The Country Doctor

THE NAPOLEON OF THE PEOPLE

“Pray, come in, sir!” cried Jacquotte.  “A pretty time the gentlemen have been waiting for you!  It is always the way!  You always manage to spoil the dinner for me whenever it ought to be particularly good.  Everything is cooked to death by this time——­”

“Oh! well, here we are,” answered Benassis with a smile.

The two horsemen dismounted, and went off to the salon, where the guests invited by the doctor were assembled.

“Gentlemen,” he said taking Genestas by the hand, “I have the honor of introducing you to M. Bluteau, captain of a regiment of cavalry stationed at Grenoble—­an old soldier, who has promised me that he will stay among us for a little while.”

Then, turning to Genestas, he presented to him a tall, thin, gray-haired man, dressed in black.

“This gentleman,” said Benassis, “is M. Dufau, the justice of the peace of whom I have already spoken to you, and who has so largely contributed to the prosperity of the Commune.”  Then he led his guest up to a pale, slight young man of middle height, who wore spectacles, and was also dressed in black.  “And this is M. Tonnelet,” he went on, “M.  Gravier’s son-in-law, and the first notary who came to the village.”

The doctor next turned to a stout man, who seemed to belong half to the peasant, half to the middle class, the owner of a rough-pimpled but good-humored countenance.

“This is my worthy colleague M. Cambon,” he went on, “the timber-merchant, to whom I owe the confidence and good-will of the people here.  He was one of the promoters of the road which you have admired.  I have no need to tell you the profession of this gentleman,” Benassis added, turning to the curate.  “Here is a man whom no one can help loving.”

There was an irresistible attraction in the moral beauty expressed by the cure’s countenance, which engrossed Genestas’ attention.  Yet a certain harshness and austerity of outline might make M. Janvier’s face seem unpleasing at a first glance.  His attitude, and his slight, emaciated frame, showed that he was far from strong physically, but the unchanging serenity of his face bore witness to the profound inward peace of heart.  Heaven seemed to be reflected in his eyes, and the inextinguishable fervor of charity which glowed in his heart appeared to shine from them.  The gestures that he made but rarely were simple and natural, his appeared to be a quiet and retiring nature, and there was a modesty and simplicity like that of a young girl about his actions.  At first sight he inspired respect and a vague desire to be admitted to his friendship.

“Ah!  M. le Maire,” he said, bending as though to escape from Benassis’ eulogium.

Something in the cure’s tones brought a thrill to Genestas’ heart, and the two insignificant words uttered by this stranger priest plunged him into musings that were almost devout.

“Gentlemen,” said Jacquotte, who came into the middle of the room, and there took her stand, with her hands on her hips, “the soup is on the table.”

Invited by Benassis, who summoned each in turn so as to avoid questions of precedence, the doctor’s five guests went into the dining-room; and after the cure, in low and quiet tones, had repeated a Benedicite, they took their places at table.  The cloth that covered the table was of that peculiar kind of damask linen invented in the time of Henry IV. by the brothers Graindorge, the skilful weavers, who gave their name to the heavy fabric so well known to housekeepers.  The linen was of dazzling whiteness, and fragrant with the scent of the thyme that Jacquotte always put into her wash-tubs.  The dinner service was of white porcelain, edged with blue, and was in perfect order.  The decanters were of the old-fashioned octagonal kind still in use in the provinces, though they have disappeared elsewhere.  Grotesque figures had been carved on the horn handles of the knives.  These relics of ancient splendor, which, nevertheless, looked almost new, seemed to those who scrutinized them to be in keeping with the kindly and open-hearted nature of the master of the house.

The lid of the soup-tureen drew a momentary glance from Genestas; he noticed that it was surmounted by a group of vegetables in high relief, skilfully colored after the manner of Bernard Palissy, the celebrated sixteenth century craftsman.

There was no lack of character about the group of men thus assembled.  The powerful heads of Genestas and Benassis contrasted admirably with M. Janvier’s apostolic countenance; and in the same fashion the elderly faces of the justice of the peace and the deputy-mayor brought out the youthfulness of the notary.  Society seemed to be represented by these various types.  The expression of each one indicated contentment with himself and with the present, and a faith in the future.  M. Tonnelet and M. Janvier, who were still young, loved to make forecasts of coming events, for they felt that the future was theirs; while the other guests were fain rather to turn their talk upon the past.  All of them faced the things of life seriously, and their opinions seemed to reflect a double tinge of soberness, on the one hand, from the twilight hues of well-nigh forgotten joys that could never more be revived for them; and, on the other, from the gray dawn which gave promise of a glorious day.

“You must have had a very tiring day, sir?” said M. Cambon, addressing the cure.

“Yes, sir,” answered M. Janvier, “the poor cretin and Pere Pelletier were buried at different hours.”

“Now we can pull down all the hovels of the old village,” Benassis remarked to his deputy.  “When the space on which the houses stand has been grubbed up, it will mean at least another acre of meadow land for us; and furthermore, there will be a clear saving to the Commune of the hundred francs that it used to cost to keep Chautard the cretin.”

“For the next three years we ought to lay out the hundred francs in making a single-span bridge to carry the lower road over the main stream,” said M. Cambon.  “The townsfolk and the people down the valley have fallen into the way of taking a short cut across that patch of land of Jean Francois Pastoureau’s; before they have done they will cut it up in a way that will do a lot of harm to that poor fellow.”

“I am sure that the money could not be put to a better use,” said the justice of peace.  “In my opinion the abuse of the right of way is one of the worst nuisances in a country district.  One-tenth of the cases that come before the court are caused by unfair easement.  The rights of property are infringed in this way almost with impunity in many and many a commune.  A respect for the law and a respect for property are ideas too often disregarded in France, and it is most important that they should be inculcated.  Many people think that there is something dishonorable in assisting the law to take its course.  ’Go and be hanged somewhere else,’ is a saying which seems to be dictated by an unpraiseworthy generosity of feeling; but at the bottom it is nothing but a hypocritical formula—­a sort of veil which we throw over our own selfishness.  Let us own to it, we lack patriotism!  The true patriot is the citizen who is so deeply impressed with a sense of the importance of the laws that he will see them carried out even at his own cost and inconvenience.  If you let the criminal go in peace, are you not making yourself answerable for the crimes he will commit?”

“It is all of a piece,” said Benassis.  “If the mayors kept their roads in better order, there would not be so many footpaths.  And if the members of Municipal Councils knew a little better, they would uphold the small landowner and the mayor when the two combine to oppose the establishment of unfair easements.  The fact that chateau, cottage, field, and tree are all equally sacred would then be brought home in every way to the ignorant; they would be made to understand that Right is just the same in all cases, whether the value of the property in question be large or small.  But such salutary changes cannot be brought about all at once.  They depend almost entirely on the moral condition of the population, which we can never completely reform without the potent aid of the cures.  This remark does not apply to you in any way, M. Janvier.”

“Nor do I take it to myself,” laughed the cure.  “Is not my heart set on bringing the teaching of the Catholic religion to co-operate with your plans of administration?  For instance, I have often tried, in my pulpit discourses on theft, to imbue the folk of this parish with the very ideas of Right to which you have just given utterance.  For truly, God does not estimate theft by the value of the thing stolen, He looks at the thief.  That has been the gist of the parables which I have tried to adapt to the comprehension of my parishioners.”

“You have succeeded, sir,” said Cambon.  “I know the change you have brought about in people’s ways of looking at things, for I can compare the Commune as it is now with the Commune as it used to be.  There are certainly very few places where the laborers are as careful as ours are about keeping the time in their working hours.  The cattle are well looked after; any damage that they do is done by accident.  There is no pilfering in the woods, and finally you have made our peasants clearly understand that the leisure of the rich is the reward of a thrifty and hard-working life.”

“Well, then,” said Genestas, “you ought to be pretty well pleased with your infantry, M. le Cure.”

“We cannot expect to find angels anywhere here below, captain,” answered the priest.  “Wherever there is poverty, there is suffering too; and suffering and poverty are strong compelling forces which have their abuses, just as power has.  When the peasants have a couple of leagues to walk to their work, and have to tramp back wearily in the evening, they perhaps see sportsmen taking short cuts over ploughed land and pasture so as to be back to dinner a little sooner, and is it to be supposed that they will hesitate to follow the example?  And of those who in this way beat out a footpath such as these gentlemen have just been complaining about, which are the real offenders, the workers or the people who are simply amusing themselves?  Both the rich and the poor give us a great deal of trouble these days.  Faith, like power, ought always to descend from the heights above us, in heaven or on earth; and certainly in our times the upper classes have less faith in them than the mass of the people, who have God’s promise of heaven hereafter as a reward for evils patiently endured.  With due submission to ecclesiastical discipline, and deference to the views of my superiors, I think that for some time to come we should be less exacting as to questions of doctrine, and rather endeavor to revive the sentiment of religion in the hearts of the intermediary classes, who debate over the maxims of Christianity instead of putting them in practice.  The philosophism of the rich has set a fatal example to the poor, and has brought about intervals of too long duration when men have faltered in their allegiance to God.  Such ascendency as we have over our flocks to-day depends entirely on our personal influence with them; is it not deplorable that the existence of religious belief in a commune should be dependent on the esteem in which a single man is held?  When the preservative force of Christianity permeating all classes of society shall have put life into the new order of things, there will be an end of sterile disputes about doctrine.  The cult of a religion is its form; societies only exist by forms.  You have your standard, we have the cross——­”

“I should very much like to know, sir,” said Genestas, breaking in upon M. Janvier, “why you forbid these poor folk to dance on Sunday?”

“We do not quarrel with dancing in itself, captain; it is forbidden because it leads to immorality, which troubles the peace of the countryside and corrupts its manners.  Does not the attempt to purify the spirit of the family and to maintain the sanctity of family ties strike at the root of the evil?”

“Some irregularities are always to be found in every district, I know,” said M. Tonnelet, “but they very seldom occur among us.  Perhaps there are peasants who remove their neighbor’s landmark without much scruple; or they may cut a few osiers that belong to some one else, if they happen to want some; but these are mere peccadilloes compared with the wrongdoing that goes on among a town population.  Moreover, the people in this valley seem to me to be devoutly religious.”

“Devout?” queried the cure with a smile; “there is no fear of fanaticism here.”

“But,” objected Cambon, “if the people all went to mass every morning, sir, and to confession every week, how would the fields be cultivated?  And three priests would hardly be enough.”

“Work is prayer,” said the cure.  “Doing one’s duty brings a knowledge of the religious principles which are a vital necessity to society.”

“How about patriotism?” asked Genestas.

“Patriotism can only inspire a short-lived enthusiasm,” the curate answered gravely; “religion gives it permanence.  Patriotism consists in a brief impulse of forgetfulness of self and self-interest, while Christianity is a complete system of opposition to the depraved tendencies of mankind.”

