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A Literary History of Reconciliation
 Also published by Bloomsbury:

Beyond the Willing Suspension of Disbelief, Michael Tomko

Contemporary Fictions of Attention, Alice Bennett
Forgiveness in Victorian Literature, Richard Hughes Gibson
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and British Romanticism, eds Russell Goulbourne and
David Higgins
A Literary History of Reconciliation

Power, Remorse and the Limits of

Forgiveness

Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen

 BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks

of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain 2018

Copyright © Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen, 2019

Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen has asserted his right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xi constitute an extension of

this copyright page.

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Cover image © Rijksmuseum

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 For John Garrison
Amicus est tamquam alter idem
 Is there no place
Left for Repentance, none for Pardon left?
None left but by submission.
John Milton, Paradise Lost (1674)

What I dream of, what I try to think of as the ‘purity’ of a forgiveness worthy
of its name, would be a forgiveness without power: unconditional but without
sovereignty.
Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (2001)
 Contents

List of Figures x
Acknowledgements xi

1 Introduction 1
2 ‘None Left but by Submission’: Paradise Lost and the Genesis of
Reconciliation 31
3 ‘Ask Her Forgiveness?’ Reconciliation, Power and Grace in Shakespeare 49
4 ‘Pray Your Honour Forgive Me!’: Hierarchical Forgiveness from
Pamela to Bleak House 77
5 ‘The Apathy of the Stars’: Impersonal Reconciliation in To the
Lighthouse and Ulysses 123
6 ‘Not Quite Not Yet’: History, Forgiveness and the Literary Imagination
in Disgrace and Atonement 151
7 ‘The Prairie Still Shines like Transfiguration’: Forgiveness, Theology
and Politics in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead Novels 181

Notes 202
Bibliography 220
Index 230
 List of Figures

1.1 Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (1606–69), The Return of the

Prodigal Son. 1636. Etching. Rijksmuseum. Mr and Mrs De
Bruijn-van der Leeuw Bequest, Muri, Switzerland 13
2.1 Richard R.A. Westall (1765–1836), engraved by William Finden
(1787–1852), Adam and Eve after the Fall. 1822. Illustration to the
1816/1822 edition of Paradise Lost, London, published by John
Sharpe. Victoria and Albert Museum. Bequeathed by Eustace F.
Bosanquet 37
 Acknowledgements

In writing this book, I have made grateful use of the advice and suggestions
generously offered by colleagues and friends. My conversations with them
also made the process of writing much more pleasurable, and the end result
significantly more interesting and sophisticated, than it would otherwise have
been. Of my colleagues at the Leiden Department of English, I am indebted
especially to Evert van Leeuwen, Peter Liebregts and Michael Newton. In
addition to sharing his knowledge especially of Modernism, Peter also listened
patiently to my frequent, often rather prolix updates on the book’s progress,
understanding that these served primarily to clarify my thoughts to myself as
they took shape over the past eighteen months. Inger Leemans and Han van der
Vegt took a reliably keen interest in the project and helped me develop my ideas
during various lively and enlightening conversations. I have also benefitted from
many stimulating classroom discussions with my students (perhaps more than
they realize), especially on Milton, Shakespeare, Richardson and Godwin.
I have been lucky in having had the chance to test out my ideas on various
audiences in a number of (conference) talks, as well as in an earlier article. I am
grateful to Karl Enenkel and Anita Traninger for inviting me to contribute a
chapter to Discourses of Anger in the Early Modern Period (Leiden: Brill, 2015).
The essay on reconciliation (or what may happen after anger) in early modernity
which I wrote for this volume contained the seed of this book. Sections of
Chapters 1, 2 and 3 appeared in earlier versions as part of this essay, and I thank
Brill for permission to reprint these. Kristine Johanson kindly invited me to
present a paper on early modern literature and reconciliation at a conference
on emotion history, held at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in
the Humanities in 2014. Judith Pollmann asked me to give a talk on the theme
of this book at the Leiden Institute for History; the debate with her and her
colleagues at the Institute was inspiring and instructive. I am also grateful to
Tuomas Tepora for inviting me to take part in a conference on the historicity
of emotions at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, and to George
Oppitz-Trotman for inviting me to speak on forgiveness and the language of
debt in Paradise Lost at his conference on early modern debts at the University
of Bamberg.
xii Acknowledgements

More than anyone else, John Garrison encouraged me to write this book. He
also offered invaluable advice in drawing up the book proposal which I submitted
to Bloomsbury and offered insightful feedback on the entire typescript. I
dedicate this book to him, and to the spirit of friendship and generous collegiality
which he embodies. In thanking John, I also express my gratitude to the Folger
Shakespeare Library, where we both were Short-Term Research Fellows in the
spring and summer of 2016, and which seems almost magically to create an
atmosphere in which academic exploration and collaboration can flourish in
all their unpredictability. It is also a pleasure, finally, to acknowledge my debt to
Bloomsbury’s David Avital for believing in the project from the start.
In spite of the help which I have enjoyed in researching and writing this book,
its inevitable shortcomings are, of course, my responsibility alone. In deference to
its main argument, I can only hope for the reader’s generous, non-transactional
forgiveness – a form of readerly grace, if you will.
As always, my deepest debts are to Tessa Kelder and to our son Otis, for
making life adventurous, fun and full of grace.
 1

Introduction

Human relationships are marked by tension and conflict. This observation,

which forms the starting point for this book, is self-evidently true for the
geopolitical sphere, as well as for domestic military conflict. Yet as most
readers know from experience, discord also emerges within the most intimate
relationships, such as those between family members, friends, spouses and
lovers. Conflict is also inherent in the asymmetrical power relationships – in
terms of gender, class and race, for example – that are present in any society.
This potential for conflict, present in many forms of human interaction, also
means that all societies and cultures are faced with a pressing need to construct
narratives of conflict resolution: to imagine the various ways in which conflicts
can be settled, as well as avoided in the future, and to bring into being the
formal processes and rituals that make reconciliation possible. While this need
for reconciliation narratives is arguably universal, the meaning and forms of
reconciliation are culturally constructed and therefore historically contingent:
different eras and cultures conceive of interpersonal reconciliation in sometimes
radically different ways. A single culture, moreover, can entertain various
and potentially conflicting notions of conflict resolution, while its dominant
reconciliation paradigms can change over time.
The degree to which reconciliation varies over time and across cultures is
also one important reason why it is deeply political, even in the most intimate
settings. As David Blight writes in a study of the fraught attempts at reconciliation
in post–Civil War America, ‘reconciliation is, of course, a noble and essential
human impulse. But it must be understood within historical time, and as similar
to any other political process that results from contests of human wills’.1 Rather
than celebrating reconciliation as an unambiguous, unproblematic moral good,
this book stresses the extent to which reconciliation is bound up with questions
of hierarchy and power relations.
2 A Literary History of Reconciliation

A second starting point for this study is the idea that the ways in which a
culture understands the nature of reconciliation can be fruitfully analysed
by examining representations of conflict resolution in literature. Works of
literature, I argue, play an important role in shaping the reconciliation paradigms
available in a given culture. At the same time, they offer an often critical
reflection on those paradigms – through the prism of the literary imagination.
Furthermore, while a study of reconciliation in literary texts sheds light on the
cultural history of reconciliation more broadly, it also illuminates the history of
literature itself. Interpersonal reconciliation has been an abiding literary theme
from, say, the reconciliation between Achilles and Agamemnon in The Iliad to the
reunion between Patty Berglund and her husband Walter in the closing chapters
of Jonathan Franzen’s novel Freedom (2010). Beowulf, the earliest surviving
narrative poem in the canon of English literature, is centrally concerned with the
failure of conflict resolution and with the endlessness of tribal warfare. In terms
of dramatic genres, comedy may be said to move towards reconciliation between
parties initially at odds (with intergenerational conflict as an important category
in Shakespearean comedy), while in tragedy, the full destructive potential
of conflict is unleashed (with King Lear as a particularly potent example). As
the French philosopher Olivier Abel notes, ‘We could recount the history of
literature as the history of the representation of forgiveness.’2
This book is intended in part as a first step towards such a history. While
recent work on literary representations of reconciliation has zoomed in on
specific eras, I examine a timespan of approximately four centuries, focusing
on literature in English from the early modern era to the present day, and with
case studies from Britain, Ireland, South Africa and the United States.3 I trace
a preoccupation with issues of reconciliation in William Shakespeare and John
Milton, in prose fiction of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Samuel
Richardson, William Godwin and Charles Dickens), in two works of modernist
fiction (Ulysses and To the Lighthouse), and in the works of three present-day
novelists (J. M. Coetzee, Ian McEwan and Marilynne Robinson). While I focus
on an inevitably limited set of case studies, I have aimed to be expansive in the
concepts which I examine and have attempted to present a diverse view of the
ways in which interpersonal reconciliation has been imagined by literary writers.
For example, while reconciliation in the familial sphere figures prominently
throughout this book, I stress its wider political ramifications. Indeed, as I will
argue repeatedly, intimate or familial reconciliation offers a crucial paradigm for
imagining reconciliation in the political sphere. Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead
novels, examined in the last chapter, tease out the implications of this, while
 Introduction 3

