in his study m. bergeret, professor of literature at the university, was preparing his lesson on the eighth book of the ?neid to the shrill mechanical accompaniment of the piano, on which, close by, his daughters were practising a difficult exercise. m. bergeret’s room possessed only one window, but this was a large one, and filled up one whole side. it admitted, however, more draught than light, for the sashes were ill-fitting and the panes darkened by a high contiguous wall. m. bergeret’s table, pushed close against this window, caught the dismal rays of niggard daylight that filtered through. as a matter of fact this study, where the professor polished and repolished his fine, scholarly phrases, was nothing more than a shapeless cranny, or rather a double recess, behind the framework of the main staircase which, spreading out most inconsiderately in a great curve towards4 the window, left only room on either side for two useless, churlish corners. trammelled by this monstrous, green-papered paunch of masonry, m. bergeret had with difficulty discovered in his cantankerous study—a geometrical abortion as well as an ?sthetic abomination—a scanty flat surface where he could stack his books along the deal shelves, upon which yellow rows of teubner classics were plunged in never-lifted gloom. m. bergeret himself used to sit squeezed close up against the window, writing in a cold, chilly style that owed much to the bleakness of the atmosphere in which he worked. whenever he found his papers neither torn nor topsy-turvy and his pens not gaping cross-nibbed, he considered himself a lucky man! for such was the usual result of a visit to the study from madame bergeret or her daughters, where they came to write up the laundry list or the household accounts. here, too, stood the dressmaker’s dummy, on which madame bergeret used to drape the skirts she cut out at home. there, bolt upright, over against the learned editions of catullus and petronius, stood, like a symbol of the wedded state, this wicker-work woman.
m. bergeret was preparing his lesson on the eighth book of the ?neid, and he ought to have been devoting himself exclusively to the fascinating5 details of metre and language. in this task he would have found, if not joy, at any rate mental peace and the priceless balm of spiritual tranquillity. instead, he had turned his thoughts in another direction: he was musing on the soul, the genius, the outward features of that classic world whose books he spent his life in studying. he had given himself up to the longing to behold with his own eyes those golden shores, that azure sea, those rose-hued mountains, those lovely meadows through which the poet leads his heroes. he was bemoaning himself bitterly that it had never been his lot to visit the shores where once troy stood, to gaze on the landscape of virgil, to breathe the air of italy, of greece and holy asia, as gaston boissier and gaston deschamps had done. the melancholy aspect of his study overwhelmed him and great waves of misery submerged his mind. his sadness was, of course, the fruit of his own folly, for all our real sorrows come from within and are self-caused. we mistakenly believe that they come from outside, but we create them within ourselves from our own personality.
so sat m. bergeret beneath the huge plaster cylinder, manufacturing his own sadness and weariness as he reflected on his narrow, cramped, and dismal life: his wife was a vulgar creature, who had by now lost all her good looks; his daughters,6 even, had no love for him, and finally the battles of ?neas and turnus were dull and boring. at last he was aroused from this melancholy train of thought by the arrival of his pupil, m. roux, who made his appearance in red trousers and a blue coat, for he was still going through his year of military service.
“ha!” said m. bergeret, “so i see they’ve turned my best latin scholar into a hero.”
and when m. roux denied the heroic impeachment, the professor persisted: “i know what i’m talking about. i call a man who wears a sabre a hero, and i’m quite right in so doing. and if you only wore a busby, i should call you a great hero. the least one can decently do is to bestow a little flattery on the people one sends out to get shot. one couldn’t possibly pay them for their services at a cheaper rate. but may you never be immortalised by any act of heroism, and may you only earn the praises of mankind by your attainments in latin verse! it is my patriotism, and nothing else, that moves me to this sincere wish. for i am persuaded by the study of history that heroism is mainly to be found among the routed and vanquished. even the romans, a people by no means so eager for war as is commonly supposed, a people, too, who were often beaten, even the romans only produced a decius in a moment7 of defeat. at marathon, too, the heroism of kynegeirus was shown precisely at the moment of disaster for the athenians, who, if they did succeed in arresting the march of the barbarian army, could not prevent them from embarking with all the persian cavalry which had just been recuperating on the plains. besides, it is not at all clear that the persians made any special effort in this battle.”
m. roux deposited his sabre in a corner of the study and sat down in a chair offered him by the professor.
