Chapter V: Cardinal and Count

Cardinal Plouernel was a man of sixty-five years of age, lean, lank and leathery of skin. Except for the difference in age, he was possessed of the identical type of face as his nephew. His long neck, bald head, large and crooked nose like the beak of a bird of prey, and wide-set, round and penetrating eyes, imparted to his physiognomy, if analyzed and the high grade of intelligence that they denoted left out of consideration, a singular resemblance to that of a vulture.

To sum up, the priest, if clad in his red robes of Prince of the Church, could not choose but present a fear-inspiring aspect. On a visit to his nephew, he was clad simply in a long black coat, strictly buttoned up to his throat.

"Pardon, dear uncle," said the Count, smiling. "Not being aware of your return to town, I did not expect this matitudinal call."

The Cardinal was not the man to be astonished at a colonel of dragoons keeping a mistress. He made answer in his brief manner:

"I am pressed for time. Let us talk to the point. On my way from abroad I made a wide tour through France. We are on the verge of a revolution."

"Indeed, uncle?" asked the colonel incredulously. "Do you really believe--"

"I believe a revolution is at hand."

"But, uncle--"

"Have you available funds about you? If not, I can help you out."

"Funds--what for?"

"To exchange into gold, or for good drafts upon London. The latter are more convenient on a voyage."

"What! A voyage, uncle? What voyage?"

"The voyage that you are to make by keeping me company. We shall depart this evening."

"Depart--this evening!"

"Would you prefer to serve the Republic?"

"The Republic!" exclaimed the Count of Plouernel. "What Republic?"

"The one that will be proclaimed in Paris, within shortly, after the downfall of Louis Philippe."

"The downfall of Louis Philippe! The Republic in France--and within shortly!"

"Yes, the French Republic--one, and indivisible--proclaimed in our interest--provided we know how to wait--"

And the Cardinal indulged in a singular smile as he inhaled a pinch of snuff.

The Count contemplated him dumbfounded. He looked as if he had just dropped down from the clouds.

"I see, my poor Gonthram, you must have been either blind or deaf," the Cardinal proceeded, shrugging his shoulders. "Do you see nothing in those revolutionary banquets that have succeeded one another throughout the principal cities of France during the last three months?"

"Ha! Ha! Ha! uncle," answered the Count, laughing out aloud; "do you take those bibbers of blue wine, those swallowers of veal--at twenty sous a plate--to be capable of making a revolution?"

"The simpletons--I can not blame them, so much the worse--the simpletons have turned the heads of the bigger simpletons who listened to them. There is nothing, in and of itself, so stupid as gunpowder; is there? Yet that does not prevent it from exploding. Well, these banqueters have played with gunpowder. The mine is about to explode, and it will blow up the throne of the Orleans dynasty."

"You are joking, uncle. There are fifty thousand soldiers in the city. If the mob but raise a finger it will be mowed down like grass. Everybody is so completely at ease regarding the state of Paris that, despite the seeming commotion of yesterday, the troops have not even been furnished with passwords in the barracks."

"Is that so? Well, so much the better!" put in the Cardinal, rubbing his hands. "If their government is seized with the vertigo, these Orleans will quickly vacate their seats for the Republic, and our turn will come all the sooner."

At this point his Eminence was interrupted by two raps given at the door of the salon that communicated with the boudoir. Promptly upon the raps followed the following ditty, still to the tune of _La Rifla_, and sung by Pradeline in measured rhythm on the other side of the door:

"To get out of this scrape--
I sorely need my cape,
On this occa-si-on,
Your bene-dic-ti-on.
La rifla-fla-fla-fla, la rifla!"

"Oh, uncle!" said the colonel in anger, "Pay no attention, I beg you, to the insolence of that foolish little minx."

And rising, the Count of Plouernel took from the sofa where they had lain since the previous evening the cape and hat of the brazen girl, rang the bell quickly, and, throwing the articles at the valet who answered the summons, said to him:

"Deliver these traps to the hussy, and have her leave the house instantly."

And then, returning to his Eminence, who had remained impassive, and was at the moment in the act of opening his snuff-box, he continued:

"I assure you, uncle, that I am ashamed. But droll creatures like that respect nothing."

"She has very well shaped limbs," mused the Cardinal, taking his snuff; "she is quite comely, the droll creature. Nevertheless, in the Fifteenth Century, we would have ordered her roasted alive like a little Jewess, in reward for such a joke. But patience. Oh, my friend, never--never before were our chances so favorable!"

