“But no—very bad!” said the Marquis. I know that I shall get very bored at the Hôtel de la Dette… I was already in a murderous humor, judge for yourself whether this adventure will help me see things in a rosy light. What ridiculous times we’re living in! Imprisonment by bailiffs! Fie! A vile creditor, for the sake of a few miserable écus, can throw a gentleman into the dungeons of that Bastille! I request that you inform my son, Monsieur, and tell him that I shall burn Clichy down if I am left there any longer than it takes to effect a little rest cure!”
Imprisonment for debt had been re-established some years before, and the debtor’s prison at Clichy rebuilt, along with the Hôtel des Haricots for refractory National Guardsmen. The passage of time had already brought back many things, among which these two prisons—precious resources for vaudevillians—were included. Although less terrible than the lead-mines of Venice or the dungeons of Spielberg, Clichy was not, however, as cheerful as vaudevillians and caricaturists depicted it.
“Escort me to my Bastille with these gentlemen,” the Marquis continued, “and I’ll tell you the story of Malvina. By the way, tell Monsieur Laforcade that there has been a case of mistaken identity.”
“Ah!” said Palluel. “You were mistaken about Malvina?”
“No, not about Malvina. As I arrived here, deeply engrossed in reflection—which delivered me into the hands of my bailiffs without my seeing them—my memories became more precise. I did indeed argue with Monsieur Laforcade in the Jardic Turc one evening in 1828, in a fit of bad temper caused by the treason of the delightful Malvina, but Monsieur Laforcade is right; he had nothing to do with that treason. He did not know Malvina! The memory has returned completely: I was furious; I had just slapped the face of the real traitor—one of my friends, a lieutenant in the King’s Rifles—but that was insufficient to discharge my fury entirely. While I was waiting for him there on the following morning, I soothed myself by picking fights right, left and center… I had no wish, you understand, to perish in the prime of life from a fit of apoplexy, which I felt to be imminent. I thus harvested a few duels, to be fought one after another. Monsieur Laforcade’s face displeased me—I have no idea why—and I told him so, as I did a number of others; there was a dispute, tables turned over, an intervention of the guard, but I was soothed; I felt better and more light-hearted! Three duels the following morning, Malvina’s accomplice paid out first with a nice thrust to the shoulder, but in the third, I sustained a cut myself…”
Chastelandry had taken Palluel’s arm, while the bailiffs walked behind, sharing in Monsieur de Chastelandry’s confidences; the latter was speaking in a loud voice, like a man who had nothing to hide of his life—nor that of Malvina, who had obviously been a very charming woman in her time, albeit somewhat flighty. Still chatting in this manner, they arrived at the Rue de Clichy, within sight of the prison gates, without having endured a minute’s boredom. The bailiffs were charmed.
“Ah, Monsieur,” said the Guardian of Commerce, “the job would be ideal if all our clients were like you! No sniveling or chicanery with you!”
“Hold on,” said Chastelandry. “Since you are content with me, know, estimable functionary of the State, that I am delighted in my turn to have had the honor of making your acquaintance! You must be acquainted with money-lenders, businessmen, lenders at high or low interest, etc. Would you care to provide me with a little list of those that you can recommend to a man of the world whose tenants are sometimes considerably in arrears?”
In front of the sentry-box guarding the famous number 48, Rue de Clichy, Palluel bid farewell to Chastelandry and left him engaged in noting down the addresses that the Guardian of Commerce gave him.
“Make my excuses to Monsieur Laforcade for the little error I made just now,” Chastelandry shouted after him. “I’m a veritable dunderhead. My most humble excuses, and most amiable civilities. If, however, he still bears a grudge against me, tell him that I remain, of course, at his disposal…”
“If he stays in Clichy for as long as possible,” Palluel said to himself, “it will be a few months of tranquility for his son.”