“it is now four months,” said he, “since i have heard a single intelligent word. during these four months i have been concentrating all the powers of my mind on the task of conciliating my corporal and my sergeant-major by carefully calculated tips. so far, that is the only side of the art of warfare that i can really say i have mastered. it is, however, the most important side. yet i have in the process lost all power of grasping a general idea or of following a subtle thought. and here you are, my dear sir, telling me that the greeks were conquered at marathon and that the romans were not warlike. my head whirls.”
m. bergeret calmly replied:
“i merely said that miltiades did not succeed in breaking through the forces of the barbarians. as8 for the romans, they were not essentially a military people, since they made profitable and lasting conquests, in contradistinction to the true military nations, such as the french, for instance, who seize all, but retain nothing.
“it is also to be noted that in rome, in the time of the kings, aliens were not allowed to serve as soldiers. but in the reign of the good king servius tullius the citizens, being by no means anxious to reserve to themselves alone the honour of fatigue and perils, admitted aliens resident in the city to military service. there are such things as heroes, but there are no nations of heroes, nor are there armies of heroes. soldiers have never marched save under penalty of death. military service was hateful even to those latin herdsmen who gained for rome the sovereignty of the world and the glorious name of goddess among the nations. the wearing of the soldier’s belt was to them such a hardship that the very name of this belt, ?rumna, eventually expressed for them the ideas of dejection, weariness of body and mind, wretchedness, misfortune and disaster. when well led they made, not heroes, but good soldiers and good navvies; little by little they conquered the world and covered it with roads and highways. the romans never sought glory: they had no imagination. they only waged absolutely necessary9 wars in defence of their own interests. their triumph was the triumph of patience and good sense.
“the make of a man is shown by his ruling passion. with soldiers, as with all crowds, the ruling passion, the predominant thought, is fear. they go to meet the enemy as the foe from whom the least danger is to be feared. troops in line are so drawn up on both sides that flight is impossible. in that lies all the art of battle. the armies of the republic were victorious because the discipline of the olden times was maintained in them with the utmost severity, while it was relaxed in the camp of the allied armies. our generals of the second year after the revolution were none other than sergeants like that la ramée who used to have half a dozen conscripts shot every day in order to encourage the others, as voltaire put it, and to arouse them with the trumpet-note of patriotism.”
“that’s very plausible,” said m. roux. “but there is another point. there is such a thing as the innate joy of firing a musket-shot. as you know, my dear sir, i am by no means a destructive animal. i have no taste for military life. i have even very advanced humanitarian ideas, and i believe that the brotherhood of the nations will be brought about by the triumph of socialism.10 in a word, i am filled with the love of humanity. but as soon as they put a musket in my hand i want to fire at everyone. it’s in the blood....”
m. roux was a fine hearty fellow who had quickly shaken down in his regiment. violent exercise suited his robust temperament, and being in addition very adaptable, although he had acquired no special taste for the profession, he found life in barracks quite bearable, and so remained both healthy and happy.
“you have left the power of suggestion out of your calculations, sir,” said he. “only give a man a bayonet at the end of a musket and he will instantly be ready to plunge it into the body of the first comer and so make himself a hero, as you call it.”
the rich southern tones of m. roux were still echoing through the room when madame bergeret came in. as a rule she seldom entered the study when her husband was there. to-day m. bergeret noticed that she wore her fine pink and white peignoir.
expressing great surprise at finding m. roux in the study, she explained that she had just come in to ask her husband for a volume of poems with which she might while away an hour or two.
she was suddenly a charming, good-tempered woman: the professor noticed the fact, as a fact, though he felt no special interest in it.
11 removing freund’s dictionary from an old leather arm-chair, m. roux cleared a seat for madame bergeret, while her husband’s thoughts strayed, first to the quartos stacked against the wall and then to his wife who had taken their place in the arm-chair. these two masses of matter, the dictionary and the lady, thought he, were once but gases floating in the primitive nebulosity. though now they are strangely different from one another in look, in nature and in function, they were once for long ages exactly similar.
“for,” thought he to himself, “madame bergeret once swam in the vasty abyss of the ages, shapeless, unconscious, scattered in light gleams of oxygen and carbon. at the same time, the molecules that were one day to make up this latin dictionary were whirling in this same vapour, which was destined at last to give birth to monstrous forms, to minute insects and to a slender thread of thought. these imperfect and often harassing creations, these monuments of my weary life, my wife and my dictionary, needed the travail of eternity to produce them. yet amélie is just a paltry mind in a coarsened body, and my dictionary is full of mistakes. we can see from this example alone that there is very little hope that even new ?ons of time would ever give us12 perfect knowledge and beauty. as it is, we live but for a moment, yet by living for ever we should gain nothing. the faults we see in nature, and how faulty she is we know, are produced neither by time nor space!”
and in the restless perturbation of his thoughts m. bergeret continued:
“but what is time itself, save just the movements of nature, and how can i judge whether these are long or short? granted that nature is cruel in her cast-iron laws, how comes it that i recognise the fact? and how do i manage to place myself outside her, so that i can weigh her deeds in my scales? had i but another standpoint in it, perchance the universe might even seem to me a happier place.”
m. bergeret hereupon suddenly emerged from his day-dream, and leant forward to push the tottering pile of quartos close against the wall.
“you are somewhat sunburnt, monsieur roux,” said madame bergeret, “and rather thinner, i fancy. but it suits you well enough.”
“the first few months are trying,” answered m. roux. “drill, of course, in the barrack-yard at six o’clock in the morning and with eight degrees of frost is rather a painful process, and just at first one finds it difficult to look on the mess as appetising. but weariness is, after all, a great blessing,13 stupefaction a priceless remedy and the stupor in which one lives is as soporific as a feather-bed. and because at night one only sleeps in snatches, by day one is never wide awake. and this state of automatic lethargy in which we all live is admirably conducive to discipline, it suits the tone of military life and produces physical and moral efficiency in the ranks.”
in short, m. roux had nothing to complain of, but one of his friends, a certain deval, a student of malay at the school of oriental languages, was plunged in the depths of misery and despair. deval, an intelligent, well-educated, intrepid man, was cursed with a sort of rigidity of mind and body that made him tactless and awkward. in addition to this he was harassed by a painfully exact sense of justice which gave him peculiar views of his rights and duties. this unfortunate turn of mind landed him in all sorts of troubles, and he had not been more than twenty-four hours in barracks before sergeant lebrec demanded, in terms which must needs be softened for madame bergeret’s sake, what ill-conducted being had given birth to such a clumsy cub as number five. it took deval a long time to make sure that he, and none other, was actually number five. he had, in fact, to be put under arrest before he was convinced on the subject. even then he could not see14 why the honour of madame deval, his mother, should be called in question because he himself was not exactly in line. his sense of justice was outraged by his mother’s being unexpectedly declared responsible in this matter, and at the end of four months he was still a prey to melancholy amazement at the idea.
“your friend deval,” answered m. bergeret, “put a wrong construction on a warlike speech that i should be inclined to count among those which exalt men’s moral tone. such speeches, in fact, arouse the spirit of emulation by exciting a desire to earn the good-conduct stripes, which confer on their wearers the right to make similar speeches in their turn, speeches which obviously stamp the speaker of them as head and shoulders above those humble beings to whom they are addressed. the authority of officers in the army should never be weakened, as was done in a recent circular issued by a war minister, which laid down the law that officers and non-commissioned officers were to avoid the practice of addressing the men with the contemptuous ‘thou.’ the minister, himself a well-bred, courteous, urbane and honourable man, was full of the idea of the dignified position of the citizen soldier and failed, therefore, to perceive that the power of scorning an inferior is the guiding principle in emulation and the15 foundation-stone of all governance. sergeant lebrec spoke like a hero who is schooling heroes, for, being a philologist, i am able to reconstruct the original form his speech took. this being the case, i have no hesitation in declaring that, in my opinion, sergeant lebrec rose to sublimity when he associated the good fame of a family with the port of a conscript, when he thus linked the life of number five, even before he saw the light, with the regiment and the flag. for, in truth, does not the issue of all warfare rest on the discipline of the recruit?
“after this, you will probably tell me that i am indulging in the weakness common to all commentators and reading into the text of my author meanings which he never intended. i grant you that there is a certain element of unconsciousness in sergeant lebrec’s memorable speech. but therein lies the genius of it. unaware of his own range, he hurls his bolts broadcast.”
m. roux answered with a smile that there certainly was an unconscious element in sergeant lebrec’s inspiration. he quite agreed with m. bergeret there. but madame bergeret interposed drily:
“i don’t understand you at all, lucien. you always laugh when there is nothing funny, and really one never knows whether you are joking or16 serious. it’s positively impossible to talk rationally to you.”