"Our chances favorable if the Orleans dynasty is chased away and the Republic is proclaimed?"

The Cardinal again shrugged his shoulders and proceeded to explain:

"Either one thing or the other will happen--either the Republic of the bare-footed mob will be anarchy, the dictatorship, emigration, pillage, paper money, the guillotine, and war with all Europe--and then the thing will last six months at the longest, and Henry V will be brought back triumphantly by the Holy Alliance; or, on the contrary, their Republic will be benign, stupid, legal and moderate with universal suffrage for its foundation--"

"And, if so, uncle?"

"If so, it will last longer, but we shall lose nothing by waiting. Wielding our influence as large landed proprietors, and operating through the lower clergy upon the peasants, we shall become masters at the hustings, obtain the majority in the Chamber, and hamper the passage of every measure that might, I will not say cause the Republic to be loved, but even cause such a revolutionary state of things to seem tolerable. We shall sow the seeds of mistrust and fear in all minds. Soon, with its credit destroyed, with universal ruin, with disaster on all sides, a chorus of curses will rise against the infamous Republic that will then die peaceably after a trial that will for all time disgust the people with it. At that psychologic moment we shall step forward. The hungering people, the bourgeois, frightened out of their senses, will throw themselves at our feet, praying to us with clasped hands for Henry V, the savior of France. Finally, the hour for stipulating conditions will arrive. These will be ours: Royalty, at least such as it existed before 1789, that is, no more bourgeois insolent and clamorous Chamber, holding the reins of government as much as the King, seeing it decides upon appropriations and taxes--an ignominious state of things; an end of the present mongrel system--_all_ or _nothing_, and we want _all_, to wit, an absolute King resting upon an omnipotent clergy; a strong aristocracy and a merciless army; a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand foreign troops, if needed; the Holy Alliance will lend them to us. Misery will be so frightful, fear so intense, the general lassitude such, that our conditions will be accepted as soon as imposed. Thereupon we shall take prompt and terrible measures--the only effective ones in such emergencies. Our measures will be these: First of all, provost courts; reinstitution of the laws pronouncing sacrilege and _lese majeste_ capital crimes, and making them retroactive, back to 1830; execution to follow verdict within twenty-four hours, in order to smother in their own poison all revolutionists, all people tainted with impiousness; it will be an era of terror--another St. Bartholomew, if necessary. France will not die under the knife; on the contrary, she is suffering of plethora, she needs a bleeding from time to time.[8] The second measure will be to assign public instruction to the Society of Jesus--it alone is able to emasculate the human species. The third measure will be to break the sheaf of centralization; in it lay the strength of the Revolution; our effort must be, on the contrary, to isolate the provinces as much as possible from the small centers, where, unmolested, we shall hold sway through the lower clergy; or, by virtue of our large holdings, restrain, prevent, if at all possible, the intercommunication of one section of the country with another. It is not helpful to us for people to draw together and meet each other with frequency. With the view of dividing and keeping them divided, we shall assiduously rekindle the rivalries, jealousies, and where needed, the old provincial hatreds. To that end an occasional little douse of civil war will be a helpful expedient. It breeds and nurses the germs of implacable animosity."

The Cardinal stopped a moment to take another pinch of snuff, and then concluded with these words:

"People who are divided by hatred never conspire."

The merciless logic of the priest repelled the Count of Plouernel. Despite his own fatuity and caste prejudices, he rather leaned towards modern thought. No doubt he would have preferred a reign of "legitimate Kings." But he did not stop to think that he who wants the end must not object to the means, and that, in order to be lasting in the eyes of its partisans, a complete and absolute restoration could not possibly take place and maintain itself except by the frightful means that the Cardinal had just laid bare with complacent assurance. The colonel replied with a smile:

"But, uncle, think of it! In these days of ours the idea of isolating the population is chimerical. The thing is impossible! What about the strategic highways! The railroads!"

"The railroads?" echoed the Cardinal angrily. "A devil's invention, good only to cause the revolutionary fever to circulate from one end of Europe to the other! For that very reason our Holy Father wants no railroads in his states, and right he is. It is incredible that the monarchs of the Holy Alliance could have allowed themselves to yield to such diabolical innovations! They may have to pay dear therefor! What did our forefathers do, at the time of the conquest, with a view to subjugate and keep the yoke riveted to the neck of this perverse Gallic race--our vassals by birth and by kind, that has so often risen in rebellion against us? Our ancestors staked them within their separate domains, forbidding them to step outside under penalty of death. Thus chained to the glebe, thus isolated and brutified, the breed is more easily kept under control--that must be the goal we should aim at returning to."

