PENGUIN ISLAND (1908)
written by Anatole France
Preface
In spite of the apparent diversity of the amusements that seem to
attract me, my life has but one object. It is wholly bent upon the
accomplishment of one great scheme. I am writing the history of the
Penguins. I labour sedulously at this task without allowing myself
to be repelled by its frequent difficulties although at times these
seem insuperable.
I have delved into the ground in order to discover the buried
remains of that people. Men's first books were stones, and I have
studied the stones that can be regarded as the primitive annals of the
Penguins. On the shore of the ocean I have ransacked a previously
untouched tumulus, and in it I found, as usually happens, flint
axes, bronze swords, Roman coins, and a twenty-sou piece bearing the
effigy of Louis-Philippe I., King of the French.
For historical times, the chronicle of Johannes Talpa, a monk of the
monastery of Beargarden, has been of great assistance to me. I steeped
myself the more thoroughly in this author as no other source for the
Penguin history of the Early Middle Ages has yet been discovered.
We are richer for the period that begins with the thirteenth
century, richer but not better off. It is extremely difficult to write
history. We do not know exactly how things have happened, and the
historian's embarrassment increases with the abundance of documents at
his disposal. When a fact is known through the evidence of a single
person, it is admitted without much hesitation. Our perplexities begin
when events are related by two or by several witnesses, for their
evidence is always contradictory and always irreconcilable.
It is true that the scientific reasons for preferring one piece of
evidence to another are sometimes very strong, but they are never
strong enough to outweigh our passions, our prejudices, our interests,
or to overcome that levity of mind common to all grave men. It follows
that we continually present the facts in a prejudiced or frivolous
manner.
I have confided the difficulties that I experienced in writing the
history of the Penguins to several learned archaeologists and
palaeographers both of my own and foreign countries. I endured their
contempt. They looked at me with a pitying smile which seemed to
say: "Do we write history? Do you imagine that we attempt to extract
the least parcel of life or truth from a text or a document? We
publish texts purely and simply. We keep to their exact letter. The
letter alone is definite and perceptible. It is not so with the
spirit; ideas are crotchets. A man must be very vain to write history,
for to do so requires imagination."
All this was in the glances and smiles of our masters in
palaeography, and their behaviour discouraged me deeply. One day after
a conversation with an eminent sigillographer, I was even more
depressed than usual, when I suddenly thought:
"After all, there are historians; the race has not entirely
disappeared. Some five or six of them have been preserved at the
Academy of Moral Sciences. They do not publish texts; they write
history. They will not tell me that one must be a vain fellow to
take up that sort of work."
This idea restored my courage.
The following day I called upon one of them, an astute old man.
"I came, sir," said I to him, "to ask for the advice that a man of
your experience can give. I am taking the utmost trouble in
composing a history and I reach no result whatever."
He answered me, shrugging his shoulders:
"What is the good, my dear sir, of giving yourself so much
trouble, and why compose a history when all you need do is to copy the
best-known ones in the usual way? If you have a fresh view or an
original idea, if you present men and things from an unexpected
point of view, you will surprise the reader. And the reader does not
like being surprised. He never looks in a history for anything but the
stupidities that he knows already. If you try to instruct him you only
humiliate him and make him angry. Do not try to enlighten him; he will
only cry out that you insult his beliefs.
"Historians copy from one another. Thus they spare themselves
trouble and avoid the appearance of presumption. Imitate them and do
not be original. An original historian is the object of distrust,
contempt, and loathing from everybody.
"Do you imagine, sir," added he, "that I should be respected and
honoured as I am if I had put innovations into my historical works?
And what are innovations? They are impertinences."
He rose. I thanked him for his kindness and reached the door. He
called me back.
"One word more. If you want your book to be well received, lose no
opportunity for exalting the virtues on which society is based--
attachment to wealth, pious sentiments, and especially resignation
on the part of the poor, which latter is the very foundation of order.
Proclaim, sir, that the origins of property-- nobility and police--
are treated in your history with all the respect which these
institutions deserve. Make it known that you admit the supernatural
when it presents itself. On these conditions you will succeed in
good society."
I have given much thought to these judicious observations and I have
given them the fullest weight.
I have not here to deal with the Penguins before their
metamorphosis. They begin to come within my scope only at the moment
when they leave the realm of zoology to enter those of history and
theology. It was in truth Penguins that the great St. Mael changed
into men, though it is necessary to explain this, for to-day the
term might give rise to confusion.
We call by the name of Penguin in French, a bird of the Arctic
regions belonging to the family of the Alcides; we call the type of
the spheniscides inhabiting the Antarctic seas, manchots. Thus M. G.
Lecointe, for example, says in his narrative of the voyage of the
Belgica: "Of all birds that people the Strait of Gerlache, the
manchots are certainly the most interesting. They are sometimes
designated, though inaccurately, under the name of the penguins of the
South." Doctor J. B. Charcot affirms, on the contrary, that the
true and only Penguins are those Antarctic birds which we call
manchots, and he gives for reason that they received from the Dutch,
who in 1598 reached Cape Magellan, the name of pinguinos, doubtless
because of their fat. But if the manchots are called penguins what are
we in future to call the Penguins themselves? Dr. J. B. Charcot does
not tell us, and he does not seem to have given the matter a
moment's attention.
Well, that his manchots become or re-become Penguins is a matter
to which we must consent. He has acquired the right to name them by
discovering them. But let him at least allow the Northern penguins
to remain penguins. There will be the penguins of the South and
those of the North, the Antarctic and the Arctic, the alcides or old
penguins, and the spheniscides or former manchots. This will perhaps
cause embarrassment to ornithologists who are careful in describing
and classing the palmipedes; they will doubtless ask if a single
name is really suited to two families who are poles apart from one
another and who differ in several respects, particularly in their
beaks, winglets, and claws. For my part, I adapt myself easily to this
confusion. Whatever be the differences between my penguins and those
of M. J. B. Charcot, the resemblances are more numerous and more
deep-seated. The former, like the latter, attract notice by their
grave and placid air, their comic dignity, their trustful familiarity,
their sly simplicity, their habits at once awkward and solemn. Both
are pacific, abounding in speech, eager to see anything novel,
immersed in public affairs, and perhaps a little jealous of all that
is superior to them.
My hyperboreans have, it is true, winglets that are not scaly, but
covered with little feathers, and, although their legs are fixed a
little farther back than those of the Southerns, they walk in the same
way with their chests lifted up and their heads held aloft,
balancing their bodies in a like dignified style, and their sublime
beak (os sublime) is not the least cause of the error into which the
apostle fell when he took them for men.
The present work, I cannot but recognise, belongs to the old order
of history, to that which presents the sequence of events whose memory
has been preserved, to the order which indicates, as far as
possible, causes and effects. It is an art rather than a science. It
is claimed that this method no longer satisfies exact minds, and
that the ancient Clio is to-day looked upon as a teller of old
wives' fables. And possibly we shall have in the future a more
trustworthy history, a history of the conditions of life, which will
teach us what a given people at a given epoch produced and consumed in
every department of its activity. History of that type will be no
longer an art but a science, and it will assume the exactness which
the former history lacked. But in order that it may come into
existence, it has need of a multitude of statistics which is
hitherto wanting among all peoples and particularly among the
Penguins. It is possible that modern nations may one day provide the
elements of such a history. As regards what is already past we must
always content ourselves, I fear, with a narrative in the ancient
style. The interest of such a narrative depends above all on the
perspicacity and good faith of the narrator.
As a great writer of Alca has said, the life of a people is a tissue
of crime, wretchedness, and folly. Penguinia did not differ in this
respect from other nations; nevertheless, its history contains some
admirable sections upon which I hope that I have cast much fresh
light.
The Penguins remained warlike for a lengthy period. One of them,
Jacquot, the Philosopher, has painted their character in a little
moral picture that I reproduce here, and that, doubtless, will not
be read without pleasure:
The philosopher, Gratien, travelled through Penguinia in the time of
the later Draconides. One day as he passed through a pleasant valley
where the cow-bells tinkled in the pure air, he seated himself on a
bench at the foot of an oak, close beside a cottage. At the
threshold a woman was nursing her child; a little boy was playing with
a big dog; a blind old man, seated in the sun with his lips
half-opened, drank in the light of day.
The master of the house, a young and sturdy man, offered some
bread and milk to Gratien.
The Porpoise philosopher having taken this rural repast:
"Delightful inhabitants of a delightful country, I give you thanks,"
said he. "Everything here breathes forth joy, concord, and peace."
As he said this a shepherd passed by playing a march upon his pipe.
"What is that lively air?" asked Gratien.
"It is the war-hymn against the Porpoises," answered the peasant.
"Everybody here sings it. Little children know it before they can
speak. We are all good Penguins."
"You don't like the Porpoises then?"
"We hate them."
"For what reason do you hate them?"
"Need you ask? Are not the Porpoises neighbours of the Penguins!"
"Of course."
"Well, that is why the Penguins hate the Porpoises."
"Is that a reason?"
"Certainly. He who says neighbours says enemies. Look at the field
that borders mine. It belongs to the man I hate most in the world.
After him my worst enemies are the people of the village on the
other slope of the valley at the foot of that birchwood. In this
narrow valley formed of two parts there are but that village and mine:
they are enemies. Every time that our lads meet the others, insults
and blows pass between them. And you want the Penguins not to be
enemies of the Porpoises! Don't you know what patriotism is? For my
part there are but two cries that rise to my lips: 'Hurrah for the
Penguins! Death to the Porpoises!'"
During thirteen centuries the Penguins made war upon all the peoples
in the world with a constant ardour and diverse fortunes. Then for
some years they tired of what they had loved so long and showed a
marked preference for peace which they expressed with dignity, indeed,
but in the most sincere accents. Their generals adapted themselves
very well to this new humour; all their army, officers,
noncommissioned officers, and men, conscripts and veterans, took
pleasure in conforming to it. None but scribblers and book-worms
complained of the change and the cut-throats alone refused to be
consoled on account of it.
This same Jacquot, the Philosopher, composed a sort of moral tale in
which he represented in a comic and lively fashion the diverse actions
of men, and he mingled in it several passages from the history of
his own country. Some persons asked him why he had written this
feigned history and what advantage, according to him, his country
would derive from it.
"A very great one," answered the philosopher. "When they see their
actions travestied in this way and lopped of all which flattered them,
the Penguins will judge better, and, perhaps, become more reasonable."
I desired to omit nothing from this history that could interest
artists. There is a chapter on Penguin painting in the Middle Ages,
and if that chapter is not so complete as I desired the fault is not
mine, as you can see from reading the terrible recital with which I
end this preface.
The idea occurred to me, in the month of June last year, to go and
consult on the origins and progress of Penguin art, the lamented M.
Fulgence Tapir, the learned author of the "Universal Annals of
Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture."
Having been shown into his study, I found seated before a roll-top
desk, beneath a frightful mass of papers, an amazingly short-sighted
little man whose eyelids blinked behind his gold-mounted spectacles.
To make up for the defeat of his eyes his long and mobile nose,
endowed with an exquisite sense of touch, explored the sensible world.
By means of this organ Fulgence Tapir put himself in contact with
art and beauty. It is observed that in France, as a general rule,
musical critics are deaf and art critics are blind. This allows them
the collectedness necessary for aesthetic ideas. Do you imagine that
with eyes capable of perceiving the forms and colours with which
mysterious nature envelops herself, Fulgence Tapir would have raised
himself, on a mountain of printed and manuscript documents, to the
summit of doctrinal spiritualism, or that he would have conceived that
mighty theory which makes the arts of all times and countries converge
towards the Institute of France, their supreme end?
The walls of the study, the floor, and even the ceiling were
loaded with overflowing bundles, pasteboard boxes swollen beyond
measure, boxes in which were compressed an innumerable multitude of
small cards covered with writing. I beheld in admiration mingled
with terror the cataracts of erudition that threatened to burst forth.
"Master," said I in feeling tones, "I throw myself upon your
kindness and your knowledge, both of which are inexhaustible. Would
you consent to guide me in my arduous researches into the origins of
Penguin art?"
"Sir," answered the Master, "I possess all art, you understand me,
all art, on cards classed alphabetically and in order of subjects. I
consider it my duty to place at your disposal all that relates to
the Penguins. Get on that ladder and take out that box you see
above. You will find in it everything you require."
I tremblingly obeyed. But scarcely had I opened the fatal box than
some blue cards escaped from it, and slipping through my fingers,
began to rain down. Almost immediately, acting in sympathy, the
neighbouring boxes opened, and there flowed streams of pink, green,
and white cards, and by degrees, from all the boxes, differently
coloured cards were poured out murmuring like a waterfall on a
mountain-side in April. In a minute they covered the floor with a
thick layer of paper. Issuing from their inexhaustible reservoirs with
a roar that continually grew in force, each second increased the
vehemence of their torrential fall. Swamped up to the knees in
cards, Fulgence Tapir observed the cataclysm with attentive nose. He
recognised its cause and grew pale with fright.
"What a mass of art!" he exclaimed.
I called to him and leaned forward to help him mount the ladder
which bent under the shower. It was too late. Overwhelmed,
desperate, pitiable, his velvet smoking-cap and his gold-mounted
spectacles having fallen from him, he vainly opposed his short arms to
the flood which had now mounted to his arm-pits. Suddenly a terrible
spurt of cards arose and enveloped him in a gigantic whirlpool. During
the space of a second I could see in the gulf the shining skull and
little fat hands of the scholar; then it closed up and the deluge kept
pouring over what was silence and immobility. In dread lest I in my
turn should be swallowed up ladder and all I made my escape through
the topmost pane of the
window.
Book 1 - The Beginnings
Chapter 1 - Life of Saint Mael
Mael, a scion of a royal family of Cambria, was sent in his ninth
year to the Abbey of Yvern so that he might there study both sacred
and profane learning. At the age of fourteen he renounced his
patrimony and took a vow to serve the Lord. His time was divided,
according to the rule, between the singing of hymns, the study of
grammar, and the meditation of eternal truths.
A celestial perfume soon disclosed the virtues of the monk
throughout the cloister, and when the blessed Gal, the Abbot of Yvern,
departed from this world into the next, young Mael succeeded him in
the government of the monastery. He established therein a school, an
infirmary, a guest-house, a forge, work-shops of all kinds, and
sheds for building ships, and he compelled the monks to till the lands
in the neighbourhood. With his own hands he cultivated the garden of
the Abbey, he worked in metals, he instructed the novices, and his
life was gently gliding along like a stream that reflects the heaven
and fertilizes the fields.
At the close of the day this servant of God was accustomed to seat
himself on the cliff, in the place that is to-day still called St.
Mael's chair. At his feet the rocks bristling with green seaweed and
tawny wrack seemed like black dragons as they faced the foam of the
waves with their monstrous breasts. He watched the sun descending into
the ocean like a red Host whose glorious blood gave a purple tone to
the clouds and to the summits of the waves. And the holy man saw in
this the image of the mystery of the Cross, by which the divine
blood has clothed the earth with a royal purple. In the offing a
line of dark blue marked the shores of the island of Gad, where St.
Bridget, who had been given the veil by St. Malo, ruled over a convent
of women.
Now Bridget, knowing the merits of the venerable Mael, begged from
him some work of his hands as a rich present. Mael cast a hand-bell of
bronze for her and, when it was finished, he blessed it and threw it
into the sea. And the bell went ringing towards the coast of Gad,
where St. Bridget, warned by the sound of the bell upon the waves,
received it piously, and carried it in solemn procession with
singing of psalms into the chapel of the convent.
Thus the holy Mael advanced from virtue to virtue. He had already
passed through two-thirds of the way of life, and he hoped
peacefully to reach his terrestrial end in the midst of his
spiritual brethren, when he knew by a certain sign that the Divine
wisdom had decided otherwise, and that the Lord was calling him to
less peaceful but not less meritorious labours.
Chapter 2 - The Apostolical Vocation of Saint Mael
One day as he walked in meditation to the furthest point of a
tranquil beach, for which rocks jutting out into the sea formed a
rugged dam, he saw a trough of stone which floated like a boat upon
the waters.
It was in a vessel similar to this that St. Guirec, the great St.
Columba, and so many holy men from Scotland and from Ireland had
gone forth to evangelize Armorica. More recently still, St. Avoye
having come from England, ascended the river Auray in a mortar made of
rose-coloured granite into which children were afterwards placed in
order to make them strong; St. Vouga passed from Hibernia to
Cornwall on a rock whose fragments, preserved at Penmarch, will cure
of fever such pilgrims as place these splinters on their heads. St.
Samson entered the Bay of St. Michael's Mount in a granite vessel
which will one day be called St. Samson's basin. It is because of
these facts that when he saw the stone trough the holy Mael understood
that the Lord intended him for the apostolate of the pagans who
still peopled the coast and the Breton islands.
He handed his ashen staff to the holy Budoc, thus investing him with
the government of the monastery. Then, furnished with bread, a
barrel of fresh water, and the book of the Holy Gospels, he entered
the stone trough which carried him gently to the island of Hoedic.
This island is perpetually buffeted by the winds. In it some poor
men fished among the clefts of the rocks and laboriously cultivated
vegetables in gardens full of sand and pebbles that were sheltered
from the wind by walls of barren stone and hedges of tamarisk. A
beautiful fig-tree raised itself in a hollow of the island and
thrust forth its branches far and wide. The inhabitants of the
island used to worship it.
And the holy Mael said to them: "You worship this tree because it is
beautiful. Therefore you are capable of feeling beauty. Now I come
to reveal to you the hidden beauty." And he taught them the Gospel.
And after having instructed them, he baptized them with salt and
water.
The islands of Morbihan were more numerous in those times than
they are to-day. For since then many have been swallowed up by the
sea. St. Mael evangelized sixty of them. Then in his granite trough he
ascended the river Auray. And after sailing for three hours he
landed before a Roman house. A thin column of smoke went up from the
roof. The holy man crossed the threshold on which there was a mosaic
representing a dog with its hind legs outstretched and its lips
drawn back. He was welcomed by an old couple, Marcus Combabus and
Valeria Moerens, who lived there on the products of their lands. There
was a portico round the interior court the columns of which were
painted red, half their height upwards from the base. A fountain
made of shells stood against the wall and under the portico there rose
an altar with a niche in which the master of the house had placed some
little idols made of baked earth and whitened with whitewash. Some
represented winged children, others Apollo or Mercury, and several
were in the form of a naked woman twisting her hair. But the holy
Mael, observing those figures, discovered among them the image of a
young mother holding a child upon her knees.
Immediately pointing to that image he said:
"That is the Virgin, the mother of God. The poet Virgil foretold her
in Sibylline verses before she was born and, in angelical tones he
sang Jam redit et virgo. Throughout heathendom prophetic figures of
her have been made, like that which you, O Marcus, have placed upon
this altar. And without doubt it is she who has protected your
modest household. Thus it is that those who faithfully observe the
natural law prepare themselves for the knowledge of revealed truths."
Marcus Combabus and Valeria Moerens, having been instructed by
this speech, were converted to the Christian faith. They received
baptism together with their young freedwoman, Caelia Avitella, who was
dearer to them than the light of their eyes. All their tenants
renounced paganism and were baptized on the same day.
Marcus Combabus, Valeria Moerens, and Caelia Avitella led
thenceforth a life full of merit. They died in the Lord and were
admitted into the canon of the saints.
For thirty-seven years longer the blessed Mael evangelized the
pagans of the inner lands. He built two hundred and eighteen chapels
and seventy-four abbeys.
Now on a certain day in the city of Vannes, where he was preaching
the Gospel, he learned that the monks of Yvern had in his absence
declined from the rule of St. Gal. Immediately, with the zeal of a hen
who gathers her brood, he repaired to his erring children. He was then
towards the end of his ninety-seventh year; his figure was bent, but
his arms were still strong, and his speech was poured forth abundantly
like winter snow in the depths of the valleys.
Abbot Budoc restored the ashen staff to St. Mael and informed him of
the unhappy state into which the Abbey had fallen. The monks were in
disagreement as to the date on which the festival of Easter ought to
be celebrated. Some held for the Roman calendar, others for the
Greek calendar, and the horrors of a chronological schism distracted
the monastery.
There also prevailed another cause of disorder. The nuns of the
island of Gad, sadly fallen from their former virtue, continually came
in boats to the coast of Yvern. The monks received them in the
guest-house and from this there arose scandals which filled pious
souls with desolation.
Having finished his faithful report, Abbot Budoc concluded in
these terms:
"Since the coming of these nuns the innocence and peace of the monks
are at an end."
"I readily believe it," answered the blessed Mael. "For woman is a
cleverly constructed snare by which we are taken even before we
suspect the trap. Alas! the delightful attraction of these creatures
is exerted with even greater force from a distance than when they
are close at hand. The less they satisfy desire the more they
inspire it. This is the reason why a poet wrote this verse to one of
them:
When present I avoid thee, but when away I find thee.
Thus we see, my son, that the blandishments of carnal love have more
power over hermits and monks than over men who live in the world.
All through my life the demon of lust has tempted me in various
ways, but his strongest temptations did not come to me from meeting
a woman, however beautiful and fragrant she was. They came to me
from the image of an absent woman. Even now, though full of days and
approaching my ninety-eighth year, I am often led by the Enemy to
sin against chastity, at least in thought. At night when I am cold
in my bed and my frozen old bones rattle together with a dull sound
I hear voices reciting the second verse of the third Book of the
Kings: 'Wherefore his servants said unto him, Let there be sought
for my lord the king a young virgin: and let her stand before the
king, and let her cherish him, and let her lie in thy bosom, that my
lord the king may get heat,' and the devil shows me a girl in the
bloom of youth who says to me: 'I am thy Abishag; I am thy
Shunamite. Make, O my lord, room for me in thy couch.'
"Believe me," added the old man, "it is only by the special aid of
Heaven that a monk can keep his chastity in act and in intention."
Applying himself immediately to restore innocence and peace to the
monastery, he corrected the calendar according to the calculations
of chronology and astronomy and he compelled all the monks to accept
his decision; he sent the women who had declined from St. Bridget's
rule back to their convent; but far from driving them away brutally,
he caused them to be led to their boat with singing of psalms and
litanies.
"Let us respect in them," he said, "the daughters of Bridget and the
betrothed of the Lord. Let us beware lest we imitate the Pharisees who
affect to despise sinners. The sin of these women and not their
persons should be abased, and they should be made ashamed of what they
have done and not of what they are, for they are all creatures of
God."
And the holy man exhorted his monks to obey faithfully the rule of
their order.
"When it does not yield to the rudder," said he to them, "the ship
yields to the rock."
Chapter 3 - The Temptation of Saint Mael
The blessed Mael had scarcely restored order in the Abbey of Yvern
before he learned that the inhabitants of the island of Hoedic, his
first catechumens and the dearest of all to his heart, had returned to
paganism, and that they were hanging crowns of flowers and fillets
of wool to the branches of the sacred fig-tree.
The boatman who brought this sad news expressed a fear that soon
those misguided men might violently destroy the chapel that had been
built on the shore of their island.
The holy man resolved forthwith to visit his faithless children,
so that he might lead them back to the faith and prevent them from
yielding to such sacrilege. As he went down to the bay where his stone
trough was moored, he turned his eyes to the sheds, then filled with
the noise of saws and of hammers, which, thirty years before, he had
erected on the fringe of that bay for the purpose of building ships.
At that moment, the Devil, who never tires, went out from the
sheds and, under the appearance of a monk called Samson, he approached
the holy man and tempted him thus:
"Father, the inhabitants of the island of Hoedic commit sins
unceasingly. Every moment that passes removes them farther from God.
They are soon going to use violence towards the chapel that you have
raised with your own venerable hands on the shore of their island.
Time is pressing. Do you not think that your stone trough would
carry you more quickly towards them if it were rigged like a boat
and furnished with a rudder, a mast, and a sail, for then you would be
driven by the wind? Your arms are still strong and able to steer a
small craft. It would be a good thing, too, to put a sharp stem in
front of your apostolic trough. You are much too clear-sighted not
to have thought of it already."
"Truly time is pressing," answered the holy man. "But to do as you
say, Samson, my son, would it not be to make myself like those men
of little faith who do not trust the Lord? Would it not be to
despise the gifts of Him who has sent me this stone vessel without
rigging or sail?"
This question, the Devil, who is a great theologian, answered by
another.
"Father, is it praiseworthy to wait, with our arms folded, until
help comes from on high, and to ask everything from Him who can do all
things, instead of acting by human prudence and helping ourselves?"
"It certainly is not," answered the holy Mael, "and to neglect to
act by human prudence is tempting God."
"Well," urged the Devil, "is it not prudence in this case to rig the
vessel?"
"It would be prudence if we could not attain our end in any other
way."
"Is your vessel then so very speedy?"
"It is as speedy as God pleases."
"What do you know about it? It goes like Abbot Budoc's mule. It is a
regular old tub. Are you forbidden to make it speedier?"
"My son, clearness adorns your words, but they are unduly
over-confident. Remember that this vessel is miraculous."
"It is, father. A granite trough that floats on the water like a
cork is a miraculous trough. There is not the slightest doubt about
it. What conclusion do you draw from that?"
"I am greatly perplexed. Is it right to perfect so miraculous a
machine by human and natural means?"
"Father, if you lost your right foot and God restored it to you,
would not that foot be miraculous?"
"Without doubt, my son."
"Would you put a shoe on it?"
"Assuredly."
"Well, then, if you believe that one may cover a miraculous foot
with a natural shoe, you should also believe that we can put natural
rigging on a miraculous boat. That is clear. Alas! Why must the
holiest persons have their moments of weakness and despondency? The
most illustrious of the apostles of Brittany could accomplish works
worthy of eternal glory... But his spirit is tardy and his hand is
slothful. Farewell then, father! Travel by short and slow stages and
when at last you approach the coast of Hoedic you will see the smoking
ruins of the chapel that was built and consecrated by your own
hands. The pagans will have burned it and with it the deacon you
left there. He will be as thoroughly roasted as a black pudding."
"My trouble is extreme," said the servant of God, drying with his
sleeve the sweat that gathered upon his brow. "But tell me, Samson, my
son, would not rigging this stone trough be a difficult piece of work?
And if we undertook it might we not lose time instead of gaining it?"
"Ah! father," exclaimed the Devil, "in one turning of the hour-glass
the thing would be done. We shall find the necessary rigging in this
shed that you have formerly built here on the coast and in those
store-houses abundantly stocked through your care. I will myself
regulate all the ship's fittings. Before being a monk I was a sailor
and a carpenter and I have worked at many other trades as well. Let us
to work."
Immediately he drew the holy man into an outhouse filled with all
things needful for fitting out a boat.
"That for you, father!"
And he placed on his shoulders the sail, the mast, the gaff, and the
boom.
Then, himself bearing a stem and a rudder with its screw and tiller,
and seizing a carpenter's bag full of tools, he ran to the shore,
dragging the holy man after him by his habit. The latter was bent,
sweating, and breathless, under the burden of canvas and wood.
Chapter 4 - St. Mael's Navigation on the Ocean of Ice
The Devil, having tucked his clothes up to his arm-pits, dragged the
trough on the sand, and fitted the rigging in less than an hour.
As soon as the holy Mael had embarked, the vessel, with all its
sails set, cleft through the waters with such speed that the coast was
almost immediately out of sight. The old man steered to the south so
as to double the Land's End, but an irresistible current carried him
to the south-west. He went along the southern coast of Ireland and
turned sharply towards the north. In the evening the wind freshened.
In vain did Mael attempt to furl the sail. The vessel flew
distractedly towards the fabulous seas.
By the light of the moon the immodest sirens of the North came
around him with their hempen-coloured hair, raising their white
throats and their rose-tinted limbs out of the sea; and beating the
water into foam with their emerald tails, they sang in cadence:
Whither go'st thou, gentle Mael
In thy trough distracted?
All distended is thy sail
Like the breast of Juno
When from it gushed the Milky Way.
For a moment their harmonious laughter followed him beneath the
stars, but the vessel fled on, a hundred times more swiftly than the
red ship of a Viking. And the petrels, surprised in their flight,
clung with their feet to the hair of the holy man.
Soon a tempest arose full of darkness and groanings, and the trough,
driven by a furious wind, flew like a sea-mew through the mist and the
surge.
After a night of three times twenty-four hours the darkness was
suddenly rent and the holy man discovered on the horizon a shore
more dazzling than diamond. The coast rapidly grew larger, and soon by
the glacial light of a torpid and sunken sun, Mael saw, rising above
the waves, the silent streets of a white city, which, vaster than
Thebes with its hundred gates, extended as far as the eye could see
the ruins of its forum built of snow, its palaces of frost, its
crystal arches, and its iridescent obelisks.
The ocean was covered with floating ice-bergs around which swam
men of the sea of a wild yet gentle appearance. And Leviathan passed
by hurling a column of water up to the clouds.
Moreover, on a block of ice which floated at the same rate as the
stone trough there was seated a white bear holding her little one in
her arms, and Mael heard her murmuring in a low voice this verse of
Virgil, Incipe parve puer.
And full of sadness and trouble, the old man wept.
The fresh water had frozen and burst the barrel that contained it.
And Mael was sucking pieces of ice to quench his thirst, and his
food was bread dipped in dirty water. His beard and his hair were
broken like glass. His habit was covered with a layer of ice and cut
into him at every movement of his limbs. Huge waves rose up and opened
their foaming jaws at the old man. Twenty times the boat was filled by
masses of sea. And the ocean swallowed up the book of the Holy Gospels
which the apostle guarded with extreme care in a purple cover marked
with a golden cross.
Now on the thirtieth day the sea calmed. And lo! with a frightful
clamour of sky and waters a mountain of dazzling whiteness advanced
towards the stone vessel. Mael steered to avoid it, but the tiller
broke in his hands. To lessen the speed of his progress towards the
rock he attempted to reef the sails, but when he tried to knot the
reef-points the wind pulled them away from him and the rope seared his
hands. He saw three demons with wings of black skin having hooks at
their ends, who, hanging from the rigging, were puffing with their
breath against the sails.
Understanding from this sight that the Enemy had governed him in all
these things, he guarded himself by making the sign of the Cross.
Immediately a furious gust of wind filled with the noise of sobs and
howls struck the stone trough, carried off the mast with all the
sails, and tore away the rudder and the stem.
The trough was drifting on the sea, which had now grown calm. The
holy man knelt and gave thanks to the Lord who had delivered him
from the snares of the demon. Then he recognised, sitting on a block
of ice, the mother bear who had spoken during the storm. She pressed
her beloved child to her bosom, and in her hand she held a purple book
marked with a golden cross. Hailing the granite trough, she saluted
the holy man with these words:
"Pax tibi Mael"
And she held out the book to him.
The holy man recognised his evangelistary, and, full of
astonishment, he sang in the tepid air a hymn to the Creator and His
creation.
Chapter 5 - The Baptism of the Penguins
After having drifted for an hour the holy man approached a narrow
strand, shut in by steep mountains. He went along the coast for a
whole day and a night, passing around the reef which formed an
insuperable barrier. He discovered in this way that it was a round
island in the middle of which rose a mountain crowned with clouds.
He joyfully breathed the fresh breath of the moist air. Rain fell, and
this was so pleasant that the holy man said to the Lord:
"Lord, this is the island of tears, the island of contrition."
The strand was deserted. Worn out with fatigue and hunger, he sat
down on a rock in the hollow of which there lay some yellow eggs,
marked with black spots, and about as large as those of a swan. But he
did not touch them, saying:
"Birds are the living praises of God. I should not like a single one
of these praises to be lacking through me."
And he munched the lichens which he tore from the crannies of the
rocks.
The holy man had gone almost entirely round the island without
meeting any inhabitants, when he came to a vast amphitheatre formed of
black and red rocks whose summits became tinged with blue as they rose
towards the clouds, and they were filled with sonorous cascades.
The reflection from the polar ice had hurt the old man's eyes, but a
feeble gleam of light still shone through his swollen eyelids. He
distinguished animated forms which filled the rocks, in stages, like a
crowd of men on the tiers of an amphitheatre. And at the same time,
his ears, deafened by the continual noises of the sea, heard a
feeble sound of voices. Thinking that what he saw were men living
under the natural law, and that the Lord had sent him to teach them
the Divine law, he preached the gospel to them.
Mounted on a lofty stone in the midst of the wild circus:
"Inhabitants of this island," said he, "although you be of small
stature, you look less like a band of fishermen and mariners than like
the senate of a judicious republic. By your gravity, your silence,
your tranquil deportment, you form on this wild rock an assembly
comparable to the Conscript Fathers at Rome deliberating in the temple
of Victory, or rather, to the philosophers of Athens disputing on
the benches of the Areopagus. Doubtless you possess neither their
science nor their genius, but perhaps in the sight of God you are
their superiors. I believe that you are simple and good. As I went
round your island I saw no image of murder, no sign of carnage, no
enemies' heads or scalps hung from a lofty pole or nailed to the doors
of your villages. You appear to me to have no arts and not to work
in metals. But your hearts are pure and your hands are innocent, and
the truth will easily enter into your souls."
Now what he had taken for men of small stature but of grave
bearing were penguins whom the spring had gathered together, and who
were ranged in couples on the natural steps of the rock, erect in
the majesty of their large white bellies. From moment to moment they
moved their winglets like arms, and uttered peaceful cries. They did
not fear men, for they did not know them, and had never received any
harm from them; and there was in the monk a certain gentleness that
reassured the most timid animals and that pleased these penguins
extremely. With a friendly curiosity they turned towards him their
little round eyes lengthened in front by a white oval spot that gave
something odd and human to their appearance.
Touched by their attention, the holy man taught them the Gospel.
"Inhabitants of this island, the early day that has just risen
over your rocks is the image of the heavenly day that rises in your
souls. For I bring you the inner light; I bring you the light and heat
of the soul. Just as the sun melts the ice of your mountains so
Jesus Christ will melt the ice of your hearts."
Thus the old man spoke. As everywhere throughout nature voice
calls to voice, as all which breathes in the light of day loves
alternate strains, these penguins answered the old man by the sounds
of their throats. And their voices were soft, for it was the season of
their loves.
The holy man, persuaded that they belonged to some idolatrous people
and that in their own language they gave adherence to the Christian
faith, invited them to receive baptism.
"I think," said he to them, "that you bathe often, for all the
hollows of the rocks are full of pure water, and as I came to your
assembly I saw several of you plunging into these natural baths. Now
purity of body is the image of spiritual purity."
And he taught them the origin, the nature, and the effects of
baptism.
"Baptism," said he to them, "is Adoption, New Birth, Regeneration,
Illumination."
And he explained each of these points to them in succession.
Then, having previously blessed the water that fell from the
cascades and recited the exorcisms, he baptized those whom he had just
taught, pouring on each of their heads a drop of pure water and
pronouncing the sacred words.
And thus for three days and three nights he baptized the birds.
Chapter 6 - An Assembly in Paradise
When the baptism of the penguins was known in Paradise, it caused
neither joy nor sorrow, but an extreme surprise. The Lord himself
was embarrassed. He gathered an assembly of clerics and doctors, and
asked them whether they regarded the baptism as valid.
"It is void," said St. Patrick.
"Why is it void?" asked St. Gal, who had evangelized the people of
Cornwall and had trained the holy Mael for his apostolical labours.
"The sacrament of baptism," answered St. Patrick, "is void when it
is given to birds, just as the sacrament of marriage is void when it
is given to a eunuch."
But St. Gal replied:
"What relation do you claim to establish between the baptism of a
bird and the marriage of a eunuch? There is none at all. Marriage
is, if I may say so, a conditional, a contingent sacrament. The priest
blesses an event beforehand; it is evident that if the act is not
consummated the benediction remains without effect. That is obvious. I
have known on earth, in the town of Antrim, a rich man named Sadoc,
who, living in concubinage with a woman, caused her to be the mother
of nine children. In his old age, yielding to my reproofs, he
consented to marry her, and I blessed their union. Unfortunately
Sadoc's great age prevented him from consummating the marriage. A
short time afterwards he lost all his property, and Germaine (that was
the name of the woman), not feeling herself able to endure poverty,
asked for the annulment of a marriage which was no reality. The Pope
granted her request, for it was just. So much for marriage. But
baptism is conferred without restrictions or reserves of any kind.
There is no doubt about it, what the penguins have received is a
sacrament."
Called to give his opinion, Pope St. Damasus expressed himself in
these terms:
"In order to know if a baptism is valid and will produce its result,
that is to say, sanctification, it is necessary to consider who
gives it and not who receives it. In truth, the sanctifying virtue
of this sacrament results from the exterior act by which it is
conferred, without the baptized person co-operating in his own
sanctification by any personal act; if it were otherwise it would
not be administered to the newly born. And there is no need, in
order to baptize, to fulfill any special condition; it is not
necessary to be in a state of grace; it is sufficient to have the
intention of doing what the Church does, to pronounce the
consecrated words and to observe the prescribed forms. Now we cannot
doubt that the venerable Mael has observed these conditions. Therefore
the penguins are baptized."
"Do you think so?" asked St. Guenole. "And what then do you
believe that baptism really is? Baptism is the process of regeneration
by which man is born of water and of the spirit, for having entered
the water covered with crimes, he goes out of it a neophyte, a new
creature, abounding in the fruits of righteousness; baptism is the
seed of immortality; baptism is the pledge of the resurrection;
baptism is the burying with Christ in His death and participation in
His departure from the sepulchre. That is not a gift to bestow upon
birds. Reverend Fathers, let us consider. Baptism washes away original
sin; now the penguins were not conceived in sin. It removes the
penalty of sin; now the penguins have not sinned. It produces grace
and the gift of virtues, uniting Christians to Jesus Christ, as the
members to the body, and it is obvious to the senses that penguins
cannot acquire the virtues of confessors, of virgins, and of widows,
or receive grace and be united to-"
St. Damasus did not allow him to finish.
"That proves," said he warmly, "that the baptism was useless; it
does not prove that it was not effective."
"But by this reasoning," said St. Guenole, "one might baptize in the
name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, by aspersion or
immersion, not only a bird or a quadruped, but also an inanimate
object, a statue, a table, a chair, etc. That animal would be
Christian, that idol, that table would be Christian! It is absurd!"
St. Augustine began to speak. There was a great silence.
"I am going," said the ardent bishop of Hippo, "to show you, by an
example, the power of formulas. It deals, it is true, with a
diabolical operation. But if it be established that formulas taught by
the Devil have effect upon unintelligent animals or even on
inanimate objects, how can we longer doubt that the effect of the
sacramental formulas extends to the minds of beasts and even to
inert matter?
"This is the example. There was during my lifetime in the town of
Madaura, the birthplace of the philosopher Apuleius, a witch who was
able to attract men to her chamber by burning a few of their hairs
along with certain herbs upon her tripod, pronouncing at the same time
certain words. Now one day when she wished by this means to gain the
love of a young man, she was deceived by her maid, and instead of
the young man's hairs, she burned some hairs pulled from a leather
bottle, made out of a goatskin that hung in a tavern. During the night
the leather bottle, full of wine, capered through the town up to the
witch's door. This fact is undoubted. And in sacraments as in
enchantments it is the form which operates. The effect of a divine
formula cannot be less in power and extent than the effect of an
infernal formula."
Having spoken in this fashion the great St. Augustine sat down
amidst applause.
One of the blessed, of an advanced age and having a melancholy
appearance, asked permission to speak. No one knew him. His name was
Probus, and he was not enrolled in the canon of the saints.
"I beg the company's pardon," said he, "I have no halo, and I gained
eternal blessedness without any eminent distinction. But after what
the great St. Augustine has just told you I believe it right to impart
a cruel experience, which I had, relative to the conditions
necessary for the validity of a sacrament. The bishop of Hippo is
indeed right in what he said. A sacrament depends on the form; its
virtue is in its form; its vice is in its form. Listen, confessors and
pontiffs, to my woeful story. I was a priest in Rome under the rule of
the Emperor Gordianus. Without desiring to recommend myself to you for
any special merit, I may say that I exercised my priesthood with piety
and zeal. For forty years I served the church of St.
Modestus-beyond-the-Walls. My habits were regular. Every Saturday I
went to a tavern-keeper called Barjas, who dwelt with his wine-jars
under the Porta Capena, and from him I bought the wine that I
consecrated daily throughout the week. During that long space of
time I never failed for a single morning to consecrate the holy
sacrifice of the mass. However, I had no joy, and it was with a
heart oppressed by sorrow that, on the steps of the altar I used to
ask, 'Why art thou so heavy, O my soul, and why art thou so disquieted
within me?' The faithful whom I invited to the holy table gave me
cause for affliction, for having, so to speak, the Host that I
administered still upon their tongues, they fell again into sin just
as if the sacrament had been without power or efficacy. At last I
reached the end of my earthly trials, and falling asleep in the
Lord, I awoke in this abode of the elect. I learned then from the
mouth of the angel who brought me here, that Barjas, the tavern-keeper
of the Porta Capena, had sold for wine a decoction of roots and
barks in which there was not a single drop of the juice of the
grape. I had been unable to transmute this vile brew into blood, for
it was not wine, and wine alone is changed into the blood of Jesus
Christ. Therefore all my consecrations were invalid, and unknown to
us, my faithful and myself had for forty years been deprived of the
sacrament and were in fact in a state of excommunication. This
revelation threw me into a stupor which overwhelms me even to-day in
this abode of bliss. I go all through Paradise without ever meeting
a single one of those Christians whom formerly I admitted to the
holy table in the basilica of the blessed Modestus. Deprived of the
bread of angels, they easily gave way to the most abominable vices,
and they have all gone to hell. It gives me some satisfaction to think
that Barjas, the tavern-keeper, is damned. There is in these things
a logic worthy of the author of all logic. Nevertheless my unhappy
example proves that it is sometimes inconvenient that form should
prevail over essence in the sacraments, and I humbly ask, Could not
eternal wisdom remedy this?"
"No," answered the Lord. "The remedy would be worse than the
disease. It would be the ruin of the priesthood if essence prevailed
over form in the laws of salvation."
"Alas! Lord," sighed the humble Probus. "Be persuaded by my humble
experience; as long as you reduce your sacraments to formulas your
justice will meet with terrible obstacles."
"I know that better than you do," replied the Lord. "I see in a
single glance both the actual problems which are difficult, and the
future problems which will not be less difficult. Thus I can
foretell that when the sun will have turned round the earth two
hundred and forty times more...."
"Sublime language," exclaimed the angels.
"And worthy of the creator of the world," answered the pontiffs.
"It is," resumed the Lord, "a manner of speaking in accordance
with my old cosmogony and one which I cannot give up without losing my
immutability....
"After the sun, then, will have turned another two hundred and forty
times round the earth, there will not be a single cleric left in
Rome who knows Latin. When they sing their litanies in the churches
people will invoke Orichel, Roguel, and Totichel, and, as you know,
these are devils and not angels. Many robbers desiring to make their
communions, but fearing that before obtaining pardon they would be
forced to give up the things they had robbed to the Church, will
make their confessions to travelling priests, who, ignorant of both
Italian and Latin, and only speaking the patois of their village, will
go through cities and towns selling the remission of sins for a base
price, often for a bottle of wine. Probably we shall not be
inconvenienced by those absolutions as they will want contrition to
make them valid, but it may be that their baptisms will cause us
some embarrassment. The priests will become so ignorant that they will
baptize children in nomine patria et filia et spirita sancta, as Louis
de Potter will take a pleasure in relating in the third volume of
his 'Philosophical, Political, and Critical History of
Christianity.' It will be an arduous question to decide on the
validity of such baptisms; for even if in my sacred writings I
tolerate a Greek less elegant than Plato's and a scarcely Ciceronian
Latin, I cannot possibly admit a piece of pure patois as a
liturgical formula. And one shudders when one thinks that millions
of new-born babes will be baptized by this method. But let us return
to our penguins."
"Your divine words, Lord, have already led us back to them," said
St. Gal. "In the signs of religion and the laws of salvation form
necessarily prevails over essence, and the validity of a sacrament
solely depends upon its form. The whole question is whether the
penguins have been baptized with the proper forms. Now there is no
doubt about the answer."
The fathers and the doctors agreed, and their perplexity became only
the more cruel.
"The Christian state," said St. Cornelius, "is not without serious
inconveniences for a penguin. In it the birds are obliged to work
out their own salvation. How can they succeed? The habits of birds
are, in many points, contrary to the commandments of the Church, and
the penguins have no reason for changing theirs. I mean that they
are not intelligent enough to give up their present habits and
assume better."
"They cannot," said the Lord; "my decrees prevent them."
"Nevertheless," resumed St. Cornelius, "in virtue of their baptism
their actions no longer remain indifferent. Henceforth they will be
good or bad, susceptible of merit or of demerit."
"That is precisely the question we have to deal with," said the
Lord.
"I see only one solution," said St. Augustine. "The penguins will go
to hell."
"But they have no soul," observed St. Irenaeus.
"It is a pity," sighed Tertullian.
"It is indeed," resumed St. Gal. "And I admit that my disciple,
the holy Mael, has, in his blind zeal, created great theological
difficulties for the Holy Spirit and introduced disorder into the
economy of mysteries."
"He is an old blunderer," cried St. Adjutor of Alsace, shrugging his
shoulders.
But the Lord cast a reproachful look on Adjutor.
"Allow me to speak," said he; "the holy Mael has not intuitive
knowledge like you, my blessed ones. He does not see me. He is an
old man burdened by infirmities; he is half deaf and three parts
blind. You are too severe on him. However, I recognise that the
situation is an embarrassing one."
"Luckily it is but a passing disorder," said St. Irenaeus. "The
penguins are baptized, but their eggs are not, and the evil will
stop with the present generation."
"Do not speak thus, Irenaeus my son," said the Lord. "There are
exceptions to the laws that men of science lay down on the earth
because they are imperfect and have not an exact application to
nature. But the laws that I establish are perfect and suffer no
exception. We must decide the fate of the baptized penguins without
violating any divine law, and in a manner conformable to the decalogue
as well as to the commandments of my Church."
"Lord," said St. Gregory Nazianzen, "give them an immortal soul."
"Alas! Lord, what would they do with it," sighed Lactantius. "They
have not tuneful voices to sing your praises. They would not be able
to celebrate your mysteries."
"Without doubt," said St. Augustine, "they would not observe the
divine law."
"They could not," said the Lord.
"They could not," continued St. Augustine. "And if, Lord, in your
wisdom, you pour an immortal soul into them, they will burn
eternally in hell in virtue of your adorable decrees. Thus will the
transcendent order, that this old Welshman has disturbed, be
re-established."
"You propose a correct solution to me, son of Monica," said the
Lord, "and one that accords with my wisdom. But it does not satisfy my
mercy. And, although in my essence I am immutable, the longer I
endure, the more I incline to mildness. This change of character is
evident to anyone who reads my two Testaments."
As the discussion continued without much light being thrown upon the
matter and as the blessed showed a disposition to keep repeating the
same thing, it was decided to consult St. Catherine of Alexandria.
This is what was usually done in such cases. St. Catherine while on
earth had confounded fifty very learned doctors. She knew Plato's
philosophy in addition to the Holy Scriptures, and she also
possessed a knowledge of rhetoric.
Chapter 7 - An Assembly in Paradise (Continuation and End)
St. Catherine entered the assembly, her head encircled by a crown of
emeralds, sapphires, and pearls, and she was clad in a robe of cloth
of gold. She carried at her side a blazing wheel, the image of her
persecutors. the one whose fragments had struck her persecutors.
The Lord having invited her to speak, she expressed herself in these
terms:
"Lord, in order to solve the problem you deign to submit to me I
shall not study the habits of animals in general nor those of birds in
particular. I shall only remark to the doctors, confessors, and
pontiffs gathered in this assembly that the separation between man and
animal is not complete since there are monsters who proceed from both.
Such are chimeras- half nymphs and half serpents; such are the three
Gorgons and the Capripeds; such are the Scyllas and the Sirens who
sing in the sea. These have a woman's breast and a fish's tail. Such
also are the Centaurs, men down to the waist and the remainder horses.
They are a noble race of monsters. One of them, as you know, was able,
guided by the light of reason alone, to direct his steps towards
eternal blessedness, and you sometimes see his heroic bosom prancing
on the clouds. Chiron, the Centaur, deserved for his works on the
earth to share the abode of the blessed; he it was who gave Achilles
his education; and that young hero, when he left the Centaur's
hands, lived for two years, dressed as a young girl, among the
daughters of King Lycomedes. He shared their games and their bed
without allowing any suspicion to arise that he was not a young virgin
like them. Chiron, who taught him such good morals, is, with the
Emperor Trajan, the only righteous man who obtained celestial glory by
following the law of nature. And yet he was but half human.
"I think I have proved by this example that, to reach eternal
blessedness, it is enough to possess some parts of humanity, always on
the condition that they are noble. And what Chiron, the Centaur, could
obtain without having been regenerated by baptism, would not the
penguins deserve too if they became half penguins and half men? That
is why, Lord, I entreat you to give old Mael's penguins a human head
and breast so that they can praise you worthily. And grant them also
an immortal soul- but one of small size."
Thus Catherine spoke, and the fathers, doctors, confessors, and
pontiffs heard her with a murmur of approbation.
But St. Anthony, the Hermit, arose and stretching two red and knotty
arms towards the Most High:
"Do not so, O Lord God," he cried, "in the name of your holy
Paraclete, do not so!"
He spoke with such vehemence that his long white beard shook on
his chin like the empty nose-bag of a hungry horse.
"Lord, do not so. Birds with human heads exist already. St.
Catherine has told us nothing new."
"The imagination groups and compares; it never creates," replied St.
Catherine drily.
"They exist already," continued St. Anthony, who would listen to
nothing. "They are called harpies, and they are the most obscene
animals in creation. One day as I was having supper in the desert with
the Abbot St. Paul, I placed the table outside my cabin under an old
sycamore tree. The harpies came and sat in its branches; they deafened
us with their shrill cries and cast their excrement over all our food.
The clamour of the monsters prevented me from listening to the
teaching of the Abbot St. Paul, and we ate birds' dung with our
bread and lettuces. Lord, it is impossible to believe that harpies
could give thee worthy praise.
"Truly in my temptations I have seen many hybrid beings, not only
women-serpents and women-fishes, but beings still more confusedly
formed such as men whose bodies were made out of a pot, a bell, a
clock, a cupboard full of food and crockery, or even out of a house
with doors and windows through which people engaged in their
domestic tasks could be seen. Eternity would not suffice were I to
describe all the monsters that assailed me in my solitude, from whales
rigged like ships to a shower of red insects which changed the water
of my fountain into blood. But none were as disgusting as the
harpies whose offal polluted the leaves of my sycamore."
"Harpies," observed Lactantius, "are female monsters with birds'
bodies. They have a woman's head and breast. Their forwardness,
their shamelessness, and their obscenity proceed from their female
nature as the poet Virgil demonstrated in his 'AEneid.' They share the
curse of Eve."
"Let us not speak of the curse of Eve," said the Lord. "The second
Eve has redeemed the first."
Paul Orosius, the author of a universal history that Bossuet was
to imitate in later years, arose and prayed to the Lord:
"Lord, hear my prayer and Anthony's. Do not make any more monsters
like the Centaurs, Sirens, and Fauns, whom the Greeks, those
collectors of fables, loved. You will derive no satisfaction from
them. Those species of monsters have pagan inclinations and their
double nature does not dispose them to purity of morals."
The bland Lactantius replied in these terms:
"He who has just spoken is assuredly the best historian in Paradise,
for Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Livy, Velleius Paterculus,
Cornelius Nepos, Suetonius, Manetho, Diodorus Siculus, Dion Cassius,
and Lampridius are deprived of the sight of God, and Tacitus suffers
in hell the torments that are reserved for blasphemers. But Paul
Orosius does not know heaven as well as he knows the earth, for he
does not seem to bear in mind that the angels, who proceed from man
and bird, are purity itself."
"We are wandering," said the Eternal. "What have we to do with all
those centaurs, harpies, and angels? We have to deal with penguins."
"You have spoken to the point, Lord," said the chief of the fifty
doctors, who, during their mortal life had been confounded by the
Virgin of Alexandria, "and I dare express the opinion that, in order
to put an end to the scandal by which heaven is now stirred, old
Mael's penguins should, as St. Catherine who confounded us has
proposed, be given half of a human body with an eternal soul
proportioned to that half."
At this speech there arose in the assembly a great noise of
private conversations and disputes of the doctors. The Greek fathers
argued with the Latins concerning the substance, nature, and
dimensions of the soul that should be given to the penguins.
"Confessors and pontiffs," exclaimed the Lord, "do not imitate the
conclaves and synods of the earth. And do not bring into the Church
Triumphant those violences that trouble the Church Militant. For it is
but too true that in all the councils held under the inspiration of my
spirit, in Europe, in Asia, and in Africa, fathers have torn the
beards and scratched the eyes of other fathers. Nevertheless they were
infallible, for I was with them."
Order being restored, old Hermas arose and slowly uttered these
words:
"I will praise you, Lord, for that you caused my mother, Saphira, to
be born amidst your people, in the days when the dew of heaven
refreshed the earth which was in travail with its Saviour. And I
will praise you, Lord, for having granted to me to see with my
mortal eyes the Apostles of your divine Son. And I will speak in
this illustrious assembly because you have willed that truth should
proceed out of the mouths of the humble, and I will say: 'Change these
penguins to men. It is the only determination conformable to your
justice and your mercy.'"
Several doctors asked permission to speak, others began to do so. No
one listened, and all the confessors were tumultuously shaking their
palms and their crowns.
The Lord, by a gesture of his right hand, appeased the quarrels of
his elect.
"Let us not deliberate any longer," said he. "The opinion broached
by gentle old Hermas is the only one conformable to my eternal
designs. These birds will be changed into men. I foresee in this
several disadvantages. Many of those men will commit sins they would
not have committed as penguins. Truly their fate through this change
will be far less enviable than if they had been without this baptism
and this incorporation into the family of Abraham. But my
foreknowledge must not encroach upon their free will.
"In order not to impair human liberty, I will be ignorant of what
I know, I will thicken upon my eyes the veils I have pierced, and in
my blind clear-sightedness I will let myself be surprised by what I
have foreseen."
And immediately calling the archangel Raphael:
"Go and find the holy Mael," said he to him; "inform him of his
mistake and tell him, armed with my Name, to change these penguins
into men."
Chapter 8 - Metamorphosis of the Penguins
The archangel, having gone down into the Island of the Penguins,
found the holy man asleep in the hollow of a rock surrounded by his
new disciples. He laid his hand on his shoulder and, having waked him,
said in a gentle voice:
"Mael, fear not!"
The holy man, dazzled by a vivid light, inebriated by a delicious
odour, recognised the angel of the Lord, and prostrated himself with
his forehead on the ground.
The angel continued:
"Mael, know thy error, believing that thou wert baptizing children
of Adam thou hast baptized birds; and it is through thee that penguins
have entered into the Church of God."
At these words the old man remained stupefied.
And the angel resumed:
"Arise, Mael, arm thyself with the mighty Name of the Lord, and
say to these birds, 'Be ye men!'"
And the holy Mael, having wept and prayed, armed himself with the
mighty Name of the Lord and said to the birds:
"Be ye men!"
Immediately the penguins were transformed. Their foreheads
enlarged and their heads grew round like the dome of St. Maria Rotunda
in Rome.
Their oval eyes opened more widely on the universe; a fleshy nose
clothed the two defts of their nostrils; their beaks were changed into
mouths, and from their mouths went forth speech; their necks grew
short and thick; their wings became arms and their claws legs; a
restless soul dwelt within the breast of each of them.
However, there remained with them some traces of their first nature.
They were inclined to look sideways; they balanced themselves on their
short thighs; their bodies were covered with fine down.
And Mael gave thanks to the Lord, because he had incorporated
these penguins into the family of Abraham.
But he grieved at the thought that he would soon leave the island to
come back no more, and that perhaps when he was far away the faith
of the penguins would perish for want of care like a young and
tender plant.
And he formed the idea of transporting their island to the coasts of
Armorica.
"I know not the designs of eternal Wisdom," said he to himself. "But
if God wills that this island be transported, who could prevent it?"
And the holy man made a very fine cord about forty feet long out
of the flax of his stole. He fastened one end of the cord round a
point of rock that jutted up through the sand of the shore and,
holding the other end of the cord in his hand, he entered the stone
trough.
The trough glided over the sea and towed Penguin Island behind it;
after nine days' sailing it approached the Breton coast, bringing
the island with it.
Book 2 - The Ancient Times
Chapter 1 - The First Clothes
One day St. Mael was sitting by the seashore on a warm stone that he
found. He thought it had been warmed by the sun and he gave thanks
to God for it, not knowing that the Devil had been resting on it.
The apostle was waiting for the monks of Yvern who had been
commissioned to bring a freight of skins and fabrics to clothe the
inhabitants of the island of Alca.
Soon he saw a monk called Magis coming ashore and carrying a chest
upon his back. This monk enjoyed a great reputation for holiness.
When he had drawn near to the old man he laid the chest on the
ground and wiping his forehead with the back of his sleeve, he said:
"Well, father, you wish then to clothe these penguins?
"Nothing is more needful, my son," said the old man. "Since they
have been incorporated into the family of Abraham these penguins share
the curse of Eve, and they know that they are naked, a thing of
which they were ignorant before. And it is high time to clothe them,
for they are losing the down that remained on them after their
metamorphosis."
"It is true," said Magis as he cast his eyes over the coast where
the penguins were to be seen looking for shrimps, gathering mussels,
singing, or sleeping, "they are naked. But do you not think, father,
that it would be better to leave them naked? Why clothe them? When
they wear clothes and are under the moral law they will assume an
immense pride, a vile hypocrisy, and an excessive cruelty."
"Is it possible, my son," sighed the old man, "that you understand
so badly the effects of the moral law to which even the heathen
submit?"
"The moral law," answered Magis, "forces men who are beasts to
live otherwise than beasts, a thing that doubtless puts a constraint
upon them, but that also flatters and reassures them; and as they
are proud, cowardly, and covetous of pleasure, they willingly submit
to restraints that tickle their vanity and on which they found both
their present security and the hope of their future happiness. That is
the principle of all morality.... But let us not mislead ourselves. My
companions are unloading their cargo of stuffs and skins on the
island. Think, father, while there is still time! To clothe the
penguins is a very serious business. At present when a penguin desires
a penguin he knows precisely what he desires and his lust is limited
by an exact knowledge of its object. At this moment two or three
couples of penguins are making love on the beach. See with what
simplicity! No one pays any attention and the actors themselves do not
seem to be greatly preoccupied. But when the female penguins are
clothed, the male penguin will not form so exact a notion of what it
is that attracts him to them. His indeterminate desires will fly out
into all sorts of dreams and illusions; in short, father, he will know
love and its mad torments. And all the time the female penguins will
cast down their eyes and bite their lips, and take on airs as if
they kept a treasure under their clothes!... what a pity!
"The evil will be endurable as long as these people remain rude
and poor; but only wait for a thousand years and you will see, father,
with what powerful weapons you have endowed the daughters of Alca.
If you will allow me, I can give you some idea of it beforehand. I
have some old clothes in this chest. Let us take at hazard one of
these female penguins to whom the male penguins give such little
thought, and let us dress her as well as we can.
"Here is one coming towards us. She is neither more beautiful nor
uglier than the others; she is young. No one looks at her. She strolls
indolently along the shore, scratching her back and with her finger at
her nose as she walks. You cannot help seeing, father, that she has
narrow shoulders, clumsy breasts, a stout figure, and short legs.
Her reddish knees pucker at every step she takes, and there is, at
each of her joints, what looks like a little monkey's head. Her
broad and sinewy feet cling to the rock with their four crooked
toes, while the great toes stick up like the heads of two cunning
serpents. She begins to walk, all her muscles are engaged in the task,
and, when we see them working, we think of her as a machine intended
for walking rather than as a machine intended for making love,
although visibly she is both, and contains within herself several
other pieces of machinery besides. Well, venerable apostle, you will
see what I am going to make of her."
With these words the monk, Magis, reached the female penguin in
three bounds, lifted her up, carried her in his arms with her hair
trailing behind her, and threw her, overcome with fright, at the
feet of the holy Mael.
And whilst she wept and begged him to do her no harm, he took a pair
of sandals out of his chest and commanded her to put them on.
"Her feet," observed the old man, "will appear smaller when squeezed
in by the woollen cords. The soles, being two fingers high, will
give an elegant length to her legs and the weight they bear will
seem magnified."
As the penguin tied on her sandals she threw a curious look
towards the open coffer, and seeing that it was full of jewels and
finery, she smiled through her tears.
The monk twisted her hair on the back of her head and covered it
with a chaplet of flowers. He encircled her wrist with golden
bracelets and making her stand upright, he passed a large linen band
beneath her breasts, alleging that her bosom would thereby derive a
new dignity and that her sides would be compressed to the greater
glory of her hips.
He fixed this band with pins, taking them one by one out of his
mouth.
"You can tighten it still more," said the penguin.
When he had, with much care and study, enclosed the soft parts of
her bust in this way, he covered her whole body with a rose-coloured
tunic which gently followed the lines of her figure.
"Does it hang well?" asked the penguin.
And bending forward with her head on one side and her chin on her
shoulder, she kept looking attentively at the appearance of her
toilet.
Magis asked her if she did not think the dress a little long, but
she answered with assurance that it was not- she would hold it up.
Immediately, taking the back of her skirt in her left hand, she drew
it obliquely across her hips, taking care to disclose a glimpse of her
heels. Then she went away, walking with short steps and swinging her
hips.
She did not turn her head, but as she passed near a stream she
glanced out of the corner of her eye at her own reflection.
A male penguin, who met her by chance, stopped in surprise, and
retracing his steps began to follow her. As she went along the
shore, others coming back from fishing, went up to her, and after
looking at her, walked behind her. Those who were lying on the sand
got up and joined the rest.
Unceasingly, as she advanced, fresh penguins, descending from the
paths of the mountain, coming out of clefts of the rocks, and emerging
from the water, added to the size of her retinue.
And all of them, men of ripe age with vigorous shoulders and hairy
breasts, agile youths, old men shaking the multitudinous wrinkles of
their rosy, and white-haired skins, or dragging their legs thinner and
drier than the juniper staff that served them as a third leg,
hurried on, panting and emitting an acrid odour and hoarse gasps.
Yet she went on peacefully and seemed to see nothing.
"Father," cried Magis, "notice how each one advances with his nose
pointed towards the centre of gravity of that young damsel now that
the centre is covered by a garment. The sphere inspires the
meditations of geometers by the number of its properties. When it
proceeds from a physical and living nature it acquires new
qualities, and in order that the interest of that figure might be
fully revealed to the penguins it was necessary that, ceasing to see
it distinctly with their eyes, they should be led to represent it to
themselves in their minds. I myself feel at this moment irresistibly
attracted towards that penguin. Whether it be because her skirt
gives more importance to her hips, and that in its simple magnificence
it invests them with a synthetic and general character and allows only
the pure idea, the divine principle, of them to be seen, whether
this be the cause I cannot say, but I feel that if I embraced her I
would hold in my hands the heaven of human pleasure. It is certain
that modesty communicates an invincible attraction to women. My
uneasiness is so great that it would be vain for me to try to
conceal it."
He spoke, and, gathering up his habit, he rushed among the crowd
of penguins, pushing, jostling, trampling, and crushing, until he
reached the daughter of Alca, whom he seized and suddenly carried in
his arms into a cave that had been hollowed out by the sea.
Then the penguins felt as if the sun had gone out. And the holy Mael
knew that the Devil had taken the features of the monk, Magis, in
order that he might give clothes to the daughter of Alca. He was
troubled in spirit, and his soul was sad. As with slow steps he went
towards his hermitage he saw the little penguins of six and seven
years of age tightening their waists with belts made of sea-weed and
walking along the shore to see if anybody would follow them.
Chapter 2 - The First Clothes (Continuation and End)
The holy Mael felt a profound sadness that the first clothes put
upon a daughter of Alca should have betrayed the penguin modesty
instead of helping it. He persisted, none the less, in his design of
giving clothes to the inhabitants of the miraculous island. Assembling
them on the shore, he distributed to them the garments that the
monks of Yvern had brought. The male penguins received short tunics
and breeches, the female penguins long robes. But these robes were far
from creating the effect that the former one had produced. They were
not so beautiful, their shape was uncouth and without art, and no
attention was paid to them since every woman had one. As they prepared
the meals and worked in the fields they soon had nothing but
slovenly bodices and soiled petticoats.
The male penguins loaded their unfortunate consorts with work
until they looked like beasts of burden. They knew nothing of the
troubles of the heart and the disorders of passion. Their habits
were innocent. Incest, though frequent, was a sign of rustic
simplicity and if drunkenness led a youth to commit some such crime he
thought nothing more about it the day afterwards.
Chapter 3 - Setting Bounds to the Fields, and the Origin of Property
The island did not preserve the rugged appearance that it had
formerly, when in the midst of floating icebergs it sheltered a
population of birds within its rock amphitheatre. Its snow-clad peak
had sunk down into a hill from the summit of which one could see the
coasts of Armorica eternally covered with mist, and the ocean strewn
with sullen reefs like monsters half raised out of its depths.
Its coasts were now very extensive and clearly defined and its shape
reminded one of a mulberry leaf. It was suddenly covered with coarse
grass, pleasing to the flocks, and with willows, ancient fig-trees,
and mighty oaks. This fact is attested by the Venerable Bede and
several other authors worthy of credence.
To the north the shore formed a deep bay that in after years
became one of the most famous ports in the universe. To the east,
along a rocky coast beaten by a foaming sea, there stretched a
deserted and fragrant heath. It was the Beach of Shadows, and the
inhabitants of the island never ventured on it for fear of the
serpents that lodged in the hollows of the rocks and lest they might
encounter the souls of the dead who resembled livid flames. To the
south, orchards and woods bounded the languid Bay so of Divers. On
this fortunate shore old Mael built a wooden church and a monastery.
To the west, two streams, the Clange and the Surelle, watered the
fertile valleys of Dalles and Dombes.
Now one autumn morning, as the blessed Mael was walking in the
valley of Clange in company with a monk of Yvern called Bulloch, he
saw bands of fierce-looking men loaded with stones passing along the
roads. At the same time he heard in all directions cries and
complaints mounting up from the valley towards the tranquil sky.
And he said to Bulloch:
"I notice with sadness, my son, that since they became men the
inhabitants of this island act with less wisdom than formerly. When
they were birds they only quarrelled during the season of their love
affairs. But now they dispute all the time; they pick quarrels with
each other in summer as well as in winter. How greatly have they
fallen from that peaceful majesty which made the assembly of the
penguins look like the Senate of a wise republic!
"Look towards Surelle, Bulloch, my son. In yonder pleasant valley
a dozen men penguins are busy knocking each other down with the spades
and picks that they might employ better in tilling the ground. The
women, still more cruel than the men, are tearing their opponents'
faces with their nails. Alas! Bulloch, my son, why are they
murdering each other in this way?"
"From a spirit of fellowship, father, and through forethought for
the future," answered Bulloch. "For man is essentially provident and
sociable. Such is his character and it is impossible to imagine it
apart from a certain appropriation of things. Those penguins whom
you see are dividing the ground among themselves."
"Could they not divide it with less violence?" asked the aged man.
"As they fight they exchange invectives and threats. I do not
distinguish their words, but they are angry ones, judging from the
tone."
"They are accusing one another of theft and encroachment,"
answered Bulloch. "That is the general sense of their speech."
At that moment the holy Mael clasped his hands and sighed deeply.
"Do you see, my son," he exclaimed, "that madman who with his
teeth is biting the nose of the adversary he has overthrown and that
other one who is pounding a woman's head with a huge stone?"
"I see them," said Bulloch. "They are creating law; they are
founding property; they are establishing the principles of
civilization, the basis of society, and the foundations of the State."
"How is that?" asked old Mael.
"By setting bounds to their fields. That is the origin of all
government. Your penguins, O Master, are performing the most august of
functions. Throughout the ages their work will be consecrated by
lawyers, and magistrates will confirm it."
Whilst the monk, Bulloch, was pronouncing these words a big
penguin with a fair skin and red hair went down into the valley
carrying a trunk of a tree upon his shoulder. He went up to a little
penguin who was watering his vegetables in the heat of the sun, and
shouted to him:
"Your field is mine!"
And having delivered himself of this stout utterance he brought down
his club on the head of the little penguin, who fell dead upon the
field that his own hands had tilled.
At this sight the holy Mael shuddered through his whole body and
poured forth a flood of tears.
And in a voice stifled by horror and fear he addressed this prayer
to heaven:
"O Lord, my God, O thou who didst receive young Abel's sacrifices,
thou who didst curse Cain, avenge, O Lord, this innocent penguin
sacrificed upon his own field and make the murderer feel the weight of
thy arm. Is there a more odious crime, is there a graver offence
against thy justice, O Lord, than this murder and this robbery?"
"Take care, father," said Bulloch gently, "that what you call murder
and robbery may not really be war and conquest, those sacred
foundations of empires, those sources of all human virtues and all
human greatness. Reflect, above all, that in blaming the big penguin
you are attacking property in its origin and in its source. I shall
have no trouble in showing you how. To till the land is one thing,
to possess it is another, and these two things must not be confused;
as regards ownership the right of the first occupier is uncertain
and badly founded. The right of conquest, on the other hand, rests
on more solid foundations. It is the only right that receives
respect since it is the only one that makes itself respected. The sole
and proud origin of property is force. It is born and preserved by
force. In that it is august and yields only to a greater force. This
is why it is correct to say that he who possesses is noble. And that
big red man, when he knocked down a labourer to get possession of
his field, founded at that moment a very noble house upon this
earth. I congratulate him upon it."
Having thus spoken, Bulloch approached the big penguin, who was
leaning upon his club as he stood in the blood-stained furrow:
"Lord Greatauk, dreaded Prince," said he, bowing to the ground, "I
come to pay you the homage due to the founder of legitimate power
and hereditary wealth. The skull of the vile Penguin you have
overthrown will, buried in your field, attest for ever the sacred
rights of your posterity over this soil that you have ennobled.
Blessed be your sons and your sons' sons! They shall be Greatauks,
Dukes of Skull, and they shall rule over this island of Alca."
Then raising his voice and turning towards the holy Mael:
"Bless Greatauk, father, for all power comes from God."
Mael remained silent and motionless, with his eyes raised towards
heaven; he felt a painful uncertainty in judging the monk Bulloch's
doctrine. It was, however, the doctrine destined to prevail in
epochs of advanced civilization. Bulloch can be considered as the
creator of civil law in Penguinia.
Chapter 4 - The First Assembly of the Estates of Penguinia
"Bulloch, my son," said old Mael, "we ought to make a census of
the Penguins and inscribe each of their names in a book."
"It is a most urgent matter," answered Bulloch, "there can be no
good government without it."
Forthwith, the apostle, with the help of twelve monks, proceeded
to make a census of the people.
And old Mael then said:
"Now that we keep a register of all the inhabitants, we ought,
Bulloch, my son, to levy a just tax so as to provide for public
expenses and the maintenance of the Abbey. Each ought to contribute
according to his means. For this reason, my son, call together the
Elders of Alca, and in agreement with them we shall establish the
tax."
The Elders, being called together, assembled to the number of thirty
under the great sycamore in the courtyard of the wooden monastery.
They were the first Estates of Penguinia. Three-fourths of them were
substantial peasants of Surelle and Clange. Greatauk, as the noblest
of the Penguins, sat upon the highest stone.
The venerable Mael took his place in the midst of his monks and
uttered these words:
"Children, the Lord when he pleases grants riches to men and he
takes them away from them. Now I have called you together to levy
contributions from the people so as to provide for public expenses and
the maintenance of the monks. I consider that these contributions
ought to be in proportion to the wealth of each. Therefore he who
has a hundred oxen will give ten; he who has ten will give one."
When the holy man had spoken, Morio, a labourer at
Anis-on-the-Clange, one of the richest of the Penguins, rose up and
said:
"O Father Mael, I think it right that each should contribute to
the public expenses and to the support of the Church. For my part I am
ready to give up all that I possess in the interest of my brother
Penguins, and if it were necessary I would even cheerfully part with
my shirt. All the elders of the people are ready, like me, to
sacrifice their goods, and no one can doubt their absolute devotion to
their country and their creed. We have, then, only to consider the
public interest and to do what it requires. Now, Father, what it
requires, what it demands, is not to ask much from those who possess
much, for then the rich would be less rich and the poor still
poorer. The poor live on the wealth of the rich and that is the reason
why that wealth is sacred. Do not touch it, to do so would be an
uncalled for evil. You will get no great profit by taking from the
rich, for they are very few in number; on the contrary you will
strip yourself of all your resources and plunge the country into
misery. Whereas if you ask a little from each inhabitant without
regard to his wealth, you will collect enough for the public
necessities and you will have no need to enquire into each citizen's
resources, a thing that would be regarded by all as a most vexatious
measure. By taxing all equally and easily you will spare the poor, for
you will leave them the wealth of the rich. And how could you possibly
proportion taxes to wealth? Yesterday I had two hundred oxen, to-day I
have sixty, to-morrow I shall have a hundred. Clunic has three cows,
but they are thin; Nicclu has only two, but they are fat. Which is the
richer, Clunic or Nicclu? The signs of opulence are deceitful. What is
certain is that everyone eats and drinks. Tax people according to what
they consume. That would be wisdom and it would be justice."
Thus spoke Morio amid the applause of the Elders.
"I ask that this speech be graven on bronze," cried the monk,
Bulloch. "It is spoken for the future; in fifteen hundred years the
best of the Penguins will not speak otherwise."
The Elders were still applauding when Greatauk, his hand on the
pommel of his sword, made this brief declaration:
"Being noble, I shall not contribute; for to contribute is
ignoble. It is for the rabble to pay."
After this warning the Elders separated in silence.
As in Rome, a new census was taken every five years; and by this
means it was observed that the population increased rapidly. Although,
children died in marvellous abundance and plagues and famines came
with perfect regularity to devastate entire villages, new Penguins, in
continually greater numbers, contributed by their private misery to
the public prosperity.
Chapter 5 - The Marriage of Kraken and Orberosia
During these times there lived in the island of Alca a Penguin whose
arm was strong and whose mind was subtle. He was called Kraken, and
had his dwelling on the Beach of Shadows whither the inhabitants never
ventured for fear of serpents that lodged in the hollows of the
rocks and lest they might encounter the souls of Penguins that had
died without baptism. These, in appearance like livid flames, and
uttering doleful groans, wandered night and day along the deserted
beach. For it was generally believed, though without proof, that among
the Penguins that had been changed into men at the blessed Mael's
prayer, several had not received baptism and returned after their
death to lament amid the tempests. Kraken dwelt on this savage coast
in an inaccessible cavern. The only way to it was through a natural
tunnel a hundred feet long, the entrance of which was concealed by a
thick wood. One evening as Kraken was walking through this deserted
plain he happened to meet a young and charming woman Penguin. She
was the one that the monk Magis had clothed with his own hands and
thus was the first to have worn the garments of chastity. In
remembrance of the day when the astonished crowd of Penguins had
seen her moving gloriously in her robe tinted like the dawn, this
maiden had received the name of Orberosia.
At the sight of Kraken she uttered a cry of alarm and darted forward
to escape from him. But the hero seized her by the garments that
floated behind her, and addressed her in these words:
"Damsel, tell me thy name, thy family and thy country."
But Orberosia kept looking at Kraken with alarm.
"Is it you, I see, sir," she asked him, trembling, "or is it not
rather your troubled spirit?"
She spoke in this way because the inhabitants of Alca, having no
news of Kraken since he went to live on the Beach of Shadows, believed
that he had died and descended among the demons of night.
"Cease to fear, daughter of Alca," answered Kraken. "He who speaks
to thee is not a wandering spirit, but a man full of strength and
might. I shall soon possess great riches."
And young Orberosia asked:
"How dost thou think of acquiring great riches, O Kraken, since thou
art a child of the Penguins?"
"By my intelligence," answered Kraken.
"I know," said Orberosia, "that in the time that thou dwelt among us
thou wert renowned for thy skill in hunting and fishing. No one
equalled thee in taking fishes in a net or in piercing with thy arrows
the swift-flying birds."
"It was but a vulgar and laborious industry, O maiden. I have
found a means of gaining much wealth for myself without fatigue. But
tell me who thou art?"
"I am called Orberosia," answered the young girl.
"Why art thou so far away from thy dwelling and in the night?"
"Kraken, it was not without the will of Heaven."
"What meanest thou, Orberosia?"
"That Heaven, O Kraken, placed me in thy path, for what reason I
know not."
Kraken beheld her for a long time in silence.
Then he said with gentleness:
"Orberosia, come into my house; it is that of the bravest and most
ingenious of the sons of the Penguins. If thou art willing to follow
me, I will make thee my companion."
Then casting down her eyes, she murmured:
"I will follow thee, master."
It is thus that the fair Orberosia became the consort of the hero
Kraken. This marriage was not celebrated with songs and torches
because Kraken did not consent to show himself to the people of the
Penguins; but hidden in his cave he planned great designs.
Chapter 6 - The Dragon of Alca
"We afterwards went to visit the cabinet of natural history....
The caretaker showed us a sort of packet bound in straw that he told
us contained the skeleton of a dragon; a proof, added he, that the
dragon is not a fabulous animal."- Memoirs of Jacques Casanova, Paris,
1843. Vol. IV., pp. 404, 405.
IN the meantime the inhabitants of Alca practised the labours of
peace. Those of the northern coast went in boats to fish or to
search for shell-fish. The labourers of Dombes cultivated oats, rye,
and wheat. The rich Penguins of the valley of Dalles reared domestic
animals, while those of the Bay of Divers cultivated their orchards.
Merchants of Port-Alca carried on a trade in salt fish with Armorica
and the gold of the two Britains, which began to be introduced into
the island, facilitated exchange. The Penguin people were enjoying the
fruit of their labours in perfect tranquility when suddenly a sinister
rumour ran from village to village. It was said everywhere that a
frightful dragon had ravaged two farms in the Bay of Divers.
A few days before, the maiden Orberosia had disappeared. Her absence
had at first caused no uneasiness because on several occasions she had
been carried off by violent men who were consumed with love. And
thoughtful people were not astonished at this, reflecting that the
maiden was the most beautiful of the Penguins. It was even remarked
that she sometimes went to meet her ravishers, for none of us can
escape his destiny. But this time, as she did not return, it was
feared that the dragon had devoured her. The more so as the
inhabitants of the valley of Dalles soon knew that the dragon was
not a fable told by the women around the fountains. For one night
the monster devoured out of the village of Anis six hens, a sheep, and
a young orphan child called little Elo. The next morning nothing was
to be found either of the animals or of the child.
Immediately the Elders of the village assembled in the public
place and seated themselves on the stone bench to take counsel
concerning what it was expedient to do in these terrible
circumstances.
Having called all those Penguins who had seen the dragon during
the disastrous night, they asked them:
"Have you not noticed his form and his behaviour?"
And each answered in his turn:
"He has the claws of a lion, the wings of an eagle, and the tail
of a serpent."
"His back bristles with thorny crests."
"His whole body is covered with yellow scales."
"His look fascinates and confounds. He vomits flames."
"He poisons the air with his breath."
"He has the head of a dragon, the claws of a lion, and the tail of a
fish."
And a woman of Anis, who was regarded as intelligent and of sound
judgment and from whom the dragon had taken three hens, deposed as
follows:
"He is formed like a man. The proof is that I thought he was my
husband, and I said to him, 'Come to bed, you old fool.'"
Others said:
"He is formed like a cloud."
"He looks like a mountain."
And a little child came and said:
"I saw the dragon taking off his head in the barn so that he might
give a kiss to my sister Minnie."
And the Elders also asked the inhabitants:
"How big is the dragon?"
And it was answered:
"As big as an ox."
"Like the big merchant ships of the Bretons."
"He is the height of a man."
"He is higher than the fig-tree under which you are sitting."
"He is as large as a dog."
Questioned finally on his colour, the inhabitants said:
"Red."
"Green."
"Blue."
"Yellow."
"His head is bright green, his wings are brilliant orange tinged
with pink, his limbs are silver grey, his hind-quarters and his tail
are striped with brown and pink bands, his belly bright yellow spotted
with black."
"His colour? He has no colour."
"He is the colour of a dragon."
After hearing this evidence the Elders remained uncertain as to what
should be done. Some advised to watch for him, to surprise him and
overthrow him by a multitude of arrows. Others, thinking it vain to
oppose so powerful a monster by force, counselled that he should be
appeased by offerings.
"Pay him tribute," said one of them who passed for a wise man. "We
can render him propitious to us by giving him agreeable presents,
fruits, wine, lambs, a young virgin."
Others held for poisoning the fountains where he was accustomed to
drink or for smoking him out of his cavern.
But none of these counsels prevailed. The dispute was lengthy and
the Elders dispersed without coming to any resolution.
Chapter 7 - The Dragon of Alca (Continuation)
During all the month dedicated by the Romans to their false god Mars
or Mavors, the dragon ravaged the farms of Dalles and Dombes. He
carried off fifty sheep, twelve pigs, and three young boys. Every
family was in mourning and the island was full of lamentations. In
order to remove the scourge, the Elders of the unfortunate villages
watered by the Clange and the Survelle resolved to assemble and
together go and ask the help of the blessed Mael.
On the fifth day of the month whose name among the Latins
signifies opening, because it opens the year, they went in
procession to the wooden monastery that had been built on the southern
coast of the island. When they were introduced into the cloister
they filled it with their sobs and groans. Moved by their
lamentations, old Mael left the room in which he devoted himself to
the study of astronomy and the meditation of the Scriptures, and
went down to them, leaning on his pastoral staff. At his approach, the
Elders, prostrating themselves, held out to him green branches of
trees and some of them burnt aromatic herbs.
And the holy man, seating himself beside the cloistral fountain
under an ancient fig-tree, uttered these words:
"O my sons, offspring of the Penguins, why do you weep and groan?
Why do you hold out those suppliant boughs towards me? Why do you
raise towards heaven the smoke of those herbs? What calamity do you
expect that I can avert from your heads? Why do you beseech me? I am
ready to give my life for you. Only tell your father what it is you
hope from him."
To these questions the chief of the Elders answered:
"O Mael, father of the sons of Alca, I will speak for all. A
horrible dragon is laying waste our lands, depopulating our
cattle-sheds, and carrying off the flower of our youth. He has
devoured the child Elo and seven young boys; he has mangled the maiden
Orberosia, the fairest of the Penguins, with his teeth. There is not a
village in which he does not emit his poisoned breath and which he has
not filled with desolation. A prey to this terrible scourge, we
come, O Mael, to pray thee, as the wisest, to advise us concerning the
safety of the inhabitants of this island lest the ancient race of
Penguins be extinguished."
"O chief of the Elders of Alca," replied Mael, "thy words fill me
with profound grief, and I groan at the thought that this island is
the prey of a terrible dragon. But such an occurrence is not unique,
for we find in books several tales of very fierce dragons. The
monsters are oftenest found in caverns, by the brinks of waters,
and, in preference, among pagan peoples. Perhaps there are some
among you who, although they have received holy baptism and been
incorporated into the family of Abraham, have yet worshipped idols,
like the ancient Romans, or hung up images, votive tablets, fillets of
wool, and garlands of flowers on the branches of some sacred tree.
Or perhaps some of the women Penguins have danced round a magic
stone and drunk water from the fountains where the nymphs dwell. If it
be so, I believe, O Penguins, that the Lord has sent this dragon to
punish all for the crimes of some, and to lead you, O children of
the Penguins, to exterminate blasphemy, superstition, and impiety from
amongst you. For this reason I advise, as a remedy against the great
evil from which you suffer, that you carefully search your dwellings
for idolatry, and extirpate it from them. I think it would be also
efficacious to pray and do penance."
Thus spoke the holy Mael. And the Elders of the Penguin people
kissed his feet and returned to their villages with renewed hope.
Chapter 8 - The Dragon of Alca (Continuation)
Following the counsel of the holy Mael the inhabitants of Alca
endeavoured to uproot the superstitions that had sprung up amongst
them. They took care to prevent the girls from dancing with
incantations round the fairy tree. Young mothers were sternly
forbidden to rub their children against the stones that stood
upright in the fields so as to make them strong. An old man of
Dombes who foretold the future by shaking grains of barley on a sieve,
was thrown into a well.
However, each night the monster still raided the poultry-yards and
the cattle-sheds. The frightened peasants barricaded themselves in
their houses. A woman with child who saw the shadow of a dragon on the
road through a window in the moonlight, was so terrified that she
was brought to bed before her time.
In those days of trial, the holy Mael meditated unceasingly on the
nature of dragons and the means of combating them. After six months of
study and prayer he thought he had found what he sought. One evening
as he was walking by the sea with a young monk called Samuel, he
expressed his thought to him in these terms:
"I have studied at length the history and habits of dragons, not
to satisfy a vain curiosity, but to discover examples to follow in the
present circumstances. For such, Samuel, my son, is the use of
history.
"It is an invariable fact that dragons are extremely vigilant.
They never sleep, and for this reason we often find them employed in
guarding treasures. A dragon guarded at Colchis the golden fleece that
Jason conquered from him. A dragon watched over the golden apples in
the garden of the Hesperides. He was killed by Hercules and
transformed into a star by Juno. This fact is related in some books,
and if it be true, it was done by magic, for the gods of the pagans
are in reality demons. A dragon prevented barbarous and ignorant men
from drinking at the fountain of Castalia. We must also remember the
dragon of Andromeda, which was slain by Perseus. But let us turn
from these pagan fables, in which error is always mixed with truth. We
meet dragons in the histories of the glorious archangel Michael, of
St. George, St. Philip, St. James the Great, St. Patrick, St.
Martha, and St. Margaret. And it is in such writings, since they are
worthy of full credence, that we ought to look for comfort and
counsel.
"The story of the dragon of Silena affords us particularly
precious examples. You must know, my son, that on the banks of a
vast pool close to that town there dwelt a dragon who sometimes
approached the walls and poisoned with his breath all who dwelt in the
suburbs. And that they might not be devoured by the monster, the
inhabitants of Silena delivered up to him one of their number every
morning. The victim was chosen by lot, and after a hundred others, the
lot fell upon the king's daughter.
"Now St. George, who was a military tribune, as he passed through
the town of Silena, learned that the king's daughter had just been
given to the fierce beast. He immediately mounted his horse, and,
armed with his lance, rushed to encounter the dragon, whom he
reached just as the monster was about to devour the royal virgin.
And when St. George had overthrown the dragon, the king's daughter
fastened her girdle round the beast's neck and he followed her like
a dog led on a leash.
"That is an example for us of the power of virgins over dragons. The
history of St. Martha furnishes us with a still more certain proof. Do
you know the story, Samuel, my son?"
"Yes, father," answered Samuel.
And the blessed Mael went on:
"There was in a forest on the banks of the Rhone, between Arles
and Avignon, a dragon half quadruped and half fish, larger than an ox,
with sharp teeth like horns and huge wings at his shoulders. He sank
the boats and devoured their passengers. Now St. Martha, at the
entreaty of the people, approached this dragon, whom she found
devouring a man. She put her girdle round his neck and led him
easily into the town.
"These two examples lead me to think that we should have recourse to
the power of some virgin so as to conquer the dragon who scatters
terror and death through the island of Alca.
"For this reason, Samuel my son, gird up thy loins and go, I pray
thee, with two of thy companions, into all the villages of this
island, and proclaim everywhere that a virgin alone shall be able to
deliver the island from the monster that devastates it.
"Thou shalt sing psalms and canticles and thou shalt say:
"'O sons of the Penguins, if there be among you a pure virgin, let
her arise and go, armed with the sign of the cross, to combat the
dragon!'"
Thus the old man spake, and Samuel promised to obey him. The next
day he girded up his loins and set out with two of his companions to
proclaim to the inhabitants of Alca that a virgin alone would be
able to deliver the Penguins from the rage of the dragon.
Chapter 9 - The Dragon of Alca (Continuation)
Orberosia loved her husband, but she did not love him alone. At
the hour when Venus lightens in the pale sky, whilst Kraken
scattered terror through the villages, she used to visit in his moving
hut, a young shepherd of Dalles called Marcel, whose pleasing form was
invested with inexhaustible vigour. The fair Orberosia shared the
shepherd's aromatic couch with delight, but far from making herself
known to him, she took the name of Bridget, and said that she was
the daughter of a gardener in the Bay of Divers. When regretfully
she left his arms she walked across the smoking fields towards the
Coast of Shadows, and if she happened to meet some belated peasant she
immediately spread out her garments like great wings and cried:
"Passer by, lower your eyes, that you may not have to say, 'Alas!
alas! woe is me, for I have seen the angel of the Lord.'"
The villagers tremblingly knelt with their faces to the ground.
And several of them used to say that angels, whom it would be death to
see, passed along the roads of the island in the night time.
Kraken did not know of the loves of Orberosia and Marcel, for he was
a hero, and heroes never discover the secrets of their wives. But
though he did not know of these loves, he reaped the benefit of
them. Every night he found his companion more good-humoured and more
beautiful, exhaling pleasure and perfuming the nuptial bed with a
delicious odour of fennel and vervain. She loved Kraken with a love
that never became importunate or anxious, because she did not rest its
whole weight on him alone.
This lucky infidelity of Orberosia was destined soon to save the
hero from a great peril and to assure his fortune and his glory for
ever. For it happened that she saw passing in the twilight a
neatherd from Belmont, who was goading on his oxen, and she fell
more deeply in love with him than she had ever been with the
shepherd Marcel. He was hunch-backed; his shoulders were higher than
his ears; his body was supported by legs of different lengths; his
rolling eyes flashed from beneath his matted hair. From his throat
issued a hoarse voice and strident laughter; he smelt of the cow-shed.
However, to her he was beautiful. "A plant," as Gnatho says, "has been
loved by one, a stream by another, a beast by a third."
Now, one day, as she was sighing within the neatherd's arms in a
village barn, suddenly the blasts of a trumpet, with sounds and
footsteps, fell upon her ears; she looked through the window and saw
the inhabitants collected in the marketplace round a young monk,
who, standing upon a rock, uttered these words in a distinct voice:
"Inhabitants of Belmont, Abbot Mael, our venerable father, informs
you through my mouth that neither by strength nor skill in arms
shall you prevail against the dragon; but the beast shall be
overcome by a virgin. If, then, there be among you a perfectly pure
virgin, let her arise and go towards the monster; and when she meets
him let her tie her girdle round his neck and she shall lead him as
easily as if he were a little dog."
And the young monk, replacing his hood upon his head, departed to
carry the proclamation of the blessed Mael to other villages.
Orberosia sat in the amorous straw, resting her head in her hand and
supporting her elbow upon her knee, meditating on what she had just
heard.
Although, so far as Kraken was concerned, she feared the power of
a virgin much less than the strength of armed men, she did not feel
reassured by the proclamation of the blessed Mael. A vague but sure
instinct ruled her mind and warned her that Kraken could not
henceforth be a dragon with safety.
She said to the neatherd:
"My own heart, what do you think about the dragon?"
The rustic shook his head.
"It is certain that dragons laid waste the earth in ancient times
and some have been seen as large as mountains. But they come no
longer, and I believe that what has been taken for a dragon is not one
at all, but pirates or merchants who have carried off the fair
Orberosia and the best of the children of Alca in their ships. But
if one of those brigands attempts to rob me of my oxen, I will
either by force or craft find a way to prevent him from doing me any
harm."
This remark of the neatherd increased Orberosia's apprehensions
and added to her solicitude for the husband whom she loved.
Chapter 10 - The Dragon of Alca (Continuation)
The days passed by and no maiden arose in the island to combat the
monster. And in the wooden monastery old Mael, seated on a bench in
the shade of an old fig-tree, accompanied by a pious monk called
Regimental, kept asking himself anxiously and sadly how it was that
there was not in Alca a single virgin fit to overthrow the monster.
He sighed and brother Regimental sighed too. At that moment old Mael
called young Samuel, who happened to pass through the garden, and said
to him:
"I have meditated anew, my son, on the means of destroying the
dragon who devours the flower of our youth, our flocks, and our
harvests. In this respect the story of the dragons of St. Riok and
of St. Pol de Leon seems to me particularly instructive. The dragon of
St. Riok was six fathoms long; his head was derived from the cock
and the basilisk, his body from the ox and the serpent; he ravaged the
banks of the Elorn in the time of King Bristocus. St. Riok, then
aged two years, led him by a leash to the sea, in which the monster
drowned himself of his own accord. St. Pol's dragon was sixty feet
long and not less terrible. The blessed apostle of Leon bound him with
his stole and allowed a young noble of great purity of life to lead
him. These examples prove that in the eyes of God a chaste young man
is as agreeable as a chaste girl. Heaven makes no distinction
between them. For this reason, my son, if you believe what I say, we
will both go to the Coast of Shadows; when we reach the dragon's
cavern we will call the monster in a loud voice, and when he comes
forth I will tie my stole round his neck and you will lead him to
the sea, where he will not fail to drown himself."
At the old man's words Samuel cast down his head and did not answer.
"You seem to hesitate, my son," said Mael.
Brother Regimental, contrary to his custom, spoke without being
addressed.
"There is at least cause for some hesitation," said he. "St. Riok
was only two years old when he overcame the dragon. Who says that nine
or ten years later he could have done as much? Remember, father,
that the dragon who is devastating our island has devoured little
Elo and four or five other young boys. Brother Samuel is not so
presumptuous as to believe that at nineteen years of age he is more
innocent that they were at twelve and fourteen.
"Alas!" added the monk, with a groan, "who can boast of being chaste
in this world, where everything gives the example and model of love,
where all things in nature, animals, and plants, show us the
caresses of love and advise us to share them? Animals are eager to
unite in their own fashion, but the various marriages of quadrupeds,
birds, fishes, and reptiles are far from equalling in lust the
nuptials of the trees. The greater extremes of lewdness that the
pagans have imagined in their fables are outstripped by the simple
flowers of the field, and, if you knew the irregularities of lilies
and roses you would take those chalices of impurity, those vases of
scandal, away from your altars."
"Do not speak in this way, Brother Regimental," answered old Mael.
Since they are subject to the law of nature, animals and plants are
always innocent. They have no souls to save, whilst man-"
"You are right," replied Brother Regimental, "it is quite a
different thing. But do not send young Samuel to the dragon- the
dragon might devour him. For the last five years Samuel is not in a
state to show his innocence to monsters. In the year of the comet, the
Devil in order to seduce him, put in his path a milkmaid, who was
lifting up her petticoat to cross a ford. Samuel was tempted, but he
overcame the temptation. The Devil, who never tires, sent him the
image of that young girl in a dream. The shade did what the reality
was unable to accomplish, and Samuel yielded. When he awoke he
moistened his couch with his tears, but alas! repentance did not
give him back his innocence."
As he listened to this story Samuel asked himself how his secret
could be known, for he was ignorant that the Devil had borrowed the
appearance of Brother Regimental, so as to trouble the hearts of the
monks of Alca.
And old Mael remained deep in thought and kept asking himself in
grief:
"Who will deliver us from the dragon's tooth? Who will preserve us
from his breath? Who will save us from his look?"
However, the inhabitants of Alca began to take courage. The
labourers of Dombes and the neatherds of Belmont swore that they
themselves would be of more avail than a girl against the ferocious
beast, and they exclaimed as they stroked the muscles on their arms,
"Let the dragon come!" Many men and women had seen him. They did not
agree about his form and his figure, but all now united in saying that
he was not as big as they had thought, and that his height was not
much greater than a man's. The defence was organised; towards
nightfall watches were stationed at the entrances of the villages
ready to give the alarm; and during the night companies armed with
pitchforks and scythes protected the paddocks in which the animals
were shut up. Indeed, once in the village of Anis some plucky
labourers surprised him as he was scaling Morio's wall, and, as they
had flails, scythes, and pitchforks, they fell upon him and pressed
him hard. One of them, a very quick and courageous man, thought to
have run him through with his pitchfork; but he slipped in a pool
and so let him escape. The others would certainly have caught him
had they not waited to pick up the rabbits and fowls that he dropped
in his flight.
Those labourers declared to the Elders of the village that the
monster's form and proportions appeared to them human enough except
for his head and his tail, which were, in truth, terrifying.
Chapter 11 - The Dragon of Alca (Continuation)
In that day Kraken came back to his cavern sooner than usual. He
took from his head his sealskin helmet with its two bull's horns and
its visor trimmed with terrible hooks. He threw on the table his
gloves that ended in horrible claws- they were the beaks of sea-birds.
He unhooked his belt from which hung a long green tail twisted into
many folds. Then he ordered his page, Elo, to help him off with his
boots and, as the child did not succeed in doing this very quickly, he
gave him a kick that sent him to the other end of the grotto.
Without looking at the fair Orberosia, who was spinning, he seated
himself in front of the fireplace, ON which a sheep was roasting,
and he muttered: "Ignoble Penguins.... There is no worse trade than
a dragon's."
"What does my master say?" asked the fair Orberosia.
"They fear me no longer," continued Kraken. "Formerly everyone
fled at my approach. I carried away hens and rabbits in my bag; I
drove sheep and pigs, cows, and oxen before me. To-day these
clod-hoppers keep a good guard; they sit up at night. Just now I was
pursued in the village of Anis by doughty labourers armed with
flails and scythes and pitchforks. I had to drop the hens and rabbits,
put my tail under my arm, and run as fast as I could. Now I ask you,
is it seemly for a dragon of Cappadocia to run away like a robber with
his tail under his arm? Further, incommoded as I was by crests, horns,
hooks, claws, and scales, I barely escaped a brute who ran half an
inch of his pitchfork into my left thigh."
As he said this he carefully ran his hand over the insulted part,
and, after giving himself up for a few moments to bitter meditation:
"What idiots those Penguins are! I am tired of blowing flames in the
faces of such imbeciles. Orberosia, do you hear me?"
Having thus spoken the hero raised his terrible helmet in his
hands and gazed at it for a long time in gloomy silence. Then he
pronounced these rapid words:
"I have made this helmet with my own hands in the shape of a
fish's head, covering it with the skin of a seal. To make it more
terrible I have put on it the horns of a bull and I have given it a
boar's jaws; I have hung from it a horse's tail dyed vermilion. When
in the gloomy twilight I threw it over my shoulders no inhabitant of
this island had courage to withstand its sight. Women and children,
young men and old men fled distracted at its approach, and I carried
terror among the whole race of Penguins. By what advice does that
insolent people lose its earlier fears and dare to-day to behold these
horrible jaws and to attack this terrible crest?"
And throwing his helmet on the rocky soil:
"Perish, deceitful helmet!" cried Kraken. "I swear by all the demons
of Armor that I will never bear you upon my head again."
And having uttered this oath he stamped upon his helmet, his gloves,
his boots, and upon his tail with its twisted folds.
"Kraken," said the fair Orberosia, "will you allow your servant to
employ artifice to save your reputation and your goods? Do not despise
a woman's help. You need it, for all men are imbeciles."
"Woman," asked Kraken, "what are your plans?"
And the fair Orberosia informed her husband that the monks were
going through the villages teaching the inhabitants the best way of
combating the dragon; that, according to their instructions, the beast
would be overcome by a virgin, and that if a maid placed her girdle
around the dragon's neck she could lead him as easily as if he were
a little dog.
"How do you know that the monks teach this?" asked Kraken.
"My friend," answered Orberosia, "do not interrupt a serious subject
by frivolous questions.... 'If, then,' added the monks, 'there be in
Alca a pure virgin, let her arise!' Now, Kraken, I have determined
to answer their call. I will go and find the holy Mael and I will
say to him: 'I am the virgin destined by Heaven to overthrow the
dragon.'"
At these words Kraken exclaimed: "How can you be that pure virgin?
And why do you want to overthrow me, Orberosia? Have you lost your
reason? Be sure that I will not allow myself to be conquered by you!"
"Can you not try and understand me before you get angry?" sighed the
fair Orberosia with deep though gentle contempt.
And she explained the cunning designs that she had formed.
As he listened, the hero remained pensive. And when she ceased
speaking:
"Orberosia, your cunning is deep," said he. "And if your plans are
carried out according to your intentions I shall derive great
advantages from them. But how can you be the virgin destined by
heaven?"
"Don't bother about that," she replied, "and come to bed."
The next day in the grease-laden atmosphere of the cavern, Kraken
plaited a deformed skeleton out of osier rods and covered it with
bristling, scaly, and filthy skins. To one extremity of the skeleton
Orberosia sewed the fierce crest and the hideous mask that Kraken used
to wear in his plundering expeditions, and to its other end she
fastened the tail with twisted folds which the hero was wont to
trail behind him. And when the work was finished they showed little
Elo and the other five children who waited on them how to get inside
this machine, how to make it walk, how to blow horns and burn tow in
it so as to send forth smoke and flames through the dragon's mouth.
Chapter 12 - The Dragon of Alca (Continuation)
Orberosia, having clothed herself in a robe made of coarse stuff and
girt herself with a thick cord, went to the monastery and asked to
speak to the blessed Mael. And because women were forbidden to enter
the enclosure of the monastery the old man advanced outside the gates,
holding his pastoral cross in his right hand and resting his left on
the shoulder of Brother Samuel, the youngest of his disciples.
He asked:
"Woman, who art thou?"
"I am the maiden Orberosia."
At this reply Mael raised his trembling arms to heaven.
"Do you speak truth, woman? It is a certain fact that Orberosia
was devoured by the dragon. And yet I see Orberosia and hear her.
Did you not, O my daughter, while within the dragon's bowels arm
yourself with the sign of the cross and come uninjured out of his
throat? That is what seems to me the most credible explanation."
"You are not deceived, father," answered Orberosia. "That is
precisely what happened to me. Immediately I came out of the
creature's bowels I took refuge in a hermitage on the Coast of
Shadows. I lived there in solitude, giving myself up to prayer and
meditation, and performing unheard of austerities, until I learnt by a
revelation from heaven that a maid alone could overcome the dragon,
and that I was that maid."
"Show me a sign of your mission," said the old man.
"I myself am the sign," answered Orberosia.
"I am not ignorant of the power of those who have placed a seal upon
their flesh," replied the apostle of the Penguins. "But are you indeed
such as you say?"
"You will see by the result," answered Orberosia.
The monk Regimental drew near:
"That will," said he, "be the best proof. King Solomon has said:
'Three things are hard to understand and a fourth is impossible:
they are the way of a serpent on the earth, the way of a bird in the
air, the way of a ship in the sea, and the way of a man with a
maid.' I regard such matrons as nothing less than presumptuous who
claim to compare themselves in these matters with the wisest of kings.
Father, if you are led by me you will not consult them in regard to
the pious Orberosia. When they have given their opinion you will not
be a bit farther on than before. Virginity is not less difficult to
prove than to keep. Pliny tells us in his history that its signs are
either imaginary or very uncertain. One who bears upon her the
fourteen signs of corruption may yet be pure in the eyes of the
angels, and, on the contrary, another who has been pronounced pure
by the matrons who inspected her may know that her good appearance
is due to the artifices of a cunning perversity. As for the purity
of this holy girl here, I would put my hand in the fire in witness
of it."
He spoke thus because he was the Devil. But old Mael did not know
it. He asked the pious Orberosia:
"My daughter, how would you proceed to conquer so fierce an animal
as he who devoured you?"
The virgin answered:
"To-morrow at sunrise, O Mael, you will summon the people together
on the hill in front of the desolate moor that extends to the Coast of
Shadows, and you will take care that no man of the Penguins remains
less than five hundred paces from those rocks so that he may not be
poisoned by the monster's breath. And the dragon will come out of
the rocks and I will put my girdle round his neck and lead him like an
obedient dog."
"Ought you not to be accompanied by a courageous and pious man who
will kill the dragon?" asked Mael.
"It will be as thou sayest, venerable father. I shall deliver the
monster to Kraken, who will slay him with his flashing sword. For I
tell thee that the noble Kraken, who was believed to be dead, will
return among the Penguins and he shall slay the dragon. And from the
creature's belly will come forth the little children whom he has
devoured."
"What you declare to me, O virgin," cried the apostle, "seems
wonderful and beyond human power."
"It is," answered the virgin Orberosia. "But learn, O Mael, that I
have had a revelation that as a reward for their deliverance, the
Penguin people will pay to the knight Kraken an annual tribute of
three hundred fowls, twelve sheep, two oxen, three pigs, one
thousand eight hundred bushels of corn, and vegetables according to
their season; and that, moreover, the children who will come out of
the dragon's belly will be given and committed to the said Kraken to
serve him and obey him in all things. If the Penguin people fail to
keep their engagements a new dragon will come upon the island more
terrible than the first. I have spoken."
Chapter 13 - The Dragon of Alca (Continuation and End)
The people of the Penguins were assembled by Mael and they spent the
night on the Coast of Shadows within the bounds which the holy man had
prescribed in order that none among the Penguins should be poisoned by
the monster's breath. The veil of night still covered the earth
when, preceded by a hoarse bellowing, the dragon showed his indistinct
and monstrous form upon the rocky coast. He crawled like a serpent and
his writhing body seemed about fifteen feet long. At his appearance
the crowd drew back in terror. But soon all eyes were turned towards
the Virgin Orberosia, who, in the first light of the dawn, clothed
in white, advanced over the purple heather. With an intrepid though
modest gait she walked towards the beast, who, uttering awful
bellowings, opened his flaming throat. An immense cry of terror and
pity arose from the midst of the Penguins. But the virgin, unloosing
her linen girdle, put it round the dragon's neck and led him on the
leash like a faithful dog amid the acclamations of the spectators.
She had walked over a long stretch of the heath when Kraken appeared
armed with a flashing sword. The people, who believed him dead,
uttered cries of joy and surprise. The hero rushed towards the
beast, turned him over on his back, and with his sword cut open his
belly, from whence came forth in their shirts, with curling hair and
folded hands, little Elo and the five other children whom the
monster had devoured.
Immediately they threw themselves on their knees before the virgin
Orberosia, who took them in her arms and whispered into their ears:
"You will go through the villages saying: 'We are the poor little
children who were devoured by the dragon, and we came out of his belly
in our shirts.' The inhabitants will give you abundance of all that
you can desire. But if you say anything else you will get nothing
but cuffs and whippings. Go!"
Several Penguins, seeing the dragon disembowelled rushed forward
to cut him to pieces, some from a feeling of rage and vengeance,
others to get the magic stone called dragonite, that is engendered
in his head. The mothers of the children who had come back to life ran
to embrace their little ones. But the holy Mael kept them back, saying
that none of them were holy enough to approach a dragon without dying.
And soon little Elo and the five other children came towards the
people and said:
"We are the poor little children who were devoured by the dragon and
we came out of his belly in our shirts."
And all who heard them kissed them and said:
"Blessed children, we will give you abundance of all that you can
desire."
And the crowd of people dispersed, full of joy, singing hymns and
canticles.
To commemorate this day on which Providence delivered the people
from a cruel scourge, processions were established in which the effigy
of a chained dragon was led about.
Kraken levied the tribute and became the richest and most powerful
of the Penguins. As a sign of his victory and so as to inspire a
salutary terror, he wore a dragon's crest upon his head and he had a
habit of saying to the people:
"Now that the monster is dead I am the dragon."
For many years Orberosia bestowed her favours upon neatherds and
shepherds, whom she thought equal to the gods. But when she was no
longer beautiful she consecrated herself to the Lord.
At her death she became the object of public veneration, and was
admitted into the calendar of the saints and adopted as the patron
saint of Penguinia.
Kraken left a son, who, like his father, wore a dragon's crest,
and he was for this reason surnamed Draco. He was the founder of the
first royal dynasty of the Penguins.
Book 3 - The Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Chapter 1 - Brian the Good and Queen Glamorgan
The kings of Alca were descended from Draco, the son of Kraken,
and they wore on their heads a terrible dragon's crest, as a sacred
badge whose appearance alone inspired the people with veneration,
terror, and love. They were perpetually in conflict either with
their own vassals and subjects or with the princes of the adjoining
islands and continents.
The most ancient of these kings has left but a name. We do not
even know how to pronounce or write it. The first of the Draconides
whose history is known was Brian the Good, renowned for his skill
and courage in war and in the chase.
He was a Christian and loved learning. He also favoured men who
had vowed themselves to the monastic life. In the hall of his palace
where, under the sooty rafters, there hung the heads, pelts, and horns
of wild beasts, he held feasts to which all the harpers of Alca and of
the neighbouring islands were invited, and he himself used to join
in singing the praises of the heroes. He was just and magnanimous, but
inflamed by so ardent a love of glory that he could not restrain
himself from putting to death those who had sung better than himself.
The monks of Yvern having been driven out by the pagans who
ravaged Brittany, King Brian summoned them into his kingdom and
built a wooden monastery for them near his palace. Every day he went
with Queen Glamorgan, his wife, into the monastery chapel and was
present at the religious ceremonies and joined in the hymns.
Now among these monks there was a brother called Oddoul, who,
while still in the flower of his youth, had adorned himself with
knowledge and virtue. The devil entertained a great grudge against
him, and attempted several times to lead him into temptation. He
took several shapes and appeared to him in turn as a war-horse, a
young maiden, and a cup of mead. Then he rattled two dice in a
dice-box and said to him:
"Will you play with me for the kingdoms of the world against one
of the hairs of your head?"
But the man of the Lord, armed with the sign of the Cross,
repulsed the enemy. Perceiving that he could not seduce him, the devil
thought of an artful plan to ruin him. One summer night he
approached the queen, who slept upon her couch, showed her an image of
the young monk whom she saw every day in the wooden monastery, and
upon this image he placed a spell. Forthwith, like a subtle poison,
love flowed into Glamorgan's veins, and she burned with an ardent
desire to do as she listed with Oddoul. She formed unceasing
pretexts to have him near her. Several times she asked him to teach
reading and singing to her children.
"I entrust them to you," said she to him. "And I will follow the
lessons you will give them so that I myself may learn also. You will
teach both mother and sons at the same time."
But the young monk kept making excuses. At times he would say that
he was not a learned enough teacher, and on other occasions that his
state forbade him all intercourse with women. This refusal inflamed
Glamorgan's passion. One day as she lay pining upon her couch, her
malady having become intolerable, she summoned Oddoul to her
chamber. He came in obedience to her orders, but remained with his
eyes cast down towards the threshold of the door. With impatience
and grief she resented his not looking at her.
"See," said she to him, "I have no more strength, a shadow is on
my eyes. My body is both burning and freezing."
And as he kept silence and made no movement, she called him in a
voice of entreaty:
"Come to me, come!"
With outstretched arms to which passion gave more length, she
endeavoured to seize him and draw him towards her.
But he fled away, reproaching her for her wantonness.
Then, incensed with rage and fearing that Oddoul might divulge the
shame into which she had fallen, she determined to ruin him so that he
might not ruin her.
In a voice of lamentation that resounded throughout all the palace
she called for help, as if, in truth, she were in some great danger.
Her servants rushed up and saw the young monk fleeing and the queen
pulling back the sheets upon her couch. They all cried out together.
And when King Brian, attracted by the noise, entered the chamber,
Glamorgan, showing him her dishevelled hair, her eyes flooded with
tears, and her bosom that in the fury of her love she had torn with
her nails, said:
"My lord and husband, behold the traces of the insults I have
undergone. Driven by an infamous desire Oddoul has approached me and
attempted to do me violence."
When he heard these complaints and saw the blood, the king,
transported with fury, ordered his guards to seize the young monk
and burn him alive before the palace under the queen's eyes.
Being told of the affair, the Abbot of Yvern went to the king and
said to him:
"King Brian, know by this example the difference between a Christian
woman and a pagan. Roman Lucretia was the most virtuous of
idolatrous princesses, yet she had not the strength to defend
herself against the attacks of an effeminate youth, and, ashamed of
her weakness, she gave way to despair, whilst Glamorgan has
successfully withstood the assaults of a criminal filled with rage,
and possessed by the most terrible of demons." Meanwhile Oddoul, in
the prison of the palace, was waiting for the moment when he should be
burned alive. But God did not suffer an innocent to perish. He sent to
him an angel, who, taking the form of one of the queen's servants
called Gudrune, took him out of his prison and led him into the very
room where the woman whose appearance he had taken dwelt.
And the angel said to young Oddoul:
"I love thee because thou art daring."
And young Oddoul, believing that it was Gudrune herself, answered
with downcast looks:
"It is by the grace of the Lord that I have resisted the violence of
the queen and braved the anger of that powerful woman."
And the angel asked:
"What? Hast thou not done what the queen accuses thee of?"
"In truth no, I have not done it," answered Oddoul, his hand on
his heart.
"Thou hast not done it?"
"No, I have not done it. The very thought of such an action fills me
with horror."
"Then," cried the angel, "what art thou doing here, thou impotent
creature?"
And she opened the door to facilitate the young man's escape. Oddoul
felt himself pushed violently out. Scarcely had he gone down into
the street than a chamber-pot was poured over his head; and he
thought:
"Mysterious are thy designs, O Lord, and thy ways past finding out."
Chapter 2 - Draco the Great (Translation of the Relics of St. Orberosia)
The direct posterity of Brian the Good was extinguished about the
year 900 in the person of Collic of the Short Nose. A cousin of that
prince, Bosco the Magnanimous, succeeded him, and took care, in
order to assure himself of the throne, to put to death all his
relations. There issued from him a long line of powerful kings.
One of them, Draco the Great, attained great renown as a man of war.
He was defeated more frequently than the others. It is by this
constancy in defeat that great captains are recognized. In twenty
years he burned down more than a hundred thousand hamlets, market
towns, unwalled towns, villages, walled towns, cities, and
universities. He set fire impartially to his enemies' territory and to
his own domains. And he used to explain his conduct by saying:
"War without fire is like tripe without mustard: it is an insipid
thing."
His justice was rigorous. When the peasants whom he made prisoners
were unable to raise the money for their ransoms he had them hanged
from a tree, and if any unhappy woman came to plead for her
destitute husband he dragged her by the hair at his horse's tail. He
lived like a soldier without effeminacy. It is satisfactory to
relate that his manner of life was pure. Not only did he not allow his
kingdom to decline from its hereditary glory, but, even in his
reverses he valiantly supported the honour of the Penguin people.
Draco the Great caused the relics of St. Orberosia to be transferred
to Alca.
The body of the blessed saint had been buried in a grotto on the
Coast of Shadows at the end of a scented heath. The first pilgrims who
went to visit it were the boys and girls from the neighbouring
villages. They used to go there in the evening, by preference in
couples, as if their pious desires naturally sought satisfaction in
darkness and solitude. They worshipped the saint with a fervent and
discreet worship whose mystery they seemed jealously to guard, for
they did not like to publish too openly the experiences they felt. But
they were heard to murmur one to another words of love, delight, and
rapture with which they mingled the name of Orberosia. Some would sigh
that there they forgot the world; others would say that they came
out of the grotto in peace and calm; the young girls among them used
to recall to each other the joys with which they had been filled in
it.
Such were the marvels that the virgin of Alca performed in the
morning of her glorious eternity; they had the sweetness and
indefiniteness of the dawn. Soon the mystery of the grotto spread like
a perfume throughout the land; it was a ground of joy and
edification for pious souls, and corrupt men endeavoured, though in
vain, by falsehood and calumny, to divert the faithful from the
springs of grace that flowed from the saint's tomb. The Church took
measures so that these graces should not remain reserved for a few
children, but should be diffused throughout all Penguin
Christianity. Monks took up their quarters in the grotto, they built a
monastery, a chapel, and a hostelry on the coast, and pilgrims began
to flock thither.
As if strengthened by a longer sojourn in heaven, the blessed
Orberosia now performed still greater miracles for those who came to
lay their offerings on her tomb. She gave hopes to women who had
been hitherto barren, she sent dreams to reassure jealous old men
concerning the fidelity of the young wives whom they had suspected
without cause, and she protected the country from plagues, murrains,
famines, tempests, and dragons of Cappadocia.
But during the troubles that desolated the kingdom in the time of
King Collic and his successors, the tomb of St. Orberosia was
plundered of its wealth, the monastery burned down, and the monks
dispersed. The road that had been so long trodden by devout pilgrims
was overgrown with furze and heather, and the blue thistles of the
sands. For a hundred years the miraculous tomb had been visited by
none save vipers, weasels, and bats, when, one day the saint
appeared to a peasant of the neighbourhood, Momordic by name.
"I am the virgin Orberosia," said she to him; "I have chosen thee to
restore my sanctuary. Warn the inhabitants of the country that if they
allow my memory to be blotted out, and leave my tomb without honour
and wealth, a new dragon will come and devastate Penguinia."
Learned churchmen held an inquiry concerning this apparition, and
pronounced it genuine, and not diabolical but truly heavenly, and in
later years it was remarked that in France, in like circumstances, St.
Foy and St. Catherine had acted in the same way and made use of
similar language.
The monastery was restored and pilgrims flocked to it anew. The
virgin Orberosia worked greater and greater miracles. She cured divers
hurtful maladies, particularly club-foot, dropsy, paralysis, and St.
Guy's disease. The monks who kept the tomb were enjoying an enviable
opulence, when the saint, appearing to King Draco the Great, ordered
him to recognise her as the heavenly patron of the kingdom and to
transfer her precious remains to the cathedral of Alca.
In consequence, the odoriferous relics of that virgin were carried
with great pomp to the metropolitan church and placed in the middle of
the choir in a shrine made of gold and enamel and ornamented with
precious stones.
The chapter kept a record of the miracles wrought by the blessed
Orberosia.
Draco the Great, who had never ceased to defend and exalt the
Christian faith, died fulfilled with the most pious sentiments and
bequeathed his great possessions to the Church.
Chapter 3 - Queen Crucha
Terrible disorders followed the death of Draco the Great. That
prince's successors have often been accused of weakness, and it is
true that none of them followed, even from afar, the example of
their valiant ancestor.
His son, Chum, who was lame, failed to increase the territory of the
Penguins. Bolo, the son of Chum, was assassinated by the palace guards
at the age of nine, just as he was ascending the throne. His brother
Gun succeeded him. He was only seven years old and allowed himself
to be governed by his mother, Queen Crucha.
Crucha was beautiful, learned, and intelligent; but she was unable
to curb her own passions.
These are the terms in which the venerable Talpa expresses himself
in his chronicle regarding that illustrious queen:
"In beauty of face and symmetry of figure Queen Crucha yields
neither to Semiramis of Babylon nor to Penthesilea, queen of the
Amazons; nor to Salome, the daughter of Herodias. But she offers in
her person certain singularities that will appear beautiful or
uncomely according to the contradictory opinions of men and the
varying judgments of the world. She has on her forehead two small
horns which she conceals in the abundant folds of her golden hair; one
of her eyes is blue and one is black; her neck is bent towards the
left side; and, like Alexander of Macedon, she has six fingers on
her right hand, and a stain like a little monkey's head upon her skin.
"Her gait is majestic and her manner affable. She is magnificent
in her expenses, but she is not always able to rule desire by reason.
"One day, having noticed in the palace stables, a young groom of
great beauty, she immediately fell violently in love with him, and
entrusted to him the command of her armies. What one must praise
unreservedly in this great queen is the abundance of gifts that she
makes to the churches, monasteries, and chapels in her kingdom, and
especially to the holy house of Beargarden, where, by the grace of the
Lord, I made my profession in my fourteenth year. She has founded
masses for the repose of her soul in such great numbers that every
priest in the Penguin Church is, so to speak, transformed into a taper
lighted in the sight of heaven to draw down the divine mercy upon
the august Crucha."
From these lines and from some others with which I have enriched
my text the reader can judge of the historical and literary value of
the "Gesta Peguinorum." Unhappily, that chronicle suddenly comes to an
end at the third year of Draco the Simple, the successor of Gun the
Weak. Having reached that point of my history, I deplore the loss of
an agreeable and trustworthy guide.
During the two centuries that followed, the Penguins remained
plunged in blood-stained disorder. All the arts perished. In the midst
of the general ignorance, the monks in the shadow of their cloister
devoted themselves to study, and copied the Holy Scriptures with
indefatigable zeal. As parchment was scarce, they scraped the
writing off old manuscripts in order to transcribe upon them the
divine word. Thus throughout the breadth of Penguinia Bibles blossomed
forth like roses on a bush.
A monk of the order of St. Benedict, Ermold the Penguin, had himself
alone defaced four thousand Greek and Latin manuscripts so as to
copy out the Gospel of St. John four thousand times. Thus the
masterpieces of ancient poetry and eloquence were destroyed in great
numbers. Historians are unanimous in recognising that the Penguin
convents were the refuge of learning during the Middle Ages.
Unending wars between the Penguins and the Porpoises filled the
close of this period. It is extremely difficult to know the truth
concerning these wars, not because accounts are wanting, but because
there are so many of them. The Porpoise Chronicles contradict the
Penguin Chronicles at every point. And, moreover, the Penguins
contradict each other as well as the Porpoises. I have discovered
two chroniclers that are in agreement, but one has copied from the
other. A single fact is certain, namely, that massacres, rapes,
conflagrations, and plunder succeeded one another without
interruption.
Under the unhappy prince Bosco IX. the kingdom was at the verge of
ruin. On the news that the Porpoise fleet, composed of six hundred
great ships, was in sight of Alca, the bishop ordered a solemn
procession. The cathedral chapter, the elected magistrates, the
members of Parliament, and the clerics of the University entered the
Cathedral and, taking up St. Orberosia's shrine, led it in
procession through the town, followed by the entire people singing
hymns. The holy patron of Penguinia was not invoked in vain.
Nevertheless, the Porpoises beseiged the town both by land and sea,
took it by assault, and for three days and three nights killed,
plundered, violated, and burned, with all the indifference that
habit produces.
Our astonishment cannot be too great at the fact that, during
those iron ages, the faith was preserved intact among the Penguins.
The splendour of the truth in those times illumined all souls that had
not been corrupted by sophisms. This is the explanation of the unity
of belief. A constant practice of the Church doubtless contributed
also to maintain this happy communion of the faithful- every Penguin
who thought differently from the others was immediately burned at
the stake.
Chapter 4 - Letters - Johannes Talpa
During the minority of King Gun, Johannes Talpa, in the monastery of
Beargarden, where at the age of fourteen he had made his profession
and from which he never departed for a single day throughout his life,
composed his celebrated Latin chronicle in twelve books called "De
Gestis Peguinorum." The monastery of Beargarden lifts its high walls
on the summit of an inaccessible peak. One sees around it only the
blue tops of mountains, divided by the clouds.
When he began to write his "Gesta Peguinorum," Johannes Talpa was
already old. The good monk has taken care to tell us this in his book:
"My head has long since lost," he says, "its adornment of fair hair,
and my scalp resembles those convex mirrors of metal which the Penguin
ladies consult with so much care and zeal. My stature, naturally
small, has with years become diminished and bent. My white beard gives
warmth to my breast."
With a charming simplicity, Talpa informs us of certain
circumstances in his life and some features in his character.
