Saturday morning

Delightful sunshine, with a light mist that promises a fine day.  I had my breakfast at the Café Mably.

      Madame Florent, the cashier, gave me a gracious smile.  I called out from my table:

      "Is Monsieur Fasquelle ill?"

      "Yes, Monsieur; a bad attack of flu: he'll have to stay in bed for a few days.  His daughter arrived from Dunkirk this morning.  She's going to stay here to look after him."

      For the first time since I got her letter, I feel really happy at the idea of seeing Anny again.  What has she been doing these last six years?  Shall we be embarrassed when we see each other again?  Anny doesn't know what it is to fee embarrassed.  She will greet me as if I had left her yesterday.  I only hope I won't behave like a fool, and put her off right at the beginning.  I must remember not to hold my hand out to her when I arrive: she hates that.

      How many days shall we stay together?  Perhaps I shall bring her back to Bouville.  It would be enough if she lived her for only a few hours; if she spent one night at the Hotel Printania.  Afterwards, it wouldn't be the same; I couldn't feel frightened anymore.

Saturday afternoon

Last year, when I paid my first visit to Bouville museum, I was struck by the portrait of Olivier Blévigne.  Was there something wrong with the proportions?  With the perspective?  I couldn't have said what it was, but something bothered me: this deputy didn't seem right on his canvas.

      Since then I have been back several times to see him.  But my impression that something was wrong persisted.  I refused to believe that Bordurin, who had received the Prix de Rome and six medals, could have been guilty of faulty draughtsmanship.

      Well, this afternoon, looking through an old collection of the Satirique Bouvillois, a blackmailing rag whose owner was accused of high treason during the war, I caught a glimpse of the truth.  I promptly left the library and went over to the museum.

      I walked quickly across the shadowy hall.  My footsteps made no noise on the black and white tiles.  Around me, a whole race of plaster people were twisting their arms.  Through a couple of large openings, I caught a glimpse in passing of some crackled vases, some plates, a blue and yellow satyr on a pedestal.  It was the Bernard-Palissy Room, devoted to ceramics and the minor arts.  But ceramics don't make me laugh.  A lady and gentleman in mourning were respectfully contemplating these baked objects.

      Above the entrance to the main hall - the Bordurin-Renaudas Room - a large canvas had been hung, probably only a little while before, which I didn't know.  It was signed Richard Séverand and was entitled The Bachelor's Death.  It was a gift from the State.

      Naked to the waist, his torso a little green as befits a dead man, the bachelor was lying on an unmade bed.  The disorder of the sheets and blankets bore witness to a long death-agony.  I smiled, thinking of Monsieur Fasquelle.  He wasn't alone: his daughter was looking after him.  Already, on the canvas, the maid, a servant-cum-mistress with features marked by vice, had opened a drawer and was counting money.  An open door revealed a man in a cap, a cigarette stuck on his lower lip, who was waiting in the shadows.  Near the wall a cat was unconcernedly lapping up some milk.

      This man had lived only for himself.  As a severe and well-merited punishment nobody had come to his bedside to close his eyes.  This picture gave me a final warning: there was still time, I could retrace my steps.  But, if I ignored it, I should remember this: in the great hall I was about to enter, over a hundred and fifty portraits were hanging on the walls; with the exception of a few young people of whom their families had been prematurely deprived and the Mother Superior of an orphanage, none of the people depicted had died unwed, none of them had died childless or intestate, none without the last sacraments.  All square, that day as every other day, with God and the world, these men had slipped gently into death, to go and claim their share of eternal life to which they were entitled.

      For they were entitled to everything: to life, to work, to wealth, to authority, to respect, and finally to immortality.

      I thought for a moment and I went in.  An attendant was sleeping near a window.  A pale light falling from the windows was making patches on the pictures.  Nothing alive in this huge rectangular hall, except for a cat which took fright at my arrival and fled.  But I felt the gaze of a hundred and fifty pairs of eyes upon me.

      All who belonged to the Bouville élite between 1875 and 1910 were there, men and women, meticulously depicted by Renaudas and Bordurin.

