2603 E74 Z7 1922 MAIN B M Db5 Qfl? UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE BY DAVID CLARK iCABEEN A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ROMANIC LANGUAGES PHILADELPHIA 1922 UNIVERSn^ r.l I't.WSVLVAMA THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE BV DAVID CLARK \CABEEN A thf:sis PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ROMANIC LANGUAGES PRINTKD BY WBSTBKOOK PrBLISHING CO. PHILAOKLPHIA. Pa. 1922 kCU^\ ?& 24o3 It affords me great pleasure to express my appreciation of the courtesy which M. Ber- trand has shown in answering my frequent inquiries. I wish also to thank M. Hugues LeRoux and M. Arthur Pellegrin for their assistance, and particularly M. Robert Randau whose letter to me is a noteworthy contribu- tion to the critical estimate of the work of Louis Bertrand. My cordial thanks are also due to Professor W. H. Scheifley of the University of Indiana for his generous interest. I am especially indebted to my teachers at the University of Pennsylvania: Professor Hugo A. Rennert, Professor Jean B. Beck and Professor J. P. W. Crawford for their many suggestions and friendly encouragement in the preparation of this work. ri22!>57 CONTENTS PAGE Introduction 7 I The French in North Africa 13 II The Renascence of National Energy 25 III Flaubert's Salammho as a Source of Inspiration for the African Novels of Louis Bertrand 32 IV The Life and Ideas of Louis Bertrand 38 V The African Novels of Louis Bertrand 61 VI The Influence of Flaubert upon the Style and the Literary Methods of Louis Bertrand 79 VII A Critical Estimate of the African Novels of Louis Bertrand 91 VIII Conclusion 100 A List of the Works of Louis Bertrand 105 INTRODUCTION It is the purpose of this paper to study the African, or more strictly speaking, the Algerian novels of Louis Bertrand, his ethnological, economic and literary doctrines, and their applica- tion in these novels. Early in the course of his study of M. Bertrand, the writer of this paper met a strikingly clear expression of an idea which was gradually taking shape in his own mind. This idea, which may be said to give a certain unity to the present essay, should here be quoted in full: "Maurice Barres et Charles Maurras ont travaille parall^lement, s4parement, k edifier tout ou partie d'une theorie de la France. . . . du double apport critique et doctrinal de Maurice Barres et de Charles Maurras quelques elements subsisteront, qu'il faudra quelque jour incorporer a un systeme frangais. Le jour venu de cette synthese, le nom de M. Louis Bertrand ne sera point oublie; sa part de construction ne sera ni la moins originale ni la moins solide M. Charles Maurras veille aux frontieres traditionnelles de la latinite; M. Maurice Barres assure la defense de nos bastions de Test. M. Louis Bertrand cherche plus loin une terre a proteger, une province a fortifier dans le dogme frangais, une lutte a soutenir pour I'elargissement de notre civilization et Texpansion de notre race. II franchit la Mediterrante; ses bastions a lui s'erigent a I'entree du desert. II est le createur et le prophete d'un imperialisme africain." ^ The critic then explains the idea of conquest as glorified by Louis Bertrand; that it represents a purification of the ancient instinct which drives man to plunder and enslave his neighbor, and that it is victorious over misery, disorder and the forces of inertia. The heroes of the novels of M. Bertrand are the pion- eers sent by France and her sister Latin countries to prepare the uncultivated domain of her new colonies; they are adventurers ^Lucien Maury, Louis Bertrand, imperialiste, Revue Bleue, 59th year, June 18, 1921. 8 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND Upon whom falls the rough task of opening roads and erecting cities. At first the novelist is principally absorbed by the pas- sionate and somewhat disordered activity, the tireless enthu- siasm, the fermenting sap and the intemperate ardor whence is to be born a new people. And he composes the Cycle africain, which is a new Roman de V energie nationalc. The invasion of Africa by the Southern European peoples is a renewal of the ancient pressure of the Latin peoples towards its shores, the eternally coveted prize of the Mediterranean races. Thus appears the traditional argument which is the indispensable support of all imperialism. Louis Bertrand develops all of the phases of this idea of Latinity from its deepest roots in far distant history to its renascence in modern French Africa; a land now richer, more beautiful and more densely populated than it ever was in Roman times. ^ The present paper opens with a brief historical sketch of the establishment and extension of French power in North Africa; a sketch which seems desirable on account of the impor- tant part certain events of colonial history such as the Algesiras and the Agadir incidents played in the renascence of energy from 1885 to 1914. The introduction of the utterances of certain public men is considered as one of the best means of determining the national sentiment upon the questions here discussed. The following chapter, dealing with the renascence of national energy in France, only aims to sketch in general outlines this important movement. It consists largely of a summary of the more important doctrines of the two contemporary writers in whom it seems to have culminated, and whose theories appear to embody many of its most salient points. A thorough account of this renascence should show the early influence of Renan upon Barr^s, of Taine upon Barres, Bourget and many others, and of Fustel de Coulanges upon Maurras. A whole generation collaborated in the movement: Deroulede, Drumont, Brunetiere, Lemaitre, L6on Daudet and a host of others whose names are I Ihid, A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 9 known wherever French is read. The doctrines of Barrds and Maurras have been selected for exposition as being, possibly, the most typical, the most widely known and influential; and also because of the fact that M. Maury has linked their names with that of Louis Bertrand as forming a trilogy of great workmen in the national renascence. No attempt is made to show that either has had any definite influence upon M. Bertrand, except as they were part of the movement, for no such influence is apparent. In fact Louis Bertrand expresses a vigorous protest against the Barresian doctrine of the cult of "la terre et les morts" when he says that the French fatherland is not where the dead are asleep, as some would have us believe, but is to be found on all of the world's highways where pass the armies and fleets of France, and in all of the countries where her manufacturers and her colonists are developing the reserves of gold and energy slowly amassed upon the ancient soil of their native land. ^ The question of influences, with their innumerable possible ramifications, which usually offers so many difficulties, is rela- tively simple in the case of Louis Bertrand, for he himself tells us that without Salammbo he could not have written his African novels. From the moment that he first set foot on African soil, this book became his "livre de chevet." He accepted Flaubert's interpretation of the land, and through it he came to understand the irresistible attraction of the mysterious South. Flaubert is the one author to have a marked influence upon Louis Bertrand, as two of his critics have so justly observed,' and of the work of the author of Salammbo, only such ideas as affect the African novels of his disciple are here noted. Flaubert understood his own time so well, believes M. Bertrand, that he realized that the human energy which was more and more with- ^ La Cina, Preface, p. XI. * Louis Lefebvre, Un grand Scrivain, de la Mediterranee: M. Louis Ber- trand. Nouvelle Revue d'ltalie, 18th year, 9th series, June 25, 1921. Fidus, Silhouettes contemporaines. M. Louis Bertrand. La Revue des Deux Mondes, Vol. 63, June 15, 1921. £0 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND drawing itself from Europe, as from a body already marked by death, was soon to concentrate passionately upon the Orient. » Possibly this idea may have suggested to Louis Bertrand the conception of a novel of energy whose scene should be laid in the land revealed to him by Salammbo. The general history of French colonial literature has been so thoroughly treated as to render even a short survey of it un- necessary here. So vast is this field that a lifetime would not suffice to read all the books which it comprises, 2 nor even those written upon Algeria alone. ^ The excellent work of MM. Cario and R6gismanset: VExotisme. La Litteratiire coloniale^ gives a brief but adequate outline of the subject from Herodotus to our own time. Like most students of colonial literature in France, these authors date the modern colonial novel from Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, whom they treat at considerable length. Another valuable book is: La Litterature nord- africaine, ^ by the poet Arthur Pellegrin, editor of the periodical Tunisie illustree. M. Pierre Martino's thesis for the doctorate, V Orient dans la Litterature f ran gaise an XV lie et au XVI lie siecle is a scholarly work, and contains much of interest for the student of the history of colonial literature. « Louis Bertrand refuses to apply to any of his own works the term of "colonial novel," which, he says, describes "les tares du civilise en pays colonial," and which contrasts the European and the native in a childish manner. He also repudiates the "roman exotique" in an equally emphatic manner, on the ground that the exotic novel consists in the expression of aston- ishment and admiration in the presence of the new and the * Louis Bertrand, Flaubert et I'Afrique, Revue de Paris, 7th year, April 1, 1900. ' Louis Cario and Charles Regismanset, L'Exotisme. La Litterature coloniale, p. 5. ' Robert Randau, Le mouvement littSraire dans I'Afrique du Nord. Belles- Lettres, November, 1920. * Paris, Mercure de France (Publishers), 1911. ^ Tunis, Bibliotheque nord-africaine, 1920. « Paris, Hachette et Cie., 1906. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 11 Strange, and encourages the Occidental to adapt himself to the manners and customs of inferior civilizations. ' In a letter to the writer of this paper, M. Bertrand says that he has passed his whole life in combating exotism, which he considers as a form of "badauderie" and of ignorance. In the class of the colonial novel as defined by Louis Bertrand, or of the exotic novel, consisting principally of descriptions of Oriental land- scapes and life, often mingled with romantic adventures, may be ranged nearly all of the fiction whose scenes are laid in the colonial possessions of France. Among the better known of the authors of such tales might be mentioned: Daudet, Mau- passant, Pierre Loti, Paul Adam, Claude Farrere, Pierre Mille, Charles Geniaux, Marius and Ary Leblond, Jean and Jerome Tharaud, Paul and Victor Margueritte, Emile Nolly and Pierre Benoit. The special field of Louis Bertrand, the Latin colonist in Africa, has been treated by only one other Frenchman (of France), M. Hugues LeRoux. The literary field of this noted traveller, essayist, lecturer and novelist is as extensive and varied as his wanderings. His African novels, preceding those of M, Bertrand, and dealing in some cases with the same subject, might be supposed to have influenced the latter. M. Bertrand, however, informs the writer of this paper that he is not familiar with the works of Hugues LeRoux. As for Rudyard Kipling, who undoubtedly inspired several French writers, notably Pierre Mille — there is no connection between his talent and that of Louis Bertrand. The latter, in deploring foreign influences upon French letters, spoke of *Mes grossieres histoires d'un simple animalier comme Rudyard Kipling." 2 If the author of Le Cycle africain states an opinion in 1903, the reader may be fairly certain that it applies to his whole work, for seldom have the doctrines of a writer altered or evolved less in the course of a long career devoted to literature. There ^ Louis Bertrand, Nietzsche et la Mediter ranee, La Revue des Deux Mondes, Vol. 25, January 1, 1915. ' Louis Bertrand, La Renaissance classique (1903), p. 42. iZ THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND has been growth, of course, but no radical changes and very few modifications of theory. For this reason, in the chapter upon the doctrines of Louis Bertrand, no attempt is made to group them by periods. While this is not to the same extent true of his fiction, Httle attention is devoted to the evolution from the novel of manners of the African cycle to the historical novel of the second period, nor are the results of this evolution studied, for this paper proposes to deal only with M. Bertrand 's African novels, and their relation to his principal doctrines. In connection with the chapter which briefly analyzes the novels of Louis Bertrand, it should be stated that the rather summary description of his characters is due to limitations of space. In the books themselves the personality of the various types is gradually unfolded to the reader with consummate art. In the pages which present critical estimates of the work of Louis Bertrand, no effort is made to group critical opinions either chronologically or according to the books under review. The unity of doctrine which underlies the Cycle africain, as well as the peculiar construction of the novels themselves, has in- clined commentators to consider the characteristics of the group as a whole, the qualities of its author, and the types he has created, rather than to examine the individual book, or to attempt an analysis of its plot or action. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 13 I The French in North Africa The history of the French empire in North Africa, in spite of periods of stumbHng and hesitation, shows a steady progress which can hardly be attributed to anything but a deep-seated, though perhaps at times, sub-conscious national desire for colonial expansion. Since 1520 France had clung to a few unprofitable trading stations in Algeria, paying therefor an annual rent to the Turks, the nominal masters of the country. These station-s had been sacked several times, and it was due to this fact, and to a dispute over the rent, that the occasion for intervention arose. In 1827, the French consul, M. Duval, was struck, in the course of a heated argument, by Hussein, the Dey of Algiers, and this insult, coupled with the irritation produced by many years of Moorish and Turkish piracy in the Mediterranean, and possibly with a desire to create a diversion of public opinion from growing dissatisfaction in France, decided Charles X to act. On June 14, 1830, a French army of 37,000 men landed at Sidi Ferruch, and within a few hours occupied Algiers, almost without a struggle. » Lamartine seems to have offered a fair estimate of the situation when he wrote: "Le littoral de TAfrique n'est ni turc ni arabe. Ce sont des colonies de brigands superposees a la terre et ne s'y enracinant pas. . . . C'est un vaisseau sans pavilion sur lequel tout le monde peut tirer." ^ That the Turks had little hold upon the affections of the natives is shown by the enthusiasm with which the Arabs attacked and plundered the retreating Turkish troops, as described by a French eye-witness. ' The occupation did not pass without protest by England, ^ Alfred Rambaud, La France coloniale, pp. 49, 50. 2 Alphonse de Lamartine, Voyage en Orient (1832-1833), Vol. II, p. 475. ^ Le Moniteur Universel, August 5, 1830. 14 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND but Polignac, the prime minister, assured her that France intended only to suppress piracy. When England asked definite assurance that there would be no acquisition of territory, Polig- nac, in a firm note, answered that the word of the King as to French intentions was a sufficient guarantee, i Louis Philippe considered for a time abandoning Algeria, and there was strong opposition in the Chambre des D6put6s to its retention. Gradually, however, the coast ports were occupied, special troops were recruited, and the French prepared to stay and to extend their conquest. 2 One of the first important measures was the creation of the "Bureaux arabes," composed of officers whose mission it was to study the natives, their lan- guage, customs, and beliefs, supervise them, and keep the high command informed of their movements. Marshal Bugeaud was the first great administrator. He established a government of the natives, based upon their religious organization (1842-44), completed the pacification of the tribes, and attempted to make of Algeria a "colonie de peuplement". The first French colon- ists, largely insurgents of 1830, were massacred by the Arabs or killed by fever. In 1848, the year of the first civil government, some 20,000 unemployed Parisian workmen were settled on land grants, and guaranteed food for a certain time, but this attempt also failed, as the workmen were unfamiliar with agriculture. Colonization was still further discouraged when, in 1863, Napo- leon III wrote to the Governor-General of Algeria (Marshal Pelissier) that the government would favor development of the country by great companies, and would no longer encourage colonists by subsidies or grants of free land, and that Algeria was not a colony properly speaking, but an Arab kingdom. 3 The "senatus-consulte" of 1865, still in force to-day, declares a French citizen to be any person born on French soil of a parent himself born there, and also any young man born on French soil of foreign parents who does not decline French citizenship ' Victor Piquet, La Colonisation frangaise dans VAfrique du Nord, p. 32. ^ Rambaud, opus cit., p. 50. * Moniteur Universel, Feb. 7, 1863. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 15 in the year following his majority. This law greatly increases the native-born population. In 1871 a formidable revolt under the leadership of an important chief named Mokrani was sup- pressed after five months of hard fighting, and 300,000 hectares of land were confiscated from the natives, to be distributed to the colonists. Shortly after the Franco-Prussian war, some 10,000 citizens of Alsace-Lorraine who had elected French citizenship were established in Algeria, but as only a few had agricultural experience, the effort met with little success. * It was not until 1880 that colonization began to be really success- ful. In that year the phylloxera was destroying vines in France, and many experienced wine growers emigrated to Algeria, where in most cases their efforts were richly rewarded, and in twenty years they increased five fold the number of hectares planted to vineyards. In these years the natives lost two-fifths of their remaining lands, and were forced to go "elsewhere". 