No! no! Monsieur FÉlix Pyat, you must remain, if you please. You have been of it, you are of it, and you shall be of it. It is well that you should go through all the tenses of the verb, I am not astonished that a man as clever as you, finding that things were taking a bad turn, should have thought fit to give in your resignation. When the house is burning, one jumps out of window. But your cleverness has been so much pure loss, for your amiable confederates are waiting in the street to thrust you back into the midst of the flames again. It is in vain that you have written the following letter, a chef-d’oeuvre in its way, to the president of

“CITIZEN PRESIDENT,—If I had not been detained at the Ministry of War on the day when the election took place, I should have voted with the minority of the Commune. I think that the majority, for this once, is in the wrong.”
“For this once” is polite.
“I doubt if she will ever retrieve her error.”
If the Commune were to retrace its steps at each error it made, it would advance slowly.
“I think that the elected have not the right of replacing the electors. I think that the representatives have not the right of taking the place of the sovereign power. I think that the Commune cannot create a single one of its own members, neither make them nor unmake them; and, therefore, that it cannot of itself furnish that which is wanted to legalise their nominations’.”

Oh! Monsieur FÉlix Pyat, legality is strangely out of fashion, and it is well for Versailles that it is so.

“I think also, seeing that the war has changed the population....”

Yes; the war has changed the population, if not in the way you understand it, at least in this sense, that a great many reasonable people have gone mad, and that many—ah! how many?—are now dead.

“I think that it was more just to change the law than to violate it. The ballot gave birth to the Commune, and in completing itself without it, the Commune commits suicide. I will not be an accomplice in the fault.”

We understand that; it is quite enough to be an accomplice in the crime.

“I am so convinced of this truth, that if the Commune persist in what I call an usurpation of the elective power, I could not reconcile the respect due to the rote of the majority with the respect due to my own conscience; I shall therefore be obliged, much to my regret, to give in my resignation to the Commune before the victory.

“Salut et FraternitÉ.
“FÉLIX PYAT.”

“Before the victory” is exquisitely comic! But, carried away by the desire of exhibiting the wit of which he is master, Monsieur FÉlix Pyat fails to perceive that his irony is a little too transparent, that “before the victory” evidently meant “before the defeat,” and that consequently, without taking into account the excellent reasons given in his letter to the president of the Commune, we shall only recollect that rats run away when the vessel is about to sink. But this time the rats must remain at the bottom of the hold. Tour colleagues, Monsieur Pyat, will not permit you to be the only one to withdraw from the honours, since you have been with them in the strife. Not daring to fly themselves, they will make you stay. Vermorel will seize you by the collar at the moment you are about to open the door and make your escape; and Monsieur Pierre Denis,^[68] who used to be a poet as well as a cobbler, will murmur in your ear these verses of Victor Hugo^[69], which, with a few slight modifications, will suit your case exactly:—

“Maintenant il se dit: ‘L’empire est chancelant;
La victoire est peu sÛre.’
Il cherche À s’en aller, furtif et reculant.
Reste dans la masure!”
“Tu dis: ‘Le plafond croule; ils vont, si l’on me voit,
EmpÊcher que je sorte.’
N’osant rester ni fuir, tu regardes le toit,
Tu regardes la porte.
“Tu mets timidement la main sur le verrou;
Reste en leurs rangs funÈbres!
Reste! La loi qu’ils ont enfouie en un trou
Est lÀ dans les tÉnÈbres.
“Reste! Elle est lÀ, le flanc percÉ de leurs couteaux,
Gisante, et sur sa biÈre
Ils ont mis une dalle. Un pan de ton manteau
Est pris sous cette pierre.
“Tu ne t’en iras pas! Quoi! quitter leur maison!
Et fuir leur destinÉe!
Quoi! tu voudrais trahir jusqu’À la trahison
Elle-mÊme indignÉe!
“Quoi! n’as-tu pas tenu l’Échelle À ces fripons
En pleine connivence?
Le sac de ces voleurs ne fut-il pas, rÉponds,
Cousu par toi d’avance?
“Les mensonges, la haine au dard froid et visqueux,
Habitent ce repaire;
Tu t’en vas! De quel droit, Étant plus renard qu’eux
Et plus qu’elle vipÈre?”

And Monsieur FÉlix Pyat will remain, in spite of the thousand and one good reasons he would find to make a short tour in Belgium. His colleagues will try persuasion, if necessary—“You are good, you are great, you are pure; what would become of us without you?” and they will hold on to him to the end, like cowards who in the midst of danger cling to their companions, shrieking out, “We will die together!” and embrace them convulsively to prevent their escape.

NOTES:

[68] A writer in the Vengeur.

[69] For translation, see Appendix 7.