s house for assignations and that Madame Lacarelle had been seen following him into this house, called the House of the Two Satyrs. He felt very bad-tempered over this. He had another cause of annoyance. Le Libéral, which had treated him respectfully for a long time, had attacked him vigorously over the departmental budget. He was censured by the Conservative organ for having made a transfer to conceal the expenses of the electoral propaganda. M. le préfet Worms-Clavelin was perfectly honest. Money inspired him with respect as well as love. He felt before “Property” that feeling of religious terror that the moon inspires in dogs. With him wealth had become a cult.
His budget was very honestly put together. And, apart from the irregularities that had now become regular as the result of a faulty administration common to the whole Republic, nothing worthy of blame could be discovered in it. M. Worms-Clavelin knew this. He felt himself strong in his integrity. But the polemics of the press put him out of patience. His heart was saddened by the animosity of his opponents and the rancour of the parties that he believed he had disarmed. After so many sacrifices he was pained at not having won the esteem of the Conservatives, which he secretly valued far more highly than the friendship of the Republicans. He would have to inspire le Phare with pointed and forceful replies, to conduct a lively, and, perhaps protracted war. This thought was harassing to the deep slothfulness of his mind and alarming to his prudence, which feared every action as a source of peril.
Thus he was in a very bad temper. And it was in a sharp voice that, throwing himself into the old leather arm-chair, he inquired of Rondonneau junior whether M. Guitrel had arrived. M. Guitrel had not yet come. So M. Worms-Clavelin, roughly snatching a paper from the jeweller’s desk, tried to read while smoking his cigar. But neither political ideas nor tobacco-smoke served to dispel the gloomy pictures that crowded into his mind. He read with his eyes, but thought of the attacks of le Libéral: “Transfer! There are not fifty people in the county town who know what a transfer is. And here I can see all the idiots in the department shaking their heads and solemnly repeating the phrase in their newspaper: ‘We regret to see that M. le préfet has not abandoned the detestable and exploded practice of making transfers.’” He fell into thought. The ash from his cigar lavishly bestrewed his waistcoat. He went on thinking: “Why does le Libéral attack me? I got its candidate returned. My department shows the greatest number of new adherents at election-times.” He turned over the page of the paper. He thought on again: “I have not covered up a deficit. The sums voted on the presentation of the estimates have not been spent in a different way from what was proposed. These people don’t know how to read a budget. And they are disingenuous.” He shrugged his shoulders; and gloomy, indifferent to the cigar ash which covered his chest and thighs, he plunged into the reading of his paper.
His eyes fell on these lines:
“We learn that a fire having broken out in a faubourg of Tobolsk, sixty wooden houses have fallen a prey to the flames. In consequence of the disaster more than a hundred families are homeless and starving.”
As he read this, M. le préfet Worms-Clavelin emitted a deep shout, something like a triumphal growl, and, aiming a kick at the jeweller’s desk:
“I say, Rondonneau, Tobolsk is a Russian town, isn’t it?”
Rondonneau, raising his innocent, bald head towards the préfet, replied that Tobolsk was, indeed, a town in Asiatic Russia.
“Well,” cried M. le préfet Worms-Clavelin, “we are going to give an entertainment for the benefit of the sufferers by the fire at Tobolsk.”
And he added between his teeth:
“I’ll make … a Russian entertainment for ’em. I shall have six weeks’ peace, and they won’t talk any more about transfers.”
At that moment Abbé Guitrel, with anxious eyes, his hat under his arm, entered the jeweller’s shop.
“Do you know, monsieur l’abbé,” said the préfet to him, “that, by general request, I am authorising entertainments for the benefit of the sufferers from the fire at Tobolsk—concerts, special performances, bazaars, &c.? I hope that the Church will join in these benevolent entertainments.”
“The Church, monsieur le préfet,” replied Abbé Guitrel, “has her hands full of comfort for the afflicted who come to her. And doubtless her prayers …”
“À propos, my dear abbé, your affairs are not getting on at all. I come from Paris. I saw the friends whom I have at the Department of Religion. And I bring back bad news. To start with, there are eighteen of you.”
“Eighteen?”
“Eighteen candidates for the bishopric of Tourcoing. In the first rank is Abbé Olivet, curé of one of the richest parishes in Paris, and the president’s candidate. Next there is Abbé Lavardin, vicar-general at Grenoble. Ostensibly, he is supported by the nuncio.”
“I have not the honour of knowing M. Lavardin, but I do not think he can be the candidate of the nunciature. It is possible that the nuncio has his favourite. But assuredly that favourite remains unknown. The nunciature does not solicit on behalf of its protégés. It insists on their appointment.”