2 Since 1884 there have been no tariff duties between France and Algeria, except on certain kinds of alcoholic drinks. By the most recent census, that of 1911, the population of Algeria was 5,492,000, of whom 304,000 were native French or their descendants (an increase of 25,000 since 1906), 188,000 natural- ized French citizens (an increase of 18,000 since 1906) of whom some 138,000 were of Spanish origin, 117,000 Spaniards, 33,150 Italians, 64,000 Jews, and 6,217 Maltese. ^ It is interesting to note that while the mortality of the French is higher than in France, the birth rate is sufficiently high to produce a slight but steady increase exclusive of immigration. * The conquest of Algeria seems never to have aroused serious opposition either at home or abroad. Bismarck even favored the colonial expansion of France as a means of turning the thoughts of the French away from their eastern frontier. The next colonial adventure of France was not, however, destined ^ Rambaud, opus cit., p. 110. 2 Piquet, opus cit., p. 205. 3 Ibid. * Augustin Bernard, L'Afrique du Nord, p. 21. 16 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERT RAND to be so fortunate. In it she came face to face with England* jealous, as ever, of the security of the trade routes to her great colonies. When, nevertheless, De Lesseps began the Suez Canal in 1859, the Second Empire seemed strong enough to disregard such considerations. The Canal was finished in 1869, but in 1875 England secured her first hold upon it by buying the shares of the Khedive. Increasing disorder in Egypt made intervention inevitable, but when it came, in 1882, France was still on an equal footing w th England. On July 4th of that year a French and an English fleet arrived before Alexandria; eleven days later an English force landed but the French force refrained. On this day France, in the eyes of Europe, renounced her claims to Egypt. 1 In the legislative session in the Chambre des Deputes of July 18th and 19th, a request for additional credits by the Ministere de la Marine was made the subject of a spirited debate. Gambetta, supported by the Center and the moderate elements of the Left and the Right, advocated making every effort to retain the alliance with England as the best means of defending French interests in the Mediterranean. The English, he asserted, esteem an ally who can make his own interests respected. The extreme Right refused to vote the credits requested, asserting that this would show approval of a government which had not sustained French interests with sufficient firmness. It is in- teresting to find that on this occasion M. Clemenceau demanded liberty for the oppressed Egyptians in the name of the great principles of the French Revolution. He rejoiced in the presence of the English in Egypt, for France was thus prevented from ruling the country by military force. The famous ironist feigned not to have grasped the point of the debate, when he obserbed that England did not need the help of the French to guarantee the safety of the canal. ^ France made one more effort to raise the question politically, when the Marchand mission arrived at Fashoda in Upper Egypt * Andre Tardieu, L'Afrique du Nord, p. 197. « Le Journal Officiel, July 19 and 20. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 17 in August of 1898. Confronted by the victorious army of Kitchener, fresh from its complete triumph over the forces of the Mahdi, the intrepid Marchand was forced to withdraw. The reaction from this humihation was so strong in France that even such a firm nationalist as Jules Lemattre went so far as to advocate an alliance with Germany against England. ' France derived at least one source of satisfaction and material advantage from her unfortunate experience in Egypt, for in the future she received the unvarying support of England for French claims in other parts of North Africa. With her un- easiness regarding the fate of her trade route to India allayed, England seemed eager to promote the plans of France elsewhere. Was England confident that once having a claim upon the Canal, its acquisition was merely a matter of time and patience? The student of English history inclines to this view when he finds Salisbury, British prime minister, declaring to the Congress of Berlin in 1878 that his government would not oppose French influence in the Regency (Tunisia), and would not set up any claims contrary to it. ^ Thereafter, the progress of France in Tunisia w^as relatively rapid and easy. For many years the finances of the Beys had been in an extremely involved condition; efforts made by French, British and Italian individuals and commissions to bring them into some sort of order had met with little real success. The authority of the Turks, and even of the Beys, was nominal, and the interior of the country was in fact in a state of anarchy. Finally in 1881 the incursions of the savage nomadic tribesmen across the Algerian frontier created an intolerable situation. A few French soldiers were killed, and the natives, subjects of France, were plundered and harried. Jules Ferry, head of the government, hesitated no longer, but obtained from the Farle- ment credits and permission to send against the turbulent tribes- men of Tunisia an expedition which should assure the future security of Algeria. ^ A powerful French force crossed the 1 Tardieu, opus cit., pp. 200, 201. 2 Piquet, opus cit., pp. 311-314. 3 Ibid. 18 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND border, dispersed the nomads, and marched on Tunis, which was occupied without a struggle. The Bey did not dare resist, and in the general revolt of the tribes which followed in this same year, he even aided the French. These operations, though successful and not very costly, aroused such opposition at home that the government which had undertaken them was overthrown. France was not yet wholly converted to a policy of colonial expansion. The fol- lowing year, we find a conservative deputy, with the manifest approval of the Right and of the more radical elements of the Left, voicing the often repeated objection that France, not having an overflow of population, would be maintaining security in Tunisia for the benefit of Spaniards, Greeks, Italians and Maltese, and that colonial conquest weakens the strength of France by scattering her forces. ^ By the treaty of 1883, the Bey agreed to execute all of the reforms requested by France, who bound herself to guarantee the Tunisian debt. The treaty of 1896 declares Tunisia to be a protectorate of France. ^ The Bey is the nominal executive, but the Resident General, the representative of the powers of the Republic, has a veto over all of his decisions. The Bey is "advised" by a cabinet composed (except for the minister of justice) of the French executives who are chiefs of the various departments of the government. ^ In local affairs the French have utilized the existing froms of native government, which have been respected and even consolidated. Except for the maintenance of a garrison, Tunisia costs France little or nothing, and excellent results have been obtained. While no efforts have been made to form in Tunisia a "colonic de peuplement", the natural resources of the country have been developed by individual initiative and private capital, largely invested by retired army officers, public officials, and other small capitalists, 1 Journal Officiel, July 18, 1882. ^ Piquet, opus cit., p. 324. • Rambaud, opus cit., p. 171, A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 19 who reside on their estates for only a part of the year. ' Of a total population of 1,928,000, by the census of 1911: 148,000 were Europeans, of whom 46,000 were French (a gain of 11,000 since 1906), 88,000 Italians, and some 10,000 Maltese. == With the eastern flank of Algeria thus assured, France was free to turn her eyes to the western frontier, so long a source of trouble, for the same reasons as in the case of the Tunisian border. Each year some 30,000 Moroccans came into the Algerian province of Oran to help with the harvest, and these natives, worked upon by Moslem agitators, spread seeds of revolt among the subjects of France. In 1903 the Sultan of Morocco obtained from French bankers a loan of 62,000,000 francs, guaranteed by the customs duties. In 1904 both Spain and England recognized the right of France, as the bordering power, to a preponderant position in the direction of the reforms which were agreed upon as necessary for Morocco, and in the maintenance of order. The sovereignty of the Sultan was to be respected, and there were to be no tariff or other economic inequalities. Thus the policy of "peaceful penetration" pro- ceeded smoothly for France till March, 1905, when a yacht bearing Kaiser Wilhelm II cast anchor in the harbor of Tangier. The imperial visitor announced that he had come to confer with the Sultan, alone, upon the best method of assuring German commercial rights in Morocco, and that he considered the Sultan as an absolutely independent sovereign. France felt the threat implied by this statement, and excitement was tense, though suppressed, for France did not feel ready for war. Paul Des- chanel probably voiced the mood of the nation when, in a speech before the Chambre des Deputes, a speech which was a veritable "cri du coeur", he recalls that France gave up claims upon Egypt (to England), Tangier (to Spain) and Tripoli (to Italy) in return for a country which France does not possess, which she must pacify, and for which, most serious of all, she is brought face to face with "the present difficulty". ^ T Augustin Bernard, opus cit., p. 21. » Ibid. ' Journal Officiel, April 20, 1905. 20 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND Encouraged by the words of the Kaiser, several Moroccan notables suggested a conference of the powers to consider the reforms proposed by France. Delcass4, the vigorous foreign minister, was obliged to resign (June 6, 1905). It was the darkest hour France had known since 1871. However, the conference held at Algesiras early in 1906 resulted in a vindication of the claims of France. ^ Andre Tardieu probably expresses the judgment of a large number of thoughtful Frenchmen when he draws the moral that the real lesson of Algesiras is that a political policy is of value only as it has military force to support it, and that a people's safety is measured by its capacity for making war. This capacity is a necessary condition of all colonial policy, and even of the existence and independence of a nation. ^ Though shaken to the depths by the crisis of 1905, France gathered herself resolutely together, and prepared to face her problems with a new hope and a new courage. General Lyautey was sent to Morocco, where his energetic military action, followed by a firm and wise political policy, quickly pacified the country. At home France was rapidly strengthening her military forces and toughening her moral fiber, softened, according to some writers, by two generations of physical comfort and humanitarian theories. In 1911 French troops, after quelling a formidable rising of the tribes, occupied Fez. When Germany, desirous of re-opening the Moroccan question, seized upon this occupation as an excuse for sending a gunboat to Agadir, France was ready, and met her with unmistakable firmness. In the words of an ardent French nationalist, "The whole French nation waited impatiently for a declaration of war."' The Germans had at this time no field gun comparable to the "soixante-quinze", and their airplanes were also far inferior to those of the French. France was supported in her occupation of Fez by England and vSpain. I Piquet, opus cit., p. 458. ' Andre Tardieu, La Conference d'Alghiras. Histoire de la Crise Maro- caine (1909), pp. 472-474. ' Abb^ Ernest Dimnet, France Herself Again (1914), p. 204. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OP NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 21 Under these conditions, the German Empire wisely decided not to press the question, and after two weeks of anxiety, the tension passed. The Accord after Agadir, which re-confirmed the position of France in Morocco, was signed on November 4, 1911. The feeHng of quiet pride which animated France at this happy ending of a delicate situation may well be gauged by a speech which Joseph Caillaux, then ''President du Con- seil", made to his constituents two days later. Caillaux said, in part, ". . . . il 6tait difficile d'esperer pour la France une issue plus honorable et plus avantageuse d'une question que la force des choses obligeait k liquider et a regler. . . . I'immense majority s'applaudit aujourd'hui d'une solution qu'elle a attendue avec le calme et la dignite qui |bnt le fait des peuples forts." i Caillaux has never been considered as an imperialist; hence the trend of his speech, made to a fairly radical electorate (La Sarthe), is an excellent measure of the intensity of the nationalistic feeling animating France at this time. Thus freed from outside interference, France moved rapidly forward to the consolidation of her hold upon Morocco. By the Treaty of Fez, signed in March, 1912, the French protecto- rate over Morocco is recognized, and they may, in agreement with the Sultan, execute such reforms as they deem wise, and may occupy with their troops whatever points they wish, after having notified the Sultan. 2 In the same year General Lyautey was named "Commissaire Resident General" with very wide powers. From this point forward the history of Morocco is so closely identified with that of the new Resident General that it may be interesting to consider for a moment this remarkable soldier and administrator. Twelve years earlier General Lyautey had written that a colonial expedition should be led by the chief who was destined to administer the country after its conquest, for such an officer would have constantly in mind the future of » Journal Officiel, November 6, 1911. 2 Piquet, opus cit., pp. 463, 464, 465. 22 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND the country as a colony. ^ For General Lyautey and the officers trained in his school, military action is only a foundation upon which to build the edifice of peace. A combat is considered as being the result of former mistakes. It should be prevented by a constant and mobile show of power, which will exercise a preventive effect by impressing upon the native the futility of resistance. On the constructive side, the native should be won over by an appeal to his sense of self-interest — his labor and food-products should be bought at fair prices. He should thus be shown that he has everything to gain by supporting the French and everything to lose by opposing them. 2 The Sultan was to be kept too closely in hand to make any trouble, while preserving a sufficiently independent appearance to have enough prestige with his native subjects to render him a useful instrument of government for the French. ^ The soundness of these principles was clearly demonstrated at the outbreak of the World War. With the country scarcely pacified, and every available soldier needed in France, many competent authorities advised that the French attempt to hold only the coast of Morocco. General Lyautey refused to abandon a foot of soil, for he knew that the Mussulman attacks at the first sign of weakness, and that a withdrawal would precipitate a general insurrection. Though his effectives were greatly diminished, Lyautey succeeded in extending French holdings, and even in recruiting soldiers and workmen for service in France by voluntary enlistment. He pushed public works vigorously, saying that one "chantier" for natives was worth a battalion of French troops. * It is to such wise policies as these that France is indebted for the acquisition and preservation of her colonies. Surely she did well to honor this great and humane soldier by election to the French Academy. ^ ^ Lt.-Col. Lyautey, Le Role colonial de VArmee, Revue des Deux Mondes, Vol. 157, January 15, 1900. 2 Andre Tardieu, opus cit., p. 587. 3 Jacques Ladreit de Lacharriere, L'Afrigue du Nord, p. 82. * Augustin Bernard, L' Effort de VAjrique du Nord, pp. 11 and 25. ' General Lyautey was received into the French Academy on October 31, 1912, L'Afrigue Frangaise for November, 1912. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 23 The necessity for France that her representatives in North Africa combine the highest virtues of the soldier and the adminis- trator may be measured by a glance at the problem offered by the Mohammedan natives. Of these there are some five to eight millions in Morocco alone, ^ as opposed to 45,000 Europeans, of whom about 31,000 are French and 12,000 Spanish. » In French North Africa, therefore, there are between eleven and fifteen million natives, and less than one million Europeans. Probably some two-thirds of these natives are Berbers, a seden- tary and agricultural people, while the remainder are Arabs, largely nomads and shepherds, and Moors, city dwellers and small merchants. These peoples, though they do not appear to have any very definite ideas of patriotism as understood by Occidentals, are united by the strong bond of the Mohammedan faith, a faith which more than maintains its position. The "French peace", imposed upon these formerly warlike races, coupled with their surprising fecundity, has already resulted in a great increase of population, which may now be counted on to double every forty years, according to one estimate. ^ The danger of a successful armed revolt is decreasing, owing to the superiority which such modern weapons as the airplane, the machine gun and poison gas give to the civilized man over the barbarian. The economic problem, however, will necessarily become more acute in proportion as France further attempts to make of North Africa a "colonic de peuplement". An ideal "colonic de peuplement" has been defined as one which is roomy, sparsely inhabited and of temperate climate. It can be success- fully colonized only by a nation having a large overflow popula- tion. ■* Now in Algeria, a policy of removing the natives from tillable lands, even by purchase, can go no further; in Tunisia the aridity is a formidable obstacle, while in Morocco the country ^ Ladreit de Lacharriere, opus cit., p. 72. 2 Statesman's Year Book, 1921. ' Piquet, opus cit., p. 530. * Louis Vignon, UExpansion de la France, p. 178. 24 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND is already densely populated in those regions which are suitable for agriculture. ^ Since the natives of North Africa are too numerous to be exterminated, and since their Moslem faith is an insurmountable barrier to their assimilation, it is evident that the problem of the disposition to be made of them is one worthy to occupy the attention of the best statesmanship of France. The history of the relations of France with Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco is an illustration of what seems to be a general law; namely that civilized nations have always been obliged by the nature of their occupation to modify conditions under which they have entered countries where a dangerous anarchy prevails. In the early part of the last century it became necessary for a European nation to take over Algeria in order to end the intoler- able nuisance of Mediterranean piracy and plunder of which the country was the headquarters. Then too, "liberty" means to the Moslem freedom to enslave the black and to rob and massacre the Christian and the Jew. Christendom would not have tolerated such a state of bloody anarchy much longer, and owes a debt of gratitude to France for accepting the role of its pro- tector in North Africa. Once established in Algeria, France could permit no other power upon her frontiers, for such a power might incite Mohammedan fanaticism against her. And no European people, it may fairly be said, has ever ruled the Moslem with less bloodshed than have the French. * Piquet opus cit., p. 529. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 25 II The Renascence of National Energy. 1885-1914. The generation which had come to maturity in the relatively care-free and materialistic atmosphere of the Second Empire, did not feel at once the whole moral significance of the Defeat of 1870. It was not until about 1880 that the psychological frame of mind which has been called the ideology of the Defeat was generally observed. The first manifestation of this depres- sion was a sort of exasperated idealism, which exalted pure intelligence as opposed to physical force; it was a form of revenge taken by humiliated pride. Men proclaimed that the refined and idealistic races were by these very qualities condemned to destruction. Pessimism, pride of the intelligence, scorn of the active life, acceptance of a near and irremediable fall, inability to make a choice; such were the ideas which combined to form the attitude of mind described as dilettantism. Because he tries to understand and enjoy everything, without attaching himself to any one thing, the dilettante considers himself superior to the believer. He is profoundly impregnated with a sense of the relativity of all truth, and this attitude leads directly to impotence, and through it to pessimism and even to despair. The habitual mode of self expression of the dilettante is irony, which is the proud attempt of a conquered intellectualism to show that it scorns the things for whose possession it is incapable of making an effort. This irony the Frenchmen of the Defeat directed against themselves, each other and their past. One of the first to protest against the self-deprecation of his com- patriots, Fustel de Coulanges, compares the tendency to a mania for suicide. ^ The mortal fatigue, the gloomy perception of the vanity of ^ Agathon, Les Jeunes Gens d'Aujourd'hui. The present chapter is largely based upon this book, but as citations are rather from the general impression than from specific passages, no attempt will be made to refer to such passages. 26 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND all effort so prevalent in the eighties, is, in the opinion of Paul Bourget, a return to the "mal du si^cle" of the romanticists, i In the introduction the Le Disciple (1889), Bourget summons the new generation to return to the Church, and urges the youth of France to exalt and to cultivate the two great virtues, the two great energies — Love and Will. Louis Bertrand believes that the young men of this generation thought that they had lost the taste for action, and even for life, partly through the depression engendered by the Defeat, and partly through the influence of the generation of the Second Empire, which opposed ideas which it felt to be hostile to its materialistic conception of life. The young men of the eighties, continues M. Bertrand, while not ready to proclaim the defeat of science, were bowed under the iron law of universal determinism. 2 But help was to come, and from the ranks of the enemy, for Maurice Barres, starting as a disciple of the Prince of the Dilet- tanti, Ernest Renan, soon came under the influence of Taine, "the great professor of energy", ' and began to elaborate a doctrine which was to give the youth of France a new hope and a new courage. The earlier theme of Barres, "le culte du moi", preaching that the individual must feel as intensely as possible in order to create in himself a maximum of strength, is really a glorification of energy. This theory of individual energy gradually evolves into that of social energy. Such energy grows and is nourished in proportion as it has roots in its native soil; it is vigorous and fecund only in so far as it remains under the influences which formed and matured it throughout the cen- turies. * From these general theories Barres deduces the central idea of his work: the restoration of provincial life, and more particularly that of his native Lorraine. In Lorraine, the ^ Paul Bourget, Essais de Psychologic contemporaine, Vol. I, Preface de 1885, p. XXII. ' Louis Bertrand, L'CEuvre de M. Paul Bourget, Revue des Deux Mondes, Vol. 60, December 15, 1920. ' C. Lecigne, Du Diletlantisme d V Action, p. 13. * Maurice Barres, Leurs Figures, p. 225. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 27 Bastion of the East, what creates a barrier to the German invader is an ancient sentimental background formed of a common fund of legends, traditions and habits, acquired by the inhabitants of the same locality through a long line of ancestors. The true principle of strength for the individual consists in the enlightening of his conscience by submission to the counsels of the soil and of the forefathers. Such is the famous Barr^sian doctrine of "la terre et les morts" which, developed in the three volumes composing Le Roman de VEnergie nationale, ^ had an enormous influence upon the young men of the nineties and the early years of the new century. These books embody a whole cross section of the moral lives of the youths of France, and will be consulted in the future for an exact description of the decade which they depict. ^ In his evolution Barres is an epitome of the progress of the renascence of his country. » Barres is a master to the present generation because he demon- strated to it that one must believe strongly in something. He tried to supply an acceptable formula with his cult of the hero of tradition (i. e. Napoleon in Les Der acmes) and by his religion of "la terre et les morts". Speaking to an age of individualists in its own language, Barres was able to convince it of the necessity of a discipline, in order to strike a reasonable balance between a life of action and one of intellectual attainment. His work was wholesome in that it restored "le sens des venerations", but, bearing as it did the stamp of a generation convinced that all truth is relative, it could not satisfy the new generation. His work was a necessary stage, but appeared to many not entirely adequate to a rapidly changing time. « The young men of the new century start at a point which Barres reached only after long meditation, and much of his work interests them simply as a record of a transition period. The new generation, in impatient reaction against the preced- 1 Les Deracines, 1897; L'Appel au Soldat, 1900; Leurs Figures, 1903. 2 James Huneker, Egoists, p. 233. 3 Dimnet, opus cit., p. 246. * Agathon, opus cit., p. 76. 28 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND ing one, craves unqualified assertion and dogmatic affirmation. This need was to be satisfied by Charles Maurras, whose works, under the general title of "empirisme organisateur", have as their main purpose the crystallization of custom into a definite code. * This code, formulated and preached daily for years in V Action fran^aise,^ and collected in numerous volumes, is definite enough to please the most exacting. The first article of the creed of Maurras is the need of the awakening and the quickening of nationalism under the stimulus of patriotism. This awakening, beginning with the students in their libraries, museums and class-rooms, at first a subject of a vague poetic enthusiasm, passed by gradual stages into political life, under the influence of literature. Its purpose was to restore to France her contested or neglected advantages, which were: the historical and territorial characteristics of France, her races, provinces, archives, legends, her treasure of ideas, poetry and arts. ^ To the patriots of this school, romanti- cism seemed a great error, and the Revolution a profound bit of stupidity, against which the loftiest ideals of the race protest. < Political and religious anarchism in the Latin peoples is an ethnological paradox, for they are heirs to the traditions of order and authority of the Roman Empire, and to that incom- parable government of minds and hearts, that lofty discipline of the most delicate sentiments, that visible administration of "mysticite", which is the Catholic Church. For twenty centuries the Church has been the repository of civilized order and has preserved the greater part of the seeds of human prog- ress. Such, in brief, are the doctrines of the "exterior Cathol- icism" preached by Maurras, who is not a "croyant".' * Paul Bouget, Le Tribun, chronique de 1911, Preface, p. II. - Charles Maurras is one of the editors of U Action franqaise. The other is the vitriolic Leon Daudet. ' Charles Maurras, Quand les Frangais ne s'aimaient pas. Chronique d'une renaissance, 1890-1905, p. XV. * Maurras, Ibid., p. 126. ^ Maurras, La Politique religieuse, p. IX. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 29 The establishment of a discipline is also the underlying idea in the restoration of the Monarchy, as advocated by M. Maurras. He admits that a state which is satisfied with liberty may find a certain well-being in it, but if the state has any aims beyond mere self-preservation, and wishes to expand, it must forge a discipline for itself. » Colonial and industrial development, by creating jealousies, inevitably cause wars, and Maurras would have France strong enough to wage them successfully. The elements which have, as social groups, refused to accept the doctrines propounded by Maurras are the Jews, the Free Masons, the Protestants, the French citizens of foreign birth ("meteques") and the Socialists, from which elements, in his opinion, the republican form of government draws its principal support. Compromise is impossible, believes M. Maurras; attempts at community of action between Catholics and Protes- tants on a basis of Christianity have always resulted in the duping of the former. Liberalism, largely of Judeo-Protestant origin, is useless for Catholics, and is rapidly being forgotten.' No alliance, concludes M. Maurras, can be arranged between the Catholic Church and such a dissident element as Protestantism. ^ It was largely to defend France from such factors of disinte- gration that La Ligue de V Action f ran Qaise was founded. Con- ceived in 1898, * it did not become a really active force until the early months of 1905, when contemporary events brought it rapidly to the fore. On March 21, 1905, military service had been reduced from three to two years by the efforts of Jaures and the radical groups; ten days later the Kaiser made his famous speech at Tangier, and shortly after, Delcasse resigned under pressure, it is thought, from Berlin. The Tangier affair had aroused little immediate reaction upon French pride, thinks ' Charles Maurras, Quand les Franqais ne s'aimaient pas, p. 209. 2 Emile Faguet, describing himself as a "vieux liberal," thinks that the failure of liberalism is the characteristic fact of the nineteenth centur>'. Problemes politiques du temps present (1907), p. II. ' Maurras, La Politique religieuse, p. XXV. « Maurras, Ibid, p. XVII. 30 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND Maurras, for La Ligue had barely come into existence, but when the Agadir crisis confronted France, even patriotic republicans used La Ligue as a "point d'appui" for resistance. U Action frangaise was unquestionably influential in recon- ciling the conservative forces of France to a common discipline in the name of nationalism. To the young idealists of the universities it preached the necessity of throwing off the anarchy taught by the past century, of considering positive necessities, and of dominating the spirit of negation and insurrection. To the soldier and the priest, it suggested the threat to their interests made by the growing strength of the radical and other non- Catholic elements. The premises of Maurras, expressing the needs of a powerful class, were received with enthusiasm. His conclusions, showing the necessity of unity in the discipline of the Church, were also widely accepted. The pragmatism of Maurras, however, inaugurated for the conversion of a genera- tion of sceptics, no longer satisfied a youth avid for the inner life of Catholicism. ^ In general, also, the young men of the lycees and the universities reject the conclusions of Maurras concerning the Monarchy, and are loyal to the Republic. 2 Selecting from each of its "professors of energy" the part of his teachings it most needed, the younger generation gradually came to crystallize its will into certain definite aims. These tendencies, taking form confusedly during the fourteen years when France was collecting her moral forces and preparing for concerted action, were brought to light by the moral crisis of 1905, and have affirmed themselves steadily up to the present time. The central motive seems to be a love of action, as con- trasted with intellectualism. In its practical phases, this ideal has taken the form of a wide-spread participation in athletic sports, a keen interest in the army, an early entrance into the ' Agathon, opus cit., p. 67. In response to an inquiry by Agathon, the professors of philosophy of the "intellectual" Iyc6es of Condorcet, Henry IV, and Louis-le-Grand testified (1912-14) to the depth and fervency of the Catholicism of most of their students. ' Agathon, opus ciL, p. 105. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 31 more active forms of business, travel for purposes of adventure, exploration and colonization, marriages contracted at a much younger age, and a higher standard in matters of sex. On the moral side, the psychological trend is towards an awakened patriotism, a taste for the heroic, a cult of classical tradition and a return to the Catholic faith. Is this change, one of the most complete recorded in the inner life of the French, to be enduring, or is it to share the fate of so many reactions? Henri Bergson, an admiring spectator of the renascence, believes that he is witnessing not a mere transforma- tion of ideas, which change easily, but a re-creation of the national will. The will, he asserts, is the real expression of the temperament, and the temperament is the hardest of human characteristics to modify. » * Agathon, opus cit.f p. 286. 32 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND III Flaubert's Salammho as a Source of Inspiration for the African Novels of Louis Bertrand M. Louis Bertrand has pointed out the high esteem in which Flaubert is held by the younger generation. ^ The author of Salammho was one of the first to preach that the remedy for the Defeat was not a vain intellectualism, but a knowledge of realities, ^ for though of a contemplative temperament himself, Flaubert worshipped action and heroism. Incarnating in himself the intellectual efforts of several generations, he is rich in ideas and images, and combines to an unusual degree an understanding of bygone scenes and epochs with a marvellous presentiment of the future. It is by this quality of the classicists that he has, believes M. Bertrand, been able to satisfy one phase of the aspirations of an epoch of renascence. Flaubert was irresistibly attracted by the romantic and exotic charm of the Orient, its exuberant flora and fauna, by its swarm- ing humanity, its grotesque and violent contrasts, and above all, by its riotous colors and flaming light. Something barbaric and primitive in the man, a secret affinity for the seething pas- sions of uncivilized mankind, lured his imagination. The age- long yearning of the barbarian of the North for countries of joy and light seems to have possessed this giant, whose appearance and violent gestures and speech led Anatole France to compare him to a Norse sea rover. ^ The fact that romantic dreams of strange and far countries, even more than utilitarian or patriotic reasoning, have inspired soldiers, explorers and colonists to brave hardship and danger, would explain the taste of the generation of the renascence for the writings of Flaubert. Superior men of * Louis Bertrand, Flaubert ct VAJrique, Revue de Paris, 7th year, 2d vol., April 1. 1900. 2 Louis Bertrand, Guslave Flaubert, p. 237. ' Anatole France, La Vie litteraire. Vol. II, p. 18. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 33 action are usually urged to achievement, not so much by material need or advantages, as by obscure atavistic instincts. The artist who can evoke the charm of the strange and the myster- ious stirs this instinct into action, while the patriotic doctrinaire supplies the reasons by which restraining prudence is overcome. The latter role Flaubert leaves to others, for the advocating of a doctrine would be foreign to his professed theory of the imper- sonality of art. In accordance with this theory, the artist must limit himself to representing, and must not attempt to offer explanations or to draw conclusions, for both causes and ends are hidden from us. The business of the writer is simply to contemplate, to understand and "chanter la vie". Art should, then, be imper- sonal, for art is man added to nature, but by this is meant the literary man, not the citizen, with his prejudices of caste and environment. Art must be intellectual and sentiment must be subordinated to the intelligence. Sensation and feeling have reality only as they are reduced to an idea, or as they have been connected with a system of previously verified ideas. The esthetic code of Flaubert is therefore essentially classical and Cartesian. The intelligence must control the emotions, and may even create them, for it is capable of creating reality. Flaubert is convinced, like Taine and Renan, that the universe attempts to prove the scholar in the right by verifying his laws and justifying his hypotheses. He reconciles these abstract laws with reality by fusing them in a love of beauty, which both satisfies the intelligence and leaves place for dreams. ^ The material for an art thus conceived must be taken from a subject adapted to the temperament of the artist. Thus the true subject of Flaubert was antiquity, not only in its romantic and decorative phases, but in its essential and permanent aspects. Because Flaubert conceives the ancient world as a magnificent manifestation of life, he is led to study it in its most intense, turbulent and confused epochs. The swarming, cosmopolitan crowds of Rome, Carthage and the Orient, with their conflicts of ^ Louis Bertrand, Gustave Flaubert, pp. 19-22. 