They had given him a grand public funeral, like they do victorious
soldiers who have added some dazzling pages to the glorious annals of
their country, who have restored courage to desponding heads and cast
over other nations the proud shadow of their country's flag, like a yoke
under which those went who were no longer to have a country, or liberty.
During a whole bright and calm night, when falling stars made people
think of unknown metamorphoses and the transmigration of souls, who
knows whether tall cavalry soldiers in their cuirasses and sitting as
motionless as statues on their horses, had watched by the dead man's
coffin, which was resting, covered with wreaths, under the porch of the
heroes, every stone of which is engraved with the name of a brave man,
and of a battle.
The whole town was in mourning, as if it had lost the only object that
had possession of its heart, and which it loved. The crowd went silently
and thoughtfully down the avenue of the _Champs Elysées_, and they
almost fought for the commemorative medals and the common portraits
which hawkers were selling, or climbed upon the stands which street boys
had erected here and there, and whence they could see over the heads of
the crowd. The _Place de la Concorde_ had something solemn about it,
with its circle of statues hung from head to foot with long crape
coverings, which looked in the distance like widows, weeping and
praying.
According to his last wish, Jean Ramel had been conveyed to the Pantheon
in the wretched paupers' hearse, which conveys them to the common grave
at the shambling trot of some thin and broken-winded horse.
That dreadful, black conveyance without any drapery, without plumes and
without flowers, which was followed by Ministers and deputies, by
several regiments with their bands, and their flags flying above the
helmets and the sabers, by children from the national schools, by
delegates from the provinces, and an innumerable crowd of men in
blouses, of women, of shop-keepers from every quarter, had a most
theatrical effect, and while standing on the steps of the Pantheon, at
the foot of the massive columns of the portico, the orators successively
discanted on his apotheosis, tried to make their voices predominate over
the noise, emphasized their pompous periods, and finished the
performance by a poor third act, which makes people yawn and gradually
empties the theater, people remembered who that man had been, on whom
such posthumous honors were being bestowed, and who was having such a
funeral: it was Jean Ramel.
Those three sonorous syllables called up a lionine head, with white hair
thrown back in disorder, like a mane, with features that looked as if
they had been cut out with a bill-hook, but which were so powerful, and
in which there lay such a flame of life, that one forgot their vulgarity
and ugliness; with black eyes under bushy eyebrows, which dilated and
flashed like lightning, now were veiled as if in tears and then were
filled with serene mildness, with a voice which now growled so as almost
to terrify its hearers, and which would have filled the hall of some
working men's club, full of the thick smoke from strong pipes without
being affected by it, and then would be soft, coaxing, persuasive and
unctuous like that of a priest who is holding out promises of Paradise,
or giving absolution for our sins.
He had had the good luck to be persecuted, to be in the eyes of the
people, the incarnation of that lying formula which appears on every
public edifice, of those three words of the _Golden Age_, which make
those who think, those who suffer and those who govern, smile somewhat
sadly, _Liberty, Fraternity, Equality_. Luck had been kind to him, had
sustained, had pushed him on by the shoulders, and had set him up on his
pedestal again when he had fallen down, like all idols do.
He spoke and he wrote, and always in order to announce the good news to
all the multitudes who suffered--no matter to what grade of society they
might belong--to hold out his hand to them and to defend them, to attack
the abuses of the _Code_--that book of injustice and severity--to speak
the truth boldly, even when it lashed his enemies as if it had been a
whip.
His books were like Gospels, which are read chapter by chapter, and
warmed the most despairing and the most sorrowing hearts, and brought
comfort, hope and dreams to each.
He had lived very modestly until the end, and appeared to spend nothing;
and he only kept one old servant, who spoke to him in the Basque
dialect.
That chaste philosopher, who had all his life long feared women's snares
and wiles, who had looked upon love as a luxury made only for the rich
and idle, which unsettles the brain and interferes with acuteness of
thought, had allowed himself to be caught like an ordinary man, late in
life, when his hair was white and his forehead deeply wrinkled.
It was not, however, as happens in the visions of solitary ascetics,
some strange queen or female magician, with stars in her eyes and
witchery in her voice, some loose woman who held up the symbolical lamp
immodestly, to light up her radiant nudity, and the pink and white
bouquet of her sweet-smelling skin, some woman in search of voluptuous
pleasures, whose lascivious appeals it is impossible for any man to
listen to, without being excited to the very depths of his being.
