“War!” exclaimed M. Bergeret. “It is patent that great armaments only hinder that by aggravating the horrors of it and rendering it of doubtful issue for both combatants. As for bankruptcy, I foretold it the other day to Abbé Lantaigne, the principal of our high seminary, as we sat on a bench on the Mall. But you need not pin your faith on me. You have studied the history of the Lower Empire too deeply, my dear Aspertini, not to be perfectly aware that, in questions of national finance, there are mysterious resources which escape the scrutiny of political economists. A ruined nation may exist for five hundred years on robbery and extortion, and how is one to guess what a great people, out of its poverty, will manage to supply to its defenders in the way of cannon, muskets, bad bread, bad shoes, straw and oats?”
“This argument sounds plausible enough,” answered Aspertini. “Yet, with all due deference to your opinion, I believe I can already discern the dawn of universal peace.”
Then, in a sing-song voice, the kindly Neapolitan began to describe his hopes and dreams for the future, to the accompaniment of the heavy thumping of the chopper with which the youthful Euphémie was preparing a mince for M. Roux on the kitchen table just the other side of the wall.
“Do you remember, Monsieur Bergeret,” said Captain Aspertini, “the place in Don Quixote where Sancho complains of being obliged to endure a never-ending series of misfortunes and the ready-witted knight tells him that this protracted wretchedness is merely a sign that happiness is at hand? ‘For,’ says he, ‘fortune is a fickle jade and our troubles have already lasted so long that they must soon give place to good-luck.’ The law of change alone....”
The rest of these optimistic utterances was lost in the boiling over of the kettle of water, followed by the unearthly yells of Euphémie, as she fled in terror from her stove.
Then M. Bergeret’s mind, saddened by the sordid ugliness of his cramped life, fell to dreaming of a villa where, on white terraces overlooking the blue waters of a lake, he might hold peaceful converse with M. Roux and Captain Aspertini, amid the scent of myrtles, when the amorous moon rides high in a sky as clear as the glance of a god and as sweet as the breath of a goddess.
But he soon emerged from this dream and began once more to take part in the discussion.
“The results of war,” said he, “are quite incalculable. My good friend William Harrison writes to me that French scholarship has been despised in England since 1871, and that at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Dublin it is the fashion to ignore Maurice Raynouard’s text-book of archæology, though it would be more helpful to their students than any other similar work. But they refuse to learn from the vanquished. And in order that they may feel confidence in a professor when he speaks on the characteristics of the art of Ægina or on the origins of Greek pottery, it is considered necessary that he should belong to a nation which excels in the casting of cannon. Because Marshal Mac-Mahon was beaten in 1870 at Sedan and General Chanzy lost his army at the Maine in the same year, my colleague Maurice Raynouard is banished from Oxford in 1897. Such are the results of military inferiority, slow-moving and illogical, yet sure in their effects. And it is, alas, only too true that the fate of the Muses is settled by a sword-thrust.”
“My dear sir,” said Aspertini, “I am going to answer you with all the frankness permissible in a friend. Let us first grant that French thought circulates freely through the world, as it has always done. And although the archæological manual of your learned countryman Maurice Raynouard may not have found a place on the desks of the English Universities, yet your plays are acted in all the theatres of the world; the novels of Alphonse Daudet and of Émile Zola are translated into every language; the canvases of your painters adorn the galleries of two worlds; the achievements of your scientists win renown in every quarter of the globe. And if your soul no longer thrills the soul of the nations, if your voice no longer quickens the heart-beats of mankind, it is because you no longer choose to play the part of apostles of brotherhood and justice, it is because you no longer utter the holy words that bring strength and consolation; it is because France is no longer the lover of the human race, the comrade of the nations; it is because she no longer opens her hands to fling broadcast those seeds of liberty which once she scattered in such generous and sovereign fashion that for long years it seemed that every beautiful human idea was a French idea; it is because she is no longer the France of the philosophers and of the Revolution: in the garrets round the Panthéon and the Luxembourg there are no longer to be found young leaders, writing on deal tables night after night, with all the fire of youth, those pages which make the nations tremble and the despots grow pale with fear. Do not then complain that the glory which you cannot view without misgivings has passed away.
“Especially, do not say that your defeats are the sources of your misfortunes: say, rather, that they are the outcome of your faults. A nation suffers no more injury from a battle lost than a robust man suffers from a sword-scratch received in a duel. It is an injury that only produces a transient illness in the system, a perfectly curable weakness. To cure it, all that is needed is a little courage, skill and political good sense. The first act of policy, the most necessary and certainly the easiest, is to make the defeat yield all the military glory it is capable of producing. For in the true view of things, the glory of the vanquished equals that of the conquerors, and it is, in addition, the more moving spectacle. In order to make the best of a disaster it is desirable to fête the general and the army which has sustained it, and to blazon abroad all the beautiful incidents which prove the moral superiority of misfortune. Such incidents are to be found even in the most headlong retreats. From the very first moment, then, the defeated side ought to decorate, to embellish, to gild their defeat, and to distinguish it with unmistakably grand and beautiful symbols. In Livy it may be read how the Romans never failed to do this, and how they hung palms and wreaths on the swords broken at the battles of the Trebbia, of Trasimene and of Cannæ. Even the disastrous inaction of Fabius has been so extolled by them that, after the lapse of twenty-two centuries, we still stand amazed at the wisdom of the Cunctator, the Lingerer, as he was nicknamed. Yet, after all, he was nothing but an old fool. In this lies the great art of defeat.”