Читать книгу Two banks of the Seine (Les Deux Rives) - Fernand Vandérem - Страница 4

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M. CYPRIEN RAINDAL lived on the sixth floor of an old house that stood at the corner of the rue Vavin and the rue ssas, in an apartment made up of two large rooms, the windows of which gave him a limitless vista over the yoke-elm trees of the Luxemburg. He was a thick-set, sanguine man, about forty-five years old, and wore his hair close-cropped, like soldiers in the African colonies. By temperament he was irritable and rebellious. As early as 1860 his elder brother had secured him a place in the Ministry of Industry, from which, however, had it not been for the same powerful intervention of Eusèbe Raindal, he would several times have been dismissed.

Born at the unfortunate period of their fathe life, when M. Raindal had been put out of the University for being an accomplice of Barbès and was reduced to coaching at two francs a lesson, it seemed as if the son had inherited a taste for political opposition. He had detested in turn each government which his functions compelled him to serve, the second empire, M. Thiers, the Seize-Mai, and the subsequent rule of “opportunism.” Finally, in 1889, when the trunks of General Boulanger were seized, a card bearing Cyprie name was found therein upon which he had written the cordial exhortation, “Bravo, general! Forward! The whole country stands with you!”

Cyprien Raindal was on the eve of being promoted; but called to the office of the Minister, his lips already shaping words of gratitude, he received instead the notification of his dismissal. The blow struck him as he was breathing the very spirit of peace; it was like an unexpected insult, like a blow upon the cheek that had been offered for a kiss. Murmuring threats and words of rage, he had returned to his desk, and then had rushed out to order new visiting-cards, on which appeared under his name, ancien sous-chef de bureau au Ministère de ndustrie, and one of these he had himself nailed up on the door of his apartment. But his vengeance had stopped there. The official mind within him forbade his persisting in what was almost the usurpation of a title, and he finally decided to burn the rest of the deceptive cards. Moreover, in spite of the affair, his brother was endeavoring to secure him the benefit of his pension,—three thousand francs, without which he would have been plunged into the most undignified misery. He waited, holding himself in check for a few weeks, and only began to express himself with freedom when his pension had been officially liquidated.

When that was done, however, the fury of his opinions and the violence of his language burst forth terribly, like explosives that have been too long compressed. Thirty years of exasperation, hitherto repressed by the necessity of existing and the fear of his superiors, rushed out through his lips in avalanches that seemed to be inexhaustible. He wished at first to reduce his hatred to a formula, to justify his discontent with some sort of principles, and he inclined towards socialism. Unfortunately, however, he was lost in questions of capital and wages; statistics bored him and political economy upset him with its systems, which were always either unstable or denied by rival experts. By taste, if not by conviction, he was bourgeois; by education he was, like his brother, non-religious; by force of habit he was a waster of red-tape. What he needed was a more human and less subversive doctrine, theories easy to master, morality rather than figures, and sentiment rather than deduction.

Thus, gradually and by himself, he had built up a social creed which allowed him elbow room, as would a suit of clothes made to order. Firmly persuaded that he was the victim of injustice, he longed to see justice enthroned. The punishment of evildoers, the death or exile of the thieves, a general return to honest life and the crushing of iniquity—these he wished to see in the first place. Later? Well, one would see about the rest. Let the people obtain that much purification, and they would settle the remainder in the best way possible. M. Raindal, junior, was not one of those swaggering dreamers who promise to destroy and rebuild society as if it were the hut of a road-mender. He knew how powerful was tradition, how necessary the family, and he appreciated the indispensable charm of freedom. Before doing away with that, let Frenchmen think about clearing the country from the vermin that infested it. If the chance offered itself, Uncle Cyprien would not refuse his help. He declared himself ready to go with them any day that the “comrades” would proceed en masse to seize in their own mansions the prevaricators, the Jews, and the pillars of the church whose coalition kept down France as with a three-pronged fork. It was his own comparison, and he repeated it readily with much bragging about getting his head broken and breaking the heads of many others.

His reading of the newspapers of the opposition had thoroughly fitted him for a place in the ranks of those sincere justice-lovers whom the death of the rebel general had left without a head but not without a hope. Instinctively he turned towards the pamphleteers who denounced the enemies of the weak or supported the victims against their oppressors. By a curious anomaly he had in turn discovered within himself all the hatreds, no matter how incongruous, with which these masters stirred up the flames. Rochefort had helped him to find in his heart the hatred of all politicians; with Paul Bert or his disciples he had discerned in himself a hatred for the priests and all devout Catholics; with Drumont, hatred for Jews and exotics. He was always reading the articles and the books of these pamphleteers and could quote whole passages from memory. His conversation showed this; it was discordant with the most diverse insults. The words chequard (grafter), repu (bloated), panamist (one compromised in the Panama scandals), calotin (priest-ridden), cafard (canting rascal), ratichon (bigot), joined to those of youtre (Jew), youpin (Jew), or rasta (short for rastaquouère and meaning an exotic mongrel or Levantine) vibrated all at once like the “sustained bass” of his indignations. His virulence when he discussed sociology in the presence of strangers was a cause of deep grievance to his family.

