Penguin Island — 58 Bk7 Ch9 - The Final Consequences

IX. THE FINAL CONSEQUENCES

Jealousy is a virtue of democracies which preserves them from tyrants.

Deputies began to envy the Prime Minister his golden key.

For a year his domination over the beauteous Madame Cérès had been known to the whole universe.

The provinces, whither news and fashions only arrive after a complete revolution of the earth round the sun, were at last informed of the illegitimate loves of the Cabinet.

The provinces preserve an austere morality; women are more virtuous there than they are in the capital.

Various reasons have been alleged for this: Education, example, simplicity of life.

Professor Haddock asserts that this virtue of provincial ladies is solely due to the fact that the heels of their shoes are low.

“A woman,” said he, in a learned article in the “Anthropological Review”, “a woman attracts a civilized man in proportion as her feet make an angle with the ground.

If this angle is as much as thirty-five degrees, the attraction becomes acute.

For the position of the feet upon the ground determines the whole carriage of the body, and it results that provincial women, since they wear low heels, are not very attractive, and preserve their virtue with ease.” These conclusions were not generally accepted.

It was objected that under the influence of English and American fashions, low heels had been introduced generally without producing the results attributed to them by the learned Professor; moreover, it was said that the difference he pretended to establish between the morals of the metropolis and those of the provinces is perhaps illusory, and that if it exists, it is apparently due to the fact that great cities offer more advantages and facilities for love than small towns provide.

However that may be, the provinces began to murmur against the Prime Minister, and to raise a scandal.

This was not yet a danger, but there was a possibility that it might become one.

For the moment the peril was nowhere and yet everywhere.

The majority remained solid; but the leaders became stiff and exacting.

Perhaps Hippolyte Cérès would never have intentionally sacrificed his interests to his vengeance.

But thinking that he could henceforth, without compromising his own fortune, secretly damage that of Paul Visire, he devoted himself to the skilful and careful preparation of difficulties and perils for the Head of the Government.

Though far from equalling his rival in talent, knowledge, and authority, he greatly surpassed him in his skill as a lobbyist.

The most acute parliamentarians attributed the recent misfortunes of the majority to his refusal to vote.

At committees, by a calculated imprudence, he favoured motions which he knew the Prime Minister could not accept.

One day his intentional awkwardness provoked a sudden and violent conflict between the Minister of the Interior, and his departmental Treasurer.

Then Cérès became frightened and went no further.

It would have been dangerous for him to overthrow the ministry too soon.

His ingenious hatred found an issue by circuitous paths.

Paul Visire had a poor cousin of easy morals who bore his name.

Cérès, remembering this lady, Celine Visire, brought her into prominence, arranged that she should become intimate with several foreigners, and procured her engagements in the music-halls.

One summer night, on a stage in the Champs Elysées before a tumultuous crowd, she performed risky dances to the sounds of wild music which was audible in the gardens where the President of the Republic was entertaining Royalty.

The name of Visire, associated with these scandals, covered the walls of the town, filled the newspapers, was repeated in the cafés and at balls, and blazed forth in letters of fire upon the boulevards.

Nobody regarded the Prime Minister as responsible for the scandal of his relatives, but a bad idea of his family came into existence, and the influence of the statesman was diminished.

Almost immediately he was made to feel this in a pretty sharp fashion.

One day in the House, on a simple question, Labillette, the Minister of Religion and Public Worship, who was suffering from an attack of liver, and beginning to be exasperated by the intentions and intrigues of the clergy, threatened to close the Chapel of St. Orberosia, and spoke without respect of the National Virgin.

The entire Right rose up in indignation; the Left appeared to give but a half-hearted support to the rash Minister.

The leaders of the majority did not care to attack a popular cult which brought thirty millions a year into the country.

The most moderate of the supporters of the Right, M. Bigourd, made the question the subject of a resolution and endangered the Cabinet.

Luckily, Fortuné Lapersonne, the Minister of Public Works, always conscious of the obligations of power, was able in the Prime Minister’s absence to repair the awkwardness and indecorum of his colleague, the Minister of Public Worship.

He ascended the tribune and bore witness to the respect in which the Government held the heavenly Patron of the country, the consoler of so many ills which science admitted its powerlessness to relieve.

When Paul Visire, snatched at last from Eveline’s arms, appeared in the House, the administration was saved; but the Prime Minister saw himself compelled to grant important concessions to the upper classes.

He proposed in Parliament that six armoured cruisers should be laid down, and thus won the sympathies of the Steel Trust; he gave new assurances that the income tax would not be imposed, and he had eighteen Socialists arrested.

He was soon to find himself opposed by more formidable obstacles.

The Chancellor of the neighbouring Empire in an ingenious and profound speech upon the foreign relations of his sovereign, made a sly allusion to the intrigues that inspired the policy of a great country.

