VI
Before the Festival
The festival was approaching and the quiverings of it were already running through the streets, as ripples pass over the surface of the water when a storm is rising. The shops, adorned with flags, displayed a gaiety of dyes, and the merchants cheated about the three colors as grocers do over their candles. Hearts were wrought up, little by little. Citizens spoke in the streets, after dinner, about the festival and exchanged ideas regarding it.
“What a festival it will be, my friends, what a festival!”
“You didn’t know? All the sovereigns will come incognito, as bourgeois, to see it.”
“It seems that the Emperor of Russia has arrived; he intends to go everywhere with the Prince of Wales.”
“Oh! What a festival it will be!”
It would be a festival, certainly, what Monsieur Patissot called a great occasion; one of those indescribable tumults that for fifteen hours roll from one end of the city to another all the populace, bedizened with tinsel, a wave of perspiring people, where, side by side are tossed the stout gossip with tricolored ribbons, puffing and panting, who has grown stout behind her counter; the rickety employee, towing his wife and brat; the workingman, carrying his youngster astride his neck; the bewildered provincial, with his stupefied, idiotic physiognomy, the lightly-shaved groom still smelling of the stable. And the strangers dressed like monkeys, the English women, like giraffes, the shining-faced water-carrier, and the innumerable phalanx of little bourgeois, inoffensive citizens, amused at everything. O topsy-turvyness, backbreaking fatigue, sweat and dust, vociferations, eddies of human flesh, extermination of corns, bewilderment of all thought, frightful odors, breaths of the multitudes, wafts of garlic, give, oh, give to Monsieur Patissot all the joy his heart can contain!
Our worthy friend made his preparations for the festival after reading the proclamation of the mayor on the walls of the district.
This notice ran:
It is principally to the private decorations that I wish to call your attention. Decorate your homes, illuminate your windows, unite, club together, to give your houses and your streets a more brilliant and more artistic appearance than that of the neighboring houses and streets.
Monsieur Patissot pondered deeply over what artistic appearance he could give his own house.
A serious obstacle presented itself. His only window looked upon a court, a dark court, narrow and deep, where only the rats would see his Venetian lanterns.
He must have a public opening. He found one. On the first floor of his house lived a rich man, a noble and a royalist, whose coachman, also a reactionist, occupied a room on the sixth floor, facing the street. Monsieur Patissot supposed that, for a certain price, any conscience could be bought, and he offered five francs to this wielder of the whip to give up to him his room, from noon to midnight. The offer was accepted at once.
Then he began to busy himself about the decorations. Were three flags and four Chinese lanterns enough to give to this snuffbox an artistic physiognomy and to express all the exaltation of his soul? No, decidedly not! But, in spite of long researches and nocturnal meditations, Monsieur Patissot could not think of anything else. He consulted his neighbors, who were astounded at his inquiry. He questioned his colleagues. Everybody had purchased lanterns and flags, attaching to them tricolored decorations for the day.
Then he began to seek for an original idea. He haunted cafés, approaching the customers, but they were lacking in imagination. Then one morning he climbed to the top of an omnibus. A gentleman of respectable aspect was smoking a cigar at his side; a workingman further off puffed at his reversed pipe; two street-boys were near the coachman; and employees of all sorts were going to business for the price of three sous.
Before the shops bundles of flags were resplendent under the rising sun. Patissot turned toward his neighbor.
“This will be a fine festival,” said he. The gentleman gave a side glance and replied with an arrogant air: “It’s all the same to me!”
“You are not going to take part in it?” Patissot asked, surprised.
The other disdainfully shook his head.
“They make me sick with their festival! What is it the festival of? The government? I don’t recognize this government, Monsieur.”
But Patissot, himself an employee of the government, sternly answered:
“The government, Monsieur, is the Republic.”
