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« on: July 08, 2024, 11:53:58 am » |
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THE Armenian and the Lebanese twitted their young French colleague with not knowing the “Wooden Baths”. “It’s affiliated to our club,” they said; “an annex of the Diplomatic Corps.” They went there nearly every day, between luncheon and the resumption of work.
“What!” said Georges. “You go bathing after a meal? Aren’t you afraid of congestion?”
They burst out laughing.
“The speciality of the Wooden Baths is that you don’t bathe there,” said the Armenian, “and the only congestion you need fear is the kind which finished off your president, Félix Faure. If you don’t know the Wooden Baths of Piraeus, you obviously don’t know the Lambs’ Baths in Bucharest, the Central Bath in Sofia, the Yildiz Hammam in Stamboul, the Kiraly Fürdö in Budapest, the Römer-Bad in Vienna, the Karls-Bad in Berlin, or the Imperatore Nero Baths in Rome.”
“You seem to have travelled a lot,” said Georges.
“I made my little tour of Europe before going into the Ministry; then I was sent to London before being sent to Athens. And I knew in advance that in New York I should go to the Millwall Baths. All over the world there is a secret civilization of baths and swimming-pools, but I’m afraid it is fading out in Paris. Yet there was a time when it flourished there as well. An old Parisian told me that before 1914, when he was asked where he was going to spend his holidays, he used to reply, ‘At the Rochechouart swimming-pool.’ It no longer exists. As for me, if I didn’t have to visit my relatives, I should spend all my leaves at the Wooden Baths.”
Georges accepted the invitation. If he patronized the house at Patissia, he could surely visit the Wooden Baths. It would not be for the same purpose, but it would be a pity to remain ignorant of an institution which was in the international class.
He left his car at Piraeus, in front of a respectable hotel, and, accompanied by the Lebanese and the Armenian, proceeded on foot to the famous establishment.
“We’re taking on a terrible responsibility in bringing you here,” said the Armenian jovially. “Such visits may change tastes and prevent good marriages.”
Georges assured them of his physical and moral equilibrium. The Wooden Baths were a large, square, boarded structure beside the shore, reached by a footbridge. Inside, a gallery, lined with cubicles, ran round the four sides. There were a great many people and very few bathers. They were gossiping and walking about. It was a sort of academy in bathing trunks, where youth pressed eagerly about the philosophers. Georges spotted one of the American secretaries, the Belgian, and the Pole. The American pretended not to see him, and the two others greeted him discreetly. He inquired whether the German Embassy was represented. “Not likely!” said the Armenian. “Our poor colleagues would have to be Nazi Party members to be allowed to come here. In Germany this would lead you straight to a concentration camp with a pink ticket.”
“And the military attachés, do they venture this far?”
“They haven’t the nerve. Still less need we fear the visits of the heads of missions. The Wooden Baths are reserved for young diplomats, and also, thank God, for young Greeks.”
Georges was undressing in his cubicle when there was a knock at the door. He thought it was one of his two friends and opened the door. It was a boy with an engaging smile, who asked him for a cigarette. Georges shut the door in his face. “Ah,” he said to himself, “that everlasting request! What the devil did the young Greeks ask Sophocles for in his time?”
The Armenian was waiting for him.
“I forgot to warn you that in this place we assume false identities. I am Italian; our friend is Swedish. Would you like to be Belgian?”
“It’s a good idea to be a neutral these days. But our other colleagues here, what nationalities do they take?”
“I’m sorry to say that the Pole passes for a Frenchman. Still, Poland is one of France’s allies. But take heart: the Belgian passes for a Rumanian.”
“And is the American an Armenian?”
“No; a Pole, which comes easily to him, for he is always half drunk.”
The boy Georges had turned out did not bear him any malice. Clearly he had had designs on him as a new client. Leaning against one of the gallery pillars, he was looking intently at Georges, and making gestures which his scanty costume rendered even more expressive than those of the urchins at the Zappeion. The Armenian commented on these manœuvres.
“The Wooden Baths are living up to their reputation,” said Georges.
“You haven’t seen everything yet,” said the Armenian, taking him by the arm.