“my wife reasons after the dean’s fashion,” said m. bergeret, “and the only thing to do with either is to give in.”
“ah!” exclaimed madame bergeret, “you do well to talk about the dean! you have always set yourself to annoy him and now you are paying for your folly. you have also managed to fall out with the rector. i met him on sunday when i was out with the girls and he hardly so much as bowed.” and turning towards the young soldier, she continued:
“i know that my husband is very much attached to you, monsieur roux. you are his favourite pupil and he foretells a brilliant future for you.”
m. roux’s swarthy face, with its mat of frizzy hair, flashed into a bold smile that showed the brilliant whiteness of his teeth.
“do try, monsieur roux, to get my husband to use a little tact with people who may be useful to him. his conduct is making life a howling wilderness for us all.”
“surely not, madame,” murmured m. roux, turning the conversation.
“the peasants,” said he, “drag out a wretched three years of service. they suffer horribly, but no one ever guesses it, for they are quite inarticulate17 when it comes to expressing subtleties. loving the land as they do with all the intensity of animal passion, when they are separated from it their existence is full of deep, silent, monotonous melancholy, with nothing whatever to distract them from their sense of exile and imprisonment, save fear of their officers and weariness of their occupation. everything around them is strange and incomprehensible. in my company, for instance, there are two bretons who have not learnt the colonel’s name after six months’ training. every morning we are drawn up before the sergeant to repeat this name with them, for every one in the regiment receives exactly the same instruction. our colonel’s name is dupont. it’s the same in all our exercises: quick, clever men are kept back for ever to wait for the dolts.”
m. bergeret inquired whether, like sergeant lebrec, the officers also cultivated the art of martial eloquence.
“not at all,” said m. roux. “my captain—quite a young man he is, too—is the very pink of courtesy. he is an ?sthete, a rosicrucian, and he paints pictures of angels and pallid virgins, against a background of pink and green skies. i devise the legends for his pictures, and whilst deval is on fatigue-duty in the barrack-square, i am on duty with the captain, who employs me to18 produce verses for him. he really is a charming fellow. his name is marcel de lagère; he exhibits at l’?uvre under the pseudonym of cyne.”
“is he a hero too?” asked m. bergeret.
“say rather a saint george,” answered m. roux. “he has conceived a mystic ideal of the military profession and declares that it is the perfect way of life. we are marching, unawares, to an unknown goal. piously, solemnly, chastely, we advance towards the altar of mystic, fated sacrifice. he is exquisite. i am teaching him to write vers libre and prose poems and he is beginning to compose prose sketches of military life. he is happy, placid and gentle, and the only sorrow he has is the flag. he considers its red, white and blue an intolerably violent colour scheme and yearns for one of rose-pink or lilac. his dreams are of the banner of heaven. ‘if even,’ he says sadly, ‘the three colours rose from a flower-stalk, like the three flames of the oriflamme, it would be bearable. but when they are perpendicular, they cut the floating folds painfully and ridiculously.’ he suffers, but he bears his suffering bravely and patiently. as i said before, he is a true saint george.”
“from your description,” said madame bergeret, “i feel keenly for the poor young man.”19 so speaking, she threw a severe glance in m. bergeret’s direction.
“but aren’t the other officers amazed at him?” asked m. bergeret.
“not at all,” answered m. roux. “for at mess, or in society, he says nothing about his opinions and he looks just like any other officer.”
“and what do the men think of him?”
“the men never come in contact with their officers in quarters.”
“you will dine with us, won’t you, monsieur roux?” said madame bergeret. “it will give us great pleasure if you will stay.”
her words instantly suggested to m. bergeret’s mind the vision of a pie, for whenever madame bergeret had informally invited anyone to dinner she always ordered a pie from magloire, the pastry-cook, and usually a pie without meat, as being more dainty. by a purely mental impetus that had no connection with greed, m. bergeret now called up a picture of an egg or fish pie, smoking in a blue-patterned dish on a damask napkin. homely and prophetic vision! but if madame bergeret invited m. roux to dinner, she must think a great deal of him, for it was most unusual for amélie to offer the pleasures of her humble table to a stranger. she dreaded the expense and fuss of doing so, and justly, for the days when she20 had a guest to dinner were made hideous by the noise of broken dishes, by yells of alarm and tears of rage from the young maid, euphémie, by an acrid smoke-reek that filled the whole flat and by a smell of cooking which found its way to the study and disturbed m. bergeret among the shades of ?neas, turnus, and the bashful lavinia. however, the professor was delighted at the idea that his pupil, m. roux, would feed to-night at his table. for there was nothing he liked better than men’s talk, and a long discussion filled him with joy.
madame bergeret continued:
“you know, monsieur roux, it will be just pot-luck.”
then she departed to give euphémie her orders.