J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace explores the problem of reconciliation in post-Apartheid

South Africa in part through the problematic affair between David Lurie and his
student Melanie Isaacs.
I use ‘reconciliation’ as a general term for conflict resolution, or settlement
of differences, regardless of the various forms and meanings which such
resolution can adopt in specific cultural–historical contexts, or in specific works
of literature. It is useful, in this context, to evoke one meaning of re-conciliāre,
the Latin root of the verb ‘to reconcile’: ‘to re-unite’. Reconciliation, in the sense
employed in this book, refers to any scenario in which parties that were formerly
in conflict with each other arrive – or attempt to arrive – at some form of
peaceful coexistence, and commit themselves – or try to commit themselves – to
sustaining this coexistence in the future. Such a state of reconciliation can entail
a renewal of friendly relations, or even of love; we might refer to this as ‘thick
reconciliation’. Yet it can also take on a more minimalist character, for example
when two parties agree not to pursue their conflicts in the future yet do not
seek further rapprochement. This can be seen as a form of ‘thin reconciliation’,
as when spouses forgive each other but still decide to separate. In many of
the literary examples which I will examine, the reconciliation is between two
characters, one of whom has wronged or been wronged by the other – or at least
feels that this is the case. Yet such small-scale reconciliation can also serve as a
metonymy for reconciliation in a broader, politico-historical sense.
In Christian theology, the term ‘reconciliation’ has a more specific meaning
relevant for the questions which this book examines: ‘The action of restoring
humanity to God’s favour, esp. as through the sacrifice of Christ; the fact or
condition of a person’s or humanity’s being reconciled with God.’4 Reconciliation,
in this sense of the term, is equivalent to forgiveness of one’s sins by God. This
suggests how deeply our notions of interpersonal reconciliation are indebted
to the vocabulary of Christian theology. As will hopefully become clear in the
course of this book, reconciliation between sinful human beings and God has
served as an important template for interpersonal reconciliation since at least
the early modern era. Nowhere is this more clearly visible than in the discourse
of ‘forgiveness’ so frequently encountered in modern-day culture. While in
everyday usage, the term ‘forgiveness’ is often employed as a shorthand for
reconciliation and the settling of differences in general, it in fact carries a set
of assumptions about the nature of reconciliation that are by no means timeless
or universal. As we will see throughout this book, the act of moulding concepts
of interpersonal reconciliation from the lexicon of divine forgiveness has far-
reaching consequences for the ways in which we understand conflict resolution
4 A Literary History of Reconciliation

between people. The following sections explore the issue of divine forgiveness
and its relation to interpersonal reconciliation in more detail.

Remorse-based forgiveness: A modern reconciliation

paradigm?

As several scholars and commentators have noted, an especially dominant

paradigm of reconciliation in modern-day culture is that of ‘remorse-based
forgiveness’.5 Within this model of interpersonal reconciliation, a victim
foreswears her feelings of anger, resentment, bitterness or rancour on the grounds
that the wrongdoer feels genuine remorse and has successfully communicated
this feeling to the victim. Both victim and wrongdoer, in other words, undergo
a self-transformation. The wrongdoer now sees that his actions were morally
wrong and acknowledges his guilt, and is therefore a different person than he
was when he committed his crime. It is largely for this reason that the victim lets
go of her anger and resentment towards him, or commits herself to doing so.
The victim’s self-transformation revolves around this letting go of resentment,
and her willingness to see the wrongdoer in a new light.
The dominance of this reconciliatory paradigm can also be gauged from the
moral importance which modern-day culture attaches to remorse more broadly.
Indeed, the ability to feel remorse – as a combination of regret and moral guilt –
is seen as a fundamental marker of moral personhood, a requirement for entry
into the community of the morally sound, and a sign that one is capable of self-
improvement.6 Remorse, therefore, is thought of as a starting point for personal
redemption. A perceived inability to feel remorse, by contrast, is often read as
a fundamental moral and psychological defect that signals both a troubling
inability to reflect morally on one’s actions and a perhaps even more disturbing
inability to empathize with the suffering of others. As such, remorselessness
serves as a mark of the sociopathic, ‘evil’ personality.
As David Konstan has convincingly shown, this emphasis on remorse and
moral self-transformation as a key to reconciliation in the human sphere was
largely alien to classical antiquity. ‘Forgiveness’ in classical culture was not
obtained by convincing the offended party that one feels deep remorse and is
now a changed person, but precisely by denying responsibility for one’s wrongful
actions. For example, one can plead ignorance; one can claim to have acted out
of passion, anger or insanity, or to have been compelled to act in a certain way
by external factors such as a storm or subjection to torture; or one can shift
 Introduction 5

responsibility on to others. For Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, it is in these

ways that one can become eligible for συγγνώμη (sungnômê) – a term more
accurately translated as ‘pity’, ‘mitigation’ or ‘excuse’ than as ‘forgiveness’ in the
modern sense.7 A canonical literary example is Agamemnon’s insistence, in The
Iliad, that he was not himself when he took Achilles’s war prize Briseis:

I am not to blame!
Zeus and Fate and the Fury stalking through the night,
they are the ones who drove that savage madness in my heart,
that day in assembly when I seized Achilles’ prize. (19.100–103)

In addition to such appeals to force majeure, classical culture saw reconciliation as

obtained through a show of self-abasement before a wronged party. As Konstan
explains, Aristotle’s discussion of anger appeasement in the Nicomachean Ethics
revolves entirely around ‘relations of status and power’, and he sees conflict as
rooted predominantly in a violation of hierarchies, a belittlement of the offended
party.8 Conflict can be resolved, therefore, by a reaffirming of the proper
hierarchical relation between wrongdoer and victim, or by demonstrating
renewed respect for the victim’s status. This is a matter of placating the offended
party, rather than of seeking their forgiveness. An instructive literary example
is Samia (The Woman from Samos), a comedy by the ancient Greek playwright
Menander. In this play, the complex conflict between Demeas and his son
Moschio is resolved when Demeas eventually accords Moschio the respect
to which he is entitled as an adult male, and as a fledgling father. In doing so,
moreover, Demeas humbles himself before his son. Conflict resolution in this
play, Konstan writes, is made possible by ‘a display of humility that shows a
proper regard for the affronted party’s status and authority’.9
So ‘forgiveness’, in the full, remorse-based, modern sense of the word, seems
to have been unavailable in classical antiquity. This view is to some degree
contradicted by Laurel Fulkerson, who has shown that a concept akin to remorse
in its modern-day sense is not altogether absent from classical culture. Achilles’s
response to the death of Patroclus in Books 18 and 19 of The Iliad is an example:
Achilles feels both responsible and guilty for Patroclus’s fate. Yet not only is such
remorse extremely rare in the Graeco-Roman world, but, unlike in modern-day
culture, it did not figure as a key moral virtue either. As Laurel Fulkerson argues,
classical antiquity emphasized instead the virtues of stability and consistency:
‘The remorseful individual in antiquity is, first and foremost, a person who has
failed to act well rather than one who has learned a lesson. So where the modern
observer is likely to privilege progress over initial mistake, the ancient observer
6 A Literary History of Reconciliation

sees the error much more vividly.’10 The classical ethical imperative is to behave
in such a manner that situations in which one must feel remorse do not arise in
the first place.
Perhaps more surprisingly, remorse-based forgiveness also does not figure
as a model for interpersonal reconciliation in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles
and the church fathers. Christian theology is of course centrally concerned
with remorse and forgiveness, yet the focus in the church fathers was first and
foremost on divine forgiveness – on repairing the damaged relationship between
God and sinful humanity. Remorse for one’s sins was an emotion which one felt
– and was obliged to feel – before God, not before fellow-human beings. Both
the Hebrew and Christian Bibles and early Christian theology were innovative
in defining the relation between God and humanity strongly in terms of sin and
forgiveness, and in defining sin not in terms of specific wrongdoings but as a
general human state. Since God sees into the deepest recesses of our soul, this
state of sinfulness cannot be reasoned away or excused. St Augustine captures
this sense of utter exposure before God in a famous passage in the Confessions:

O Lord, the depths of man’s conscience lie bare before your eyes. Could anything
of mine remain hidden from you, even if I refused to confess it? […] O Lord, all
that I am is laid before you. I have declared how it profits me to confess to you.
And I make my confession, not in words and sounds made by the tongue alone,
but with the voice of my soul and in my thoughts which cry aloud to you. Your
ear can hear them. (207)

Yet this forgiveness model was not extrapolated to interpersonal relations.