At the corner of one of the galleries, on the sea side, they slipped out towards a floating stage, hidden from curious eyes. Here a number of entirely naked young men were supposed to be sun-bathing. The arrival of the two foreigners did not disturb them; on the contrary, their attitudes became more immodest. Just as nobody came to the Wooden Baths for sea-bathing, so one did not come for sun-bathing, either. The boy who had designs on Georges had joined this group. The theoretical sun-bath gave him an excuse to show himself off without his trunks. Such shamelessness made Georges blush. The idea that the boy was paying him tribute with his beauty stirred him pleasurably, but did not blind him to the fact that he would have done the same for anyone else. The proof was soon forthcoming: piqued at his failure, he turned his attention to the Armenian, an easy conquest, who beckoned to him to return to the cubicles.
“Excuse our Balkan simplicity,” said the Armenian to Georges, and beckoned to another boy.
“Long live simplicity!” said Georges.
“Your presence inspires me. In a cabaret in the happy Berlin of pre-Hitler times, there was a notice:
“Französische Liebe, aristokratische Sensationen.’
“French love, aristocratic sensations’. Which meant, roughly, that three’s company.”
Half amused and half disgusted, Georges returned to the galleries. They had become almost empty in his absence, and yet there were no more bathers. At least he would now be able to wait in peace until it was time to bathe.
He thought about the “civilization of baths and swimming-pools”. To excuse those who partook of it, he looked for the precedents, as Redouté would have said. He thought of the young Greeks of antiquity bathing after their exercises in the palaestra; of the young Romans, in the Roman baths, timorously hiding their precocious charms, like Juvenal’s little slave, or bathing naked in the Tiber under the gardens of some Roman beauty, who, as Cicero records of the sister of Clodius, would thus be given the opportunity of making her choice between them. He thought also of the heroes of Petronius at the baths of Puteoli, and the future St. Augustine at the baths of Tagasta. This civilization of baths seemed to have its best antecedents in antiquity. It had had its apogee then, precisely because it could not be accused of being a vice. Today nothing remained of it but a miserable counterfeit. Yet, to show the permanence of it as well, the Parthenon stood out on the landward horizon of the Wooden Baths and bestowed on them its Olympian benediction.
+++
Redouté had done all he could to palliate his blunder about the Steua Marina. The Havas correspondent had published in the Greek press some articles which told the story of the false shipwreck, and added that the diplomatic missions had been so much perturbed by the news that some of them had advised their governments. Thus Redouté appeared not to have been the only dupe. He had had these articles translated and sent in a memorandum, headed simply, “Apropos of the alleged torpedoing of the Steua Marina’.
None the less, his heart sank when he read the item about the torpedoing in Le Temps: “A report from Athens. . . .” Even “a report” seemed to him to point directly at himself. And, oddly, the denial was not published. Had the Ministry not wanted to retract its communiqué? Did it want to cover its representative or to stir up feeling? The Steua Marina, created by the French Embassy at Athens, had its existence confirmed by the discretion of the Quai d’Orsay. In any case, there had been no reaction from that quarter towards the chargé d’affaires, who was, indeed, glad enough of this, and yet also a little mortified.
A telegram came from Paris. It was signed “Yvon Delbos”, and was therefore an important communication. The usual signature was “Diplomacy”, or, one grade higher, “Léger”. Redouté was greatly excited. He came down to the chancellery to be present at the deciphering, with all the anxiety of one consulting an oracle. He breathed again: it asked him to invite the Greek Government, together with his British colleague, to take part in a conference to be held at Nyon on September the 10th, to “study means of restoring the safety of shipping in the Mediterranean”. He could have fallen on the cipher clerk’s neck, as the latter, with his head in his hand, sat stolidly waiting for any further instructions.
Redouté was radiant with pride and joy. Here he was entrusted with a mission: simple enough, no doubt, yet flattering. He concluded that the Steua Marina affair was finally buried.
“If I were in disgrace, the Quai d’Orsay would have sent the invitation to the Greek Embassy in Paris.”
Better still, he calculated that, so far from having done him harm, the Steua Marina had helped him. It was not the first time that he had contradicted himself.
“My telegram reminded them of my existence and showed that the Mediterranean question is, here, the question of the hour. It may even have been one of the minor causes leading up to the Nyon Conference. In fact, the biggest blunder of my career will have had the happiest results, and earned me the honour of a telegram signed by the Minister.”
“I wonder,” said the cipher clerk, “why the Quai d’Orsay is so keen on sending messages of this kind in code. Really, it is gratuitous torture of the cipherer and even sometimes of the chargé d’affaires.”
“You misunderstand the principles of the Service. It must send all its telegrams in code, to match its traditions, its spirit, its very reason for existence.”
