The President Read online

  There were journalists on guard day and night outside the Hôtel Matignon in the Rue de Varennes, others in front of the Ministry of Finance in the Rue de Rivoli, and others, again, in the Rue de Valois, where the Governor of the Bank of France lived.

  The three men with whom the decision rested were spied upon continually, their words, their mood, their slightest frown interpreted in one way or another.

  But little by little the details of the operation had been settled, and all that remained was to fix the new exchange rate and the date of the devaluation.

  Nerves were so strained in the Bourse and the foreign Stock Exchanges that the three men responsible ended by being afraid to be seen together for fear it might be taken for a signal.

  So they decided to meet for luncheon, one Sunday, at a country house belonging to Ascain, just outside Melun. The appointment had been kept so secret that even their wives did not know about it, and Madame Ascain had not been there to receive her guests.

  When he had arrived with Chalamont, who was then his Principal Private Secretary, the Premier had caught a frown on the face of Lauzet-Duché, the Governor of the Bank, but he had not felt called upon to give any reason for bringing the younger man.

  Had not Chalamont become almost his shadow? Besides, even before his time, hadn’t the Premier felt the need of a silent presence by his side?

  The house was built of golden yellow stone; it looked onto a sloping street and was surrounded on three sides by a lovely garden, enclosed by iron railings and walls. It had belonged to Ascain’s father, who was a solicitor, and the mark left by the brass plate could still be seen, to the left of the gate.

  They had talked of nothing in particular during luncheon, in front of the servants; then they had taken coffee under a lime tree at the far end of the garden. As they were more secure from inquisitive ears in that spot than anywhere else, they had sat on in their wicker armchairs, around a small table loaded with liqueurs that nobody touched, to decide the rate of devaluation and fix the zero hour, which, for technical reasons, had to be Monday, just before the Bourse closed.

  Reaching their decision after weeks of nervous strain, they had felt so relieved at the idea that matters were now out of their hands, that Ascain, who was short and plump, had suddenly pointed to a corner of the garden which was screened by a row of plane trees and suggested:

  “We ought to have a game of skittles.”

  It was so unexpected, immediately after their serious conversation, that they had all burst out laughing, including Ascain, who had thrown out his proposal as a joke.

  “There’s a proper skittle alley over there, behind the plane trees,” he explained. “My father had a passion for the game and I still keep the place in order. Like to have a look?”

  Lauzet-Duché, a former Inspector of Finance, seldom relaxed his grave manner, which was enhanced by a square-cut pepper-and-salt beard.

  Still not knowing what they were going to do, the four men walked across the lawn to the plane trees and there, indeed, was the skittle alley, with its cindered track and a big flat stone on which the Finance Minister, bending down, began to arrange the skittles that were lying about.

  “Shall we have a go?”

  The newspapers had never got hold of that story. For more than an hour the four men who had just determined the fate of the franc and the fortunes of millions of people, had played skittles, at first condescendingly and then with growing enthusiasm.

  The next day, fifteen minutes after the opening of the Bourse, the telephone in the Prime Minister’s office rang, and Chalamont picked it up, listened in silence, and then said:

  “Just a moment, please.”

  And, turning to his chief:

  “Lauzet-Duché wants to speak to you personally.

  “Hello?”

  “Is that you, Premier?”

  Right away he had sensed trouble.

  “Forgive me for asking, but I suppose you have told nobody about the decision we took yesterday? And you haven’t mentioned it in talking by telephone to Ascain, by any chance?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I don’t know anything definite yet. It’s only an impression so far. I’m told that when the Bourse opened there were some rather disturbing dealings. . . . ”

  “By which bank?”

  “It’s too soon to say. I’m to have a report every fifteen minutes. . . . May I ring you back?”

  “I shan’t budge from my office. . . . ”

  By half past two over thirty thousand million francs’ worth of government stock had been thrown onto the market. By three o’clock the Bank of France was beginning to buy back on the quiet, to prevent a collapse.

  Lauzet-Duché, the Rue de Rivoli, and the Premier were in constant touch by telephone, and things reached a point where they wondered if the devaluation would not have to be postponed. This unexpected, unforeseeable speculation had already robbed it of much of its effect.

  On the other hand, to draw back now might start a panic.

  The Premier was livid when he finally gave the signal, in much the same spirit as a general launching a battle half lost in advance.

  This would no longer be a bloodletting operation, affecting the whole of France to a more or less equal extent. Those in the know had already escaped, and what was more they had made huge profits at the expense of the medium and small investors.

  During all these discussions Chalamont, as white-faced as his chief, had remained in the office, lighting one cigarette after another and throwing each one away after a few tense puffs.

  He was not fat in those days. The caricaturists usually depicted him as a raven.

  In a few minutes the news-vendors would be out on the boulevards with special editions. The telephone switchboards at the Premier’s house, the Ministry of Finance, and the Bank of France were overwhelmed with calls.

  In the spacious office with its carved paneling the Premier sat tapping his blotter with the end of his pencil, his eyes fixed on some detail of a tapestry that hung on the opposite wall.

