Compte rendu de mandat

Report on a Mandate

*Charles Péguy

Our former subscribers have not forgotten that my tall cousin from the provinces was supposed to come see me before the opening of the Exposition. Why he did not come is none of your business. And if you are not happy about it, you will have to answer to him. — Good day, my little cousin, good day. I have come to ask you for the report you have owed me for fourteen months past. — Good day, my tall cousin. But I hardly have the time. — Be quiet, you have no call to complain. You are my delegate. You must obey me like a man carried out feet first. — Yes, yes, my tall cousin. Only I have had the flu. I have a cold. I have subscribers. — I don’t give a damn. I am the public, the people, in short, the citizens, the sovereign people. I did not order you to get the flu. Give me my report. — I consent, but the report must still be rendered in proper form. Where is the assembly of citizens, where is the bureau, where are the tellers, and the glass of water, and the carafe? — Where is the assembly of citizen electors, to smoke, drink, and sing during the report: Long live the Sociale! Long live the Social Revolution! Long live the Unions!

Long live the Unions! Long live the Social Republic! Long live the Commune! Down with the ministerialists! To Chalon! Down with the demagogues! Edwards in his shirtsleeves. Delory too. Down with the intellectuals! Silence back there! Long live the consumer cooperatives! Long live the general strike! Down with the popes! Down with the emperor! Silence, you church-goers! And the exodus? Murderers! Murderers! It is the final struggle — let us gather together and tomorrow —

— Where is the chairman?

— Where is the chairman of the session with his tireless gavel: Citizens, citizens, come now citizens, citizens, citizens, citizens, really citizens. Do not forget, citizens, let us not forget that you are assembled, that we are assembled so that citizen Péguy may render you, render us an account, citizens, of the mandate, citizens, that we, that you entrusted to him, citizens, for the, come now citizens, for the first national congress of French socialist organizations. Really, citizens, what a spectacle you would present to the bourgeois who might be watching. Let us not forget, citizens, that we are all working for the same cause. Long live the Sociale! Really, citizens, let the speaker speak. Our comrades from the French Workers’ Party will speak in their turn. The meeting is open to debate.

— Where are the chairs, the platform, and the bureau? Where are the indispensable formalities of a proper report?

— They will be there, for I am a just man.

— Give me a certain delay, then. I need to prepare. A little. I need to think about it.

— One does not prepare to tell the truth. One does not prepare to speak in public. The great orators stumble along without preparation. Are you then some wretched showman, that you want to prepare before giving me a report? This evening, do you hear me, this afternoon, and not tomorrow. Even if it kills you. Summon your friends.

I am a good sport. And besides, I did not bring a single citizen in my suitcase.

At two o’clock sharp, the appointed hour, my friends Pierre Baudouin and Pierre Deloire crossed the threshold of the door.

— I am patient, said my tall cousin. But it displeases me to be kept waiting. Your friends are in no hurry. I see the first two arriving, swaying like two retired gendarmes. When will the others reach us? When will the crowd of your friends arrive? — The two you see are the only ones I sent for. — The two I see? You do not have a crowd of friends, then? — I have fewer since I have been unhappy. But they are better ones. The two who are waiting for us under the big pear tree are the only ones who live in my part of the country. — Let us go down. I will content myself with this assembly. We will hold a reduced meeting. And we will postpone the grand ceremony, which one must not profane. The philosopher Pierre Baudouin and the historian Pierre Deloire were standing together in silence at the foot of the old pear tree. Pierre Deloire greeted us with a sober gesture. But Pierre Baudouin, who harbored an inner hope of some happy event, was showing the beginnings of exuberance. He walked straight up to my cousin, stared him in the face, sized him up from head to toe, and recognized in him someone who would genuinely enjoy being had on. He stopped short, ceremoniously removed his hat, bowed; then in a voice crudely deep:

— Good day, sir.

My cousin looked at him steadily, recognized his man — the one who would pretend to be had on. He settled his cap firmly on his head, put both hands back in his pockets; then in a violent voice:

— Good day, citizen. But Pierre Baudouin repeated: — Good day, sir. — I do not know who you are, replied my cousin heatedly, since my dimwit of a little cousin completely forgot to tell me. But know that I do not accept being called sir. What have I done to you that you should call me sir in front of everyone? On a day of reporting on a mandate, no less. In a meeting. Know that in Orléans I am always called citizen. When I want to light my cigarette, going out in the morning along the Rue Bourgogne, I approach the first smoker who passes: Excuse me, citizen, would you give me a light? — Why certainly, he answers me, citizen. The more you take, the more there is left. And then when I want to have my apéritif, so as not to drink alone, at eleven o’clock, I call my mate: Say, citizen, will you come have a drink to the health of the Sociale? — Why certainly, he answers me, citizen. One must never refuse. — There are so many capitalists, replied Pierre Baudouin, so many rentiers, millionaires, and fat bourgeois who have themselves called citizen nowadays, that I have gone back to calling everyone sir, and gentlemen when there are several. That way I make no one jealous. You are wrong to cheapen the fine name of citizen. You are wrong to smoke cigarettes. You are wrong to drink.

— I am wrong? said my cousin, as if the word were choking him.

— You are wrong: if all the republicans who call themselves socialists or merely good republicans had sent our friends in Calais the equivalent of what they drank and smoked in the same period, our friends the lace-workers would have held out for years on end. Instead, we lamentably let them starve to death, in misery and cold. We are cowards.

— I am wrong, said my cousin, like a man trying out an unknown word.

— You are wrong. If all those who call themselves socialists gave up bad drink, the true social revolution would be advanced by more than seventy-one years. We are cowards.

— I am wrong, I am wrong, but do you know, sir, that you are a singular man. You are something new, you are. You are a man who has audacity. You are teaching me new words. A new word. You claim that I am wrong. Do you know that you are the first person who has ever dared to tell me I am wrong? When I go see the municipal councillors in my district, at election time, they do not tell me I am wrong; they always tell me I am right, that they share my opinion, that I must vote for them. Never has a district councillor, nor a departmental councillor, nor a deputy told me I was wrong. And yet these are men placed high, capable men, freely chosen by the votes of their fellow citizens. They must know a little more about it than you do. Why do you also say that there are capitalists who have themselves called socialists? Never have M. de Rothschild, M. Lebaudy, M. Schneider, or M. Chagot had themselves called revolutionary socialists.

— Nor is it them I meant to speak of. But we have journalists who draw ten, twelve, and fifteen hundred francs.

— Even if that were so, my cousin replied, one is not a capitalist for so little. Take me: my employer pays me four francs a day. That makes me close to fifteen hundred a year. And I do not take myself for a capitalist.

Pierre Baudouin would thus have had my cousin on for some time. But Pierre Deloire intervened for the first time. My friend has a somewhat heavy mind, somewhat distracted, somewhat stuffed with facts. He does not always grasp the nuances of having someone on. He will forgive me these few indications. They were indispensable.

— Sir, said Pierre Deloire pedantically, it is per month and not per year that our journalists earn these considerable sums.

Pierre Baudouin sketched a movement of irritation. My cousin sat down, looking wretched. He looked at us for a moment, still hoping to doubt. All hope of doubt being henceforth closed to him, he collapsed and counted as if to himself:

— Fifteen hundred per month. Twelve times fifteen makes 180. Eighteen thousand per year. 180,000 in ten years. One million 800,000 in a hundred years. Eighteen million in a thousand years.

— Stop there, said Pierre Baudouin. You know how to count well. — I learned with the brothers, when I was little, said my cousin. The problems were just like what I am telling you. The dear brothers also taught me the rule of three and interest calculations. Give me a pencil.