“my dear sir,” said m. bergeret to his pupil, “are you still asserting the pre-eminence of vers libre? of course, i am aware that poetic forms vary according to time and place. nor am i ignorant of the fact that, in the course of ages, french verse has undergone incessant alterations, and, hidden behind my books of notes on metre, i can smile discreetly at the pious prejudices of the poets who refuse to allow anyone to lay an unhallowed finger on the instrument consecrated by their genius. i have noticed that they give no reasons for the rules they follow, and i am inclined21 to think that one must not search for these reasons in the verse itself, but rather in the music which in primitive times accompanied it. it is the scientific spirit which i acknowledge as my guide, and as that is naturally far less conservative than the artistic spirit, i am therefore ready to welcome innovations. but i must, nevertheless, confess that vers libre baffles me and i cannot even grasp the definition of it. the vagueness of the limits to which it must conform is a worry to me and ...”
at that moment a visitor came into the study. it was a well-built man in the prime of life, with handsome sunburnt features. captain aspertini of naples was a student of philology and agriculture and a member of the italian parliament who for the last ten years had been carrying on a learned correspondence with m. bergeret, after the style of the great scholars of the renaissance and the seventeenth century, and whenever he visited france he made it his practice to come and see his correspondent. savants the world over held a high opinion of carlo aspertini for having deciphered a complete treatise by epicurus on one of the charred scrolls from pompeii. although his energies were now absorbed in agriculture, politics and business, he was still passionately devoted to the art of numismatics and his sensitive hands still22 itched to have the fingering of medals. indeed, there were two attractions which drew him to * * *—the pleasure of seeing m. bergeret and the delight of looking once more at the priceless collection of ancient coins bequeathed to the town library by boucher de la salle. he also came to collate the letters of muratori which were preserved there. the two men greeted each other with great pleasure, for a common love of knowledge had made them fellow-citizens. then, when the neapolitan perceived that they had a soldier with them in the study, m. bergeret hastened to inform him that this gallic warrior was a budding philologist, inspired by enthusiasm for the latin tongue.
“this year, however,” said m. bergeret, “he is learning in a barrack-square to put one foot before the other, and in him you see what our witty commandant, general cartier de chalmot, calls the primary tool of tactics, commonly known as a soldier. my pupil, m. roux, is a warrior, and having a high-bred soul, he feels the honour of the position. truth to tell, it is an honour which he shares at this identical moment with all the young men of haughty europe. your neapolitans, too, rejoice in it, since they became part of a great nation.”
“without wishing in any way to show disloyalty23 to the house of savoy, to which i am genuinely attached,” said the captain, “i feel that military service and taxation weigh so heavily on the neapolitans as to make them sometimes regret the happy days of king bomba and the pleasure of living ingloriously under an easy-going government. neither tax nor conscription is popular with the neapolitan. what is wanted is that statesmen should really open their eyes to the necessities of national life. but, as you know, i have always been an opponent of megalomaniac politics and have always deplored those great armaments which hinder all progress in europe, whether it be intellectual, moral, or material. it is a great, a ruinous folly which can only culminate in farce.”
“i foresee no end to it at all,” replied m. bergeret. “no one wishes it to end save certain thinkers who have no means of making their ideas known. the rulers of states cannot desire disarmament, for such a movement would render their position difficult and precarious and would take an admirable tool of empire out of their hands. for armed nations meekly submit to government. military discipline shapes them to obedience, and in a nation so disciplined, neither insurrections, nor riots, nor tumults of any kind need be feared. when military service is obligatory upon all, when all the citizens either are, or have been,24 soldiers, then all the forces of social life are so calculated as to support power, or even the lack of it. this fact the history of france can prove.”
just as m. bergeret reached this point in his political reflections, from the kitchen close by there burst out the noise of grease pouring over on the fire; from this the professor inferred that the youthful euphémie, according to her usual practice on gala days, had upset her saucepan on the stove, after rashly balancing it on a pyramid of coal. he had learnt by now that such an event must recur again and again with the inexorable certainty of the laws that govern the universe. a shocking smell of burnt meat filled the study, while m. bergeret traced the course of his ideas as follows:
“had not europe,” said he, “been turned into a barrack, we should have seen insurrections bursting out in france, germany, or italy, as they did in former times. but nowadays those obscure forces which from time to time uplift the very pavements of our city find regular vent in the fatigue duty of barrack-yards, in the grooming of horses and the sentiment of patriotism.