This reference, which was received with smiles by the Imperial Parliament, was certain to irritate a punctilious republic.

It aroused the national susceptibility, which directed its wrath against its amorous Minister.

The Deputies seized upon a frivolous pretext to show their dissatisfaction.

A ridiculous incident, the fact that the wife of a subprefect had danced at the Moulin Rouge, forced the minister to face a vote of censure, and he was within a few votes of being defeated.

According to general opinion, Paul Visire had never been so weak, so vacillating, or so spiritless, as on that occasion.

He understood that he could only keep himself in office by a great political stroke, and he decided on the expedition to Nigritia.

This measure was demanded by the great financial and industrial corporations and was one which would bring concessions of immense forests to the capitalists, a loan of eight millions to the banking companies, as well as promotions and decorations to the naval and military officers.

A pretext presented itself; some insult needed to be avenged, or some debt to be collected.

Six battleships, fourteen cruisers, and eighteen transports sailed up the mouth of the river Hippopotamus.

Six hundred canoes vainly opposed the landing of the troops.

Admiral Vivier des Murènes’ cannons produced an appalling effect upon the blacks, who replied to them with flights of arrows, but in spite of their fanatical courage they were entirely defeated.

Popular enthusiasm was kindled by the newspapers which the financiers subsidised, and burst into a blaze.

Some Socialists alone protested against this barbarous, doubtful, and dangerous enterprise.

They were at once arrested.

At that moment when the Minister, supported by wealth, and now beloved by the poor, seemed unconquerable, the light of hate showed Hippolyte Cérès alone the danger, and looking with a gloomy joy at his rival, he muttered between his teeth, “He is wrecked, the brigand!”

Whilst the country intoxicated itself with glory, the neighbouring Empire protested against the occupation of Nigritia by a European power, and these protests following one another at shorter and shorter intervals became more and more vehement.

The newspapers of the interested Republic concealed all causes for uneasiness; but Hippolyte Cérès heard the growing menace, and determined at last to risk everything, even the fate of the ministry, in order to ruin his enemy.

He got men whom he could trust to write and insert articles in several of the official journals, which, seeming to express Paul Visire’s precise views, attributed warlike intentions to the Head of the Government.

These articles roused a terrible echo abroad, and they alarmed the public opinion of a nation which, while fond of soldiers, was not fond of war.

Questioned in the House on the foreign policy of his government, Paul Visire made a re-assuring statement, and promised to maintain a face compatible with the dignity of a great nation.

His Minister of Foreign Affairs, Crombile, read a declaration which was absolutely unintelligible, for the reason that it was couched in diplomatic language.

The Minister obtained a large majority.

But the rumours of war did not cease, and in order to avoid a new and dangerous motion, the Prime Minister distributed eighty thousand acres of forests in Nigritia among the Deputies, and had fourteen Socialists arrested.

Hippolyte Cérès went gloomily about the lobbies, confiding to the Deputies of his group that he was endeavouring to induce the Cabinet to adopt a pacific policy, and that he still hoped to succeed.

Day by day the sinister rumours grew in volume, and penetrating amongst the public, spread uneasiness and disquiet.

Paul Visire himself began to take alarm.

What disturbed him most were the silence and absence of the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Crombile no longer came to the meetings of the Cabinet.

Rising at five o’clock in the morning, he worked eighteen hours at his desk, and at last fell exhausted into his waste-paper basket, from whence the registrars removed him, together with the papers which they were going to sell to the military attachés of the neighbouring Empire.

General Débonnaire believed that a campaign was imminent, and prepared for it.

Far from fearing war, he prayed for it, and confided his generous hopes to Baroness Bildermann, who informed the neighbouring nation, which, acting on her information, proceeded to a rapid mobilization.

The Minister of Finance unintentionally precipitated events.

At the moment, he was speculating for a fall, and in order to bring about a panic on the Stock Exchange, he spread the rumour that war was now inevitable.

The neighbouring Empire, deceived by this action, and expecting to see its territory invaded, mobilized its troops in all haste.

The terrified Chamber overthrew the Visire ministry by an enormous majority (814 votes to 7, with 28 abstentions).

It was too late.

The very day of this fall the neighbouring and hostile nation recalled its ambassador and flung eight millions of men into Madame Cérès’ country.

War became universal, and the whole world was drowned in a torrent of blood.

THE ZENITH OF PENGUIN CIVILIZATION

Half a century after the events we have just related, Madame Cérès died surrounded with respect and veneration, in the eighty-ninth year of her age.

She had long been the widow of a statesman whose name she bore with dignity.

Her modest and quiet funeral was followed by the orphans of the parish and the sisters of the Sacred Compassion.

The deceased left all her property to the Charity of St. Orberosia.