CHAPTER XV
Step By Step to the Honeymoon and the Engagement
Everyone admitted it; Palleul was right to proclaim the superiority of the new form of life unfolding in the inverse direction to the old, in every respect, but particularly that of marriage. Yes, everything is much better than it was before; yes, everything is going in a better direction; one extracts much more satisfaction from life now than then—especially in matrimonial life, which was formerly the butt of so many comic or furious diatribes, so much bitter mockery and joking.
All evils, like all benefits, and all sorrows, like all joys, have always been contained in that single word, marriage. We must to leave to the institution’s accountants the obviously-diluted statistic that estimates at scarcely 20%-25% the espousals that formerly worked out fairly well. This figure is evidently adapted to the needs of their cause by sad bachelors in search of excuses. Let us invert the proportion and admit that 25% of unions turned out quite badly, adding to that 25% of stormy households, and we ought to arrive at a figure closer to the verity of the old times.
Would you like to know today’s truth? It is quite simply this: 100% of marriages evolve in the direction of perfect happiness and all of them end up getting there! No wastage at all—not the pettiest pourcentage on the bad side!21
This is the great miracle wrought by the force of events, by today’s natural course of life, so extraordinarily superior to the former march of time. How often, in former times, did unions commenced in the rosiest of lights, amid joy and illusion, rapidly decline at intense and complete blackness? How many households, borne by tempests on to the reefs of misunderstanding and incompatibility, sank into the abysses of betrayal, hatred and despair? We no longer see that—or, at least, even the darkest situation works out happily. Everything sorts itself out. That is the eternal refrain of the new life.
Balzac once wrote a Physiology of Marriage. He could begin it again now; everything is changed, everything is reversed, to the extent that we even see people once divorced for the gravest of reasons, which we think it unnecessary to specify, recommencing their life, climbing up the descendant slopes again, and ending up rediscovering the happy times of cloudless skies.
These general considerations lead us to the particular case of Robert Laforcade and Berthe. They too had descended the fatal slopes, as you will recall, and had arrived, just as the old era came to an end, at the great crossroads of divorce, at which the various roads of the realm of marriage then ended rather frequently.
Since the beginning of the New Era, taking one more step every day along the road to the springtime of their young love, Robert and Berthe Laforcade, becoming younger and younger, have left behind them almost everything, even the memory, of what had once soiled their life. All the cares and sorrows brought by maturity, painfully exaggerated by the vicissitudes of life, are past and forgotten.
Step by step, they have arrived, as we have seen, at the first season of their marriage, the fullness of the honeymoon. One sole thought, one sole heart—to the great joy of the relatives who now follow their happiness with a tender and tranquil gaze, absolutely devoid of the uncertainties and anxieties that were ever-present before, even with regard to unions formed under the most fortunate auspices.
Father Laforcade, very busy, wrapped up in his business, is usually at his shop, absorbed by the fabrication and sale of his crinolines, but the grandfather and grandmother are still there, happy and smiling, their tender old hearts warmed up as in the dawn of their lives, experiencing all the sunlight and the joys of the past again, with long perspectives before them. For them, too, everything will come back; for them, too, life will bloom again.
This morning, Robert—the joyful Robert, whose mind knows only gaiety and insouciance—has prepared a little prank for his young wife. It amuses him to give her presents, and in order to have a pretext, he has dr
essed her up in all the saints’ names in the calendar, forging new ones where the names of male saints cannot be feminized, calling her successively Pélagie, Clotilde, Médardine, Estelle or Scholastique—but today, Sainte Berthe reigns supreme on the calendar, and he has just brought her a little two-sou bouquet of violets wrapped in an enormous sheet of white paper, in the middle of which another piece of folded paper envelops a little gift, which Berthe is pretending not to notice.
“Well now,” said Robert, pretending to be annoyed. “Aren’t you going to unwrap it? Are you spurning Sainte Berthe’s gift? Are you one of those spoiled, disdainful beauties? It’s nothing but a little ring alas, very simple, an inexpensive little gift, to be sure, for one isn’t rich!”
Berthe made as if to throw her arms around her husband’s neck, but he stopped her. “A moment, Madame!” he said. “Is the little piece of paper in which the ring is rapped a symbol of your servitude?”
