L'affaire Crainquebille, édition complète

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By the same author, Calmann-Lévy publisher, volumes at three francs fifty, on sale at the cahiers bookshop:

Balthasar. The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard. The Mother-of-Pearl Case. The Garden of Epicurus. Jocasta and the Lean Cat. The Book of My Friend. The Red Lily. The Opinions of M. Jérôme Coignard. The Well of Saint Claire. The Rotisserie of the Queen Pédauque. Thaïs. Literary Life, four volumes.

CONTEMPORARY HISTORY I. The Elm of the Mall. II. The Wicker Mannequin. III. The Amethyst Ring. IV. M. Bergeret in Paris.

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The cahiers have published by the same author: In the third cahier of the first series, dated February 5, 1900, today out of print, existing only in complete collections, from the newspapers of Thursday, November 23, 1899, the speech delivered by Anatole France at the inauguration of Emancipation, the people’s university of the fifteenth arrondissement. We reproduced this speech, “Freedom through Study,” in the fifteenth cahier of the third series, Anatole France, Cahiers de la Quinzaine;

In the same third cahier of the first series, from the Figaro of Wednesday, January 3, 1900, from the Contemporary History, the story entitled Clopinel; from the Figaro of Wednesday, January 10, from the same history, the article entitled After Clopinel; and from the Figaro of Wednesday, January 17, from the same history, the conclusion of the article entitled Consoling Spectacle; this conclusion is about the People’s Universities. These various articles, and the one we reproduced in the fifteenth cahier of the third series, bore in the third cahier of the first series the general title: For and Against Socialism. We did not reproduce them in the fifteenth cahier of the third series. The first two of these articles passed into Monsieur Bergeret in Paris, fourth volume of Contemporary History, one volume at three francs fifty.

In the seventh cahier of the second series, today out of print, existing only in complete collections, from the Petite République dated Tuesday, July 31, 1900, the speech delivered the day before yesterday in the Wagram Hall by Anatole France for the Celebration of Diderot.

ANATOLE FRANCE of the French Academy

THE CRAINQUEBILLE AFFAIR ORIGINAL EDITION 63 compositions by Steinlen Engraved by Deloche, Ernest and Frédéric Florian, the two Froment, Guzman, Mathieu and Perrichon In quarto and in octavo Jesus, printing in red and black on the hand presses of Lahure, limited to 400 numbered copies.

This original edition of the Crainquebille Affair is the work of M. Édouard Pelletan, art editions, 125, boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris. We finished reading the Crainquebille Affair for the first time in the Figaro in January 1901. The edition we give today is the first complete edition in an ordinary volume.

We have published by the same author: Cahiers de la Quinzaine, fifteenth cahier of the third series, a cahier of 72 pages, one franc: Freedom through Study; The Law Is Dead, but the Judge Is Alive; The Domestic; The Upright Judges; Riquet’s Thoughts; Speech for Freedom, delivered at the extraordinary general assembly of April 20, 1902, of the French League for the Defense of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

Before beginning to reread the story of Crainquebille, Anatole France will forgive me for pinning to it a quotation, because this quotation sheds light on the debates engaged for and against freedom of education:

“The school system would be modeled on the judicial system: the magistrates of reason would pronounce the true, under the same conditions and with the same guarantees as judges pronounce the just.” (Gustave Téry, in the Petite République of Tuesday, September 23, 1902) I would not dream of commenting on this text. Charles Péguy

The Crainquebille Affair

CHAPTER ONE

The majesty of justice resides entirely in each sentence rendered by the judge in the name of the sovereign people. Jérôme Crainquebille, a street vendor, learned how august the law is when he was brought before the criminal court for insulting an agent of the public force. Having taken his place in the magnificent and somber hall, on the bench of the accused, he saw the judges, the clerks, the lawyers in robes, the usher bearing the chain, the gendarmes, and behind a partition, the bare heads of the silent spectators. And he saw himself seated on a raised chair, as if appearing before magistrates conferred upon the accused himself a fateful honor. At the back of the hall, between the two assessors, the presiding judge M. Bourriche sat. The palms of an Officer of the Academy were pinned to his chest. A bust of the Republic and a Christ on the cross surmounted the court, so that all divine and human laws were suspended over Crainquebille’s head. He conceived a just terror at this. Not having a philosophical turn of mind, he did not ask himself what this bust and this crucifix meant, and he did not inquire whether Jesus and Marianne, at the Palace, got along together. Yet this was matter for reflection, for after all pontifical doctrine and canon law are opposed, on many points, to the Constitution of the Republic and to the Civil Code. The Decretals have not been abolished, as far as anyone knows. The Church of Christ teaches as in former times that only those powers are legitimate to which it has given investiture. Now the French Republic still claims not to depend on pontifical power. Crainquebille could have said with some reason:

“Gentlemen of the court, President Loubet not having been anointed, this Christ, hanging over your heads, recuses you through the voice of the Councils and the Popes. Either he is here to remind you of the rights of the Church, which invalidate yours, or his presence has no reasonable meaning.”