“the rank of corporal supplies an admirable outlet for the energies of young heroes who, had they been left in freedom, would have been building barricades to keep their arms lissom. i have only this moment been told of the sublime25 speeches made by a certain sergeant lebrec. were he dressed in the peasant’s blouse this hero would be thirsting for liberty, but clad in a uniform, it is tyranny for which he yearns, and to help in the maintenance of order the thing for which he craves. in armed nations it is easy enough to preserve internal peace, and you will notice that, although in the course of the last twenty-five years, paris has been a little agitated on one occasion, it was only when the commotion was the work of a war minister. that is, a general was able to do what a demagogue could not have done. and the moment this general lost his hold on the army, he also lost it on the nation, and his power was gone. therefore, whether the state be a monarchy, an empire, or a republic, its rulers have an interest in keeping up obligatory military service for all, in order that they may command an army, instead of governing a nation.
“and, while the rulers have no desire for disarmament, the people have lost all wish for it, too. the masses endure military service quite willingly, for, without being exactly pleasurable, it gives an outlet to the rough, crude instincts of the majority and presents itself as the simplest, roughest and strongest expression of their sense of duty. it overawes them by the gorgeous splendour of its outward paraphernalia and by the amount of metal26 used in it. in short, it exalts them through the only ideals of power, of grandeur and of glory, which they are capable of conceiving. often they rush into it with a song; if not, they are perforce driven to it. for these reasons i foresee no termination to this honourable calling which is brutalising and impoverishing europe.”
“there are,” said captain aspertini, “two ways out of it: war and bankruptcy.”
“war!” exclaimed m. bergeret. “it is patent that great armaments only hinder that by aggravating the horrors of it and rendering it of doubtful issue for both combatants. as for bankruptcy, i foretold it the other day to abbé lantaigne, the principal of our high seminary, as we sat on a bench on the mall. but you need not pin your faith on me. you have studied the history of the lower empire too deeply, my dear aspertini, not to be perfectly aware that, in questions of national finance, there are mysterious resources which escape the scrutiny of political economists. a ruined nation may exist for five hundred years on robbery and extortion, and how is one to guess what a great people, out of its poverty, will manage to supply to its defenders in the way of cannon, muskets, bad bread, bad shoes, straw and oats?”
“this argument sounds plausible enough,” answered aspertini. “yet, with all due deference27 to your opinion, i believe i can already discern the dawn of universal peace.”
then, in a sing-song voice, the kindly neapolitan began to describe his hopes and dreams for the future, to the accompaniment of the heavy thumping of the chopper with which the youthful euphémie was preparing a mince for m. roux on the kitchen table just the other side of the wall.
“do you remember, monsieur bergeret,” said captain aspertini, “the place in don quixote where sancho complains of being obliged to endure a never-ending series of misfortunes and the ready-witted knight tells him that this protracted wretchedness is merely a sign that happiness is at hand? ‘for,’ says he, ‘fortune is a fickle jade and our troubles have already lasted so long that they must soon give place to good-luck.’ the law of change alone....”
the rest of these optimistic utterances was lost in the boiling over of the kettle of water, followed by the unearthly yells of euphémie, as she fled in terror from her stove.
then m. bergeret’s mind, saddened by the sordid ugliness of his cramped life, fell to dreaming of a villa where, on white terraces overlooking the blue waters of a lake, he might hold peaceful converse with m. roux and captain aspertini, amid the scent of myrtles, when the amorous moon rides28 high in a sky as clear as the glance of a god and as sweet as the breath of a goddess.
but he soon emerged from this dream and began once more to take part in the discussion.