Pierre Deloire always had something on him for taking notes.

— Eighteen thousand, multiplied by a hundred over three. Two zeros. One million eight hundred thousand, divided by three. Six hundred thousand. It all works out as if our socialist journalists each possessed six hundred thousand francs and each lived off the income, without touching the capital, the money assumed to be invested at three percent — a modest investment. You see that I am no ignoramus. But how can the newspapers survive?

— There are the advertisements, the deals, the pornography, the overcoats, the white sales. One is no longer quite sure that there are not some secret funds. And then there are the savings made on the junior staff.

— What! Not everyone is paid the same?

— The editor-in-chief and the big name are paid very well. But the common run of writers get between one hundred and one hundred fifty.

— Per month, said Pierre Deloire.

— There are also the native rentiers. The great Belgian orator has the standing of a fat bourgeois. We have rentiers who range from fifteen to thirty thousand.

— Per year, said Pierre Deloire.

— One wonders whether there is not more than one who reaches the fifty mark. Lafargue has less. But he has a great deal. We have citizens who add the total of large salaries to the total of large private incomes. We have had journalists who to their large socialist salaries added large salaries from reactionary newspapers. One is not entirely sure that this arrangement is past. M. Millerand, who is wealthy, only left L’Éclair — that utterly independent newspaper — a considerable time after ordinary honest bourgeois had already packed their bags. My cousin stood up, genuinely moved:

— Sir, he said, you have had the honor of having me on, with that whole business about months that I took for years. You were stronger than me. Have no fear: I pay masters the homage I owe them. Listen, sir, you can believe me: this is the first time in my life that I have been had. But then, sir, how could I have thought that such things were going on in the party? How could I have imagined so much money? I am still quite stunned by it.

— Sit down a moment, replied Pierre Baudouin, it will pass. You will see much more in Paris, if you stay with us for a while. Do not forget that today you owe us a report.

— What, I owe you a report! You are abusing your victory. It is I who came to ask my little cousin for the report he has owed me for fourteen months past.

— Why does he owe you a report?

— Because he was truly my delegate to the first national congress of French Socialist Organizations, held in Paris in December 1899.

— We must therefore know how you delegated him.

— It is quite simple: When we read in the newspapers that the French socialists were going to hold their Estates-General to begin the social revolution — immediately we said to ourselves that the Social Studies Group of Orléans had to be represented at these Estates-General.

— What was this social studies group?

— A social studies group, that’s what. You know perfectly well what that is.

— No doubt, no doubt. But act as if I did not know.

— I can see you coming, with your big clogs. You want to make me talk now.

— Yes.

— You want to draw me out?

— Yes.

— Know then how it stands. It was my little cousin who got me into the social studies group of Orléans. He was in it before me.

— What did he do there?

— Propaganda. He was working with Nivet to build the group back up — it had gone downhill. They always agreed with each other. In those days.

— How did he do propaganda?

— You want to know everything, and pay nothing for it, you do. I know your type well. He would speak on Saturdays, when we met — when the Group met. We met on Saturdays because that is payday.

— At a wine merchant’s? — Of course, a wine merchant who was good enough to give us his big room every Saturday without asking us so much as a centime. We also met on Saturdays because we could stay late in the evening. The next morning, we stayed in bed. On Sundays we could sleep in.

— One had the right to order drinks, at the wine merchant’s?

— Yes, we ordered drinks.

— How much?

— It depends — three francs, a hundred sous. Sometimes more.

— Split among how many?

— It depends — eight, ten, twelve, fifteen people.

— Out of how many?

— I don’t know. There were fifty, sixty enrolled members. Some say eighty. But they didn’t pay their dues. But no one struck them from the rolls. The group has to look important.

— Out of how many inhabitants in the town?

— Fifty-some thousand, counting the suburbs. But there’s also the Republican Socialist Workers’ Committee, which has more members. All told that comes to two or three per thousand.

— And when there was a meeting, did you take up collections?

— You have to. In a cap. For the strikers.

— How much did you collect?

— Depends — forty, fifty sous. Sometimes less.

— So when there was a meeting, what did you do?

— My little cousin would speak. Nivet didn’t much like to speak, because he was a civil servant and hadn’t yet learned how. So it was almost always my little cousin. — Well? — Depends. No. He spoke like everyone else. He didn’t speak like an orator. In the beginning we thought it was fine. Because we’d never seen any others. We hadn’t seen any yet. But once we had seen and heard the great orators from Paris, then we learned what true eloquence was. Just think, sir, think that citizen Alexandre Zévaès himself came all the way to Orléans. We were never able to get Jaurès. Nobody knows why. But we had citizen Alexandre Zévaès. He’s not as capable as Jaurès. But he’s a famous orator all the same. What fire! A great orator. He was young then. But already he was traveling across France to sow the good word. Now there’s an orator for you, with his round black head like a little ball. And his nose in the middle. Have you seen him when he swings his arm? The bourgeois world doesn’t weigh much at the end of an arm like his. So then we realized that my little cousin was nothing but small fry, as they say in those parts. My little cousin spoke sitting down, both elbows on the table, like an ordinary man, and he looked as though he were paying attention to what he was saying. He even searched sometimes for what he was going to say. Whereas Zévaès knows all that by heart. You can’t teach him anything. — What did you talk about when there was a meeting? — My little cousin talked about something. So it wasn’t interesting. The great orators talk about everything. Zévaès paints for you the entire social revolution in forty minutes. After that you still need twenty-three minutes to demonstrate the social republic. Because the social revolution is when you make the social republic, and the social republic is when you’ve made the social revolution. I know all that like a Parisian. I’ve heard it said often enough, in meetings. I could be an orator like anyone else. Only I don’t know how to speak. And anyway it’s not my trade. By trade I’m a chimney builder. My little cousin, too, didn’t speak long enough. He was at the end of his rope right away. He didn’t know how to develop his ideas. He spoke too short. Too dry. Not enough big words. We need big words, don’t we?

It gets you excited. When he’d finished, he said nothing more. When he didn’t know, he said: I don’t know. That made a bad impression. The great orator always knows everything. The true orator must never admit he doesn’t know. Here, another detail comes back to me: my little cousin wanted to make us talk, to converse with us.

He asked us what we knew, what we thought. It made us think. It was tiring. He wanted to make us study, you see. The true orator must always speak himself. And besides, when you ask your neighbor, you look like you don’t know yourself. The true teacher never lets his pupil speak. And I’d never finish. My little cousin didn’t like clinking glasses. He drank water. He had the air of lecturing those who drank wine, or some other good thing. A good glass of wine, myself, I’ve always liked that. He wanted to make us read pamphlets, books. It’s tiring, reading. He’d gotten us subscriptions to the socialist reviews. They’re not entertaining. What’s fine is when an orator really bellows, like Zévaès, and knows how to swing both arms. Now that’s thrilling. It’s as fine as Les Deux Gosses. I’ve seen real dramas. I’ve seen some Victor Hugo. But at home alone with a book, it’s deadly dull. It’s tiring. My little cousin spent all the money he could scrape together buying us pamphlets. So he had a somewhat bourgeois air about him. That’s not what we need. The emancipation of the workers by the workers themselves.

The Social Studies Group of Orléans met to finally elect its delegate to the first General Congress of French Socialist Organizations. My young scamp of a little cousin was elected without much difficulty. The group added that this election was definitive.

The following Saturday, I believe, or thereabouts, the Social Studies Group of Orléans met again to finally elect its delegate to the first General Congress of French Socialist Organizations. Memorable session at which as many as eleven members sat. And where my scatterbrained little cousin was ousted, which served him right. I had told him to come. But he did nothing of the sort, as I shall have the honor of relating to you.