      The men built Sainte-Cécile-de-la-Mer.  In 1882, they founded the Federation of Bouville Ship-owners and Merchants 'to unite in a powerful group all men of goodwill, to cooperate in the task of national recovery, and to hold in check the parties of disorder....'  They made Bouville the best-equipped port in France for the unloading of coal and timber.  The lengthening and widening of the quays were their work.  They carried out necessary extensions to the harbour station and, by means of constant dredging, increased the depth of the anchorage at low tide to thirty-five feet.  Thanks to them, in twenty years, the tonnage of the fishing fleet, which was 5,000 barrels in 1869, rose to 18,000 barrels.  Stopping at no sacrifice to help the rise of the best elements in the working class, they created, on their own initiative, various centres of technical and professional training which prospered under their lofty patronage.  They broke the famous dock strike of 1898 and gave their sons to their country in 1914.

      The women, worthy help-mates of these fighters, founded most of the town's church clubs, day nurseries, and charity needlework schools.  But above all they were wives and mothers.  They raised fine children, taught them their rights and duties, religion, and respect for the traditions which have gone to the making of France.  The general hue of the portraits bordered on dark brown.  Bright colours had been banished, out of a sense of decency.  However, in the portraits by Renaudas, who showed a preference for painting old men, the snowy white of the hair and side-whiskers stood out against the black backgrounds; he excelled in painting hands.  Bordurin, who was less meticulous, sacrificed the hands to some extent, but the collars shone like white marble.

      It was very hot and the attendant was snoring gently.  I glanced all round the walls: I saw hands and eyes; here and there a patch of light covered part of a face.  As I was walking towards the portrait of Olivier Blévigne, something brought me to a stop: from his place on the line, Pacôme the merchant was looking down at me with his bright eyes.

      He was standing with his head thrown slightly back; in one hand he was holding a top hat and gloves against his pearl-grey trousers.  I could not help feeling a certain admiration: I could see nothing mediocre about him, nothing to lay him open to criticism: small feet, delicate hands, broad wrestler's shoulders, quiet elegance with a hint of whimsy.  He courteously offered visitors the unwrinkled purity of his face; the shadow of a smile was actually playing about his lips.  But his grey eyes were not smiling.  He could have been about fifty: he was as young and fresh as a man of thirty.  He was very handsome.

      I gave up trying to find any fault with him.  But he for his part didn't let me go.  I read a calm, implacable judgement in his eyes.

      Then I realized what separated us: what I might think about him could not touch him; it was just psychology, the sort you find in novels.  But his judgement pierced me like a sword and called in question my very right to exist.  And it was true, I had always realized that: I hadn't any right to exist.  I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant, a microbe.  My life grew in a haphazard way and in all directions.  Sometimes it sent me vague signals; at other times I could feel nothing but an inconsequential buzzing. 

      But for this handsome impeccable man, now dead, for Jean Pacôme, the son of the Pacôme of the Government of National Defence, it had been an entirely different matter: the beating of his heart and the dull rumbling of his organs reached him in the form of pure and instantaneous little rights.  For sixty years, without a moment's failing, he had made use of his right to live.  These magnificent grey eyes had never been clouded by the slightest doubt.  Nor had Pacôme ever made a mistake.

      He had always done his duty, all his duty, his duty as a son, a husband, a father, a leader.  He had also unhesitatingly demanded his rights: as a child, the right to be well brought up, in a united family, the right to inherit a spotless name, a prosperous business; as a husband, the right to be cared for, to be surrounded with tender affection; as a father, the right to be venerated; as a leader, the right to be obeyed without demur.  For a right is never anything but the other aspect of a duty.  His extraordinary success (the Pacômes are now the richest family in Bouville) could never have surprised him.  He had never told himself that he was happy, and when he indulged in a pleasure, he must have done so in moderation, saying: "I am relaxing."  Thus pleasure, likewise acquiring the status of a right, lost its aggressive futility.  On the left, a little above his bluish grey hair, I noticed some books on a shelf.  The bindings were handsome; they must undoubtedly have been classics.  Every evening, before going to sleep, Pacôme probably re-read a few pages of 'his old Montaigne' or one of Horace's odes in the original Latin.  Sometimes, too, he must have read a contemporary work to keep up to date.  That was how he had known Barès and Bourget.  After a little while he would put the book down.  He would smile.  His gaze, losing its admirable vigilance, would become almost dreamy.  He would say: "How much simpler and how much more difficult it is to do one's duty."

