M. BERGERET: “Nothing. I am filling in the headings in the
_Discours sur l’Histoire universelle_.”
M. LANTAIGNE: “Do not jest and do not deny. Coming along the
roads sounded the white horses that were bringing the king to his
own again. Henri Dieudonné was coming to re-establish the principle
of authority from which spring the two social forces: command and
obedience; he was coming to restore human order along with divine
order, political wisdom along with the religious spirit, the hierarchy,
law, discipline, true liberty and unity. The nation, linking up its
traditions once more, was recovering, along with the sense of its
mission, the secret of its power and the pledge of victory. … God
willed it not. These great designs, thwarted by the enemy who still
hated us after having satisfied his hatred, opposed by a great number
of the French, miserably supported even by those who had formed them,
were brought to naught in one day. The frontier of our country was
barricaded against Henri Dieudonné, and the people subsided into a
Republic; that is to say, they repudiated their birthright, they
renounced their rights and their duties, in order to govern themselves
according to their own inclinations and to live at their ease in that
liberty which God curbs and which overturns both law and order, the
temporal images of Himself. Henceforth evil was king and proclaimed its
edicts. The Church, exposed to incessant vexations, was perfidiously
tempted on the one side to an impossible renunciation and on the other
to revolt involving punishment.”
M. BERGERET: “You doubtless reckon among the vexatious
measures the expulsion of the fraternities?”
M. LANTAIGNE: “It is clear that the expulsion of the
fraternities was prompted by evil intentions, and was the result of
malicious calculation. It is also certain that the religious who were
expelled did not deserve such treatment. In striking them it was
believed that the Church was being struck. But the blow, badly aimed,
strengthened the body that they wished to shake, and restored to the
parishes the authority and the resources which had been diverted from
them. Our enemies did not know the Church, and their chief minister of
that time, less ignorant than they, but more desirous of satisfying
them than of destroying us, made a war on us that was merely mimic
and for purposes of show. For I do not regard the expulsion of the
non-licensed orders as an effective attack. Of course, I honour the
victims of this clumsy persecution; but I consider that the Church
of France has in the secular clergy a sufficient staff to govern and
minister to souls without the help of the regulars. Alas! the Republic
has inflicted deeper and more secret wounds on the Church. You know
too much about educational questions, Monsieur Bergeret, not to have
discovered several of these plague-spots; but the most poisonous
one was induced by the introduction into the episcopate of priests
feeble in mind or in character. … I have said enough about that. The
Christian at least consoles and reassures himself, knowing that the
Church will not perish. But what will be the patriot’s consolation?
He discovers that all the members of the State are gangrened and
rotten. In twenty years what progress in corruption! A chief of the
State whose sole virtue is his powerlessness, and who is denounced
as criminal if it should get wind that he ventures to act, or even
merely to think; ministers subject to a foolish Parliament, which is
believed to be corrupt, and whose members, more ignorant every day,
were chosen, moulded, nominated in the godless clubs of the freemasons
to carry out an evil policy of which they are yet incapable, and
which is surpassed by the evils brought about through their turbulent
inaction; an incessantly increasing bureaucracy, vast, greedy, and
mischievous, in which the Republic believes she is securing for herself
a band of supporters, but which she is nourishing to her own ruin; a
magistracy recruited without law or equity, and too often canvassed by
the government not to be suspected of obsequiousness; an army, nay, a
whole nation, unceasingly pervaded by the fatal spirit of independence
and equality, is poured back straightway into town and country, a whole
community, depraved by barrack life, unfitted for arts and trades,
and disliking all labour; an educational body which has a mission
to teach atheism and immorality; a diplomatic corps which fails in
readiness and authority, and which leaves the care of our foreign
policy and the conclusion of our alliances to innkeepers, shopkeepers
and journalists; in a word, all the powers, the legislative and the
executive, the judicial, the military, and the civil, intermingled,
confused, destroyed one by the other; a farcical rule which, in its
destructive weakness, has given to society the two most powerful
instruments of death that wickedness ever devised: divorce and
malthusianism. And all the evils of which I have made a rapid summary
belong to the Republic and spring naturally from her: the Republic is
essentially unrighteous. She is unrighteous in willing a liberty which
God has not willed, since He is the master, and since He has delegated
to priests and kings a part of his authority; she is unrighteous in
willing an equality which God has not willed, since He has established
the hierarchy of dignities in Heaven and on earth; she is unrighteous
in instituting that tolerance which cannot be the will of God, since
evil is intolerable; she is unrighteous in consulting the will of the
people, as if the multitude of ignorant ought to prevail against the
small company of those who bow themselves before the will of God, which
overshadows the government and even the details of administration, as
a principle whose consequences are never-ending; in a word, she is
unrighteous in proclaiming her indifference to religion—that is to
say, her impiety, her unbelief, her blasphemies (of which the very
smallest is mortal sin), and her adhesion to diversity, which is evil
and death.”
M. BERGERET: “Did you not say just now, monsieur l’abbé, that
being as republican as the Pope, you were resolved to live at peace
with the Republic?”
