Monsieur Bergeret had a great liking and esteem for craftsmen. As he did not indulge in any elaborate appointments, he rarely employed workmen, but, when he did employ one, he tried to enter into conversation with him, being sure of hearing something worth listening to. So he extended a gracious welcome to Roupart, the carpenter, who came one morning to put up some book-shelves in his study. Riquet, as was his custom, lay in the depths of his master’s arm-chair, peacefully slumbering. But the immemorial recollection of the perils which surrounded his wild forbears in the forests makes the domestic dog sleep lightly. It should further be said that this hereditary readiness to awaken promptly was fostered in Riquet by the sense of duty. Riquet regarded himself as a watch-dog. Firmly convinced that his mission in life was to guard the house, he was proud and happy in his vocation. “So you allow this anarchist to enter, dragging his infernal machine behind him. Well, come what may, I’ve done my duty.” Then he went back to his chair and slept again. Monsieur Bergeret, abandoning the scholiasts of Virgil, entered into conversation with the carpenter. First he questioned him as to the purchasing, cutting and polishing of different woods and the joining of His face to the wall, Roupart answered him between intervals of long silence, during which he took measurements. It was then that he discussed panelling and the making of joints. “A tenon and mortice joint needs no glue if the work is properly done.” “Is there not also such a thing as a dove-tail joint?” inquired Monsieur Bergeret. “It’s an old-fashioned affair; they don’t make ’em now,” replied the carpenter. Thus the professor learned something by listening to the artisan. Having made sufficient headway with his work, the carpenter turned to Monsieur Bergeret. His sunken, large-featured face, his brown complexion, his hair matted over his forehead, and his little goatee, grey with dust, gave him the look of a bronze figure. His smile, which was gentle, but came with difficulty, showed his white teeth and gave him a youthful look. “I know you, Monsieur Bergeret.” “Do you really?” “Oh yes, I know you. That was something a bit out of the common what you did, and no mistake. You don’t mind my mentioning it, I hope?” “Not in the least.” “I hate forgers, my friend,” replied Monsieur Bergeret. “Surely that is permissible in a philologist. I have made no secret of my opinions, but I have not gone out of my way to spread them. How did you get to know of them?” “I will tell you. One sees all sorts of people at the workshop in the Rue Saint-Jacques. All sorts and conditions, big and little. One day I was planing some wood, and I heard Pierre say: ‘That low-down cur of a Bergeret.’ And Paul asks him, ‘Won’t somebody smash his jaw for him?’ And then I realized that you were on the right side in the Affair. There aren’t many like you in this part of Paris.” “And what do your friends say?” “There aren’t many Socialists hereabouts, and the few there are don’t agree. Last Saturday at the club there was a lot of tag-rag and bobtail and the whole lot of us started quarrelling. Old FlÉchier, who fought in 1870, a Communard, who was deported—he’s a man, he is—he got up on the platform and said: ‘Citizens, keep your hair on! The intellectual bourgeois are no less bourgeois than the military bourgeois. Let the capitalists scratch each other’s eyes out. Fold your “That pretty well brought the house down. But, I ask you, should an old Communard, a good revolutionary, talk in that way? I am not educated like old FlÉchier, who has read Marx, but I could see well enough that his arguments were all wrong. It seems to me that Socialism, which stands for truth, should also stand for justice and kindliness, that everything just and kindly must come from it as naturally as the apple comes from the apple-tree. I take it that when we fight against injustice we are fighting for ourselves, for the working-classes, because it’s on us that all injustice lies so heavy. In my opinion, everything that is equitable is a beginning of Socialism. Like JaurÈs, I believe that to take sides with the upholders of violence and falsehood is to turn one’s back upon the social revolution. I know nothing of Jews or Christians. I recognize only men—and there again the only distinction I make is between the just and the unjust. Jews or Christians, it is difficult for the rich to be just; but when the laws are just, men will be just too. Even now the Collectivists and Anarchists are preparing for the He pulled out his watch, and seeing that it was eleven o’clock he put on his waistcoat, picked up his tools, and ramming his cap on the back of his head, said, without turning round: “It’s a sure thing that the middle classes are rotten. The Dreyfus case showed that plainly enough.” With that, he went off to his dinner. Then, with wide-open mouth, bristling hair and flaming eyes, Riquet rushed at Roupart’s departing heels, pursuing them with frantic barks. It may have been that a bad dream had troubled his light slumber and caused him to take advantage of the enemy’s retreat, or, as his master feigned to believe, that his anger had been aroused by the name which had just been pronounced. Alone with Riquet, Monsieur Bergeret addressed him gently in these sorrowful words: And as Riquet gazed at his master with a look of infinite innocence Monsieur Bergeret continued still more gently: “Yes, I know: you have a vague goodness, the goodness of a Caliban. You are a pious dog; you have your theology and your morality, and you try to do well. But then you know nothing. You keep watch over the house, guarding it even against its friends and those who would make it more beautiful. The workman whom you wanted to drive out of the house has, in his simple fashion, “Your shaggy ears are turned not to him whose words are wisest but to him who makes the most noise; and the natural fear which in the days of the cave-dwellers was the wise counsellor of your ancestors and of mine—the fear that created the gods and crime—makes you turn from the unfortunate and deprives you of pity. And you do not even want to be just. The white face of the new goddess Justice is strange to you, and you prostrate yourself before the old gods, black like yourself with fear and violence. You admire brute force, thinking it the sovereign power, because you do not know that it destroys itself. You do not know that all chains must fall before a just idea. “You do not know that true strength lies in wisdom and that through wisdom alone the nations rise to greatness. You do not know that that which makes the glory of the nations is not the senseless clamour raised in public places, but the noble thought concealed in some garret, which, spreading one day over the whole world, will change its face. You do not know that those who have suffered imprisonment, outrage and exile, for justice’ sake, have honoured their country in the act. You do not understand.” |