Indeed, even Christ’s pronouncements on interhuman forgiveness do not stress
the importance of contrition and repentance. The Sermon on the Mount, perhaps
Christ’s most famous statement on the subject, presents forgivingness towards
others as a duty because we are all sinful before God: ‘For if ye forgive men their
trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men
their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses’ (Matth. 6:14–
15). God’s graciousness towards sinful human beings entails a duty to be similarly
gracious in our dealings with others; a wrongdoer’s heartfelt remorse does not
enter the equation. Likewise, Christ’s prayer to God to forgive his crucifiers on
the grounds that ‘they know not what they do’ (Luke 23:34) echoes not so much
Christian theological models of forgiveness but Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics,
in which pleading ignorance is one way of obtaining sungnômê.
The rarity of remorse-based forgiveness in classical antiquity offers a
compelling example of the cultural–historical contingency of reconciliation.
 Introduction 7

The core question which Konstan ultimately poses is when Christian models of
divine forgiveness came to be applied systematically to interpersonal relations,
and when remorse became an issue in scenarios of interpersonal reconciliation.
He tentatively locates the first stirrings of this shift in the early modern era, with
Molière’s Les Fourberies de Scapin (1671) and Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of
Verona (1590s) as examples, yet he sees a more decisive shift during the late
eighteenth century, in Immanuel Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals (1797).
My aim in this book is not to pinpoint a precise originary moment for the
modern, remorse-based model of interpersonal reconciliation. Yet I do hope to
show that it has a long-term presence in literary texts that goes back at least to
the early modern era. A useful starting point for approaching this issue can be
found in a passage in Henry Fielding’s great picaresque novel Tom Jones (1749),
which both evokes and rejects remorse as the royal road to forgiveness. Tom
Jones works towards a marriage between Tom and Sophia Western, yet the
former’s past sexual escapades seem to have placed him ‘beyond all hope of
[Sophia’s] forgiveness’ (855) and therefore pose the central obstacle in the way
of the novel’s comic ending. In the penultimate chapter, Tom attempts to gain
Sophia’s forgiveness by stressing the intensity and authenticity of his remorse
over his past actions: ‘No repentance was ever more sincere. O! let it reconcile
me to my heaven in this dear bosom’ (865). Sophia’s response is revealing:

‘Sincere repentance, Mr Jones’, answered she, ‘will obtain the pardon of a sinner,
but it is from one who is a perfect judge of that sincerity. A human mind may
be imposed on; nor is there any infallible method to prevent it. You must expect
however, that if I can be prevailed on by your repentance to pardon you, I will
at least insist on the strongest proof of its sincerity’. – ‘O! name any proof in
my power,’ answered Jones eagerly. ‘Time,’ replied she; ‘time, Mr Jones, can
alone convince me that you are a true penitent, and have resolved to abandon
these vicious courses, which I should detest you, if I imagined you capable of
persevering in.’ (865)

As Sophia explains, Tom applies the language of divine forgiveness to human

relations: interpersonal reconciliation is to be reached via the wrongdoer’s
remorse. This brings with it an epistemological problem explicitly addressed
by Sophia: only God can accurately gauge the sincerity of human remorse.
Human beings have no reliable method for doing so, and this renders Tom’s
appeal to remorse as a basis for reconciliation problematic. For Sophia, Tom’s
self-transformation can only appear from concrete behaviour – not from his
inner emotional state, which she sees as a matter between him and God. Such a
8 A Literary History of Reconciliation

change in behaviour takes time, moreover, and it is only after repeated entreaties
that Sophia reluctantly hints at the required duration of his atonement: ‘“A
twelve-month, perhaps,” said she. – “O! my Sophia,” cries he, “you have named
an eternity”’ (866).
The exchange between Tom and Sophia suggests that by the mid-eighteenth
century, remorse-based forgiveness was culturally available as a model for
interpersonal reconciliation yet could simultaneously be understood as
deeply problematic. This insight can also be applied to many of the other
literary case studies examined in this book. As will become clear in Chapter
3, the idea that remorse is the basis for interpersonal reconciliation is clearly
present in Shakespeare, yet both its efficacy and its conceptual coherence are
also questioned. In The Tempest, Antonio’s remorse remains unknowable, while
Leontes’s remorse in The Winter’s Tale is never sufficient and never seems to
render him eligible for forgiveness. As I argue in Chapter 4, William Godwin’s
novel Caleb Williams presents remorse-based forgiveness primarily as an
instrument of political oppression. Remorse-based forgiveness is arguably
evoked most insistently in Dickens’s Dombey and Son and Bleak House, yet even
there, it remains fraught and at best partially effective.
Literature offers a special perspective on the cultural history of interpersonal
reconciliation and on the question of when remorse came to be applied to the
interpersonal sphere. It allows us to see that the beginnings of this shift can be
traced at least to the early modern era, yet also offers a critical examination of
how models of divine forgiveness can or cannot operate in the interpersonal
sphere. The latter holds true as much for J. M. Coetzee as it does for Shakespeare,
and literature’s ability to address the subject of reconciliation in a spirit of
critical, open-ended exploration is a key strand in this book. It should be
emphasized, furthermore, that my literary case studies also draw on other
religious reconciliation paradigms than remorse-driven forgiveness. Christ’s
notion that in forgiving others, we imitate God’s forgiveness of sinful humans,
for example, is evoked by Prospero in the epilogue to The Tempest, while it
also figures prominently in Robinson’s Gilead novels. Likewise, the forgiveness
offered by the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son – discussed in more
detail below – haunts various literary works, from King Lear to Bleak House and
Robinson’s Home.
While Konstan offers a compelling analysis of how notions of interpersonal
reconciliation are modelled on divine forgiveness, he leaves unexamined the
question of how theological models of divine forgiveness in turn draw on
secular discourses of conflict resolution. Yet discourses of divine forgiveness
 Introduction 9

are shot through with the secular language of power and subjection, drawing,
for example, on classical notions of reconciliation as a matter of self-abasement
and supplication. In this sense, the conceptual traffic between divine and
interpersonal reconciliation goes in two directions. We cannot overlook the
role which the language of power and hierarchy plays in the theology of divine
forgiveness.

