Light by Henri Barbusse (good novels to read in english txt) 📕

it and put it under the chap's nose; and all the smart hunting folk they laughed to see how the simpleton changed when he saw all those bank notes. And naturally he ended by nodding that it was a bargain, and he'd even seen so many of the rustlers that he turned from crying to laughing! Then the prince loaded his gun at ten paces from the bear and killed it with one shot, my boy; just when he was rocking left and right, and sitting up like a man. You ought to have seen it! There weren't a lot there; but _I_ was there!"

The story made an impression. No one spoke at first. Then some one risked the opinion. "No doubt they do things like that in Hungary or Bohemia, or where he reigns. You wouldn't see it here," he added, innocently.

"He's from Austria," Tudor corrected.

"Yes," muttered Crillon, "but whether he's Austrian or whether he's Bohemian or Hungarian, he's a grandee, so he's got the right to do what he likes, eh?"

Eudo looked as if he would intervene at this point and was seeking words. (Not long before that he had had the queer notion of sheltering and nursing a crippled hind that had escaped from a previous run, and his act had given great displeasure in high places.) So as soon as he opened his mouth we made him shut it. The idea of Eudo in judgment on princes!

And the rest lowered their heads and nodded and murmured, "Yes, he's a grandee."

And the little phrase spread abroad, timidly and obscurely.

* * * * * *


When All Saints' Day came round, many of the distinguished visitors at the castle were still there. Every year that festival gives us occasion for an historical ceremony on the grand scale. At two o'clock all the townsfolk that matter gather with bunches of flowers on the esplanade or in front of the cemetery half-way up Chestnut Hill, for the ceremony and an open air service.

Early in the afternoon I betook myself with Marie to the scene. I put on a fancy waistcoat of black and white check and my new patent leather boots, which make me look at them. It is fine weather on this Sunday of Sundays, and the bells are ringing. Everywhere the hurrying crowd climbs the hill--peasants in flat caps, working families in their best clothes, young girls with faces white and glossy as the bridal satin which is the color of their thoughts, young men carrying jars of flowers. All these appear on the esplanade, where graying lime trees are also in assembly. Children are sitting on the ground.

Monsieur Joseph Bonéas, in black, with his supremely distinguished air, goes by holding his mother's arm. I bow deeply to them. He points at the unfolding spectacle as he passes and says, "It is our race's festival."

The words made me look more seriously at the scene before my eyes--all this tranquil and contemplative stir in the heart of festive nature. Reflection and the vexations of my life have mellowed my mind. The idea at last becomes clear in my brain of an entirety, an immense multitude in space, and infinite in time, a multitude of which I am an integral part, which has shaped me in its image, which continues to keep me like it, and carries me along its control; my own people.

Baroness Grille, in the riding habit that she almost always wears when mixing with the people, is standing near the imposing entry to the cemetery. Monsieur the Marquis of Monthyon is holding aloft his stately presence, his handsome and energetic face. Solid and sporting, with dazzling shirt cuffs and fine ebon-black shoes, he parades a smile. There is an M.P. too, a former Minister, very assiduous, who chats with the old duke. There are the Messrs. Gozlan and famous people whose names one does not know. Members of the Institute of the great learned associations, or people fabulously wealthy.

Not far from these groups, which are divided from the rest by a scarlet barrier of beaters and the flashing chain of their slung horns, arises Monsieur Fontan. The huge merchant and café-owner occupies an intermediate and isolated place between principals and people. His face is disposed in fat white tiers, like a Buddha's belly. Monumentally motionless he says nothing at all, but he tranquilly spits all around him. He radiates saliva.

And for this ceremony, which seems like an apotheosis, all the notables of our quarter are gathered together, as well as those of the other quarter, who seem different and are similar.

We elbow the ordinary types. Apolline goes crabwise. She is in new things, and has sprinkled Eau-de-Cologne on her skin; her eye is bright; her face well-polished; her ears richly adorned. She is always rather dirty, and her wrists might be branches, but she has cotton gloves. There are some shadows in the picture, for Brisbille has come with his crony, Termite, so that his offensive and untidy presence may be a protest. There is another blot--a working man's wife, who speaks at their meetings; people point at her. "What's that woman doing here?"

"She doesn't believe in God," says some one.

"Ah," says a mother standing by, "that's because she has no children."

"Yes, she's got two."

