Part 27 (1/2)
The powerful orator excited still greater indignation when he described the proud and crime-stained Colomban, plunged into the stream, all the waters of which could not cleanse him. He gathered up all the humiliations and all the perils of the Penguins in order to reproach the President of the Republic and his Prime Minister with them.
”That Minister,” said he, ”having been guilty of degrading cowardice in not exterminating the seven hundred Pyrotists with their allies and defenders, as Saul exterminated the Philistines at Gibeah, has rendered himself unworthy of exercising the power that G.o.d delegated to him, and every good citizen ought henceforth to insult his contemptible government. Heaven will look favourably on those who despise him.
'He hath put down the mighty from their seat.' G.o.d will depose these pusillanimous chiefs and will put in their place strong men who will call upon Him. I tell you, gentlemen, I tell you officers, non-commissioned officers, and soldiers who listen to me, I tell you General of the Penguin armies, the hour has come! If you do not obey G.o.d's orders, if in His name you do not depose those now in authority, if you do not establish a religious and strong government in Penguinia, G.o.d will none the less destroy what He has condemned, He will none the less save His people. He will save them, but, if you are wanting, He will do so by means of a humble artisan or a simple corporal. Hasten!
The hour will soon be past.”
Excited by this ardent exhortation, the sixty thousand people present rose up trembling and shouting: ”To arms! To arms! Death to the Pyrotists! Hurrah for Crucho!” and all of them, monks, women, soldiers, n.o.blemen, citizens, and loafers, who were gathered beneath the superhuman arm uplifted in the pulpit, struck up the hymn, ”Let us save Penguinia!” They rushed impetuously from the basilica and marched along the quays to the Chamber of Deputies.
Left alone in the deserted nave, the wise Cornemuse, lifting his arms to heaven, murmured in broken accents:
”Agnosco fortunam ecclesiae penguicanae! I see but too well whither this will lead us.”
The attack which the crowd made upon the legislative palace was repulsed. Vigorously charged by the police and Alcan guards, the a.s.sailants were already fleeing in disorder, when the Socialists, running from the slums and led by comrades Phoenix, Dagobert, Lapersonne, and Varambille, threw themselves upon them and completed their discomfiture. MM. de La Trumelle and d'Ampoule were taken to the police station. Prince des Boscenos, after a valiant struggle, fell upon the b.l.o.o.d.y pavement with a fractured skull.
In the enthusiasm of victory, the comrades, mingled with an innumerable crowd of paper-sellers and gutter-merchants, ran through the boulevards all night, carrying, Maniflore in triumph, and breaking the mirrors of the cafes and the gla.s.ses of the street lamps amid cries of ”Down with Crucho! Hurrah for the Social Revolution!” The Anti-Pyrotists in their turn upset the newspaper kiosks and tore down the h.o.a.rdings.
These were spectacles of which cool reason cannot approve and they were fit causes for grief to the munic.i.p.al authorities, who desired to preserve the good order of the roads and streets. But, what was sadder for a man of heart was the sight or the canting humbugs, who, from fear of blows, kept at an equal distance from the two camps, and who, although they allowed their selfishness and cowardice to be visible, claimed admiration for the generosity of their sentiments and the n.o.bility of their souls. They rubbed their eyes with onions, gaped like whitings, blew violently into their handkerchiefs, and, bringing their voices out of the depths of their stomachs, groaned forth: ”O Penguins, cease these fratricidal struggles; cease to rend your mother's bosom!”
As if men could live in society without disputes and without quarrels, and as if civil discords were not the necessary conditions of national life and progress. They showed themselves hypocritical cowards by proposing a compromise between the just and the unjust, offending the just in his rect.i.tude and the unjust in his courage. One of these creatures, the rich and powerful Machimel, a champion coward, rose upon the town like a colossus of grief; his tears formed poisonous lakes at his feet and his sighs capsized the boats of the fishermen.
During these stormy nights Bidault-Coquille at the top of his old steam-engine, under the serene sky, boasted in his heart, while the shooting stars registered themselves upon his photographic plates. He was fighting for justice. He loved and was loved with a sublime pa.s.sion.
Insult and calumny raised him to the clouds. A caricature of him in company with those of Colomban, Kerdanic, and Colonel Hastaing was to be seen in the newspaper kiosks. The Anti-Pyrotists proclaimed that he had received fifty thousand francs from the big Jewish financiers.
