Hence there have been strange changes of fortune. A man who arrived without a farthing, sold for sixpence a cigar he had been given, bought chocolate with the sixpence, resold it at 1,000 per cent., and, continually bargaining, always turning over his money with increased profit, has succeeded in this way in amassing a capital. I have several times come across this brilliant trader on the slopes at nightfall, when he believed himself alone. Leaning forward on his hands, he was contemplating his greasy handkerchief stretched out on the grass, covered with little piles of silver. Another, who was scullion in a drinking-booth, has taken to writing poems; at the Saturday concerts in No. 7 he sings them to well-known airs, amid universal applause. A man named Tarbouriech, a farmer from the Agen district, has made himself graving tools and carves pebbles for French and Bavarian customers. He gets a mark for each carving, and can thus from time to time buy himself a supplementary loaf. He is a real decorative artist, a good sculptor, and he did not know it.
As I lounge in the last rays of sunshine, I admire the spontaneous manifestation of creative energy. I am astonished at the superabundance of talents in so restricted a group. Yet there is a sadness in the sight of this poor primitive city which has set itself to sprout upon the levelled bed of servile equality.
Everything betrays the stimulus of hunger. Hunger is here the universal mother of artistic, commercial, and industrial inventions; it even induces devotion to the collectivity, for the performance of a public service commonly secures an extra ration. Work or starve, such is the rule. Each one makes his plans, exercises his ingenuity, does the best for himself. The aim is simple: not to die of hunger, to keep oneself going, if possible to improve in appearance and to grow fat. Some, too, having filled their stomachs, try to line their pockets. The strong try to get the better of the weak; the cunning, of the stupid; those who know a little German, of those who know none at all. Hence arises extreme inequality, tangible, crying inequality, shown by the cheeks, the eyes, the gait—the inequality between those who are hungry and those who are fed. Here is one running upstairs, happy, and lively as a cricket, for he has eaten his fill. Unashamedly he overtakes and passes a poor devil, a man quite well off in civil life, but who has had a visit from the body stripper when lying in a swoon on the field of battle; he makes his way up with great difficulty, breathless, shaky, clinging to the banister, finding the flight of stairs interminable.
Sad thoughts assail me as I walk. This battle without rifles or artillery, exempt from immediate risk of death, baser than war because it is more hypocritical, more crafty, and carried on under the Christian ægis—is it not life itself? Is not life immoral in its very essence?
For, after all, one must live. First of all, one must live. Now, here it is clear that there is not enough food to go round. What then? Then the field is open for the craftiest and the boldest. Let us suppose that there are twenty bold men among the thousand prisoners. From the lean corpse of our cow they have cut their large share, the lion’s share; now it is the turn of the little jackals to divide up what remains. Let us suppose that one of these “lions” has a conscience. Let us suppose that his mind is influenced by the morality of the gospels or by socialist ideas. Is he to sacrifice his average share, the share requisite to keep him in good health, because the others, nine hundred and eighty in the thousand, have nothing but a famine ration, and can have nothing else, whatever he may do? Ought he to make up his mind, as an act of goodwill, and knowing that the general regimen will be no whit bettered, to accept malnutrition for himself, to accept the permanent ruin of his health? Christ, where are your beatitudes? Will the determinism of the body ever be overcome? Will your reign, your city of justice, ever be established upon this dreary planet? But if the world continues, and if the general supply of goods should happen to become as greatly restricted as it is within the limits of our fortress, I shall be sorry for the city of the just. Let the twenty “lions,” from virtuous motives, tie up their jaws, let us suppose that there are one thousand ascetics in place of nine hundred and eighty, the stew will be little thicker.
The electric bell, its jarring note issuing from all the doorways, breaks in upon these grey reflections, as much the outcome, perhaps, of personal discouragement as of the realities of the situation. It is five o’clock. In a twinkling the ants disappear into the under ways.
In kitchen No. 22, Dutrex, Durupt, and the three cooks are standing round the vice. Half a gruyère cheese is fixed in it. This is the entire dinner; each one of our four hundred and eighty men, those fed from the first of the three kitchens, will have to be satisfied this evening with the four hundred and eightieth part of this half cheese. Devèse is usually responsible for the serious task of cutting up the cheese. He is an expert, being accustomed every day in Paris to serve out large quantities of ham, saveloy, and galantine. Unfortunately our cook-butcher is confined to bed in the hospital casemate with a sore throat. Dutrex has therefore asked little Lambert, Maître Lambert, Lambert the Good, to do the cutting up.
The great kitchen knife passes busily through the hard, white curd. The usher of Saint-Joseph-de-Tinée holds the knife in both hands and presses on it with all his weight. Beads of perspiration are standing on his besmirched forehead; his goggle eyes dilate; the ruddy skin of his face, downy with sparse golden hairs, is deeply wrinkled. He sweats as only a thoroughly good fellow, a man who puts all his will into his work, can sweat. Bouquet and Pailloux look on indifferently. Durupt, who becomes absorbed in the most trifling matters as if they were affairs of state, gravely counts the slices and arranges them on the right-hand corner of the kitchen table in piles of ten. Dutrex has assumed his service manner. He stands stiffly upright at the left corner; his moustache is brushed away from his lips, his eye is severe, he holds his check-list. “Lambert, cut more equal slices!”
“Corporal Dutrex, I am doing my best, as you see; it is very difficult.”
“I know it. Durupt, you will give an extra piece to the rooms whose share is obviously too small.”