Mirbeau laments the pomp and godlessness of M. About’s civil burial, casting satire on patriotic spectacle and atheist pride while invoking the dignity of humble death, faith, and forgotten consolation.
Murger was dying. A friend informed him that a priest was there asking to see him for a moment.
The poet slowly raised himself on his bed and in a dying voice:
“A priest?” he murmured. “Tell him I’ve read Voltaire.”
“Poor little thing,” added Veuillot, who told the story, “you’d only read M. About.”
M. About, who is supposed to have started Voltaire all over again—had he then only read M. About? Quite possible. They have just buried him in turn, and civilly, naturally. The funeral took place with great pomp. There were some soldiers, for he was decorated, four or five academicians, for he was one of the house, M. Jules Ferry, for he was an atheist, and then friends. For a man of wit, one must admit he had a quite ridiculous burial, and it’s regrettable he didn’t see it while alive, for I imagine he would have cruelly mocked it, he who mocked so many things less sad and less ridiculous. Young girls, costumed as Alsatians with tricolour cockades, followed the procession; there was also a detachment from the League of Patriots; the whole crowned by a speech from M. Siebecker, who once more declared war on Germany and reconquered Alsace, as is fitting. That patriots come to howl around the statues in the Place de la Concorde, that they insult flags flying from hotel windows, that they revolt against beer halls where sauerkraut is served—all well and good. But really, they should respect peaceful death and not come troubling graves. It’s a curious and distressing thing that four patriots can no longer meet anywhere now without scandals ensuing, and that in public ceremonies one must avoid them as one avoids swaggerers and quarrel-seekers in crowds.
True, they were at this burial very much at ease, and hardly troubled about compromising the dignity of anything, since there was nothing, since nothing better had been found than patriots who howl and battle to replace the priest who sings prayers and murmurs consolations. It’s doubtless the ceremonial used at these burials, which aren’t content with defying God and insult Death into the bargain.
But that’s not all.
M. Caro had been designated by the Academy to deliver a speech on behalf of this Academy that had just elected M. About. M. Caro couldn’t shirk this duty, and one can say he accomplished it magnificently. He had also been designated by the family to hold one of the pall cords. But this honour M. Caro refused. He wouldn’t sanction by a free act a demonstration he protested against and which his beliefs, as well as his courtesies, loudly disavowed. He demonstrated in this way that he wouldn’t have honoured with his presence this feast of death without God, had he not been forced by his duty as academician.
We congratulate M. Caro on this great courage. For it’s great courage to claim God’s rights today when He is insulted everywhere, driven from all places, and not permitted to let His image hover above death’s processions. And this courage was all the greater as the crowd that had come there showed itself hostile to such an act of independence and dignity, and paraded its atheism and irreligion.
So when M. Caro delivered his speech, at the moment when, with infinite tact, sincere sadness, and delicate allusions that could offend no one, he spoke of M. About’s political and religious sentiments, some hisses were heard, and protests as misplaced as they were stupid arose around the tomb of one who had been so thoroughly hissed at Gaëtana. The patriots wanted to make M. Caro pay for his noble refusal to walk beside a hearse decorated with no religious attributes and followed by no priest. These hisses and protests honour M. Caro, who in this sad ceremony represented the conscience of decent people.
So these were the funeral rites of a man whose intelligence everyone these past days celebrated and whose wit they praised. An exhibition and a dispute. There was truly in all this a great sadness, for one thought that this man had daughters, poor children who could only draw from the spring of divine consolations the consolations necessary to their grief. I don’t know how their father had raised them, whether he had let the beliefs that are woman’s beauty and goodness bloom in their young hearts and put something of angels’ smiles on their faces, or whether he had tried to close their souls to the rays of eternal hope; but I’m certain that in these hours of affliction when the finest faiths, the most hardened impieties, turn toward heaven eyes heavy with supplication and repentance, these young girls will have wept more for the dead father going away all alone, without a whiff of incense, without a song of prayer, without forgiveness, without hope of seeing heaven ever open for oneself and the beings one has adored and will never see again.
What good to have been a light, an intelligence, a brain? What good to have filled the world with the noise of one’s name? What good to have won successes and seen oneself carried in triumphs, if all this must perish and one must depart like a dog, sinking into earth’s night without passers-by uncovering their heads, so they turn away quickly to avoid saluting your remains? Isn’t it better to remain unknown, ignored, a poor devil and go into eternity, saluted by the tender, consoling respect left by the hearses of the wretched, behind which walks the priest in white surplice, carrying the cross, sign of our redemption?
This is one of 50+ rare French literary texts translated into English for the first time on this site.
Léon Hennique Novel 