      He had never gone any further in examining himself: he was a leader.

      There were other leaders hanging on the walls: indeed, there was nothing else.  He was a leader, this tall verdigris old man in his armchair.  His white waistcoat was a happy echo of his silver hair.  (From these portraits, which were painted above all for moral edification, and in which accuracy was pushed to an exaggerated degree, artistic considerations were not entirely excluded.)  He had placed his long, delicate hand on the head of a little boy.  An open book was resting on his knees, which were covered with a rug.  But his eyes were gazing into the distance.  He was seeing all those things which are invisible to young people.  His name was written on his lozenge of gilded wood underneath his portrait: he must have been called Pacôme or Parrottin or Chaigneau.  It didn't occur to me to look: for his family, for this child, for himself, he was simply the Grandfather; before long, if he considered the time had come to reveal to his grandson the extent of his future duties, he would speak of himself in the third person.

      "You're going to promise your grandfather to be good, my boy, to work hard next year.  Perhaps Grandfather won't be here anymore next year."

      In the evening of life, he spread his indulgent kindness over all and sundry.  I myself, if he saw me - but I was transparent to his gaze - I myself would find grace in his eyes: he would think that I had once had grandparents.  He demanded nothing: a man has no more desires at that age.  Nothing except that people should lower their voices slightly when he came in, nothing except that their smiles should reveal a touch of affection and respect as he passed, nothing except that his daughter-in-law should sometimes say: "Father is amazing; he is younger than all of us", nothing except that he should be the only one able to calm his grandson's temper by putting his hands on the child's head, and able to say afterwards: "Grandfather knows how to soothe these troubles", nothing except that his son should come several times a year to ask for his advice on delicate questions, nothing finally except that he should feel  serene, calm, and infinitely wise.  The old gentleman's hand scarcely weighed upon his grandson's curls;  it was almost a benediction.  What could he be thinking about?  About his honourable past which conferred upon him the right to speak about everything and to have the last word on everything.  I had not gone far enough the other day: Experience was much more than a defence against death; it was a right - the right of old men.

      General Aubry, hanging on the line with his great sword, was a leader.  Another leader was President Hébert, a well-read man and a friend of Impétraz.  His face was long and symmetrical with an interminable chin, punctuated, just below the lip, by a tuft of hair: he thrust his jaw out slightly, with an amused expression as if he were putting on airs, pondering an objection on principle, like a gentle belch.  He was dreaming, holding a quill pen: he too was relaxing, dammit, this time by writing poetry.  But he had the eagle eye of a leader.

      And what about the soldiers?  I was in the middle of the room, the cynosure of all these grave eyes.  I was neither a grandfather, nor a father, nor even a husband.  I didn't vote, I scarcely paid any taxes; I couldn't lay claim to the rights of a taxpayer, nor to those of an elector, nor even to the humble right to honour which twenty years of obedience confer on an employee.  My existence was beginning to cause me serious concern.  Was I a mere figment of the imagination?

      "Hey," I suddenly said to myself, "I'm the one who is the soldier!"  This made me laugh, without any suggestion of rancour.

      A plump quinquagenarian politely returned a magnificent smile to me.  Renaudas had painted him with loving attention, unable to find any touch too gentle for the flesh, finely chiselled little ears, and above all for the hands, long sensitive hands with tapering fingers: real scientist's or artist's hands.  His face was unknown to me: I must have passed the canvas often without noticing it.  I went up to it and read: 'Rémy Parrottin, born at Bouville in 1849. Professor at the École de Médicine in Paris, by Renaudas.'

      Parrottin: Doctor Wakefield had spoken to me about him: "Once in my life I met a great man.  It was Remy Parrottin.  I attended his lectures during the winter of 1904 (you know that I spent two years in Paris studying obstetrics).  He made me understand what a leader is.  He had a sort of life force in him, I swear he did.  He electrified us, we would have followed him to the ends of the earth.  And with all that he was a gentleman: he had a huge fortune and he used a good part of it to help poor students."

