WHEREIN WE LEARN THAT SOPHAR, NO LESS EAGER FOR GOLD THAN
MAMMON, LOOKED UPON HIS HEAVENLY HOME LESS FAVOURABLY THAN
UPON FRANCE, A COUNTRY BLESSED WITH A SAVINGS BANK AND LOAN
DEPARTMENTS, AND WHEREIN WE SEE, YET ONCE AGAIN, THAT WHOSO
IS POSSESSED OF THIS WORLD'S GOODS FEARS THE EVIL EFFECTS OF
ANY CHANGE
Meanwhile Arcade led a life of obscure toil. He worked at a printer's in
the Rue St. Benoît, and lived in an attic in the Rue Mouffetard. His
comrades having gone on strike, he left the workroom and devoted his day
to his propaganda. So successful was he that he won over to the side of
revolt fifty thousand of those guardian angels who, as Zita had
surmised, were discontented with their condition and imbued with the
spirit of the times. But lacking money, he lacked liberty, and could not
employ his time as he wished in instructing the sons of Heaven. So, too,
Prince Istar, hampered by want of funds, manufactured fewer bombs than
were needed, and these less fine. Of course he prepared a good many
small pocket machines. He had filled Théophile's rooms with them, and
not a day passed but he forgot some and left them lying about on the
seats in various cafés. But a nice bomb, easily handled and capable of
destroying many big mansions, cost him from twenty to twenty-five
thousand francs; and Prince Istar only possessed two of this kind.
Equally bent on procuring funds, Arcade and Istar both went to make a
request for money from a celebrated financier named Max Everdingen, who,
as everyone knows, is the managing director of the biggest banking
concern in France and indeed in the whole world. What is not so well
known is that Max Everdingen was not born of woman, but is a fallen
angel. Nevertheless, such is the truth. In Heaven he was named Sophar,
and guarded the treasures of Ialdabaoth, a great collector of gold and
precious stones. In the exercise of this function Sophar contracted a
love of riches which could not be satisfied in a state of society in
which banks and stock exchanges are alike unknown. His heart flamed with
an ardent love for the god of the Hebrews to whom he remained faithful
during a long course of centuries. But at the commencement of the
twentieth century of the Christian era, casting his eyes down from the
height of the firmament upon France, he saw that this country, under the
name of a Republic, was constituted as a plutocracy and that, under the
appearance of a democratic government, high finance exercised sovereign
sway, untrammelled and unchecked.
Henceforth life in the Empyrean became intolerable to him. He longed for
France as for the promised land, and one day, bearing with him all the
precious stones he could carry, he descended to earth and established
himself in Paris. This angel of cupidity did good business there. Since
his materialisation his face had lost its celestial aspect; it
reproduced the Semitic type in all its purity, and one could admire the
lines and the puckers which wrinkle the faces of bankers and which are
to be seen in the money-changers of Quintin Matsys.
His beginnings were humble and his success amazing. He married an ugly
woman and they saw themselves reflected in their children as in a
mirror. Baron Max Everdingen's large mansion, which rears itself on the
heights of the Trocadéro, is crammed with the spoils of Christian
Europe.
The Baron received Arcade and Prince Istar in his study,--one of the
most modest rooms in his mansion. The ceiling is decorated with a fresco
of Tiepolo, taken from a Venetian palace. The bureau of the Regent,
Philip of Orleans, is in this room, which is full of cabinets,
show-cases, pictures, and statues.
Arcade allowed his gaze to wander over the walls.
"How comes it, my brother Sophar," said he, "that you, in spite of your
Jewish heart, obey so ill the commandment of the Lord your God who said:
'Thou shalt have no graven images'? for here I see an Apollo of Houdon's
and a Hebe of Lemoine's, and several busts by Caffieri. And, like
Solomon in his old age, O son of God, you set up in your dwelling-place
the idols of strange nations: for such are this Venus of Boucher, this
Jupiter of Rubens, and those nymphs that are indebted to Fragonard's
brush for the gooseberry jam which smears their gleaming limbs. And here
in this single show-case, Sophar, you keep the sceptre of St. Louis, six
hundred pearls of Marie Antoinette's broken necklace, the imperial
mantle of Charles V, the tiara wrought by Ghiberti for Pope Martin V,
the Colonna, Bonaparte's sword--and I know not what besides."