Divine forgiveness: Contrition, self-abasement, grace

As Martha Nussbaum explains in her recent study Anger and Forgiveness:

Resentment, Generosity, Justice (2016), Christian theology has construed divine
forgiveness on the one hand as deeply transactional and conditional, and on
the other hand as a matter of unconditional, loving grace. In one dominant
strand of Christian theology, that is to say, divine forgiveness, or humanity’s
reconciliation with God, is conditional upon a set of acts on the part of the
sinner. In late medieval theologies of justification, the first of these is remorse,
or contrition of heart (contritio cordis), the term more frequently used in
theological discourse. The Council of Trent defines contrition as a form of
inward repentance: ‘a sorrow of soul and a hatred of sin committed, with a
firm purpose of not sinning in the future.’11 In the Summa Theologica, Thomas
Aquinas sees contrition as one important cause of forgiveness, stating that
the sorrow over sin that comes with contrition ‘is also a kind of punishment’,
and that ‘it may be so intense as to suffice for the remission of both guilt
and punishment’.12 The twelfth-century scholastic theologian Peter Lombard
believed contrition, as a deeply felt inner state, to be the only requirement for
forgiveness.13 Twelfth-century theology also developed a tripartite process of
penance, in which contrition would precede confession of mouth (confessio
oris) and works of satisfaction (satisfactio operis): a confession of one’s sins
and a repaying of one’s spiritual debt to God by means of good works such
as fasting or a pilgrimage. An influential late medieval model of divine
forgiveness, codified by thirteenth-century scholastic philosophers such as
Gabriel Biel and Robert Holcot, held that God is obliged to show grace to any
person who has done quod in se est (‘what is in him’) – that is to say, to anyone
who has done everything in their limited human power to earn grace.14 Divine
forgiveness, on this reading, is a fundamentally transactional affair – a pactum,
or covenant, between God and humanity, in which both parties must meet
certain obligations.
10 A Literary History of Reconciliation

Contrition, as a deep awareness of and sorrow for one’s sins, brings with it a
deep sense of humility. Indeed, divine forgiveness requires that sinful humans
abase themselves before God. Analysing the language of forgiveness in the late
medieval Latin hymn Dies Irae, Nussbaum argues that the repentant sinner
seeking forgiveness approaches God in a lowly, ‘suppliant posture’:

Ingemisco, tamquam reus:

Culpa rubet vultus meus:
Supplicanti parce, Deus.

[I moan like a guilty criminal.

My face blushes with my fault.
Spare me, God, your suppliant.]15

Nussbaum comments that the hymn depicts a ‘demanding and an angry God,
who, nonetheless, if sufficiently supplicated, may opt for forgiveness, in the
sense of turning from anger and not exacting the merited punishment’.16 The
speaker’s abject supplication with God in this hymn echoes classical rituals
of supplication, as encountered, for example, in final book of The Iliad, when
Priam supplicates with Achilles for the return of Hector’s body, kneeling before
Achilles and clasping his knees.17 As Leah Whittington explains, supplication
revolves around a radical disparity in power between suppliant and supplicatee:
‘The suppliant makes a request not as an equal partner, but from a posture of
total powerlessness.’18 This posture of total powerlessness is also adopted by
the sinful human seeking divine forgiveness. The contrite speaker in Dies Irae
confesses his sins in a psychological form of self-abasement, an utter exposure
of his sinful self to God’s wrathful gaze: ‘Iudex ergo cum sedebit, / Quidquid
latet, apparebit’ [Therefore, when the judge will sit, / Whatever is hidden will
appear].19
The emphasis on humility before and supplication with God also informed
Reformation understandings of divine forgiveness. A morning prayer in the Book
of Common Prayer begs God not to despise ‘humble and contrite hearts’ (sig.
A[2]1) and urges the faithful to confess their sins ‘with an humble, lowly, penitent,
and obedient heart’ (sig. A[2]1v). The Book of Common Prayer also stresses the
necessity of remorse; a communion prayer addresses God as ‘our heavenly Father,
who of his great mercy hath promised forgivenesse of sinnes to all them which
with heartie repentance and true faith turne unto him’ (sig. N1v). A commination
against sinners – ‘a recital of Divine threatenings against sinners’20 – presents
forgiveness as intensely conditional on contrition and humility:
 Introduction 11

Let us therefore returne unto him, who is the merciful receiver of all true
penitent sinners, assuring our selves that he is ready to receive us, & most willing
to pardon us, if we come unto him with faithfull repentance, if we will submit
our selves unto him, & from henceforth walk in his wayes, if wee will take his
easie yoke and light burden upon us, to follow him in lowlines, patience and
charitie, and bee ordered by the governance of his holy spirite, seeking alwayes
his glory, and serving him duely in our vocation, with thankesgiving. This if
wee doe, Christ will deliver us from the curse of the law, and from the extreme
malediction which shall light upon them that shalbe set on the left hand. (sig.
Q4v)

The conditional ‘if ’ repeats four times in this passage, suggesting that in
order to be eligible for divine forgiveness, the sinner must meet an intricate
set of requirements. As Michael Schoenfeldt has argued, seventeenth-century
devotional poets such as John Donne and George Herbert address God in a
comparably humble, supplicatory manner, drawing on the social language of
subjection for their exploration of spiritual redemption.21 In a similar vein,
seventeenth-century prayer manuals insist that ‘Christians [must] prove their
devotion through fervent and importunate supplication of God’; reconciliation
with God, on this understanding of prayer, requires human self-abasement.22
In spite of their emphasis on the conditional, transactional nature of divine
forgiveness, the theological models outlined here also insist that grace represents
a mysterious, free and unmerited gift, motivated by God’s love of humanity
and not ultimately a response to, or the result of, human initiatives.23 Indeed,
according to the fourteenth-century theologian Gregory of Rimini, it is in fact
the free gift of divine grace that enables sinful human beings to experience
contrition in the first place.24 This brings us to an alternative notion of divine
forgiveness not as requiring contrition, confession and self-abasement, but as
unconditional, non-transactional and rooted only in divine love. We find such a
model evoked, for example, by the epic voice in Paradise Lost, which celebrates
the Son’s ‘Divine compassion’ with sinful humanity, his ‘Love without end, and
without measure Grace’ (3.141–42).
The idea of divine forgiveness as rooted in divine love and compassion finds
expression perhaps most famously in the parable of the Prodigal Son, narrated
by Christ in Luke 15:11–32. At the beginning of the tale, the Prodigal Son claims
his inheritance and leaves his father’s household. When he has spent his entire
fortune on ‘riotous living’ (Luke 15: 13) and is hungry, destitute and desperate,
he realizes how foolish he has been. He decides to return home, humble himself
before his father, confess his sins and ask to be reaccepted into the household as
12 A Literary History of Reconciliation

a servant rather than as his father’s son. Yet although the son intends to do all of
this, the father requires nothing of the kind. The forgiveness (if that is indeed
the right term) which he offers his son in fact precedes any actions on the latter’s
part:
And when [the Prodigal Son] came to himself, he said, How many hired servants
of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!
I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned
against heaven, and before thee,
And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired
servants.
And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his
father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed
him. (Luke 15:17–20)

The father finds himself overcome by love and overjoyed to see his son alive,
while the son does not even get a chance to display the contrition and self-
humiliation which he had planned. Martha Nussbaum argues that the father’s
response to his son’s return is not really forgiveness, but rather a form of loving
generosity that does away with all forms of conditionality and humiliation,
or assertions of moral superiority.25 From a theological perspective, such
unconditional love is not incompatible with the idea of divine grace, yet the
parable insists – by means of the crucial conjunction ‘but’ in verse 20 – that
the apparatus of repentance, confession, remorse and self-abasement evoked
by the son himself is not needed, and that the father’s love is the only reason
why the son is ‘forgiven’.26 Indeed, the parable contains no suggestion that
the father has to overcome feelings of anger or bitterness before forgiving
his son; his compassion upon seeing his son in the distance is instinctive and
instantaneous. When the more dutiful elder son expresses his misgivings
about the unmerited generosity lavished on his prodigal brother, the father
responds as follows: ‘Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.
It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was
dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found’ (Luke 15:31–32). The
King James Version’s ‘it was meet’ suggests that the father sees it as merely
appropriate – in accordance with social decorum, as it were – to rejoice at the
Prodigal Son’s return. Yet the Greek ἔδει (édei) also carries the stronger sense
of ‘being absolutely necessary’, captured, for example, in the New American
Standard Bible: ‘We had to celebrate and rejoice.’27 The father, that is to say, can
do no other: he is compelled to celebrate by a deep love for his son and invites
his elder son to join in that love.
 Introduction 13

The return of the Prodigal Son is hauntingly depicted in a 1636 etching by

Rembrandt van Rijn (Figure 1.1).28 The etching underscores the reading of the
parable outlined in the previous paragraph. It shows an emaciated Prodigal
Son kneeling before his father, his face ‘brutally coarsened’, in tattered clothes
and looking older than his father.29 The father bends forward, with bent knees,
towards his son, his posture suggesting not authority or hierarchy but emotional
closeness, visually echoing the son’s kneeling. The son has dropped his walking
stick and is now supported by the father’s left hand, while the latter’s right hand

Figure 1.1 Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (1606–1669), The Return of the Prodigal
Son. 1636. Etching. Rijksmuseum. Mr and Mrs De Bruijn-van der Leeuw Bequest,
Muri, Switzerland.
14 A Literary History of Reconciliation

touches the son’s back in a gesture of tenderness. The image suggests not only the
father’s compassion with his son’s suffering but also his own desire to be reunited
with him, and the anguish he felt during his absence. Rembrandt’s depiction
of the reunion further gains in drama from the presence of two servants who
have come to bring a robe and sandals yet invert their faces from the scene on
which they are intruding. The elder brother, by contrast, does look intently at
what unfolds before his eyes, attempting, it seems, to gauge its meaning. His
presence, which mirrors that of the viewer himself, goes undetected by his father
and brother.

Political forgiveness: Generosity, justice, oblivion

In the return of the Prodigal Son, divine forgiveness seems severed from notions
of hierarchy and subjection, motivated instead only by love and generosity.
Rembrandt’s sketch also holds out the possibility of such unconditional
forgiveness in the interpersonal sphere, even as it registers the unforgiving
elder brother’s presence. Seen in this light, it is intriguing that forgiveness has
become a dominant reconciliation model in the political sphere (in addition to
its emergence as a paradigm of intimate reconciliation, outlined earlier in this
introduction). Indeed, as Antony Bash observes, the emergence of forgiveness
as a political concept constitutes one of the pivotal developments in its recent
history. During approximately the second half of the twentieth century, Bash
notes, forgiveness moved ‘from being primarily the focus of religious discourse
and ethical reflection’ to become ‘a matter for nations as well as individuals’.30
The most celebrated example of political forgiveness is the South African Truth
and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), set up in 1995, which created a model
of political reconciliation imitated across the world since then, in countries as
diverse as Chile, Nepal, Canada and Germany.31 As we will see, the modern
concept of political forgiveness, like its divine counterpart, stands precariously
between conditionality and generosity, while it also has a fraught relation to the
vocabulary of divine forgiveness.
One of the most thoughtful and lucid theoretical models of political
forgiveness has been offered by P. E. Digeser. Central to Digeser’s model is an
attempt to define political forgiveness in non-religious terms, without recourse
to theologically inflected concepts such as remorse. She therefore also rejects
‘sentiment-based’ notions of political forgiveness, which revolve around a letting
go of resentment by victims and a wrongdoer’s contrition – around a human
 Introduction 15

capacity, therefore, for inward change.32 The remorse-based model of forgiveness

discussed above relies, of course, largely on sentiment. Digeser proposes instead
an illocutionary notion of forgiveness, in which victims release wrongdoers from
their debt in a speech act carried out before a relevant audience who understand
its import. This form of political forgiveness does not follow theological,
contrition-based models but tracks more closely to the cancelling, or forgiving,
of a financial debt. The efficacy of such forgiveness does not depend on whether
or not victims eliminate their feelings of resentment or anger. Instead, political
forgiveness relies on the publicly proclaimed possibility of a new start, a way of
preventing the past from holding the present hostage: ‘a settling of past debts so
that they do not haunt the future.’33 This also means that for Digeser, political
forgiveness is by its very nature public and explicit; there is no such thing as sotto
voce political forgiveness.
Political forgiveness is most characteristically pursued when legal concepts
of retributive justice fall short. As Julie McGonegal asks in response to critiques
of postcolonial reconciliation as excluding any notions of criminality and
responsibility, ‘is it possible for the crimes committed by the perpetrators of
Apartheid to be accurately recorded and tallied up to create a sum total of
meanings?’.34 Political notions of reconciliation and forgiveness rest on the idea
that some forms of past injustice are so systemic, and their present-day legacy so
pervasive, that they can only be addressed by acknowledging the limits – and even
the impossibility – of legal redress and retribution. In an important sense, therefore,
political reconciliation emerges precisely when societies attempt to come to terms
with unforgivable wrongs – ones that overwhelm conventional notions of just
retribution. Political forgiveness entails a recognition of the limits of justice, and a
sense that in some cases, the pursuit of justice can be trumped by other values or
goals, such as generosity and magnanimity, or a peaceful transition to democracy.
At the same time, Digeser insists that in scenes of political forgiveness,
justice cannot be foregone completely. In order for political forgiveness to be
efficacious and morally acceptable, the demands of justice must be met on at
least some basic level. For Digeser, this minimal level of justice revolves around
truth-telling: political forgiveness, as a form of debt forgiveness, requires a
‘publicly verifiable account of the wrong’; ‘a shared account of what happened
(who did what to whom)’.35 This view was also central to the South African TRC:
the horrors and injustices of Apartheid could be overcome only if perpetrators
publicly disclosed the truth about their crimes, in this way making forgiveness
by their victims a possibility. Perpetrator’s remorse, by contrast, was not a
prerequisite.
16 A Literary History of Reconciliation

This insistence on truth-finding – on revealing what happened in the past –

seems fundamental to modern understandings of political reconciliation
more broadly.36 Indeed, it points to a fundamental difference with earlier, and
especially early modern, conceptions of political forgiveness. As will be discussed
in more detail in Chapter 2, early modern governments defined reconciliation
after civil war, for example, not in terms of truth-finding but as requiring a
form of oblivion. Indeed, as Judith Pollmann explains, ‘from the Middle Ages
until the nineteenth century, acts of oblivion were a favourite instrument in any
peacemaker’s toolkit’.37 The Indemnity and Oblivion Act proclaimed by Charles
II in 1660 offers a case in point: Charles’s professed aim was to bury the collective
memory of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.
The purpose of political oblivion was in fact highly similar to one crucial aim
of modern-day political forgiveness, namely to ensure that the horrors of the
past ‘cannot serve as the basis for legitimate claims in the future’.38 In this way,
it becomes possible for a society to move forward. Similarly, acts of oblivion
do not in the first instance mean that one no longer has knowledge of the past,
but rather ‘that this knowledge is now, not merely of but also in the past; it does
not bear on the present’.39 In recent history, too, political forgetting has been
adopted as a reconciliation strategy, for example in Brazil, Guatemala, Spain and
Argentina. In such cases, the decision not to pursue truth stemmed from a tragic
awareness that the pursuit of truth would antagonize a nation’s armed forces
and therefore endanger the very transition to democracy that governments were
seeking to safeguard.40 Yet the idea that a state of political reconciliation can be
obtained through a form of oblivion seems unacceptable in many modern-day
societies and certainly cannot be held up as an ideal.
We have seen that Digeser’s model of political reconciliation minimizes the
relevance of the sentiments felt by either victims or wrongdoers, while it also
elides religious vocabulary. Yet religious discourses have a way of insinuating
themselves into modern-day political forgiveness. In his book No Future without
Forgiveness, Desmond Tutu famously reads the hearings by the South African
TRC in deeply religious terms, invoking the full vocabulary of divine forgiveness,
including contrition, confession and redemption. While such religious discourse
certainly did not dominate the hearings themselves, it did crop up in a number
of prominent cases, for example in the hearing of Jeffrey Benzien, a member of
the South African secret service under Apartheid, and in the statements made by
Frederik Willem de Klerk, State President of South Africa from 1989 until 1994.
As Ralf Wüstenburg notes, Benzien showed an empathy with his victims that
can be seen as remorse, and his hearing evinces a strong sense that reconciliation
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Title: Rabevel, ou le mal des ardents, Volume 1 (of 3)

I. La jeunesse de Rabevel

Author: Lucien Fabre

Release date: October 21, 2023 [eBook #71926]

Language: French

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 LUCIEN FABRE

RABEVEL
OU
LE MAL DES ARDENTS

*
LA JEUNESSE DE RABEVEL
« Il n’y a pas de passion sans excès. »

Pascal.

