Monsieur Bergeret in Paris

by Anatole France

“There aren’t many Socialists hereabouts, and the few there are don’t agree. Last Saturday at the club there was a lot of tag-rag and bobtail and the whole lot of us started quarrelling. Old Fléchier, who fought in 1870, a Communard, who was deported—he’s a man, he is—he got up on the platform and said: ‘Citizens, keep your hair on! The intellectual bourgeois are no less bourgeois than the military bourgeois. Let the capitalists scratch each other’s eyes out. Fold your arms and keep your eyes on the anti-Semites. At present they are drilling with sham guns and wooden swords, but when the time comes to expropriate the capitalists I don’t see why we shouldn’t make a start with the Jews.’

“That pretty well brought the house down. But, I ask you, should an old Communard, a good revolutionary, talk in that way? I am not educated like old Fléchier, who has read Marx, but I could see well enough that his arguments were all wrong. It seems to me that Socialism, which stands for truth, should also stand for justice and kindliness, that everything just and kindly must come from it as naturally as the apple comes from the apple-tree. I take it that when we fight against injustice we are fighting for ourselves, for the working-classes, because it’s on us that all injustice lies so heavy. In my opinion, everything that is equitable is a beginning of Socialism. Like Jaurès, I believe that to take sides with the upholders of violence and falsehood is to turn one’s back upon the social revolution. I know nothing of Jews or Christians. I recognize only men—and there again the only distinction I make is between the just and the unjust. Jews or Christians, it is difficult for the rich to be just; but when the laws are just, men will be just too. Even now the Collectivists and Anarchists are preparing for the future by fighting against tyranny and inspiring the people with hatred of war and love for their fellow-men. Even now we can do something. It’ll keep us from dying desperate with the bitterness of rage in our hearts. For sure enough we shan’t see the triumph of our ideas, and when Collectivism is established all over the world I shall have been carried feet foremost from my garret a long while before. But there! I’m jawing and the time’s going.”

He pulled out his watch, and seeing that it was eleven o’clock he put on his waistcoat, picked up his tools, and ramming his cap on the back of his head, said, without turning round:

“It’s a sure thing that the middle classes are rotten. The Dreyfus case showed that plainly enough.”

With that, he went off to his dinner.

Then, with wide-open mouth, bristling hair and flaming eyes, Riquet rushed at Roupart’s departing heels, pursuing them with frantic barks. It may have been that a bad dream had troubled his light slumber and caused him to take advantage of the enemy’s retreat, or, as his master feigned to believe, that his anger had been aroused by the name which had just been pronounced.

Alone with Riquet, Monsieur Bergeret addressed him gently in these sorrowful words:

“You, too, poor little blackamoor, so feeble in spite of your sharp teeth and your deep bark, the apparent strength of which renders your weakness ridiculous and your cowardice amusing—you, too, worship the pomps of the flesh. You bow to the old iniquities and worship injustice out of respect for the social order that gives you food and a roof over your head. You, too, would uphold an illegal judgment obtained by fraud and untruth; you, too, are the plaything of appearances and allow yourself to be seduced by lies. You have been brought up on clumsy falsehoods and your darkened mind feeds on the works of darkness. You deceive and are deceived with delightful thoroughness, and you, too, have your racial hatreds, your cruel prejudices and your contempt for the unfortunate.”

And as Riquet gazed at his master with a look of infinite innocence Monsieur Bergeret continued still more gently:

“Yes, I know: you have a vague goodness, the goodness of a Caliban. You are a pious dog; you have your theology and your morality, and you try to do well. But then you know nothing. You keep watch over the house, guarding it even against its friends and those who would make it more beautiful. The workman whom you wanted to drive out of the house has, in his simple fashion, some admirable ideas. But you did not listen to him.