“I merely said that Miltiades did not succeed in breaking through the
forces of the barbarians. As for the Romans, they were not essentially
a military people, since they made profitable and lasting conquests, in
contradistinction to the true military nations, such as the French, for
instance, who seize all, but retain nothing.
“It is also to be noted that in Rome, in the time of the kings, aliens
were not allowed to serve as soldiers. But in the reign of the good
king Servius Tullius the citizens, being by no means anxious to reserve
to themselves alone the honour of fatigue and perils, admitted aliens
resident in the city to military service. There are such things as
heroes, but there are no nations of heroes, nor are there armies of
heroes. Soldiers have never marched save under penalty of death.
Military service was hateful even to those Latin herdsmen who gained
for Rome the sovereignty of the world and the glorious name of goddess
among the nations. The wearing of the soldier’s belt was to them such
a hardship that the very name of this belt, _ærumna_, eventually
expressed for them the ideas of dejection, weariness of body and mind,
wretchedness, misfortune and disaster. When well led they made, not
heroes, but good soldiers and good navvies; little by little they
conquered the world and covered it with roads and highways. The Romans
never sought glory: they had no imagination. They only waged absolutely
necessary wars in defence of their own interests. Their triumph was
the triumph of patience and good sense.
“The make of a man is shown by his ruling passion. With soldiers, as
with all crowds, the ruling passion, the predominant thought, is fear.
They go to meet the enemy as the foe from whom the least danger is to
be feared. Troops in line are so drawn up on both sides that flight
is impossible. In that lies all the art of battle. The armies of the
Republic were victorious because the discipline of the olden times
was maintained in them with the utmost severity, while it was relaxed
in the camp of the Allied Armies. Our generals of the second year
after the Revolution were none other than sergeants like that la Ramée
who used to have half a dozen conscripts shot every day in order to
encourage the others, as Voltaire put it, and to arouse them with the
trumpet-note of patriotism.”
“That’s very plausible,” said M. Roux. “But there is another point.
There is such a thing as the innate joy of firing a musket-shot. As you
know, my dear sir, I am by no means a destructive animal. I have no
taste for military life. I have even very advanced humanitarian ideas,
and I believe that the brotherhood of the nations will be brought about
by the triumph of socialism. In a word, I am filled with the love of
humanity. But as soon as they put a musket in my hand I want to fire at
everyone. It’s in the blood....”
M. Roux was a fine hearty fellow who had quickly shaken down in his
regiment. Violent exercise suited his robust temperament, and being
in addition very adaptable, although he had acquired no special taste
for the profession, he found life in barracks quite bearable, and so
remained both healthy and happy.
“You have left the power of suggestion out of your calculations, sir,”
said he. “Only give a man a bayonet at the end of a musket and he will
instantly be ready to plunge it into the body of the first comer and so
make himself a hero, as you call it.”
The rich southern tones of M. Roux were still echoing through the room
when Madame Bergeret came in. As a rule she seldom entered the study
when her husband was there. To-day M. Bergeret noticed that she wore
her fine pink and white _peignoir_.
Expressing great surprise at finding M. Roux in the study, she
explained that she had just come in to ask her husband for a volume of
poems with which she might while away an hour or two.
She was suddenly a charming, good-tempered woman: the professor noticed
the fact, as a fact, though he felt no special interest in it.
Removing Freund’s Dictionary from an old leather arm-chair, M. Roux
cleared a seat for Madame Bergeret, while her husband’s thoughts
strayed, first to the quartos stacked against the wall and then to his
wife who had taken their place in the arm-chair. These two masses of
matter, the dictionary and the lady, thought he, were once but gases
floating in the primitive nebulosity. Though now they are strangely
different from one another in look, in nature and in function, they
were once for long ages exactly similar.