But first I must tell you that the Social Studies Group of Orléans is an adherent of the French Workers’ Party. Adherent means that it adheres, you see. It holds, as you might say, to the French Workers’ Party. The French Workers’ Party, you know what that is: the party of French workers, like us. You only have to read the name on a poster: Workers’ — Party — French. A child would know at once what it means. We are French workers, aren’t we? So that’s why it’s our party.

I believe I rightly recall that it was my little cousin, who was a real fool, who made the Social Studies Group of Orléans adhere to the French Workers’ Party. Because I must tell you that you could never get orators for public meetings. You’d ask a deputy, a militant. — No, he’d answer us, you’re not part of my organization. — But, you’d tell him, there’s a need for propaganda in Orléans. There’s work to be done. — You’re not part of my organization. — The bourgeois have their orators. — You’re not part of my organization. If you don’t know what an organization is, it’s something like the French Workers’ Party. Something for you to adhere to. So my little cousin said: All socialist organizations are obviously perfectly good, since they’re socialist. Let us adhere to any one of them. They adhered to the French Workers’ Party, on account of citizen Vinciguerra, who was a member, and citizen Nivet, who was becoming one. It must be that the French Workers’ Party was not pleased that the Social Studies Group of Orléans had elected citizen Péguy to represent it at the first General Congress of French Socialist Organizations. The National Council of the French Workers’ Party did not like citizen Péguy. You’re not obliged to like everybody, are you. So they sent citizen Lucien Rolland, or better Lucien Roland, who was in the party. You may not know what that means. In the beginning, when someone was spoken of in front of me and they said: He’s in the party, I understood that he was in the socialist party. Gross ignorance in which I languished. Gross misunderstanding in which my intellectual childhood withered. Know, sir, if you are as stupid as I once was, know that when someone says of a person before you: He is in the party, that means he is in the French Workers’ Party. There are times when I still get it wrong. But that’s because it slips my mind.

The session began for the definitive election. I had warned my little cousin. All his friends had warned him. — Come, we’d told him. But he had answered us that the work he would produce in Paris as a publisher-bookseller for the same cost and in the same time would be more useful for the preparation of the Social Revolution than going to support his candidacy on the spot. He was wrong, for the question is not one of working more effectively toward the best preparation of the Social Revolution; the only question is knowing how to please the citizen-electors. A trip to Orléans, round trip, costs not ten francs by rail. In third class. Let’s say twenty francs with expenses. Let’s say two days, counting the fatigue. My little cousin thought that twenty francs of his money and two days of his work in Paris would produce far more socialist-revolutionary effect than three-quarters of an hour of stammering before the Social Studies Group of Orléans, in front of fifteen people. He was right. Only he was wrong all the same, because thoughts like those you keep to yourself. We all know that twenty francs’ worth of publications and two days of bookselling are worth far more for the preparation of the Social Revolution than all the stammerings of groups. Only you don’t say such things. You must make the electors believe that their company is the most agreeable in the world, that conversing with them is the most useful occupation, that it is better to speak for those fifteen than to write for eighteen hundred readers, that every lie becomes truth so long as you please them, and that every servitude is good, provided you serve under them.

— If they want to know what I think, said my cousin, let them look at my articles. If they want to know what I intend to do and what I’m doing, let them look at what I write, and let them ask you for supplementary information. Gross vanity of a pedant. To ask electors to read, to ask a group to buy publications. I must tell you that it was in the Revue blanche that my little cousin was writing in those days. To ask electors to bestir themselves, to work, to rack their brains. Gross invention of an intellectual imagination. That’s not what citizen-electors need, what the true people need, what the venerable militant needs. You have to bring him his candidate right before him. That way he can pull his leg, make him talk, make him turn, make him rise, make him bow, make him hedge, make him stand, make him sit, make him sing, make him blab, make him lie down, make him lose his head. The citizen-elector must have some amusements in life, after all.

Let us not forget that the citizen-delegate is beholden to the citizen-elector. The citizen-elector is someone who possesses something. He possesses his vote. The citizen-candidate is someone who asks for something. He asks for that vote. Don’t go getting ideas about this, my little cousin. The citizen-candidate asks for the vote of the citizen-elector. As my grandmother used to say — who was yours too — when you beg for charity, you mustn’t put on airs. As my boss says, business is business. And beggars are beggars. When you hold out your hand, you mustn’t raise your head. So spoke grandmother, my friend, and I am grieved that you have not kept the sense of her old lessons.

Business is business. You want the citizen-elector to give you his vote. You must give him something in return. If you were a deputy, you’d give him governmental favors. But delegates to socialist congresses don’t yet have any tobacco shops to hand out. In the meantime you must pay for the vote you’re asking for. You must pay. If you went to an umbrella merchant and told him: The weather is turning. I need an umbrella. — In what price range, sir, he’d ask you. Likewise when you put yourself forward as a candidate you must offer a price for votes. If you had come yourself, that would have given the citizen-elector, for the price of his vote, the gratifying feeling that he could inconvenience you at his pleasure. It is an ancient pleasure, whose savor has not yet evaporated, to hold a man, to make him feel your superiority, to keep him in your dependence, to bend him to your whim, to subjugate him, to make him feel your authority. To have at one’s disposal the fawning candidate. To savor his fawning. That is what we need. We are the sovereign people. That is as much as to say that we are all kings. So we need courtiers. Only in the old days there was but one king. And he had many courtiers. That was not just. That is why the revolution was made. So now everyone is king, and the same courtier serves several at once. It’s less convenient. But equality above all.

My little cousin did not come. He sent a letter. Useless communication. A dreadful letter, unheard-of, in which, with incredible audacity, he violently attacked Guesde and Lafargue for the attitude they had taken during the Dreyfus affair. Inconceivable clumsiness. Coming from someone who has had an education. Gross lack of propriety. We all know that Guesde and Vaillant dropped the ball during the affair, that they abandoned, as you put it, justice and truth. But you mustn’t say that in the party. My little cousin also spoke of Guesdists. There are no Guesdists. There is only the French Workers’ Party. All members of the party are equal. Speaking for myself, know that citizen Guesde is no more than I am in the party. When the National Council of the French Workers’ Party issues manifestos, citizen Jules Guesde signs in his alphabetical place: a-b-c-d-e-f-g: Guesde. Citizen Jules Guesde is even the party’s secretary: secretary for internal affairs. You know what a secretary is. When you’re someone’s secretary, it’s he who commands you. Since citizen Guesde is the party’s secretary, that means it’s we, the party, who command him.

— That is not, said Pierre Baudouin, what is generally believed.

— That is not what is generally believed. The world is so badly informed. Citizen Roland came in person. He was sent by the National Council of the French Workers’ Party, or by someone on the National Council, perhaps by the secretary for internal affairs of the National Council of the French Workers’ Party. Our candidate-delegates are generally sent to us from Paris. This is what we call the spontaneous manifestations of the socialist country, the spontaneous choice of our provincial groups, a profound movement, the authority of the socialist people, the voice of the people at last. The same goes for resolutions, motions, approvals, condemnations, indignations, proposals, notations, censures, and reports. Everything comes to us from Paris. It requires less work on our part. We practice what the republicans under the Empire used to call the official candidacy. We find it quite convenient. We receive candidacies ready-made, both the citizen-candidates as dignitaries and the candidate-texts as manifestos. It spares us worry. It spares us knowledge. It spares us study. So when that renegade Millerand, you know, the ministerialist, had his rubber-stamp Chamber pass his infamous scoundrel law, the Millerand-Colliard law, which I know nothing about — if we’d had to decide for ourselves, we would at least have had to look at the Official Gazette, ask around, get information from comrades who live in town, who work in those workshops, in those factories, discuss, debate, reflect — work. Whereas with the marvelous unity, with the unalterable centralization that we owe to the good offices of His Eminence or Excellency Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu, and His Majesty Emperor Napoleon the First, a word of command goes out from Paris, and this criminal law is pilloried as it deserves, nailed to the post. — What is a pillory? asked Pierre Baudouin. — It’s something for nailing Millerand to. Millerand the infanticide! You see the utility: there’s no one in Orléans who can dress someone down as well as I can. But never would I have found a word like that. Infanticide! Say what you will. Infanticide! There’s nothing like those Paris lawyers. Infanticide!

Only what’s really funny is that Millerand doesn’t give a damn any more than we do, because he knows the game.

— Knows the game of what?

— Knows the game of centralization, since he’s a minister. So he can organize spontaneous manifestations for his law.

Myself, you see, I need unity. I love unity.

I’m a partisan of unity. I love alignment, ensemble. If you let the far-off provinces imagine disparate manifestations, not only would it lack literary polish, but you wouldn’t get those admirable concerts, those mighty symphonies.

— Antiphonal.

— Leave me in peace. When I use a learned word for effect, I forbid you to use an even more learned word. I was at symphonies. And I maintain that we produced an admirable one. Infanticide, infanticide, infanticide — it rolled from Quimper to Barcelonnette like the immense wave of the sound of the voice of the cry of the reproach and remorse of the conscience of the people of the citizens of the socialist world. You see that I can manage long sentences. That is why we were happy to observe that the great National Council of Paris of the French Workers’ Party had been kind enough to think of us. It thereby testified to the singular esteem in which it holds us. How beautiful are the feet of him who comes in the name of the government. For after all who was forcing the great Council to bother with the few miserable souls we are, scattered about. And does not such disinterestedness deserve gratitude?

The national candidate suited exactly. He was even pleasing. He had been chosen, designated with the wise discernment that makes a good minister of the interior. Minister, that is to say secretary of state for internal affairs. The National Council of the French Workers’ Party had designated for us citizen Roland, a native son. But not a native son the way my little cousin was.

My little cousin too is from the country, since he was born in the Faubourg Bourgogne. I even served as his godfather. Only since he came to Paris, on the pretext that he has a lot of work to do, he scorns us, he doesn’t come to see us. Whereas citizen Roland is always around our place. He’s an indefatigable man. He’s not one who, when you ask for him, says he has a lot of work to do. He hadn’t been seen at the beginning, when the group was doing badly. But since things have been going a little better, since there are fifteen or so of us, and we have a voice in the congresses, he anticipates our every wish. He’s made up for lost time. Public or private meetings, punch parties, lectures, festivities, dances, addresses, programs — he refuses us nothing.

His devotion is inexhaustible. Always on the train. And he’s not one who dulls his eyes in books, like all those filthy intellectuals.

— What does he live on? asked Pierre Baudouin.

— That’s none of your business, citizen. We must not breach the wall of private life, as Schneider used to say, or one of his. Every man is master in his own house, as Rességuier used to say. Citizen Roland, as a public man, belongs to us body and soul. Citizen Roland, as a private man, must remain totally unknown to us. From the moment we receive him at the station to the moment the punch has finished flaming, every citizen-propagandist belongs to us. Once the punch is out, private life begins. We have in the party a great number of militants whose private lives would be dubious, if one were to examine them. But they are not dubious, since we are not to examine them. I don’t know if you’re intelligent enough to grasp the distinction.

— I’ll try, Pierre Baudouin replied.

— I’ll tell you how it is. I, who am no half-wit, as they say, have never quite understood the difference. But it must be crucial, since everyone says so. So I learned it by heart. And I know it well, because I’ve had it repeated to me often. Know then, my friend, that there are two domains: the public domain, where men are our slaves, and the private domain, where they are, if they wish, slaves of their evil passions. These two domains are — wait till I find the word I was told. Yes: these two domains are incommunicable. Incommunicable means that the same man is bad in private and good in public. In private he’s a thief, a liar, a drunkard, a coward, a libertine — he has every vice. In public he’s honest, sober as a camel, orderly as a railway clerk. So the theory wills it. It has even been observed in the party that constant experience seemed to demonstrate, confirm, and verify that it was the most villainous who had the most talent. That is why we have so much consideration for citizens who practiced the parliamentary methods so learnedly.

— I would be happy, said Pierre Baudouin, to ask you for some information.

— You mean, my friend, that you would be happy to have the information you wish to ask me for. You would do well to watch your language. You’re stammering.

— It is you, sir, who intimidate me.

— I’m glad of it. You flatter me. I’m listening.

— The parliamentarians who had engineered the scheme were no doubt the worst enemies of your little cousin?

— Not at all: they were his best friends. So politics wills it. You forget everything I teach you. Incommunicable. In private one has friends and enemies. Your friends love you. Your enemies hate you. Your friends extend their hand. Your enemies turn their back. You know where you stand. At least that’s how I understand it. Myself, if I had a mate who’d clink glasses with me on Saturday, and then Sunday morning talked behind my back when I wasn’t looking — you know, I’m patient, but lord I’d hit him. Because those are dirty tricks you don’t play on mates. In private you have to be straight. And when someone tries to swindle me, I sock him one, right? You know what that means.

— Yes, a philosophy graduate, at a general meeting of a limited company with variable capital and personnel, translated it thus: to punch Péguy in the face.

— Now there’s a graduate I like. If all philosophy graduates had that vigor, one might perhaps consent to make a small place in the party for all those stunted intellectuals. Tell me his name, my friend, so I can go pay my respects.

— I’ll tell you in private. — Between four eyes, as we say. You’re not accustomed to truly popular speech. They told me you’re an aristocratist and a personalist. When you see that graduate, give him all my compliments. He’s a tough comrade. Few manual workers would speak so well. Truly, sir, you’ve surprised me, with this graduate. I’d been told that all those intellectuals wasted their time in discussions, in reasoning, in demonstrations. Some envious person, no doubt. I’d been told they squandered their youth and the strength of their years in rational speculations, that they grew pale at the Sorbonne and got headaches. I’m glad there are some who are ruddy, bearded, and brutal. A loud-mouthed intellectual does much in my mind for the rehabilitation of his class, which needs it. I was telling you, then, my friend, that in private one does not tolerate betrayals, felonies, Jesuitries, lies, swindles, equivocations, and duplicities. But by a just reversal, these ignominies are not only tolerated in politics — know that they are its ornament, its crowning glory, and so to speak its flower and fruit. In private we are the friends of our friends and we love our friends and the friends of our friends. In private we carry our gaze straight. In private we keep the word we have given. In private our handshakes are sometimes dirty, but they are dirty only with soot or plaster or smoke. In the public sphere, in politics, we first imagined that one must surpass the nationalists themselves in brutality, in order to annoy the nationalists. Then we imagined that one must surpass the Jesuits themselves in Jesuitism, in order to annoy the Jesuits. We annoy them thus doubly. As adversaries we annoy them by dealing them Jesuitical blows. And as competitors we annoy them by doing better than they in the same game. How they must grumble. Not to mention that in this way we will end by eliminating them entirely. Since, to speak like the scholars, gentlemen, one never eliminates except those whom one replaces. We are usefully training ourselves to eliminate the black Jesuits. Everything gives us hope that we shall succeed.

Not only have we imagined that one must surpass barbarians in barbarism and Jesuits in Jesuitism, but we deliberately affirm that those who will not, like us and with us, surpass the Jesuits in Jesuitism for the sole purpose of annoying the Jesuits, are incontestably sold out to the Jesuits. Thus we practice the stupid assertion, which served Monsieur le Marquis de Rochefort so well, and the assertion without proof, which served Monsieur Édouard Drumont so well. We find it quite convenient. We acknowledge, after all the great anti-Semites, that it is far easier to repeat a condemnation than to substantiate an accusation, and that it works much better. We have found that the most stupid condemnations are, by far, those that receive the best reception, and that the most outrageous calumnies are those that find the widest credit. We put to the best use for our interests the demagogic mentality long since established by our most precious adversaries. We cultivate among ourselves that singular mentality of the traitor, about which we wrote such fine articles during the affair — a mentality in which every man who thinks freely appears as a spy and, to say it plainly, as a seller of memoranda. We sow suspicion with full hands. It is much easier than sowing education. We stab the people we love best. For their own good. Because we love them. To ensure their eternal salvation. We smother them with tenderness. When the tenderness is feigned, the result is already remarkable. But when it is with genuine tenderness that we smother the people we love, we reach the sublime in politics. There must have been monks as fine. To turn bad feelings into bad actions requires a certain craft, but to divert the feelings of love toward the ends of hatred demands a religious sense of politics. We must convert the infidels. But above all we must save the heretics in spite of themselves. We must save the heretic despite himself. We have secularized all that. For true secularization is no longer a matter of casting off the religious yoke that weighed on the neck of humanity.

True secularization is to leave the religious yoke in place — it’s convenient for governments. Only, because we are the anti-clericals, we write secular on the yoke. Those who cannot read are asked to inquire of their neighbor. I forgot to tell you: we write secular in red letters, because we are the revolutionary socialists. We have invented the honor of the red. We long mocked the honor of the tricolor. But we acknowledge that it is good to have a color. It’s convenient. Red is what the people need.

I was telling you, then, my friend, that in private one does not tolerate betrayals, but that they are the flower of politics. The two or three citizens who had maneuvered so superbly against the Péguy candidacy were the best friends — political friends — of Péguy. Men who once shook his hand warmly. My dear Péguy here, my dear Péguy there. And on that memorable Saturday, at the beginning of the session, they devised this scrupulously regular means of intercepting the floor, of cutting the communication to my absent little cousin. Such are the singular beauties of politics. At first they seemed questionable to us. But our education has been completed. We too have become connoisseurs. And we know how to appreciate fine maneuvers.

For a fine parliamentary maneuver, you’re forced to admit it was a fine parliamentary maneuver, perfect in every respect. It goes like this — imitating actors of bourgeois comedy — I ask for the floor for a preliminary observation: may we know whether the citizen requesting the floor is properly enrolled in the group? — amiable smile from the citizen chairman: Would you tell us, citizen, someone is asking whether you are properly enrolled in the group. Citizen, do you hear? — stupefaction of the citizen: But, citizen, since I am replacing — — — the chairman, severely pleased: No, citizen, I am in despair over it. But if you are not properly enrolled in the group, it is rigorously impossible for me to give you the floor. — stupidity of the substitute citizen, thus flummoxed. There is nothing to say to that. You are not enrolled: you are not enrolled. Monsieur Péguy is enrolled, but he is not here. You are here, but you are not enrolled. It’s clear. It’s true. It’s the truth itself. You who love truth so much. I am in despair over it: an admirable political phrase, and one by which even I was moved. By an excess of kindness, with the consent of the assembly, Roy was permitted to read the letter without any commentary. The impression was glacial. This letter without commentary presented itself like a skeleton. I admired to myself the skillful kindness of the chairman. Always tenderness. Citizen Roland let things take their course. Pierre le Febvre asked for the floor. This Pierre le Febvre is the oldest friend my cousin has ever had in Orléans. A man of old-fashioned soul. Loving as a father. Solid as a bar of iron. He doesn’t budge. He contributed much to forming my little cousin. He’s a former blacksmith. He has read a great deal. He knows much from books and much from life. All self-taught. What do you call that?

— An autodidact.

— An autodidact. Myself, you know, I don’t much care for that — autodictature.

— Autodidascalia.

— Autodidascalia. I’m for the impersonal dictatorship, like citizen Vaillant.

— I assure you those two words have nothing in common.

— Be quiet. I’m not asking you for information. I’m for the impersonal dictatorship of the proletariat. I’ll tell you. I don’t like autodidascalia because I’ve been told that autodidacts always suffer from it a little. I don’t much like the other didascalia either, because, you see, one must never enslave one’s thought. So I don’t educate myself at all. That’s how we all do it in the party. That way we remain free. And besides, there’s no need to know what’s in the bourgeois world, since we’re going to replace it one of these fine days. And what will be in the socialist world we know in advance: everyone will be a Guesdist. Either books are contrary to the party program — and then they are dangerous. Or they are in conformity with the party program — and then they are superfluous. We never read. And besides, it’s tiring. And besides, it’s boring. And besides, it’s intellectual.

This Pierre le Febvre has therefore read a great deal to educate himself and live like a man, and for that very reason he displeases us. And besides, he’s a radical. We call radicals the old provincial republicans who get in our way. The radical program — we’re the ones who picked it up. We practice bourgeois anti-clericalism as profitably as the best pupils

— We are getting there.

— An example will make it easier for you to understand. The Republic is the house. The republicans are the tenants. We have a double interest in appropriating the house and in driving out the tenants. As the admirable verse of Vandervelde so eloquently puts it:

The house is mine: it is for you to leave.

— Sir, said Pierre Deloire, that verse is not by Vandervelde.

— What do you mean, it is not by Vandervelde, Emile Vandervelde. The proof is that I heard him say it myself in the provinces, on a speaking tour. Somewhere other than Orléans. If you knew how well he delivers it. The admirable lecturer. He is perfect. He builds up a great long sentence. He pauses a moment. The audience, sensing the blow, waits too. And he lets you have it:

The house is mine: it is for you to leave.

He leans into the you. You means the bourgeois. We, me, means the good socios. So we applaud frantically.

— Sir, Pierre Deloire repeated, that verse is not by Vandervelde: it is by Molière.

— Who’s that, Molière? I tell you it is by Vandervelde. The proof is that citizen Roland told us that was the line on which the great Belgian orator finished off his great speech at the international congress. I say finished off because I don’t know the proper word. I don’t know everything, you know. When you end a speech, you know, the final blow. The moment when you save the best for last.

— Sir, Pierre Deloire repeated for the last time, that verse is not by Vandervelde. It is by Molière. Molière, as our literature professors used to say, Molière puts it in the mouth of Tartuffe. And it is deplorable that, seduced by the eloquence of the great Belgian orator, an entire international socialist congress should have so frantically acclaimed a verse from Tartuffe.

— I can see, said my cousin, when his first astonishment had passed, I can see, sir, that I should have been wary of you, who said nothing at the start, and not of this Pierre Baudouin who talks at random. The silent ones are dangerous. You are inventing diversions to make me lose the thread of my story. You know perfectly well that I want to tell you your truths, which displease you. M. le Febvre gave to the Republic everything he had — his time, his money, his health, his strength, his life. I had not yet drunk my first absinthe when he already had his thirty years of republican service. He began under the Empire, when I had not yet come into the world. Only I shall tell you his story next time, because this is yet another diversion you are attempting. In short, M. le Febvre had everything to displease us. He is enrolled in the group. Citizen Roland was kind enough to let him have the floor.

M. Pierre le Febvre spoke badly, because he was deeply moved, because he was sincere, because he believed he was right, and because, having during his youth served his apprenticeship in the blacksmith’s trade, he had not been able to serve it in the trade of socialist orator. The least perceptive noticed at once that he was very fond of my little cousin and that the slanders sickened him and that these slanders in particular caused him great pain. So the assembled company coveted the chance to slander his young friend. Popular assemblies are sometimes merciful to the weak and the wretched. But parliamentary assemblies know no deeper pleasure than to crush the weak, and the wretched in their grief, who are the weakest of the weak. When the assembled company realized that Péguy’s defeat would cause great pain to his old friend le Febvre, a political desire rose in them to hasten Péguy’s defeat.

M. le Febvre played right into their wishes. He timidly put forward ridiculous arguments: that my little cousin had, so to speak, founded the group at the beginning, that he had contributed greatly to the upkeep of the group afterward, that in Paris, as a bookseller, he worked hard for revolutionary socialism, and finally that he would know how, at the congress, to work effectively toward the preparation of the social revolution.

They listened patiently to these miserable arguments. Then citizen Roland asked to speak. Note that he spoke last. Out of an excess of politeness.

Perpetual enchantment. We recognized at once that politeness was his strong suit. Citizen Roland is not one of those fanatics — like my little cousin has become — who noisily fling injurious accusations at the most venerable militants. He scrupulously maintains, in the heat of his hatreds, that savory, well-seasoned mildness that we reproach so violently in the Jesuits, but which we admire deep down and which we love so much in our committees. He maintains that false evenness of temper that makes the fine parliamentarians. Bourgeois politeness pleases us when, among ourselves, it earns us compliments and deference. Citizen Roland began by not imitating my little cousin’s brutalities.

— Sir, said Pierre Deloire, I have already asked you how he lived, what he lived on.

— Sir, I have already told you that is none of your business. Your head is as hard as a Solognot’s.

— Sir, asked Pierre Deloire, would you tell me why, at the first national or general congress of the French Socialist Organizations, held in Paris in December 1900, when citizen Roland mounted, as they say, the tribune, he was met with jeers from half the audience — would you tell me why the Allemanists were particularly furious, and why an Allemanist who was seated behind me —

— An Allemanist who was seated behind you?

— Why an Allemanist who was sitting at the table behind the one where I was sitting shouted at him violently: Go set yourself up in Orléans!

— Sir, answered my cousin, you must know that this was the ordinary state of affairs at the first Paris congress. When an orator from the left half mounted the tribune, the right half jeered him. But when an orator from the right half mounted the tribune, the left half jeered him. Impartial justice. Equitable distribution. Roland was no worse treated than most of our great orators. To jeer an orator means that one is from the other half. It is of no great importance, and socialist unity advances all the same. The Allemanists do not like citizen Roland. This is because he was one of theirs, and in leaving them he became a Guesdist. One never hates anyone so much as the people who leave you, unless it be those whom one leaves oneself. He had, however, the right to leave the Allemanists for the Guesdists. One is free. But the Allemanists are not happy when one leaves them. Especially for the Guesdists. The Allemanists do not like the Guesdists. Unity above all. We do not like the Allemanists. Unity all the same. There are Allemanists now who claim that citizen Roland was driven out of the party. Long live unity! So many citizens have been driven out of so many groups and so many parties, so many groups and so many parties have been driven out of so many groups and so many parties, that one can no longer keep track of these minor incidents. They are what the bourgeois call the thousand incidents of daily politics. Citizen Roland is a Guesdist. He was an Allemanist — who hasn’t that happened to? It is almost a matter of private life. We must not merely respect the private life of citizens. We must respect the private life of the party. These are domestic quarrels, household wars, cordial hatreds, fraternal murders. As citizen Léon Blum so excellently writes: In spite of the faults, the grudges, the violence, socialist unity was on the march.

— Sir, asked Pierre Deloire, would you tell me what it is that you call socialist unity. If I have followed the speech you are delivering to us, you insert unity at places that are not accidental. What is this unity?

— It is a most convenient word, which means that one can fight and kill with a clear conscience. You, for example, sir — when I give you a punch, that is minor violence; if I give you a blow with a stick, that is serious violence; if I give you a blow with a knife, that is attempted murder; if I kill you, that is murder. All this evil comes from the fact that we have not yet achieved unity. When, on the contrary, one has achieved unity with a person, the punches, the blows with sticks, and the blows with knives become permissible, if not encouraged. When one has achieved unity, hatreds, remaining hateful, become pieties; jealousies, remaining envious, become beatitudes. If one massacres and ravages in the name of socialist unity, the hatreds, having become pious, become inexpiably meritorious; the envious beatitudes become infinite bliss, holy sweetness of heaven, adorable ideas. Evil, remaining evil, becomes good. The word unity is a marvelous word. Through it we work miracles. We are well worth the priests. We have every right to work miracles. Only our miracles are incontestable, proven, authentic, and not those dubious miracles like the Roman Church’s. That is why we always invoke unity at the very moment when we are quarreling the most. That is why in my speech, at the points of hatred and war, I regularly insert the name of unity like a litany: Holy unity, pray for us, holy Unity, holy Unity —

eleventh cahier of the second series

Our attitude toward unity is quite simple: we fight it while claiming to uphold it; the more we fight it, the more we claim to uphold it; we demolish it with all our strength, and we acclaim it with all our voices. We first thought of monopolizing it, but we gave that up: each of the five or seven or fifteen competitors is too weak to appropriate unity, but too strong to let the neighbor appropriate it. So we march against peace in the name of unity, we march against unity in the name of unity. Which allows citizen Léon Blum, with supreme skill and gentle benevolence, to go looking in the Vantier hall for proofs of socialist unity.

Pierre Deloire drew from his pocket the issue of the socialist library recently inaugurated by the Société Nouvelle de librairie et d’édition: les Congrès ouvriers et socialistes français, by Léon Blum.

— One must admit, said Pierre Baudouin, seizing the book, that this citizen Blum is a singularly fortunate man, and, as they used to say, blessed by fortune. He lives, no doubt, in some dreamland. Reading:

Meanwhile the delegates of the Parti ouvrier, assembled in the Salle du Globe, then the Salle Vantier,

Speaking:

It concerns the great schism of the Guesdists at the recent Paris congress. I continue: then the Salle Vantier, under the chairmanship of citizen Delory, voted unanimously the following resolutions “destined to bring about in short order revolutionary socialist unity.”

They began by explaining that in breaking “with so-called comrades who, after having trampled on the decisions of the General Committee, stripped the greatest number of its organizations of all representation by means of a head count, validated all fictitious groups, swindled all the chairmanships… went so far as to ambush the rapporteurs of the Propaganda Commission…,” the Parti ouvrier had fulfilled its duty toward the conscious proletariat. Then the delegates resolved: 1. To approve the reports of Dubreuilh, Bracke, and Andrieux; 2. To take up again “the vote of disapproval — or of censure” issued by the General Committee with regard to several elected socialist officials.

Pierre Baudouin clearly enunciated the third paragraph:

3. “To bring about among all revolutionary socialists not merely union, but unity, by means of a new General Committee open to all organizations unshakable on the ground of the class struggle.”

— You see, cried my cousin triumphantly, there it is. Not merely union, but unity. There are militants in the provinces who imagine that we lack for unities. We have several of them. We have too many. While my little cousin was foolishly attacking the General Committee, we the Guesdists were demanding a second one. When one takes on General Committees —

— Yes, citizen Zola used to say eloquently: unity is on the march, and nothing will stop it.

— Sir, Pierre Deloire pointed out, citizen Zola did not speak of unity but of truth. He said: truth is on the march, and nothing will stop it. When that great citizen uttered those memorable words, he did not foresee that ingenious Dreyfusards would throw the amnesty into the path of truth.

— Yes, said my cousin, it does slow the march, an amnesty.

— It is not citizen Zola, it is citizen Léon Blum who wrote by way of conclusion —

— One is as good as the other; all citizens are equal.

— All citizens are equal. It is citizen Léon Blum who wrote by way of conclusion. Picking up the book again:

Despite all the reservations implicit in that phrase, the Parti ouvrier also spoke no longer of union, but of unity. In spite of the faults, the grudges, the violence, socialist unity was on the march.

Sir, I have a question to ask you.

— Go ahead, answered my cousin, I know nearly everything.

— When citizen Léon Blum wrote that conclusion, do you think he was serious?

— What do you mean by that?

— Do you think he was sincere?

— What does that mean?

— Do you think he believed what he wrote?

— We do not understand that language.

— Well then, if some author had put the following argument to citizen Léon Blum the reader: the proof that socialist unity is making progress is that the Guesdists who withdrew to the Salle Vantier demanded unity for themselves — what do you think citizen Blum would have replied to the author? Would he have taken offense, or would he have gone along with it?

— He would have smiled, replied Pierre Baudouin.

— Is there not some danger in publishing for the people arguments at which one smiles oneself?

— These are not lies, my cousin answered quickly. They are consolations. And encouragements. One must console the people. They are so unhappy. And one must encourage them. They are so listless.

— I wonder, Pierre Deloire continued, pursuing his thought, I wonder what Léon Blum wanted at the moment when he wrote that singular conclusion. Was he bringing to harsh events that smiling indulgence we have known in him as a literary critic? Was he bringing to miserable events the easy philosophy of the fortunate of this world? Or was he engaging in worldliness, in worldly politeness for the use of the people? Was it embourgeoisement? Was it political calculation and parliamentary skill?

— Be quiet, you wretch, my cousin interrupted. You have crossed the border of the private. There is not merely the private of citizens and parties. There is the private of authors, the private of orators, the private of deputies, the private of newspapers, the private of ministers, the private of the President of the Republic. We saw that clearly enough under Félix Faure. I was forgetting the private of limited liability companies with variable capital and personnel. When we present you with a text, you must read it exactly as if it had never been written by anyone. This is what we call objectivist impersonalism, or, more familiarly, impersonalist objectivism.

— However, replied Pierre Deloire, when we read the monumental texts of ancient ages, we begin by gathering all the information that has come down to us about the authors of those texts. We want to know how the author was born, of what race, what family, what land, under what sky, in what climate, how he lived, how he loved, how he worked, how he was dying, how he died. We want to know how he conducted his share of that ever-recommencing and never-disappointing life. And we do not think that we value this information out of fancy, or out of idle curiosity, or out of servile admiration. But we are certain that this knowledge is indispensable to the understanding of the text, because understanding a text means its rebirth, its recommencement, and its reliving. Now I was telling myself: at least for our contemporaries we have the good fortune that the information is readily at hand. We live with them. We know them. We see them. We have about them that firsthand, accurate information that we so often desire for the understanding of ancient texts. How fortunate that we are so well provided for the understanding of texts that are contemporary with us. So I was telling myself: What a blessing that we live in the same time as our contemporaries.

— Sir, said my cousin, you have uttered a mighty truism.

— A truism is better than a lie. Or rather, a truism is worth nothing. But a lie is worth ill. It is not of the same order. So I would rather spend my whole life saying truisms than commit a single lie. When one says many truisms, one is merely a fool. But when one tells a lie, one is a dishonest man.

— And for fear of falling into dishonesty, you pour abundantly into foolishness.

— Yes. I was telling myself, in the name of the same historical method, I was telling myself that we must gather, honestly but scrupulously, honestly but carefully, all the information we have about the authors whose texts we read. We must, honestly but attentively, penetrate their intentions, perceive their modes. We must, in short, surround ourselves with all the information necessary, indispensable for understanding the text.

— One can see, said my cousin, that you do not know the two methods.

— The two methods?

— Don’t play the fool. You know about the two moralities?

— What two moralities?

— So it falls to me to teach you. Allow me to put it off until later. I am naturally lazy. And one must live in conformity with one’s nature.

Know in brief that there are two moralities, which are public morality and private morality. Incommunicable, as I told you. And just as we have two moralities, we also have two methods. To study ancient texts we gather the information contemporary with them. The historical method demands it. But to study texts that are contemporary with us we ignore all the information that is contemporaneous with us. We pretend that the texts wrote themselves, all on their own. It is one fiction among so many fictions. Just as political morality stands opposed to private morality, so and no less usefully the political method stands opposed to the historical method. This is what allows proven historians to cut a fine figure on the political field. Historians of bygone ages, they love above all truth. But citizens of the present age, they love above all unity. They juxtapose in their conscience contemporary unity with outdated truth. I do not know if they make a happy household together in there, because I have not gone in to see. Since that is private. The double morality serves us to safeguard the double method. Incommunicably incommunicable.

In my own conscience, so to speak, it is much simpler. Unity is the beginning, the principle, and the consummation. It is a word that admits no reply: unity, unity — to the tune of street-lamps swinging.

Knowing what one owes to unity, citizen Roland began by not imitating my little cousin’s brutalities. The rule of our meetings is as follows, it is quite simple: when one is in the audience, one has the right and the license and the duty to jeer one’s comrades, provided they are from the other half. But when one is at the tribune — I speak for those who have the privilege of mounting it — at the tribune the duty is to respect one’s adversary in appearance and to extol socialist unity. When one is up there, one must keep one’s composure. The same citizen who has just been yelling murderers, murderers must open his speech with a redoubling of obsequious politeness. Such are the rules of the genre. We are not the sort of revolutionaries who overturn the rules of genres. When citizen Roland begins to speak, one senses at once that he will respect the laws of true parliamentary eloquence. He begins by speaking well of his adversary. This appears all the more meritorious because one can see at the same time that he does not mean a word of the good he speaks. When he had thus paid my little cousin the tribute that my little cousin does not deserve, he then set about — but only then — demolishing, gently, the Péguy candidacy. It was a rare pleasure for provincials long deprived of eloquence and politics. I feel quite incapable, I a mere citizen, of producing for you even a distant and faded image of so skillful and so well-balanced a speech. The eminent lecturer had not finished his praise of my little cousin before all those present already recognized that the candidate Péguy was nothing but a fly-by-night socialist.

— What kind of fly-by-night? asked Pierre Deloire.

— You don’t know the slang. You are not a working man. It means a phony socialist.

— Ah, I see.

— In general considerations of which I cannot give you back even the faintest echo, the eminent lecturer demonstrated to us that the class struggle forbade true militants from participating in the Dreyfus affair, that the proletariat must never let itself be duped, that the proletariat must always let all the bourgeois tear each other’s noses off. You know all that as well as I do: they put it in all the papers. But where he was inimitable was in the individual polemic. After the preliminary niceties and much circumlocution, he penetrated boldly to the heart of the matter and demonstrated to us, clear as day, that my little cousin was nothing but a vile intellectual.

— Sir, asked Pierre Deloire, what is he, himself, citizen Roland?

— Roland: he is a typographer. He demonstrated boldly —

— Wait a moment: Have you seen him do typographic work?

— That is to say, I cannot have seen him do it, because he hasn’t the time. But he is a typographer all the same.

— So he is a typographer and does not practice typography.

— That is exactly right. He is a typographer and does not practice typography.

— He is a manual worker?

— Yes, he is a manual worker, since he is a typographer.

— So he is a manual worker and does not work with his hands?