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 PARENT. ET FRAT.
ABAFFECT. LUC. EOR. DIC.
 CHAPITRE PREMIER

Le premier Octobre 1875 qui était un mardi, vers les trois heures
de relevée, un homme sortit subitement de la maison qui porte
encore le numéro vingt-six dans la rue des Rosiers. Il tombait une
grosse pluie froide. L’homme maugréa un instant sur la porte en
ouvrant son parapluie. Puis il se retourna brusquement, assujettit sur
la tête d’un gamin qui se tenait dans l’ombre du couloir, un capuchon
de laine bleue et partit à grandes enjambées, au milieu de la boue et
d’un ruissellement de torrent, tandis que l’enfant dont un cartable
battait le dos, trottinait sur ses pas en geignant et toussant.
Ayant suivi la rue jusqu’au bout dans la direction de l’Hôtel de
Ville, ils traversèrent le passage des Singes, remontèrent la rue des
Guillemites et prirent enfin la rue Sainte Croix de la Bretonnerie. Le
gamin à bout de souffle tirait la jambe si bien que l’homme ne
l’entendant plus piétiner tout contre lui se retourna et, distinguant
sous le capuchon le petit visage rougi, s’arrêta en souriant :
— Je cours donc si vite, petit Bernard ? lui dit-il.
— Oh ! oui, oncle Noë, répondit l’enfant avec assurance. Mais je
te ferai trotter moi aussi quand je serai plus grand que toi.
— Eh ! qui te dit que tu deviendras plus grand que moi,
moucheron ?
— Je le sais bien, moi.
 Noë Rabevel regarda son neveu. L’enfant assez grand pour ses
dix ans semblait robuste. Ses cheveux bouclés qu’il portait longs
adoucissaient un peu une mine têtue et sournoise qui gâtait
l’intelligence des yeux vifs. L’homme poussa un soupir et marmonna
quelques mots. Mais l’enfant tendait l’oreille et l’observait de côté
d’un regard fixe qu’il surprit et qui lui pesa. Il sentit après un peu de
réflexion son étonnement et sa gêne.
— Damné gosse, se dit-il, qui ne sera pas commode.
Il avait ralenti l’allure et ils firent encore quelques pas en silence.
Noë poursuivait le cours de ses réflexions.
— Bon Dieu, oui, songeait-il, qu’il grandisse et tant mieux s’il est
capable de faire autre chose qu’un menuisier ou un tailleur. On en
sera enfin débarrassé.
Une calèche lancée au grand trot de ses deux chevaux les
dépassa et projeta sur sa cotte de velours une flaque de boue
luisante.
— Les cochons ! fit-il.
— Je les connais, dit l’enfant. C’est Monsieur Bansperger, tu sais,
le fils du rabbin ? Il est avec une dame. Il va voir son père sans
doute.
— Oui, il a eu vite fait fortune celui-là avec les fournitures de la
guerre, grommela Noë.
Un camarade d’école, de quelques années à peine plus âgé que
lui ; oui, il devait être de 1844, ce qui représentait une différence de
cinq ans ; il s’était enrichi tandis que d’autres, dont lui-même,
faisaient le coup de feu dans la mobile et allaient pourrir dans les
casemates glacées de la Prusse.
— Pourquoi tu n’es pas riche comme ce Bansperger ? demanda
l’enfant comme si les pensées de son oncle ne lui avaient pas
échappé.
— Parce que, mon petit, il faisait du commerce tandis que je me
battais.
— Et l’oncle Rodolphe se battait aussi ?
 — Oui, mon frère se battait aussi.
— Mais pourquoi Bansperger ne se battait-il pas ?
— Bansperger était Polonais, mon petit Bernard.
— Alors, pour devenir riche, il valait mieux être Polonais ?
— Oui, pendant la guerre. Mais à présent cela n’a plus
d’importance…
— Alors je pourrai rester Français ? demanda l’enfant.
Noë eut un serrement de cœur qu’il reconnut bien. Souvent les
réflexions de son neveu le transperçaient.
— Je pourrai rester Français ? répéta l’enfant d’une voix
insistante.
— Oui, répondit Noë, avec une émotion qu’il tentait vainement de
surmonter. Sais-tu que c’est un grand honneur d’être Français ?
— Pourquoi ? demanda Bernard.
— Ah ! le maître te l’expliquera ! D’ailleurs, nous arrivons.
Ils s’arrêtèrent devant une vieille bâtisse en pans de bois, toute
vermoulue, où déjà stationnaient des groupes d’enfants et de
grandes personnes. Le menuisier reconnut quelques amis et
bavarda un instant avec eux sous le déluge qui ne cessait point.
— Alors, vous menez ce gosse au régent ? lui demandait-on.
— Ma foi, oui, c’est de son âge ; il faut bien qu’il apprenne son
alphabet. Et puis, quelques coups de rabot au caractère ça ne fait
point de mal, pas vrai ? Surtout que le petit gars ne l’a pas toujours
verni ; hein, Bernard ?
Mais l’enfant se taisait ; il avait un pli au front et semblait méditer.
— Il est toujours comme ça, ce petit, c’est une souche, dit Noë à
ses interlocuteurs ; on ne sait pas d’où ça sort.
Bernard leva les yeux.
— Tu ferais mieux de te taire, fit-il d’un ton froid qui remua les
auditeurs.
 — Voilà, s’écria l’oncle en prenant ceux-ci à témoin, voilà
comment me parle ce gosse. Et c’est mon neveu ; et j’ai seize ans
de plus que lui !
« Et encore moi, ça m’est égal, je ne le vois guère que quand il
descend à l’atelier, et aux repas. Mais avec mon frère Rodolphe, le
tailleur, qui est marié, lui, et chez qui nous sommes en pension, c’est
pareil. On ne peut pas dire qu’il soit grossier ; mais il vous a des
raisonnements et tout le temps des raisonnements. Tout le jour, je
l’entends à travers le plancher qui fait damner les compagnons
tailleurs à l’étage et qui leur mange tout leur temps. Ça veut tout
savoir, et ça a un mauvais esprit du diable. C’est un badinguet de
mes bottes, quoi !
— Une bonne claque, dit un gros monsieur décoré, une bonne
claque je vous lui donnerais, moi, quand il veut faire le zouave.
Pourquoi vous ne le corrigez pas ?
Noë eut un petit mouvement de stupéfaction.
— Eh ! bien, répondit-il, c’est vrai, vous me croirez si vous voulez,
on n’y a jamais songé. Ce gosse-là, c’est pas tout le monde. Rien ne
nous empêcherait, pas ? Mais c’est comme le mauvais bois.
Comment qu’on veuille le prendre, au guillaume ou au bouvet, on l’a
toujours à contrefil ; il répond comme un homme. Alors… Et, ajouta-
t-il après un instant en baissant la voix et après avoir constaté que
Bernard regardait ailleurs, que voulez-vous ? le gronder, ça passe,
mais le battre, je crois bien que j’oserais pas !
A ce moment la porte de l’école s’ouvrit et le maître parut sur le
seuil. C’était un homme d’une cinquantaine d’années, aux longues
moustaches fatiguées, qui traînait les pieds dans des savates. Il ôta
sa calotte défraîchie à pompon noir pour saluer son monde ; puis,
d’un tic qui l’agitait tout entier, il secoua ses vêtements verdis par
l’usage et d’où s’envolaient de la poussière et du tabac à priser. Noë
le regardait avec admiration.
— Tu sais, dit-il au petit, c’est un savant et un républicain de la
première heure. Il était près de Lamartine en 48 et il possède encore
des lettres qu’il a reçues de Béranger et de Victor Hugo. C’est un
Père du peuple, ça. Tu as de la chance d’avoir un pareil maître.
Mais Bernard contemplait les vêtements avachis du pauvre
homme et sa contenance misérable ; un grand air d’ennui, de
tristesse et de solitude émanait du pédagogue. L’enfant y cherchait
vainement l’éclat des rêves, la féerie de la science, toute la lumière
de ces paradis dont ses oncles, petits patrons intelligents et cultivés,
lui parlaient si souvent. Cette minute qu’il avait attendue longuement,
et longtemps souhaitée, lui parut tellement morne qu’il sentit monter
les larmes. Il se retint par orgueil et fit du coin de la bouche une
mauvaise grimace ; son démon coutumier lui souffla le mot le plus
propre à blesser Noë :
— Il n’est pas reluisant ton bonhomme, lui dit-il ; et il souffla avec
dérision.
A peine achevait-il qu’il sentait à la joue une brûlure cuisante :
pour la première fois de sa vie on l’avait giflé. L’oncle et le neveu se
regardaient aussi interdits l’un que l’autre. Le maître d’école les
aborda :
— Que viens-tu de faire, Noë ? dit-il d’un ton de reproche.
Mais l’enfant, les yeux humides, le prévint :
— Il m’a battu parce que je ne vous trouve pas reluisant.
Le père Lazare hocha la tête.
— Il est pourtant vrai, dit-il, que je ne me soigne guère.
L’observation de cet enfant m’est une leçon, Noë, et elle me profitera
plus que ne t’ont profité celles que je t’ai données. Où irons-nous,
mon pauvre ami, si tu ne sais pas respecter le citoyen qui dort dans
cette petite âme d’enfant ? Que nous donneront les institutions dont
nous rêvons et qu’ont préparées les barricades et la défaite des
tyrans, si nous ne conservons intacte la bonté naturelle, si nous ne
l’éduquons, si nous ne révérons la raison dans cette source si pure
où elle nous apparaît à l’état naissant ?
Il s’exprimait à voix presque basse, si bien que nul ne les avait
remarqués. Il les avait conduits en parlant dans un coin obscur de
l’école où les enfants déjà prenaient leur place au milieu d’un
murmure joyeux tandis que les parents se rassemblaient au fond de
la salle pour échanger des nouvelles ou des témoignages d’amitié.
— Je vous jure, dit Noë tout rouge, je vous jure…
— Eh ! sur quoi veux-tu jurer, mon ami ? L’Être suprême est bien
loin et nul ne sait ce qu’est devenu Jésus, le plus grand des
hommes. Les formes de la superstition demeurent-elles à ce point
vivantes dans les cœurs de vingt ans ? La tâche d’éduquer
l’humanité est la plus lourde et la plus ingrate. Faut-il donc douter du
progrès ? Autrefois, ton père, comme toi, poussait le riflard en
chantant Lisette. Mais il avait à peine desserré le valet et rangé les
outils qu’il prenait, pour les dévorer, tous les ouvrages des
émancipateurs.
— Il le fait encore, remarqua le jeune homme comme pour lui-
même. Mais nous le faisons aussi, Maître Lazare. Moi, évidemment,
je suis encore un peu jeune vous comprenez ; j’en suis toujours à
revenir aux livres moins secs…
— Oui, dit le maître en lui prenant affectueusement le bras, je
sais bien que le sang des faubourgs ne ment pas. Va, tu peux lire les
poëtes, ils ne sont pas les ennemis de la République, nous ne
l’ignorons pas, quoi qu’en dise Platon.
Il ferma à demi les yeux et sourit à sa vision. C’était là, tout à
côté, que, près de lui, Lamartine… Depuis, il y avait eu l’Usurpateur,
puis, la défaite, la Commune… Cette belle Commune qui avait
pourtant, de l’Hôtel de Ville, laissé les ruines fumantes… Bah !
songeait Lazare, crise de croissance. Et Noë qui rêvait aussi disait,
tout doucement, avec amour :

