Anatole France

“ Shouts of ‘Hurrah for the Army!’ resounded from the Bastille to the Madeleine. Smiling and amused, the passers-by were on our side. Bissolo stretched out his long hunchback’s arm like a scythe in the direction of the crowd and remarked: ‘I know the jade. Mount her, and she’ll break your back by suddenly lying down when you aren’t expecting it.’ Those were the words of Citizen Bissolo as we stood at the corner of the Rue Drouot on the day when Paris offered herself to us.”
“But this Bissolo of yours is a rogue,” cried Joseph Lacrisse. “He insults the people.” ”

“ You are an optimist, papa; I knew you were!” cried Pauline, stopping short for a moment in the middle of the pavement to gaze at her father with her dawn-grey eyes, full of gentle radiance and morning coolness. “You are an optimist. You are working with a cheerful heart to build the house of the future. That is good! It is a fine thing to build the New Republic with men of good will.”
Monsieur Bergeret smiled at the hopeful words and youthful eyes.
“Yes,” he said, “it would be fine to lay the foundations for the new society, where each man would receive the just price of his labour.” ”

“ One day this winter I overheard Jean Coq say, ‘We must have a war. This Government has made it inevitable by its cowardice!’ And Jean Mouton replied: ‘I’d rather have a naval war.’ ‘Of course,’ said Jean Coq, ‘a sea-fight would be consistent with the enthusiasm of the Nationalists. But why not have war on land as well as on sea? Who’s to stop us?’ ‘No one,’ replied Jean Coq. ‘I should like to see anyone try to stop us! But we must first exterminate all traitors and spies, all Jews and Freemasons. ”

“ I have lost my friends, and now all that gave me delight in this city, her peace, her grace and her beauty, her old-time elegance and her noble historical vistas, is being violently swept away. It is always right and fitting, however, that reason should prevail over sentiment. We must not dally with vain regrets for the past, nor commiserate with ourselves over the changes that thrust themselves upon us, since change is the very condition of life. ”

“ Our spirit is too great to endure it without impatience. This feeble enervating peace which satisfies you, cruelly wounds the pride of our hearts. When we are the masters we shall make another peace; a terrible, clanking, spurred and booted, equestrian peace! We shall make a pitiless, savage peace, a threatening, horrible, blazing peace; a peace worthy of us; a peace which, more frightful than the most frightful war, will freeze the world with terror and kill all the English by inhibition. That, Monsieur Bergeret, is our manner of being pacific. ”

“ The time is yet far distant when they will be kind and gentle to one another. The time is yet far distant when they will not war upon one another, and when pictures representing battle scenes will be hidden away as affording an immoral and shameful spectacle. I believe that the reign of violence will last a long time yet, that for many years to come the nations will rend one another asunder for trivial reasons; that for many years to come the people of the same country will desperately snatch from one another the common necessaries of life, instead of equitably dividing them. ”

“ Your shaggy ears are turned not to him whose words are wisest but to him who makes the most noise; and the natural fear which in the days of the cave-dwellers was the wise counsellor of your ancestors and of mine—the fear that created the gods and crime—makes you turn from the unfortunate and deprives you of pity. And you do not even want to be just. The white face of the new goddess Justice is strange to you, and you prostrate yourself before the old gods, black like yourself with fear and violence. ”

“ Truth has a faculty of linking facts together which error does not possess. It formed, in the face of insult and impotent hatred, a chain that could not again be broken. We owe the triumph of our cause to the liberty, the licence of the Press.”
“But you are not victorious,” cried Jumage. “Neither are we defeated! Quite the contrary! The opinion of the whole country is against you. I regret to say it, but you and your friends are unanimously execrated, dishonoured, spat upon. We defeated? You are joking. The whole of France is with us.” ”

“ This habit of almsgiving is contrary to beneficence and abhorrent to charity.”
“Really?” said Pauline good-humouredly.
“Almsgiving,” went on Monsieur Bergeret, “is no more to be compared to beneficence than a monkey’s grimace to the smile of the Joconda. Beneficence is as ingenious as almsgiving is inept. It is vigilant, and proportions its efforts to the need. That is precisely what I did not do with regard to brother Hobbler. The very name of beneficence evoked the most beautiful ideas in the sensitive minds of the century of the philosophers. ”

“ Madame de Gromance gave immediate proof of a tact for which Panneton was grateful. Without so much as a glance at the throne of Parma and Modena, and leaving on the right the Napoleonic swan’s neck, she sat on the flowered Beauvais sofa like a Parisienne. Clotilde had languished among the smaller landed gentry of the department and had had attentions paid to her by some rather under-bred young men; but the meaning of life was dawning upon her. She had racked her brains over money matters and was beginning to understand what social duty entailed. ”

“ But, such as he is, he is our work. Our pride fathered and our sin mothered him; he is the evil fruit of our vices. Every man in the world should both give and receive. He has not given enough, doubtless because he has not received enough.”
“He may be lazy,” said Pauline. “Mon Dieu, how can we do away with poverty and weakness and idleness! Don’t you believe that men are naturally good and that it is society that makes them wicked?”
“No, I don’t believe that men are naturally good,” replied Monsieur Bergeret. ”