“For,” thought he to himself, “Madame Bergeret once swam in the vasty
abyss of the ages, shapeless, unconscious, scattered in light gleams of
oxygen and carbon. At the same time, the molecules that were one day
to make up this Latin dictionary were whirling in this same vapour,
which was destined at last to give birth to monstrous forms, to minute
insects and to a slender thread of thought. These imperfect and often
harassing creations, these monuments of my weary life, my wife and my
dictionary, needed the travail of eternity to produce them. Yet Amélie
is just a paltry mind in a coarsened body, and my dictionary is full of
mistakes. We can see from this example alone that there is very little
hope that even new æons of time would ever give us perfect knowledge
and beauty. As it is, we live but for a moment, yet by living for ever
we should gain nothing. The faults we see in nature, and how faulty she
is we know, are produced neither by time nor space!”
And in the restless perturbation of his thoughts M. Bergeret continued:
“But what is time itself, save just the movements of nature, and how
can I judge whether these are long or short? Granted that nature is
cruel in her cast-iron laws, how comes it that I recognise the fact?
And how do I manage to place myself outside her, so that I can weigh
her deeds in my scales? Had I but another standpoint in it, perchance
the universe might even seem to me a happier place.”
M. Bergeret hereupon suddenly emerged from his day-dream, and leant
forward to push the tottering pile of quartos close against the wall.
“You are somewhat sunburnt, Monsieur Roux,” said Madame Bergeret, “and
rather thinner, I fancy. But it suits you well enough.”
“The first few months are trying,” answered M. Roux. “Drill, of course,
in the barrack-yard at six o’clock in the morning and with eight
degrees of frost is rather a painful process, and just at first one
finds it difficult to look on the mess as appetising. But weariness
is, after all, a great blessing, stupefaction a priceless remedy and
the stupor in which one lives is as soporific as a feather-bed. And
because at night one only sleeps in snatches, by day one is never wide
awake. And this state of automatic lethargy in which we all live is
admirably conducive to discipline, it suits the tone of military life
and produces physical and moral efficiency in the ranks.”
In short, M. Roux had nothing to complain of, but one of his friends, a
certain Deval, a student of Malay at the school of Oriental languages,
was plunged in the depths of misery and despair. Deval, an intelligent,
well-educated, intrepid man, was cursed with a sort of rigidity of mind
and body that made him tactless and awkward. In addition to this he was
harassed by a painfully exact sense of justice which gave him peculiar
views of his rights and duties. This unfortunate turn of mind landed
him in all sorts of troubles, and he had not been more than twenty-four
hours in barracks before Sergeant Lebrec demanded, in terms which must
needs be softened for Madame Bergeret’s sake, what ill-conducted being
had given birth to such a clumsy cub as Number Five. It took Deval a
long time to make sure that he, and none other, was actually Number
Five. He had, in fact, to be put under arrest before he was convinced
on the subject. Even then he could not see why the honour of Madame
Deval, his mother, should be called in question because he himself was
not exactly in line. His sense of justice was outraged by his mother’s
being unexpectedly declared responsible in this matter, and at the end
of four months he was still a prey to melancholy amazement at the idea.
“Your friend Deval,” answered M. Bergeret, “put a wrong construction on
a warlike speech that I should be inclined to count among those which
exalt men’s moral tone. Such speeches, in fact, arouse the spirit of
emulation by exciting a desire to earn the good-conduct stripes, which
confer on their wearers the right to make similar speeches in their
turn, speeches which obviously stamp the speaker of them as head and
shoulders above those humble beings to whom they are addressed. The
authority of officers in the army should never be weakened, as was done
in a recent circular issued by a War Minister, which laid down the law
that officers and non-commissioned officers were to avoid the practice
of addressing the men with the contemptuous ‘thou.’ The minister,
himself a well-bred, courteous, urbane and honourable man, was full of
the idea of the dignified position of the citizen soldier and failed,
therefore, to perceive that the power of scorning an inferior is
the guiding principle in emulation and the foundation-stone of all
governance. Sergeant Lebrec spoke like a hero who is schooling heroes,
for, being a philologist, I am able to reconstruct the original form
his speech took. This being the case, I have no hesitation in declaring
that, in my opinion, Sergeant Lebrec rose to sublimity when he
associated the good fame of a family with the port of a conscript, when
he thus linked the life of Number Five, even before he saw the light,
with the regiment and the flag. For, in truth, does not the issue of
all warfare rest on the discipline of the recruit?
