The Lemoine Affair Read online

  THE LEMOINE AFFAIR WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN LE FIGARO IN JANUARY, 1904 AND FEBRUARY-MARCH, 1908. THEY WERE SUBSEQUENTLY REVISED AND COLLECTED IN THE BOOK PASTICHES ET MÉLANGES (GALLIMARD) IN 1918.

  TRANSLATION © CHARLOTTE MANDELL 2008

  MELVILLE HOUSE PUBLISHING

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  BROOKLYN, NY 11201

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  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE PAPERBACK EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  PROUST, MARCEL, 1871-1922.

  [PASTICHES ET MÉLANGES. ENGLISH]

  THE LEMOINE AFFAIR / MARCEL PROUST; TRANSLATED BY CHARLOTTE MANDELL.

  P. CM.

  eISBN: 978-1-61219-233-8

  I. MANDELL, CHARLOTTE. II. TITLE.

  PQ2631.R63P313 2008

  843.912–DC22

  2008009204

  v3.1

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I. FROM A NOVEL BY BALZAC

  II. THE “LEMOINE AFFAIR” BY GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

  III. CRITIQUE OF THE NOVEL BY M. GUSTAVE FLAUBERT ON “THE LEMOINE AFFAIR,” BY SAINTE-BEUVE, IN HIS COLUMN IN THE CONSTITUTIONAL.

  IV. BY HENRI DE RÉGNIER

  V. IN “THE GONCOURT JOURNALS”

  VI. “THE LEMOINE AFFAIR” BY MICHELET

  VII. IN THE WEEKLY THEATER REVIEW BY M. ÉMILE FAGUET

  VIII. BY ERNEST RENAN

  IX. IN THE MEMOIRS OF SAINT-SIMON

  Translator’s Acknowledgment

  Other Books in This Series

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The reader may have forgotten, since ten years have now passed, that Lemoine, having falsely claimed to have discovered the secret of making diamonds and having received, because of this claim, more than a million francs from the President of De Beers, Sir Julius Werner, who then brought action against him, was afterwards condemned on July 6, 1909 to six years in prison. This legal affair, which, although insignificant, enthralled public opinion at the time, was selected one evening by me, entirely by chance, as the common theme for a few short pieces in which I would set out to imitate the style of a certain number of writers. Even though offering even the slighest explanation of one’s pastiches risks diminishing their effect, nonetheless, lest one’s own legitimate self-esteem be ruffled, I might remind the reader that it is the pastiched writer who is imagined as speaking, faithful not only to his particular mind, but also to the language of his time. In the piece by Saint-Simon for example, the words “good man, bonhomme” and “good woman” do not at all have the familiar, condescending slant they have today. In his Memoirs, Saint-Simon throughout says “good man Chaulnes” (le bonhomme Chaulnes) for the Duc de Chaulnes, for whom he had infinite respect, and likewise for many others.

  —Marcel Proust

  I FROM A NOVEL BY BALZAC

  In one of the last months of the year 1907, at one of those “routs” of the Marquise d’Espard thronged with the elite of Parisian aristocracy (the most elegant in Europe, according to M. de Talleyrand, that Roger Bacon of the social organism, who was both a bishop and Prince of Benevento), de Marsay and Rastignac, Comte Félix de Vandenesse, the Ducs de Rhétoré and Grandlieu, Comte Adam Laginski, Maître Octave de Camps, and Lord Dudley, formed a circle around Mme the Princesse de Cadignan, yet without arousing the jealousy of the Marquise. Isn’t it in fact one of the greatnesses of the mistress of the house—that Carmelite of worldly success—that she must sacrifice her coquetry, her pride, her very love, to the necessity of creating a salon in which her rivals will at times be the most striking ornament? Isn’t she in that respect equivalent to a saint? Doesn’t she deserve her share, so dearly acquired, in the social paradise? The Marquise—a young lady from Blamont-Chauvry, related to the Navarreins, the Lenoncourts, and the Chaulieus—held out to each newcomer the hand that Desplein, the greatest scholar of our time (without excepting Claude Bernard) who had been the student of Lavater, declared was the most profoundly mapped he had ever been given to examine. All of a sudden the door opened to the illustrious novelist Daniel d’Arthez. A physicist of the moral world who possessed the genius of both Lavoisier and Bichat—the creator of organic chemistry—would alone be capable of isolating the elements that compose the special sonority of the footsteps of superior men. Hearing those of d’Arthez resound you would have trembled. Only a sublime genius or a great criminal could have walked thus. But isn’t genius a kind of crime against the routine of the past that our time punishes more severely than crime itself, since scholars die in hospitals bleaker than any prison?

