The Red and the Black (61 page)

'And I shall tell you in very blunt terms: England hasn't got a
farthing left to further the good cause. Even if Pitt himself were to
come back, all his genius would be of no avail to pull the wool over
the English smallholders' eyes, for they know that the short Waterloo
campaign on its own cost them a billion francs. Since you want plain
speaking', the spokesman added, getting more and more animated, 'I say
to you: '
Go out and seek your own help
,
^*
for England hasn't got a guinea to give you, and when England doesn't
pay, Austria, Russia and Prussia, who only have courage and not
money, cannot wage more than a campaign or two against France.

'It is to be hoped that the young soldiers mustered by the forces of
Jacobinism will be defeated in the first campaign, or maybe in the
second; but in the third, at the cost of seeming a revolutionary in
your biased eyes, in the third you'll get the soldiers of 1794,
^*
who that time round weren't the pressganged peasants of 1792.'

At this point interruptions fired off from three or four quarters at once.

'Sir,' said the chairman to Julien, 'go into the next room and copy
out the beginning of the minutes you've taken.' Julien left the room,
much to his regret. The spokesman had just touched on eventualities
which formed the subject of his customary meditations.

They're afraid I'll laugh at them, he thought. When he was recalled,
M. de La Mole was saying, with a seriousness which struck Julien, who
knew him, as highly comic:

'...Yes, gentlemen, it's particularly appropriate to ask of this unfortunate nation:

Will it be a god, a table or a basin?

'It will be a god!
^*
the fable-writer exclaims. You, gentlemen, seem to be the ones for
whom these most noble and profound words are destined. Act on your
own, and noble France will reappear much as our ancestors had created
her and our eyes still saw her before the death of Louis XVI.
^*

' England--her noble lords, that is--loathes base Jacobinism as much
as we do: without English gold, Austria, Russia and Prussia can only
fight two or three battles. Will that be enough

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to bring about the desired occupation, like the one M. de Richelieu
^*
so stupidly failed to exploit in 1817!
^*
I don't think so.'

Here there was an interruption, but it was stifled by sounds of sshh!
from everyone else. It again came from the former imperial general
^*
who was after a Blue Sash, and wanted to cut a figure among the authors of the secret memorandum.

'I don't think so,' M. de La Mole resumed when the hubbub died down.
He stressed the I in a tone of insolence that delighted Julien. That
was well played, he said to himself, making his pen fly almost as fast
as the marquis's speech. With a word said right, M. de La Mole
destroys all twenty of this turncoat's campaigns.

'It isn't only to foreign hands', the marquis continued, 'that we can
look for a fresh military occupation. All these young men writing
inflammatory articles in
Le Globe
^*
will provide you with three or four thousand young captains in whose midst there may be a Kléber,
^*
a Hoche, a Jourdan, a Pichegru, but less well-intentioned.

'We failed to give him due honour,' said the chairman, 'His memory should have been made immortal.'

'We must ultimately have two parties in France,' M. de La Mole went
on, 'but two parties not in name alone, two parties that are quite
distinct, quite separate. Let's be clear who it is we must crush. On
the one hand journalists, voters, public opinion, in short: youth and
all its admirers. While its head is being turned by the sound of its
idle words, we on our side have the sure advantage of feeding off the
budget.'

Another interruption here.

'You, sir,' said M. de La Mole to the interrupter with admirable
hauteur and polish, 'you don't "feed off it"--if the term shocks
you--you devour forty thousand francs from the State budget and eighty
thousand you receive from the civil list.

'Well, sir, since you drive me to it, let me boldly take you as an
example. Like your noble ancestors who followed St Louis to the
Crusades, you ought, in return for these hundred and twenty thousand
francs, to have at least a regiment to show us--a company, or come
now! a half-company, even if it had

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no more than fifty men in it ready to fight, and devoted to the good
cause, in life and in death! You've only got lackeys who, if it came
to an uprising, would frighten the daylights out of your good self.

'The throne, the altar, the nobility risk destruction tomorrow, until such time as you set up a force of five hundred
devoted
men in every département; and I mean devoted, not just with the true
bravery of the French, but also the constancy of the Spaniards.

'Half of each band will have to consist of our children, our nephews,
real gentlemen, that is. Each one of them will have at his side not
some talkative petty bourgeois, ready to sport the red-white-and-blue
emblem if 1815
^*
repeats itself, but a good, straightforward, loyal peasant like Cathelineau;
^*
our gentleman will have instructed him, they will have been suckled
by the same nurse if possible. Let each one of us sacrifice a fifth
of his income to set up this little band of five hundred devoted men
in each département. Then you'll be able to count on a foreign
occupation. Your foreign troops will never even get as far as Dijon if
they aren't sure of finding five hundred friendly soldiers in every
département.

'Foreign kings will only
listen to you when you announce the presence of twenty thousand
gentlemen ready to take up arms to open the gates of France to them.
Guaranteeing this support is a burden, you'll tell me; gentlemen, our
heads remain on our shoulders at this price. It's war to the death
between freedom of the press and our existence as gentlemen. Become
manufacturers or peasants, or take up your guns. Be cautious if you
wish, but don't be stupid; open your eyes.

'
Form your battalions
, I'd say to you with a line from the Jacobins' song,
^*
then some noble Gustave-Adolphe
^*
will come along and, moved by the imminent threat to the cause of the
monarchy, will speed three hundred leagues from his own country to
do for you what Gustave did for the Protestant princes. Do you intend
to go on producing talk and no action? In fifty years time there will
only be presidents of republics in Europe, and not a single king. And
with those four letters K-I-N-G, gone are priests and gentlemen. All I
can see is
candidates
currying favour with grubby
majorities
.