  When at last he stood up, he moved like an automaton.

  “Sit down, Chalamont.”

  His voice was clear, firm, with no more warmth than a machine.

  “No. Not there. At my desk, please.”

  He began to walk up and down, hands behind his back. “Take a pen and a sheet of paper. . . . ”

  And then he dictated, still walking up and down, with head lowered and hands clasped behind his back, pausing now and then for the right word:

  “I, the undersigned, Philippe Chalamont . . . ”

  There was the sound of the pen moving over the paper, the sound of heavy breathing, and, about halfway through the dictation, a sound that resembled a sob.

  “I can’t . . . ”

  But the voice cut him short:

  “Go on!”

  The dictation went on till the bitter end.

  CHAPTER 4

  “DO YOU REALLY THINK ANYBODY WILL COME in this weather?” muttered Emile skeptically.

  It was five minutes to ten. At about half past nine the electric bulbs had lit up feebly, as though trying to come back to life, but after blinking two or three times they had gone out again. A little later, Emile had come in and asked:

  “How are you going to manage for the night, sir?”

  Seeing that the old man had not immediately realized what he meant, he explained:

  “About the light. . . . I went to the ironmonger’s and bought the smallest oil lamp I could find, but I’m afraid even that will be too strong. . . . ”

  For several months the old man had given up sleeping in the dark; he had a tiny electric light, a special type that had been ordered from Paris. This decision had been taken on his doctor’s insistence, after a distressing incident that had deeply humiliated him.

  For a
long time the doctors, Gaffé and Lalinde, had been urging him not merely to let the nurse stay at Les Ebergues instead of going off to sleep in the village, but to have her all night within call, on a camp bed in his study, for instance, or in the tunnel.

  He had flatly, obstinately refused, and Fumet, to whom they had finally appealed to persuade him, had advised that, on the contrary, he should not be harassed about it.

  He understood that for a man who in the whole of his life had never relied on anybody, prizing his independence above everything, the nurse’s presence would be tantamount to surrender.

  The fact that his chauffeur now turned into a valet, morning and evening, to help him to dress or to get to bed, was quite distressing enough for a man who had always jealously guarded his privacy.

  “If I need help I can always ring for it,” he had said, indicating the pear-shaped bellpull that hung above the bed.

  “Or if not,” he had added, “I shall be too far gone for anyone’s help.”

  As a precaution, a very loud bell, shrill as would have befitted a school or a factory, had been placed, not in Emile’s room because he might happen to be away, but on the first-floor landing, above the kitchen, so that there were three people to hear it.

  But one night that had proved inadequate. In the middle of a nightmare he couldn’t entirely shake off, though he was unable to recall it later, he had sat up in bed, in pitch darkness, oppressed, his body bathed in cold sweat, with a sensation of horror that he had never experienced before. He knew there was something he ought to do, that it was agreed on, that they had insisted he must do it, but he couldn’t quite remember what it was, he was groping in the dark.

  It was like a night he had been through at about eight years old, when he had mumps and had seen the ceiling coming slowly down on top of him, while his eiderdown floated up to meet it.

  He struggled with his torpor, wanting to do as they had advised, for he was not hostile to them, whatever they might think, and feeling around in the emptiness, his hand touched a smooth, cold surface. Without realizing it, he had been trying to find the switch of the lamp on his bedside table, and all at once there was a crash on the floor; the tray, the bottle of mineral water, and the glass had been knocked over.

  He still couldn’t find the cord of the lamp, or the switch. They must have pulled the bedside table farther away; that was a little mystery he would try to clear up later. Meanwhile he felt an urgent, imperative need of action.

  Then, leaning forward, he had tipped over and fallen heavily to the floor, all of a piece, landing in a position as ridiculous as on the cliff path the day his left leg had played him that dirty trick.

  He could feel splinters of glass all around him, and felt sure that blood was running over his hand, though he didn’t know where it came from. He tried to get up, but in vain, there was no strength in his legs, and in the last resort the instinct of the baby in its cot returned to him and he began to shout.

  There had been no storm that night. And yet, incredible as it might seem, of the three whose bedrooms were above the kitchen, not so far off, not one had heard him; it was young Marie, so difficult to wake in the morning, who had arrived in her nightdress, smelling of bed. She had turned on the light and stood there for quite a while, as though on her guard, hesitant, suspicious.

  Had she believed him to be dead or dying? In the end she, too, had uttered a cry and, instead of giving him a hand, had rushed off upstairs to call the others. When they had come hurrying she had lagged behind, still half frightened.

  His wrist had been bleeding, but it wasn’t a deep cut. Gaffé had been unable to decide exactly what had been wrong with the Premier.

  “It happens to everybody, at any age. Probably a nightmare, brought on by cramp or by a momentary disturbance of the circulation. That would explain why you couldn’t get up. . . . ”

  He had talked again about having Madame Blanche there on a camp bed. The Premier’s only concession had been to sleep from then on with a faint light in his room. They’d found him this lamp, hardly bigger than the bulb in a pocket flashlight, and he had grown accustomed to the night light, which had gradually come to form part of his world.

