“Well then, my friend, I am sorry to tell you that you don’t in the least understand the spirit of your age. You have described a worthy of the type of Berryer. He would seem like a man stepped out of a family portrait. Your Royalist might have passed muster under the Second Empire, but I can assure you that to-day he would appear vieux jeu and devilishly out of date. The faithful courtier would be simply absurd in the twentieth century. One has no business to be beaten, and the weak are always in the wrong. That is the way we look at things, my dear fellow. Are we for Poland, or Greece, or Finland? No, no; we don’t dance to that tune. We are not simpletons. We shouted ‘Vive les Boers,’ it’s true. But we knew what we were about. We wanted to worry the Government by stirring up trouble with England, and also we hoped that the Boers would win. However, I’m not discouraged. I have reason to hope that we shall overthrow the Republic with the help of the Republicans.
“What we can’t do alone we shall do with Nationalists of every shade of opinion. With them we’ll make an end of the Republic. And to begin with we must bring off the municipal elections.”
CHAPTER XXII
Joseph Lacrisse had spoken the truth when he called himself a man of action. Idleness was a burden to him. The Secretary of an extinct Royalist Committee, he became a member of a Nationalist Committee which was very much alive. It was violent in tone, full of a malevolent love of France and a destructive patriotism. It was continually organizing rather savage demonstrations in the theatres or the churches. Joseph Lacrisse was the moving spirit of these demonstrations. When they took place in a church, Madame de Bonmont, who was religiously inclined, attended them, dressed in dark colours. Domus mea domus orationis. One day after joining the Nationalists in the Cathedral in order to pray in select company, Madame de Bonmont and Lacrisse mingled with a crowd of men in the square before the Cathedral who were expressing their patriotism by frantic and concerted shouts. Lacrisse joined his voice to that of the crowd, and Madame de Bonmont quickened their courage by the smile of her blue eyes and her rosy lips, gleaming behind her veil.
The noise was magnificent and formidable, and it was growing even louder when, on an order from the prefecture, a squad of police marched upon the demonstrators. Lacrisse watched them approaching without surprise, and as soon as they were within hearing he shouted, “Hurrah for the police!”
This enthusiasm was not lacking in prudence, and it was also sincere. Bonds of friendship had been formed between the brigades of the prefecture and the Nationalist demonstrators in the ever-to-be-regretted times, if I may say so, of the ploughman Minister who allowed cudgel-bearing roughs to club the silent Republicans in the streets. That is what he called acting with moderation. O gentle country customs! O primitive simplicity! O happy days! Who knew you not never knew the meaning of life! O simplicity of the man of the open fields, who vowed that the Republic had no enemies! Where were the Royalist conspirators and seditious monks? There were none. He had hidden them all under his long Sunday-go-to-meeting coat. Joseph Lacrisse had not forgotten those happy days, and relying on the old alliance of rioters and police he cheered the black brigades. Standing in the front rank of the Leaguers he waved his hat on the end of his stick in token of peace, shouting twenty times over, “Hurrah for the police!” But times had changed. Indifferent to this friendly welcome, deaf to these flattering shouts, the police charged. The shock was violent. The Nationalist ranks wavered and fell back. Human affairs are subject to time’s revenges. Lacrisse, who had stopped cheering the attackers and had replaced his hat on his head, found it knocked over his eyes by a vigorous blow. Indignant at the insult he broke his stick over a policeman’s head, and had it not been for the efforts of friends who came to his assistance he would have been marched off to the police station and thrown into a cell like a Socialist.
The policeman whose head was cracked was taken to the hospital, where he received a silver medal from the prefect of police.
Joseph Lacrisse was chosen by the Nationalist Committee for the ward of the Grandes-Écuries as their candidate at the municipal elections of the 6th of May.