“After this, you will probably tell me that I am indulging in the
weakness common to all commentators and reading into the text of my
author meanings which he never intended. I grant you that there is
a certain element of unconsciousness in Sergeant Lebrec’s memorable
speech. But therein lies the genius of it. Unaware of his own range, he
hurls his bolts broadcast.”
M. Roux answered with a smile that there certainly was an unconscious
element in Sergeant Lebrec’s inspiration. He quite agreed with M.
Bergeret there. But Madame Bergeret interposed drily:
“I don’t understand you at all, Lucien. You always laugh when there is
nothing funny, and really one never knows whether you are joking or
serious. It’s positively impossible to talk rationally to you.”
“My wife reasons after the dean’s fashion,” said M. Bergeret, “and the
only thing to do with either is to give in.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Madame Bergeret, “you do well to talk about the dean!
You have always set yourself to annoy him and now you are paying for
your folly. You have also managed to fall out with the rector. I met
him on Sunday when I was out with the girls and he hardly so much as
bowed.” And turning towards the young soldier, she continued:
“I know that my husband is very much attached to you, Monsieur Roux.
You are his favourite pupil and he foretells a brilliant future for
you.”
M. Roux’s swarthy face, with its mat of frizzy hair, flashed into a
bold smile that showed the brilliant whiteness of his teeth.
“Do try, Monsieur Roux, to get my husband to use a little tact with
people who may be useful to him. His conduct is making life a howling
wilderness for us all.”
“Surely not, Madame,” murmured M. Roux, turning the conversation.
“The peasants,” said he, “drag out a wretched three years of service.
They suffer horribly, but no one ever guesses it, for they are
quite inarticulate when it comes to expressing subtleties. Loving
the land as they do with all the intensity of animal passion, when
they are separated from it their existence is full of deep, silent,
monotonous melancholy, with nothing whatever to distract them from
their sense of exile and imprisonment, save fear of their officers and
weariness of their occupation. Everything around them is strange and
incomprehensible. In my company, for instance, there are two Bretons
who have not learnt the colonel’s name after six months’ training.
Every morning we are drawn up before the sergeant to repeat this name
with them, for every one in the regiment receives exactly the same
instruction. Our colonel’s name is Dupont. It’s the same in all our
exercises: quick, clever men are kept back for ever to wait for the
dolts.”
M. Bergeret inquired whether, like Sergeant Lebrec, the officers also
cultivated the art of martial eloquence.
“Not at all,” said M. Roux. “My captain—quite a young man he is,
too—is the very pink of courtesy. He is an æsthete, a Rosicrucian, and
he paints pictures of angels and pallid virgins, against a background
of pink and green skies. I devise the legends for his pictures, and
whilst Deval is on fatigue-duty in the barrack-square, I am on duty
with the captain, who employs me to produce verses for him. He really
is a charming fellow. His name is Marcel de Lagère; he exhibits at
L’Œuvre under the pseudonym of Cyne.”
“Is he a hero too?” asked M. Bergeret.
“Say rather a Saint George,” answered M. Roux. “He has conceived a
mystic ideal of the military profession and declares that it is the
perfect way of life. We are marching, unawares, to an unknown goal.
Piously, solemnly, chastely, we advance towards the altar of mystic,
fated sacrifice. He is exquisite. I am teaching him to write _vers
libre_ and prose poems and he is beginning to compose prose sketches of
military life. He is happy, placid and gentle, and the only sorrow he
has is the flag. He considers its red, white and blue an intolerably
violent colour scheme and yearns for one of rose-pink or lilac. His
dreams are of the banner of Heaven. ‘If even,’ he says sadly, ‘the
three colours rose from a flower-stalk, like the three flames of the
oriflamme, it would be bearable. But when they are perpendicular, they
cut the floating folds painfully and ridiculously.’ He suffers, but he
bears his suffering bravely and patiently. As I said before, he is a
true Saint George.”
