All Penguinia heard with horror of Pyrot's crime; at the same time there was a
sort of satisfaction that this embezzlement combined with treachery and even
bordering on sacrilege, had been committed by a Jew. In order to understand
this feeling it is necessary to be acquainted with the state of public opinion
regarding the Jews both great and small. As we have had occasion to say in
this history, the universally detested and all powerful financial caste was
composed of Christians and of Jews. The Jews who formed part of it and on whom
the people poured all their hatred were the upper-class Jews. They possessed
immense riches and, it was said, held more than a fifth part of the total
property of Penguinia. Outside this formidable caste there was a multitude of
Jews of a mediocre condition, who were not more loved than the others and who
were feared much less. In every ordered State, wealth is a sacred thing: in
democracies it is the only sacred thing. Now the Penguin State was democratic.
Three or four financial companies exercised a more extensive, and above all,
more effective and continuous power, than that of the Ministers of the
Republic. The latter were puppets whom the companies ruled in secret, whom
they compelled by intimidation or corruption to favour themselves at the
expense of the State, and whom they ruined by calumnies in the press if they
remained honest. In spite of the secrecy of the Exchequer, enough appeared to
make the country indignant, but the middle-class Penguins had, from the
greatest to the least of them, been brought up to hold money in great
reverence, and as they all had property, either much or little, they were
strongly impressed with the solidarity of capital and understood that a small
fortune is not safe unless a big one is protected. For these reasons they
conceived a religious respect for the Jews' millions, and self-interest being
stronger with them than aversion, they were as much afraid as they were of
death to touch a single hair of one of the rich Jews whom they detested.
Towards the poorer Jews they felt less ceremonious and when they saw any of
them down they trampled on them. That is why the entire nation learnt with
thorough satisfaction that the traitor was a Jew. They could take vengeance on
all Israel in his person without any fear of compromising the public credit.
That Pyrot had stolen the eighty thousand trusses of hay nobody hesitated for
a moment to believe. No one doubted because the general ignorance in which
everybody was concerning the affair did not allow of doubt, for doubt is a
thing that demands motives. People do not doubt without reasons in the same
way that people believe without reasons. The thing was not doubted because it
was repeated everywhere and, with the public, to repeat is to prove. It was
not doubted because people wished to believe Pyrot guilty and one believes
what one wishes to believe. Finally, it was not doubted because the faculty of
doubt is rare amongst men; very few minds carry in them its germs and these
are not developed without cultivation. Doubt is singular, exquisite,
philosophic, immoral, transcendent, monstrous, full of malignity, injurious to
persons and to property, contrary to the good order of governments, and to the
prosperity of empires, fatal to humanity, destructive of the gods, held in
horror by heaven and earth. The mass of the Penguins were ignorant of doubt:
it believed in Pyrot's guilt and this conviction immediately became one of its
chief national beliefs and an essential truth in its patriotic creed.
Pyrot was tried secretly and condemned.
General Panther immediately went to the Minister of War to tell him the
result.
"Luckily," said he, "the judges were certain, for they had no proofs."
"Proofs," muttered Greatauk, "Proofs, what do they prove? There is only one
certain, irrefragable proof--the confession of the guilty person. Has Pyrot
confessed?"
"No, General."
"He will confess, he ought to. Panther, we must induce him; tell him it is to
his interest. Promise him that, if he confesses, he will obtain favours, a
reduction of his sentence, full pardon; promise him that if he confesses his
innocence will be admitted, that he will be decorated. Appeal to his good
feelings. Let him confess from patriotism, for the flag, for the sake of
order, from respect for the hierarchy, at the special command of the Minister
of War militarily. . . . But tell me, Panther, has he not confessed already?
There are tacit confessions; silence is a confession."
"But, General, he is not silent; he keeps on squealing like a pig that he is
innocent."
"Panther, the confessions of a guilty man sometimes result from the vehemence
of his denials. To deny desperately is to confess. Pyrot has confessed; we
must have witnesses of his confessions, justice requires them."
There was in Western Penguinia a seaport called La Cirque, formed of three
small bays and formerly greatly frequented by ships, but now solitary and
deserted. Gloomy lagoons stretched along its low coasts exhaling a pestilent
odour, while fever hovered over its sleepy waters. Here, on the borders of the
sea, there was built a high square tower, like the old Campanile at Venice,
from the side of which, close to the summit hung an open cage which was
fastened by a chain to a transverse beam. In the times of the Draconides the
Inquisitors of Alca used to put heretical clergy into this cage. It had been
empty for three hundred years, but now Pirot was imprisoned in it under the
guard of sixty warders, who lived in the tower and did not lose sight of him
night or day, spying on him for confessions that they might afterwards report
to the Minister of War. For Greatauk, careful and prudent, desired confessions
and still further confessions. Greatauk, who was looked upon as a fool, was in
reality a man of great ability and full of rare foresight.
In the mean time Pyrot, burnt by the sun, eaten by mosquitoes, soaked in the
rain, hail and snow, frozen by the cold, tossed about terribly by the wind,
beset by the sinister croaking of the ravens that perched upon his cage, kept
writing down his innocence on pieces torn off his shirt with a tooth-pick
dipped in blood. These rags were lost in the sea or fell into the hands of the
gaolers. But Pyrot's protests moved nobody because his confessions had been
published.
Read next: BOOK VI - MODERN TIMES#CHAPTER III - COUNT DE MAUBEC DE LA DENTDULYNX
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