“the results of war,” said he, “are quite incalculable. my good friend william harrison writes to me that french scholarship has been despised in england since 1871, and that at the universities of oxford, cambridge and dublin it is the fashion to ignore maurice raynouard’s text-book of arch?ology, though it would be more helpful to their students than any other similar work. but they refuse to learn from the vanquished. and in order that they may feel confidence in a professor when he speaks on the characteristics of the art of ?gina or on the origins of greek pottery, it is considered necessary that he should belong to a nation which excels in the casting of cannon. because marshal mac-mahon was beaten in 1870 at sedan and general chanzy lost his army at the maine in the same year, my colleague maurice raynouard is banished from oxford in 1897. such are the results of military inferiority, slow-moving and illogical, yet sure in their effects. and it is, alas, only too true that the fate of the muses is settled by a sword-thrust.”
“my dear sir,” said aspertini, “i am going to29 answer you with all the frankness permissible in a friend. let us first grant that french thought circulates freely through the world, as it has always done. and although the arch?ological manual of your learned countryman maurice raynouard may not have found a place on the desks of the english universities, yet your plays are acted in all the theatres of the world; the novels of alphonse daudet and of émile zola are translated into every language; the canvases of your painters adorn the galleries of two worlds; the achievements of your scientists win renown in every quarter of the globe. and if your soul no longer thrills the soul of the nations, if your voice no longer quickens the heart-beats of mankind, it is because you no longer choose to play the part of apostles of brotherhood and justice, it is because you no longer utter the holy words that bring strength and consolation; it is because france is no longer the lover of the human race, the comrade of the nations; it is because she no longer opens her hands to fling broadcast those seeds of liberty which once she scattered in such generous and sovereign fashion that for long years it seemed that every beautiful human idea was a french idea; it is because she is no longer the france of the philosophers and of the revolution: in the garrets round the panthéon and the luxembourg there are30 no longer to be found young leaders, writing on deal tables night after night, with all the fire of youth, those pages which make the nations tremble and the despots grow pale with fear. do not then complain that the glory which you cannot view without misgivings has passed away.
“especially, do not say that your defeats are the sources of your misfortunes: say, rather, that they are the outcome of your faults. a nation suffers no more injury from a battle lost than a robust man suffers from a sword-scratch received in a duel. it is an injury that only produces a transient illness in the system, a perfectly curable weakness. to cure it, all that is needed is a little courage, skill and political good sense. the first act of policy, the most necessary and certainly the easiest, is to make the defeat yield all the military glory it is capable of producing. for in the true view of things, the glory of the vanquished equals that of the conquerors, and it is, in addition, the more moving spectacle. in order to make the best of a disaster it is desirable to fête the general and the army which has sustained it, and to blazon abroad all the beautiful incidents which prove the moral superiority of misfortune. such incidents are to be found even in the most headlong retreats. from the very first moment, then, the defeated side ought to decorate, to embellish, to gild their31 defeat, and to distinguish it with unmistakably grand and beautiful symbols. in livy it may be read how the romans never failed to do this, and how they hung palms and wreaths on the swords broken at the battles of the trebbia, of trasimene and of cann?. even the disastrous inaction of fabius has been so extolled by them that, after the lapse of twenty-two centuries, we still stand amazed at the wisdom of the cunctator, the lingerer, as he was nicknamed. yet, after all, he was nothing but an old fool. in this lies the great art of defeat.”
“it is by no means a lost art,” said m. bergeret. “in our own days italy showed that she knew how to practise it after novara, after lissa, after adowa.”
“my dear sir,” said captain aspertini, “whenever an italian army capitulates, we rightly reckon this capitulation glorious. a government which succeeds in throwing a glamour of poetry over a defeat rouses the spirit of patriotism within the country and at the same time makes itself interesting in the eyes of foreigners. and to bring about these two results is a fairly considerable achievement. in the year 1870 it rested entirely with you frenchmen to produce them for yourselves. after sedan, had the senate, the chamber of deputies, and all the state officials publicly32 and unanimously congratulated the emperor napoleon and marshal mac-mahon on not having despaired of the salvation of their country when they gave battle to the enemy, do you not think that france would have gained a radiant halo of glory from the defeat of its army? at the same time it would have given forcible expression of its will to conquer. and pray believe, dear monsieur bergeret, that i am not impertinent enough to be trying to give your country lessons in patriotism. in doing that, i should be putting myself in a wrong position. i am merely presenting you with some of the marginal notes that will be found, after my death, pencilled in my copy of livy.”