“And yet, during the wars undertaken by the Revolution, patriotism——­”

“Yes, we worked wonders at the time of the Revolution,” said Benassis, interrupting Genestas; “but only twenty years later, in 1814, our patriotism was extinct; while, in former times, a religious impulse moved France and Europe to fling themselves upon Asia a dozen times in the course of a century.”

“Maybe it is easier for two nations to come to terms when the strife has arisen out of some question of material interests,” said the justice of the peace; “while wars undertaken with the idea of supporting dogmas are bound to be interminable, because the object can never be clearly defined.”

“Well, sir, you are not helping any one to fish!” put in Jacquotte, who had removed the soup with Nicolle’s assistance.  Faithful to her custom, Jacquotte herself always brought in every dish one after another, a plan which had its drawbacks, for it compelled gluttonous folk to over-eat themselves, and the more abstemious, having satisfied their hunger at an early stage, were obliged to leave the best part of the dinner untouched.

“Gentlemen,” said the cure, with a glance at the justice of the peace, “how can you allege that religious wars have had no definite aim?  Religion in olden times was such a powerful binding force, that material interests and religious questions were inseparable.  Every soldier, therefore, knew quite well what he was fighting for.”

“If there has been so much fighting about religion,” said Genestas, “God must have built up the system very perfunctorily.  Should not a divine institution impress men at once by the truth that is in it?”

All the guests looked at the cure.

“Gentlemen,” said M. Janvier, “religion is something that is felt and that cannot be defined.  We cannot know the purpose of the Almighty; we are no judges of the means He employs.”

“Then, according to you, we are to believe in all your rigmaroles,” said Genestas, with the easy good-humor of a soldier who has never given a thought to these things.

“The Catholic religion, better than any other, resolves men’s doubts and fears; but even were it otherwise, I might ask you if you run any risks by believing in its truths.”

“None worth speaking of,” answered Genestas.

“Good! and what risks do you not run by not believing?  But let us talk of the worldly aspect of the matter, which most appeals to you.  The finger of God is visible in human affairs; see how He directs them by the hand of His vicar on earth.  How much men have lost by leaving the path traced out for them by Christianity!  So few think of reading Church history, that erroneous notions deliberately sown among the people lead them to condemn the Church; yet the Church has been a pattern of perfect government such as men seek to establish to-day.  The principle of election made it for a long while the great political power.  Except the Catholic Church, there was no single religious institution which was founded upon liberty and equality.  Everything was ordered to this end.  The father-superior, the abbot, the bishop, the general of an order, and the pope were then chosen conscientiously for their fitness for the requirements of the Church.  They were the expression of its intelligence, of the thinking power of the Church, and blind obedience was therefore their due.  I will say nothing of the ways in which society has benefited by that power which has created modern nations and has inspired so many poems, so much music, so many cathedrals, statues, and pictures.  I will simply call your attention to the fact that your modern systems of popular election, of two chambers, and of juries all had their origin in provincial and oecumenical councils, and in the episcopate and college of cardinals; but there is this difference,—­the views of civilization held by our present-day philosophy seem to me to fade away before the sublime and divine conception of Catholic communion, the type of a universal social communion brought about by the word and the fact that are combined in religious dogma.  It would be very difficult for any modern political system, however perfect people may think it, to work once more such miracles as were wrought in those ages when the Church as the stay and support of the human intellect.”

“Why?” asked Genestas.

“Because, in the first place, if the principle of election is to be the basis of a system, absolute equality among the electors is a first requirement; they ought to be ‘equal quantities,’ things which modern politics will never bring about.  Then, great social changes can only be effected by means of some common sentiment so powerful that it brings men into concerted action, while latter-day philosophism has discovered that law is based upon personal interest, which keeps men apart.  Men full of the generous spirit that watches with tender care over the trampled rights of the suffering poor, were more often found among the nations of past ages than in our generation.  The priesthood, also, which sprang from the middle classes, resisted material forces and stood between the people and their enemies.  But the territorial possessions of the Church and her temporal power, which seemingly made her position yet stronger, ended by crippling and weakening her action.  As a matter of fact, if the priest has possessions and privileges, he at once appears in the light of an oppressor.  He is paid by the State, therefore he is an official:  if he gives his time, his life, his whole heart, this is a matter of course, and nothing more than he ought to do; the citizens expect and demand his devotion; and the spontaneous kindliness of his nature is dried up.  But, let the priest be vowed to poverty, let him turn to his calling of his own free will, let him stay himself on God alone, and have no resource on earth but the hearts of the faithful, and he becomes once more the missionary of America, he takes the rank of an apostle, he has all things under his feet.  Indeed, the burden of wealth drags him down, and it is only by renouncing everything that he gains dominion over all men’s hearts.”

M. Janvier had compelled the attention of every one present.  No one spoke; for all the guests were thoughtful.  It was something new to hear such words as these in the mouth of a simple cure.

“There is one serious error, M. Janvier, among the truths to which you have given expression,” said Benassis.  “As you know, I do not like to raise discussions on points of general interest which modern authorities and modern writers have called in question.  In my opinion, a man who has thought out a political system, and who is conscious that he has within him the power of applying it in practical politics, should keep his mind to himself, seize his opportunity and act; but if he dwells in peaceful obscurity as a simple citizen, is it not sheer lunacy to think to bring the great mass over to his opinion by means of individual discussions?  For all that, I am about to argue with you, my dear pastor, for I am speaking before sensible men, each of whom is accustomed always to bring his individual light to a common search for the truth.  My ideas may seem strange to you, but they are the outcome of much thought caused by the calamities of the last forty years.  Universal suffrage, which finds such favor in the sight of those persons who belong to the constitutional opposition, as it is called, was a capital institution in the Church, because (as you yourself have just pointed out, dear pastor) the individuals of whom the Church was composed were all well educated, disciplined by religious feeling, thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the same system, well aware of what they wanted and whither they were going.  But modern Liberalism rashly made war upon the prosperous government of the Bourbons, by means of ideas which, should they triumph, would be the ruin of France and of the Liberals themselves.  This is well known to the leaders of the Left, who are merely endeavoring to get the power into their own hands.  If (which Heaven forbid) the middle classes ranged under the banner of the opposition should succeed in overthrowing those social superiorities which are so repugnant to their vanity, another struggle would follow hard upon their victory.  It would not be very long before the middle classes in their turn would be looked upon by the people as a sort of noblesse; they would be a sorry kind of noblesse, it is true, but their wealth and privileges would seem so much the more hateful in the eyes of the people because they would have a closer vision of these things.  I do not say that the nation would come to grief in the struggle, but society would perish anew; for the day of triumph of a suffering people is always brief, and involves disorders of the worst kind.  There would be no truce in a desperate strife arising out of an inherent or acquired difference of opinion among the electors.  The less enlightened and more numerous portion would sweep away social inequalities, thanks to a system in which votes are reckoned by count and not by weight.  Hence it follows that a government is never more strongly organized, and as a consequence is never more perfect than when it has been established for the protection of Privilege of the most restricted kind.  By Privilege I do not at this moment mean the old abuses by which certain rights were conceded to a few, to the prejudice of the many; no, I am using it to express the social circle of the governing class.  But throughout creation Nature has confined the vital principle within a narrow space, in order to concentrate its power; and so it is with the body politic.  I will illustrate this thought of mine by examples.  Let us suppose that there are a hundred peers in France, there are only one hundred causes of offence.  Abolish the peerage, and all the wealthy people will constitute the privileged class; instead of a hundred, you will have ten thousand, instead of removing class distinctions, you have merely widened the mischief.  In fact, from the people’s point of view, the right to live without working is in itself a privilege.  The unproductive consumer is a robber in their eyes.  The only work that they understand has palpable results; they set no value on intellectual labor—­the kind of labor which is the principal source of wealth to them.  So by multiplying causes of offence in this way, you extend the field of battle; the social war would be waged on all points instead of being confined within a limited circle; and when attack and resistance become general, the ruin of a country is imminent.  Because the rich will always be fewer in number, the victory will be to the poor as soon as it comes to actual fighting.  I will throw the burden of proof on history.

“The institution of Senatorial Privilege enabled the Roman Republic to conquer the world.  The Senate preserved the tradition of authority.  But when the equites and the novi homines had extended the governing classes by adding to the numbers of the Patricians, the State came to ruin.  In spite of Sylla, and after the time of Julius Caesar, Tiberius raised it into the Roman Empire; the system was embodied in one man, and all authority was centered in him, a measure which prolonged the magnificent sway of the Roman for several centuries.  The Emperor had ceased to dwell in Rome when the Eternal City fell into the hands of barbarians.  When the conqueror invaded our country, the Franks who divided the land among themselves invented feudal privilege as a safeguard for property.  The hundred or the thousand chiefs who owned the country, established their institutions with a view to defending the rights gained by conquest.  The duration of the feudal system was co-existent with the restriction of Privilege.  But when the leudes (an exact translation of the word gentlemen) from five hundred became fifty thousand, there came a revolution.  The governing power was too widely diffused; it lacked force and concentration; and they had not reckoned with the two powers, Money and Thought, that had set those free who had been beneath their rule.  So the victory over the monarchical system, obtained by the middle classes with a view to extending the number of the privileged class, will produce its natural effect—­the people will triumph in turn over the middle classes.  If this trouble comes to pass, the indiscriminate right of suffrage bestowed upon the masses will be a dangerous weapon in their hands.  The man who votes, criticises.  An authority that is called in question is no longer an authority.  Can you imagine a society without a governing authority?  No, you cannot.  Therefore, authority means force, and a basis of just judgement should underlie force.  Such are the reasons which have led me to think that the principle of popular election is a most fatal one for modern governments.  I think that my attachment to the poor and suffering classes has been sufficiently proved, and that no one will accuse me of bearing any ill-will towards them, but though I admire the sublime patience and resignation with which they tread the path of toil, I must pronounce them to be unfit to take part in the government.  The proletariat seem to me to be the minors of a nation, and ought to remain in a condition of tutelage.  Therefore, gentlemen, the word election, to my thinking, is in a fair way to cause as much mischief as the words conscience and liberty, which ill-defined and ill-understood, were flung broadcast among the people, to serve as watchwords of revolt and incitements to destruction.  It seems to me to be a right and necessary thing that the masses should be kept in tutelage for the good of society.”

“This system of yours runs so clean contrary to everybody’s notions nowadays, that we have some right to ask your reasons for it,” said Genestas, interrupting the doctor.

“By all means, captain.”

“What is this the master is saying?” cried Jacquotte, as she went back to her kitchen.  “There he is, the poor dear man, and what is he doing but advising them to crush the people!  And they are listening to him——­”

“I would never have believed it of M. Benassis,” answered Nicolle.