“ I am a Monarchist and authoritarian by temperament. I am a Royalist. Now the army is all that is left us of the Monarchy; all that is left of a glorious past. It consoles us for the present and fills us with hope for the future. ”

“ Lord! what voices they had, and what fists, and what cudgels!
“A counter-manifestation quickly made its appearance; a smaller and more insignificant crowd, though warlike and determined enough, advanced to meet us amid shouts of ‘Long live the Republic! Down with the priests!’ with an occasional solitary cry for Loubet that seemed surprised to find itself in the air. Before it was over this unexpected disturbance aroused the anger of the police, who at that moment were barricading the boulevard and looking just like an austere border of black wool on a brightly variegated carpet. ”

“ Jean Coq came up to me, and said sternly: ‘Monsieur Bergeret, you said that we wanted war, and that we should make war, that Jean Mouton and I were going to land at Dover with an army and occupy London, and that then I should take Berlin and various other capitals. You said this, I know. You said it with malicious intent to harm us and make the French nation believe that we desire war. Understand, monsieur, that this is a lie. Our tendencies are not war-like; they are military, which is quite another thing. ”

“ I think he suffered intensely at the thought of so much baseness and treachery, of so monstrous an injustice, of that epidemic of crime and madness, of the execrable fury of the men who were deceiving the crowd, and the pardonable fury of the ignorant mob. He, too, saw the aged woman bearing with saintly simplicity the faggots for the torture of the innocent. How could he do other than suffer, when he found that men were worse than his philosophy had pictured them, less courageous and less intelligent when put to the test than the psychologists imagined in their quiet studies? ”

“ What upset the whole country, what is calculated to injure us abroad and at home, was that those in authority obstinately persisted in a monstrous piece of wickedness which increased day by day under the covering of lies with which they strove to hide it.”
“What else would you expect?” said Monsieur Mazure. “I am a good patriot and a republican.”
“Then since you are a republican,” said Monsieur Bergeret, “you must feel an alien, a solitary, among your fellow-citizens. There are few republicans left in France to-day. The Republic herself has created none. ”

“ Having re-entered the empty house, Riquet pawed his master’s legs, looking up at him with his beautiful sorrowing eyes, that said: “You, formerly so rich and powerful, have you, O master, become poor? Have you grown powerless? You suffer men clad in filthy rags to invade your study, your bedroom and your dining-room, to fall upon your furniture and drag it out of doors. ”

“ The advance toward a better order of things is vague and indeterminate. The profound and innumerable forces which chain man to the past cause him to cherish its errors, superstitions, prejudices and cruelties as precious symbols of his security. Salutary innovation terrifies him. Prudence makes him imitative, and he dare not quit the tumble-down shelter that protected his fathers and which is about to fall in upon him. Do you not agree with me, Monsieur Panneton?” inquired Monsieur Bergeret, with a charming smile. ”

“ Jean Coq and Jean Mouton are not evil; they are only the innocent enemies of the human species. Jean Coq is the more ardent, Jean Mouton the more melancholy, but they are simple fellows both, and believe what their newspapers tell them. This throws a dazzling light upon their innocence, for it is not easy to believe what their newspapers tell them. I take you all to witness, all you famous impostors, you forgers of all time; you egregious liars, distinguished tricksters, notorious creators of fictitious errors and illusions ”

“ Joseph Lacrisse had not forgotten those happy days, and relying on the old alliance of rioters and police he cheered the black brigades. Standing in the front rank of the Leaguers he waved his hat on the end of his stick in token of peace, shouting twenty times over, “Hurrah for the police!” But times had changed. Indifferent to this friendly welcome, deaf to these flattering shouts, the police charged. The shock was violent. The Nationalist ranks wavered and fell back. Human affairs are subject to time’s revenges. ”

“ Jean Coq looked at me with that eye that causes the world to tremble: ‘I am peacefully disposed, Monsieur Bergeret, but, thank God, not as you are. The peace I desire is not your peace. You are slavishly content with the peace that is forced upon us to-day. ”

“ We desire that these be plunged into a profound and deadly peace. We desire for all that are not Trublions the gulf and abyss of pacification and deadly repose. Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine. This is our desire. We do not demand our own pacification. We are not pacified. When we sing Requiescat, is it for ourselves? We do not desire to sleep. When we are dead it is for a long time. Nos qui vivimus, we bestow peace on others, not in this world but in the next; this is the more certain. I desire peace. Am I then a simple fellow? Know ye not Robin Honeyman? ”

“ And as Riquet gazed at his master with a look of infinite innocence Monsieur Bergeret continued still more gently:
“Yes, I know: you have a vague goodness, the goodness of a Caliban. You are a pious dog; you have your theology and your morality, and you try to do well. But then you know nothing. You keep watch over the house, guarding it even against its friends and those who would make it more beautiful. The workman whom you wanted to drive out of the house has, in his simple fashion, some admirable ideas. ”