De la grippe

On the Flu

Charles Péguy

Immobilized by a sudden bout of influenza, I was unable to go see the revolutionary moralist doctor at first. As soon as my head became a little clearer, I resolved to complete the collection I had begun of documents and information on the preparation of the national Socialist Congress. But at the very moment when I had scissors in hand to cut out these last documents and pieces of information from the Petite République, the citizen doctor entered the kitchen, where I work in winter.

— Good day, citizen patient, are you feeling a little better? — Thank you, doctor: I am feeling a little better.

— I learned easily enough that you were ill; the baker’s nephew had told the butcher’s boy; the latter had told the poultry-seller’s niece: thus does news travel through this simple country. — I had the flu. And I still have it a little. — Thus you have justified by a fresh example what you told me at the end of the last fortnight, that you were an ordinary man: the ordinary man has had the flu of late.

You have not had it, citizen doctor? The moralist never has the flu, on condition, naturally, that he punctually regulates his conduct according to the teachings of his morality. I shall tell you why I am quite pleased, citizen doctor.

I came because it seemed to me, on reflection, that we had neglected an important consideration in this question of personalities: the consideration of private life.

We shall discuss it, my friend, when your head is a little steadier; today, if it does not tire you too much, would you tell me the history of your illness?

— It is of little interest, citizen. On Friday evening I had given the press approval for the first thirty-six pages of the third notebook; the next thirty-six were, so to speak, ready; and the last seventy-two were well advanced; I promised myself to have finished by Saturday at noon, and that the printers would finish Saturday evening; I was content because the notebooks, for the first time in their existence, were going to appear punctually; I rejoiced in my heart: fool who rejoices before the hour of his death! At the very moment I was flattering myself with this foolish hope, a whole regiment of enemy microbes was invading my organism, where, according to the laws of war, they were marching against me with all their forces: not that these microbes had any reason to bear me ill will, but they were tending to persevere in their being. Where had I caught these enemy microbes?

Had I borrowed them from the headquarters of these notebooks, 19 rue des Fossés-Saint-Jacques, or from the printing house, or from the carriages of the Western Railway Company, or from the carriages of the Orléans line, or from the houses of this village, where everyone is contaminated: I had only been spoilt for choice. On Friday evening, back at the house, I felt that things were not going well. On Saturday morning, I harnessed myself by an act of will. At the moment of departure, my heart failed me. I collapsed suddenly. I went to bed. I was ill. I had the printers telephoned, and they finished the notebook more or less without me. — It is none the worse for that. — It is none the worse for that. It was the printers who reread the second batch in third proofs. I scarcely had the strength to reread for sense the third and fourth batches. They reread for corrections. Then I became incapable of all work. I was ill. — Seriously? — Seriously. — What were your feelings? — I was seriously vexed, because I had always lived on this idea that I would never be ill. — Indeed. And on what did you base this idea? — I did not base it on anything; I believed vaguely and profoundly that I was solid. — Thus do societies and parties believe vaguely and profoundly that they are solid. — I was like societies and like parties. I believed. — It was therefore a simple hypothesis? — A simple hypothesis, and one that events have contradicted. — You have renounced this vain hypothesis? — I have renounced this vanity. — You did not think that it was the events that were wrong and the hypothesis that was right after all?

— I did not think so.

— I did not claim so. — That is most fortunate, and good. Do you not know that what you have done, what you so wisely refrained from doing, is what is commonly done today?

I rather suspected as much. What were your troubles?

— I thought that in falling ill I had justified the prophecies; but this justification gave me no pride.

— What prophecies? — The prophecy that misfortune would befall the notebooks, because one never founded a considerable enterprise on a single man.

— These prophets gave good counsel. — They forgot that I was not entirely alone, and that, if nearly all the work fell to me, I had solid friendships to give me courage. — What happened next? — as they say in elementary books.

— On the recommendation of my friend Jean Tharaud, who had spoken most highly of it, I took up my little school edition of Pascal’s Pensées, published in their authentic text with a continuous commentary by Ernest Havet, former student of the École Normale, Lecturer at that School, Agrégé of the Faculty of Letters of Paris, and in this edition, which brought back good memories, I read the Prayer to Ask God for the Good Use of Illnesses. I admired, as one ought, this religious passion and, to use the word, this passionately geometric, geometrically passionate faith, so absolutely exact, so absolutely proper, so absolutely punctual, so perfect, so infinitely finite, so well made, so well enclosed, and regularly sorrowful and consoled, in short so usefully faithful and so practically confident — so foreign to us. — Less foreign than you think. But tell me sincerely why you read this prayer at the beginning of your illness. — Having become miserly after several financial disappointments, I was happy to use the time of my illness to read a good text. I was happy to read Pascal, because I have retained for this Christian a singular and anxious admiration. I was happy to read a prayer my friend had just admired. Finally, the appropriateness of this prayer to my new state pleased me. — Was there not a little amusement in your case? — Ill for the first time in a very long while, I was a little childishly amused by my new situation. Thus do bad revolutionaries amuse themselves with novelty when the first stirrings of crises disturb the provisionally habitable tranquility of the present. I was playing a little at being ill. But this amusement did not last. My body rose rapidly to a temperature of forty degrees centigrade. The rest to match. I did not want to say anything about it. But I was afraid. And for three-quarters of a day, half by association, half by appropriation of ideas, I considered the universe under the aspect of mortality — sub specie mortalitatis, doctor, if you will permit. — I permit everything to a convalescent: this aspect of mortality is, for us mortals, what most resembles the aspect of eternity. — For sixteen or twenty hours I formed thoughts that I shall never forget as long as I live and that I shall tell you later. They are thoughts with a long maturity. Believe me, I had set aside all books. I was delirious, which is proper to a sick man, and yet I saw extraordinarily clearly into certain sound ideas. A singularly painful memory haunted me: at the moment when I had formed the plan to publish these notebooks, I had confided it to several persons in whom I had confidence; one of these persons replied to me almost immediately: “I warn you that I shall march against you with all my strength.”

— He who spoke to you thus was no doubt some Guesdist. — You misunderstand me, citizen doctor: I would not have had confidence in a Guesdist. It has been more than a year since I ceased to have confidence in the last of the Guesdists in whom I had confidence, and who was, as you are aware, the citizen Henri or Henry Nivet. No, the citizen of whom I speak, a citizen librarian who promised to march against me with all his strength, and who kept his word, had not long before been an excellent Dreyfusard. But when the idea of Catholic unity has entered the soul of a monk, and when the idea of socialist unity has entered the soul of a citizen, these men are unrecognizable. — It is a question whether a good citizen ought to march against you with all his strength, and whether you are a bad citizen. But we shall treat these questions when you are better. I do not wish to tire you.

— While I was considering the universe under the aspect of mortality, I was telling myself precisely that we can kill many people without having wished to. In the vain fabric of fortunate and especially of unfortunate events, feeble efforts can have incalculable consequences. Often all our strength cannot move a grain of sand, and sometimes we do not need all our strength to kill a man. When a man is dying, he does not die only of the illness he has. He dies of his whole life. I do not wish, citizen doctor, to attribute too much importance to troubled ideas that came to me in the heat of fever. But I was telling myself that before declaring — sincerely — to an isolated man that one will march with all one’s strength against him, one ought at least to examine whether this man alone is truly a great criminal. — I wish only to ask you for a brief piece of information. Did these good citizens who marched with all their strength against you, bad citizen, know those prophets who had predicted to you that the notebooks would not succeed, and who had in passing given you what is called good counsel? — I do not know if they knew each other, but they were identically the same men. — I rather suspected as much, replied the citizen doctor with a smile. When certain men have prophesied ill to an institution or to individuals, they become formidable to that institution and to those individuals: prophets would have to be extraordinarily strong and just not to lend a hand to the accomplishment of their prophecies. Let us not ask of men an extraordinary strength and justice. It is so agreeable to have prophesied correctly. We must wisely count ourselves happy when these complacently realized prophecies are not subsequently elevated to the dignity of natural laws. — While I was considering the universe under the aspect I have told you, I formed the firm resolution, if I escaped, never to march with all my strength against any person as such, but only against injustice. After which I asked for the doctor at the very moment my family had the same thought. — That is extraordinary, my friend: what! You were gravely ill, and you asked for the doctor! We handle social diseases more astutely. What! You did not have any ballot taken, either by the inhabitants of your commune of Saint-Clair, or at least by an elected council, the municipal council, or finally by the different persons of your family! You did not hold some assembly, a good congress, a council, or a little conclave! You did not take the opinion of the majority! What were you thinking? — I was thinking of getting well. So we sent for the doctor. — Strange idea! And how little you know the advantages of the parliamentary system. We, when a party is ill, take care not to send for the doctors: they might diagnose acute individual ambitions, Boulangeritis, parliamentaritis, competitionitis, authoritaritis, unitaritis, electorolatry — better named thus: electoriculture. We want none of that. So we assemble in congresses the sick, who are numerous,

and the healthy, who are less numerous; and each has from one to five votes. We are in fact partisans of equality. Then the majority decides. — What does it decide? — Everything: fact and law; whether such a proposition is or is not in Jansenius; and whether this proposition is or is not in conformity with justice. You are aware that the majority is evidently right — and they will bring in so many Cordeliers that they will end by carrying the vote. — What sort of man, at least, was this doctor? — I shall confess it to you without detour: he is a bourgeois. For twenty-seven years, in every season — through the candors of summer, through the candors of winter, through the breathless and copious anxieties and uncertainties of spring, through the autumnal uncertainties — this bourgeois makes the rounds of the countryside, following more or less the itinerary of the postman. A faithful coachman, named Papillon, drives his country carriage. I believe he is a bourgeois. He charges five francs per consultation to people who have the means or who are supposed to have the means, two or three francs to those who have less, nothing to those who have nothing, a great deal to the people in the châteaux. He is still a bourgeois. When one needs him, one alerts a few neighbors; as he is always going somewhere, the neighbors stop him and send him to you. This primitive procedure has never given any disappointment. At the moment when this bourgeois doctor entered my sickroom, I had the Petite République and the Aurore wide open and unread on my bed. If this man had been a partisan of a certain ill-understood class struggle, my case would have been settled. Fortunately he had not read the authors and was only a country doctor. He somewhat resembled Zola’s good doctors — not so much Doctor Pascal, who is a type and not only a doctor, as that good Doctor Boutan, who gave such good advice in Fécondité, who was more of a philosopher and better than the Froments. He asked our permission to warm himself at my good sick-man’s fire, a red coke fire. His feet were very cold, from making his rounds in such weather. A freezing sleet was falling that plastered itself to the ground. There was no one left but the postman and himself who continued to go about. And even the postman had been dragging around for three days an encroaching flu. The roadmender had long since deserted the national road to Chartres and had taken refuge in some shelter. While the doctor warmed his feet, the consultation lengthened into conversation. — Tell me first, my friend, what belongs to the consultation. — You know well enough what the consultation of a doctor of medicine is: attentive and sincere examination of all the signs, taking the pulse, tapping the back and auscultating. — Let us not go too fast, my friend: why did this doctor examine you thus? — Curious question, doctor: to find out what was wrong with me… — We handle social diseases more astutely: we go searching in our good authors, some of whom have been dead for seventeen or thirty-six years, for complete information on what is happening to us and some information on what will happen to us.

— My doctor of medicine had read, when he was a student, the good authors on medicine, on anatomy, on animal and human physiology, and on the medical art. Then he had kept abreast of medical progress. He had read what the good authors had written about the flu. He had even read the statistics. But he did not consider himself dispensed for all that from examining particular cases and new cases. He examined new cases with a fresh mind. He did not have ready-made and dispensatory formulas. He auscultated me myself. He did not say to me from the threshold of my room: “Perfectly, sir, you have the flu: we know what that is; it is known, classified, catalogued; I have here a printed formula, copied from a good book, which infallibly assures recovery.” No, he entered calmly and made his way toward my bed, looking at me. Then he looked at the newspapers that were on my bed. But he used his medical powers only to give me a remedy. And I myself, citizen, had many good reasons not to march against him with all my feeble strength. He asked me for all the information necessary for him to establish his diagnosis. — You answered him the truth? — Certainly. One answers the truth to doctors. You did not try to play clever, to dupe the doctor, to give him illusions? — You are joking, doctor… I would have considered myself a madman. — Why then, citizen patient? — Because it is evident that it is myself I would have duped; I would have compromised my future health. — But this truth you were telling this doctor could have injured your self-esteem. — I no longer had any consideration, doctor, for my former self-esteem. Do not hope that you will ever add, in your enumerations, the honor of the sick man to the honor of the soldier. The sick man is a wretch without professional honor. — We handle social diseases more astutely: we mask, we disguise, we paint over, we alter, we bend the truth so as not to displease, so as not to wound, so as not to vex all those who are ill and who contaminate us — the individual and collective ambitious, the authoritarians, the unitarians, the Boulangists, the competitors, the electoriculturists, the parliamentarians. — I know what individual ambitious individuals are, doctor; I am less acquainted with the collective ambitious. — That is a considerably more formidable breed of ambitious men. It is they who invented the syndicates and cooperatives for the production and consumption of ambition. Guesdism was formerly the cult and veneration of Guesde: it has lately begun to become, and is becoming more and more, a syndicate of young ambitious men… Whom do you call the authoritarians?

— Among all those who believe themselves revolutionaries, I call authoritarian or authoritary, in a reactionary sense, those who wish to command their comrades by force, instead of convincing them by reason. I would call authoritarists those who make and profess the theory of authoritarism. But these last words displease me. Whom do you call the unitarians? — Among all those who believe themselves socialists, I call unitarian or unitary, and I judge in a sense ecclesiastical: those who wish to unite, even by force, those who are right with those who are wrong, instead of acting simply and modestly with those who are right. I would call unitarists those who make and profess the theory of unitarism. But these last words displease me. — I believe I know whom you call the Boulangists. — You will never know it well enough: Boulangism was at first an epidemic illness with more or less regular relapses; but it is tending to become a formidable endemic illness. — Whom exactly do you call the competitors? — I could distinguish the competitors and the competitionists; but this last word displeases me. The competitors are those who, calling themselves socialists, nonetheless indulge in the worst excesses of individual and collective competition. The competitionists would be those good people such as we see, who, themselves animated by the gentlest sentiments, have nonetheless retained for the old competition a religious respect and who would like to institute it, arranged, adapted, honored, at the heart of the socialist city. These last are good folk who have never been able to forget the bourgeois prize-giving ceremonies where they were crowned. — I know only too well what you call the cultivation of the elector.

— You do not yet know it well enough. You are thinking here only of the elector born or become or supposed to have become French, whom one cultivates in order to become municipal councillor, or district councillor, or general councillor, or deputy, according to universal suffrage. And you are still thinking of the elector become or supposed to have become senatorial, whom one cultivates in order to become senator, according to restricted suffrage. You are thinking of academic elections, of co-optation. But you are not thinking that we now have our elections, our own, and our electors, our own, born or become or supposed to have become socialists. We cultivate internally. We cultivate in order to become delegates, according to universal suffrage, which we have adopted. We cultivate in order to become members of the General Committee, according to the laws of restricted suffrage, which we have introduced. — I believe I know whom you call the parliamentarians. — You do not yet know it well enough. You are thinking only of parliamentary socialists and socialist parliamentarians introduced into bourgeois Parliaments, gradually inclined toward parliamentary manners. You are not thinking of socialists who have introduced among themselves, for themselves, parliamentary manners: the unanimous inclination before the majority, even if it be factitious, and all the tricks of bourgeois Parliaments — the vote by division, the vote by paragraphs and the vote on the whole, and all the motions, and the points of order, and the previous question, and the vote beginning with the motion most remote, and the vote on priority, and the vote on form, and the vote on substance, and the vote by head, and the vote by order, and the vote by mandates, and the vote with hands, and the vote with feet, and the vote with canes, and the vote with hats, on tables, on chairs, and the vote while singing, and the happy formulas of conciliation. I would call parliamentarists those who make and profess the theory of parliamentarism. But these last words displease me. — Very well. You give your patients and your illnesses names that are very un-French. — The names are very un-French; the acts I have named are very un-French and very un-socialist. — And when the doctor had thoroughly auscultated you? — This doctor raised his arms to heaven — not to worship, for doctors have long since become little inclined to worship, but to mark his astonishment. “Well, madame!” he said to my wife — doctors neglect to address the patient himself — “what an extraordinary illness! I have not yet seen two cases that resembled each other.” Hearing these words, I recalled this proposition: that there are no diseases, there are only patients. — A proposition that appears modest and even humble, but which is presumptuous and seeks to reduce the aspects of the real: for my part, I have no more received it into my understanding than the contrary proposition, that there would be no patients, that there would only be diseases. These are propositions that seem to me to encroach no less on social reality than on medical reality: for everything is itself a little bit a social reality. I would venture to say that there are diseases that manifest themselves in patients, and that there are social diseases that manifest themselves in individual and collective patients. There would therefore be at once diseases and patients. It is because there are diseases that one must work in the documents and information of books. It is because there are patients that we must auscultate them individually or particularly. Identical or nearly identical microbes give different organisms different lesions, and require, if I may say so, different treatments. What were your lesions? — “You have never had pneumonia?” the doctor asked me. “Never, doctor.” “That is curious; your chest is rather dilapidated. Still, you would be wrong to be afraid. You will be able to recover with a great deal of care. You are still young. How old are you — thirty-something?” “No, doctor, I am only twenty-seven.” “Well, well, this is more serious. Your chest is really rather dilapidated.” — I stop you here, my friend: do you think this doctor was telling you the truth? — I think so: doctors always tell the truth. — Let us not generalize too much. Let us merely grant that they naturally tell the truth; let us grant that they tell the truth when one is willing to know it. — If you wish. I believe this doctor was telling me the truth. — But this truth was not flattering to you. — This doctor was not there to flatter me; rather, we had sent for him so that he would tell me the truth he would know about the health of my body. — We handle social diseases more astutely: we take care not to tell the few truths we know; we would risk wounding an organization constituted nationally or even regionally; we would risk wounding the Directory, which we call the General Committee, or someone on the Directory, or someone connected to someone on the Directory; we would risk wounding the great Chamber of socialist deputies, which we call the Congress; we would risk wounding someone who has been, who is, or who may one day become a delegate to some Congress; and then we must respect the international Congresses, and the merely regional congresses, and the provincial congresses, and the departmental congresses, and the district congresses, and the cantonal congresses, and the municipal congresses, and the groups, and the grouped, and the great-great-cousins and the suppliers of the citizen delegates. We have established indefinite respects, a universal respect. This somewhat hampers criticism. But in short, we are as free as under the old regime, and even, progress in manners having intervened, a little more so — and provided we say nothing about anyone who is connected or attached to anything… Our greatest concern, our only concern, is therefore to please; is not the great rule of all rules still to please? We please! We please! We please! We are complaisant! We speak pleasing words and not true words. We please everyone: friends of the socialist kind, national and international friends. — I once had a rather unfortunate adventure. — Can it interest me?

— I do not think so.

— Tell it to me, then. — I was working for a collective employer.

— How is that? — I was employed by a joint-stock company with variable capital and personnel; what I call a collective employer was, if you will, the board of directors of this Company. One morning I felt ill. It was the beginning of what has just come to a head. I sent word to my employer that I would not be able to come. Then, out of endurance and vanity, I got up anyway and harnessed myself. The harness supports the beast. When one has polished shoes, one walks — unless one is where I am today. When I arrived at my office, I saw clearly that my employers were kind enough not to let me see that they did not believe a word of what I had had them told. — This story indeed interests me little. We shall retain it, however, for when we discuss individual and collective employers. It is a considerable question. Many socialists imagine that the Social Revolution will surely consist in replacing the capitalist employer with a certain employer of socialist functionaries. — I imagine, on the contrary, that the social revolution will no doubt consist in suppressing the employer: so I am called an anarchist. — Let us not let ourselves be frightened by words. Think only of the miserable situation of all the workers who seem to be more or less well and who are dilapidated by the exercise of their trade. — I was thinking of it long before I fell ill — though it is true that I think of it now as something of my own. — Why then did this doctor not trust solely in your good appearance? — No doubt because he knew that we must not trust appearances. Such at least is the meaning of an old saying. He knew that some people look ill and are well, that a great number of people have a fairly good appearance and are dilapidated. — We handle social diseases more astutely: we take care not to criticize appearances; provided the groups are numerous and acclaim resounding resolutions, provided the meetings are vibrant, provided the demonstrations rain potatoes on Rochefort’s carriage, provided the congresses end by singing the Internationale, which is an admirable hymn, provided the delegates call themselves socialists and are politically more or less so, provided the elections go more or less well, provided the votes go up, and above all provided one does not abandon the terrain of the class struggle — we take care not to examine what is underneath, we take care not to examine whether souls enjoy socialist health or whether they are laboring under the bourgeois malady. — Why then, citizen, if I may be permitted to question you in turn? — Above all out of habit, a little out of laziness, and also because we are afraid of the fine discoveries we would not fail to make. — In civil life, on the contrary, one is afraid that the doctor may not make all the discoveries there are to make. — I believe I know why you have overworked yourself for several years; but may I ask for knowledge of the particular circumstances? — For as long as I have known myself, I have led an unintelligent life and overworked: it had to break down. A little sooner, a little later, the dilapidation had to manifest itself. It manifested itself a little sooner because these last years were exceptional. It manifested itself recently for very determinate causes. — What were these causes? — They would take very long to tell and would be tiring. — I beg your pardon; I was forgetting you were ill. — Naturally. — I shall tell you these causes at leisure when we discuss the collective employer, or the authoritarians, or when we treat the decomposition of Dreyfusism in France. Come see me again tomorrow: having told you today the history of my flu, it is fitting that tomorrow I tell you the history of my remedy and that of my convalescence and recovery.