“It seems that it is fixed for to-morrow,” said M. de Terremondre as he
entered Paillot’s shop.
Everyone understood the allusion: he was referring to the execution
of Lecœur, the butcher’s assistant, who had been sentenced to
death on the 27th of November, for the murder of Madame Houssieu.
This young criminal supplied the entire township with an interest in
life. Judge Roquincourt, who had a reputation in society as a ladies’
man, had courteously admitted Madame Dellion and Madame de Gromance
to the prison and allowed them a glimpse of the prisoner through the
barred grating of the cell where he was playing cards with a gaoler.
In his turn, the governor of the prison, M. Ossian Colot, an officer
of the Academy, gladly did the honours of his condemned prisoner to
journalists as well as to prominent townsmen. M. Ossian Colot had
written with the knowledge of an expert on various questions of the
penal code. He was proud of his establishment, which was run on the
most up-to-date lines, and he by no means despised popularity. The
visitors cast curious glances at Lecœur, while they speculated on
the relationship between this youth of twenty and the nonagenarian
widow who had become his victim. They stood stupefied by astonishment
before this monstrous brute. Yet Abbé Tabarit, the prison chaplain,
told with tears in his eyes how the poor lad had expressed the most
edifying sentiments of repentance and piety. Meanwhile, from morning
to night throughout three whole months, Lecœur played cards with
his gaolers and disputed the points in their own slang, for they were
of the same class. His darkened soul never revealed its sufferings
in words, but the rosy, chubby lad who, only ten months before, was
to be met whistling in the street with his basket on his head, and
his white apron knotted round his muscular loins, now shivered in his
strait waistcoat with pale, cadaverous face and looked like a sick man
of forty. His herculean neck was wasted and now protruded from his
drooping shoulders, thin and disproportionately long. By this time it
was agreed on all sides that he had exhausted the abhorrence, the pity
and the curiosity of his fellow-citizens, and that it was high time to
put an end to him.
“For six o’clock to-morrow. I heard it from Surcouf himself,” added M.
de Terremondre. “They’ve got the guillotine at the station.”
“That’s a good thing,” said Dr. Fornerol. “For three nights the crowd
has been congregating at the cross-roads of les Évées and there have
been several accidents. Julien’s son fell from a tree on his head and
cracked his skull. I’m afraid it’s impossible to save him.
“As for the condemned,” continued the doctor, “nobody, not even the
President of the Republic, could prolong his life. For this young lad
who was vigorous and sound up to the time of his arrest is now in the
last stage of consumption.”
“Have you seen him in his cell, then?” asked Paillot.
“Several times,” answered Dr. Fornerol, “and I have even attended him
professionally at Ossian Colot’s request, for he is always deeply
interested in the moral and physical well-being of his boarders.”
“He’s a real philanthropist,” answered M. de Terremondre. “And the
fact ought to be recognised that, in its way, our municipal prison is
an admirable institution, with its clean, white cells, all radiating
from a central watch-tower, and so skilfully arranged that all the
occupants are constantly under observation without being aware of the
fact. Nothing can be said against it, it is complete and modern and
all on the newest lines. Last year, when I was on a walking tour in
Morocco, I saw at Tangier, in a courtyard shaded by a mulberry tree,
a wretched building of mud and plaster, with a huge negro dressed in
rags lying asleep in front of it. Being a soldier, he was armed with a
cudgel. Swarthy hands clasping wicker baskets were projecting from the
narrow windows of the building. These belonged to the prisoners, who
were offering the passers-by the products of their lazy efforts, in
exchange for a copper or two. Their guttural voices whined out prayers
and complaints, which were harshly punctuated at intervals by curses
and furious shouts. For they were all shut up together in a vast hall
and spent the time in quarrelling with one another about the apertures,
through which they all wanted to pass their baskets. Whenever a dispute
was too noisy, the black soldier would wake up and force both baskets
and suppliant hands back within the walls by a vigorous onslaught of
his cudgel. In a few seconds, however, more hands would appear, all
sunburnt and tattooed in blue like the first ones. I had the curiosity
to peep into the prison hall through the chinks in an old wooden door.
