Mirbeau contrasts cowardice rewarded and heroism forgotten: while Maginard earns the Legion of Honour through flattery and petty courtisanship, a mutilated war hero begs for dignity and is denied, wandering France with only hope and burnt wounds.
Maginard never leaves the ministerial antechambers; all the ushers know him and treat him with a familiarity that immediately establishes a man’s position. In ministries and great banking houses, nothing is more sought after than an usher’s friendship, and the number of degradations performed to obtain it is incalculable. It’s as if the usher carries within him something of the master’s power. One jokes with him, and when you have managed to crack his gravity and venture a timid use of the familiar ‘tu’, it seems you have conquered fortune itself. Besides, ushers measure their benevolence by the master’s benevolence; they give it only advisedly and never let it linger on poor petitioners or people who come seeking justice.
The ushers call Maginard “my little one”; M. Jules Ferry treats him as “dear friend”, and Maginard, deeply bowed, forehead in the dust, says “Monsieur le Président” as a praying priest says “Holy Virgin Mary”.
That’s why they have made him a Knight of the Legion of Honour. Maginard isn’t a writer, though. He possesses no trade, except that he was once known as a reporter, hunting for the day’s accident, which he would then hawk from paper to paper. Then he began assiduously following Chamber debates, bringing back corridor gossip, snatches of conversation caught in passing, indiscretions that run up and down the stairs. He was introduced to a deputy, who introduced him to a minister. From reporter, he has become a lackey; and he has gained much consideration from it. Every morning he goes to the minister’s, and the minister orders him the day’s work, which consists of paragraphs, pompous and devoid of proper French, but where the master’s politics are praised to the skies. The more criminal the acts, the more enthusiastic the eulogies. That’s where one reads the most stupefying things of our time and where it’s proved most congruously that we are not at war; that our soldiers aren’t dying in Tonkin; that there are no Chinese, and that France has never been more prosperous. Maginard excels at distorting truth and ribboning lies. He has no ideas of his own, and if by chance any come to him, he carefully hides them, which makes everyone say he has the minister’s ear. So people court him extensively and his prestige is enormous. Job applications rain down on him; people turn to him to carry out dirty little intrigues, brightened with tips; he often has affairs in hand from which he tries to extract fat commissions. But his credit is more apparent than real, and he doesn’t dare use it for others because he might need it for himself. And then, everything isn’t rosy in this trade. The minister isn’t always amiable; he has fits of impatience one must know how to bear, whims to which one must bend silently. Back and spine must be ready for blows as for caresses; it’s indispensable to receive a shove with the same gracious manner as one receives a compliment. Maginard is very skilled in this art and doesn’t feel the red sometimes rising to his face. It’s at these difficult moments that his genius for cowardice and courtisanship bursts forth, and he finds admirable servilities that suddenly calm the minister’s anger.
Politics doesn’t suffice for Maginard, for he understands he must place between the minister and himself a stronger bond, less easily broken and which, when broken, leaves traces good to show later. From political services he willingly descends to private ones. If he could dress the minister, put on his socks, polish his boots, brush his clothes. But there’s a quantity of other little intimate and secret services one doesn’t like to ask of one’s valet and with which Maginard consoles and contents himself. They say that one day the minister had charged Maginard with a special mission, to which politics was entirely foreign. This had necessitated some outlays, and well, Maginard isn’t rich yet. He came one morning to find the minister and, with a thousand precautions, handed him the note of his expenses.
“What’s this?” cried the minister in a slightly angry voice.
“Monsieur le Ministre,” Maginard replied sadly, “these are the expenses, you know, for that affair…”
“Well, monsieur,” interrupted the minister, throwing the note in the wastebasket, “you should have told me you couldn’t do me this service… a service from man to man… I’d have taken a messenger—it would have been cheaper.”
Two months later, Maginard was decorated, and the other day one could see in the Journal Officiel, opposite his name, the traditional mention: Exceptional merits.
Four years ago, after twenty-two years of hard service in the African chasseurs, they retired old Brigadier B… His body was nothing but wounds. Always first in moments of danger, the brigadier was known as the most intrepid soldier in our African army. Ten times they had picked him up for dead on battlefields. Legend had seized upon this brave man and made him an epic hero. The truth is that on several occasions, the brigadier, through his courage and his madness for charging forward that made him hurl himself at the enemy like a cannonball, saved expeditionary forces that without him would have remained in the desert or at the bottom of mountain gorges. Having no family in France and not wanting to leave Algeria, the brigadier asked to be given some small post or other on which he could live, for one doesn’t amass much money getting killed for one’s country, and none had been more prodigal with his blood than he. After many difficulties, they named him forest guard and entrusted him with a rather remote post, dangerous, haunted by pillagers who often came to raid livestock and trouble the colonists. The brigadier was very happy, for it was still war for him, and the quiet life, rest, weren’t his thing. He armed himself with two rifles, two revolvers, and a supply of cartridges, and went to inhabit, all alone, the hovel assigned to him.
He spent his time watching the fields and forest. At night, he would lie in ambush in places particularly frequented by Arabs, making rounds. The pillagers were always sure to spot the old brigadier, revolver at his belt, rifle on his shoulder, eye on the lookout. Many times they had tried to rid themselves of this troublesome surveillance; but the guard, remembering his former prowess, had known how to spread terror among them through some terrible executions. Often at night, rifle shots were heard, and the next day, thieves’ corpses were seen stretched out in the fields, while the old guard returned at dawn, stroking his beard and smoking his pipe.
One night, the guard was preparing for his customary round when, opening his door, he saw a swarming crowd and above, gleaming rifle barrels. Immediately a shot rang out and the guard, spinning round, collapsed on his doorstep. He got up quickly, barricaded the door, took his rifles, his pistols and cartridges, and through a sort of opening cut in the house wall, set about resisting and defending himself. Each rifle shot brought down an Arab; he himself received six wounds. He was covered in blood; his strength was abandoning him; but he wouldn’t surrender, and he awaited death, defending himself like a hunted beast.
Despairing of reducing him, and as day was coming, the bandits, fearing the colonists might send help, set fire to the hovel. Then the guard, using the poor resources his cabin contained, tried to fight the fire as he had fought the thieves; but the fire gained ground, devouring everything, and the flaming roof collapsed on him. Bruised, bloody, flesh burned, but still alive, he dragged himself from under the debris. The Arabs had fled, and no one came. He called out; no voice answered. His hair and beard were singed, his hand entirely burned. Yet the poor old man crawled, had the strength to walk for two kilometres and, succumbing to pain and exhaustion, collapsed on the ground and fainted.
For three months he remained in hospital, bedridden and dying. But his constitution was so robust they managed to save and cure him. When he was on his feet, the governor ordered he be given fifty francs, and since he no longer had a hovel to shelter in, that he go forth at God’s mercy.
The guard requested an audience with the governor, who made him wait a very long time. The poor devil could be seen coming every morning to the palace and leaving every evening without M. Tirman having leisure to receive him.
“How long things take in these shacks,” he would say, shaking his head. “What the hell are they doing in there?”
Finally, he was introduced to the republican functionary.
“What do you want?” asked M. Tirman. “You’ve been given fifty francs.”
“It’s not money I’m asking for,” replied the brigadier, “it’s the cross I’d like.”
“The cross?”
“Yes, the cross. And I’ve earned it well. I’ve always been a good soldier; I’ve got, by myself, as many wounds as a regiment that’s been under fire… and then, I think I defended myself well, against more than a hundred Arabs, back there. It wasn’t for me, after all, that I did that, it was for you. I’d like the cross. You give it to people who don’t deserve it like I do… Give me the cross…”
The governor smiled and, dismissing the guard:
“Very well, my good man,” he said, “you’ll have the cross.”
The wounded man left.
Since then, he wanders along the roads, a knapsack on his back. He lives on what he finds, on charities he encounters, on alms and chance. When questioned, the poor old man smiles; then he replies, with an obstinate air, pointing to the buttonhole of his beggar’s jacket:
“I’ll have the cross, I will.”
It’s Maginard who got it.
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Léon Hennique Novel 