CARDINAL AND COUNT.
Cardinal Plouernel was a man of sixty-five years of age, lean, lank and
leathery of skin. Except for the difference in age, he was possessed of
the identical type of face as his nephew. His long neck, bald head,
large and crooked nose like the beak of a bird of prey, and wide-set,
round and penetrating eyes, imparted to his physiognomy, if analyzed and
the high grade of intelligence that they denoted left out of
consideration, a singular resemblance to that of a vulture.
To sum up, the priest, if clad in his red robes of Prince of the Church,
could not choose but present a fear-inspiring aspect. On a visit to his
nephew, he was clad simply in a long black coat, strictly buttoned up to
his throat.
"Pardon, dear uncle," said the Count, smiling. "Not being aware of your
return to town, I did not expect this matitudinal call."
The Cardinal was not the man to be astonished at a colonel of dragoons
keeping a mistress. He made answer in his brief manner:
"I am pressed for time. Let us talk to the point. On my way from abroad
I made a wide tour through France. We are on the verge of a revolution."
"Indeed, uncle?" asked the colonel incredulously. "Do you really
believe--"
"I believe a revolution is at hand."
"But, uncle--"
"Have you available funds about you? If not, I can help you out."
"Funds--what for?"
"To exchange into gold, or for good drafts upon London. The latter are
more convenient on a voyage."
"What! A voyage, uncle? What voyage?"
"The voyage that you are to make by keeping me company. We shall depart
this evening."
"Depart--this evening!"
"Would you prefer to serve the Republic?"
"The Republic!" exclaimed the Count of Plouernel. "What Republic?"
"The one that will be proclaimed in Paris, within shortly, after the
downfall of Louis Philippe."
"The downfall of Louis Philippe! The Republic in France--and within
shortly!"
"Yes, the French Republic--one, and indivisible--proclaimed in our
interest--provided we know how to wait--"
And the Cardinal indulged in a singular smile as he inhaled a pinch of
snuff.
The Count contemplated him dumbfounded. He looked as if he had just
dropped down from the clouds.
"I see, my poor Gonthram, you must have been either blind or deaf," the
Cardinal proceeded, shrugging his shoulders. "Do you see nothing in
those revolutionary banquets that have succeeded one another throughout
the principal cities of France during the last three months?"
"Ha! Ha! Ha! uncle," answered the Count, laughing out aloud; "do you
take those bibbers of blue wine, those swallowers of veal--at twenty
sous a plate--to be capable of making a revolution?"
"The simpletons--I can not blame them, so much the worse--the simpletons
have turned the heads of the bigger simpletons who listened to them.
There is nothing, in and of itself, so stupid as gunpowder; is there?
Yet that does not prevent it from exploding. Well, these banqueters have
played with gunpowder. The mine is about to explode, and it will blow up
the throne of the Orleans dynasty."
"You are joking, uncle. There are fifty thousand soldiers in the city.
If the mob but raise a finger it will be mowed down like grass.
Everybody is so completely at ease regarding the state of Paris that,
despite the seeming commotion of yesterday, the troops have not even
been furnished with passwords in the barracks."
"Is that so? Well, so much the better!" put in the Cardinal, rubbing his
hands. "If their government is seized with the vertigo, these Orleans
will quickly vacate their seats for the Republic, and our turn will come
all the sooner."
At this point his Eminence was interrupted by two raps given at the door
of the salon that communicated with the boudoir. Promptly upon the raps
followed the following ditty, still to the tune of _La Rifla_, and sung
by Pradeline in measured rhythm on the other side of the door:
"To get out of this scrape--
I sorely need my cape,
On this occa-si-on,
Your bene-dic-ti-on.
La rifla-fla-fla-fla, la rifla!"
"Oh, uncle!" said the colonel in anger, "Pay no attention, I beg you, to
the insolence of that foolish little minx."
And rising, the Count of Plouernel took from the sofa where they had
lain since the previous evening the cape and hat of the brazen girl,
rang the bell quickly, and, throwing the articles at the valet who
answered the summons, said to him:
"Deliver these traps to the hussy, and have her leave the house
instantly."
And then, returning to his Eminence, who had remained impassive, and was
at the moment in the act of opening his snuff-box, he continued:
"I assure you, uncle, that I am ashamed. But droll creatures like that
respect nothing."
"She has very well shaped limbs," mused the Cardinal, taking his snuff;
"she is quite comely, the droll creature. Nevertheless, in the Fifteenth
Century, we would have ordered her roasted alive like a little Jewess,
in reward for such a joke. But patience. Oh, my friend, never--never
before were our chances so favorable!"
"Our chances favorable if the Orleans dynasty is chased away and the
Republic is proclaimed?"