"Descended," he tells us, "from a noble family, and destined from
childhood for the ecclesiastical state, I was taught grammer and
music. I learned to read under the guidance of a master who was called
Amicus, and who would have been better named Inimicus. As I did not
easily attain to a knowledge of my letters, he beat me violently
with rods so that I can say that he printed the alphabet in strokes
upon my back."
In another passage Talpa confesses his natural inclination towards
pleasure. These are his expressive words: "In my youth the ardour of
my senses was such that in the shadow of the woods I experienced a
sensation of boiling in a pot rather than of breathing the fresh
air. I fled from women, but in vain, for every object recalled them to
me."
While he was writing his chronicle, a terrible war, at once
foreign and domestic, laid waste the Penguin land. The soldiers of
Crucha came to defend the monastery of Beargarden against the
Penguin barbarians and established themselves strongly within its
walls. In order to render it impregnable they pierced loop-holes
through the walls and they took the lead off the church roof to make
balls for their slings. At night they lighted huge fires in the courts
and cloisters and on them they roasted whole oxen which they spitted
upon the ancient pine-trees of the mountain. Sitting around the
flames, amid smoke filled with a mingled odour of resin and fat,
they broached huge casks of wine and beer. Their songs, their
blasphemies, and the noise of their quarrels drowned the sound of
the morning bells.
At last the Porpoises, having crossed the defiles, laid siege to the
monastery. They were warriors from the North, clad in copper armour.
They fastened ladder's a hundred and fifty fathoms long to the sides
of the cliffs and sometimes in the darkness and storm these broke
beneath the weight of men and arms, and bunches of the besiegers
were hurled into the ravines and precipices. A prolonged wail would be
heard going down into the darkness, and the assault would begin again.
The Penguins poured streams of burning wax upon their assailants,
which made them blaze like torches. Sixty times the enraged
Porpoises attempted to scale the monastery and sixty times they were
repulsed.
For six months they had closely invested the monastery, when, on the
day of the Epiphany, a shepherd of the valley showed them a hidden
path by which they climbed the mountain, penetrated into the vaults of
the abbey, ran through the cloisters, the kitchens, the church, the
chapter halls, the library, the laundry, the cells, the refectories,
and the dormitories, and burned the buildings, killing and violating
without distinction of age or sex. The Penguins, awakened
unexpectedly, ran to arms, but in the darkness and alarm they struck
at one another, whilst the Porpoises with blows of their axes disputed
the sacred vessels, the censers, the candlesticks, dalmatics,
reliquaries, golden crosses, and precious stones.
The air was filled with an acrid odour of burnt flesh. Groans and
death-cries arose in the midst of the flames, and on the edges of
the crumbling roofs monks ran in thousands like ants, and fell into
the valley. Yet Johannes Talpa kept on writing his Chronicle. The
soldiers of Crucha retreated speedily and filled up all the issues
from the monastery with pieces of rock so as to shut up the
Porpoises in the burning buildings. And to crush the enemy beneath the
ruin they employed the trunks of old oaks as battering-rams. The
burning timbers fell in with a noise like thunder and the lofty arches
of the naves crumbled beneath the shock of these giant trees when
moved by six hundred men together. Soon there was left nothing of
the rich and extensive abbey but the cell of Johannes Talpa, which, by
a marvellous chance, hung from the ruin of a smoking gable. The old
chronicler still kept writing.
This admirable intensity of thought may seem excessive in the case
of an annalist who applies himself to relate the events of his own
time. For, however abstracted and detached we may be from
surrounding things, we nevertheless resent their influence. I have
consulted the original manuscript of Johannes Talpa in the National
Library, where it is preserved (Monumenta Peng., K. L6., 12390
four). It is a parchment manuscript of 628 leaves. The writing is
extremely confused, the letters instead of being in a straight line,
stray in all directions and are mingled together in great disorder,
or, more correctly speaking, in absolute confusion. They are so
badly formed that for the most part it is impossible not merely to say
what they are, but even to distinguish them from the splashes of ink
with which they are plentifully interspersed. Those inestimable
pages bear witness in this way to the troubles amid which they were
written. To read them is difficult. On the other hand, the monk of
Beargarden's style shows no trace of emotion. The tone of the "Gesta
Peguinorum" never departs from simplicity. The narration is rapid
and of a conciseness that sometimes approaches dryness. The
reflections are rare and, as a rule, judicious.
Chapter 5 - The Arts - The Primitives of Penguin Painting
The Penguin critics vie with one another in affirming that Penguin
art has from its origin been distinguished by a powerful and
pleasing originality, and that we may look elsewhere in vain for the
qualities of grace and reason that characterise its earliest works.
But the Porpoises claim that their artists were undoubtedly the
instructors and masters of the Penguins. It is difficult to form an
opinion on the matter, because the Penguins, before they began to
admire their primitive painters, destroyed all their works.
We cannot be too sorry for this loss. For my own part I feel it
cruelly, for I venerate the Penguin antiquities and I adore the
primitives. They are delightful. I do not say they are all alike,
for that would be untrue, but they have common characters that are
found in all schools- I mean formulas from which they never depart-
and there is besides some, thing finished in their work, for what they
know they know well. Luckily we can form a notion of the Penguin
primitives from the Italian, Flemish, and Dutch primitives, and from
the French primitives, who are superior to all the rest; as M.
Gruyer tell us they are more logical, logic being a peculiarly
French quality. Even if this is denied it must at least be admitted
that to France belongs the credit of having kept primitives when the
other nations knew them no longer. The Exhibition of French Primitives
at the Pavilion Marsan in 1904 contained several little panels
contemporary with the later Valois kings and with Henry IV.
I have made many journeys to see the pictures of the brothers Van
Eyck, of Memling, of Roger van der Weyden, of the painter of the death
of Mary, of Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and of the old Umbrian masters. It
was, however, neither Bruges, nor Cologne, nor Sienna, nor Perugia,
that completed my initiation; it was in the little town of Arezzo that
I became a conscious adept in primitive painting. That was ten years
ago or even longer. At that period of indigence and simplicity, the
municipal museums, though usually kept shut, were always opened to
foreigners. One evening, an old woman with a candle showed me, for
half a lira, the sordid museum of Arezzo, and in it I discovered a
painting by Margaritone, a "St. Francis," the pious sadness of which
moved me to tears. I was deeply touched, and Margaritone of Arezzo
became from that day my dearest primitive.
I picture to myself the Penguin primitives in conformity with the
works of that master. It will not therefore be thought superfluous
if in this place I consider his works with some attention, if not in
detail, at least under their more general and, if I dare say so,
most representative aspect.
We possess five or six pictures signed with his hand. His
masterpiece, preserved in the National Gallery of London, represents
the Virgin seated on a throne and holding the infant Jesus in her
arms. What strikes one first when one looks at this figure is the
proportion. The body from the neck to the feet is only twice as long
as the head, so that it appears extremely short and podgy. This work
is not less remarkable for its painting than for its drawing. The
great Margaritone had but a limited number of colours in his
possession, and he used them in all their purity without ever
modifying the tones. From this it follows that his colouring has
more vivacity than harmony. The cheeks of the Virgin and those of
the Child are of a bright vermilion which the old master, from a naive
preference for clear definitions, has placed on each face in two
circumferences as exact as if they had been traced out by a pair of
compasses.
A learned critic of the eighteenth century, the Abbe Lanzi, has
treated Margaritone's works with profound disdain. "They are," he
says, "merely crude daubs. In those unfortunate times people could
neither draw nor paint." Such was the common opinion of the
connoisseurs of the days of powdered wigs. But the great Margaritone
and his contemporaries were soon to be avenged for this cruel
contempt. There was born in the nineteenth century, in the biblical
villages and reformed cottages of pious England, a multitude of little
Samuels and little St. Johns with hair curling like lambs, who,
about 1840 and 1850, became spectacled professors and founded the cult
of the primitives.
That eminent theorist of Pre-Raphaelitism, Sir James Tuckett, does
not shrink from placing the Madonna of the National Gallery on a level
with the masterpieces of Christian art. "By giving to the Virgin's
head," says Sir James Tuckett, "a third of the total height of the
figure, the old master attracts the spectator's attention and keeps it
directed towards the more sublime parts of the human figure, and in
particular the eyes, which we ordinarily describe as the spiritual
organs. In this picture, colouring and design conspire to produce an
ideal and mystical impression. The vermilion of the cheeks does not
recall the natural appearance of the skin; it rather seems as if the
old master has applied the roses of Paradise to the faces of the
Mother and the Child."
We see, in such a criticism as this, a shining reflection, so to
speak, of the work which it exalts; yet MacSilly, the seraphic
aesthete of Edinburgh, has expressed in a still more moving and
penetrating fashion the impression produced upon his mind by the sight
of this primitive painting. "The Madonna of Margaritone," says the
revered MacSilly, "attains the transcendent end of art. It inspires
its beholders with feelings of innocence and purity; it makes them
like little children. And so true is this, that at the age of
sixty-six, after having had the joy of contemplating it closely for
three hours, I felt myself suddenly transformed into a little child.
While my cab was taking me through Trafalgar Square I kept laughing
and prattling and shaking my spectacle-case as if it were a rattle.
And when the maid in my boarding-house had served my meal I kept
pouring spoonfuls of soup into my ear with all the artlessness of
childhood."
"It is by such results," adds MacSilly, "that the excellence of a
work of art is proved."
Margaritone, according to Vasari, died at the age of
seventy-seven, "regretting that he had lived to see a new form of
art arising and the new artists crowned with fame."
These lines, which I translate literally, have inspired Sir James
Tuckett with what are perhaps the finest pages in his work. They
form part of his "Breviary for AEsthetes"; all the Pre-Raphaelites
know them by heart. I place them here as the most precious ornament of
this book. You will agree that nothing more sublime has been written
since the days of the Hebrew prophets.
Margaritione's Vision
Margaritone, full of years and labours, went one day to visit the
studio of a young painter who had lately settled in the town. He
noticed in the studio a freshly painted Madonna, which, although
severe and rigid, nevertheless, by a certain exactness in the
proportions and a devilish mingling of light and shade, assumed an
appearance of relief and life. At this sight the artless and sublime
worker of Arezzo perceived with horror what the future of painting
would be. With his brow clasped in his hands he exclaimed:
"What things of shame does not this figure show forth! I discern
in it the end of that Christian art which paints the soul and inspires
the beholder with an ardent desire for heaven. Future painters will
not restrain themselves as does this one to portraying on the side
of a wall or on a wooden panel the cursed matter of which our bodies
are formed; they will celebrate and glorify it. They will clothe their
figures with dangerous appearances of flesh, and these figures will
seem like real persons. Their bodies will be seen; their forms will
appear through their clothing. St. Magdalen will have a bosom. St.
Martha a belly, St. Barbara hips, St. Agnes buttocks; St. Sebastian
will unveil his youthful beauty, and St. George will display beneath
his armour the muscular wealth of a robust virility; apostles,
confessors, doctors, and God the Father himself will appear as
ordinary beings like you and me; the angels will affect an
equivocal, ambiguous, mysterious beauty which will trouble hearts.
What desire for heaven will these representations impart? None; but
from them you will learn to take pleasure in the forms of
terrestrial life. Where will painters stop in their indiscreet
inquiries? They will stop nowhere. They will go so far as to show
men and women naked like the idols of the Romans. There will be a
sacred art and a profane art, and the sacred art will not be less
profane than the other."
"Get ye behind me, demons," exclaimed the old master. For in
prophetic vision he saw the righteous and the saints assuming the
appearance of melancholy athletes. He saw Apollos playing the lute
on a flowery hill, in the midst of the Muses wearing light tunics.
He saw Venuses lying under shady myrtles and the Danae exposing
their charming sides to the golden rain. He saw pictures of Jesus
under the pillars of the temple amidst patricians, fair ladies,
musicians, pages, negroes, dogs, and parrots. He saw in an
inextricable confusion of human limbs, outspread wings, and flying
draperies, crowds of tumultuous Nativities, opulent Holy Families,
emphatic Crucifixions. He saw St. Catherines, St. Barbaras, St.
Agneses humiliating patricians by the sumptuousness of their
velvets, their brocades, and their pearls, and by the splendour of
their breasts. He saw Auroras scattering roses, and a multitude of
naked Dianas and Nymphs surprised on the banks of retired streams. And
the great Margaritone died, strangled by so horrible a presentiment of
the Renaissance and the Bolognese School.
Chapter 6 - Marbodius
We possess a precious monument of the Penguin literature of the
fifteenth century. It is a narrative of a journey to hell undertaken
by the monk Marbodius, of the order of St. Benedict, who professed a
fervent admiration for the poet Virgil. This narrative, written in
fairly good Latin, has been published by M. du Clos des Lunes. It is
here translated for the first time. I believe that I am doing a
service to my fellow-countrymen in making them acquainted with these
pages, though doubtless they are far from forming a unique example
of this class of mediaeval Latin literature. Among the fictions that
may be compared with them we may mention "The Voyage of St.
Brendan," "The Vision of Albericus," and "St. Patrick's Purgatory,"
imaginary descriptions, like Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy," of the
supposed abode of the dead. The narrative of Marbodius is one of the
latest works dealing with this theme, but it is not the least
singular.
The Descent of Marbodius into Hell
In the fourteen hundred and fifty-third year of the incarnation of
the Son of God, a few days before the enemies of the Cross entered the
city of Helena and the great Constantine, it was given to me,
Brother Marbodius, an unworthy monk, to see and to hear what none
had hitherto seen or heard. I have composed a faithful narrative of
those things so that their memory may not perish with me, for man's
time is short.
On the first day of May in the aforesaid year, at the hour of
vespers, I was seated in the Abbey of Corrigan on a stone in the
cloisters and, as my custom was, I read the verses of the poet whom
I love best of all, Virgil, who has sung of the labours of the
field, of shepherds, and of heroes. Evening was hanging its purple
folds from the arches of the cloisters and in a voice of emotion I was
murmuring the verses which describe how Dido, the Phoenician queen,
wanders with her ever-bleeding wound beneath the myrtles of hell. At
that moment Brother Hilary happened to pass by, followed by Brother
Jacinth, the porter.
Brought up in the barbarous ages before the resurrection of the
Muses, Brother Hilary has not been initiated into the wisdom of the
ancients; nevertheless, the poetry of the Mantuan has, like a subtle
torch, shed some gleams of light into his understanding.
"Brother Marbodius," he asked me, "do those verses that you utter
with swelling breast and sparkling eyes- do they belong to that
great 'AEneid' from which morning or evening your glances are never
withheld?"
I answered that I was reading in Virgil how the son of Anchises
perceived Dido like a moon behind the foliage.
"Brother Marbodius," he replied, "I am certain that on all occasions
Virgil gives expression to wise maxims and profound thoughts. But
the songs that he modulates on his Syracusan flute hold such a lofty
meaning and such exalted doctrine that I am continually puzzled by
them."
"Take care, father," cried Brother Jacinth, in an agitated voice.
"Virgil was a magician who wrought marvels by the help of demons. It
is thus he pierced through a mountain near Naples and fashioned a
bronze horse that had power to heal all the diseases of horses. He was
a necromancer, and there is still shown, in a certain town in Italy,
the mirror in which he made the dead appear. And yet a woman
deceived this great sorcerer. A Neapolitan courtesan invited him to
hoist himself up to her window in the basket that was used to bring
the provisions, and she left him all night suspended between two
storeys."
Brother Hilary did not appear to hear these observations.
"Virgil is a prophet," he replied, "and a prophet who leaves far
behind him the sibyls with their sacred verses as well as the daughter
of King Priam, and that great diviner of future things, Plato of
Athens. You will find in the fourth of his Syracusan cantos the
birth of our Lord foretold in a language that seem of heaven rather
than of earth. In the time of my early studies, when I read for the
first time Jam Redit Et Virgo, I felt myself bathed in an infinite
delight, but I immediately experienced intense grief at the thought
that, for ever deprived of the presence of God, the author of this
prophetic verse, the noblest that has come from human lips, was pining
among the heathen in eternal darkness. This cruel thought did not
leave me. It pursued me even in my studies, my prayers, my
meditations, and my ascetic labours. Thinking that Virgil was deprived
of the sight of God and that possibly he might even be suffering the
fate of the reprobate in hell, I could neither enjoy peace nor rest,
and I went so far as to exclaim several times a day with my arms
outstretched to heaven:
"'Reveal to me, O Lord, the lot thou hast assigned to him who sang
on earth as the angels sing in heaven!'
"After some years my anguish ceased when I read in an old book
that the great Apostle St. Paul, who called the Gentiles into the
Church of Christ, went to Naples and sanctified with his tears the
tomb of the prince of poets. This was some ground for believing
that Virgil, like the Emperor Trajan, was admitted to Paradise because
even in error he had a presentiment of the truth. We are not compelled
to believe it, but I can easily persuade myself that it is true."
Having thus spoken, old Hilary wished me the peace of a holy night
and went away with Brother Jacinth.
I resumed the delightful study of my poet. Book in hand, I meditated
upon the way in which those whom Love destroys with its cruel malady
wander through the secret paths in the depth of the myrtle forest,
and, as I meditated, the quivering reflections of the stars came and
mingled with those of the leafless eglantines in the waters of the
cloister fountain. Suddenly the lights and the perfumes and the
stillness of the sky were overwhelmed, a fierce North-wind charged
with storm and darkness burst roaring upon me. It lifted me up and
carried me like a wisp of straw over fields, cities, rivers, and
mountains, and through the midst of thunderclouds, during a long night
composed of a whole series of nights and days. And when, after this
prolonged and cruel rage, the hurricane was at last stilled, I found
myself far from my native land at the bottom of a valley bordered by
cypress trees. Then a woman of wild beauty, trailing long garments
behind her, approached me. She placed her left hand on my shoulder,
and, pointing her right arm to an oak with thick foliage:
"Look!" said she to me.
Immediately I recognised the Sibyl who guards the sacred wood of
Avernus, and I discerned the fair Proserpine's beautiful golden twig
amongst the tufted boughs of the tree to which her finger pointed.
"O prophetic Virgin," I exclaimed, "thou hast comprehended my desire
and thou hast satisfied it in this way. Thou has revealed to me the
tree that bears the shining twig without which none can enter alive
into the dwelling-place of the dead. And in truth, eagerly did I
long to converse with the shade of Virgil."
Having said this, I snatched the golden branch from its ancient
trunk and I advanced without fear into the smoking gulf that leads
to the miry banks of the Styx, upon which the shades are tossed
about like dead leaves. At sight of the branch dedicated to
Proserpine, Charon took me in his bark, which groaned beneath my
weight, and I alighted on the shores of the dead, and was greeted by
the mute baying of the threefold Cerberus. I pretended to throw the
shade of a stone at him, and the vain monster fled into his cave.
There, amidst the rushes, wandered the souls of those children whose
eyes had but opened and shut to the kindly light of day, and there
in a gloomy cavern Minos judges men. I penetrated into the myrtle wood
in which the victims of love wander languishing, Phaedra, Procris, the
sad Eriphyle, Evadne, Pasiphae, Laodamia, and Cenis, and the
Phoenician Dido. Then I went through the dusty plains reserved for
famous warriors. Beyond them open two ways. That to the left leads
to Tartarus, the abode of the wicked. I took that to the right,
which leads to Elysium and to the dwellings of Dis. Having hung the
sacred branch at the goddess's door, I reached pleasant fields flooded
with purple light. The shades of philosophers and poets hold grave
converse there. The Graces and the Muses formed sprightly choirs
upon the grass. Old Homer sang, accompanying himself upon his rustic
lyre. His eyes were closed, but divine images shone upon his lips. I
saw Solon, Democritus, and Pythagoras watching the games of the
young men in the meadow, and, through the foliage of an ancient
laurel, I perceived also Hesiod, Orpheus, the melancholy Euripides,
and the masculine Sappho. I passed and recognised, as they sat on
the bank of a fresh rivulet, the poet Horace, Varius, Gallus, and
Lycoris. A little apart, leaning against the trunk of a dark holm-oak,
Virgil was gazing pensively at the grove. Of lofty stature, though
spare, he still preserved that swarthy complexion, that rustic air,
that negligent bearing, and unpolished appearance which during his
lifetime concealed his genius. I saluted him piously and remained
for a long time without speech.
At last when my halting voice could proceed out of my throat:
"O thou, so dear to the Ausonian Muses, thou honour of the Latin
name, Virgil," cried I, "it is through thee I have known what beauty
is, it is through thee I have known what the tables of the gods and
the beds of the goddesses are like. Suffer the praises of the humblest
of thy adorers."
"Arise, stranger," answered the divine poet. "I perceive that thou
art a living being among the shades, and that thy body treads down the
grass in this eternal evening. Thou art not the first man who has
descended before his death into these dwellings, although all
intercourse between us and the living is difficult. But cease from
praise; I do not like eulogies and the confused sounds of glory have
always offended my ears. That is why I fled from Rome, where I was
known to the idle and curious, and laboured in the solitude of my
beloved Parthenope. And then I am not so convinced that the men of thy
generation understand my verses that I should be gratified by thy
praises. Who art thou?"
"I am called Marbodius of the Kingdom of Alca. I made my
profession in the Abbey of Corrigan. I read thy poems by day and I
read them by night. It is thee whom I have come to see in Hell; I
was impatient to know what thy fate was. On earth the learned often
dispute about it. Some hold it probable that, having lived under the
power of demons, thou art now burning in inextinguishable flames;
others, more cautious, pronounce no opinion, believing that all
which is said concerning the dead is uncertain and full of lies;
several though not in truth the ablest, maintain that, because thou
didst elevate the tone of the Sicilian Muses and foretell that a new
progeny would descend from heaven, thou wert admitted, like the
Emperor Trajan, to enjoy eternal blessedness in the Christian heaven."
"Thou seest that such is not the case," answered the shade, smiling.
"I meet thee in truth, O Virgil, among the heroes and sages in those
Elysian Fields which thou thyself hast described. Thus, contrary to
what several on earth believe, no one has come to seek thee on the
part of Him who reigns on high?"
After a rather long silence:
"I will conceal nought from thee. He sent for me; one of His
messengers, a simple man, came to say that I was expected, and that,
although I had not been initiated into their mysteries, in
consideration of my prophetic verses a place had been reserved for
me among those of the new sect. But I refused to accept that
invitation; I had no desire to change my place. I did so not because I
share the admiration of the Greeks for the Elysian fields, or
because I taste here those joys which caused Proserpine to lose the
remembrance of her mother. I never believed much myself in what I
say about these things in the 'AEneid.' I was instructed by
philosophers and men of science and I had a correct foreboding of
the truth. Life in hell is extremely attenuated; we feel neither
pleasure nor pain; we are as if we were not. The dead have no
existence here except such as the living lend them. Nevertheless I
prefer to remain here."
"But what reason didst thou give, O Virgil, for so strange a
refusal?"
"I gave excellent ones. I said to the messenger of the god that I
did not deserve the honour he brought me, and that a meaning had
been given to my verses which they did not bear. In truth I have not
in my fourth Eclogue betrayed the faith of my ancestors. Some ignorant
Jews alone have interpreted in favour of a barbarian god a verse which
celebrates the return of the golden age predicted by the Sibylline
oracles. I excused myself then on the ground that I could not occupy a
place which was destined for me in error and to which I recognised
that I had no right. Then I alleged my disposition and my tastes,
which do not accord with the customs of the new heavens.
"'I am not unsociable,' said I to this man. 'I have shown in life
a complaisant and easy disposition, although the extreme simplicity of
my habits caused me to be suspected of avarice. I kept nothing for
myself alone. My library was open to all and I have conformed my
conduct to that fine saying of Euripides, "all ought to be common
among friends." Those praises that seemed obtrusive when I myself
received them became agreeable to me when addressed to Varius or to
Macer. But at bottom I am rustic and uncultivated. I take pleasure
in the society of animals; I was so zealous in observing them and took
so much care of them that I was regarded, not altogether wrongly, as a
good veterinary surgeon. I am told that the people of thy sect claim
an immortal soul for themselves, but refuse one to the animals. That
is a piece of nonsense that makes me doubt their judgment. Perhaps I
love the flocks and the shepherds a little too much. That would not
seem right amongst you. There is a maxim to which I endeavour to
conform my actions, "Nothing too much." More even than my feeble
health my philosophy teaches me to use things with measure. I am
sober; a lettuce and some olives with a drop of Falernian wine form
all my meals. I have, indeed, to some extent gone with strange
women, but I have not delayed over long in taverns to watch the
young Syrians dance to the sound of the crotalum. But if I have
restrained my desires it was for my own satisfaction and for the
sake of good discipline. To fear pleasure and to fly from joy
appears to me the worst insult that one can offer to nature. I am
assured that during their lives certain of the elect of thy god
abstained from food and avoided women through love of asceticism,
and voluntarily exposed themselves to useless sufferings. I should
be afraid of meeting those criminals whose frenzy horrifies me. A poet
must not be asked to attach himself too strictly to any scientific
or moral doctrine. Moreover, I am a Roman, and the Romans, unlike
the Greeks, are unable to pursue profound speculations in a subtle
manner. If they adopt a philosophy it is above all in order to
derive some practical advantages from it. Siro, who enjoyed a great
renown among us, taught me the system of Epicurus and thus freed me
from vain terrors and turned me aside from the cruelties to which
religion persuades ignorant men. I have embraced the views of
Pythagoras concerning the souls of men and animals, both of which
are of divine essence; this invites us to look upon ourselves
without pride and without shame. I have learnt from the Alexandrines
how the earth, at first soft and without form, hardened in
proportion as Nereus withdrew himself from it to dig his humid
dwellings; I have learned how things were formed insensibly; in what
manner the rains, falling from the burdened clouds, nourished the
silent forests, and by what progress a few animals at last began to
wander over the nameless mountains. I could not accustom myself to
your cosmogony either, for it seems to me fitter for a camel-driver on
the Syrian sands than for a disciple of Aristarchus and Samos. And
what would become of me in the abode of your beatitude if I did not
find there my friends, my ancestors, my masters, and my gods, and if
it is not given me to see Rhea's noble son, or Venus, mother of
AEneas, with her winning smile, or Pan, or the young Dryads, or the
Sylvans, or old Silenus, with his face stained by AEgle's purple
mulberries.' These are the reasons which I begged that simple man to
plead before the successor of Jupiter."
"And since then, O great shade, thou has received no other
messages?"
"I have received none."
"To console themselves for thy absence, O Virgil, they have three
poets, Commodianus, Prudentius, and Fortunatus, who were all three
born in those dark days when neither prosody nor grammar were known.
But tell me, O Mantuan, hast thou never received other intelligence of
the God whose company thou didst so deliberately refuse?"
"Never that I remember."
"Hast thou not told me that I am not the first who descended alive
into these abodes and presented himself before thee?"
"Thou dost remind me of it. A century and a half ago, or so it seems
to me (it is difficult to reckon days and years amid the shades), my
profound peace was intruded upon by a strange visitor. As I was
wandering beneath the gloomy foliage that borders the Styx, I saw
rising before me a human form more opaque and darker than that of
the inhabitants of these shores. I recognised a living person. He
was of high stature, thin, with an aquiline nose, sharp chin, and
hollow cheeks. His dark eyes shot forth fire; a red hood girt with a
crown of laurels bound his lean brows. His bones pierced through the
tight brown cloak that descended to his heels. He saluted me with
deference, tempered by a sort of fierce pride, and addressed me in a
speech more obscure and incorrect than that of those Gauls with whom
the divine Julius filled both his legions and the Curia. At last I
understood that he had been born near Fiesole, in an ancient
Etruscan colony that Sulla had founded on the banks of the Arno, and
which had prospered; that he had obtained municipal honours, but
that he had thrown himself vehemently into the sanguinary quarrels
which arose between the senate, the knights, and the people, that he
had been defeated and banished, and now he wandered in exile
throughout the world. He described Italy to me as distracted by more
wars and discords than in the time of my youth, and as sighing anew
for a second Augustus. I pitied his misfortunes, remembering what I
myself had formerly endured.
"An audacious spirit unceasingly disquieted him, and his mind
harboured great thoughts, but alas! his rudeness and ignorance
displayed the triumph of barbarism. He knew neither poetry, nor
science, nor even the tongue of the Greeks, and he was ignorant,
too, of the ancient traditions concerning the origin of the world
and the nature of the gods. He gravely repeated fables which in my
time would have brought smiles to the little children who were not yet
old enough to pay for admission at the baths. The vulgar easily
believe in monsters. The Etruscans especially peopled hell with
demons, hideous as a sick man's dreams. That they have not abandoned
their childish imaginings after so many centuries is explained by
the continuation and progress of ignorance and misery, but that one of
their magistrates whose mind is raised above the common level should
share these popular illusions and should be frightened by the
hideous demons that the inhabitants of that country painted on the
walls of their tombs in the time of Porsena- that is something which
might sadden even a sage. My Etruscan visitor repeated verses to me
which he had composed in a new dialect, called by him the vulgar
tongue, the sense of which I could not understand. My ears were more
surprised than charmed as I heard him repeat the same sound three or
four times at regular intervals in his efforts to mark the rhythm.
That artifice did not seem ingenious to me; but it is not for the dead
to judge of novelties.
"But I do not reproach this colonist of Sulla, born in an unhappy
time, for making inharmonious verses or for being, if it be
possible, as bad a poet as Bavius or Maevius. I have grievances
against him which touch me more closely. The thing is monstrous and
scarcely credible, but when this man returned to earth he disseminated
the most odious lies about me. He affirmed in several passages of
his barbarous poems that I had served him as a guide in the modern
Tartarus, a place I know nothing of. He insolently proclaimed that I
had spoken of the gods of Rome as false and lying gods, and that I
held as the true God the present successor of Jupiter. Friend, when
thou art restored to the kindly light of day and beholdest again thy
native land, contradict those abominable falsehoods. Say to thy people
that the singer of the pious AEneas has never worshipped the god of
the Jews. I am assured that his power is declining and that his
approaching fall is manifested by undoubted indications. This news
would give me some pleasure if one could rejoice in these abodes,
where we feel neither fears nor desires."
He spoke, and with a gesture of farewell he went away. I beheld
his shade gliding over the asphodels without bending their stalks. I
saw that it became fainter and vaguer as it receded farther from me,
and it vanished before it reached the wood of evergreen laurels.
Then I understood the meaning of the words, "The dead have no life,
but that which the living lend them," and I walked slowly through
the pale meadow to the gate of horn.
I affirm that all in this writing is true.
One would not have thought either that Marbodius, or even Virgil,
could have known the Etruscan tombs of Chiusi and Corneto, where, in
fact, there are horrible and burlesque devils closely resembling those
of Orcagna. Nevertheless, the authenticity of the "Descent of
Marbodius into Hell" is indisputable. M. du Clos des Lunes has
firmly established it. To doubt it would be to doubt palaeography
itself.
Chapter 7 - Signs in the Moon
At that time, whilst Penguinia was still plunged in ignorance and
barbarism, Giles Bird-catcher, a Franciscan monk, known by his
writings under the name AEgidius Aucupis, devoted himself with
indefatigable zeal to the study of letters and the sciences. He gave
his nights to mathematics and music, which he called the two
adorable sisters, the harmonious daughters of Number and
Imagination. He was versed in medicine and astrology. He was suspected
of practising magic, and it seemed true that he wrought
metamorphoses and discovered hidden things.
The monks of his convent, finding in his cell Greek books which they
could not read, imagined them to be conjuring-books, and denounced
their too learned brother as a wizard. AEgidius Aucupis fled, and
reached the island of Ireland, where he lived for thirty studious
years. He went from monastery to monastery, searching for and
copying the Greek and Latin manuscripts which they contained. He
also studied physics and alchemy. He acquired a universal knowledge
and discovered notable secrets concerning animals, plants, and stones.
He was found one day in the company of a very beautiful woman who sang
to her own accompaniment on the lute, and who was afterwards
discovered to be a machine which he had himself constructed.
He often crossed the Irish Sea to go into the land of Wales and to
visit the libraries of the monasteries there. During one of these
crossings, as he remained during the night on the bridge of the
ship, he saw beneath the waters two sturgeons swimming side by side.
He had very good hearing and he knew the languages of the fishes.
Now he heard one of the sturgeons say to the other:
"The man in the moon, whom we have often seen carrying fagots on his
shoulders, has fallen into the sea."
And the other sturgeon said in its turn:
"And in the silver disc there will be seen the image of two lovers
kissing each other on the mouth."
Some years later, having returned to his native country, AEgidius
Aucupis found that ancient learning had been restored. Manners had
softened. Men no longer pursued the nymphs of the fountains, of the
woods, and of the mountains with their insults. They placed images
of the Muses and of the modest Graces in their gardens, and they
rendered her former honours to the Goddess with ambrosial lips, the
joy of men and gods. They were becoming reconciled to nature. They
trampled vain terrors beneath their feet and raised their eyes to
heaven without fearing, as they formerly did, to read signs of anger
and threats of damnation in the skies.
At this spectacle AEgidius Aucupis remembered what the two sturgeons
of the sea of Erin had foretold.
Book 4 - Modern Times - Trinco
Chapter 1 - Mother Rouquin
Aegidius Aucupis, the Erasmus of the Penguins, was not mistaken; his
age was an age of free inquiry. But that great man mistook the
elegances of the humanists for softness of manners, and he did not
foresee the effects that the awaking of intelligence would have
amongst the Penguins. It brought about the religious Reformation;
Catholics massacred Protestants and Protestants massacred Catholics.
Such were the first results of liberty of thought. The Catholics
prevailed in Penguinia. But the spirit of inquiry had penetrated among
them without their knowing it. They joined reason to faith, and
claimed that religion had been divested of the superstitious practices
that dishonoured it, just as in later days the booths that the
cobblers, hucksters, and dealers in old clothes had built against
the walls of the cathedrals were cleared away. The word, legend, which
at first indicated what the faithful ought to read, soon suggested the
idea of pious fables and childish tales.
The saints had to suffer from this state of mind. An obscure canon
called Princeteau, a very austere and crabbed man, designated so great
a number of them as not worthy of having their days observed, that
he was surnamed the exposer of the saints. He did not think, for
instance, that if St. Margaret's prayer were applied as a poultice
to a woman in travail that the pains of childbirth would be softened.
Even the venerable patron saint of Penguinia did not escape his
rigid criticism. This is what he says of her in his "Antiquities of
Alca":
"Nothing is more uncertain than the history, or even the
existence, of St. Orberosia. An ancient anonymous annalist, a monk
of Dombes, relates that a woman called Orberosia was possessed by
the devil in a cavern where, even down to his own days, the little
boys and girls of the village used to play at a sort of game
representing the devil and the fair Orberosia. He adds that this woman
became the concubine of a horrible dragon, who ravaged the country.
Such a statement is hardly credible, but the history of Orberosia,
as it has since been related, seems hardly more worthy of belief.
The life of that saint by the Abbot Simplicissimus is three hundred
years later than the pretended events which it relates and that author
shows himself excessively credulous and devoid of all critical
faculty."
Suspicion attacked even the supernatural origin of the Penguins. The
historian Ovidius Capito went so far as to deny the miracle of their
transformation. He thus begins his "Annals of Penguinia":
"A dense obscurity envelopes this history, and it would be no
exaggeration to say that it is a tissue of puerile fables and
popular tales. The Penguins claim that they are descended from birds
who were baptized by St. Mael and whom God changed into men at the
intercession of that glorious apostle. They hold that, situated at
first in the frozen ocean, their island, floating like Delos, was
brought to anchor in these heaven-favoured seas, of which it is
today the queen. I conclude that this myth is a reminiscence of the
ancient migrations of the Penguins."
In the following century, which was that of the philosophers,
scepticism became still more acute. No further evidence of it is
needed than the following celebrated passage from the "Moral Essay."
"Arriving we know not from whence (for indeed their origins are
not very clear), and successively invaded and conquered by four or
five peoples from the north, south, east, and west, miscegenated,
inter-bred, amalgamated, and commingled, the Penguins boast of the
purity of their race, and with justice, for they have become a pure
race. This mixture of all mankind, red, black, yellow, and white,
round-headed and long-headed, has formed in the course of ages a
fairly homogeneous human family, and one which is recognisable by
certain features due to a community of life and customs.
"This idea that they belong to the best race in the world, and
that they are its finest family, inspires them with noble pride,
indomitable courage, and a hatred for the human race.
"The life of a people is but a succession of miseries, crimes, and
follies. This is true of the Penguin nation, as of all other
nations. Save for this exception its history is admirable from
beginning to end."
The two classic ages of the Penguins are too well-known for me to
lay stress upon them. But what has not been sufficiently noticed is
the way in which the rationalist theologians such as Canon
Princeteau called into existence the unbelievers of the succeeding
age. The former employed their reason to destroy what did not seem
to them essential to their religion; they only left untouched the most
rigid article of faith. Their intellectual successors, being taught by
them how to make use of science and reason, employed them against
whatever beliefs remained. Thus rational theology engendered natural
philosophy.
That is why (if I may turn from the Penguins of former days to the
Sovereign Pontiff, who, to-day governs the universal Church) we cannot
admire too greatly the wisdom of Pope Pius X. in condemning the
study of exegesis as contrary to revealed truth, fatal to sound
theological doctrine, and deadly to the faith. Those clerics who
maintain the rights of science in opposition to him are pernicious
doctors and pestilent teachers, and the faithful who approve of them
are lacking in either mental or moral ballast.
At the end of the age of philosophers, the ancient kingdom of
Penguinia was utterly destroyed, the king put to death, the privileges
of the nobles abolished, and a Republic proclaimed in the midst of
public misfortunes and while a terrible war was raging. The assembly
which then governed Penguinia ordered all the metal articles contained
in the churches to be melted down. The patriots even desecrated the
tombs of the kings. It is said that when the tomb of Draco the Great
was opened, that king presented an appearance as black as ebony and so
majestic that those who profaned his corpse fled in terror.
According to other accounts, these churlish men insulted him by
putting a pipe in his mouth and derisively offering him a glass of
wine.
On the seventeenth day of the month of May-flowers, the shrine of
St. Orberosia, which had for five hundred years been exposed to the
veneration of the faithful in the Church of St. Mael, was
transported into the town-hall and submitted to the examination of a
jury of experts appointed by the municipality. It was made of gilded
copper in shape like the nave of a church, entirely covered with
enamels and decorated with precious stones, which latter were
perceived to be false. The chapter in its foresight had removed the
rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and great balls of rock-crystal, and
had substituted pieces of glass in their place. It contained only a
little dust and a piece of old linen, which were thrown into a great
fire that had been lighted on the Place de Greve to burn the relics of
the saints. The people danced around it singing patriotic songs.
From the threshold of their booth, which leant against the
town-hall, a man called Rouquin and his wife were watching this
group of madmen. Rouquin clipped dogs and gelded cats; he also
frequented the inns. His wife was a ragpicker and a bawd, but she
had plenty of shrewdness.
"You see, Rouquin," said she to her man, "they are committing a
sacrilege. They will repent of it."
"You know nothing about it, wife," answered Rouquin; "they have
become philosophers, and when one is once a philosopher he is a
philosopher for ever."
"I tell you, Rouquin, that sooner or later they will regret what
they are doing to-day. They ill-treat the saints because they have not
helped them enough, but for all that the quails won't fall ready
cooked into their mouths. They will soon find themselves as badly
off as before, and when they have put out their tongues for enough
they will become pious again. Sooner than people think the day will
come when Penguinia will again begin to honour her blessed patron.
Rouquin, it would be a good thing, in readiness for that day, if we
kept a handful of ashes and some rags and bones in an old pot in our
lodgings. We will say that they are the relics of St. Orberosia and
that we have saved them from the flames at the peril of our lives. I
am greatly mistaken if we don't get honour and profit out of them.
That good action might be worth a place from the Cure to sell tapers
and hire chairs in the chapel of St. Orberosia."
On that same day Mother Rouquin took home with her a little ashes
and some bones, and put them in an old jam-pot in her cupboard.
Chapter 2 - Trinco
The sovereign Nation had taken possession of the lands of the
nobility and clergy to sell them at a low price to the middle
classes and the peasants. The middle classes and the peasants
thought that the revolution was a good thing for acquiring lands and a
bad one for retaining them.
The legislators of the Republic made terrible laws for the defence
of property, and decreed death to anyone who should propose a division
of wealth. But that did not avail the Republic. The peasants who had
become proprietors bethought themselves that though it had made them
rich, the Republic had nevertheless caused a disturbance to wealth,
and they desired a system more respectful of private property and more
capable of assuring the permanence of the new institutions.
They had not long to wait. The Republic, like Agrippina, bore her
destroyer in her bosom.
Having great wars to carry on, it created military forces, and these
were destined both to save it and to destroy it. Its legislators
thought they could restrain their generals by the fear of
punishment, but if they sometimes cut off the heads of unlucky
soldiers they could not do the same to the fortunate soldiers who
obtained over it the advantages of having saved its existence.
In the enthusiasm of victory the renovated Penguins delivered
themselves up to a dragon, more terrible than that of their fables,
who, like a stork amongst frogs, devoured them for fourteen years with
his insatiable beak.
