Jealousy is a virtue of democracies which preserves them from tyrants.
Deputies began to envy the Prime Minister his golden key. For a year his
domination over the beauteous Madame Ceres had been known to the whole
universe. The provinces, whither news and fashions only arrive after a
complete revolution of the earth round the sun, were at last informed of the
illegitimate loves of the Cabinet. The provinces preserve an austere morality;
women are more virtuous there than they are in the capital.
Various reasons have been alleged for this: Education, example, simplicity of
life. Professor Haddock asserts that this virtue of provincial ladies is
solely due to the fact that the heels of their shoes are low. "A woman," said
he, in a learned article in the "Anthropological Review", "a woman attracts a
civilized man in proportion as her feet make an angle with the ground. If this
angle is as much as thirty-five degrees, the attraction becomes acute. For the
position of the feet upon the ground determines the whole carriage of the
body, and it results that provincial women, since they wear low heels, are not
very attractive, and preserve their virtue with ease." These conclusions were
not generally accepted. It was objected that under the influence of English
and American fashions, low heels had been introduced generally without
producing the results attributed to them by the learned Professor; moreover,
it was said that the difference he pretended to establish between the morals
of the metropolis and those of the provinces is perhaps illusory, and that if
it exists, it is apparently due to the fact that great cities offer more
advantages and facilities for love than small towns provide. However that may
be, the provinces began to murmur against the Prime Minister, and to raise a
scandal. This was not yet a danger, but there was a possibility that it might
become one.
For the moment the peril was nowhere and yet everywhere. The majority remained
solid; but the leaders became stiff and exacting. Perhaps Hippolyte Ceres
would never have intentionally sacrificed his interests to his vengeance. But
thinking that he could henceforth, without compromising his own fortune,
secretly damage that of Paul Visire, he devoted himself to the skilful and
careful preparation of difficulties and perils for the Head of the Government.
Though far from equalling his rival in talent, knowledge, and authority, he
greatly surpassed him in his skill as a lobbyist. The most acute
parliamentarians attributed the recent misfortunes of the majority to his
refusal to vote. At committees, by a calculated imprudence, he favoured
motions which he knew the Prime Minister could not accept. One day his
intentional awkwardness provoked a sudden and violent conflict between the
Minister of the Interior, and his departmental Treasurer. Then Ceres became
frightened and went no further. It would have been dangerous for him to
overthrow the ministry too soon. His ingenious hatred found an issue by
circuitous paths. Paul Visire had a poor cousin of easy morals who bore his
name. Ceres, remembering this lady, Celine Visire, brought her into
prominence, arranged that she should become intimate with several foreigners,
and procured her engagements in the music-halls. One summer night, on a stage
in the Champs Elysees before a tumultuous crowd, she performed risky dances to
the sounds of wild music which was audible in the gardens where the President
of the Republic was entertaining Royalty. The name of Visire, associated with
these scandals, covered the walls of the town, filled the newspapers, was
repeated in the cafes and at balls, and blazed forth in letters of fire upon
the boulevards.
Nobody regarded the Prime Minister as responsible for the scandal of his
relatives, but a bad idea of his family came into existence, and the influence
of the statesman was diminished.
Almost immediately he was made to feel this in a pretty sharp fashion. One day
in the House, on a simple question, Labillette, the Minister of Religion and
Public Worship, who was suffering from an attack of liver, and beginning to be
exasperated by the intentions and intrigues of the clergy, threatened to close
the Chapel of St. Orberosia, and spoke without respect of the National Virgin.
The entire Right rose up in indignation; the Left appeared to give but a
half-hearted support to the rash Minister. The leaders of the majority did not
care to attack a popular cult which brought thirty millions a year into the
country. The most moderate of the supporters of the Right, M. Bigourd, made
the question the subject of a resolution and endangered the Cabinet. Luckily,
Fortune Lapersonne, the Minister of Public Works, always conscious of the
obligations of power, was able in the Prime Minister's absence to repair the
awkwardness and indecorum of his colleague, the Minister of Public Worship. He
ascended the tribune and bore witness to the respect in which the Government
held the heavenly Patron of the country, the consoler of so many ills which
science admitted its powerlessness to relieve.
When Paul Visire, snatched at last from Eveline's arms, appeared in the House,
the administration was saved; but the Prime Minister saw himself compelled to
grant important concessions to the upper classes. He proposed in Parliament
that six armoured cruisers should be laid down, and thus won the sympathies of
the Steel Trust; he gave new assurances that the income tax would not be
imposed, and he had eighteen Socialists arrested.
