His Excellency the Minister Part 1

His Excellency the Minister.

by Jules Claretie.

TO ALPHONSE DAUDET

My dear friend,

Ideas sometimes float about in the air like the pollen of flowers. For years past I have been at work collecting notes for this book which I have decided to dedicate to you.

In one of your charming prefaces, you told us lately that you only painted from nature. We are both of us, I imagine, in our day and generation, quite captivated and carried away by that modern society from which in your exquisite creations you have so well understood how to extract the essence.

What is it that I have desired to do this time? That which we have both been trying to do at one and the same time: to seize, in pa.s.sing, these stirring times of ours, these modern manners, that society which perpetuates the antediluvian uproar, that feverish, bustling world always posing before the footlights, that market for the sale of appet.i.tes, that kirmess of pleasure that saddens us a little and amuses us a great deal, and allows us romance-writers, simple seekers after truth, to smile in our sleeves at the constant seekers after portfolios.

This book is true, I have seen the events narrated in it pa.s.s before my own eyes, and I can say, as a spectator greatly interested in what I see, that I am delighted, my old fellow-traveller, to write your great and honored name on the first page of my book as a witness to the sincere affection and true comrades.h.i.+p of

Your devoted,

JULES CLARETIE.

PREFACE

_There was once a Minister of State who presented to his native land the astonis.h.i.+ng spectacle of a Cabinet Minister dying whilst in office. This action was so astounding to the nation at large that a statue has since been erected to his memory._

_I saw his funeral procession defile past me, I think I even made one of the Committee sent by the Society of Men of Letters to march in the funeral convoy. It was superb. This lawyer from the Provinces, good honest man, eloquent orator, honest politician that he was, who came to Paris but to die there, was buried with the greatest magnificence._

_De Musset had eight persons to follow him to the grave; his Excellency had one hundred thousand._

_I returned home from this gorgeous funeral in a thoughtful mood, thinking how much emptiness there is in glory, and particularly in political glory. This man had been "His Excellency the Minister" and not only his own province, but the whole country had placed its hopes on him. But what had he done? He had left his home to cast himself into the great whirlpool of the metropolis. It was the romance of a great provincial plunged in Paris into the reality of contemporary history, and become as ordinary as the commonplace items of the Journals. "What a subject for a study at once profoundly modern and perfectly lifelike!"

The funeral convoy had hardly left the church of the Madeleine when my plot of this romance was thought out, and appeared clearly before me in this t.i.tle, very brief and simple: _His Excellency the Minister_._

_I have not drawn any one in particular, I have thought of no individual person, I even forgot all about this departed Minister, whose face I hardly caught even a glimpse of, and of whose life I was completely ignorant; I had only in my mind's eye a hero or rather a heroine: Politics with all its discouragements, its vexations, its treacheries, its deceptions, its visions as fair as the blue sky of summer, suddenly bursting like soap bubbles; and to the woes of Politics, I naturally endeavored to add those of the pangs of love._

_And this is how my book came to see the light. I have been frequently asked from what living person I borrowed the character of Vaudrey, with its sufferings, its disappointments, its falterings. From whom? An American translator, better informed, it appears, than myself, has, I believe, brought out in New York a _key_ to the characters presented in my book. I should have publicly protested against this _Key_ which unlocks nothing, however, had it been published in France. Reader, do not expect any masks to be raised here--there are no masks; it is only a picture of living people, of pa.s.sions of our time. No portraits, however, only types. That, at least, is what I have tried to do. And if I expected to find indulgent critics, I have certainly succeeded, and the two special characters which I sought to portray in my romance--in Parisian and political life--have been fortunate enough to win the approval of two critics whose testimony to the truth of my portraitures I have set down here._

_An author of rare merit and an authority on Statecraft, Monsieur J.-J.

Weiss, was kind enough one day to a.n.a.lyze and praise, apropos of the comedy founded upon my book, the romance which I am to-day republis.h.i.+ng.

It has been extremely pleasant for me to put myself under the sponsors.h.i.+p of a man of letters willing to vouch for the truth of my portrayals. I must beg pardon for repeating his commendations of my work, so grateful are they to me, coming from the pen of a critic so renowned, and which I take some pride in reading again._

_"I had already twice read _Monsieur le Ministre_," wrote Monsieur J.-J.

Weiss in the _Journal des Debats_ the day following the production at the Gymnase, "before having seen the drama founded on the book, and I do not regret having been obliged to read it for the third time. The romance is both well conceived and admirably executed. To have written it, a union of character and talent was necessary. A Republican tried and proved, permitting his ideal to be tarnished and sullied; a patriot wronged by the vices of the times in which he lived; an honest, clean-handed man; the representative of a family of rigid morality; the strict impartiality of the artist who cares for nothing but his ideas of art, and who protects those ideas from being injured or influenced by the pretensions of any group or coterie; a close and long acquaintances.h.i.+p with the ins and outs of Parisian life; an eye at once inquiring, calm and critical, a courageous indifference, hatred for the mighty ones of the hour, and a loftiness of soul which refuses to yield to the unjust demands of timid friends.h.i.+p: such are the qualities that make the value of this matchless book. Monsieur Claretie has been accused of having gathered together and exposed to the public gaze two or three more or less scandalous episodes of private life, and using them as the foundation of his romance. The fict.i.tious name of Vaudrey has been held to cloak that of such and such a Minister of State. Those, however, who search for vulgar gossip in this book, or who look for private scandal are far astray. They are quite mistaken as regards the tendency and moral of Monsieur Claretie's book. The Vaudrey of the romance is no minister in particular, neither this statesman nor that.

He is the Minister whom we have had before our eyes for the last quarter of a century. He is that one, at once potential and universal. In him are united and portrayed all the traits by which the species may be determined. He had been elected to office without knowing why, and to do him this justice, at least without any fault of his; he was deposed from power without knowing the reason, and we have no hesitation in saying, without his having done anything either good or bad to deserve his fall.

There he is minister, however; Minister of the Interior, and who knows?

in a fair way, perhaps, to be swept by some favorable wind to the post of President of the Council; while not so very long ago to have been made sub-prefect of the first cla.s.s, would have surpa.s.sed the wildest visions of his youth. In Monsieur Claretie's romance it is the old Member of Parliament, Collard--of Nantes--converted late in life to Republicanism, who chose the provincial Vaudrey for his Minister of the Interior; this may, with equal probability be Marshal MacMahon._

_"In Monsieur Claretie's romance, _Monsieur le Ministre_ is of the Left Centre or the so-called Moderate Party, he is therefore on the side of Law and Order. He enters into the Cabinet with the determination to reform every abuse, to recast everything; to seek for honest men, to make merit and not faction, the touchstone of advancement. In short, to apply in his political life the glorious principles which--and the n.o.ble maxims that--He is only, however, forty-eight hours in office when he becomes quite demoralized, paralyzed and stultified for the rest of his ministerial life. It is the phenomenon of crus.h.i.+ng demoralization and of complete enervation of which the public, from the situation in which it is placed, sees only the results of which Monsieur Claretie, with a skilful hand describes for us the mechanism and the cause. This Minister of State, supposed to be omnipotent in office, has not even the power to choose an undersecretary of State for himself. The Minister who only the day before, from his seat upon one of the benches of the Opposition, sat with his head held aloft, his long body erect, with rigid dignity, as if made of triple bra.s.s, cannot now take the initiative in the appointment of a '_garde champetre_.' His undersecretaries of State, his _gardes champetres_, he himself, his whole environment, in fact, are only painted dummies and the meek puppets that a director of the staff, a chief of a division, or a chief of a bureau sets in motion, to the tune he grinds out of his hand-organ, or moves them about at his will like p.a.w.ns upon a chess-board. The Minister will read with smiling confidence the reports by which his subordinates who are his masters, inform him--what no one until then had thought of--that he has been called by the voice of the nation to his high office, and that he can in future count upon the entire and complete confidence of the country. To please these obliging persons, the hangers-on of governments that he has pa.s.sed a quarter of his life infighting against and whom he will call gravely, and upon certain occasions, very drolly, the hierarchy, he will betray without any scruples all those whose disinterested efforts and great sacrifices have brought about the triumph of the cause which he represents._