“From your description,” said Madame Bergeret, “I feel keenly for
the poor young man.” So speaking, she threw a severe glance in M.
Bergeret’s direction.
“But aren’t the other officers amazed at him?” asked M. Bergeret.
“Not at all,” answered M. Roux. “For at mess, or in society, he says
nothing about his opinions and he looks just like any other officer.”
“And what do the men think of him?”
“The men never come in contact with their officers in quarters.”
“You will dine with us, won’t you, Monsieur Roux?” said Madame
Bergeret. “It will give us great pleasure if you will stay.”
Her words instantly suggested to M. Bergeret’s mind the vision of a
pie, for whenever Madame Bergeret had informally invited anyone to
dinner she always ordered a pie from Magloire, the pastry-cook, and
usually a pie without meat, as being more dainty. By a purely mental
impetus that had no connection with greed, M. Bergeret now called up
a picture of an egg or fish pie, smoking in a blue-patterned dish on
a damask napkin. Homely and prophetic vision! But if Madame Bergeret
invited M. Roux to dinner, she must think a great deal of him, for
it was most unusual for Amélie to offer the pleasures of her humble
table to a stranger. She dreaded the expense and fuss of doing so, and
justly, for the days when she had a guest to dinner were made hideous
by the noise of broken dishes, by yells of alarm and tears of rage
from the young maid, Euphémie, by an acrid smoke-reek that filled the
whole flat and by a smell of cooking which found its way to the study
and disturbed M. Bergeret among the shades of Æneas, Turnus, and the
bashful Lavinia. However, the professor was delighted at the idea that
his pupil, M. Roux, would feed to-night at his table. For there was
nothing he liked better than men’s talk, and a long discussion filled
him with joy.
Madame Bergeret continued:
“You know, Monsieur Roux, it will be just pot-luck.”
Then she departed to give Euphémie her orders.
“My dear sir,” said M. Bergeret to his pupil, “are you still asserting
the pre-eminence of _vers libre_? Of course, I am aware that poetic
forms vary according to time and place. Nor am I ignorant of the fact
that, in the course of ages, French verse has undergone incessant
alterations, and, hidden behind my books of notes on metre, I can smile
discreetly at the pious prejudices of the poets who refuse to allow
anyone to lay an unhallowed finger on the instrument consecrated by
their genius. I have noticed that they give no reasons for the rules
they follow, and I am inclined to think that one must not search for
these reasons in the verse itself, but rather in the music which in
primitive times accompanied it. It is the scientific spirit which I
acknowledge as my guide, and as that is naturally far less conservative
than the artistic spirit, I am therefore ready to welcome innovations.
But I must, nevertheless, confess that _vers libre_ baffles me and I
cannot even grasp the definition of it. The vagueness of the limits to
which it must conform is a worry to me and ...”
At that moment a visitor came into the study. It was a well-built
man in the prime of life, with handsome sunburnt features. Captain
Aspertini of Naples was a student of philology and agriculture and a
member of the Italian Parliament who for the last ten years had been
carrying on a learned correspondence with M. Bergeret, after the style
of the great scholars of the Renaissance and the seventeenth century,
and whenever he visited France he made it his practice to come and
see his correspondent. Savants the world over held a high opinion of
Carlo Aspertini for having deciphered a complete treatise by Epicurus
on one of the charred scrolls from Pompeii. Although his energies
were now absorbed in agriculture, politics and business, he was still
passionately devoted to the art of numismatics and his sensitive hands
still itched to have the fingering of medals. Indeed, there were two
attractions which drew him to * * *—the pleasure of seeing M. Bergeret
and the delight of looking once more at the priceless collection of
ancient coins bequeathed to the town library by Boucher de La Salle.
He also came to collate the letters of Muratori which were preserved
there. The two men greeted each other with great pleasure, for a
common love of knowledge had made them fellow-citizens. Then, when the
Neapolitan perceived that they had a soldier with them in the study, M.
