Émile Bergeot woke early. He got up, opened the shutters, leaning out as far as he could into the freshness. It would be another cloudless day. The long shadow of the Prefecture across the garden was the only stain he could see on its surface, already cleansed and varnished by the light. The colour of the trees was dazzling: a bird, followed by another, and another, flew up like a jet of smoke from a bush close to the window.
He looked at his watch—a handsome gold watch given him by Thiviers. Scarcely five o’clock. Pulling on trousers and shirt, he went out and strolled down the carriage road towards the town. The tomb-like houses below the Prefecture were open, people had begun living. A child crawled to the door of a house and looked up at him with enormous dark eyes.
“What are you doing?” Bergeot asked him.
The child smiled. A young woman snatched him up. She was bare-armed, with big firm arms and a strong throat. In the strong light the fine down covering her arms and nape turned suddenly golden. The centuries-old walls of France can still ripen a superb fruit. The voice of another child, and the voice of an old woman, murmured on in the dark room, a cavern, behind the window. The young woman noticed Bergeot’s glance at her arms and throat, blushed, and disappeared into the house.
He walked on and down, and came out at last on to the Quai Gambetta. After the darkness of narrow streets, the sunlight slapped at him like a sail. He steadied himself between the white fronts of houses and the Loire, still, below its sleek surface, wrinkled by the night. Every plane tree and lime along the edge of the quay gave out its purest light of the day. He heard a church clock strike the quarter, and then another: a full minute later, the town hall clock decided to confirm the rumour. It did so suddenly, like an alarm-clock. A shutter was flung open in the nearest house and a housewife shook out her bedding at the head of a column of women rubbing their eyes and fastening the gaping plackets of skirts.
Except for a few workmen—old men, boys too young to be called up yet—Bergeot was the only person breathing an air as clear and living as a young Loire salmon. He felt a familiar joy and confidence. If only he could embrace the town, with its old houses, churches, barracks, its bridges across the Loire, its sun. He felt under his hand on the wall of the embankment the veins starting off to join it to all the other towns and villages of France and to the living wall of men on the frontier, placing between themselves and an invader their memories of just such days as this, just such houses as that one with its shabby iron balconies and narrow door, just such a light, firm, bounding, as was falling on all the rivers of the only flawlessly human country in the world.
He heard a man’s voice behind him, slow, tender, broken up by chuckling intervals. Turning round, he saw that a very old man had seated himself on a bench under the trees. He had with him a small mongrel, to whom he was reading aloud from yesterday’s Journal. He read monotonously, carefully, like a child, stumbling over many of the words. Now and then he impressed a point on his dog by turning to him with an admonishing glance. . . . “Listen to this, old chap. . . .” The dog lay on the seat with his head held aside. He was bored. The old man glanced up when Bergeot’s shadow fell across the newspaper.
“What do you think, sir?” he said, in his almost extinguished voice, “can there be more than a dozen human beings, among all the millions trapped in it, who actually want to be at war-on a day like this?”
“I daresay a dozen,” Bergeot said.
“Yes. Then who are the lunatics? All the other millions ’who are getting up this morning—in this sunlight—to kill each other.” He had not lifted his finger from the line he was reading, and now went on patiently, with an imploring smile at his dog. “Do just listen, old fellow. . . .”
Towards the middle of the morning, when Bergeot was busy with his correspondence, M. de Thiviers was announced.
“Send him in,” Bergeot said.
He looked over his desk swiftly. Was there anything he was ashamed of? Nothing—but he thrust out of sight a letter from his sister, a widow living rather poorly at Troyes. There was always this moment, before Thiviers came into his room, when he felt in himself like a scald all the awkwardness of the boy who ran about barefoot in summer to save money.
Thiviers came in smiling and elegant, carrying himself with the assurance of a good-looking woman. In his narrow shoulders and well-filled-out body there was in fact something womanly; he had a trick of pursing his lips. Or it was perhaps a priest he reminded you of; there are priests who have the faces of matriarchs, filed down by suavity and a civilised gentle innocence.
He seated himself and looked at the Prefect with the affection Bergeot found flattering and embarrassing. He was embarrassed because—for all his gratitude—he did not return it. He loved two people, Rienne, Marguerite, held to each of them by a different nerve, and for each of them he was a different being. For his other friends, admirers, enemies, he was a wholly or partly fictitious character. When he was able to press heart or mind into this put-on character, he was a success, he won the approval he craved; he felt safe. His enemies were the people he had not managed to convince.
Thiviers had come to complain about the Journal and its editor. Mathieu had published an attack on him, so injurious that even a convinced liberal, a man to whom the suppression of newspapers was a lay blasphemy, could not rest under it.
“What do you want me to do?” Bergeot said in a lively voice.
“Suppress the paper and arrest Mathieu. We are fighting for our lives, we can’t afford weakness.”
Bergeot was silent. He did not want to upset the banker’s idea of him as a man of ruthlessness and energy. But he did not want to start suppressions. He saw a way out by accusing Mathieu and leaped at it.
“My dear Robert, I know all about Louis Mathieu. He’s discontented, ambitious, a Jew. I have my eye on him. But don’t ask me to put him on his guard at this moment.”
Thiviers opened his eyes.
“You know something about him?”
“I’m keeping him under observation.” Bergeot felt uncomfortable. He went on recklessly, “You can be sure I shall know when to cut him off. Just now it’s useful to have him at large. . . .” He saw Mathieu on the day some of his schoolfellows decided to punish him mildly for having been born a Jew. They were content to knock him into the gutter. Mud from head to foot, he limped away, only saying to Bergeot, who had been watching it with disgust and fear, “You could have stopped them. . . .”
“Very well, I leave it to your judgement.” Thiviers smiled. “There was something else I had to say to you. About your investments——”
“Oh, that I leave to your judgement,” Bergeot cried. “Do what you like with my money. If it weren’t for you I shouldn’t have any. I don’t pretend to be able to make fifty francs into a thousand.”
Mme de Freppel’s voice made them both jump. She had come into the room through the second door, at their back. There was no keeping her out of the Prefect’s room when she wanted to see him; his clerks had given up trying. If she chose, she could reach it by a second staircase.
“No, you’re an idiot about money, my dear Émile!”
She came forward quickly. She had bare arms, as delicate as a girl’s, and a light dress. Standing in front of him, her hands behind her back, body thrust forward, she repeated sharply,
“Yes, an idiot. I believe you would really rather be poor. You think it’s a sign of honesty. It’s nothing of the kind, it’s stupidity and conceit.”
Bergeot pointed at his desk.
“Look at my work waiting for me.” . . .
But as soon as he was alone he felt restless. He had failed—he would always fail—to be simple and dignified. He had had to exert himself, to tell lies, to be familiar. He was always straining to cover the gap between himself and what people expected of him. I should like to know no one, he thought, discouraged.
It was a lie. Already his confidence was pouring back. He looked round the room—at the Renaissance fireplace with the arms of the Duc de Seuilly, at the panelled cupboards. I’m here, he thought, stretching his arms. I, Jean-Émile Bergeot. He felt ruthless and gentle, serious and gay. One of Marguerite’s gloves was lying under the window. He picked it up, small, a little shabby. She had a habit of putting new things away for a year or two before taking them into wear. It was ridiculous and miserly. It belonged to her past, which he knew to have been difficult. Poor child, he thought, folding the glove.
The door opened softly. Lucien Sugny poked his head round. When he saw that the Prefect was alone he came in, carrying a pile of opened letters.
“What, more of them?” Bergeot said joyfully.