      That was how this prince of science, the first time I heard about him, had inspired a few strong feelings in me.  Now I was standing before him and he was smiling at me.  What intelligence and affability there was in his smile!  His plump body rested comfortably in the hollow of a big leather armchair.  This unpretentious savant put people at their ease straightaway.  If it hadn't been for the spirituality of his gaze, you would even have taken him for a very ordinary man.

      It wasn't hard to guess the reason for his prestige: he was loved because he understood everything; you could tell him anything.  All in all he looked a little like Renan, with more distinction.  He was one of those people who say:

      "The Socialists? Why, I go further than they do!"  When you followed him along this perilous road, you soon had to abandon, with a shiver, family, country, the right to property, the most sacred values.  You even doubted for a moment the right of the bourgeois elite to govern.  Another step and suddenly everything was restored, miraculously founded on solid reasons, in the good old way.  You turned round and you saw behind you the Socialists, already far away and tiny, waving their handkerchiefs and shouting: "Wait for us!"

      I knew too, through Wakefield, that the Master liked, as he used to say himself with a smile, "to deliver souls".  Having remained young, he surrounded himself with young people: he often received young men of good family who were studying medicine.  Wakefield had been to his house for luncheon several times.  After the meal everyone moved into the smoking-room.  The Master treated these students who had smoked their first cigarette not long before like men: he offered them cigars.  He stretched out on a divan and spoke at length, his eyes half-closed, surrounded by the eager crowd of his disciples.  He evoked memories and told anecdotes, drawing an amusing and profound moral from each.  And if, among these well-bred young men, there was one who showed a liking for advanced ideas, Parrottin would take a special interest in him.  He encouraged him to speak, listened to him attentively, provided him with ideas and subjects for meditation.  Inevitably the young man, full of generous ideas, excited by his family's hostility, and weary of thinking by himself and in opposition to everybody else, would ask the Master one day if he might see him alone, and, stammering with shyness, would confide to him his most intimate thoughts, his indignations, his hopes.  Parrottin would clasp him in his arms.  He would say: "I understand you, I have understood you from the very first day."  They would talk together, and Parrottin would go far, further still, so far that the young man would have difficulty in following him.  After a few conversations of this sort, a distinct improvement could be detected in the young rebel.  He saw clearly in himself, he learned to know the close ties which linked him to his family, to his environment; finally he understood the admirable role of the elite.  And in the end, as if by magic, the lost sheep, which had been following Parrottin step by step, found himself back in the fold, enlightened and repentant.  "He cured more souls," Wakefield concluded, "than I've cured bodies."

      Rémy Parrottin smiled affably at me.  He hesitated, trying to understand my position, in order to outflank it and lead me back to the fold.  But I wasn't afraid of him: I wasn't a sheep.  I looked at his fine forehead, calm and unwrinkled, his little paunch, his hand resting flat on his knee.  I returned his smile and left him.

      Jean Parrottin, his brother, the President of the S.A.B., was leaning with both hands on the edge of a table loaded with papers; everything in his attitude indicated to the visitor that the audience was over.  His gaze was extraordinary; it was almost abstract and shone with pure privilege.  His dazzling eyes dominated the whole of his face.  Below this glow I noticed two thin, tight lips, the lips of a mystic.  'That's funny,' I thought, 'he looks like Rémy Parrottin.'  I turned towards the Master: examining him in the light of this resemblance, I suddenly saw something arid and desolate appear in his gentle face: the family resemblance.  I came back to Jean Parrottin.

      This man possessed the simplicity of an idea.  Nothing was left in him but bones, dead flesh, and Pure Privilege.  A real case of possession, I thought.  Once Privilege has taken hold of a man, there is no exorcistic spell which can drive it out; Jean Parrottin had devoted the whole of his life to thinking of his Privileges: nothing else.  Instead of the slight headache which I could feel coming on, as it does every time I visit a museum, he would have felt in his temples the painful right to be looked after.  It was important not to make him think too much, or to draw his attention to unpleasant realities, to the possibility of his dying, to other people's sufferings.  Probably, on his deathbed, at that moment which, ever since Socrates, it has been the done thing to say a few uplifting words, he said to his wife, as an uncle of mine told his, after she had watched over him for twelve nights: "You I don't thank, Therèse; you have only done your duty."  When a man gets to that point, you have to take your hat off to him.

