Anselme Raimondin, at his meetings, replied that he himself was honest, extremely honest, but his protestations, coming after the others, seemed tedious. Since he had already been a councillor and had experience of municipal affairs, the electors did not find it easy to believe in his honesty, whereas Joseph Lacrisse was dazzling in his innocence.
Lacrisse was young, brisk, and had a soldierly appearance. Raimondin was short and stout, and wore spectacles. This difference was remarked upon at a moment when Nationalism had breathed into municipal elections some of the enthusiasm and poetry which are inseparable from it, together with an ideal of beauty perceptible to the small shopkeeper.
Joseph Lacrisse was totally ignorant of all questions concerning civic affairs, even to the attributions of municipal councils. This ignorance was useful to him. His eloquence was thereby the freer and more stirring. Anselme Raimondin, on the contrary, lost himself in the mazes of detail. He was accustomed to the use of business expressions, and to technical discussions; he had a love of figures, and a passion for documents, and although he knew his public he laboured under certain illusions with regard to the intelligence of the electors who had nominated him. He had a certain amount of respect for them; he dared not lie too grossly, and did his best to enter into explanations. All this made him appear cold, obscure and tedious.
He was no simpleton. He knew where lay his interests, and he understood minor politics. For two years his district had been submerged by Nationalist newspapers, posters and pamphlets; and he told himself that when the moment came he, too, could pretend to be a Nationalist, that it wasn’t so difficult to demolish traitors and acclaim the National Army. He had not feared his enemies sufficiently, thinking that he could always do as they did, in which he was mistaken. Joseph Lacrisse had an inimitable genius for expressing the Nationalist ideal. He had hit upon one special sentence which he frequently employed, and which always seemed new and beautiful. It was this: “Citizens, let us all rise to defend our admirable Army against a handful of cosmopolitans who have sworn to destroy it.” This was just the thing to say to the electors of the Grandes-écuries. Repeated nightly, the sentence aroused the whole meeting to great and formidable enthusiasm. Anselme Raimondin did not hit upon anything nearly so good; if patriotic phrases occurred to him he did not deliver them in the right tone, and they produced no effect.
Lacrisse covered the walls with tricolour posters. Anselme Raimondin also made use of tricolour posters, but either the colours were too washy or the sun faded them; at all events, his posters had a pallid appearance. Everything played him false, every one abandoned him. He lost his assurance; he humbled himself, showed himself prudent and humble. He shrank from notice; he became almost imperceptible.
Again, when he stood up to speak in the dancing-hall of some third-rate drinking-house he seemed like a pale phantom from which proceeded a feeble voice drowned by pipe-smoke and the interruptions of the audience. He recalled his past. He had always been a fighter, he said. He stood up for the Republic; this remark, like the preceding one, caused no sensation, had no sonorous echo. The electors of the Grandes-écuries ward wanted the Republic to be defended by Joseph Lacrisse, who had conspired against her. That was what they wanted.
The meeting did not discuss both sides of the question. Only once was Raimondin invited to put in an appearance at a Nationalist meeting. He went; but he was not allowed to speak; and was utterly crushed by a resolution put and carried amid darkness and disorder, for the landlord had cut off the gas as soon as the people started breaking up the benches. The meetings in the Grandes-écuries ward, as in all the other wards of Paris, were only moderately rowdy. The people now and then displayed the languid violence peculiar to their day, which is the most noticeable characteristic of our political manners. The Nationalists, according to their habit, hurled forth the same monotonous insults in which the expressions “Spy,” “Traitor” and “Rogue” had a feeble, exhausted sound. Their slogans told of an extreme physical and moral enervation, a vague discontent combined with profound lethargy, and a definite inability to think out the simplest problems. There were many insults and few blows. It was unusual if more than two or three per night were wounded or knocked about, counting both parties. Lacrisse’s wounded were taken to the Nationalist chemist Delapierre, next door to the riding-school, and Raimondin’s to the Radical chemist Job, opposite the market-place, and by midnight there was not a soul left in the streets.
On Sunday, May the 6th, at six o’clock, Joseph Lacrisse, accompanied by his friends, was awaiting the result of the ballot in an empty shop decorated with flags and placards. This was their chief Committee Room. The pork-butcher, Monsieur Bonnaud, arrived, and announced that Lacrisse was elected by two thousand three hundred and nine votes against one thousand five hundred and fourteen for Monsieur Raimondin.
“Citizen,” said Bonnaud, “we are much gratified. It is a victory for the Republic.”
“And for honest men,” replied Lacrisse, adding with dignified benevolence: “I thank you, Monsieur Bonnaud, and I beg you to thank in my name our valiant friends.” Then, turning to Henri Léon who stood beside him, he whispered, “Léon, do me a favour, will you? Wire our success at once to Monseigneur.”
Shouts were heard from the street.
“Long live Déroulède! Long live the Army! Long live the Republic! Down with the Jews!”
Lacrisse entered his carriage amid the cheers of the crowd that barred his passage. Baron Golsberg, the Jew, was standing at the carriage door; he seized the new councillor’s hand:
“I gave you my vote, Monsieur Lacrisse. You understand, I gave you my vote, because, I tell you, anti-Semitism is mere humbug—you know it as well as I do—mere humbug, while Socialism is a serious matter.”
“Yes, yes. Good-bye, Monsieur Golsberg.”
But the Baron still held on.
“Socialism is the danger. Monsieur Raimondin favoured concessions to the Collectivists. That’s why I voted for you, Monsieur Lacrisse.”
And still the crowd yelled:
“Hurrah for Déroulède! Hurrah for the Army! Down with the Dreyfusards! Down with Raimondin! Death to the Jews!”
The coachman succeeded in making a way through the mass of electors.
Joseph Lacrisse found Madame de Bonmont at home, alone. She was excited and triumphant, having already heard the news.
“Elected!” she cried, her arms extended and her gaze directed heavenward.
And the word “elected” on the lips of so pious a lady seemed full of mystical meaning.
She put her beautiful arms around him and drew him to her.
“What makes me happiest is that you owe your election to me.”
She had contributed nothing to his expenses. It is true that money had not been wanting, and Joseph Lacrisse had drawn upon more than one banking account; but the gentle Elisabeth had given nothing, and Joseph Lacrisse could not understand what she meant. She explained herself:
“I had a candle burnt every day before St. Anthony; that is why you got in. St. Anthony grants all requests. Father Adéodat told me so, and I have proved it several times.”
She covered his face with kisses, and a beautiful idea occurred to her, which reminded her of the customs of chivalry.
“My dear,” she asked him, “do not municipal councillors wear a scarf? an embroidered scarf, isn’t it? I’ll embroider one for you.”
He was very tired and fell exhausted into a chair, but kneeling at his feet she murmured:
“I love you.”
And only the darkness heard the rest.
The same evening, in his modest apartments—the apartments of “a child of the quarter,” as he called them—Anselme Raimondin heard the result of the election. There were some dozen bottles of wine and a cold paté on the dining-room table. His failure amazed him.
“It was only what I expected,” he said.
And he swung round in a pirouette, but he was clumsy and twisted his ankle.
“It’s your own fault,” said Dr. Maufle, by way of consolation. The Doctor was president of his Committee, an old Radical, with the face of a Silenus. “You allowed the Nationalists to poison the whole ward; you hadn’t the pluck to stand up against them. You made no attempt to unmask their falsehoods. On the contrary, like them, with them, you told every lie you could think of. You knew the truth, and you dared not undeceive the electors while there was still time. You’ve funked it, and you are beaten, and it serves you right!”
Anselme Raimondin shrugged his shoulders.
“You are a silly old fool, Maufle. You don’t understand the ins and outs of this election. Yet it’s clear enough. My failure was due to one thing only: the discontent of the small shopkeepers who are being crushed out of existence between the big shops and the co-operative societies. They are suffering and they made me pay for it. That’s all.”
Then, with a faint smile, he added:
“They’ll find themselves nicely taken in.”