Monsieur Bergeret in Paris. Anatole France
they would never burst? Did you think the sun would never shine again upon the classic land of Justice, upon the country that taught the Law to Europe and the world?”
“Don’t let us speak of the Affair,” replied Monsieur de La Barge. “I know nothing of it. I wish to know nothing. I did not read a word of the Inquiry. Commandant de La Barge, my cousin, assured me that Dreyfus was guilty. That affirmation was enough for me. I came, dear Monsieur Bergeret, to ask your advice about my son Adhémar, whose prospects in life are now engaging my attention. A year of military service is a long time for a young fellow of good family. Three years would be nothing short of disaster. It is essential to find a means of exemption. I had thought of letting him take his degree in literature, but I’m afraid it is too difficult. Adhémar is intelligent, but he has no taste for literature.”
“Well,” said Monsieur Bergeret, “try the School of Higher Commercial Studies; or the Commercial Institute, or the School of Commerce. I do not know if the Watchmakers’ College at Cluses would still furnish means of exemption. It used not to be difficult, I’ve been told, to obtain the certificate.”
“But Adhémar cannot very well make watches,” replied Monsieur de La Barge with a certain modesty.
“Then try the School of Oriental Languages,” said Monsieur Bergeret obligingly. “It was an excellent institution to begin with.”
“It has gone down since,” sighed Monsieur de La Barge.
“It still has its good points. What about Tamil, for instance?”
“Tamil, do you think?”
“Or Malagasy.”
“Malagasy, perhaps.”
“There is also a certain Polynesian language which was spoken, at the beginning of this century, by only one old yellow woman. She died, leaving behind her a parrot. A German scholar collected a few words of the language from the parrot, and from these he compiled a dictionary. Perhaps this language is still taught at the School of Oriental Languages. I should advise your son to find out.”
Upon this advice, Monsieur Panneton de La Barge made his adieux and thoughtfully took his departure.
CHAPTER VI
Events followed their due course. Monsieur Bergeret continued to look for a flat; it was his sister who found one. Thus the positive mind has the advantage over the speculative mind. It must be admitted that Mademoiselle Bergeret made an excellent choice. She was lacking neither in experience of life nor in common sense. Having been a governess, she had lived in Russia, and had travelled about Europe. She had observed the manners and customs of the different nations. She knew the world, and that helped her to know Paris.
“That’s it,” she said to her brother, stopping before a new house overlooking the Luxembourg garden.
“The stairs look decent enough,” said Monsieur Bergeret, “but it’s rather a stiff climb.”
“Nonsense, Lucien. You are quite young enough to go up five short flights of stairs without getting exhausted.”
“Do you really think so?” said Lucien, flattered.
She was careful to point out that the stair-carpet ran right to the top of the house, and he smilingly accused her of being susceptible to trifling vanities.
“But it is possible,” he added, “that I myself should feel slightly offended were the carpet to stop short at the floor below ours. We profess to be wise, but we still have our weak points. That reminds me of what I noticed yesterday, after lunch, as I was passing a church. The outer steps were covered with a red carpet which had been trodden, after the ceremony, by the guests at some great wedding. A working-class couple with their party were waiting for the last of the wealthy company to leave so that they might enter the church. They were laughing at the idea of climbing the steps upon this unexpected splendour. The little bride’s white feet were already on the edge of the carpet when the beadle waved her away. The men in charge of the trappings of the wealthy wedding slowly rolled up the carpet of honour, and only when it formed a huge cylinder did they allow the humble wedding party to mount the bare steps. I stood for a moment and watched the worthy folk, who seemed greatly amused by the incident. Humble folk surrender with admirable equanimity to social inequality, and Lamennais was quite right to say ‘that the whole social order rests on the resignation of the poor.’ ”
“Here we are,” said Mademoiselle Bergeret.
“I’m out of breath,” remarked Monsieur Bergeret.
“Because you would talk,” replied Mademoiselle Bergeret. “You shouldn’t tell anecdotes while you are going upstairs.”
“After all,” said Monsieur Bergeret, “it is the common destiny of men of learning to live close under the roof. Science and meditation are often hidden away in garrets, and when we come to think of it, no marble hall is worth an attic filled with beautiful thoughts.”
“This room,” replied Mademoiselle Bergeret, “is not a garret. It is lighted by a big window and is to be your study.”
On hearing this, Monsieur Bergeret looked at the four walls in alarm, like a man on the brink of a precipice.
“What is the matter?” asked his sister uneasily.
But he did not reply. The little square room, hung with light paper, seemed to him dark with the unknown future. He entered with a slow and fearful step as though he were entering upon a hidden destiny. Then, measuring on the floor the position of his work-table, he said:
“I shall sit there. It is a mistake to be too sentimental over the past and the future. They are nothing but abstract ideas, which were not originally possessed by primitive man; he acquired them only after long effort, to his great misfortune. The thought of the past in itself is sufficiently painful. I do not think anyone would be willing to begin life again if he had to go over precisely the same ground. That there are delightful hours and exquisite moments I do not deny, but they are pearls and precious stones sparsely sprinkled on the harsh and dismal web of life. The course of the years is, for all its brevity, of tedious slowness, and if it be sometimes sweet to remember it is because we are able to make our minds dwell upon certain moments. And even then the sweetness is pale and melancholy. As for the future, we dare not look it in the face, so threatening is its gloomy countenance. And when you told me a moment since, Zoe, that this was to be my study, I saw myself in the future, and I could not bear the sight. I am not without courage, I think, but I am given to reflection, and reflection and fearlessness are not the best of friends.”
“The most difficult thing of all,” put in Zoe, “was to find three bedrooms.”
“It is certain,” rejoined Monsieur Bergeret, “that humanity, in its youth, did not conceive of the future and the past as we do. Now these ideas that devour us have no reality outside ourselves. We know nothing of life, and the theory of its development through time is pure illusion. It is by some infirmity of our senses that we do not see to-morrow realized as we see yesterday. We can very well conceive of beings so organized as to be capable of the simultaneous perception of phenomena which to us appear to be separated from one another by an appreciable interval of time. We ourselves do not perceive light and sound in the order of time. We ourselves take in at a single glance, when we raise our eyes to the sky, aspects which are by no means contemporaneous. The beams of light from the stars seem indistinguishable to our eyes, yet they mingle in them, in a fraction of a second, centuries and thousands of centuries. With instruments other than those we now possess we might see ourselves lying dead in the very midst of our own life. For, as time does not in reality exist, and as the succession of facts is only an appearance, all facts are realized simultaneously and there is no such thing as the future. The future has already been; we merely discover it. Now, perhaps, you have some