      His eyes, which I gazed at in wonder, told me to go.  I didn't leave, I was resolutely indiscreet.  I knew, as a result of contemplating for a long time a certain portrait of Philip II in the library of the Escurial, that, when you look straight at a face ablaze with a sense of privilege, this fire dies out after a moment, and only an ashy residue remains: it was this residue which interested me.

      Parrottin put up a good fight.  But, all of a sudden, the light in his eyes went out, the picture grew dim.

      What was left?  Blind eyes, a mouth as thin as a dead snake, and cheeks.  The pale, round cheeks of a child: they spread out over the canvas.  The employees of the S.A.B. had never had an inkling of their existence: they never stayed for long enough in Parrottin's office.  When they went in, they came up against that terrible gaze, as against a wall.  The cheeks, white and flabby, were sheltered behind it.  How long had it taken his wife to notice them?  Two years?  Five years?  One day, I imagine, as her husband was sleeping beside her, with a ray of moonlight caressing his nose, or else as he was laboriously digesting, in the heat of the day, stretched out in an armchair, with his eyes half-closed and a puddle of sunlight on his chin, she had ventured to look him in the face: all this flesh had appeared to her without any defence, bloated, slavering, vaguely obscene.  From that day on, Madame Parrottin had probably taken command.

      I took a few steps backwards and embraced all these great figures in a single glance: Pacôme, President Hébert, the two Parrottins, and General Aubry.  They had worn top hats; every Sunday, in the rue Tournebride, they used to meet Madame Gratien, the Mayor's wife, who saw St Cécile in a dream.  They used to greet her with great ceremonious bows, the secret of which is now lost.

      They had been painted with minute care; and yet, under the brush, their features had been stripped of the mysterious weakness of men's faces.  Their faces, even the feeblest, were as clear-cut as porcelain: I looked at them in vain for some link with trees and animals, with the thoughts of earth or water.  The need for this had obviously not been felt during their lifetime.  But, on the point of passing on to posterity, they had entrusted themselves to a celebrated painter so that he should discreetly carry out on their faces the dredging, drilling, and irrigation by which, all around Bouville, they had transformed the sea and the fields.  Thus, with the help of Renaudas and Bordurin, they had enslaved the whole of Nature: outside themselves and in themselves.  What these dark canvases offered to my gaze was man re-thought by man, with, as his sole adornment, man's finest conquest: the bouquet of the Rights of Man and Citizen.  Without any mental reservation, I admired the reign of man.

      A lady and gentleman had come in.  They were dressed in black and were trying to make themselves inconspicuous.  They stopped, dumbfounded, on the threshold, and the gentleman automatically took off his hat.

      "Ah!  Well I never!" said the lady, deeply moved.

      The gentleman regained his composure more quickly.  He said in a respectful tone of voice:

      "It's a whole era!"

      "Yes," said the lady, "it's my grandmother's era."

      They took a few steps and met Jean Parrottin's gaze.  The lady stood there gaping, but the gentleman wasn't proud: he had a humble appearance, he must have been very familiar with intimidating gazes and brief interviews.  He tugged gently at his wife's arm:

      "Look at this one," he said.

      Rémy Parrottin's smile had always put humble folk at their ease.  The woman went forward and painstakingly read out:

      "Portrait of Rémy Parrottin, born at Bouville in 1849.  Professor of the École de Médecine in Paris, by Renaudas."

      "Parrottin of the Académie des Sciences," said her husband, "by Renaudas of the Institut.  That's History!"

      The lady nodded her head, then looked at the Master.

      "How handsome he is," she said, "how intelligent he looks!"

      The husband made a sweeping gesture.

      "These are the people who made Bouville what it is," he said simply.

      "It was a good idea to put them here, all together," the lady said gently.

      We were three soldiers drilling in that huge hall.  The husband, who was laughing respectfully and silently, darted a worried glance at me and suddenly stopped laughing.  I turned away and went and planted myself opposite the portrait of Olivier Blévigne.  A sweet joy swept over me:  well, I was right!  It really was too funny for words!

      The woman had drawn near me.

      "Gaston," she said, suddenly emboldened, "come here!"

      The husband came towards us.

      "Look," she went on, "this one has a street named after him: Olivier Blévigne.  You know, the little street that goes up to the Coteau Vert just before you get to Jouxtebouville."

