BOOK VI. MODERN TIMES: THE AFFAIR OF THE EIGHTY THOUSAND TRUSSES OF HAY

Ζεῦ πάτερ ἀλλὰ σὺ ρῦσαι ὑπ᾽ ἠέρος υἷας Αχαιῶν,

ποίησον δ᾽αἴθρην, δὸς δ᾽ὀφθαλμοῖ σιν ἰδέσθαι·

ἐν δὲ φάιει καὶ ὄλεσσον ἐπεί νύ τοι εὔαδεν οὕτως.[10]

(Iliad, xvii. 645 _et seq_.)

[10] O Father Zeus, only save thou the sons of the Acheans from the

darkness, and make clear sky and vouchsafe sight to our eyes, and

then, so it be but light, slay us, since such is thy good pleasure.

I. GENERAL GREATAUK, DUKE OF SKULL

A short time after the flight of the Emiral, a middle-class Jew called

Pyrot, desirous of associating with the aristocracy and wishing to

serve his country, entered the Penguin army. The Minister of War, who

at the time was Greatauk, Duke of Skull, could not endure him. He

blamed him for his zeal, his hooked nose, his vanity, his fondness for

study, his thick lips, and his exemplary conduct. Every time the author

of any misdeed was looked for, Greatauk used to say:

“It must be Pyrot!”

One morning General Panther, the Chief of the Staff, informed Greatauk

of a serious matter. Eighty thousand trusses of hay intended for the

cavalry had disappeared and not a trace of them was to be found.

Greatauk exclaimed at once:

“It must be Pyrot who has stolen them!”

He remained in thought for some time and said: “The more I think of it

the more I am convinced that Pyrot has stolen those eighty thousand

trusses of hay. And I know it by this: he stole them in order that he

might sell them to our bitter enemies the Porpoises. What an infamous

piece of treachery!

“There is no doubt about it,” answered Panther; “it only remains to

prove it.”

The same day, as he passed by a cavalry barracks, Prince des Boscénos

heard the troopers as they were sweeping out the yard, singing:

Boscénos est un gros cochon;

On en va faire des andouilles,

Des saucisses et du jambon

Pour le réveillon des pauv’ bougres.

It seemed to him contrary to all discipline that soldiers should sing

this domestic and revolutionary refrain which on days of riot had been

uttered by the lips of jeering workmen. On this occasion he deplored

the moral degeneration of the army, and thought with a bitter smile

that his old comrade Greatauk, the head of this degenerate army, basely

exposed him to the malice of an unpatriotic government. And he promised

himself that he would make an improvement before long.

“That scoundrel Greatauk,” said he to himself, “will, not remain long a

Minister.”

Prince des Boscénos was the most irreconcilable of the opponents of

modern democracy, free thought, and the government which the Penguins

had voluntarily given themselves. He had a vigorous and undisguised

hatred for the Jews, and he worked in public and in private, night and

day, for the restoration of the line of the Draconides. His ardent

royalism was still further excited by the thought of his private

affairs, which were in a bad way and were hourly growing worse. He had

no hope of seeing an end to his pecuniary embarrassments until the heir

of Draco the Great entered the city of Alca.

When he returned to his house, the prince took out of his safe a bundle

of old letters consisting of a private correspondence of the most

secret nature, which he had obtained from a treacherous secretary. They

proved that his old comrade Greatauk, the Duke of Skull, had been

guilty of jobbery regarding the military stores and had received a

present of no great value from a manufacturer called Maloury. The very

smallness of this present deprived the Minister who had accepted it of

all excuse.

The prince re-read the letters with a bitter satisfaction, put them

carefully back into his safe, and dashed to the Minister of War. He was

a man of resolute character. On being told that the Minister could see

no one he knocked down the ushers, swept aside the orderlies, trampled

under foot the civil and military clerks, burst through the doors, and

entered the room of the astonished Greatauk.

“I will not say much,” said he to him, “but I will speak to the point.

You are a confounded cad. I have asked you to put a flea in the ear of

General Mouchin, the tool of those Republicans, and you would not do

it. I have asked you to give a command to General des Clapiers, who

works for the Dracophils, and who has obliged me personally, and you

would not do it. I have asked you to dismiss General Tandem, the

commander of Port Alca, who robbed me of fifty louis at cards, and who

had me handcuffed when I was brought before the High Court as Emiral

Chatillon’s accomplice. You would not do it. I asked you for the hay

and bran stores. You would not give them. I asked you to send me on a

secret mission to Porpoisia. You refused. And not satisfied with these

repeated refusals you have designated me to your Government colleagues

as a dangerous person, who ought to be watched, and it is owing to you

that I have been shadowed by the police. You old traitor! I ask nothing

more from you and I have but one word to say to you: Clear out; you

have bothered us too long. Besides, we will force the vile Republic to

replace you by one of our own party. You know that I am a man of my

word. If in twenty-four hours you have not handed in your resignation I

will publish the Maloury _dossier_ in the newspapers.”

But Greatauk calmly and serenely replied:

“Be quiet, you fool. I am just having a Jew transported. I am handing

over Pyrot to justice as guilty of having stolen eighty thousand

trusses of hay.”

Prince Boscénos, whose anger vanished like a dream, smiled.

“Is that true?”

“You will see.”

“My congratulations, Greatauk. But as one always needs to take

precautions with you I shall immediately publish the good news. People

will read this evening about Pyrot’s arrest in every newspaper in Alca

. . . .”

And he went away muttering:

“That Pyrot! I suspected he would come to a bad end.”

A moment later General Panther appeared before Greatauk.

“Sir,” said he, “I have just examined the business of the eighty

thousand trusses of hay. There is no evidence against Pyrot.”

“Let it be found,” answered Greatauk. “Justice requires it. Have Pyrot

arrested at once.”

II. PYROT

All Penguinia heard with horror of Pyrot’s crime; at the same time

there was a sort of satisfaction that this embezzlement combined with

treachery and even bordering on sacrilege, had been committed by a Jew.

In order to understand this feeling it is necessary to be acquainted

with the state of public opinion regarding the Jews both great and

small. As we have had occasion to say in this history, the universally

detested and all powerful financial caste was composed of Christians

and of Jews. The Jews who formed part of it and on whom the people

poured all their hatred were the upper-class Jews. They possessed

immense riches and, it was said, held more than a fifth part of the

total property of Penguinia. Outside this formidable caste there was a

multitude of Jews of a mediocre condition, who were not more loved than

the others and who were feared much less. In every ordered State,

wealth is a sacred thing: in democracies it is the only sacred thing.

Now the Penguin State was democratic. Three or four financial companies

exercised a more extensive, and above all, more effective and

continuous power, than that of the Ministers of the Republic. The

latter were puppets whom the companies ruled in secret, whom they

compelled by intimidation or corruption to favour themselves at the

expense of the State, and whom they ruined by calumnies in the press if

they remained honest. In spite of the secrecy of the Exchequer, enough

appeared to make the country indignant, but the middle-class Penguins

had, from the greatest to the least of them, been brought up to hold

money in great reverence, and as they all had property, either much or

little, they were strongly impressed with the solidarity of capital and

understood that a small fortune is not safe unless a big one is

protected. For these reasons they conceived a religious respect for the

Jews’ millions, and self-interest being stronger with them than

aversion, they were as much afraid as they were of death to touch a

single hair of one of the rich Jews whom they detested. Towards the

poorer Jews they felt less ceremonious and when they saw any of them

down they trampled on them. That is why the entire nation learnt with

thorough satisfaction that the traitor was a Jew. They could take

vengeance on all Israel in his person without any fear of compromising

the public credit.

That Pyrot had stolen the eighty thousand trusses of hay nobody

hesitated for a moment to believe. No one doubted because the general

ignorance in which everybody was concerning the affair did not allow of

doubt, for doubt is a thing that demands motives. People do not doubt

without reasons in the same way that people believe without reasons.

The thing was not doubted because it was repeated everywhere and, with

the public, to repeat is to prove. It was not doubted because people

wished to believe Pyrot guilty and one believes what one wishes to

believe. Finally, it was not doubted because the faculty of doubt is

rare amongst men; very few minds carry in them its germs and these are

not developed without cultivation. Doubt is singular, exquisite,

philosophic, immoral, transcendent, monstrous, full of malignity,

injurious to persons and to property, contrary to the good order of

governments, and to the prosperity of empires, fatal to humanity,

destructive of the gods, held in horror by heaven and earth. The mass

of the Penguins were ignorant of doubt: it believed in Pyrot’s guilt

and this conviction immediately became one of its chief national

beliefs and an essential truth in its patriotic creed.

Pyrot was tried secretly and condemned.

General Panther immediately went to the Minister of War to tell him the

result.

“Luckily,” said he, “the judges were certain, for they had no proofs.”

“Proofs,” muttered Greatauk, “Proofs, what do they prove? There is only

one certain, irrefragable proof—the confession of the guilty person.

Has Pyrot confessed?”

“No, General.”

“He will confess, he ought to. Panther, we must induce him; tell him it

is to his interest. Promise him that, if he confesses, he will obtain

favours, a reduction of his sentence, full pardon; promise him that if

he confesses his innocence will be admitted, that he will be decorated.

Appeal to his good feelings. Let him confess from patriotism, for the

flag, for the sake of order, from respect for the hierarchy, at the

special command of the Minister of War militarily. . . . But tell me,

Panther, has he not confessed already? There are tacit confessions;

silence is a confession.”

“But, General, he is not silent; he keeps on squealing like a pig that

he is innocent.”

“Panther, the confessions of a guilty man sometimes result from the

vehemence of his denials. To deny desperately is to confess. Pyrot has

confessed; we must have witnesses of his confessions, justice requires

them.”

There was in Western Penguinia a seaport called La Cirque, formed of

three small bays and formerly greatly frequented by ships, but now

solitary and deserted. Gloomy lagoons stretched along its low coasts

exhaling a pestilent odour, while fever hovered over its sleepy waters.

Here, on the borders of the sea, there was built a high square tower,

like the old Campanile at Venice, from the side of which, close to the

summit hung an open cage which was fastened by a chain to a transverse

beam. In the times of the Draconides the Inquisitors of Alca used to

put heretical clergy into this cage. It had been empty for three

hundred years, but now Pyrot was imprisoned in it under the guard of

sixty warders, who lived in the tower and did not lose sight of him

night or day, spying on him for confessions that they might afterwards

report to the Minister of War. For Greatauk, careful and prudent,

desired confessions and still further confessions. Greatauk, who was

looked upon as a fool, was in reality a man of great ability and full

of rare foresight.

In the mean time Pyrot, burnt by the sun, eaten by mosquitoes, soaked

in the rain, hail and snow, frozen by the cold, tossed about terribly

by the wind, beset by the sinister croaking of the ravens that perched

upon his cage, kept writing down his innocence on pieces torn off his

shirt with a tooth-pick dipped in blood. These rags were lost in the

sea or fell into the hands of the gaolers. But Pyrot’s protests moved

nobody because his confessions had been published.

III. COUNT DE MAUBEC DE LA DENTDULYNX

The morals of the Jews were not always pure; in most cases they were

averse from none of the vices of Christian civilization, but they

retained from the Patriarchal age a recognition of family, ties and an

attachment to the interests of the tribe. Pyrot’s brothers,

half-brothers, uncles, great-uncles, first, second, and third cousins,

nephews and great-nephews, relations by blood and relations by

marriage, and all who were related to him to the number of about seven

hundred, were at first overwhelmed by the blow that had struck their

relative, and they shut themselves up in their houses, covering

themselves with ashes and blessing the hand that had chastised them.

For forty days they kept a strict fast. Then they bathed themselves and

resolved to search, without rest, at the cost of any toil and at the

risk of every danger, for the demonstration of an innocence which they

did not doubt. And how could they have doubted? Pyrot’s innocence had

been revealed to them in the same way that his guilt had been revealed

to Christian Penguinia’s; for these things, being hidden, assume a

mystic character and take on the authority of religious truths. The

seven hundred Pyrotists set to work with as much zeal as prudence, and

made the most thorough inquiries in secret. They were everywhere; they

were seen nowhere. One would have said that, like the pilot of Ulysses,

they wandered freely over the earth. They penetrated into the War

Office and approached, under different disguises, the judges, the

registrars, and the witnesses of the affair. Then Greatauk’s cleverness

was seen. The witnesses knew nothing; the judges and registrars knew

nothing. Emissaries reached even Pyrot and anxiously questioned him in

his cage amid the prolonged moanings of the sea and the hoarse croaks

of the ravens. It was in vain; the prisoner knew nothing. The seven

hundred Pyrotists could not subvert the proofs of the accusation

because they could not know what they were, and they could not know

what they were because there were none. Pyrot’s guilt was indefeasible

through its very nullity. And it was with a legitimate pride that

Greatauk, expressing himself as a true artist, said one day to General

Panther: “This case is a master-piece: it is made out of nothing.” The

seven hundred Pyrotists despaired of ever clearing up this dark

business, when suddenly they discovered, from a stolen letter, that the

eighty thousand trusses of hay had never existed, that a most

distinguished nobleman, Count de Maubec, had sold them to the State,

that he had received the price but had never delivered them. Indeed

seeing that he was descended from the richest landed proprietors of

ancient Penguinia, the heir of the Maubecs of Dentdulynx, once the

possessors of four duchies, sixty counties, and six hundred and twelve

marquisates, baronies, and viscounties, he did not possess as much land

as he could cover with his hand, and would not have been able to cut a

single day’s mowing of forage off his own domains. As to his getting a

single rush from a land-owner or a merchant, that would have been quite

impossible, for everybody except the Ministers of State and the

Government officials knew that it would be easier to get blood from a

stone than a farthing from a Maubec.

The seven hundred Pyrotists made a minute inquiry concerning the Count

Maubec de la Dentdulynx’s financial resources, and they proved that

that nobleman was chiefly supported by a house in which some generous

ladies were ready to furnish all comers with the most lavish

hospitality. They publicly proclaimed that he was guilty of the theft

of the eighty thousand trusses of straw for which an innocent man had

been condemned and was now imprisoned in the cage.

Maubec belonged to an illustrious family which was allied to the

Draconides. There is nothing that a democracy esteems more highly than

noble birth. Maubec had also served in the Penguin army, and since the

Penguins were all soldiers, they loved their army to idolatry. Maubec,

on the field of battle, had received the Cross, which is a sign of

honour among the Penguins and which they valued even more highly than

the embraces of their wives. All Penguinia declared for Maubec, and the

voice of the people which began to assume a threatening tone, demanded

severe punishments for the seven hundred calumniating Pyrotists.

Maubec was a nobleman; he challenged the seven hundred Pyrotists to

combat with either sword, sabre, pistols, carabines, or sticks.

“Vile dogs,” he wrote to them in a famous letter, “you have crucified

my God and you want my life too; I warn you that I will not be such a

duffer as He was and that I will cut off your fourteen hundred ears.

Accept my boot on your seven hundred behinds.”

The Chief of the Government at the time was a peasant called Robin

Mielleux, a man pleasant to the rich and powerful, but hard towards the

poor, a man of small courage and ignorant of his own interests. In a

public declaration he guaranteed Maubec’s innocence and honour, and

presented the seven hundred Pyrotists to the criminal courts where they

were condemned, as libellers, to imprisonment, to enormous fines, and

to all the damages that were claimed by their innocent victim.

It seemed as if Pyrot was destined to remain for ever shut in the cage

on which the ravens perched. But all the Penguins being anxious to know

and prove that this Jew was guilty, all the proofs brought forward were

found not to be good, while some of them were also contradictory. The

officers of the Staff showed zeal but lacked prudence. Whilst Greatauk

kept an admirable silence, General Panther made inexhaustible speeches

and every morning demonstrated in the newspapers that the condemned man

was guilty. He would have done better, perhaps, if he had said nothing.

The guilt was evident and what is evident cannot be demonstrated. So

much reasoning disturbed people’s minds; their faith, though still

alive, became less serene. The more proofs one gives a crowd the more

they ask for.

Nevertheless the danger of proving too much would not have been great

if there had not been in Penguinia, as there are, indeed, everywhere,

minds framed for free inquiry, capable of studying a difficult

question, and inclined to philosophic doubt. They were few; they were

not all inclined to speak, and the public was by no means inclined to

listen to them. Still, they did not always meet with deaf ears. The

great Jews, all the Israelite millionaires of Alca, when spoken to of

Pyrot, said: “We do not know the man”; but they thought of saving him.

They preserved the prudence to which their wealth inclined them and

wished that others would be less timid. Their wish was to be gratified.

IV. COLOMBAN

Some weeks after the conviction of the seven hundred Pyrotists, a

little, gruff, hairy, short-sighted man left his house one morning with

a paste-pot, a ladder, and a bundle of posters and went about the

streets pasting placards to the walls on which might be read in large

letters: _Pyrot is innocent, Maubec is guilty_. He was not a

bill-poster; his name was Colomban, and as the author of sixty volumes

on Penguin sociology he was numbered among the most laborious and

respected writers in Alca. Having given sufficient thought to the

matter and no longer doubting Pyrot’s innocence, he proclaimed it in

the manner which he thought would be most sensational. He met with no

hindrance while posting his bills in the quiet streets, but when he

came to the populous quarters, every time he mounted his ladder,

inquisitive people crowded round him and, dumbfounded with surprise and

indignation, threw at him threatening looks which he received with the

calm that comes from courage and short-sightedness. Whilst caretakers

and tradespeople tore down the bills he had posted, he kept on

zealously placarding, carrying his tools and followed by little boys

who, with their baskets under their arms or their satchels on their

backs, were in no hurry to reach school. To the mute indignation

against him, protests and murmurs were now added. But Colomban did not

condescend to see or hear anything. As, at the entrance to the Rue St.

Orberosia, he was posting one of his squares of paper bearing the

words: _Pyrot is innocent, Maubec is guilty_, the riotous crowd showed

signs of the most violent anger. They called after him, “Traitor,

thief, rascal, scoundrel.” A woman opened a window and emptied a vase

full of filth over his head, a cabby sent his hat flying from one end

of the street to the other by a blow of his whip amid the cheers of the

crowd who now felt themselves avenged. A butcher’s boy knocked Colomban

with his paste-pot, his brush, and his posters, from the top of his

ladder into the gutter, and the proud Penguins then felt the greatness

of their country. Colomban stood up, covered with filth, lame, and with

his elbow injured, but tranquil and resolute.

“Low brutes,” he muttered, shrugging his shoulders.

Then he went down on all-fours in the gutter to look for his glasses

which he had lost in his fall. It was then seen that his coat was split

from the collar to the tails and that his trousers were in rags. The

rancour of the crowd grew stronger.

On the other side of the street stretched the big St. Orberosian

Stores. The patriots seized whatever they could lay their hands on from

the shop front, and hurled at Colomban oranges, lemons, pots of jam,

pieces of chocolate, bottles of liqueurs, boxes of sardines, pots of

_foie gras_, hams, fowls, flasks of oil, and bags of haricots. Covered

with the débris of the food, bruised, tattered, lame, and blind, he

took to flight, followed by the shop-boys, bakers, loafers, citizens,

and hooligans whose number increased each moment and who kept shouting:

“Duck him! Death to the traitor! Duck him!” This torrent of vulgar

humanity swept along the streets and rushed into the Rue St. Maël. The

police did their duty. From all the adjacent streets constables

proceeded and, holding their scabbards with their left hands, they went

at full speed in front of the pursuers. They were on the point of

grabbing Colomban in their huge hands when he suddenly escaped them by

falling through an open man-hole to the bottom of a sewer.

He spent the night there in the darkness, sitting close by the dirty

water amidst the fat and slimy rats. He thought of his task, and his

swelling heart filled with courage and pity. And when the dawn threw a

pale ray of light into the air-hole he got up and said, speaking to

himself:

“I see that the fight will be a stiff one.”

Forthwith he composed a memorandum in which he clearly showed that

Pyrot could not have stolen from the Ministry of War the eighty

thousand trusses of hay which it had never received, for the reason

that Maubec had never delivered them, though he had received the money.

Colomban caused this statement to be distributed in the streets of

Alca. The people refused to read it and tore it up in anger. The

shop-keepers shook their fists at the distributers, who made off,

chased by angry women armed with brooms. Feelings grew warm and the

ferment lasted the whole day. In the evening bands of wild and ragged

men went about the streets yelling: “Death to Colomban!” The patriots

snatched whole bundles of the memorandum from the newsboys and burned

them in the public squares, dancing wildly round these bon-fires with

girls whose petticoats were tied up to their waists.

Some of the more enthusiastic among them went and broke the windows of

the house in which Colomban had lived in perfect tranquillity during

his forty years of work.

Parliament was roused and asked the Chief of the Government what

measures he proposed to take in order to repel the odious attacks made

by Colomban upon the honour of the National Arm and the safety of

Penguinia. Robin Mielleux denounced Colomban’s impious audacity and

proclaimed amid the cheers of the legislators that the man would be

summoned before the Courts to answer for his infamous libel.

The Minister of War was called to the tribune and appeared in it

transfigured. He had no longer the air, as in former days, of one of

the sacred geese of the Penguin citadels. Now, bristling, with

outstretched neck and hooked beak, he seemed the symbolical vulture

fastened to the livers of his country’s enemies.

In the august silence of the assembly he pronounced these words only:

“I swear that Pyrot is a rascal.”

This speech of Greatauk was reported all over Penguinia and satisfied

the public conscience.

V. THE REVEREND FATHERS AGARIC AND CORNEMUSE

Colomban bore with meekness and surprise the weight of the general

reprobation. He could not go out without being stoned, so he did not go

out. He remained in his study with a superb obstinacy, writing new

memoranda in favour of the encaged innocent. In the mean time among the

few readers that he found, some, about a dozen, were struck by his

reasons and began to doubt Pyrot’s guilt. They broached the subject to

their friends and endeavoured to spread the light that had arisen in

their minds. One of them was a friend of Robin Mielleux and confided to

him his perplexities, with the result that he was no longer received by

that Minister. Another demanded explanations in an open letter to the

Minister of War. A third published a terrible pamphlet. The latter,

whose name was Kerdanic, was a formidable controversialist. The public

was unmoved. It was said that these defenders of the traitor had been

bribed by the rich Jews; they were stigmatized by the name of Pyrotists

and the patriots swore to exterminate them. There were only a thousand

or twelve hundred Pyrotists in the whole vast Republic, but it was

believed that they were everywhere. People were afraid of finding them

in the promenades, at meetings, at receptions, in fashionable

drawing-rooms, at the dinner-table, even in the conjugal couch. One

half of the population was suspected by the other half. The discord set

all Alca on fire.

In the mean time Father Agaric, who managed his big school for young

nobles, followed events with anxious attention. The misfortunes of the

Penguin Church had not disheartened him. He remained faithful to Prince

Crucho and preserved the hope of restoring the heir of the Draconides

to the Penguin throne. It appeared to him that the events that were

happening or about to happen in the country, the state of mind of which

they were at once the effect and the cause, and the troubles that

necessarily resulted from them might—if they were directed, guided, and

led by the profound wisdom of a monk—overthrow the Republic and incline

the Penguins to restore Prince Crucho, from whose piety the faithful

hoped for so much solace. Wearing his huge black hat, the brims of

which looked like the wings of Night, he walked through the Wood of

Conils towards the factory where his venerable friend, Father

Cornemuse, distilled the hygienic St. Orberosian liqueur. The good

monk’s industry, so cruelly affected in the time of Emiral Chatillon,

was being restored from its ruins. One heard goods trains rumbling

through the Wood and one saw in the sheds hundreds of orphans clothed

in blue, packing bottles and nailing up cases.

Agaric found the venerable Cornemuse standing before his stoves and

surrounded by his retorts. The shining pupils of the old man’s eyes had

again become as rubies, his skull shone with its former elaborate and

careful polish.

Agaric first congratulated the pious distiller on the restored activity

of his laboratories and workshops.

“Business is recovering. I thank God for it,” answered the old man of

Conils. “Alas! it had fallen into a bad state, Brother Agaric. You saw

the desolation of this establishment. I need say no more.”

Agaric turned away his head.

“The St. Orberosian liqueur,” continued Cornemuse, “is making fresh

conquests. But none the less my industry remains uncertain and

precarious. The laws of ruin and desolation that struck it have not

been abrogated, they have only been suspended.”

And the monk of Conils lifted his ruby eyes to heaven.

Agaric put his hand on his shoulder.

“What a sight, Cornemuse, does unhappy Penguinia present to us!

Everywhere disobedience, independence, liberty! We see the proud, the

haughty, the men of revolt rising up. After having braved the Divine

laws they now rear themselves against human laws, so true is it that in

order to be a good citizen a man must be a good Christian. Colomban is

trying to imitate Satan. Numerous criminals are following his fatal

example. They want, in their rage, to put aside all checks, to throw

off all yokes, to free themselves from the most sacred bonds, to escape

from the most salutary restraints. They strike their country to make it

obey them. But they will be overcome by the weight of public

animadversion, vituperation, indignation, fury, execration, and

abomination. That is the abyss to which they have been led by atheism,

free thought, and the monstrous claim to judge for themselves and to

form their own opinions.”

“Doubtless, doubtless,” replied Father Cornemuse, shaking his head,

“but I confess that the care of distilling these simples has prevented

me from following public affairs. I only know that people are talking a

great deal about a man called Pyrot. Some maintain that he is guilty,

others affirm that he is innocent, but I do not clearly understand the

motives that drive both parties to mix themselves up in a business that

concerns neither of them.”

The pious Agaric asked eagerly:

“You do not doubt Pyrot’s guilt?”

“I cannot doubt it, dear Agaric,” answered the monk of Conils. “That

would be contrary to the laws of my country which we ought to respect

as long as they are not opposed to the Divine laws. Pyrot is guilty,

for he has been convicted. As to saying more for or against his guilt,

that would be to erect my own authority against that of the judges, a

thing which I will take good care not to do. Besides, it is useless,

for Pyrot has been convicted. If he has not been convicted because he

is guilty, he is guilty because he has been convicted; it comes to the

same thing. I believe in his guilt as every good citizen ought to

believe in it; and I will believe in it as long as the established

jurisdiction will order me to believe in it, for it is not for a

private person but for a judge to proclaim the innocence of a convicted

person. Human justice is venerable even in the errors inherent in its

fallible and limited nature. These errors are never irreparable; if the

judges do not repair them on earth, God will repair them in Heaven.

Besides I have great confidence in general Greatauk, who, though he

certainly does not look it, seems to me to be an abler man than all

those who are attacking him.”

“Dearest Cornemuse,” cried the pious Agaric, “the Pyrot affair, if

pushed to the point whither we can lead it by the help of God and the

necessary funds, will produce the greatest benefits. It will lay bare

the vices of this Anti-Christian Republic and will incline the Penguins

to restore the throne of the Draconides and the prerogatives of the

Church. But to do that it is necessary for the people to see the clergy

in the front rank of its defenders. Let us march against the enemies of

the army, against those who insult our heroes, and everybody will

follow us.”

“Everybody will be too many,” murmured the monk of Conils, shaking his

head. “I see that the Penguins want to quarrel. If we mix ourselves up

in their quarrel they will become reconciled at our expense and we

shall have to pay the cost of the war. That is why, if you are guided

by me, dear Agaric, you will not engage the Church in this adventure.”

“You know my energy; you know my prudence. I will compromise nothing. .

. . Dear Cornemuse, I only want from you the funds necessary for us to

begin the campaign.”

For a long time Cornemuse refused to bear the expenses of what he

thought was a fatal enterprise. Agaric was in turn pathetic and

terrible. At last, yielding to his prayers and threats, Cornemuse, with

banging head and swinging arms, went to the austere cell that concealed

his evangelical poverty. In the whitewashed wall under a branch of

blessed box, there was fixed a safe. He opened it, and with a sigh took

out a bundle of bills which, with hesitating hands, he gave to the

pious Agaric.

“Do not doubt it, dear Cornemuse,” said the latter, thrusting the

papers into the pocket of his overcoat, “this Pyrot affair has been

sent us by God for the glory and exaltation of the Church of

Penguinia.”

“I pray that you may be right!” sighed the monk of Conils.

And, left alone in his laboratory, he gazed, through his exquisite

eyes, with an ineffable sadness at his stoves and his retorts.

VI. THE SEVEN HUNDRED PYROTISTS

The seven hundred Pyrotists inspired the public with an increasing

aversion. Every day two or three of them were beaten to death in the

streets. One of them was publicly whipped, another thrown into the

river, a third tarred and feathered and led through a laughing crowd, a

fourth had his nose cut off by a captain of dragoons. They did not dare

to show themselves at their clubs, at tennis, or at the races; they put

on a disguise when they went to the Stock Exchange. In these

circumstances the Prince des Boscénos thought it urgent to curb their

audacity and repress their insolence. For this purpose he joined with

Count Cléna, M. de La Trumelle, Viscount Olive, and M. Bigourd in

founding a great anti-Pyrotist association to which citizens in

hundreds of thousands, soldiers in companies, regiments, brigades,

divisions, and army corps, towns, districts, and provinces, all gave

their adhesion.

About this time the Minister of War happening to visit one day his

Chief of Staff, saw with surprise that the large room where General

Panther worked, which was formerly quite bare, had now along each wall

from floor to ceiling in sets of deep pigeon-holes, triple and

quadruple rows of paper bundles of every as form and colour. These

sudden and monstrous records had in a few days reached the dimensions

of a pile of archives such as it takes centuries to accumulate.

“What is this?” asked the astonished minister.

“Proofs against Pyrot,” answered General Panther with patriotic

satisfaction. “We had not got them when we convicted him, but we have

plenty of them now.”

The door was open, and Greatauk saw coming up the stair-case a long

file of porters who were unloading heavy bales of papers in the hall,

and he saw the lift slowly rising heavily loaded with paper packets.

“What are those others?” said he.

“They are fresh proofs against Pyrot that are now reaching us,” said

Panther. “I have asked for them in every county of Penguinia, in every

Staff Office and in every Court in Europe. I have ordered them in every

town in America and in Australia, and in every factory in Africa, and I

am expecting bales of them from Bremen and a ship-load from Melbourne.”

And Panther turned towards the Minister of War the tranquil and radiant

look of a hero. However, Greatauk, his eye-glass in his eye, was

looking at the formidable pile of papers with less satisfaction than

uneasiness.

“Very good,” said he, “very good! but I am afraid that this Pyrot

business may lose its beautiful simplicity. It was limpid; like a

rock-crystal its value lay in its transparency. You could have searched

it in vain with a magnifying-glass for a straw, a bend, a blot, for the

least fault. When it left my hands it was as pure as the light. Indeed

it was the light. I give you a pearl and you make a mountain out of it.

To tell you the truth I am afraid that by wishing to do too well you

have done less well. Proofs! of course it is good to have proofs, but

perhaps it is better to have none at all. I have already told you,

Panther, there is only one irrefutable proof, the confession of the

guilty person (or if the innocent what matter!). The Pyrot affair, as I

arranged it, left no room for criticism; there was no spot where it

could be touched. It defied assault. It was invulnerable because it was

invisible. Now it gives an enormous handle for discussion. I advise

you, Panther, to use your paper packets with great reserve. I should be

particularly grateful if you would be more sparing of your

communications to journalists. You speak well, but you say too much.

Tell me, Panther, are there any forged documents among these?”

“There are some adapted ones.”

“That is what I meant. There are some adapted ones. So much the better.

As proofs, forged documents, in general, are better than genuine ones,

first of all because they have been expressly made to suit the needs of

the case, to order and measure, and therefore they are fitting and

exact. They are also preferable because they carry the mind into an

ideal world and turn it aside from the reality which, alas! in this

world is never without some alloy. . . . Nevertheless, I think I should

have preferred, Panther, that we had no proofs at all.”

The first act of the Anti-Pyrotist Association was to ask the

Government immediately to summon the seven hundred Pyrotists and their

accomplices before the High Court of Justice as guilty of high treason.

Prince des Boscénos was charged to speak on behalf of the Association

and presented himself before the Council which had assembled to hear

him. He expressed a hope that the vigilance and firmness of the

Government would rise to the height of the occasion. He shook hands

with each of the ministers and as he passed General Greatauk he

whispered in his ear:

“Behave properly, you ruffian, or I will publish the Maloury

_dossier!_”

Some days later by a unanimous vote of both Houses, on a motion

proposed by the Government, the Anti-Pyrotist Association was granted a

charter recognising it as beneficial to the public interest.

The Association immediately sent a deputation to Chitterlings Castle in

Porpoisia, where Crucho was eating the bitter bread of exile, to assure

the prince of the love and devotion of the Anti-Pyrotist members.

However, the Pyrotists grew in numbers, and now counted ten thousand.

They had their regular cafés on the boulevards. The patriots had theirs

also, richer and bigger, and every evening glasses of beer, saucers,

match-stands, jugs, chairs, and tables were hurled from one to the

other. Mirrors were smashed to bits, and the police ended the struggles

by impartially trampling the combatants of both parties under their

hob-nailed shoes.

On one of these glorious nights, as Prince des Boscénos was leaving a

fashionable café in the company of some patriots, M. de La Trumelle

pointed out to him a little, bearded man with glasses, hatless, and

having only one sleeve to his coat, who was painfully dragging himself

along the rubbish-strewn pavement.

“Look!” said he, “there is Colomban!”

The prince had gentleness as well as strength; he was exceedingly mild;

but at the name of Colomban his blood boiled. He rushed at the little

spectacled man, and knocked him down with one blow of his fist on the

nose.

M. de La Trumelle then perceived that, misled by an undeserved

resemblance, he had mistaken for Colomban, M. Bazile, a retired lawyer,

the secretary of the Anti-pyrotist Association, and an ardent and

generous patriot. Prince des Boscénos was one of those antique souls

who never bend. However, he knew how to recognise his faults.

“M. Bazile,” said he, raising his hat, “if I have touched your face

with my hand you will excuse me and you will understand me, you will

approve of me, nay, you will compliment me, you will congratulate me

and felicitate me, when you know the cause of that act. I took you for

Colomban.”

M. Bazile, wiping his bleeding nostrils with his handkerchief and

displaying an elbow laid bare by the absence of his sleeve:

“No, sir,” answered he drily, “I shall not felicitate you, I shall not

congratulate you, I shall not compliment you, for your action was, at

the very least, superfluous; it was, I will even say, supererogatory.

Already this evening I have been three times mistaken for Colomban and

received a sufficient amount of the treatment he deserves. The patriots

have knocked in my ribs and broken my back, and, sir, I was of opinion

that that was enough.”

Scarcely had he finished this speech than a band of Pyrotists appeared,

and misled in their turn by that insidious resemblance, they believed

that the patriots were killing Colomban. They fell on Prince des

Boscénos and his companions with loaded canes and leather thongs, and

left them for dead. Then seizing Bazile they carried him in triumph,

and in spite of his protests, along the boulevards, amid cries of:

“Hurrah for Colomban! Hurrah for Pyrot!” At last the police, who had

been sent after them, attacked and defeated them and dragged them

ignominiously to the station, where Bazile, under the name of Colomban,

was trampled on by an innumerable quantity of thick, hob-nailed shoes.

VII. BIDAULT-COQUILLE AND MANIFLORE, THE SOCIALISTS

Whilst the wind of anger and hatred blew in Alca, Eugine

Bidault-Coquille, poorest and happiest of astronomers, installed in an

old steam-engine of the time of the Draconides, was observing the

heavens through a bad telescope, and photographing the paths of the

meteors upon some damaged photographic plates. His genius corrected the

errors of his instruments and his love of science triumphed over the

worthlessness of his apparatus. With an inextinguishable ardour he

observed aerolites, meteors, and fire-balls, and all the glowing ruins

and blazing sparks which pass through the terrestrial atmosphere with

prodigious speed, and as a reward for is studious vigils he received

the indifference of the public, the ingratitude of the State and the

blame of the learned societies. Engulfed in the celestial spaces he

knew not what occurred upon the surface of the earth. He never read the

newspapers, and when he walked through the town his mind was occupied

with the November asteroids, and more than once he found himself at the

bottom of a pond in one of the public parks or beneath the wheels of a

motor omnibus.

Elevated in stature as in thought he respected himself and others. This

was shown by his cold politeness as well as by a very thin black frock

coat and a tall hat which gave to his person an appearance at once

emaciated and sublime. He took his meals in a little restaurant from

which all customers less intellectual than himself had fled, and

thenceforth his napkin bound by its wooden ring rested alone in the

abandoned rack.

In this cook-shop his eyes fell one evening upon Colomban’s memorandum

in favour of Pyrot. He read it as he was cracking some bad nuts and

suddenly, exalted with astonishment, admiration, horror, and pity, he

forgot all about falling meteors and shooting stars and saw nothing but

the innocent man hanging in his cage exposed to the winds of heaven and

the ravens perching upon it.

That image did not leave him. For a week he had been obsessed by the

innocent convict, when, as he was leaving his cook-shop, he saw a crowd

of citizens entering a public-house in which a public meeting was going

on. He went in. The meeting was disorderly; they were yelling, abusing

one another and knocking one another down in the smoke-laden hall. The

Pyrotists and the Anti-Pyrotists spoke in turn and were alternately

cheered and hissed at. An obscure and confused enthusiasm moved the

audience. With the audacity of a timid and retired man Bidault-Coquille

leaped upon the platform and spoke for three-quarters of an hour. He

spoke very quickly, without order, but with vehemence, and with all the

conviction of a mathematical mystic. He was cheered. When he got down

from the platform a big woman of uncertain age, dressed in red, and

wearing an immense hat trimmed with heroic feathers, throwing herself

into his arms, embraced him, and said to him:

“You are splendid!”

He thought in his simplicity that there was some truth in the

statement.

She declared to him that henceforth she would live but for Pyrot’s

defence and Colomban’s glory. He thought her sublime and beautiful. She

was Maniflore, a poor old courtesan, now forgotten and discarded, who

had suddenly become a vehement politician.

She never left him. They spent glorious hours together in doss-houses

and in lodgings beautified by their love, in newspaper offices, in

meeting-halls and in lecture-halls. As he was an idealist, he persisted

in thinking her beautiful, although she gave him abundant opportunity

of seeing that she had preserved no charm of any kind. From her past

beauty she only retained a confidence in her capacity for pleasing and

a lofty assurance in demanding homage. Still, it must be admitted that

this Pyrot affair, so fruitful in prodigies, invested Maniflore with a

sort of civic majesty, and transformed her, at public meetings, into an

august symbol of justice and truth.

Bidault-Coquille and Maniflore did not kindle the least spark of irony

or amusement in a single Anti-Pyrotist, a single defender of Greatauk,

or a single supporter of the army. The gods, in their anger, had

refused to those men the precious gift of humour. They gravely accused

the courtesan and the astronomer of being spies, of treachery, and of

plotting against their country. Bidault-Coquille and Maniflore grew

visibly greater beneath insult, abuse, and calumny.

For long months Penguinia had been divided into two camps and, though

at first sight it may appear strange, hitherto the socialists had taken

no part in the contest. Their groups comprised almost all the manual

workers in the country, necessarily scattered, confused, broken up, and

divided, but formidable. The Pyrot affair threw the group leaders into

a singular embarrassment. They did not wish to place themselves either

on the side of the financiers or on the side of the army. They regarded

the Jews, both great and small, as their uncompromising opponents.

Their principles were not at stake, nor were their interests concerned

in the affair. Still the greater number felt how difficult it was

growing for them to remain aloof from struggles in which all Penguinia

was engaged.

Their leaders called a sitting of their federation at the Rue de la

Queue-du-diable-St. Maël, to take into consideration the conduct they

ought to adopt in the present circumstances and in future

eventualities.

Comrade Phœnix was the first to speak.

“A crime,” said he, “the most odious and cowardly of crimes, a judicial

crime, has been committed. Military judges, coerced or misled by their

superior officers, have condemned an innocent man to an infamous and

cruel punishment. Let us not say that the victim is not one of our own

party, that he belongs to a caste which was, and always will be, our

enemy. Our party is the party of social justice; it can look upon no

iniquity with indifference.

“It would be a shame for us if we left it to Kerdanic, a radical, to

Colomban, a member of the middle classes, and to a few moderate

Republicans, alone to proceed against the crimes of the army. If the

victim is not one of us, his executioners are our brothers’

executioners, and before Greatauk struck down this soldier he shot our

comrades who were on strike.

“Comrades, by an intellectual, moral and material effort you must

rescue Pyrot from his torment, and in performing this generous act you

are not turning aside from the liberating and revolutionary task you

have undertaken, for Pyrot his become the symbol of the oppressed and

of all the social iniquities that now exist; by destroying one you make

all the others tremble.”

When Phœnix ended, comrade Sapor spoke in these terms:

“You are advised to abandon your task in order to do something with

which you have no concern. Why throw yourselves into a conflict where,

on whatever side you turn, you will find none but your natural,

uncompromising, even necessary opponents? Are the financiers to be less

hated by us than the army? What inept and criminal generosity is it

that hurries you to save those seven hundred Pyrotists whom you will

always find confronting you in the social war?

“It is proposed that you act the part of the police for your enemies,

and that you are to re-establish for them the order which their own

crimes have disturbed. Magnanimity pushed to this degree changes its

name.

“Comrades, there is a point at which infamy becomes fatal to a society.

Penguin society is being strangled by its infamy, and you are requested

to save it, to give it air that it can breathe. This is simply turning

you into ridicule.

“Leave it to smother itself and let us gaze at its last convulsions

with joyful contempt, only regretting that it has so entirely corrupted

the soil on which it has been built that we shall find nothing but

poisoned mud on which to lay the foundations of a new society.”

When Sapor had ended his speech comrade Lapersonne pronounced these few

words:

“Phœnix calls us to Pyrot’s help for the reason that Pyrot is innocent.

It seems to me that that is a very bad reason. If Pyrot is innocent he

has behaved like a good soldier and has always conscientiously worked

at his trade, which principally consists in shooting the people. That

is not a motive to make the people brave all dangers in his defence.

When it is demonstrated to me that Pyrot is guilty and that he stole

the army hay, I shall be on his side.”

Comrade Larrivée afterwards spoke.

“I am not of my friend, Phœnix’s opinion but I am not with my friend

Sapor either. I do not believe that the party is bound to embrace a

cause as soon as we are told that that cause is just. That, I am

afraid, is a grievous abuse of words and a dangerous equivocation. For

social justice is not revolutionary justice. They are both in perpetual

antagonism: to serve the one is to oppose the other. As for me, my

choice is made. I am for revolutionary justice as against social

justice. Still, in the present case I am against abstention. I say that

when a lucky chance brings us an affair like this we should be fools

not to profit by it.

“How? We are given an opportunity of striking terrible, perhaps fatal,

blows against militarism. And am I to fold my arms? I tell you,

comrades, I am not a fakir, I have never been a fakir, and if there are

fakirs here let them not count on me. To sit in meditation is a policy

without results and one which I shall never adopt.

“A party like ours ought to be continually asserting itself. It ought

to prove its existence by continual action. We will intervene in the

Pyrot affair but we will intervene in it in a revolutionary manner; we

will adopt violent action. . . . Perhaps you think that violence is

old-fashioned and superannuated, to be scrapped along with diligences,

hand-presses and aerial telegraphy. You are mistaken. To-day as

yesterday nothing is obtained except by violence; it is the one

efficient instrument. The only thing necessary is to know how to use

it. You ask what will our action be? I will tell you: it will be to

stir up the governing classes against one another, to put the army in

conflict with the capitalists, the government with the magistracy, the

nobility and clergy with the Jews, and if possible to drive them all to

destroy one another. To do this would be to carry on an agitation which

would weaken government in the same way that fever wears out the sick.

“The Pyrot affair, little as we know how to turn it to advantage, will

put forward by ten years the growth of the Social party and the

emancipation of the proletariat, by disarmament, the general strike,

and revolution.”

The leaders of the party having each expressed a different opinion, the

discussion was continued, not without vivacity. The orators, as always

happens in such a case, reproduced the arguments they had already

brought forward, though with less order and moderation than before. The

dispute was prolonged and none changed his opinion. These opinions, in

the final analysis, were reduced to two: that of Sapor and Lapersonne

who advised abstention, and that of Phœnix and Larrivée, who wanted

intervention. Even these two contrary opinions were united in a common

hatred of the heads of the army and of their justice, and in a common

belief in Pyrot’s innocence. So that public opinion was hardly mistaken

in regarding all the Socialist leaders as pernicious Anti-Pyrotists.

As for the vast masses in whose name they spoke and whom they

represented as far as speech can express the impossible—as for the

proletarians whose thought is difficult to know and who do not know it

themselves, it seemed that the Pyrot affair did not interest them. It

was too literary for them, it was in too classical a style, and had an

upper-middle-class and high-finance tone about it that did not please

them much.

VIII. THE COLOMBAN TRIAL

When the Colomban trial began, the Pyrotists were not many more than

thirty thousand, but they were every where and might be found even

among the priests and millionaires. What injured them most was the

sympathy of the rich Jews. On the other hand they derived valuable

advantages from their feeble number. In the first place there were

among them fewer fools than among their opponents, who were

over-burdened with them. Comprising but a feeble minority, they

co-operated easily, acted with harmony, and had no temptation to divide

and thus counteract one another’s efforts. Each of them felt the

necessity of doing the best possible and was the more careful of his

conduct as he found himself more in the public eye. Finally, they had

every reason to hope that they would gain fresh adherents, while their

opponents, having had everybody with them at the beginning, could only

decrease.

Summoned before the judges at a public sitting, Colomban immediately

perceived that his judges were not anxious to discover the truth. As

soon as he opened his mouth the President ordered him to be silent in

the superior interests of the State. For the same reason, which is the

supreme reason, the witnesses for the defence were not heard. General

Panther, the Chief of the Staff, appeared in the witness-box, in full

uniform and decorated with all his orders. He deposed as follows:

“The infamous Colomban states that we have no proofs against Pyrot. He

lies; we have them. I have in my archives seven hundred and thirty-two

square yards of them which at five hundred pounds each make three

hundred and sixty-six thousand pounds.”

That superior officer afterwards gave, with elegance and ease, a

summary of those proofs.

“They are of all colours and all shades,” said he in substance, “they

are of every form—pot, crown, sovereign, grape, dove-cot, grand eagle,

etc. The smallest is less than the hundredth part of a square inch, the

largest measures seventy yards long by ninety yards broad.”

At this revelation the audience shuddered with horror.

Greatauk came to give evidence in his turn. Simpler, and perhaps

greater, he wore a grey tunic and held his hands joined behind his

back.

“I leave,” said he calmly and in a slightly raised voice, “I leave to

M. Colomban the responsibility for an act that has brought our country

to the brink of ruin. The Pyrot affair is secret; it ought to remain

secret. If it were divulged the cruelest ills, wars, pillages,

depredations, fires, massacres, and epidemics would immediately burst

upon Penguinia. I should consider myself guilty of high treason if I

uttered another word.”

Some persons known for their political experience, among others M.

Bigourd, considered the evidence of the Minister of War as abler and of

greater weight than that of his Chief of Staff.

The evidence of Colonel de Boisjoli made a great impression.

“One evening at the Ministry of War,” said that officer, “the attaché

of a neighbouring Power told me that while visiting his sovereign’s

stables he had once admired some soft and fragrant hay, of a pretty

green colour, the finest hay he had ever seen! ‘Where did it come

from?’ I asked him. He did not answer, but there seemed to me no doubt

about its origin. It was the hay Pyrot had stolen. Those qualities of

verdure, softness, and aroma, are those of our national hay. The forage

of the neighbouring Power is grey and brittle; it sounds under the fork

and smells of dust. One can draw one own conclusions.”

Lieutenant-Colonel Hastaing said in the witness-box, amid hisses, that

he did not believe Pyrot guilty. He was immediately seized by the

police and thrown into the bottom of a dungeon where, amid vipers,

toads, and broken glass, he remained insensible both to promises and

threats.

The usher called:

“Count Pierre Maubec de la Dentdulynx.”

There was deep silence, and a stately but ill-dressed nobleman, whose

moustaches pointed to the skies and whose dark eyes shot forth flashing

glances, was seen advancing toward the witness-box.

He approached Colomban and casting upon him a look of ineffable

disdain:

“My evidence,” said he, “here it is: you excrement!”

At these words the entire hall burst into enthusiastic applause and

jumped up, moved by one of those transports that stir men’s hearts and

rouse them to extraordinary actions. Without another word Count Maubec

de la Dentdulynx withdrew.

All those present left the Court and formed a procession behind him.

Prostrate at his feet, Princess des Boscénos held his legs in a close

embrace, but he went on, stern and impassive, beneath a shower of

handkerchiefs and flowers. Viscountess Olive, clinging to his neck,

could not be removed, and the calm hero bore her along with him,

floating on his breast like a light scarf.

When the court resumed its sitting, which it had been compelled to

suspend, the President called the experts.

Vermillard, the famous expert in handwriting, gave the results of his

researches.

“Having carefully studied,” said he, “the papers found in Pyrot’s

house, in particular his account book and his laundry books, I noticed

that, though apparently not out of the common, they formed an

impenetrable cryptogram, the key to which, however, I discovered. The

traitor’s infamy is to be seen in every line. In this system of writing

the words ‘Three glasses of beer and twenty francs for Adèle’ mean ‘I

have delivered thirty thousand trusses of hay to a neighbouring Power.’

From these documents I have even been able to establish the composition

of the hay delivered by this officer. The words waistcoat, drawers,

pocket handkerchief, collars, drink, tobacco, cigars, mean clover,

meadowgrass, lucern, burnet, oats, rye-grass, vernal-grass, and common

cat’s tail grass. And these are precisely the constituents of the hay

furnished by Count Maubec to the Penguin cavalry. In this way Pyrot

mentioned his crimes in a language that he believed would always remain

indecipherable. One is confounded by so much astuteness and so great a

want of conscience.”

Colomban, pronounced guilty without any extenuating circumstances, was

condemned to the severest penalty. The judges immediately signed a

warrant consuming him to solitary confinement.

In the Place du Palais on the sides of a river whose banks had during

the course of twelve centuries seen so great a history, fifty thousand

persons were tumultuously awaiting the result of the trial. Here were

the heads of the Anti-Pyrotist Association, among whom might be seen

Prince des Boscénos, Count Cléna, Viscount Olive, and M. de La

Trumelle; here crowded the Reverend Father Agaric and the teachers of

St. Maël College with their pupils; here the monk Douillard and General

Caraguel, embracing each other, formed a sublime group. The market

women and laundry women with spits, shovels, tongs, beetles, and

kettles full of water might be seen running across the Pont-Vieux. On

the steps in front of the bronze gates were assembled all the defenders

of Pyrot in Alca, professors, publicists, workmen, some conservatives,

others Radicals or Revolutionaries, and by their negligent dress and

fierce aspect could be recognised comrades Phœnix, Larrivée,

Lapersonne, Dagobert, and Varambille. Squeezed in his funereal

frock-coat and wearing his hat of ceremony, Bidault-Coquille invoked

the sentimental mathematics on behalf of Colomban and Colonel Hastaing.

Maniflore shone smiling and resplendent on the topmost step, anxious,

like Leaena, to deserve a glorious monument, or to be given, like

Epicharis, the praises of history.

The seven hundred Pyrotists disguised as lemonade sellers,

gutter-merchants, collectors of odds and ends, or anti-Pyrotists,

wandered round the vast building.

When Colomban appeared, so great an uproar burst forth that, struck by

the commotion of air and water, birds fell from the trees and fishes

floated on the surface of the stream.

On all sides there were yells:

“Duck Colomban, duck him, duck him!”

There were some cries of “Justice and truth!” and a voice was even

heard shouting:

“Down with the Army!”

This was the signal for a terrible struggle. The combatants fell in

thousands, and their bodies formed howling and moving mounds on top of

which fresh champions gripped each other by the throats. Women, eager,

pale, and dishevelled, with clenched teeth and frantic nails, rushed on

the man, in transports that, in the brilliant light of the public

square, gave to their faces expressions unsurpassed even in the shade

of curtains and in the hollows of pillows. They were going to seize

Colomban, to bite him, to strangle, dismember and rend him, when

Maniflore, tall and dignified in her red tunic, stood forth, serene and

terrible, confronting these furies who recoiled from before her in

terror. Colomban seemed to be saved; his partisans succeeded in

clearing a passage for him through the Place du Palais and in putting

him into a cab stationed at the corner of the Pont-Vieux. The horse was

already in full trot when Prince des Boscénos, Count Cléna, and M. de

La Trumelle knocked the driver off his seat. Then, making the animal

back and pushing the spokes of the wheels, they ran the vehicle on to

the parapet of the bridge, whence they overturned it into the river

amid the cheers of the delirious crowd. With a resounding splash a jet

of water rose upwards, and then nothing but a slight eddy was to be

seen on the surface of the stream.

Almost immediately comrades Dagobert and Varambille, with the help of

the seven hundred disguised Pyrotists, sent Prince des Boscénos head

foremost into a river-laundry in which he was lamentably swallowed up.

Serene night descended over the Place du Palais and shed silence and

peace upon the frightful ruins with which it was strewed. In the mean

time, Colomban, three thousand yards down the stream, cowering beside a

lame old horse on a bridge, was meditating on the ignorance and

injustice of crowds.

“The business,” said he to himself, “is even more troublesome than I

believed. I foresee fresh difficulties.”

He got up and approached the unhappy animal.

“What have you, poor friend, done to them?” said he. “It is on my

account they have used you so cruelly.”

He embraced the unfortunate beast and kissed the white star on his

forehead. Then he took him by the bridle and led him, both of them

limping, trough the sleeping city to his house, where sleep soon

allowed them to forget mankind.

IX. FATHER DOUILLARD

In their infinite gentleness and at the suggestion of the common father

of the faithful, the bishops, canons, vicars, curates, abbots, and

friars of Penguinia resolved to hold a solemn service in the cathedral

of Alca, and to pray that Divine mercy would deign to put an end to the

troubles that distracted one of the noblest countries in Christendom,

and grant to repentant Penguinia pardon for its crimes against God and

the ministers of religion.

The ceremony took place on the fifteenth of June. General Caraguel,

surrounded by his staff, occupied the churchwarden’s pew. The

congregation was numerous and brilliant. According to M. Bigourd’s

expression it was both crowded and select. In the front rank was to be

seen M. de la Bertheoseille, Chamberlain to his Highness Prince Crucho.

Near the pulpit, which was to be ascended by the Reverend Father

Douillard, of the Order of St. Francis, were gathered, in an attitude

of attention with their hands crossed upon their wands of office, the

great dignitaries of the Anti-Pyrotist association, Viscount Olive, M.

de La Trumelle, Count Cléna, the Duke d’Ampoule, and Prince des

Boscénos. Father Agaric was in the apse with the teachers and pupils of

St. Maël College. The right-hand transept and aisle were reserved for

officers and soldiers in uniform, this side being thought the more

honourable, since the Lord leaned his head to the right when he died on

the Cross. The ladies of the aristocracy, and among them Countess

Cléna, Viscountess Olive, and Princess des Boscénos, occupied reserved

seats. In the immense building and in the square outside were gathered

twenty thousand clergy of all sorts, as well as thirty thousand of the

laity.

After the expiatory and propitiatory ceremony the Reverend Father

Douillard ascended the pulpit. The sermon had at first been entrusted

to the Reverend Father Agaric, but, in spite of his merits, he was

thought unequal to the occasion in zeal and doctrine, and the eloquent

Capuchin friar, who for six months had gone through the barracks

preaching against the enemies of God and authority, had been chosen in

his place.