  Athénaïs did not feel any joy at seeing return to her home the lover she hoped to snatch away from her best friend. Thus she pressed the hand of the Princess while preserving the impenetrable calm that women of high society possess at the very instant they are burying a dagger in your heart.

  “I am happy for you, my dear friend, that Monsieur d’Arthez has come,” she said to Mme de Cadignan, “all the more so since he will be completely surprised; he did not know you would be here.”

  “He probably thought he would meet Monsieur de Rubempré here, whose talent he admires,” Diane replied with an affectionate pout that hid the most biting raillery, since everyone knew that Mme d’Espard did not forgive Lucien for having abandoned her.

  “Oh! my angel,” the Marquise replied with a surprising ease, “we cannot stop people like that, Lucien will undergo the fate of little d’Esgrignon,” she added, confounding all those present by the infamy of these words, each one of which was an overwhelming taunt for the Princess. (See The Cabinet of Antiquities.)

  “You are speaking of Monsieur de Rubempré,” the Vicomtesse de Beauséant said, who had not reappeared in society since the death of M. de Nueil and who, out of a habit peculiar to people who have lived in the country for a long time, eagerly looked forward to surprising Parisians with a piece of news she had just learned. “You know that he is engaged to Clotilde de Grandlieu.”

  Everyone made a sign to the Vicomtesse to be quiet, since this marriage was still unknown to Mme de Sérizy, whom it would cast into despair.

  “People say it’s true, but it might not be,” the Vicomtesse continued who, without precisely understanding what sort of gaffe she had committed, regretted she had been so demonstrative.

  “What you say does not astonish me,” she added, “for I was surprised that Clotilde was in love with someone so unattractive.”

  “But on the contrary, no one is of your opinion, Claire,” the Princess cried out, pointing out the Comtesse de Sérizy who was listening.

  These words were all the more lost on the Vicomtesse since she was completely unaware of the relationship between Mme de Sérizy and Lucien.

  “Unattractive,” she tried to correct herself, “unattractive … at least for a young woman!”

  “Picture it to yourself,” d’Arthez cried out before he had even given his coat to Paddy, the famous tiger to the late Beaudenord (see The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan), who was standing in front of him with that immobility which was the specialty of the domestic staffs of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, “yes, just picture it,” the great man repeated with that enthusiasm of thinkers that seems ridiculous amidst the profound dissimulation of high society.

  “What is it? What should we picture to ourselves,” de Marsay asked ironically, giving Félix de Vandenesse and Prince Galathione that ambiguous look, a veritable privilege of those who had lived for a long time in intimacy with MADAME.

  “Alvays goot!” the Baron de Nucingen gushed with the frightful vulgarity of parvenus who think that with the help of the coarsest sayings they can put on airs and mimic people like Maxime de Trailles or de Marsay; “unt you haf a
goot hott; you are de true brotector of de boor, in de Deppities.”

  (The famous financier had special reasons to bear a grudge against d’Arthez who hadn’t given him enough support, when Esther’s former lover had sought in vain to have his wife, née Goriot, admitted to the home of Diane de Maufrigneuse).

  “Kvik, kvik, sire, mein happiness vill be complete if you find me vorthy of knowing egzakly vat it is I should himagine?”

  “Nothing,” d’Arthez replied appropriately, “I am speaking to the Marquise.”

  That was said in such a perfidiously epigrammatic tone that Paul Morand, one of our more impertinent embassy secretaries, murmured, “He is stronger than we!” The Baron, sensing he had been trifled with, felt his blood run cold. Mme Firmiani sweated in her slippers, masterpieces of Polish industry. D’Arthez pretended he didn’t notice the comedy that had just played out, of a kind that only Parisian life can offer so profoundly (which explains why the provinces have always provided France with so few men of State) and without pausing at the beautiful Négrepelisse, turning toward Mme de Sérizy with that terrifying sang-froid that can triumph over the greatest obstacles (and for lofty souls are there any like those of the heart?):

  “Madame, they have just discovered the secret of making diamonds.”