      After a little while she added:

      "He doesn't look very easy-going."

      "No.  Grumblers and grousers must have met their match in him."  This remark was addressed to me.  The gentleman looked at me out of the corner of his eye and started laughing, audibly this time, with a conceited, meddlesome air, as if he were Olivier Blévigne himself.

      Olivier Blévigne did not laugh.  He thrust his set jaw towards us and his Adam's apple jutted out.

      There was a moment of ecstatic silence.

      "Anybody'd think he was going to move," said the lady.

      The husband obligingly explained:

      "He was a cotton merchant on a big scale.  Then he went into politics, he was a deputy."

      I knew that.  Two years ago I looked him up in the Petit Dictionnaire des Grands Hommes de Bouville by the Abbé Morellet.  I copied out the article.

      Blévigne, Olivier-Martial, son of the above, born and died at Bouville (1849-1908), studied law in Paris and obtained his degree in 1872.  Deeply impressed by the Commune insurrection, which had forced him, like so many other Parisians, to take refuge at Versailles under the protection of the National Assembly, he swore, at the age when young men usually think of nothing but pleasure, to 'devote his life to the re-establishment of Order'.  He kept his word: immediately after his return to our town, he founded the famous Club de l'Ordre, which, every evening for many years, brought together the principal businessmen and ship-owners of Bouville.  This aristocratic circle, which was jokingly described as being more exclusive than the Jockey Club, exerted until 1908 a salutary influence on the destinies of our great commercial port.  In 1880, Olivier Blévigne married Marie-Louise Pacôme, the youngest daughter of the merchant Charles Pacôme (see under Pacôme) and on the latter's death founded the company of Pacôme-Blévigne and Son.  Soon afterwards he turned to political life and presented himself as a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies.

       "The Country," he said in a famous speech, "is suffering from the most serious of maladies: the governing class no longer wants to govern.  But who is going to govern, gentlemen, if those whose heredity, education, and experience have rendered them most fit for the exercise of power, turn from it out of resignation or weariness?  As I have often observed, to govern is not a right of the élite; it is the élite's principal duty.  Gentlemen, I beg of you: let us restore the principle of authority!"

       Elected on the first ballot of 4 October 1885, he was consistently re-elected thereafter.  Endowed with an energetic and vigorous eloquence, he delivered a great many brilliant speeches.  He was in Paris in 1898 when the terrible strike broke out.  He returned immediately to Bouville, where he became the moving spirit of the resistance.  He took the initiative of negotiating with the strikers.  These negotiations, inspired by a generous conciliatory spirit, were interrupted by the riot at Jouxtebouville.  As is well known, calm was restored by the discreet intervention of the military.

       The premature death of his son Octave, who had entered the École Polytechnique at an early age, and of whom he wanted to 'make a leader' was a terrible blow to Olivier Blévigne.  He was never to recover from it and died a few years later, in February 1908.

       Collected speeches; Moral Forces (1894.  Out of print); The Duty to Punish (1900.  The speeches in this volume were all given in connexion with the Dreyfus Case.  Out of print); Will-power (1902.  Out of print). After his death, his last speeches and a few letters to close friends were collected under the title Labor Improbus (Plon, 1910).  Iconography: there is an excellent portrait of him by Bordurin, in Bouville museum.

      An excellent portrait, granted, Olivier Blévigne had a little black moustache and his olive-tinted face somewhat resembled that of Maurice Barrès.  The two men had undoubtedly met: they sat on the same benches.  But the deputy from Bouville possessed none of the nonchalance of the President of the League of Patriots.  He was as stiff as a poker and jumped out of the canvas like a jack-in-the-box.  His eyes sparkled: the pupils were black, the corneas reddish.  He pursed his fleshy little lips and held his right hand pressed against his chest.

      How this portrait had bothered me!   Sometimes Blévigne had struck me as too big and other times as too small.  But today everything was clear to me.  I had learned the truth while looking through the Satirique Bouvillois.  The issue of 6 November 1905 was entirely devoted to Blévigne.  He was depicted on the cover as a tiny figure clinging to the mane of old Combes, with this caption: The Lion's Louse.  And on the very first page, everything was explained: Olivier Blévigne was five feet tall.  The paper made fun of his tiny stature and his croaking voice, which on more than one occasion had sent the whole Chamber into hysterics.  It accused him of putting rubber lifts in his boots.  On the other hand, Madame Blévigne, née Pacôme, was a horse.  'It must be said,' the paper added, 'that his better half is his double.'