Bergeret hastened to inform him that this Gallic warrior was a budding
philologist, inspired by enthusiasm for the Latin tongue.
“This year, however,” said M. Bergeret, “he is learning in a
barrack-square to put one foot before the other, and in him you see
what our witty commandant, General Cartier de Chalmot, calls the
primary tool of tactics, commonly known as a soldier. My pupil, M.
Roux, is a warrior, and having a high-bred soul, he feels the honour
of the position. Truth to tell, it is an honour which he shares at
this identical moment with all the young men of haughty Europe. Your
Neapolitans, too, rejoice in it, since they became part of a great
nation.”
“Without wishing in any way to show disloyalty to the house of Savoy,
to which I am genuinely attached,” said the captain, “I feel that
military service and taxation weigh so heavily on the Neapolitans as
to make them sometimes regret the happy days of King Bomba and the
pleasure of living ingloriously under an easy-going government. Neither
tax nor conscription is popular with the Neapolitan. What is wanted
is that statesmen should really open their eyes to the necessities of
national life. But, as you know, I have always been an opponent of
megalomaniac politics and have always deplored those great armaments
which hinder all progress in Europe, whether it be intellectual, moral,
or material. It is a great, a ruinous folly which can only culminate in
farce.”
“I foresee no end to it at all,” replied M. Bergeret. “No one wishes
it to end save certain thinkers who have no means of making their
ideas known. The rulers of states cannot desire disarmament, for such
a movement would render their position difficult and precarious and
would take an admirable tool of empire out of their hands. For armed
nations meekly submit to government. Military discipline shapes them to
obedience, and in a nation so disciplined, neither insurrections, nor
riots, nor tumults of any kind need be feared. When military service is
obligatory upon all, when all the citizens either are, or have been,
soldiers, then all the forces of social life are so calculated as to
support power, or even the lack of it. This fact the history of France
can prove.”
Just as M. Bergeret reached this point in his political reflections,
from the kitchen close by there burst out the noise of grease pouring
over on the fire; from this the professor inferred that the youthful
Euphémie, according to her usual practice on gala days, had upset her
saucepan on the stove, after rashly balancing it on a pyramid of coal.
He had learnt by now that such an event must recur again and again
with the inexorable certainty of the laws that govern the universe. A
shocking smell of burnt meat filled the study, while M. Bergeret traced
the course of his ideas as follows:
“Had not Europe,” said he, “been turned into a barrack, we should have
seen insurrections bursting out in France, Germany, or Italy, as they
did in former times. But nowadays those obscure forces which from time
to time uplift the very pavements of our city find regular vent in
the fatigue duty of barrack-yards, in the grooming of horses and the
sentiment of patriotism.
“The rank of corporal supplies an admirable outlet for the energies
of young heroes who, had they been left in freedom, would have been
building barricades to keep their arms lissom. I have only this moment
been told of the sublime speeches made by a certain Sergeant Lebrec.
Were he dressed in the peasant’s blouse this hero would be thirsting
for liberty, but clad in a uniform, it is tyranny for which he yearns,
and to help in the maintenance of order the thing for which he craves.
In armed nations it is easy enough to preserve internal peace, and you
will notice that, although in the course of the last twenty-five years,
Paris has been a little agitated on one occasion, it was only when the
commotion was the work of a War Minister. That is, a general was able
to do what a demagogue could not have done. And the moment this general
lost his hold on the army, he also lost it on the nation, and his power
was gone. Therefore, whether the State be a monarchy, an empire, or a
republic, its rulers have an interest in keeping up obligatory military
service for all, in order that they may command an army, instead of
governing a nation.
“And, while the rulers have no desire for disarmament, the people have
lost all wish for it, too. The masses endure military service quite
willingly, for, without being exactly pleasurable, it gives an outlet
to the rough, crude instincts of the majority and presents itself as
the simplest, roughest and strongest expression of their sense of duty.