_"Monsieur le Ministre is from the Provinces! You understand. Solemn and pedantic, if his youth has been pa.s.sed upon the banks of the Isere, a puppy with his muzzle held aloft and giddy, if Garonne has nourished him, broad faced and vulgarly pedantic if his cradle has been rocked in upper Limousin. But whether he comes from Correze, from Garonne or Isere, it is always as a Provincial that he arrives in Paris, the air of which intoxicates him. He is in the same situation and carries with him the same sentiments as Monsieur Jourdain when invited to visit the Countess Dorimene. For the first adventuress who comes along, a born princess who has strayed into a house of ill fame, or one who frequents such a house, who masquerades as a princess in her coquettish house in Rue Bremontier, he will forsake father, mother, children, state doc.u.ments, cabinet, councils, Chamber of Deputies, everything in fact.

He will break away from his young wife who has grown up under his eyes in the same town with him, among all the sweet domestic graces, moulded amid all the fresh and sapid delicacies of the provinces, but pshaw! too provincial for a n.o.ble of his importance, and he will go in pursuit of some flower, no matter what, be it only redolent of Parisian patchouli.

He will break the heart of the one, while for the other, he will bring before the councils of administration suspected schemes, blackmailings, concessions, treachery and ruin. Monsieur Claretie had shown us the Vaudrey of his romance involved in all these degradations, although he has checked him as to some, and in his novel, at least, with due submission to the exalted truth of art, he has not shrunk from punis.h.i.+ng this false, great man and pretended tribune of the people, by the very vices he espoused._

_"I do not stop to inquire if even in the story, Monsieur Claretie's 'Marianne Kayser' is frequently self-contradictory, and if in some features I clearly recognize his Guy de Lissac; two characters that play an important part in the narrative! But after all, what does it matter?

It suffices for me that his Excellency the Minister and all his Excellency's entourage are fully grasped and clearly described. Granet, the low _intriguer_ of the lobbies; Molina, the stock-company cut-throat and Bourse ruffian; Ramel, the melancholy and redoubtable publicist, who has made emperors without himself desiring to become one, who will die in the neighborhood of Montmartre and the Batignolles, forgotten but proud, poor, and unsullied by money, true to his ideals, among the ingrates enriched by his journal and who have reached the summit only by the influence of his authority with the public; Denis Garnier, the Parisian workman who has had an experience of the hulks as the result of imbibing too freely of sentimental prose and of lending too ready an ear to the golden speech of some tavern demagogue, who has now had enough of politics and who scarcely troubles to think what former retailer of treasonable language, what Gracchus of the sidewalk may be minister, Vaudrey or Pichereau, or even Granet: all these types are separately a.n.a.lyzed and vigorously generalized. Monsieur Claretie designated no one in particular but we elbow the characters in his book every day of our lives. He has, moreover, written a book of a robust and healthy novelty.

The picture of the greenroom of the Ballet with which the tale opens and where we are introduced in the most natural way possible to nearly all the characters that play a part in the story of Vaudrey is masterly in execution and intention. It is Balzac, but Balzac toned down and more limpid."_

_I will stop here at the greenroom of the Ballet commended by Monsieur J.-J. Weiss, to give a slight sketch, clever as a drawing by Saint' Aubin or a lithograph by Gavarni, which Monsieur Ludovic Halevy has contributed to a journal and in which he also praises the romance that the _feuilletoniste_ of the _Debats_ has criticized with an authority so discriminating and a benevolence so profound._

_It was very agreeable for me to observe that such a thorough Parisian as the shrewd and witty author of _Les Pet.i.tes Cardinal_ should find that the Opera--which certainly plays a role in our politics--had been sufficiently well portrayed by the author of _Monsieur le Ministre_. And upon this, the first chapter of my book, Monsieur Ludovic Halevy adds, moreover, some special and piquant details which are well worth quoting:_

_"That which gave me very great pleasure in this tale of a man of politics is that politics really have little, very little place in the novel; it is love that dominates it and in the most despotic and pleasant way possible. This great man of Gren.o.ble who arrives at Paris in order to reform everything, repair everything, elevate everything, falls at once under the sway of a most charming Parisian adventuress.

See Sulpice Vaudrey the slave of Marianne. Marianne's gray eyes never leave him--But she in her turn meets her master--and Marianne's master is Adolphe Gochard, a horrid Parisian blackguard--who is so much her master that, after all, the real hero of the romance is Adolphe Gochard.

Such is the secret philosophy of this brilliant and ingenious romance._

_"I have, however, a little quarrel on my own account with Monsieur Jules Claretie. Nothing can be more brilliantly original than the introductory chapter of _Monsieur le Ministre_. Sulpice Vaudrey makes his first appearance behind the scenes of the Opera, and from the sides of the stage, in the stage boxes, opera-gla.s.ses are turned upon him, and he hears whispered:_

_"'It is the new Minister of the Interior.'_

_"'Nonsense! Monsieur Vaudrey?'_

_"'Yes, Monsieur Vaudrey--'_

_"In short, the appearance of his Excellency creates a sensation, and it is against this statement that I protest. I go frequently to the Opera, very frequently. During the last ten years I have seen defile before me in the wings, at least fifty Ministers of State, all just freshly ground out. Curiosity had brought them there and the desire to see the dancers at close quarters, and also the vague hope that by exhibiting themselves there in all their glory, they would create a sensation in this little world._

_"Well, this hope of theirs was never realized. n.o.body took the trouble to look at them. A minister nowadays is n.o.body of importance. Formerly to rise to such a position, to take in hand the reins of one of the great departments, it was necessary to have a certain exterior, a certain prominence, something of a past--to be a Monsieur Thiers, Monsieur Guizot, Monsieur Mole, Monsieur de Remusat, Monsieur Villemain, Monsieur Duchatel, Monsieur de Falloux or Monsieur de Broglie--that is to say, an orator, an author, a historian, somebody in fact. But nowadays, all that is necessary to be a minister is the votes of certain little combinations of groups and subsidiary groups, who all expect a share of the spoils. Therefore we are ruled by certain personages ill.u.s.trious perhaps at Gap or at Montelimar but who are quite unknown in the genealogical records of the Boulevard Haussmann. Why should you imagine that public attention would be attracted by news like this:_

_"'Look!--There is Monsieur X, or Monsieur Y, or Monsieur Z.'_

_"One person only during these last years ever succeeded in attracting the attention of the songstresses and ballet-girls of the Opera. And that was Gambetta. Ah! when he came to claim Monsieur Vaucorbeil's hospitality, it was useless to crouch behind the cherry-colored silk curtains of the manager's box, many glances were directed toward him, and many prowling curiosities were awakened in the vicinity of the manager's box. Little la.s.sies of ten or twelve came and seized your hand, saying:_

_"'Please, monsieur, point out Monsieur Gambetta to me--he is here--I would so much like to see him.'_

_"And then Gambetta was pointed out to them during the entr'acte--after which, delighted, they went off caracoling and pirouetting behind the scenes:_

_"'You did not see Monsieur Gambetta, but I saw him!'_

_"This was popularity--and it must be confessed that only one man in France to-day receives such marks of it. This man is Gambetta._

_"Meanwhile Claretie's minister continues his walk through the corridors of the Opera house. He reaches the greenroom of the ballet at last and exclaims:_

_"'And that is all!'_

_"Alas, yes, your Excellency, that is all!--"_

_And everything is only a _"that is all,"_ in this world. If one should set himself carefully to weigh power or fame,--power, that force of which Girardin said, however: "I would give fifty years of glory for one hour of power,"--even if one tilted the scale, one would not find the weight very considerable._