34 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND races, religions and ideas, their obscure instincts of cruelty, superstition, vice and mysticism, had a supreme attraction for him. Flaubert continues the great French tradition, which consists in observing facts and objects in their most general sense. Thus for him Africa is a country of limitless fecundity, of prodigious creative energy, of fierce sensuality and cruelty. The land is personified in the Phoenician goddess Tanit, a symbol of the hidden and evil powers of nature which constantly conspire to check the harmonious action of the reason through the violence of the senses. The duality of Tanit and Moloch is only the expression of the double nature of the climate, which is shown by surprising contrasts in the soul and genius of Africa. Tanit stands for the amorous and corrupting languor of the coasts, while Moloch, the devourer, symbolizes the aridity of the sands; he is the hot breath of the desert which inspires not only unbridled sensuality, but thirst for conquest, pillage and murder. Feminine softness, savage brutality — the whole spirit of Africa is expressed in this antithesis. These eternal aspects of the country Flaubert has revealed in Salammbo, a work of the imagination, yet one which combine an understanding of the past with a comprehension of the signifi- cance of life. He saw that in Africa the race question was all-important, and perceived a Carthage composed of ethnical elements of many origins, never completely fused, and whose conflicting characteristics and interests were the cause of most of the revolts and wars. He does not paint these checkered crowds in the manner of Zola, as an unchained element, but has depicted individual traits corresponding to the diversity of races. Flaubert had a remarkable intuition of the main ethnical currents of the ancient Occidental world. In all times the men of the North and of the Mediterranean countries have hungered for the license of Africa. Like the mercenaries of Hamilcar, the modern invaders of Africa, the men of Normandy, Provence, Catalonia, Valencia and Calabria are drawn to its shores by all sorts of lures, but especially by its vices. » 1 Louis Bertrand, Ibid, p. 76. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 35 In Salammho, Flaubert has created characters that are the living expression of a land, a climate, and a moment of history. » They are veritable Africans, yet they bear the distinctive marks of the countries from which they originally came. According to the classical procedure, Flaubert has drawn general types, whose vitality is such, however, that they are still recognizable today in North Africa. The Greek Spendius, for example, might well be the Neapolitan or Spanish adventurer, a bully and a boaster, ready to make a fortune by any questionable means. 2 Matho might well be the good-hearted, faithful spahi, born to serve, proud of his medals, and capable of great heroism. Many of the characters of the novel are easily recognizable in the streets of present-day Algiers and Tunis; the same types of adventurers, the same hybrid and colorful crowds, yet a study of the literature of Rome and Punic Africa shows that Flaubert has made a psychologically accurate reconstruction of antiquity, 3 and that the principal traits of the country and its inhabitants have not changed appreciably in the course of the centuries. Salammbo depicts a strange and motley society and a land where the Orient and the Occident mingle without fusing — the meeting-place of two opposing civilizations. Thus has Flaubert created an historical novel of the best type; one which connects the present and the past in a vast synthesis. It is a new conception of reality, to take from phenomena their fixed and rigid appearance by projecting them into the past and the future. This conception means the reconciling of the local color of the romanticists with the eternally- the-same human heart of the classicists, of the transitory with ^ Louis Bertrand, Le Jar din de la Mort, p. 292. 2 Louis Bertrand, Gustave Flaubert, p. 97. 2 Confirmation of this opinion of Louis Bertrand is found in Sources and Structure of Flaubert's Salammbo, (1914, The Elliott Monographs), by P. B. Fay and A. Coleman. Mr. Fay concludes that Flaubert follows faithfully the account of the mercenary war given by Polybius, p. 34. Mr. Coleman finds that while Flaubert owes little to the Bible, he must have ransacked antiquity to supply himself with the numberless details which his genius has colored and fused, p. 55. 36 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERT RAND the permanent. ^ Flaubert had a keen sense of the continuity of history, considering it as a perpetual renewal after stated periods. He knew that there is a correlation of action between the present and the past, and that the struggles of the barbarians around Carthage were the symbol of the same force which drives their descendants into Africa and brings them into conflicts with Islam. It was through his trips to Africa that Flaubert came to a full understanding of the "sens de la vie," and it was upon Africa, considered as a source of life and beauty, that he wished to write his final and greatest book. As early as 1860 Flaubert expressed the opinion that a great success awaited the author who could write a "grandissme" novel on Algeria. Two years later he confided to the Goncourt brothers that the dream of his life was to write a great novel on the modern Orient, and told of the pleasure it would give him to depict the curious contrast of an Oriental becoming civilized and a European reverting to a state of barbarism, while about the latter, his hero, revolved the worst elements of the Greek, Italian and Jewish races. ^ Flaubert, on first landing in Africa, was surprised to find that he was less interested in the picturesque and the exotic sides of life than in its psychological and human phases. Had he carried out his project, we would not, in M. Bertrand's opinion, have found in his book the conventional Orient brought into fashion by Byron and his imitators: white-bearded sheiks and barred windows overlooking the blue sea, but psychological studies of scientific exactness. Flaubert would have drawn the startling grotesque- ness of the motley throngs, the eager immigrants, the astonishing moral corruption, and above all, the happy carelessness of this society so generously treated by nature that it drifts aimlessly through life, forgetting its ideals and retaining, of the countries where its members were born, only vague national prejudices. Flaubert's death prevented the realization of this gorgeous ^ Louis Bertrand, Une Evolution nouvelle du Roman historique, Revue de Paris, 28th year. May 15, 1921. ^Journal des Goncourt, Vol. II, p. 23. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 37 dream, and since Salammbo, M. Bertrand thinks, nothing has been brought from Africa but a superficial exotism, and no one has seen that there was anything to be obtained in Algeria but sunsets and mirages. ^ Yet the two great African novels of Flaubert, Salammbo and La Tentation de Saint Antoine, together with the one which he had planned, form a "large conception d'ensemble" whose meaning has scarcely been understood, and "dont la fecondite est incalculable." 2 For the barbarian mercenaries ^ are flocking to North Africa in greater numbers than ever from all of the Mediterranean countries, with the same appetites for lucre and dominion as when they sacked Carthage centuries before. Thus the subject of Salammhd is once more offered to the novelist who would try his skill upon it. * How M. Louis Bertrand continues the task where Flaubert left off, and how this task broadens and acquires a new significance under the influence of the renascence of French nationalistic feeling in the twentieth century, is the subject of the study made in the following pages. ^ Louis Bertrand, Flaubert et VAfrique, Revue de Paris, 7th year, 2d Vol,. April 1, 1900. 2 The same article. Much of this article, like others upon Flaubert pub- lished by M. Bertrand in La Revue des Deux Mondes and La Revue de Paris, has been re-printed in Gtistave Flaubert. In the book the significant paragraph here cited ends: "dont la fecondite litteraire est loin d'etre epuisee" (p. 94). 3 The word "barbarian", so frequently met in the works of Louis Bertrand, seems to have a variety of meanings depending upon the context and the nature of the subject under discussion. In passages which refer to Flaubert, M. Bertrand uses the word to designate the workman from Latin countr es, in order to make clear the parallel between the mercenaries of SdLammbd and the present-day invaders of North Africa. In discussions of Oriental peoples, the term means the Moslem native. In connection with European affairs, "barbarian" seems to mean any actual or possible enemy of France, such as the Anglo-Saxon, the German, or the Russian of the Soviets. See: Le Jardin dela Mort, p. 308 (cited on p. 55 of this paper), and La Revue Catholique des Idees et des Fails, for December 16, 1921. (Cited on p. 48 of this paper.) * Flaubert et VAfrique. 38 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERT RAND IV The Life and Ideas of Louis Bertrand By the exercise of a curious combination of aversions and affinities, the early environment of Louis Bertrand was destined to influence, to an unusual degree, the choice and trend of his Hfe work. Born on March 20, 1866, in the little village of Spincourt, near Metz, his earliest recollections are of the German invader. Spincourt was not annexed, but the near presence of the enemy was felt as a constant menace, and to it M. Bertrand owes his keen "sens de ce qui n'est pas moi"; a sort of sub- conscious hostility to whatever is not French. The country was constantly wet, with stagnant pools of water and sticky mud everywhere, and this dampness, coupled with the penetrating cold, caused in him an oppressive sadness and a craving for light and heat. The monotonously level plains of the Woevre dis- trict of his native Lorraine gave Louis Bertrand a longing for the vast horizons of the desert. The ever present menace of the enemy caused in the people of Lorraine a uniformity of thought and habit and a rigorous discipline which threatened to stifle the delicate parts of the soul, leaving only the combative virtues. Whatever feeling for beauty Louis Bertrand acquired in his youth was due to the Church, whose ceremonies provided him with a refuge and a barrier against the rough life of the country. » As a student at the Lycee Henri IV, which he entered in 1883, Louis Bertrand is described as being a tall, slender 3^outh, studious and reserved, with quite a fund of dry and quiet humor. He was soon at the head of his class, and from the very first was devoted heart and soul to the art of writing. His cult for Flaubert is described by a comrade as less a similarity of talent ' Louis Bertrand, U eteryiel champ de hataille, Revue des Deux Mondes, Vol. 28, August 15 and September 1, 1915. All of the biographical details on this page are from these two articles. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 39 than an affinity of taste and character. > After completing brilliantly his studies at the Lyc6e Henri IV, and later at the Ecole Normale, Louis Bertrand was sent to Africa to teach in the Lyc^e at Algiers. This position he held till 1900, when he resigned to devote himself entirely to the career of letters. In 1891, at the age of twenty-five, Louis Bertrand landed in Africa burdened, as he has expressed it, with all the ideological and sentimental nonsense which he had brought from Paris, but also, as a biographer adds, with a splendid knowledge of classical antiquity and a broad cultural humanism. ^ The thoroughness and solidity of this culture appear in the study made by Louis Bertrand as his thesis for the Doctorate; La Fin du classicisme et le retour a V antique dans la secondemoitie du XV I lie siecle et les premieres annees du XIXe, en France. The introduction was signed at Madrid in August, 1896, a few months after its author had passed his thirtieth birthday. The book is a study of the manner in which the movement back to antiquity, starting in the latter half of the 18th century, diffused itself in literature and art up to the very eve of romanticism. The movement is shown to be in conformity with classicism, whose fundamental principle is imitation. The author finds that the main cause of its spread in France was the growing paganism of morals, or the weakening of the religious idea. He concludes that the move- ment failed largely because his countrymen of the period were too personal, too exclusively French, to be able or to wish to free themselves from the classic tradition as established in the 17 th century. In the course of the studies upon which the thesis is based, its writer no doubt formulated, or at least meditated, many of the theories which are so fully developed in his later work. Already Louis Bertrand had conceived the Mediterranean as the eternal attraction for the barbarian of the North, the need for the Latin of contact with the barbarian, and the historical evidence of Latin continuity. 1 Andre Bellessort, Portraits d'Ecrivains: Louis Bertrand, Revue Bleue, 58th year, June 19, 1920. 2 Ibid. 40 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND Many of these ideas and theories are first exposed at some length in La Renaissance classique (1903), which was written as a preface to the Chants seculaires of Joachim Gasquet. Louis Bertrand wrote this introduction to the verses of his friend because he found formulated in them an indication of the aspira- tions and ideas which were moulding the rising generation of the twentieth century. The purpose of the essay is to develop, to complete and to determine as definitely as possible these aspira- tions. Louis Bertrand summons the new generation of French- men to turn back to the great masters of the 17th century for a renewal of their fecundity. Above all, the study of the history of their race in its greatest period will teach this generation the road to a discipline and to a grasp of the realities of life. Almost as soon as he landed in Africa, the young student, who had spent an unhappy childhood shivering over a stove and dreaming of countries of warmth and sunlight, was happy in Algeria. Lie felt his real fatherland to be the shores of the Latin Sea, and instinctively his heart turned towards those lands which had fascinated the man of the North for so many centuries. The eternal magic of the Mediterranean offers him the same "fetes de lumiere" in which his great ancestor, the painter Claude le Lorrain, reveled. ^ A number of analogies related Algeria to the native Lorraine of Louis Bertrand, and the young traveller felt that he had only left his frontier of the East for that of the South. Again he found himself in a territory the destiny of which was to be constantly trampled over by the invader. Aided by his "sens lorrain de I'ennemi et de I'^tranger", Louis Bertrand defended himself against the overpraised and threadbare charm of Arab picturesqueness, and instinctively turned towards the men and the traditions of his race. He neglected all that was not Latin or French to exalt his own people, and to find again, on this soil invaded by the barbarian and the nomad, the titles of the Latin to the possession of the land. This conception did not immediately come to M. Bertrand, * Louis Bertrand, La Cr^c^ du soldi et des pay sages, p. 19. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 41 for at first he saw Algeria as does every one else; influenced by official reports and the descriptions of novelists in search of local color. Then, gradually, as a result of living in the country, these errors of vision began to be corrected. Direct personal impressions came to take the place of literary reminiscences and ready-made ideas. What Louis Bertrand almost at once per- ceived in Africa, as he tells us in the introduction to his first novel, Le Sang des races, was the silent labor of the men who were clearing the land and putting it under cultivation, draining the marshes, planting vines, and building farms and cities. He saw a whole race living frugally, a people of rough manners, of colorful costumes and language, as stubborn in their exhausting labor as though they were performing it for fame and honor alone. It was a strangely cosmopolitan people of mercenaries, colonists and merchants which he perceived when seeking the living Algeria, that of the future. Contemplating this variegated mass of Italian, Spanish and Provencal immigrants in blue smocks, cord slippers, and berets, drifting southward from the coast, M. Bertrand was led to follow them, and thus began to understand the infinite possibilities of the French conquest. He was lured by the charm of adventure, the delights of the open highway, and of the limitless spaces. The carter, travelling without constraint or master for days and nights through the sands and surrounded by the mirages of the Sahara, bringing food to farms, villages and outposts at the confines of the desert, seemed to him to be a sort of hero, enamored of liberty, glory and joy. Thirsting for the charm and the adventure of the unknown, the scholar left his books and followed the carter across the sands. At first the man of letters was shocked by these rough and violent men, but admiration came with understanding. He learned that under a simple and even barbaric exterior, the primitive man often conceals a delicate and extremely com- plicated soul. Little by little, in the supposed barbarian, Louis Bertrand discovered the eternal man of the Mediterranean, with his irresistible taste for wanderings by sea and road, for the showy and beautiful side of life, and for the harmonious labor 42 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERT RAND which does not debase souls. The novelist learned that the children of the Latin Sea are characterized by respect for the family, the immemorial rites of birth, marriage and death, and by a keen and jealous sense of individual independence and worth. At this time, when the author of Le Sang des races had before him almost daily the epic poems of antiquity, the heroes of Homer and Pindar acquired for him a more profound and human meaning through his association with the modern Latins of the Mediterranean. In the characters of the classic epics, in the souls of these warriors and shepherds, Louis Bertrand found something of the souls of his own heroes. The songs of the mariners, charioteers and goatherds of antiquity illuminated his African carters with a ray of poetry. The joy in life and struggle which the novelist felt in the new people of Latin Africa revived for him the atmosphere of the heroic youth of humanity. The verses of the ancient Greek poets affirmed in his mind the lesson of virile energy and confidence in life which he had learned from the rough teamsters of the desert highways. At this time, when the future seemed dark, when the enemies of France said that she was dying, this burning and ardent Africa brought to Louis Bertrand a distinct presentiment of ultimate victory for his fatherland. Thus was born the thought which he has not ceased to proclaim ever since: that France, wearied by centuries of civilization, could renew her youth by contact with the seeming barbarism of the new and vigorous Latin race of Africa. » The real barbarian, as M. Bertrand uses the term. Is the Moslem native of Africa. The colonist, and especially the over-civilized Frenchman, should "se barbarlser" In the sense that he should learn to understand the soul of the barbarian in all its violence and cunning, and be able to compete with him by the strength of his will and of his muscles. Thus will North Africa become an Invaluable school of energy for the Frenchman, since he will quickly learn there the sharp glance and the power of rapid decision of the uncultivated man. The immediate ^ Louis Bertrand, Le Sang des races (edition of 1920), pp. 6-9. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 43 dangers of hunger and thirst toughen the moral fiber just as the extremes of heat and cold harden the body, while contact with an ancient, warlike and hostile race, disarmed only in appearance, develops the courage. Stimulated by the presence of the common enemy, and by the intermingling of their blood, Latins from even the most somnolent provinces of their native countries show in Africa a fecundity, an energy, and a capacity for action which astonish those who know them best. But the rigor of the harsh struggle for existence is not alone sufficient to explain the sudden development of new aptitudes in the immigrant. It is the moral atmosphere of the country, its climate and the ardor of the African sun, which, believes M. Bertrand, quicken in the colonist the flowering of faculties which remain In an embryonic state in his European province. The atmosphere, the climate and the sun are, for the southern European, somew^hat the same as in his native village, but raised to a degree of intensity which doubles in him the power of action, Louis Bertrand assures us. In the colonies, the conditions of life bring out the innate capacities of man more strongly than in the older centers of civilization. The born leader emerges almost at once from the mass of his fellows and Imposes his will upon them. Confronted with an emergency and the necessity of rapid action in a hostile and barren country, men instinctively turn towards the natural chief. Even in the every-day life of the more settled parts of a colony, he who can acquire wealth or power must show more vigorous and original qualities than the highly civilized man is capable of displaying, because his action is more Isolated, less sustained by his environment, and less limited by regulations and social prejudices. Thus the real attributes of an aristocracy assume a higher significance and value In colonial countries. ^ ^ Louis Bertrand, Nietzsche et la MediterranSe, Revue des Deux Mondes, Vol. 25, January 1, 1915. Some of M. Bertrand's ideas as here summarized show a similarity with certain of the conceptions of Nietzsche which are mentioned in the article. The question of influence can scarcely be raised, however, as M. Bertrand declares that he did not know Nietzsche's work till after the outbreak of the war. 44 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND The 61ite thus produced, believes M. Bertrand, is one purely of strength and a profuse physical vitality, and lacks the refine- ment as well as the weaknesses of an older civilization. Louis Bertrand describes the typical African as characterized by ardor of the imagination, love of whatever glistens and shines, bad taste, a frenzied sensuality, and often by a frank and undisguised obscenity. But the young peoples, trusting in their vigor and their future, and conceiving the world by the measure of their appetites, their ambitions and their hopes, may be excused for an often exaggerated assertiveness, which is usually simply the outward sign of a very real force. All races in their epochs of expansion have aspired to grandeur even to the point of magnilo- quence ("emphase"). The overwrought sensuality of the African, caused by superabundant animal vitality, may incite him to practical activity in order to be able to gratify desires for a more voluptuous and opulent life. Louis Bertrand does not hesitate to describe "la laideur et I'ordure" when it displays itself with an insolent cynicism, or when it symbolizes for him a state of barbarism which is enjoyed by the greater part of humanity. He even relishes such description when it serves to recall to a sense of the realities of life the Utopian and degenerate member of an over-civilized and decadent society. ^ These salient characteristics of the Latin of Africa recall to Louis Bertrand those of the other Mediterranean peoples, and are explained by the same influences. The novelist was early impressed by the close similarity which exists between North Africa and the other Mediterranean regions: the same flora and fauna, the same climate and the same configuration of the coasts. North Africa is France of the Midi, but to a greater degree it is Spain and southern Italy. One is not surprised then that the men of Languedoc, Provence, Spain, Italy, Corsica, Sicily and Malta have flocked to Africa and have felt immediately at home there. The manners and customs of Algiers are almost the same as those of Marseilles, Valencia and Barcelona, just as the manners and customs of Tunis resemble those of Naples ^ Louis Bertrand, PSpete el Balthasar, Introduction, p. 4. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 45 and Palermo. When M. Bertrand had fully understood these facts he felt that his mission was determined; he decided to write of and celebrate the renascence of the Latin races in French Africa. Louis Bertrand believes himself to be the first to see modern Algeria as a Latin country. Those who preceded him, novelists or travelers, imbued for the most part with romantic and exotic prejudices, perceived there only the picturesqueness of native life and of a dying civilization. Such writers ignored the fas- cinating spectacle of a new people which was groping its way and arming itself for life. Worse still, from the point of view of men of letters, his predecessors overlooked the rich psycho- logical material offered by this African land, where are mingled all types of the Latin races, where differences of origin and temperament become so strongly exaggerated by contrast, and under the action of a prodigiously unstable and violent climate. This living psychology soon became for M. Bertrand the most captivating subject for study which he found in Algeria. Not only did the meeting and the slow fusion of the Mediterranean peoples on the soil of Africa seem to him a fact of capital importance, but he quickly accustomed himself to consider it as an entirely natural phenomenon. Hearing about him on all sides most of the dialects of the south of France, of Italy and of Spain, and observing that the manner of living and dressing was the same as in those countries, the novelist reasoned that these things were not merely the accidental result of a brutal and ephemeral conquest. There was between the new people of North Africa and the land which they inhabited a conformity so perfect that they seemed made for each other. This sort of harmony was to be explained in reality by more or less distant causes, of which the author of Le Jardin de la Mort had a kind of palpable vision when he visited the ruins which Roman * civilization had left in all parts of French North Africa. In the presence of these monuments, still standing in spite of the passage of so many centuries, he understood with what a profound imprint the genuis of Rome had marked these provinces which were among the most active, the richest and most cultured 46 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND of the Empire. This Roman Africa had long been known to archeologists and historians. But it was reserved for Louis Bertrand to present to the public a conception of it different from that of the scholar — that the Africa of the past still lives in the present. This is the more easily understood when it is remembered that the manners and customs of the country have been petrified, or as it were, embalmed by the Moslem faith; a religious ideal which has remained unchanged throughout the centuries. Latin Africa is not an accident of international politics, but has profound roots in the past, believes M. Ber- trand. Yet the French themselves, he thinks, in occupying Algeria, did not seem aware that they were simply recovering a lost province of Latinity, blinded as they were by the literature of the lovers of the Orient and of local color. Among these latter, writers of great talent, like Fromentin, had contributed by the brilliancy of their paintings to this initial error. In studying only what was before his eyes, Fromen- tin created the prejudice that Africa is radically hostile to the French, and that the Africans and their conquerors were destined to be forever enemies. Flaubert himself, by an unconscious contradiction due to ingrained romantic prejudices, represented the part of Africa which his genius had made so living, as some- thing forever dead, unique of its kind, which could never be reproduced. Nevertheless it was he who, guided by a sure instinct, found in the streets of the nineteenth-century cities of North Africa the human types which seemed to be contempora- ries of Hamilcar, thus furnishing to his disciple the key to the unknown and mysterious world opening before the young student. Flaubert, while showing the continuity of history, was yet convinced that there was no bond between the Africa of the present and that of the past. Fromentin, seeing only contemporary Africa, does not think to inquire into its origins. Louis Bertrand has made the synthesis of the two ideas, and has united the present and the past. The country is full of monuments and is strewn with ruins which attest the common origin of Latin and African civilizations, and show that even their religious faith had been the same for several centuries A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 47 The hundreds of dead cities of the desert proclaim by their broken colonnades and their triumphal arches that Africa was a Latin province, and that under the hegemony of Rome it knew a prosperity never since attained. Not only was the country a Latin province, but it has never completely ceased to be one, declares M. Bertrand, for most of the customs and material things of life are to-day as in Roman times. Thus the borj which crowns the hills of the Sahel and the Atlas range is in name and construction the Romanic burgus, while the kouha which adorns the roofs of the mosques, palaces and villas of North Africa was called the cupa when Latin civilization was supreme in the country. The native gold work, the household furniture and utensils, the symbolic and traditional images, all show the survival of the Latin or Punic prototype. As for the religious architecture of Moslem Africa, M. Bertrand affirms that it could not possibly have been introduced by the Arab, who, as a nomad and a tent dweller, has never been a builder. The mosque is simply the basilica adapted to a different cult. From one end of the Mediterranean to the other, there is no country where the Helleno-Latin life of antiquity has been preserved as intact and as living as in Africa, where the very customs and dress of the natives are the same as in the time of the Empire. Christian ruins in Africa are more numerous than pagan ruins. Some two hundred and fifty churches, chapels and basilicas have been uncovered. Why, asks M. Bertrand, should not pilgrims flock there, since these memorials of their faith are unaltered, while those of Rome have in most cases been almost completely rebuilt? It is an imperative duty of the French, thinks the author of Sai7it Augustm, carefully to preserve and even to repair these beautiful and significant ruins. Carthage, in particular, calls for restoration. Such, indeed, was one of the dearest dreams of Cardinal Lavigerie, that great servant of France and of civilization. He hoped to make of it a capital for archeology as well as of political power, and thus to erect before the eyes of the Moslem a monument to the union of the Empire and the Faith. The re-establishment of religious unity in order to restore 48 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND peace was the great apostolic task of his predecessor, Saint Augustine. In the book which M. Bertrand has devoted to the biography of this great churchman of the Empire, he has de- picted the author of the Confessions as the ideal African, incar- nating the best and loftiest aspirations of an epoch and a nation. He was a universal genius, and for forty years was the spokesman of Catholicism. Saint Augustine consummated the union of the Semitic genius and that of the Occident. He contributed more than any other one man to save Mediterranean civilization from the barbarian. Saint Augustine was the great African. The French, who consider North Africa as the extension of their own fatherland, may think of him with patriotic pride, since for almost a century they have been continuing in his native country the struggle which he waged for Latin unity. Throughout his whole life, Augustine was an admirable servant of Rome, for to him the Empire meant order, peace, civilization and unity of faith under unity of political domination. Attracted to the author of the Confessions by these affinities of taste and ideals, Louis Bertrand has treated his subject with an enthusiasm and an insight which make of the book a biography of rare value. ^ The restoration of the Latin and Christian ruins in this land of Saint Augustine should interest the whole Catholic world, for they show to the Mohammedan that he is only an intruder in this land to which he brought nothing but destruction and death. These ruins bear witness to an ideal of civilization which has never been equalled, and which it is urgent today to oppose to all forms of barbarism ("k toutes les barbaries") — to the childish and depraved barbarism of the Slav, to Germanic and Anglo- Saxon brutality, and to revolutionary folly. ^ If the French show themselves worthy of the great ideals of their Latin ancestors, and are able to maintain themselves in ' Canon Paul Halflants, in La Revue catholique des Idees et des Fails (Brus- sels), for November 4, 1921, believes that Samt Augustin vastly increased the number of the admirers of Louis Bertrand. 2 Louis Bertrand, L'Afrique latine et chrStietme, an article in La Revue catholique des Idees et des Faits, December 16, 1921. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 49 Africa, they may make of the country what it was in antiquity, the meeting place for the ideas of the Orient and the Occident. The Latin spirit would doubtless find there a unique opportunity for the renewal of its vitality. ^ The theories which came to form M. Bertrand's doctrine of the continuity of Latin tradition in Africa developed little by little as a result of his wanderings through the solitudes and ruins of Algeria. Gradually he discovered in the vestiges of the past, in the eternal aspects of the soil, the underlying causes which determine contemporary events. The characters which he has described and the adventures which he has related in his novels acquire a deeper significance by the chain of events of which they are the result. Thus these characters and adven- tures assume the quality of symbols, thanks to the historical, social, philosophical or religious ideas of which they become as it were the dramatic masks. ^ From these glorious ruins, from these vestiges of the former greatness of his ancestors, the Frenchman, heir to a past so pregnant with meaning, receives the silent exhortation to per- severe in his effort of conquest and to maintain his position by his thought and by his arms against the perpetual menace of barbarism (''en face de la barbaric jamais vaincue"). ^ Rome knew well that no peace was possible with the barbarian, and that it was necessary to battle ceaselessly, if only for the beauty of the struggle. For when a nation has ceased to struggle, it is a sign that death is at hand. Louis Bertrand prays that the youth of France may preserve the same warlike virtues which urged their ancestors towards the African shores. His com- patriots must not forget that art and thought dwindle and die in countries without vigor, which have deserted the sword and the plowshare ; and that all noble qualities have been extinguished in men's souls as soon as they are no longer prepared for sacrifice to the point of death . * ^ Louis Bertrand, Le Jardin de la Mort., p. X, XI. 2 76irf, pp. XI, XII. 3 Le Sens de I'Ennemi, p. 161. * Le Jardin de la Mort, p. 248. 50 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND All of a nation's cultivation is useless unless it has the prestige of force to impose it — never have there been victorious ideas except in the wake of victorious armies. Without the military hegemony of Louis XIV the spirit of French classicism would not have dominated Europe, and it took the defeat of 1870 to open French eyes to what M. Bertrand ironically calls the "beauties" of German philosophy and philology.^ Right is always crushed by violence, if incapable of resisting it. Instead of preparing herself for the inevitable struggle, France has made the mistake of the Roman Empire on the eve of the invasions: she has armed and trained her African subjects — a dangerous measure, for the barbarian will always outnumber his master. « In meditation before the statue of Cardinal Lavigerie, M. Bertrand laments the death of this great builder, financier and organizer, who dreamed of giving France a vast African empire, "par I'unique efficace de la propagande religieuse preparant les voies k la force armee." ^ This Roman prince of the Church, this conqueror born for a more virile age, must indeed have been saddened by the asphyxiating air of modern mediocrity, and by the servile instincts of these new generations who are no longer willing to suffer in order to do great deeds, * The pursuit of a commonplace felicity leads the masses astray. When peoples renounce the pursuit of glory, they lose even their daily bread, and it is only victorious peoples who have the right to eat. If the slave is to satisfy his hunger, the table of the master must be abundantly served. ^ Instead of aspiring towards a peace which is only stagnation and decomposition, we should conceive peace, thinks M. Ber- ^ Le Sens de I'Ennemi, p. 57. ' Le Mirage oriental, p. 448. ' Le Jardin de la Mort, p. 146. * Compare: "... Assur^ment les pouvoirs forts font des peuples grands et prosperes. Mais les peuples ont tant souflFert, au long des siecles, de leur grandeur et de leur prosperite, que je congois qu'ils y renoncent. La gloire leur a coflt6 trop cher pour qu'on ne sache pas gre k nos maitres actuels de ne nous en procurer que de la coloniale. " Anatole France, L'Orme du Mail, p. 233. ' Le Jardin de la Mort, p. 147. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 51 trand, as a perpetual elaboration of power, an habitually dynamic state, a co-ordination and a progressive intensification of all our national energies, if we wish to deserve to live. * War has in itself a mystic element which raises the masses out of themselves, for it meets a need of the most profound instincts of human nature, from the desire for carnage to the thirst for sacrifice, and it is impossible to uproot the one without destroying the other. 2 Pacifism and revolutionary humanitarianism, con- sidered as universal ideals, have been proved by the Great War to be absolute failures. However tired of war a nation may be, it is a gain of no mediocre importance to have recovered a taste for violence, and to have again become accustomed to scorn human life and the shedding of blood. Peoples now know that vast wars can continue for a long time without bringing about the financial and economic ruin with which we were threatened. Also, they can get used to anything in time; a thirty or a hundred years' war now seems to us an ultra modern possibility — perhaps even the rule of the future. ^ The doctrines of La Declaration des Droits de V Homme apply only to individuals conscious of their dignity, and not to the vast mass of mortals of a lower order, in the midst of which the civilized nations are as a small island lost in a sea of barbarism. One of the most fatal illusions of nineteenth-century France was to believe that her political and social ideals were to conquer the universe. \A'e must not aspire to improve humanity at large, for our own country is enough to occupy our strength. Thus in Africa the Frenchman learns one of the hardest lessons for him to understand: to comprehend a mentality which differs from his own. Little by little he ceases to consider himself as a model for the universe. He gradually comes to realize that one cannot export souls, that civilization is a question of souls, and that each race has its own, which cannot be changed or reduced by those of other races. An Arab, for example, does ^ Le Sens de VEnnemi, p. 24. ^ La Renaissance classique (1903), p. 36. ' Louis Bertrand, Les pays mediterraneens et la guerre (1917), pp. 167, 168. 52 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND not regard liberty as do the French, and he scorns their attempts to free him from what they call his fanaticism. He informs them proudly that it is exactly suited to his needs, since it is his "raison de vivre" and his safeguard against the encroach- ments of the foreigner. Neither societies nor individuals, continues Louis Bertrand, are governed by abstract principles, but by laws similar to those of biology. To wish to establish on earth the reign of Reason, Justice, or of the Son of God, is to have lost the compre- hension of the fall of man and the distinction between Good and Evil. Pacifists and humanitarians are dupes of a mirage — their renouncement is only the weak selfishness of the dilettante, and their pacifism a shameful following of the line of least resistance. France must realize that her democracy is nothing but an outworn and deadly Utopia, which almost destroyed her, and of which she must purge herself at all costs. If Frenchmen will look abroad, they will see that all nations are resolutely turning their backs on the doctrines of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of universal fraternity, and walling them- selves in a sacred egotism or plunging into the most violent imperialism. France must realize under pain of death that the principles of her Revolution are in contradiction with all of the instincts of the modern world. Abroad no one considers them at all except a few professors, who see in any local success which these principles may have, simply a sign of decadence. ^ The world is more than ever turning from democracy as the nineteenth century conceived it, for Socialism has killed the old-fashioned liberalism of the French Revolution, and the class struggle has ruined the principle of fraternity. It is a dangerous equivocation to say that the Great War was fought for democracy or for the triumph of democratic ideas, since the success of the revolutionary type of democracy would result in advancing the interests of Germany. A democracy, however, which would distribute rewards in proportion to merit, and co-ordinate the national energies, while resting on the whole people, could ' Le Sens de I'Ennemi, pp. 10-24, A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IF FRANCE 53 probably succeed well under a monarchical form of government. ^ The average Frenchman, believes Louis Bertrand, lacks the "sens de I'ennemi" so strongly possessed by the Lorraine and Catalan peoples — that state of constant qui-vive which leads the borderer to distrust the stranger and instinctively to put himself on the defensive against him as against an enemy. Most errors in international politics may be traced to a lack of this under- standing. For example, it required the intrepid ignorance of a Jaur^s to speak, as he did, of the Ottoman nation or of the Moroccan nation, when all who know the Orient are aware of the fact that distinctions between peoples there are along ethnical and religious rather than national lines. Thus the ten years which Louis Bertrand spent in Africa, by teaching him "le sens colonial," which is allied to "le sens de I'ennemi", showed him the folly of dreaming of any union of the European and the Moslem peoples. Too many irreducible differences separate them. In all his ten years in Algeria, the author of Le Mirage oriental was never able to consider the Arab as a brother, either as saved by Christ, or platonically freed by La D eclaration des Droits de rHomme. Realizing then that any fusion or unity either of blood or of souls was not possible, M. Bertrand came to understand that the European can maintain his position in the lands of Islam only by force of arms, for the Mohammedan respects only those whom he fears. 2 Confronted by the barbarian, the French traveller or colonist rapidly loses his fondness for Utopian ideas, a lesson which is further re-enforced by contact with the delicately realistic spirit of the Italian. For the Italians have "la belle rudesse" of new peoples, not yet weakened by an excess of well-being or intel- lectual culture, and are vigorous and astonishingly prolific. They have a taste for action, not, like so many of the French, for the sake of an occupation, but to get something, no matter how or where. The French will find in them not only partners, but stimulators and creators of energy. The more primitive 1 Les pays mediterr aniens et la guerre, p. VI. ' Le Mirage oriental, pp. 97-105. 54 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERT RAND Italians such as the Calabrians, being half barbarian themselves, will better be able to resist the Moslem, the real barbarian. From the Spaniard also the Frenchman may learn a salutary lesson by studying this race whose moral energy is intact, which has not been rendered too sophisticated by literature, nor softened by an excess of comfort. Among the Mediterranean peoples who were struggling over the division of the fruits of the conquest of Algeria, it was the Iberian who most favorably impressed M. Bertrand when he began to study these new peoples. For in spite of what Louis Bertrand calls the characteristic faults of the Spaniard of the colonies; brutality, "ruse carthaginoise" and usurious instincts, this race inspired the respect of the novelist by their endurance as well as by a proud attitude and a certain outer dignity. ^ It was by contemplating the competition of the Mediterranean peoples in Algeria, and by observing their points of resemblance to each other, that Louis Bertrand came to realize the possi- bilities of their union in North Africa, as in a common Latin fatherland. Slowly the racial similarity, the influence of a common climate, and the necessity of unity before the Moslem native were forcing the Latin races together and producing a common type. If the new people thus being born is showing an energy and an endurance greater than in the European provinces of their origin, they are also acquiring in Africa some of the age-old vices of its inhabitants, such as the ancient Semitic spirit of Carthage, with its trickery, fanaticism and cruelty. By contact with the Arab and the Jew, the immigrant, in a natural and inevitable way, is coming to acquire many of the distinguishing characteristics of these races. ^ Such considerations must be of minor importance however, for during the twenty years from Le Sang des races to Saint Augustin, Louis Bertrand has illustrated, developed and preached to the French the necessity for the union of the Latin peoples * Le Sens de VEnnemi, p. 196. 2 Louis Bertrand, Flaubert et I'Afrique, Revue de Paris, 7th year, April 1, 1900. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OP NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 55 as the only means of revivifying them and restoring to them the preponderance and the place they once held in the world. ' In the eloquent lines of the "Reconnaissance k I'Afrique" M. Bertrand has thus proclaimed his faith and his hope for the future: "... Tu m'enseignas le culte salutaire de la force, de la sant^, de I'^nergie virile. Tu rattachas ma pens6e egar6e au solide appui de la tradition, en 6talant sous mes yeux la majesty de tes mines, en me jetant parmi des peuples venus de tous les bords de la M^diterran^e maternelle, et dont la conscience est soeur de la mienne. . . Ah! puissent-ils, en se retrouvant sur ton sol, reprendre avec ferveur le sentiment invincible de la fraternite qui les unissait jadis! Puisse cette mer, oil je suis, redevenir, comme au temps de Rome la Grande, k la fois le symbole et le chemin de I'Alliance entre les nations latines!. . . Mare nostrum! Qu'elle soit notre mer a tout jamais! Defen- dons-la contre les Barbares, pour refaire Tunit^ de I'Empire!. . . "2 While Louis Bertrand is attracted to the Spaniards, even more than to the other Mediterranean peoples, by sociological and patriotic reasons, his partiality for them may be explained on more fundamental grounds. It is deeply rooted in the instincts of his race and the influence of his early environment. The people of Lorraine have a secret leaning towards Spain, for the north of their country was long under the domination of Spanish kings, while for many years the soldiers of Lorraine fought in the Peninsula. Damvillers, near which M. Bertrand was born, was one of the last citadels of Spain in Lorraine. Some of the Iberian adventurers of her garrisons must, M. Bertrand believes, have settled in the country, for the large dark eyes, black hair and square faces with protruding cheek bones so common in the district, are quite unlike the prevailing Northern type of face. The very architecture of the churches in Valencia, and the form of their spires, recalled to Louis Bertrand those of his native province. The attraction which his compatriots feel for things ^ Les pays miditerraneens et la guerre, p. 186. » Le Jardin de la Mart, pp. 307, 308. 56 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND Spanish seems to him as evident as it is general. Hugo, "le grand Lorrain," furnishes the most striking example. The author of Hernani and Ruy Bias appeals to the Lorraine taste not only by his color, the vigor of his temperament and the pas- sionate energy of his character, but by a certain harshness and roughness. Especially do those of Louis Bertrand's race admire in the Spanish character its gravity, its seriousness, its disdain of useless architectural ornamentation and its profound taste for realities. The Spaniards, in the opinion of Louis Bertrand, are the most realistic of peoples, who even in the lofty regions of mystic thought aspire to keep in touch with those concrete forms which are easily accessible to the mind. The French imagination has often found in the customs and literature of Spain a salutary tonic. Periodically, thinks M. Bertrand, France has crossed the Pyrenees to recover or to renew her understanding of life. While in periods of calm France falls back on her own traditions, customs and landscapes, *'aux epoques de renouveau, de fougue et d'energie creatrices, de grandes illusions aussi, nous nous empressons de franchir nos frontieres. Et c'est toujours vers le Midi que nous nous tournons, vers I'Espagne et vers ITtalie, comme les terres elues de la passion et de la beaute." While the first French renas- cence, continues M. Bertrand, was almost entirely Italian, Corneille and his contemporaries drew heavily upon Spain for their inspiration; The romanticists, though they had no very extensive knowledge of the literatures of the Southern neighbors of France, had yet travelled widely in these countries, and loved to place in them the scenes of their stories and their dramas. ^ Such are the reasons which have led Louis Bertrand to Spain, which he has visited each year for the past twenty, and which has left a clear imprint upon seven of his nine novels. Instinc- tively, on returning to this land of his predilection, he has sojourned longest in those parts which live and act most in- tensely. He has always preferred the great cities of joy, of labor and of color such as Valencia, Seville and Barcelona. These ^ Le Sens de VEnnemi, pp. 205, 206. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 57 cities of modern Spain not only announce the future to the noveHst, but even better than museums and art galleries they reveal to him her past. He reads it in the living souls of the Spaniards of today, who perpetuate, under other appearances and new conditions, the gestures and the characteristics of their ancestors. The active Spaniard of the present enables the author of VInfante to comprehend the contemporaries of Philip II. Louis Bertrand never really understood the spirit of Cortes and the other conquistador es until he had himself followed into South Algeria the Valencian and Castilian carters. ^ It is by using this knowledge of the past to illumine the present that the historical novel justifies and renews itself. The his- torical novelist should express what is permanent and universal in a phenomenon or a series of events of other days, and should interpret the great ideas which determined the actions of a people or of an epoch. Ke should try to discover and expose the innermost sensibility of a bygone age by joining documentary solidity and scientific criticism to a creative imagination. Con- sidering a contemporary event under its historical aspects gives it a meaning and a poetic prestige which the bare fact would not possess. Thus in all his African novels, says M. Bertrand, he has attempted to compare the present and the past, and to show, under the differences of time and environ- ment, the secret continuity of a tradition or an ideal, and the perpetuity of a race. 2 The present, the passing moment, is by no means all of life, which is really the sum of the past, as it is a prophecy of the future. Life is also, for Louis Bertrand, a thought, an art and a tradition, whose portrayal must be characterized by order, intelligibility and harmony. Everything which does not bear these distinguishing marks, such as the abnormal and the hybrid, should be ignored or subordinated, as bordering on the ^Ihid., pp. 212-215. 2 Louis Bertrand, Une Evolution nouvelle du Roman historique, Revue de Paris, 28th year, Vol. 3, May 15, 1921. 58 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND non-existent. ^ M. Bertrand has always striven to reconcile life with art, and thus to create that living beauty which is only the harmonious expression of realities. He has adopted the classic conception of art which, neglecting the appearance of phenomena, considers only their substantial reality and their eternal aspect. These realities can only be grasped by the exercise of a poetic imagination, which is a gift essential for the comprehension and portrayal of truth. While careful to paint life and nature truthfully, the artist may present them in their most ideal forms. The characters which he presents, whether virtuous or vicious, should be de- picted in their most complete manifestations. Thus will the artist be fulfilling his duty to his fellow men, for he instructs them by placing before their eyes complete human types which convey their lesson effectively without need of preaching or moralizing on the part of the writer. The clearness of the lines with which these portraits are drawn should be scrupulously observed, and the painting should contain nothing which does not serve to explain the souls of the characters, or to render comprehensible their actions and gestures. If the novelist observes these great classic precepts, form, which is nothing more than perfected content, will be blended with it to produce a work of both the most strict unity and the richest diversity. * Like the great writers of classicism, and also Flaubert, Louis Bertrand believes that the novelist should observe the most absolute impersonality. He limits himself to presenting, and does not make his heroes the spokesmen for his own ideas. The author of La Cina states in the most positive fashion that he simply causes his creations to express in literary form ideas often uttered in his presence, and that he requires their thought to conform to the logic of their characters. » ^ Louis Bertrand, L'ltalie dans I'osuvre de M. Henri de Rignier, Revue des Deux Mondes, Vol. 63, June 1, 1921. ' La Renaissance classique, pp. 29-39. ' La Cina, Preface, p. IX. This idea is cited and discussed at greater jength on page 101 of this paper. A PHASE OF rilE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 59 While the principle of the impersonality of art is a naturalistic as well as a classical characteristic, M. Bertrand has repeatedly affirmed that there are radical differences between his conception of literature and that of Zola and his school. The author of Le Sang des races admits that at one time he was somewhat under the influence of Taine and the naturalists. ^ He soon discovered, however, that the naturalists had misunderstood the central thought of the philosopher; for of his three factors, "la race, le milieu et le moment", they appeared to remember only the second, while deforming its real meaning. For M. Bertrand "le milieu" signifies the life-giving soil which fashions the individual, and the bond of the permanent and primordial forces which determine his type. To the naturalists, on the other hand, "le millieu", thinks M. Bertrand, was the "pele-mele" of contingent phenomena which came within the reach of the literary observer. Their much boasted documentation was superficial, and too limited in scope, since it excluded all time but the present. Their pessimism offends Louis Bertrand even more than does that of the romanticists, since it is more cruel and hopeless. In spite of their claim to present reality with scientific exactness, the naturalists held the real in horror, for in their heavy and formless works man disappears in the immen- sity of nature. ^ Zola and his followers believed in an undefined sort of progress, and erected nature as the only truth and religion. Their teachings, making of man a mere brute dominated by his instincts, would destroy civilization as we know it, since the human brute is in essence revolutionary. When freed from restraint, such men tend to destroy tradition, which is the stored-up wisdom of humanity slowly amassed throughout the centuries. ^ For the form of his writings, Louis Bertrand tells us that he 1 Louis Bertrand, Une Evolution nouvelle du Roman historique, Revue de Paris, 28th year, Vol. 3, May 15, 1921. 2 La Renaissance dassique, p. 12. 3 Louis Bertrand, L'CEuvre de M. Paul Bout get, Revue des Deux Mondes Vol. 60. December 15. 1920. 60 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND went back to antiquity, and drew his inspiration from the texts of the Greek and Latin masters. From them he learned a "freedom and a grandeur of composition of which modern writers have no idea," and of which the French classicists themselves were ignorant. The multiplication of episodes, not grouped by chance, but in accordance with aesthetic rather than logical affinities, allowed the ancients to present a character under an extreme variety of circumstances, and in such a way as to illumine all of its aspects. It is the principles of this com- position, "subtile et souple, et avec cela, tres large", which he has followed in his earlier novels. After the example of the ancients, again, M. Bertrand conceives the "action" of a novel as a sort of potential power; "c'est une virtualite, une puissance qui passe k I'acte." The novelist only leaves his hero when the latter has realized "a decisive and truly characteristic enrich- ment" of his individuality. The essential action consists in depicting the human being as developing all of his powers, rather than as simply the helpless victim of sentimental crises or reacting in accordance with the pressure of circumstances. In a novel which portrays action in the true sense of the word, the hero must accomplish a marked and genuine progress, **. . . il faut. . . qu'il ait veritablement augmente son ^tre." ^ ^ Preface to the 1920 edition of Le Sang des races, p. 10. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 61 The African Novels of Louis Bertrand Le Sang des races The story opens at Algiers at a period when an era of con- struction was filling the city and its suburbs with large numbers of workmen. The greater part of these men came from Medi- terranean countries, drawn to Africa by the opportunity for work and for a larger life than that afforded by their native provinces. Among these immigrants is a youth named Ramon, who had landed in Algiers the year before, driven by hunger from his native village near Alicante, in the south of Spain. After working for a short time as a quarryman, Ramon takes up the trade of the carter, in which his endurance and energy soon bring him success. He marries a tall and handsome Valencian girl named Rosa. They have a son whom they christen Rafael, and who, as he grows into early manhood, shows an instinctive taste for his father's trade. When Rafael was sixteen, Ramon died, and the lad became the head of the now numerous family. Before long the youth shows that he possesses the energy of his race, and that he has inherited all of his father's skill in the handling of animals. The carter was well paid at this time, for the task of driving heavy carts across the burning deserts to frontier posts was one which only the most hardy cared to under- take. Rafael's life of strenuous toil, relieved only by short periods of almost equally strenuous recreation, was varied only by an excursion to Valencia, where he is very much bored, and whence he returns to Africa as soon as possible. Rafael becomes engaged to a handsome girl of his own race named Assompcion. This event, and the tragic death of a younger brother, have a steadying effect upon him, and the closing lines of the book show the young man starting on a long trip across the desert, filled with a quiet joy in the thought of his work and of his approaching marriage. 62 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND As an illustration of the doctrine that Africa is a school of energy for the European, M. Bertrand describes Ram6n as displaying the eagerness for gain and the "endurance of races whose energy has long been somnolent." The Spaniards in the novel considered this half-wild Africa as their conquest — they forced the arid soil to produce, and with superhuman effort, drove heavy carts loaded with food and construction materials across the shifting sands of the Sahara to the most distant border posts. They display the ancient "ruse carthaginoise", for all of them plunder the Arab, the European, and even each other, and resemble those of their ancestors who set out in bands from the ports of San Lucar and Palos to conquer the gold of Peru and Mexico. During an insurrection of the natives, Ramon gained large sums of money by selling powder to the Arabs, at great risk of being shot by the French; this powder, however, was often nothing more than crushed charcoal. His son Rafael early developed the salient traits of his race. Like most Neo-Africans, Rafael loved personal adornment and fine clothes. He especially admired the handsomely draped Provencal smocks, with their ample and carefully arranged folds, which shone like satin in the bright African sun. The carters returning from the South excited his emulation by the luxurious smocks and the velvet suits which they displayed with such pride. Rafael's enthusiasm for the highway overcame the opposition of his mother, and he accepted an offer to join a provision train of three carts which was setting out for Laghouat. As Rafael set forth on his first long trip, he was exalted by a feeling of infinite peace and liberty. His pride at the ease with which he con- trolled and dominated his team of eleven mules, and the happi- ness which he felt at the thought that he was bound for the mysterious South caused him to crack his whip loudly in order to afifirm his joy in life and effort, and in the overflowing vitality of his strength and energy. The route was long and arduous, but Rafael enjoyed it to the full. Neither the burning sun nor the blinding light daunted him; he looked out upon the desert with eager eyes, as though through them he could absorb the rugged strength of this country A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 63 where he felt that he was to pass his life. Filled with admiration in the presence of the vast open spaces which stretch out before him, Rafael thinks with pity of his former comrades, shut in by the walls of the quarry and the narrow streets of Algiers, under the watchful eye of the foreman or of the policeman. Even when tortured by thirst, that terror of the desert lands, Rafael did not long for the city, exalted as he was by a vision of the South and by a sort of joy of conquest. Under the scorching waves of heat his energy redoubled, and he was filled with a feeling of triumph that his veins were swelling with blood more ardent than the blazing sun. Among Rafael's companions of the route, Vicente, also of Spanish origin, stands out as the most vividly drawn. Much older than Rafael, his hair was already turning gray, though he was not much over forty. His narrow eyes glittered like those of a bird of prey, with a sort of flaming yellow light. The nose, broken by the kick of a mule, the cheek, furrowed by the scar of a knife cut, and the expression of the eyes lent to Vicente's face an appearance of terrible will and energy. The other carters show in different degrees the same characteristics. In almost all of them instincts of cunning and ferocity are revealed by their tightly closed lips and the glitter of the pupils under the blinking eyelids. But when the force of their wills seemed to slumber in moments of dreamy relaxation, their faces could assume a sort of candid and youthful charm. After short periods of relaxation in the city, Rafael would return to the desert highways with the same instinctive love as at first. Gradually he acquired a reputation for skill in handling animals and for tireless energy. He loved and understood his cart as though it were part of his own body. Every sound and every creak contained a meaning for him, and had the load been upon his own shoulders, he could not have distributed it with more care. But above all he loves his mules. The force of his will sustains their blind instinct. At the mere sound of his voice they strain forward, and when they are pulling well together, Rafael feels so exalted that he begins to sing joyously. After he had become engaged Rafael spent much more time 64 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND at home, and in the quarter. His prestige as a traveller and as a master of his trade increased, and he gradually became the model of the youths of the district. His gestures, his turns of speech and his smocks were widely imitated. His sonorous voice often resounded now in the cafes of Bab-el-Oued, the suburb of Algiers in which was his home. Always sure of a respectful and admiring audience, Rafael was somewhat spoiled by success. He embroidered the narratives of his adventures, often enlarging them to attain the measure of whatever high- sounding phrases came to his mind. In proportion as he was carried away by his subject, metaphors, constantly growing more vivid, crowded to his lips as though he could not find words adequate to communicate to others the ardent flame of his poetic imagination. Rafael was not universally liked, for his overweening pride and the seriousness of his character excluded commonplace and easy-going comradeship. But even the oldest teamsters showed him deference, for they loved to con- template his strength and to admire in him the superb vigor of their race. During one of his absences in the South, Rafael learned that his younger brother, Juanete, who had been ill for some time, was in a serious condition. The carter hastened home, only to be greeted upon his arrival with the news of his brother's death. He received the information impassively, and his only feeling upon gazing at the body, was one of disgust and fear. Life coursed so vigorously through the veins of this strong man that he could not endure the thought that soon he too might be like this pitiful figure on the bed. The lamentations of the stricken mother resounded through the house. The simple and elemental violence of her grief had in it something of the primitive grandeur of the mothers of antiquity. Standing at the foot of the bed where the body of her son was lying, Rosa, "... tendait en un grand gestesesbras robustes de travailleuse, les paumes des mains ouvertes. Ses doigts tremblaient par la violence qui secouait tout son corps, et sa bouche hurlante se creusait en un trou noir, comme celle des statues. Elle invectivait la mort. . . . Puis, songeant aux A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 65 folles coupablcs de Ram6n enivre par Tabondance de TAfrique, emporte par I'ardeur de la terre, elle reprit: 'Pourquoi n*es-tu pas retourne au pays de ton p^re? Pourquoi es-tu rest6 dans cette Afrique maudite? C'est son soleil qui t'a brflle le sang — c'est le soleil maudit qui a tu6 mon fils! . . .' "Elle battait avec ses mains ses vastes flancs de m^re feconde, capable de concevoir encore. Son visage de pierre s' etait noye au torrent de ses larmes. Elle tomba k genoux, en embrassant les pieds du mort, et elle resta ainsi, la tete cachee dans le linceul et sanglotant." ^ Soon after the death of his brother Rafael again took up his task. He felt the same sentiment of peace and freedom as on the night of his first departure. Now he was sure of his way through the desert and through life. He knew that young men, in whose veins was fermenting the wine of life, spoke of him at the family table, and that soon beings of his own blood would perpetuate the grandeur and the beauty of his work. Then Rafael, *'. . . la pensee remplie de ses noces prochaines, dans la joie de sa force. . . redescendit vers le Sud." ^ La Cina Michel Botteri and Claude Gelee, two young Frenchmen of independent fortune and good education, after a period of rather aimless travel, resolve to lead a life of useful activity, and decide, in order to gratify this ambition, to go to Algeria, where the father of Michel had left a famous name and a considerable estate. Upon their arrival in Africa they take up their residence in the villa which Michel's father had built at Tipasa. Michel is joined by his wife, whose maiden name had been F^licienne Colona. The Italian diminutive of Felicienne, "La Cina", furnishes the title of the book. The villa was built upon the site of an old Roman city which dated from the time of King Juba, King of Numidia, and the whole estate was rich in ruins ^ Le Sang des races, pp. 332, 333. ' Closing lines of Le Sang des races, p. 344 in the 1899 edition, and p. 343 of the 1920 edition. 66 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND of the old Roman city. These ruins inspire the archaeologist, Paul Hartmann, a frequent and welcome visitor at the villa, to express many theories upon the continuity of Latin tradition, North Africa as a land long coveted by the Mediterranean peo- ples, and other ideas often found elsewhere in the works of Louis Bertrand. Michel decides to be a candidate for the office of deputy, but is unable to obtain the support of the powerful Archbishop of Algiers, Mgr. Puig, and, becoming disgusted, furthermore, by the excesses of the leader of the anti-Semitic movement, the popular lawyer Carmelo, without whose support election was impossible, he withdraws from the contest. Claude, after travelling extensively in North Africa, visits the farm of a successful Alsatian colonist named Schirrer. The latter invites the young man to spend a year with him, at the end of which time, he thinks, Claude will be capable of choosing an estate wisely, if he is still sincere in his expressed desire to become a colonist. Claude gladly accepts the offer, for he already loves the country, and is firmly resolved upon building for himself a successful future in Africa. It is interesting to note that Claude Gelee, who expresses in this book so many of Louis Bertrand's favorite ideas, resembles his creator in a number of particulars. He is twenty-nine years of age, as was Louis Bertrand when he first planned to write La Cinay ^ and, like the novelist, is a descendant of the great painter of the Mediterranean, Claude le Lorrain; was born near Metz, and attended the Lyc6e at Nancy before entering the Lycee Henri IV. Michel's friend aspires, if he ever writes, to depict the life of the street: men, animals, everything which has life and movement, and especially life in action in all its original beauty. While awaiting the boat for Algiers, the two friends visit the art museum at Marseilles; but Claude can scarcely restrain his ^ In the preface to La Cina (p. VII) M. Bertrand tells us that he planned the book in the spring of 1895, on the occasion of his first visit to the ruins of Tipasa. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 67 impatience, and urges Michel to leave the images of a dead past in order to observe the Marseilles which is living in the present. He tells Michel that they must choose between life and art, and that art must be forgotten, since it hides life from them. As the comrades are seated before a cafe, observing with delight the variegated crowds in movement before them, their imagina- tions become as it were illumined by a vision of the past. The whole forgotten poetry of the Mediterranean rises before them, with its islands and the mirages of its waves, the gaiety of its shores and the delights of its cities, with its temples and its sacred ruins, its pirates and adventurers, and the tumult of its battles. They rejoice to recognize in the crowds passing before them the eternal types of the wanderers of the Latin sea. Later, when, at Tipasa, the friends first gaze upon the ancient vestiges of the Romans, the startling evidence of Latin continuity dawns upon them, and Claude remarks that these Latin ancestors of their race were deeply rooted here, and that they had always hovered about Africa, as about a rich prize. To Michel's observation that the French are not strangers in that country, Claude adds that his compatriots are simply claiming an inheri- tance. Both approve the statement of the local priest, who is acting as their guide, that, as Catholics, they have glorious traditions to preserve, and that their titles of possession to these lands of the Empire date back almost eighteen hundred years. Like Claude, his friend the archeologist, Paul Hartmann, expresses many of the ideas of Louis Bertrand. Not only had Hartmann travelled over the whole of Latin Africa, which he knew in the most minute detail, but he was thoroughly acquainted with the ancient texts, which he interpreted with the accuracy of a Fustel de Coulanges. Yet the archeologist's scientific enthu- siasm was tempered by the most positive logic, and the past did not mask the present for him, nor did the historical mirage cause him to forget contemporary realities. Michel and his guests found the conversation of the scholar highly interesting, for so profound was his understanding of the continuity of history that he was able to portray the antiquities of Africa as still living in the present. 