Crainquebille, Putois, Riquet and Other Profitable Tales. François-Anatole Thibault

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СКАЧАТЬ of its officers. To slight the authority of Constable 64 is to weaken the State. To eat the leaves of an artichoke is to eat the artichoke, as Bossuet puts it in his sublime language. (Politique tirée de l'Ecriture sainte, passim.)

      "All the swords of the State are turned in the same direction. To oppose one to the other is to overthrow the Republic. For that reason, Crainquebille, the accused, is justly condemned to a ​fortnight in prison and a fine of fifty francs, on the evidence of Constable 64. I seem to hear President Bourriche, himself, explaining the high and noble considerations which inspired his sentence. I seem to hear him saying:

      "I judged this person according to the evidence of Constable 64, because Constable 64. is the emanation of public force. And if you wish to prove my wisdom, imagine the consequences had I adopted the opposite course. You will see at once that it would have been absurd. For if my judgments were in opposition to force, they would never be executed. Notice, gentlemen, that judges are only obeyed when force is on their side. A judge without policemen would be but an idle dreamer. I should be doing myself an injury if I admitted a policeman to be in the wrong. Moreover, the very spirit of laws is in opposition to my doing so. To disarm the strong and to arm the weak would be to subvert that social order which it is my duty to preserve. Justice is the sanction of established injustice. Was justice ever seen to oppose conquerors and usurpers? When an unlawful power arises, justice has only to recognize it and it becomes lawful. Form is everything; and between crime and innocence there is but the thickness of a piece of stamped paper. It was for ​you, Crainquebille, to be the strongest. If, after having cried: "Mort aux vaches!" you had declared yourself emperor, dictator, President of the Republic or even town councillor, I assure you you would not have been sentenced to pass a fortnight in prison, and to pay a fine of fifty francs. I should have acquitted you. You may be sure of that.

      "Such would have doubtless been the words of President Bourriche; for he has a judicial mind, and he knows what a magistrate owes to society. With order and regularity he defends social principles. Justice is social. Only wrong-headed persons would make justice out to be human and reasonable. Justice is administered upon fixed rules, not in obedience to physical emotions and flashes of intelligence. Above all things do not ask justice to be just, it has no need to be just since it is justice, and I might even say that the idea of just justice can have only arisen in the brains of an anarchist. True, President Magnaud pronounces just sentences; but if they are reversed, that is still justice.

      "The true judge weighs his evidence with weights that are weapons. So it was in the Crainquebille affair, and in other more famous cases."

      Thus said Monsieur Jean Lermite as he paced up and down the Salle des Pas Perdus.

      ​Scratching the tip of his nose, Maître Joseph Aubarrée, who knows the Palais well, replied:

      "If you want to hear what I think, I don't believe that President Bourriche rose to so lofty a metaphysical plane. In my opinion, when he received as true the evidence of Constable 64, he merely acted according to precedent. Imitation lies at the root of most human actions. A respectable person is one who conforms to custom. People are called good when they do as others do."

      ​

      V

      CRAINQUEBILLE SUBMITS TO THE LAWS OF THE REPUBLIC

      AVING been taken back to his prison, Crainquebille sat down on his chained stool, filled with astonishment and admiration. He, himself, was not quite sure whether the magistrates were mistaken. The tribunal had concealed its essential weakness beneath the majesty of form. He could not believe that he was in the right, as against magistrates whose reasons he had not understood: it was impossible for him to conceive that anything could go wrong in so elaborate a ceremony. For, unaccustomed to attending Mass or frequenting the Elysée, he had never in his life witnessed anything so grand as a police court trial. He was perfectly aware that he had never cried "Mort aux vaches!" That for having said it he should have been sentenced to a ​fortnight’s imprisonment seemed to him an august mystery, one of those articles of faith to which believers adhere without understanding them, an obscure, striking, adorable and terrible revelation.

      This poor old man believed himself guilty of having mystically offended Constable 64, just as the little boy learning his first Catechism believes himself guilty of Eve’s sin. His sentence had taught him that he had cried: "Mort aux vaches!" He must, therefore have cried " Mort aux vaches!" in some mysterious manner, unknown to himself. He was transported into a supernatural world. His trial was his apocalypse.

      If he had no very clear idea of the offence, his idea of the penalty was still less clear. His sentence appeared to him a solemn and superior ritual, something dazzling and incomprehensible, which is not to be discussed, and for which one is neither to be praised nor pitied. If at that moment he had seen President Bourriche, with white wings and a halo round his forehead, coming down through a hole in the ceiling, he would not have been surprised at this new manifestation of judicial glory. He would have said: "This is my trial continuing!"

      On the next day his lawyer visited him:

      “Well, my good fellow, things aren’t so bad after ​all! Don't be discouraged. A fortnight is soon over. We have not much to complain of."

      "As for that, I must say the gentlemen were very kind, very polite: not a single rude word. I shouldn't have believed it. And the cipal was wearing white gloves. Did you notice?"

      "Everything considered, we did well to confess."

      "Perhaps."

      "Crainquebille, I have a piece of good news for you. A charitable person, whose interest I have elicited on your behalf, gave me fifty francs for you. The sum will be used to pay your fine."

      "When will you give me the money?"

      "It will be paid into the clerk's office. You need not trouble about it."

      "It does not matter. All the same I am very grateful to this person." And Crainquebille murmured meditatively: "It's something out of the common that's happening to me."

      "Don't exaggerate, Crainquebille. Your case is by no means rare, far from it."

      "You couldn’t tell me where they’ve put my barrow?"

      ​

      VI

      CRAINQUEBILLE IN THE LIGHT OF PUBLIC OPINION

      FTER his discharge from prison, Crainquebille trundled his barrow along the Rue Montmartre, crying: "Cabbages, turnips, carrots!" He was neither ashamed nor proud of his adventure. The memory of it was not painful. He classed it in his mind with dreams, travels and plays. But, above all things, he was glad to be walking in the mud, along the paved streets, and to see overhead the rainy sky as dirty as the gutter, the dear sky of the town. At every corner he stopped to have a drink; then, gay and unconstrained, spitting in his hands in order to moisten his horny palms, he would seize the shafts and push on his barrow. Meanwhile a flight of sparrows, as poor and as early as he, seeking their livelihood in the road, flew off at the sound of his familiar cry: ​"Cabbages, turnips, carrots!" An old house wife, who had come up, said to him as she felt his celery:

      "What’s happened to you, Père Crainquebille? We haven’t seen you for three weeks. Have you been ill? You look rather pale."

      "I’ll tell you, M’ame Mailloche, I’ve been doing the gentleman."

      Nothing in his life changed, except that he went oftener to the pub, СКАЧАТЬ