The Lemoine Affair, by Gustave Flaubert
The heat was becoming stifling,
a bell rings, turtle-doves take flight, and, the windows having
been closed on the orders of the presiding judge, an odour of
dust pervades through the room. He was elderly, with a clownish
face, a robe too tight for his bulk, and pretensions of wit; and
his uniform side-whiskers, stained with tobacco residue, lent to
his whole appearance a theatrical and vulgar air. As the
suspension of the hearing drew on, new acquaintanceships were
being forged; in order to start up conversations, some rakes
complained in loud voices about the lack of air, and, when
somebody said they recognized a gentleman leaving the room as the
Minister of the Interior, a reactionary whispered: "Poor
France!" And a negro brought respect upon himself, partly out
of a desire for popularity, by taking an orange from his pocket
and apologetically offering the segments to his neighbours on a
newspaper: firstly to a clergyman who declared he had "never
tasted anything so good, an excellent fruit, very
refreshing"; but a dowager assumed an offended expression,
forbidding her girls from accepting anything "from someone
they don't know", whilst other people, not knowing if the
newspaper would reach as far as them, tried to adopt a suitable
expression: some took out their watches, a lady took off her hat.
Which was surmounted with a parrot. Two astonished young people
wondered whether it had been placed there as a keepsake or was
simply an expression of her eccentric taste. Already practical
jokers were beginning to question each other from one bench to
the next, and the ladies, looking to their husbands, were
stifling their laughter in their handkerchiefs, when silence
descended on the room, the judge seemed about to fall asleep,
Werner's council pronounced his address. He began in an emphatic
tone, spoke for two hours, seemed dyspeptic, and every time he
said "Monsieur le Président" lowered his voice with
such profound bow that he brought to mind a young girl
before the king, a deacon leaving the altar. It was terrible for
Lemoine, but the elegance of his formulae mitigated the harshness
of the indictment. And his sentences followed each other without
interruption, like the waters of waterfall, like a ribbon being
unwound. At one point the monotony of his address was such that
it could barely be distinguished from silence, as the vibration
of a bell persists, like a dying echo. To conclude, he called to
witness the portraits of presidents Grévy and Carnot which hung
above the tribunal; and each of them, with head raised,
undeniably proved that they had earned their mouldiness in this
official and dirty room that exhibits our glories and smelled of
decay. A large bay divided the benches that were lined up as far
as the foot of the tribunal down the centre; the court room was
covered in dust, with spiders in the corners of the ceiling, a
rat in every hole, and it needed to be frequently ventilated
because of the proximity of the hot-air stove, sometimes because
of a more nauseating odour. Lemoine's advocate was brief in his
reply. But he had a Meridional accent, appealed to the generous
passions, constantly removing his pince-nez. As she listened to
him Nathalie felt that uneasiness that is caused by true
eloquence, a delicious emotion assailed her and, her heart
swelling with expectation, the cambric of her bodice was
palpitating, like the grass on the bank of a spring that is about
to gush forth, like the plumage of a pigeon that is about to take
flight. Eventually the judge made a sign, a murmur spread through
the room, two umbrellas fell to the floor: we were going to hear
from the accused once again. Immediately he was called forth with
angry gestures from the witnesses; why had he not, in all
honesty, manufactured diamonds, divulged his invention? Everyone,
even down to the most wretched person, would have known - and
this was certain - how to make millions from them. They even saw
them with their own eyes, with that excessive regret we feel when
we believe we possess that which we lament. And many yielded
themselves up once more to the sweetness of the dreams they had
conceived, in which they had caught a glimpse of a fortune, upon
the news of the discovery, before having tracked down the
swindler.
For some it was the abandonment of their jobs,
a house on the avenue du Bois, influence in the Academy; even a
yacht that would have taken them to cooler climes for the summer,
not to the Pole perhaps, which may be interesting, but the food
there tastes of oil, the twenty four hours of daylight must be
inconvenient for sleeping, and then how do you keep out of the
way of the polar bears?
For others, millions would not be enough;
straight away they would gamble it on the stock market; and
buying their shares at the lowest price the very day before they
rose in value - a friend would have provided them with this
information - would see their capital increase a hundredfold in a
few hours. Then, rich as Carnegie, they take care not to give it
away to some humanitarian Utopia. (Besides what good does it do?
It has been calculated that a thousand million shared out to
every Frenchman would not make a single one any the richer.) But,
leaving luxury to the vainglorious, they will endeavour to obtain
merely comfort and influence, getting themselves nominated
President of the Republic, ambassador to Constantinople, having
their bedroom walls lined with cork to deaden the noise from
their neighbours. They would not join the Jockey Club, passing
their own judgement on the value of the aristocracy. A papal
title has more attraction for them. Perhaps you can get one
without having to pay. But in that case what use so many
millions? In short they add to St Peter's pence while blaming the
institution. What can the pope do with five million lace ruffles
when so many rural priests are dying of hunger?
But some, dreaming of the riches that could
have come their way felt they were about to faint; because they
would have been able to throw themselves at the feet of the woman
who until then had scorned them, who would have finally given up
to them the secret of her kiss and the softness of her body. They
could picture themselves with her, living in the country, till
the end of their days, in a house made of white wood, by the
melancholy banks of a great river. They would have known the cry
of the petrel, the arrival of the mists, the rocking of the
ships, the formations of the clouds, and would have remained for
hours with her body cradled on their knees, watching the rising
tide and the mooring ropes knocking together, from the terrace,
in a cane armchair, under a blue-striped awning, between metal
balls. And they would end up seeing nothing else but two branches
of violet flowers, hanging down over the fast-moving water that
they almost touch, in the flood of light of a sunless afternoon,
along the length of a reddish wall that is crumbling away. For
them, the excess of their own distress lessens the strength of
their damnation of the accused; but they all hate him, feeling
that they have been frustrated in their debauchery, fame, honour
and talent; perhaps too in those deep and comforting feelings
that they have kept hidden, since childhood, in the particular
folly of their own dream.
Article appeared in Le Figaro, 14 March 1908 and reprinted in Pastiches et Mélanges (Libraire Gallimard, 1919).