To which Judge Bourriche might have replied:

“Accused Crainquebille, the kings of France were always at odds with the Pope. Guillaume de Nogaret was excommunicated and did not resign from his offices for so little. The Christ of the court is not the Christ of Gregory VII and Boniface VIII. He is, if you like, the Christ of the Gospel, who did not know a word of canon law and had never heard of the sacred Decretals.”

Then Crainquebille would have been at liberty to reply:

“The Christ of the Gospel was a firebrand. Moreover, he suffered a condemnation that, for nineteen hundred years, all Christian peoples have considered a grave judicial error. I defy you, M. le président, to condemn me, in his name, to even forty-eight hours in prison.”

But Crainquebille engaged in no historical, political, or social considerations. He remained in astonishment. The apparatus surrounding him gave him a high idea of justice. Penetrated with respect, submerged in dread, he was ready to defer to the judges on his own guilt. In his conscience, he did not believe himself criminal; but he felt how little is the conscience of a vegetable seller before the symbols of the law and the ministers of social vindication. Already his lawyer had half persuaded him that he was not innocent.

A summary and rapid investigation had established the charges weighing upon him.

CHAPTER II THE ADVENTURE OF CRAINQUEBILLE

Jérôme Crainquebille, a costermonger, went about the city, pushing his little cart and crying: “Cabbages, turnips, carrots!” And when he had leeks, he cried: “Bunches of asparagus!” because leeks are the poor man’s asparagus. Now, on October 20, at the hour of noon, as he was coming down the rue Montmartre, Madame Bayard, the cobbler’s wife, came out of her shop and approached the vegetable cart. Disdainfully lifting a bunch of leeks:

“They’re hardly handsome, your leeks. How much a bunch?”

“Fifteen sous, ma’am. Nothing better.”

“Fifteen sous, three rotten leeks?”

And she threw the bunch back into the cart with a gesture of disgust.

It was then that Constable 64 appeared and said to Crainquebille:

“Move along.”

Crainquebille had been moving along for fifty years, from morning till night. Such an order seemed to him legitimate and in accordance with the nature of things. Quite disposed to obey, he urged the lady to take what was to her liking.

“I have to choose the goods first,” the cobbler’s wife replied sourly.

And she felt all the bunches of leeks again, then kept the one that seemed the finest and held it against her bosom as the saints, in church paintings, press the triumphal palm to their breast.

“I’ll give you fourteen sous. That’s plenty. And I still have to go get them from the shop, because I haven’t got them on me.”

And, clutching her leeks, she went back into the cobbler’s shop where a customer carrying a child had preceded her.

At that moment Constable 64 said for the second time to Crainquebille:

“Move along!”

“I’m waiting for my money,” Crainquebille replied.

“I’m not telling you to wait for your money; I’m telling you to move along,” the constable said firmly.

Meanwhile the cobbler’s wife, in her shop, was trying blue shoes on an eighteen-month-old child whose mother was in a hurry. And the green tops of the leeks were resting on the counter.

For half a century that he had been pushing his cart through the streets, Crainquebille had learned to obey the representatives of authority. But he found himself this time in a particular situation, between a duty and a right. He had no legal mind. He did not understand that the enjoyment of an individual right did not exempt him from fulfilling a social duty. He considered too much his right, which was to receive fourteen sous, and he did not attend enough to his duty, which was to push his cart and go on and ever on. He stayed.

For the third time, Constable 64, calm and without anger, gave him the order to move along. Contrary to the habit of Sergeant Montauciel, who ceaselessly threatens and never acts, Constable 64 is sparing of warnings and prompt to write up a summons. Such is his character. Though somewhat sly, he is an excellent servant and a loyal soldier. The courage of a lion and the gentleness of a child. He knows only his orders.

“Don’t you hear me when I tell you to move along!”

Crainquebille had a reason for staying in place that seemed too considerable in his eyes for him not to think it sufficient. He stated it simply and without art:

“Good Lord! since I tell you I’m waiting for my money.”

Constable 64 merely replied:

“Do you want me to give you a ticket? If you do, you’ve only to say so.”

On hearing these words, Crainquebille slowly shrugged his shoulders and cast upon the constable a sorrowful look that he then raised to the sky. And this look said:

“God sees me! Am I a scorner of laws? Do I laugh at decrees and ordinances that govern my ambulatory state? At five in the morning I was on the Halles pavement. Since seven I’ve been burning my hands on my shafts crying: Cabbages, turnips, carrots! I am sixty years old. I am weary. And you ask me whether I’m raising the black flag of revolt. You jest, and your jest is cruel.”

Whether the expression of this look escaped him, or whether he found no excuse in it for disobedience, the constable asked in a brusque, rough voice if it was understood.

Now, at that very moment the jam of vehicles was extreme in the rue Montmartre. The cabs, drays, vans, omnibuses, trucks, pressed one against another, seemed indissolubly joined and assembled. And over their quivering immobility rose oaths and cries. The cab drivers exchanged from afar, and slowly, heroic insults with the butcher boys, and the omnibus conductors, considering Crainquebille the cause of the jam, called him “dirty leek.”

Meanwhile on the sidewalk curious bystanders were pressing, attentive to the quarrel. And the constable, seeing himself observed, thought of nothing but displaying his authority.

“Very well,” he said.

And from his pocket he drew a greasy notebook and a very short pencil.

