THE BRAWLER
At the time of the great military maneuvers of September, 1913, Viviers
was an important center of the operations. All the district was
brightened with a swarming of red and blue and with martial ardor.
Alone and systematically, Brisbille was the reviler. From the top of
Chestnut Hill, where we were watching a strategical display, he pointed
at the military mass. "Maneuvers, do they call them? I could die of
laughing! The red caps have dug trenches and the white-band caps have
bunged 'em up again. Take away the War Office, and you've only kids'
games left."
"It's war!" explained an influential military correspondent, who was
standing by.
Then the journalist talked with a colleague about the Russians.
"The Russians!" Brisbille broke in; "when they've formed a
republic----"
"He's a simpleton," said the journalist, smiling.
The inebriate jumped astride his hobby horse. "War me no war, it's all
lunacy! And look, look--look at those red trousers that you can see
miles away! They must do it on purpose for soldiers to be killed, that
they don't dress 'em in the color of nothing at all!"
A lady could not help breaking in here: "What?" Change our little
soldiers' red trousers? Impossible! There's no good reason for it.
They would never consent! They would rebel."
"Egad!" said a young officer; "why we should all throw up our
commissions! And any way, the red trousers are not the danger one
thinks. If they were as visible as all that, the High Command would
have noticed it and would have taken steps--just for field service, and
without interfering with the parade uniform!"
The regimental sergeant-major cut the discussion short as he turned to
Brisbille with vibrant scorn and said, "When the Day of Revenge comes,
_we_ shall have to be there to defend _you_!"
And Brisbille only uttered a shapeless reply, for the sergeant-major
was an athlete, and gifted with a bad temper, especially when others
were present.
The castle was quartering a Staff. Hunting parties were given for the
occasion in the manorial demesne, and passing processions of bedizened
guests were seen. Among the generals and nobles shone an Austrian
prince of the blood royal, who bore one of the great names in the
Almanach de Gotha, and who was officially in France to follow the
military operations.
The presence of the Baroness's semi-Imperial guest caused a great
impression of historic glamour to hover over the country. His name was
repeated; his windows were pointed out in the middle of the principal
front, and one thought himself lucky if he saw the curtains moving.
Many families of poor people detached themselves from their quarters in
the evenings to take up positions before the wall behind which he was.
Marie and I, we were close to him twice.
One evening after dinner, we met him as one meets any passer-by among
the rest. He was walking alone, covered by a great gray waterproof.
His felt hat was adorned with a short feather. He displayed the
characteristic features of his race--a long turned-down nose and a
receding chin.
When he had gone by, Marie and I said, both at the same time, and a
little dazzled, "An eagle!"
We saw him again at the end of a stag-hunt. They had driven a stag
into the Morteuil forest. The _mort_ took place in a clearing in the
park, near the outer wall. The Baroness, who always thought of the
townsfolk, had ordered the little gate to be opened which gives into
this part of the demesne, so that the public could be present at the
spectacle.
It was imperious and pompous. The scene one entered, on leaving the
sunny fields and passing through the gate, was a huge circle of dark
foliage in the heart of the ancient forest. At first, one saw only the
majestic summits of mountainous trees, like peaks and globes lost amid
the heavens, which on all sides overhung the clearing and bathed it in
twilight almost green.
In this lordly solemnity of nature, down among the grass, moss and dead
wood, there flowed a contracted but brilliant concourse around the
final preparations for the execution of the stag.
The animal was kneeling on the ground, weak and overwhelmed. We
pressed round, and eyes were thrust forward between heads and shoulders
to see him. One could make out the gray thicket of his antlers, his
great lolling tongue, and the enormous throb of his heart, agitating
his exhausted body. A little wounded fawn clung to him, bleeding
abundantly, flowing like a spring.
Round about it the ceremony was arranged in several circles. The
beaters, in ranks, made a glaring red patch in the moist green
atmosphere. The hunters, men and women, all dismounted, in scarlet
coats and black hats, crowded together. Apart, the saddle and tackle
horses snorted, with creaking of leather and jingle of metal. Kept at
a respectful distance by a rope extended hastily on posts, the
inquisitive crowd flowed and increased every instant.
The blood which issued from the little fawn made a widening pool, and
one saw the ladies of the hunt, who came to look as near as possible,
pluck up their habits so that they would not tread in it. The sight of
the great stag crushed by weariness, gradually drooping his branching
head, tormented by the howls of the hounds which the whipper-in held
back with difficulty, and that of the little one, cowering beside him
and dying with gaping throat, would have been touching had one given
way to sentiment.
I noticed that the imminent slaying of the stag excited a certain
curious fever. Around me the women and young girls especially elbowed
and wriggled their way to the front, and shuddered, and were glad.
