The Short Reign of Pippin IV (9 page)

Pippin said softly, “England's monarchs lay cornerstones and take unequivocal positions on the kind of hat to wear to a racetrack. But have you thought, my friends, that Englishmen love their government and spend most of their time celebrating it, while Frenchmen on the contrary automatically detest any government in power? I am of the same persuasion. It is the French way of regarding government. Until I am better informed, I would like to go to sleep. But have you thought of the difficulties involved in your—plan? France has been a republic for some time now. Her institutions are republican, her thinking is republican. I think I had better go to bed. You still haven't told me who sent this deputation.”

M. Flosse cried, “The Senate and the Assembly of France only await Your Majesty's gracious acceptance. We are sent by the representatives of the people of France.”

“Will the Communists vote for the monarchy?” Héristal asked gently.

“They will not oppose, Sire. They guarantee that.”

“And how about the people of France? I seem to remember that they swarmed into Paris with pitchforks and that some royalty—fortunately no relatives of mine—did not survive.”

Senator Veauvache, the Socialist, rose to his feet. This is the same Veauvache who aroused national attention in 1948 by refusing a bribe. At that time he was given the honorary title Honnête Jean, which he has carried with humility to this day. M. Veauvache said solemnly, “A sampling of opinion indicates that the French people will unite behind you as one man.”

“Whom did you sample?” Pippin asked.

“That is beside the point,” Honnête Jean said. “In America, the home of the opinion poll, does anyone ask that insulting question?”

“I'm sorry,” Pippin apologized. “I guess it is because I am sleepy and confused and tired. I am not as young as I was—”

“Poof!” said M. Flosse flatteringly.

“And, too, I have been busy with—” He gestured upward. “Madame doesn't bother me with news when I am preoccupied. You see, gentlemen, I am taken off guard.”

“You must be crowned at Reims,” cried M. Flosse, and his eyes brimmed with emotion. “We must follow the old customs. France needs you, Sire. Will you deny your country the security of your great bloodline?”

“My bloodline?”

“Are you not directly descended from Pippin the Second?”

“Oh! Is that what it's all about? But there have been so many other royal houses since—”

“But you do not deny your descent?”

“How could I? I believe it is a matter of record.”

“Do you forbid us, Sire?”

“That's silly,” said Pippin. “How can I forbid anything a republic might take it into its head to do, even destroy itself? I am the broken tip of a long dog's long tail. Can I wag that dog?”

“France needs—”

“And I need sleep, gentlemen. Please leave me now and I will awaken some hours hence, hoping that you have been a dream.”

And while he slept what has been called in the press the “Historic Nap,” students from the Sorbonne marched up the Champs Elysées, shouting “Vive le roi!” and “Saint Denis pour la France.” Four of them climbed the girders of the Eiffel Tower and raised an antique royal standard on the very top, where it fluttered triumphantly among the wind gauges.

The citizens boiled into the streets, dancing and singing with excitement.

Barrels of wine from the cooperative warehouses up-Seine were rolled through the streets and broached on the street corners.

The Lords of the Couture rushed to their drawing boards.

Schiaparelli, within the house, announced a new perfume called “Rêve Royale.”

Special editions of
L'Espèce, Cormoran, Paris Minuit, L'Era,
and
Monde Dieu
rolled from the presses and were snatched up.

The royal standard of Charlemagne appeared like magic in shop windows.

The American Ambassador, with instructions from his government, sought in vain for someone to congratulate.

The wave overflowed Paris, and concentric circles spread into the provinces, lighting bonfires and raising flags.

And through it all, the king slept. But Madame made hourly visits to the kiosk for the new editions and piled them neatly on his desk for his perusal.

Pippin might well have slept through the night and into the next day had not the anti-aircraft batteries disposed about Paris fired a royal salute at two-thirty in the morning. Five citizens were killed and thirty-two were wounded by the fallback. The thirty-two wounded made loyal and enthusiastic statements from their hospital beds.

The firing of the anti-aircraft guns awakened Pippin. His first thought was, It must be Clotilde coming in. What has she stumbled over now?

A second salvo of anti-aircraft guns brought him up on his elbow, his left hand thrashing about, seeking the bed reading light. “Marie!” he called. “Marie! What is that?”

Madame opened the door. Her arms were loaded with newspapers. “It is the Royal Salute,” she said. “
L'Espèce
says there will be one hundred and one guns.”

“My God!” said Pippin. “I thought it was Clotilde.” He looked at his watch, then raised his voice to be heard over the guns. “It is three, less fifteen minutes. Where is Clotilde?”

Madame said coldly, “La Princesse, on a motor scooter, is leading her loyal subjects to Versailles. She is going to start the fountains.”

Pippin said, “Then it was no dream! When the Minister of Public Works hears of this, I smell the guillotine. Marie, these people seem to mean this nonsense. I want to talk to Uncle Charlie.”

 

 

In the early dawn the king and his uncle faced each other in the rear of the gallery in the Rue de Seine.

Pippin had battered on the shutters of Charles Martel's establishment until that gentleman, clad in a long nightgown and a tarboosh, ill-tempered with sleep, peered out at him. After a time of grumbling, of making his morning chocolate, and of pulling on his trousers, Uncle Charlie settled back on his dusty Morocco armchair, adjusted the green-shaded reading light, polished his glasses, and prepared for business.

“You must study calmness, Pippin,” he said. “For years I have recommended calmness. When you burst in here with your———comet, I suggested that the stars would wait on a cup of chocolate. When Clotilde had her small difficulty with the gendarmes about the improper use of firearms at the shooting gallery, did I not recommend calm? And it came out all right, you remember. You paid for a few light globes she shot from a carousel, and Clotilde sold her life story to an American magazine. Calm! Pippin. Calm! I recommend calm.”

“But they have gone insane, Uncle Charlie.”

“No, my boy, abandon that theory. The French do not go insane unless there is some advantage in it. Now you say that the delegation was composed of all parties, and you further say that they mentioned the future well-being of France.”

“They say France must have a stable government.”

“Hmmm,” said Uncle Charlie. “It has always seemed to me that this is the last thing they want. It is possible, Pippin, that the parties have chosen a direction, but for different reasons. Yes, that must be it, and you, my poor boy, have been chosen for the role of what the Americans call a ‘patsy.'”

“What can I do, Uncle Charlie? How can I avoid this—this patsy?”

Uncle Charlie tapped his glasses on his knee, sneezed, poured himself a fresh cup of chocolate from the saucepan on the gas ring at his elbow, and slowly shook his head.

“With time and calm,” he said, “I could possibly work out the political background. But right at the moment I cannot see any escape for you unless you wish to retire with dignity to a warm bath and cut your wrists.”

“I don't want to be king!”

“If suicide does not appeal to you, dear boy, you may relax in the certainty that in the near future there will be attempts at assassination and, who knows, one of them may succeed.”

“Can't I say no, Uncle Charlie? No, no, no, no! Why not?”

Uncle Charlie sighed. “I can think of two reasons now. Later, several more will come to me. In the first place, you will be told that France needs you. No one has ever been able to resist such a suggestion, here or elsewhere. Let a man, old, sick, stupid, tired, cynical, wise, even dangerous to the future of his country, be told that his country needs him and him alone, and he will respond even though he must be carried to the rostrum on a stretcher and take the oath and Extreme Unction simultaneously. No, I can see no escape for you. If they tell you that France needs you, you are lost. You can only pray that France is not also lost.”

“But maybe—”

“You see,” said Uncle Charlie, “you are already caught. The second force is more subtle but no less powerful. It is the overwhelming numerical strength of the aristocracy. Let me develop this.

“Aristocracy thrives and breeds most luxuriantly under democratic or republican regimes. Whereas in a kingdom the aristocrats are screened and controlled, even eliminated for one reason or another, in republican climates the noblesse breed like rabbits. At the same time, the lower orders seem to become sterile. You will find the best proof of this in America, where there is no single individual who is not descended from an aristocrat, where there is not even an Indian who is not a tribal chief. In republican France, to only a slightly lesser degree, the aristocracy has shown a fecundity beyond belief.

“They will be down on you like sparrows on a—No, I won't complete that simile. They will demand privileges unremembered since Louis the Ugly, but more than that, my dear child, they will want money.”

Pippin said miserably, “What am I to do, Uncle Charlie? Why couldn't it have waited a generation or two? Isn't there a collateral branch of the family who might—”

“No,” said Charles, “there isn't. And if there were, the combination of reason number one, plus Madame, plus Clotilde, would pull you under. And there's another thing. If every Frenchman should oppose your accession to the monarchy, every Frenchwoman would force you to reign. Too long have they looked with craving eyes across the channel, sneered at the frumpiness of British royalty, and envied it.

“Pippin, my child, you are sunk,” said Charles. “You are the royal patsy. I suggest that you search deeply in the situation for something to enjoy. And now I know you will excuse me. A client is coming in with three unsigned Renoirs.”

Pippin said, “Well, anyway, I don't feel so alone, knowing that you will have to assume your titles.”

“Name of a thrice-soiled name!” cried Uncle Charlie. “I had forgotten that!”

In a daze, Pippin left the gallery. He wandered blindly up-Seine on the Left Bank, past Notre-Dame, past warehouses, past wine storage, over bridges, past factories, and he did not look around until he came to Bercy.

During his long and slow peramble it is more than possible that his mind, like a rat in a laboratory maze, sought every possible avenue of escape, explored runways and aisles and holes, only to run against the wire netting of fact. Again and again he butted his mental nose against the screen at the end of a promising passage, and there was the fact. He was king and there was no escaping it.

In Bercy he stumbled wearily into a café, sat at a small marble table, observed, without seeing it, a passionate domino game, and, although it was not yet noon, he ordered a Pernod. He drank so rapidly and ordered another so promptly that the domino-players thought him a tourist and guarded their language.

With his third Pernod, Pippin was heard to say, “All right, then. All right, then.” He swallowed his drink and waved for another and, when it came, he addressed his glass.

“So you want a king, my friends? But have you considered the danger? Do you know what you might have conjured up?” He turned to the domino-players. “Will you do me the honor of drinking a toast with me?” he demanded.

Sullenly they accepted. For an American, they thought, he spoke excellent French.

When they were served, Pippin raised his glass. “They want a king! I drink to the King! Long live the King!” He drained his glass. “Very well, my friends,” he said. “It is just possible that they will
get
a king—and that's the last thing in the world they want. Yes, they may find they have a king on their hands.” He got up from his table and moved to the door. It was noted that he had a slow and regal step.

It is not so easy as might appear on the surface to reactivate a monarchy. There is the matter of what kind of monarchy you are going to have. Pippin leaned strongly toward the constitutional form, not only because he was a liberal man at heart, but also because the responsibility of absolutism is very great. He owned himself too lazy to make all the effort for success and too cowardly to take all the blame for mistakes.