“Its spirit, certainly,” said the cipher clerk ironically. “But if that corresponds with its reason for existence, it is as much as to say that it has none. In all countries, besides the ciphering and deciphering services, there are ‘code-breaking’ services. Our telegram has hardly been handed in at the Post Office in Athens before they send a copy of it to the Greek Foreign Ministry, and an hour later the text of it is duly translated. It is sitting on Metaxas’s desk before it is on Delbos’s.”
“You’re overdoing that a bit. In the first place, there are such things as unbreakable codes----”
“Excuse me if I interrupt: you know very well that the only unbreakable codes are those that are used only once. If we were determined that our telegrams should never be read by third parties, we should have to change the code each time; at least this would have the advantage of cutting down the number of telegrams.”
“It may be that codes are not much use in hiding secrets from governments, but they do hide them from the public.”
“My favourite of those we hide from the public is the ritual Fourteenth of July telegram, which is the shortest of the lot. The simple hieroglyphic ‘X 1326’ means ‘The French community, being met at the Embassy on the occasion of the national holiday, desires me to transmit on its behalf to M. the President of the Republic its assurances of respect, loyalty, and devotion’.”
“You must admit,” said Redouté, “that, though we may be lavish with our telegram expenses, We send one per annum which is a masterpiece of economy.”
He took up the code book to re-read it, and threw it angrily on the table. He had seen the embellishments the former clerk had added to it.
“He was lacking in respect for the Service,” he said.
“That was the result of the abuse of codes, Monsieur le Chargé d’ Affaires,” replied the cipher clerk.
Redouté went out, followed by Georges.
“That buffoon exaggerated, with his graffiti,” he said, “but I wouldn’t say he was altogether wrong in attacking codes. He was not so much a victim of the war as a victim of the rules governing reserved occupations, which compel the Minister to engage a certain number of men wounded in the head as cipher clerks, and, of course, the cipher drives them completely mad.”
He got in touch by telephone with his British colleague, who had just received the same instructions. Before going to the Ministry he lay down on the sofa. “I must have a rest, if I am to be presentable. That telegram gave me a bad shock, and yet there was no harm in it. But there are times when the mere arrival of a telegram can produce such effects. The formula ‘to be deciphered by yourself’, with which they sometimes begin, and which I was expecting to see in this one, is the most extreme refinement of sadism the Quai d’Orsay has ever invented. It goes without saying that the head of a mission never knows how to decipher, and you can imagine his embarrassment, not to mention his terror, when this instruction stops the deciphering in the chancellery and they bring him the tables and the telegram. He already knows it is a personal communication---state secrets are hardly ever sent in this fashion, and, besides, there are no such things as state secrets any more. So he calls in one of his close colleagues, who ordinarily doesn’t know how to decipher either, and in the end the cipher clerk does the translation. Just imagine the unfortunate chief . . .”
To do so was easy for Georges: he had only to think of Redouté.
“Imagine this unfortunate man. At the best, he watches emerging, bit by bit, that other equally sacred formula: ‘By reason of the eminent services which you have rendered to France in the course of a particularly exacting career . . .’ Don’t let yourself think that at this point he brightens up, preens himself, and calls for champagne. No. If he dared, he would call for sal volatile, for he knows well that this pompous phrase is double-edged. It heralds promotion or decapitation; a better post, or retirement. So imagine him hanging on the comma which the cipher clerk has just put after the word ‘career’. That comma is capable of killing a man. In vain do some try to bolster themselves up: ‘If it is the Holy See, I refuse,’ said X, magnificently. He was Minister at Belgrade and hoped to be posted to the Quirinal. Alas! Instead of reading, ‘I have decided to ask the consent of the Italian Government to your nomination as Ambassador of the Republic in Rome’, he reads the supreme formula, the supreme masterpiece of irony: ‘I have decided to authorize you to benefit from your rights to a retiring pension.’ ”
+++
Georges thought insistently about Francoise. He would not have believed that he would have missed her so much. He was worried by this and asked himself if he were in love with her. To ask this was to ask whether love could be born in the conditions in which they had begun. They had begun with the end. The pleasures of which they had partaken were those which a man dares only to ask of his mistress after the lapse of some time. A young girl who admitted them at the outset and who seemed to find them natural, was as rare as she was adorable. Judging her at a distance, Georges did not think the climate of Athens the only cause of her readiness. He supposed now that it arose from the life she led. By turns Japanese, Lithuanian, Greek, she had been caressed by the glances and the desires of too many races. That sensuality which travel awakes, that intoxication which a change of scene, of décor, and of company induces, had been multiplied by the atmosphere of luxury in which principles mattered less than privileges. The Service had given to Francoise, born in it, the aptitudes which Georges thought belonged to those forcing-grounds of love, the religious colleges. Was the colonel not right to accuse the majority of diplomats of erotic mania?
