His enemies pursued him even into the sacred precincts of the Senate, where his misfortunes gave him an air of still greater dignity, for he had once before been in difficulties and even actually on the verge of ruin. This came about through a mistake made by a Keeper of the Seals who was not a member of the syndicate and who had rashly handed him over into the astonished hands of justice. Neither the honourable M. Laprat-Teulet, nor his examining judge, nor his barrister, nor the Public Prosecutor, nor the Keeper of the Seals himself, was capable of foreseeing, or even understanding, the cause of those sudden partial cleavages in the machine of government, those catastrophes, farcical as the collapse of a platform at a show and terrible as the outcome of what the orator called immanent justice, catastrophes which sometimes hurl the most respected statesmen from their seats in both Chambers. M. Laprat-Teulet felt a melancholy surprise at his fate and he scorned to give any explanation to the authorities, but the number and splendour of his connections saved him. A plea that there was not sufficient cause for prosecution was interposed. At first Laprat-Teulet accepted it with humble gratitude, and next he bore it into the official world as a regular certificate of innocence. “Almighty God,” said Madame Laprat-Teulet, who was pious, “Almighty God has been very merciful to my husband, for to him He has granted the stay of proceedings he so much desired.” It is matter of common knowledge that Madame Laprat-Teulet was so grateful that she had a votive-offering hung up in the chapel of Saint-Antoine, a marble slab bearing the following inscription: “From a Christian wife, in gratitude for an unhoped-for blessing.”
This stay of proceedings reassured Laprat-Teulet’s political friends, the crowd of ex-ministers and big officials who had shared with him, not only the time of struggle, but the fruitful years, who had known both the seven lean kine and the seven fat kine. This stay was a safeguard, or at any rate was regarded as such. It could be relied upon for several years to come. Then suddenly, by a stroke of bad luck, by one of those ill-omened and unforeseen accidents that come secretly and from underneath, like sudden leaks in rotten vessels, without any political or moral reason, in the full glory of his honours, this old servant of the democracy, this heir of its achievements whom M. Worms-Clavelin had instanced only the night before in the comitia as a shining light to the whole department, this man of order and progress, this defender of capital and opponent of clericalism, this intimate friend of ex-ministers and ex-presidents, this Senator Laprat-Teulet, this man, though exculpated on the former occasion, was sent to prison with a batch of members of parliament. And the local paper announced in large type: “A Senator at Mazas. Arrest of M. Laprat-Teulet.” M. Bergeret, being a man of delicacy, turned the paper round on the back of the seat.
“Well,” said M. Lantaigne in a morose voice, “do you like the look of what you see there, and do you think it can last long?”
“What do you mean?” asked M. Bergeret. “Are you referring to the parliamentary scandals? But let us first ask what a scandal really is. A scandal is the effect that usually results from the revelation of some secret deed. For men don’t in general act furtively, save when they are doing something that runs counter to morality and public opinion. It is also noticeable that, although public scandals occur in every period and every nation, they happen most frequently when the Government is least skilled in dissimulation. It is also evident that state secrets are never well kept in a democracy. The number of people concerned, indeed, and the powerful party jealousies invite revelations, sometimes hushed up, sometimes startling. It should also be observed that the parliamentary system actually multiplies the number of those who betray trusts, by putting a crowd of people in a position where they can do it easily. Louis XIV was robbed by Fouquet on a large and splendid scale. But in our days, all the while the melancholy President, who had been chosen merely as a creditable figure-head, confronted the chastened departments with the mute countenance of a bearded Minerva, he was distributing largesse at the Palais Bourbon at a rate past checking. In itself this was no great evil, for every Government always has a number of needy folks hanging about it, and it is too much to demand of human nature to ask that they shall all be honest. Besides, what these paltry thieves have taken is very little in comparison with what our honest administration wastes every hour of the day. One point alone should be observed, for it is of primary importance. The revenue farmers of olden days, this Pauquet de Sainte-Croix, for instance, who in the time of Louis XV heaped up the wealth of the province in the very mansion where I now live ‘in the third room,’ those shameless plunderers robbed their nation and their king without being in collusion with any of their country’s enemies. Now, on the contrary, our parliamentary sharks are betraying France to a foreign power, Finance, to wit. For it is true that Finance is to-day one of the Powers of Europe, and of her it may be said, as was formerly said of the Church, that among the nations she remains a splendid alien. Our representatives, whom she buys over, are not only robbers but traitors. And, in truth, they rob and betray in paltry, huckstering fashion. Each one in himself is merely an object of pity: it is their rapid swarming that alarms me.
“Meanwhile the honourable M. Laprat-Teulet is at Mazas! He was taken there on the morning of the very day on which he was due here to preside over the Social Defence League banquet. This arrest, which was carried out on the day after the vote that authorised the prosecution, has taken M. Worms-Clavelin completely by surprise. He had arranged for M. Dellion to preside at the banquet, since his integrity, guaranteed by inherited wealth and by forty years of commercial prosperity, is universally respected. Though the préfet deplores the fact that the most prominent officials of the Republic are continually subject to suspicion, yet, at the same time, he congratulates himself on the loyalty of their constituents, who remain true to the established system, even when it seems the general wish to bring it into disrepute. He declares, in fact, that parliamentary episodes such as the one which has just occurred, even when they follow on others of the same kind, leave the working-classes of the department absolutely indifferent. And M. Worms-Clavelin is quite right: he is by no means exaggerating the phlegmatic calm of these classes, which seem no longer capable of surprise. The herd of nobodies read in the newspapers that Senator Laprat-Teulet has been sent to solitary confinement; they manifest no surprise at the news, and they would have received with the same phlegm the information that he had been sent as ambassador to some foreign court. It is even probable that, if the arm of justice sends him back to parliamentary life, M. Laprat-Teulet will sit next year on the budget commission. There is, at any rate, no doubt whatever that at the end of his sentence he will be re-elected.”
The abbé here interrupted M. Bergeret.
“There, Monsieur Bergeret, you put your finger on the weak point; there you make the void to echo. The public is becoming used to the spectacle of wrong-doing and is losing the power to discriminate between good and evil. That’s where the danger lies. Now one public scandal after another arises, only to be at once hushed up. Under the Monarchy and the Empire there was such a thing as public opinion; there is none to-day. This nation, once so high-spirited and generous, has suddenly become incapable of either hatred or love, of either admiration or scorn.”
“Like you,” said M. Bergeret, “I have been struck by this change and I have sought in vain for the causes of it. We read in many Chinese fables of a very ugly spirit, of lumpish gait, but subtle mind, who loves to play pranks. He makes his way by night into inhabited houses, then opening a sleeper’s brain, as though it were a box, he takes out the brain, puts another in its place and softly closes the skull. He takes infinite delight in passing thus from house to house, interchanging brains as he goes, and when, at dawn, this tricksy elf has returned to his temple, the mandarin awakes with the mind of a courtesan, and the young girl with the dreams of a hardened opium-eater. Some spirit of this sort must assuredly have been busy bartering French brains for those of some tame, spiritless people, who drag out a melancholy existence without rising to the height of a new desire, indifferent alike to justice and injustice. For, indeed, we are no longer at all like ourselves.”
Stopping suddenly, M. Bergeret shrugged his shoulders. Then he went on, in a tone of gentle sadness:
“Yet, it is the effect of age and the sign of a certain wisdom. Infancy is the age of awe and wonder; youth, of fiery revolt. It is the mere passing of the years that has brought us this mood of peaceful indifference: I ought to have understood it better. Our condition of mind, at any rate, assures us both internal and external peace.”