It overawes them by the gorgeous splendour of its outward paraphernalia
and by the amount of metal used in it. In short, it exalts them
through the only ideals of power, of grandeur and of glory, which
they are capable of conceiving. Often they rush into it with a song;
if not, they are perforce driven to it. For these reasons I foresee
no termination to this honourable calling which is brutalising and
impoverishing Europe.”
“There are,” said Captain Aspertini, “two ways out of it: war and
bankruptcy.”
“War!” exclaimed M. Bergeret. “It is patent that great armaments only
hinder that by aggravating the horrors of it and rendering it of
doubtful issue for both combatants. As for bankruptcy, I foretold it
the other day to Abbé Lantaigne, the principal of our high seminary, as
we sat on a bench on the Mall. But you need not pin your faith on me.
You have studied the history of the Lower Empire too deeply, my dear
Aspertini, not to be perfectly aware that, in questions of national
finance, there are mysterious resources which escape the scrutiny of
political economists. A ruined nation may exist for five hundred years
on robbery and extortion, and how is one to guess what a great people,
out of its poverty, will manage to supply to its defenders in the way
of cannon, muskets, bad bread, bad shoes, straw and oats?”
“This argument sounds plausible enough,” answered Aspertini. “Yet, with
all due deference to your opinion, I believe I can already discern the
dawn of universal peace.”
Then, in a sing-song voice, the kindly Neapolitan began to describe
his hopes and dreams for the future, to the accompaniment of the heavy
thumping of the chopper with which the youthful Euphémie was preparing
a mince for M. Roux on the kitchen table just the other side of the
wall.
“Do you remember, Monsieur Bergeret,” said Captain Aspertini, “the
place in _Don Quixote_ where Sancho complains of being obliged to
endure a never-ending series of misfortunes and the ready-witted knight
tells him that this protracted wretchedness is merely a sign that
happiness is at hand? ‘For,’ says he, ‘fortune is a fickle jade and our
troubles have already lasted so long that they must soon give place to
good-luck.’ The law of change alone....”
The rest of these optimistic utterances was lost in the boiling over of
the kettle of water, followed by the unearthly yells of Euphémie, as
she fled in terror from her stove.
Then M. Bergeret’s mind, saddened by the sordid ugliness of his cramped
life, fell to dreaming of a villa where, on white terraces overlooking
the blue waters of a lake, he might hold peaceful converse with M. Roux
and Captain Aspertini, amid the scent of myrtles, when the amorous moon
rides high in a sky as clear as the glance of a god and as sweet as
the breath of a goddess.
But he soon emerged from this dream and began once more to take part in
the discussion.
“The results of war,” said he, “are quite incalculable. My good
friend William Harrison writes to me that French scholarship has been
despised in England since 1871, and that at the Universities of Oxford,
Cambridge and Dublin it is the fashion to ignore Maurice Raynouard’s
text-book of archæology, though it would be more helpful to their
students than any other similar work. But they refuse to learn from the
vanquished. And in order that they may feel confidence in a professor
when he speaks on the characteristics of the art of Ægina or on the
origins of Greek pottery, it is considered necessary that he should
belong to a nation which excels in the casting of cannon. Because
Marshal Mac-Mahon was beaten in 1870 at Sedan and General Chanzy lost
his army at the Maine in the same year, my colleague Maurice Raynouard
is banished from Oxford in 1897. Such are the results of military
inferiority, slow-moving and illogical, yet sure in their effects. And
it is, alas, only too true that the fate of the Muses is settled by a
sword-thrust.”
