Petit index alphabétique
Short Alphabetical Index
Charles Péguy
FIRST CAHIER OF THE SEVENTH SERIES
Short alphabetical index of the analytical summary catalogue and very summary analytical table of the sixth series.
CAHIERS DE LA QUINZAINE, appearing twenty times a year, PARIS, 8, rue de la Sorbonne, ground floor.
We published in our earlier editions and in our first five series, 1900-1904, such a great number of documents, of texts forming dossiers, of information and commentaries; such a great number of cahiers of letters — novels, dramas, dialogues, poems and tales; such a great number of cahiers of history and philosophy; and these documents, information, texts, dossiers and commentaries, these cahiers of letters, history and philosophy were so considerable that we cannot think of giving even the most succinct statement of them here; to know what has appeared in the first five series of the cahiers, one need only send a money order of five francs to M. Andre Bourgeois, administrator of the cahiers, 8, rue de la Sorbonne, ground floor, Paris, fifth arrondissement; in return one will receive the analytical summary catalogue, 1900-1904, of our first five series.
This catalogue was properly established to give, as far as possible, an image in brief, an abridgment, an idea, abbreviated but complete, of our earlier editions and our first five series; everything is classified there in order; one need only read it to find, in their place, the references requested.
This catalogue, in-18 grand jesus, forms a very thick cahier of XII+408 very dense pages, marked five francs; this cahier counted as the first cahier of the sixth series and our subscribers received it at its date, October 2, 1904, as the first cahier of the sixth series; any person who up to December 31, 1905 subscribes retroactively to the sixth series receives it, by the very fact of their subscription, at the head of the series; we send it upon receipt of a money order of five francs to any person who requests it.
For the sixth series, working year 1904-1905, and while awaiting the publication of the analytical summary catalogue of our second five series, 1904-1909, one may consult — provisionally — the very summary analytical table that we have established and that we publish at the end of the present cahier.
To begin any work that one might have to undertake in our first analytical summary catalogue, consult below the provisional short alphabetical index that we have established of this analytical summary catalogue.
FOR THE NEW TERM
I am perfectly aware that I owe our former subscribers — that is, our subscribers to the sixth series and the series before it — an account of what happened, of why this enormous sixth series broke off cleanly after the cahier by our collaborator M. Paul Desjardins, Catholicism and Criticism, Reflections of a Layman on the Loisy Affair, seventeenth and last cahier of the sixth series; but I shall be allowed to reserve this account, if ever I can produce it, for a cahier that, being entirely from my hand, belongs to me in my own right, if ever I can produce one; we must safeguard above all this fundamental principle of our cahiers: that they are respectively autonomous, free among themselves, mutually free, free one from another, that each of them is born, lives and moves in a free company of free cahiers; this principle is one of those that have made the strength of our institution, and today less than ever am I disposed to renounce the principles that have made the strength of our first institution.
This present cahier is entirely a cahier of repertory; it does not therefore belong to me; it belongs to all the other cahiers, to the entire collection; it belongs to all its brother cahiers; I shall put in another cahier, if ever I can produce one, the account that I owe, if ever I can produce it.
It will therefore be in a more particular cahier, and if I may say so, a more intimate one; this present cahier is, by its very content, destined for a wider public; it is not only an indispensable instrument in the hands of our former subscribers; I also hope that through the care of our friends, through the care of our subscribers, perhaps even through the care of our enemies the authors, it will be put into the hands of a great number of people who do not know us.
What do our individual miseries matter; what does an account matter; indeed; what do the miseries and crises of this very institution matter, when at last this people is alive; what do these miseries matter, what do these crises matter, what do the miseries here matter, the eventualities close at hand, and the crises of this house, what do the final extremities matter after the five long weeks we have just passed through.
Unforgettable weeks of June; an entire people, an old people, certainly, an ancient people, the father of the modern world and of liberty, a still-great people, and, all things considered, the foremost of peoples, an entire people held for several months under the most brutal of military threats; a new Duke of Brunswick, sprung from the same German race, threatening this same ancient people with the same total subversion; and this great and old people only slowly awakening from its acquired laziness, its acquired slowness, its acquired modern cowardice; from its acquired weakness; finally, accomplices of German brutality, this old and this foremost people finding within itself the new manifestations of the most authentic treason.
Herve the traitor. The traitor Herve. Of all the spectacles of sadness we have seen these past four months, and of all the events of mourning that have sought to overwhelm us in succession, no spectacle was surely as sad, no event was as lamentable: as the spectacle offered, as the event brought by those wretched men of the pen; a spectacle that would have made a fine comedy, if one were permitted to laugh at such grave events; a pitiful event, if one were permitted to have any pity for so much base common cowardice.
Herve the traitor. The traitor Herve. A pitiful spectacle, if one dared, a surely grotesque spectacle, a comic event, if one wished, to see the embarrassment of all these men of the pen before the treason of the traitor Herve; since the hour when the treason of the traitor Herve was committed, no one will ever know what treasures of ingenuity were spent, so as not to name Herve by his traitor’s name, so as not to name Herve’s treason by its name of treason, by all those wretches who, abandoned by men and gods through the misfortune of the times, with their feeble hands wield a pen, instead of holding a useful instrument, a tool, a spade, a hammer, some implement, a starting lever on some industrial machine.
