M. Mazure hastily thrust Le Phare into his pocket and looked askance at the voluminous foreign journal, wherein he could claim no little thing of his own. M. Bergeret accepted it and applied himself as conscientiously to construing the text as though it were one of those books of the Æneid from which he was compiling his “Virgilius Nauticus.” “The manners of our neighbours,” he presently said, “are as usual more interesting to a student of human nature than their politics. I read that they are seriously concerned about the ethical teaching of their kinematography, and they have appointed a film censor, the deputy T. P. O’Connor.”
“I think I have heard speak of him over there,” interrupted M. de Terremondre; “they call him, familiarly, Tépé.”
“A mysterious name,” said M. Bergeret, “but manifestly not abusive, and that of itself is a high honour. History records few nicknames that do not revile. And if the deputy O’Connor, or Tépé, can successfully acquit himself of his present functions he will be indeed an ornament to history, a saint of the Positivist Calendar, which is no doubt less glorious than the Roman, but more exclusive.”
“Talking of Roman saints,” broke in M. Mazure, “the Abbé Lantaigne has been spreading it abroad that you called Joan of Arc a mascot.”
“By way of argument merely,” said M. Bergeret, “not of epigram. The Abbé and I were discussing theology, about which I never permit myself to be facetious.”
“But what of Tépé and his censorial functions?” asked M. de Terremondre.
“They are extremely delicate,” replied M. Bergeret, “and offer pitfalls to a censor with a velleity for nice distinctions. Thus I read that this one has already distinguished, and distinguished con allegrezza, between romantic crime and realistic crime, between murder in Mexico and murder in Mile End (which I take to be a suburb of London). He has distinguished between ‘guilty love’ and ‘the pursuit of lust.’ He has distinguished between a lightly-clad lady swimming and the same lady at rest. Surely a man gifted with so exquisite a discrimination is wasted in rude practical life. He should have been a metaphysician.”
“Well, I,” confessed M. de Terremondre, “am no metaphysician, and it seems to me murder is murder all the world over.”
“Pardon me,” said M. Bergeret, “but there, I think, your Tépé is quite right. Murder is murder all the world over if you are on the spot. But if you are at a sufficient distance from it in space or time, it may present itself as a thrilling adventure. Thus the Mexican film censor will be right in prohibiting films of murder in Mexico, and not wrong in admitting those of murder in Mile End. Where would tragedy be without murder? We enjoy the murders of Julius Cæsar or of Duncan because they are remote; they gratify the primeval passion for blood in us without a sense of risk. But we could not tolerate a play or a picture of yesterday’s murder next door, because we think it might happen to ourselves. Remember that murder was long esteemed in our human societies as an energetic action, and in our manners and in our institutions there still subsist traces of this antique esteem. And that is why I approve the English film censor for treating with a wise indulgence one of the most venerable of our human admirations. He gratifies it under conditions of remoteness that deprive bloodshed of its reality while conserving its artistic verisimilitude.”