  Emile had remembered it this evening, and, without saying anything, had gone down to the village and bought the little oil lamp. As luck would have it, at the very moment when he mentioned it, the electric current made a spasmodic return, died away again, then revived, and at last one could feel, from the brightness of the light, that this time it had come back for good.

  “I’ll fix you up the oil lamp all the same, just in case . . . ”

  Morning and evening, for his valeting duties, Emile wore a white linen jacket, and it was probably the way in which the white of the jacket emphasized his black hair and rugged, irregular features that had prompted someone to remark:

  “Your man looks more like a thug than a servant. . . . ”

  He’d been born at Ingrannes, in the depths of the Forest of Orléans, in a family whose men had been gamekeepers, from father to son, for longer than anyone could remember, and he and his brothers had been brought up with the dogs. But he made one think of a poacher rather than a gamekeeper. In spite of his sturdy frame and bulging muscles, he moved about the house more softly than the ethereal Milleran, and a disturbing glint sometimes came into his mocking yet guileless eyes.

  The Premier had taken him over the year he had become Foreign Minister. He had found Emile, just released from military service, among the chauffeurs at the Quai d’Orsay, where he had been accepted through the influence of his local “Squire,” and he contrasted so strongly with the well-schooled chauffeurs of the Quai that he had found him amusing to watch.

  It hadn’t been easy to tame him, for at the least approach Emile’s face would close up and one would be confronted with an expressionless, irritating wooden mask.

  That particular Cabinet had survived for three years, and when it had been finally defeated Emile had muttered hesitantly, hanging his head and fidgeting awkwardly with his cap:

  “I suppose there’s no chance I could go along with you?”

  He had gone along with him for twenty-two years, hanging around him like a dog at his master’s heels, and had never spoken of getting married. Presumably he felt no need to do so, but the moment a passable unmarried woman, thin or fat, young or middle-aged, came into his field of vision he would cover her as a cock or a rabbit might, without hesitation but nonchalantly, as though it were part of his natural functions.

  The Premier had more than once amused himself by watching his goings on, for he felt that in his dealings with women his chauffeur revealed the same instinct as a poacher dealing with game. When a new victim came along, Emile scarcely appeared to notice her, except that his small black eyes became more set and his movements slower and more silent than usual. He melted into his surroundings at such times, just as a poacher in a forest becomes a tree or a rock, and waited patiently for an hour, a day, or a week, till the propitious moment arrived. Whereupon, with an unerring instinct, he pounced.

  Young Marie had certainly had her turn in the first week, if not on the first night, and the Premier would not have been surprised to learn that from time to time Milleran submitted, passively but not unwillingly, to the attentions of the only active male in the household.

  Once in Paris he had been almost an eye-witness of one of these forthright conquests, which were an aspect of natural history and had a touch of its rough poetry. It was at the Ministry of Justice, when he was Keeper of the Seals. There had just been some changes in the staff, and on the morning of a big luncheon party a housemaid had arrived from the country, young and dewy, with the bloom still on her.

  The great house had been the scene of feverish activity and things had been a bit confused. About nine o’clock in the morning, the Keeper of the Seals had happened to be in a room that was being turned out, just in time to witnes
s the meeting between Emile and the new maid.

  He had sensed what was happening. Some people maintain that cock and hen birds communicate with each other by a kind of telepathy, and if so, Emile must have possessed the same faculty of emitting and receiving waves, for on merely catching sight of the girl from behind he made a dead set and his brown pupils contracted.

  Later on, as the Premier came out of his own suite, where he had gone to put on his morning coat, he had seen Emile come into the corridor, emerging from the linen room and closing the door noiselessly behind him; his face was flushed and wore a satisfied expression, and he paused to tidy himself up.

  The two men’s eyes met, and Emile simply gave an imperceptible wink, as much as to say:

  “That’s that!”

  As though he had just snared a rabbit at the expected spot.

  Girls would pester him, claiming that they were pregnant by him. Their fathers would join in now and then, and some of them wrote to the Premier, who still remembered one typical phrase:

  “ . . . and I rely on you, Minister, to see that the skunk puts matters to rights by marrying my daughter. . . . ”

  To which Emile would reply, unabashed:

  “If a fellow had to marry every girl he put in the family way! . . . ”

  What kind of stories would Emile relate, in future years, to sightseers who came to Les Ebergues? And what did he really think about the old man he served?

  “If you’ve no objection I’ll stay in the kitchen and make myself some coffee. Like that, if the gentlemen were to come . . . ”

  Was it he who had hunted through the volumes of Saint-Simon and various other books?

  Milleran was equally devoted, and would be much more afflicted by his death. She would find it difficult, at forty-seven, to submit to a new kind of discipline and get used to another employer. Would she yield to the insistence of the publishers who would try to persuade her to write about his private life, so far as she knew it?

  Those idiots were unaware that he’d never had any private life, and that at the age of eighty-two his entire store of human relationships—he would not venture upon the word “friendship” or “affection”—consisted of the few people who lived at Les Ebergues.