They cut the throats of the beasts, the big and the little, amid
absolute and religious silence, the silence of a sacrament. Madame
Lacaille vibrated from head to foot. Marie was calm, but there was a
gleam in her eyes; and little Marthe, who was hanging on to me, dug her
nails into my arm. The prince was prominent on our side, watching the
last act of the run. He had remained in the saddle. He was more
splendidly red than the others--empurpled, it seemed, by reflections
from a throne. He spoke in a loud voice, like one who is accustomed to
govern and likes to discourse; and his outline had the very form of
bidding. He expressed himself admirably in our language, of which he
knew the intimate graduations. I heard him saying, "These great
maneuvers, after all, they're a sham. It's music-hall war, directed by
scene-shifters. Hunting's better, because there's blood. We get too
much unaccustomed to blood, in our prosaic, humanitarian, and bleating
age. Ah, as long as the nations love hunting, I shall not despair of
them!"
Just then, the crash of the horns and the thunder of the pack released
drowned all other sounds. The prince, erect in his stirrups, and
raising his proud head and his tawny mustache above the bloody and
cringing mob of the hounds, expanded his nostrils and seemed to sniff a
battlefield.
The next day, when a few of us were chatting together in the street
near the sunken post where the old jam-pot lies, Benoît came up, full
of a tale to tell. Naturally it was about the prince. Benoît was
dejected and his lips were drawn and trembling. "He's killed a bear!"
said he, with glittering eye; "you should have seen it, ah! a tame
bear, of course. Listen--he was coming back from hunting with the
Marquis and Mademoiselle Berthe and some people behind. And he comes
on a wandering showman with a performing bear. A simpleton with long
black hair like feathers, and a bear that sat on its rump and did
little tricks and wore a belt. The prince had got his gun. I don't
know how it came about but the prince he got an idea. He said, 'I'd
like to kill that bear, as I do in my own hunting. Tell me, my good
fellow, how much shall I pay you for firing at the beast? You'll not
be a loser, I promise you.' The simpleton began to tremble and lift
his arms up in the air. He loved his bear! 'But my bear's the same as
my brother!' he says. Then do you know what the Marquis of Monthyon
did? He just simply took out his purse and opened it and put it under
the chap's nose; and all the smart hunting folk they laughed to see how
the simpleton changed when he saw all those bank notes. And naturally
he ended by nodding that it was a bargain, and he'd even seen so many
of the rustlers that he turned from crying to laughing! Then the
prince loaded his gun at ten paces from the bear and killed it with one
shot, my boy; just when he was rocking left and right, and sitting up
like a man. You ought to have seen it! There weren't a lot there; but
_I_ was there!"
The story made an impression. No one spoke at first. Then some one
risked the opinion. "No doubt they do things like that in Hungary or
Bohemia, or where he reigns. You wouldn't see it here," he added,
innocently.
"He's from Austria," Tudor corrected.
"Yes," muttered Crillon, "but whether he's Austrian or whether he's
Bohemian or Hungarian, he's a grandee, so he's got the right to do what
he likes, eh?"
Eudo looked as if he would intervene at this point and was seeking
words. (Not long before that he had had the queer notion of sheltering
and nursing a crippled hind that had escaped from a previous run, and
his act had given great displeasure in high places.) So as soon as he
opened his mouth we made him shut it. The idea of Eudo in judgment on
princes!
And the rest lowered their heads and nodded and murmured, "Yes, he's a
grandee."
And the little phrase spread abroad, timidly and obscurely.
* * * * * *
When All Saints' Day came round, many of the distinguished visitors at
the castle were still there. Every year that festival gives us
occasion for an historical ceremony on the grand scale. At two o'clock
all the townsfolk that matter gather with bunches of flowers on the
esplanade or in front of the cemetery half-way up Chestnut Hill, for
the ceremony and an open air service.
Early in the afternoon I betook myself with Marie to the scene. I put
on a fancy waistcoat of black and white check and my new patent leather
boots, which make me look at them. It is fine weather on this Sunday
of Sundays, and the bells are ringing. Everywhere the hurrying crowd
climbs the hill--peasants in flat caps, working families in their best
clothes, young girls with faces white and glossy as the bridal satin
which is the color of their thoughts, young men carrying jars of
flowers. All these appear on the esplanade, where graying lime trees
are also in assembly. Children are sitting on the ground.
Monsieur Joseph Bonéas, in black, with his supremely distinguished air,
goes by holding his mother's arm. I bow deeply to them. He points at
the unfolding spectacle as he passes and says, "It is our race's
festival."
