During the holidays, Monsieur Mazure, a keeper of departmental
archives, came for a few days to Paris to canvass the offices of
the Ministry for the Cross of the Legion of Honour, to make certain
historical researches among the National Archives, and to see the
Moulin-Rouge. Before entering upon his labours, on the day after his
arrival, he called, about six o’clock in the evening, upon Monsieur
Bergeret, who welcomed him benevolently. As the heat of the day
was overwhelming to those who were detained in the city, under the
scorching roofs and in the streets filled with acrid dust, a bright
idea occurred to Monsieur Bergeret. He took Monsieur Mazure to the
Bois, to a _cabaret_, where tables were set out under the trees, by the
brink of a slumbering sheet of water.
There, in the cool shade and the peace of the foliage, they enjoyed an
excellent dinner, and exchanged views upon familiar topics, discoursing
in turn upon learning and the divers fashions of loving. Then, without
preconcerted design, they yielded to an inevitable impulse and spoke of
the Affair.
Monsieur Mazure was greatly perturbed by the Affair. Being both by
persuasion and temperament a Jacobin and a patriot, after the manner
of Barère and Saint-Just, he had joined the Nationalist hosts of his
own department, and in company with Royalists and clerics, his _bêtes
noires_, he had, in the superior interest of his country, uplifted his
voice for the unity and indivisibility of the Republic. He had even
become a member of the league of which Monsieur Panneton de La Barge
was the president, and as this league had voted an address to the
King it was slowly dawning upon him that it was anti-republican, and
he no longer felt easy in respect of its principles. As a matter of
fact, being accustomed to dealing with documents, and quite capable of
bringing his intelligence to bear upon a critical inquiry of a fairly
simple character, he experienced some difficulty in upholding a system
that displayed an audacity hitherto unexampled in the fabrication and
falsification of documents intended to ruin an innocent man. He felt
that he was surrounded by imposture, and yet he would not admit the
fact that he had made a mistake, such an admission being possible only
to minds of unusual quality.
He protested, on the contrary, that he was right, and it is only
fair to admit that he was kept in ignorance, constrained, crushed and
compressed by the compact mass of his fellow-citizens. The knowledge
of the inquiry and the discussion of the documents had not yet
reached his little town, comfortably situated on the green banks of a
sluggish river. There, obstructing the light, filling public offices
and sitting on the bench, was that host of politicians and churchmen,
whom Monsieur Méline had formerly sheltered beneath the skirts of his
provincial frock-coat, waxing prosperous in acquiescent ignorance of
the truth. This elect society, which enlisted crime in the interests
of patriotism and religion, made it respectable for all, even for the
Radical-Socialist chemist Mandar.
The department was all the more safely protected against any revelation
of the most notorious facts in that it was administered by an
Israelitish prefect.
Monsieur Worms-Clavelin held himself bound, by the very fact that
he was a Jew, to serve the interests of the anti-Semites of his
administration with greater zeal than a Catholic prefect would have
displayed in his place. With a prompt and sure hand he stifled in his
department the growing faction in favour of revision. He favoured
the leagues of the clerical agitators, causing them to prosper so
wonderfully that citizens Francis de Pressensé, Jean Psichari, Octave
Mirbeau and Pierre Quillard, who came to the departmental capital
to speak their minds as free men, felt as though they had stepped
straight into a city of the sixteenth century. They encountered none
but idolatrous papists, howling for their death, who wanted to massacre
them. And as Monsieur Worms-Clavelin, who since the judgment of 1894
was fully convinced that Dreyfus was innocent, made no mystery of that
conviction after dinner, as he smoked his cigar, the Nationalists whose
cause he favoured had good reason to count on a loyal support which was
not dependent upon personal feeling.
This firm hold over the department whose archives he kept profoundly
impressed Monsieur Mazure, who was an ardent Jacobin and capable of
heroism, but who, like the company of heroes, marched only to the sound
of the drum. Monsieur Mazure was not a brute. He felt that he owed it
to others and to himself to explain his attitude.
After the soup, as they were waiting for the trout, he leaned his arms
on the table and remarked:
“My dear Bergeret, I am a patriot and a republican; I do not know
whether Dreyfus is guilty or innocent. I do not want to know; it’s
not my business. He may be innocent, but there is no doubt that the
Dreyfusites are guilty. They have been guilty of a great impertinence
in substituting their own personal opinion for a decision given by
republican justice. Besides, they have stirred up the whole country.
Trade is suffering.”
“There’s a pretty woman,” said Monsieur Bergeret, “tall, straight and
slender as a young tree.”
“Pooh!” said Monsieur Mazure. “A mere doll.”
“You speak very frivolously,” returned Monsieur Bergeret. “A doll, when
alive, is a great force of Nature.”
“I don’t trouble my head about that woman or any other,” said Monsieur
Mazure. “Perhaps because my own wife is a very well-made woman.”
So he said and did his best to believe. The truth was he had married
the old servant and mistress of his two predecessors. Bourgeois society
had kept aloof from her for ten years, but as soon as Monsieur Mazure
joined the Nationalist leagues of the department she found herself
received in the best society of the town. General Cartier de Chalmot’s
wife went about with her, and the wife of Colonel Despautères could
hardly tear herself away from her.
“The reason why I attach special blame to the Dreyfusites,” added
Monsieur Mazure, “is that they have weakened our national defence and
lowered our prestige in the eyes of other nations.”