Crainquebille was following his own train of thought and obeying an inner force. Besides, it was impossible for him now to move forward or backward. The wheel of his cart was unfortunately caught in the wheel of a milkman’s van.

He cried out, tearing his hair under his cap:

“But since I tell you I’m waiting for my money! Isn’t that a shame! Misery of miseries! By God!”

By these words, which nonetheless expressed despair rather than revolt, Constable 64 believed himself insulted. And since, for him, every insult necessarily took the traditional, regular, consecrated, ritual, and so to speak liturgical form of “Death to the cows!” it was in this form that he spontaneously received and concretized in his ear the words of the offender.

“Ah! You said: ‘Death to the cows!’ Very well. Follow me.”

Crainquebille, in the excess of stupor and distress, gazed with his large sun-scorched eyes at Constable 64, and from his broken voice, which came now from above his head and now from below his heels, he cried out, arms crossed over his blue smock:

“I said ‘Death to the cows’? Me? Oh!”

This arrest was greeted by the laughter of shop clerks and small boys. It satisfied the taste that all crowds feel for ignoble and violent spectacles. But, having pushed his way through the popular circle, a very sad old man, dressed in black and wearing a top hat, approached the constable and said to him very gently and very firmly, in a low voice:

“You are mistaken. This man did not insult you.”

“Mind your own business,” the constable replied, without uttering threats, for he was speaking to a well-dressed man.

The old man insisted with great calm and tenacity. And the constable ordered him to explain himself at the police station.

Meanwhile Crainquebille was crying:

“Then! that I said ‘Death to the cows’! Oh!”

He was uttering these astonished words when Madame Bayard, the cobbler’s wife, came to him with the fourteen sous in her hand. But already Constable 64 held him by the collar, and Madame Bayard, thinking one owed nothing to a man being taken to the station, put the fourteen sous in the pocket of her apron.

And seeing all at once his cart impounded, his freedom lost, the abyss under his feet and the sun extinguished, Crainquebille murmured:

“All the same!”

Before the police commissioner, the old man declared that, stopped on his way by a traffic jam, he had witnessed the scene and affirmed that the constable had not been insulted, and that he had been entirely mistaken. He gave his name and qualifications: Doctor David Matthieu, chief physician of the Ambroise Paré Hospital, Officer of the Legion of Honor. In other times, such testimony would have sufficiently enlightened the commissioner. But then, in France, scientists were suspect.

Crainquebille, whose arrest was maintained, spent the night in the lockup and was transferred in the morning, in the Black Maria, to the depot.

The prison did not seem to him either painful or humiliating. It seemed necessary. What struck him upon entering was the cleanliness of the walls and the tiles. He said:

“For a clean place, it’s a clean place. Honest truth! You could eat off the floor.”

Left alone, he wanted to pull up his stool; but he noticed it was sealed to the wall. He expressed his surprise aloud.

“What a funny idea! There’s a thing I’d never have thought of, for sure.”

Having sat down, he twiddled his thumbs and remained in astonishment. The silence and solitude overwhelmed him. He was bored, and he thought anxiously of his cart, impounded and still loaded with cabbages, carrots, celery, lamb’s lettuce, and dandelion greens. And he asked himself anxiously:

“Where have they put away my cart?”

On the third day he received a visit from his lawyer, Maître Lemerle, one of the youngest members of the Paris bar, president of one of the sections of the “League of the French Fatherland.”

Crainquebille tried to tell him his story, which was not easy for him, as he was not in the habit of speaking. Perhaps he would have managed with a little help. But his lawyer shook his head mistrustfully at everything he said, and, leafing through papers, murmured:

“Hmm! Hmm! I don’t see any of that in the file.”

Then, with some weariness, he said, stroking his blond moustache:

“In your interest, it might be better to confess. For my part, I consider your system of absolute denial to be signally unwise.”

And from then on Crainquebille would have made confessions if he had known what he was supposed to confess.

CHAPTER III CRAINQUEBILLE BEFORE THE COURT

Judge Bourriche devoted six full minutes to the interrogation of Crainquebille. This interrogation would have shed more light if the accused had answered the questions put to him. But Crainquebille was not accustomed to discussion, and in such company respect and terror closed his mouth. So he kept silent, and the judge himself supplied the answers; they were crushing. He concluded:

“Finally, you admit having said: ‘Death to the cows!’”

Only then did the accused Crainquebille draw from his old throat a noise of scrap iron and broken glass.

“I said ‘Death to the cows!’ because the officer said ‘Death to the cows!’ So I said ‘Death to the cows!’”

He meant to convey that, astonished by the most unforeseen accusation, he had, in his stupor, repeated the strange words falsely attributed to him, which he had certainly not uttered. He had said “Death to the cows!” as he would have said: “Me! utter insulting words, how could you believe it?”

Judge Bourriche did not take it that way.

“Are you claiming,” he said, “that the constable uttered that cry first?”

Crainquebille gave up trying to explain. It was too difficult.

“You don’t insist. You are right,” said the judge.

And he called the witnesses.

