This brought the colour to his face; and I think, perhaps, that he might have become ashamed of the part he had played; but the women pushed in again, as they are so fond of doing. ‘Oh, M. le Maire, he does not deserve that you should lose your words upon him!’ they cried; ‘and, besides, is it likely he will pay any attention to you when he tries to stop even the bon Dieu?’
‘The bon Dieu!’ cried Jacques. ‘Why doesn't He clear the way for himself? Look here. I do not care one farthing for your bon Dieu. Here is mine; I carry him about with me.’ And he took a piece of a hundred sous out of his pocket (how had it got there?) ‘Vive l'argent’ he said. ‘You know it yourself, though you will not say so. There is no bon Dieu but money. With money you can do anything. L'argent c'est le bon Dieu.’
‘Be silent,’ I cried, ‘thou profane one!’ And the women were still more indignant than I. ‘We shall see, we shall see; when he is ill and would give his soul for something to wet his lips, his bon Dieu will not do much for him,’ cried one; and another said, clasping her hands with a shrill cry, ‘It is enough to make the dead rise out of their graves!’
‘The dead rise out of their graves!’ These words, though one has heard them before, took possession of my imagination. I saw the rude fellow go along the street as I went on, tossing the coin in his hand. One time it fell to the ground and rang upon the pavement, and he laughed more loudly as he picked it up. He was walking towards the sunset, and I too, at a distance after. The sky was full of rose-tinted clouds floating across the blue, floating high over the grey pinnacles of the Cathedral, and filling the long open line of the Rue St. Etienne down which he was going. As I crossed to my own house I caught him full against the light, in his blue blouse, tossing the big silver piece in the air, and heard him laugh and shout ‘Vive l'argent! This is the only bon Dieu.’ Though there are many people who live as if this were their sentiment, there are few who give it such brutal expression; but some of the people at the corner of the street laughed too. ‘Bravo, Jacques!’ they cried; and one said, ‘You are right, mon ami, the only god to trust in nowadays.’ ‘It is a short credo, M. le Maire,’ said another, who caught my eye. He saw I was displeased, this one, and his countenance changed at once.
‘Yes, Jean Pierre,’ I said, ‘it is worse than short—it is brutal. I hope no man who respects himself will ever countenance it. It is against the dignity of human nature, if nothing more.’
‘Ah, M. le Maire!’ cried a poor woman, one of the good ladies of the market, with entrenchments of baskets all round her, who had been walking my way; ‘ah, M. le Maire! did not I say true? it is enough to bring the dead out of their graves.’
‘That would be something to see,’ said Jean Pierre, with a laugh; ‘and I hope, ma bonne femme, that if you have any interest with them, you will entreat these gentlemen to appear before I go away.’
‘I do not like such jesting,’ said I. ‘The dead are very dead and will not disturb anybody, but even the prejudices of respectable persons ought to be respected. A ribald like Jacques counts for nothing, but I did not expect this from you.’
‘What would you, M. le Maire?’ he said, with a shrug of his shoulders. ‘We are made like that. I respect prejudices as you say. My wife is a good woman, she prays for two—but me! How can I tell that Jacques is not right after all? A grosse pièce of a hundred sous, one sees that, one knows what it can do—but for the other!’ He thrust up one shoulder to his ear, and turned up the palms of his hands.
‘It is our duty at all times to respect the convictions of others,’ I said, severely; and passed on to my own house, having no desire to encourage discussions at the street corner. A man in my position is obliged to be always mindful of the example he ought to set. But I had not yet done with this phrase, which had, as I have said, caught my ear and my imagination. My mother was in the great salle of the rez-de-chausée, as I passed, in altercation with a peasant who had just brought us in some loads of wood. There is often, it seems to me, a sort of refrain in conversation, which one catches everywhere as one comes and goes. Figure my astonishment when I heard from the lips of my good mother the same words with which that good-for-nothing Jacques Richard had made the profession of his brutal faith. ‘Go!’ she cried, in anger; ‘you are all the same. Money is your god. De grosses pièces, that is all you think of in these days.’