“Alas!” sighed M. Monnoyer, a canon of St. Maël, as he received the pious legacy, “it was high time for a generous benefactor to come to the relief of our necessities.

Rich and poor, learned and ignorant are turning away from us.

And when we try to lead back these misguided souls, neither threats nor promises, neither gentleness nor violence, nor anything else is now successful.

The Penguin clergy pine in desolation; our country priests, reduced to following the humblest of trades, are shoeless, and compelled to live upon such scraps as they can pick up.

In our ruined churches the rain of heaven falls upon the faithful, and during the holy offices they can hear the noise of stones falling from the arches.

The tower of the cathedral is tottering and will soon fall.

St. Orberosia is forgotten by the Penguins, her devotion abandoned, and her sanctuary deserted.

On her shrine, bereft of its gold and precious stones, the spider silently weaves her web.”

Hearing these lamentations, Pierre Mille, who at the age of ninety-eight years had lost nothing of his intellectual and moral power, asked, the canon if he did not think that St. Orberosia would one day rise out of this wrongful oblivion.

“I hardly dare to hope so,” sighed M. Monnoyer.

“It is a pity!” answered Pierre Mille.

“Orberosia is a charming figure and her legend is a beautiful one.

I discovered the other day by the merest chance, one of her most delightful miracles, the miracle of Jean Violle.

Would you like to hear it, M. Monnoyer?”

“I should be very pleased, M. Mille.”

“Here it is, then, just as I found it in a fifteenth-century manuscript “Cécile, the wife of Nicolas Gaubert, a jeweller on the Pont-au-Change, after having led an honest and chaste life for many years, and being now past her prime, became infatuated with Jean Violle, the Countess de Maubec’s page, who lived at the Hôtel du Paon on the Place de Grève.

He was not yet eighteen years old, and his face and figure were attractive.

Not being able to conquer her passion, Cécile resolved to satisfy it.

She attracted the page to her house, loaded him with caresses, supplied him with sweetmeats and finally did as she wished with him.

“Now one day, as they were together in the jeweller’s bed, Master Nicholas came home sooner than he was expected.

He found the bolt drawn, and heard his wife on the other side of the door exclaiming, ‘My heart!

my angel!

my love!’ Then suspecting that she was shut up with a gallant, he struck great blows upon the door and began to shout ‘Slut!

hussy!

wanton!

open so that I may cut off your nose and ears!’ In this peril, the jeweller’s wife besought St. Orberosia, and vowed her a large candle if she helped her and the little page, who was dying of fear beside the bed, out of their difficulty.

“The saint heard the prayer.

She immediately changed Jean Violle into a girl.

Seeing this, Cécile was completely reassured, and began to call out to her husband: ‘Oh!

you brutal villain, you jealous wretch!

Speak gently if you want the door to be opened.’ And scolding in this way, she ran to the wardrobe and took out of it an old hood, a pair of stays, and a long grey petticoat, in which she hastily wrapped the transformed page.

Then when this was done, ‘Catherine, dear Catherine,’ said she, loudly, ‘open the door for your uncle; he is more fool than knave, and won’t do you any harm.’ The boy who had become a girl, obeyed.

Master Nicholas entered the room and found in it a young maid whom he did not know, and his wife in bed.

‘Big booby,’ said the latter to him, ‘don’t stand gaping at what you see, just as I had come to bed because had a stomach ache, I received a visit from Catherine, the daughter of my sister Jeanne de Palaiseau, with whom we quarrelled fifteen years ago.

Kiss your niece.

She is well worth the trouble.’ The jeweller gave Violle a hug, and from that moment wanted nothing so much as to be alone with her a moment, so that he might embrace her as much as he liked.

For this reason he led her without any delay down to the kitchen, under the pretext of giving her some walnuts and wine, and he was no sooner there with her than he began to caress her very affectionately.

He would not have stopped at that if St. Orberosia had not inspired his good wife with the idea of seeing what he was about.

She found him with the pretended niece sitting on his knee.

She called him a debauched creature, boxed his ears, and forced him to beg her pardon.

The next day Violle resumed his previous form.”

Having heard this story the venerable Canon Monnoyer thanked Pierre Mille for having told it, and, taking up his pen, began to write out a list of horses that would win at the next race meeting.

For he was a book-maker’s clerk.

In the mean time Penguinia gloried in its wealth.

Those who produced the things necessary for life, wanted them; those who did not produce them had more than enough.

“But these,” as a member of the Institute said, “are necessary economic fatalities.” The great Penguin people had no longer either traditions, intellectual culture, or arts.

The progress of civilisation manifested itself among them by murderous industry, infamous speculation, and hideous luxury.

Its capital assumed, as did all the great cities of the time, a cosmopolitan and financial character.

An immense and regular ugliness reigned within it.

The country enjoyed perfect tranquillity.

It had reached its zenith.