The sun was shedding his last crimson rays between the black
tree-trunks. Monsieur Bergeret felt that he must in honesty reply:
“Just consider, my dear Mazure,” he said, “that if the affairs of an
obscure captain have become a matter of national importance the fault
is not ours, but that of the ministers who erected the support of an
erroneous and illogical sentence into a system of government. If the
Keeper of the Seals had done his duty and proceeded to the revision
of the trial as soon as it was clearly proved to be necessary, no one
would have said anything. It was during this lamentable evasion of
justice that protests began to make themselves heard. What upset the
whole country, what is calculated to injure us abroad and at home, was
that those in authority obstinately persisted in a monstrous piece of
wickedness which increased day by day under the covering of lies with
which they strove to hide it.”
“What else would you expect?” said Monsieur Mazure. “I am a good
patriot and a republican.”
“Then since you are a republican,” said Monsieur Bergeret, “you must
feel an alien, a solitary, among your fellow-citizens. There are few
republicans left in France to-day. The Republic herself has created
none. It’s absolute government that makes republicans. The love of
liberty is sharpened on the grinding-stone of royalty or imperialism,
but it grows blunt in a country where people believe they are free.
People seldom care much for what they possess. Reality as a rule is not
a very pleasant thing. One needs wisdom to be content with it. We can
safely say that to-day Frenchmen under fifty are not republicans.”
“They are not monarchists.”
“No, they are not monarchists either, for while as a rule men care
little for what they have, because what they have is not usually
pleasant, they fear change because it contains the Unknown. It is the
Unknown that frightens them most; that is the source and fountain-head
of all fear. You see that in universal suffrage, which would produce
an incalculable effect but for this terror of the Unknown, which
annihilates it. It contains a force which ought to perform prodigies of
good or evil, but the fear of the change contained in the Unknown gives
it power, and the monster bows his head to the yoke.”
“Would the gentlemen care for a _pêche au marasquin_?” inquired the
head waiter.
His voice was gentle and persuasive, and none of the occupied tables
escaped his vigilant gaze. But Monsieur Bergeret did not reply; he
was watching a lady who was advancing along the sandy path, wearing a
Louis XIV “church-lamp” hat of rice-straw, covered with roses, and a
white muslin gown, the body of which was loose and floating, drawn
in at the waist by a pink sash. The ruche round her neck looked like
the collar of wings enclosing the face of an angel. Monsieur Bergeret
recognized Madame de Gromance, whom he had more than once met, to his
secret agitation, in the dull monotony of provincial streets. He saw
that she was accompanied by a very smart young man, whose attitude was
altogether too correct for him to appear anything but bored.
He stopped at the table next to that occupied by Monsieur Bergeret and
his friend, when Madame de Gromance happened to glance round and see
Monsieur Bergeret. An expression of displeasure came over her face,
and she led her companion to the remotest corner of the lawn, where
they sat down under the shade of a large tree. The sight of Madame de
Gromance filled Monsieur Bergeret with that bitter-sweet feeling of
which a pleasure-loving soul is conscious at the sight of the beauty of
living forms.
He asked the head waiter whether he knew the lady and gentleman.
“I know them in a kind of way,” replied the waiter. “They often come
here, but I don’t know their names. We see so many people! On Saturday
the place was crowded. There were covers all over the grass and under
the trees, as far as the hedge that encloses the lawn.”
“Really?” said Monsieur Bergeret. “There were covers under all those
trees?”
“Yes, and on the terrace as well, and in the kiosk.”
Busily cracking almonds, Monsieur Mazure had not noticed the muslin
dress. He inquired which lady they were speaking of. Monsieur Bergeret,
however, decided to keep Madame de Gromance’s secret, and made no reply.
Night had fallen. Here and there a lamp whose radiance was softened
by a shade of white or pink paper marked the position of a table and
revealed shapes surrounded by faint haloes of light. Beneath one of
these discreet lights the little white plume surmounting a straw hat
was drawing closer and closer to the gleaming cranium of an elderly
man. At the next table were two youthful faces, more unsubstantial than
the moths that fluttered around them. Not in vain was the white round
shape of the moon ascending the paling sky.
“I trust you are satisfied, gentlemen,” said the head waiter.
And without waiting for a reply he directed his vigilant steps
elsewhere.
“Look at those people dining in the kindly darkness,” said Monsieur
Bergeret with a smile. “Those little white plumes, and right at the
back, under that great tree, those roses on a Louis Quatorze straw
hat. They are eating, drinking and making love, and to this man they
are nothing but covers! They have instincts and desires, even thoughts
perhaps, and they are covers! What strength of mind and of language!
This knight of the appetite is a great man.”
“We have had a very pleasant dinner,” said Monsieur Mazure, rising.
“This restaurant is frequented by the very smartest people.”
“Their smartness,” replied Monsieur Bergeret, “was possibly not of
the highest category. But some of them, certainly, were graceful
and charming enough. I must confess, however, that it gives me less
pleasure to contemplate these fashionable folk since a vile conspiracy
has aroused the sickly fanaticism and thoughtless cruelty of their
poor little brains. The Affair has revealed the moral sickness with
which our fashionable society is afflicted, just as the vaccine of
Koch discovers the lesions of tuberculosis in an infected organism.
Fortunately the depths of the human ocean lie beneath this gilded scum.
But when will my country be delivered from ignorance and hatred?”