“it is not the first time,” said m. bergeret, “that the commentary on the decades has been worth more than the text. but go on.”
with a smile captain aspertini once more took up the thread of his argument.
“the wisest thing for the country to do is to cast huge handfuls of lilies over the wounds of war. then, skilfully and silently, with a swift glance, she will examine the wound. if the blow has been a knock-down one, and if the strength of the country is seriously impaired, she will instantly start negotiating. in treating with the victorious side, it will be found that the earliest moment is33 the most propitious. in the first surprise of triumph, the enemy welcomes with joy any proposal which tends to turn a favourable beginning into a definite advantage. he has not yet had time for repeated successes to go to his head, nor for long-continued resistance to drive him to rage. he will not demand huge damages for an injury that is still trifling, nor, as yet, have his budding aspirations had time to grow. it is possible that even under these circumstances he may not grant you peace on easy terms. but you are sure to have to pay dearer for it, if you delay in applying for it. the wisest policy is to open negotiations before one has revealed all one’s weakness. it is possible then to obtain easy terms, which are usually rendered easier still by the intervention of neutral powers. as for seeking safety in despair and only making peace after a victory, these ideas are doubtless fine enough as maxims, but very difficult to carry out at a time when, for one thing, the industrial and commercial needs of modern life, and for another, the immense size of the armies which have to be equipped and fed, do not permit an indefinite continuance of warfare, and consequently do not leave the weaker side enough time to straighten out its affairs. france in 1870 was inspired by the noblest of sentiments, but if she had acted in accordance with reason, she would34 have started negotiations immediately after her first reverses, honourable as they were. she had a government which could have undertaken the task, and which ought to have done so, a government which was, indeed, in a better position for bringing it to a successful issue than any that might follow. the sensible thing to have done would have been to exact this last service from it before getting rid of it altogether. instead, they acted the wrong way about. after having maintained that government for twenty years, france conceived the ill-considered notion of overturning it just at the very moment when it ought to have been useful to her, and of substituting another government for it. this administration, not being jointly liable with the former one, had to begin the war over again, without, however, bringing any new strength to its prosecution. after that a third government tried to establish itself.
“if it had succeeded, the war would have begun again a third time, because the first two unfortunate attempts did not count. honour, say you, must be satisfied. but you had given satisfaction with your blood to two honours: the honour of the empire, as well as of the republic; you were also ready to satisfy a third, the honour of the commune. yet it seems to me that even the proudest nation in the world has but one honour35 to satisfy. you were thrown by this excess of generosity into a state of great weakness from which you are now happily recovering....”
“in fact,” said m. bergeret, “if italy had been beaten at weissenburg and at reichshoffen, these defeats would have been as valuable to her as the whole of belgium. but we are a people of heroes, who always fancy that we have been betrayed. that sums up our history. take note also of the fact that we are a democracy; and that is the state in which negotiations present most difficulties. nobody can, however, deny that we made a long and courageous stand. moreover, we have a reputation for magnanimity, and i believe we deserve it. anyhow, the feats of the human race have always been but melancholy farces, and the historians who pretend to discover any sequence in the flow of events are merely great rhetoricians. bossuet...”
just as m. bergeret was uttering this name the study door opened with such a crash that the wicker-work woman was upheaved by it and fell at the feet of the astonished young soldier. then there appeared in the doorway a ruddy, squint-eyed wench, with no forehead worth mentioning. her sturdy ugliness shone with the glow of youth and health. her round cheeks and bare arms were a fine military red. planting herself in front of36 m. bergeret, she brandished the coal-shovel and shouted:
“i’m off!”
euphémie, having quarrelled with madame bergeret, was now giving notice. she repeated:
“i’m going off home!”
said m. bergeret:
“then go quietly, my child.”
again and again she shouted:
“i’m off! madame wants to turn me into a regular beast of burden.”
then, lowering her shovel, she added in lower tones:
“besides, things are always happening here that i would rather not see.”
without attempting to unravel the mystery of these words, m. bergeret merely remarked that he would not delay her, and that she could go.
“well, then, give me my wages.”
“leave the room,” answered m. bergeret. “don’t you see that i have something to do besides settling with you? go and wait elsewhere.”
but euphémie, once more waving the dull, heavy shovel, yelled:
“give me my money! my wages! i want my wages!”
