“Take care,” said M. de Terremondre, “lest you impair discipline in any way.”
“If,” answered M. Bergeret, “you had only seen a batch of raw recruits filing into the barrack yard, you would no longer think it necessary to be for ever hurling threats of death at these sheep-like creatures in order to maintain discipline among them. They are thinking of nothing but of how to get through their three years, as they put it, and Sergeant Bridoux would be touched even to tears by their pitiful docility, were it not that he thirsts to terrify them in order that he may enjoy his own sense of power. It is not that Sergeant Bridoux was born with a more callous heart than anyone else. But he is doubly perverted, both as slave and tyrant, and if Marcus Aurelius had been a non-commissioned officer I would not go so far as to promise that he would never have tyrannised over his men. However that may be, this tyranny suffices to produce that submission tempered by deceit that is the soldier’s most useful virtue in time of peace.
“It is high time that our military codes of law, with their paraphernalia of death, should be seen no more, save in the chamber of horrors, by the side of the keys of the Bastille and the thumb-screws of the Inquisition.”
“Army affairs,” said M. de Terremondre, “require most cautious handling. The army means safety and it means hope. It is also the training school of duty. Where else, save there, can be found self-sacrifice and devotion?”
“It is true,” said M. Bergeret, “that men consider it the primary social duty to learn to kill their fellows according to rule, and that, in civilised nations, the glory of massacre is the greatest glory known. And, after all, though man may be irredeemably evil and mischievous, the bad work he does is but small in comparison with the whole universe. For this planet is but a clod of earth in space and the sun but a gaseous bubble that will soon dissolve.”
“I see,” said M. Frémont, “that you are no positivist. For you treat the great fetich but scornfully.”
“What is the great fetich?” asked M. de Terremondre.
“You know,” answered M. Frémont, “that the positivists classify man as the worshipping animal. Auguste Comte was very anxious to provide for the wants of this worshipping animal and, after long reflection, supplied him with a fetich. But his choice fell on the earth and not on God. This was not because he was an atheist. On the contrary, he held that the existence of a creative power is quite probable. Only he opined that God was too difficult for comprehension, and therefore his disciples, who are very religious men, practise the worship of the dead, of great men, of woman, and of the great fetich, which is the earth. Hence it comes about that the followers of this cult make plans for the happiness of men and busy themselves in regulating the affairs of the planet with a view to our happiness.”
“They will have a great deal to do,” said M. Bergeret, “and it is quite evident that they are optimists. They must be optimistic to a degree, and this temperament of theirs fills me with astonishment, for it is difficult to realise that intelligent and thoughtful men such as these can cherish the hope of some day making our sojourn on this petty ball bearable to us. For this earth, revolving clumsily round a yellow, half-darkened sun, carries us with it as though we were vermin on a mouldy crust. The great fetich does not seem to me in any way worshipful.”
Dr. Fornerol stooped down to whisper in M. de Terremondre’s ear: