Chapter 10

“Tu veux choisir ta mort;Va sache bien mourir sans crainte niaise:La lâcheté, c’est le travail sans pain,Le suicide lent des ruines et des fournaises.Ne tremble pas, sois fort, de ton dédain,Et fais grève à la vie, enfant sans pain!”Francis Vielé-Griffin.

“I have an education.“‘Now you are armed for the battle,’ said my professor, in bidding me adieu. ‘Who triumphs at college enters victorious intola carrière’ [career].“Whatcarrière?A former classmate of my father’s, who was passing through Nantes and stopped off to see him, told him that one of their fellow-classmates, he who had won all the prizes, had been found dead—mangled and bloody—at the bottom of acarrière[quarry] of stone, into which he had cast himself after having been three days without food.It is not into this‘carrière’I must enter, I take it,—at least, not head first.”—Jules Vallès, in Jacques Vingtras—Le Bachelier.

“First came the silent gazers; next,A screen of glass we’re thankful for;Last, the sight’s self, the sermon’s text,The three men who did most abhorTheir life in Paris yesterday,So killed themselves: and now, enthronedEach on his copper couch, they layFronting me, waiting to be owned.I thought, and think, their sin’s atoned.”Robert Browning.

ARECENT morning paper contained the following item in its column of “Crimes and Casualties”:—

“La Littérature qui Tue.

“Enamoured of art and persuaded that he would quickly win a name in Paris, Louis M——, a young man of twenty-five, left some six months ago the little provincial city where he was born.

“Like Balzac’s hero, Lucien de Rubempré, who entered the Latin Quarter with two hundred and forty francs in money and the manuscripts ofL’Archer de Charles IX.andLes Marguerites, this young provincial arrived in Paris with a light purse and the bulky manuscript of a drama in five acts, which he expected to get performed immediately. Unfortunately, the purse was quickly emptied, and the drama was refused by all the theatre managers.

“As his father was not rich, Louis M—— was unwilling to appeal to him, and suffered without complaining.

“One day, however, he confessed his desperate situation to Mme. C——, a friend of his family, who inhabits a comfortable apartment, rue ——. Mme. C—— promised to see what she could do for him. In the midst of a conversation with her yesterday he drew a revolver from his pocket, and before she could catch his arm fired a bullet into his heart.

“Death was instantaneous.”

Emile Goudeau, in hisDix Ans de Bohème, tells of the picturesque suicide of a young Latin Quarter poet of his acquaintance:—

“D——, arrayed in a new suit and with his hands full of bouquets, went up to the cashier’s desk and graciously adorned the counter and corsage of the cashier. Then, turning to a medical student, he said to him nonchalantly, ‘My dear fellow, I have made a bet that the little point of the heart isherebetween thesetwo ribs’; and he designated a spot on his vest. ‘Not at all,’ corrected the other, ‘it is lower down.There!’ ‘I have lost then,’ D—— replied.

“He called a cab, and ordered thecocherto drive him to the Arc de Triomphe.

“When thecocherarrived at the head of the Champs Elysées, and opened the cab door, there was only a corpse upon the cushions. D—— had shot himself full in the heart.”

The last season I passed on the Left Bank of the Seine, theQuartierwas deeply moved by the death of one of its faithful devotees, the poet René Leclerc (nom-de plume, Robert de la Villoyo), who poisoned himself with cyanide of potassium.

Leclerc was thirty-two at the time of his death. He had inhabited theQuartierfor more than a decade. He had come thither to study medicine in accordance with the wishes of his bourgeois parents; and he had stayed on after all thought of practising as a physician had left him, in order to pursue the literature which had become his passion.

With the funds which his family provided he lived neither too well nor too ill, working steadily, but gaining little, slowly developing a very real, if not very robust, talent. He completed two romances, contributed more or less regularly toLa Plumeand the minor reviews and literary weeklies of the Left Bank, which are the easier to enter since contributors are paid nothing at all or very little, and placed an occasional poem andchroniquein the daily press. Indeed, everything went well with him up to the moment when his family, disgruntled at his persistency in holding to so unprofitable a calling, deprived him of his income. Then he set out bravely to earn his living with his pen. He besieged editors with copy, but succeeded in placing but few articles; and, when he did place them, he was more often than not kept waiting for his pay, and sometimes defrauded out of it altogether. He tried in vain to find a publisher for either of his two manuscript romances. He did difficult and ill-paid hack-work, collaborating on a translation into French of the NorwegianStrindberg and on an adaptation into French verse of theMandragoreof Machiavelli; and he undertook—oh, the bitter pill!—the task of writing a volume on theCôte d’Ivoire, ofA Suicide of the Latin QuarterA Suicide of the Latin Quarterwhich he was as ignorant as he was of the borders of the supposititious canals of the planet Mars. Even this concession to mercantilism—beyond which it is not surprising he was unwilling to go—did not suffice to procure him a living. He ran behind two quarters on his rent, and was threatened with eviction. If not actually destitute, he was on the verge of destitution. And yet to those who were familiar with René Leclerc’s proud and sensitive spirit it seems more likely that it was disgust with his lot rather than terror before the approach of want which drove him to kill himself. It was because he held his art so high that he was unwilling to survive its debasement. He had made concessions that he regarded as enormous,—compromised his ideal, vulgarised his taste, and prostituted (at least so it seemed to him) his talent. It was too much. His last act-could a dying gesture well be finer?—was to reduce to ashesthe hateful manuscript of theCôte d’Ivoireand all his other writings that he held unworthy.

And journalists were found contemptible enough to censure him, to call him coward, because he was too fastidious to stoop to their own corrupt, degrading practices, even to save his life.

Among the works he left, as having his affection and which by one of those ironies so common with the law went to his unappreciative family (who might have saved him), was a collection of sweet and delicate poems, entitledLa Guirlande de Marie, dedicated to her who had shared his prosperity and remained the faithful friend of his adversity.

Here are a few stanzas (from a poem of this collection) inscribed to Henry Mürger, in which he sings the praises of the Bohemia by which he died:—

Les gais amoureux et les amoureusesOnt depuis des ans, Mürger, désertéLa mansarde étroite où leurs voix rieusesNarguaient le bon sens—et la pauvreté!L’amour, aujourd’hui, s’est fait plus morose;Schaunard est rentier, Colline est bourgeois,Les lauriers coupés, et mortes les roses,Ils ont désappris les chemins du bois.Rodolphe et Mimi, Marcel et Musette,Dans leurs lits bien clos sont endormis;Mais, vivante encor, leur chanson coquetteEveille en nos vers des refrains amis;Nos rèves, vois-tu, sont restés les mêmes:Roses du matin, rires du printemps,Châteaux en Espagne ou parcs en BohèmeIrréels ou vrais,—comme de ton temps!Nous marchons leur pas, nous aussi, sans trève.Vers quel but lointain? Nous n’en savons rien;235Baste! Il faut toujours que route s’achève.—Quand nous y serons, nous le verrons bien.Peu d’argent en poche, et point de bagages,Nul regret d’antan pour nous chagriner,Nous sommes parés pour les longs voyages,Libres: rien à perdre, et tout à gagner!

And here is a portion of a poem, “Le Sabot de Noël,” that is a sort of playful prayer:—

Mets dans mon sabot de NoëlLe jeune espoir qui nous fait libre,Mets le désir profond de vivreEt la fleur qui fleurit au ciel.Mets le succès dans les efforts,Le travail sans souci ni doute,Et comme étoile sur ma routeL’orgueil simple qui fait les forts.

Poor boy! It was this very “orgueil simple” that was his sad undoing.

“If the artist,” says Balzac in a memorable passage of hisCousine Bette, “does not hurl himself into his work, like Curtius into the gulf, without reflecting, and if, in this crater, he does not dig like a miner buried under a land-slide, ... his work perishes in the atelier, where production becomes impossible; and he assists at the suicide of his talent.”

René Leclerc, though no mere dawdler, as the twelve sizable manuscripts he left behind him prove, was not endowed with either the mental or the physical endurance to perform the Herculean labour which Balzac both preached and practised. No more was Louis M—— nor D——; no more was the brilliant Gérard de Nerval, who was found one winter morning in the rue de la Vieille Lanterne hanging from a window-bar, nor the precocious Escousse and Lebras, who at nineteen and sixteen respectively killed themselves because a first phenomenal success with a dramawas followed by failures; no more was Chatterton in England. Few artists are. With most of them ample time for revery is a prerequisite condition of production. And yet the record seems to show that suicides are relatively rare among poets and artists.

Perhaps this is because the record does not occupy itself with the poets and artists, the Louis M——s and the D——s, who are not known as such to the world at large. Or, perhaps, it is because so many die in the hospital, like Gilbert, Malfilâtre, Hégésippe Moreau, and the Joseph D—— of Mürger’s tale; and so many others are claimed by Charenton, like Jules Jouy, Toulouse de Lautrec, and André Gill (for bedlam is another Bohemian resort), that suicide has no need to assert its rights. In any event, two cardinal qualities of the artistic temperament are distinctly hostile to self-destruction; namely, faith in the sure emergence and supremacy of genius, and a Hamlet-like irresolution that prefers pouring out woes on paper to ending them by an energetic trigger-pull.

The despair of the victims of themisère en habit noir, who are less able to sustain themselves by faith and who are more capable of decisive action, is, like their dress, much blacker and more austere; and suicides are far commoner among them.

THE PONT DU CARROUSEL AT NIGHTTHE PONT DU CARROUSEL AT NIGHT

“If there is a fill of tobacco among the crew, for God’s sake pass it round and let us have a pipe before we go.”—Robert Louis Stevenson.

“‘Lord, my dear,’ returned he, with the utmost good humour, ‘you seem immensely chagrined; but, hang me, when the world laughs at me, I laugh at all the world, and so we are even.’”

Oliver Goldsmith, Beau Tibbs at Home.

“Stupeur du badaud, gaîté du trottin,Le masque à Sardou, la gueule à Voltaire,La tignasse en pleurs sur maigres vertèbresEt la requimpette au revers fleuriD’horribles bouquets pris à la poubelle,Ainsi se ballade à travers ParisDu brillant Montmartre au Quartier-LatinBibi-la-Purée, le pouilleux célèbre,Prince des crasseux et des Purotains.”Jehan Rictus.

“Much good might be sucked from these beggars.”—Charles Lamb.

“Mieux vaut goujat debout qu’empereur enterré.”—Emile Goudeau.

THE dislike of and contempt for the bourgeois felt by the Bohemian students and the other Bohemians who have elected to reside in theQuartier Latinpale into insignificance before the absolute detestation of the bourgeois displayed by theQuartier’s chevaliers d’industrie, the hangers-on and camp-followers of its littérateurs and artists, who bear about the same relation to their principals that a side-show bears to a circus or the capering monkey to the hand-organ and its grinder.

As the lackey of the nobleman often holds himself above the commoner far more than does the nobleman himself, and as he will rather put up with poor living and poor wages in the service of an indigent aristocrat than demean himself by serving in the households of tradesmen, so these ne’er-do-wells of theQuartier Latin—ragged retainers of the threadbare gentry of arts and letters, pinched flunkeys of the straightened lords of thought, seedy clients of needy Latin patricians, tatterdemalion cup-bearers to tattered Parnassians, supernumeraries to the protagonists in the melodrama of cultured poverty, chorus to the soloists of theLearned Beggars’ Opera—would be humiliated and miserable outside of the atmosphere of letters. They would rather be door-keepers, to paraphrase a familiar text, in the house of the intellectualélitethan to dwell in the tents of vulgarity.

If there is more comedy and less tragedy in the existences of these satellites than in the existences of their controlling luminaries, it is not because their physical hardships are fewer,—for, parasites, sycophants, trencher-friends, pick-thanks, and toad-eaters though they be, theirs is but sorry hap,—but because they are mostly ambitionless or feeble-minded and so not as susceptible to the mental torture of disenchantment.

They “carry the half of their mattresses in their hair,” after the fashion of the nephew of Rameau described by Diderot. They don the cast-off garments and retail the worn-out epigrams oftheirfétiches, who are amused by and therefore endlessly indulgent of them. They strut and smirk and rant like children masquerading in the attic frippery of their elders, make as clever displays of superficial knowledge as the most up-to-date members of the most up-to-date women’s clubs, and revert constantly to a previous connection with the university which is not always imaginary. As individuals, these pseudo-connoisseurs and savants come and go in theQuartier Latin: the class goes on forever.

There are plenty of persons still living in the Latin Quarter who knew the originals of the eccentricQuartiertypes immortalised by Jules Vallès in his phenomenalRéfractaires.

