His Excellency the Minister

Jules Claretie

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• Publié par: epsea
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 49
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of His Excellency the Minister, by Jules Claretie This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: His Excellency the Minister Author: Jules Claretie Translator: Henri Roberts Release Date: May 29, 2005 [EBook #15934] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIS EXCELLENCY THE MINISTER *** Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Jonathan Niehof and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. THIS EDITION DEDICATED TO THE HONOR OF THE ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE IS LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND NUMBERED AND REGISTERED SETS, OF WHICH THIS IS NUMBER 358 THE ROMANCISTS JULES CLARETIE HIS EXCELLENCY THE MINISTER BIBLIOTHÈQUE DES CHEFS-D'ŒUVRE DU ROMAN CONTEMPORAIN HIS EXCELLENCY THE MINISTER JULES CLARETIE OF THE ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE PRINTED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY BY GEORGE BARRIE & SONS, PHILADELPHIA COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY G.B. & SON THIS EDITION OF HIS EXCELLENCY THE MINISTER HAS BEEN COMPLETELY TRANSLATED BY HENRI ROBERTS THE ETCHINGS ARE BY EUGENE WALLET AND DRAWINGS BY ADRIEN MARIE TO ALPHONSE D AUDET PART FIRST PREFACE I II III IV V VI VII VIII PART SECOND I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO ALPHONSE DAUDET My dear friend, Ideas sometimes float about in the air like the pollen of flowers. For years past I have been at work collecting notes for this book which I have decided to dedicate to you. In one of your charming prefaces, you told us lately that you only painted from nature. We are both of us, I imagine, in our day and generation, quite captivated and carried away by that modern society from which in your exquisite creations you have so well understood how to extract the essence. What is it that I have desired to do this time? That which we have both been trying to do at one and the same time: to seize, in passing, these stirring times of ours, these modern manners, that society which perpetuates the antediluvian uproar, that feverish, bustling world always posing before the footlights, that market for the sale of appetites, that kirmess of pleasure that saddens us a little and amuses us a great deal, and allows us romance-writers, simple seekers after truth, to smile in our sleeves at the constant seekers after portfolios. This book is true, I have seen the events narrated in it pass before my own eyes, and I can say, as a spectator greatly interested in what I see, that I am delighted, my old fellow-traveller, to write your great and honored name on the first page of my book as a witness to the sincere affection and true comradeship of Your devoted, JULES CLARETIE. TOC PREFACE There was once a Minister of State who presented to his native land the astonishing spectacle of a Cabinet Minister dying whilst in office. This action was so astounding to the nation at large that a statue has since been erected to his memory. I saw his funeral procession defile past me, I think I even made one of the Committee sent by the Society of Men of Letters to march in the funeral convoy. It was superb. This lawyer from the Provinces, good honest man, eloquent orator, honest politician that he was, who came to Paris but to die there, was buried with the greatest magnificence. De Musset had eight persons to follow him to the grave; his Excellency had one hundred thousand. TOC I returned home from this gorgeous funeral in a thoughtful mood, thinking how much emptiness there is in glory, and particularly in political glory. This man had been "His Excellency the Minister" and not only his own province, but the whole country had placed its hopes on him. But what had he done? He had left his home to cast himself into the great whirlpool of the metropolis. It was the romance of a great provincial plunged in Paris into the reality of contemporary history, and become as ordinary as the commonplace items of the Journals. "What a subject for a study at once profoundly modern and perfectly lifelike!" The funeral convoy had hardly left the church of the Madeleine when my plot of this romance was thought out, and appeared clearly before me in this title, very brief and simple: His Excellency the Minister. I have not drawn any one in particular, I have thought of no individual person, I even forgot all about this departed Minister, whose face I hardly caught even a glimpse of, and of whose life I was completely ignorant; I had only in my mind's eye a hero or rather a heroine: Politics with all its discouragements, its vexations, its treacheries, its deceptions, its visions as fair as the blue sky of summer, suddenly bursting like soap bubbles; and to the woes of Politics, I naturally endeavored to add those of the pangs of love. And this is how my book came to see