“Ah! ah! monsieur l’abbé, they are cute at the nunciature.”
“Monsieur le préfet, the members of it are not all eminent in themselves; but they have on their side unbroken tradition, and their action is guided by secular rules. It is a force, monsieur le préfet, a great force.”
“By Jove, yes! But we were saying that there is the president’s candidate and the nuncio’s candidate. There is also your own Archbishop’s candidate. When they first mentioned him, I thought to myself that it was you. … We were wrong, my poor friend. Monseigneur Charlot’s protégé—I’ll wager you won’t guess who it is.”
“Don’t make a wager, monsieur le préfet, don’t make a wager. I would bet that the candidate of Monseigneur the Cardinal-Archbishop is his vicar-general, M. de Goulet.”
“How do you know that? I did not know it myself.”
“Monsieur le préfet, you are not unaware that Monseigneur Charlot dreads that he may find himself saddled with a coadjutor, and that his old age, otherwise so august and serene, is darkened by this fear. He is afraid lest M. de Goulet should, so to say, attract this nomination to himself, as much by his personal merits as by the knowledge that he has acquired of the affairs of the diocese. And His Eminence is still more desirous, and even impatient, to separate himself from his vicar-general, since M. de Goulet belongs by birth to the nobility of the district, and through that fact shines with a brilliancy which is far too dazzling for Monseigneur Charlot. Since, on the contrary, Monseigneur does not rejoice in being the son of an honest artisan who, like Saint Paul, worked at the trade of weaver!”
“You know, Monsieur Guitrel, that they also talk of M. Lantaigne. He is the protégé of Madame Cartier de Chalmot. And General Cartier de Chalmot, although clerical and reactionary, is much respected in Paris. He is recognised as one of the ablest and most intelligent of our generals. Even his opinions, at this moment, are advantageous rather than harmful to him. With a ministry disposed to reunion, reactionaries get all that they want. They are needed; they give the turn to the scale. And then the Russian alliance and the Czar’s friendship have contributed to restore to the aristocracy and the army of our nation a part of their ancient prestige. We are shunting the Republic on to a certain distinction of mind and manners. Moreover, a general tendency towards authority and stability is declaring itself. I do not, however, believe that M. Lantaigne has great chances. In the first place, I have reported most unfavourably with regard to him. I have represented him in high places as a militant monarchist. I have described his uncompromising ways, his cross-grained temperament. And I have painted a sympathetic portrait of you, my dear Guitrel. I have shown off your moderation, your pliancy, your politic mind, your respect for republican institutions.”
“I am very grateful to you for your kindness, monsieur le préfet. And what did they reply?”
“You want to know that. Well! they replied: ‘We know such candidates as your M. Guitrel. Once nominated, they are worse than the others. They show more zeal against us. That is easily accounted for. They have more to beg pardon for of their own party.’”
“Is it possible, monsieur le préfet, that they talked like this in high places?”
“Ha! yes. And my interlocutor added this: ‘I do not like candidates for the episcopacy who show too much zeal for our institutions. If I could get a hearing, the choice would be made from among the others. In the civil and political ranks they prefer officials who are most devoted, most attached to the government. Nothing can be better. But there are no priests devoted to the Republic. In this case, the wise thing is always to take the most honest men.’”
And the préfet, throwing the chewed end of his cigar into the middle of the floor, finished with these words:
“You see, my poor Guitrel, that your affairs are not making headway.”
M. Guitrel stammered:
“I do not see, Monsieur le préfet, I do not perceive anything, in such speeches, that is calculated to produce in you this impression of … discouragement. On the contrary, I should rather derive from it a sentiment of … confidence. …”
M. le préfet Worms-Clavelin lit a cigar and said with a laugh:
“Who knows whether they are not right, at the bureaux? … But reassure yourself, my dear abbé, I do not abandon you. Let’s see, whom have we on our side?”
He opened his left hand, in order to count on his fingers.
They both considered.
They found a senator of the department who was beginning to emerge from the difficulties into which the recent scandals had plunged him, a retired general, politician, publicist and financier, the bishop of Ecbatana, well known in the artistic world, and Théophile Mayer, the friend of the ministers.
“But, my dear Guitrel,” cried the préfet, “you have only the rag-tag and bobtail on your side.”
Abbé Guitrel endured these manners, but he did not like them. He looked at the préfet with a saddened air and pressed his sinuous lips together. M. Worms-Clavelin, who had no spite, regretted the playfulness of his words and took pains to console the old man:
“Come! come! they are by no means the worst protectors. Besides, my wife is for you. And Noémi by herself is well able to make a bishop.”