Half a century after the reign of the new dragon a young Maharajah
of Malay, called Djambi, desirous, like the Scythian Anacharsis, of
instructing himself by travel, visited Penguinia and wrote an
interesting account of his travels. I transcribe the first page of his
account:
Account of the Travels of Young Djambi in Penguinia
After a voyage of ninety days I landed at the vast and deserted port
of the Penguins and travelled over untilled fields to their ruined
capital. Surrounded by ramparts and full of barracks and arsenals it
had a martial though desolate appearance. Feeble and crippled men
wandered proudly through the streets, wearing old uniforms and
carrying rusty weapons.
"What do you want?" I was rudely asked at the gate of the city by
a soldier whose moustaches pointed to the skies.
"Sir," I answered, "I come as an inquirer to visit this island."
"It is not an island," replied the soldier.
"What!" I exclaimed, "Penguin Island is not an island?"
"No, sir, it is an insula. It was formerly called an island, but for
a century it has been decreed that it shall bear the name of insula.
It is the only insula in the whole universe. Have you a passport?"
"Here it is."
"Go and get it signed at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs."
A lame guide who conducted me came to a pause in a vast square.
"The insula," said he, "has given birth, as you know, to Trinco, the
greatest genius of the universe, whose statue you see before you. That
obelisk standing to your right commemorates Trinco's birth; the column
that rises to your left has Trinco crowned with a diadem upon its
summit. You see here the triumphal arch dedicated to the glory of
Trinco and his family."
"What extraordinary feat has Trinco performed?" I asked.
"War."
"That is nothing extraordinary. We Malayans make war constantly."
"That may be, but Trinco is the greatest warrior of all countries
and all times. There never existed a greater conqueror than he. As you
anchored in our port you saw to the east a volcanic island called
Ampelophoria, shaped like a cone, and of small size, but renowned
for its wines. And to the west a larger island which raises to the sky
a long range of sharp teeth; for this reason it is called the Dog's
jaws. It is rich in copper mines. We possessed both before Trinco's
reign and they were the boundaries of our empire. Trinco extended
the Penguin dominion over the Archipelago of the Turquoises and the
Green Continent, subdued the gloomy Porpoises, and planted his flag
amid the icebergs of the Pole and on the burning sands of the
African deserts. He raised troops in all the countries he conquered,
and when his armies marched past in the wake of our own light
infantry, our island grenadiers, our hussars, our dragoons, our
artillery, and our engineers there were to be seen yellow soldiers
looking in their blue armour like crayfish standing on their tails;
red men with parrots' plumes, tatooed with solar and Phallic
emblems, and with quivers of poisoned arrows resounding on their
backs; naked blacks armed only with their teeth and nails; pygmies
riding on cranes; gorillas carrying trunks of trees and led by an
old ape who wore upon his hairy breast the cross of the Legion of
Honour. And all those troops, led to Trinco's banner by the most
ardent patriotism, flew on from victory to victory, and in thirty
years of war Trinco conquered half the known world."
"What!" cried I, "you possess half of the world."
"Trinco conquered it for us, and Trinco lost it to us. As great in
his defeats as in his victories he surrendered all that he had
conquered. He even allowed those two islands we possessed before his
time, Ampelophoria and the Dog's jaws, to be taken from us. He left
Penguinia impoverished and depopulated. The flower of the insula
perished in his wars. At the time of his fall there were left in our
country none but the hunchbacks and cripples from whom we are
descended. But he gave us glory."
"He made you pay dearly for it!"
"Glory never costs too much," replied my guide.
Chapter 3 - The Journey of Doctor Obnubile
After a succession of amazing vicissitudes, the memory of which is
in great part lost by the wrongs of time and the bad style of
historians, the Penguins established the government of by
themselves. They elected a diet or assembly, and invested it with
the privilege of naming the Head of the State. The latter, chosen from
among the simple Penguins, wore no formidable monster's crest upon his
head and exercised no absolute authority over the people. He was
himself subject to the laws of the nation. He was not given the
title of king, and no ordinal number followed his name. He bore such
names as Paturle, Janvion, Truffaldin, Coquenhot, and Bredouille.
These magistrates did not make war. They were not suited for that.
The new state received the name of Public Thing or Republic. Its
partisans were called republicanists or republicans. They were also
named Thing-mongers and sometimes Scamps, but this latter name was
taken in ill part.
The Penguin democracy did not itself govern. It obeyed a financial
oligarchy which formed opinion by means of the newspapers, and held in
its hands the representatives, the ministers, and the president. It
controlled the finances of the republic, and directed the foreign
affairs of the country as if it were possessed of sovereign power.
Empires and kingdoms in those days kept up enormous fleets.
Penguinia, compelled to do as they did, sank under the pressure of her
armaments. Everybody deplored or pretended to deplore so grievous a
necessity. However, the rich, and those engaged in business or all
airs, submitted to it with a good heart through a spirit of
patriotism, and because they counted on the soldiers and sailors to
defend their goods at home and to acquire markets and territories
abroad. The great manufacturers encouraged the making of cannons and
ships through a zeal for the national defence and in order to obtain
orders. Among the citizens of middle rank and of the liberal
professions some resigned themselves to this state of affairs
without complaining, believing that it would last for ever; others
waited impatiently for its end and thought they might be able to
lead the powers to a simultaneous disarmament.
The illustrious Professor Obnubile belonged to this latter class.
"War," said he, "is a barbarity to which the progress of
civilization will put an end. The great democracies are pacific and
will soon impose their will upon the aristocrats."
Professor Obnubile, who had for sixty years led a solitary and
retired life in his laboratory, whither external noises did not
penetrate, resolved to observe the spirit of the peoples for
himself. He began his studies with the greatest of all democracies and
set sail for New Atlantis.
After a voyage of fifteen days his steamer entered, during the
night, the harbour of Titanport, where thousands of ships were
anchored. An iron bridge thrown across the water and shining with
lights, stretched between two piers so far apart that Professor
Obnubile imagined he was sailing on the seas of Saturn and that he saw
the marvellous ring which girds the planet of the Old Man. And this
immense conduit bore upon it more than a quarter of the wealth of
the world. The learned Penguin, having disembarked, was waited on by
automatons in a hotel forty-eight stories high. Then he took the great
railway that led to Gigantopolis, the capital of New Atlantis. In
the train there were restaurants, gaming-rooms, athletic arenas,
telegraphic, commercial, and financial offices, a Protestant Church,
and the printing-office of a great newspaper, which latter the
doctor was unable to read, as he did not know the language of the
New Atlantans. The train passed along the banks of great rivers,
through manufacturing cities which concealed the sky with the smoke
from their chimneys, towns black in the day, towns red at night,
full of noise by day and full of noise also by night.
"Here," thought the doctor, "is a people far too much engaged in
industry and trade to make war. I am already certain that the New
Atlantans pursue a policy of peace. For it is an axiom admitted by all
economists that peace without and peace within are necessary for the
progress of commerce and industry."
As he surveyed Gigantopolis, he was confirmed in this opinion.
People went through the streets so swiftly propelled by hurry that
they knocked down all who were in their way. Obnubile was thrown
down several times, but soon succeeded in learning how to demean
himself better; after an hour's walking he himself knocked down an
Atlantan.
Having reached a great square he saw the portico of a palace in
the classic style, whose Corinthian columns reared their capitals of
arborescent acanthus seventy metres above the stylobate.
As he stood with his head thrown back admiring the building, a man
of modest appearance approached him and said in Penguin:
"I see by your dress that you are from Penguinia. I know your
language; I am a sworn interpreter. This is the Parliament palace.
At the present moment the representatives of the States are in
deliberation. Would you like to be present at the sitting?"
The doctor was brought into the hall and cast his looks upon the
crowd of legislators who were sitting on cane chairs with their feet
upon their desks.
The president arose and, in the midst of general inattention,
muttered rather than spoke the following formulas which the
interpreter immediately translated to the doctor.
"The war for the opening of the Mongol markets being ended to the
satisfaction of the States, I propose that the accounts be laid before
the finance committee...."
"Is there any opposition?..."
"The proposal is carried."
"The war for the opening of the markets of Third-Zealand being ended
to the satisfaction of the States, I propose that the accounts be laid
before the finance committee...."
"Is there any opposition?..."
"The proposal is carried."
"Have I heard aright?" asked Professor Obnubile. "What? you an
industrial people and engaged in all these wars!"
"Certainly," answered the interpreter, "these are industrial wars.
Peoples who have neither commerce nor industry are not obliged to make
war, but a business people is forced to adopt a policy of conquest.
The number of wars necessarily increases with our productive activity.
As soon as one of our industries fails to find a market for its
products a war is necessary to open new outlets. It is in this way
we have had a coal war, a copper war, and a cotton war. In
Third-Zealand we have killed two-thirds of the inhabitants in order to
compel the remainder to buy our umbrellas and braces."
At that moment a fat man who was sitting in the middle of the
assembly ascended the tribune.
"I claim," said he, "a war against the Emerald Republic, which
insolently contends with our pigs for the hegemony of hams and
sauces in all the markets of the universe."
"Who is that legislator?" asked Doctor Obnubile.
"He is a pig merchant."
"Is there any opposition?" said the President. "I put the
proposition to the vote."
The war against the Emerald Republic was voted with uplifted hands
by a very large majority.
"What?" said Obnubile to the interpreter; "you have voted a war with
that rapidity and that indifference!"
"Oh! it is an unimportant war which will hardly cost eight million
dollars."
"And men..."
"The men are included in the eight million dollars."
Then Doctor Obnubile bent his head in bitter reflection.
"Since wealth and civilization admit of as many causes of wars as
poverty and barbarism, since the folly and wickedness of men are
incurable, there remains but one good action to be done. The wise
man will collect enough dynamite to blow up this planet. When its
fragments fly through space an imperceptible amelioration will be
accomplished in the universe and a satisfaction will be given to the
universal conscience. Moreover, this universal conscience does not
exist."
Book 5 - Modern Times - Chatillon
Chapter 1 - The Reverend Fathers Agaric and Cornemuse
Every system of government produces people who are dissatisfied. The
Republic or Public Thing produced them at first from among the
nobles who had been despoiled of their ancient privileges. These
looked with regret and hope to Prince Crucho, the last of the
Draconides, a prince adorned both with the grace of youth and the
melancholy of exile. It also produced them from among the smaller
traders, who, owing to profound economic causes, no longer gained a
livelihood. They believed that this was the fault of the republic
which they had at first adored and from which each day they were now
becoming more detached. The financiers, both Christians and Jews,
became by their insolence and their cupidity the scourge of the
country, which they plundered and degraded, as well as the scandal
of a government which they never troubled either to destroy or
preserve, so confident were they that they could operate without
hindrance under all governments. Nevertheless, their sympathies
inclined to absolute power as the best protection against the
socialists, their puny but ardent adversaries. And just as they
imitated the habits of the aristocrats, so they imitated their
political and religious sentiments. Their women, in particular,
loved the Prince and had dreams of appearing one day at his Court.
However, the Republic retained some partisans and defenders. If it
was not in a position to believe in the fidelity of its own
officials it could at least still count on the devotion of the
manual labourers, although it had never relieved their misery. These
came forth in crowds from their quarries and their factories to defend
it, and marched in long processions, gloomy, emaciated, and
sinister. They would have died for it because it had given them hope.
Now, under the Presidency of Theodore Formose, there lived in a
peaceable suburb of Alca a monk called Agaric, who kept a school and
assisted in arranging marriages. In his school he taught fencing and
riding to the sons of old families, illustrious by their birth, but
now as destitute of wealth as of privilege. And as soon as they were
old enough he married them to the daughters of the opulent and
despised caste of financiers.
Tall, thin, and dark, Agaric used to walk in deep thought, with
his breviary in his hand and his brow loaded with care, through the
corridors of the school and the alleys of the garden. His care was not
limited to inculcating in his pupils abstruse doctrines and mechanical
precepts and to endowing them afterwards with legitimate and rich
wives. He entertained political designs and pursued the realisation of
a gigantic plan. His thought of thoughts and labour of labours was
to overthrow the Republic. He was not moved to this by any personal
interest. He believed that a democratic state was opposed to the
holy society to which body and soul he belonged. And all the other
monks, his brethren, thought the same. The Republic was perpetually at
strife with the congregation of monks and the assembly of the
faithful. True, to plot the death of the new government was a
difficult and perilous enterprise. Still, Agaric was in a position
to carry on a formidable conspiracy. At that epoch, when the clergy
guided the superior classes of the Penguins, this monk exercised a
tremendous influence over the aristocracy of Alca.
All the young men whom he had brought up waited only for a
favourable moment to march against the popular power. The sons of
the ancient families did not practise the arts or engage in
business. They were almost all soldiers and served the Republic.
They served it, but they did not love it; they regretted the
dragon's crest. And the fair Jewesses shared in these regrets in order
that they might be taken for Christians.
One July as he was walking in a suburban street which ended in
some dusty fields, Agaric heard groans coming from a moss-grown well
that had been abandoned by the gardeners. And almost immediately he
was told by a cobbler of the neighbourhood that a ragged man who had
shouted out "Hurrah for the Republic!" had been thrown into the well
by some cavalry officers who were passing, and had sunk up to his ears
in the mud. Agaric was quite ready to see a general significance in
this particular fact. He inferred a great fermentation in the whole
aristocratic and military caste, and concluded that it was the
moment to act.
The next day he went to the end of the Wood of Conils to visit the
good Father Cornemuse. He found the monk in his laboratory pouring a
golden-coloured liquor into a still. He was a short, fat, little
man, with vermilion-tinted cheeks and elaborately polished bald
head. His eyes had ruby-coloured pupils like a guinea-pig's. He
graciously saluted his visitor and offered him a glass of the St.
Orberosian liqueur, which he manufactured, and from the sale of
which he gained immense wealth.
Agaric made a gesture of refusal. Then, standing on his long feet
and pressing his melancholy hat against his stomach, he remained
silent.
"Take a seat," said Cornemuse to him.
Agaric sat down on a rickety stool, but continued mute.
Then the monk of Conils inquired:
"Tell me some news of your young pupils. Have the dear children
sound views?"
"I am very satisfied with them," answered the teacher. "It is
everything to be nurtured in sound principles. It is necessary to have
sound views before having any views at all, for afterwards it is too
late.... Yes, I have great grounds for comfort. But we live in a sad
age."
"Alas!" sighed Cornemuse.
"We are passing through evil days..."
"Times of trial."
"Yet, Cornemuse, the mind of the public is not so entirely corrupted
as it seems."
"Perhaps you are right."
"The people are tired of a government that ruins them and does
nothing for them. Every day fresh scandals spring up. The Republic
is sunk in shame. It is ruined."
Sorry to hear that you have been laid off. Is jobs scarce there?
"May God grant it!"
"Cornemuse, what do you think of Prince Crucho?"
"He is an amiable young man and, I dare say, a worthy scion of an
august stock. I pity him for having to endure the pains of exile at so
early an age. Spring has no flowers for the exile, and autumn no
fruits. Prince Crucho has sound views; he respects the clergy; he
practises our religion; besides, he consumes a good deal of my
little products."
"Cornemuse, in many homes, both rich and poor, his return is hoped
for. Believe me, he will come back."
"May I live to throw my mantle beneath his feet!" sighed Cornemuse.
Seeing that he held these sentiments, Agaric depicted to him the
state of people's minds such as he himself imagined them. He showed
him the nobles and the rich exasperated against the popular
government; the army refusing to endure fresh insults; the officials
willing to betray their chiefs; the people discontented, riot ready to
burst forth, and the enemies of the monks, the agents of the
constituted authority, thrown into the wells of Alca. He concluded
that it was the moment to strike a great blow.
"We can," he cried, "save the Penguin people, we can deliver it from
its tyrants, deliver it from itself, restore the Dragon's crest,
re-establish the ancient State, the good State, for the honour of
the faith and the exaltation of the Church. We can do this if we will.
We possess great wealth and we exert secret influences; by our
evangelistic and outspoken journals we communicate with all the
ecclesiastics in towns and county alike, and we inspire them with
our own eager enthusiasm and our own burning faith. They will kindle
their penitents and their congregations. I can dispose of the chiefs
of the army; I have an understanding with the men of the people.
Unknown to them I sway the minds of umbrella sellers, publicans,
shopmen, gutter merchants, newspaper boys, women of the streets, and
police agents. We have more people on our side than we need. What
are we waiting for? Let us act!"
"What do you think of doing?" asked Cornemuse.
"Of forming a vast conspiracy and overthrowing the Republic, of
re-establishing Crucho on the throne of the Draconides."
Cornemuse moistened his lips with his tongue several times. Then
he said with unction:
"Certainly the restoration of the Draconides is desirable; it is
eminently desirable; and for my part, I desire it with all my heart.
As for the Republic, you know what I think of it.... But would it
not be better to abandon it to its fate and let it die of the vices of
its own constitution? Doubtless, Agaric, what you propose is noble and
generous. It would be a fine thing to save this great and unhappy
country, to re-establish it in its ancient splendour. But reflect on
it, we are Christians before we are Penguins. And we must take heed
not to compromise religion in political enterprises."
Agaric replied eagerly:
"Fear nothing. We shall hold all the threads of the plot, but we
ourselves shall remain in the background. We shall not be seen."
"Like flies in milk," murmured the monk of Conils.
And turning his keen ruby-coloured eyes towards his brother monk:
"Take care. Perhaps the Republic is stronger than it seems.
Possibly, too, by dragging it out of the nerveless inertia in which it
now rests we may only consolidate its forces. Its malice is great;
if we attack it, it will defend itself. It makes bad laws which hardly
affect us; if it is frightened it will make terrible ones against
us. Let us not lightly engage in an adventure in which we may get
fleeced. You think the opportunity a good one. I don't, and I am going
to tell you why. The present government is not yet known by everybody,
that is to say, it is known by nobody. It proclaims that it is the
Public Thing, the common thing. The populace believes it and remains
democratic and Republican. But patience! This same people will one day
demand that the public thing be the people's thing. I need not tell
you how insolent, unregulated, and contrary to Scriptural polity
such claims seem to me. But the people will make them, and enforce
them, and then there will be an end of the present government. The
moment cannot now be far distant; and it is then that we ought to
act in the interests of our august body. Let us wait. What hurries us?
Our existence is not in peril. It has not been rendered absolutely
intolerable to us. The Republic fails in respect and submission to us;
it does not give the priests the honours it owes them. But it lets
us live. And such is the excellence of our position that with us to
live is to prosper. The Republic is hostile to us, but women revere
us. President Formose does not assist at the celebration of our
mysteries, but I have seen his wife and daughters at my feet. They buy
my phials by the gross. I have no better clients even among the
aristocracy. Let us say what there is to be said for it. There is no
country in the world as good for priests and monks as Penguinia. In
what other country would you find our virgin wax, our virile
incense, our rosaries, our scapulars, our holy water, and our St.
Orberosian liqueur sold in such great quantities? What other people
would, like the Penguins, give a hundred golden crowns for a wave of
our hands, a sound from our mouths, a movement of our lips? For my
part, I gain a thousand times more, in this pleasant, faithful, and
docile Penguinia, by extracting the essence from a bundle of thyme,
than I could make by tiring my lungs with preaching the remission of
sins in the most populous States of Europe and America. Honestly,
would Penguinia be better off if a police officer came to take me away
from here and put me on a steamboat bound for the Islands of Night?"
Having thus spoken, the monk of Conils got up and led his guest into
a huge shed where hundreds of orphans clothed in blue were packing
bottles, nailing up cases, and gumming tickets. The ear was deafened
by the noise of hammers mingled with the dull rumbling of bales
being placed upon the rails.
"It is from here that consignments are forwarded," said Cornemuse.
"I have obtained from the government a railway through the Wood and
a station at my door. Every three days I fill a truck with my own
products. You see that the Republic has not killed all beliefs."
Agaric made a last effort to engage the wise distiller in his
enterprise. He pointed him to a prompt, certain, dazzling success.
"Don't you wish to share in it?" he added. "Don't you wish to
bring back your king from exile?"
"Exile is pleasant to men of good will," answered the monk of
Conils. "If you are guided by me, my dear Brother Agaric, you will
give up your project for the present. For my own part I have no
illusions. Whether or not I belong to your party, if you lose, I shall
have to pay like you."
Father Agaric took leave of his friend and went back satisfied to
his school. "Cornemuse," thought he, "not being able to prevent the
plot, would like to make it succeed and he will give money." Agaric
was not deceived. Such, indeed, was the solidarity among priests and
monks that the acts of a single one bound them all. That was at once
both their strength and their weakness.
Chapter 2 - Prince Crucho
Agaric resolved to proceed without delay to Prince Crucho, who
honoured him with his familiarity. In the dusk of the evening he
went out of his school by the side door, disguised as a cattle
merchant and took passage on board the St. Mael.
The next day he landed in Porpoisea, for it was at Chitterlings
Castle on this hospitable soil that Crucho ate the bitter bread of
exile.
Agaric met the Prince on the road driving in a motor-car with two
young ladies at the rate of a hundred miles an hour. When the monk saw
him he shook his red umbrella and the prince stopped his car.
"Is it you, Agaric? Get in! There are already three of us, but we
can make room for you. You can take one of these young ladies on
your knee."
The pious Agaric got in.
"What news, worthy father?" asked the young prince.
"Great news," answered Agaric. "Can I speak?"
"You can. I have nothing secret from these two ladies."
"Sire, Penguinia claims you. You will not be deaf to her call."
Agaric described the state of feeling and outlined a vast plot.
"On my first signal," said he, "all your partisans will rise at
once. With cross in hand and habits girded up, your venerable clergy
will lead the armed crowd into Formose's palace. We shall carry terror
and death among your enemies. For a reward of our efforts we only
ask of you, Sire, that you will not render them useless. We entreat
you to come and seat yourself on the throne that we shall prepare."
The prince returned a simple answer:
"I shall enter Alca on a green horse."
Agaric declared that he accepted this manly response. Although,
contrary to his custom, he had a lady on his knee, he adjured the
young prince, with a sublime loftiness of soul, to be faithful to
his royal duties.
"Sire," he cried, with tears in his eyes, "you will live to remember
the day on which you have been restored from exile, given back to your
people, re-established on the throne of your ancestors by the hands of
your monks, and crowned by them with the august crest of the Dragon.
King Crucho, may you equal the glory of your ancestor Draco the
Great!"
The young prince threw himself with emotion on his restorer and
attempted to embrace him, but he was prevented from reaching him by
the girth of the two ladies, so tightly packed were they all in that
historic carriage.
"Worthy father," said he, "I would like all Penguinia to witness
this embrace."
"It would be a cheering spectacle," said Agaric.
In the mean time the motor-car rushed like a tornado through hamlets
and villages, crushing hens, geese, turkeys, ducks, guinea-fowls,
cats, dogs, pigs, children, labourers, and women beneath its
insatiable tyres. And the pious Agaric turned over his great designs
in his mind. His voice, coming from behind one of the ladies,
expressed this thought:
"We must have money, a great deal of money."
"That is your business," answered the prince.
But already the park gates were opening to the formidable motor-car.
The dinner was sumptuous. They toasted the Dragon's crest. Everybody
knows that a closed goblet is a sign of sovereignty; so Prince
Crucho and Princess Gudrune, his wife, drank out of goblets that
were covered over like ciboriums. The prince had his filled several
times with the wines of Penguinia, both white and red.
Crucho had received a truly princely education, and he excelled in
motoring, but was not ignorant of history either. He was said to be
well versed in the antiquities and famous deeds of his family; and,
indeed, he gave a notable proof of his knowledge in this respect. As
they were speaking of the various remarkable peculiarities that had
been noticed in famous women,
"It is perfectly true," said he, "that Queen Crucha, whose name I
bear, had the mark of a little monkey's head upon her body."
During the evening Agaric had a decisive interview with three of the
prince's oldest councillors. It was decided to ask for funds from
Crucho's father-in-law, as he was anxious to have a king for
son-in-law, from several Jewish ladies, who were impatient to become
ennobled, and, finally, from the Prince Regent of the Porpoises, who
had promised his aid to the Draconides, thinking that by Crucho's
restoration he would weaken the Penguins, the hereditary enemies of
his people. The three old councillors divided among themselves the
three chief offices of the Court, those of Chamberlain, Seneschal, and
High Steward, and authorised the monk to distribute the other places
to the prince's best advantage.
"Devotion has to be rewarded," said the three old councillors.
"And treachery also," said Agaric.
"It is but too true," replied one of them, the Marquis of
Sevenwounds, who had experience of revolutions.
There was dancing, and after the ball Princess Gudrune tore up her
green robe to make cockades. With her own hands she sewed a piece of
it on the monk's breast, upon which he shed tears of sensibility and
gratitude.
M. de Plume, the prince's equerry, set out the same evening to
look for a green horse.
Chapter 3 - The Cabal
After his return to the capital of Penguinia, the Reverend Father
Agaric disclosed his projects to Prince Adelestan des Boscenos, of
whose Draconian sentiments he was well aware.
The Prince belonged to the highest nobility. The Torticol des
Boscenos went back to Brian the Good, and under the Draconides had
held the highest offices in the kingdom. In 1179, Philip Torticol,
High Admiral of Penguinia, a brave, faithful, and generous, but
vindictive man, delivered over the port of La Crique and the Penguin
fleet to the enemies of the kingdom, because he suspected that Queen
Crucha, whose lover he was, had been unfaithful to him and loved a
stable-boy. It was that great queen who gave to the Boscenos the
silver warming-pan which they bear in their arms. As for their
motto, it only goes back to the sixteenth century. The story of its
origin is as follows: One gala night, as he mingled with the crowd
of courtiers who were watching the fire-works in the king's garden,
Duke John des Boscenos approached the Duchess of Skull and put his
hand under the petticoat of that lady, who made no complaint at the
gesture. The king, happening to pass, surprised them and contented
himself with saying, "And thus I find you." These four words became
the motto of the Boscenos.
Prince Adelestan had not degenerated from his ancestors. He
preserved an unalterable fidelity for the race of the Draconides and
desired nothing so much as the restoration of Prince Crucho, an
event which was in his eyes to be the fore-runner of the restoration
of his own fortune. He therefore readily entered into the Reverend
Father Agaric's plans. He joined himself at once to the monk's
projects, and hastened to put him into communication with the most
loyal Royalists of his acquaintance, Count Clena, M. de la Trumelle,
Viscount Olive, and M. Bigourd. They met together one night in the
Duke of Ampoule's country house, six miles eastward of Alca, to
consider ways and means.
M. de la Trumelle was in favour of legal action.
"We ought to keep within the law," said he in substance. "We are for
order. It is by an untiring propaganda that we shall best pursue the
realisation of our hopes. We must change the feeling of the country.
Our cause will conquer because it is just."
The Prince des Boscenos expressed a contrary opinion. He thought
that, in order to triumph, just causes need force quite as much and
even more than unjust causes require it.
"In the present situation," said he tranquilly, "three methods of
action present themselves: to hire the butcher boys, to corrupt the
ministers, and to kidnap President Formose."
"It would be a mistake to kidnap Formose, objected M. de la
Trumelle. "The President is on our side."
The attitude and sentiments of the President of the Republic are
explained by the fact that one Dracophil proposed to seize Formose
while another Dracophil regarded him as a friend. Formose showed
himself favourable to the Royalists, whose habits he admired and
imitated. If he smiled at the mention of the Dragon's crest it was
at the thought of putting it on his own head. He was envious of
sovereign power, not because he felt himself capable of exercising it,
but because he loved to appear so. According to the expression of a
Penguin chronicler, "he was a goose."
Prince des Boscenos maintained his proposal to march against
Formose's palace and the House of Parliament.
Count Clena was even still more energetic.
"Let us begin," said he, "by slaughtering, disembowelling, and
braining the Republicans and all partisans of the government.
Afterwards we shall see what more need be done."
M. de la Trumelle was a moderate, and moderates are always
moderately opposed to violence. He recognised that Count Clena's
policy was inspired by a noble feeling and that it was high-minded,
but he timidly objected that perhaps it was not conformable to
principle, and that it presented certain dangers. At last he consented
to discuss it.
"I propose," added he, "to draw up an appeal to the people. Let us
show who we are. For my own part I can assure you that I shall not
hide my flag in my pocket."
M. Bigourd began to speak.
"Gentlemen, the Penguins are dissatisfied with the new order because
it exists, and it is natural for men to complain of their condition.
But at the same time the Penguins are afraid to change their
government because new things alarm them. They have not known the
Dragon's crest and, although they sometimes say that they regret it,
we must not believe them. It is easy to see that they speak in this
way either without thought or because they are in an ill-temper. Let
us not have any illusions about their feelings towards ourselves. They
do not like us. They hate the aristocracy both from a base envy and
from a generous love of equality. And these two united feelings are
very strong in a people. Public opinion is not against us, because
it knows nothing about us. But when it knows what we want it will
not follow us. If we let it be seen that we wish to destroy democratic
government and restore the Dragon's crest, who will be our
partisans? Only the butcher-boys and the little shopkeepers of Alca.
And could we even count on them to the end? They are dissatisfied, but
at the bottom of their hearts they are Republicans. They are more
anxious to sell their cursed wares than to see Crucho again. If we act
openly we shall only cause alarm.
"To make people sympathise with us and follow us we must make them
believe that we want, not to overthrow the Republic, but, on the
contrary, to restore it, to cleanse, to purify, to embellish, to
adorn, to beautify, and to ornament it, to render it, in a word,
glorious and attractive. Therefore, we ought not to act openly
ourselves. It is known that we are not favourable to the present
order. We must have recourse to a friend of the Republic, and, if we
are to do what is best, to a defender of this government. We have
plenty to choose from. It would be well to prefer the most popular
and, if I dare say so, the most republican of them. We shall win him
over to us by flattery, by presents, and above all by promises.
Promises cost less than presents, and are worth more. No one gives
as much as he who gives hopes. It is not necessary for the man we
choose to be of brilliant intellect. I would even prefer him to be
of no great ability. Stupid people show an inimitable grace in
roguery. Be guided by me, gentlemen, and overthrow the Republic by the
agency of a Republican. Let us be prudent. But prudence does not
exclude energy. If you need me you will find me at your disposal."
This speech made a great impression upon those who heard it. The
mind of the pious Agaric was particularly impressed. But each of
them was anxious to appoint himself to a position of honour and
profit. A secret government was organised of which all those present
were elected active members. The Duke of Ampoule, who was the great
financier of the party, was chosen treasurer and charged with
organising funds for the propaganda.
The meeting was on the point of coming to an end when a rough
voice was heard singing an old air:
Boscenos est un gros cochon;
On en va faire des andouilles
Des saucisses et du jambon
Pour le reveillon des pauv' bougres.
It had, for two hundred years, been a well-known song in the slums
of Alca. Prince Boscenos did not like to hear it. He went down into
the street, and, perceiving that the singer was a workman who was
placing some slates on the roof of a church, he politely asked him
to sing something else.
"I will sing what I like," answered the man.
"My friend, to please me...."
"I don't want to please you."
Prince Boscenos was as a rule good-tempered, but he was easily
angered and a man of great strength.
"Fellow, come down or I will go up to you," cried he, in a
terrible voice.
As the workman, astride on his coping, showed no sign of budging,
the prince climbed quickly up the staircase of the tower and
attacked the singer. He gave him a blow that broke his jaw-bone and
sent him rolling into a water-spout. At that moment seven or eight
carpenters, who were working on the rafters, heard their companion's
cry and looked through the window. Seeing the prince on the coping
they climbed along a ladder that was leaning on the slates and reached
him just as he was slipping into the tower. They sent him, head
foremost, down the one hundred and thirty-seven steps of the spiral
staircase.
Chapter 4 - Viscountess Olive
The Penguins had the finest army in the world. So had the Porpoises.
And it was the same with the other nations of Europe. The smallest
amount of thought will prevent any surprise at this. For all armies
are the finest in the world. The second finest army, if one could
exist, would be in a notoriously inferior position; it would be
certain to be beaten. It ought to be disbanded at once. Therefore, all
armies are the finest in the world. In France the illustrious
Colonel Marchand understood this when, before the passage of the
Yalou, being questioned by some journalists about the Russo-Japanese
war, he did not hesitate to describe the Russian army as the finest in
the world, and also the Japanese. And it should be noticed that even
after suffering the most terrible reverses an army does not fall
from its position of being the finest in the world. For if nations
ascribe their victories to the ability of their generals and the
courage of their soldiers, they always attribute their defeats to an
inexplicable fatality. On the other hand, navies are classed according
to the number of their ships. There is a first, a second, a third, and
so on. So that there exists no doubt as to the result of naval wars.
The Penguins had the finest army and the second navy in the world.
This navy was commanded by the famous Chatillon, who bore the title of
Emiralbahr, and by abbreviation Emiral. It is the same word which,
unfortunately in a corrupt form, is used to-day among several European
nations to designate the highest grade in the naval service. But as
there was but one Emiral among the Penguins, a singular prestige, if I
dare say so, was attached to that rank.
The Emiral did not belong to the nobility. A child of the people, he
was loved by the people. They were flattered to see a man who sprang
from their own ranks holding a position of honour. Chatillon was
good-looking and fortune favoured him. He was not over-addicted to
thought. No event ever disturbed his serene outlook.
The Reverend Father Agaric, surrendering to M. Bigourd's reasons and
recognising that the existing government could only be destroyed by
one of its defenders, cast his eyes upon Emiral Chatillon. He asked
a large sum of money from his friend, the Reverend Father Cornemuse,
which the latter handed him with a sigh. And with this sum he hired
six hundred butcher boys of Alca to run behind Chatillon's horse and
shout, "Hurrah for the Emiral!" Henceforth Chatillon could not take
a single step without being cheered.
Viscountess Olive asked him for a private interview. He received her
at the Admiralty in a room decorated with anchors, shells, and
grenades.
She was discreetly dressed in greyish blue. A hat trimmed with roses
covered her pretty, fair hair. Behind her veil her eyes shone like
sapphires. Although she came of Jewish origin there was no more
fashionable woman in the whole nobility. She was tall and well shaped;
her form was that of the year, her figure that of the season.
"Emiral," said she, in a delightful voice, "I cannot conceal my
emotion from you.... It is very natural... before a hero."
"You are too kind. But tell me, Viscountess, what brings me the
honour of your visit."
"For a long time I have been anxious to see you, to speak to you....
So I very willingly undertook to convey a message to you."
"Please take a seat."
"How still it is here."
"Yes, it is quiet enough."
"You can hear the birds singing."
"Sit down, then, dear lady."
And he drew up an arm-chair for her.
She took a seat with her back to the light.
"Emiral, I came to bring you a very important message, a message..."
"Explain."
"Emiral, have you ever seen Prince Crucho?"
"Never."
She sighed.
"It is a great pity. He would be so delighted to see you! He esteems
and appreciates you. He has your portrait on his desk beside his
mother's. What a pity it is he is not better known! He is a charming
prince and so grateful for what is done for him! He will be a great
king. For he will be king without doubt. He will come back and
sooner than people think.... What I have to tell you, the message with
which I am entrusted, refers precisely to..."
The Emiral stood up.
"Not a word more, dear lady. I have the esteem, the confidence of
the Republic. I will not betray it. And why should I betray it? I am
loaded with honours and dignities."
"Allow me to tell you, my dear Emiral, that your honours and
dignities are far from equalling what you deserve. If your services
were properly rewarded, you would be Emiralissimo and Generalissimo,
Commander-in-chief of the troops both on land and sea. The Republic is
very ungrateful to you."
"All governments are more or less ungrateful."
"Yes, but the Republicans are jealous of you. That class of person
is always afraid of his superiors. They cannot endure the Services.
Everything that has to do with the navy and the army is odious to
them. They are afraid of you."
"That is possible."
"They are wretches; they are ruining the country. Don't you wish
to save Penguinia?"
"In what way?"
"By sweeping away all the rascals of the Republic, all the
Republicans."
"What a proposal to make to me, dear lady!"
"It is what will certainly be done, if not by you, then by some
one else. The Generalissimo, to mention him alone, is ready to throw
all the ministers, deputies, and senators into the sea, and to
recall Prince Crucho."
"Oh, the rascal, the scoundrel," exclaimed the Emiral.
"Do to him what he would do to you. The prince will know how to
recognise your services. He will give you the Constable's sword and
a magnificent grant. I am commissioned, in the mean time, to hand
you a pledge of his royal friendship."
As she said these words she drew a green cockade from her bosom.
"What is that?" asked the Emiral.
"It is his colours which Crucho sends you."
"Be good enough to take them back."
"So that they may be offered to the Generalissimo who will accept
them!... No, Emiral, let me place them on your glorious breast."
Chatillon gently repelled the lady. But for some minutes he
thought her extremely pretty, and he felt this impression still more
when two bare arms and the rosy palms of two delicate hands touched
him lightly. He yielded almost immediately. Olive was slow in
fastening the ribbon. Then when it was done she made a low courtesy
and saluted Chatillon with the title of Constable.
"I have been ambitious like my comrades," answered the sailor, "I
don't hide it, and perhaps I am so still; but upon my word of
honour, when I look at you, the only desire I feel is for a cottage
and a heart."
She turned upon him the charming sapphire glances that flashed
from under her eyelids.
"That is to be had also... what are you doing, Emiral?"
"I am looking for the heart."
When she left the Admiralty, the Viscountess went immediately to the
Reverend Father Agaric to give an account of her visit.
"You must go to him again, dear lady," said that austere monk.
Chapter 5 - The Prince Des Boscenos
Morning and evening the newspapers that had been bought by the
Dracophils proclaimed Chatillon's praises and hurled shame and
opprobrium upon the Ministers of the Republic. Chatillon's portrait
was sold through the streets of Alca. Those young descendants of Remus
who carry plaster figures on their heads, offered busts of Chatillon
for sale upon the bridges.
Every evening Chatillon rode upon his white horse round the
Queen's Meadow, a place frequented by the people of fashion. The
Dracophils posted along the Emiral's route a crowd of needy Penguins
who kept shouting: "It is Chatillon we want." The middle classes of
Alca conceived a profound admiration for the Emiral. Shopwomen
murmured: "He is good-looking." Women of fashion slackened the speed
of their motor-cars and kissed hands to him as they passed, amidst the
hurrahs of an enthusiastic populace.
One day, as he went into a tobacco shop, two Penguins who were
putting letters in the box recognized Chatillon and cried at the top
of their voices: "Hurrah for the Emiral! Down with the Republicans."
All those who were passing stopped in front of the shop. Chatillon
lighted his cigar before the eyes of a dense crowd of frenzied
citizens who waved their hats and cheered. The crowd kept
increasing, and the whole town, singing and marching behind its
hero, went back with him to the Admiralty.
The Emiral had an old comrade in arms, Under-Emiral Vulcanmould, who
had served with great distinction, a man as true as gold and as
loyal as his sword. Vulcanmould plumed himself on his thoroughgoing
independence and he went among the partisans of Crucho and the
Minister of the Republic telling both parties what he thought of them.
M. Bigourd maliciously declared that he told each party what the other
party thought of it. In truth he had on several occasions been
guilty of regrettable indiscretions, which were overlooked as being
the freedoms of a soldier who knew nothing of intrigue. Every
morning he went to see Chatillon, whom he treated with the cordial
roughness of a brother in arms.
"Well, old buffer, so you are popular," said he to him. "Your phiz
is sold on the heads of pipes and on liqueur bottles and every
drunkard in Alca spits out your name as he rolls in the gutter....
Chatillon, the hero of the Penguins! Chatillon, defender of the
Penguin glory!... Who would have said it? Who would have thought it?"
And he laughed with his harsh laugh. Then changing his tone:
"But, joking aside, are you not a bit surprised at what is happening
to you?"
"No, indeed," answered Chatillon.
And out went the honest Vulcanmould, banging the door behind him.
In the mean time Chatillon had taken a little flat at number 18
Johannes-Talpa Street, so that he might receive Viscountess Olive.
They met there every day. He was desperately in love with her.
During his martial and neptunian life he had loved crowds of women,
red, black, yellow, and white, and some of them had been very
beautiful. But before he met the Viscountess he did not know what a
woman really was. When the Viscountess Olive called him her darling,
her dear darling, he felt in heaven and it seemed to him that the
stars shone in her hair.
She would come a little late, and, as she put her bag on the
table, she would ask pensively:
"Let me sit on your knee."
And then she would talk of subjects suggested by the pious Agaric,
interrupting the conversation with sighs and kisses. She would ask him
to dismiss such and such an officer, to give a command to another,
to send the squadron here or there. And at the right moment she
would exclaim:
"How young you are, my dear!"
And he did whatever she wished, for he was simple, he was anxious to
wear the Constable's sword, and to receive a large grant; he did not
dislike playing a double part, he had a vague idea of saving
Penguinia, and he was in love.
This delightful woman induced him to remove the troops that were
at La Cirque, the port where Crucho was to land. By this means it
was made certain that there would be no obstacle to prevent the prince
from entering Penguinia.
The pious Agaric organised public meetings so as to keep up the
agitation. The Dracophils held one or two every day in some of the
thirty-six districts of Alca, and preferably in the poorer quarters.
They desired to win over the poor, for they are the most numerous.
On the fourth of May a particularly fine meeting was held in an old
cattle-market, situated in the centre of a populous suburb filled with
housewives sitting on the doorsteps and children playing in the
gutters. There were present about two thousand people, in the
opinion of the Republicans, and six thousand according to the
reckoning of the Dracophils. In the audience was to be seen the flower
of Penguin society, including Prince and Princess des Boscenos,
Count Clena, M. de La Trumelle, M. Bigourd, and several rich Jewish
ladies.
The Generalissimo of the national army had come in uniform. He was
cheered.
The committee had been carefully formed. A man of the people, a
workman, but a man of sound principles, M. Rauchin, the secretary of
the yellow syndicate, was asked to preside, supported by Count Clena
and M. Michaud, a butcher.
The government which Penguinia had freely given itself was called by
such names as cesspool and drain in several eloquent speeches. But
President Formose was spared and no mention was made of Crucho or
the priests.
The meeting was not unanimous. A defender of the modern State and of
the Republic, a manual labourer, stood up.
"Gentlemen," said M. Rauchin, the chairman, "we have told you that
this meeting would not be unanimous. We are not like our opponents, we
are honest men. I allow our opponent to speak. Heaven knows what you
are going to hear. Gentlemen, I beg of you to restrain as long as
you call the expression of your contempt, your disgust, and your
indignation."
"Gentlemen," said the opponent....
Immediately he was knocked down, trampled beneath the feet of the
indignant crowd, and his unrecognisable remains thrown out of the
hall.
The tumult was still resounding when Count Clena ascended the
tribune. Cheers took the place of groans and when silence was restored
the orator uttered these words:
"Comrades, we are going to see whether you have blood in your veins.
What we have got to do is to slaughter, disembowel, and brain all
the Republicans."
This speech let loose such a thunder of applause that the old shed
rocked with it, and a cloud of acrid and thick dust fell from its
filthy walls and worm-eaten beams and enveloped the audience.
A resolution was carried vilifying the government and acclaiming
Chatillon. And the audience departed singing the hymn of the
liberator: "It is Chatillon we want."
The only way out of the old market was through a muddy alley shut in
by omnibus stables and coal sheds. There was no moon and a cold
drizzle was coming down. The police, who were assembled in great
numbers, blocked the alley and compelled the Dracophils to disperse in
little groups. These were the instructions they had received from
their chief, who was anxious to check the enthusiasm of the excited
crowd.
The Dracophils who were detained in the alley kept marking time
and singing, "It is Chatillon we want." Soon, becoming impatient of
the delay, the cause of which they did not know, they began to push
those in front of them. This movement, propagated along the alley,
threw those in front against the broad chests of the police. The
latter had no hatred for the Dracophils. In the bottom of their hearts
they liked Chatillon. But it is natural to resist aggression and
strong men are inclined to make use of their strength. For these
reasons the police kicked the Dracophils with their hob-nailed
boots. As a result there were sudden rushes backwards and forwards.
Threats and cries mingled with the songs.
"Murder! Murder!... It is Chatillon we want! Murder! Murder!"
And in the gloomy alley the more prudent kept saying, "Don't
push." Among these latter, in the darkness, his lofty figure rising
above the moving crowd, his broad shoulders and robust body noticeable
among the trampled limbs and crushed sides of the rest, stood the
Prince des Boscenos, calm, immovable and placid. Serenely and
indulgently he waited. In the meantime, as the exit was opened at
regular intervals between the ranks of the police, the pressure of
elbows against the chests of those around the prince diminished and
people began to breathe again.
"You see we shall soon be able to go out," said that kindly giant,
with a pleasant smile. "Time and patience..."
He took a cigar from his case, raised it to his lips and struck a
match. Suddenly, in the light of the match, he saw Princess Anne,
his wife, clasped in Count Clena's arms. At this sight he rushed
towards them, striking both them and those around with his cane. He
was disarmed, though not without difficulty, but he could not be
separated from his opponent. And whilst the fainting princess was
lifted from arm to arm to her carriage over the excited and curious
crowd, the two men still fought furiously. Prince des Boscenos lost
his hat, his eye-glass, his cigar, his necktie, and his portfolio full
of private letters and political correspondence; he even lost the
miraculous medals that he had received from the good Father Cornemuse.
But he gave his opponent so terrible a kick in the stomach that the
unfortunate Count was knocked through an iron grating and went, head
foremost, through a glass door and into a coal shed.
Attracted by the struggle and the cries of those around, the
police rushed towards the prince, who furiously resisted them. He
stretched three of them gasping at his feet and put seven others to
flight, with, respectively, a broken jaw, a split lip, a nose
pouring blood, a fractured skull, a torn ear, a dislocated
collar-bone, and broken ribs. He fell, however, and was dragged
bleeding and disfigured, with his clothes in rags, to the nearest
police-station, where, jumping about and bellowing, he spent the
night.
Until daybreak groups of demonstrators went about the town
singing, "It is Chatillon we want," and breaking the windows of the
houses in which the Ministers of the Republic lived.
Chapter 6 - The Emiral's Fall
That night marked the culmination of the Dracophil movement. The
Royalists had no longer any doubt of its triumph. Their chiefs sent
congratulations to Prince Crucho by wireless telegraphy. Their
ladies embroidered scarves and slippers for him. M. de Plume had found
the green horse.
The pious Agaric shared the common hope. But he still worked to
win partisans for the Pretender. They ought, he said, to lay their
foundations upon the bed-rock.
With this design he had an interview with three Trade Union workmen.
In these times the artisans no longer lived, as in the days of the
Draconides, under the government of corporations. They were free,
but they had no assured pay. After having remained isolated from
each other for a long time, without help and without support, they had
formed themselves into unions. The coffers of the unions were empty,
as it was not the habit of the unionists to pay their subscriptions.
There were unions numbering thirty thousand members, others with a
thousand, five hundred, two hundred, and so forth. Several numbered
two or three members only, or even a few less. But as the lists of
adherents were not published, it was not easy to distinguish the great
unions from the small ones.
After some dark and indirect steps the pious Agaric was put into
communication in a room in the Moulin de la Galette, with comrades
Dagobert, Tronc, and Balafille, the secretaries of three unions of
which the first numbered fourteen members, the second twenty-four, and
the third only one. Agaric showed extreme cleverness at this
interview.
"Gentlemen," said he, "you and I have not, in most respects, the
same political and social views, but there are points in which we
may come to an understanding. We have a common enemy. The government
exploits you and despises us. Help us to overthrow it; we will
supply you with the means so far as we are able, and you can in
addition count on our gratitude."
"Fork out the tin," said Dagobert.
The Reverend Father placed on the table a bag which the distiller of
Conils had given him with tears in his eyes.
"Done!" said the three companions.
Thus was the solemn compact sealed.
As soon as the monk had departed, carrying with him the joy of
having won over the masses to his cause, Dagobert, Tronc, and
Balafille whistled to their wives, Amelia, Queenie, and Matilda, who
were waiting in the street for the signal, and all six holding each
other's hands, danced around the bag, singing:
J'ai du bon pognon,
Tu n'l'auras pas Chatillon!
Hou! Hou! la calotte!
And they ordered a salad-bowl of warm wine.
In the evening all six went through the street from stall to stall
singing their new song. The song became popular, for the detectives
reported that every day showed an increase of the number of workpeople
who sang through the slums:
J'ai du bon pognon;
Tu n'l'auras pas Chatillon!
Hou! Hou! la calotte!
The Dracophil agitation made no progress in the provinces. The pious
Agaric sought to find the cause of this, but was unable to discover it
until old Cornemuse revealed it to him.
"I have proofs," sighed the monk of Conils, "that the Duke of
Ampoule, the treasurer of the Dracophils, has bought property in
Porpoisia with the funds that he received for the propaganda."
The party wanted money. Prince des Boscenos had lost his portfolio
in a brawl and he was reduced to painful expedients which were
repugnant to his impetuous character. The Viscountess Olive was
expensive. Cornemuse advised that the monthly allowance of that lady
should be diminished.
"She is very useful to us," objected the pious Agaric.
"Undoubtedly," answered Cornemuse, "but she does us an injury by
ruining us."
A schism divided the Dracophils. Misunderstandings reigned in
their councils. Some wished that in accordance with the policy of M.
Bigourd and the pious Agaric, they should carry on the design of
reforming the Republic. Others, wearied by their long constraint,
had resolved to proclaim the Dragon's crest and swore to conquer
beneath that sign.
The latter urged the advantage of a clear situation and the
impossibility of making a pretence much longer, and in truth, the
public began to see whither the agitation was tending and that the
Emiral's partisans wanted to destroy the very foundations of the
Republic.
A report was spread that the prince was to land at La Cirque and
make his entry into Alca on a green horse.
These rumours excited the fanatical monks, delighted the poor
nobles, satisfied the rich Jewish ladies, and put hope in the hearts
of the small traders. But very few of them were inclined to purchase
these benefits at the price of a social catastrophe and the
overthrow of the public credit; and there were fewer still who would
have risked their money, their peace, their liberty, or a single
hour from their pleasures in the business. On the other hand, the
workmen held themselves ready, as ever, to give a day's work to the
Republic, and a strong resistance was being formed in the suburbs.
"The people are with us," the pious Agaric used to say.
However, men, women, and children, when leaving their factories,
used to shout with one voice:
A bas Chatillon!
Hou! Hou! la calotte!
As for the government, it showed the weakness, indecision,
flabbiness, and heedlessness common to all governments, and from which
none has ever departed without falling into arbitrariness and
violence. In three words it knew nothing, wanted nothing, and could do
nothing. Formose, shut in his presidential palace, remained blind,
dumb, deaf, huge, invisible, wrapped up in his pride as in an
eider-down.
Count Olive advised the Dracophils to make a last appeal for funds
and to attempt a great stroke while Alca was still in a ferment.
An executive committee, which he himself had chosen, decided to
kidnap the members of the Chamber of Deputies, and considered ways and
means.
The affair was fixed for the twenty-eighth of July. On that day
the sun rose radiantly over the city. In front of the legislative
palace women passed to market with their baskets; hawkers cried
their peaches, pears, and grapes; cab horses with their noses in their
bags munched their hay. Nobody expected anything, not because the
secret had been kept but because it met with nothing but
unbelievers. Nobody believed in a revolution, and from this fact we
may conclude that nobody desired one. About two o'clock the deputies
began to pass, few and unnoticed, through the side-door of the palace.
At three o'clock a few groups of badly dressed men had formed. At half
past three black masses coming from the adjacent streets spread over
Revolution Square. This vast expanse was soon covered by an ocean of
soft hats, and the crowd of demonstrators, continually increased by
sight-seers, having crossed the bridge, struck its dark wave against
the walls of the legislative enclosure. Cries, murmurs, and songs went
up to the impassive sky. "It is Chatillon we want!" "Down with the
Deputies!" "Down with the Republicans!" "Death to the Republicans!"
The devoted band of Dracophils, led by Prince des Boscenos, struck
up the august canticle:
Vive Crucho,
Vaillant et sage,
Plein de courage
Des le berceau!
Behind the wall silence alone replied.
This silence and the absence of guards encouraged and at the same
time frightened the crowd. Suddenly a formidable voice cried out:
"Attack!"
And Prince des Boscenos was seen raising his gigantic form to the
top of the wall, which was covered with barbs and iron spikes.
Behind him rushed his companions, and the people followed. Some
hammered against the wall to make holes in it; others endeavoured to
tear down the spikes and to pull out the barbs. These defences had
given way in places and some of the invaders had stripped the wall and
were sitting astride on the top. Prince des Boscenos was waving an
immense green flag. Suddenly the crowd wavered and from it came a long
cry of terror. The police and the Republican carabineers issuing out
of all the entrances of the palace formed themselves into a column
beneath the wall and in a moment it was cleared of its besiegers.
After a long moment of suspense the noise of arms was heard, and the
police charged the crowd with fixed bayonets. An instant afterwards
and on the deserted square strewn with hats and walking-sticks there
reigned a sinister silence. Twice again the Dracophils attempted to
form, twice they were repulsed. The rising was conquered. But Prince
des Boscenos, standing on the wall of the hostile palace, his flag
in his hand, still repelled the attack of a whole brigade. He
knocked down all who approached him. At last he, too, was thrown down,
and fell on an iron spike, to which he remained hooked, still clasping
the standard of the Draconides.
On the following day the Ministers of the Republic and the Members
of Parliament determined to take energetic measures. In vain this
time, did President Formose attempt to evade his responsibilities. The
government discussed the question of depriving Chatillon of his rank
and dignities and of indicting him before the High Court as a
conspirator, an enemy of the public good, a traitor, etc.
At this news the Emiral's old companions in arms, who the very
evening before had beset him with their adulations, made no effort
to conceal their joy. But Chatillon remained popular with the middle
classes of Alca and one still heard the hymn of the liberator sounding
in the streets, "It is Chatillon we want."
The Ministers were embarrassed. They intended to indict Chatillon
before the High Court. But they knew nothing; they remained in that
total ignorance reserved for those who govern men. They were incapable
of advancing any grave charges against Chatillon. They could supply
the prosecution with nothing but the ridiculous lies of their spies.
Chatillon's share in the plot and his relations with Prince Crucho
remained the secret of the thirty thousand Dracophils. The Ministers
and the Deputies had suspicions and even certainties, but they had
no proofs. The Public Prosecutor said to the Minister of Justice:
"Very little is needed for a political prosecution! but I have nothing
at all and that is not enough." The affair made no progress. The
enemies of the Republic were triumphant.
On the eighteenth of September the news ran in Alca that Chatillon
had taken flight. Everywhere there was surprise and astonishment.
People doubted, for they could not understand.
This is what had happened: One day as the brave Under-Emiral
Vulcanmould happened, as if by chance, to go into the office of M.
Barbotan, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, he remarked with his
usual frankness:
"M. Barbotan, your colleagues do not seem to me to be up to much; it
is evident that they have never commanded a ship. That fool
Chatillon gives them a deuced bad fit of the shivers."
The Minister, in sign of denial, waved his paper-knife in the air
above his desk.
"Don't deny it," answered Vulcanmould. "You don't know how to get
rid of Chatillon. You do not dare to indict him before the High
Court because you are not sure of being able to bring forward a strong
enough charge. Bigourd will defend him, and Bigourd is a clever
advocate.... You are right, M. Barbotan, you are right. It would be
a dangerous trial."
"Ah! my friend," said the Minister, in a careless tone, "if you knew
how satisfied we are.... I receive the most reassuring news from my
prefects. The good sense of the Penguins will do justice to the
intrigues of this mutinous soldier. Can you suppose for a moment
that a great people, an intelligent, laborious people, devoted to
liberal institutions which..."
Vulcanmould interrupted with a great sigh:
"Ah! If I had time to do it I would relieve you of your
difficulty. I would juggle away my Chatillon like a nutmeg out of a
thimble. I would fillip him off to Porpoisia."
The Minister paid close attention.
"It would not take long," continued the sailor. "I would rid you
in a trice of the creature.... But just now I have other fish to
fry.... I am in a bad hole. I must find a pretty big sum. But, deuce
take it, honour before everything."
The Minister and the Under-Emiral looked at each other for a
moment in silence. Then Barbotan said with authority:
"Under-Emiral Vulcanmould, get rid of this seditious soldier. You
will render a great service to Penguinia, and the Minister of Home
Affairs will see that your gambling debts are paid."
The same evening Vulcanmould called on Chatillon and looked at him
for some time with an expression of grief and mystery.
"Why do you look like that?" answered the Emiral in an uneasy tone.
Vulcanmould said to him sadly:
"Old brother in arms, all is discovered. For the past half-hour
the government knows everything."
At these words Chatillon sank down overwhelmed.
Vulcanmould continued:
"You may be arrested any moment. I advise you to make off."
And drawing out his watch:
"Not a minute to lose."
"Have I time to call on the Viscountess Olive?"
"It would be mad," said Vulcanmould, handing him a passport and a
pair of blue spectacles, and telling him to have courage.
"I will," said Chatillon.
"Good-bye! old chum."
"Good-bye and thanks! You have saved my life."
"That is the least I could do."
A quarter of an hour later the brave Emiral had left the city of
Alca.
He embarked at night on an old cutter at La Cirque and set sail
for Porpoisia. But eight miles from the coast he was captured by a
despatch-boat which was sailing without lights and which was under the
flag of the Queen of the Black Islands. That Queen had for a long time
nourished a fatal passion for Chatillon.
Chapter 7 - Conclusion
Nunc est bibendum. Delivered from its fears and pleased at having
escaped from so great a danger, the government resolved to celebrate
the anniversary of the Penguin regeneration and the establishment of
the Republic by holding a general holiday.
President Formose, the Ministers, and the members of the Chamber and
of the Senate were present at the ceremony.
The Generalissimo of the Penguin army was present in uniform. He was
cheered.
Preceded by the black flag of misery and the red flag of revolt,
deputations of workmen walked in the procession, their aspect one of
grim protection.
President, Ministers, Deputies, officials, heads of the magistracy
and of the army, each, in their own names and in the name of the
sovereign people, renewed the ancient oath to live in freedom or to
die. It was an alternative upon which they were resolutely determined.
But they preferred to live in freedom. There were games, speeches, and
songs.
After the departure of the representatives of the State the crowd of
citizens separated slowly and peaceably, shouting out, "Hurrah for the
Republic!" "Hurrah for liberty!" "Down with the shaven pates!"
The newspapers mentioned only one regrettable incident that happened
on that wonderful day.
Prince des Boscenos was quietly smoking a cigar in the Queen's
Meadow when the State procession passed by. The prince approached
the Minister's carriage and said in a loud voice: "Death to the
Republicans!" He was immediately apprehended by the police, to whom he
offered a most desperate resistance. He knocked them down in crowds,
but he was conquered by numbers, and, bruised, scratched, swollen, and
unrecognisable even to the eyes of his wife, he was dragged through
the joyous streets into an obscure prison.
The magistrates carried on the case against Chatillon in a
peculiar style. Letters were found at the Admiralty which revealed the
complicity of the Reverend Father Agaric in the plot. Immediately
public opinion was inflamed against the monks, and Parliament voted,
one after the other, a dozen laws which restrained, diminished,
limited, prescribed, suppressed, determined, and curtailed, their
rights, immunities, exemptions, privileges, and benefits, and
created many invalidating disqualifications against them.
The Reverend Father Agaric steadfastly endured the rigour of the
laws which struck himself personally, as well as the terrible fall
of the Emiral of which he was the chief cause. Far from yielding to
evil fortune, he regarded it as but a bird of passage. He was planning
new political designs more audacious than the first.
When his projects were sufficiently ripe he went one day to the Wood
of Conils. A thrush sang in a tree and a little hedge-hog crossed
the stony path in front of him with awkward steps. Agaric walked
with great strides, muttering fragments of sentences to himself.
When he reached the door of the laboratory in which, for so many
years, the pious manufacturer had distilled the golden liqueur of
St. Orberosia, he found the place deserted and the door shut. Having
walked around the building he saw in the back. yard the venerable
Cornemuse, who, with his habit pinned up, was climbing a ladder that
leant against the wall.
"Is that you, my dear friend?" said he to him. "What are you doing
there?"
"You can see for yourself," answered the monk of Conils in a
feeble voice, turning a sorrowful look upon Agaric. "I am going into
my house."
The red pupils of his eyes no longer imitated the triumph and
brilliance of the ruby, they flashed mournful and troubled glances.
His countenance had lost its happy fulness. His shining head was no
longer pleasant to the sight; perspiration and inflamed blotches had
altered its inestimable perfection.
"I don't understand," said Agaric.
"It is easy enough to understand. You see the consequences of your
plot. Although a multitude of laws are directed against me I have
managed to elude the greater number of them. Some, however, have
struck me. These vindictive men have closed my laboratories and my
shops, and confiscated my bottles, my stills, and my retorts. They
have put seals on my doors and now I am compelled to go in through the
window. I am barely able to extract in secret from time to time the
juice of a few plants and that with an apparatus which the humblest
labourer would despise."
"You suffer from the persecution," said Agaric. "It strikes us all."
The monk of Conils passed his hand over his afflicted brow:
"I told you so, Brother Agaric; I told you that your enterprise
would turn against ourselves."
"Our defeat is only momentary," replied Agaric eagerly. "It is due
to purely accidental causes; it results from mere contingencies.
Chatillon was a fool; he has drowned himself in his own ineptitude.
Listen to me, Brother Cornemuse. We have not a moment to lose. We must
free the Penguin people, we must deliver them from their tyrants, save
them from themselves, restore the Dragon's crest, re-establish the
ancient State, the good State, for the honour of religion and the
exaltation of the Catholic faith. Chatillon was a bad instrument; he
broke in our hands. Let us take a better instrument to replace him.
I have the man who will destroy this impious democracy. He is a
civil official; his name is Gomoru. The Penguins worship him. He has
already betrayed his party for a plate of rice. There's the man we
want!"
At the beginning of this speech the monk of Conils had climbed
into his window and pulled up the ladder.
"I foresee," answered he, with his nose through the sash, "that
you will not stop until you have us all expelled from this pleasant,
agreeable, and sweet land of Penguinia. Good night; God keep you!"
Agaric, standing before the wall, entreated his dearest brother to
listen to him for a moment:
"Understand your own interest better, Cornemuse! Penguinia is
ours. What do we need to conquer it? Just one effort more... one
more little sacrifice of money and..."
But without listening further, the monk of Conils drew in his head
and closed his window.
Book 6 - Modern Times - The Affair of the Eighty Thousand Tursses of Hay
Zeu pater alla su rusai up eeros uias Achaion,
poieson daithren, dos dopthalmoi sin idesthai
en de phaiei olesson epei nu toi euaden outos.
(Iliad xvii. 645 et seq.)
Chapter 1 - 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 is 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
Boscenos heard the troopers as they were sweeping out the yard,
singing:
Boscenos est un gros cochon;
On en va faire des andouilles,
Des saucisses et du jambon
Pour le reveillon 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 Boscenos 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 Boscenos, 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."
Chapter 2 - 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 the 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
last 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 mosquitos, 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.
Some of them, however, came under the eyes of the public. But
Pyrot's protests moved nobody because his confessions had been
published.
Chapter 3 - 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 interest 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; 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
masterpiece: 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 land proprietors of ancient Penguinia, the heir of the Maubecs
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.
Chapter 4 - 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, dumfounded with surprise and
indignation, threw at him threatening looks which he received with the
calm that comes from courage and shortsightedness. 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
vessel 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 debris 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. Mael. 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. Feeling 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 there
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 Army 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.
Chapter 5 - 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 bright 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 hanging 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.
Chapter 6 - 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 Boscenos thought it urgent to
curb their audacity and repress their insolence. For this purpose he
joined with Count Clena, 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 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 Boscenos 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 cafe's 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 Boscenos was
leaving a fashionable cafe 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 Boscenos 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 the insidious resemblance,
they believed that the patriots were killing Colomban. They fell on
Prince des Boscenos 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 under ignominiously to the station, where Bazile, under the
name of Colomban, was trampled on by an innumerable quantity of thick,
hob-nailed shoes.
Chapter 7 - 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 his 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. Mael, to take into consideration the conduct
they ought to adopt in the present circumstances and in future
eventualities.
Comrade Phoenix 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 has 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 Phoenix 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:
"Phoenix 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 Larrivee afterwards spoke.
"I am not of my friend, Phoenix'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 Socialist 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. But these opinions, in the final analysis, were reduced to
two, that of Sapor and Lapersonne who advised abstention, and that
of Phoenix and Larrivee, 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 inexpressible- 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-class and high-finance tone about it that did
not please them much.
Chapter 8 - The Colomban Trial
When the Colomban trial began, the Pyrotists were not many more than
thirty thousand, but they were everywhere 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 weight."
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
attache 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's 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 Boscenos 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 Adele,'
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, meadow-grass, 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 consigning 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 Boscenos, Count Clena, Viscount Olive, and M. de La
Trumelle; here crowded the Reverend Father Agaric and the teachers
of St. Mael 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
Phoenix, Larrivee, 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 as 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 Boscenos, Count Clena, 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 Varambile, with the help of
the seven hundred disguised Pyrotists, sent Prince des Boscenos 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 hundred 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, through the sleeping city to his house, where sleep soon
allowed them to forget mankind.
Chapter 9 - Father Douillard
In their minute 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 against 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 Clena, the Duke d'Ampoule,
and Prince des Boscenos. Father Agaric was in the apse with the
teachers and pupils of St. Mael 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 Clena, Viscountess Olive, and Princess des
Boscenos, 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 ecclesiae penguicanae! 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 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 Boscenos, 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 cafes 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 of 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 depth 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.
Chapter 10 - 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 thence-forward 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 Trinite 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 Panther, 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 pleased with mystery, and likes to remain
veiled. Treat 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 Trinite demanded the documents belonging to the Pyrot affair.
Peniche, 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 Trinite 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, Peniche, 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 Trinite 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 have 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 stories 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 Phoenix, 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 the Seals, it fell to Chaussepied to
examine it and discover 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 to be submitted to him proofs of certain guilt and of
obvious criminality. After lengthened difficulties and repeated
refusals on the part of General van 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.
Chapter 11 - 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, squashed 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. Orberosian 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 Phoenix 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 Larrivee 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
employe's 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 steam-engine, 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 hid 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 characters. 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 your 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!"
Book 7 - Modern Times - Madame Ceres
"Only extreme things are tolerable."
Count Robert de Montesquiou.
Chapter 1 - Madame Clarence's Drawing-Room
Madame Clarence the widow of an exalted functionary of the Republic,
loved to entertain. Every Thursday she collected together some friends
of modest condition who took pleasure in conversation. The ladies
who went to see her, very different in age and rank, were all
without money and had all suffered much. There was a duchess who
looked like a fortune-teller and a fortune-teller who looked like a
duchess. Madame Clarence was pretty enough to maintain some old
liaisons but not to form new ones, and she generally inspired a
quiet esteem. She had a very pretty daughter, who, since she had no
dower, caused some alarm among the male guests; for the Penguins
were as much afraid of portionless girls as they were of the devil
himself. Eveline Clarence, noticing their reserve and perceiving its
cause, used to hand them their tea with an air of disdain. Moreover,
she seldom appeared at the parties and talked only to the ladies or
the very young people. Her discreet and retiring presence put no
restraint upon the conversation, since those who took part in it
thought either that as she was a young girl she would not understand
it, or that, being twenty-five years old, she might listen to
everything.
One Thursday therefore, in Madame Clarence's drawing-room, the
conversation turned upon love. The ladies spoke of it with pride,
delicacy? and mystery, the men with discretion and fatuity; everyone
took an interest in the conversation, for each one was interested in
what he or she said. A great deal of wit flowed; brilliant apostrophes
were launched forth and keen repartees were returned. But when
Professor Haddock began to speak he overwhelmed everybody.
"It is the same with our ideas on love as with our ideas on
everything else," said he, "they rest upon anterior habits whose
very memory has been effaced. In morals, the limitations that have
lost their grounds for existing, the most useless obligations, the
cruelest and most injurious restraints, are because of their
profound antiquity and the mystery of their origin, the least disputed
and the least disputable as well as the most respected, and they are
those that cannot be violated without incurring the most severe blame.
All morality relative to the relations of the sexes is founded on this
principle: that a woman once obtained belongs to the man, that she
is his property like his horse or his weapons. And this having
ceased to be true, absurdities result from it, such as the marriage or
contract of sale of a woman to a man, with clauses restricting the
right of ownership introduced as a consequence of the gradual
diminution of the claims of the possessor.
"The obligation imposed on a girl that she should bring her
virginity to her husband comes from the times when girls were
married immediately they were of a marriageable age. It is
ridiculous that a girl who marries at twenty-five or thirty should
be subject to that obligation. You will, perhaps, say that it is a
present with which her husband, if she gets one at last, will be
gratified; but every moment we see men wooing married women and
showing themselves perfectly satisfied to take them as they find them.
"Still, even in our own day, the duty of girls is determined in
religious morality by the old belief that God, the most powerful of
warriors, is polygamous, that he has reserved all maidens for himself,
and that men can only take those whom he has left. This belief,
although traces of it exist in several metaphors of mysticism, is
abandoned to-day by most civilised peoples. However, it still
dominates the education of girls not only among our believers, but
even among our free-thinkers, who, as a rule, think freely for the
reason that they do not think at all.
"Discretion means ability to separate and discern. We say that a
girl is discreet when she knows nothing at all. We cultivate her
ignorance. In spite of all our care the most discreet know
something, for we cannot conceal from them their own nature and
their own sensations. But they know badly, they know in a wrong way.
That is all we obtain by our careful education..."
"Sir," suddenly said Joseph Boutourle, the High Treasurer of Alca,
"believe me, there are innocent girls, perfectly innocent girls, and
it is a great pity. I have known three. They married, and the result
was tragical."
"I have noticed," Professor Haddock went on, "that Europeans in
general and Penguins in particular occupy themselves, after sport
and motoring, with nothing so much as with love. It is giving a
great deal of importance to a matter that has very little weight."
"Then, Professor," exclaimed Madame Cremeur in a choking voice,
"when a woman has completely surrendered herself to you, you think
it is a matter of no importance?"
"No, Madam; it can have its importance," answered Professor Haddock,
"but it is necessary to examine if when she surrenders herself to us
she offers us a delicious fruit-garden or a plot of thistles and
dandelions. And then, do we not misuse words? In love, a woman lends
herself rather than gives herself. Look at the pretty Madame
Pensee..."
"She is my mother," said a tall, fair young man.
"Sir, I have the greatest respect for her," replied Professor
Haddock; "do not be afraid that I intend to say anything in the
least offensive about her. But allow me to tell you that, as a rule,
the opinions of sons about their mothers are not to be relied on. They
do not bear enough in mind that a mother is a mother only because
she loved, and that she can still love. That, however, is the case,
and it would be deplorable were it otherwise. I have noticed, on the
contrary, that daughters do not deceive themselves about their
mothers' faculty for loving or about the use they make of it; they are
rivals; they have their eyes upon them."
The insupportable Professor spoke a great deal longer, adding
indecorum to awkwardness, and impertinence to incivility, accumulating
incongruities, despising what is respectable, respecting what is
despicable; but no one listened to him further.
During this time in a room that was simple without grace, a room sad
for the want of love, a room which, like all young girls' rooms, had
something of the cold atmosphere of a place of waiting about it,
Eveline Clarence turned over the pages of club annuals and
prospectuses of charities in order to obtain from them some
acquaintance with society. Being convinced that her mother, shut up in
her own intellectual but poor world, could neither bring her out nor
push her into prominence, she decided that she herself would seek
the best means of winning a husband. At once calm and obstinate,
without dreams or illusions, and regarding marriage as but a ticket of
admission or a passport, she kept before her mind a clear notion of
the hazards, difficulties, and chances of her enterprise. She had
the art of pleasing and a coldness of temperament that enabled her
to turn it to its fullest advantage. Her weakness lay in the fact that
she was dazzled by anything that had an aristocratic air.
When she was alone with her mother she said: "Mamma, we will go
to-morrow to Father Douillard's retreat."
Chapter 2 - The Charity of St. Orberosia
Every Friday evening at nine o'clock the choicest of Alcan society
assembled in the aristocratic church of St. Mael for the Reverend
Father Douillard's retreat. Prince and Princess des Boscenos, Viscount
and Viscounttess Olive, M. and Madame Bigourd, Monsieur and Madame
de La Trumelle were never absent. The flower of the aristocracy
might be seen there, and fair Jewish baronesses also adorned it by
their presence, for the Jewish baronesses of Alca were Christians.
This retreat, like all religious retreats, had for its object to
procure for those living in the world opportunities for recollection
so that they might think of their eternal salvation. It was also
intended to draw down upon so many noble and illustrious families
the benediction of St. Orberosia, who loves the Penguins. The Reverend
Father Douillard strove for the completion of his task with a truly
apostolical zeal. He hoped to restore the prerogatives of St.
Orberosia as the patron saint of Penguinia and to dedicate to her a
monumental church on one of the hills that dominate the city. His
efforts had been crowned with great success, and for the accomplishing
of this national enterprise he had already united more than a
hundred thousand adherents and collected more than twenty millions
of francs.
It was in the choir of St. Mael's that St. Orberosia's new shrine,
shining with gold, sparkling with precious stones, and surrounded by
tapers and flowers, had been erected.
The following account may be read in the "History of the Miracles of
the Patron Saint of Alca" by the Abbe Plantain:
"The ancient shrine had been melted down during the Terror and the
precious relics of the saint thrown into a fire that had been lit on
the Place de Greve; but a poor woman of great piety, named Rouquin,
went by night at the peril of her life to gather up the calcined bones
and the ashes of the blessed saint. She preserved them in a jam-pot,
and when religion was again restored, brought them to the venerable
Cure of St. Mael's. The woman ended her days piously as a vendor of
tapers and custodian of seats in the saint's chapel."
It is certain that in the time of Father Douillard, although faith
was declining, the cult of St. Orberosia, which for three hundred
years had fallen under the criticism of Canon Princeteau and the
silence of the Doctors of the Church, recovered, and was surrounded
with more pomp, more splendour, and more fervour than ever. The
theologians did not now subtract a single iota from the legend. They
held as certainly established all facts related by Abbot
Simplicissimus, and in particular declared, on the testimony of that
monk, that the devil, assuming a monk's form had carried off the saint
to a cave and had there striven with her until she overcame him.
Neither places nor dates caused them any embarrassment. They paid no
heed to exegesis and took good care not to grant as much to science as
Canon Princeteau had formerly conceded. They knew too well whither
that would lead.
The church shone with lights and flowers. An operatic tenor sang the
famous canticle of St. Orberosia
Virgin of Paradise
Come, come in the dusky night
And on us shed
Thy beams of light.
Mademoiselle Clarence sat beside her mother and in front of Viscount
Clena. She remained kneeling during a considerable time, for the
attitude of prayer is natural to discreet virgins and it shows off
their figures.
The Reverend Father Douillard ascended the pulpit. He was a powerful
orator and could, at once melt, surprise, and rouse his hearers. Women
complained only that he fulminated against vice with excessive
harshness and in crude terms that made them blush. But they liked
him none the less for it.
He treated in his sermon of the seventh trial of St. Orberosia,
who was tempted by the dragon which she went forth to combat. But
she did not yield, and she disarmed the monster.
The orator demonstrated without difficulty that we, also, by the aid
of St. Orberosia, and strong in the virtue which she inspires, can
in our turn overthrow the dragons that dart upon us and are waiting to
devour us, the dragon of doubt, the dragon of impiety, the dragon of
forgetfulness of religious duties. He proved that the charity of St.
Orberosia was a work of social regeneration, and he concluded by an
ardent appeal to the faithful "to become instruments of the Divine
mercy, eager upholders and supporters of the charity of St. Orberosia,
and to furnish it with all the means which it required to take its
flight and bear its salutary fruits."
After the ceremony, the Reverend Father Douillard remained in the
sacristy at the disposal of those of the faithful who desired
information concerning the charity, or who wished to bring their
contributions. Mademoiselle Clarence wished to speak to Father
Douillard, so did Viscount Clena. The crowd was large, and a queue was
formed. By chance Viscount Clena and Mademoiselle Clarence were side
by side and possibly they were squeezed a little closely to each other
by the crowd. Eveline had noticed this fashionable young man, who
was almost as well known as his father in the world of sport. Clena
had noticed her, and, as he thought her pretty, he bowed to her,
then apologized and pretended to believe that he had been introduced
to the ladies, but could not remember where. They pretended to believe
it also.
He presented himself the following week at Madame Clarence's,
thinking that her house was a bit fast- a thing not likely to
displease him- and when he saw Eveline again he felt he had not been
mistaken and that she was an extremely pretty girl.
Viscount Clena had the finest motor-car in Europe. For three
months he drove the Clarences every day over hills and plains, through
woods and valleys; they visited famous sites and went over
celebrated castles. He said to Eveline all that could be said and
did all that could be done to overcome her resistance. She did not
conceal from him that she loved him, that she would always love him,
and love no one but him. She remained grave and trembling by his side.
To his devouring passion she opposed the invincible defence of a
virtue conscious of its danger. At the end of three months, after
having gone uphill and down hill, turned sharp corners and
negotiated level crossings, and experienced innumerable break-downs,
he knew her as well as he knew the fly-wheel of his car, but not
much better. He employed surprises, adventures, sudden stoppages in
the depths of forests and before hotels, but he had advanced no
farther. He said to himself that it was absurd; then, taking her again
in his car he set off at fifty miles an hour quite prepared to upset
her in a ditch or to smash himself and her against a tree.
One day, having come to take her on some excursion, he found her
more charming than ever, and more provoking. He darted upon her as a
storm falls upon the reeds that border a lake. She bent with
adorable weakness beneath the breath of the storm and twenty times was
almost carried away by its strength, but twenty times she arose,
supple and bowing to the wind. After all these shocks one would have
said that a light breeze had barely touched her charming stem; she
smiled as if ready to be plucked by a bold hand. Then her unhappy
aggressor, desperate, enraged, and three parts mad, fled so as not
to kill her, mistook the door, went into the bedroom of Madame
Clarence, whom he found putting on her hat in front of a wardrobe,
seized her, flung her on the bed, and possessed her before she knew
what had happened.
The same day Eveline, who had been making inquiries, learned that
Viscount Clena had nothing but debts, lived on money given him by an
elderly lady, and promoted the sale of the latest models of a
motor-car manufacturer. They separated with common accord and
Eveline began again disdainfully to serve tea to her mother's guests.
Chapter 3 - Hippolyte Ceres
In Madame Clarence's drawing-room the conversation turned upon love,
and many charming things were said about it.
"Love is a sacrifice," sighed Madame Cremeur.
"I agree with you," replied M. Boutourle with animation.
But Professor Haddock soon displayed his fastidious insolence.
"It seems to me," said he, "that the Penguin ladies have made a
great fuss since, through St. Mael's agency, they became viviparous.
But there is nothing to be particularly proud of in that, for it is
a state they share in common with cows and pigs, and even with
orange and lemon trees, for the seeds of these plants germinate in the
pericarp."
"The self-importance which the Penguin ladies give themselves does
not go so far back as that," answered M. Boutourle. "It dates from the
day when the holy apostle gave them clothes. But this
self-importance was long kept in restraint, and displayed itself fully
only with increased luxury of dress and in a small section of society.
For go only two leagues from Alca into the country at harvest time,
and you will see whether women are over-precise or self-important."
On that day M. Hippolyte Ceres paid his first call. He was a
deputy of Alca, and one of the youngest members of the House. His
father was said to have kept a dram shop, but he himself was a
lawyer of robust physique, a good though prolix speaker, with a
self-important air and a reputation for ability.
"M. Ceres," said the mistress of the house, "your constituency is
one of the finest in Alca."
"And there are fresh improvements made in it every day, Madame."
"Unfortunately, it is impossible to take a stroll through it any
longer," said M. Boutourle.
"Why?" asked M. Ceres.
"On account of the motors, of course."
"Do not give them a bad name," answered the Deputy. "They are our
great national industry."
"I know. The Penguins of to-day make me think of the ancient
Egyptians. According to Clement of Alexandria, Taine tells us-
though he misquotes the text- the Egyptians worshipped the
crocodiles that devoured them. The Penguins to-day worship the
motors that crush them. Without a doubt the future belongs to the
metal beast. We are no more likely to go back to cabs than we are to
go back to the diligence. And the long martyrdom of the horse will
come to an end. The motor, which the frenzied cupidity of
manufacturers hurls like a juggernaut's car upon the bewildered people
and of which the idle and fashionable make a foolish though fatal
elegance, will soon begin to perform its true function, and putting
its strength at the service of the entire people, will behave like a
docile, toiling monster. But in order that the motor may cease to be
injurious and become beneficent we must build roads suited to its
speed, roads which it cannot tear up with its ferocious tyres, and
from which it will send no clouds of poisonous dust into human
lungs. We ought not to allow slower vehicles or mere animals to go
upon those roads, and we should establish garages upon them and
foot-bridges over them, and so create order and harmony among the
means of communication of the future. That is the wish of every good
citizen."
Madame Clarence led the conversation back to the improvements in
M. Ceres' constituency. M. Ceres showed his enthusiasm for
demolitions, tunnelings, constructions, reconstructions, and all other
fruitful operations.
"We build to-day in an admirable style," said he; "everywhere
majestic avenues are being reared. Was ever anything as fine as our
arcaded bridges and our domed hotels!"
"You are forgetting that big palace surmounted by an immense
melon-shaped dome," grumbled M. Daniset, an old art amateur, in a
voice of restrained rage. "I am amazed at the degree of ugliness which
a modern city can attain. Alca is becoming Americanised. Everywhere we
are destroying all that is free, unexpected, measured, restrained,
human, or traditional among the things that are left us. Everywhere we
are destroying that charming object, a piece of an old wall that bears
up the branches of a tree. Everywhere we are suppressing some fragment
of light and air, some fragment of nature, some fragment of the
associations that still remain with us, some fragment of our
fathers, some fragment of ourselves. And we are putting up
frightful, enormous, infamous houses, surmounted in Viennese style
by ridiculous domes, or fashioned after the models of the 'new art'
without mouldings, or having profiles with sinister corbels and
burlesque pinnacles, and such monsters as these shamelessly peer
over the surrounding buildings. We see bulbous protuberances stuck
on the fronts of buildings and we are told they are 'new art' motives.
I have seen the 'new art' in other countries, but it is not so ugly as
with us; it has fancy and it has simplicity. It is only in our own
country that by a sad privilege we may behold the newest and most
diverse styles of architectural ugliness. What an enviable privilege!"
"Are you not afraid," asked M. Ceres severely, "are you not afraid
that these bitter criticisms tend to keep out of our capital the
foreigners who flow into it from all parts of the world and who
leave millions behind them?"
"You may set your mind at rest about that," answered M. Daniset.
"Foreigners do not come to admire our buildings; they come to see
our courtesans, our dressmakers, and our dancing saloons."
"We have one bad habit," sighed M. Ceres, "it is that we
calumniate ourselves."
Madame Clarence as an accomplished hostess thought it was time to
return to the subject of love and asked M. Jumel his opinion of M.
Leon Blum's recent book in which the author complained....
"...That an irrational custom," went on Professor Haddock, "prevents
respectable young ladies from making love, a thing they would enjoy
doing, whilst mercenary girls do it too much and without getting any
enjoyment out of it. It is indeed deplorable. But M. Leon Blum need
not fret too much. If the evil exists, as he says it does, in our
middle-class society, I can assure him that everywhere else he would
see a consoling spectacle. Among the people, the mass of the people
through town and country, girls do not deny themselves that pleasure."
"It is depravity!" said Madame Cremeur.
And she praised the innocence of young girls in terms full of
modesty and grace. It was charming to hear her.
Professor Haddock's views on the same subject were, on the contrary,
painful to listen to.
"Respectable young girls," said he, "are guarded and watched over.
Besides, men do not, as a rule, pursue them much, either through
probity, or from a fear of grave responsibilities, or because the
seduction of a young girl would not be to their credit. Even then we
do not know what really takes place, for the reason that what is
hidden is not seen. This is a condition necessary to the existence
of all society. The scruples of respectable young girls could be
more easily overcome than those of married women if the same
pressure were brought to bear on them, and for this there are two
reasons: they have more illusions, and their curiosity has not been
satisfied. Women, for the most part, have been so disappointed by
their husbands that they have not courage enough to begin again with
somebody else. I myself have been met by this obstacle several times
in my attempts at seduction."
At the moment when Professor Haddock ended his unpleasant remarks,
Mademoiselle Eveline Clarence entered the drawing-room and
listlessly handed about tea with that expression of boredom which gave
an oriental charm to her beauty.
"For my part," said Hippolyte Ceres, looking at her, "I declare
myself the young ladies' champion."
"He must be a fool," thought the girl.
Hippolyte Ceres, who had never set foot outside of his political
world of electors and elected, thought Madame Clarence's
drawing-room most select, its mistress exquisite, and her daughter
amazingly beautiful. His visits became frequent and he paid court to
both of them. Madame Clarence, who now liked attention, thought him
agreeable. Eveline showed no friendliness towards him, and treated him
with a hauteur and disdain that he took for aristocratic behaviour and
fashionable manners, and he thought all the more of her on that
account.
This busy man taxed his ingenuity to please them, and he sometimes
succeeded. He got them cards for fashionable functions and boxes at
the Opera. He furnished Mademoiselle Clarence with several
opportunities of appearing to great advantage and in particular at a
garden party which, although given by a Minister, was regarded as
really fashionable, and gained its first success in society circles
for the Republic.
At that party Eveline had been much noticed and had attracted the
special attention of a young diplomat called Roger Lambilly who,
imagining that she belonged to a rather fast set, invited her to his
bachelor's flat. She thought him handsome and believed him rich, and
she accepted. A little moved, almost disquieted, she very nearly
became the victim of her daring, and only avoided defeat by an
offensive measure audaciously carried out. This was the most foolish
escapade in her unmarried life.
Being now on friendly terms with Ministers and with the President,
Eveline continued to wear her aristocratic and pious affectations, and
these won for her the sympathy of the chief personages in the
anti-clerical and democratic Republic. M. Hippolyte Ceres, seeing that
she was succeeding and doing him credit, liked her still more. He even
went so far as to fall madly in love with her.
Henceforth, in spite of everything, she began to observe him with
interest, being curious to see if his passion would increase. He
appeared to her without elegance or grace, and not well bred, but
active, clear-sighted, full of resource, and not too great a bore. She
still made fun of him, but he had now won her interest.
One day she wished to test him. It was during the elections, when
members of Parliament were, as the phrase runs, requesting a renewal
of their mandates. He had an opponent, who, though not dangerous at
first and not much of an orator, was rich and was reported to be
gaining votes every day. Hippolyte Ceres, banishing both dull security
and foolish alarm from his mind, redoubled his care. His chief
method of action was by public meetings at which he spoke vehemently
against the rival candidate. His committee held huge meetings on
Saturday evenings and at three o'clock on Sunday afternoons. One
Sunday, as he called on the Clarences, he found Eveline alone in the
drawing-room. He had been chatting for about twenty or twenty-five
minutes, when, taking out his watch, he saw that it was a quarter to
three. The young girl showed herself amiable, engaging, attractive,
and full of promises. Ceres was fascinated, but he stood up to go.
"Stay a little longer," said she in a pressing and agreeable voice
which made him promptly sit down again.
She was full of interest, of abandon, curiosity, and weakness. He
blushed, turned pale, and again got up.
Then, in order to keep him still longer, she looked at him out of
two grey and melting eyes, and though her bosom was heaving, she did
not say another word. He fell at her feet in distraction, but once
more looking at his watch, he jumped up with a terrible oath.
"D-! a quarter to four! I must be off."
And immediately he rushed down the stairs.
From that time onwards she had a certain amount of esteem for him.
Chapter 4 - A Politician's Marriage
She was not quite in love with him, but she wished him to be in love
with her. She was, moreover, very reserved with him, and that not
solely from any want of inclination to be otherwise, since in
affairs of love some things are due to indifference, to inattention,
to a woman's instinct, to traditional custom and feeling, to a
desire to try one's power, and to satisfaction at seeing its
results. The reason of her prudence was that she knew him to be very
much infatuated and capable of taking advantage of any familiarities
she allowed as well as of reproaching her coarsely afterwards if she
discontinued them.
As he was a professed anti-clerical and free-thinker, she thought it
a good plan to affect an appearance of piety in his presence and to be
seen with huge prayer-books bound in red morocco, such as Queen
Marie Leczinska's or the Dauphiness Marie Josephine's "The Last Two
Weeks of Lent." She lost no opportunity either, of showing him the
subscriptions that she collected for the endowment of the national
cult of St. Orberosia. Eveline did not act in this way because she
wished to tease him. Nor did it spring from a young girl's archness,
or a spirit of constraint, or even from snobbishness, though there was
more than a suspicion of this latter in her behaviour. It was but
her way of asserting herself, of stamping herself with a definite
character, of increasing her value. To rouse the Deputy's courage
she wrapped herself up in religion, just as Brunhild surrounded
herself with flames so as to attract Sigard. Her audacity was
successful. He thought her still more beautiful thus. Clericalism
was in his eyes a sign of good form.
Ceres was re-elected by an enormous majority and returned to a House
which showed itself more inclined to the Left, more advanced, and,
as it seemed, more eager for reform than its predecessor. Perceiving
at once that so much zeal was but intended to hide a fear of change,
and a sincere desire to do nothing, he determined to adopt a policy
that would satisfy these aspirations. At the beginning of the
session he made a great speech, cleverly thought out and well
arranged, dealing with the idea that all reform ought to be put off
for a long time. He showed himself heated, even fervid; holding the
principle that an orator should recommend moderation with extreme
vehemence. He was applauded by the entire assembly. The Clarences
listened to him from the President's box and Eveline trembled in spite
of herself at the solemn sound of the applause. On the same bench
the fair Madame Pensee shivered at the intonations of his virile
voice.
As soon as he descended from the tribune, Ceres, even while the
audience were still clapping, went without a moment's delay to
salute the Clarences in their box. Eveline saw in him the beauty of
success, and as he leaned towards the ladies, wiping his neck with his
handkerchief and receiving their congratulations with an air of
modesty though not without a tinge of self-conceit, the young girl
glanced towards Madame Pensee and saw her, palpitating and breathless,
drinking in the hero's applause with her head thrown backwards. It
seemed as if she were on the point of fainting. Eveline immediately
smiled tenderly on M. Ceres.
The Alcan deputy's speech had a great vogue. In political
"spheres" it was regarded as extremely able. "We have at last heard an
honest pronouncement," said the chief Moderate journal. "It is a
regular programme!" they said in the House. It was agreed that he
was a man of immense talent.
Hippolyte Ceres had now established himself as leader of the
radicals, socialists, and anti-clericals, and they appointed him
President of their group, which was then the most considerable in
the House. He thus found himself marked out for office in the next
ministerial combination.
After a long hesitation Eveline Clarence accepted the idea of
marrying M. Hippolyte Ceres. The great man was a little common for her
taste. Nothing had yet proved that he would one day reach the point
where politics bring in large sums of money. But she was entering
her twenty-seventh year and knew enough of life to see that she must
not be too fastidious or show herself too difficult to please.
Hippolyte Ceres was celebrated; Hippolyte Ceres was happy. He was no
longer recognisable; the elegance of his clothes and deportment had
increased tremendously. He wore an undue number of white gloves. Now
that he was too much of a society man, Eveline began to doubt if it
was not worse than being too little of one. Madame Clarence regarded
the engagement with favour. She was reassured concerning her
daughter's future and pleased to have flowers given her every Thursday
for her drawing-room.
The celebration of the marriage raised some difficulties. Eveline
was pious and wished to receive the benediction of the Church.
Hippolyte Ceres, tolerant but a free-thinker, wanted only a civil
marriage. There were many discussions and even some violent scenes
upon the subject. The last took place in the young girl's room at
the moment when the invitations were being written. Eveline declared
that if she did not go to church she would not believe herself
married. She spoke of breaking off the engagement, and of going abroad
with her mother, or of retiring into a convent. Then she became
tender, weak, suppliant. She sighed, and everything in her virginal
chamber sighed in chorus, the holy-water font, the palm-branch above
her white bed, the books of devotion on their little shelves, and
the blue and white statuette of St. Orberosia chaining the dragon of
Cappadocia, that stood upon the marble mantelpiece. Hippolyte Ceres
was moved, softened, melted.
Beautiful in her grief, her eyes shining with tears, her wrists girt
by a rosary of lapis lazuli and, so to speak, chained by her faith,
she suddenly flung herself at Hippolyte's feet, and dishevelled,
almost dying, she embraced his knees.
He nearly yielded.
"A religious marriage," he muttered, "a marriage in church, I
could make my constituents stand that, but my committee would not
swallow the matter so easily.... Still I'll explain it to them...
toleration, social necessities.... They all send their daughters to
Sunday school.... But as for office, my dear I am afraid we are
going to drown all hope of that in your holy water."
At these words she stood up grave, generous, resigned, conquered
also in her turn.
"My dear, I insist no longer."
"Then we won't have a religious marriage. It will be better, much
better not."
"Very well, but be guided by me. I am going to try and arrange
everything both to your satisfaction and mine."
She sought the Reverend Father Douillard and explained the
situation. He showed himself even more accommodating and yielding than
she had hoped.
"Your husband is an intelligent man, a man of order and reason; he
will come over to us. You will sanctify him. It is not in vain that
God has granted him the blessing of a Christian wife. The Church needs
no pomp and ceremonial display for her benedictions. Now that she is
persecuted, the shadow of the crypts and the recesses of the catacombs
are in better accord with her festivals. Mademoiselle, when you have
performed the civil formalities come here to my private chapel in
walking costume with M. Ceres. I will marry you, and I will observe
the most absolute discretion. I will obtain the necessary
dispensations from the Archbishop as well as all facilities
regarding the banns, confession-tickets, etc."
Hippolyte, although he thought the combination a little dangerous,
agreed to it, a good deal flattered at bottom.
"I will go in a short coat," he said.
He went in a frock coat with white gloves and varnished shoes, and
he genuflected.
"Politeness demands..."
Chapter 5 - The Visire Cabinet
The Ceres household was established with modest decency in a
pretty flat situated in a new building. Ceres loved his wife in a calm
and tranquil fashion. He was often kept late from home by the
Commission on the Budget and he worked more than three nights a week
at a report on the postal finances of which he hoped to make a
masterpiece. Eveline thought she could twist him round her finger, and
this did not displease him. The bad side of their situation was that
they had not much money; in truth they had very little. The servants
of the Republic do not grow rich in her service as easily as people
think. Since the sovereign is no longer there to distribute favours,
each of them takes what he can, and his depredations, limited by the
depredations of all the others, are reduced to modest proportions.
Hence that austerity of morals that is noticed in democratic
leaders. They can only grow rich during periods of great business
activity and then they find themselves exposed to the envy of their
less favoured colleagues. Hippolyte Ceres had for a long time foreseen
such a period. He was one of those who had made preparations for its
arrival. Whilst waiting for it he endured his poverty with dignity,
and Eveline shared that poverty without suffering as much as one might
have thought. She was in close intimacy with the Reverend Father
Douillard and frequented the chapel of St. Orberosia, where she met
with serious society and people in a position to render her useful
services. She knew how to choose among them and gave her confidence to
none but those who deserved it. She had gained experience since her
motor excursions with Viscount Clena, and above all she had now
acquired the value of a married woman.
The deputy was at first uneasy about these pious practices, which
were ridiculed by the demagogic newspapers, but he was soon reassured,
for he saw all around him democratic leaders joyfully becoming
reconciled to the aristocracy and the Church.
They found that they had reached one of those periods (which often
recur) when advance had been carried a little too far. Hippolyte Ceres
gave a moderate support to this view. His policy was not a policy of
persecution but a policy of tolerance. He had laid its foundations
in his splendid speech on the preparations for reform. The Prime
Minister was looked upon as too advanced. He proposed schemes which
were admitted to be dangerous to capital, and the great financial
companies were opposed to him. Of course it followed that the
newspapers of all views supported the companies. Seeing the danger
increasing, the Cabinet abandoned its schemes, its programme, and
its opinions, but it was too late. A new administration was already
ready. An insidious question by Paul Visire which was immediately made
the subject of a resolution, and a fine speech by Hippolyte Ceres,
overthrew the Cabinet.
The President of the Republic entrusted the formation of a new
Cabinet to this same Paul Visire, who, though still very young, had
been a Minister twice. He was a charming man, spending much of his
time in the green-rooms of theatres, very artistic, a great society
man, of amazing ability and industry. Paul Visire formed a temporary
ministry intended to reassure public feeling which had taken alarm,
and Hippolyte Ceres was invited to hold office in it.
The new ministry, belonging to all the groups in the majority,
represented the most diverse and contrary opinions, but they were
all moderate and convinced conservatives. The Minister of Foreign
Affairs was retained from the former cabinet. He was a little dark man
called Crombile, who worked fourteen hours a day with the conviction
that he dealt with tremendous questions. He refused to see even his
own diplomatic agents, and was terribly uneasy, though he did not
disturb anybody else, for the want of foresight of peoples is infinite
and that of governments is just as great.
The office of Public Works was given to a Socialist, Fortune
Lapersonne. It was then a political custom and one of the most solemn,
most severe, most rigorous, and if I may dare say so, the most
terrible and cruel of all political customs, to include a member of
the Socialist party in each ministry intended to oppose Socialism,
so that the enemies of wealth and property should suffer the shame
of being attacked by one of their own party, and so that they could
not unite against these forces without turning to some one who might
possibly attack themselves in the future. Nothing but a profound
ignorance of the human heart would permit the belief that it was
difficult to find a Socialist to occupy these functions. Citizen
Fortune Lapersonne entered the Visire cabinet of his own free will and
without any constraint; and he found those who approved of his
action even among his former friends, so great was the fascination
that power exercised over the Penguins!
General Debonnaire went to the War Office. He was looked upon as one
of the ablest generals in the army, but he was ruled by a woman, the
Baroness Bildermann, who, though she had reached the age of
intrigue, was still beautiful. She was in the pay of a neighbouring
and hostile Power.
The new Minister of Marine, the worthy Admiral Vivier des Murenes,
was generally regarded as an excellent seaman. He displayed a piety
that would have seemed excessive in an anti-clerical minister, if
the Republic had not recognised that religion was of great maritime
utility. Acting on the instruction of his spiritual director, the
Reverend Father Douillard, the worthy Admiral had dedicated his
fleet to St. Orberosia and directed canticles in honour of the Alcan
Virgin to be composed by Christian bards. These replaced the
national hymn in the music played by the navy.
Prime Minister Visire declared himself to be distinctly anticlerical
but ready to respect all creeds; he asserted that he was a
sober-minded reformer. Paul Visire and his colleagues desired reforms,
and it was in order not to compromise reform that they proposed
none; for they were true politicians and knew that reforms are
compromised the moment they are proposed. The government was well
received, respectable people were reassured, and the funds rose.
The administration announced that four new ironclads would be put
into commission, that prosecutions would be undertaken against the
Socialists, and it formally declared its intention to have nothing
to do with any inquisitorial income-tax. The choice of Terrasson as
Minister of Finance was warmly approved by the press. Terrasson, an
old minister famous for his financial operations, gave warrant to
all the hopes of the financiers and shadowed forth a period of great
business activity. Soon those three udders of modern nations,
monopolies, bill discounting, and fraudulent speculation, were swollen
with the milk of wealth. Already whispers were heard of distant
enterprises, and of planting colonies, and the boldest put forward
in the newspapers the project of a military and financial protectorate
over Nigritia.
Without having yet shown what he was capable of, Hippolyte Ceres was
considered a man of weight. Business people thought highly of him.
He was congratulated on all sides for having broken with the extreme
sections, the dangerous men, and for having realised the
responsibilities of government.
Madame Ceres shone alone amid the Ministers' wives. Crombile
withered away in bachelordom. Paul Visire had married money in the
person of Mademoiselle Blampignon, an accomplished, estimable, and
simple lady who was always ill, and whose feeble health compelled
her to stay with her mother in the depths of a remote province. The
other Ministers' wives were not born to charm the sight, and people
smiled when they read that Madame Labillette had appeared at the
Presidency Ball wearing a headdress of birds of paradise. Madame
Vivier des Murenes, a woman of good family, was stout rather than
tall, had a face like a beef-steak and the voice of a
newspaper-seller. Madame Debonnaire, tall, dry, and florid, was
devoted to young officers. She ruined herself by her escapades and
crimes and only regained consideration by dint of ugliness and
insolence.
Madame Ceres was the charm of the Ministry and its title to
consideration. Young, beautiful, and irreproachable, she charmed alike
society and the masses by her combination of elegant costumes and
pleasant smiles.
Her receptions were thronged by the great Jewish financiers. She
gave the most fashionable garden parties in the Republic. The
newspapers described her dresses and the milliners did not ask her
to pay for them. She went to Mass; she protected the chapel of St.
Orberosia from the ill-will of the people; and she aroused in
aristocratic hearts the hope of a fresh Concordat.
With her golden hair, grey eyes, and supple and slight though
rounded figure, she was indeed pretty. She enjoyed an excellent
reputation and she was so adroit, and calm, so much mistress of
herself, that she would have preserved it intact even if she had
been discovered in the very act of ruining it.
The session ended with a victory for the cabinet which, amid the
almost unanimous applause of the House, defeated a proposal for an
inquisitorial tax, and with a triumph for Madame Ceres who gave
parties in honour of three kings who were at the moment passing
through Alca.
Chapter 6 - The Sofa of the Favourite
The Prime Minister invited Monsieur and Madame Ceres to spend a
couple of weeks of the holidays in a little villa that he had taken in
the mountains, and in which he lived alone. The deplorable health of
Madame Paul Visire did not allow her to accompany her husband, and she
remained with her relatives in one of the southern provinces.
The villa had belonged to the mistress of one of the last Kings of
Alca: the drawing-room retained its old furniture, and in it was still
to be found the Sofa of the Favourite. The country was charming; a
pretty blue stream, the Aiselle, flowed at the foot of the hill that
dominated the villa. Hippolyte Ceres loved fishing; when engaged at
this monotonous occupation he often formed his best Parliamentary
combinations, and his happiest oratorical inspirations. Trout
swarmed in the Aiselle; he fished it from morning till evening in a
boat that the Prime Minister readily placed at his disposal.
In the mean time, Eveline and Paul Visire sometimes took a turn
together in the garden, or had a little chat in the drawing-room.
Eveline, although she recognised the attraction that Visire had for
women, had hitherto displayed towards him only an intermittent and
superficial coquetry, without any deep intentions or settled design.
He was a connoisseur and saw that she was pretty. The House and the
Opera had deprived him of all leisure, but, in a little villa, the
grey eyes and rounded figure of Eveline took on a value in his eyes.
One day as Hippolyte Ceres was fishing in the Aiselle, he made her sit
beside him on the Sofa of the Favourite. Long rays of gold struck
Eveline like arrows from a hidden Cupid through the chinks of the
curtains which protected her from the heat and glare of a brilliant
day. Beneath her white muslin dress her rounded yet slender form was
outlined in its grace and youth. Her skin was cool and fresh, and
had the fragrance of freshly mown hay. Paul Visire behaved as the
occasion warranted, and for her part, she was opposed neither to the
games of chance or of society. She believed it would be nothing or a
trifle; she was mistaken.
"There was," says the famous German ballad, "on the sunny side of
the town square, beside a wall whereon the creeper grew, a pretty
little letter-box, as blue as the corn-flowers, smiling and tranquil.
"All day long there came to it, in their heavy shoes, small
shop-keepers, rich farmers, citizens, the tax-collector and the
policeman, and they put into it their business letters, their
invoices, their summonses, their notices to pay taxes, the judges'
returns, and orders for the recruits to assemble. It remained
smiling and tranquil.
"With joy, or in anxiety, there advanced towards it workmen and farm
servants, maids and nursemaids, accountants, clerks, and women
carrying their little children in their arms; they put into it
notifications of births, marriages, and deaths, letters between
engaged couples, between husbands and wives, from mothers to their
sons, and from sons to their mothers. It remained smiling and
tranquil.
"At twilight, young lads and young girls slipped furtively to it,
and put in love-letters, some moistened with tears that blotted the
ink, others with a little circle to show the place to kiss, all of
them very long. It remained smiling and tranquil.
"Rich merchants came themselves through excess of carefulness at the
hour of daybreak, and put into it registered letters, and letters with
five red seals, full of bank notes or cheques on the great financial
establishments of the Empire. It remained smiling and tranquil.
"But one day, Gaspar, whom it had never seen, and whom it did not
know from Adam, came to put in a letter, of which nothing is known but
that it was folded like a little hat. Immediately the pretty
letter-box fell into a swoon. Henceforth it remains no longer in its
place; it runs through streets, fields, and woods, girdled with ivy,
and crowned with roses. It keeps running up hill and down dale; the
country policeman surprises it sometimes, amidst the corn, in Gaspar's
arms kissing him upon the mouth."
Paul Visire had recovered all his customary non-chalance. Eveline
remained stretched on the Divan of the Favourite in an attitude of
delicious astonishment.
The Reverend Father Douillard, an excellent moral theologian, and
a man who in the decadence of the Church has preserved his principles,
was very right to teach, in conformity with the doctrine of the
Fathers, that while a woman commits a great sin by giving herself
for money, she commits a much greater one by giving herself for
nothing. For, in the first case she acts to support her life, and that
is sometimes not merely excuseable but pardonable, and even worthy
of the Divine Grace, for God forbids suicide, and is unwilling that
his creatures should destroy themselves. Besides, in giving herself in
order to live, she remains humble, and derives no pleasure from it,
a thing which diminishes the sin. But a woman who gives herself for
nothing sins with pleasure and exults in her fault. The pride and
delight with which she burdens her crime increase its load of moral
guilt.
Madame Hippolyte Ceres' example shows the profundity of these
moral truths. She perceived that she had senses. A second was enough
to bring about this discovery, to change her soul, to alter her
whole life. To have learned to know herself was at first a delight.
The guothi seauton of the ancient philosophy is not a precept the
moral fulfilment of which procures any pleasure, since one enjoys
little satisfaction from knowing one's soul. It is not the same with
the flesh, for in it sources of pleasure may be revealed to us.
Eveline immediately felt an obligation to her revealer equal to the
benefit she had received, and she imagined that he who had
discovered these heavenly depths was the sole possessor of the key
to them. Was this an error, and might she not be able to find others
who also had the golden key? It is difficult to decide; and
Professor Haddock, when the facts were divulged (which happened
without much delay as we shall see), treated the matter from an
experimental point of view, in a scientific review, and concluded that
the chances Madam C- would have of finding the exact equivalent of
M. V- were in the proportion of 305 to 975008. This is as much as to
say that she would never find it. Doubtless her instinct told her
the same, for she attached herself distractedly to him.
I have related these facts with all the circumstances which seemed
to me worthy of attracting the attention of meditative and philosophic
minds. The Sofa of the Favourite is worthy of the majesty of
history; on it were decided the destinies of a great people; nay, on
it was accomplished an act whose renown was to extend over the
neighbouring nations both friendly and hostile, and even over all
humanity. Too often events of this nature escape the superficial minds
and shallow spirits who inconsiderately assume the task of writing
history. Thus the secret springs of events remain hidden from us.
The fall of Empires and the transmission of dominions astonish us
and remain incomprehensible to us, because we have not discovered
the imperceptible point, or touched the secret spring which when put
in movement has destroyed and overthrown everything. The author of
this great history knows better than anyone else his faults and his
weaknesses, but he can do himself this justice- that he has always
kept the moderation, the seriousness, the austerity, which an
account of affairs of State demands, and that he has never departed
from the gravity which is suitable to a recital of human actions.
Chapter 7 - The First Consequences
When Eveline confided to Paul Visire that she had never
experienced anything similar, he did not believe her. He had had a
good deal to do with women and knew that they readily say these things
to men in order to make them more in love with them. Thus his
experience, as sometimes happens, made him disregard the truth.
Incredulous, but gratified all the same, he soon felt love and
something more for her. This state at first seemed favourable to his
intellectual faculties. Visire delivered in the chief town of his
constituency a speech full of grace, brilliant and happy, which was
considered to be a masterpiece.
The re-opening of Parliament was serene. A few isolated
jealousies, a few timid ambitions raised their heads in the House, and
that was all. A smile from the Prime Minister was enough to
dissipate these shadows. She and he saw each other twice a day, and
wrote to each other in the interval. He was accustomed to intimate
relationships, was adroit, and knew how to dissimulate; but Eveline
displayed a foolish imprudence: she made herself conspicuous with
him in drawing-rooms, at the theatre, in the House, and at the
Embassies; she wore her love upon her face, upon her whole person,
in her moist glances, in the languishing smile of her lips, in the
heaving of her breast, in all her heightened, agitated, and distracted
beauty. Soon the entire country knew of their intimacy. Foreign Courts
were informed of it. The President of the Republic and Eveline's
husband alone remained in ignorance. The President became acquainted
with it in the country, through a misplaced police report which
found its way, it is not known how, into his portmanteau.
Hippolyte Ceres, without being either very subtle, or very
perspicacious, noticed that there was something different in his home.
Eveline, who quite lately had interested herself in his affairs, and
shown, if not tenderness, at least affection, towards him, displayed
henceforth nothing but indifference and repulsion. She had always
had periods of absence, and made prolonged visits to the Charity of
St. Orberosia; now, she went out in the morning, remained out all day,
and sat down to dinner at nine o'clock in the evening with the face of
a somnambulist. Her husband thought it absurd; however, he might
perhaps have never known the reason for this; a profound ignorance
of women, a crass confidence in his own merit, and in his own fortune,
might perhaps have always hidden the truth from him, if the two lovers
had not, so to speak, compelled him to discover it.
When Paul Visire went to Eveline's house and found her alone, they
used to say, as they embraced each other; "Not here! not here!" and
immediately they affected an extreme reserve. That was their
invariable rule. Now, one day, Paul Visire went to the house of his
colleague Ceres, with whom he had an engagement. It was Eveline who
received him, the Minister of Commerce being delayed by a commission.
"Not here!" said the lovers, smiling.
They said it, mouth to mouth, embracing, and clasping each other.
They were still saying it, when Hippolyte Ceres entered the
drawing-room.
Paul Visire did not lose his presence of mind. He declared to Madame
Ceres that he would give up his attempt to take the dust out of her
eye. By this attitude he did not deceive the husband, but he was
able to leave the room with some dignity.
Hippolyte Ceres was thunderstruck. Eveline's conduct appeared
incomprehensible to him; he asked her what reasons she had for it.
"Why? why?" he kept repeating continually, "why?"
She denied everything, not to convince him, for he had seen them,
but from expediency and good taste, and to avoid painful explanations.
Hippolyte Ceres suffered all the tortures of jealousy. He admitted
it to himself, he kept saying inwardly, "I am a strong man; I am
clad in armour; but the wound is underneath, it is in my heart," and
turning towards his wife, who looked beautiful in her guilt, he
would say:
"It ought not to have been with him."
He was right- Eveline ought not to have loved in government circles.
He suffered so much that he took up his revolver, exclaiming: "I
will go and kill him!" But he remembered that a Minister of Commerce
cannot kill his own Prime Minister, and he put his revolver back
into his drawer.
The weeks passed without calming his sufferings. Each morning he
buckled his strong man's armour over his wound and sought in work
and fame the peace that fled from him. Every Sunday he inaugurated
busts, statues, fountains, artesian wells, hospitals, dispensaries,
railways, canals, public markets, drainage systems, triumphal
arches, and slaughter houses, and delivered moving speeches on each of
these occasions. His fervid activity devoured whole piles of
documents; he changed the colours of the postage stamps fourteen times
in one week. Nevertheless, he gave vent to outbursts of grief and rage
that drove him insane; for whole days his reason abandoned him. If
he had been in the employment of a private administration this would
have been noticed immediately, but it is much more difficult to
discover insanity or frenzy in the conduct of affairs of State. At
that moment the government employes were forming themselves into
associations and federations amid a ferment that was giving alarm both
to the Parliament and to public feeling. The postmen were especially
prominent in their enthusiasm for trade unions.
Hippolyte Ceres informed them in a circular that their action was
strictly legal. The following day he sent out a second circular
forbidding all associations of government employes as illegal. He
dismissed one hundred and eighty postmen, reinstated them, reprimanded
them, and awarded them gratuities. At Cabinet councils he was always
on the point of bursting forth. The presence of the Head of the
State scarcely restrained him within the limits of the decencies,
and as he did not dare to attack his rival he consoled himself by
heaping invectives upon General Debonnaire, the respected Minister
of War. The General did not hear them, for he was deaf and occupied
himself in composing verses for the Baroness Bildermann. Hippolyte
Ceres offered an indistinct opposition to everything the Prime
Minister proposed. In a word, he was a madman. One faculty alone
escaped the ruin of his intellect: he retained his Parliamentary
sense, his consciousness of the temper of majorities, his thorough
knowledge of groups, and his certainty of the direction in which
affairs were moving.
Chapter 8 - Further Consequences
The session ended calmly, and the Ministry saw no dangerous signs
upon the benches where the majority sat. It was visible, however, from
certain articles in the Moderate Journals, that the demands of the
Jewish and Christian financiers were increasing daily, that the
patriotism of the banks required a civilizing expedition to
Nigritia, and that the steel trusts, eager in the defence of our
coasts and colonies, were crying out for armoured cruisers and still
more armoured cruisers. Rumours of war began to be heard. Such rumours
sprang up every year as regularly as the trade winds; serious people
paid no heed to them and the government usually let them die away from
their own weakness unless they grew stronger and spread. For in that
case the country would be alarmed. The financiers only wanted colonial
wars and the people did not want any wars at all. It loved to see
its government proud and even insolent, but at the least suspicion
that a European war was brewing, its violent emotion would quickly
have reached the House. Paul Visire was not uneasy. The European
situation was in his view completely reassuring. He was only irritated
by the maniacal silence of his Minister of Foreign Affairs. That gnome
went to the Cabinet meetings with a portfolio bigger than himself
stuffed full of papers, said nothing, refused to answer all questions,
even those asked him by the respected President of the Republic,
and, exhausted by his obstinate labours, took a few moments' sleep
in his arm-chair in which nothing but the top of his little black head
was to be seen above the green tablecloth.
In the mean time Hippolyte Ceres became a strong man again. In
company with his colleague Lapersonne he formed numerous intimacies
with ladies of the theatre. They were both to be seen at night
entering fashionable restaurants in the company of ladies whom they
over-topped by their lofty stature and their new hats, and they were
soon reckoned amongst the most sympathetic frequenters of the
boulevards. Fortune' Lapersonne had his own wound beneath his
armour. His wife, a young milliner whom he carried off from a marquis,
had gone to live with a chauffeur. He loved her still, and could not
console himself for her loss, so that very often in the private room
of a restaurant, in the midst of a group of girls who laughed and
ate crayfish, the two ministers exchanged a look full of their
common sorrow and wiped away an unbidden tear.
Hippolytes Ceres, although wounded to the heart, did not allow
himself to be beaten. He swore that he would be avenged.
Madame Paul Visire, whose deplorable health forced her to live
with her relatives in a distant province, received an anonymous letter
specifying that M. Paul Visire, who had not a half-penny when he
married her, was spending her dowry on a married woman, E- C-, that he
gave this woman thirty-thousand-franc motor-cars, and pearl
necklaces costing twenty-five thousand francs, and that he was going
straight to dishonour and ruin. Madame Paul Visire read the letter,
fell into hysterics, and handed it to her father.
"I am going to box your husband's ears," said M. Blampignon; "he
is a blackguard who will land you in the workhouse unless we look out.
He may be Prime Minister, but he won't frighten me."
When he stepped off the train M. Blampignon presented himself at the
Ministry of the Interior, and was immediately received. He entered the
Prime Minister's room in a fury.
"I have something to say to you, sir!" And he waved the anonymous
letter.
Paul Visire welcomed him smiling.
"You are welcome, my dear father. I was going to write to you....
Yes, to tell you of your nomination to the rank of officer of the
Legion of Honour. I signed the patent this morning."
M. Blampignon thanked his son-in-law warmly and threw the
anonymous letter into the fire.
He returned to his provincial house and found his daughter
fretting and agitated.
"Well! I saw your husband. He is a delightful fellow. But then,
you don't understand how to deal with him."
About this time Hippolyte Ceres learned through a little
scandalous newspaper (it is always through the newspapers that
ministers are informed of the affairs of State) that the Prime
Minister dined every evening with Mademoiselle Lysiane of the Folies
Dramatiques, whose charm seemed to have made a great impression on
him. Thenceforth Ceres took a gloomy joy in watching his wife. She
came in every evening to dine or dress with an air of agreeable
fatigue and the serenity that comes from enjoyment.
Thinking that she knew nothing, he sent her anonymous
communications. She read them at the table before him and remained
still listless and smiling.
He then persuaded himself that she gave no heed to these vague
reports, and that in order to disturb her it would be necessary to
enable her to verify her lover's infidelity and treason for herself.
There were at the Ministry a number of trustworthy agents charged with
secret inquiries regarding the national defence. They were then
employed in watching the spies of a neighbouring and hostile Power who
had succeeded in entering the Postal and Telegraphic service. M. Ceres
ordered them to suspend their work for the present and to inquire
where, when, and how the Minister of the Interior saw Mademoiselle
Lysiane. The agents performed their missions faithfully and told the
minister that they had several times seen the Prime Minister with a
woman, but that she was not Mademoiselle Lysiane. Hippolyte Ceres
asked them nothing further. He was right; the loves of Paul Visire and
Lysiane were but an alibi invented by Paul Visire himself, with
Eveline's approval, for his fame was rather inconvenient to her, and
she sighed for secrecy and mystery.
They were not shadowed by the agents of the Ministry of Commerce
alone. They were also followed by those of the Prefect of Police,
and even by those of the Minister of the Interior, who disputed with
each other the honour of protecting their chief. Then there were the
emissaries of several royalist, imperialist, and clerical
organisations, those of eight or ten blackmailers, several amateur
detectives, a multitude of reporters, and a crowd of photographers,
who all made their appearance wherever these two took refuge in
their perambulating love affairs, at big hotels, small hotels, town
houses, country houses, private apartments, villas, museums,
palaces, hovels. They kept watch in the streets, from neighbouring
houses, trees, walls, stair-cases, landings, roofs, adjoining rooms,
and even chimneys. The Minister and his friend saw with alarm all
round their bed room, gimlets boring through doors and shutters, and
drills making holes in the walls. A photograph of Madame Ceres in
night attire buttoning her boots was the utmost that had been
obtained.
Paul Visire grew impatient and irritable, and often lost his good
humour and agreeableness. He came to the cabinet meetings in a rage
and he, too, poured invectives upon General Debonnaire- a brave man
under fire but a lax disciplinarian- and launched his sarcasms against
the venerable admiral Vivier des Murenes whose ships went to the
bottom without any apparent reason.
Fortune' Lapersonne listened open-eyed, and grumbled scoffingly
between his teeth:
"He is not satisfied with robbing Hippolyte Ceres of his wife, but
he must go and rob him of his catch-words too."
These storms were made known by the indiscretion of some ministers
and by the complaints of the two old warriors, who declared their
intention of flinging their portfolios at the beggar's head, but who
did nothing of the sort. These outbursts, far from injuring the
lucky Prime Minister, had an excellent effect on Parliament and public
opinion, who looked on them as signs of a keen solicitude for the
welfare of the national army and navy. The Prime Minister was
recipient of general approbation.
To the congratulations of the various groups and of notable
personages, he replied with simple firmness: "Those are my
principles!" and he had seven or eight Socialists put in prison.
The session ended, and Paul Visire, very exhausted, went to take the
waters. Hippolyte Ceres refused to leave his Ministry, where the trade
union of telephone girls was in tumultuous agitation. He opposed it
with an unheard of violence, for he had now become a woman-hater. On
Sundays he went into the suburbs to fish along with his colleague
Lapersonne, wearing the tall hat that never left him since he had
become a Minister. And both of them, forgetting the fish, complained
of the inconstancy of women and mingled their griefs.
Hippolyte still loved Eveline and he still suffered. However, hope
had slipped into his heart. She was now separated from her lover, and,
thinking to win her back, he directed all his efforts to that end.
He put forth all his skill, showed himself sincere, adaptable,
affectionate, devoted, even discreet; his heart taught him the
delicacies of feeling. He said charming and touching things to the
faithless one, and, to soften her, he told her all that he had
suffered.
Crossing the band of his trousers upon his stomach.
"See," said he, "how thin I have got."
He promised her everything he thought could gratify a woman, country
parties, hats, jewels.
Sometimes he thought she would take pity on him. She no longer
displayed an insolently happy countenance. Being separated from
Paul, her sadness had an air of gentleness. But the moment he made a
gesture to recover her she turned away fiercely and gloomily, girt
with her fault as if with a golden girdle.
He did not give up, making himself humble, suppliant, lamentable.
One day he went to Lapersonne and said to him with tears in his
eyes:
"Will you speak to her?"
Lapersonne excused himself, thinking that his intervention would
be useless, but he gave some advice to his friend.
"Make her think that you don't care about her, that you love
another, and she will come back to you."
Hippolyte, adopting this method, inserted in the newspapers that
he was always to be found in the company of Mademoiselle Guinaud of
the Opera. He came home late or did not come home at all, assumed in
Eveline's presence an appearance of inward joy impossible to restrain,
took out of his pocket, at dinner, a letter on scented paper which
he pretended to read with delight, and his lips seemed as in a dream
to kiss invisible lips. Nothing happened. Eveline did not even
notice the change. Insensible to all around her, she only came out
of her lethargy to ask for some louis from her husband, and if he
did not give them she threw him a look of contempt, ready to upbraid
him with the shame which she poured upon him in the sight of the whole
world. Since she had loved she spent a great deal on dress. She needed
money, and she had only her husband to secure it for her; she was so
far faithful to him.
He lost patience, became furious, and threatened her with his
revolver. He said one day before her to Madame Clarence:
"I congratulate you, Madame; you have brought up your daughter to be
a wanton hussy."
"Take me away, Mamma," exclaimed Eveline. "I will get a divorce!"
He loved her more ardently than ever. In his jealous rage,
suspecting her, not without probability, of sending and receiving
letters, he swore that he would intercept them, re-established a
censorship over the post, threw private correspondence into confusion,
delayed stock-exchange quotations, prevented assignations, brought out
bankruptcies, thwarted passions, and caused suicides. The
independent press gave utterance to the complaints of the public and
indignantly supported them. To justify these arbitrary measures, the
ministerial journals spoke darkly of plots and public dangers, and
promoted a belief in a monarchical conspiracy. The less
well-informed sheets gave more precise information, told of the
seizure of fifty thousand guns, and the landing of Prince Crucho.