— That is exactly right. He is a manual worker and does not work with his hands. You are beginning to become intelligent. You will benefit greatly from talking with me. I am no fool. I know the distinctions.

— Let us classify a little. Citizen Roland is a manual worker who does not work with his hands.

— Exactly. He is a manual worker and does not work with his hands.

— Understood. And citizen Péguy.

— He is an intellectual, since he went to the lycée.

— Very well, but he became a bookseller and publisher.

— That makes no difference: he is an intellectual all the same.

— He was a bookseller and publisher for as long as he could, and he became a publisher again and then a publisher-bookseller. As a publisher he works with typographers, in the workshop — with real typographers —

— You may say what you like: he is an intellectual all the same.

— He works with the typographers, in the workshop, to make beautiful pages, beautiful covers; he corrects proofs, ruins his eyes. As a bookseller he makes up parcels, sticks on stamps, draws up lists, prepares index cards, lines up orders, stacks volumes. He works with his hands.

— You have said it yourself: my cousin works with his hands, but he is not a manual worker.

— To sum up: a) Citizen Roland is a manual worker, and he does not work with his hands; b) Citizen Péguy is not a manual worker, and he works with his hands; a second proposition that one may also state as: b) Citizen Péguy works with his hands, and he is not a manual worker.

— There you have it. I am proud of you. You will do honor to your master. You will be the honor of my old age, admirable student, the glory of my white hairs. Know then, sir, that citizen Roland works with his tongue. He is a standing orator in the Parti ouvrier français. He makes interminable speaking tours in the provinces. He is an inexhaustible talker. Every evening he holds meetings. Always on the train. But it is enough for us that he once served some manual apprenticeship. You know that ordination confers upon the ordained an indelible character, which follows them even to hell. In our church, it is the manual apprenticeship that gives this consecration. And the intellectual apprenticeship gives the opposite consecration. A former manual worker, even if he were to become the most cunning and the richest of politicians, is always of the true people. A former intellectual, were he as poor as citizen Job, and were he to have become a mason, is always unfavorably marked. He is always an aristo. We make exceptions only for doctors and lawyers.

— So noted.

— Citizen Roland had no difficulty demonstrating to us that my little cousin was nothing but one of those vile intellectuals, a Dreyfusard, a bourgeois, who want to command the proletariat, to dupe the proletariat, to divert it from its duties and its proper interests, to make it forget the class struggle. Then he examined, as he put it, the second face of the question. Citizen le Febvre had said that my little cousin, by participating in the congress, would do more useful work there than citizen Roland.

— I admit, replied citizen Roland, that citizen Péguy has made himself much stronger than me.

We were most grateful to him for this feigned humility.

— I admit that citizen Péguy is much stronger than me. That is not the question. But the question is much more precise.

— We like precise questions, don’t we. We are men of business, not men of words.

The question is not who will work the most and the best in the congress toward the preparation of the social revolution; but the question is who will best uphold the interests of the group in the congress. The voter above all. We are well worth the bourgeois. We long declaimed along with them in favor of the list ballot against the single-member constituency ballot. The single-member constituency ballot substituted for a politics of ideas a politics of local business. But when we had to constitute our parliamentary assemblies, we invented a ballot next to which the single-member constituency ballot seems as vast as the vast world. We invented the group ballot, or the neighborhood ballot. In short, we practice for our parliamentary assemblies that restricted suffrage and that two-stage suffrage, and multi-stage suffrage, against which we waged such ardent campaigns. In practice we find them most convenient.

An example will make it easier for you to understand. When the voters of the first constituency of Orléans are summoned to elect a deputy, they do not ask themselves who will be the best deputy. For the deputy for Orléans is not the delegate of Orléans to the best administration of France alongside the delegates of the other French constituencies. But, since we live under the universal regime of competition, and since political competition is the keenest of competitions,

the deputy from Orléans is precisely the delegate from Orléans charged with defending Orléans’s interests against the delegates from other constituencies, who themselves do the same. The best deputy from Orléans will therefore be the one who best defends its vinegar and its blankets, and the Orléans-to-Combleux canal. Thus is formed what citizen Daveillans calls, as he pleases, the democratic will of the republican country, or the republican will of the democratic country.

The socialist deputies whom we send to the bourgeois Parliament obey the same system. Those from the south are for the wines, and those from the north are for the sugar beet. Those who represent the south vigorously protect the bullfights. But those from the north have a weakness for cockfights. One must please the voters. And if one did not please them, they would vote for non-socialist candidates.

The socialist delegates whom we send to the socialist Parliament obey the same system. The delegate of the Social Studies Group of Orléans is not the delegate of the Social Studies Group of Orléans to the best administration of the preparation of the social revolution in France alongside the delegates from other French groups. But, since we too live under the universal system of competition, and since socialist political competition is the fiercest of political competitions, the delegate of the Social Studies Group of Orléans is precisely the delegate of the Social Studies Group of Orléans charged with defending the interests of the Social Studies Group of Orléans against the delegates from the other social studies groups, who themselves do the same. The best delegate from Orléans will therefore be the one who is the most useful to the group. And on that ground it was plain that my little cousin could not withstand the competition with citizen Roland.

When the vote was taken, citizen Roland’s candidacy received six votes. But citizen Péguy’s candidacy received five votes, a respectable and unexpected minority: the vote of citizen le Febvre, my vote, because one is rather obliged to vote for one’s own cousin, and the three votes of the three citizens who argued most openly with my little cousin whenever he came to the group.

Having thus arrived at the conclusion of his report, my big cousin assumed a solemn air and continued:

— Here, he continued, here occurred a mysterious operation, a singular operation, about which you will no doubt enlighten me, gentlemen intellectuals, you who know everything.

We pricked up our ears, intrigued.

— As soon as, my cousin continued coolly, as soon as the chairman had proclaimed the result of the vote, as soon as the citizen chairman had proclaimed that citizen Roland had received six votes, while citizen Péguy had received only five votes, by common accord it was proclaimed that citizen Roland would be, at the first general congress of French Socialist Organizations, the delegate of the Social Studies Group of Orléans. And there was no further mention of citizen Péguy. So that citizen Roland, having received six votes, counted for eleven, and citizen Péguy, having received five votes, counted for zero. Would you be so good as to explain to me, gentlemen intellectuals, what kind of arithmetical operation it is by which six equals eleven, and five equals zero?

We looked at each other, dumbfounded.

— Sir, said Pierre Baudouin, my philosophy had not considered that.

— Sir, said Pierre Deloire, it is an operation that history has very often recorded, but the most numerous operations are not for all that the most reasonable. I confess that I had not yet thought of it.

— I have quite forgotten my arithmetic, said Pierre Baudouin. We must go fetch the schoolteacher.

— I knew my arithmetic in primary school — let us go fetch the schoolteacher.

— He will not be able to come today, I replied, for he is the town clerk and must attend to the election. I myself am about to leave you to go and vote. The polls close at six o’clock. You know that today we are definitively choosing a successor for M. Marcel Habert. I insist on voting, for I am not an abstentionist, as my worst enemies claim. I am going to vote for the patriotic candidate.

This word had a prodigious effect on my cousin. The whole time my two friends had been declining to answer, he had been beaming, waiting for the schoolteacher. But at the word “patriotic” he gave a prodigious start.

— So it is true, he roared with terrible fury, I had been told all right that you were betraying the Republic! You are going to vote for a filthy nationalist, for a militarist, for this Comte de Caraman whose tricolour posters I have seen on the road.

— No, the tricolour posters were M. l’abbé Louis Georges’s. I am going to vote for M. Olivier Bascou, candidate of the republican defence. He is the one who put on a poster: patriot above all, in letters as thick as your finger.