Anatole France

“ To this M. Bergeret replied:
“Every party which finds itself shut out from the Government demands liberty, because to do so strengthens the opposition and weakens the party in power. For the same reason the party in power curtails liberty as much as possible and it passes, in the sacred name of the sovereign people, the most despotic laws. For there is no charter which can safeguard liberty against the acts of the sovereign nation. Democratic despotism theoretically has no limits, but in actual fact, and considering only the present period, I grant that its power is not boundless. ”

“ Under the elm-trees173 on the Mall walked M. Bergeret with slow, irregular steps. As he wandered on, his mind glanced hither and thither; shifting it was and confused; old as the earth itself, yet young as the flowers on the apple-boughs; empty of thought, yet full of vague visions; lonely, yet full of desire; gentle, innocent, wanton, melancholy; dragging behind it a weight of weariness, yet still pursuing Hopes and Illusions whose very names, shapes and faces were unknown to him. ”

“ Finally, religious and moral ideas becoming completely confounded with one another in his mind, M. Bergeret felt nothing but a sense of misery, while disgust, like a vast wave of dirty water, poured across the flame of his wrath. Three full seconds passed; he was plunged in the depths of irresolution and did nothing. By an obscure, confused instinct which was characteristic of his temperament, from the first moment he had turned his eyes away from the sofa and fixed them on the round table near the door. ”

“ Left alone in this way, Madame Bergeret went to her own room to think.
It did not seem to her that what had just taken place was important in itself. In the first place, if this was the first time that she had permitted herself to be compromised by M. Roux, it was not the first time that she had been indiscreet with others, few in number as they might be. Besides, an act like this may be horrible in thought, while in actual performance it merely appears commonplace, dependent upon circumstances and naturally innocent. In face of reality, prejudice dies away. ”

“ This nation, once so high-spirited and generous, has suddenly become incapable of either hatred or love, of either admiration or scorn.”
“Like you,” said M. Bergeret, “I have been struck by this change and I have sought in vain for the causes of it. We read in many Chinese fables of a very ugly spirit, of lumpish gait, but subtle mind, who loves to play pranks. He makes his way by night into inhabited houses, then opening a sleeper’s brain, as though it were a box, he takes out the brain, puts another in its place and softly closes the skull. ”

“ Hence, when Euphémie in a voice as countrified as a fable by Æsop, told him he was wicked, M. Bergeret, by virtue of his philosophical temperament, felt flattered and fancied he heard a murmur which filled out the gaps in the maid’s simple speech, and said: “Learn, Lucien Bergeret, that you are a wicked man, in the vulgar sense of the word—that is to say, you are able to injure and destroy; in other words, you are in a state of defence, in full possession of life, on the road to victory. In your own way, you must know, you are a giant, a monster, an ogre, a man of terror.” ”

“ It shocked him to see it, for he had delicate perceptions and a taste for dainty conceits.
“Monsieur Bergeret,” he said to himself, “you are a professor of some distinction, an intelligent provincial, a university man with a tendency to the florid, an average scholar shackled by the barren quests of philology, a stranger to the true science of language, which can be plumbed only by men of broad, unbiassed and trenchant views. Monsieur Bergeret, you are not a scholar, for you are incapable of grasping or classifying the facts of language. ”

“ I should be much more afraid of a new religion, framed with scrupulous exactitude. Such a religion, even if it were based on the most beautiful and kindly morality, would act at first with inconvenient austerity and painful accuracy. I prefer intolerance rubbed smooth, to charity with a fresh edge to it. Taking one thing with another, it is Abbé Lantaigne who is in the wrong, it is I who am wrong, and it is you, Monsieur de Terremondre, who are right. ”

“ And if your soul no longer thrills the soul of the nations, if your voice no longer quickens the heart-beats of mankind, it is because you no longer choose to play the part of apostles of brotherhood and justice, it is because you no longer utter the holy words that bring strength and consolation; it is because France is no longer the lover of the human race, the comrade of the nations ”

“ We cannot speak of the planets attendant on Sirius or Aldebaran, on Altaïr or Vega, of those dark masses of dust that may perchance accompany these points of fire that lie scattered over the sky, for even that they exist is not known to us, and we only suspect it by virtue of the analogy existing between our sun and the other stars of the universe. But if we try to form some conception of the planets in our own system, we cannot possibly imagine that life exists there in the mean forms which she usually presents on our earth. ”

