The Short Reign of Pippin IV Page 2

  “In very truth your vineyard hills are the remains of a kingdom.”

  “An empire.”

  “You stem from a family so ancient, so noble, that you do not condescend to remind the upstart nobility of your origin by the use of titles clearly yours.”

  “You put it very well, Uncle Charlie. And all I want is a new camera.”

  “There,” said Charles. “You feel better now?”

  “I really do.”

  “Let me lend you the money for the camera, my child. You can pay it back little by little. Marie does not shy at little things—it is large expenditures which frighten and confuse her.”

  “I did not come to borrow.”

  “You have not asked. I have offered. You will purchase the camera. You will inform Marie that you have decided not to buy it. Does Marie know one camera from another?”

  “Of course not. But will I not have surrendered my position in the house?”

  “Quite the contrary, my child. You will have put her in a position of guilt. She will urge you to buy many little things. Thus you will repay the loan.”

  “I wonder you have never married.”

  “I prefer to see other people happy. Now—for what amount shall I make the check?”

  When M. Héristal had slammed the iron gate and stormed to the taxi rank on Avenue Gabriel, Madame, for all her cold and deadly triumph, was shaken and uncertain—and at such times it was her habit to visit her old friend Sister Hyacinthe in her convent not far from the Porte de Vincennes—a large, low, orderly building within sight of the Bois. Madame changed her dress, took purse and black shopping bag, and took the metro.

  Sister Hyacinthe had been her childhood friend and moreover they had gone to school together. Suzanne Lescault was a pretty child, with a thin, true singing voice and a natural ability as a dancer so that she dominated the pageants and little plays of the school. Inevitably Suzanne rose from wood sprite to fairy queen to Pierrette, and later, for three successive years, she acted Joan the Maid to the complete satisfaction of its authoress, the Sister Superior. And Marie, who could neither sing nor dance, far from being jealous, adored her gifted friend and felt that she somehow participated in her triumphs.

  In the normal course of events Suzanne would have married and retired her talents and her blossoming figure. However, a distant manipulation of the Crédit Lyonnais and the subsequent suicide of her father, an officer in that organization, left Suzanne with a sickly mother, a dwarflike schoolboy brother in a black smock, and the necessity for making her way in the world. Only then did the often heard comment that she should be on the stage make some sense to Suzanne and more to her mother.

  The Comédie Française had no immediate openings but took her name, and while she waited Suzanne was employed by the Folies Bergère, where her voice, her grace, and her high and perfect bosom were instantly appreciated and utilized. Her mother’s professional illness, and her brother’s interminable education, followed by his death by misadventure with a motorcycle, made it economically unsound for Suzanne to jeopardize a permanent and well-paid position for the uncertainty of higher art.

  For many years she graced the stage of the Folies, not only in the line of lovely undressed girls, but also with speaking, singing, and dancing parts. After twenty years of complicated and complaining illness, her mother died without a single symptom. By this time Suzanne had become not only a performer but ballet mistress.

  She was very tired. Her bosom had remained high; her arches had fallen. She had lived a life of comparative virtue, as do most Frenchwomen. Indeed it is a matter of disillusion to young male Americans otherwise informed, to discover that the French are a moral people—judged, that is, by American country-club standards.

  Suzanne wanted to rest her feet. She left a world about which she knew perhaps too much and after a proper novitiate took the veil as Sister Hyacinthe in an order of contemplation which demanded a great deal of sitting down.

  As a nun Sister Hyacinthe radiated such peace and piety that she became an ornament to her order, while her knowledge and background made her both tolerant and helpful to younger sisters with troubles.

  During all the years of both her lives she had maintained contact with her old school friend Marie. Even between visits they kept up a detailed and dull correspondence, exchanging complaints and recipes. Marie still adored her talented and now saintly friend. It was perfectly natural that she called upon her in the matter of the camera.

  In the tidy and comfortable little visiting room of the convent near Vincennes, Marie said, “I am at my wit’s end. In most things M’sieur is as considerate as one could wish, but where his ill-named stars are concerned he pours out money like water.”

  Sister Hyacinthe smiled at her. “Why don’t you beat him?” she asked pleasantly.

  “Pardon? Oh! I see you make a jollity. I assure you it is a serious matter. The cooperage at Auxerre—”

  “Is there food on the table, Marie? Is the rent paid? Have they cut off the electricity?”

  “It is a matter of principle and of precedent,” said Marie a little stiffly.

  “My dear friend,” said the nun, “did you come to me for advice or to complain?”

  “Why, for advice of course. I never complain.”

  “Of course not,” said Sister Hyacinthe, and she continued softly, “I have known many people to ask for advice but very few who wanted it and none who followed it. However, I will advise you.”

  “Please do,” said Marie distantly.

  “In my profession, Marie, I have had contacts with many men. I think I am in a position to make some generalities about them. First, they are like children, sometimes spoiled children.”

  “Now there I agree with you.”

