The Red Lily — Complete. Anatole France
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and disinterested meditations. They succeed themselves in a series of acts. They lack interior life. This defect is particularly visible in Napoleon, who never lived within himself. From this is derived the frivolity of temperament which made him support easily the enormous load of his evils and of his faults. His mind was born anew every day. He had, more than any other person, a capacity for diversion. The first day that he saw the sun rise on his funereal rock at Saint Helena, he jumped from his bed, whistling a romantic air. It was the peace of a mind superior to fortune; it was the frivolity of a mind prompt in resurrection. He lived from the outside.”
Garain, who did not like Paul Vence’s ingenious turn of wit and language, tried to hasten the conclusion:
“In a word,” he said, “there was something of the monster in the man.”
“There are no monsters,” replied Paul Vence; “and men who pass for monsters inspire horror. Napoleon was loved by an entire people. He had the power to win the love of men. The joy of his soldiers was to die for him.”
Countess Martin would have wished Dechartre to give his opinion. But he excused himself with a sort of fright.
“Do you know,” said Schmoll again, “the parable of the three rings, sublime inspiration of a Portuguese Jew.”
Garain, while complimenting Paul Vence on his brilliant paradox, regretted that wit should be exercised at the expense of morality and justice.
“One great principle,” he said, “is that men should be judged by their acts.”
“And women?” asked Princess Seniavine, brusquely; “do you judge them by their acts? And how do you know what they do?”
The sound of voices was mingled with the clear tintinabulation of silverware. A warm air bathed the room. The roses shed their leaves on the cloth. More ardent thoughts mounted to the brain.
General Lariviere fell into dreams.
“When public clamor has split my ears,” he said to his neighbor, “I shall go to live at Tours. I shall cultivate flowers.”
He flattered himself on being a good gardener; his name had been given to a rose. This pleased him highly.
Schmoll asked again if they knew the parable of the three rings.
The Princess rallied the Deputy.
“Then you do not know, Monsieur Garain, that one does the same things for very different reasons?”
Montessuy said she was right.
“It is very true, as you say, Madame, that actions prove nothing. This thought is striking in an episode in the life of Don Juan, which was known neither to Moliere nor to Mozart, but which is revealed in an English legend, a knowledge of which I owe to my friend James Russell Lowell of London. One learns from it that the great seducer lost his time with three women. One was a bourgeoise: she was in love with her husband; the other was a nun: she would not consent to violate her vows; the third, who had for a long time led a life of debauchery, had become ugly, and was a servant in a den. After what she had done, after what she had seen, love signified nothing to her. These three women behaved alike for very different reasons. An action proves nothing. It is the mass of actions, their weight, their sum total, which makes the value of the human being.”
“Some of our actions,” said Madame Martin, “have our look, our face: they are our daughters. Others do not resemble us at all.”
She rose and took the General’s arm.
On the way to the drawing-room the Princess said:
“Therese is right. Some actions do not express our real selves at all. They are like the things we do in nightmares.”
The nymphs of the tapestries smiled vainly in their faded beauty at the guests, who did not see them.
Madame Martin served the coffee with her young cousin, Madame Belleme de Saint-Nom. She complimented Paul Vence on what he had said at the table.
“You talked of Napoleon with a freedom of mind that is rare in the conversations I hear. I have noticed that children, when they are handsome, look, when they pout, like Napoleon at Waterloo. You have made me feel the profound reasons for this similarity.”
Then, turning toward Dechartre:
“Do you like Napoleon?”
“Madame, I do not like the Revolution. And Napoleon is the Revolution in boots.”
“Monsieur Dechartre, why did you not say this at dinner? But I see you prefer to be witty only in tete-a-tetes.”
Count Martin-Belleme escorted the men to the smoking-room. Paul Vence alone remained with the women. Princess Seniavine asked him if he had finished his novel, and what was the subject of it. It was a study in which he tried to reach the truth through a series of plausible conditions.
“Thus,” he said, “the novel acquires a moral force which history, in its heavy frivolity, never had.”
She inquired whether the book was written for women. He said it was not.
“You are wrong, Monsieur Vence, not to write for women. A superior man can do nothing else for them.”
He wished to know what gave her that idea.
“Because I see that all the intelligent women love fools.”
“Who bore them.”
“Certainly! But superior men would weary them more. They would have more resources to employ in boring them. But tell me the subject of your novel.”
“Do you insist?”
“Oh, I insist upon nothing.”
“Well, I will tell you. It is a study of popular manners; the history of a young workman, sober and chaste, as handsome as a girl, with the mind of a virgin, a sensitive soul. He is a carver, and works well. At night, near his mother, whom he loves, he studies, he reads books. In his mind, simple and receptive, ideas lodge themselves like bullets in a wall. He has no desires. He has neither the passions nor the vices that attach us to life. He is solitary and pure. Endowed with strong virtues, he becomes conceited. He lives among miserable people. He sees suffering. He has devotion without humanity. He has that sort of cold charity which is called altruism. He is not human because he is not sensual.”
“Oh! One must be sensual to be human?”
“Certainly, Madame. True pity, like tenderness, comes from the heart. He is not intelligent enough to doubt. He believes what he has read. And he has read that to establish universal happiness society must be destroyed. Thirst for martyrdom devours him. One morning, having kissed his mother, he goes out; he watches for the socialist deputy of his district, sees him, throws himself on him, and buries a poniard in his breast. Long live anarchy! He is arrested, measured, photographed, questioned, judged, condemned to death, and guillotined. That is my novel.”
“It is not very amusing,” said the Princess; “but that is not your fault. Your anarchists are as timid and moderate as other Frenchmen. The Russians have more audacity and more imagination.”
Countess Martin asked Paul Vence whether he knew a silent, timid-looking man among the guests. Her husband had invited him. She knew nothing of him, not even his name. Paul Vence could only say that he was a senator. He had seen him one day by chance in the Luxembourg, in the gallery that served as a library.
“I went there to look at the cupola, where Delacroix has painted, in a wood of bluish myrtles, heroes and sages of antiquity. That gentleman was there, with the same wretched and pitiful air. His coat was damp and he was warming himself. He was talking with old colleagues and saying, while rubbing his hands: ‘The proof that the Republic is the best of governments is that in 1871 it could kill in a week sixty thousand insurgents without becoming unpopular. After such a repression any other regime would have been impossible.’ ”
“He is