Fontan-Crusoe, a genuine bachelor of arts, who slept one hundred and eleven consecutive nights under a tree near the fortifications, spent for nourishment from three to five sous a day which he earned by selling in the street his two principal works,Le Spectre Noir: ElégieandUn Galop à travers l’Espace.

Poupelin, called also “Mes Papiers,” he of the enormous yellow felt, “pantalon d’enfant,” and “redingote de centennaire,” who spent his time seeking titled office and recommendations therefor, when he was not occupied in one of the three positions which he accepted with equal alacrity and in which he was equally efficient,—or inefficient,—namely, teacher, school usher, and cook.

And M. Chaque, “Orientaliste,” another genuinebachelier, who had a useful habit of carrying rice pudding in his hat and omelettes and beefà la modein his pockets,—ex-professor of a colonial school; author of a volume of travels in Greece (published by a reputable firm) with which he beset Greek enthusiasts orally and successfully; a constant reader of theRevue des Deux Mondes, to which he had, once on a time, contributed an article; communicant of all the Christian or pagan sects that had churches or temples in Paris; privileged hanger-on of gaming-houses and soldiers’ barracks; razor-sharpener and professional weeper at the cemetery of Montparnasse.

Two vagrant types (equally grotesque with those of Vallès), who are now dead, but whom one need not have been long associated with theQuartierto remember, were Eugène Cochet and Amédée Cloux.

Cochet was an ex-prefect of the Department of the Eure, a rhymester and the author of an unpublished work of “philosophical reflections,” who depended for his sustenance on the bounty of one or two restaurants and thesoupes populaires, and who had a mania for decorations, like Poupelin. The students, who made Cochet the butt of a great deal of good-natured chaffing, which he accepted gratefully as so much tribute to his worth, formally invested him one day with the star of the Legion of Honour (attached to a flaming red cravat) and with the insignia of ten fantastic foreign orders, notably with that of the Garter and that of the Green Elephant, which last consisted of a zinc elephant, painted green, suspended from a bailiff’s chain.

Amédée Cloux, poet, emulated the literary forgeries of Chatterton at closer range. He had a marvellous facility for copying poetic styles, and he got his living for a time by the deaths of his more illustrious brother poets. As soon as a well-known poet died, he produced imitations of his poetry, which he sold as posthumous works. His most successful efforts, “Le Chien Mort,” attributed by him to Baudelaire, and “Plus de Représailles” and “L’Ode à la Colonne Déboulonnée,” purporting to be by Eugène Vermesch, deceived both the public and the experts until the good Cloux, who was more of a joker than a vulgar swindler, acknowledged his ruse.

Of the freaks who now perch in (for they can hardly be said to inhabit) theQuartier Latin, far and away the most famous is Bibi-la-Purée,

“Qui porte en son cœur un vaste méprisPour quiconque n’est Bohème ni poète.”

No Parisian of the period, perhaps, has been more written about, and none more photographed, sculptured, etched, and painted;and none has done more to divert his time than Bibi. Bibi is by turns an artist’s model, a sponge, a simple beggar, a shoe-black, a tourist’s guide, a watcher of bicycles at cafe doors, a dealer in photographs of himself and in original poems, a boon companion of poets and artists, and a confidant and counsellor ofétudiantes; but he is first, last, and all the time Bibi the fop, the Beau Tibbs of Latium, the Beau Brummel of the Castalian gutter.

The first time I saw Bibi was in 1895, at an anarchist meeting addressed by Louise Michel, in the rue de la Montagne Ste. Geneviève, back of the Panthéon. He was muffled to the eyes, conspirator-like, in the folds of a rusty, tattered Spanish cloak, faced with dirty red velvet, and wore besides a white yachting cap, white skin-tight pantaloons, gaping patent leather shoes fitted with cavalry spurs, and white gaiters.

The last time I saw Bibi he was pulling an unlighted cigar, and tenderly convoying to his lodging a poet, not of the most obscure, who had been imbibing too freely. He was dight in a red fez, a bright green velvet waistcoat under an Inverness cape (with no jacket intervening), a yellow silk neckerchief, cavalry boots, and baggy brown corduroy trousers; and, if I should itemise all the different costumes it has been my privilege to see Bibi wear between these dates, a large octavo volume would scarcely hold the list. Reputed in some quarters to be an ex-student, an ex-journalist, a political refugee, and a disguised nobleman, and in others to be a blackmailer, a swindler, a thief, a police spy, and a pander, the mystery that envelopes Bibi’s present as well as his past—a mystery which his autobiography, published inL’Idée, did appreciably nothing to dispel—gives him a curiosity-piquing charm.

There is no doubt as to Bibi’s untidiness, his inordinate vanity, his assurance, his unscrupulousness, and his genuine kindness of heart; but beyond this all is conjecture.

Jehan Rictus in a recent poem, to the recitation of which (at theNoctambulesor theGrille) Bibi often listens with his inscrutable smile, has given Bibi a large symbolic significance:—

“On dit de Bibi: ‘Chut! c’est un mouchard!’D’autres: ‘Taisez-vous, il est bachelier!’Et d’autres encor’: ‘Bibi est rentier.’Mais nul ne peut croire à la vérité:Bibi-la-Purée, c’est le Grand-Déchard.Et quel âge a-t-il? On ne sait pas bien.Son nom symbolique en le largougiProclame qu’il est assez ancien,Quasi éternel comme la Misère.Et trimballes-tu, tu trimballeras,O Bibi, toujours ta rare effigie.Bibi-la-Purée jamais ne mourra.******C’est le Pèlerin, c’est le SolitaireQui depuis toujours marche sur la Terre,C’est un sobriquet bon pour l’Etre Humain.”

Bibi was a humble follower and adorer—slave almost—of Verlaine, who playfully honored him with the following verses in hisDédicaces:—

A BIBI-PURÉEBibi-Purée,Type épatantEt drôle tant!Quel Dieu te créeCe chic, pourtant,Qui nous agréePourtant, aussi,Ta gentillesseNotre liesse,Et ton souci244De l’obligeanceNotre gaieté,Ta pauvreté,Ton opulence?

A sincere mourner for Verlaine since his death, Bibi regards it as his special mission to cherish the cult of the dead poet’s memory.

The sincerity of Bibi’s mourning, however, has not prevented him from turning an honest penny by selling the inscribed volumes Verlaine had given him, nor from turning many a dishonest penny by selling, as relics, copies of Verlaine’s works supplied with forged inscriptions, and numerous other objects Verlaine never saw.

Thanks to Bibi’s zeal, Verlaine’s last cane and last pipe have been multiplied, like “the only true cross,” and have taken up their abodes in the poetic shrines of two hemispheres.77

It is impossible to think of Bibi without thinking of the Mère Casimir, lately deceased, who was, for some reason, Bibi’s most cordial aversion.

The Mère Casimir was a tiny, twisted, shrivelled old flower-woman, who claimed to be anex-danseuseof theOpéraand to have had for friends “princes and marquises,” and who was ready at any moment, in consideration of a few sous, to prove it by executing certain grotesque Terpsichorean movements on the sidewalk.

While the Mère Casimir was still alive, there was nothing that delighted the students more than bringing about an encounter between her and Bibi, and hearing the pair blackguard each other. Only once, so far as history records, was there a truce between them,—a certainMi-carême, when, Bibi having been elected king and the Mère Casimir queen of the fête, they paraded the streets of Paris together in the same car. On that day the antipathetic pair were so impressed with the dignities and responsibilities of their position that they treated each other with royal magnanimity. Bibi even went farther than strict etiquette required.In descending from his throne at the breaking up of the cortège, he gallantly fell to his knees,—sight for gods and men!—and kissed the hand of his queen.

The Marquis de Soudin, a long-haired but relatively neat little man, with the noiseless step of a bird, who makes crayon portraits, at ten sous per head, at theGrilleand theNoctambulesand in the all-night restaurants of theHalles Centrales, is as much of a mystery in his way as Bibi, though he has lived in theQuartiermore than twenty-five years. He is said to have been crossed in love early in life, and his title is believed by many to be genuine. However that may be, the little Soudin has the education and manners of a gentleman, andnoblesse obligeinspires his conduct. He does no offence to any, and is a veritable providence to his poorer fellow-Bohemians. M. le Marquis makes poems as well as portraits, but not for money. “At least no merchant traffics in his heart.”

The artist bard of Père Lunette’s,78who makes crayon portraits at ten sous a head, like the little marquis, and poems for money, unlike the little marquis, is also supposed by many to be of noble origin. He is a dashing, handsome fellow, with the felt and the swagger of amousquetaire, and is, when he chooses to quit the vulgar rôle his position at Père Lunette’s imposes upon him, a lively and stimulating conversationalist. In summer, with his bosom friend Père Jules, he tramps the country roads of France.

Achille Leroy, philosopher and poet (the anarchist author-editor-publisher-bookseller, referred to in the chapter on the oral propaganda of the anarchists), is another favourite with the students, upon whose quizzical, good-natured patronage he depends mainly for the sale of his wares.

Some years back, at the moment of the anarchist “Terror,”Achille, whose illusions regarding his intellect are on a par with those of Bibi regarding his person, offered himself as a candidate for the Academy. He made the customary “visits” to the Academicians attired in the uniform of a Mexican general, and wherever he was not received left an ominous-looking brass kettle to which, along with his visiting card, this inscription was attached:

“Je ne fais sauter que les idées.”

Other contemporary freaks who help to swell the picturesqueness and gaiety of theQuartierare: the anarchist cobblerchansonnierPère La Purge (author of theChanson du Père La Purge, quoted in a previous chapter), whose customers (mainly the poets and artists of theQuartier) visit his shop in the rue de la Parcheminerie to enjoy the piquancy of the contrast between his ruddy, contented face and his anathemas against society; Gaillepand, a big, athletic-looking fellow, who, having failed to earn a living by legitimate sculpture, took to making plaster medallions of the celebrities of Paris, especially those of theQuartier, and selling them up and down the Boulevard St. Michel, while his brother “Môme l’Histoire” (now dead) displayed his phenomenal memory by reciting biographies and poems; the Mère Souris (Mother Mouse), so called from her conical head and her funny little walk, ex-proprietor of an artists’ restaurant and present palmist, fortune-teller, and reputed usurer,—in short, a very useful personage to theétudiantes; Victor Sainbault, author, editor, publisher, and book-seller, like Achille Leroy; and the poet Coulet, who gives author’s readings before the terraces of the cafés, and who between times, if hearsay may be credited, provides petty bourgeois families with wedding, christening, and funeral verses at so much per yard.

It is because these freaks take themselves seriously, because they are unconscious humourists and involuntaryfarceurs, that they are amusing. But theQuartierhas always had among its choicer Bohemians a class of conscious, almost professional humourists and deliberatefarceurs, calledfumistes,79who by drollyexpressing their very disrespect for life have done much to make life worth the living.

SITE OF THE CHÂTEAU ROUGESITE OF THE CHÂTEAU ROUGELa rue Galande

SITE OF THE CHÂTEAU ROUGE

La rue Galande

The most renowned of theQuartier fumisteswho practised when those now in middle life were young was unquestionably Sapeck.

“Verily,” says Emile Goudeau, “I owe a taper to Sapeck for having initiated me into this inner folly which manifests itself outwardly by imperturbable buffooneries.... Better to have kept alive, thanks toinsouciance, than to have died stoically ofmisère, wrapped in the cloak of a Byronian hero. If we occasionally exceeded the proper limits of the laugh, at least we did not light the brazier of Escousse nor seek the rope of Gérard de Nerval; and that is something.”

Sapeck is very likely dead now. At any rate, he is dead to the Quarter. But, as he was the successor (according to the archæologists offumisterie) of Romien and Vivier, so he has his successors, one of whom therapinKarl, mystifier of Quesnay de Beaurepaire and abductor of the Comtesse Martel (“Gyp”), has almost earned the right to be regarded as his peer. Zo d’Axa, who is less afumistethan he has it in him to be, because he takes time to be a serious and talented author and to serve sentences in prison for his opinions, perpetrated afumisteriesome five years back that has taken an honourable place among the classics of its kind.

It will be best narrated as he narrated it himself in one of his celebratedFeuilles:—

“HE IS ELECTED

“Good People of the City, Electors,

“Listen to the edifying story of a pretty little white jackass, candidate in the capital. It is not a Mother Goose tale nor a sensation of thePetit Journal. It is a veracious narrative for the grown-up youngsters who still vote:—

“A little jackass, born in the land of La Fontaine and of Rabelais, ... madea campaign for a deputy’s chair. When election day came, this jackass, this typical candidate, answering to the unequivocal name ofNul, executed a last-hour manœuvre.ZO D'AXA'S NOVEL CANDIDATEZO D'AXA'S NOVEL CANDIDATEZO D’AXA’S NOVEL CANDIDATEOn a warm Sunday in May, while the people crowded to the urns, the white jackass, the candidateNul, enthroned on a triumphal car drawn by electors, traversed Paris, hisbonne ville.

“Erect on his hind legs, ears to the wind, craning forward, over-topping proudly the parti-colored vehicle,—the vehicle in the form of an urn,—his head planted between the traditional glass of water and the presidential bell, he passed in the midst of hisses and bravos and jests.

“The jackass beheld Paris, and Paris beheld him.

“Paris! The Paris that votes, the rout, the people sovereign every four years,—the people simpleton enough to believe that sovereignty consists in naming its masters....

“Slowly the jackass went through the streets. As he advanced, the walls were covered with placards by members of his committee, while others distributed his proclamation to the crowd:—

“‘Reflect, dear fellow-citizens. You know that your deputies deceive you, have deceived you, will deceive you; and yet you vote. Vote for me then! Vote for the jackass! Elect the jackass! It is impossible to be more stupid than you.’

“This frankness, a trifle brutal, was not to everybody’s taste.

“‘They are insulting us,’ bellowed some. ‘They are ridiculing universal suffrage,’ protested others more justly. Some one shook his fist at the jackass furiously, and said, ‘Sale Juif!’ (Dirty Jew), but a laugh burst out, and spread sonorous. The candidate was acclaimed. Bravely the elector made fun of himself and of his representatives. Hats and canes were waved. Ladies threw flowers. The jackass passed.

“He descended from the heights of Montmartre, going towards theQuartier Latin. He crossed the Grands-Boulevards, the Croissant,80where is cooked, without salt, theordinaireserved by the gazettes. He saw thehalles(markets) where the starving glean in the heaps of garbage, the quays where electors elect lodgings under the bridges.

“Heart and brain! Paris! Democracy!...

“The jackass arrived before the Senate.

“He skirted the palace, whence the guard emerged hurriedly. He followed, on the outside, alas! the too-green gardens. Then came the Boulevard St. Michel. On the terraces of the cafés the youth of theQuartierclapped their hands. The crowd, constantly growing, snatched out of each other’s hands the jackass’s proclamations. The students harnessed themselves to the car, a professor pushed the wheels; but it struck three, and the police appeared.

“Since ten o’clock that morning, from post to commissariat, the telegraph and the telephone had signalled the strange passage of the subversive animal. The order was issued: ‘Arrest the jackass!’And now the police sergeants barred the route of the candidate.

“Near the Place St. Michel, the faithful committee ofNulwas ordered by the armed force to conduct its candidate to the nearest police station. Naturally, the committee paid no attention, and kept on its way. The car crossed the Seine, and soon it halted before thePalais de Justice.

“The police, re-enforced, surrounded the white jackass, the impassive jackass. The candidate was arrested at the gate of thisPalais de Justice, whence deputies, defaulters,panamistes, all the big thieves, go out free.

“In the midst of the surging crowd the car swayed as if about to capsize. The police, a brigadier at their head, had seized the shafts and donned the straps. The committee insisted no more: they helped harness thesergents de ville.

“Thus the white jackass was abandoned by his warmest partisans. Like any other vulgar politician, the animal had come to a bad end. The police towed him, authority guided his route.From this moment Nul was only an official candidate.His friends acknowledged him no more. The door of the prefecture opened wide, and the jackass entered quite as if he were entering his own stall.”

What has all this starving and self-killing and freakishness and practical joking of theQuartierBohemians to do with revolution? Much every way.

Jules Vallès (all his life a Latin Quarter Bohemian), whom Richepin has characterised as “the most curious and the most complete of thedéclassésof the pen”; of whom his intimate friend Gill said, “He would be the tenderest, the mostspirituel, the most charming, and the most eloquent fellow in the world, were it not for the mania which possesses him to believe himself at ease only in the smoke of battles or the bawlings of the faubourgs”; who presented himself at the elections of 1869 as “le candidat de la misère,” and put at the head of his second volume ofJacquesVingtras(Le Bachelier), “A ceux qui nourris de Grec et de Latin sont morts de faim, je dédie ce livre,”—Jules Vallès (and who should know better than Vallès?) said, not long before the Commune was declared:—

“In this life there is a danger.Misèrewithout a flag conducts to themisèrethat has a flag, and makes of the scatteredréfractairesan army which counts in its ranks less sons of the people than sons of thebourgeoisie. Behold them bearing down upon us, pale, mute, emaciated, beating the charge with the bones of their martyrs upon the drum of therévoltés, and waving as a standard, at the point of a sword, the blood-stained shirt of the last of their suicides!...

“Thesedéclassésmust find places, or they will have revenge; and this is why so much absinthe runs down their throats and so much blood upon the paving-stones. They become drunkards or rebels.”

And again, in the introduction to hisRéfractaires, he says, “Give me three hundred of these men, any sort of a flag, toss me down there before the regiments in a raking fire, and you shall see what short work I will make of the gunners at the head of myréfractaires!”

Every convulsion Paris has undergone has proved the truth of Vallès’ mordant sentences. What was the Commune, indeed, but the joint self-assertion of thedéclassés?

“Déclassés,” wrote Richepin of the leaders of the Commune shortly after its suppression, “from the unrecognised general, Cluseret, to the unappreciated caricaturist, Pilotell; from the intelligent deputy, Millière, to the lunatic, Allix; from the great painter, Courbet, to the ex-monk, Panille, andtutti quanti;déclassésof politics, like Delescluze and Pyat, of journalism and of literature, like Vallès, Vermesch, Vermorel, Grousset, Vésinier, Maroleau; of the army, like Rossel, of the workshop, like Assi, of thebrasserie, like Rigault, of lower still, like Johamard.”

Not all these starving, suiciding, freakish, jesting Latin Quarter Bohemians are conscious socialists and anarchists, though thereis a good proportion of them who are,—a greater proportion probably than among the students proper, by as much as their situations are more precarious; but they nearly all hold vaguely subversive humanitarian views, and they are all, even the Bohemians by choice,réfractairesandrévoltés. Like the Thélémites of Rabelais, they all recognise but the one law which is no law,—“Fay ce que vouldras.”

Their way of living is a species of thepropagande par l’exemplefrom which it is a quick and easy step to thepropagande par le fait. Given a crisis,réfractaire,révolté, andrévolutionnairespell very much the same thing. They are all ripe for disorder.

The victims of themisère en habit noir—the poor doctors, teachers, lawyers, petty functionaries, and clerks—are, in the nature of the case, more submissive to their fate than the free-living freaks, littérateurs, and artists; but there are evidences that they, too, are beginning to think of stepping over the bounds within which patience is a virtue.

M. Paul Webre, one of a group of young men of means and education—evolutionists, not revolutionists—who have pursued the laboratory method of studying the conditions, the psychology, and the relations to society of various employments, has given the following testimony to the expectant, if unaggressive, attitude of the small clerks:—

“My relatively frail health forbidding me work in a factory, I sought a place as a clerk. After twenty ineffectual applications I succeeded in crossing the threshold of an insurance company. I earn there 100 francs a month, on which I manage to live without resorting to my income. I carry with me in the morning a lunch of bread, cheese, and a slice of ham or sausage, and I talk with my comrades of the office. Some are married. These are the most unfortunate; but they reflect that, if they quit their meagre situations, there are innumerable persons in the streets ready to vie with each other to obtain them, and they cling to them for dear life. Nevertheless, their hatred is brooding. While taking cold bites during the hour of respite which the avaricious administrationaccords us, we pass our chiefs in review, and compare their profits with our own. The director has a salary of 100,000 francs, the president is several times a millionaire; while we,morbleu! Oh, the monotonous days! the repulsive work! the ominous end of the month! and the certainty of plodding along for twenty years in the same fashion, only to be sent away at last without resource! It is poverty in the frayed frock-coat, the worst poverty. I have tried to organise the discontented, but they have a terror of compromising themselves and of making themselves marks for the Company’s blows. So, bending over their documents, they spy the growlings in the street, ready to descend there, in their turn, when the revolution asserts itself. The atmosphere in which these petty clerks stagnate is saturated with bitterness, with rancours, with regrets, with deceived ambitions. Terrible eruptions are being prepared therein. And I cry to the capitalists: ‘Take care! Transform these enemies into friends, these anarchists into conservators! Share your profits with them. Throw them a honey-cake while there is still time.’”

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