WHEREIN WE SHALL SEE REVEALED A DARK AND SECRET MYSTERY AND
LEARN HOW IT COMES ABOUT THAT EMPIRES ARE OFTEN HURLED
AGAINST EMPIRES, AND RUIN FALLS ALIKE UPON THE VICTORS AND
THE VANQUISHED; AND THE WISE READER (IF SUCH THERE BE--WHICH
I DOUBT) WILL MEDITATE UPON THIS IMPORTANT UTTERANCE: "A WAR
IS A MATTER OF BUSINESS"
The Angels had dispersed. At the foot of the slopes at Meudon, seated on
the grass, Arcade and Zita watched the Seine flowing by the willows.
"In this world," said Arcade, "in this world, which we call a cosmos,
though it is but a microcosm, no thinking being can imagine that he is
able to destroy even one atom. At the utmost, all we can hope for is
that we shall succeed in modifying, here and there, the rhythm of some
group of atoms and the arrangement of certain cells. That, when one
thinks of it, must be the limit of our great enterprise. And when we
shall have set up the Contradictor in the place of Ialdabaoth, we shall
have done no more.... Zita, is the evil in the nature of things or in
their arrangement? That is what we ought to know. Zita, I am profoundly
troubled----"
"Arcade," replied Zita, "if to act we had to know the secret of Nature,
one would never act at all. And neither would one live--since to live is
to act. Arcade, is your resolution failing you already?"
Arcade assured the beautiful angel that he was resolved to plunge the
demiurge into eternal darkness.
A motor-car passed by on the road, followed by a long trail of dust. It
stopped before the two angels, and the hooked nose of Baron Everdingen
appeared at the window.
"Good morning, my celestial friends, good morning," said the capitalist.
"Sons of Heaven, I am pleased to meet you. I have a word of importance
to say to you. Do not remain idle--do not go to sleep. Arm! Arm! You may
be surprised by Ialdabaoth. You have a big war-fund. Employ it without
stint. I have just learnt that the Archangel Michael has given large
orders in Heaven for thunderbolts and arrows. If you take my advice you
will procure fifty thousand more electrophores. I will take the order.
Good day, angels. Long live the celestial country!"
And Baron Everdingen flew by the flowery shores of Louveciennes in the
company of a pretty actress.
"Is it true that they are taking up arms at the demiurge's?" asked
Arcade.
"It may be," replied Zita, "that up there another Baron Everdingen is
inciting to arms."
The guardian angel of young Maurice remained pensive for some moments.
Then he murmured:
"Can it be that we are the sport of financiers?"
"Pooh!" said the beautiful archangel. "War is a business. It has always
been a business."
Then they discussed at length the means of executing their immense
enterprise. Rejecting disdainfully the anarchistic proceedings of Prince
Istar, they conceived a formidable and sudden invasion of the kingdom of
Heaven by their enthusiastic and well-drilled troops.
Now Barattan, the innkeeper of La Jonchère, who had let the
entertainment-hall to the rebellious angels, was in the employ of the
secret police. In the reports he furnished to the Prefecture he
denounced the members of this secret meeting as meditating an attack on
a certain person whom they described as obtuse and cruel, and whom they
called _Alaballotte_. The agent believed this to be a pseudonym denoting
either the President of the Republic or the Republic itself. The
conspirators had unanimously given voice to threats against
_Alaballotte_, and one of them, a very dangerous individual, well-known
in anarchist circles, who had already several convictions against him
on account of writings and speeches of a seditious nature, and who was
known as Prince Istar or the _Quéroube_, had brandished a bomb of very
small calibre which seemed to contain a formidable machine. The other
conspirators were unknown to Barattan, notwithstanding the fact that he
frequented revolutionary circles. Many among them were very young men,
mere beardless youths. There were two who, it appeared, had spoken with
conspicuous vehemence; a certain Arcade, dwelling in the Rue St.
Jacques, and a woman of easy virtue called Zita, living at Montmartre,
both without visible means of subsistence.
The affair seemed sufficiently serious to the Prefect of Police to make
him think it necessary to confer without delay with the President of the
Council.
The Third Republic was then going through one of those climacteric
periods during which the French nation, enamoured of authority and
worshipping force, gave itself up for lost because it was not governed
enough, and clamoured loudly for a saviour. The President of the
Council, and Minister of Justice, was only too eager to be that
longed-for saviour. Still, for him to play that part it was first
necessary that there should be a danger to face. Thus the news of a plot
was highly welcome to him. He questioned the Prefect of Police on the
character and importance of the affair. The Prefect of Police explained
that the people seemed to have money, intelligence, and energy; but
that they talked too much and were too numerous to undertake secret and
concerted action. The Minister, leaning back in his arm-chair, pondered
on the matter. The Empire writing-table at which he was seated, the
ancient tapestry which covered the walls, the clock and the candelabra
of the Restoration period--all, in this traditional setting, reminded
him of those great principles of government which remain immutable
throughout the succession of _régimes_, of stratagem and of bluff. After
brief reflexion, he concluded that the plot must be allowed to grow and
take shape, that it would even be fitting to nurse it, to embroider it,
to colour it, and only to stifle it after having extracted every
possible advantage from it.
He instructed the Prefect of Police to watch the affair closely, to
render him an account of what went on from day to day, and to confine
himself to the rôle of informer.
"I rely on your well-known prudence; observe, and do not intervene."
The Minister lit a cigarette. He quite reckoned, with the help of this
plot, on silencing the Opposition, strengthening his own influence,
diminishing that of his colleagues, humiliating the President of the
Republic, and becoming the saviour of his country.
The Prefect of Police undertook to follow the ministerial instructions,
vowing inwardly all the while to act in his own way. He had a watch put
upon the individuals pointed out by Barattan, and commanded his agents
not to intervene, come what might. Perceiving that he was a marked man,
Prince Istar--who united prudence with strength--withdrew the bombs from
the gutter outside his window where he had hidden them, and changing
from motor 'bus to tube, from tube to motor 'bus, and choosing the most
cunningly circuitous route, at length deposited his machines with the
angelic musician.
Every time he left his house in the Rue St. Jacques, Arcade found a man
of exaggerated smartness at his door, with yellow gloves and in his tie
a diamond bigger than the Regent. Being a stranger to the things of this
world, the rebellious angel paid no attention to the circumstance. But
young Maurice d'Esparvieu, who had undertaken the task of guarding his
guardian-angel, viewed this gentleman with uneasiness, for he equalled
in assiduity and surpassed in vigilance that Monsieur Mignon who had
formerly allowed his inquisitive gaze to wander from the rams' heads on
the Hôtel de la Sordière in the Rue Garancière to the apse of the church
of St. Sulpice. Maurice came two and three times a day to see Arcade in
his furnished rooms, warning him of the danger, and urging him to change
his abode.
Every evening he took his angel to night restaurants, where they supped
with ladies of easy virtue. There young d'Esparvieu would foretell the
issue of some coming glove-fight, and afterwards exert himself to
demonstrate to Arcade the existence of God, the necessity for religion,
and the beauties of Christianity, and adjure him to renounce his impious
and criminal undertakings wherefrom, he said, he would reap but
bitterness and disappointment.
"For really," said the young apologist, "if Christianity were false it
would be known."
The ladies approved of Maurice's religious sentiments, and when the
handsome Arcade uttered some blasphemy in language they could
understand, they put their hands to their ears and bade him be silent,
for fear of being struck down with him. For they believed that God, in
his omnipotence and sovereign goodness, taking sudden vengeance against
those who insulted him, was quite capable of striking down the innocent
with the guilty without meaning it.
Sometimes the angel and his guardian took supper with the angelic
musician. Maurice, who remembered from time to time that he was
Bouchotte's lover, was displeased to see Arcade taking liberties with
the singer. She had allowed him to do so ever since the day when, the
angelic musician having had the little flowery couch repaired, Arcade
and Bouchotte had made it a foundation for their friendship. Maurice,
who loved Madame des Aubels a great deal, also loved Bouchotte a little,
and was rather jealous of Arcade. Now jealousy is a feeling natural to
man and beast, and causes them, however slight the attack, keen
unhappiness. Therefore, suspecting the truth, which Bouchotte's
temperament and the angel's character made sufficiently obvious, he
overwhelmed Arcade with sarcasm and abuse, reproaching him with the
immorality of his ways. Arcade answered, tranquilly, that it was
difficult to subject physiological impulses to perfectly defined rules,
and that moralists encountered great difficulties in the case of certain
natural necessities.