M. LANTAIGNE: “Certainly, I will live with her in submission
and obedience. In rebelling against her, I should act according to
her principles, and contrary to my own. By being seditious I should
resemble her, and I should no longer resemble myself.
“It is unlawful to return evil for evil. Sovereignty is hers. Whether
she decrees ill or does not decree, hers is the guilt. Let it rest with
her! My duty is to obey. I shall do it. I shall obey. As a priest and,
if it please God, as a bishop, I shall refuse nothing to the Republic
of what I owe her. I call to mind that Saint Augustine, in Hippo, then
besieged by the Vandals, died a bishop and a Roman citizen. For myself,
the lowest member of this illustrious Church of the Gauls, after the
example of the greatest of the doctors, I will die in France, a priest
and a French citizen, praying God to scatter the Vandals.”
The elm-trees on the Mall began to incline their shadow towards the
east. A fresh breeze coming from a region of distant storm stirred
among the leaves. Whilst a ladybird travelled over the sleeve of his
coat, M. Bergeret replied to Abbé Lantaigne in a tone of the greatest
affability.
“Monsieur l’abbé, you have just traced, with an eloquence only to
be found on your lips, the characteristics of democratic rule. This
government is very much as you describe it. And yet it is the one I
prefer. In it all bonds are loosened, which weakens the State, but
relieves individuals and ensures a certain ease of life and a liberty
which unfortunately local tyrannies counteract. It is true that
corruption appears to be greater in it than in monarchies. That springs
from the number and diversity of the people who are raised to power.
But this corruption would be less visible if the secret of it were
better kept. The lack of secrecy and the want of continuity render
all enterprise impossible in a democratic Republic. But, since the
enterprises of monarchies have most often ruined the nations, I am not
very sorry to live under a government incapable of great designs. What
rejoices me especially in our Republic is the sincere desire which she
shows not to provoke war in Europe. She rejoices in militarism, but
is not at all bellicose. In considering the chances of a war, other
governments have nothing to fear save defeat. Ours fears equally—and
justly so—both victory and defeat. This salutary fear secures us
peace, which is the greatest of blessings.
“The worst fault of the present _régime_ is that it costs very dear. It
makes no outward show: it is not ostentatious. It is gorgeous neither
in its women nor its horses. But, with its humble appearance and
neglected exterior, it is expensive. It has too many poor relations,
too many friends to provide for. It is a spendthrift. The most grievous
point is that it lives on an exhausted country, whose powers are waning
and which no longer thrives. And the administration has great need of
money. It is aware that it is in difficulties. And its difficulties are
greater than it fancies. They will increase still more. The evil is not
new. It is the one which killed the old _régime_. I am going, monsieur
l’abbé, to tell you a great truth: as long as the State contents itself
with the revenues supplied by the poor, as long as it has enough from
the subsidies which are assured to it with mechanical regularity
by those who work with their hands, it lives happy, peaceful, and
honoured. Economists and financiers are pleased to acknowledge its
honesty. But as soon as this unhappy State, driven by need, makes a
show of asking for money from those who have it, and of levying some
slight toll on the rich, it is made to feel that it is committing a
horrible outrage, is violating all rights, is wanting in respect to a
sacred thing, is destroying commerce and industry, and crushing the
poor by touching the rich. No one hides his conviction that discredit
is at hand. And it sinks beneath the genuine contempt of the good
citizen. Yet ruin comes slowly and surely. The State touches capital:
it is lost.
“Our ministers are jesting at us when they speak of the clerical or
the socialist peril. There is but one peril, the financial peril.
The Republic is beginning to recognise this. I pity her, I shall
regret her. I was reared under the Empire, in love for the Republic.
‘She is justice,’ my father, professor of rhetoric at the college of
Saint-Omer, used to say to me. He did not know her. She is not justice,
but she is ease. Monsieur l’abbé, if you had a soul less exalted,
less serious, and more given to jesting thoughts, I should confide
to you that the present Republic, the Republic of 1896, delights me
and touches me by its modesty. She acquiesces in not being admired.
She exacts but a trifling respect, and even renounces esteem. It
is enough for her to live. That is her sole desire; it is a lawful
one. The humblest beings cling to life. Like the woodcutter of the
fabulist, like the apothecary of Mantua, who so greatly astonished that
young fool of a Romeo, she fears death, and it is her only fear. She
mistrusts princes and soldiers. In danger of death, she would be very
ill to handle. Fear would make her abandon her own nature and would
render her ferocious. That would be a pity. But as long as they make
no attempt on her life, and as long as they only attack her honour,
she is good-natured. A government of this kind suits me and gives
me confidence. So many others were merciless through self-esteem!
