"And how long will it run to gain that?"
"Perhaps two months."
"So in two months, you will have earned the whole year's salary of three chief clerks, including bonuses?"
"Call in your three chief clerks and tell them to do as much for themselves."
"Get out! I am afraid the very ceiling will fall on our heads while you are saying such monstrous things!"
"To-morrow night, then?"
"Yes, to-morrow night, if I have nothing better to do."
I was quite easy. M. Deviolaine would not have anything better to do, nor would he have accepted a year of his salary to be kept away.
From M. Deviolaine's house I ran to M. Laffitte's. I was proud to be able to pay him what I owed him so promptly. I gave him his thousand crowns, and he returned me my promissory note and my manuscript. But I always remembered the service rendered me, which, coming when my mother was taken ill, was of priceless value. Still, I had not reached the conclusion of my worries. When I returned to my temporary dwelling-place, I found a letter from the Théâtre-Français asking me to go to the office there immediately. I rushed there, and found the Committee in a state of consternation from Taylor downwards. They had received a letter from the Home Minister suspending Henri III. This was a far more serious matter than the suspension of my salary. Luckily, Taylor had made up his mind what should be done. He proposed I should urgently demand an audience of M. de Martignac. He himself undertook to take the letter and see that it was conveyed to him. I sat down and wrote at once, asking for an audience for the next day. I received an answer two hours later. M. de Martignac would see me at seven next morning. By seven next morning I was at his house. Oh! what a blessing it is to find a Minister who is both polished and cultivated, like M. de Martignac! rara avis, as Juvenal would call it, and, worse still, a bird of passage! We remained together for an hour, not talking of the play, but of all sorts of subjects; in ten minutes, we came to an understanding over the play, and I carried my manuscript back, saved, this time not from Annihilation, but from Limbo. Oh! poor M. de Martignac! how well he understood Art! How thoroughly well he knew that type of human being who obstructs all progress he meets with on the way, with a view rather of hindering others from advancing than of advancing himself! It was not under M. de Martignac's administration that Art, wherever it turned, encountered the notice, "This road is closed by order of the authorities." And to think that for twenty years the same men blocked the same avenues; that, from being old men, they grew into being decrepit ones, whilst we young men grew old; that, by dint of ill-will and persecution, they managed to drive both Lamartine and Hugo into politics, Soulié and Balzac into their graves; that I stood almost alone, in my struggle against them; that they set their mark on things, like the seal of Solomon which enclosed the genii of the Thousand and One Nights in clay vases; and that all this political and literary compression will one day burst in their faces, killing and overturning all around it without injuring itself—wrinkled dwarfs who everlastingly stir up the glowing fires of revolutions! Some things, at least, are very clear; that, for twenty years, these rulers were petty, paltry, contemptible; that they left behind them a sad and shameful memory amongst the Germans, Hungarians, Italians, along the banks of the Nile as well as on the shores of the Bosphorus, at Mogador even as at Montevideo, in the old World as well as the New; that, during the whole of the time which transpired between the day on which M. Sébastiani made his announcement at the Tribune that "Order reigned at Warsaw," and that on which M. Barrot wrote in the Moniteur that "The French have entered Rome," they gave the lie not only with respect to every promise made by man—whether these promises came through M. de la Fayette or M. de Lamartine—but still, more, with respect to everything hoped of God, who destined France to be the Pole Star to other nations, who said to the peoples, "You wish to sail towards the unknown world, towards the Promised Land called Liberty; there is your compass. Spread your sails and follow boldly!" Instead of keeping faith with men and fulfilling God's will, what did you do, you poor slaves of passion, and miserable servants of blindness? You made the sea rough and the winds contrary for every noble vessel that set sail under divine inspiration. You know it is so, I am not telling you anything fresh; you know that whatever is young and noble and pure, that has not been dragged through the mud of the past, and reaches forth to ethereal regions in the future, is against you; you know that those whom you allowed to be murdered by Austrian rods, those whom you left shut up in pontifical dungeons, those whom you suffered to be shot down by Neapolitan cannon, were martyrs. You are aware that, whilst people hail you, you tyrants, as you go to your places of entertainment, we shall have their devotion; you are aware, in short, that we, the torchbearers, are loved, whilst you, the workers of darkness, are detested; you know that should you ever be forgiven your deeds, it will be because of what we have said on your behalf; and hence come your persecutions—powerless, thank God, like all things that come from below and seek to harm what is above.... Yes, what is above, for he who can say "I have just written this page, and you could not write it," is above you!