  “Dis bizness is eine grreat dreasure,” the Baron exclaimed, dazzled.

  “But I thought they always made them,” Léontine naively replied.

  Mme de Cadignan, as a woman of taste, took care not to say a word, whereas bourgeois ladies would have launched into a conversation where they would have inanely flaunted their knowledge of chemistry. But Mme de Sérizy had still not finished that phrase that revealed an incredible ignorance, when Diane, lavishing her whole attention on the Countess, assumed a sublime look. Only Raphael might have been capable of painting it. And indeed, if he had succeeded, he would have given us a counterpart to his famous Fornarina, the most prominent of his canvases, the only one that places him above Andrea del Sarto in the esteem of connoisseurs.

  To understand the drama that is about to unfold, and to which the scene we have just related may serve as prologue, a few words of explanation are necessary. At the end of the year 1905, a fearful tension reigned in the relationships between France and Germany. Either because Wilhelm II was actually planning to declare war on France, or because he just wanted to give that impression in order to break our alliance with England, the German ambassador received the order to announce to the French government that he was going to present his letters of recall. The kings of finance speculated then on a drop in the market, coming on news of an imminent mobilization. Considerable sums were lost in the stock exchange. For one whole day they sold government bonds that the banker Nucingen, secretly alerted by his friend the minister de Marsay of the resignation of the chancellor Delcassé, which people in Paris didn’t hear about until around four o’clock, bought back at a ludicrous price and has kept ever since.

  Even Raoul Nathan believed in the war, although Florine’s lover, because du Tillet, whose sister-in-law he had wanted to seduce (see A Daughter of Eve), had given him a bad steer on the stock market, advocated peace at any price in his newspaper.

  France was saved from a disastrous war then only by the intervention, of which for a long time historians have been unaware, of the Maréchal de Montcornet, the strongest man of his century after Napoleon. Even Napoleon was unable to execute his plan of landing in England, the master idea of his reign. Napoleon, Montcornet—isn’t there a kind of mysterious resemblance between these two names? I should be careful not to say that they are linked to each other by some occult bond. Perhaps our era, after having doubted all great things without trying to understand them, will be forced to return to the pre-established harmony of Leibniz. What’s more, the man who was then at the head of the most colossal diamond business in England was named Werner, Julius Werner—Werner! Doesn’t this name seem to you strangely to evoke the Middle Ages? Just hearing it, don’t you already see Dr. Faust, bending over his crucibles, with or without Marguerite? Doesn’t it imply the idea of the philosopher’s stone? Werner! Julius! Werner! Change two letters and you have Werther. Werther is by Goethe.

  Julius Werner used Lemoine, one of those extraordinary men who, if they are guided by a favorable fate, will be called Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, Cuvier, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Charlemagne, Berthollet, Spalanzani, Volta. Change the circumstances and they will end up like the Maréchal d’Ancre, Balthazar Cleas, Pugachev, Le Tasse, the Comtesse de la Motte or Vautrin. In France, the patent the government grants inventors has no value of its own. That is where we should seek the cause that is paralyzing the whole vast industrial enterprise in our country. Before the Revolution, the Séchards, giants of printing, still used wooden presses in Angoulême, and the Cointet brothers hesitated to buy the second printing patent. (See Lost Illusions.) In fact, few people understood the answer Lemoine made to the policemen who had come to arrest him. “What? Would Europe abandon me?” the false inventor had exclaimed with profound terror. The remark bandied about that evening in the salons of the government minister Rastignac passed unnoticed.

  “Has that man gone mad?” the Comte de Granville said, surprised.

  The former clerk of the attorney Bordin was supposed to take the stand in this case in the name of the public prosecutor’s department, having recently recovered, through the marriage of his second daughter to the banker du Tillet, the favorable consideration from the new government that his alliance with the Vandenesses had made him lose, etc.