The Reverend Father Douillard, taking as his text, “He hath put down

the mighty from their seat,” established that all temporal power has

God as its principle and its end, and that it is ruined and destroyed

when it turns aside from the path that Providence has traced out for it

and from the end to which He has directed it.

Applying these sacred rules to the government of Penguinia, he drew a

terrible picture of the evils that the country’s rulers had been unable

either to prevent or to foresee.

“The first author of all these miseries and degradations, my brethren,”

said he, “is only too well known to you. He is a monster whose destiny

is providentially proclaimed by his name, for it is derived from the

Greek word, _pyros_, which means fire. Eternal wisdom warns us by this

etymology that a Jew was to set ablaze the country that had welcomed

him.”

He depicted the country, persecuted by the persecutors of the Church,

and crying in its agony:

“O woe! O glory! Those who have crucified my God are crucifying me!”

At these words a prolonged shudder passed through the assembly.

The powerful orator excited still greater indignation when he described

the proud and crime-stained Colomban, plunged into the stream, all the

waters of which could not cleanse him. He gathered up all the

humiliations and all the perils of the Penguins in order to reproach

the President of the Republic and his Prime Minister with them.

“That Minister,” said he, “having been guilty of degrading cowardice in

not exterminating the seven hundred Pyrotists with their allies and

defenders, as Saul exterminated the Philistines at Gibeah, has rendered

himself unworthy of exercising the power that God delegated to him, and

every good citizen ought henceforth to insult his contemptible

government. Heaven will look favourably on those who despise him. ‘He

hath put down the mighty from their seat.’ God will depose these

pusillanimous chiefs and will put in their place strong men who will

call upon Him. I tell you, gentlemen, I tell you officers,

non-commissioned officers, and soldiers who listen to me, I tell you

General of the Penguin armies, the hour has come! If you do not obey

God’s orders, if in His name you do not depose those now in authority,

if you do not establish a religious and strong government in Penguinia,

God will none the less destroy what He has condemned, He will none the

less save His people. He will save them, but, if you are wanting, He

will do so by means of a humble artisan or a simple corporal. Hasten!

The hour will soon be past.”

Excited by this ardent exhortation, the sixty thousand people present

rose up trembling and shouting: “To arms! To arms! Death to the

Pyrotists! Hurrah for Crucho!” and all of them, monks, women, soldiers,

noblemen, citizens, and loafers, who were gathered beneath the

superhuman arm uplifted in the pulpit, struck up the hymn, “Let us save

Penguinia!” They rushed impetuously from the basilica and marched along

the quays to the Chamber of Deputies.

Left alone in the deserted nave, the wise Cornemuse, lifting his arms

to heaven, murmured in broken accents:

“Agnosco fortunam ecclesiæ penguicanæ! I see but too well whither this

will lead us.”

The attack which the crowd made upon the legislative palace was

repulsed. Vigorously charged by the police and Alcan guards, the

assailants were already fleeing in disorder, when the Socialists,

running from the slums and led by comrades Phœnix, Dagobert,

Lapersonne, and Varambille, threw themselves upon them and completed

their discomfiture. MM. de La Trumelle and d’Ampoule were taken to the

police station. Prince des Boscénos, after a valiant struggle, fell

upon the bloody pavement with a fractured skull.

In the enthusiasm of victory, the comrades, mingled with an innumerable

crowd of paper-sellers and gutter-merchants, ran through the boulevards

all night, carrying, Maniflore in triumph, and breaking the mirrors of

the cafés and the glasses of the street lamps amid cries of “Down with

Crucho! Hurrah for the Social Revolution!” The Anti-Pyrotists in their

turn upset the newspaper kiosks and tore down the hoardings.

These were spectacles of which cool reason cannot approve and they were

fit causes for grief to the municipal authorities, who desired to

preserve the good order of the roads and streets. But, what was sadder

for a man of heart was the sight or the canting humbugs, who, from fear

of blows, kept at an equal distance from the two camps, and who,

although they allowed their selfishness and cowardice to be visible,

claimed admiration for the generosity of their sentiments and the

nobility of their souls. They rubbed their eyes with onions, gaped like

whitings, blew violently into their handkerchiefs, and, bringing their

voices out of the depths of their stomachs, groaned forth: “O Penguins,

cease these fratricidal struggles; cease to rend your mother’s bosom!”

As if men could live in society without disputes and without quarrels,

and as if civil discords were not the necessary conditions of national

life and progress. They showed themselves hypocritical cowards by

proposing a compromise between the just and the unjust, offending the

just in his rectitude and the unjust in his courage. One of these

creatures, the rich and powerful Machimel, a champion coward, rose upon

the town like a colossus of grief; his tears formed poisonous lakes at

his feet and his sighs capsized the boats of the fishermen.

During these stormy nights Bidault-Coquille at the top of his old

steam-engine, under the serene sky, boasted in his heart, while the

shooting stars registered themselves upon his photographic plates. He

was fighting for justice. He loved and was loved with a sublime

passion. Insult and calumny raised him to the clouds. A caricature of

him in company with those of Colomban, Kerdanic, and Colonel Hastaing

was to be seen in the newspaper kiosks. The Anti-Pyrotists proclaimed

that he had received fifty thousand francs from the big Jewish

financiers. The reporters of the militarist sheets held interviews

regarding his scientific knowledge with official scholars, who declared

he had no knowledge of the stars, disputed his most solid observations,

denied his most certain discoveries, and condemned his most ingenious

and most fruitful hypotheses. He exulted under these flattering blows

of hatred and envy.

He contemplated the black immensity pierced by a multitude of lights,

without giving a thought to all the heavy slumbers, cruel insomnias,

vain dreams, spoilt pleasures, and infinitely diverse miseries that a

great city contains.

“It is in this enormous city,” said he to himself, “that the just and

the unjust are joining battle.”

And substituting a simple and magnificent poetry for the multiple and

vulgar reality, he represented to himself the Pyrot affair as a

struggle between good and bad angels. He awaited the eternal triumph of

the Sons of Light and congratulated himself on being a Child of the Day

confounding the Children of Night.

X. MR. JUSTICE CHAUSSEPIED

Hitherto blinded by fear, incautious and stupid before the bands of

Friar Douillard and the partisans of Prince Crucho, the Republicans at

last opened their eyes and grasped the real meaning of the Pyrot

affair. The deputies who had for two years turned pale at the shouts of

the patriotic crowds became, not indeed more courageous, but altered

their cowardice and blamed Robin Mielleux for disorders which their own

compliance had encouraged, and the instigators of which they had

several times slavishly congratulated. They reproached him for having

imperilled the Republic by a weakness which was really theirs and a

timidity which they themselves had imposed upon him. Some of them began

to doubt whether it was not to their interest to believe in Pyrot’s

innocence rather than in his guilt, and thenceforward they felt a

bitter anguish at the thought that the unhappy man might have been

wrongly convicted and that in his aerial cage he might be expiating

another man’s crimes. “I cannot sleep on account of it!” was what

several members of Minister Guillaumette’s majority used to say. But

these were ambitious to replace their chief.

These generous legislators overthrew the cabinet, and the President of

the Republic put in Robin Mielleux’s place, a patriarchal Republican

with a flowing beard, La Trinité by name, who, like most of the

Penguins, understood nothing about the affair, but thought that too

many monks were mixed up in it.

General Greatauk before leaving the Ministry of War, gave his final

advice to Pariler, the Chief of the Staff.

“I go and you remain,” said he, as he shook hands with him. “The Pyrot

affair is my daughter; I confide her to you, she is worthy of your love

and your care; she is beautiful. Do not forget that her beauty loves

the shade, is leased with mystery, and likes to remain veiled. Great

her modesty with gentleness. Too many indiscreet looks have already

profaned her charms. . . . Panther, you desired proofs and you obtained

them. You have many, perhaps too many, in your possession. I see that

there will be many tiresome interventions and much dangerous curiosity.

If I were in your place I would tear up all those documents. Believe

me, the best of proofs is none at all. That is the only one which

nobody discusses.”

Alas! General Panther did not realise the wisdom of this advice. The

future was only too thoroughly to justify Greatauk’s perspicacity. La

Trinité demanded the documents belonging, to the Pyrot affair. Péniche,

his Minister of War, refused them in the superior interests of the

national defence, telling him that the documents under General

Panther’s care formed the hugest mass of archives in the world. La

Trinité studied the case as well as he could, and, without penetrating

to the bottom of the matter, suspected it of irregularity. Conformably

to his rights and prerogatives he then ordered a fresh trial to be

held. Immediately, Péniche, his Minister of War, accused him of

insulting the army and betraying the country and flung his portfolio at

his head. He was replaced by a second, who did the same. To him

succeeded a third, who imitated these examples, and those after him to

the number of seventy acted like their predecessors, until the

venerable La Trinité groaned beneath the weight of bellicose

portfolios. The seventy-first Minister of War, van Julep, retained

office. Not that he was in disagreement with so many and such noble

colleagues, but he had been commissioned by them generously to betray

his Prime Minister, to cover him with shame and opprobrium, and to

convert the new trial to the glory of Greatauk, the satisfaction of the

Anti-Pyrotists, the profit of the monks, and the restoration of Prince

Crucho.