the light. I have been frequently asked from what living person I borrowed the character of Vaudrey, with its sufferings, its disappointments, its falterings. From whom? An American translator, better informed, it appears, than myself, has, I believe, brought out in New York a key to the characters presented in my book. I should have publicly protested against this Key which unlocks nothing, however, had it been published in France. Reader, do not expect any masks to be raised here—there are no masks; it is only a picture of living people, of passions of our time. No portraits, however, only types. That, at least, is what I have tried to do. And if I expected to find indulgent critics, I have certainly succeeded, and the two special characters which I sought to portray in my romance—in Parisian and political life—have been fortunate enough to win the approval of two critics whose testimony to the truth of my portraitures I have set down here. An author of rare merit and an authority on Statecraft, Monsieur J.-J. Weiss, was kind enough one day to analyze and praise, apropos of the comedy founded upon my book, the romance which I am to-day republishing. It has been extremely pleasant for me to put myself under the sponsorship of a man of letters willing to vouch for the truth of my portrayals. I must beg pardon for repeating his commendations of my work, so grateful are they to me, coming from the pen of a critic so renowned, and which I take some pride in reading again. "I had already twice read Monsieur le Ministre," wrote Monsieur J.-J. Weiss in the Journal des Débats the day following the production at the Gymnase, "before having seen the drama founded on the book, and I do not regret having been obliged to read it for the third time. The romance is both well conceived and admirably executed. To have written it, a union of character and talent was necessary. A Republican tried and proved, permitting his ideal to be tarnished and sullied; a patriot wronged by the vices of the times in which he lived; an honest, clean-handed man; the representative of a family of rigid morality; the strict impartiality of the artist who cares for nothing but his ideas of art, and who protects those ideas from being injured or influenced by the pretensions of any group or coterie; a close and long acquaintanceship with the ins and outs of Parisian life; an eye at once inquiring, calm and critical, a courageous indifference, hatred for the mighty ones of the hour, and a loftiness of soul which refuses to yield to the unjust demands of timid friendship: such are the qualities that make the value of this matchless book. Monsieur Claretie has been accused of having gathered together and exposed to the public gaze two or three more or less scandalous episodes of private life, and using them as the foundation of his romance. The fictitious name of Vaudrey has been held to cloak that of such and such a Minister of State. Those, however, who search for vulgar gossip in this book, or who look for private scandal are far astray. They are quite mistaken as regards the tendency and moral of Monsieur Claretie's book. The Vaudrey of the romance is no minister in particular, neither this statesman nor that. He is the Minister whom we have had before our eyes for the last quarter of a century. He is that one, at once potential and universal. In him are united and portrayed all the traits by which the species may be determined. He had been elected to office without knowing why, and to do him this justice, at least without any fault of his; he was deposed from power without knowing the reason, and we have no hesitation in saying, without his having done anything either good or bad to deserve his fall. There he is minister, however; Minister of the Interior, and who knows? in a fair way, perhaps, to be swept by some favorable wind to the post of President of the Council; while not so very long ago to have been made subprefect of the first class, would have surpassed the wildest visions of his youth. In Monsieur Claretie's romance it is the old Member of Parliament, Collard—of Nantes—converted late in life to Republicanism, who chose the provincial Vaudrey for his Minister of the Interior; this may, with equal probability be Marshal MacMahon. "In Monsieur Claretie's romance, Monsieur le Ministre is of the Left Centre or the so-called Moderate Party, he is therefore on the side of Law and Order. He enters into the Cabinet with the determination to reform every abuse, to recast everything; to seek for honest men, to make merit and not faction, the touchstone of advancement. In short, to apply in his political life the glorious principles which —and the noble maxims that—He is only, however, forty-eight hours in office when he becomes quite demoralized, paralyzed and stultified for the rest of his ministerial life. It is the phenomenon of crushing demoralization and of complete enervation of which the public, from the situation in which it is placed, sees only the results of which Monsieur Claretie, with a skilful han