Constable 64, whose name was Bastien Matra, swore to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. Then he testified in these terms:

“Being on duty on October 20, at the hour of noon, I noticed, in the rue Montmartre, an individual who appeared to be a street vendor and who was keeping his cart unduly stopped at the level of number 328, which was causing a traffic jam. I ordered him three times to move along, which he refused to comply with. And when I warned him that I was going to write him up, he answered me by shouting: ‘Death to the cows!’ which seemed to me to be injurious.”

This firm and measured testimony was heard with evident favor by the Court. The defense had cited Madame Bayard, cobbler’s wife, and Doctor David Matthieu, chief physician of the Ambroise Paré Hospital, Officer of the Legion of Honor. Madame Bayard had seen and heard nothing. Doctor Matthieu had been in the crowd gathered around the constable who was summoning the vendor to move along. His testimony caused an incident.

“I witnessed the scene,” he said. “I noticed that the constable was mistaken: he had not been insulted. I approached and pointed this out to him. The constable kept the vendor under arrest and invited me to follow him to the police station. Which I did. I repeated my statement before the commissioner.”

“You may sit down,” said the judge. “Usher, recall the witness Matra. — Matra, when you proceeded to arrest the accused, did Doctor Matthieu not point out to you that you were mistaken?”

“That is to say, M. le président, he insulted me.”

“What did he say to you?”

“He said to me: ‘Death to the cows!’”

A murmur and laughter rose in the audience.

“You may withdraw,” said the judge hastily.

And he warned the public that if these indecent manifestations were repeated, he would have the hall cleared. Meanwhile the defense was triumphantly waving its robes, and people were thinking at that moment that Crainquebille would be acquitted.

When calm was restored, Maître Lemerle rose. He began his plea with a eulogy of the constables of the Prefecture, “those modest servants of society who, for a derisory salary, endure fatigues and face incessant perils, and who practice everyday heroism. They are former soldiers, and soldiers they remain. Soldiers, that word says everything…”

And Maître Lemerle rose without effort to very lofty considerations on the military virtues. He was of those, he said, “who do not allow anyone to touch the army, this national army to which he was proud to belong.”

The judge nodded.

Maître Lemerle, indeed, was a lieutenant in the reserve. He was also a nationalist candidate in the Vieilles-Haudriettes quarter.

He continued:

“No, indeed, I do not fail to appreciate the modest and valuable services that the guardians of the peace render daily to the valiant population of Paris. And I would not have consented to present to you, gentlemen, the defense of Crainquebille had I seen in him the insulter of a former soldier. My client is accused of having said: ‘Death to the cows!’ The meaning of this phrase is not doubtful. If you consult the Dictionary of Slang, you will read: ‘Vachard, lazy, idle; who stretches lazily like a cow, instead of working. — Cow, one who sells out to the police; informer.’ ‘Death to the cows!’ is said in a certain world. But the whole question is this: How did Crainquebille say it? And even, did he say it? Allow me, gentlemen, to doubt it.

“I do not suspect Constable Matra of any evil thought. But he performs, as we have said, a difficult task. He is sometimes tired, exasperated, overworked. In those conditions he may have been the victim of a kind of auditory hallucination. And when he comes to tell you, gentlemen, that Doctor David Matthieu, Officer of the Legion of Honor, chief physician of the Ambroise Paré Hospital, a prince of science and a man of the world, cried ‘Death to the cows!’ we are forced to recognize that Matra suffers from the disease of obsession, and, if the term is not too strong, from the delirium of persecution.

“And even if Crainquebille had cried: ‘Death to the cows!’ it would remain to be established whether this remark, on his lips, has the character of an offense. Crainquebille is the natural child of an itinerant vendor, lost to misconduct and drink. He was born an alcoholic. You see him here, brutalized by sixty years of poverty. Gentlemen, you will say that he is not responsible.”

Maître Lemerle sat down, and Judge Bourriche mumbled a judgment that condemned Jérôme Crainquebille to fifteen days in prison and a fifty-franc fine. The Court had founded its conviction on the testimony of Constable Matra.

Led through the long dark corridors of the Palace, Crainquebille felt an immense need for sympathy. He turned to the guard who was leading him and called him three times:

“Cipal! Cipal! Hey, cipal!”

And he sighed:

“Only fifteen days ago, if someone had told me what’s happening to me would happen to me!”

Then he made this reflection:

“They talk too fast, those gentlemen. They speak well, but they talk too fast. A man can’t explain himself to them… Cipal, don’t you think they talk too fast?”

But the soldier walked on without answering or turning his head.

Crainquebille asked him:

“Why don’t you answer me?”

And the soldier kept silent. And Crainquebille said to him bitterly:

“People talk to a dog. Why don’t you talk to me? Don’t you ever open your mouth? Aren’t you afraid it’ll stink?”

CHAPTER IV APOLOGY FOR JUDGE BOURRICHE

Some spectators and two or three lawyers left the hearing after the reading of the verdict, when already the clerk was calling another case. Those leaving made no reflections on the Crainquebille affair, which had hardly interested them and which they were no longer thinking about. Only M. Jean Lermite, an etcher, who had come by chance to the Palace, meditated on what he had just seen and heard.