It is a rather thick piece of paper, quite crumpled by virtue of having been folded repeatedly. Berthe unfolds it and casts a glance over it while Robert bursts out laughing.
“A stamped paper! Since when does one wrap gifts for one’s wife in frightful illegible documents? What is this lawyer’s gibberish?”
Berthe read a few lines and suddenly blushed. “Oh the villain!” she said. “He has kept these horrid things!”
“Little souvenirs!” said Robert, taking back the paper. “Listen, it’s pretty:
“ ‘1901, day, etc.
“ ‘At the request of Madame Berthe Emma Palluel,22 spouse of, etc., having Monsieur Ducoudray for her advocate, etc., etc….
“ ‘Presented to the Tribunal the following facts and legitimate complaints that she intends to weigh against Monsieur Robert Laforcade, her husband, in the petition for divorce presently introduced by the aforesaid lady…’ ”
Berthe snatched the piece of paper and rapidly tore it into little pieces, which she blew into her husband’s face.
“There, see what I think of your document! What horror! Were we mad, though? Is it possible, my darling Robert, that we have been as close to the edge of the precipice as that? No, it wasn’t us—it wasn’t me, I swear it!”
“Nor me either!” said Robert. “It was two transformed and spoiled versions of us, two hearts withered by maturity, which made them do stupid things. You see, it’s maturity that makes husbands gloomy and grumpy, wives irritable and cantankerous; it’s maturity that brings necessities, true or false, and responsibilities, inevitable or artificial, and desires for luxury, worries about money, the endless torture of existence… It’s maturity that spoils everything! Fortunately, we’re cured of it now—long live the youth that will repair everything!”
Yes, long live youth, radiant and triumphant youth. Robert and Berthe are returning to the happy age of their beginnings in life. They are now a young couple at the beginning of their honeymoon, charming to one another, competing in attentiveness and graciousness. A delightful existence! How well made for one another those children are! How they love one another, as if the soul of each one were reflected the other’s eyes!
Thus the days of that honeymoon continue to pass—too rapidly, in truth; time marches on, and here is the day of their wedding arriving, just as each of the spouses swears that the dreamed-of perfection is found, the husband truly ideal, the wife exquisite, the charm and poetry of life.
The next day, they are no more than fiancés, which is certainly still charming and procures marvelous states of mind. Everything is tender and rosy, sweet illusion and paradisal emotion.
And very gently, our two young people are moving towards adolescence, Berthe preceding her ex-husband by a few years. There will be a happy and joyful adolescence, then a childhood without cares, and a childhood even happier. And so it will be, henceforth, for everyone: individuals, families, nations.
CHAPTER XVI
By Reason of the Perturbations of the Commencement,
A Few Extraordinary Cases of Returns Ahead of Time
By reason of the initial perturbations and irregularities following the abrupt reversal of the march of time, there were a few hazards for the new society to avoid and some rather considerable difficulties to negotiate.
A number of people emerged ahead of time, as we have seen in the cases of the Marquis de Chastelandry, grandfather Laforcade and others. Quite naturally, these irregular individuals, arriving with their own ways of thinking, aspirations and tastes, were manifestly impatient to recover the institutions and the milieux with which they had been familiar before, in order to take up their old habits more rapidly.
One could only preach the gospel of patience to these exiles, who were understandably discontented to have emerged amid the innovations of a generation that was not in any respect their own.
As the progression of things became increasingly regular, these cases of advance emergence became extremely rare. Among these exceptional and phenomenal rebirths, however, there were a few cases even more exceptional and even more remarkable than that of the Marquis de Chastelandry. These were produced in every country; a careful statistical survey revealed 100 in Europe and a few in America. As exact data were lacking regarding advanced newcomers in Asia and Africa, save for the Mediterranean coasts, these regions were not included in the statistics. We are not talking about advances of 30, 40, or even 50 years; those emerging from the 19th century had not been included in the survey. The 18th century and the two preceding it had furnished the greater number of these rebirths, but there were a few among them even stranger: amazing reappearances of people emerging from the past many hundreds of years in advance.