-395-

'It's no use saying that at this moment France doesn't have an
accredited general known and loved by all; that the army is only
organized to serve the interests of throne and altar; that all the old
troopers have been removed from it, whereas every single Prussian or
Austrian regiment has fifty sub-officers who've been in the firing
line.

'Two hundred thousand young men from the lower middle classes are infatuated with war...'

'A pax on unpalatable truths,' said a solemn individual complacently;
he was apparently high up in the ecclesiastical ranks, for M. de La
Mole smiled engagingly instead of getting angry, which was a very
telling sign for Julien.

'A pax on
unpalatable truths; let us sum up, gentlemen: a man with a gangrened
leg that needs amputating is in no position to say to his surgeon:
"this diseased leg is perfectly healthy." If you'll excuse the
expression, gentlemen, the noble Duke of ----- is our surgeon.'

At last the great name has been uttered, thought Julien; I shall be galloping off towards the ----- tonight.
^*

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The first law of every creature is self-preservation and life. You sow hemlock and make out that you'll see corn ripening!

MACHIAVELLI

'The fourth point I venture to put to you as self-evident is this:

Quite impossible to form an armed party in France without the clergy
. I say this boldly, because I'm going to prove it to you, gentlemen. We must give everything to the clergy.

1. Because they are engaged in their business night and day, and
guided by men of great ability settled at a safe distance from the
storms three hundred leagues from your frontiers...'

'Ah! Rome, Rome!' exclaimed the host...

'Yes, sir,
Rome
!' the cardinal continued proudly. '
Pace
the jokes of greater or lesser ingenuity that were in fashion when
you were young, let me declare openly, in 1830, that the clergy,
guided by Rome, is alone in being able to speak to the lower orders.

'If fifty thousand priests repeat the same words on the day appointed
by the leaders, the common people, who, after all, provide the
soldiers, will be more moved by their priests'

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words than by all the doggerel
^*
in the world...' (This slighting allusion set off murmurs.)

'The clergy has greater understanding than you do,' the cardinal went
on, raising his voice; 'all the steps you have taken to achieve this
crucial aim,
having an armed party in France
, have been taken by us.' Here he threw in facts... 'Who sent eighty thousand rifles to the Vendée?
^*
... etc., etc.

'As long as the clergy is deprived of its forests
^*
it possesses nothing. When the first war comes along, the finance
minister is going to send word to his agents that there's no more
money available except for parish priests
^*
. Basically, France is not a religious country, and she loves wars.
Whoever it happens to be who gives her war will be doubly popular,
because waging war means starving the Jesuits, as the common people
would put it; and waging war means delivering those monsters of
pride, the French, from the threat of foreign intervention.'

The cardinal's words were going down well... 'What is needed', he said, 'is for M. de Nerval
^*
to leave the Cabinet: his name puts people's backs up unnecessarily.

At this, everyone stood up and spoke at once. They'll send me out
again, Julien thought; but even the wise chairman had forgotten about
Julien's presence and his very existence.

All eyes looked round for a man Julien recognized. It was M. de
Nerval, the Prime Minister, whom he had glimpsed at the Duc de Retz's
ball.

The commotion reached a peak
,
as the newspapers say when talking about the National Assembly. After
a good quarter of an hour things quietened down somewhat.

Then M. de Nerval rose to his feet and, adopting the tones of an apostle:

'I shall not make out to you', he said in a strange voice, 'that I put no store by the premiership.

'It has been indicated to me, gentlemen, that my name doubles the
Jacobins' numbers by turning a good many moderates against us. I
should therefore readily step down; but the ways of the Lord are shown
only to a few; and', he added, staring straight at the cardinal, 'I
have a mission; heaven has said to me: "You shall lay your head on the
block, or you shad restore the monarchy in France and reduce the

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Chambers to what Parliament was under Louis XV",
^*
and
that, gentlemen, is what I shall do
.'

He finished uttering and sat down; a deep silence fell. There's a
good actor, Julien thought. He again made the mistake, as he always
did, of crediting people with too much intelligence. Roused by this
stimulating evening's debates, and particularly by the sincerity of
the discussion, at that moment M. de Nerval believed in his mission.
For all his great courage, the man did not have any sense.

Midnight struck during the silence following the fine phrase:
that is what I shall do
. Julien found the striking of the clock somehow imposing and funereal. He was moved.

The discussion soon resumed with growing animation, and in particular
with unbelievable openness. These people will have me poisoned,
Julien thought at times. How can they say such things in front of a
plebeian?

Two o'clock struck, and
they were still talking. The host had been asleep for some time; M. de
La Mole was obliged to ring for more candles. M. de Nerval, the
minister, had left at a quarter to two, having taken frequent
advantage of a mirror beside him to study Julien's face. His departure
had seemed to put everyone at their ease.

While the candles were being renewed, 'God knows what that man is
going to tell the king!' said the man in the waistcoats softly to his
neighbour. 'He can make us look pretty ridiculous and ruin our future.
You must admit he's got a rare degree of self-importance and even
effrontery to turn up here. He used to come along before he rose to
the Cabinet; but a portfolio changes everything: it swamps all a man's
other interests, and he ought to have sensed this.'

No sooner was the minister gone than the general from Bonaparte's
army had shut his eyes. Now he said something about his health and his
wounds, looked at his watch and left.

'I'd lay a wager on it', said the man in the waistcoats, 'that the
general is running after the minister; he's going to apologize for being
here, and claim to be manipulating us.'

When the bleary-eyed servants had finished renewing the candles:

'Let us get down to our deliberations, gentlemen,' said the

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