Herve the traitor. The traitor Herve. Inconsolable perplexities of the pen-wielders; embarrassments of the circumlocutionists; spinelessness of the periphrastic; whirling of flies; distresses; how to avoid naming what is, what is; what imaginings, so as not to name a traitor, a traitor; what migraines in the evening, what abortive meningitis, so as not to name treason, this treason. What cramps in the nape of the neck, and, in the occiput, what stiffness. Never had anyone worked so hard, as they say, in the editorial offices of reviews and newspapers.
Herve the traitor. The traitor Herve. To measure Herve quite exactly, to evaluate, to estimate his treason, to judge his act quite justly, one must and it suffices; one must go back, and it suffices to place oneself again, by an operation of return, by a re-situation backward, by a recall of memory, in a moral situation chosen above all others, unique, marvelously clear in justice and truth, in the purest situation we have ever occupied, in a moral situation so marvelously beautiful that we shall never find it again — and shall we ever find one even comparable to it? — in the singularly enchanted moral situation in which we lived for several years at the heart of the first, the old Dreyfus affair.
Herve the traitor. The traitor Herve. Let us forget for a moment the subsequent disease, corruption and death of that eternally famous affair. Let us forget all that parliamentary political rot. Let us forget the capitulations of our General Staffs. Let us forget the parliamentary treasons, the political cowardice, the laziness of the judiciary too, the governmental weaknesses and all the subsequent electoral lies. Let us forget the treason, the corruption, the exploitation, the capitulation, the crime. Let us forget that Jaures committed the crime of imposing on us an odious and criminal amnesty. Let us forget, let us cease to see all that blackish mud into which that formerly clean affair has fallen, where we see it lying, and from which it will never rise again. Let us forget even and finally all those singular illnesses that successively and as if by chance suddenly strike all the counselor-reporters at the Court of Cassation shortly after they have been designated to make the definitive report of that unfortunate affair. Let us forget these consequent miseries and stains. By an effort of memory, in thought let us go back to those unforgettable years, to those marvelous years, to those years of moral and mental lucidity perhaps unique in the history of the world.
Herve the traitor. The traitor Herve. This return accomplished, I ask it of all those former and pure Dreyfusists, who belonging to no General Staffs never betrayed their cause, of all those little people who were the inimitable soldiers of pure justice and pure truth to a degree never before seen realized, I ask it of those poor people, those former moralists, those former Dreyfusists, a betrayed army, a sold army, a surrendered army, formerly the best army in the world, if only one had known, or if one had only wished, not lions led by donkeys, but very honest people stripped bare by politicians, I ask it of my colleagues the former seekers of justice and truth, the laughingstock of Guesdists and the expected prey of the former nationalist demagogy, I ask it of all those poor people, my colleagues in ridicule, of all those simple folk who little by little rallied to the cahiers, and around the cahiers, I say to the cahiers and nowhere else, I ask it, and in this form I defy anyone to evade the question, to dodge the answer, to slip by some sideways route; I ask it, in brief, of any person of good faith. I say: If at the heart of the Dreyfus affair we had been demonstrated by exact scientific, historical, technical, juridical proofs that M. Dreyfus (Alfred) — I am making here a very disagreeable supposition, but I shall be pardoned for the good of the cause — so if we had been demonstrated by these sorts of exact proofs that M. Dreyfus (Alfred), and so on, had delivered to the German General Staff the chart of French mobilization; particularly if we had been thus demonstrated that M. Dreyfus had delivered the chart of that part of mobilization by which the reserve army rejoins the active army in the early days and comes to reinforce the common line of defense, himself thus preventing or compromising this junction and reinforcement; and more particularly finally if we had been thus demonstrated that M. Dreyfus had delivered the chart of that part of the mobilization of reserves by which the mobilization of reserve regiments and territorial army supplied by reservists and territorials of the Yonne department is carried out, as if by chance, himself thus preventing or compromising specifically that part of the general mobilization, what would we have said immediately that he was, Dreyfus?
A traitor.
So Herve, what is he?
Quite simply.
Quite exactly.
A traitor.
CHARLES PEGUY
This short alphabetical index of our analytical summary catalogue is naturally, like this catalogue, valid for our earlier editions and for our first five series, 1900-1904;
It will be constantly kept up to date, that is to say that until the publication of the analytical summary catalogue of our second five series, 1904-1909, the first cahier of every new series will be this same short alphabetical index in which we shall additionally have incorporated, each time, the series before last, the preceding one being given each time at the end of the same cahier, and while awaiting its definitive establishment in the analytical summary catalogue in preparation, in a very summary analytical table;
Thus for the sixth series, 1904-1905, consult the very summary analytical table that appears at the end of the present cahier;
The prices marked here are the prices, simply carried over, from the analytical summary catalogue; these prices naturally cannot decrease; they will increase as cahiers not yet out of print come to be on the way to being out of print;
The pages marked here are fixed; they are the pages of the analytical summary catalogue where one will find the references in question.