Feeling grew throughout the country, and the republican organs
called for the immediate meeting of Parliament. Paul Visire returned
to Paris, summoned his colleagues, held an important Cabinet
Council, and proclaimed through his agencies that a plot had been
actually formed against the national representation, but that the
Prime Minister held the threads of it in his hand, and that a judicial
inquiry was about to be opened.
He immediately ordered the arrest of thirty Socialists, and whilst
the entire country was acclaiming him as its saviour, baffling the
watchfulness of his six hundred detectives, he secretly took Eveline
to a little house near the Northern railway station, where they
remained until night. After their departure, the maid of their
hotel, as she was putting their room in order, saw seven little
crosses traced by a hairpin on the wall at the head of the bed.
That is all that Hippolyte Ceres obtained as a reward of his
efforts.
Chapter 9 - The Final Consequences
Jealousy is a virtue of democracies which preserves them from
tyrants. Deputies began to envy the Prime Minister his golden key. For
a year his domination over the beauteous Madame Ceres had been known
to the whole universe. The provinces, whither news and fashions only
arrive after a complete revolution of the earth round the sun, were at
last informed of the illegitimate loves of the Cabinet. The
provinces preserve an austere morality; women are more virtuous
there than they are in the capital. Various reasons have been
alleged for this: Education, example, simplicity of life. Professor
Haddock asserts that this virtue of provincial ladies is solely due to
the fact that the heels of their shoes are low. "A woman," said he, in
a learned article in the "Anthropological Review," "a woman attracts a
civilized man in proportion as her feet make an angle with the ground.
If this angle is as much as thirty-five degrees, the attraction
becomes acute. For the position of the feet upon the ground determines
the whole carriage of the body, and it results that provincial
women, since they wear low heels, are not very attractive, and
preserve their virtue with ease." These conclusions were not generally
accepted. It was objected that under the influence of English and
American fashions, low heels had been introduced generally without
producing the results attributed to them by the learned Professor;
moreover, it was said that the difference he pretended to establish
between the morals of the metropolis and those of the provinces is
perhaps illusory, and that if it exists, it is apparently due to the
fact that great cities offer more advantages and facilities for love
than small towns provide. However that may be, the provinces began
to murmur against the Prime Minister, and to raise a scandal. This was
not yet a danger, but there was a possibility that it might become
one.
For the moment the peril was nowhere and yet everywhere. The
majority remained solid; but the leaders became stiff and exacting.
Perhaps Hippolyte Ceres would never have intentionally sacrificed
his interests to his vengeance. But thinking that he could henceforth,
without compromising his own fortune, secretly damage that of Paul
Visire, he devoted himself to the skilful and careful preparation of
difficulties and perils for the Head of the Government. Though far
from equalling his rival in talent, knowledge, and authority, he
greatly surpassed him in his skill as a lobbyist. The most acute
parliamentarians attributed the recent misfortunes of the majority
to his refusal to vote. At committees, by a calculated imprudence,
he favoured motions which he knew the Prime Minister could not accept.
One day his intentional awkwardness provoked a sudden and violent
conflict between the Minister of the Interior, and his departmental
Treasurer. Then Ceres became frightened and went no further. It
would have been dangerous for him to overthrow the ministry too
soon. His ingenious hatred found an issue by circuitous paths. Paul
Visire had a poor cousin of easy morals who bore his name. Ceres,
remembering this lady, Celine Visire, brought her into prominence,
arranged that she should become intimate with several foreigners,
and procured her engagements in the music-halls. One summer night,
on a stage in the Champs Elysees before a tumultuous crowd, she
performed risky dances to the sounds of wild music which was audible
in the gardens where the President of the Republic was entertaining
Royalty. The name of Visire, associated with these scandals, covered
the walls of the town, filled the newspapers, was repeated in the
cafe's and at balls, and blazed forth in letters of fire upon the
boulevards.
Nobody regarded the Prime Minister as responsible for the scandal of
his relatives, but a bad idea of his family came into existence, and
the influence of the statesman was diminished.
Almost immediately he was made to feel this in a pretty sharp
fashion. One day in the House, on a simple question, Labillette, the
Minister of Religion and Public Worship, who was suffering from an
attack of liver, and beginning to be exasperated by the intentions and
intrigues of the clergy, threatened to close the Chapel of St.
Orberosia, and spoke without respect of the National Virgin. The
entire Right rose up in indignation; the Left appeared to give but a
half-hearted support to the rash Minister. The leaders of the majority
did not care to attack a popular cult which brought thirty millions
a year into the country. The most moderate of the supporters of the
Right, M. Bigourd, made the question the subject of a resolution and
endangered the Cabinet. Luckily, Fortune Lapersonne, the Minister of
Public Works, always conscious of the obligations of power, was able
in the Prime Minister's absence to repair the awkwardness and
indecorum of his colleague, the Minister of Public Worship. He
ascended the tribune and bore witness to the respect in which the
Government held the heavenly Patron of the country, the consoler of so
many ills which science admitted its powerlessness to relieve.
When Paul Visire, snatched at last from Eveline's arms, appeared
in the House, the administration was saved; but the Prime Minister saw
himself compelled to grant important concessions to the upper classes.
He proposed in Parliament that six armoured cruisers should be laid
down, and thus won the sympathies of the Steel Trust; he gave new
assurances that the income tax would not be imposed, and he had
eighteen Socialists arrested.
He was soon to find himself opposed by more formidable obstacles.
The Chancellor of the neighbouring Empire in an ingenious and profound
speech upon the foreign relations of his sovereign, made a sly
allusion to the intrigues that inspired the policy of a great country.
This reference, which was received with smiles by the Imperial
Parliament, was certain to irritate a punctilious republic. It aroused
the national susceptibility, which directed its wrath against its
amorous Minister. The Deputies seized upon a frivolous pretext to show
their dissatisfaction. A ridiculous incident, the fact that the wife
of a sub-prefect had danced at the Moulin Rouge, forced the minister
to face a vote of censure, and he was within a few votes of being
defeated. According to general opinion, Paul Visire had never been
so weak, so vacillating, or so spiritless, as on that occasion.
He understood that he could only keep himself in office by a great
political stroke, and he decided on the expedition to Nigritia. This
measure was demanded by the great financial and industrial
corporations and was one which would bring concessions of immense
forests to the capitalists, a loan of eight millions to the banking
companies, as well as promotions and decorations to the naval and
military officers. A pretext presented itself; some insult needed to
be avenged, or some debt to be collected. Six battleships, fourteen
cruisers, and eighteen transports sailed up the mouth of the river
Hippopotamus. Six hundred canoes vainly opposed the landing of the
troops. Admiral Vivier des Murenes' cannons produced an appalling
effect upon the blacks, who replied to them with flights of arrows,
but in spite of their fanatical courage they were entirely defeated.
Popular enthusiasm was kindled by the newspapers which the
financiers subsidised, and burst into a blaze. Some Socialists alone
protested against this barbarous, doubtful, and dangerous
enterprise. They were at once arrested.
At that moment when the Minister, supported by wealth, and now
beloved by the poor, seemed unconquerable, the light of hate showed
Hippolyte Ceres alone the danger, and looking with a gloomy joy at his
rival, he muttered between his teeth, "He is wrecked, the brigand!"
Whilst the country intoxicated itself with glory, the neighbouring
Empire protested against the occupation of Nigritia by a European
power, and these protests following one another at shorter and shorter
intervals became more and more vehement. The newspapers of the
interested Republic concealed all causes for uneasiness; but Hippolyte
Ceres heard the growing menace, and determined at last to risk
everything, even the fate of the ministry, in order to ruin his enemy.
He got men whom he could trust to write and insert articles in several
of the official journals, which, seeming to express Paul Visire's
precise views, attributed warlike intentions to the Head of the
Government.
These articles roused a terrible echo abroad, and they alarmed the
public opinion of a nation which, while fond of soldiers, was not fond
of war. Questioned in the House on the foreign policy of his
government, Paul Visire made a re-assuring statement, and promised
to maintain a peace compatible with the dignity of a great nation. His
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Crombile, read a declaration which was
absolutely unintelligible, for the reason that it was couched in
diplomatic language. The Minister obtained a large majority.
But the rumours of war did not cease, and in order to avoid a new
and dangerous motion, the Prime Minister distributed eighty thousand
acres of forests in Nigritia among the Deputies, and had fourteen
Socialists arrested. Hippolyte Ceres went gloomily about the
lobbies, confiding to the Deputies of his group that he was
endeavouring to induce the Cabinet to adopt a pacific policy, and that
he still hoped to succeed. Day by day the sinister rumours grew in
volume, and penetrating amongst the public, spread uneasiness and
disquiet. Paul Visire himself began to take alarm. What disturbed
him most were the silence and absence of the Minister of Foreign
Affairs. Crombile no longer came to the meetings of the Cabinet.
Rising at five o'clock in the morning, he worked eighteen hours at his
desk, and at last fell exhausted into his waste-paper basket, from
whence the registrars removed him, together with the papers which they
were going to sell to the military attache's of the neighbouring
Empire.
General Debonnaire believed that a campaign was imminent, and
prepared for it. Far from fearing war, he prayed for it, and
confided his generous hopes to Baroness Bildermann, who informed the
neighbouring nation, which, acting on her information, proceeded to
a rapid mobilization.
The Minister of Finance unintentionally precipitated events. At
the moment, he was speculating for a fall, and in order to bring about
a panic on the Stock Exchange, he spread the rumour that war was now
inevitable. The neighbouring Empire, deceived by this action, and
expecting to see its territory invaded, mobilized its troops in all
haste. The terrified Chamber overthrew the Visire ministry by an
enormous majority (814 votes to 7, with 28 abstentions). It was too
late. The very day of this fall the neighbouring and hostile nation
recalled its ambassador and flung eight millions of men into Madame
Ceres country. War became universal, and the whole world was drowned
in a torrent of blood.
Chapter 10 - The Zenith of Penguin Civilization
Half a century after the events we have just related, Madame Ceres
died surrounded with respect and veneration, in the eighty-ninth
year of her age. She had long been the widow of a statesman whose name
she bore with dignity. Her modest and quiet funeral was followed by
the orphans of the parish and the sisters of the Sacred Compassion.
The deceased left all her property to the Charity of St. Orberosia.
"Alas!" sighed M. Monnoyer, a canon of St. Mael, as he received
the pious legacy, "it was high time for a generous benefactor to
come to the relief of our necessities. Rich and poor, learned and
ignorant are turning away from us. And when we try to lead back
these misguided souls, neither threats nor promises, neither
gentleness nor violence, nor anything else is now successful. The
Penguin clergy pine in desolation; our country priests, reduced to
following the humblest of trades, are shoeless, and compelled to
live upon such scraps as they can pick up. In our ruined churches
the rain of heaven falls upon the faithful, and during the holy
offices they can hear the noise of stones falling from the arches. The
tower of the cathedral is tottering and will soon fall. St.
Orberosia is forgotten by the Penguins, her devotion abandoned, and
her sanctuary deserted. On her shrine, bereft of its gold and precious
stones, the spider silently weaves her web."
Hearing these lamentations, Pierre Mille, who at the age of
ninety-eight years had lost nothing of his intellectual and moral
power, asked the canon if he did not think that St. Orberosia would
one day rise out of this wrongful oblivion.
"I hardly dare to hope so," sighed M. Monnoyer.
"It is a pity!" answered Pierre Mille. "Orberosia is a charming
figure and her legend is a beautiful one. I discovered the other day
by the merest chance, one of her most delightful miracles, the miracle
of Jean Violle. Would you like to hear it, M. Monnoyer?"
"I should be very pleased, M. Mille."
"Here it is, then, just as I found it in a fifteenth-century
manuscript:
"Cecile, the wife of Nicolas Gaubert, a jeweller on the
Pont-au-Change, after having led an honest and chaste life for many
years, and being now past her prime, became infatuated with Jean
Violle, the Countess de Maubec's page, who lived at the Hotel du
Paon on the Place de Greve. He was not yet eighteen years old, and his
face and figure were attractive. Not being able to conquer her
passion, Cecile resolved to satisfy it. She attracted the page to
her house, loaded him with caresses, supplied him with sweetmeats
and finally did as she wished with him.
"Now one day, as they were together in the jeweller's bed, Master
Nicolas came home sooner than he was expected. He found the bolt
drawn, and heard his wife on the other side of the door exclaiming,
'My heart! my angel! my love!' Then suspecting that she was shut up
with a gallant, he struck great blows upon the door and began to
shout: 'Slut! hussy! wanton! open so that I may cut off your nose
and ears!' In this peril, the jeweller's wife besought St. Orberosia,
and vowed her a large candle if she helped her and the little page,
who was dying of fear beside the bed, out of their difficulty.
"The saint heard the prayer. She immediately changed Jean Violle
into a girl. Seeing this, Cecile was completely reassured, and began
to call out to her husband: 'Oh! you brutal villain, you jealous
wretch! Speak gently if you want the door to be opened.' And
scolding in this way, she ran to the wardrobe and took out of it an
old hood, a pair of stays, and a long grey petticoat, in which she
hastily wrapped the transformed page. Then when this was done,
'Catherine, dear Catherine,' said she, loudly, 'open the door for your
uncle; he is more fool than knave, and won't do you any harm.' The boy
who had become a girl, obeyed. Master Nicholas entered the room and
found in it a young maid whom he did not know, and his wife in bed.
'Big booby,' said the latter to him, 'don't stand gaping at what you
see. Just as I had come to bed because I had a stomach ache, I
received a visit from Catherine, the daughter of my sister Jeanne de
Palaiseau, with whom we quarrelled fifteen years ago. Kiss your niece.
She is well worth the trouble.' The jeweller gave Violle a hug, and
from that moment he wanted nothing so much as to be alone with her a
moment, so that he might embrace her as much as he liked. For this
reason he led her without any delay down to the kitchen, under the
pretext of giving her some walnuts and wine, and he was no sooner
there with her than he began to caress her very affectionately. He
would not have stopped at that if St. Orberosia had not inspired his
good wife with the idea of seeing what he was about. She found him
with the pretended niece sitting on his knee. She called him a
debauched creature, boxed his ears, and forced him to beg her
pardon. The next day Violle resumed his previous form."
Having heard this story the venerable Canon Monnoyer thanked
Pierre Mille for having told it, and, taking up his pen, began to
write out a list of horses that would win at the next race meeting.
For he was a book-maker's clerk.
In the mean time Penguinia gloried in its wealth. Those who produced
the things necessary for life, wanted them; those who did not
produce them had more than enough. "But these," as a member of the
Institute said, "are necessary economic fatalities." The great Penguin
people had no longer either traditions, intellectual culture, or arts.
The progress of civilisation manifested itself among them by murderous
industry, infamous speculation, and hideous luxury. Its capital
assumed, as did all the great cities of the time, a cosmopolitan and
financial character. An immense and regular ugliness reigned within
it. The country enjoyed perfect tranquillity. It had reached its
zenith.
Book 8 - Future Times - The Endless History
Alca is becoming Americanised. -M. Daniset.
And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the
inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.-
Genesis xix. 25.
Te Elladi penie men aei kote suntrhophos esti, arhete de epaktos
esti, apo te sophies katergasmene kai nomou ischurhou.
(Herodotus, Histories, VII. cii.)
You have not seen angels then.- Liber Terribilis.
Bqsfttfusftpvtuse jufbmbb b up sjufef
tspjtfucftfnqfsfvstbqsftbnpjsqsp dmbnfuspj tghj
ttd mjcfsu f nbgsbodftftut p bnjtfb ef tdpnqb ho
jttgjobo- djfsftr- vjejtqpteoueftsjdifttftevqbzt
fuqbsmfn Pzfoevofqsf ttfbdifuffejsjhfboumpqjojno
Voufnpjoxfsiejrvf
We are now beginning to study a chemistry which will deal with
effects produced by bodies containing a quantity of concentrated
energy the like of which we have not yet had at our disposal.-
Sir William Ramsay.
SS 1.
The houses were never high enough to satisfy them; they kept on
making them still higher and built them of thirty or forty storeys
with offices, shops, banks, societies one above another; they dug
cellars and tunnels ever deeper downwards.
Fifteen millions of men laboured in a giant town by the light of
beacons which shed forth their glare both day and night. No light of
heaven pierced through the smoke of the factories with which the
town was girt, but sometimes the red disk of a ray. less sun might
be seen riding in the black firmament through which iron bridges
ploughed their way, and from which there descended a continual
shower of soot and cinders. It was the most industrial of all the
cities in the world and the richest. Its organisation seemed
perfect. None of the ancient aristocratic or democratic forms
remained; everything was subordinated to the interests of the
trusts. This environment gave rise to what anthropologists called
the multi-millionaire type. The men of this type were at once
energetic and frail, capable of great activity in forming mental
combinations and of prolonged labour in offices, but men whose nervous
irritability suffered from hereditary troubles which increased as time
went on.
Like all true aristocrats, like the patricians of republican Rome or
the squires of old England, these powerful men affected a great
severity in their habits and customs. They were the ascetics of
wealth. At the meetings of the trusts an observer would have noticed
their smooth and puffy faces, their lantern cheeks, their sunken
eyes and wrinkled brows. With bodies more withered, complexions
yellower, lips drier, and eyes filled with a more burning fanaticism
than those of the old Spanish monks, these multi-millionaires gave
themselves up with inextinguishable ardour to the austerities of
banking and industry. Several, denying themselves all happiness, all
pleasure, and all rest, spent their miserable lives in rooms without
light or air, furnished only with electrical apparatus, living on eggs
and milk, and sleeping on camp beds. By doing nothing except
pressing nickel buttons with their fingers, these mystics heaped up
riches of which they never even saw the signs, and acquired the vain
possibility of gratifying desires that they never experienced.
The worship of wealth had its martyrs. One of these
multi-millionaires, the famous Samuel Box, preferred to die rather
than surrender the smallest atom of his property. One of his
workmen, the victim of an accident while at work, being refused any
indemnity by his employer, obtained a verdict in the courts, but
repelled by innumerable obstacles of procedure, he fell into the
direst poverty. Being thus reduced to despair, he succeeded by dint of
cunning and audacity in confronting his employer with a loaded
revolver in his hand, and threatened to blow out his brains if he
did not give him some assistance. Samuel Box gave nothing, and let
himself be killed for the sake of principle.
Examples that come from high quarters are followed. Those who
possessed some small capital (and they were necessarily the greater
number), affected the ideas and habits of the multi-millionaires, in
order that they might be classed among them. All passions which
injured the increase or the preservation of wealth, were regarded as
dishonourable; neither indolence, nor idleness, nor the taste for
disinterested study, nor love of the arts, nor, above all,
extravagance, was ever forgiven; pity was condemned as a dangerous
weakness. Whilst every inclination to licentiousness excited public
reprobation, the violent and brutal satisfaction of an appetite was,
on the contrary, excused; violence, in truth, was regarded as less
injurious to morality, since it manifested a form of social energy.
The State was firmly based on two great public virtues: respect for
the rich and contempt for the poor. Feeble spirits who were still
moved by human suffering had no other resource than to take refuge
in a hypocrisy which it was impossible to blame, since it
contributed to the maintenance of order and the solidity of
institutions.
Thus, among the rich, all were devoted to the social order, or
seemed to be so; all gave good examples, if all did not follow them.
Some felt the severity of their position cruelly; but they endured
it either from pride or from duty. Some attempted, in secret and by
subterfuge, to escape from it for a moment. One of these, Edward
Martin, the President of the Steel Trust, sometimes dressed himself as
a poor man, went forth to beg his bread, and allowed himself to be
jostled by the passers-by. One day, as he asked alms on a bridge, he
engaged in a quarrel with a real beggar, and filled with a fury of
envy, he strangled him.
As they devoted their whole intelligence to business, they sought no
intellectual pleasures. The theatre, which had formerly been very
flourishing among them, was now reduced to pantomimes and comic
dances. Even the pieces in which women acted were given up; the
taste for pretty forms and brilliant toilettes had been lost; the
somersaults of downs and the music of negroes were preferred above
them, and what roused enthusiasm was the sight of women upon the stage
whose necks were bedizened with diamonds, or processions carrying
golden bars in triumph. Ladies of wealth were as much compelled as the
men to lead a respectable life. According to a tendency common to
all civilizations, public feeling set them up as symbols; they were,
by their austere magnificence, to represent both the splendour of
wealth and its intangibility. The old habits of gallantry had been
reformed, but fashionable lovers were now secretly replaced by
muscular labourers or stray grooms. Nevertheless, scandals were
rare, a foreign journey concealed nearly all of them, and the
Princesses of the Trusts remained objects of universal esteem.
The rich formed only a small minority, but their collaborators,
who composed the entire people, had been completely won over or
completely subjugated by them. They formed two classes, the agents
of commerce or banking, and workers in the factories. The former
contributed an immense amount of work and received large salaries.
Some of them succeeded in founding establishments of their own; for in
the constant increase of the public wealth the more intelligent and
audacious could hope for anything. Doubtless it would have been
possible to find a certain number of discontented and rebellious
persons among the immense crowd of engineers and accountants, but this
powerful society had imprinted its firm discipline even on the minds
of its opponents. The very anarchists were laborious and regular.
As for the workmen who toiled in the factories that surrounded the
town, their decadence, both physical and moral, was terrible; they
were examples of the type of poverty as it is set forth by
anthropology. Although the development among them of certain
muscles, due to the particular nature of their work, might give a
false idea of their strength, they presented sure signs of morbid
debility. Of low stature, with small heads and narrow chests, they
were further distinguished from the comfortable classes by a multitude
of physiological anomalies, and, in particular, by a common want of
symmetry between the head and the limbs. And they were destined to a
gradual and continuous degeneration, for the State made soldiers of
the more robust among them, and the health of these did not long
withstand the brothels and the drink-shops that sprang up around their
barracks. The proletarians became more and more feeble in mind. The
continued weakening of their intellectual faculties was not entirely
due to their manner of life; it resulted also from a methodical
selection carried out by the employers. The latter, fearing that
workmen of too great ability might be inclined to put forward
legitimate demands, took care to eliminate them by every possible
means, and preferred to engage ignorant and stupid labourers, who were
incapable of defending their rights, but were yet intelligent enough
to perform their toils, which highly perfected machines rendered
extremely simple. Thus the proletarians were unable to do anything
to improve their lot. With difficulty did they succeed by means of
strikes in maintaining the rate of their wages. Even this means
began to fail them. The alternations of production inherent in the
capitalist system caused such cessations of work that, in several
branches of industry, as soon as a strike was declared, the
accumulation of products allowed the employers to dispense with the
strikers. In a word, these miserable employees were plunged in a
gloomy apathy that nothing enlightened and nothing exasperated. They
were necessary instruments for the social order and well adapted to
their purpose.
Upon the whole, this social order seemed the most firmly established
that had yet been seen, at least among mankind, for that of bees and
ants is incomparably more stable. Nothing could foreshadow the ruin of
a system founded on what is strongest in human nature, pride and
cupidity. However, keen observers discovered several grounds for
uneasiness. The most certain, although the least apparent, were of
an economic order, and consisted in the continually increasing
amount of over-production, which entailed long and cruel
interruption of labour, though these were, it is true, utilized by the
manufacturers as a means of breaking the power of the workmen, by
facing them with the prospect of a lock-out. A more obvious peril
resulted from the physiological state of almost the entire population.
"The health of the poor is what it must be," said the experts in
hygiene, "but that of the rich leaves much to be desired." It was
not difficult to find the causes of this. The supply of oxygen
necessary for life was insufficient in the city, and men breathed in
an artificial air. The food trusts, by means of the most daring
chemical syntheses, produced artificial wines, meat, milk, fruit,
and vegetables, and the diet thus imposed gave rise to stomach and
brain troubles. The multi-millionaires were bald at the age of
eighteen; some showed from time to time a dangerous weakness of
mind. Over-strung and enfeebled, they gave enormous sums to ignorant
charlatans; and it was a common thing for some trumpery bath-attendant
or other who turned healer or prophet, to make a rapid fortune by
the practice of medicine or theology. The number of lunatics increased
continually; suicides multiplied in the world of wealth, and many of
them were accompanied by atrocious and extraordinary circumstances,
which bore witness to an unheard of perversion of intelligence and
sensibility.
Another fatal symptom created a strong impression upon average
minds. Terrible accidents, henceforth periodical and regular,
entered into people's calculations, and kept mounting higher and
higher in statistical tables. Every day, machines burst into
fragrants, houses fell down, trains laden with merchandise fell on
to the streets, demolishing entire buildings and crushing hundreds
of passers-by. Through the ground, honey-combed with tunnels, two or
three storeys of work-shops would often crash, engulfing all those who
worked in them.
SS 2.
In the southwestern district of the city, on an eminence which had
preserved its ancient name of Fort Saint-Michel, there stretched a
square where some old trees still spread their exhausted arms above
the greensward. Landscape gardeners had constructed a cascade,
grottos, a torrent, a lake, and an island, on its northern slope. From
this side one could see the whole town with its streets, its
boulevards, its squares, the multitude of its roofs and domes, its
air-passages, and its crowds of men, covered with a veil of silence,
and seemingly enchanted by the distance. This square was the
healthiest place in the capital; here no smoke obscured the sky, and
children were brought here to play. In summer some employees from
the neighbouring offices and laboratories used to resort to it for a
moment after their luncheons, but they did not disturb its solitude
and peace.
It was owing to this custom that, one day in June, about mid-day,
a telegraph clerk, Caroline Meslier, came and sat down on a bench at
the end of a terrace. In order to refresh her eyes by the sight of a
little green, she turned her back to the town. Dark, with brown
eyes, robust and placid, Caroline appeared to be from twenty-five to
twenty-eight years of age. Almost immediately, a clerk in the
Electricity Trust, George Clair, took his place beside her. Fair,
thin, and supple, he had features of a feminine delicacy; he was
scarcely older than she, and looked still younger. As they met
almost every day in this place, a comradeship had sprung up between
them, and they enjoyed chatting together. But their conversation had
never been tender, affectionate, or even intimate. Caroline,
although it had happened to her in the past to repent of her
confidence, might perhaps have been less reserved had not George Clair
always shown himself extremely restrained in his expressions and
behaviour. He always gave a purely intellectual character to the
conversation, keeping it within the realm of general ideas, and,
moreover, expressing himself on all subjects with the greatest
freedom. He spoke frequently of the organization of society, and the
conditions of labour.
"Wealth," said he, "is one of the means of living happily; but
people have made it the sole end of existence."
And this state of things seemed monstrous to both of them.
They returned continually to various scientific subjects with
which they were both familiar.
On that day they discussed the evolution of chemistry.
"From the moment," said Clair, "that radium was seen to be
transformed into helium, people ceased to affirm the immutability of
simple bodies; in this way all those old laws about simple relations
and about the indestructibility of matter were abolished."
"However," said she, "chemical laws exist."
For, being a woman, she had need of belief.
He resumed carelessly:
"Now that we can procure radium in sufficient quantities, science
possesses incomparable means of analysis; even at present we get
glimpses, within what are called simple bodies, of extremely
diversified complex ones, and we discover energies in matter which
seem to increase even by reason of its tenuity."
As they talked, they threw bits of bread to the birds, and some
children played around them.
Passing from one subject to another:
"This hill, in the quaternary epoch," said Clair, "was inhabited
by wild horses. Last year, as they were tunnelling for the water
mains, they found a layer of the bones of primeval horses."
She was anxious to know whether, at that distant epoch, man had
yet appeared.
He told her that man used to hunt the primeval horse long before
he tried to domesticate him.
"Man," he added, "was at first a hunter, then he became a
shepherd, a cultivator, a manufacturer... and these diverse
civilizations succeeded each other at intervals of time that the
mind cannot conceive."
He took out his watch.
Caroline asked if it was already time to go back to the office.
He said it was not, that it was scarcely half-past twelve.
A little girl was making mud pies at the foot of their bench; a
little boy of seven or eight years was playing in front of them.
Whilst his mother was sewing on an adjoining bench, he played all
alone at being a run-away horse, and with that power of illusion, of
which children are capable, he imagined that he was at the same time
the horse, and those who ran after him, and those who fled in terror
before him. He kept struggling with himself and shouting: "Stop him,
Hi! Hi! This is an awful horse, he has got the bit between his teeth."
Caroline asked the question:
"Do you think that men were happy formerly?"
Her companion answered:
"They suffered less when they were younger. They acted like that
little boy: they played; they played at arts, at virtues, at vices, at
heroism, at beliefs, at pleasures; they had illusions; which
entertained them; they made a noise, they amused themselves. But
now...."
He interrupted himself, and looked again at his watch.
The child, who was running, struck his foot against the little
girl's pail, and fell his full length on the gravel. He remained a
moment stretched out motionless, then raised himself up on the palms
of his hands. His forehead puckered, his mouth opened, and he burst
into tears. His mother ran up but Caroline had lifted him from the
ground and was wiping his eyes and mouth with her handkerchief. The
child kept on sobbing and Clair took him in his arms.
"Come, don't cry, my little man! I am going to tell you a story.
"A fisherman once threw his net into the sea and drew out a
little, sealed, copper pot, which he opened with his knife. Smoke came
out of it, and as it mounted up to the clouds the smoke grew thicker
and thicker and became a giant who gave such a terrible yawn that
the whole world was blown to dust...."
Clair stopped himself, gave a dry laugh, and handed the child back
to his mother. Then he took out his watch again, and kneeling on the
bench with his elbows resting on its back he gazed at the town. As far
as the eye could reach, the multitude of houses stood out in their
tiny immensity.
Caroline turned her eyes in the same direction.
"What splendid weather it is!" said she. "The sun's rays change
the smoke on the horizon into gold. The worst thing about civilization
is that it deprives one of the light of day."
He did not answer; his looks remained fixed on a place in the town.
After some seconds of silence they saw about half a mile away, in
the richer district on the other side of the river, a sort of tragic
fog rearing itself upwards. A moment afterwards an explosion was heard
even where they were sitting, and an immense tree of smoke mounted
towards the pure sky. Little by little the air was filled with an
imperceptible murmur caused by the shouts of thousands of men. Cries
burst forth quite close to the square.
"What has been blown up?"
The bewilderment was great, for although accidents were common, such
a violent explosion as this one had never been seen, and everybody
perceived that something terribly strange had happened.
Attempts were made to locate the place of the accident; districts,
streets, different buildings, clubs, theatres, and shops were
mentioned. Information gradually became more precise and at last the
truth was known.
"The Steel Trust has just been blown up."
Clair put his watch back into his pocket.
Caroline looked at him closely and her eyes filled with
astonishment.
At last she whispered in his ear:
"Did you know it? Were you expecting it? Was it you..."
He answered very calmly:
"That town ought to be destroyed."
She replied in a gentle and thoughtful tone:
"I think so too."
And both of them returned quietly to their work.
SS 3.
From that day onward, anarchist attempts followed one another
every week without interruption. The victims were numerous, and almost
all of them belonged to the poorer classes. These crimes roused public
resentment. It was among domestic servants, hotel-keepers, and the
employees of such small shops as the Trusts still allowed to exist,
that indignation burst forth most vehemently. In popular districts
women might be heard demanding unusual punishments for the
dynamitards. (They were called by this old name, although it was
hardly appropriate to them, since, to these unknown chemists, dynamite
was an innocent material only fit to destroy ant-hills, and they
considered it mere child's play to explode nitro-glycerine with a
cartridge made of fulminate of mercury.) Business ceased suddenly, and
those who were least rich were the first to feel the effects. They
spoke of doing justice themselves to the anarchists. In the mean
time the factory workers remained hostile or indifferent to violent
action. They were threatened, as a result of the decline of
business, with a likelihood of losing their work, or even a lock-out
in all the factories. The Federation of Trade Unions proposed a
general strike as the most powerful means of influencing the
employers, and the best aid that could be given to the revolutionists,
but all the trades with the exception of the gilders refused to
cease work.
The police made numerous arrests. Troops summoned from all parts
of the National Federation protected the offices of the Trusts, the
houses of the multi-millionaires, the public halls, the banks, and the
big shops. A fortnight passed without a single explosion, and it was
concluded that the dynamitards, in all probability but a handful of
persons, perhaps even still fewer, had all been killed or captured, or
that they were in hiding, or had taken flight. Confidence returned; it
returned at first among the poorer classes. Two or three hundred
thousand soldiers, who had been lodged in the most closely populated
districts, stimulated trade, and people began to cry out: "Hurrah
for the army!"
The rich, who had not been so quick to take alarm, were reassured
more slowly. But at the Stock Exchange a group of "bulls" spread
optimistic rumours and by a powerful effort put a brake upon the
fall in prices. Business improved. Newspapers with big circulations
supported the movement. With patriotic eloquence they depicted capital
as laughing in its impregnable position at the assaults of a few
dastardly criminals, and public wealth maintaining its serene
ascendency in spite of the vain threats made against it. They were
sincere in their attitude, though at the same time they found it
benefited them. Outrages were forgotten or their occurrence denied. On
Sundays, at the race-meetings, the stands were adorned by women
covered with pearls and diamonds. It was observed with joy that the
capitalists had not suffered. Cheers were given for the
multi-millionaires in the saddling rooms.
On the following day the Southern Railway Station, the Petroleum
Trust, and the huge church built at the expense of Thomas Morcellet
were all blown up. Thirty houses were in flames, and the beginning
of a fire was discovered at the docks. The firemen showed amazing
intrepidity and zeal. They managed their tall fire-escapes with
automatic precision, and climbed as high as thirty storeys to rescue
the luckless inhabitants from the flames. The soldiers performed their
duties with spirit, and were given a double ration of coffee. But
these fresh casualties started a panic. Millions of people, who wanted
to take their money with them and leave the town at once, crowded
the great banking houses. These establishments, after paying out money
for three days, closed their doors amid mutterings of a riot. A
crowd of fugitives, laden with their baggage, besieged the railway
stations and took the town by storm. Many who were anxious to lay in a
stock of provisions and take refuge in the cellars, attacked the
grocery stores, although they were guarded by soldiers with fixed
bayonets. The public authorities displayed energy. Numerous arrests
were made and thousands of warrants issued against suspected persons.
During the three weeks that followed no outrage was committed. There
was a rumour that bombs had been found in the Opera House, in the
cellars of the Town Hall, and beside one of the pillars of the Stock
Exchange. But it was soon known that these were boxes of sweets that
had been put in those places by practical jokers or lunatics. One of
the accused, when questioned by a magistrate, declared that he was the
chief author of the explosions, and said that all his accomplices
had lost their lives. These confessions were published by the
newspapers and helped to reassure public opinion. It was only
towards the close of the examination that the magistrates saw they had
to deal with a pretender who was in no way connected with any of the
crimes.
The experts chosen by the courts discovered nothing that enabled
them to determine the engine employed in the work of destruction.
According to their conjectures the new explosion emanated from a gas
which radium evolves, and it was supposed that electric waves,
produced by a special type of oscillator, were propagated through
space and thus caused the explosion. But even the ablest chemist could
say nothing precise or certain. At last two policemen, who were
passing in front of the Hotel Meyer, found on the pavement, close to a
ventilator, an egg made of white metal and provided with a capsule
at each end. They picked it up carefully, and, on the orders of
their chief, carried it to the municipal laboratory. Scarcely had
the experts assembled to examine it, than the egg burst and blew up
the amphitheatre and the dome. All the experts perished, and with them
Collin, the General of Artillery, and the famous Professor Tigre.
The capitalist society did not allow itself to be daunted by this
fresh disaster. The great banks re-opened their doors, declaring
that they would meet demands partly in bullion and partly in paper
money guaranteed by the State. The Stock Exchange and the Trade
Exchange, in spite of the complete cessation of business, decided
not to suspend their sittings.
In the mean time the magisterial investigation into the case of
those who had been first accused had come to an end. Perhaps the
evidence brought against them might have appeared insufficient under
other circumstances, but the zeal both of the magistrates and the
public made up for this insufficiency. On the eve of the day fixed for
the trial the Courts of Justice were blown up and eight hundred people
were killed, the greater number of them being judges and lawyers. A
furious crowd broke into the prison and lynched the prisoners. The
troops sent to restore order were received with showers of stones
and revolver shots; several soldiers being dragged from their horses
and trampled underfoot. The soldiers fired on the mob and many persons
were killed. At last the public authorities succeeded in
establishing tranquillity. Next day the Bank was blown up.
From that time onwards unheard-of things took place. The factory
workers, who had refused to strike, rushed in crowds into the town and
set fire to the houses. Entire regiments, led by their officers,
joined the workmen, went with them through the town singing
revolutionary hymns, and took barrels of petroleum from the docks with
which to feed the fires. Explosions were continual. One morning a
monstrous tree of smoke, like the ghost of a huge palm tree half a
mile in height, rose above the giant Telegraph Hall which suddenly
fell into a complete ruin.
Whilst half the town was in flames, the other half pursued its
accustomed life. In the mornings, milk pails could be heard jingling
in the dairy carts. In a deserted avenue some old navvy might be
seen seated against a wall slowly eating hunks of bread with perhaps a
little meat. Almost all the presidents of the trusts remained at their
posts. Some of them performed their duty with heroic simplicity.
Raphael Box, the son of a martyred multi-millionaire, was blown up
as he was presiding at the general meeting of the Sugar Trust. He
was given a magnificent funeral and the procession on its way to the
cemetery had to climb six times over piles of ruins or cross upon
planks over the uprooted roads.
The ordinary helpers of the rich, the clerks, employees, brokers,
and agents, preserved an unshaken fidelity. The surviving clerks of
the Bank that had been blown up, made their way along the ruined
streets through the midst of smoking houses to hand in their bills
of exchange, and several were swallowed up in the flames while
endeavouring to present their receipts.
Nevertheless, any illusion concerning the state of affairs was
impossible. The enemy was master of the town. Instead of silence the
noise of explosions was now continuous and produced an
insurmountable feeling of horror. The lighting apparatus having been
destroyed, the city was plunged in darkness all through the night, and
appalling crimes were committed. The populous districts alone,
having suffered the least, still preserved measures of protection.
They were paraded by patrols of volunteers who shot the robbers, and
at every street corner one stumbled over a body lying in a pool of
blood, the hands bound behind the back, a handkerchief over the
face, and a placard pinned upon the breast.
It became impossible to clear away the ruins or to bury the dead.
Soon the stench from the corpses became intolerable. Epidemics raged
and caused innumerable deaths, while they also rendered the
survivors feeble and listless. Famine carried off almost all who
were left. A hundred and one days after the first outrage, whilst
six army corps with field artillery and siege artillery were marching,
at night, into the poorest quarter of the city, Caroline and Clair,
holding each other's hands, were watching from the roof a lofty house,
the only one still left standing, but now surrounded by smoke and
flame. Joyous songs ascended from the street, where the crowd was
dancing in delirium.
"To-morrow it will be ended," said the man "and it will be better."
The young woman, her hair loosened and her face shining with the
reflection of the flames, gazed with a pious joy at the circle of fire
that was growing closer around them.
"It will be better," said she also.
And throwing herself into the destroyer's arms she pressed a
passionate kiss upon his lips.
SS 4.
The other towns of the federation also suffered from disturbances
and outbreaks, and then order was restored. Reforms were introduced
into institutions and great changes took place in habits and
customs, but the country never recovered the loss of its capital,
and never regained its former prosperity. Commerce and industry
dwindled away, and civilization abandoned those countries which for so
long it had preferred to all others. They became insalubrious and
sterile; the territory that had supported so many millions of men
became nothing more than a desert. On the hill of Fort St. Michel wild
horses cropped the coarse grass.
Days flowed by like water from the fountains, and the centuries
passed like drops falling from the ends of stalactites. Hunters came
to chase the bears upon the hills that covered the forgotten city;
shepherds led their flocks upon them; labourers turned up the soil
with their ploughs; gardeners cultivated their lettuces and grafted
their pear trees. They were not rich, and they had no arts. The
walls of their cabins were covered with old vines and roses. A
goat-skin clothed their tanned limbs, while their wives dressed
themselves with the wool that they themselves had spun. The goat-herds
moulded little figures of men and animals out of day, or sang songs
about the young girl who follows her lover through woods or among
the browsing goats while the pine trees whisper together and the water
utters its murmuring sound. The master of the house grew angry with
the beetles who devoured his figs; he planned snares to protect his
fowls from the velvet-tailed fox, and he poured out wine for his
neighbours saying:
"Drink!" The flies have not spoilt my vintage; the vines were dry
before they came."
Then in the course of ages the wealth of the villages and the corn
that filled the fields were pillaged by barbarian invaders. The
country changed its masters several times. The conquerors built
castles upon the hills; cultivation increased; mills, forges,
tanneries, and looms were established; roads were opened through the
woods and over the marshes; the river was covered with boats. The
hamlets became large villages and joining together formed a town which
protected itself by deep trenches and lofty walls. Later, becoming the
capital of a great State, it found itself straitened within its now
useless ramparts, and it converted them into grass-covered walks.
It grew very rich and large beyond measure. The houses were never
high enough to satisfy the people; they kept on making them still
higher and built them of thirty or forty storeys, with offices, shops,
banks, societies one above another; they dug cellars and tunnels
ever deeper downwards. Fifteen millions of men laboured in the giant
town.
The End.
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