  “The ones who really truly grow up, Marie, are no good because men are either children or old—there is nothing in between. But in their childlike unreason and irresponsibility there is sometimes greatness. Please understand that I know most women are more intelligent, but women grow up, women face realities—and women are very rarely great. One of the few regrets I have in my present profession is the lack of male nonsense. It at least makes for contrast,” said Sister Hyacinthe.

  “He discovered a comet,” said Marie. “The Academy commended him. But this new camera business—that goes too far.”

  “Again I ask—do you want my advice?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then advise him to buy the camera—insist on it.”

  “But I have already taken my stand. I would lose his respect.”

  “On the contrary,” said Sister Hyacinthe, “if you should advise the expenditure, even suggest a greater one, you might find a reluctance on his part to spend the money. He might then have to inspect realities instead of simply opposing you. They are very curious creatures, men.”

  “I’ve brought you some handkerchiefs,” said Marie.

  “Oh, how beautiful! Marie, there is genius in your fingers. How do your eyes permit this tiny embroidery?”

  “My eyes have always been good,” said Marie.

  When Madame returned to Number One Avenue de Marigny she found the double doors of the salon open and her husband busy with small shining tools at his telescope.

  “I have been thinking,” she said. “It occurs to me that you should buy the camera.”

  “Eh?” he said.

  “Why, it might mean your election to the Academy.”

  “You are kind,” said her husband. “But I too have been thinking. First things must come first. No, I will get along with what I have.”

  “I implore you.”

  “No,” he said.

  “I command it.”

  “My dear, let us not be confused about who is the head of this house. Do not let us, like the Americans, hear the hens crowing.’

  “Forgive me,” said Marie.

  “It is nothing, Madame. And now I must prepare for the night. The meteor shower continues, my dear. The stars have no interest in our pr
oblems.’

  From the floor above came a metallic crash. M. Héristal looked up apprehensively. “I didn’t know Clotilde was in.”

  “The copper table in the hallway,” said Madame. “It leaps out at her. I must put it somewhere else.”

  “Please don’t allow her on the terrace, Marie,” he said. “My telescope might leap at her.”

  Clotilde sauntered down the stairs, her dress a little tight over her growing inches. A sullen-looking little fur, savagely biting its own tail, hung limply from her shoulders. “You are going out, my dear?” Madame asked.

  “Oh, yes, Maman. I am having a screen test.”

  “Not another one!”

  “One does as one’s director suggests,” said Clotilde. M’sieur moved protectively in front of his telescope as his daughter glided through the double doors and tripped slightly on the doorstep.

  “You have then a director?” he asked.

  “They are casting for the novel The Ragamuffin Princess. You see, there’s an orphan girl and—”

  “And she finds out she is a princess. It is an American novel.”

  “You have read it?”

  “No, my dear, but I know it."

  “How do you know it is American?”

  “For one thing because the Americans have perhaps an exaggerated interest in princesses, and for another thing they have a strong feeling for the Cinderella story.”

  “Cinderella?”

  “You should read it, my dear,” he said.

  “Gregory Peck is going to play the prince.”

  “Of course he is,” said M’sieur. “Now if it were a French novel the princess would find out that—Careful, my dear—please don’t come near the telescope. It is arranged for tonight’s show.”

  When their daughter had oozed away down the stairs and the gate to the courtyard had clanged behind her, Madame said, “I liked it almost better when she was writing novels. She was at home more often. In a way I will be glad when she finds a nice boy of good family.”

  “She must be a princess first,” said her husband. “Everyone must.”

  “You should not make fun of her.”

  “Perhaps I was not. I can remember such dreams. They were very real.”

  “You are amiable, M’sieur.”

  “I am curiously excited and content, Marie. For a whole week I shall be entertained”—he raised his fingers lightly—“by my friends up there.”

  “And you will be up all night and sleep all day.”

  “Of a certainty,” said M. Héristal.

  The events of 19—in France should be studied not for their uniqueness but rather for their inevitability. The study of history, while it does not endow with prophecy, may indicate lines of probability.

  It was and is no new thing for a French government to fall for lack of a vote of confidence. What has been called in other countries “'instability” is in France a kind of stability. Lord Cotten has said that “In France anarchy has been refined to the point of reaction,” and later, “Stability to a Frenchman is intolerable tyranny.’ Alas, too few are emotionally capable of understanding Lord Cotten.

  Many millions of words partisan and passionate have been written about the recent French crisis and re-crisis. It remains to trace the process with the cool and appraising eye of the historian.

  On February 12, 19—, when M. Rumorgue was finally placed in the position of asking for a vote on the issue of Monaco, it is conceded that he knew the result in advance. Indeed, there were many around him who felt he welcomed the termination of his premiership. M. Rumorgue, in addition to his titular leadership of the Proto-Communist party, which is traditionally two degrees right of center, is an authority in psycho-botany. To accept the premiership at all, he had reluctantly abandoned for the time being the experiments concerning pain in plants which he had been carrying on for many years at his nursery at Juan les Pins.