Ainsi, toujours poussé vers de nouveaux rivages…

— Le progrès, Noë, le progrès, murmura le maître. Il se pencha

vers l’enfant qui avait ôté son capuchon et son béret. Sa main
dégagea des boucles un beau front lumineux mais serré aux
tempes, froncé près des sourcils sur une arête coupante et dure.
 — Il est fait pour tout comprendre, ce petit, dit-il au jeune homme
à voix basse.
— Pour ça, c’est sûr ; reste le caractère ; et là, dame, je vous
assure qu’il n’est pas de droit fil.
— Ah ? fit le maître pensif.
— Et puis, comment vous dire ? Ce gosse-là c’est presque
effrayant comme il ne pense qu’au sérieux. Il a tout le temps l’air de
faire des expériences. Il va, il vient, mais toujours il calcule et il vous
a des réflexions qui vous tournent quartier. Plus de nœuds que de
bois sain je vous dis.
— A quoi paraît-il plus particulièrement s’intéresser ? A quoi
songe-t-il ?
— Difficile à dire, pour moi qui ne réfléchis pas à vos affaires
d’esprit. Mais enfin, je ne mentirai pas, au moins que je croie, si je
vous disais qu’il me fait l’effet de ne pas guère penser à autre chose
qu’au profit ; au profit et aux moyens d’avoir du profit.
Le père Lazare qui regardait l’enfant releva la tête :
— Que c’est grave, que c’est grave. Il faut que j’y songe à tout
cela… Mais attends encore. Je vais maintenant m’occuper de tout
ce petit monde. En attendant, installe l’enfant à quelqu’une de ces
tables, n’importe où ; le rang est provisoire.
Il quitta le jeune homme ; dans le groupe des parents qu’il
connaissait à peu près tous il s’attarda encore un instant cependant
que les écoliers achevaient de se placer suivant leurs préférences.
Enfin, il gagna la chaire et il se fit peu à peu le silence.
— Je vais, dit-il, mes enfants, vous demander de vous lever l’un
après l’autre. Chacun de vous me donnera son nom afin que je
grave dans ma mémoire les traits qui répondent à tous ces livrets
que m’ont apportés vos parents. Ne soyez pas intimidés et parlez-
moi tout bonnement, comme à un ami que vous connaîtriez depuis
longtemps.
Une trentaine d’écoliers répondirent d’une voix coupée par
l’émotion. Noë fut frappé du nombre de noms étrangers qui
blessaient son oreille au passage, Schalom, Hirschbein, Alheihem,
Schapiro, Ionah, Mandelé, Pérès, Mocher, Séforim… Et, venue il ne
savait d’où, une image de Ghetto médiéval s’imposa à ses yeux puis
se dégrada peu à peu pour reprendre les couleurs familières de la
rue des Rosiers. Il eut, un instant, le souci de la race et de la patrie ;
la calèche de Bansperger, d’une copieuse volée de fange,
l’éclaboussa au plus bleu de l’âme ; il en ressentit presque une
douleur physique. Autour de lui, à voix basse, des personnages en
lévite et en caftan parlaient et multipliaient les sourires, les clins
d’yeux, précipitaient une mimique inconnue de l’occident.
— Ces gens-là aiment la France, se dit-il pour se rassurer,
puisqu’ils viennent y vivre.
Il écouta, mais les étrangers parlaient yiddisch.
— En tous cas leurs enfants parleront français ; ils seront
Français. » Mais la calèche de Bansperger passait encore contre lui,
il fit un pas de côté pour l’éviter.
— Je rêve debout et éveillé, ça n’est pas ordinaire, grommela-t-il,
et je radote. J’ai le comprenoir mal affûté ce matin, faudra donner de
la voie.
Pourtant, se rappelant encore l’incident du chemin, comme la
réflexion de son neveu lui revenait à la mémoire, de nouveau il se
sentit pincé au cœur.
— Si nous n’avons que cette graine pour reprendre l’Alsace…
Le père Lazare interrogeait justement l’enfant ; debout, d’une voix
nette et tranquille, son beau visage mat sous les boucles brunes
tourné vers le maître, le petit Rabevel répondait sans l’ombre de
timidité ni d’arrogance.
— Il est né bon, se disait le maître, il est évidemment né bon
comme tous les êtres, mais il a dû être mal conduit… Un enfant
élevé sans père ni mère… Pourtant ses oncles sont de si braves
gens.
L’enfant se rassit. Il n’avait pas eu un regard pour ses voisins. Il
examinait la grande salle, les murs recouverts d’images
pédagogiques, les tableaux luisants comme des eaux profondes au
bord des rives de craie, les rayons chargés de livres qui recélaient
un formidable inconnu et enfin ce maître jugé quelques minutes
auparavant sans indulgence et où déjà il devinait une puissance.
Puissance encore occulte, amie ou ennemie, il ne savait ; il ne se le
demandait pas tout-à-fait ; un obscur instinct triple de force, de ruse
et de possession commandait l’observation. Les yeux grand ouverts,
toute l’attention de son jeune esprit appliquée à comprendre, il
écoutait la voix de ce vieil homme dont on lui avait dit qu’il lui
donnerait ce qui était l’essentiel de la vie.
— Mes enfants, poursuivait le maître d’une voix infiniment douce
tant s’y reflétait la sérénité du cœur, maintenant je vous connais
tous. Vous voici autour de moi pour apprendre, c’est-à-dire pour
devenir des hommes bons et forts. Quelques-uns d’entre vous sont
nés dans des pays étrangers mais ils sont en France et seront
Français, citoyens du premier des pays libres ; ils y vivront utiles,
respectés, aimés de tous. Vous êtes des petits enfants du peuple
mais vous savez que vous pouvez espérer en la République. Vous
pouvez devenir ce qu’il vous plaira de devenir. Enfants du peuple,
vous pourrez commander un régiment, conduire un cuirassé, devenir
banquiers, notaires, armateurs, députés, ministres. La République
aime pareillement tous ses fils, juifs ou chrétiens, nobles ou
roturiers, pauvres ou riches. Il s’agit pour vous d’être persévérants et
laborieux. Et chacun, suivant son intelligence, arrivera, sans que rien
au monde puisse l’arrêter, à la place digne de lui. Ainsi, mes petits
enfants, travaillez, travaillez de tout votre cœur, non pas seulement
pour contenter vos parents et votre maître qui déjà vous aime tous,
mais pour assurer votre avenir.
Bernard avalait goulûment ces paroles dont beaucoup lui
demeuraient étrangères mais dont le sens général ne lui échappait
pas. Il se sentait né premier, au-dessus de tous, et brûlait déjà d’en
donner les preuves. Et cette République dont les oncles ne
cessaient de parler, elle devait donc l’aider ? Mais le préférerait-elle ?
Oui, le maître disait qu’elle aimait pareillement tous ses enfants.
D’abord, quels enfants ? Lui-même n’avait aucune mère, il le savait