      Five feet tall!  Why, yes: Bordurin, with jealous care, had surrounded him with objects which ran no risk of diminishing him: a hassock, a low armchair, a shelf with a few small books, a little Persian table.  Only he had given him the same stature as his neighbour Jean Parrottin and the two canvases were the same size.  The result was that the little table in one picture was almost as large as the huge table in the other, and that the hassock would have come up to Parrottin's shoulder.  The eye instinctively compared the two portraits: my uneasiness had come from that.

      Now I wanted to laugh: five feet tall!  If I had wanted to speak to Blévigne, I would have had to lean over or bend my knees.  I was no longer surprised that he stuck his nose into the air so impetuously: the destiny of men his size is always worked out a few inches above their heads.

      The power of art is truly admirable.  Of this shrill-voiced little man, nothing would go down to posterity except a threatening face, a superb gesture, and the bloodshot eyes of a bull.  The student terrorized by the Commune, the bad-tempered midget of a deputy: that was what death had taken.  But, thanks to Bordurin, the President of the Club de l'Ordre, the orator of Moral Forces, was immortal.

      "Oh, the poor boy!"

      The lady had given a stifled cry: under the portrait of Octave Blévigne, 'son of the former', a pious hand had traced these words:

      'Died at the École Polytechnique in 1904.'

      "He's dead!  Just like the Arondel boy.  He looks intelligent.  How upset his mother must have been!  They make them work too hard in those big schools.  The boys' brains go on working even when they're asleep.  I must say, I like those two-cornered hats, they look so smart.  Is that what they call a cassowary?"

      "No.  A cassowary is what they wear at Saint-Cyr."

      I in my turn contemplated the prematurely dead polytechnician.  His waxy complexion and his respectable moustache would have been enough to give anybody the impression of an early death.  For that matter he had foreseen his destiny: a certain resignation could be read in his bright, far-seeing eyes.  But at the same time he carried his head high; in this uniform he represented the French Army.

      Tu Marcellus eris!  Manibus date lilia plenis ...

      A cut rose, a dead polytechnician: what could be sadder?

      I walked along the long gallery, greeting in passing, without stopping, the distinguished faces which emerged from the shadows: Monsieur Bossoire, President of the Commercial Court; Monsieur Faby, President of the Board of Directors of the Independent Port of Bouville; Monsieur Boulange, merchant, with his family; Monsieur Rannequin, Mayor of Bouville; Monsieur de Lucien, born at Bouville, French Ambassador to the United States and a poet as well; an unknown dressed in a prefect's uniform; Mother Sainte-Marie-Louise, Mother Superior of the Great Orphanage; Monsieur and Madame Théréson; Monsieur Thiboust-Gouron, President of the Conciliation Board; Monsieur Bobot, Chief Administrator of the Conscription Board; Messieurs Brion, Minette, Grelot, Lefèbrve, Doctor and Madame Pain, and Bordurin himself, painted by his son Pierre Bordurin.  Clear, cold gazes, delicate features, thin lips.  Monsieur Boulange was huge and patient, Mother Sainte-Marie-Louise industrious in her piety.  Monsieur Thiboust-Gouron was as hard on himself as on others.  Madame Théréson struggled without weakening against a deep-seated illness.  Her infinitely weary mouth spoke eloquently of her suffering.  But this pious woman had never said: "I feel ill."  She concealed her pain; she composed menus and presided over charitable societies.  Sometimes, in the middle of a sentence, she would slowly close her eyes and all the life would go out of her face.  This attack would scarcely ever last more than a second: soon Madame Théréson would open her eyes again and finish her sentence.  And in the workshop they would whisper: "Poor Madame Théréson!  She never complains."

      I had walked the whole length of the Bordurin-Renaudas Room.  I turned round.  Farewell, you beautiful lilies, elegant in your little painted sanctuaries; farewell, you beautiful lilies, our pride and raison d'être; farewell, you Bastards.