THE WORKS OF
ANATOLE FRANCE
IN AN ENGLISH
TRANSLATION EDITED
BY THE LATE FREDERIC
CHAPMAN, J. LEWIS MAY
AND BERNARD MIALL
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ANATOLE FRANCE
“I do not believe that Thorfin Karlsefne was more astonished and delighted when he discovered America than I was when, in my sixtieth year, this great literary luminary sailed into my ken. … I have three good reasons for writing about Anatole France. I want to help the British people to enjoy his work; I want them to accord to the great Frenchman the full justice which I feel he has not yet received in this country; and I want to ease my soul by some expression of my own gratitude and admiration. … Of all the famous or popular men alive upon this planet Anatole France is to me the greatest. There is no writer to compare to him, and he has few peers amongst the greatest geniuses of past ages and all climes. … ‘Penguin Island’ is a masterpiece and a classic. It is, in my opinion, a greater work than ‘Gargantua’ or ‘Don Quixote’ or ‘Sartor Resartus’ or ‘Tristram Shandy.’ … The laughing, mocking, learned and dissolute Abbé Coignard is one of the greatest creations of human genius. If it will not sound too audacious I will venture to claim that there is no character in Rabelais, Cervantes, Dickens, or Sterne to equal the Abbé Coignard, and, with the exception of the miraculous Hamlet, there is nothing greater in Shakespeare. These be ‘brave words.’ I am writing of one of the world’s greatest artists and humorists: of Anatole France, the Master. … Then there is the great scene of the banquet in the house of Monsieur de la Geritande, which I have read fifty times, and hope to read a hundred times again. The whole chapter is one of the most artistic, humorous, human, and exhilarating achievements in literature. It is alive; it is real; it goes like a song. There is nothing finer or stronger in the best comedy work of Shakespeare. … Anatole France is a great man, and there is no living celebrity for whom I have so much reverence and regard.”—Robert Blatchford in the Sunday Chronicle.
[*] THE RED LILY
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MOTHER OF PEARL
A Translation by Frederic Chapman
THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS
A Translation by Alfred Allinson
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A Translation by Lafcadio Hearn
THE WELL OF ST. CLARE
A Translation by Alfred Allinson
BALTHASAR
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A Translation by Robert Bruce Douglas
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A Translation by C. E. Roche
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THE MERRIE TALES OF JACQUES TOURNEBROCHE. A Translation by Alfred Allinson
THE ELM TREE OF THE MALL
A Translation by M. P. Willcocks
THE WICKER-WORK WOMAN
A Translation by M. P. Willcocks
ON LIFE AND LETTERS. 2 Vols. First and Second Series. A Translation by A. W. Evans
AT THE SIGN OF THE REINE PEDAUQUE A Translation by Mrs Wilfrid Jackson
THE ASPIRATIONS OF JEAN SERVIEN
A Translation by Alfred Allinson
JOCASTA AND THE FAMISHED CAT
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MY FRIEND’S BOOK
A Translation by J. Lewis May
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CRAINQUEBILLE
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ON LIFE AND LETTERS
Third Series. A Translation by D. B. Stewart
ON LIFE AND LETTERS
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JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD, VIGO ST., W.
Transcriber’s Note:
Hyphenation, spelling, accents and punctuation have been retained as they appear in the original publication except as follows:
- Page 10
- M Lantaigne, principal of the high changed to
[M. Lantaigne], principal of the high
- M Lantaigne, principal of the high changed to
- Page 20
- Abbe Lantaigne, head of the high seminary changed to
[Abbé] Lantaigne, head of the high seminary
- Abbe Lantaigne, head of the high seminary changed to
- Page 37
- of the proper of the saint. changed to
of the proper of the [saint.”]
- of the proper of the saint. changed to
- Page 66
- at all, our Archbishop. changed to
at all, our [Archbishop.”]
- at all, our Archbishop. changed to
- Page 79
- M le Préfet Worms-Clavelin changed to
[M. le Préfet] Worms-Clavelin
- M le Préfet Worms-Clavelin changed to
- Page 118
- should come in 189– changed to
[Should] come in 189–
- should come in 189– changed to
- Page 125
- M Paillot was the bookseller changed to
[M. Paillot] was the bookseller
- M Paillot was the bookseller changed to
- Page 123
- he may make fun o changed to
he may make fun [of]
- he may make fun o changed to
- Page 219
- They are capital.’ changed to
They are [capital.”]
- They are capital.’ changed to