Passing his arm over the shoulder of Maître Joseph Aubarrée:

“What we must praise Judge Bourriche for,” he said, “is having known how to defend himself against the vain curiosities of the mind and to guard against that intellectual pride which wants to know everything. By opposing to each other the contradictory testimonies of Constable Matra and Doctor David Matthieu, the judge would have entered a path where one encounters only doubt and uncertainty. The method that consists in examining facts according to the rules of criticism is irreconcilable with the good administration of justice. If the magistrate had the imprudence to follow this method, his judgments would depend on his personal sagacity, which is most often small, and on human infirmity, which is constant. What authority would they have? It cannot be denied that the historical method is entirely unsuited to provide him with the certainties he needs. It suffices to recall the adventure of Walter Raleigh.

“One day when Walter Raleigh, confined in the Tower of London, was working, as was his custom, on the second part of his History of the World, a brawl broke out beneath his window. He went to look at those people who were quarreling, and when he got back to work, he thought he had observed them very well. But the next day, having spoken of this affair to one of his friends who had been present and had even taken part in it, he was contradicted by this friend on every point. Reflecting then on the difficulty of knowing the truth about distant events, when he could be mistaken about what was happening before his eyes, he threw the manuscript of his history into the fire.

“If judges had the same scruples as Sir Walter Raleigh, they would throw all their investigations into the fire. And they have no right to do so. That would be on their part a denial of justice, a crime. One must give up knowing, but one must not give up judging. Those who want the verdicts of courts to be founded on the methodical investigation of facts are dangerous sophists and perfidious enemies of civil and military justice. Judge Bourriche has too judicial a mind to make his sentences depend on reason and science whose conclusions are subject to eternal disputes. He grounds them on dogmas and rests them on tradition, so that his judgments equal in authority the commandments of the Church. His sentences are canonical. I mean that he derives them from a certain number of sacred canons. See, for example, how he classifies testimonies not according to the uncertain and deceptive character of probability and human truth, but according to intrinsic, permanent, and manifest character. He weighs them by the weight of arms. Is there anything simpler and wiser at the same time? He holds as irrefutable the testimony of a guardian of the peace, abstraction made of his humanity and conceived metaphysically as a badge number and according to the categories of the ideal police. Not that Matra (Bastien), born in Cinto-Monte (Corsica), seems to him incapable of error. He never thought Bastien Matra endowed with a great spirit of observation, nor that he applied an exact and rigorous method to the examination of facts. To tell the truth, he does not consider Bastien Matra, but Constable 64. A man is fallible, he thinks. Pierre and Paul can be mistaken. Descartes and Gassendi, Leibniz and Newton, Bichat and Claude Bernard may have been mistaken. We all err and at every moment. Our reasons for erring are innumerable. The perceptions of the senses and the judgments of the mind are sources of illusion and causes of uncertainty. One must not trust the testimony of a man: Testis unus, testis nullus. But one can have faith in a number. Bastien Matra, of Cinto-Monte, is fallible. But Constable 64, abstraction made of his humanity, is not mistaken. He is an entity. An entity has nothing in it of what is in men and troubles them, corrupts them, deceives them. It is pure, unalterable, and without admixture. And so the Court did not hesitate to reject the testimony of Doctor David Matthieu, who is only a man, in order to admit that of Constable 64, who is a pure idea, and as it were a ray of God descending to the witness bar.

“In presiding in this manner, Judge Bourriche assures himself a sort of infallibility, and the only one to which a judge can aspire. When the man who testifies is armed with a saber, it is the saber that must be heard and not the man. The man is contemptible and may be wrong. The saber is not contemptible and is always right. Judge Bourriche has profoundly penetrated the spirit of the laws. Society rests on force, and force must be respected as the august foundation of societies. Justice is the administration of force. Judge Bourriche knows that Constable 64 is a particle of the Prince. The Prince resides in each of his officers. To undermine the authority of Constable 64 is to weaken the State. To eat one of the leaves of the artichoke is to eat the artichoke, as Bossuet says in his sublime language. (Politics Drawn from Holy Scripture, passim)

“All the Swords of a State are turned in the same direction. By opposing them to one another, one subverts the republic. That is why the accused Crainquebille was justly condemned to fifteen days in prison and a fifty-franc fine, on the testimony of Constable 64. I think I hear Judge Bourriche himself explaining the lofty and beautiful reasons that inspired his sentence. I think I hear him say:

“‘I judged this individual in conformity with Constable 64, because Constable 64 is the emanation of the public force. And to recognize my wisdom, you have only to imagine that I acted inversely. You will see at once that it would have been absurd. For if I judged against the force, my judgments would not be carried out. Note, gentlemen, that judges are obeyed only as long as they have force on their side. Without gendarmes, the judge would be nothing but a poor dreamer. I would hurt myself if I ruled against a gendarme. Besides, the genius of the laws opposes it. To disarm the strong and arm the weak would be to change the social order that I have a mission to preserve. Justice is the sanction of established injustices. Has it ever been seen opposed to conquerors and contrary to usurpers? When an illegitimate power arises, it has only to recognize it to make it legitimate. Everything is in the form, and there is between crime and innocence only the thickness of a sheet of stamped paper. — It was up to you, Crainquebille, to be the stronger. If, after crying “Death to the cows!” you had had yourself declared emperor, dictator, president of the Republic, or even a city councilor, I assure you that I would not have condemned you to fifteen days in prison and a fifty-franc fine. I would have held you free of all penalty. You may believe me.’