“If I require that the ignorant masses should be governed by a strong hand,” the doctor resumed, after a brief pause, “I should desire at the same time that the framework of the social system should be sufficiently yielding and elastic to allow those who have the will and are conscious of their ability to emerge from the crowd, to rise and take their place among the privileged classes.  The aim of power of every kind is its own preservation.  In order to live, a government, to-day as in the past, must press the strong men of the nation into its service, taking them from every quarter, so as to make them its defenders, and to remove from among the people the men of energy who incite the masses to insurrection.  By opening out in this way to the public ambition paths that are at once difficult and easy, easy for strong wills, difficult for weak or imperfect ones, a State averts the perils of the revolutions caused by the struggles of men of superior powers to rise to their proper level.  Our long agony of forty years should have made it clear to any man who has brains that social superiorities are a natural outcome of the order of things.  They are of three kinds that cannot be questioned—­the superiority of the thinker, the superiority of the politician, the superiority of wealth.  Is not that as much as to say, genius, power, and money, or, in yet other words—­the cause, the means, and the effect?  But suppose a kind of social tabula rasa, every social unit perfectly equal, an increase of population everywhere in the same ratio, and give the same amount of land to each family; it would not be long before you would again have all the existing inequalities of fortune; it is glaringly evident, therefore, that there are such things as superiority of fortune, of thinking capacity, and of power, and we must make up our minds to this fact; but the masses will always regard rights that have been most honestly acquired as privileges, and as a wrong done to themselves.

“The social contract founded upon this basis will be a perpetual pact between those who have and those who have not.  And acting on these principles, those who benefit by the laws will be the lawmakers, for they necessarily have the instinct of self-preservation, and foresee their dangers.  It is even more to their interest than to the interest of the masses themselves that the latter should be quiet and contented.  The happiness of the people should be ready made for the people.  If you look at society as a whole from this point of view, you will soon see, as I do, that the privilege of election ought only to be exercised by men who possess wealth, power, or intelligence, and you will likewise see that the action of the deputies they may choose to represent them should be considerably restricted.

“The maker of laws, gentlemen, should be in advance of his age.  It is his business to ascertain the tendency of erroneous notions popularly held, to see the exact direction in which the ideas of a nation are tending; he labors for the future rather than for the present, and for the rising generation rather than for the one that is passing away.  But if you call in the masses to make the laws, can they rise above their own level?  Nay.  The more faithfully an assembly represents the opinions held by the crowd, the less it will know about government, the less lofty its ideas will be, and the more vague and vacillating its policy, for the crowd is and always will be simply a crowd, and this especially with us in France.  Law involves submission to regulations; man is naturally opposed to rules and regulations of all kinds, especially if they interfere with his interests; so is it likely that the masses will enact laws that are contrary to their own inclinations?  No.

“Very often legislation ought to run counter to the prevailing tendencies of the time.  If the law is to be shaped by the prevailing habits of thought and tendencies of a nation, would not that mean that in Spain a direct encouragement would be given to idleness and religious intolerance; in England, to the commercial spirit; in Italy, to the love of the arts that may be the expression of a society, but by which no society can entirely exist; in Germany, feudal class distinctions would be fostered; and here, in France, popular legislation would promote the spirit of frivolity, the sudden craze for an idea, and the readiness to split into factions which has always been our bane.

“What has happened in the forty years since the electors took it upon themselves to make laws for France?  We have something like forty thousand laws!  A people with forty thousand laws might as well have none at all.  Is it likely that five hundred mediocrities (for there are never more than a hundred great minds to do the work of any one century), is it likely that five hundred mediocrities will have the wit to rise to the level of these considerations?  Not they!  Here is a constant stream of men poured forth from five hundred different places; they will interpret the spirit of the law in divers manners, and there should be a unity of conception in the law.

“But I will go yet further.  Sooner or later an assembly of this kind comes to be swayed by one man, and instead of a dynasty of kings, you have a constantly changing and costly succession of prime ministers.  There comes a Mirabeau or a Danton, a Robespierre or a Napoleon, or proconsuls, or an emperor, and there is an end of deliberations and debates.  In fact, it takes a determinate amount of force to raise a given weight; the force may be distributed, and you may have a less or greater number of levers, but it comes to the same thing in the end:  the force must be in proportion to the weight.  The weight in this case is the ignorant and suffering mass of people who form the lowest stratum of society.  The attitude of authority is bound to be repressive, and great concentration of the governing power is needed to neutralize the force of a popular movement.  This is the application of the principle that I unfolded when I spoke just now of the way in which the class privileged to govern should be restricted.  If this class is composed of men of ability, they will obey this natural law, and compel the country to obey.  If you collect a crowd of mediocrities together, sooner or later they will fall under the dominion of a stronger head.  A deputy of talent understands the reasons for which a government exists; the mediocre deputy simply comes to terms with force.  An assembly either obeys an idea, like the Convention in the time of the Terror; a powerful personality, like the Corps Legislatif under the rule of Napoleon; or falls under the domination of a system or of wealth, as it has done in our own day.  The Republican Assembly, that dream of some innocent souls, is an impossibility.  Those who would fain bring it to pass are either grossly deluded dupes or would-be tyrants.  Do you not think that there is something ludicrous about an Assembly which gravely sits in debate upon the perils of a nation which ought to be roused into immediate action?  It is only right of course that the people should elect a body of representatives who will decide questions of supplies and of taxation; this institution has always existed, under the sway of the most tyrannous ruler no less than under the sceptre of the mildest of princes.  Money is not to be taken by force; there are natural limits to taxation, and if they are overstepped, a nation either rises up in revolt, or lays itself down to die.  Again, if this elective body, changing from time to time according to the needs and ideas of those whom it represents, should refuse obedience to a bad law in the name of the people, well and good.  But to imagine that five hundred men, drawn from every corner of the kingdom, will make a good law!  Is it not a dreary joke, for which the people will sooner or later have to pay?  They have a change of masters, that is all.

“Authority ought to be given to one man, he alone should have the task of making the laws; and he should be a man who, by force of circumstances, is continually obliged to submit his actions to general approbation.  But the only restraints that can be brought to bear upon the exercise of power, be it the power of the one, of the many, or of the multitude, are to be found in the religious institutions of a country.  Religion forms the only adequate safeguard against the abuse of supreme power.  When a nation ceases to believe in religion, it becomes ungovernable in consequence, and its prince perforce becomes a tyrant.  The Chambers that occupy an intermediate place between rulers and their subjects are powerless to prevent these results, and can only mitigate them to a very slight extent; Assemblies, as I have said before, are bound to become the accomplices of tyranny on the one hand, or of insurrection on the other.  My own leanings are towards a government by one man; but though it is good, it cannot be absolutely good, for the results of every policy will always depend upon the condition and the belief of the nation.  If a nation is in its dotage, if it has been corrupted to the core by philosophism and the spirit of discussion, it is on the high-road to despotism, from which no form of free government will save it.  And, at the same time, a righteous people will nearly always find liberty even under a despotic rule.  All this goes to show the necessity for restricting the right of election within very narrow limits, the necessity for a strong government, the necessity for a powerful religion which makes the rich man the friend of the poor, and enjoins upon the poor an absolute submission to their lot.  It is, in fact, really imperative that the Assemblies should be deprived of all direct legislative power, and should confine themselves to the registration of laws and to questions of taxation.

“I know that different ideas from these exist in many minds.  To-day, as in past ages, there ware enthusiasts who seek for perfection, and who would like to have society better ordered than it is at present.  But innovations which tend to bring about a kind of social topsy-turvydom, ought only to be undertaken by general consent.  Let the innovators have patience.  When I remember how long it has taken Christianity to establish itself; how many centuries it has taken to bring about a purely moral revolution which surely ought to have been accomplished peacefully, the thought of the horrors of a revolution, in which material interests are concerned, makes me shudder, and I am for maintaining existing institutions.  ’Each shall have his own thought,’ is the dictum of Christianity; ’Each man shall have his own field,’ says modern law; and in this, modern law is in harmony with Christianity.  Each shall have his own thought; that is a consecration of the rights of intelligence; and each shall have his own field, is a consecration of the right to property that has been acquired by toil.  Hence our society.  Nature has based human life upon the instinct of self-preservation, and social life is founded upon personal interest.  Such ideas as these are, to my thinking, the very rudiments of politics.  Religion keeps these two selfish sentiments in subordination by the thought of a future life; and in this way the harshness of the conflict of interests has been somewhat softened.  God has mitigated the sufferings that arise from social friction by a religious sentiment which raises self-forgetfulness into a virtue; just as He has moderated the friction of the mechanism of the universe by laws which we do not know.  Christianity bids the poor bear patiently with the rich, and commands the rich to lighten the burdens of the poor; these few words, to my mind, contain the essence of all laws, human and divine!”

“I am no statesman,” said the notary; “I see in a ruler a liquidator of society which should always remain in liquidation; he should hand over to his successor the exact value of the assets which he received.”

“I am no statesman either,” said Benassis, hastily interrupting the notary.  “It takes nothing but a little common sense to better the lot of a commune, of a canton, or of an even wider district; a department calls for some administrative talent, but all these four spheres of action are comparatively limited, the outlook is not too wide for ordinary powers of vision, and there is a visible connection between their interests and the general progress made by the State.

“But in yet higher regions, everything is on a larger scale, the horizon widens, and from the standpoint where he is placed, the statesman ought to grasp the whole situation.  It is only necessary to consider liabilities due ten years hence, in order to bring about a great deal of good in the case of the department, the district, the canton, or the commune; but when it is a question of the destinies of a nation, a statesman must foresee a more distant future and the course that events are likely to take for the next hundred years.  The genius of a Colbert or of a Sully avails nothing, unless it is supported by the energetic will that makes a Napoleon or a Cromwell.  A great minister, gentlemen, is a great thought written at large over all the years of a century of prosperity and splendor for which he has prepared the way.  Steadfast perseverance is the virtue of which he stands most in need; and in all human affairs does not steadfast perseverance indicate a power of the very highest order?  We have had for some time past too many men who think only of the ministry instead of the nation, so that we cannot but admire the real statesman as the vastest human Poetry.  Ever to look beyond the present moment, to foresee the ways of Destiny, to care so little for power that he only retains it because he is conscious of his usefulness, while he does not overestimate his strength; ever to lay aside all personal feeling and low ambitions, so that he may always be master of his faculties, and foresee, will, and act without ceasing; to compel himself to be just and impartial, to keep order on a large scale, to silence his heart that he may be guided by his intellect alone, to be neither apprehensive nor sanguine, neither suspicious nor confiding, neither grateful nor ungrateful, never to be unprepared for an event, nor taken unawares by an idea; to live, in fact, with the requirements of the masses ever in his mind, to spread the protecting wings of his thought above them, to sway them by the thunder of his voice and the keenness of his glance; seeing all the while not the details of affairs, but the great issues at stake—­is not that to be something more than a mere man?  Therefore the names of the great and noble fathers of nations cannot but be household words for ever.”

