Joseph Lacrisse, the Nationalist candidate, was carrying on an active
campaign in the Grandes-Écuries ward against the outgoing councillor,
Anselme Raimondin. From the first he felt at his ease in the public
meetings at which he spoke. Being a lawyer and very ignorant, he spoke
profusely, and nothing ever stopped him. The rapidity of his delivery
astonished the electors, with whom he was in sympathy because of the
scarcity and simplicity of his ideas, and what he said was always
what they would have said themselves, or at least would have tried to
say. He was always speaking of his honesty, and of the honesty of his
political friends; he insisted that they must elect honest men, and
that his party was the party of honest men. As it was a new party, the
people believed him.
Anselme Raimondin, at his meetings, replied that he himself was
honest, extremely honest, but his protestations, coming after the
others, seemed tedious. Since he had already been a councillor and
had experience of municipal affairs, the electors did not find it easy
to believe in his honesty, whereas Joseph Lacrisse was dazzling in his
innocence.
Lacrisse was young, brisk, and had a soldierly appearance. Raimondin
was short and stout, and wore spectacles. This difference was remarked
upon at a moment when Nationalism had breathed into municipal elections
some of the enthusiasm and poetry which are inseparable from it,
together with an ideal of beauty perceptible to the small shopkeeper.
Joseph Lacrisse was totally ignorant of all questions concerning civic
affairs, even to the attributions of municipal councils. This ignorance
was useful to him. His eloquence was thereby the freer and more
stirring. Anselme Raimondin, on the contrary, lost himself in the mazes
of detail. He was accustomed to the use of business expressions, and
to technical discussions; he had a love of figures, and a passion for
documents, and although he knew his public he laboured under certain
illusions with regard to the intelligence of the electors who had
nominated him. He had a certain amount of respect for them; he dared
not lie too grossly, and did his best to enter into explanations. All
this made him appear cold, obscure and tedious.
He was no simpleton. He knew where lay his interests, and he
understood minor politics. For two years his district had been
submerged by Nationalist newspapers, posters and pamphlets; and he
told himself that when the moment came he, too, could pretend to be
a Nationalist, that it wasn’t so difficult to demolish traitors and
acclaim the National Army. He had not feared his enemies sufficiently,
thinking that he could always do as they did, in which he was mistaken.
Joseph Lacrisse had an inimitable genius for expressing the Nationalist
ideal. He had hit upon one special sentence which he frequently
employed, and which always seemed new and beautiful. It was this:
“Citizens, let us all rise to defend our admirable Army against a
handful of cosmopolitans who have sworn to destroy it.” This was just
the thing to say to the electors of the Grandes-Écuries. Repeated
nightly, the sentence aroused the whole meeting to great and formidable
enthusiasm. Anselme Raimondin did not hit upon anything nearly so good;
if patriotic phrases occurred to him he did not deliver them in the
right tone, and they produced no effect.
Lacrisse covered the walls with tricolour posters. Anselme Raimondin
also made use of tricolour posters, but either the colours were too
washy or the sun faded them; at all events, his posters had a pallid
appearance. Everything played him false, every one abandoned him. He
lost his assurance; he humbled himself, showed himself prudent and
humble. He shrank from notice; he became almost imperceptible.
Again, when he stood up to speak in the dancing-hall of some third-rate
drinking-house he seemed like a pale phantom from which proceeded
a feeble voice drowned by pipe-smoke and the interruptions of the
audience. He recalled his past. He had always been a fighter, he
said. He stood up for the Republic; this remark, like the preceding
one, caused no sensation, had no sonorous echo. The electors of the
Grandes-Écuries ward wanted the Republic to be defended by Joseph
Lacrisse, who had conspired against her. That was what they wanted.
The meeting did not discuss both sides of the question. Only once was
Raimondin invited to put in an appearance at a Nationalist meeting. He
went; but he was not allowed to speak; and was utterly crushed by a
resolution put and carried amid darkness and disorder, for the landlord
had cut off the gas as soon as the people started breaking up the
benches. The meetings in the Grandes-Écuries ward, as in all the other
wards of Paris, were only moderately rowdy. The people now and then
displayed the languid violence peculiar to their day, which is the most
noticeable characteristic of our political manners. The Nationalists,
according to their habit, hurled forth the same monotonous insults
in which the expressions “Spy,” “Traitor” and “Rogue” had a feeble,
exhausted sound. Their slogans told of an extreme physical and moral
enervation, a vague discontent combined with profound lethargy, and a
definite inability to think out the simplest problems. There were many
insults and few blows. It was unusual if more than two or three per
night were wounded or knocked about, counting both parties. Lacrisse’s
wounded were taken to the Nationalist chemist Delapierre, next door to
the riding-school, and Raimondin’s to the Radical chemist Job, opposite
the market-place, and by midnight there was not a soul left in the
streets.