I could see in the dim-lit, shadowy place a horde of tatterdemalions
scattered over the damp ground, bronzed bodies sleeping on piles of red
rags, solemn faces with long venerable beards beneath their turbans,
nimble blackamoors weaving baskets with shouts of laughter. On swollen
limbs here and there could be seen soiled linen bandages barely hiding
sores and ulcers, and one could see and hear the vermin wave and rustle
in all directions. Sometimes a laugh passed round the room. And a black
hen was pecking at the filthy ground with her beak. The soldier allowed
me to watch the prisoners as long as I liked, waiting for me to go,
before he begged of me. Then I thought of the governor of our splendid
municipal prison, and I said to myself: ‘If only M. Ossian Colot were
to come to Tangier he would soon discover and sweep away this crowding,
this horrible promiscuity.’”
“You paint a picture of barbarism which I recognise,” answered M.
Bergeret. “It is far less cruel than civilisation. For these Mussulman
prisoners have no sufferings to undergo, save such as arise from the
indifference or the occasional savagery of their gaolers. At least the
philanthropists leave them alone and their life is endurable, for they
escape the torture of the cell system, and in comparison with the cell
invented by the penal code of science, every other sort of prison is
quite pleasant.
“There is,” continued M. Bergeret, “a peculiar savagery in civilised
peoples, which surpasses in cruelty all that the imagination of
barbarism can conceive. A criminal expert is a much fiercer being than
a savage, and a philanthropist will invent tortures unknown in China or
Persia. A Persian executioner kills his prisoners by starving them, but
it required a philanthropist to conceive the idea of killing them with
solitude. It is on the principle of solitude that the punishment of the
cell system depends, and no other penalty can be compared with it for
duration and cruelty. The sufferer, if he is lucky, becomes mad through
it, and madness mercifully destroys in him all sense of his sufferings.
People imagine they are justifying this abominable system when they
allege that the prisoner must be withdrawn from the bad influence of
his fellows and put in a position where he cannot give way to immoral
or criminal instincts. People who reason in this way are really such
great fools that one can scarcely call them hypocrites.”
“You are right,” said M. Mazure. “But let us be just to our own age.
The Revolution not only accomplished a reform in judicial procedure,
but also much improved the lot of the prisoner. The dungeons of the
olden times were generally dark, pestilential dens.”
“It is true,” replied M. Bergeret, “that men have been cruel and
malicious in every age and have always delighted in tormenting the
wretched. But before philanthropists arose, at any rate, men were only
tortured through a simple feeling of hatred and desire for revenge, and
not for the good of their morals.”
“You forget,” answered M. Mazure, “that the Middle Ages gave birth to
the most accursed form of philanthropy ever known—the spiritual. For
it is just this name that suits the spirit of the holy Inquisition. It
was through pure charity alone that this tribunal handed heretics over
to the stake, and if it destroyed the body, it was, so they said, only
in order to save the soul.”
“They never said that,” answered M. Bergeret, “and they never thought
it. Victor Hugo did, indeed, believe that Torquemada ordered men to be
burnt for their good, in order that their eternal happiness might be
secured at the price of a short pain. On this theory he constructed
a drama that sparkles with the play of antithesis. But there is no
foundation whatever for this idea of his, and I should never have
imagined that a scholar like you, fattening, as you have done, on old
parchments, would have been led astray by a poet’s lies. The truth
is that the tribunal of the Inquisition, in handing the heretic over
to the secular arm, was simply cutting away a diseased limb from the
Church, for fear lest the whole body should be contaminated. As for
the limb thus cut off, its fate was in the hands of God. Such was the
spirit of the Inquisition, frightful enough, but by no means romantic.