So many others made sure of their rights, their grandeur, and their
prosperity by cruelties! So many others have poured out blood for
their prerogative and their majesty! She has no self-esteem; she has
no majesty. A fortunate lack which keeps her innocuous to us! Provided
that she lives, she is content. She rules laxly, and I should be
tempted to praise her for that more than for all the rest. And since
she governs laxly, I forgive her for governing badly. I suspect men
at all times of having much exaggerated the necessity of government
and the benefits of a strong administration. Certainly strong
administrations make nations great and prosperous. But the nations
have suffered so much all through the centuries for their grandeur and
prosperity, that I fancy they would renounce it. Glory has cost them
too dear for them to resent the fact that our present rulers have only
procured for us the colonial variety of it. If the uselessness of all
government should at last be discovered, the Republic of M. Carnot
would have paved the way for this priceless discovery. And one ought
to feel some gratitude towards it for that. Taking everything into
consideration, I feel much attached to our institutions.”
Thus spoke M. Bergeret, professor of literature at the University.
Abbé Lantaigne rose, drew out from his pocket his blue-checkered
handkerchief, passed it over his lips, returned it to his pocket,
smiled, contrary to his custom, secured his breviary under his arm, and
said:
“You express yourself pleasantly, Monsieur Bergeret. Just so did the
rhetors talk in Rome when Alaric entered it with his Visigoths. Yet
under the terebinth trees of the Esquiline the rhetors of the fifth
century let fall thoughts of less vanity. For then Rome was Christian.
You are that no longer.”
“Monsieur l’abbé,” replied the professor, “be a bishop and not the head
of the University.”
“It is true, Monsieur Bergeret,” said the priest with a loud laugh,
“that if I were head of the University I should forbid you to be a
teacher of youth.”
“And you would do me a great service. For then I should write in the
papers, like M. Jules Lemaître, and who knows whether, like him …”
“Well! well! you would not be out of place among the wits. And the
French Academy has a partiality for freethinkers.”
He spoke and walked away with a firm, straight, heavy tread. M.
Bergeret remained alone in the middle of the bench, which was now
three-parts covered by shade. The ladybird which had been fluttering
its wing-cases on his shoulder for a moment flew away. He began to
dream. He was not happy, for he had an acute mind whose points were
not always turned outwards, and very often he pricked himself with
the needle-points of his own criticism. Anæmic and bilious, he had
a very weak digestion and enfeebled senses, which brought him more
disgust and suffering than pleasure and happiness. He was reckless in
speech, and in unerringness and precision his tactlessness attained
the same results as the most practised skill. With cunning art he
seized every opportunity of injuring himself. He inspired the majority
of people with a natural aversion, and being sociable and inclined
to fraternise with his fellows, he suffered from that fact. He had
never succeeded in moulding his pupils, and he delivered his lectures
on Latin literature in a gloomy, damp, deserted cellar, in which he
was buried through the Dean’s burning hatred of him. The University
buildings were, however, spacious. Built in 1894, “these new premises,”
according to the words of M. Worms-Clavelin at the opening, “testified
to the zeal of the government of the Republic for the diffusion of
learning.” They boasted an amphitheatre, decorated by M. Léon Glaize
with allegorical paintings representing Science and Literature, where
M. Compagnon gave his much-belauded lectures on mathematics. The other
gownsmen in their red or yellow taught different subjects in handsome,
well-lighted rooms. M. Bergeret alone, under the bedel’s ironic glance,
had to descend, followed by three students, into a dusky, subterranean
hole. There, in the heavy, noisome air, he expounded the _Æneid_ with
German scholarship and French subtlety; there, by his literary and
moral pessimism, he afflicted M. Roux, of Bordeaux, his best pupil;
there, he opened up new vistas, whose aspect was terrifying; there, one
evening he pronounced those words now become famous, but which ought
rather to have perished, stifled in the shadow of the vault: “Fragments
of differing origins, soldered clumsily on to each other, made up the
_Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. Such are the models of composition that
have been imitated by Virgil, by Fénelon, and in general, in classic
literatures, by writers of narratives in verse or in prose.”
M. Bergeret was not happy. He had received no honorary distinction. It
is true that he despised honours. But he felt that it would have been
much finer to despise them while accepting them. He was obscure and
less well known in the town for works of talent than M. de Terremondre,
author of a Tourist Guide; than General Milher, a distinguished
miscellaneous writer of the department; less even than his pupil, M.
Albert Roux, of Bordeaux, author of _Nirée_, a poem in _vers libres_.
Certainly he despised literary fame, knowing that that of Virgil in
Europe rested on a double misconception, one absurd and the other
fabulous. But he suffered at having no intercourse with writers who,
like MM. Faguet, Doumic, or Pellissier, seemed akin to him in mind. He
would have liked to know them, to live with them in Paris, like them to
write in reviews, to contradict, to rival, perhaps to outstrip them.
He recognised in himself a certain subtlety of intellect, and he had
written pages which he knew to be pleasing.
He was not happy. He was poor, shut up with his wife and his three
daughters in a little dwelling, where he tasted to the full the
inconveniences of domestic life; and it harassed him to find
hair-curlers on his writing-table, and to see the margins of his
manuscripts singed by curling-tongs. The only secure and pleasant place
of retreat that he had in the world was that bench on the Mall shaded
by an ancient elm, and the old-book corner in Paillot’s shop.
He meditated for a moment on his sad condition; then he rose from his
bench and took the road which leads to the bookseller’s.