CHAPTER XVII
It was the first day of the New Year. Between two showers Monsieur Bergeret and his daughter Pauline wended their way along the streets still covered with fresh golden mud, to wish the compliments of the season to a maternal aunt of Monsieur Bergeret’s who still survived, but lived alone, if living it could be called, in a little Beguine’s cell which stood in a kitchen garden, amid the sound of convent bells. Pauline was happy without a reason simply because holidays such as these, which marked the flight of time, made her the more conscious of the delightful progress of her young life.
On this solemn day Monsieur Bergeret still observed his customary indulgence, no longer expecting much good from his fellow-creatures or from life itself, but knowing, like Monsieur Fagon, that one must forgive nature a great deal. All along the road beggars of every description, standing upright like candlesticks, or spread out like temporary altars, formed the decorations of this social fête. They had all come to help to adorn the bourgeois quarters, all our poor unfortunates, lame, halt and blind; crooks, tramps, pickpockets, malingerers, rogues, and hardened ruffians. Yielding, however, to the general tendency to obliterate individual character, and to conform with the universal mediocrity of manners, they did not expose to view horrible malformations and ghastly sores as in the days of the great Coësre. They did not bind their mutilated limbs with blood-stained rags; they were modest and affected only endurable infirmities. One of them hobbled nimbly after Monsieur Bergeret for some considerable distance. Then he stopped and took up his position once more like a lamp-post on the edge of the pavement. After which Monsieur Bergeret remarked to his daughter:
“I have just committed a wicked action; I have given alms. In giving a couple of sous to Monsieur Hobbler I tasted the shameful joy of humiliating my fellow-man. I was a partner to the odious pact that gives power to the strong and leaves the weak in their weakness. I have sealed with my own seal the injustice of ages and contributed my share to depriving this man of one half of his soul.”
“You’ve done all that, papa?” asked Pauline incredulously.
“Almost all that,” replied Monsieur Bergeret. “I have sold fraternity to my brother Hobbler, using false weights, and in humiliating him I have brought humiliation on myself, for almsgiving degrades both him who gives and him who takes. I have done wrong.”
“I don’t think so,” said Pauline.
“You don’t think so,” replied Monsieur Bergeret, “because you have no philosophy and are incapable of tracing from an apparently innocent action the stupendous consequences which it bears within itself. This fellow induced me to offer him alms. I could not resist the importunity of his whining appeal. I pitied his bare thin neck, the knees of his trousers, which, baggy from too long wear, bear such a depressing resemblance to the knees of a camel, and his feet, on which his shoes were gaping at the toes like a couple of ducks. Seducer! Dangerous Hobbler! Through you my sous have produced their little share of baseness and shame. Through you I have created with ten centimes a little ugliness and evil. In handing you that tiny token of wealth and power, I have ironically made you a capitalist, and invited you, an unhonoured guest, to the banquet of society, the feast of civilization. And as I did it I felt that I was one of the mighty of this world as compared with you, a rich man compared with you, my gentle Hobbler, exquisite mendicant and flatterer. I rejoiced and was proud, exulting in my opulence and my greatness. O Hobbler, live for ever! Pulcher hymnus divitiarum pauper immortalis.
“An abominable practice, that of almsgiving! A barbarous pity, that of charity! An ancient error, that of the well-to-do who give a penny and think they are performing a good deed, who believe they have fulfilled their whole duty to their fellow-man by means of the most miserable, awkward, ridiculous, senseless and mean action which could possibly be committed with a view to a better distribution of wealth. This habit of almsgiving is contrary to beneficence and abhorrent to charity.”