Books: The Three Cities Trilogy: Paris, Complete

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"And your daughter, little Celine?" Guillaume inquired. "Have you
ventured to go back to see her?"

Salvat waved his hand in a vague way. "No, but what would you have? She's
with Mamma Theodore. Women always find some help. And then I'm done for,
I can do nothing for anybody. It's as if I were already dead." However,
in spite of these words, tears were rising to his eyes. "Ah! the poor
little thing!" he added, "I kissed her with all my heart before I went
away. If she and the woman hadn't been starving so long the idea of that
business would perhaps never have come to me."

Then, in all simplicity, he declared that he was ready to die. If he had
ended by depositing his bomb at the entrance of Duvillard's house, it was
because he knew the banker well, and was aware that he was the wealthiest
of those /bourgeois/ whose fathers at the time of the Revolution had
duped the people, by taking all power and wealth for themselves,--the
power and wealth which the sons were nowadays so obstinately bent in
retaining that they would not even bestow the veriest crumbs on others.
As for the Revolution, he understood it in his own fashion, like an
illiterate fellow who had learnt the little he knew from newspapers and
speeches at public meetings. And he struck his chest with his fist as he
spoke of his honesty, and was particularly desirous that none should
doubt his courage because he had fled.

"I've never robbed anybody," said he, "and if I don't go and hand myself
up to the police, it's because they may surely take the trouble to find
and arrest me. I'm very well aware that my affair's clear enough as
they've found that bradawl and know me. All the same, it would be silly
of me to help them in their work. Still, they'd better make haste, for
I've almost had enough of being tracked like a wild beast and no longer
knowing how I live."

Janzen, yielding to curiosity, had ceased turning over the leaves of the
picture book and was looking at Salvat. There was a smile of disdain in
the Anarchist leader's cold eyes; and in his usual broken French he
remarked: "A man fights and defends himself, kills others and tries to
avoid being killed himself. That's warfare."

These words fell from his lips amidst deep silence. Salvat, however, did
not seem to have heard them, but stammered forth his faith in a long
sentence laden with fulsome expressions, such as the sacrifice of his
life in order that want might cease, and the example of a great action,
in the certainty that it would inspire other heroes to continue the
struggle. And with this certainly sincere faith and illuminism of his
there was blended a martyr's pride, delight at being one of the radiant,
worshipped saints of the dawning Revolutionary Church.

As he had come so he went off. When Janzen had led him away, it seemed as
if the night which had brought him had carried him back into its
impenetrable depths. And then only did Pierre rise from his chair. He was
stifling, and threw the large window of the room wide open. It was a very
mild but moonless night, whose silence was only disturbed by the
subsiding clamour of Paris, which stretched away, invisible, on the
horizon.

Guillaume, according to his habit, had begun to walk up and down. And at
last he spoke, again forgetting that his brother was a priest. "Ah! the
poor fellow! How well one can understand that deed of violence and hope!
His whole past life of fruitless labour and ever-growing want explains
it. Then, too, there has been all the contagion of ideas; the
frequentation of public meetings where men intoxicate themselves with
words, and of secret meetings among comrades where faith acquires
firmness and the mind soars wildly. Ah! I think I know that man well
indeed! He's a good workman, sober and courageous. Injustice has always
exasperated him. And little by little the desire for universal happiness
has cast him out of the realities of life which he has ended by holding
in horror. So how can he do otherwise than live in a dream--a dream of
redemption, which, from circumstances, has turned to fire and murder as
its fitting instruments. As I looked at him standing there, I fancied I
could picture one of the first Christian slaves of ancient Rome. All the
iniquity of olden pagan society, agonising beneath the rottenness born of
debauchery and covetousness, was weighing on his shoulders, bearing him
down. He had come from the dark Catacombs where he had whispered words of
deliverance and redemption with his wretched brethren. And a thirst for
martyrdom consumed him, he spat in the face of Caesar, he insulted the
gods, he fired the pagan temples, in order that the reign of Jesus might
come and abolish servitude. And he was ready to die, to be torn to pieces
by the wild beasts!"

Pierre did not immediately reply. He had already been struck, however, by
the fact that there were undoubted points of resemblance between the
secret propaganda and militant faith of the Anarchists, and certain
practices of the first Christians. Both sects abandon themselves to a new
faith in the hope that the humble may thereby at last reap justice.
Paganism disappears through weariness of the flesh and the need of a more
lofty and pure faith. That dream of a Christian paradise opening up a
future life with a system of compensations for the ills endured on earth,
was the outcome of young hope dawning at its historic hour. But to-day,
when eighteen centuries have exhausted that hope, when the long
experiment is over and the toiler finds himself duped and still and ever
a slave, he once more dreams of getting happiness upon this earth,
particularly as each day Science tends more and more to show him that the
happiness of the spheres beyond is a lie. And in all this there is but
the eternal struggle of the poor and the rich, the eternal question of
bringing more justice and less suffering to the world.

"But surely," Pierre at last replied, "you can't be on the side of those
bandits, those murderers whose savage violence horrifies me. I let you
talk on yesterday, when you dreamt of a great and happy people, of ideal
anarchy in which each would be free amidst the freedom of all. But what
abomination, what disgust both for mind and heart, when one passes from
theory to propaganda and practice! If yours is the brain that thinks,
whose is the hateful hand that acts, that kills children, throws down
doors and empties drawers? Do you accept that responsibility? With your
education, your culture, the whole social heredity behind you, does not
your entire being revolt at the idea of stealing and murdering?"

Guillaume halted before his brother, quivering. "Steal and murder! no!
no! I will not. But one must say everything and fully understand the
history of the evil hour through which we are passing. It is madness
sweeping by; and, to tell the truth, everything necessary to provoke it
has been done. At the very dawn of the Anarchist theory, at the very
first innocent actions of its partisans, there was such stern repression,
the police so grossly ill-treating the poor devils that fell into its
hands, that little by little came anger and rage leading to the most
horrible reprisals. It is the Terror initiated by the /bourgeois/ that
has produced Anarchist savagery. And would you know whence Salvat and his
crime have come? Why, from all our centuries of impudence and iniquity,
from all that the nations have suffered, from all the sores which are now
devouring us, the impatience for enjoyment, the contempt of the strong
for the weak, the whole monstrous spectacle which is presented by our
rotting society!"

Guillaume was again slowly walking to and fro; and as if he were
reflecting aloud he continued: "Ah! to reach the point I have attained,
through how much thought, through how many battles, have I not passed! I
was merely a Positivist, a /savant/ devoted to observation and
experiment, accepting nothing apart from proven facts. Scientifically and
socially, I admitted that simple evolution had slowly brought humanity
into being. But both in the history of the globe and that of human
society, I found it necessary to make allowance for the volcano, the
sudden cataclysm, the sudden eruption, by which each geological phase,
each historical period, has been marked. In this wise one ends by
ascertaining that no forward step has ever been taken, no progress ever
accomplished in the world's history, without the help of horrible
catastrophes. Each advance has meant the sacrifice of millions and
millions of human lives. This of course revolts us, given our narrow
ideas of justice, and we regard nature as a most barbarous mother; but,
if we cannot excuse the volcano, we ought to deal with it when it bursts
forth, like /savants/ forewarned of its possibility. . . . And then, ah,
then! well, perhaps I'm a dreamer like others, but I have my own
notions."

With a sweeping gesture he confessed what a social dreamer there was
within him beside the methodical and scrupulous /savant/. His constant
endeavour was to bring all back to science, and he was deeply grieved at
finding in nature no scientific sign of equality or even justice, such as
he craved for in the social sphere. His despair indeed came from this
inability to reconcile scientific logic with apostolic love, the dream of
universal happiness and brotherhood and the end of all iniquity.

Pierre, however, who had remained near the open window, gazing into the
night towards Paris, whence ascended the last sounds of the evening of
passionate pleasure, felt the whole flood of his own doubt and despair
stifling him. It was all too much: that brother of his who had fallen
upon him with his scientific and apostolic beliefs, those men who came to
discuss contemporary thought from every standpoint, and finally that
Salvat who had brought thither the exasperation of his mad deed. And
Pierre, who had hitherto listened to them all without a word, without a
gesture, who had hidden his secrets from his brother, seeking refuge in
his supposed priestly views, suddenly felt such bitterness stirring his
heart that he could lie no longer.

"Ah! brother, if you have your dream, I have my sore which has eaten into
me and left me void! Your Anarchy, your dream of just happiness, for
which Salvat works with bombs, why, it is the final burst of insanity
which will sweep everything away! How is it that you can't realise it?
The century is ending in ruins. I've been listening to you all for a
month past. Fourier destroyed Saint-Simon, Proudhon and Comte demolished
Fourier, each in turn piling up incoherences and contradictions, leaving
mere chaos behind them, which nobody dares to sort out. And since then,
Socialist sects have been swarming and multiplying, the more sensible of
them leading simply to dictatorship, while the others indulge in most
dangerous reveries. And after such a tempest of ideas there could indeed
come nothing but your Anarchy, which undertakes to bring the old world to
a finish by reducing it to dust. . . . Ah! I expected it, I was waiting
for it--that final catastrophe, that fratricidal madness, the inevitable
class warfare in which our civilisation was destined to collapse!
Everything announced it: the want and misery below, the egotism up above,
all the cracking of the old human habitation, borne down by too great a
weight of crime and grief. When I went to Lourdes it was to see if the
divinity of simple minds would work the awaited miracle, and restore the
belief of the early ages to the people, which rebelled through excess of
suffering. And when I went to Rome it was in the /naive/ hope of there
finding the new religion required by our democracies, the only one that
could pacify the world by bringing back the fraternity of the golden age.
But how foolish of me all that was! Both here and there, I simply lighted
on nothingness. There where I so ardently dreamt of finding the salvation
of others, I only sank myself, going down apeak like a ship not a timber
of which is ever found again. One tie still linked me to my fellow-men,
that of charity, the dressing, relieving, and perhaps, in the long run,
healing, of wounds and sores; but that last cable has now been severed.
Charity, to my mind, appears futile and derisive by the side of justice,
to whom all supremacy belongs, and whose advent has become a necessity
and can be stayed by none. And so it is all over, I am mere ashes, an
empty grave as it were. I no longer believe in anything, anything,
anything whatever!"

Pierre had risen to his full height, with arms outstretched as if to let
all the nothingness within his heart and mind fall from them. And
Guillaume, distracted by the sight of such a fierce denier, such a
despairing Nihilist as was now revealed to him, drew near, quivering:
"What are you saying, brother! I thought you so firm, so calm in your
belief! A priest to be admired, a saint worshipped by the whole of this
parish! I was unwilling even to discuss your faith, and now it is you who
deny all, and believe in nothing whatever!"

Pierre again slowly stretched out his arms. "There is nothing, I tried to
learn all, and only found the atrocious grief born of the nothingness
that overwhelms me."

"Ah! how you must suffer, Pierre, my little brother! Can religion, then,
be even more withering than science, since it has ravaged you like that,
while I have yet remained an old madman, still full of fancies?"

Guillaume caught hold of Pierre's hands and pressed them, full of
terrified compassion in presence of all the grandeur and horror embodied
in that unbelieving priest who watched over the belief of others, and
chastely, honestly discharged his duty amidst the haughty sadness born of
his falsehood. And how heavily must that falsehood have weighed upon his
conscience for him to confess himself in that fashion, amidst an utter
collapse of his whole being! A month previously, in the unexpansiveness
of his proud solitude, he would never have taken such a course. To speak
out it was necessary that he should have been stirred by many things, his
reconciliation with his brother, the conversations he had heard of an
evening, the terrible drama in which he was mingled, as well as his
reflections on labour struggling against want, and the vague hope with
which the sight of intellectual youth had inspired him. And, indeed, amid
the very excess of his negation was there not already the faint dawn of a
new faith?

This Guillaume must have understood, on seeing how he quivered with
unsatisfied tenderness as he emerged from the fierce silence which he had
preserved so long. He made him sit down near the window, and placed
himself beside him without releasing his hands. "But I won't have you
suffer, my little brother!" he said; "I won't leave you, I'll nurse you.
For I know you much better than you know yourself. You would never have
suffered were it not for the battle between your heart and your mind, and
you will cease to suffer on the day when they make peace, and you love
what you understand." And in a lower voice, with infinite affection, he
went on: "You see, it's our poor mother and our poor father continuing
their painful struggle in you. You were too young at the time, you
couldn't know what went on. But I knew them both very wretched: he,
wretched through her, who treated him as if he were one of the damned;
and she, suffering through him, tortured by his irreligion. When he died,
struck down by an explosion in this very room, she took it to be the
punishment of God. Yet, what an honest man he was, with a good, great
heart, what a worker, seeking for truth alone, and desirous of the love
and happiness of all! Since we have spent our evenings here, I have felt
him coming back, reviving as it were both around and within us; and she,
too, poor, saintly woman, is ever here, enveloping us with love, weeping,
and yet stubbornly refusing to understand. It is they, perhaps, who have
kept me here so long, and who at this very moment are present to place
your hands in mine."

And, indeed, it seemed to Pierre as if he could feel the breath of
vigilant affection which Guillaume evoked passing over them both. There
was again a revival of all the past, all their youth, and nothing could
have been more delightful.

"You hear me, brother," Guillaume resumed. "You must reconcile them, for
it is only in you that they can be reconciled. You have his firm, lofty
brow, and her mouth and eyes of unrealisable tenderness. So, try to bring
them to agreement, by some day contenting, as your reason shall allow,
the everlasting thirst for love, and self-bestowal, and life, which for
lack of satisfaction is killing you. Your frightful wretchedness has no
other cause. Come back to life, love, bestow yourself, be a man!"

Pierre raised a dolorous cry: "No, no, the death born of doubt has swept
through me, withering and shattering everything, and nothing more can
live in that cold dust!"

"But, come," resumed Guillaume, "you cannot have reached such absolute
negation. No man reaches it. Even in the most disabused of minds there
remains a nook of fancy and hope. To deny charity, devotion, the
prodigies which love may work, ah! for my part I do not go so far as
that. And now that you have shown me your sore, why should I not tell you
my dream, the wild hope which keeps me alive! It is strange; but, are
/savants/ to be the last childish dreamers, and is faith only to spring
up nowadays in chemical laboratories?"

Intense emotion was stirring Guillaume; there was battle waging in both
his brain and his heart. And at last, yielding to the deep compassion
which filled him, vanquished by his ardent affection for his unhappy
brother, he spoke out. But he had drawn yet closer to Pierre, even passed
one arm around him; and it was thus embracing him that he, in his turn,
made his confession, lowering his voice as if he feared that someone
might overhear his secret. "Why should you not know it?" he said. "My own
sons are ignorant of it. But you are a man and my brother, and since
there is nothing of the priest left in you, it is to the brother I will
confide it. This will make me love you the more, and perhaps it may do
you good."

Then he told him of his invention, a new explosive, a powder of such
extraordinary force that its effects were incalculable. And he had found
employment for this powder in an engine of warfare, a special cannon,
hurling bombs which would assure the most overwhelming victory to the
army using them. The enemy's forces would be destroyed in a few hours,
and besieged cities would fall into dust at the slightest bombardment. He
had long searched and doubted, calculated, recalculated and experimented;
but everything was now ready: the precise formula of the powder, the
drawings for the cannon and the bombs, a whole packet of precious papers
stored in a safe spot. And after months of anxious reflection he had
resolved to give his invention to France, so as to ensure her a certainty
of victory in her coming, inevitable war with Germany!

At the same time, he was not a man of narrow patriotism; on the contrary
he had a very broad, international conception of the future liberative
civilisation. Only he believed in the initiatory mission of France, and
particularly in that of Paris, which, even as it is to-day, was destined
to be the world's brain to-morrow, whence all science and justice would
proceed. The great idea of liberty and equality had already soared from
it at the prodigious blast of the Revolution; and from its genius and
valour the final emancipation of man would also take its flight. Thus it
was necessary that Paris should be victorious in the struggle in order
that the world might be saved.

Pierre understood his brother, thanks to the lecture on explosives which
he had heard at Bertheroy's. And the grandeur of this scheme, this dream,
particularly struck him when he thought of the extraordinary future which
would open for Paris amidst the effulgent blaze of the bombs. Moreover,
he was struck by all the nobility of soul which had lain behind his
brother's anxiety for a month past. If Guillaume had trembled it was
simply with fear that his invention might be divulged in consequence of
Salvat's crime. The slightest indiscretion might compromise everything;
and that little stolen cartridge, whose effects had so astonished
/savants/, might reveal his secret. He felt it necessary to act in
mystery, choosing his own time, awaiting the proper hour, until when the
secret would slumber in its hiding-place, confided to the sole care of
Mere-Grand, who had her orders and knew what she was to do should he, in
any sudden accident, disappear.