There was silence for a moment, during which the guests looked at one another.

“Gentlemen, you have not said a word about the army!” cried Genestas.  “A military organization seems to me to be the real type on which all good civil society should be modeled; the Sword is the guardian of a nation.”

The justice of the peace laughed softly.

“Captain,” he said, “an old lawyer once said that empires began with the sword and ended with the desk; we have reached the desk stage by this time.”

“And now that we have settled the fate of the world, gentlemen, let us change the subject.  Come, captain, a glass of Hermitage,” cried the doctor, laughing.

“Two, rather than one,” said Genestas, holding out his glass.  “I mean to drink them both to your health—­to a man who does honor to the species.”

“And who is dear to all of us,” said the cure in gentle tones.

“Do you mean to force me into the sin of pride, M. Janvier?”

“M. le Cure has only said in a low voice what all the canton says aloud,” said Cambon.

“Gentlemen, I propose that we take a walk to the parsonage by moonlight, and see M. Janvier home.”

“Let us start,” said the guests, and they prepared to accompany the cure.

“Shall we go to the barn?” said the doctor, laying a hand on Genestas’ arm.  They had taken leave of the cure and the other guests.  “You will hear them talking about Napoleon, Captain Bluteau.  Goguelat, the postman, is there, and there are several of his cronies who are sure to draw him out on the subject of the idol of the people.  Nicolle, my stableman, has set a ladder so that we can climb up on to the hay; there is a place from which we can look down on the whole scene.  Come along, an up-sitting is something worth seeing, believe me.  It will not be the first time that I have hidden in the hay to overhear a soldier’s tales or the stories that peasants tell among themselves.  We must be careful to keep out of sight though, as these folk turn shy and put on company manners as soon as they see a stranger.”

“Eh! my dear sir,” said Genestas, “have I not often pretended to be asleep so as to hear my troopers talking out on bivouac?  My word, I once heard a droll yarn reeled off by an old quartermaster for some conscripts who were afraid of war; I never laughed so heartily in any theatre in Paris.  He was telling them about the Retreat from Moscow.  He told them that the army had nothing but the clothes they stood up in; that their wine was iced; that the dead stood stock-still in the road just where they were; that they had seen White Russia, and that they currycombed the horses there with their teeth; that those who were fond of skating had fine times of it, and people who had a fancy for savory ices had as much as they could put away; that the women were generally poor company; but that the only thing they could really complain of was the want of hot water for shaving.  In fact, he told them such a pack of absurdities, that even an old quartermaster who had lost his nose with a frost-bite, so that they had dubbed him Nezrestant, was fain to laugh.”

“Hush!” said Benassis, “here we are.  I will go first; follow after me.”

Both of them scaled the ladder and hid themselves in the hay, in a place from whence they could have a good view of the party below, who had not heard a sound overhead.  Little groups of women were clustered about three or four candles.  Some of them sewed, others were spinning, a good few of them were doing nothing, and sat with their heads strained forward, and their eyes fixed on an old peasant who was telling a story.  The men were standing about for the most part, or lying at full length on the trusses of hay.  Every group was absolutely silent.  Their faces were barely visible by the flickering gleams of the candles by which the women were working, although each candle was surrounded by a glass globe filled with water, in order to concentrate the light.  The thick darkness and shadow that filled the roof and all the upper part of the barn seemed still further to diminish the light that fell here and there upon the workers’ heads with such picturesque effects of light and shade.  Here, it shone full upon the bright wondering eyes and brown forehead of a little peasant maiden; and there the straggling beams brought out the outlines of the rugged brows of some of the older men, throwing up their figures in sharp relief against the dark background, and giving a fantastic appearance to their worn and weather-stained garb.  The attentive attitude of all these people and the expression on all their faces showed that they had given themselves up entirely to the pleasure of listening, and that the narrator’s sway was absolute.  It was a curious scene.  The immense influence that poetry exerts over every mind was plainly to be seen.  For is not the peasant who demands that the tale of wonder should be simple, and that the impossible should be well-nigh credible, a lover of poetry of the purest kind?

“She did not like the look of the house at all,” the peasant was saying as the two newcomers took their places where they could overhear him; “but the poor little hunchback was so tired out with carrying her bundle of hemp to market, that she went in; besides, the night had come, and she could go no further.  She only asked to be allowed to sleep there, and ate nothing but a crust of bread that she took from her wallet.  And inasmuch as the woman who kept house for the brigands knew nothing about what they had planned to do that night, she let the old woman into the house, and sent her upstairs without a light.  Our hunchback throws herself down on a rickety truckle bed, says her prayers, thinks about her hemp, and is dropping off to sleep.  But before she is fairly asleep, she hears a noise, and in walk two men carrying a lantern, and each man had a knife in his hand.  Then fear came upon her; for in those times, look you, they used to make pates of human flesh for the seigneurs, who were very fond of them.  But the old woman plucked up heart again, for she was so thoroughly shriveled and wrinkled that she thought they would think her a poorish sort of diet.  The two men went past the hunchback and walked up to a bed that there was in the great room, and in which they had put the gentleman with the big portmanteau, the one that passed for a negromancer.  The taller man holds up the lantern and takes the gentleman by the feet, and the short one, that had pretended to be drunk, clutches hold of his head and cuts his throat, clean, with one stroke, swish!  Then they leave the head and body lying in its own blood up there, steal the portmanteau, and go downstairs with it.  Here is our woman in a nice fix!  First of all she thinks of slipping out, before any one can suspect it, not knowing that Providence had brought her there to glorify God and to bring down punishment on the murderers.  She was in a great fright, and when one is frightened one thinks of nothing else.  But the woman of the house had asked the two brigands about the hunchback, and that had alarmed them.  So back they came, creeping softly up the wooden staircase.  The poor hunchback curls up in a ball with fright, and she hears them talking about her in whispers.

“‘Kill her, I tell you.’

“‘No need to kill her.’

“‘Kill her!’

“‘No!’

“Then they came in.  The woman, who was no fool, shuts her eyes and pretends to be asleep.  She sets to work to sleep like a child, with her hand on her heart, and takes to breathing like a cherub.  The man opens the lantern and shines the light straight into the eyes of the sleeping old woman—­she does not move an eyelash, she is in such terror for her neck.

“‘She is sleeping like a log; you can see that quite well,’ so says the tall one.

“‘Old women are so cunning!’ answers the short man.  ’I will kill her.  We shall feel easier in our minds.  Besides, we will salt her down to feed the pigs.’

“The old woman hears all this talk, but she does not stir.

“‘Oh! it is all right, she is asleep,’ says the short ruffian, when he saw that the hunchback had not stirred.

“That is how the old woman saved her life.  And she may be fairly called courageous; for it is a fact that there are not many girls here who could have breathed like cherubs while they heard that talk going on about the pigs.  Well, the two brigands set to work to lift up the dead man; they wrap him round in the sheets and chuck him out into the little yard; and the old woman hears the pigs scampering up to eat him, and grunting, hon! hon!

“So when morning comes,” the narrator resumed after a pause, “the woman gets up and goes down, paying a couple of sous for her bed.  She takes up her wallet, goes on just as if nothing had happened, asks for the news of the countryside, and gets away in peace.  She wants to run.  Running is quite out of the question, her legs fail her for fright; and lucky it was for her that she could not run, for this reason.  She had barely gone half a quarter of a league before she sees one of the brigands coming after her, just out of craftiness to make quite sure that she had seen nothing.  She guesses this, and sits herself down on a boulder.

“‘What is the matter, good woman?’ asks the short one, for it was the shorter one and the wickeder of the two who was dogging her.

“‘Oh! master,’ says she, ’my wallet is so heavy, and I am so tired, that I badly want some good man to give me his arm’ (sly thing, only listen to her!) ‘if I am to get back to my poor home.’

“Thereupon the brigand offers to go along with her, and she accepts his offer.  The fellow takes hold of her arm to see if she is afraid.  Not she!  She does not tremble a bit, and walks quietly along.  So there they are, chatting away as nicely as possible, all about farming, and the way to grow hemp, till they come to the outskirts of the town, where the hunchback lived, and the brigand made off for fear of meeting some of the sheriff’s people.  The woman reached her house at mid-day, and waited there till her husband came home; she thought and thought over all that had happened on her journey and during the night.  The hemp-grower came home in the evening.  He was hungry; something must be got ready for him to eat.  So while she greases her frying-pan, and gets ready to fry something for him, she tells him how she sold her hemp, and gabbles away as females do, but not a word does she say about the pigs, nor about the gentleman who was murdered and robbed and eaten.  She holds her frying-pan in the flames so as to clean it, draws it out again to give it a wipe, and finds it full of blood.

“‘What have you been putting into it?’ says she to her man.

“‘Nothing,’ says he.

“She thinks it must have been a nonsensical piece of woman’s fancy, and puts her frying-pan into the fire again. . . . Pouf! A head comes tumbling down the chimney!

“‘Oh! look!  It is nothing more nor less than the dead man’s head,’ says the old woman.  ‘How he stares at me!  What does he want!’

“‘You must avenge me!’ says a voice.

“‘What an idiot you are!’ said the hemp-grower.  ’Always seeing something or other that has no sort of sense about it!  Just you all over.’

“He takes up the head, which snaps at his finger, and pitches it out into the yard.

“‘Get on with my omelette,’ he says, ’and do not bother yourself about that.  ‘Tis a cat.’

“’A cat! says she; ‘it was as round as a ball.’

“She puts back her frying-pan on the fire. . . . Pouf! Down comes a leg this time, and they go through the whole story again.  The man was no more astonished at the foot than he had been at the head; he snatched up the leg and threw it out at the door.  Before they had finished, the other leg, both arms, the body, the whole murdered traveler, in fact, came down piecemeal.  No omelette all this time!  The old hemp-seller grew very hungry indeed.

“‘By my salvation!’ said he, ’when once my omelette is made we will see about satisfying that man yonder.’

“‘So you admit, now, that it was a man?’ said the hunchback wife.  ’What made you say that it was not a head a minute ago, you great worry?’

“The woman breaks the eggs, fries the omelette, and dishes it up without any more grumbling; somehow this squabble began to make her feel very uncomfortable.  Her husband sits down and begins to eat.  The hunchback was frightened, and said that she was not hungry.

“‘Tap! tap!’ There was a stranger rapping at the door.

“‘Who is there?’

“‘The man that died yesterday!’

“‘Come in,’ answers the hemp-grower.