“Thus doubtless would have spoken Judge Bourriche, for he has a judicial mind and knows what a magistrate owes to society. He defends its principles with order and regularity. Justice is social. Only bad spirits would want it human and sensitive. It is administered with fixed rules and not with the shivers of the flesh and the lights of intelligence. Above all, do not ask it to be just, it has no need to be since it is justice, and I will even tell you that the idea of a just justice could only have germinated in the head of an anarchist. Judge Magnaud renders, it is true, equitable sentences. But they are overturned, and that is justice.

“The true judge weighs testimonies by the weight of arms. This was seen in the Crainquebille affair, and in other more celebrated cases.”

So spoke M. Jean Lermite, walking from one end to the other of the Hall of Lost Steps.

Maître Joseph Aubarrée, who knew the Palace, replied, scratching the tip of his nose:

“If you want my opinion, I don’t think Judge Bourriche rose to such a lofty metaphysics. In my view, in admitting the testimony of Constable 64 as the expression of the truth, he simply did what he had always seen done. It is in imitation that one must seek the reason for most human actions. By conforming to custom, one will always pass for an honest man. Those are called good people who do as others do.”

CHAPTER V ON THE SUBMISSION OF CRAINQUEBILLE TO THE LAWS OF THE REPUBLIC

Crainquebille, led back to prison, sat on his chained stool, full of astonishment and admiration. He did not know very well himself that the judges had been mistaken. The Court had hidden its intimate weaknesses from him beneath the majesty of its forms. He could not believe that he was right against magistrates whose reasons he had not understood. It was impossible for him to conceive that something was amiss in so fine a ceremony. For, going neither to mass nor to the Élysée, he had, in his whole life, seen nothing so beautiful as a police court judgment. He knew well that he had not cried “Death to the cows!” And, that he had been condemned to fifteen days in prison for having cried it, that was, to his mind, an august mystery, one of those articles of faith to which believers adhere without understanding them, an obscure, brilliant, adorable, and terrible revelation.

This poor old man recognized himself as guilty of having mystically offended Constable 64, as the little boy going to catechism recognizes himself guilty of Eve’s sin. It was taught to him, by his verdict, that he had cried: “Death to the cows!” Then he must have cried “Death to the cows!” in a mysterious fashion, unknown to himself. He was transported into a supernatural world. His judgment was his apocalypse.

If he did not form a clear idea of the offense, he formed no clearer idea of the penalty. His condemnation had seemed to him a solemn, ritual, and superior thing, a dazzling thing that one does not understand, that one does not discuss, and from which one has neither to rejoice nor to complain. At that hour, he would have seen Judge Bourriche, a halo on his brow, descend with white wings through the opened ceiling, and he would not have been surprised by this new manifestation of judicial glory. He would have said to himself: there goes my case continuing!

The next day his lawyer came to see him:

“Well, my good man, you’re not doing too badly? Courage! Two weeks pass quickly. We haven’t too much to complain about.”

“As for that, you can say those gentlemen were very gentle, very polite; not a harsh word. I wouldn’t have believed it. And the guard had put on white gloves. Did you notice?”

“All things considered, we did well to confess.”

“Perhaps.”

“Crainquebille, I have good news for you. A charitable person, whom I have interested in your situation, has given me a sum of fifty francs for you, which will go toward payment of the fine to which you have been condemned.”

“So when will you give me the fifty francs?”

“They will be paid at the clerk’s office. Don’t worry about it.”

“All the same, I thank the person.”

And Crainquebille, meditatively, murmured:

“What’s happening to me isn’t ordinary.”

“Don’t exaggerate, Crainquebille. Your case is not rare, far from it.”

“Could you tell me where they’ve put my cart?”

CHAPTER VI CRAINQUEBILLE BEFORE PUBLIC OPINION

Crainquebille, out of prison, pushed his cart down the rue Montmartre, crying: “Cabbages, turnips, carrots!” He had neither pride nor shame about his adventure. He did not keep a painful memory of it. In his mind, it was something of theater, travel, and dream. He was above all happy to be walking in the mud, on the city pavement, and to see above his head the sky, all wet and dirty like the gutter, the good sky of his city. He stopped at every corner to drink a glass; then, free and joyful, having spat in his hands to lubricate the calloused palms, he seized the shafts and pushed the cart, while before him the sparrows, like him early risers and poor, who sought their living on the roadway, flew up in sheaves with his familiar cry: “Cabbages, turnips, carrots!” An old housewife who had approached said to him, feeling the celery:

“What happened to you, old Crainquebille? It’s a good three weeks since we’ve seen you. Have you been sick? You’re a bit pale.”

“I’ll tell you, Mme Mailloche, I’ve been living the life of a gentleman of leisure.”

Nothing was changed in his life, except that he went to the tavern more often than usual, because he had the idea that it was a holiday, and that he had made the acquaintance of charitable persons. He returned home a bit merry to his garret. Stretched out in his pallet, he pulled over himself the sacks the chestnut vendor on the corner had lent him, which served as his blankets, and he thought: “Prison, you can’t complain; you have everything you need there. But you’re still better off at home.”

