“These old books,” he said, “amuse and divert our minds, they make us forget the present day.”
“That is true,” replied Monsieur Goubin.
But he smiled; a thing he seldom did.
CHAPTER IX
During the holidays, Monsieur Mazure, a keeper of departmental archives, came for a few days to Paris to canvass the offices of the Ministry for the Cross of the Legion of Honour, to make certain historical researches among the National Archives, and to see the Moulin-Rouge. Before entering upon his labours, on the day after his arrival, he called, about six o’clock in the evening, upon Monsieur Bergeret, who welcomed him benevolently. As the heat of the day was overwhelming to those who were detained in the city, under the scorching roofs and in the streets filled with acrid dust, a bright idea occurred to Monsieur Bergeret. He took Monsieur Mazure to the Bois, to a cabaret, where tables were set out under the trees, by the brink of a slumbering sheet of water.
There, in the cool shade and the peace of the foliage, they enjoyed an excellent dinner, and exchanged views upon familiar topics, discoursing in turn upon learning and the divers fashions of loving. Then, without preconcerted design, they yielded to an inevitable impulse and spoke of the Affair.
Monsieur Mazure was greatly perturbed by the Affair. Being both by persuasion and temperament a Jacobin and a patriot, after the manner of Barère and Saint-Just, he had joined the Nationalist hosts of his own department, and in company with Royalists and clerics, his bêtes noires, he had, in the superior interest of his country, uplifted his voice for the unity and indivisibility of the Republic. He had even become a member of the league of which Monsieur Panneton de La Barge was the president, and as this league had voted an address to the King it was slowly dawning upon him that it was anti-republican, and he no longer felt easy in respect of its principles. As a matter of fact, being accustomed to dealing with documents, and quite capable of bringing his intelligence to bear upon a critical inquiry of a fairly simple character, he experienced some difficulty in upholding a system that displayed an audacity hitherto unexampled in the fabrication and falsification of documents intended to ruin an innocent man. He felt that he was surrounded by imposture, and yet he would not admit the fact that he had made a mistake, such an admission being possible only to minds of unusual quality.
He protested, on the contrary, that he was right, and it is only fair to admit that he was kept in ignorance, constrained, crushed and compressed by the compact mass of his fellow-citizens. The knowledge of the inquiry and the discussion of the documents had not yet reached his little town, comfortably situated on the green banks of a sluggish river. There, obstructing the light, filling public offices and sitting on the bench, was that host of politicians and churchmen, whom Monsieur Méline had formerly sheltered beneath the skirts of his provincial frock-coat, waxing prosperous in acquiescent ignorance of the truth. This elect society, which enlisted crime in the interests of patriotism and religion, made it respectable for all, even for the Radical-Socialist chemist Mandar.