“My dear sir,” said Aspertini, “I am going to answer you with all
the frankness permissible in a friend. Let us first grant that French
thought circulates freely through the world, as it has always done. And
although the archæological manual of your learned countryman Maurice
Raynouard may not have found a place on the desks of the English
Universities, yet your plays are acted in all the theatres of the
world; the novels of Alphonse Daudet and of Émile Zola are translated
into every language; the canvases of your painters adorn the galleries
of two worlds; the achievements of your scientists win renown in
every quarter of the globe. And if your soul no longer thrills the
soul of the nations, if your voice no longer quickens the heart-beats
of mankind, it is because you no longer choose to play the part of
apostles of brotherhood and justice, it is because you no longer utter
the holy words that bring strength and consolation; it is because
France is no longer the lover of the human race, the comrade of the
nations; it is because she no longer opens her hands to fling broadcast
those seeds of liberty which once she scattered in such generous and
sovereign fashion that for long years it seemed that every beautiful
human idea was a French idea; it is because she is no longer the France
of the philosophers and of the Revolution: in the garrets round the
Panthéon and the Luxembourg there are no longer to be found young
leaders, writing on deal tables night after night, with all the fire of
youth, those pages which make the nations tremble and the despots grow
pale with fear. Do not then complain that the glory which you cannot
view without misgivings has passed away.
“Especially, do not say that your defeats are the sources of your
misfortunes: say, rather, that they are the outcome of your faults.
A nation suffers no more injury from a battle lost than a robust man
suffers from a sword-scratch received in a duel. It is an injury that
only produces a transient illness in the system, a perfectly curable
weakness. To cure it, all that is needed is a little courage, skill and
political good sense. The first act of policy, the most necessary and
certainly the easiest, is to make the defeat yield all the military
glory it is capable of producing. For in the true view of things, the
glory of the vanquished equals that of the conquerors, and it is, in
addition, the more moving spectacle. In order to make the best of a
disaster it is desirable to fête the general and the army which has
sustained it, and to blazon abroad all the beautiful incidents which
prove the moral superiority of misfortune. Such incidents are to be
found even in the most headlong retreats. From the very first moment,
then, the defeated side ought to decorate, to embellish, to gild their
defeat, and to distinguish it with unmistakably grand and beautiful
symbols. In Livy it may be read how the Romans never failed to do
this, and how they hung palms and wreaths on the swords broken at the
battles of the Trebbia, of Trasimene and of Cannæ. Even the disastrous
inaction of Fabius has been so extolled by them that, after the lapse
of twenty-two centuries, we still stand amazed at the wisdom of the
Cunctator, the Lingerer, as he was nicknamed. Yet, after all, he was
nothing but an old fool. In this lies the great art of defeat.”
“It is by no means a lost art,” said M. Bergeret. “In our own days
Italy showed that she knew how to practise it after Novara, after
Lissa, after Adowa.”
“My dear sir,” said Captain Aspertini, “whenever an Italian army
capitulates, we rightly reckon this capitulation glorious. A government
which succeeds in throwing a glamour of poetry over a defeat rouses
the spirit of patriotism within the country and at the same time makes
itself interesting in the eyes of foreigners. And to bring about these
two results is a fairly considerable achievement. In the year 1870 it
rested entirely with you Frenchmen to produce them for yourselves.
After Sedan, had the Senate, the Chamber of Deputies, and all the
State officials publicly and unanimously congratulated the Emperor
Napoleon and Marshal Mac-Mahon on not having despaired of the salvation
of their country when they gave battle to the enemy, do you not think
that France would have gained a radiant halo of glory from the defeat
of its army? At the same time it would have given forcible expression
of its will to conquer. And pray believe, dear Monsieur Bergeret, that
I am not impertinent enough to be trying to give your country lessons
in patriotism. In doing that, I should be putting myself in a wrong
position. I am merely presenting you with some of the marginal notes
that will be found, after my death, pencilled in my copy of Livy.”
“It is not the first time,” said M. Bergeret, “that the commentary on
the Decades has been worth more than the text. But go on.”
With a smile Captain Aspertini once more took up the thread of his
argument.
“The wisest thing for the country to do is to cast huge handfuls of
lilies over the wounds of war. Then, skilfully and silently, with
a swift glance, she will examine the wound. If the blow has been
a knock-down one, and if the strength of the country is seriously
impaired, she will instantly start negotiating. In treating with the
victorious side, it will be found that the earliest moment is the
most propitious. In the first surprise of triumph, the enemy welcomes
with joy any proposal which tends to turn a favourable beginning into
a definite advantage. He has not yet had time for repeated successes
to go to his head, nor for long-continued resistance to drive him to
rage. He will not demand huge damages for an injury that is still
trifling, nor, as yet, have his budding aspirations had time to grow.