Neither a princess out of some fairy tale, nor a frail beauty who was an
expert in the art of reviving the ardor of old men, and of leading them
astray, nor a woman who was disgusted with her ideals, that always
turned out to be alike, and who dreamt of awakening the heart of one of
those men who suffer, who have afforded so much alleviation to human
misery, who seemed to be surrounded by a halo, and who never knew
anything but the true, the beautiful and the good.
It was only a little girl of twenty, who was as pretty as a wild flower,
who had a ringing laugh, white teeth, and a mind that was as spotless as
a new mirror, in which no figure has been reflected as yet.
He was in exile at the time for having given public expression to what
he thought, and he was living in an Italian village which was buried in
chestnut trees and situated on the shores of a lake that was narrow and
so transparent that it might have been taken for some nobleman's fish
pond that was like an emerald in a large park. The village consisted of
about twenty red-tiled houses. Several paths paved with flint led up the
side of the hill among the vines where the Madonna, full of grace and
goodness extended her indulgence.
For the first time in his life Ramel remarked that there were some lips
that were more desirable, more smiling than others, that there was hair
in which it must be delicious to bury the fingers like in fine silk, and
which it must be delightful to kiss, and that there were eyes which
contained an infinitude of caresses, and he had spelled right through
the eclogue, which at length revealed true happiness to him, and he had
had a child, a son, by her.
This was the only secret that Ramel jealously concealed, and which no
more than two or three of his oldest friends knew anything about, and
while he hesitated about spending twopence on himself, and went to the
Institute and to the Chamber of Deputies outside an omnibus, Pepa led
the happy life of a millionaire who is not frightened of the to-morrow,
and brought up her son like a little prince, with a tutor and three
servants, who had nothing to do but to look after him.
All that Ramel made went into his mistress's hands, and when he felt
that his last hour was approaching, and that there was no hope of his
recovery--in full possession of his faculties and joy in his dull
eyes--he gave his name to Pepa, and made her his lawful widow, in the
presence of all his friends. She inherited everything that her former
lover left behind, a considerable income from his share of the annual
profits on his books, and also his pension, which the State continued to
pay to her.
Little Ramel throve wonderfully amidst all this luxury, and gave free
scope to his instincts and his caprices, without his mother ever having
the courage to reprove him in the least, and he did not bear the
slightest resemblance to Jean Ramel.
Full of pranks, effeminate, a superfine dandy, and precociously vicious,
he suggested the idea of those pages at the Court of Florence, whom we
frequently meet with in _The Decameron_, and who were the playthings for
the idle hands and tips of the patrician ladies.
He was very ignorant and lived at a great rate, bet on races, and played
cards for heavy stakes with seasoned gamblers, old enough to be his
father. And it was distressing to hear this lad joke about the memory of
him whom he called _the old man_, and persecute his mother because of
the worship and adoration which she felt for Jean Ramel, whom she spoke
of as if he had become a demigod when he died, like in Roman theogony.
He would have liked altogether to have altered the arrangement of that
kind of sanctuary, the drawing-room, where Pepa kept some of her
husband's manuscripts, the furniture that he had most frequently used,
the bed on which he had died, his pens, his clothes and his weapons. And
one evening, not knowing how to dress himself up more originally than
the rest for a masked ball that stout Toinette Danicheff was going to
give as her house-warming, without saying a word to his mother, he took
down the Academician's dress, the sword and cocked hat that had belonged
to Jean Ramel, and put it on as if it had been a disguise on Shrove
Tuesday.
Slightly built and with thin arms and legs, the wide clothes hung on
him, and he was a comical sight with the embroidered skirt of his coat
sweeping the carpet, and his sword knocking against his heels. The
elbows and the collar were shiny and greasy from wear, for the _Master_
had worn it until it was threadbare, to avoid having to buy another, and
had never thought of replacing it.
He made a tremendous hit, and fair Liline Ablette laughed so at his
grimaces and his disguise, that that night she threw over Prince
Noureddin for him, although he had paid for her house, her horses and
everything else, and allowed her six thousand francs a month--£240--for
extras and pocket money.