When he heard the bell of his apartment he jumped from the little green rep-covered couch where he was dozing and, slightly limping and holding his back with one hand, he opened the door. A smile lit his face the moment he recognized M. Raindal.

“I am very glad to see you!” exclaimed Cyprien, after the two brothers had kissed as usual. “Come this way.... I had so many things to read to you....”

“And how are you?” asked M. Raindal, as he followed him. “How do you feel now? Are you coming to dine to-night?”

“Why, yes, indeed; I shall certainly come.” And, entering the room in which he used to receive, Cyprien affectionately laid his hand on his brothe shoulder and said, “Now, sit down and listen to this.”

Hastily he began a search among the newspapers which littered his couch. They were unfolded, crumpled or piled up so that only odd letters from their large titles could be seen. All those scattered newspapers were a sick ma debauch, a fond indulgence—a luxury, a treat he offered himself when he was kept at home by rheumatism. Otherwise he only read the papers at the café or at the brasserie, and in small doses—perhaps two or three aggressive sheets, which gave a delightful sensation of warmth to his brain after lunch, as the small glass of cognac he usually took burned his throat. When at last he had sorted them and found the three which he sought he flourished them with a rattling noise.

“Here is something!” he said. “Rich and delightful!... Enough to amuse me and to make you swell with pride.... First of all, of course, what amuses me....”

He read the first article in victorious tones. In discreet but pitiless terms the writer announced as imminent the arrest of a senator, an ex-minister and deputy, well-known for his intrigues, his accommodating complacency towards the banking interests and his clerical tendencies; and the government was congratulated for that forthcoming show of energy.

“You see,” Uncle Cyprien said, when he had finished reading, “I do know who it is.... I thought about it for hours.... I could find the name ... and yet, I must admit the news caused me to pass a very pleasant day.... It is high time that all those scoundrels were swept out.... One more in jail! I score one!...” He smiled at his own merriment and added, with his two hands on his knees:

“Well, what do you think about it? It is getting serious! All these rotten gatherings are bursting open!”

M. Raindal hesitated. He wished to avoid controversy or, at least, to adjourn it and to thrash the matter out only after his brother had read the other articles. Trained by his profession and by personal inclination to consider things through the immensity of time, in the infinite span of past and future centuries, he was not so much indifferent to his own time as disdainful of it. Whenever his brother goaded him into discussing politics he felt more scared and ill at ease than if he had had to argue upon a matter of taboo with a savage chief of Polynesia in the latte own language.

“Of course! To be sure!...” he declared. “We are living in a troubled period.... There are many abuses.... How can it be helped?... Concussion is the plague of democracies.... Polybius said so....”

“Ah, leave me alone with your Polybius!” Uncle Cyprien interrupted, shaking his head as if to disentangle himself from his brothe aphorisms. “Why not simply tell me that we are governed by rogues?... It will be truer and quicker....”

Then he felt somewhat ashamed of having thus chided his illustrious elder brother whom he worshiped in the depths of his tormented soul.

“Oh, well, do get angry.... I your fault, after all.... You get on my nerves with your vague, high-sounding sentences.... See, to earn my forgiveness ... the portrait of M. Eusèbe Raindal, the man of the day, the famil standard, the glory of the French Egyptology, with the history of his life from the most remote times to our own days! Tara! Tara! Ta-ta-ta-ta!...” He gave his brother the second newspaper and marched round the room sounding through his rounded fingers a triumphal march, as in the days gone by, at the office, he had celebrated the success of some colleague.

M. Rainda eyes stared at the paper which his long-sightedness compelled him to hold at ar length.

Yes, that coarse-printed, ill-reproduced portrait, that was himself, his own strong nose, his white beard and benevolent face—a true senato face, as uncle Cyprien assured him.

Below his biography were spread out dates and yet more dates, all the titles of his books, one after the other, giving no more inkling of his life, his ideas, the joys and sorrows of his manhood than the milestones on the road or the posts at the crossings give one any idea of the places one goes through. To him, however, these dry figures and words were as alive as his own human flesh. His lips trembled in a nervous smile. Vanity overflowed from his heart to his face. He blushed with shame as if he felt directed towards him the stares of the crowd which, this very day, was looking at his features. However, his innate sense of propriety caused him to collect himself, and he said calmly:

“Entirely correct! I am much obliged to you. l carry it home....”

He rose to take his leave. A gesture from Cyprien caused him to resume his seat.

“Wait! Wait!... Tha not all. Now comes the unpleasant part!... You are insulted in the Fléau, a filthy rag written by calotins and read by all the rich Jews.... Here, listen to this!... It is awful!”

Cyprien began to read in a voice that trembled with sarcasm but even more with anger: