“I beg your pardon, father,” said Edouard Laforcade, “it’s me who put the family back in its feet, remember—I did everything I could when you were ruined!”
“Your crinoline factory? That’s nothing remarkable. Didn’t that collapse too.”
“What do you expect? Changes in fashion…”
“Anyway, I’d like to find something; I’m twiddling my thumbs here, idly, when I feel that it would be no bad thing to get back to active life as soon as possible! Business, that’s the thing! Myself, I was a post-master,15 you know, but there’ll be nothing to do in that regard for years and years.”
“It’s too soon,” said Palluel, smiling irreverently.
“So you understand why I have to find something else. Oil? Sugar? Leather? Iron?”
“That’s the one thing about which I don’t have an opinion!” exclaimed Palluel. “I have to admit that you’re barking up the wrong tree. I have fixed opinions on many things, and I’d advise you not to contradict me on some of them, but on leather and oil my brain is an infertile desert! Would you like some advice anyway? You were a post-master—well, be patient until stage-coaches come back, and on that day you’ll be rich; you’ll overwhelm us with your magnificence.”
“Will that take long?”
“Who knows? We’re going so rapidly! Tastes and preferences are being modified with an unexpected rapidity; with every day that passes you can observe new aspirations. Look at all the changes that have taken place since the New Era—the great New Era!—began, and all those that are in preparation. The day will come, as others used to say, for the worst of motives! The day will come, and it will all go very well, in accordance with the march of progress—of true progress! Besides, I’m working to accelerate it even further, that march of Progress. I’m founding a journal—don’t worry, this isn’t an appeal for funds, I have sleeping partners in the big banks—I’m founding a great political, literary and social journal, and here’s a mock-up of the first issue, with our program, which is that of all today’s young folk!”
Palluel took a sheaf of printed proofs from his pocket, among which a large poster stood out, bearing a legend in large letters:
BACKWARDS
The Journal of True Progress
Organ of the Retrograde Committee for
Politics, Literature, Industry and Commerce
“Listen to this,” said Palluel. “Since the immense highway previously traveled by our ancestors has been suddenly reopened before tremulous humankind, the most desiccated hearts, devastated by bleak despair, have suddenly begun to beat again, etc., etc…a dawn of hope has broken over the surprised world, etc., etc…flux and reflux, etc., etc…
“They are coming back, the ancestors, reappearing by degrees, as astonished as we are! Young or old, whether they were formerly happy or unhappy, good or evil, they are all re-emerging at the age when they quite the Earth for the first time. It is the re-entrance on to the stage, with others expected, of a generation whose first experience, it is necessary to believe, must undoubtedly have enlightened them and made them wise, and which will not be inclined to fall into the same traps...”
“Very good!” said grandfather Laforcade. “That’s enough—I’ll take out a subscription…”
“I’ll go on: ‘The mounting tide of old generations returned, will increasingly transport and bring into our present the tastes and ideas of the past, which experience must certainly have ripened, and wisdom weighed and tested, but which will still be transitory and destined to be replaced in their turn. You can see them already, these ancestors, with their particular conception of progress, seeking out, rediscovering or reinventing the things of their own time…
“ ‘Let us enter resolutely into that process; instead of raising obstacles to Progress, let us throw ourselves Backwards!
“ ‘LET US PERFECT THE PAST!
“ ‘Despairing thinkers of the last days of the Old Era, trembling at the spectacle of its lamentable follies, you have fully understood that the true Progress is backwards! It was in the past that the world knew its happiest days, the epochs of beauty, when glorious and various civilizations—too soon disturbed, alas, always crumbling rapidly—bloomed in the splendor of the arts. We who once counseled mistrust in confrontation with an excessively dark future now cry: Trust the unfolding past!
“ ‘Since the past must be reborn, let it be reborn ameliorated and perfected! Let us take measures to avoid the recognized faults, let us carefully set aside the injurious errors, etc., etc…’ ”
“Better and better,” said the grandfather. “I’ve already said that I’ll subscribe—that’s for a year…”
“Listen to my political program: ‘Let us not seek to hide that veritable difficulties will emerge, numerous difficulties of every sort. In politics, history is not, as one might think, experience; history, alas, is inevitably falsified by both sides, so that it becomes impossible to discern the truth of any event, large or small. We can only be certain of one thing, which is that the truth is displaced from history, always displaced. Let us accept history for what it is—the most spiteful of romances—and let us proclaim that nothing is inevitable, that everything is modifiable, and that the worst situations and difficult passages that we must anticipate, duly warned by the information gifted to us in the form of an inventory, can be negotiated better than they were the first time around!
“ ‘In the same way that any individual, profiting from acquired experience, can correct the mistakes of his first existence, making up for what it lacked and attempting to realize his dreams without falling into recognized errors, so we should act in political terms, and not be content with straightforward recommencements.
“ ‘The New Era must be one of true progress, always aiming higher, towards perfectibility! Backwards, ever backwards, champions of true progress!
“ ‘And we are not only concerned with France and Europe in discerning within the past, and in aiming a little higher, to pierce or oversee the thick layers of fog of every color that historians have accumulated through the epochs.
“ ‘Closest to us, in the 19th century, there was a formidable eruption of Volcano France, followed, as you know, by terrible collapses, then new upsurges and a final lapse into apathy, into political grumbling, interested or otherwise, social indiscipline and anarchy. Previously, there was the 18th century, perfumed decadence; the 17th, the apogee of grandeur turning to an imprudent distension; the 16th, sparkling and terrible, etc., etc…let us pass on…
“ ‘Let us first hypothesize a principle, that in going back, one finds in every century, almost routinely, a superiority over the one that succeeded it, a life more beautiful, conditions more favorable, facilities more considerable for the natural development of man and society—and let us, in consequence, recognize that, very probably, it was the tribes of the Stone Age who existed in the best conditions, with their naïve and simplistic ambition to establish a society as perfect as possible in its simplicity, and for the access of the greatest number of its citizens to all the advantages that virtually constitute the essence of the happy medium...’ ”
“You might be going a bit far,” said Robert, laughing.
“Yes, certainly, too far,” said his father and grandfather, in unison.
“That’s the reaction that will immediately raise its head,” said Palluel, with an indignant gesture, “but we shall pulverize it! You’re not worthy of my accepting your subscription. Here are the eternal enemies of all progress, so satisfied with what they have, and so besotted with their petty ideas, that they can’t see beyond their narrow horizon. Tomorrow, gentlemen—the tomorrow that is yesterday—will take the responsibility for providing your answer!”
The father and grandfather nodded their heads anxiously.
“This damned politics sometimes leads us into terrible trouble,” said the father, “with changes of regime, epochs of revolutionary upheaval…”
“You haven’t grasped my point—I tell you once again that eve
rything will sort itself out, and that the past can be ameliorated! That must be the work of thinking men; the journal Backwards will advocate the formation of a large party of wise men dedicated to cushioning the difficulties, greasing the springs of the chariot of State as it approaches sections of the way that are too deeply rutted! Grave political obstacles seem to be foreseeable at short notice as certain fateful dates approach, for indispensable changes and the return of governments formerly overthrown with some brutality—but you must have noticed the ease with which people have already got used to the idea of reacquiring certain forsaken habits. I may be alone, but I am convinced that it will happen quite smoothly, and that these ‘revolutions’—there’s no other word for them—these reversed revolutions will seem to respond to almost unanimous aspirations.
“And I terminate my program: ‘Trust! Let us trust and support with all our hearts the evolutionary movement that is drawing the world in quest of improvement! Backwards, always backwards!’ ”
“I’ll definitely subscribe, all the same,” said the grandfather.
“Are you abandoning literature, then?” asked Robert Laforcade.
“Not at all, except that, my former studies having led me to the conclusions that I revealed to you just now, I want to defend my ideas and try to lend some aid to the general movement of the world, which is currently heading in the right direction.”
“Let’s wait for Monsieur Thiers then,” said Robert Laforcade.16
“No, Monsieur Guizot!” declared his father.
“Monsieur de Villèle!” murmured the grandfather, in a low falsetto voice that seemed to come from very far away.
“To secure your agreement, Laforcade senior, intermediary and junior,” cried Palluel, “I would like to be able to offer you Monsieur de Sully! But I cannot get as far ahead of events as I would like; the great Sully will be the delight of our successors in a couple of centuries’ time. In the meantime, let us attempt to arrange things as if he were already here! But I have so scarcely abandoned literature that I am preparing to make my visits to the Academy…”
“What—but you’re already a member!”
“I still am, but our backward progression has almost reached the moment of my election. My predecessor has already returned, one of the numerous advanced cases that Montarcy explains by the difficulties of getting the New Era started, when years were rushing by at five or six a season. I must, therefore, make my visits again, and I shan’t hide from you that I shall take advantage of that to tell some of the gentlemen of the Forty what I really think of them… I’ve no need to hold back, like a candidate desirous of entry, have I?—since I’m a candidate making his exit. Thus, the gentle Palluel that you have known, having become once again Palluel the Romantic, the vibrant voice of Young France, will roar and bite! I’ve told you that I have advanced too, that the verses and my frenetic ardor of my prime have already come back to me…. As soon as I have taken the time to enter my son Gustave, who has been sleeping over there in his corner while we were arguing, in the Lycée de Bordeaux, I shall begin my visits…”
Everyone had forgotten the young man that Palluel had brought with him. Engrossed in the study of the charades and riddles in a collection of illustrated magazines, he had not said a word, contenting himself with occasionally darting a surreptitious glance at Madame Laforcade, who was doing her embroidery by lamplight beside him.
“That boy is your nephew?” said Robert, in amazement. “I didn’t recognize him… I thought he was much older.”
“He is my nephew, though,” said Palluel. “Isn’t that so, Gustave?”
“Yes, uncle,” said the strange young man with the wrinkled and bald forehead, extracting himself with difficulty from a riddle.
“I thought he was in the civil service?”
“He was—an agent of the Treasury, deputy head of a Tax Office and decadent poet, or symbolist, or something like that… But here he is; having returned to extreme youth, he’s left the Tax Office and I’m sending him off right away to hand in his degree and go back to college.”
“Alas,” sighed the young man. “Down with college—boo!”
“Ah! There’s one who isn’t content with the new order of life… What do you expect, my child? We’ll all be going back there! You can take it for granted that I won’t see much of him, or anything at all, in fact. I wasn’t a rich uncle before, but a shabby relation, a wretched old uncle with neither a town house not a place in the Sun, disdained as a relative. Don’t contradict me, Gustave… As a poet I was an object of shame and vilification to this joker. Don’t contradict me, not again, you little guttersnipe, or I’ll write to your headmaster and tell him to put you back...”
Gustave muttered a confused sentence through clenched teeth, in which it was only possible to make out the words “get” and “stuffed.”
“I don’t know what he was worth as a deputy head in the Tax Office, but as a poet, what must you think, O sad and pitiful Muses, of the manner in which he scraped the lyre? Gustave, do you have your four volumes of verse about you?”
Gustave’s pout became more emphatic; he pulled a rather nasty face and started pulling volumes from his pocket. They were bound in various colors: mauve, blood red and bright green.
“Enough, enough,” said Palluel. “One volume will suffice; your complete works are tiresomely repetitious! Let’s look at the first one.”
Palluel opened a volume and held it out to Berthe Laforcade. “Read a passage at random, Madame. It doesn’t matter which—there are only masterpieces in there, as one young contemporary critic declared!”
Berthe read aloud, trying vainly to lend some emphasis to the verses:
THE BELOVED WHO PASSES TOO SOON
…On the path, arduous and fluid and fleeting, in her unexpectedly incommensurable flagrancy
The hack which, suave, fragranced with flowering shadow and trembling,
Goes ric rac, trip trap.
And plaintive,
The beauty lies her dying head upon the plaited mane….
Howl, dogs, whoo! whoo! Moon, put on your mask of clouds!
“That’s too sad—another, if you please?”
Berthe Laforcade turned a few pages.
WAITING
Oh! Waiting with tense heart, eyebrow furrowed—anguished, ticket in hand, for the omnibus
Always besuited
With cantankerous ladies, on the imperial or the platform
Where the heavy, long, slow trams….
“Don’t go any further, dear lady,” said Palluel, “you’ve happened upon the only work in the volume that’s fairly clear, but the first remains obscure to me. We’re lucky—the author will explain it to us.”
Gustave plunged his head back into his illustrated magazine.
“You can’t? Little monster, you’ve ceased to be able to understand your own verses! I knew that—I discovered you this morning in the process of racking your brains, trying to recast them in honest alexandrines and rhyming them properly, and you couldn’t! Little guttersnipe, little fraud, as you might say. Do your homework! Tomorrow I’ll enter you in college, but before then, I’ll force you to translate your lucubrations, or you’ll go to bed without supper!”
CHAPTER IX
The Tribulations of a Son
Palluel was interrupted in his wrath by the arrival of Houquetot. He too was looking younger, by at least 20 years, than on the day when Robert Laforcade had been fortunate enough to meet him amid the cataclysms. This was no longer the slightly plump fellow with the cheerful appearance, whose placidity had scarcely been eroded by the worst catastrophes; he was thinner and his face was less jovial. One might even have thought that there were worry-lines on his forehead that had not been visible there in the worst days of yesteryear. Houquetot evidently had his troubles.
“Isn’t my father here?” he said, after the customary exchange of polite greetings.
“No,” said Robert.
“That’s odd—we ere supposed to mee
t at your house.” He drew Robert into a corner and spoke to him in a low voice.
“Hmm!” grandfather Laforcade whispered into his son’s ear. “Houquetot the son seems like a fine young chap, but I can’t place the father. From the first day I saw that pretentious popinjay, I’ve felt a certain animosity towards him. Why? I don’t know, exactly—but I’ve seen him before. I’m trying to recall… I have a vague impression that we quarreled. But why? Why?”
“Yes,” said Houquetot to Robert, “my father has put me in a difficult position. It’s caused me a great deal of anxiety, as I’ve already told you, and while I’m marking time it can only get worse. So I wanted to bring him here this evening, to keep hold of him for at least one night—he’s too careful to have dinner with me. Where is he? I don’t know.”
“So,” said Palluel, who was aware of Houquetot’s troubles, “the terrible papa is up to his old tricks again.”
“As before, my God yes! The Devil of it is that I still have a court order—500 francs! I can get out of it, I hope, but after… I don’t want to be continually borrowing from you, Robert.”
“So he still has debts, the terrible Monsieur Houquetot de Mont-Héricourt, Marquis de Chastelandry?”
“Still! He’s certainly a Chastelandry, while I, as I’ve admitted and as you’ve been able to see, am no more than a simple Houquetot, an orderly, peaceful and tranquil person produced, by some joke of Providence, at the very end of a brilliant, noisy, active and combative family. I was a simple clerk for a long time, a bureaucrat in the registry office at Auxerre; now I’m an accountant at a salary of 300 francs, thanks to my friend Robert Laforcade—but the Chastelandrys, Monsieur Palluel! A château with farms and vineyards in Burgundy, and old Renaissance town house in Dijon, the still-respectable remains of vaster estates eroded under Louis XIV, in the army or at court—all that opulent debris entirely squandered in two or three generations! My father completed a task well begun! I’ve already given you the details. You only see him know in his old age—which he wears well, doesn’t he?—but that’s nothing; just wait and see!”
The Clock of the Centuries Page 12