The words made me look more seriously at the scene before my eyes--all
this tranquil and contemplative stir in the heart of festive nature.
Reflection and the vexations of my life have mellowed my mind. The
idea at last becomes clear in my brain of an entirety, an immense
multitude in space, and infinite in time, a multitude of which I am an
integral part, which has shaped me in its image, which continues to
keep me like it, and carries me along its control; my own people.
Baroness Grille, in the riding habit that she almost always wears when
mixing with the people, is standing near the imposing entry to the
cemetery. Monsieur the Marquis of Monthyon is holding aloft his
stately presence, his handsome and energetic face. Solid and sporting,
with dazzling shirt cuffs and fine ebon-black shoes, he parades a
smile. There is an M.P. too, a former Minister, very assiduous, who
chats with the old duke. There are the Messrs. Gozlan and famous
people whose names one does not know. Members of the Institute of the
great learned associations, or people fabulously wealthy.
Not far from these groups, which are divided from the rest by a scarlet
barrier of beaters and the flashing chain of their slung horns, arises
Monsieur Fontan. The huge merchant and café-owner occupies an
intermediate and isolated place between principals and people. His
face is disposed in fat white tiers, like a Buddha's belly.
Monumentally motionless he says nothing at all, but he tranquilly spits
all around him. He radiates saliva.
And for this ceremony, which seems like an apotheosis, all the notables
of our quarter are gathered together, as well as those of the other
quarter, who seem different and are similar.
We elbow the ordinary types. Apolline goes crabwise. She is in new
things, and has sprinkled Eau-de-Cologne on her skin; her eye is
bright; her face well-polished; her ears richly adorned. She is always
rather dirty, and her wrists might be branches, but she has cotton
gloves. There are some shadows in the picture, for Brisbille has come
with his crony, Termite, so that his offensive and untidy presence may
be a protest. There is another blot--a working man's wife, who speaks
at their meetings; people point at her. "What's that woman doing
here?"
"She doesn't believe in God," says some one.
"Ah," says a mother standing by, "that's because she has no children."
"Yes, she's got two."
"Then," says the poor woman, "it's because they've never been ill."
Here is little Antoinette and the old priest is holding her hand. She
must be fifteen or sixteen years old by now, and she has not grown--or,
at least, one has not noticed it. Father Piot, always white, gentle
and murmurous, has shrunk a little; more and more he leans towards the
tomb. Both of them proceed in tiny steps.
"They're going to cure her, it seems. They're seeing to it seriously."
"Yes--the extraordinary secret remedy they say they're going to try."
"No, it's not that now. It's the new doctor who's come to live here,
and he says, they say, that he's going to see about it."
"Poor little angel!"
The almost blind child, whose Christian name alone one knows, and whose
health is the object of so much solicitude, goes stiffly by, as if she
were dumb also, and deaf to all the prayers that go on with her.
After the service some one comes forward and begins to speak. He is an
old man, an officer of the Legion of Honor; his voice is weak but his
face noble.
He speaks of the Dead, whose day this is. He explains to us that we
are not separated from them; not only by reason of the future life and
our sacred creeds, but because our life on earth must be purely and
simply a continuation of theirs. We must do as they did, and believe
what they believed, else shall we fall into error and utopianism. We
are all linked to each other and with the past; we are bound together
by an entirety of traditions and precepts. Our normal destiny, so
adequate to our nature, must be allowed to fulfill itself along the
indicated path, without hearkening to the temptations of novelty, of
hate, of envy--of envy above all, that social cancer, that enemy of the
great civic virtue--Discipline.
He ceases. The echo of the great magnificent words floats in the
silence. Everybody does not understand all that has just been said;
but all have a deep impression that the text is one of simplicity, of
moderation, of obedience, and foreheads move altogether in the breath
of the phrases like a field in the breeze.
"Yes," says Crillon, pensively, "he speaks to confection, that
gentleman. All that one thinks about, you can see it come out of his
mouth. Common sense and reverence, we're attached to 'em by
something."
"We are attached to them by orderliness," says Joseph Bonéas.
"The proof that it's the truth," Crillon urges, "is that it's in the
dissertions of everybody."
"To be sure!" says Benoît, going a bit farther, "since everybody says
it, and it's become a general repetition!"
The good old priest, in the center of an attentive circle, is
unstringing a few observations. "Er, hem," he says, "one should not
blaspheme. Ah, if there were not a good God, there would be many
things to say; but so long as there is a good God, all that happens is
adorable, as Monseigneur said. We shall make things better, certainly.
Poverty and public calamities and war, we shall change all that, we
shall set those things to rights, er, hem! But let us alone, above
all, and don't concern yourselves with it--you would spoil everything,
my children. _We_ shall do all that, but not immediately."
"Quite so, quite so," we say in chorus.
"Can we be happy all at once," the old man goes on; "change misery into
joy, and poverty into riches? Come now, it's not possible, and I'll
tell you why; if it had been as easy as all that, it would have been
done already, wouldn't it?"
The bells begin to ring. The four strokes of the hour are just falling
from the steeple which the rising mists touch already, though the
evening makes use of it last of all; and just then one would say that
the church is beginning to talk even while it is singing.
The important people get onto their horses or into their carriages and
go away--a cavalcade where uniforms gleam and gold glitters. We can
see the procession of the potentates of the day outlined on the crest
of the hill which is full of our dead. They climb and disappear, one
by one. _Our_ way is downward; but we form--they above and we
below--one and the same mass, all visible together.
"It's fine!" says Marie, "it looks as if they were galloping over us!"
They are the shining vanguard that protects us, the great eternal
framework which upholds our country, the forces of the mighty past
which illuminate it and protect it against enemies and revolutions.
And we, we are all alike, in spite of our different minds; alike in the
greatness of our common interests and even in the littleness of our
personal aims. I have become increasingly conscious of this close
concord of the masses beneath a huge and respect-inspiring hierarchy.
It permits a sort of lofty consolation and is exactly adapted to a life
like mine. This evening, by the light of the setting sun, I see it and
read it and admire it.
All together we go down by the fields where tranquil corn is growing,
by the gardens and orchards where homely trees are making ready their
offerings--the scented blossom which lends, the fruit which gives
itself. They form an immense plain, sloping and darkling, with brown
undulations under the blue which now alone is becoming green. A little
girl, who has come from the spring, puts down her bucket and stands at
the roadside like a post, looking with all her eyes. She looks at the
marching multitude with beaming curiosity. Her littleness embraces
that immensity, because it is all a part of Order. A peasant who has
stuck to his work in spite of the festival and is bent over the deep
shadows of his field, raises himself from the earth which is so like
him, and turns towards the golden sun the shining monstrance of his
face.
* * * * * *
But what is this--this sort of madman, who stands in the middle of the
road and looks as if, all by himself, he would bar the crowd's passage?
We recognize Brisbille, swaying tipsily in the twilight. There is an
eddy and a muttering in the flow.
"D'you want to know where all that's leading you?" he roars, and
nothing more can be heard but his voice. "It's leading you to hell!
It's the old rotten society, with the profiteering of all them that
can, and the stupidity of the rest! To hell, I tell you! To-morrow
look out for yourselves! To-morrow!"
A woman's voice cries from out of the shadows, in a sort of scuffle,
"Be quiet, wicked man! You've no right to frighten folks!"
But the drunkard continues to shout full-throated, "To-morrow!
To-morrow! D'you think things will always go on like that? You're fit
for killing! To hell!"
Some people are impressed and disappear into the evening. Those who
are marking time around the obscure fanatic are growling, "He's not
only bad, he's mad, the dirty beast!"
"It's disgraceful," says the young curate.
Brisbille goes up to him. "_You_ tell me, then, _you_, what'll happen
very soon--Jesuit, puppet, land-shark! We know you, you and your
filthy, poisonous trade!"
"_Say that again_!"
It was I who said that. Leaving Marie's arm instinctively I sprang
forward and planted myself before the sinister person. After the
horrified murmur which followed the insult, a great silence had fallen
on the scene.
Astounded, and his face suddenly filling with fear, Brisbille stumbles
and beats a retreat.
The crowd regains confidence, and laughs, and congratulates me, and
reviles the back of the man who is sinking in the stream.
"You were fine!" Marie said to me when I took her arm again, slightly
trembling.
I returned home elated by my energetic act, still all of a tremor,
proud and happy. I have obeyed the prompting of my blood. It was the
great ancestral instinct which made me clench my fists and throw myself
bodily, like a weapon, upon the enemy of all.
After dinner, naturally, I went to the military tattoo, at which, by an
unpardonable indifference, I have not regularly been present, although
these patriotic demonstrations have been organized by Monsieur Joseph
Bonéas and his League of Avengers. A long-drawn shudder, shrill and
sonorous, took flight through the main streets, filling the spectators
and especially the young folks, with enthusiasm for the great and
glorious deeds of the future. And Pétrolus, in the front row of the
crowd, was striding along in the crimson glow of the fairy-lamps--clad
in a visionary uniform of red.
I remember that I talked a great deal that evening in our quarter, and
then in the house. Our quarter is something like all towns, something
like all country-sides, something like it is everywhere--it is a
foreshortened picture of all societies in the old universe, as my life
is a picture of life.