La tragédie d'Elektre et Oreste

The Tragedy of Electra and Orestes

Suares

AT PERIER’S

— Mister Madec brings something to eat, and begging your pardon, Boulon brings something to drink for Mister Madec, in his umbrella, since he drinks only water.

Then they sat down around the table, and right away Valentine brought a large earthenware teapot, amid the glasses and plates of petit beurre biscuits. The steaming, golden-brown tea was poured into the tall glasses where small tin spoons were plunged.

Boulon said at once:

— Well? Things are still going for the League? We’re meeting at Tetu’s in a week, you know?

Madame Boulon was monopolizing Valentine who had sat down, after removing her large apron, and in the bursts of voice, one could make out that there was much question, “my dear,” of Madame Durand, the prosecutor’s wife; of Madame Palier, the lawyer’s wife.

The three men were discussing the future of the League. Doctor Piault was accepting the presidency. Tetu would be secretary. It was a matter of grouping workers and intellectuals, the watchword of the day. Suddenly Valentine, escaping from Madame Boulon’s chatter, threw them this irony:

— Another fine story, that league of yours! Do you believe in it, Mister Madec? It’s always the same old thing, you know! An election business! I keep telling Perier that!

This air of saintly reason delighted Madec.

— If you think I have any illusions, you’re mistaken, dear madame!

— Yet, interrupted Boulon with conviction, if there was ever an occasion to band together against the clergy, it seems to me this is it! I should think that, all the same, you’re anticlerical?

— I’m anti-nothing at all, replied Yves with a smile. Unless it be anti-anti, if I may say so; not even anti-alcohol! Eh? That surprises you?

Boulon laughed, coughing, in the smoke of his pipe:

— Well, then, dear sir, I don’t understand you! — Anti-alcohol still, I won’t say no; in a country like this one for instance, where the petty bourgeois and the peasant live only by the vine and by alcohol, you mustn’t come singing too loudly, they wouldn’t listen to anyone! But, good God! If you’re not anticlerical!… We’re rotting with the Black Plague; and it’s not too soon for the government to notice. I believe, on the contrary, you see, that the Church is the first evil we must be cured of. Suppression of the congregations first, and then the abrogation of the Falloux Law! After that, we’ll breathe a little!

— What do you think, Perier? asked Madec calmly.

Perier hesitated a moment:

— Monsieur Madec, I…

— For God’s sake stop with your monsieur! Am I calling you monsieur Perier?

Perier gave an embarrassed laugh:

— Well, I’d rather agree with Boulon!

A melancholy seized Yves. The two women were listening, although Madame Boulon seemed above all absorbed in tasting her tea and examining a skein of black wool she found hanging on her chair behind her.

But Valentine was following what Madec was saying:

— Come now! That’s fine! You too? You think the government will change anything about it? Never, do you hear! Never has any government done anything good that didn’t turn for the worse. It is the punishment of peoples… who must be free.

Boulon was indignant:

— There are all the same some undeniable reforms! You can’t deny that the workers haven’t drawn great benefit from the law on workplace accidents, for instance! And for unions, strikes. Look, for the railroad, Perier himself will tell you.

— Oh no, not that! Perier decided suddenly.

— Ah! said Boulon, I know well that everything isn’t perfect; but Mister Madec, he, it’s perfection right away. I can guess; he wants no practical means!…

— Go on, my dear fellow, you amuse me, replied Madec. Call me a utopian then! It’s burning your throat to tell me so. It’s been sung a long time in the ears of all people who see to the end of their noses!… Let’s not get carried away. Let’s get back to our sheep, I mean to the people of the League. Have the goodness to tell me what it’s done, your League of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen! You know that’s a fine name, by Jove! And that it obliges one terribly? Now, apart from the Affair, where it was a matter of a great heap of money, of an officer, and of a powerful social class, the Jews; where do you see it stir, this famous League?… Don’t cry shame! You are well aware that I am one of the oldest, the most irreducible Dreyfusards!… I, naively, imagined at the beginning that it would, through its thousands of eyes and forefingers, see and denounce all the filth from which the poorest wretches around us suffer and groan, who are men and citizens as much as any Dreyfus, eh?… Oh, fat chance! It sleeps quietly, the fine League… Yes! From time to time it beats the big drum around some little soldier they want to push too fast into Biribi… But is that all, by God! To rely on it, one would say that all is well, all is for the best in the best of all worlds. Instead of that, should it ever be idle, night or day!…