"Then," says the poor woman, "it's because they've never been ill."

Here is little Antoinette and the old priest is holding her hand. She must be fifteen or sixteen years old by now, and she has not grown--or, at least, one has not noticed it. Father Piot, always white, gentle and murmurous, has shrunk a little; more and more he leans towards the tomb. Both of them proceed in tiny steps.

"They're going to cure her, it seems. They're seeing to it seriously."

"Yes--the extraordinary secret remedy they say they're going to try."

"No, it's not that now. It's the new doctor who's come to live here, and he says, they say, that he's going to see about it."

"Poor little angel!"

The almost blind child, whose Christian name alone one knows, and whose health is the object of so much solicitude, goes stiffly by, as if she were dumb also, and deaf to all the prayers that go on with her.

After the service some one comes forward and begins to speak. He is an old man, an officer of the Legion of Honor; his voice is weak but his face noble.

He speaks of the Dead, whose day this is. He explains to us that we are not separated from them; not only by reason of the future life and our sacred creeds, but because our life on earth must be purely and simply a continuation of theirs. We must do as they did, and believe what they believed, else shall we fall into error and utopianism. We are all linked to each other and with the past; we are bound together by an entirety of traditions and precepts. Our normal destiny, so adequate to our nature, must be allowed to fulfill itself along the indicated path, without hearkening to the temptations of novelty, of hate, of envy--of envy above all, that social cancer, that enemy of the great civic virtue--Discipline.

He ceases. The echo of the great magnificent words floats in the silence. Everybody does not understand all that has just been said; but all have a deep impression that the text is one of simplicity, of moderation, of obedience, and foreheads move altogether in the breath of the phrases like a field in the breeze.

"Yes," says Crillon, pensively, "he speaks to confection, that gentleman. All that one thinks about, you can see it come out of his mouth. Common sense and reverence, we're attached to 'em by something."

"We are attached to them by orderliness," says Joseph Bonéas.

"The proof that it's the truth," Crillon urges, "is that it's in the dissertions of everybody."

"To be sure!" says Benoît, going a bit farther, "since everybody says it, and it's become a general repetition!"

The good old priest, in the center of an attentive circle, is unstringing a few observations. "Er, hem," he says, "one should not blaspheme. Ah, if there were not a good God, there would be many things to say; but so long as there is a good God, all that happens is adorable, as Monseigneur said. We shall make things better, certainly. Poverty and public calamities and war, we shall change all that, we shall set those things to rights, er, hem! But let us alone, above all, and don't concern yourselves with it--you would spoil everything, my children. _We_ shall do all that, but not immediately."

"Quite so, quite so," we say in chorus.

"Can we be happy all at once," the old man goes on; "change misery into joy, and poverty into riches? Come now, it's not possible, and I'll tell you why; if it had been as easy as all that, it would have been done already, wouldn't it?"

The bells begin to ring. The four strokes of the hour are just falling from the steeple which the rising mists touch already, though the evening makes use of it last of all; and just then one would say that the church is beginning to talk even while it is singing.

The important people get onto their horses or into their carriages and go away--a cavalcade where uniforms gleam and gold glitters. We can see the procession of the potentates of the day outlined on the crest of the hill which is full of our dead. They climb and disappear, one by one. _Our_ way is downward; but we form--they above and we below--one and the same mass, all visible together.

"It's fine!" says Marie, "it looks as if they were galloping over us!"

They are the shining vanguard that protects us, the great eternal framework which upholds our country, the forces of the mighty past which illuminate it and protect it against enemies and revolutions.

And we, we are all alike, in spite of our different minds; alike in the greatness of our common interests and even in the littleness of our personal aims. I have become increasingly conscious of this close concord of the masses beneath a huge and respect-inspiring hierarchy. It permits a sort of lofty consolation and is exactly adapted to a life like mine. This evening, by the light of the setting sun, I see it and read it and admire it.

All together we go down by the fields where tranquil corn is growing, by the gardens and orchards where homely trees are making ready their offerings--the scented blossom which lends, the fruit which gives itself. They form an immense plain, sloping and darkling, with brown undulations under the blue which now alone is becoming green. A little girl, who has come from the spring, puts down her bucket and stands at the roadside like a post, looking with all her eyes. She looks at the marching multitude with beaming curiosity. Her littleness embraces that immensity, because