It is possible that even under these circumstances he may not grant
you peace on easy terms. But you are sure to have to pay dearer for
it, if you delay in applying for it. The wisest policy is to open
negotiations before one has revealed all one’s weakness. It is possible
then to obtain easy terms, which are usually rendered easier still by
the intervention of neutral powers. As for seeking safety in despair
and only making peace after a victory, these ideas are doubtless fine
enough as maxims, but very difficult to carry out at a time when, for
one thing, the industrial and commercial needs of modern life, and
for another, the immense size of the armies which have to be equipped
and fed, do not permit an indefinite continuance of warfare, and
consequently do not leave the weaker side enough time to straighten out
its affairs. France in 1870 was inspired by the noblest of sentiments,
but if she had acted in accordance with reason, she would have started
negotiations immediately after her first reverses, honourable as they
were. She had a government which could have undertaken the task, and
which ought to have done so, a government which was, indeed, in a
better position for bringing it to a successful issue than any that
might follow. The sensible thing to have done would have been to
exact this last service from it before getting rid of it altogether.
Instead, they acted the wrong way about. After having maintained that
government for twenty years, France conceived the ill-considered notion
of overturning it just at the very moment when it ought to have been
useful to her, and of substituting another government for it. This
administration, not being jointly liable with the former one, had to
begin the war over again, without, however, bringing any new strength
to its prosecution. After that a third government tried to establish
itself.
“If it had succeeded, the war would have begun again a third time,
because the first two unfortunate attempts did not count. Honour, say
you, must be satisfied. But you had given satisfaction with your blood
to two honours: the honour of the Empire, as well as of the Republic;
you were also ready to satisfy a third, the honour of the Commune. Yet
it seems to me that even the proudest nation in the world has but one
honour to satisfy. You were thrown by this excess of generosity into a
state of great weakness from which you are now happily recovering....”
“In fact,” said M. Bergeret, “if Italy had been beaten at Weissenburg
and at Reichshoffen, these defeats would have been as valuable to her
as the whole of Belgium. But we are a people of heroes, who always
fancy that we have been betrayed. That sums up our history. Take note
also of the fact that we are a democracy; and that is the state in
which negotiations present most difficulties. Nobody can, however,
deny that we made a long and courageous stand. Moreover, we have a
reputation for magnanimity, and I believe we deserve it. Anyhow, the
feats of the human race have always been but melancholy farces, and the
historians who pretend to discover any sequence in the flow of events
are merely great rhetoricians. Bossuet...”
Just as M. Bergeret was uttering this name the study door opened with
such a crash that the wicker-work woman was upheaved by it and fell at
the feet of the astonished young soldier. Then there appeared in the
doorway a ruddy, squint-eyed wench, with no forehead worth mentioning.
Her sturdy ugliness shone with the glow of youth and health. Her round
cheeks and bare arms were a fine military red. Planting herself in
front of M. Bergeret, she brandished the coal-shovel and shouted:
“I’m off!”
Euphémie, having quarrelled with Madame Bergeret, was now giving
notice. She repeated:
“I’m going off home!”
Said M. Bergeret:
“Then go quietly, my child.”
Again and again she shouted:
“I’m off! Madame wants to turn me into a regular beast of burden.”
Then, lowering her shovel, she added in lower tones:
“Besides, things are always happening here that I would rather not see.”
Without attempting to unravel the mystery of these words, M. Bergeret
merely remarked that he would not delay her, and that she could go.
“Well, then, give me my wages.”
“Leave the room,” answered M. Bergeret. “Don’t you see that I have
something to do besides settling with you? Go and wait elsewhere.”
But Euphémie, once more waving the dull, heavy shovel, yelled:
“Give me my money! My wages! I want my wages!”