The first thing Labenne saw when he went out the next morning, were Bergeot’s notices. They had been posted overnight. He read one through, catching hold of a passer-by to read it with him. “Do you see yourself with your wife’s broom sweeping up German tanks?” he asked him. “I’m lucky, I have my Louis-Philippe cannon”—he jerked his head at the gun mounted in the courtyard. The man laughed. Good, Labenne said to himself, he’ll repeat that as his own.
He went directly to Thiviers.
“Have you seen the new mobilisation notices?”
“What mobilisation?”
“Our gallant Prefect is calling up his storm-troopers. It’s the next move—with the Germans in Rheims and across the Marne. They’ll be in Paris before the end of the week. The right moment to begin calling out the mob!”
He watched Thiviers’s cheeks pale and his hands seek each other as they did when he was agitated. A little astonished, Labenne saw signs of indecision on his long face. What’s he up to? he wondered. Thiviers’s voice was calm.
“The Government is at Tours,” he said.
“For how long?” Labenne jeered. “And do you think they will have time there to attend to Monsieur Bergeot? Not a minute. When they’re not in the closet they’re playing musical chairs—last in takes over the Government. I have my money on Pétain, he’s more used to danger than the others, poor little bed-wetters.”
Thiviers winced. Looking steadily at Labenne, he said,
“If General Weygand is planning to stand on the Loire, Seuilly will be part of the defence. In that case, Bergeot is the right man in the right place.”
So that’s where we are, Labenne thought. He paused a minute before beginning to speak in the soft voice he used in his public speeches to give greater effect to the deeper tones which vibrated like gongs and produced in his hearers the delirium of savages.
“And you’re prepared to sacrifice Seuilly? Why? Shall I blow up the Prefecture and the Town Hall and this house—to save time? And my friend Marquet, who is mayor of Bordeaux—ought he to be sinking ships in the harbour and driving steam-rollers through the vines? You must want to make quite sure that France is crushed before making terms. So that we have no choice except to become a German colony. I wonder whether future generations will think you as noble as you think yourself. Forgive me for talking in such bad taste. I’m the son of a village butcher and peasant, I don’t understand the difference between good taste and suicide. Or—when you think of the lives that will be cut short—murder.”
He’s taking this well, he thought, looking at Thiviers.
Thiviers stood up and walked to the window, where he could see the garden, and the tree which, he believed, had been planted by Balzac. Attributed to Balzac. A jet of water glittered against the sunlight, the birds quarrelling under it babbled like children.
“I suppose it’s foolish to think we might go on.”
Labenne let his voice rise with his anger. “If murder as a point of honour is foolish. As a simple Frenchman, I should call it wicked.”
“And if the soldiers decide that Seuillv is to be defended——?”
“Do you mean Piriac?”
“Certainly not.”
Labenne decided to strike brutally.
“If such orders are given, your duty is as clear as mine. We must try to make them impossible to carry out. Piriac is not one of your implacable politicians, he’s an old soldier, that is, he hates bloodshed: the sight of women and children being killed in the streets by German guns, an air-raid or two, the hospital bombed, will finish him. He’ll surrender the town—whatever his orders. I know him. Our duty is to see that Bergeot is discredited before he can empty the hospital and send away children and mothers. Seuilly must be made more, not less vulnerable.”
He paused after this last terrible sentence, to see whether Thiviers could swallow any more or if he must have a rest. The look of mingled embarrassment and stupor on the banker’s face amused him. You’d think I’d invited him to take his mother to our slaughter-house. The image gave him fresh energy. “Do you want to save the town, or watch it bleed to death? You can choose, you know.”
“You’re asking me to behave treacherously . . .” Thiviers said.
Labenne’s contempt almost choked him. He spoke in his pleasantest voice. “You can decide for yourself where the treachery comes in. Who is betraying Seuilly? Prudent men who want to save it from the fate of Arras—they say it’s still burning—or an ambitious prefect who wants to burn it for his own glory? And if that were all, we might, if we were cowards, let him sacrifice it. But do you know what his future plans are? He intends to go into politics and become head of a communist government—confiscate money, property, everything. If you think it’s not possible, remember what happened in Russia when the country was exhausted by a war it was losing. All this affects you more than me.” He grinned. “I can always dig.”
“But do you think he has any chance——?”
Labenne pushed with fierce gestures at the shirt he had worked loose during his speech. “The best in the world,” he said. And now, he thought drily, ask me to prove it.
Thiviers was silent. His face paled still more, to show all the marks of his inner travail. An acute eye—he was sitting close to the most deadly ambush in Seuilly—could follow exactly the movements of his heart between fear and honesty, between prudence and a vestige of courage. He looked round the room, then fixed his glance on the bust of Corneille, to whom, by a supreme effort, he was trying to attribute avarice and bad faith.
“And you believe that the prudent thing——” he began.
“Is to assassinate Monsieur Bergeot,” Labenne said energetically, “before he can stab us. I speak metaphorically. What I propose is to prepare a statement for the press—that is, the New Order—and have handbills printed showing him up as a self-styled patriot who has a fortune abroad—” he saw the movement Thiviers controlled at once. “As well as the story of Madame Prefect’s flourishing little business selling places and honours. From the Prefecture! . . . Ah, I see you didn’t know about that. My dear fellow, any woman who plays at politics is unscrupulous—women see through the game too easily—but Madame de Freppel can give points to her friend the Vayrac woman, who only runs brothels.”
Thiviers made a gesture of disgust. “As you like,” he murmured.
“But—before we go to these extremes—we must try to use Piriac. I have a weakness for acting through other people. And could you have a nobler screen?”
He smiled affably at his joke. Thiviers, he could see, was prostrated by his anxiety. I’ll leave him to recover, he thought.
He went home. On the way he caught sight of Bergeot himself, walking with Colonel Rienne. They were in front of him, and they turned down a street leading to the hospital. Which of them, he wondered, will be the first to realise that the other is suspect, and drop him? It won’t save either.
He found his wife crying. She had been listening to the radio, and was distraught. She begged him to let her take the children to a relative at Bayonne, to be near a frontier.
“Windy, are you?” he said unkindly. “When I decide what to do with the children, I’ll tell you. But you’ll stay here in any case.”
He had been turning the problem in his mind for several days. At one moment he considered sending them to Spain or even America, but he could not bring himself to place his dearest property so far out of his sight. During the morning he decided to send them to Thouédun, to the château. He would send two servants with them, with orders to take them into the cellars under the courtyard at the first sound of firing or bombs. He announced his decision at lunch. Henry looked at him blackly.
“Let me stay with you. I can look after you when the Germans come.”
“You’ll do as you’re told, you young sinner.” He hid his delight in the boy’s anxiety for him.
His wife gave him an imploring look. She was afraid it would provoke him to one of his fits of sour rage. But I shall die if I stay here, she thought. Terror gave her the spirit to say,
“Their mother ought to be with them.”
“And a wife’s duty to be with her husband?” Labenne said.
He behaves to me, she thought, as if he were still a peasant. He’s a brute, though not to his children. Why hasn’t he any kindness for me, I’m certain there isn’t any other woman? . . . She sighed. She had enough shrewdness to know that her husband regarded her as the implement he had used to plant his family. Once planted, only the family was important. He was keeping her with him out of indifference. Without hope, resigning herself, she thought: He’s the master, it will be his fault if I’m killed.