From this very detailed and analytical case-studies included in this exhaustive document—a document far too long to be reproduced here in its entirety—we shall be content to cite the most remarkable:
* Guyot Clairefontaine, deceased in 1250, minstrel in the court of the Comtes de Champagne, reappeared in Provins, where he wandered for a weak like a soul in torment, weeping at the sight of the ruined château and mourning his lord, the valiant Thibaut de Champagne, a courtly poet in his own right. “Has he gone on the crusade without taking me with him?” the poor man asked repeatedly. Brought to Paris, Guyot Clairefontaine has been lodged in the Collège de France, where a chair in Old French and Medieval Poetry has been created for him. Occupies himself in transcribing all the poems that he can still remember, and re-establishing the true text of the Chanson de Roland. Continues to versify, but instead of joyful or martial songs, composes melancholy rhymes, as in the following work, comparing his epoch with the present and proclaiming the superiority of the former. He speaks of the ladies of today and describes railways and machines, roundly castigating the impact of the modern era, which will happily soon pass away.
“Loyal lovers of remembrance/Ladies of noble family with soft skin, Valiant horses of Eastern France, replaced today by horses of iron and fire/Ladies who seem askew, betrayed! Engines of fire unfurnishable with lances/O my sweet time/Am exceeding doleful!” 23
* Cornelius Vanderbroek, Lutheran minister of Harlem who was councilor to William the Taciturn, a violent preacher whose sermons were collected in a thick octavo volume printed in Leyden; also distinguished himself in the great war against Spain, marching at the head of the burghers of Harlem in several combats, notably on one occasion when the town almost fell to a surprise night attack by the Duc d’Albe. Reappeared in a little town in Spain and almost immediately went raving mad. As he was taken to Madrid, he assumed, despite all the attentions that were lavished upon him, that he was destined to feature in an imminent auto-da-fé, in the sack-cloth of heretics condemned to the fire. Must be sent to Harlem immediately, to prevent him dying too soon.
* Jehan Maulin, curé of Saint-Benoît-le-Bétourné in 1540, who delivered ardent harangues against the heresy of Calvin and, it appears, wielded an arquebus no less ardently on the night of Saint Bartholomew. Reappeared in Geneva in a Calvinist family bearing his name. Believing himself to have
fallen into Calvin’s hands, immediately fell victim to an illness from which he might not recover. Brought back to Paris immediately.
* Ali Yousuf, of the janissaries of Kara Mustapha, killed at the siege of Vienna in one of the first Turkish attacks, at the moment when he reached the top of the rampart. Reappeared in a Vienna suburb. Believed himself still at the siege, a prisoner of the Christian dogs. Well-treated, interrogated by the scientific commissioner of Vienna, with the aid of an attaché from the Ottoman embassy; refused to recognize the frock-coated diplomat as a Muslim. Immediately escaped from the apartment provided for him at the embassy, stole a horse and set off in search of the Pasha of Hungary’s army; arrived in Constantinople more than half-dead, after awful misadventures in Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria.
* Thomas Robiquel, keeper of an inn neighboring the convent of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois in Paris during the reign of Henri III, enthusiastic partisan of the Guises and the Sainte-Ligue; hanged by the neck from the sign-post of his inn on the day of the barricades in 1588, for having stirred up the population of his quarter and having dared to establish a barricade directly in front of the Louvre, thus blocking the King’s path.
This brave innkeeper had a poor understanding of his role as a popular agitator, for he defended his barricade himself and was captured at 10 a.m. This lack of prudence prevented him from seeing the triumph of the Ligue at mid-day; he returned furious, threatening to sack the house of his own descendant, a peaceful Parisian notary, if he did not immediately run up the Cross of Lorraine. It was necessary to take him to the Louvre, which he scarcely recognized, to force him to admit the reality of certain changes. Disappointed by no longer being able to take action against Henri III, became angry when he saw the statue of the Béarnais.
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