The Cardinal again shrugged his shoulders and proceeded to explain:
"Either one thing or the other will happen--either the Republic of the
bare-footed mob will be anarchy, the dictatorship, emigration, pillage,
paper money, the guillotine, and war with all Europe--and then the thing
will last six months at the longest, and Henry V will be brought back
triumphantly by the Holy Alliance; or, on the contrary, their Republic
will be benign, stupid, legal and moderate with universal suffrage for
its foundation--"
"And, if so, uncle?"
"If so, it will last longer, but we shall lose nothing by waiting.
Wielding our influence as large landed proprietors, and operating
through the lower clergy upon the peasants, we shall become masters at
the hustings, obtain the majority in the Chamber, and hamper the passage
of every measure that might, I will not say cause the Republic to be
loved, but even cause such a revolutionary state of things to seem
tolerable. We shall sow the seeds of mistrust and fear in all minds.
Soon, with its credit destroyed, with universal ruin, with disaster on
all sides, a chorus of curses will rise against the infamous Republic
that will then die peaceably after a trial that will for all time
disgust the people with it. At that psychologic moment we shall step
forward. The hungering people, the bourgeois, frightened out of their
senses, will throw themselves at our feet, praying to us with clasped
hands for Henry V, the savior of France. Finally, the hour for
stipulating conditions will arrive. These will be ours: Royalty, at
least such as it existed before 1789, that is, no more bourgeois
insolent and clamorous Chamber, holding the reins of government as much
as the King, seeing it decides upon appropriations and taxes--an
ignominious state of things; an end of the present mongrel system--_all_
or _nothing_, and we want _all_, to wit, an absolute King resting upon
an omnipotent clergy; a strong aristocracy and a merciless army; a
hundred thousand, two hundred thousand foreign troops, if needed; the
Holy Alliance will lend them to us. Misery will be so frightful, fear so
intense, the general lassitude such, that our conditions will be
accepted as soon as imposed. Thereupon we shall take prompt and terrible
measures--the only effective ones in such emergencies. Our measures will
be these: First of all, provost courts; reinstitution of the laws
pronouncing sacrilege and _lese majeste_ capital crimes, and making them
retroactive, back to 1830; execution to follow verdict within
twenty-four hours, in order to smother in their own poison all
revolutionists, all people tainted with impiousness; it will be an era
of terror--another St. Bartholomew, if necessary. France will not die
under the knife; on the contrary, she is suffering of plethora, she
needs a bleeding from time to time.[8] The second measure will be to
assign public instruction to the Society of Jesus--it alone is able to
emasculate the human species. The third measure will be to break the
sheaf of centralization; in it lay the strength of the Revolution; our
effort must be, on the contrary, to isolate the provinces as much as
possible from the small centers, where, unmolested, we shall hold sway
through the lower clergy; or, by virtue of our large holdings, restrain,
prevent, if at all possible, the intercommunication of one section of
the country with another. It is not helpful to us for people to draw
together and meet each other with frequency. With the view of dividing
and keeping them divided, we shall assiduously rekindle the rivalries,
jealousies, and where needed, the old provincial hatreds. To that end an
occasional little douse of civil war will be a helpful expedient. It
breeds and nurses the germs of implacable animosity."
The Cardinal stopped a moment to take another pinch of snuff, and then
concluded with these words:
"People who are divided by hatred never conspire."
The merciless logic of the priest repelled the Count of Plouernel.
Despite his own fatuity and caste prejudices, he rather leaned towards
modern thought. No doubt he would have preferred a reign of "legitimate
Kings." But he did not stop to think that he who wants the end must not
object to the means, and that, in order to be lasting in the eyes of its
partisans, a complete and absolute restoration could not possibly take
place and maintain itself except by the frightful means that the
Cardinal had just laid bare with complacent assurance. The colonel
replied with a smile:
"But, uncle, think of it! In these days of ours the idea of isolating
the population is chimerical. The thing is impossible! What about the
strategic highways! The railroads!"
"The railroads?" echoed the Cardinal angrily. "A devil's invention, good
only to cause the revolutionary fever to circulate from one end of
Europe to the other! For that very reason our Holy Father wants no
railroads in his states, and right he is. It is incredible that the
monarchs of the Holy Alliance could have allowed themselves to yield to
such diabolical innovations! They may have to pay dear therefor! What
did our forefathers do, at the time of the conquest, with a view to
subjugate and keep the yoke riveted to the neck of this perverse Gallic
race--our vassals by birth and by kind, that has so often risen in
rebellion against us? Our ancestors staked them within their separate
domains, forbidding them to step outside under penalty of death. Thus
chained to the glebe, thus isolated and brutified, the breed is more
easily kept under control--that must be the goal we should aim at
returning to."
