Bouvard and Pecuchet Part 35

And M. de Faverges, when he said, "We wish," "We shall do," "We calculate clearly," represented a group.

Bouvard and Pecuchet were disgusted with the minority quite as much as with the majority. The common people, in short, were just the same as the aristocracy.

The right of intervention appeared dubious to them. They sought for its principles in Calvo, Martens, Vattel; and Bouvard's conclusion was this:

"There may be intervention to restore a prince to the throne, to emanc.i.p.ate a people, or, for the sake of precaution, in view of a public danger. In other cases it is an outrage on the rights of others, an abuse of force, a piece of hypocritical violence."

"And yet," said Pecuchet, "peoples have a solidarity as well as men."

"Perhaps so." And Bouvard sank into a reverie.

The expedition to Rome soon began.

At home, through hatred of revolutionary ideas, the leaders of the Parisian middle cla.s.s got two printing-offices sacked. The great party of order was formed.

It had for its chiefs in the arrondiss.e.m.e.nt the count, Foureau, Marescot, and the cure. Every day, about four o'clock, they walked from one end of the green to the other, and talked over the events of the day. The princ.i.p.al business was the distribution of pamphlets. The t.i.tles did not lack attractiveness: "G.o.d will be pleased with it"; "The sharing"; "Let us get out of the mess"; "Where are we going?" The finest things among them were the dialogues in the style of villagers, with oaths and bad French, to elevate the mental faculties of the peasants.

By a new law, the hawking of pamphlets would be in the hands of the prefects; and they had just crammed Proudhon into St. Pelagie--gigantic triumph!

The trees of liberty were generally torn down. Chavignolles obeyed orders. Bouvard saw with his own eyes the fragments of his poplar on a wheelbarrow. They helped to warm the gendarmes, and the stump was offered to the cure, who had blessed it. What a mockery!

The schoolmaster did not hide his way of thinking.

Bouvard and Pecuchet congratulated him on it one day as they were pa.s.sing in front of his door. Next day he presented himself at their residence.

At the end of the week they returned his visit.

The day was declining. The brats had just gone home, and the schoolmaster, in half-sleeves, was sweeping the yard. His wife, with a neckerchief tied round her head, was suckling a baby. A little girl was hiding herself behind her petticoat; a hideous-looking child was playing on the ground at her feet. The water from the was.h.i.+ng she had been doing in the kitchen was flowing to the lower end of the house.

"You see," said the schoolmaster, "how the government treats us."

And forthwith he began finding fault with capital as an infamous thing.

It was necessary to democratise it, to enfranchise matter.

"I ask for nothing better," said Pecuchet.

At least, they ought to have recognised the right to a.s.sistance.

"One more right!" said Bouvard.

No matter! The provisional government had acted in a flabby fas.h.i.+on by not ordaining fraternity.

"Then try to establish it."

As there was no longer daylight, Pet.i.t rudely ordered his wife to carry a candle to his study.

The lithograph portraits of the orators of the Left were fastened with pins to the plaster walls. A bookshelf stood above a deal writing-desk.

There were a chair, stool, and an old soap-box for persons to sit down upon. He made a show of laughing. But want had laid its traces on his cheeks, and his narrow temples indicated the stubbornness of a ram, an intractable pride. He never would yield.

"Besides, see what sustains me!"

It was a pile of newspapers on a shelf, and in feverish phrases he explained the articles of his faith: disarmament of troops, abolition of the magistracy, equality of salaries, a levelling process by which the golden age was to be brought about under the form of the Republic, with a dictator at its head--a fellow that would carry this out for us briskly!

Then he reached for a bottle of aniseed cordial and three gla.s.ses, in order to propose the toast of the hero, the immortal victim, the great Maximilian.

On the threshold appeared the black ca.s.sock of the priest. Having saluted those present in an animated fas.h.i.+on, he addressed the schoolmaster, speaking almost in a whisper:

"Our business about St. Joseph, what stage is it at?"

"They have given nothing," replied the schoolmaster.

"That is your fault!"

"I have done what I could."

"Ha! really?"

Bouvard and Pecuchet discreetly rose. Pet.i.t made them sit down again, and addressing the cure:

"Is that all?"

The Abbe Jeufroy hesitated. Then, with a smile which tempered his reprimand:

"It is supposed that you are rather negligent about sacred history."

"Oh, sacred history!" interrupted Bouvard.

"What fault have you to find with it, sir?"

"I--none. Only there are perhaps more useful things to be learned than the anecdote of Jonas and the story of the kings of Israel."

"You are free to do as you please," replied the priest drily.

And without regard for the strangers, or on account of their presence:

"The catechism hour is too short."

Pet.i.t shrugged his shoulders.

"Mind! You will lose your boarders!"

The ten francs a month for these pupils formed the best part of his remuneration. But the ca.s.sock exasperated him.

"So much the worse; take your revenge!"

"A man of my character does not revenge himself," said the priest, without being moved. "Only I would remind you that the law of the fifteenth of March a.s.signs us to the superintendence of primary education."

"Ah! I know that well," cried the schoolmaster. "It is given even to colonels of gendarmes. Why not to the rural guard? That would complete the thing!"

And he sank upon the stool, biting his fingers, repressing his rage, stifled by the feeling of his own powerlessness.