"Moreover," added Arcade, "I freely acknowledge that it is almost
impossible systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has
no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human
life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no
distinction between good and evil."
"You see, then," replied Maurice, "that religion is necessary."
"Moral law," replied the angel, "which is supposed to be revealed to us,
is drawn in reality from the grossest empiricism. Custom alone regulates
morals. What Heaven prescribes is merely the consecration of ancient
customs. The divine law, promulgated amid fireworks on some Mount
Sinai, is never anything but the codification of human prejudice. And
from this fact--namely, that morals change--religions which endure for a
long time, such as Judæo-Christianity, vary their moral law."
"At any rate," said Maurice, whose intelligence was swelling visibly,
"you will grant me that religion prevents much profligacy and crime?"
"Except when it promotes crime--as, for instance, the murder of
Iphigenia."
"Arcade," exclaimed Maurice, "when I hear you argue, I rejoice that I am
not an intellectual."
Meanwhile Théophile, with his head bent over the piano, his face hidden
by the long fair veil of his hair, bringing down from on high his
inspired hands on to the keys, was playing and singing the full score of
_Aline, Queen of Golconda_.
Prince Istar used to come to their friendly reunions, his pockets filled
with bombs and bottles of champagne, both of which he owed to the
liberality of Baron Everdingen. Bouchotte received the Kerûb with
pleasure, since she saw in him the witness and the trophy of the victory
she had gained on the little flowered couch. He was to her as the
severed head of Goliath in the hands of the youthful David. And she
admired the prince for his cleverness as an accompanist, his vigour,
which she had subdued, and his prodigious capacity for drink.
One night, when young d'Esparvieu took his angel home in his car from
Bouchotte's house to the lodgings in the Rue St. Jacques, it was very
dark; before the door the diamond in the spy's necktie glittered like a
beacon; three cyclists standing in a group under its rays made off in
divers directions at the car's approach. The angel took no notice, but
Maurice concluded that Arcade's movements interested various important
people in the State. He judged the danger to be pressing, and at once
made up his mind.
The next morning he came to seek the suspect, to take him to the Rue de
Rome. The angel was in bed. Maurice urged him to dress and to follow
him.
"Come," said he. "This house is no longer safe for you. You are watched.
One of these days you will be arrested. Do you wish to sleep in gaol?
No? Well, then, come. I will put you in a safe place."
The spirit smiled with some little compassion on his naïve preserver.
"Do you not know," he said, "that an angel broke open the doors of the
prison where Peter was confined, and delivered the apostle? Do you
believe me, Maurice, to be inferior in power to that heavenly brother of
mine, and do you suppose that I am unable to do for myself what he did
for the fisherman of the lake of Tiberias?"
"Do not count on it, Arcade. He did it miraculously."
"Or by a stroke of luck, as a modern historian of the Church has it. But
no matter. I will follow you. Just allow me to burn a few letters and to
make a parcel of some books I shall need."
He threw some papers in the fire-place, put several volumes in his
pockets, and followed his guide to the car, which was waiting for them
not far off, outside the College of France. Maurice took the wheel.
Imitating the Kerûb's prudence, he made so many windings and turnings,
and so many rapid twists that he put all the swift and numerous
cyclists, speeding in pursuit, off the scent. At length, having left
wheelmarks in every direction all over the town, he stopped in the Rue
de Rome, before the first-door flat, where the angel had first appeared.
On entering the dwelling which he had left eighteen months before to
carry out his mission, Arcade remembered the irreparable past, and
breathing in the scent used by Gilberte, his nostrils throbbed. He asked
after Madame des Aubels.
"She is very well," replied Maurice. "A little plumper and very much
more beautiful for it. She still bears you a grudge for your forward
behaviour. I hope that she will one day forgive you, as I have forgiven
you, and that she will forget your offence. But she is still very
annoyed with you."
Young d'Esparvieu did the honours of his flat to his angel with the
manners of a well-bred man and the tender solicitude of a friend. He
showed him the folding bed which was opened every evening in the
entrance hall and pushed into a dark cupboard in the morning. He showed
him the dressing-table, with its accessories; the bath, the linen
cupboard, the chest of drawers; gave him the necessary information
regarding the heating and lighting; told him that his meals would be
brought and the rooms cleaned by the concierge, and showed him which
bell to press when he required that person's services. He told him also
that he must consider himself at home, and receive whom he wished.