"But I repeat--what about the railroads? You would not tear up the
highways and railroads, would you, uncle?"
"Why not? Did not the Franks, our ancestors, in pursuit of an unerring
policy, tear up the highways, the magnificent roads of communication
that they found in Gaul, and which those pagans of Romans had
constructed? Would it be so difficult a task to hurl against the
railroads the mass of brutes whom that infernal invention threw out of
their means of earning a livelihood? Anathema--anathema against those
proud monuments of haughty Satan! By the blood of my race! If he is not
curbed in his sacrilegious career, man will yet end--may God
forefend!--by changing this valley of tears into a terrestrial paradise,
wholly oblivious of the fact that original sin condemns him to perpetual
suffering!"
"Zounds! Dear uncle, not so fast!" interjected the colonel. "I am not
inclined to carry out my destiny with quite such scrupulous accuracy."
"You big baby!" replied the Cardinal impatiently, taking a fresh pinch
of snuff. "Do you not understand that, in order that the large majority
of the race of Adam suffer and be meritoriously conscious of its
suffering, it is requisite that there be always in evidence a neat small
number of happy people in the world?"
"Oh, I see! As a contrast; is that it, dear uncle?"
"Necessarily. The depth of the valley is not realized but for its
contrast with the mountain top. But enough of philosophy. As you know, I
have an accurate eye, quick and certain. The situation is such as I have
described it to you. I repeat--do as I have done. Realize all your
negotiable effects in gold, or in good drafts upon London. Send in your
resignation this minute, and let us depart to-morrow at the very latest.
Such is the blindness of those people that they apprehend nothing. You
said so yourself. There is hardly any military precaution taken. You
can, accordingly, without in any way wounding your military honor, quit
your regiment this instant."
"Impossible, my dear uncle--that would be an act of cowardice. If the
Republic is to be established, the thing will not be done without the
firing of some guns. I wish to do my part--I wish to be quits.
Politeness for politeness, with good round discharges of muskets! My
dragoons will want nothing better than a chance to charge upon the
canaille."
"Then you propose to defend the throne of the wretches of Orleans!"
exclaimed the Cardinal with a loud outburst of sardonic laughter.
"Dear uncle, you know very well I did not wheel in line in support of
the Orleans dynasty. No more than you, do I love them. I simply joined
the army, because I have a military turn of mind. The army has but one
opinion--discipline. In short, if your foresight is correct--and your
trained experience inclines me to the belief that you are not
mistaken--then a battle will be fought this very day. Under such
circumstances I would be a despicable wretch to hand in my resignation
on the eve of an encounter."
"Then you are determined to run the risk of being riddled with bullets
or brained by the mob on a barricade--in the interest of the Orleans
dynasty?"
"I am a soldier--I am determined to fulfil the duties of my profession."
"But, you devil of a stubborn block! Suppose you are killed, our house
would then fall from the lance to the distaff."
"I promised you I would marry at forty--"
"But until then--think of it--these street fights are disgraceful--to
die in the mud of the gutters, killed by a lot of beggars!"
"Before it came to that I would have treated myself to the sport of
hewing several of them down with my saber," coolly replied the colonel.
"In that event it will not be difficult for you to find some sturdy
Plouernel bastard of my own making--whom you will then adopt, uncle. He
will perpetuate my name. Bastards often have brought good luck to great
houses."
"Triple fool! To play with your life in that manner! And that at the
very moment when the future smiles upon us as it never smiled before! At
the moment when, after having been beaten, kicked and cuffed by the
descendants of the men who for fourteen centuries were our vassals and
serfs, we are about to wipe out at a single stroke these last fifty
years of shame! At the moment when, instructed by experience, and aided
by the course of events, we are about to resume our power and become
even mightier than we were in 1789! Go to--I pity you! You are right,
races degenerate!" exclaimed the intractable old man, rising. "I would
despair of our cause if all our people were like you."
The valet, stepping in again after rapping at the door, said to the
Count of Plouernel:
"Monsieur Count, the linendraper of St. Denis Street has arrived. He is
waiting in the ante-chamber."
"Take him to the salon of the portraits."
The valet left; the colonel said to the Cardinal, whom he saw angrily
picking up his hat and moving towards the door:
"For God's sake, uncle, do not go away angry, in that way--"
"I am not going away angry; I am going away ashamed."
"Come, dear uncle, you will think better of me."
"Will you, yes or no, depart with me for England?"
"Impossible, uncle."
"Then go to the devil!" was the rather uncanonical shout with which the
Cardinal furiously took his leave, slamming the door behind him.