It was not because he had the illusion of knowing Francoise better that Georges felt himself less enamoured; but it was, however, that which reassured him. Their affinities were the bounds which separated them: they were too much alike to esteem one another. Georges, at any rate, had the classic conception of love founded on esteem; and though he saw a thousand reasons for delighting in this pretty girl, he saw none for loving her. Did he esteem himself, when he did certain things? Could he esteem Francoise for having allowed him to do them? With the poet, he anathematized those who
“Mix modesty with matters of love”.
Yet he was none the less convinced that love---real love---and modesty go together. The one time in his life that he had loved had been in childhood, and, because that love had remained unsatisfied, all the others, including Francoise, were the delights of animals and not of angels.
This time, Redouté studied deeply the communiqué in Le Temps. His name, even his Christian name, adorned the account of the démarche which he and his British colleague had made in connexion with the Nyon Conference. These communiqués are the delight of diplomats and the landmarks of their career. This one was to Redouté a sign that his future was not compromised. True, the colonel, irritated by anything which brought the Service into prominence, did not conceal from Georges how grotesque he thought this publicity.
“Is the planet itching to be told that the French chargé d’affaires in Athens is called Redouté and that his Christian name is Roland? If he will allow me to say so, to be a Redouté is nothing.”
“You must not despise his ancestor the painter.”
“It is a recommendation for a painter, but not for a representative. As for the name Roland, if it is that of a paladin, you must admit we might have been spared it.”
“The Quai d’Orsay cultivates Christian names because the great names no longer flourish there.”
“And then there is the mania for double-barrelled names, another of their absurdities. The André Francois-Poncets, the Francoise Charles-Roux’s---do they think that all those names help us to remember the real one?”
“The Service, my dear Colonel, is the only profession which flatters itself that it can create a society man. Its members draw what profit they can from this.”
Out of earshot of all this comment, Redouté was still basking in the enjoyment of his communiqué when he heard a piece of news which set him lamenting again. The International Surgical Congress was going to meet in Athens. It had been forgotten about, what with all the fuss of the Guillaume Budé cruise and the torpedoings, but it seemed that it had lost nothing in the keeping. The Service des Œuvres had sent the list of members of the French delegation: fifteen persons, including the delegates’ wives.
The chargé d’affaires was determined to be even more economical in regard to the congress than he had been with the cruise. He had worked it out and decided that he would succeed in just balancing his budget with his expense allowance. But after all these lamentations and resolves, he gave in, as always. Willy-nilly, he would give a lunch of twenty covers. He thought it wise, in fact, to beware of travelling doctors: he declared that they were more dangerous than men of letters.
“Every more or less well-known doctor,” he said, “has some sort of a hold over a politician, and I must not offend anybody, on the eve of my promotion.”
In the end, terrified as he was of doctors, he did not flinch even from going to the Piraeus to welcome the delegates. Georges followed in his own car. Between them they could not give lifts to fifteen people, but at least they would show that the Embassy was on its toes.
They were surprised to see the colonel’s car on the quay. He came to meet them with affected politeness.
“You're expecting somebody?” Redouté asked.
“I am expecting the Surgical Congress.”
“Are you, indeed? We are expecting only the French delegation.”
“That is just what I mean. For me, the French delegation is the Surgical Congress.”
“We must draw lots, then.”
“In any case, may I thank you for the manner in which the Embassy keeps me informed.”
“But since you know everything . . . ! Besides, I should not have thought that an international surgical congress would interest you.”
“You would have thought so if you had remembered that among the delegation there is a medical colonel of the first grade.”
“Yes, of course.”
“You have arranged a lunch at the Palace Hotel. I do not think you invited me. But I should be very much honoured if you would be of the company this evening, at the same hotel, where I have ordered a supper for a hundred people. That should show you how much interest a military attaché takes in surgery.”
“Good! I hope you have more success with congresses than with cruises.”
“Perhaps you are unaware, M. le Chargé d’ Affaires, that you have come to welcome both a congress and a cruise. How many delegates are you expecting, may I ask?”