“So the traveler comes in, sits himself down on a three-legged stool, and says:  ’Are you mindful of God, who gives eternal peace to those who confess His Name?  Woman!  You saw me done to death, and you have said nothing!  I have been eaten by the pigs!  The pigs do not enter Paradise, and therefore I, a Christian man, shall go down into hell, all because a woman forsooth will not speak, a thing that has never been known before.  You must deliver me,’ and so on, and so on.

“The woman, who was more and more frightened every minute, cleaned her frying-pan, put on her Sunday clothes, went to the justice, and told him about the crime, which was brought to light, and the robbers were broken on the wheel in proper style on the Market Place.  This good work accomplished, the woman and her husband always had the finest hemp you ever set eyes on.  Then, which pleased them still better, they had something that they had wished for for a long time, to-wit, a man-child, who in course of time became a great lord of the king’s.

“That is the true story of The Courageous Hunchback Woman.

“I do not like stories of that sort; they make me dream at night,” said La Fosseuse.  “Napoleon’s adventures are much nicer, I think.”

“Quite true,” said the keeper.  “Come now, M. Goguelat, tell us about the Emperor.”

“The evening is too far gone,” said the postman, “and I do not care about cutting short the story of a victory.”

“Never mind, let us hear about it all the same!  We know the stories, for we have heard you tell them many a time; but it is always a pleasure to hear them.”

“Tell us about the Emperor!” cried several voices at once.

“You will have it?” answered Goguelat.  “Very good, but you will see that there is no sense in the story when it is gone through at a gallop.  I would rather tell you all about a single battle.  Shall it be Champ-Aubert, where we ran out of cartridges, and furbished them just the same with the bayonet?”

“No, the Emperor! the Emperor!”

The old infantry man got up from his truss of hay and glanced round about on those assembled, with the peculiar sombre expression in which may be read all the miseries, adventures, and hardships of an old soldier’s career.  He took his coat by the two skirts in front, and raised them, as if it were a question of once more packing up the knapsack in which his kit, his shoes, and all he had in the world used to be stowed; for a moment he stood leaning all his weight on his left foot, then he swung the right foot forward, and yielded with a good grace to the wishes of his audience.  He swept his gray hair to one side, so as to leave his forehead bare, and flung back his head and gazed upwards, as if to raise himself to the lofty height of the gigantic story that he was about to tell.

“Napoleon, you see, my friends, was born in Corsica, which is a French island warmed by the Italian sun; it is like a furnace there, everything is scorched up, and they keep on killing each other from father to son for generations all about nothing at all—­’tis a notion they have.  To begin at the beginning, there was something extraordinary about the thing from the first; it occurred to his mother, who was the handsomest woman of her time, and a shrewd soul, to dedicate him to God, so that he should escape all the dangers of infancy and of his after life; for she had dreamed that the world was on fire on the day he was born.  It was a prophecy!  So she asked God to protect him, on condition that Napoleon should re-establish His holy religion, which had been thrown to the ground just then.  That was the agreement; we shall see what came of it.

“Now, do you follow me carefully, and tell me whether what you are about to hear is natural.

“It is certain sure that only a man who had had imagination enough to make a mysterious compact would be capable of going further than anybody else, and of passing through volleys of grape-shot and showers of bullets which carried us off like flies, but which had a respect for his head.  I myself had particular proof of that at Eylau.  I see him yet; he climbs a hillock, takes his field-glass, looks along our lines, and says, ‘That is going on all right.’  One of the deep fellows, with a bunch of feathers in his cap, used to plague him a good deal from all accounts, following him about everywhere, even when he was getting his meals.  This fellow wants to do something clever, so as soon as the Emperor goes away he takes his place.  Oh! swept away in a moment!  And this is the last of the bunch of feathers!  You understand quite clearly that Napoleon had undertaken to keep his secret to himself.  That is why those who accompanied him, and even his especial friends, used to drop like nuts:  Duroc, Bessieres, Lannes —­men as strong as bars of steel, which he cast into shape for his own ends.  And here is a final proof that he was the child of God, created to be the soldier’s father; for no one ever saw him as a lieutenant or a captain.  He is a commandant straight off!  Ah! yes, indeed!  He did not look more than four-and-twenty, but he was an old general ever since the taking of Toulon, when he made a beginning by showing the rest that they knew nothing about handling cannon.  Next thing he does, he tumbles upon us.  A little slip of a general-in-chief of the army of Italy, which had neither bread nor ammunition nor shoes nor clothes—­a wretched army as naked as a worm.

“‘Friends,’ he said, ’here we all are together.  Now, get it well into your pates that in a fortnight’s time from now you will be the victors, and dressed in new clothes; you shall all have greatcoats, strong gaiters, and famous pairs of shoes; but, my children, you will have to march on Milan to take them, where all these things are.’

“So they marched.  The French, crushed as flat as a pancake, held up their heads again.  There were thirty thousand of us tatterdemalions against eighty thousand swaggerers of Germans—­fine tall men and well equipped; I can see them yet.  Then Napoleon, who was only Bonaparte in those days, breathed goodness knows what into us, and on we marched night and day.  We rap their knuckles at Montenotte; we hurry on to thrash them at Rivoli, Lodi, Arcola, and Millesimo, and we never let them go.  The army came to have a liking for winning battles.  Then Napoleon hems them in on all sides, these German generals did not know where to hide themselves so as to have a little peace and comfort; he drubs them soundly, cribs ten thousand of their men at a time by surrounding them with fifteen hundred Frenchmen, whom he makes to spring up after his fashion, and at last he takes their cannon, victuals, money, ammunition, and everything they have that is worth taking; he pitches them into the water, beats them on the mountains, snaps at them in the air, gobbles them up on the earth, and thrashes them everywhere.

“There are the troops in full feather again!  For, look you, the Emperor (who, for that matter, was a wit) soon sent for the inhabitant, and told him that he had come there to deliver him.  Whereupon the civilian finds us free quarters and makes much of us, so do the women, who showed great discernment.  To come to a final end; in Ventose ’96, which was at that time what the month of March is now, we had been driven up into a corner of the Pays des Marmottes; but after the campaign, lo and behold! we were the masters of Italy, just as Napoleon had prophesied.  And in the month of March following, in one year and in two campaigns, he brings us within sight of Vienna; we had made a clean sweep of them.  We had gobbled down three armies one after another, and taken the conceit out of four Austrian generals; one of them, an old man who had white hair, had been roasted like a rat in the straw before Mantua.  The kings were suing for mercy on their knees.  Peace had been won.  Could a mere mortal have done that?  No.  God helped him, that is certain.  He distributed himself about like the five loaves in the Gospel, commanded on the battlefield all day, and drew up his plans at night.  The sentries always saw him coming; he neither ate nor slept.  Therefore, recognizing these prodigies, the soldier adopts him for his father.  But, forward!

“The other folk there in Paris, seeing all this, say among themselves: 

“’Here is a pilgrim who appears to take his instructions from Heaven above; he is uncommonly likely to lay a hand on France.  We must let him loose on Asia or America, and that, perhaps, will keep him quiet.

“The same thing was decreed for him as for Jesus Christ; for, as a matter of fact, they give him orders to go on duty down in Egypt.  See his resemblance to the Son of God!  That is not all, though.  He calls all his fire-eaters about him, all those into whom he had more particularly put the devil, and talks to them in this way: 

“’My friends, for the time being they are giving us Egypt to stop our mouths.  But we will swallow down Egypt in a brace of shakes, just as we swallowed Italy, and private soldiers shall be princes, and shall have broad lands of their own.  Forward!’

“‘Forward, lads!’ cry the sergeants.

“So we come to Toulon on the way to Egypt.  Whereupon the English put to sea with all their fleet.  But when we are on board, Napoleon says to us: 

“’They will not see us:  and it is right and proper that you should know henceforward that your general has a star in the sky that guides us and watches over us!’

“So said, so done.  As we sailed over the sea we took Malta, by way of an orange to quench his thirst for victory, for he was a man who must always be doing something.  There we are in Egypt.  Well and good.  Different orders.  The Egyptians, look you, are men who, ever since the world has been the world, have been in the habit of having giants to reign over them, and armies like swarms of ants; because it is a country full of genii and crocodiles, where they have built up pyramids as big as our mountains, the fancy took them to stow their kings under the pyramids, so as to keep them fresh, a thing which mightily pleases them all round out there.  Whereupon, as we landed, the Little Corporal said to us: 

“’My children, the country which you are about to conquer worships a lot of idols which you must respect, because the Frenchman ought to be on good terms with all the world, and fight people without giving annoyance.  Get it well into your heads to let everything alone at first; for we shall have it all by and by! and forward!’

“So far so good.  But all those people had heard a prophecy of Napoleon, under the name of Kebir Bonaberdis; a word which in our lingo means, ‘The Sultan fires a shot,’ and they feared him like the devil.  So the Grand Turk, Asia, and Africa have recourse to magic, and they send a demon against us, named the Mahdi, who it was thought had come down from heaven on a white charger which, like its master was bullet-proof, and the pair of them lived on the air of that part of the world.  There are people who have seen them, but for my part I cannot give you any certain informations about them.  They were the divinities of Arabia and of the Mamelukes who wished their troopers to believe that the Mahdi had the power of preventing them from dying in battle.  They gave out that he was an angel sent down to wage war on Napoleon, and to get back Solomon’s seal, part of their paraphernalia which they pretended our general had stolen.  You will readily understand that we made them cry peccavi all the same.

“Ah, just tell me now how they came to know about that compact of Napoleon’s?  Was that natural?

“They took it into their heads for certain that he commanded the genii, and that he went from place to place like a bird in the twinkling of an eye; and it is a fact that he was everywhere.  At length it came about that he carried off a queen of theirs.  She was the private property of a Mameluke, who, although he had several more of them, flatly refused to strike a bargain, though ‘the other’ offered all his treasures for her and diamonds as big as pigeon’s eggs.  When things had come to that pass, they could not well be settled without a good deal of fighting; and there was fighting enough for everybody and no mistake about it.

“Then we are drawn up before Alexandria, and again at Gizeh, and before the Pyramids.  We had to march over the sands and in the sun; people whose eyes dazzled used to see water that they could not drink and shade that made them fume.  But we made short work of the Mamelukes as usual, and everything goes down before the voice of Napoleon, who seizes Upper and Lower Egypt and Arabia, far and wide, till we came to the capitals of kingdoms which no longer existed, where there were thousands and thousands of statues of all the devils in creation, all done to the life, and another curious thing too, any quantity of lizards.  A confounded country where any one could have as many acres of land as he wished for as little as he pleased.

