The Deputy of Arcis by Honoré de Balzac (reading in the dark .txt) 📖

/> "There was nothing wonderful in that; you must have heard that a saint fought for us."

"Well, at any rate," said Rastignac, "I prefer this result to the one arranged for us by a man I thought cleverer than he proved to be, whom I sent down there. It seems that Beauvisage is a perfect nonentity; he'd have rubbed off upon us; and after all, he was really as much Left centre as the other man, Giguet. Now the Left centre is our real enemy, because it is aiming to get our portfolios."

"Oh!" said Monsieur de l'Estorade, "after what we heard of the man, I think he would have done exactly what was wanted of him."

"My dear friend, don't believe that," said the minister. "Fools are often more tenacious of the flag under which they enlisted than we think for. Besides, to go over to the enemy is to make a choice, and that supposes an operation of the mind; it is much easier to be obstinate."

"I agree with the minister," said Sallenauve; "extreme innocence and extreme rascality are equally able to defend themselves against seduction."

Here Monsieur de l'Estorade, seeing, or pretending to see, a signal made to him, looked over his shoulder and said,--

"I'm coming."

And the two adversaries being thus buckled together, he hastened away as if summoned to some duty as master of the house.

Sallenauve was anxious not to seem disturbed at finding himself alone with the minister. The meeting having come about, he decided to endure it with a good grace, and, taking the first word, he asked if the ministry had prepared, in view of the coming sessions, a large number of bills.

"No, very few," replied Rastignac. "To tell the truth, we do not expect to be in power very long; we brought about an election because in the general confusion into which the press has thrown public opinion, our constitutional duty was to force that opinion to reconstitute itself; but the fact is, we did not expect the result to be favorable to us, and we are therefore taken somewhat unawares."

"You are like the peasant," said Sallenauve, laughing, "who, expecting the end of the world, did not sow his wheat."

"Well, we don't look upon our retirement as the end of the world," said Rastignac, modestly; "there are men to come after us, and many of them well able to govern; only, as we expected to give but few more representations in that transitory abode called 'power,' we have not unpacked either our costumes or our scenery. Besides, the coming session, in any case, can only be a business session. The question now is, of course, between the palace, that is, personal influence, and the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy. This question will naturally come up when the vote is taken on the secret-service fund. Whenever, in one way or the other, that is settled, and the budget is voted, together with a few bills of secondary interest, Parliament has really completed its task; it will have put an end to a distressing struggle, and the country will know to which of the two parties it can look for the development of its prosperity."

"And you think," said Sallenauve, "that in a well-balanced system of government that question is a useful one to raise?"

"Well," replied Rastignac, "we have not raised it. It is born perhaps of circumstances; a great deal, as I think, from the restlessness of certain ambitions, and also from the tactics of parties."

"So that, in your opinion, one of the combatants is not guilty and has absolutely nothing to reproach himself with?"

"You are a republican," said Rastignac, "and therefore, _a priori_, an enemy to the dynasty. I think I should lose my time in trying to change your ideas on the policy you complain of."

"You are mistaken," said the theoretical republican deputy; "I have no preconceived hatred to the reigning dynasty. I even think that in its past, _striped_, if I may say so, with royal affinities and revolutionary memories, it has all that is needed to respond to the liberal and monarchical instincts of the nation. But you will find it difficult to persuade me that in the present head of the dynasty we shall not find extreme ideas of personal influence, which in the long run will undermine and subvert the finest as well as the strongest institutions."

"Yes," said Rastignac, ironically, "and they are saved by the famous axiom of the deputy of Sancerre: 'The king reigns, but does not govern.'"

Whether he was tired of standing to converse, or whether he wished to prove his ease in releasing himself from the trap which had evidently been laid for him, Sallenauve, before replying, drew up a chair for his interlocutor, and, taking one himself, said,--

"Will you permit me to cite the example of another royal behavior?--that of a prince who was not considered indifferent to his royal prerogative, and who was not ignorant of constitutional mechanism--"

"Louis XVIII.," said Rastignac, "or, as the newspapers used to call him, 'the illustrious author of the Charter'?"

"Precisely; and will you kindly tell me where he died?"

"_Parbleu_! at the Tuileries."

"And his successor?"

"In exile--Oh! I see what you are coming to."