"And, now," said Guillaume in conclusion, "you know my hopes and my
anguish, and you can help me and even take my place if I am unable to
reach the end of my task. Ah! to reach the end! Since I have been shut up
here, reflecting, consumed by anxiety and impatience, there have been
hours when I have ceased to see my way clearly! There is that Salvat,
that wretched fellow for whose crime we are all of us responsible, and
who is now being hunted down like a wild beast! There is also that
insensate and insatiable /bourgeoisie/, which will let itself be crushed
by the fall of the shaky old house, rather than allow the least repair to
it! And there is further that avaricious, that abominable Parisian press,
so harsh towards the weak and little, so fond of insulting those who have
none to defend them, so eager to coin money out of public misfortune, and
ready to spread insanity on all sides, simply to increase its sales!
Where, therefore, shall one find truth and justice, the hand endowed with
logic and health that ought to be armed with the thunderbolt? Would Paris
the conqueror, Paris the master of the nations, prove the justiciar, the
saviour that men await! Ah! the anguish of believing oneself to be the
master of the world's destinies, and to have to choose and decide."

He had risen again quivering, full of anger and fear that human
wretchedness and baseness might prevent the realisation of his dream. And
amidst the heavy silence which fell in the room, the little house
suddenly resounded with a regular, continuous footfall.

"Ah, yes! to save men and love them, and wish them all to be equal and
free," murmured Pierre, bitterly. "But just listen! Barthes's footsteps
are answering you, as if from the everlasting dungeon into which his love
of liberty has thrown him!"

However, Guillaume had already regained possession of himself, and coming
back in a transport of his faith, he once more took Pierre in his loving,
saving arms, like an elder brother who gives himself without restraint.
"No, no, I'm wrong, I'm blaspheming," he exclaimed; "I wish you to be
with me, full of hope and full of certainty. You must work, you must
love, you must revive to life. Life alone can give you back peace and
health."

Tears returned to the eyes of Pierre, who was penetrated to the heart by
this ardent affection. "Ah! how I should like to believe you," he
faltered, "and try to cure myself. True, I have already felt, as it were,
a vague revival within me. And yet to live again, no, I cannot; the
priest that I am is dead--a lifeless, an empty tomb."

He was shaken by so frightful a sob, that Guillaume could not restrain
his own tears. And clasped in one another's arms the brothers wept on,
their hearts full of the softest emotion in that home of their youth,
whither the dear shadows of their parents ever returned, hovering around
until they should be reconciled and restored to the peace of the earth.
And all the darkness and mildness of the garden streamed in through the
open window, while yonder, on the horizon, Paris had fallen asleep in the
mysterious gloom, beneath a very peaceful sky which was studded with
stars.

THE THREE CITIES

PARIS

BY

EMILE ZOLA

TRANSLATED BY ERNEST A. VIZETELLY

BOOK III

I

THE RIVALS

ON the Wednesday preceding the mid-Lent Thursday, a great charity bazaar
was held at the Duvillard mansion, for the benefit of the Asylum of the
Invalids of Labour. The ground-floor reception rooms, three spacious
Louis Seize /salons/, whose windows overlooked the bare and solemn
courtyard, were given up to the swarm of purchasers, five thousand
admission cards having been distributed among all sections of Parisian
society. And the opening of the bombarded mansion in this wise to
thousands of visitors was regarded as quite an event, a real
manifestation, although some people whispered that the Rue
Godot-de-Mauroy and the adjacent streets were guarded by quite an army of
police agents.

The idea of the bazaar had come from Duvillard himself, and at his
bidding his wife had resigned herself to all this worry for the benefit
of the enterprise over which she presided with such distinguished
nonchalance. On the previous day the "Globe" newspaper, inspired by its
director Fonsegue, who was also the general manager of the asylum, had
published a very fine article, announcing the bazaar, and pointing out
how noble, and touching, and generous was the initiative of the Baroness,
who still gave her time, her money, and even her home to charity, in
spite of the abominable crime which had almost reduced that home to
ashes. Was not this the magnanimous answer of the spheres above to the
hateful passions of the spheres below? And was it not also a peremptory
answer to those who accused the capitalists of doing nothing for the
wage-earners, the disabled and broken-down sons of toil?