"But I repeat--what about the railroads? You would not tear up the highways and railroads, would you, uncle?"

"Why not? Did not the Franks, our ancestors, in pursuit of an unerring policy, tear up the highways, the magnificent roads of communication that they found in Gaul, and which those pagans of Romans had constructed? Would it be so difficult a task to hurl against the railroads the mass of brutes whom that infernal invention threw out of their means of earning a livelihood? Anathema--anathema against those proud monuments of haughty Satan! By the blood of my race! If he is not curbed in his sacrilegious career, man will yet end--may God forefend!--by changing this valley of tears into a terrestrial paradise, wholly oblivious of the fact that original sin condemns him to perpetual suffering!"

"Zounds! Dear uncle, not so fast!" interjected the colonel. "I am not inclined to carry out my destiny with quite such scrupulous accuracy."

"You big baby!" replied the Cardinal impatiently, taking a fresh pinch of snuff. "Do you not understand that, in order that the large majority of the race of Adam suffer and be meritoriously conscious of its suffering, it is requisite that there be always in evidence a neat small number of happy people in the world?"

"Oh, I see! As a contrast; is that it, dear uncle?"

"Necessarily. The depth of the valley is not realized but for its contrast with the mountain top. But enough of philosophy. As you know, I have an accurate eye, quick and certain. The situation is such as I have described it to you. I repeat--do as I have done. Realize all your negotiable effects in gold, or in good drafts upon London. Send in your resignation this minute, and let us depart to-morrow at the very latest. Such is the blindness of those people that they apprehend nothing. You said so yourself. There is hardly any military precaution taken. You can, accordingly, without in any way wounding your military honor, quit your regiment this instant."

"Impossible, my dear uncle--that would be an act of cowardice. If the Republic is to be established, the thing will not be done without the firing of some guns. I wish to do my part--I wish to be quits. Politeness for politeness, with good round discharges of muskets! My dragoons will want nothing better than a chance to charge upon the canaille."

"Then you propose to defend the throne of the wretches of Orleans!" exclaimed the Cardinal with a loud outburst of sardonic laughter.

"Dear uncle, you know very well I did not wheel in line in support of the Orleans dynasty. No more than you, do I love them. I simply joined the army, because I have a military turn of mind. The army has but one opinion--discipline. In short, if your foresight is correct--and your trained experience inclines me to the belief that you are not mistaken--then a battle will be fought this very day. Under such circumstances I would be a despicable wretch to hand in my resignation on the eve of an encounter."

"Then you are determined to run the risk of being riddled with bullets or brained by the mob on a barricade--in the interest of the Orleans dynasty?"

"I am a soldier--I am determined to fulfil the duties of my profession."

"But, you devil of a stubborn block! Suppose you are killed, our house would then fall from the lance to the distaff."

"I promised you I would marry at forty--"

"But until then--think of it--these street fights are disgraceful--to die in the mud of the gutters, killed by a lot of beggars!"

"Before it came to that I would have treated myself to the sport of hewing several of them down with my saber," coolly replied the colonel. "In that event it will not be difficult for you to find some sturdy Plouernel bastard of my own making--whom you will then adopt, uncle. He will perpetuate my name. Bastards often have brought good luck to great houses."

"Triple fool! To play with your life in that manner! And that at the very moment when the future smiles upon us as it never smiled before! At the moment when, after having been beaten, kicked and cuffed by the descendants of the men who for fourteen centuries were our vassals and serfs, we are about to wipe out at a single stroke these last fifty years of shame! At the moment when, instructed by experience, and aided by the course of events, we are about to resume our power and become even mightier than we were in 1789! Go to--I pity you! You are right, races degenerate!" exclaimed the intractable old man, rising. "I would despair of our cause if all our people were like you."

The valet, stepping in again after rapping at the door, said to the Count of Plouernel:

"Monsieur Count, the linendraper of St. Denis Street has arrived. He is waiting in the ante-chamber."

"Take him to the salon of the portraits."

The valet left; the colonel said to the Cardinal, whom he saw angrily picking up his hat and moving towards the door:

"For God's sake, uncle, do not go away angry, in that way--"

"I am not going away angry; I am going away ashamed."

"Come, dear uncle, you will think better of me."

"Will you, yes or no, depart with me for England?"

"Impossible, uncle."

"Then go to the devil!" was the rather uncanonical shout with which the Cardinal furiously took his leave, slamming the door behind him.