"My conclusion is certainly not difficult to guess. But have you fully remarked the deduction to be drawn from that royal career?--for which I myself feel the greatest respect. Louis XVIII. was not a citizen king. He granted this Charter, but he never consented to it. Born nearer to the throne than the prince whose regrettable tendencies I mentioned just now, he might naturally share more deeply still the ideas, the prejudices, and the infatuations of the court; in person he was ridiculous (a serious princely defect in France); he bore the brunt of a new and untried regime; he succeeded a government which had intoxicated the people with that splendid gilded smoke called glory; and if he was not actually brought back to France by foreigners, at any rate he came as the result of the armed invasion of Europe. Now, shall I tell you why, in spite of all these defects and disadvantages, in spite, too, of the ceaseless conspiracy kept up against his government, it was given to him to die tranquilly in his bed at the Tuileries?"

"Because he had made himself a constitutional king," said Rastignac, with a slight shrug of his shoulders. "But do you mean to say that we are not that?"

"In the letter, yes; in the spirit, no. When Louis XVIII. gave his confidence to a minister, he gave it sincerely and wholly. He did not cheat him; he played honestly into his hand,--witness the famous ordinance of September 5, and the dissolution of the Chamber, which was more Royalist than himself,--a thing he had the wisdom not to desire. Later, a movement of public opinion shook the minister who had led him along that path; that minister was his favorite, his son, as he called him. No matter; yielding to the constitutional necessity, he bravely sent him to foreign parts, after loading him with crosses and titles,--in short, with everything that could soften the pain of his fall; and he did not watch and manoeuvre surreptitiously to bring him back to power, which that minister never regained."

"For a man who declares he does not hate us," said Rastignac, "you treat us rather roughly. According to you we are almost faithless to the constitutional compact, and our policy, to your thinking ambiguous and tortuous, gives us a certain distant likeness to Monsieur Doublemain in the 'Mariage de Figaro.'"

"I do not say that the evil is as deep as that," replied Sallenauve; "perhaps, after all, _we_ are simply a _faiseur_,--using the word, be it understood, in the sense of a meddler, one who wants to have his finger in everything."

"Ah! monsieur, but suppose we are the ablest politician in the country."

"If we are, it does not follow that our kingdom ought not to have the chance of becoming as able as ourselves."

"_Parbleu_!" cried Rastignac, in the tone of a man who comes to the climax of a conversation, "I wish I had power to realize a wish--"

"And that is?"

"To see you grappling with that ability which you call meddlesome."

"Well, you know, Monsieur le ministre, that we all spend three fourths of life in wishing for the impossible."

"Why impossible? Would you be the first man of the Opposition to be seen at the Tuileries? An invitation to dinner given publicly, openly, which would, by bringing you into contact with one whom you misjudge at a distance--"

"I should have the honor to refuse."

And he emphasized the words _have the honor_ in a way to show the meaning he attached to them.

"You are all alike, you men of the Opposition!" cried the minister; "you won't let yourselves be enlightened when the opportunity presents itself; or, to put it better, you--"

"Do you call the rays of those gigantic red bottles in a chemist's shop _light_, when they flash into your eyes as you pass them after dark? Don't they, on the contrary, seem to blind you?"

"It is not our rays that frighten you," said Rastignac; "it is the dark lantern of your party watchmen on their rounds."

"There may be some truth in what you say; a party and the man who undertakes to represent it are in some degree a married couple, who in order to live peaceably together must be mutually courteous, frank, and faithful in heart as well as in principle."

"Well, try to be moderate. Your dream is far more impossible to realize than mine; the day will come when you will have more to say about the courtesy of your chaste better half."

"If there is an evil for which I ought to be prepared, it is that."

"Do you think so? With the lofty and generous sentiments so apparent in your nature, shall you remain impassive under political attack,--under calumny, for instance?"

"You yourself, Monsieur le ministre, have not escaped its venom; but it did not, I think, deter you from your course."

"But," said Rastignac, lowering his voice, "suppose I were to tell you that I have already sternly refused to listen to a proposal to search into your private life on a certain side which, being more in the shade than the rest, seems to offer your enemies a chance to entrap you."

"I do not thank you for the honor you have done yourself in rejecting with contempt the proposals of men who can be neither of my party nor of yours; they belong to the party of base appetites and selfish passions. But, supposing the impossible, had they found some acceptance from you, pray believe that my course, which follows the dictates of my conscience, could not be affected thereby."

"But your party,--consider for a moment its elements: a jumble of foiled ambitions, brutal greed, plagiarists of '93, despots disguising themselves as lovers of liberty."

"My party has nothing, and seeks to gain something. Yours calls itself conservative, and it is right; its chief concern is how to preserve its power, offices, and wealth,--in short, all it now monopolizes."

"But, monsieur, we are not a closed way; we open our way, on the contrary, to all ambitions. But the higher you are in character and intellect, the less we can allow you to pass, dragging after you your train of democrats; for the day when that crew gains the upper hand it will not be a change