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Penguin Island, a novel by Anatole France |
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BOOK V - MODERN TIMES: CHATILLON - CHAPTER VII - CONCLUSION |
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_ Nunc est bibendum. Delivered from its fears and pleased at having escaped from so great a danger, the government resolved to celebrate the anniversary of the Penguin regeneration and the establishment of the Republic by holding a general holiday. President Formose, the Ministers, and the members of the Chamber and of the Senate were present at the ceremony. The Generalissimo of the Penguin army was present in uniform. He was cheered. Preceded by the black flag of misery and the red flag of revolt, deputations of workmen walked in the procession, their aspect one of grim protection. President, Ministers, Deputies, officials, heads of the magistracy and of the army, each, in their own names and in the name of the sovereign people, renewed the ancient oath to live in freedom or to die. It was an alternative upon which they were resolutely determined. But they preferred to live in freedom. There were games, speeches, and songs. After the departure of the representatives of the State the crowd of citizens separated slowly and peaceably, shouting out, "Hurrah for the Republic!" "Hurrah for liberty!" "Down with the shaven pates!" The newspapers mentioned only one regrettable incident that happened on that wonderful day. Prince des Boscenos was quietly smoking a cigar in the Queen's Meadow when the State procession passed by. The prince approached the Minister's carriage and said in a loud voice: "Death to the Republicans!" He was immediately apprehended by the police, to whom he offered a most desperate resistance. He knocked them down in crowds, but he was conquered by numbers, and, bruised, scratched, swollen, and unrecognisable even to the eyes of. his wife, he was dragged through the joyous streets into an obscure prison. The magistrates carried on the case against Chatillon in a peculiar style. Letters were found at the Admiralty which revealed the complicity of the Reverend Father Agaric in the plot. Immediately public opinion was inflamed against the monks, and Parliament voted, one after the other, a dozen laws which restrained, diminished, limited, prescribed, suppressed, determined, and curtailed, their rights, immunities, exemptions, privileges, and benefits, and created many invalidating disqualifications against them. The Reverend Father Agaric steadfastly endured the rigour of the laws which struck himself personally, as well as the terrible fall of the Emiral of which he was the chief cause. Far from yielding to evil fortune, he regarded it as but a bird of passage. He was planning new political designs more audacious than the first. When his projects were sufficiently ripe he went one day to the Wood of Conils. A thrush sang in a tree and a little hedgehog crossed the stony path in front of him with awkward steps. Agaric walked with great strides, muttering fragments of sentences to himself. When he reached the door of the laboratory in which, for so many years, the pious manufacturer bad distilled the golden liqueur of St. Orberosia, he found the place deserted and the door shut. Having walked around the building he saw in the backyard the venerable Cornemuse, who, with his habit pinned up, was climbing a ladder that leant against the wall. "Is that you, my dear friend?" said he to him. "What are you doing there?" "You can see for yourself," answered the monk of Conils in a feeble voice, turning a sorrowful look Upon Agaric. "I am going into my house." The red pupils of his eyes no longer imitated the triumph and brilliance of the ruby, they flashed mournful and troubled glances. His countenance had lost its happy fulness. His shining head was no longer pleasant to the sight; perspiration and inflamed blotches bad altered its inestimable perfection. "I don't understand," said Agaric. "It is easy enough to understand. You see the consequences of your plot. Although a multitude of laws are directed against me I have managed to elude the greater number of them. Some, however, have struck me. These vindictive men have closed my laboratories and my shops, and confiscated my bottles, my stills, and my retorts. They have put seals on my doors and now I am compelled to go in through the window. I am barely able to extract in secret and from time to time the juice of a few plants and that with an apparatus which the humblest labourer would despise." "You suffer from the persecution," said Agaric. "It strikes us all." The monk of Conils passed his hand over his afflicted brow: "I told you so, Brother Agaric; I told you that your enterprise would turn against ourselves." "Our defeat is only momentary," replied Agaric eagerly. "It is due to purely accidental causes; it results from mere contingencies. Chatillon was a fool; he has drowned himself in his own ineptitude. Listen to me, Brother Cornemuse. We have not a moment to lose. We must free the Penguin people, we must deliver them from their tyrants, save them from themselves, restore the Dragon's crest, reestablish the ancient State, the good State, for the honour of religion and the exaltation of the Catholic faith. Chatillon was a bad instrument; he broke in our hands. Let us take a better instrument to replace him. I have the man who will destroy this impious democracy. He is a civil official; his name is Gomoru. The Penguins worship him, He has already betrayed his party for a plate of rice. There's the man we want!" At the beginning of this speech the monk of Conils had climbed into his window and pulled up the ladder. "I foresee," answered he, with his nose through the sash, "that you will not stop until you have us all expelled from this pleasant, agreeable, and sweet land of Penguinia. Good night; God keep you!" Agaric, standing before the wall, entreated his dearest brother to listen to him for a moment: "Understand your own interest better, Cornemuse! Penguinia is ours. What do we need to conquer it? just one effort more . . . one more little sacrifice of money and . . ." But without listening further, the monk of Conils drew in his head and closed his window. _ |
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