  Few people outside this field are even aware of Professor Rumorgue’s Separate entitled Tendencies and Symptoms of Hysteria in Red Clover, reprinted from his address to the Academy of Horticulture. His academic triumph over his critics, some of whom went to the extreme of denouncing him as being crazier than his clover, must have made him doubly reluctant to assume not only the leadership of his party but also the premiership of France. The newspaper Peace Thru War, although in opposition to the Proto-Communists, very likely quoted M. Rumorgue correctly in remarking that white clover with all its faults was easier to deal with emotionally than the elected representatives of the people of France.

  The question on which M. Rumorgue’s government failed, while interesting, was not nationally important. It is widely believed that if the Monaco question had not arisen, some other difficulty would have taken its place. M. Rumorgue himself emerged with honor and was able to work quietly on his forthcoming book on “Inherited Schizophrenia in Legumes”—a group of Mendelian by-laws.

  At any rate, France found herself without a government. It will be remembered that when President Sonnet called on the Christian Atheists to form a government they could not agree even within their own ranks. Likewise the Socialists failed to draw support. The Christian Communists, with the support of the Non-Tax-Payers' League, failed to qualify. Only then did M. Sonnet call the historic conference of leaders of all parties at the Elysée Palace.

  The parties involved at this time should be listed, since some of them have since disappeared and been replaced by others. Those groups attending the president’s call are here listed, not by their power but simply geographically in relation to the center. Gathered in the Elysée Palace were:

  The Conservative Radicals

  The Radical Conservatives

  The Royalists

  The Right Centrists

  The Left Centrists

  The Christian Atheists

  The Christian Christians

  The Christian Communists

  The Proto-Communists

  The Neo-Communists

  The Socialists

  and

  The Communists

  The Communists were broken up into:

  Stalinists

  Trotskyists

  Khrushchevniks

  Bulganinians

  For three days the struggle raged. The leaders slept on the brocade couches of the Grand Ballroom and subsisted on the bread and cheese and Algerian wine furnished by M. le President. It was a scene of activity and turmoil. The Elysée Ballroom is not only wainscoted with mirrors but also has mirrors on its ceiling, which created the impression that instead of forty-two party chiefs there were literally thousands. Every raised fist became fifty fists, while the echo from the hard mirror surfaces threw back the sounds of a multitude.

  M. Rumorgue, the fallen minister and leader of the Proto-Communists, left the meeting and went back to Juan les Pins on receipt of a telegram from Madame Rumorgue saying that the Poland China sow, named Anxious, had farrowed.

  At the end of seven days the conference had accomplished nothing. President Sonnet put the Elysée bathroom at the disposal of the delegates, at the same time refusing to be responsible for their linen.

  The seriousness of the impasse at last began to be reflected in the Paris press. The humorous periodical Alligator suggested that the situation should be made permanent, since no national crisis had arisen since the party leaders were taken out of circulation.

  Great historic decisions often result from small and even flippant causes. Well into the second week, the leaders of the larger political parties found that their voices, which had gone from loud to harsh to hoarse, were finally disappearing completely.

  It was at this time that the compact group of the leaders of the Royalist party took the floor. Having had no hope of being included in any new government, they had abstained from making speeches, and thus had kept their voices. After the confusion of eight days of meetings, the calm of the Royalists was by contrast explosive.

  The Comte de Terrefranque advanced to the rostrum and took the floor
in spite of an impassioned but whispered address by M. Triflet, the Radical Conservative.

  M. le Comte in a clear, loud voice announced that the Royalist group had joined forces. He himself, he said, in spite of his basic and unchanging loyalty to the Merovingian line, from which his title derived, had agreed to join the Bourbons, not from lack of respect and love for his own great tradition, but simply because the Merovingians were not able to produce a prince of clear and direct descent. He therefore introduced the Due des Troisfronts, whose proposal would have the backing not only of the other Royalist parties but also of the noble and intelligent people of France.

  The Due des Troisfronts, who under ordinary circumstances was shielded from public appearances, because of the split palate which has been his family’s chief characteristic for many generations, now took the stand and was able to make himself not only heard but even understood.

  France, he said, stood at the crossroads. Under the tattered flag of the unwashed, the greedy, and the inept, France had seen herself reduced from the glorious leadership of the world to a bitter, bickering, third-rate power, a craven province trying unsuccessfully to lick the boots of England and the United States on the one hand—or rather foot—and of the Commissars on the other.

  M. le Due was so surprised that he had been able to say all of this that he sat down and had to be reminded that he had not arrived at the point. Once reminded, however, he graciously arose again. He suggested, even commanded, that the monarchy be restored so that France might rise again like the phoenix out of the ashes of the Republic to cast her light over the world. He ended his address in tears and immediately left the room, crying to the Gardes Républicains at the gates of the palace, “I have failed! I have failed!” But, indeed, as everyone knows, he had not failed.

  The announcement by the Due des Troisfronts had the effect of shocking the party leaders to silence. Every man seemed frozen within himself. Only very gradually did a series of whispered conferences begin. Party leaders collected in knots and spoke together in low tones, glancing occasionally over their shoulders.