“While he was busy inland, where he meant to carry out some wonderful ideas of his, the English burn his fleet for him in Aboukir Bay, for they never could do enough to annoy us.  But Napoleon, who was respected East and West, and called ‘My Son’ by the Pope, and ’My dear Father’ by Mahomet’s cousin, makes up his mind to have his revenge on England, and to take India in exchange for his fleet.  He set out to lead us into Asia, by way of the Red Sea, through a country where there were palaces for halting-places, and nothing but gold and diamonds to pay the troops with, when the Mahdi comes to an understanding with the Plague, and sends it among us to make a break in our victories.  Halt!  Then every man files off to that parade from which no one comes back on his two feet.  The dying soldier cannot take Acre, into which he forces an entrance three times with a warrior’s impetuous enthusiasm; the Plague was too strong for us; there was not even time to say ‘Your servant, sir!’ to the Plague.  Every man was down with it.  Napoleon alone was as fresh as a rose; the whole army saw him drinking in the Plague without it doing him any harm whatever.

“There now, my friends, was that natural, do you think?

“The Mamelukes, knowing that we were all on the sick-list, want to stop our road; but it was no use trying that nonsense with Napoleon.  So he spoke to his familiars, who had tougher skins than the rest: 

“‘Go and clear the road for me.’

“Junot, who was his devoted friend, and a first-class fighter, only takes a thousand men, and makes a clean sweep of the Pasha’s army, which had the impudence to bar our way.  Thereupon back we came to Cairo, our headquarters, and now for another story.

“Napoleon being out of the country, France allowed the people in Paris to worry the life out of her.  They kept back the soldiers’ pay and all their linen and clothing, left them to starve, and expected them to lay down law to the universe, without taking any further trouble in the matter.  They were idiots of the kind that amuse themselves with chattering instead of setting themselves to knead the dough.  So our armies were defeated, France could not keep her frontiers; The Man was not there.  I say The Man, look you, because that was how they called him; but it was stuff and nonsense, for he had a star of his own and all his other peculiarities, it was the rest of us that were mere men.  He hears this history of France after his famous battle of Aboukir, where with a single division he routed the grand army of the Turks, twenty-five thousand strong, and jostled more than half of them into the sea, rrrah! without losing more than three hundred of his own men.  That was his last thunder-clap in Egypt.  He said to himself, seeing that all was lost down there, ’I know that I am the saviour of France, and to France I must go.’

“But you must clearly understand that the army did not know of his departure; for if they had, they would have kept him there by force to make him Emperor of the East.  So there we all are without him, and in low spirits, for he was the life of us.  He leaves Kleber in command, a great watchdog who passed in his checks at Cairo, murdered by an Egyptian whom they put to death by spiking him with a bayonet, which is their way of guillotining people out there; but he suffered so much, that a soldier took pity on the scoundrel and handed his flask to him; and the Egyptian turned up his eyes then and there with all the pleasure in life.  But there is not much fun for us about this little affair.  Napoleon steps aboard of a little cockleshell, a mere nothing of a skiff, called the Fortune, and in the twinkling of an eye, and in the teeth of the English, who were blockading the place with vessels of the line and cruisers and everything that carries canvas, he lands in France for he always had the faculty of taking the sea at a stride.  Was that natural?  Bah! as soon as he landed at Frejus, it is as good as saying that he has set foot in Paris.  Everybody there worships him; but he calls the Government together.

“‘What have you done to my children, the soldiers?’ he says to the lawyers.  ’You are a set of good-for-nothings who make fools of other people, and feather your own nests at the expense of France.  It will not do.  I speak in the name of every one who is discontented.’

“Thereupon they want to put him off and to get rid of him; but not a bit of it!  He locks them up in the barracks where they used to argufy and makes them jump out of the windows.  Then he makes them follow in his train, and they all become as mute as fishes and supple as tobacco pouches.  So he becomes Consul at a blow.  He was not the man to doubt the existence of the Supreme Being; he kept his word with Providence, who had kept His promise in earnest; he sets up religion again, and gives back the churches, and they ring the bells for God and Napoleon.  So every one is satisfied:  primo, the priests with whom he allows no one to meddle; segondo, the merchant folk who carry on their trades without fear of the rapiamus of the law that had pressed too heavily on them; tertio, the nobles; for people had fallen into an unfortunate habit of putting them to death, and he puts a stop to this.

“But there were enemies to be cleared out of the way, and he was not the one to go to sleep after mess; and his eyes, look you, traveled all over the world as if it had been a man’s face.  The next thing he did was to turn up in Italy; it was just as if he had put his head out of the window and the sight of him was enough; they gulp down the Austrians at Marengo like a whale swallowing gudgeons! Haouf! The French Victories blew their trumpets so loud that the whole world could hear the noise, and there was an end of it.

“‘We will not keep on at this game any longer!’ say the Germans.

“‘That is enough of this sort of thing,’ say the others.

“Here is the upshot.  Europe shows the white feather, England knuckles under, general peace all round, and kings and peoples pretending to embrace each other.  While then and there the Emperor hits on the idea of the Legion of Honor.  There’s a fine thing if you like!

“He spoke to the whole army at Boulogne.  ‘In France,’ so he said, ’every man is brave.  So the civilian who does gloriously shall be the soldier’s sister, the soldier shall be his brother, and both shall stand together beneath the flag of honor.’

“By the time that the rest of us who were away down there in Egypt had come back again, everything was changed.  We had seen him last as a general, and in no time we find that he is Emperor!  And when this was settled (and it may safely be said that every one was satisfied) there was a holy ceremony such as was never seen under the canopy of heaven.  Faith, France gave herself to him, like a handsome girl to a lancer, and the Pope and all his cardinals in robes of red and gold come across the Alps on purpose to anoint him before the army and the people, who clap their hands.

“There is one thing that it would be very wrong to keep back from you.  While he was in Egypt, in the desert not far away from Syria, the Red Man had appeared to him on the mountain of Moses, in order to say, ‘Everything is going on well.’  Then again, on the eve of victory at Marengo, the Red Man springs to his feet in front of the Emperor for the second time, and says to him: 

“’You shall see the world at your feet; you shall be Emperor of the French, King of Italy, master of Holland, ruler of Spain, Portugal, and the Illyrian Provinces, protector of Germany, saviour of Poland, first eagle of the Legion of Honor and all the rest of it.’

“That Red Man, look you, was a notion of his own, who ran on errands and carried messages, so many people say, between him and his star.  I myself have never believed that; but the Red Man is, undoubtedly, a fact.  Napoleon himself spoke of the Red Man who lived up in the roof of the Tuileries, and who used to come to him, he said, in moments of trouble and difficulty.  So on the night after his coronation Napoleon saw him for the third time, and they talked over a lot of things together.

“Then the Emperor goes straight to Milan to have himself crowned King of Italy, and then came the real triumph of the soldier.  For every one who could write became an officer forthwith, and pensions and gifts of duchies poured down in showers.  There were fortunes for the staff that never cost France a penny, and the Legion of Honor was as good as an annuity for the rank and file; I still draw my pension on the strength of it.  In short, here were armies provided for in a way that had never been seen before!  But the Emperor, who knew that he was to be Emperor over everybody, and not only over the army, bethinks himself of the bourgeois, and sets them to build fairy monuments in places that had been as bare as the back of my hand till then.  Suppose, now, that you are coming out of Spain and on the way to Berlin; well, you would see triumphal arches, and in the sculpture upon them the common soldiers are done every bit as beautifully as the generals!

“In two or three years Napoleon fills his cellars with gold, makes bridges, palaces, roads, scholars, festivals, laws, fleets, and harbors; he spends millions on millions, ever so much, and ever so much more to it, so that I have heard it said that he could have paved the whole of France with five-franc pieces if the fancy had taken him; and all this without putting any taxes on you people here.  So when he was comfortably seated on his throne, and so thoroughly the master of the situation, that all Europe was waiting for leave to do anything for him that he might happen to want; as he had four brothers and three sisters, he said to us, just as it might be by way of conversation, in the order of the day: 

“’Children, is it fitting that your Emperor’s relations should beg their bread?  No; I want them all to be luminaries, like me in fact!  Therefore, it is urgently necessary to conquer a kingdom for each one of them, so that the French nation may be masters everywhere, so that the Guard may make the whole earth tremble, and France may spit wherever she likes, and every nation shall say to her, as it is written on my coins, “God protects you.”’

“‘All right!’ answers the army, ’we will fish up kingdoms for you with the bayonet.’

“Ah! there was no backing out of it, look you!  If he had taken it into his head to conquer the moon, we should have had to put everything in train, pack our knapsacks, and scramble up; luckily, he had no wish for that excursion.  The kings who were used to the comforts of a throne, of course, objected to be lugged off, so we had marching orders.  We march, we get there, and the earth begins to shake to its centre again.  What times they were for wearing out men and shoe-leather!  And the hard knocks that they gave us!  Only Frenchmen could have stood it.  But you are not ignorant that a Frenchman is a born philosopher; he knows that he must die a little sooner or a litter later.  So we used to die without a word, because we had the pleasure of watching the Emperor do this on the maps.”

Here the soldier swung quickly round on one foot, so as to trace a circle on the barn floor with the other.

“‘There, that shall be a kingdom,’ he used to say, and it was a kingdom.  What fine times they were!  Colonels became generals whilst you were looking at them, generals became marshals of France, and marshals became kings.  There is one of them still left on his feet to keep Europe in mind of those days, Gascon though he may be, and a traitor to France that he might keep his crown; and he did not blush for his shame, for, after all, a crown, look you, is made of gold.  The very sappers and miners who knew how to read became great nobles in the same way.  And I who am telling you all this have seen in Paris eleven kings and a crowd of princes all round about Napoleon, like rays about the sun!  Keep this well in your minds, that as every soldier stood a chance of having a throne of his own (provided he showed himself worthy of it), a corporal of the Guard was by way of being a sight to see, and they gaped at him as he went by; for every one came by his share after a victory, it was made perfectly clear in the bulletin.  And what battles they were!  Austerlitz, where the army was manoeuvred as if it had been a review; Eylau, where the Russians were drowned in a lake, just as if Napoleon had breathed on them and blown them in; Wagram, where the fighting was kept up for three whole days without flinching.  In short, there were as many battles as there are saints in the calendar.

“Then it was made clear beyond a doubt that Napoleon bore the Sword of God in his scabbard.  He had a regard for the soldier.  He took the soldier for his child.  He was anxious that you should have shoes, shirts, greatcoats, bread, and cartridges; but he kept up his majesty, too, for reigning was his own particular occupation.  But, all the same, a sergeant, or even a common soldier, could go up to him and call him ‘Emperor,’ just as you might say ‘My good friend’ to me at times.  And he would give an answer to anything you put before him.  He used to sleep on the snow just like the rest of us—­in short, he looked almost like an ordinary man; but I who am telling you all these things have seen him myself with the grape-shot whizzing about his ears, no more put out by it than you are at this moment; never moving a limb, watching through his field-glass, always looking after his business; so we stood our ground likewise, as cool and calm as John the Baptist.  I do not know how he did it; but whenever he spoke, a something in his words made our hearts burn within us; and just to let him see that we were his children, and that it was not in us to shirk or flinch, we used to walk just as usual right up to the sluts of cannon that were belching smoke and vomiting battalions of balls, and never a man would so much as say, ‘Look out!’ It was a something that made dying men raise their heads to salute him and cry, ’Long live the Emperor!’