The reporters of the militarist sheets held interviews regarding his scientific knowledge with official scholars, who declared he had no knowledge of the stars, disputed his most solid observations, denied his most certain discoveries, and condemned his most ingenious and most fruitful hypotheses. He exulted under these flattering blows of hatred and envy.
He contemplated the black immensity pierced by a mult.i.tude of lights, without giving a thought to all the heavy slumbers, cruel insomnias, vain dreams, spoilt pleasures, and infinitely diverse miseries that a great city contains.
”It is in this enormous city,” said he to himself, ”that the just and the unjust are joining battle.”
And subst.i.tuting a simple and magnificent poetry for the multiple and vulgar reality, he represented to himself the Pyrot affair as a struggle between good and bad angels. He awaited the eternal triumph of the Sons of Light and congratulated himself on being a Child of the Day confounding the Children of Night.
X. MR. JUSTICE CHAUSSEPIED
Hitherto blinded by fear, incautious and stupid before the bands of Friar Douillard and the partisans of Prince Crucho, the Republicans at last opened their eyes and grasped the real meaning of the Pyrot affair.
The deputies who had for two years turned pale at the shouts of the patriotic crowds became, not indeed more courageous, but altered their cowardice and blamed Robin Mielleux for disorders which their own compliance had encouraged, and the instigators of which they had several times slavishly congratulated. They reproached him for having imperilled the Republic by a weakness which was really theirs and a timidity which they themselves had imposed upon him. Some of them began to doubt whether it was not to their interest to believe in Pyrot's innocence rather than in his guilt, and thenceforward they felt a bitter anguish at the thought that the unhappy man might have been wrongly convicted and that in his aerial cage he might be expiating another man's crimes.
”I cannot sleep on account of it!” was what several members of Minister Guillaumette's majority used to say. But these were ambitious to replace their chief.
These generous legislators overthrew the cabinet, and the President of the Republic put in Robin Mielleux's place, a patriarchal Republican with a flowing beard, La Trinite by name, who, like most of the Penguins, understood nothing about the affair, but thought that too many monks were mixed up in it.
General Greatauk before leaving the Ministry of War, gave his final advice to Pariler, the Chief of the Staff.
”I go and you remain,” said he, as he shook hands with him. ”The Pyrot affair is my daughter; I confide her to you, she is worthy of your love and your care; she is beautiful. Do not forget that her beauty loves the shade, is leased with mystery, and likes to remain veiled. Great her modesty with gentleness. Too many indiscreet looks have already profaned her charms. . . . Panther, you desired proofs and you obtained them. You have many, perhaps too many, in your possession. I see that there will be many tiresome interventions and much dangerous curiosity. If I were in your place I would tear up all those doc.u.ments. Believe me, the best of proofs is none at all. That is the only one which n.o.body discusses.”
Alas! General Panther did not realise the wisdom of this advice. The future was only too thoroughly to justify Greatauk's perspicacity. La Trinite demanded the doc.u.ments belonging, to the Pyrot affair. Peniche, his Minister of War, refused them in the superior interests of the national defence, telling him that the doc.u.ments under General Panther's care formed the hugest ma.s.s of archives in the world. La Trinite studied the case as well as he could, and, without penetrating to the bottom of the matter, suspected it of irregularity. Conformably to his rights and prerogatives he then ordered a fresh trial to be held. Immediately, Peniche, his Minister of War, accused him of insulting the army and betraying the country and flung his portfolio at his head. He was replaced by a second, who did the same. To him succeeded a third, who imitated these examples, and those after him to the number of seventy acted like their predecessors, until the venerable La Trinite groaned beneath the weight of bellicose portfolios. The seventy-first Minister of War, van Julep, retained office. Not that he was in disagreement with so many and such n.o.ble colleagues, but he had been commissioned by them generously to betray his Prime Minister, to cover him with shame and opprobrium, and to convert the new trial to the glory of Greatauk, the satisfaction of the Anti-Pyrotists, the profit of the monks, and the restoration of Prince Crucho.
General van Julep, though endowed with high military virtues, was not intelligent enough to employ the subtle conduct and exquisite methods of Greatauk. He thought, like General Panther, that tangible proofs against Pyrot were necessary, that they could never ave too many of them, that they could never have even enough. He expressed these' sentiments to his Chief of Staff, who was only too inclined to agree with them.
”Panther,” said he, ”we are at the moment when we need abundant and superabundant proofs.”