“Fifteen, provided that the Service des Œuvres counted them correctly.”
“That is what comes of trusting in the Service des Œuvres. The delegation consists of fifty-five people, Monsieur Roland Redouté.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What my Minister talked about, and he talks very often to better purpose than the Quai d’Orsay. You were sent the list of official delegates; but they did not say a word to you about the others who are always much more numerous---the non-official participants or free members. Very often they include the most important people, who don’t want all the trouble of being official representatives. Even when they are not invited to lunch, these people are sensitive to the attention paid them.”
With an expansive gesture, the colonel indicated two chars-a-bancs which were standing ready. Georges felt like laughing at such a deployment of forces, but seeing Redouté’s downcast expression he held his peace.
“I think, gentlemen,” he said by way of breaking the ice, “that it is time you announced yourselves on board.”
The chargé d’affaires, defeated by the colonel, walked sadly with him onto the gangway.
They came back soon, followed by a flock of travellers, like two guides leading tourists. The men had beards, corporations, and Legion of Honour rosettes; the women had double chins and were stoutly corseted. It was the same banal exterior as that of the Guillaume Budé cruise---“a French exterior”, M. Laurent would have called it. The colonel was talking to a person in a white suit, doubtless the first-grade military doctor. Redouté was divided between a voluminous man and an equally voluminous woman, doubtless the president of the delegation and his wife. In the bad humour which was afflicting him, he forgot all about Georges and went off with this couple. The colonel, taking with him his chosen guest, had directed the rest towards the chars-à-bancs.
Georges was no longer thinking of offering his services: he was gossiping with the English secretary, who had also come to meet someone.
A traveller came running down the gangway and made vain signals to the drivers of the chars-à-bancs. He was evidently a belated member of the French delegation. Finding himself alone on the quay, he looked very lost. His air of desperation was comic. He had not the solemnity of a surgeon who cuts open the stomachs of heads of states, but a rubicund face and a debonair, but slightly gauche, expression which attracted sympathy. Some worthy provincial surgeon, no doubt. Another sign told of the provinces: he wore academic palms. Georges felt the chord of nationality and of professional duty vibrate within him. He was sorry for this compatriot who had taken the trouble to come to Greece for love of surgery. He approached and introduced himself. The man shook hands with him as with a veritable saviour.
“You are in the International Surgical Congress?” said Georges, to make sure he was not mistaken.
“Naturally. I am M. Ventre, of Bordeaux.”
M. Ventre did not boast the title of doctor nor that of professor. No doubt he thought that his name was enough, embellished by a magnificent accent. “In spite of appearances and palms, he’s probably a surgical celebrity,” thought Georges, congratulating himself all the more on his own generosity. He led the Bordeaux surgeon towards his car.
“Aha!” said the latter. “A nice car! I haven’t had bad service for arriving last. It’s like in the Gospel. Congresses and Embassies always do things well.”
On the way, Georges asked him whether it was his first visit to Athens.
“Yes. I am so busy. It is hard to leave one’s clientéle. But I give myself a holiday each year, and I am particularly glad that this year, through the Surgical Congress, I am able to take it in Greece. Besides, I have many Greeks among my clients: the Greek Consul at Bordeaux, for example.”
M. Ventre was surely a specialist physician, rather than a surgeon.
“May I ask what is your speciality?”
The other seemed shocked at such ignorance.
“So you can never have come to Bordeaux, Mr. Secretary? If you had, you would know my house and my speciality.”
Looking at the violet ribbon out of the corner of his eye, Georges risked a fresh approach.
“I seem to remember that you have written a treatise, a manual----”
“Some articles, quite a few; but I have never gathered them together.”
“Do you hold a chair?”
M. Ventre laughed.
“I educate some pupils, indeed, but to call that having a chair. . . . In any case, no one could say that my courses were neither fish nor flesh.”
M. Ventre clearly liked his little joke. Like Rabelais, he must use laughter to treat his patients. But he still eluded Georges’s inquiries. Finally, Georges asked him:
“Have you a clinic?”
“A clinic! Good Heavens! I’m not in the habit of poisoning people. I tell you that I am M. Ventre: I am the proprietor of the Bec-Fin. My surgical instruments are the chopping-knife and the skewer, my clinic that of good wine and good food, my speciality canard à l’orange.”