“Was that natural?  Would you have done this for a mere man?

“Thereupon, having fitted up all his family, and things having so turned out that the Empress Josephine (a good woman for all that) had no children, he was obliged to part company with her, although he loved her not a little.  But he must have children, for reasons of State.  All the crowned heads of Europe, when they heard of his difficulty, squabbled among themselves as to who should find him a wife.  He married an Austrian princess, so they say, who was the daughter of the Caesars, a man of antiquity whom everybody talks about, not only in our country, where it is said that most things were his doing, but also all over Europe.  And so certain sure is that, that I who am talking to you have been myself across the Danube, where I saw the ruins of a bridge built by that man; and it appeared that he was some connection of Napoleon’s at Rome, for the Emperor claimed succession there for his son.

“So, after his wedding, which was a holiday for the whole world, and when they let the people off their taxes for ten years to come (though they had to pay them just the same after all, because the excisemen took no notice of the proclamation)—­after his wedding, I say, his wife had a child who was King of Rome; a child was born a King while his father was alive, a thing that had never been seen in the world before!  That day a balloon set out from Paris to carry the news to Rome, and went all the way in one day.  There, now!  Is there one of you who will stand me out that there was nothing supernatural in that?  No, it was decreed on high.  And the mischief take those who will not allow that it was wafted over by God Himself, so as to add to the honor and glory of France!

“But there was the Emperor of Russia, a friend of our Emperor’s, who was put out because he had not married a Russian lady.  So the Russian backs up our enemies the English; for there had always been something to prevent Napoleon from putting a spoke in their wheel.  Clearly an end must be made of fowl of that feather.  Napoleon is vexed, and he says to us: 

“’Soldiers!  You have been the masters of every capital in Europe, except Moscow, which is allied to England.  So, in order to conquer London and India, which belongs to them in London, I find it absolutely necessary that we go to Moscow.’

“Thereupon the greatest army that ever wore gaiters, and left its footprints all over the globe, is brought together, and drawn up with such peculiar cleverness, that the Emperor passed a million men in review, all in a single day.

“‘Hourra!’ cry the Russians, and there is all Russia assembled, a lot of brutes of Cossacks, that you never can come up with!  It was country against country, a general stramash; we had to look out for ourselves.  ‘It was all Asia against Europe,’ as the Red Man had said to Napoleon.  ‘All right,’ Napoleon had answered, ‘I shall be ready for them.’

“And there, in fact, were all the kings who came to lick Napoleon’s hand.  Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Poland, and Italy, all speaking us fair and going along with us; it was a fine thing!  The Eagles had never cooed before as they did on parade in those days, when they were reared above all the flags of all the nations of Europe.  The Poles could not contain their joy because the Emperor had a notion of setting up their kingdom again; and ever since Poland and France have always been like brothers.  In short, the army shouts, ‘Russia shall be ours!’

“We cross the frontiers, all the lot of us.  We march and better march, but never a Russian do we see.  At last all our watch-dogs are encamped at Borodino.  That was where I received the Cross, and there is no denying that it was a cursed battle.  The Emperor was not easy in his mind; he had seen the Red Man, who said to him, ’My child, you are going a little too fast for your feet; you will run short of men, and your friends will play you false.’

“Thereupon the Emperor proposes a treaty.  But before he signs it, he says to us: 

“‘Let us give these Russians a drubbing!’

“‘All right!’ cried the army.

“‘Forward!’ say the sergeants.

“My clothes were all falling to pieces, my shoes were worn out with trapezing over those roads out there, which are not good going at all.  But it is all one.  ‘Since here is the last of the row,’ said I to myself, ‘I mean to get all I can out of it.’

“We were posted before the great ravine; we had seats in the front row.  The signal is given, and seven hundred guns begin a conversation fit to make the blood spirt from your ears.  One should give the devil his due, and the Russians let themselves be cut in pieces just like Frenchmen; they did not give way, and we made no advance.

“‘Forward!’ is the cry; ‘here is the Emperor!’

“So it was.  He rides past us at a gallop, and makes a sign to us that a great deal depends on our carrying the redoubt.  He puts fresh heart into us; we rush forward, I am the first man to reach the gorge.  Ah! mon Dieu! how they fell, colonels, lieutenants, and common soldiers, all alike!  There were shoes to fit up those who had none, and epaulettes for the knowing fellows that knew how to write. . . .  Victory is the cry all along the line!  And, upon my word, there were twenty-five thousand Frenchmen lying on the field.  No more, I assure you!  Such a thing was never seen before, it was just like a field when the corn is cut, with a man lying there for every ear of corn.  That sobered the rest of us.  The Man comes, and we make a circle round about him, and he coaxes us round (for he could be very nice when he chose), and persuades us to dine with Duke Humphrey, when we were hungry as hunters.  Then our consoler distributes the Crosses of the Legion of Honor himself, salutes the dead, and says to us, ’On to Moscow!’

“‘To Moscow, so be it,’ says the army.

“We take Moscow.  What do the Russians do but set fire to their city!  There was a blaze, two leagues of bonfire that burned for two days!  The buildings fell about our ears like slates, and molten lead and iron came down in showers; it was really horrible; it was a light to see our sorrows by, I can tell you!  The Emperor said, ’There, that is enough of this sort of thing; all my men shall stay here.’

“We amuse ourselves for a bit by recruiting and repairing our frames, for we really were much fatigued by the campaign.  We take away with us a gold cross from the top of the Kremlin, and every soldier had a little fortune.  But on the way back the winter came down on us a month earlier than usual, a matter which the learned (like a set of fools) have never sufficiently explained; and we are nipped with the cold.  We were no longer an army after that, do you understand?  There was an end of generals and even of the sergeants; hunger and misery took the command instead, and all of us were absolutely equal under their reign.  All we thought of was how to get back to France; no one stooped to pick up his gun or his money; every one walked straight before him, and armed himself as he thought fit, and no one cared about glory.

“The Emperor saw nothing of his star all the time, for the weather was so bad.  There was some misunderstanding between him and heaven.  Poor man, how bad he felt when he saw his Eagles flying with their backs turned on victory!  That was really too rough!  Well, the next thing is the Beresina.  And here and now, my friends, any one can assure you on his honor, and by all that is sacred, that never, no, never since there have been men on earth, never in this world has there been such a fricasse of an army, caissons, transports, artillery and all, in such snow as that and under such a pitiless sky.  It was so cold that you burned your hand on the barrel of your gun if you happened to touch it.  There it was that the pontooners saved the army, for the pontooners stood firm at their posts; it was there that Gondrin behaved like a hero, and he is the sole survivor of all the men who were dogged enough to stand in the river so as to build the bridges on which the army crossed over, and so escaped the Russians, who still respected the Grand Army on account of its past victories.  And Gondrin is an accomplished soldier,” he went on, pointing to his friend, who was gazing at him with the rapt attention peculiar to deaf people, “a distinguished soldier who deserves to have your very highest esteem.

“I saw the Emperor standing by the bridge,” he went on, “and never feeling the cold at all.  Was that, again, a natural thing?  He was looking on at the loss of his treasures, of his friends, and those who had fought with him in Egypt.  Bah! there was an end of everything.  Women and wagons and guns were all engulfed and swallowed up, everything went to wreck and ruin.  A few of the bravest among us saved the Eagles, for the Eagles, look you, meant France, and all the rest of you; it was the civil and military honor of France that was in our keeping, there must be no spot on the honor of France, and the cold could never make her bow her head.  There was no getting warm except in the neighborhood of the Emperor; for whenever he was in danger we hurried up, all frozen as we were—­we who would not stop to hold out a hand to a fallen friend.

“They say, too, that he shed tears of a night over his poor family of soldiers.  Only he and Frenchmen could have pulled themselves out of such a plight; but we did pull ourselves out, though, as I am telling you, it was with loss, ay, and heavy loss.  The Allies had eaten up all our provisions; everybody began to betray him, just as the Red Man had foretold.  The rattle-pates in Paris, who had kept quiet ever since the Imperial Guard had been established, think that HE is dead, and hatch a conspiracy.  They set to work in the Home Office to overturn the Emperor.  These things come to his knowledge and worry him; he says to us at parting, ’Good-bye, children; keep to your posts, I will come back again.’

“Bah!  Those generals of his lose their heads at once; for when he was away, it was not like the same thing.  The marshals fall out among themselves, and make blunders, as was only natural, for Napoleon in his kindness had fed them on gold till they had grown as fat as butter, and they had no mind to march.  Troubles came of this, for many of them stayed inactive in garrison towns in the rear, without attempting to tickle up the backs of the enemy behind us, and we were being driven back on France.  But Napoleon comes back among us with fresh troops; conscripts they were, and famous conscripts too; he had put some thorough notions of discipline into them—­the whelps were good to set their teeth in anybody.  He had a bourgeois guard of honor too, and fine troops they were!  They melted away like butter on a gridiron.  We may put a bold front on it, but everything is against us, although the army still performs prodigies of valor.  Whole nations fought against nations in tremendous battles, at Dresden, Lutzen, and Bautzen, and then it was that France showed extraordinary heroism, for you must all of you bear in mind that in those times a stout grenadier only lasted six months.

“We always won the day, but the English were always on our track, putting nonsense into other nations’ heads, and stirring them up to revolt.  In short, we cleared a way through all these mobs of nations; for wherever the Emperor appeared, we made a passage for him; for on the land as on the sea, whenever he said, ‘I wish to go forward,’ we made the way.

“There comes a final end to it at last.  We are back in France; and in spite of the bitter weather, it did one’s heart good to breathe one’s native air again, it set up many a poor fellow; and as for me, it put new life into me, I can tell you.  But it was a question all at once of defending France, our fair land of France.  All Europe was up in arms against us; they took it in bad part that we had tried to keep the Russians in order by driving them back within their own borders, so that they should not gobble us up, for those Northern folk have a strong liking for eating up the men of the South, it is a habit they have; I have heard the same thing of them from several generals.