  II THE “LEMOINE AFFAIR” BY GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

  The heat had become stifling, a bell chimed, some turtledoves took flight, and, the windows having been closed by order of the presiding magistrate, a smell of dust spread. He was old, with a clown’s face, wore a gown too narrow for his girth, and had pretensions to wit; his twin sideburns, which a trace of tobacco stained, gave something ornamental and vulgar to his entire person. Since the adjournment of the hearing was prolonged, private exchanges started up; to enter into conversation, the irritable ones complained out loud about the lack of air, and, when someone said he had recognized the Minister of the Interior as the gentleman who was going out, a reactionary sighed, “Poor France!” Taking an orange out of his pocket, a black man won esteem, and, out of a desire for popularity, offered segments of it on a newspaper to his neighbors, excusing himself: first to a clergyman, who stated “he had never eaten anything so good; it is an excellent, refreshing fruit”; but a dowager lady took on an offended air, forbade her daughters to accept anything “from someone they didn’t know,” while other people, not knowing if the newspaper would get to them, sought to strike up an attitude: several took out their watches, a lady took off her hat. A parrot was mounted on it. Two young men were startled, would much have liked to discover if the bird had been placed there as a souvenir or perhaps out of some sort of eccentric taste. Already the wags were beginning to call out to each other from one bench to the other, and the women, looking at their husbands, were smothering their laughter in their handkerchiefs, when silence was restored, the presiding magistrate seemed to be absorbed in sleeping, and Werner’s lawyer began to utter his speech for the plaintiff. He started out with an emphatic tone, spoke for two hours, seemed dyspeptic, and every time he said “Your Honor” collapsed into such a profound bow that you would have thought he was a young woman in front of a king, or a deacon leaving the altar. He was savage about Lemoine, but the elegance of the phrases softened the harshness of the indictment. And his sentences followed each other uninterruptedly, like the gush of a waterfall, like a ribbon unfurling. At times, the monotony of his speech was such that it could no longer be distinguished from silence, like a bell whose vibration persists, like an echo becoming fainter. To conclude, he called to witness the portraits of Presidents Grévy and Carnot, placed above the court; and everyone, raising his head, observed that mildew had overtaken them in this official, unclean room that exhibited our glories
and smelled musty. A wide opening divided it down the middle, benches were lined up to the foot of the dais; there was dust on the floor, spiders in the corners of the ceiling, a rat in every hole, and it had to be aired out often because of the closeness of the stove, which was sometimes even more foul-smelling. Lemoine’s counsel was brief in his reply. But he had a southern accent, appealed to generous passions, kept taking off his pince-nez. Listening to him, Nathalie felt that confusion to which eloquence leads; a sweetness filled her and her heart heaving, the cambric of her corsage fluttered, like a blade of grass by the edge of a fountain ready to well up, like the plumage of a pigeon about to fly away. Finally the magistrate made a sign, a murmuring rose up, two umbrellas fell down: they were going to hear the defendant once again. All of a sudden the angry gestures of the crowd pointed him out; why hadn’t he told the truth, and made the diamond, and patented his invention? Everyone, even the poorest, could have—this was certain—made millions from it. They could even see the money in front of them, with that violence of regret when you think you possess what you mourn. And many abandoned themselves all over again to the loveliness of the dreams they had fashioned, when upon news of the discovery they had glimpsed the fortune, before being foiled by the swindle.

  For some, it had meant retiring from business, having a mansion on the Avenue du Bois, influence at the Academy; and even a yacht that would have taken them in the summer to cold countries—but not to the Pole, which is not without interest, but the food there smells of oil, the twenty-four-hour day must bother your sleep, and also how do you keep clear of the polar bears?

  For some, millions were not enough; they would have played them all at once on the stock market; and, buying shares at the lowest rate the day before they rose back up—a friend would have let them know when—they could see their capital increase a hundredfold in a few hours. Rich as Carnegie then, though they would take care not to waste it on humanitarian utopias. (In any case, what’s the use? A billion shared among all the French wouldn’t make one single person rich, it’s been calculated.) But, leaving luxury to the vain, they would only seek comfort and influence, would have themselves elected President of the Republic, Ambassador to Constantinople, would have their bedrooms padded with cork that would deaden the sound of their neighbors. They would not join the Jockey Club, having the correct opinion of the aristocracy. A patent of nobility from the Pope attracted them more. Perhaps you could have a papal title without paying. But then what would be the good of so many millions? In short, they would augment the annual gift to the Pope while still blaming the Church. What possible use can the Pope have for five million pieces of lacework, while so many country priests are dying of hunger?