His rich voice seemed to roll round mouthfuls of duck. Georges was flabbergasted: he had not thought to find this vaudeville character in an international surgical congress.
“Now you’re asking yourself,” went on M. Ventre, “what I’m doing in this congress. I am fond of going abroad and I have discovered that the most comfortable way of doing it, as well as the cheapest, is by attending congresses. For some years this is the only way I have travelled. I join some congress as a free member---sometimes it’s not too easy, but I have clients in every walk of life and all doors open to me. I have been to Sweden for child welfare, to Holland with the medicinal herbalists, I did England on Biblical studies, Poland on Esperanto, Egypt with the town planners, Sicily with the ophthalmologists. The whole thing is delightful. One is received everywhere with open arms. One goes from banquet to banquet. One meets sovereigns and heads of states. Tomorrow we have an audience with the King of Greece. Do you think I would have got that as a tourist, even as the proprietor of the Bec-Fin? Besides, it is enormously instructive and as amusing as it is instructive. The lectures, the debates, and the heads of these savants are irresistibly comic to me. And in my profession it gives me great distinction: I am the man who goes to the scientific congresses. And you see the result of my application: I have been awarded the academic palms.”
+++
These performances often involved Georges in taking round travellers whom his friends or colleagues had recommended to him. He had been given the reputation of a good cicerone as an excuse for laying him under contribution. Almost every week, in this holiday season, he received letters which ran like this:
“Dear friend,---Two of my cousins, charming girls, X and Y, will be arriving in Athens on the ----. May I entrust them to the best-informed of our young secretaries, the most agreeable of companions, and consequently the person best qualified to tell them about the past, the present, and perhaps also the future? . . .”
The cousins were not always as charming as they were alleged to be, but he had to put a good face on it. It was the same with the wives or daughters of ambassadors, who had personal letters of introduction to the chargé d’affaires. He, too, entrusted them to Georges.
Every time it was a drive to the Piraeus or the station, a visit to the Acropolis or the Museum, a luncheon and a drive in the car round the neighbourhood. Even when these meetings were not devoid of charm, they were spoilt for Georges by their servile character. One of them, however, was entirely agreeable: Francoise proved that she had not forgotten him by recommending a girl-friend who was passing on a yachting cruise.
There were various ways of showing people the Acropolis. Taking his inspiration from the formulae of politeness fixed by the protocol of the Service, he treated people according to its nuances, which ranged from “distinguished greetings” to “assurances of the highest consideration”. It was either the perfunctory visit, with some gross historical over-simplifications designed to be more easily understood---a free version of the paid guide’s performance; or else the detailed, boring, learned visit such as a member of the Institute of Art would do; or perhaps the languid, dawdling visit of the aesthete, complete with quotation from Valéry’s poem: “Douces colonnes . . .”
Though he had to bear his part of the Embassy’s burdens, he had at least lightened one of his own: his correspondence. He had made drastic cuts in the number of his “intimate friends”. But those in the Quai d’Orsay needed more consideration. He had been rash enough to send them his first impressions in a lively style which made them anxious to hear more. Proud of his success, he had half-killed himself to send ten letters or so every Bag. He hastened to curb this untimely zeal after he had kept it up longer than he had foreseen. Nevertheless, on the principle that it is as well to nourish one’s reputation from afar, he sent little presents instead of letters: cigarettes, objects in filigree-work, terra-cotta statuettes which would pass for Tanagras in a Parisian flat.
On the other hand, he kept up a very active correspondence in a purely sporting pursuit of decorations. He had decided that this was one of the amusements of the Service and his aim was to become one of the most decorated of diplomats as quickly as possible. He had taken the trouble to find out which of the colonial honours he was entitled to solicit and was disappointed to learn that only one was allowed every three years, from the age of twenty-nine onwards.
“Count yourself happy, lucky mortal, in being too young,” one of his colleagues in the Protocol section wrote to him. “But remember, when you do come to choose among the list, that you must go for the Cambodge and none other: the jewel is ravishing.” This colleague prided himself on being able to get it for Georges before the stipulated age, by counting his foreign service as double, which is done in certain cases for the colonies. He added that his son was collecting stamps and would be very glad to receive from Greece the “last royal issue”. Georges hastened to acquire credit with the King of Cambodia by sending Greek stamps to a young French boy.