“ She went out, closing the door behind her as noiselessly as possible, and M. Bergeret began to picture her standing at the bottom of the waiting-room in Deniseau’s office, with anxious looks fixed on the door, among the melancholy crowd of girls waiting to be hired, in her white head-dress with her blue cotton umbrella stuck between her knees.
Meanwhile Marie, the stable-girl, who had never in her life waited on anything but beasts, was filled with amazement and stupefaction at the ways of these townsfolk, till the terror that she communicated to others began to overwhelm her own mind. ”

“ You have studied the history of the Lower Empire too deeply, my dear Aspertini, not to be perfectly aware that, in questions of national finance, there are mysterious resources which escape the scrutiny of political economists. A ruined nation may exist for five hundred years on robbery and extortion, and how is one to guess what a great people, out of its poverty, will manage to supply to its defenders in the way of cannon, muskets, bad bread, bad shoes, straw and oats? ”

“ After a momentary sigh, he began again, this time turning towards M. Bergeret:
“Ah, sir,” said he, “in the course of my painful ministry I have encountered many thorns. But also what fruit I find! Many times in the course of my long life have I snatched lost souls from the devil, who was on the alert to lay hold of them. But none of the poor creatures with whom I have journeyed to the gates of death presented such an edifying spectacle in their last moments as this young Lecœur.” ”

“ It was with something approaching a smile that M. Lantaigne watched the poor old fellow, with his quick, birdlike movements, handing up his scrawls to the radical editor.
“Look!” said he to M. Bergeret, “the miasma of this age has even infected a man who was marching deathwards by a path long paved with goodness and virtue. This old fellow, though he is humble and modest about everything else, is craving for notoriety. He yearns to appear in print at any cost, even though it be in the pages of an anti-clerical paper.” ”

“ The soldier allowed me to watch the prisoners as long as I liked, waiting for me to go, before he begged of me. Then I thought of the governor of our splendid municipal prison, and I said to myself: ‘If only M. Ossian Colot were to come to Tangier he would soon discover and sweep away this crowding, this horrible promiscuity.’”
“You paint a picture of barbarism which I recognise,” answered M. Bergeret. “It is far less cruel than civilisation. For these Mussulman prisoners have no sufferings to undergo, save such as arise from the indifference or the occasional savagery of their gaolers. ”

“ Now, on the contrary, our parliamentary sharks are betraying France to a foreign power, Finance, to wit. For it is true that Finance is to-day one of the Powers of Europe, and of her it may be said, as was formerly said of the Church, that among the nations she remains a splendid alien. Our representatives, whom she buys over, are not only robbers but traitors. And, in truth, they rob and betray in paltry, huckstering fashion. Each one in himself is merely an object of pity: it is their rapid swarming that alarms me. ”

“ When she awoke one morning a melancholy ray of pale sunlight was shining between the folds of the curtain on the132 mutilated wicker dummy and, as she lay watching it, she melted with self-pity at the thought of her own innocence and M. Bergeret’s cruelty. She felt instinct with rebellion. It was intolerable, she thought, that Amélie Pouilly should suffer by the act of a Bergeret. She mentally communed with the soul of her father and so strengthened herself in the idea that M. Bergeret was too paltry a man to make her unhappy. ”

“ He even smiled within himself, for in the secret depths of his heart, beneath layers of wise thoughts and fine sayings, he still retained that primitive instinct which persists even in modern men of the gentlest and sweetest character, and which makes them rejoice whenever they see they are taken for ferocious beings, as if the mere power of injuring and destroying were the motive force of living things, their essential quality and highest merit. This, on reflection, is indeed true, since, as life is supported and nourished only upon murder, the best men must be those who slaughter most. ”

“ The life of a nation, like that of an individual, is a never-ceasing ruin, a series of downfalls, an endless prospect of misery and crime. Our country, though it is the finest in the world, only exists, like others, by the perpetual renewal of its miseries and mistakes. To live is to destroy. ”

“ For it is desire, far stronger than will, that, having created the world, now upholds it. In this undertaking of his, M. Bergeret was sustained by unutterable desire, by a masterful Lust to see Madame Bergeret no more. And this untempered, transparent desire had the happy force of a great love, for it was ruffled by no feeling of hatred.
All this time Euphémie stood waiting for her master to answer her, or, at any rate, to hurl furious words at her. For on this point she agreed with Madame Bergeret, and considered silence far more cruel than insult and invective. ”