He was soon to find himself opposed by more formidable obstacles. The
Chancellor of the neighbouring Empire in an ingenious and profound speech upon
the foreign relations of his sovereign, made a sly allusion to the intrigues
that inspired the policy of a great country. This reference, which was receive
with smiles by the Imperial Parliament, was certain to irritate a punctilious
republic. It aroused the national susceptibility, which directed its wrath
against its amorous Minister. The Deputies seized upon a frivolous pretext to
show their dissatisfaction. A ridiculous incident, the fact that the wife of a
subprefect had danced at the Moulin Rouge, forced the minister to face a vote
of censure, and he was within a few votes of being defeated. According to
general opinion, Paul Visire had never been so weak, so vacillating, or so
spiritless, as on that occasion.
He understood that he could only keep himself in office by a great political
stroke, and he decided on the expedition to Nigritia. This measure was
demanded by the great financial and industrial corporations and was one which
would bring concessions of immense forests to the capitalists, a loan of eight
millions to the banking companies, as well as promotions and decorations to
the naval and military officers. A pretext presented itself; some insult
needed to be avenged, or some debt to be collected. Six battleships, fourteen
cruisers, and eighteen transports sailed up the mouth of the river
Hippopotamus. Six hundred canoes vainly opposed the landing of the troops.
Admiral Vivier des Murenes' cannons produced an appalling effect upon the
blacks, who replied to them with flights of arrows, but in spite of their
fanatical courage they were entirely defeated. Popular enthusiasm was kindled
by the newspapers which the financiers subsidised, and burst into a blaze.
Some Socialists alone protested against this barbarous, doubtful, and
dangerous enterprise. They were at once arrested.
At that moment when the Minister, supported by wealth, and now beloved by the
poor, seemed unconquerable, the light of hate showed Hippolyte Ceres alone the
danger, and looking with a gloomy joy at his rival, he muttered between his
teeth, "He is wrecked, the brigand!"
Whilst the country intoxicated itself with glory, the neighbouring Empire
protested against the occupation of Nigritia by a European power, and these
protests following one another at shorter and shorter intervals became more
and more vehement. The newspapers of the interested Republic concealed all
causes for uneasiness; but Hippolyte Ceres heard the growing menace, and
determined at last to risk everything, even the fate of the ministry, in order
to ruin his enemy. He got men whom he could trust to write and insert articles
in several of the official journals, which, seeming to express Paul Visire's
precise views, attributed warlike intentions to the Head of the Government.
These articles roused a terrible echo abroad, and they alarmed the public
opinion of a nation which, while fond of soldiers, was not fond of war.
Questioned in the House on the foreign policy of his government, Paul Visire
made a re-assuring statement, and promised to maintain a face compatible with
the dignity of a great nation. His Minister of Foreign Affairs, Crombile, read
a declaration which was absolutely unintelligible, for the reason that it was
couched in diplomatic language. The Minister obtained a large majority.
But the rumours of war did not cease, and in order to avoid a new and
dangerous motion, the Prime Minister distributed eighty thousand acres of
forests in Nigritia among the Deputies, and had fourteen Socialists arrested.
Hippolyte Ceres went gloomily about the lobbies, confiding to the Deputies of
his group that he was endeavouring to induce the Cabinet to adopt a pacific
policy, and that he still hoped to succeed. Day by day the sinister rumours
grew in volume, and penetrating amongst the public, spread uneasiness and
disquiet. Paul Visire himself began to take alarm. What disturbed him most
were the silence and absence of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Crombile no
longer came to the meetings of the Cabinet. Rising at five o'clock in the
morning, he worked eighteen hours at his desk, and at last fell exhausted into
his waste-paper basket, from whence the registrars removed him, together with
the papers which they were going to sell to the military attaches of the
neighbouring Empire.
General Debonnaire believed that a campaign was imminent, and prepared for it.
Far from fearing war, he prayed for it, and confided his generous hopes to
Baroness Bildermann, who informed the neighbouring nation, which, acting on
her information, proceeded to a rapid mobilization.
The Minister of Finance unintentionally precipitated events. At the moment, he
was speculating for a fall, and in order to bring about a panic on the Stock
Exchange, he spread the rumour that war was now inevitable. The neighbouring
Empire, deceived by this action, and expecting to see its territory invaded,
mobilized its troops in all haste. The terrified Chamber overthrew the Visire
ministry by an enormous majority (814 votes to 7, with 28 abstentions). It was
too late. The very day of this fall the neighbouring and hostile nation
recalled its ambassador and flung eight millions of men into Madame Ceres'
country. War became universal, and the whole world was drowned in a torrent of
blood.
Read next: BOOK VII - MODERN TIMES#CHAPTER X - THE ZENITH OF PENGUIN CIVILIZATION
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