His neighbor was not disconcerted, and, quietly putting his hands into his pockets, replied:
“Well, what of it? I don’t object. Republic or anything else, I don’t care about it. What I want, Monsieur, is to know my government. I have seen Charles X and I stood by him; I have seen Louis Philippe and I stood by him; I have seen Napoleon III, and I stood by him; but I have never seen the Republic.”
Patissot, still serious, replied:
“It is represented by its President.”
“Well, let them show him to me,” the other grunted.
Patissot shrugged his shoulders.
“Everybody can see him—he is not concealed in a wardrobe.”
But suddenly the stout man grew angry:
“Pardon me, Monsieur, he cannot be seen. I have tried more than a hundred times, Monsieur. I have posted myself near the Élysée; he did not come out. A passerby told me that he was playing billiards in the café opposite. I went into the café opposite. He was not there. They promised me that he would go to Melan for the meeting. I went to Melan and I did not see him. I got tired finally. I have never seen Gambetta, either, and I don’t know a single deputy.”
He became excited.
“A government, Monsieur, ought to show itself. It is made for that, for nothing else. People ought to know that on a certain day, at a certain hour, the government will pass through a certain street. In that way people can see it and be satisfied.”
Patissot, quieted, rather liked these statements.
“It is true,” said he, “that people would prefer to know those who govern them.”
The gentleman replied in a softer tone:
“Do you know how I should manage the festival myself? Well, Monsieur, I should have a procession with gilded cars, like the sacred chariots of kings, and I should take the members of the government, from the President down to the deputies, through Paris in them, all day long. In that way everybody would know by sight at least, the persons of the State.”
But one of the street-boys near the coachman turned around, saying:
“And the fat ox, where would you put him?”
A laugh ran through the two benches. Patissot understood the objection, and murmured:
“That, perhaps, would not be dignified.”
The gentleman, after reflecting, agreed.
“Well, then,” said he, “I should place them on view somewhere so that everybody could see them without putting themselves out; on the Triumphal Arc de l’Étoile, for instance, and I should make the whole population file before them. That would lend great character to the event.”
But the boy again turned around and asked:
“Would it need a telescope to see their faces?”
The gentleman did not reply; he continued:
“It is like the distribution of flags! There ought to be some pretext, some organization, perhaps a little war; and then the standards could be presented to the troops as a recompense. I had an idea of which I wrote to the minister; but he has not deigned to reply to me. As they have chosen the date of the taking of the Bastile, an imitation of that might be made; they ought to have built a Bastile in cardboard, painted by a scene-painter, and concealing the whole Column of July within the walls. Then, Monsieur, the troop should make an assault and capture the citadel. That would have been a fine spectacle, and a lesson at the same time, to see the army itself overthrow the ramparts of tyranny. Then they ought to set the sham Bastile on fire; and amid the flames should appear the column, with the Genius of Liberty, symbol of a new order and of the freedom of the people.”
Everybody on the omnibus top listened this time, finding these ideas excellent. An old man said:
“That is a great thought, Monsieur, and one which does you honor. It is to be regretted that the government has not adopted it.”
A young man declared that they ought to have the poems of Barbier recited by actors in the streets, to teach the people art and liberty simultaneously.
This proposition excited great enthusiasm. Everybody wished to talk; their brains were exalted. A street-organ passing by droned out a bar of the “Marseillaise”; a workingman chanted the words, and everyone in chorus shouted the refrain. The lofty nature of the song and its stirring rhythm fired the coachman, whose flogged horses were galloping. Monsieur Patissot bawled at the top of his lungs, slapping his thighs, and the inside passengers, terrified, wondered what kind of tempest had burst over their heads.
They stopped singing after a time, and Monsieur Patissot, judging his neighbor to be a man well able to take the initiative, consulted him on the preparations which he expected to make.
“Lanterns and flags are all very well,” said Patissot, “but I would like something better.”
The other reflected a long time, but found nothing to suggest. So Monsieur Patissot, in despair of finding any novelty, bought three flags and four lanterns.