But where the Holy Office showed what you rightly call spiritual
philanthropy was in the treatment it meted out to those converted from
the error of their ways. It charitably condemned them to perpetual
imprisonment, and immured them for the good of their souls. But I was
merely referring to the State prisons, just now, such as they were in
the Middle Ages and in modern times up to the reign of Louis XIV.”
“It is true,” said M. de Terremondre, “that the system of solitary
confinement has not produced all the happy results that were expected
from it in the reformation of prisoners.”
“This system,” said Dr. Fornerol, “often produces rather serious mental
disorders. Yet it is only fair to add that criminals are naturally
predisposed to troubles of this kind. We recognise to-day that the
criminal is a degenerate. Thus, for instance, thanks to M. Ossian
Colot’s courtesy, I have been allowed to make an examination of our
murderer, this fellow Lecœur. I found many physiological defects in
him.... His teeth, for instance, are quite abnormal. I argue from that
fact that he is only partially responsible for his acts.”
“Yet,” said M. Bergeret, “one of the sisters of Mithridates had a
double row of teeth in each jaw, and in her brother’s estimation, at
any rate, she was a woman of noble courage. So dearly did he love her
that when he was a fugitive pursued by Lucullus, he gave orders that
she should be strangled by a mute to prevent her falling alive into the
hands of the Romans. Nor did she then fail to live up to her brother’s
lofty estimation of her character, but suffering death by the bowstring
with joyous calmness, said: ‘I thank the king, my brother, for having
had a care to my honour, even in the midst of his own besetting
troubles.’ You see from this example that heroism is not impossible
even with a row of abnormal teeth.”
“Lecœur’s case,” replied the doctor, “presents many other
peculiarities which cannot fail to be significant in the eyes of a
scientist. Like so many born criminals his senses are blunted. Thus I
found, when I examined him, that he was tattooed in every part of his
body. You would be surprised at the lewd fancy shown in the choice of
scenes and symbols painted on his skin.”
“Really?” said M. de Terremondre.
“The skin of this patient,” said Dr. Fornerol, “really ought to be
properly prepared and preserved in our museum. But it is not the
character of the tattooing that I want to insist upon, but rather the
number of the pictures and their arrangement on the body. Certain parts
of the operation must have caused the patient an amount of pain which
could scarcely have been bearable to a person of ordinary sensibility.”
“There you are making a mistake!” exclaimed M. de Terremondre. “It
is evident that you don’t know my friend Jilly. Yet he is a very
well-known man. Jilly was quite young when, in 1885 or ’86, he made
the tour of the world with his friend Lord Turnbridge on the yacht
_Old Friend_. Jilly swears that throughout the whole voyage, through
storms and calm, neither Lord Turnbridge nor himself ever put foot on
deck for a single moment. The whole time they remained in the cabin
drinking champagne with an old top-man of the marines who had been
taught tattooing by a Tasmanian chief. In the course of the voyage
this old top-man covered the two friends from head to foot with tattoo
marks, and Jilly returned to France adorned with a fox-hunt that
comprises as many as three hundred and twenty-four figures of men,
women, horses and dogs. He is always delighted to show it when he sups
with boon companions at an inn. Now I really cannot say whether Jilly
is abnormally insensitive to pain, but what I can tell you is that he
is a fine fellow, and a man of honour and that he is incapable of....”
“But,” asked M. Bergeret, “do you think it right that this butcher’s
boy should be guillotined? For you confess that there are such things
as born criminals, and in your own phrase it seems that Lecœur
was only partially responsible for his acts, through a congenital
predisposition to crime.”
The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
“Then what would you do with him?” he asked.
“As a matter of fact,” replied M. Bergeret, “I am but little interested
in the fate of this particular man. But I am, nevertheless, opposed to
the death penalty.”
“Let’s hear your reasons, Bergeret,” said Mazure, the archivist, for
to him, living as he did in admiration of ’93 and the Terror, the idea
of the guillotine carried with it mystic suggestions of moral beauty.
“For my part, I would prohibit the death penalty in common law, but
re-establish it in political cases.”
M. de Terremondre had appointed Paillot’s shop as a rendezvous for M.
Georges Frémont, the inspector of fine arts, and just at the moment
when this civic discussion was in progress, he entered the shop. They
were going together to inspect Queen Marguerite’s house. Now, M.
Bergeret stood rather in awe of M. Frémont, for he felt himself a poor
creature by the side of such a great man. For M. Bergeret, who feared
nothing in the world of ideas, was very diffident where living men were
concerned.
M. de Terremondre had not got the key of the house, so he sent Léon to
fetch it, while he made M. Georges Frémont sit down in the corner among
the old books.
“Monsieur Bergeret,” said he, “is singing the praises of the
old-fashioned prisons.”
“Not at all,” said M. Bergeret, a little annoyed, “not at all. They
were nothing but sewers where the poor wretches lived chained to the
wall. But, at any rate, they were not alone—they had companions—and
the citizens, as well as the lords and ladies, used to come and visit
them. Visiting the prisons was one of the seven works of mercy. Nobody
is tempted to do that now, and if they were, the prison regulations
would not allow it.”
“It is true,” said M. de Terremondre, “that in olden times it was
customary to visit the prisoners. In my portfolios I have an engraving
by Abraham Bosse, which represents a nobleman wearing a plumed felt
hat, accompanying a lady in a veil of Venice point and a peaked brocade
bodice, into a dungeon which is swarming with beggars clothed in a few
shreds of filthy rags. The engraving is one of a set of seven original
proofs which I possess. And with these one always has to be on one’s
guard, for nowadays they reprint them from the old worn plates.”
“Visiting the prisons,” said Georges Frémont, “is a common subject
of Christian art in Italy, Flanders and France. It is treated with
peculiar vigour and truth in the Della Robbias on the frieze of painted
terra-cotta that surrounds the hospital at Pistoia in its superb
embrace.... You know Pistoia, Monsieur Bergeret?...”
The Professor had to acknowledge that he had never been in Tuscany.
Here M. de Terremondre, who was standing near the door, touched M.
Frémont’s arm.
“Look, Monsieur Frémont,” said he, “towards the square at the right of
the church. You will see the prettiest woman in the town go by.”
“That’s Madame de Gromance,” said M. Bergeret. “She is charming.”
“She occasions a lot of gossip,” said M. Mazure. “She was a Demoiselle
Chapon. Her father was a solicitor, and the greatest skinflint in the
department. Yet she is a typical aristocrat.”
“What is called the aristocratic type,” said Georges Frémont, “is a
pure conception of the brain. There is no more reality in it than in
the classic type of the Bacchante or the Muse. I have often wondered
how this aristocratic type of womanhood arose, how it managed to
root itself in the popular conception. It takes its origin, I think,
from several elements of real life. Among these I should point to
the actresses in tragedy and comedy, both those of the old Gymnase
and of the Théâtre-Français, as well as of the Boulevard du Crime
and the Porte-Saint-Martin. For a whole century these actresses have
been presenting to our spectacle-loving people numberless studies of
princesses and great ladies. Besides these, one must include the models
from whom painters create queens and duchesses for their genre, or
historical pictures. Nor must one overlook the more recent and less
far-reaching, yet still powerful, influence of the mannequins, or
lay-figures, of the great dressmakers, those beautiful girls with tall
figures who show off a dress so superbly. Now these actresses, these
models, these shop-girls, are all women of the lower class. From this
I deduce the fact that the aristocratic type proceeds entirely from
plebeian elegance. Hence there is nothing surprising in the fact that
Madame de Gromance, _née_ Chapon, should be found to belong to this
type. She is graceful, and what is a rare thing in our towns, with
their sharp paving-stones and dirty footpaths—she walks well. But I
rather fancy she falls a little short of perfection as regards the
hips. That’s a serious defect!”
Lifting his nose from the thirty-eighth volume of _l’Histoire générale
des Voyages_, M. Bergeret looked with admiring awe at this red-bearded
Parisian who could thus pass judgment on Madame de Gromance’s
delicious beauty and worshipful shape in the cold and measured accents
of an inquisitor.
“Now I know your tastes,” said M. de Terremondre, “I will introduce you
to my aunt Courtrai. She is heavily built and can only sit down in a
certain family arm-chair, which, for the past three hundred years, has
been in the habit of receiving all the old ladies of Courtrai-Maillan
within its capaciously wide and complacent embrace. As for her face,
it suits well with the rest of her, and I hope you will like it.
My aunt Courtrai is as red as a tomato, with fair moustaches that
wave negligently in their beauty. Ah! my aunt Courtrai’s type has no
connection with your actresses, models, and dressmakers’ dummies.”
“I feel myself,” said M. Frémont, “already much enamoured of your
worthy aunt.”
“The ancient nobility,” said M. Mazure, “used to live the life of
our large farmers of to-day, and, of course, they could not avoid
resembling those whose lives they led.”
“It is a well-proved fact,” said Dr. Fornerol, “that the human race is
degenerating.”
“Do you really think so?” asked M. Frémont. “Yet in France and Italy,
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the flower of their
chivalry must have been very slender. The royal coats of mail belonging
to the end of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance times were skilfully
wrought, and damascened and chased with exquisite art, yet so narrow
in the shoulders are they and so meagre in figure, that a man of our
day could only wear them with difficulty. They were almost all made
for small, slight men, and in fact, French portraits of the fifteenth
century, and the miniatures of Jehan Foucquet show us a world of almost
stunted folk.”
Léon entered with the key, in a great state of excitement.
“It is fixed for to-morrow,” he said to his master. “Deibler and his
assistants came by the half-past three train. They went to the Hôtel
de Paris, but there they wouldn’t take them in. Then they went to the
inn at the bottom of Duroc Hill, _le Cheval Bleu_, a regular cut-throat
place.”
“Ah, yes,” said Frémont, “I heard this morning at the prefecture that
there was an execution in your town. The topic was in everybody’s
mouth.”
“There are so few amusements in the provinces!” said M. de Terremondre.
“But that spirit,” said M. Bergeret, “is revolting. A legal execution
takes place in secret. But why should we still carry it on at all,
if we are ashamed of it? President Grévy, who was a man of great
insight, practically abolished the death penalty, by never passing a
sentence of death. Would that his successors had followed his example!
Personal security in the modern state is not obtained by mere fear of
punishment. Many European nations have now abolished the death penalty,
and in such countries crime is no more common than in the nations where
this base custom yet exists. And even in countries where this practice
is still found, it is in a weak and languishing condition, no longer
retaining power or efficacy. It is nothing but a piece of useless
unseemliness, for the practice is a mere survival of the principle on
which it rested. Those ideas of right and justice which formerly laid
men’s heads low in majestic fashion are now shaken to their roots by
the morality which has blossomed upon the natural sciences. And since
the death penalty is visibly on the point of death, the wisest thing
would be to let it die.”
“You are right,” said M. Frémont. “The death penalty has become an
intolerable practice, since now we no longer connect any idea of
expiation with it, for expiation is a purely theological notion.”
“The President would certainly have sent a pardon,” said Léon, with a
consequential air. “But the crime was too horrible.”
“The power of pardon,” said M. Bergeret, “was one of the attributes
of divine right. The king could only exercise it because, as the
representative of God on earth, he was above the ordinary human
justice. In passing from the king to the President of the Republic,
this right lost its essential character and therefore its legality.
It thenceforth became a flimsy prerogative, a judicial power
outside justice and yet no longer above it; it created an arbitrary
jurisdiction, foreign to our conception of the lawgiver. In practice
it is good, since by its action the wretched are saved. But bear in
mind that it has become ridiculous. The mercy of the king was the mercy
of God Himself, but just imagine M. Félix Faure invested with the
attributes of divinity! M. Thiers, who did not fancy himself the Lord’s
Anointed, and who, indeed, was not consecrated at Rheims, released
himself from this right of pardon by appointing a commission which was
entrusted with the task of being merciful for him.”
“It was only moderately so,” said M. Frémont.
Here a young soldier entered the shop and asked for _Le Parfait
Secrétaire_.
“Remains of barbarism,” said M. Bergeret, “still persist in modern
civilisation. Our code of military justice, for instance, will make
our memory hateful in the eyes of the near future. That code was
framed to deal with the bands of armed brigands who ravaged Europe in
the eighteenth century. It was perpetuated by the Republic of ’92
and reduced to a system during the first half of this century. When a
nation had taken the place of an army, they forgot to change the code,
for one cannot think of everything. Those brutal laws which were framed
in the first place to curb a savage soldiery are now used to govern
scared young peasants, or the children of our towns, who could easily
be led by kindness. And that is considered a natural proceeding!”
“I don’t follow you,” said M. de Terremondre. “Our military code,
prepared, I believe, at the Restoration, only dates from the Second
Empire. About 1875 it was revised and made to suit the new organisation
of the army. You cannot, therefore, say that it was framed for the
armies of former times.”
“I can with truth,” answered M. Bergeret, “for this code is nothing
more than a mere collection of orders respecting the armies of
Louis XIV and Louis XV. Everyone knows what these armies were, a
conglomeration of kidnappers and kidnapped, the scourings of the
country, divided into lots which were bought by the young nobles, often
mere children. In such regiments discipline was maintained by perpetual
threats of death. But everything is now changed: the soldiery of the
monarchy and the two Empires has given place to a vast and peaceful
national guard. There is no longer any fear of mutiny or violence.
Nevertheless, death at every turn still threatens these gentle flocks
of peasants and artisans clumsily disguised as soldiers. The contrast
between their harmless conduct and the savage laws in force against
them is almost laughable. And a moment’s reflection would prove that
it is as absurd as it is hateful to punish with death crimes which
could easily be dealt with by the simple penal code devised for the
maintenance of public order.”
“But,” said M. de Terremondre, “the soldiers of to-day are armed as
were the soldiers of former ages, and it is quite necessary that a
small, unarmed body of officers should be able to ensure obedience and
respect from a mob of men armed with muskets and cartridges. That’s the
gist of the whole matter.”
“It is an ancient prejudice,” said M. Bergeret, “to believe in the
necessity of punishment and to fancy that the severer the punishment
the more efficacious it is. The death penalty for assaulting a superior
officer is a survival of the time when the officers were not of the
same blood as the soldiers. These penalties were still retained in the
republican armies. Brindamour, who became a general in 1792, employed
the customs of bygone days in the service of the Revolution and shot
volunteers in grand style. At any rate, it may be said that Brindamour
waged war and fought strenuously from the time that he became general.
It was a matter of keeping the upper hand: it was not a man’s life that
was at stake, but the safety of the country.”
“It was theft especially,” said M. Mazure, “that the generals of the
year II punished with relentless severity. A light-infantry man in the
Army of the North, who had merely exchanged his old hat for a new one,
was shot. Two drummers, the eldest of whom was only eighteen, were shot
in sight of their comrades for having stolen some worthless ornaments
from an old peasant. It was the heroic age.”
“It was not only thieves,” answered M. Bergeret, “who were shot down
from day to day in the republican armies, it was also mutineers. And
those soldiers, who have been so much belauded since, were dragooned
like convicts, even to the point of semi-starvation. It is true that
they were occasionally in an awkward mood. Witness the three hundred
gunners of the 33rd demi-brigade who, at Mantua in the year IV,
demanded their pay by turning their cannon on the generals.
“They were jolly dogs with whom jesting was not safe! If enemies
were not come-at-able they were capable of spitting a dozen of their
superior officers. Such is the heroic temperament. But Dumanet is not
a hero nowadays, since peace no longer produces such beings. Sergeant
Bridoux has nothing to fear in his peaceful quarters, yet it pleases
him to be still able to say that a man cannot raise a hand against him
without being immediately shot with musical honours. However, in the
present state of our manners and in time of peace, such a circumstance
is out of proportion, although nobody can see it. It is true that
when a sentence of death has been passed by court-martial it is never
carried out, save in Algeria, and that, as far as possible, we avoid
giving these martial and musical entertainments in France. It is
recognised that here they would produce a bad effect: and in that fact
you have a tacit condemnation of the military code.”
“Take care,” said M. de Terremondre, “lest you impair discipline in any
way.”
“If,” answered M. Bergeret, “you had only seen a batch of raw recruits
filing into the barrack yard, you would no longer think it necessary
to be for ever hurling threats of death at these sheep-like creatures
in order to maintain discipline among them. They are thinking of
nothing but of how to get through their three years, as they put it,
and Sergeant Bridoux would be touched even to tears by their pitiful
docility, were it not that he thirsts to terrify them in order that
he may enjoy his own sense of power. It is not that Sergeant Bridoux
was born with a more callous heart than anyone else. But he is doubly
perverted, both as slave and tyrant, and if Marcus Aurelius had been a
non-commissioned officer I would not go so far as to promise that he
would never have tyrannised over his men. However that may be, this
tyranny suffices to produce that submission tempered by deceit that is
the soldier’s most useful virtue in time of peace.
“It is high time that our military codes of law, with their
paraphernalia of death, should be seen no more, save in the chamber of
horrors, by the side of the keys of the Bastille and the thumb-screws
of the Inquisition.”
“Army affairs,” said M. de Terremondre, “require most cautious
handling. The army means safety and it means hope. It is also the
training school of duty. Where else, save there, can be found
self-sacrifice and devotion?”
“It is true,” said M. Bergeret, “that men consider it the primary
social duty to learn to kill their fellows according to rule, and
that, in civilised nations, the glory of massacre is the greatest
glory known. And, after all, though man may be irredeemably evil and
mischievous, the bad work he does is but small in comparison with the
whole universe. For this planet is but a clod of earth in space and
the sun but a gaseous bubble that will soon dissolve.”
“I see,” said M. Frémont, “that you are no positivist. For you treat
the great fetich but scornfully.”
“What is the great fetich?” asked M. de Terremondre.
“You know,” answered M. Frémont, “that the positivists classify man
as the worshipping animal. Auguste Comte was very anxious to provide
for the wants of this worshipping animal and, after long reflection,
supplied him with a fetich. But his choice fell on the earth and not
on God. This was not because he was an atheist. On the contrary, he
held that the existence of a creative power is quite probable. Only
he opined that God was too difficult for comprehension, and therefore
his disciples, who are very religious men, practise the worship of the
dead, of great men, of woman, and of the great fetich, which is the
earth. Hence it comes about that the followers of this cult make plans
for the happiness of men and busy themselves in regulating the affairs
of the planet with a view to our happiness.”
“They will have a great deal to do,” said M. Bergeret, “and it is
quite evident that they are optimists. They must be optimistic to a
degree, and this temperament of theirs fills me with astonishment, for
it is difficult to realise that intelligent and thoughtful men such
as these can cherish the hope of some day making our sojourn on this
petty ball bearable to us. For this earth, revolving clumsily round a
yellow, half-darkened sun, carries us with it as though we were vermin
on a mouldy crust. The great fetich does not seem to me in any way
worshipful.”
Dr. Fornerol stooped down to whisper in M. de Terremondre’s ear:
“Bergeret wouldn’t gird at the universe in this way if he hadn’t some
special trouble. It isn’t natural to see the seamy side of everything.”
“You’re right,” said M. de Terremondre.