These negotiations reminded him of what experience had already taught him, that there is always a way of getting round the rules. But he was not looking for the miserable satisfactions of vanity: these baubles pleased him simply as trophies of the chase. He did not regard them, as Stendhal did, as “certificates of baseness and black treason”, nor, as did Casanova, as a veil to be thrown over corrupted morals. He did not deceive himself about the importance of possessing them, any more than he thought himself demeaned in asking for them.
To begin with, he by-passed the Quai d’Orsay and wrote directly to the African protectorates: one of his contemporaries was in a post at Rabat, and another at Tunis. They undertook to get him the Ouissam and the Nicham very shortly. He laughed already to think what the colonel would say. As for the Cambodge itself, he had great hopes of one of his friends, attached to the Governor-General of Indo-China: if he could obtain this ribbon without the help of the Protocol section, he would be able to use his dispatches of postage stamps in favour of the Black Star of Benin.
He next set himself to collect some foreign decorations. Two former colleagues, in whom he could trust, promised him that they would not forget him: one at Bangkok, in the next exchange of decorations, the other at Monaco, in the distribution of the St. Charles on the first of January. From another friend, a member of the committee of the International Exhibition, he had a similar promise of the Eagle of Mexico. Lastly, in Athens, the Armenian and the Lebanese were confident that they would bring him back some sort of pendant when they went on leave. In short, if he received this avalanche of decorations, he would have the additional pleasure of being able to say, like Melbourne when he received the Garter, that he had done nothing to deserve it.
The collector’s enthusiasm which had seized him was not peculiar to himself. He had seen and still saw it reigning all around him. In Paris the International Exhibition, from which he also would benefit, had started it. The visits of foreign ministers to open pavilions had been the occasion of a prodigious shower of every sort of ribbon. At the Quai d’Orsay, boxes of crosses and plaques littered the desks of heads of departments who had quite lost their heads over them. If the cases carried no inscriptions and if someone had mislaid the diplomas, how was one to know that this pendant without oak-leaves was that of the Crown of Oak? how distinguish the Order of the Grand-Duke Gediminas from that of Vytautus the Great? or the head of Pablo Duarte from the Bust of Bolivar? This had a singular result: to reverse the scale of values. The invasion of unknown orders put them at a premium: they were welcomed, they were sought after as a poet searches for a rare word, and people were prouder of having obtained the White Rose without being posted to Helsinki, than of getting the Victorian Order for having been posted to London.
This manna, which the central administration reserved for its higher ranks, excited the desires of everyone, even those abroad. Redouté, for all his pose of detachment, was none the less conducting his own little intrigue. He had heard from his Dutch colleague that the medal of the Sultan of Soulou was easily come by. So he had it discreetly asked for by the French Consulate in the Dutch East Indies. As the former secretary of the Embassy had been posted to Java, this seemed a promising line of approach.
The Ambassador, for his part, had declared his intention of not coming back empty-handed. The plan which he had unfolded to his colleagues seemed to Georges the height of diplomatic subtlety. “I must,” he had said, “bring back the Grand Order of Benin. This is not only because its ribbon is the same shade of blue as the Saint-Esprit, but also to encourage the Greeks to give me the Grand Ribbon of the Saviour, which it also resembles. Having given me the Phoenix, I’m sure they’ll try to palm me off with the George I when I leave, as they did my predecessor. But I don’t want it. To rehabilitate the Saviour, which the republican régime distributed wholesale, they make a point of never giving it at all. That’s the one I mean to have. To make it clear to them, I shall stop wearing the Phoenix and wear the Benin instead. The blue will say to them: ‘Note well! I like blue, I am devoted to blue; blue attracts blue.’ And if the language of colour means nothing to them, their own self-esteem will. To prevent a French colonial order from being mistaken for the most exalted of their own, they will hasten to give me the Saviour.”
“But don’t you think,” Redouté had said, “that on the contrary, your one blue ribbon will make the Greeks even less disposed to give you another?”
“That is what ordinary common sense would say, but that is not the sense by which we must be guided. Laroche did exactly as I am doing to get the White Eagle at Warsaw. He had already been given the Polonia Restituta and was obsessed with the idea that he might miss the White Eagle. So he asked Paris for the Benin and wore it instead of his Polonia. He told the Poles that it was the second French order, as it is, and that according to the protocol he was obliged to sacrifice the second Polish order for it. When he presented his letters of recall, he was given his White Eagle. ‘I’ve got the White Eagle!’ he shouted when he returned to the Embassy. I hope, for his sake, that people will still know what the White Eagle is in ten years’ time.”
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