His contentment was short-lived. He soon noticed that his customers were giving him cold looks.

“Fine celery, Mme Cointreau!”

“I don’t need anything.”

“What do you mean, you don’t need anything? You don’t live on air.”

And Mme Cointreau, without giving him any answer, proudly went back into the large bakery of which she was the owner. The shopkeepers and concierges, formerly assiduous around his verdant and flowering cart, now turned away from him. Arrived at the cobbler’s shop of the Guardian Angel, which was the spot where his judicial adventures began, he called:

“Mme Bayard, Mme Bayard, you owe me fifteen sous from the other time.”

But Mme Bayard, who sat at her counter, did not deign to turn her head.

The whole rue Montmartre knew that old Crainquebille had come out of prison, and the whole rue Montmartre no longer knew him. The report of his condemnation had reached as far as the faubourg and the tumultuous corner of the rue Richer. There, around noon, he saw Madame Laure, his good and faithful customer, leaning over little Martin’s cart. She was feeling a big cabbage. Her hair shone in the sun like abundant strands of gold broadly twisted. And little Martin, a nobody, a dirty rat, was swearing to her, hand on heart, that there was no finer merchandise than his. At this sight Crainquebille’s heart was torn. He pushed his cart against little Martin’s and said to Madame Laure, in a plaintive and broken voice:

“It’s not right to be unfaithful to me.”

Madame Laure, as she herself acknowledged, was no duchess. It was not in society that she had formed an idea of the Black Maria and the Depot. But one can be honest in all stations, can’t one? Everyone has self-respect, and one doesn’t like to deal with an individual who’s come out of prison. So she replied to Crainquebille only by feigning a heave of disgust. And the old street vendor, feeling the affront, howled:

“Hussy!”

Madame Laure dropped her green cabbage and exclaimed:

“Oh! go on, old jailbird! It comes out of prison and insults people!”

Crainquebille, if he had been cool-headed, would never have reproached Madame Laure for her condition. He knew too well that one doesn’t do what one wants in life, that one doesn’t choose one’s trade, and that there are good people everywhere. He was accustomed to wisely ignore what his customers did in their homes, and he despised no one. But he was beside himself. He gave Madame Laure the names of hussy, carcass, and streetwalker three times. A circle of onlookers formed around Madame Laure and Crainquebille, who exchanged several more insults as solemn as the first, and who would have run through their whole rosary if a constable had not suddenly appeared and, by his silence and immobility, rendered them at once as mute and motionless as himself. They separated. But this scene finished ruining Crainquebille in the opinion of the Montmartre faubourg and the rue Richer.

CHAPTER VII THE CONSEQUENCES

And the old man went about muttering:

“For sure she’s a codfish. And there’s nothing more codfish than that woman.”

But deep in his heart, that was not what he reproached her for. He did not despise her for being what she was. He rather esteemed her for it, knowing her to be thrifty and orderly. In the old days they had chatted together willingly. She spoke to him of her parents who lived in the country. And they both shared the same wish of cultivating a little garden and raising chickens. She was a good customer. To see her buying cabbages from little Martin, a dirty rat, a nobody, had been a blow to his stomach; and when he had seen her pretending to despise him, the mustard had risen to his nose, and well!

The worst of it was that she was not the only one who treated him like a mangy dog. No one would acknowledge him anymore. Just like Madame Laure, Madame Cointreau the baker, Madame Bayard of the Guardian Angel despised him and pushed him away. Society at large, in short.

So! because you’d been put in the shade for a fortnight, you weren’t even good enough to sell leeks anymore! Was that fair? Did it make any sense to starve a decent fellow because he’d had trouble with the cops? If he could no longer sell his vegetables, he had nothing left but to croak.

Like mistreated wine, he was turning sour. After having “had words” with Madame Laure, he now had them with everybody. For nothing at all he told his customers what he thought of them, and without mincing words, if you please. If they handled the merchandise a bit too long, he called them outright grumblers and slovens; likewise at the tavern, he gave the comrades a tongue-lashing. His friend the chestnut vendor, who no longer recognized him, declared that this damned old Crainquebille was a real porcupine. It cannot be denied: he was becoming rude, disagreeable, foul-mouthed, loud-mouthed. It was because, finding society imperfect, he had less facility than a professor of the School of Moral and Political Sciences to express his ideas on the vices of the system and the necessary reforms, and his thoughts did not unfold in his head with order and measure.

Misfortune was making him unjust. He took revenge on those who bore him no ill will and sometimes on weaker people. Thus he gave a slap to Alphonse, the wine merchant’s little boy, who had asked him if one was comfortable in the shade. He slapped him and said:

“Dirty kid! it’s your father who should be in the shade instead of getting rich selling poison.”

An act and a word that did him no honor; for, as the chestnut vendor rightly pointed out, one should not beat a child, nor reproach him for his father, whom he did not choose.

He had taken to drink. The less money he earned, the more brandy he drank. Formerly thrifty and sober, he marveled himself at this change.

“I was never a guzzler,” he said. “It must be that you get less sensible as you get old.”

Sometimes he judged his misconduct and laziness severely:

“My old Crainquebille, you’re no longer good for anything but lifting your elbow.”