On Sunday, May the 6th, at six o’clock, Joseph Lacrisse, accompanied
by his friends, was awaiting the result of the ballot in an empty shop
decorated with flags and placards. This was their chief Committee
Room. The pork-butcher, Monsieur Bonnaud, arrived, and announced that
Lacrisse was elected by two thousand three hundred and nine votes
against one thousand five hundred and fourteen for Monsieur Raimondin.
“Citizen,” said Bonnaud, “we are much gratified. It is a victory for
the Republic.”
“And for honest men,” replied Lacrisse, adding with dignified
benevolence: “I thank you, Monsieur Bonnaud, and I beg you to thank
in my name our valiant friends.” Then, turning to Henri Léon who stood
beside him, he whispered, “Léon, do me a favour, will you? Wire our
success at once to Monseigneur.”
Shouts were heard from the street.
“Long live Déroulède! Long live the Army! Long live the Republic! Down
with the Jews!”
Lacrisse entered his carriage amid the cheers of the crowd that barred
his passage. Baron Golsberg, the Jew, was standing at the carriage
door; he seized the new councillor’s hand:
“I gave you my vote, Monsieur Lacrisse. You understand, I gave you my
vote, because, I tell you, anti-Semitism is mere humbug—you know it as
well as I do—mere humbug, while Socialism is a serious matter.”
“Yes, yes. Good-bye, Monsieur Golsberg.”
But the Baron still held on.
“Socialism is the danger. Monsieur Raimondin favoured concessions to
the Collectivists. That’s why I voted for you, Monsieur Lacrisse.”
And still the crowd yelled:
“Hurrah for Déroulède! Hurrah for the Army! Down with the Dreyfusards!
Down with Raimondin! Death to the Jews!”
The coachman succeeded in making a way through the mass of electors.
Joseph Lacrisse found Madame de Bonmont at home, alone. She was excited
and triumphant, having already heard the news.
“Elected!” she cried, her arms extended and her gaze directed
heavenward.
And the word “elected” on the lips of so pious a lady seemed full of
mystical meaning.
She put her beautiful arms around him and drew him to her.
“What makes me happiest is that you owe your election to me.”
She had contributed nothing to his expenses. It is true that money had
not been wanting, and Joseph Lacrisse had drawn upon more than one
banking account; but the gentle Elisabeth had given nothing, and Joseph
Lacrisse could not understand what she meant. She explained herself:
“I had a candle burnt every day before St. Anthony; that is why you got
in. St. Anthony grants all requests. Father Adéodat told me so, and I
have proved it several times.”
She covered his face with kisses, and a beautiful idea occurred to her,
which reminded her of the customs of chivalry.
“My dear,” she asked him, “do not municipal councillors wear a scarf?
an embroidered scarf, isn’t it? I’ll embroider one for you.”
He was very tired and fell exhausted into a chair, but kneeling at his
feet she murmured:
“I love you.”
And only the darkness heard the rest.
* * * * *
The same evening, in his modest apartments—the apartments of “a child
of the quarter,” as he called them—Anselme Raimondin heard the result
of the election. There were some dozen bottles of wine and a cold
_pâté_ on the dining-room table. His failure amazed him.
“It was only what I expected,” he said.
And he swung round in a pirouette, but he was clumsy and twisted his
ankle.
“It’s your own fault,” said Dr. Maufle, by way of consolation. The
Doctor was president of his Committee, an old Radical, with the face
of a Silenus. “You allowed the Nationalists to poison the whole ward;
you hadn’t the pluck to stand up against them. You made no attempt to
unmask their falsehoods. On the contrary, like them, with them, you
told every lie you could think of. You knew the truth, and you dared
not undeceive the electors while there was still time. You’ve funked
it, and you are beaten, and it serves you right!”
Anselme Raimondin shrugged his shoulders.
“You are a silly old fool, Maufle. You don’t understand the ins and
outs of this election. Yet it’s clear enough. My failure was due to
one thing only: the discontent of the small shopkeepers who are being
crushed out of existence between the big shops and the co-operative
societies. They are suffering and they made me pay for it. That’s all.”
Then, with a faint smile, he added:
“They’ll find themselves nicely taken in.”