"Mere trifles," said Max Everdingen.
"My dear Baron," said Prince Istar, "you even possess the ring which
Charlemagne placed on a fairy's finger and which was thought to be lost.
But let us discuss the business on which we have come. My friend and I
have come to ask you for money."
"I can well believe it," replied Max Everdingen. "Everyone wants money,
but for different reasons. What do you want money for?"
Prince Istar replied simply:
"To stir up a revolution in France."
"In France!" repeated the Baron, "in France? Well, I shall give you no
money for that, you may be quite sure."
Arcade did not disguise the fact that he had expected greater liberality
and more generous help from a celestial brother.
"Our project," he said, "is a vast one. It embraces both Heaven and
Earth. It is settled in every detail. We shall first bring about a
social revolution in France, in Europe, on the whole planet; then we
shall carry war into the heavens, where we shall establish a peaceful
democracy. And to reduce the citadels of Heaven, to overturn the
mountain of God, to storm celestial Jerusalem, a vast army is needful,
enormous resources, formidable machines, and electrophores of a strength
yet unknown. It is our intention to commence with France."
"You are madmen!" exclaimed Baron Everdingen; "madmen and fools! Listen
to me. There is not one single reform to carry out in France. All is
perfect, finally settled, unchangeable. You hear?--unchangeable." And to
add force to his statement, Baron Everdingen banged his fist three times
on the Regent's bureau.
"Our points of view differ," said Arcade sweetly. "_I_ think, as does
Prince Istar, that everything should be changed in this country. But
what boots it to dispute the matter? Moreover, it is too late. We have
come to speak to you, O my brother Sophar, in the name of five hundred
thousand celestial spirits, all resolved to commence the universal
revolution to-morrow."
Baron Everdingen exclaimed that they were crazy, that he would not give
a _sou_, that it was both criminal and mad to attack the most admirable
thing in the world, the thing which renders earth more beautiful than
heaven--Finance. He was a poet and a prophet. His heart thrilled with
holy enthusiasm; he drew attention to the French Savings Bank, the
virtuous Savings Bank, that chaste and pure Savings Bank like unto the
Virgin of the Canticle who, issuing from the depths of the country in
rustic petticoat, bears to the robust and splendid Bank--her bridegroom,
who awaits her--the treasures of her love; and drew a picture of the
Bank, enriched with the gifts of its spouse, pouring on all the nations
of the world torrents of gold, which, of themselves, by a thousand
invisible channels return in still greater abundance to the blessed land
from which they sprung.
"By Deposit and Loan," he went on, "France has become the New Jerusalem,
shedding her glory over all the nations of Europe, and the Kings of the
Earth come to kiss her rosy feet. And that is what you would fain
destroy? You are both impious and sacrilegious."
Thus spoke the angel of finance. An invisible harp accompanied his
voice, and his eyes darted lightning.
Meanwhile Arcade, leaning carelessly against the Regent's bureau, spread
out under the Banker's eyes various ground-plans, underground-plans, and
sky-plans of Paris with red crosses indicating the points where bombs
should be simultaneously placed in cellars and catacombs, thrown on
public ways, and flung by a flotilla of aeroplanes. All the financial
establishments, and notably the Everdingen Bank and its branches, were
marked with red crosses.
The financier shrugged his shoulders.
"Nonsense! you are but wretches and vagabonds, shadowed by all the
police of the world. You are penniless. How can you manufacture all the
machines?"
By way of reply, Prince Istar drew from his pocket a small copper
cylinder, which he gracefully presented to Baron Everdingen.
"You see," said he, "this ordinary-looking box. It is only necessary to
let it fall on the ground immediately to reduce this mansion with its
inmates to a mass of smoking ashes, and to set a fire going which would
devour all the Trocadéro quarter. I have ten thousand like that, and I
make three dozen a day."
The financier asked the Cherub to replace the machine in his pocket, and
continued in a conciliatory tone:
"Listen to me, my friends. Go and start a revolution at once in Heaven,
and leave things alone in this country. I will sign a cheque for you.
You can procure all the material you need to attack celestial
Jerusalem."
And Baron Everdingen was already working up in his imagination a
magnificent deal in electrophores and war-material.