General van Julep, though endowed with high military virtues, was not

intelligent enough to employ the subtle conduct and exquisite methods

of Greatauk. He thought, like General Panther, that tangible proofs

against Pyrot were necessary, that they could never ave too many of

them, that they could never have even enough. He expressed these’

sentiments to his Chief of Staff, who was only too inclined to agree

with them.

“Panther,” said he, “we are at the moment when we need abundant and

superabundant proofs.”

“You have said enough, General,” answered Panther, “I will complete my

piles of documents.”

Six months later the proofs against Pyrot filled two storeys of the

Ministry of War. The ceiling fell in beneath the weight of the bundles,

and the avalanche of falling documents crushed two head clerks,

fourteen second clerks, and sixty copying clerks, who were at work upon

the ground floor arranging a change in the fashion of the cavalry

gaiters. The walls of the huge edifice had to be propped. Passers-by

saw with amazement enormous beams and monstrous stanchions which reared

themselves obliquely against the noble front of the building, now

tottering and disjointed, and blocked up the streets, stopped the

carriages, and presented to the motor-omnibuses an obstacle against

which they dashed with their loads of passengers.

The judges who had condemned Pyrot were not, properly speaking, judges

but soldiers. The judges who had condemned Colomban were real judges,

but of inferior rank, wearing seedy black clothes like church vergers,

unlucky wretches of judges, miserable judgelings. Above them were the

superior judges who wore ermine robes over their black gowns. These,

renowned for their knowledge and doctrine, formed a court whose

terrible name expressed power. It was called the Court of Appeal

(Cassation) so as to make it clear that it was the hammer suspended

over the judgments and decrees of all other jurisdictions.

One of these superior red Judges of the Supreme Court, called

Chaussepied, led a modest and tranquil life in a suburb of Alca. His

soul was pure, his heart honest, his spirit just. When he had finished

studying his documents he used to play the violin and cultivate

hyacinths. Every Sunday he dined with his neighbours the Mesdemoiselles

Helbivore. His old age was cheerful and robust and his friends often

praised the amenity of his character.

For some months, however, he had been irritable and touchy, and when he

opened a newspaper his broad and ruddy face would become covered with

dolorous wrinkles and darkened with an angry purple. Pyrot was the

cause of it. Justice Chaussepied could not understand how an officer

could have committed so black a crime as to hand over eighty thousand

trusses of military hay to a neighbouring and hostile Power. And he

could still less conceive how a scoundrel should have found official

defenders in Penguinia. The thought that there existed in his country a

Pyrot, a Colonel Hastaing, a Colomban, a Kerdanic, a Phœnix, spoilt his

hyacinths, his violin, his heaven, and his earth, all nature, and even

his dinner with the Mesdemoiselles Helbivore!

In the mean time the Pyrot case, having been presented to the Supreme

Court by the Keeper of Seals, it fell to Chaussepied to examine it and

cover its defects, in case any existed. Although as upright and honest

as a man can be, and trained by long habit to exercise his magistracy

without fear or favour, he expected to find in the documents he

submitted to him proofs of certain guilt and obvious criminality. After

lengthened difficulties and repeated refusals on the part of General

Julep, Justice Chaussepied was allowed to examine the documents.

Numbered and initialed they ran to the number of fourteen millions six

hundred and twenty-six thousand three hundred and twelve. As he studied

them the judge was at first surprised, then astonished, then stupefied,

amazed, and, if I dare say so, flabbergasted. He found among the

documents prospectuses of new fancy shops, newspapers, fashion-plates,

paper bags, old business letters, exercise books, brown paper, green

paper for rubbing parquet floors, playing cards, diagrams, six thousand

copies of the “Key to Dreams,” but not a single document in which any

mention was made of Pyrot.

XI. CONCLUSION

The appeal was allowed, and Pyrot was brought down from his cage. But

the Anti-Pyrotists did not regard themselves as beaten. The military

judges re-tried Pyrot. Greatauk, in this second affair, surpassed

himself. He obtained a second conviction; he obtained it by declaring

that the proofs communicated to the Supreme Court were worth nothing,

and that great care had been taken to keep back the good ones, since

they ought to remain secret. In the opinion of connoisseurs he had

never shown so much address. On leaving the court, as he passed through

the vestibule with a tranquil step, and his hands behind his back,

amidst a crowd of sight-seers, a woman dressed in red and with her face

covered by a black veil rushed at him, brandishing a kitchen knife.

“Die, scoundrel!” she cried. It was Maniflore. Before those present

could understand what was happening, the general seized her by the

wrist, and with apparent gentleness, squeezed it so forcibly that the

knife fell from her aching hand.

Then he picked it up and handed it to Maniflore.

“Madam,” said he with a bow, “you have dropped a household utensil.”

He could not prevent the heroine from being taken to the

police-station; but he had her immediately released and afterwards he

employed all his influence to stop the prosecution.

The second conviction of Pyrot was Greatauk’s last victory.

Justice Chaussepied, who had formerly liked soldiers so much, and

esteemed their justice so highly, being now enraged with the military

judges, quashed their judgments as a monkey cracks nuts. He

rehabilitated Pyrot a second time; he would, if necessary, have

rehabilitated him five hundred times.

Furious at having been cowards and at having allowed themselves to be

deceived and made game of, the Republicans turned against the monks and

clergy. The deputies passed laws of expulsion, separation, and

spoliation against them. What Father Cornemuse had foreseen took place.

That good monk was driven from the Wood of Conils. Treasury officers

confiscated his retorts and his stills, and the liquidators divided

amongst them his bottles of St. Oberosian liqueur. The pious distiller

lost the annual income of three million five hundred thousand francs

that his products procured for him. Father Agaric went into exile,

abandoning his school into the hands of laymen, who soon allowed it to

fall into decay. Separated from its foster-mother, the State, the

Church of Penguinia withered like a plucked flower.

The victorious defenders of the innocent man now abused each other and

overwhelmed each other reciprocally with insults and calumnies. The

vehement Kerdanic hurled himself upon Phœnix as if ready to devour him.

The wealthy Jews and the seven hundred Pyrotists turned away with

disdain from the socialist comrades whose aid they had humbly implored

in the past.

“We know you no longer,” said they. “To the devil with you and your

social justice. Social justice is the defence of property.”

Having been elected a Deputy and chosen to be the leader of the new

majority, comrade Larrivée was appointed by the Chamber and public

opinion to the Premiership. He showed himself an energetic defender of

the military tribunals that had condemned Pyrot. When his former

socialist comrades claimed a little more justice and liberty for the

employés of the State as well as for manual workers, he opposed their

proposals in an eloquent speech.

“Liberty,” said he, “is not licence. Between order and disorder my

choice is made: revolution is impotence. Progress has no more

formidable enemy than violence. Gentlemen, those who, as I am, are

anxious for reform, ought to apply themselves before everything else to

cure this agitation which enfeebles government just as fever exhausts

those who are ill. It is time to reassure honest people.”

This speech was received with applause. The government of the Republic

remained in subjection to the great financial companies, the army was

exclusively devoted to the defence of capital, while the fleet was

designed solely to procure fresh orders for the mine-owners. Since the

rich refused to pay their just share of the taxes, the poor, as in the

past, paid for them.

In the mean time from the height of his old steamline, beneath the

crowded stars of night, Bidault-Coquille gazed sadly at the sleeping

city. Maniflore had left him. Consumed with a desire for fresh

devotions and fresh sacrifices, she had gone in company with a young

Bulgarian to bear justice and vengeance to Sofia. He did not regret

her, having perceived after the Affair, that she was less beautiful in

form and in thought than he had at first imagined. His impressions had

been modified in the same direction concerning many other forms and

many other thoughts. And what was cruelest of all to him, he regarded

himself as not so great, not so splendid, as he had believed.

And he reflected:

“You considered yourself sublime when you had but candour and

good-will. Of what were you proud, Bidault-Coquille? Of having been one

of the first to know that Pyrot was innocent and Greatauk a scoundrel.

But three-fourths of those who defended Greatauk against the attacks of

the seven hundred Pyrotists knew that better than you. Of what then did

you show yourself so proud? Of having dared to say what you thought?

That is civic courage, and, like military courage, it is a mere result

of imprudence. You have been imprudent. So far so good, but that is no

reason for praising yourself beyond measure. Your imprudence was

trifling; it exposed you to trifling perils; you did not risk your head

by it. The Penguins have lost that cruel and sanguinary pride which

formerly gave a tragic grandeur to their revolutions; it is the fatal

result of the weakening of beliefs and character. Ought one to look

upon oneself as a superior spirit for having shown a little more

clear-sightedness than the vulgar? I am very much afraid, on the

contrary, Bidault-Coquille, that you have given proof of a gross

misunderstanding of the conditions of the moral and intellectual

development of a people. You imagined that social injustices were

threaded together like pearls and that it would be enough to pull off

one in order to unfasten the whole necklace. That is a very ingenuous

conception. You flattered yourself that at one stroke you were

establishing justice in your own country and in the universe. You were

a brave man, an honest idealist, though without much experimental

philosophy. But go home to your own heart and you will recognise that

you had in you a spice of malice and that our ingenuousness was not

without cunning. You believed you were performing a fine moral action.

You said to yourself: ‘Here am I, just and courageous once for all. I

can henceforth repose in the public esteem and the praise of

historians.’ And now that you have lost your illusions, now that you

know how hard it is to redress wrongs, and that the task must ever be

begun afresh, you are going back to your asteroids. You are right; but

go back to them with modesty, Bidault-Coquille!”