bien. Ensuite on préfère toujours quelqu’un. Allons, on n’allait pas lui
dire le contraire, à lui, Bernard, à dix ans ! Pourtant…
Il regarda à la dérobée ses voisins. Puis s’adressant à l’un d’eux,
un petit garçon de mine timide, aux yeux candides et tout rêveurs, il
lui demanda son nom : François Régis, répondit l’enfant.
— As-tu compris tout ce qu’il a dit, le maître ?
— Pas tout. Mais je sais ce que c’est qu’un armateur, dit le petit
garçon tout fier.
Bernard fut blessé de cette supériorité.
— Moi aussi, fit-il sèchement. Et, ayant proféré son mensonge, il
se tourna vers son autre voisin qui les observait. Celui-là s’appelait
Abraham Blinkine ; il montrait un visage souffreteux, prématurément
ridé ; des boutons blancs gonflaient son cou. Il regarda un instant
Bernard de ses yeux mi-fermés, luisants d’une intelligence acérée,
héritée d’une civilisation vieille de millénaires. Quand le petit
Rabevel lui demanda à lui aussi s’il avait tout compris, il ne dit rien,
haussant les épaules. Bernard, perplexe, baissait les yeux, mais,
comme il les relevait à l’improviste, il surprit dans ceux d’Abraham
une telle expression de finesse qu’il sentit, comme en un choc, que
si le petit camarade n’avait rien dit c’était uniquement afin de ne pas
le blesser par l’étalage d’une supériorité. Et, dans cet égard dont il
n’aurait pas eu l’idée lui-même vis-à-vis d’un autre, il devina une
ampleur telle, une puissance au regard de laquelle il se sentait si
petit, que son humiliation fit remonter une boule amère dans sa
gorge. Il serra sa langue entre ses dents pour ne pas crier.
Cependant le père Lazare annonçait qu’il remettait en liberté
« ses jeunes étourneaux » et que la véritable classe commencerait le
lendemain matin. Puis il fit ses dernières recommandations, donna
tous les renseignements utiles pour l’achat des livres et descendit de
sa chaire.
— Venez donc dîner avec nous, demanda Noë comme il le
rejoignait. Cela fera plaisir à tout le monde.
— Je ne dis pas non, dit le régent, laisse-moi le temps de devenir
un peu plus « reluisant… »
 Il avait prononcé le mot sans regarder Bernard ; mais celui-ci,
bien qu’il eût entendu, ne rougit point. Seul, un mouvement de la
mâchoire et qui décelait de la colère et non de la confusion, fit
trembler légèrement sa joue.
Le père Lazare prit l’escalier ; l’enfant s’assit au pupitre qui lui
était destiné et, avec beaucoup d’attention, l’examina de tous côtés ;
puis il l’ouvrit, fit, à plusieurs reprises, jouer les gonds ; s’étant
aperçu tout-à-coup qu’il manquait une vis à l’une des charnières, il
se mit en devoir d’en retirer une du pupitre voisin. Mais à peine l’eut-
il retirée qu’il s’arrêta comme interdit. Il fit la moue, eut un
imperceptible mouvement d’impatience contre lui-même comme s’il
déplorait sa propre sottise et remit la vis qu’il venait d’enlever ; puis,
ayant avisé à quelques tables plus loin un autre pupitre, il mena
cette fois son opération jusqu’au bout.
Noë qui, feignant de lire un journal, avait suivi son manège se
demandait s’il devait admirer l’attention, la précision, la minutie et
l’adresse de l’enfant, s’étonner de sa rare prudence ou essayer
d’inculquer une idée de scrupule à une nature qui témoignait d’une
parfaite et si calme absence de sens moral. Il l’appela, mais Bernard
sembla ne pas entendre. « Il me boude, se dit le jeune homme,
parce qu’il a reçu de moi cette première gifle » ; et il se sentit
attendri ; ce serait la dernière, bien sûr ; comment un tel mouvement
d’humeur avait-il pu lui échapper ? Il voulut faire la paix avec le petit
sauvage ; il l’appela de nouveau ; mais l’enfant, levant enfin la tête et
le regardant fixement, lui montra de tels yeux, et si chargés de
haine, qu’il redouta l’avenir.
Le maître d’école descendait à ce moment. Ils sortirent tous trois.
— Voilà le temps qui s’est remis au beau, dit le père Lazare. Il est
cinq heures et ton après-midi est perdue et bien perdue, mon petit
Noë. Alors, si tu veux, nous allons prendre le chemin des écoliers.
— Bah ! répondit le jeune homme, il faut que je passe tout de
même chez nous pour avertir de votre arrivée…
— Oui, et que ta mère et ta belle-sœur se mettent en cuisine ?
Non, mon petit, rien de tout ça. Combien êtes-vous à table ?
 — Mes parents, mon frère et sa femme, Bernard et moi ; cela fait
six.
— Eh bien ! quand il y en a pour six il y en a pour sept… Si tu
veux, nous allons prendre la rue de Rivoli jusqu’au Châtelet et nous
ferons tout le tour par la Cité et l’île Saint-Louis pour reprendre la rue
des Rosiers par l’autre bout. Cela te va à toi, petit Bernard ?
— Oui, Monsieur, répondit l’enfant d’une voix sans nuance.
— Alors, passe devant comme un homme, pour voir si tu ne te
tromperas pas de chemin.
Quand Bernard eut pris quelque avance, le maître qui le
regardait marcher et jugeait cette démarche forte et sûre, cette
foulée sans distraction, se tourna vers Noë.
— Vois-tu ce qui le distingue des autres dans son allure, cet
enfant ? C’est qu’il n’applique son attention qu’à bon escient. Il ne
fait point le badaud devant tout, il n’est pas non plus indifférent à
tout, mais il discerne parfois un objet digne d’être observé et alors il
s’arrête ; il enregistre et il mûrit. Tu as dû remarquer cela
fréquemment.
Noë avoua qu’il n’avait jamais prêté attention à la chose. Quand il
sortait avec son neveu il ne s’en occupait guère, étant toujours
pressé lui-même et il laissait courir le petit derrière lui.
— Tu as tort ; il faut gagner la confiance de ces jeunes êtres pour
les guider et il faut les observer sans relâche ; c’est très important ;
une promenade comme celle-ci peut suffire à se faire une idée du
caractère de cet enfant. Regarde-le. Il s’est déjà arrêté devant la
devanture d’un bijoutier ; et le voici devant celle d’un changeur,
justement le père de son voisin, le petit Blinkine ; de toute évidence il
ne peut comprendre ce qu’il y a dans cette vitrine ni ce qui peut se
vendre et s’acheter dans cette boutique ; mais il s’y intéresse. Vois à
présent comme il passe dédaigneusement devant ce petit bazar à
jouets. Si, il s’arrête ; il examine les bateaux, les chemins de fer.
Qu’en ferons-nous ? Un navigateur, ou un mécanicien ? ou un
géographe ? car il s’arrête aussi devant les cartes de l’armateur
Bordes ; le petit François Régis pourra le piloter, c’est le cas de le