Sometimes he deceived himself and persuaded himself that he drank out of need:

“I have to have a glass now and then to give me strength and to cool me off. Sure, I’ve got something burning inside. And besides, drink is refreshing.”

Often it happened that he missed the morning market and supplied himself only with spoiled goods delivered on credit. One day, feeling his legs wobbly and his heart weary, he left his cart in the shed and spent the whole blessed day wandering around Madame Rose the tripe-seller’s stall and in front of all the taverns of the Halles. In the evening, sitting on a basket, he mused, and became conscious of his degradation. He recalled his former strength and his ancient labors, his long toils and his happy earnings, his innumerable, equal, and full days; the hundred paces, at night, on the pavement of the Halles, waiting for the market; the vegetables scooped up by armfuls and arranged with art in the cart, the little black coffee from old Théodore swallowed piping hot, standing, in a rush, the shafts firmly seized; his cry, vigorous as the cock’s crow, rending the morning air, his run through the busy streets, all his innocent and rough life as a human horse, who, for half a century, carried on his rolling stall, to city folk burned with late hours and worries, the fresh harvest of kitchen gardens. And shaking his head he sighed:

“No! I haven’t the courage I used to have. I’m finished. The pitcher goes to the well so often that at last it breaks. And then, since my trouble with the law, I haven’t the same character. I’m not the same man anymore.”

In short, he was demoralized. A man in that state, you might as well say he’s a man on the ground, unable to get up. Everyone who passes treads on him.

CHAPTER VIII THE FINAL CONSEQUENCES

Poverty came, black poverty. The old street vendor, who used to bring back five-franc pieces from the Montmartre faubourg by the bagful, now didn’t have a sou. It was winter. Expelled from his garret, he slept under carts in a shed. The rains having fallen for twenty-four days, the drains overflowed, and the shed was flooded.

Crouching in his cart, above the poisoned waters, in the company of spiders, rats, and starving cats, he mused in the darkness. Having eaten nothing all day and no longer having the chestnut vendor’s sacks to cover himself, he recalled the two weeks during which the government had given him room and board. He envied the lot of prisoners, who suffer neither cold nor hunger, and an idea came to him:

“Since I know the trick, why shouldn’t I use it?”

He got up and went out into the street. It was barely past eleven. The weather was bitter and black. A drizzle was falling, colder and more penetrating than rain. Rare passersby slid along the walls.

Crainquebille walked along the church of Saint-Eustache and turned into the rue Montmartre. It was deserted. A guardian of the peace stood rooted on the sidewalk at the apse of the church, under a gas lamp, and one could see, around the flame, a fine reddish rain falling. The constable received it on his hood. He looked frozen, but whether he preferred the light to the darkness, or was tired of walking, he stayed under his streetlight, and perhaps made of it a companion, a friend. This trembling flame was his only company in the solitary night. His immobility did not seem entirely human; the reflection of his boots on the wet sidewalk, which resembled a lake, prolonged him downward and gave him from a distance the look of an amphibious monster, half emerged from the waters. Closer up, hooded and armed, he had a monastic and military air. The heavy features of his face, still enlarged by the shadow of the hood, were peaceful and sad. He had a thick, short, gray moustache. He was an old cop, a man of about forty.

Crainquebille approached him softly and, in a hesitant, weak voice, said to him:

“Death to the cows!”

Then he waited for the effect of this consecrated utterance. But it was followed by no effect. The cop remained motionless and mute, arms crossed under his short cloak. His eyes, wide open and shining in the shadow, watched Crainquebille with sadness, vigilance, and contempt.

Crainquebille, astonished but still retaining a remnant of resolution, stammered:

“Death to the cows! I said to you.”

There was a long silence during which the fine, reddish rain fell and the icy shadow reigned. At last the cop spoke:

“That’s not something to say… For sure and certain, that’s not something to say. At your age you should know better… Be on your way.”

“Why don’t you arrest me?” asked Crainquebille.

The cop shook his head under his damp hood:

“If we had to collar every drunk who says what’s not to be said, there’d be plenty of work!… And what good would it do?”

Crainquebille, crushed by this magnanimous contempt, stood a long while stupid and silent, his feet in the gutter. Before leaving, he tried to explain:

“It wasn’t at you I said ‘Death to the cows!’ It wasn’t at one any more than at another that I said it. It was for an idea.”

The cop replied with austere gentleness:

“Whether it was for an idea or for anything else, it wasn’t to be said, because when a man is doing his duty and enduring plenty of hardship, one shouldn’t insult him with foolish words… I repeat, be on your way.”

Crainquebille, head lowered and arms dangling, sank into the rain and the shadow.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I. — The Majesty of Justice Chapter II. — The Adventure of Crainquebille Chapter III. — Crainquebille Before the Court Chapter IV. — Apology for Judge Bourriche Chapter V. — On the Submission of Crainquebille to the Laws of the Republic Chapter VI. — Crainquebille Before Public Opinion Chapter VII. — The Consequences Chapter VIII. — The Final Consequences

Finished printing five thousand copies for the first edition on Thursday, October 9, 1902, at the Printing Works of Suresnes (E. Payen, manager) at 9, rue du Pont.