“So the Emperor finds his own father-in-law, his friends whom he had made crowned kings, and the rabble of princes to whom he had given back their thrones, were all against him.  Even Frenchmen and allies in our own ranks turned against us, by orders from high quarters, as at Leipsic.  Common soldiers would hardly be capable of such abominations; yet these princes, as they called themselves, broke their words three times a day!  The next thing they do is to invade France.  Wherever our Emperor shows his lion’s face, the enemy beats a retreat; he worked more miracles for the defence of France than he had ever wrought in the conquest of Italy, the East, Spain, Europe, and Russia; he has a mind to bury every foreigner in French soil, to give them a respect for France, so he lets them come close up to Paris, so as to do for them at a single blow, and to rise to the highest height of genius in the biggest battle that ever was fought, a mother of battles!  But the Parisians wanting to save their trumpery skins, and afraid for their twopenny shops, open their gates and there is a beginning of the ragusades, and an end of all joy and happiness; they make a fool of the Empress, and fly the white flag out at the windows.  The Emperor’s closest friends among his generals forsake him at last and go over to the Bourbons, of whom no one had ever heard tell.  Then he bids us farewell at Fontainbleau: 

“‘Soldiers!’ . . . (I can hear him yet, we were all crying just like children; the Eagles and the flags had been lowered as if for a funeral.  Ah! and it was a funeral, I can tell you; it was the funeral of the Empire; those smart armies of his were nothing but skeletons now.) So he stood there on the flight of steps before his chateau, and he said: 

“’Children, we have been overcome by treachery, but we shall meet again up above in the country of the brave.  Protect my child, I leave him in your care. Long live Napoleon II.!’

“He had thought of killing himself, so that no one should behold Napoleon after his defeat; like Jesus Christ before the Crucifixion, he thought himself forsaken by God and by his talisman, and so he took enough poison to kill a regiment, but it had no effect whatever upon him.  Another marvel! he discovered that he was immortal; and feeling sure of his case, and knowing that he would be Emperor for ever, he went to an island for a little while, so as to study the dispositions of those folk who did not fail to make blunder upon blunder.  Whilst he was biding his time, the Chinese and the brutes out in Africa, the Moors and what-not, awkward customers all of them, were so convinced that he was something more than mortal, that they respected his flag, saying that God would be displeased if any one meddled with it.  So he reigned over all the rest of the world, although the doors of his own France had been closed upon him.

“Then he goes on board the same nutshell of a skiff that he sailed in from Egypt, passes under the noses of the English vessels, and sets foot in France.  France recognizes her Emperor, the cuckoo flits from steeple to steeple; France cries with one voice, ’Long live the Emperor!’ The enthusiasm for that Wonder of the Ages was thoroughly genuine in these parts.  Dauphine behaved handsomely; and I was uncommonly pleased to learn that people here shed tears of joy on seeing his gray overcoat once more.

“It was on March 1st that Napoleon set out with two hundred men to conquer the kingdom of France and Navarre, which by March 20th had become the French Empire again.  On that day he found himself in Paris, and a clean sweep had been made of everything; he had won back his beloved France, and had called all his soldiers about him again, and three words of his had done it all—­’Here am I!’ ’Twas the greatest miracle God ever worked!  Was it ever known in the world before that a man should do nothing but show his hat, and a whole Empire became his?  They fancied that France was crushed, did they?  Never a bit of it.  A National Army springs up again at the sight of the Eagle, and we all march to Waterloo.  There the Guard fall all as one man.  Napoleon in his despair heads the rest, and flings himself three times on the enemy’s guns without finding the death he sought; we all saw him do it, we soldiers, and the day was lost!  That night the Emperor calls all his old soldiers about him, and there on the battlefield, which was soaked with our blood, he burns his flags and his Eagles—­the poor Eagles that had never been defeated, that had cried, ‘Forward!’ in battle after battle, and had flown above us all over Europe.  That was the end of the Eagles—­all the wealth of England could not purchase for her one tail-feather.  The rest is sufficiently known.

“The Red Man went over to the Bourbons like the low scoundrel he is.  France is prostrate, the soldier counts for nothing, they rob him of his due, send him about his business, and fill his place with nobles who could not walk, they were so old, so that it made you sorry to see them.  They seize Napoleon by treachery, the English shut him up on a desert island in the ocean, on a rock ten thousand feet above the rest of the world.  That is the final end of it; there he has to stop till the Red Man gives him back his power again, for the happiness of France.  A lot of them say that he is dead!  Dead?  Oh! yes, very likely.  They do not know him, that is plain!  They go on telling that fib to deceive the people, and to keep things quiet for their tumble-down government.  Listen; this is the whole truth of the matter.  His friends have left him alone in the desert to fulfil a prophecy that was made about him, for I forgot to tell you that his name Napoleon really means the Lion of the Desert.  And that is gospel truth.  You will hear plenty of other things said about the Emperor, but they are all monstrous nonsense.  Because, look you, to no man of woman born would God have given the power to write his name in red, as he did, across the earth, where he will be remembered for ever! . . .  Long live ‘Napoleon, the father of the soldier, the father of the people!’”

“Long live General Eble!” cried the pontooner.

“How did you manage not to die in the gorge of the redoubts at Borodino?” asked a peasant woman.

“Do I know? we were a whole regiment when we went down into it, and only a hundred foot were left standing; only infantry could have carried it; for the infantry, look you, is everything in an army——­”

“But how about the cavalry?” cried Genestas, slipping down out of the hay in a sudden fashion that drew a startled cry from the boldest.

“He, old boy! you are forgetting Poniatowski’s Red Lancers, the Cuirassiers, the Dragoons, and the whole boiling.  Whenever Napoleon grew tired of seeing his battalions gain no ground towards the end of a victory, he would say to Murat, ‘Here, you! cut them in two for me!’ and we set out first at a trot, and then at a gallop, one, two! and cut a way clean through the ranks of the enemy; it was like slicing an apple in two with a knife.  Why, a charge of cavalry is nothing more nor less than a column of cannon balls.”

“And how about the pontooners?” cried the deaf veteran.

“There, there! my children,” Genestas went on, repenting in his confusion of the sally he had made, when he found himself in the middle of a silent and bewildered group, “there are no agents of police spying here!  Here, drink to the Little Corporal with this!”

“Long live the Emperor!” all cried with one voice.

“Hush! children,” said the officer, concealing his own deep sorrow with an effort.  “Hush! He is dead.  He died saying, ’Glory, France, and battle.’  So it had to be, children, he must die; but his memory —­never!”

Goguelat made an incredulous gesture, then he whispered to those about him, “The officer is still in the service, and orders have been issued that they are to tell the people that the Emperor is dead.  You must not think any harm of him because, after all, a soldier must obey orders.”

As Genestas went out of the barn, he heard La Fosseuse say, “That officer, you know, is M. Benassis’ friend, and a friend of the Emperor’s.”

Every soul in the barn rushed to the door to see the commandant again; they saw him in the moonlight, as he took the doctor’s arm.

“It was a stupid thing to do,” said Genestas.  “Quick! let us go into the house.  Those Eagles, cannon, and campaigns! . . .  I had quite forgotten where I was.”

“Well, what do you think of our Goguelat?” asked Benassis.

“So long as such stories are told in France, sir, she will always find the fourteen armies of the Republic within her, at need; and her cannon will be perfectly able to keep up a conversation with the rest of Europe.  That is what I think.”

A few moments later they reached Benassis’ dwelling, and soon were sitting on either side of the hearth in the salon; the dying fire in the grate still sent up a few sparks now and then.  Each was absorbed in thought.  Genestas was hesitating to ask one last question.  In spite of the marks of confidence that he had received, he feared lest the doctor should regard his inquiry as indiscreet.  He looked searchingly at Benassis more than once; and an answering smile, full of a kindly cordiality, such as lights up the faces of men of real strength of character, seemed to give him in advance the favorable reply for which he sought.  So he spoke: 

“Your life, sir, is so different from the lives of ordinary men, that you will not be surprised to hear me ask you the reason of your retired existence.  My curiosity may seem to you to be unmannerly, but you will admit that it is very natural.  Listen a moment:  I have had comrades with whom I have never been on intimate terms, even though I have made many campaigns with them; but there have been others to whom I would say, ‘Go to the paymaster and draw our money,’ three days after we had got drunk together, a thing that will happen, for the quietest folk must have a frolic fit at times.  Well, then, you are one of those people whom I take for a friend without waiting to ask leave, nay, without so much as knowing wherefore.”

“Captain Bluteau——­”

Whenever the doctor had called his guest by his assumed name, the latter had been unable for some time past to suppress a slight grimace.  Benassis, happening to look up just then, caught this expression of repugnance; he sought to discover the reason of it, and looked full into the soldier’s face, but the real enigma was well-nigh insoluble for him, so he set down these symptoms to physical suffering and went on: 

“Captain, I am about to speak of myself.  I have had to force myself to do so already several times since yesterday, while telling you about the improvements that I have managed to introduce here; but it was a question of the interests of the people and the commune, with which mine are necessarily bound up.  But, now, if I tell you my story, I should have to speak wholly of myself, and mine has not been a very interesting life.”

“If it were as uneventful as La Fosseuse’s life,” answered Genestas, “I should still be glad to know about it; I should like to know the untoward events that could bring a man of your calibre into this canton.”

“Captain, for these twelve years I have lived in silence; and now, as I wait at the brink of the grave for the stroke that will cast me into it, I will candidly own to you that this silence is beginning to weigh heavily upon me.  I have borne my sorrows alone for twelve years; I have had none of the comfort that friendship gives in such full measure to a heart in pain.  My poor sick folk and my peasants certainly set me an example of unmurmuring resignation; but they know that I at least understand them and their troubles, while there is not a soul here who knows of the tears that I have shed, no one to give me the hand-clasp of a comrade, the noblest reward of all, a reward that falls to the lot of every other; even Gondrin has not missed that.”

Genestas held out his hand, a sudden impulsive movement by which Benassis was deeply touched.

“There is La Fosseuse,” he went on in a different voice; “she perhaps would have understood as the angels might; but then, too, she might possibly have loved me, and that would have been a misfortune.  Listen, captain, my confession could only be made to an old soldier who looks as leniently as you do on the failings of others, or to some young man who has not lost the illusions of youth; for only a man who knows life well, or a lad to whom it is all unknown, could understand my story.  The captains of past times who fell upon the field of battle used to make their last confession to the cross on the hilt of their sword; if there was no priest at hand, it was the sword that received and kept the last confidences between a human soul and God.  And will you hear and understand me, for you are one of Napoleon’s finest sword-blades, as thoroughly tempered and as strong as steel?  Some parts of my story can only be understood by a delicate tenderness, and through a sympathy with the beliefs that dwell in simple hearts; beliefs which would seem absurd to the sophisticated people who make use in their own lives of the prudential maxims of worldly wisdom that only apply to the government of states.  To you I shall speak openly and without reserve, as a man who does not seek to apologize for his life with the good and evil done in the course of it; as one who will hide nothing from you, because he lives so far from the world of to-day, careless of the judgements of man, and full of hope in God.”

Benassis stopped, rose to his feet, and said, “Before I begin my story, I will order tea.  Jacquotte has never missed asking me if I will take it for these twelve years past, and she will certainly interrupt us.  Do you care about it, captain?”

“No, thank you.”

In another moment Benassis returned.