Octave Mirbeau’s witty 1901 satire on political vanity and academic ambitions. The French writer skewers his ‘friend’ Georges Leygues, a perpetual minister with no qualifications beyond his office, who dreams of joining the Académie française despite having written no books.
It had been ages since I had run into my friend Georges Leygues, and I was feeling quite glum… when yesterday evening, in the wings of the Opera, bursting suddenly from behind a stage flat, his handsome face waxier than ever, his moustache even more swashbuckling, expansive and gesticulating wildly, that devil of a minister fell into my arms… At first I thought, so swift and rough was the embrace, that I had been knocked senseless by a piece of scenery… My confusion didn’t last long… and I quickly realised I had merely suffered the impact of a governmental prop… That’s less dangerous…
“Ah! At last!… you!…” cried Georges Leygues… “One never sees you anymore! What on earth are you up to, you old hermit?… I miss you terribly, you know!…”
“And I you!…” I replied, trying to meridionalise my joy to match the pitch of his… “But what are you doing here?…”
The minister smiled and stroked his splendid moustaches, comma-shaped and pomaded:
“Why, old boy,” he answered… “I’m supervising… the terms and conditions… It’s no sinecure being a minister… One must earn the salary France pays me…”
He wouldn’t stop examining me… and, clapping me familiarly on the shoulder, he exclaimed:
“How curious!… you’re exactly the same… You haven’t changed…”
“Neither have you,” I replied… “I find you as handsome as ever.”
“It’s the profession!… What can one do?… Since the irony of things demands that I teach beauty to the populace, I must lead by example!… Still… I’m so pleased… You can’t imagine how much I’ve missed you… I say it every morning to Pol Neveux: ‘That blighter, I miss him!… When I don’t see him, I feel somehow less ministerial!…’”
He was so delighted to see me again that I saw the moment coming when he would decorate me on the spot. He understood my apprehensions and, quite amiably, like a good chap, he reassured me:
“How silly you are!…” he said… “I wouldn’t play those tricks on you!… No!… It’s like our friend Rodin. I’d promised him… this year… Well… I decorated Grenet-Dancourt instead, you see?… Friends are friends, blast it!… I hope you won’t abandon me again!…”
We were walking across the cluttered stage. The minister took my arm to guide me through rocks, seas, temples that came crashing down from the flies or went soaring back up… While guiding me, he pursued his thought, saying:
“Still, I’d like to do something for you… Shall I commission your bust from Denys Puech?… Brilliant sculptor!… Three flicks of the thumb… and there’s your likeness… He missed his calling, that fellow!… He should have been doing busts in courtesans’ restaurants and the grand bars at seaside resorts… He’d have made a packet in no time!… I’m thinking of taking him with me to my constituency during the elections. He could do busts of all my voters… So, you don’t want one?”
I asked him:
“What would you do with my bust?”
My friend replied briskly:
“Why, old boy, I’d present it, in the name of the State, to the Académie Goncourt… and Bernheim, on my behalf, would deliver one of those speeches that lodge a man firmly in posterity!…”
I thanked him warmly… And, not wishing to disoblige such a generous minister with a discourteous refusal, I declared:
“We’ll see… we’ll see!… Later on!…”
He insisted.
“I mean it, you know! I’ve got an old bust of Changarnier in the marble depot… with two or three touches from Puech… it would be striking!… Take advantage while I’m in power!…”
And as I protested vehemently against this inadmissible idea of any government whatsoever without Georges Leygues somewhere in it:
“One never knows! One never knows!” he continued, shaking his head. “We’ve seen even more extraordinary things!…”
But this hypothesis, which had slipped out, this hypothesis so remote and of such proven improbability… had made him melancholy. He was contemplating impossible cataclysms. Two little dancers passed us, smiling, provocative and diaphanous. Their balloon of pink gauze brushed the minister’s evening dress… He didn’t even notice them… Skilfully I diverted the conversation, which had anyway slowed, to divert the course of my friend’s sad thoughts.
“But speaking of the Academy!… Is it true what they’re saying?… You’re standing?”
My friend’s face brightened… His eyes filled with new gleams… his moustache quivered… He replied:
“Here’s how things stand… I’m testing the waters… or rather… I’m having the waters tested… by discreet and clever friends… I wouldn’t be averse, indeed, to standing for the Academy… the real one. I think it would rather suit me…”
He was watching my face for whatever expression his words might produce… Then:
“Your opinion?”
I pretended to reflect, to give the appearance of taking such a question seriously… And gravely, affectionately, I asked him:
“Have you any qualifications?”
“What… qualifications?… You’re priceless!… But I have them all. I’m a minister.”
“Yes, but what else?”
“What better qualifications could I have than this situation, unique in history, of a perfectly mediocre man, unutterably ignorant, who has always been, is, and always will be a minister?”
“I’m not saying otherwise… But have you others? Have you qualifications that are truly personal to you, that don’t depend on the office you occupy… ah! so immovably?”
“How could I have others, and how could they be personal to me, since I have no reason for being except through the minister that I am… which contains them all, moreover? Deschanel… come now!… Has he been a minister?”
My friend showed his contempt with a significant shrug.
“Deschanel…” I replied… “That’s different… He keeps a good table…”
“Oh! Let’s talk about that! What a splendid joke!… I’ve never been able to eat at his house without getting indigestion!”
“He’s elegant!”
“I don’t aspire to elegance… but I have natural style.”
“He’s a friend to bishops!”
“Well… and I?”
“Are you rich?”
“I’m comfortable…”
“That’s not enough… Are you a duke?”
“Not yet… But Méline promised me a duchy when he returns to power…”
“Have you written verse?…”
Poor Leygues stopped suddenly… He didn’t turn pale because he can’t turn pale… and looking at me with pleading eyes:
“Let’s not talk about that…” he stammered…
The two little dancers had come back to us…
“Monsieur le ministre… do listen to us…”
But Monsieur le ministre wasn’t listening to them… He was thinking now of Albin Valabrègue…
1901.
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