68 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERT RAND Another guest at the villa was Mgr. Puig, Archbishop of Algiers, Hippo and Carthage. The appearance of this prelate was striking by its very unexpectedness. The violet shade of his robe threw into high relief the vermilion of his nose and cheeks. With his reddish bushy beard, he resembled a burly wine grower of his native Cerdagne in the disguise of a bishop. In the course of a dinner at the villa, one of the party having commented upon the picturesque features of the cosmopolitan crowds of the colony, Paul Hartmann warns the guests that these crowds will one day be masters of the country. The archeologist points out that at all epochs of African history, there has been in the country a confused proletariat composed of all of the Mediterranean races, who are at this time trying to affirm themselves as a homogeneous people. These people are completely Semitized, and their cries of "Down with the Jew" would be absurd, if our knowledge of history did not teach us that the Jews, like the Africans, have never ceased devouring each other. If the race, he continues, is only physiologically speaking, an entity, and if, as he believes, climate and training are everything, is not the climate the same as that which pro- duced Semitic Carthage, and is it not the Jew and the Arab, in the midst of whom they have lived, who have fashioned the characters of the African colonists? Since these Italians and Spaniards are on the same level as the Jew and the Arab, and since their aspirations do not go beyond the patriarchal state, for they are a flock which needs a shepherd, it would be unwise on the part of the French to give them the vote. The chief political issue of the day in Algeria was anti-Semitism, and Michel did not feel that he could conscientiously espouse this cause. He realized that the movement was regarded by its leaders as affording a means to obtain office. Worse still, the popular press had convinced the non-French element of the colony that France herself was completely Semitized, and the jealousy of the French felt by this element caused them to use the movement as a pretext to attack the masters of the country. The Moslem gladly seized upon the occasion to confuse the Jew and the conqueror in the same execration ; for these natives A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 69 the shout "Down with the Jews" was the same as crying "Down with France." Besides these abstract considerations, the practical side of the question revolted Michel. The most popular candidate for the office of deputy was a certain Carmelo, a lawyer of Maltese origin, whose imperfect knowledge of French had prevented his admission to the bar. Carmelo's election to one of the two seats to the Chambre des Deputes was certain, and so popular was he that Michel could only have been chosen to the other by the support of the lawy-er, on the basis of anti-Semitism. Mgr. Puig is, with Carmelo, the outstanding character of the book. This powerful prince of the Church expresses views the penetrating and rather cynical realism of which mark him as an exceedingly shrewd opportunist politician, if not a far-seeing statesman. Thus his favorite subject of ridicule is the concep- tion of his predecessor that it is possible to evangelize the Arab by prayer, by humanity or by similar prejudices brought from France. Mgr. Puig would preach to them by gun-shots, and with an army he would guarantee to convert them en masse. He also ridicules the idea that the Spaniards and the Italians of the colony can ever be assimilated by the French: they may become Africans or Algerians, but never Frenchmen. It is this new Latin people of Africa that the Church must conquer and retain, not the negro nor the Arab. The best method to this end is for the Church to be rich, to possess much property, and to supplant the Jew as banker to the colonist. The prelate would unite the Latins of Africa into a compact mass, to be hurled against the Mohammedan, who should be exterminated without pity, since this is necessary for the future safety of the Latin. A common religious belief is to be the bond of union, and the Archbishop does not particularly care whether this belief is a heartfelt one. After the Mussulman, the Latin world has a not less implacable enemy in the xA-nglo-Saxon, who is driving it back everywhere. Already the Latins of South America, he says, are turning towards their brothers in Europe for help to resist the invading Yankee. If the Latin peoples 70 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND were united, their task would be easy, and there would be a new crusade embracing both hemispheres. Claude, after his long trip through the inland provinces of Algeria, feels that his recent travels have changed him greatly. He realizes that contact with realities, while roughening him, has also fortified him, and armed him for the struggle of life. The few remains of the vaguely socialistic ideas which he had brought from Paris had been dissipated by the brutal contact of African barbarism. When Claude has made his decision to remain in Africa, he remembers his glorious ancestor, Claude le Lorrain, who, born in the fogs of the North, had passed his life in Italy painting sunrises and sunsets. "I have done as he did," thinks Claude, "I have come back to the light." While Claude is establishing himself on the farm of the hos- pitable Alsatian, Mgr. Puig is proceeding to Carthage, where he is to preside over a provincial church council and the celebra- tions attending his own elevation to the rank of cardinal. More important still, he intended to strengthen his position and enlarge his prestige in Tunisia, where he was planning vast agricultural and financial enterprises. The Archbishop has no sentimental feeling for Carthage, nor any interest in its restora- tion. For this man of action, the important thing is to awaken to a sense of nationality the new Latin people, and to send it to the uncultivated parts of North Africa, which would thus be brought under cultivation. In addressing the assembled council and people, the prelate speaks of the ancient pact between France and the Church. In the re-establishment of the Church of Carthage, he says, is brilliantly demonstrated the continuity of a firm purpose and the victory of a secret and patient will. Since the time of Saint Louis, France and the Church had meditated the conquest of Africa. Mgr. Puig feels exalted as he contemplates these Latins of Africa, the race of the future, united for a moment at least by their common faith. He pronounces a benediction: ". . . — et dans un geste hardi de conqucte, la main benissante du prince romain enveloppa I'Afrique et la mer." ' ^ The closing lines of La Cina, A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 71 Le Rival de don Juan Jean Puig, a young banker of Perpignan, a nephew of Cardinal Puig of La Ct?ja, and his friend Henri Mautoucher, the painter, novelist and literary critic, are at Montpellier awaiting the arrival of the mistress of the former, "La Galliego", a beautiful Spanish dancer, whose fame has spread over Europe. The young men have been friends since their school days at the Lyc^e Henri IV, where the "Lorrain" Claude Gelee, the "Lyon- nais" Michel Botteri, the Catalan Jean Puig and Henri Mau- toucher were known as the four inseparable companions. Jean, his beautiful mistress, her mother and Henri proceed to Seville, where they expect to pass most of the summer. Mau- toucher falls in love with La Galliego, but she remains faithful to Jean. How the mind of Henri gradually becomes unbalanced by the intensity and hopelessness of his passion, and how he finally kills the dancer and throws himself from the Giralda of Seville, shouting, "Je suis don Juan," forms the subject of this skillfully written tragedy. While the scene of the novel does not take place in Africa, there are a number of ideas expressed in it which illustrate so clearly the African, Latin and Mediterra- nean doctrines of Louis Bertrand, that brief mention of them seems desirable here. Thus, the arrival at Montpellier of a delegation of students from Barcelona is the occasion for an enthusiastic popular demonstration, which the comrades observe with keen interest. Jean Puig, forgetting his carefully acquired Parisian impassivity, and remembering only his origin, cries with the loudest, "Visca Catalunya." At this cry: "Un immense frisson passa sur la foule, une Amotion presque religieuse oppressa les poitrines. La voix du sang monta dans les acclamations eperdues, I'image oubliee de la grande Patrie Latine illumina les ames les plus obscures, et, pendant une seconde, elle plana, ressuscitee par I'emotion de la multitude." Jean, turning to Henri, com- ments upon the beauty of the emotion of the people and of their ''sens de la terre et des origines." ^ Explaining his preference for Seville, as compared with 1 Le Rival de don Jtian, p. 5. 72 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND several other cities of the Mediterranean, Jean says: "Toutes ces grandes villes mediterran^ennes sont de v^ritables alcoves toutes preparees pour I'amour: Marseille, Naples, Barcelone, Valence, Alger, Seville! Et chacune a sa volupte! Marseille, c'est Tamour a la frangaise au milieu du mouvement, des bruits du port, quelque chose de brilliant, de superficial et d'un peu vulgaire; Naples et Valence, c'est le plaisir k la fois sentimental et sensuel parmi les jardins, les fleurs, la musique; Alger, c'est la luxure brutale, toute la fureur du sang africain! Mais Seville! . . . Seville est divine! Une langeur passionnee, je ne sais quoi de tendre et de tragique, de suave et de sauvage, dans un air de fete perp^tuelle!." ^ When the city is reached, Henri begins to share his friend's admiration for it. The Northerner, suddenly thrown into the midst of the great joy of the South, feels his whole being expand among this people which constantly affirms its faith in the beauty of living. He reflects that he is repeating the gesture of his ancestors, the age-old exodus of the northern barbarian who comes down to the joyous countries of the South in search of plunder, carnage and beauty; he is making again the pilgrimage of Goethe, of Byron, of Shelley, of Lamartine,andof Chateaubriand. During a visit which Michel Botteri pays to his old friends, on his way back to Algeria after a stay in France, he expresses his bitterness against the inertia and the hollow pride of the French whom he has recently seen. To understand fully the extent of the decay of French character, Michel informs his friends, one must have just come from a young and vigorous country like Algeria, where the human plant flowers with full strength and complete liberty. Merely from his self-confident air, one recognizes in the Algerian the male and the conqueror. Jean points out that Michel is judging France from the stand- point of the people of the central part of the country, but that the borderers, the Lorraine and the Catalan peoples, these laborious, fecund and sensual races, cannot be shaken nor uprooted. Subjected to the constant pressure of the foreigner, they have acquired a tremendous power of elastic resistance. Michel * Ibid, p. 41. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 73 admits that the only way to regenerate races is to place them in opposition with each other, and he remarks that the Frenchman is always toughened by contact with the Arab, the Italian and the Spaniard. Jean is of the same opinion, and believes that it is in North Africa that France is destined to renew her youth, and that she will be saved by the neo-Latin race growing up there. As for the moribund generation of the Defeat, typified, he says, by Michel and Henri, it is dying, and to the great advantage of France. This generation will be replaced by a new one now coming into manhood: a young bourgeoisie avid of adventures and plunder, impatient for action and weary of useless specula- tion. This bourgeoisie, of which Jean proudly calls himself a member, will save itself and France by combating the "canaille" within and the enemy without. By "canaille" Jean says that he means the idle and the cowardly, whether of the proletariat or of the aristocracy. To Henri's caustic objection that he is becoming annoying with his display of deliberate brutality, Jean replies sharply that he is proud of this brutality, which is a mark of real dis- tinction in the midst of the general softening and relaxing of characters. He maintains that all civilization rests on a broad base of barbarism. It is because the French have lost the roughness of their grandfathers that they are no longer capable of effective political action, of art, or of literature. France needs men who can suffer and strike hard. She must carefully conserve the brutality of the masses, as a requisite for all of the strength, delicacy and generosity of the upper classes. Through all our roots, he concludes, we must saturate ourselves in bar- barism. 1 ^ Le Rival de don Juan, p. 293. When Mautoucher cries in answer: " C'est monstrueux! quoi que nous fassions, I'humanite marche a plus de lumiere!. . .", M. Bertrand declares that he revealed thus "sa tare ple- beienne." It is interesting to note that the generation of the Defeat, which Louis Bertrand here attacks in the person of Mautoucher, professes at times a sort of humanitarian optimism, a belief in a future progress. Compare: "Lentement, mais toujours, i'humanite realise les rives des sages." Anatole France, Vers les Temps meilleurs, Vol. II, p. 57. 74 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND Pepete et Balthasar P^pete Ferrer, a young sardine fisherman of Spanish origin, who lives at Algiers, is popular among his companions for his gifts as a dancer, a singer and a clown. He has also a con- siderable reputation for success as a Don Juan, a reputation which is so well deserved that he is supported by his conquests for the greater part of the time during which the author follows his career. A wound which the young man receives at the hands of a jealous mistress forces him to remain in bed for many weeks. During this time he is tenderly nursed by Ang^le Micoud, a young French girl, the daughter of a neighbor. Pepete falls in love with her, and the two marry. Except as Pepete may be considered as a symbol of the fecundity of the Neo- African, and the stage-coach driver Bal- thasar as typifying the love of display of the proletarian of the Mediterranean countries, the book has little direct importance as an illustration of the African and Latin theories of its author. One chapter, however, that which describes a meeting of work- men at Labor Headquarters at Algiers, should be summarized in some detail. At one time Pepete, after a long period of idleness and dissipa* tion, resolves to seek out a former employer and to ask for a position. The young man finds him attempting to organize the long established Spanish fishermen against their recently arrived Calabrian and Neapolitan competitors, whose standards of living were so low as to enable them to undersell the Algerian, accustomed as he was to a larger economic life. Attempts at organization by Pepete and his employer are nearly hopeless, so divided are the fishermen by the fierceness of their competition, and by the diversity of their religions and origins. Knowing these men as he did. P6pete's employer foresees that their jeal- ousies, cowardice and hypocritical compromises are almost insurmountable obstacles to any sort of union. He is in despair for arguments with which to appeal to these poor brains, obsessed by prejudices, narrowed by the most bitter egotism, and floating A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 7$ in a fog of images so confused that nothing is formulated in them except such crude notions as grow from daily toil. Pepete, though unstable and easily discouraged, is capable of enthusiasm for a cause, and throws himself with ardor into the task of organization. He succeeds in persuading a number of his fellows to attend a meeting at labor headquarters, to listen to an address by the secretary of the federated unions of Algiers. Delegations of all the manual trades of the city are present, picturesque in their toil-worn and diverse costumes. Among these delegations only those representing the skilled trades, largeh' Frenchmen, have any notion of organization or of solidar- ity. The Italians and Spaniards came for the most varying reasons, some in the desperation caused by an unemployment crisis, others out of curiosity, and Balthasar to display a splendid new cap. The speaker, who had formerly been a lay teacher in a Catholic school, then a cafe waiter, had become imbued with the most radical socialistic ideas. His address begins with a few socialistic commonplaces which soon put his auditors to sleep. Enraged by this lack of interest, the orator berates his hearers for their lack of class-consciousness. The tirade becomes so abusive that it is approved only by the skilled French artisans, and by them largely because it is directed against the Spaniards and the Italians. These latter, who had brought into fertility vast plains, and had driven their carts through the devouring desert, risking their lives daily from hunger, thirst, the burning sun and the treachery of the nomad; who, reduced to passive obedience by the fierceness of competition, slaved for the price of a loaf of bread, allow themselves to be treated as mere brutes by this pedant who knew nothing of their lives. To these ardent and sensual Latins, impetuous in action as in pleasure, this "pion de la Sociale" addresses the commonplaces of university and Protestant morality, good perhaps, thinks the novelist, for men of Dantzig, but meaningless for Africans. Wearied and irritated, the fishermen can endure the flow of words no longer and, led by Pepete and Balthasar, file out of the hall. Pepete, as Louis Bertrand tells us in the introduction to the 76 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND new edition of the book, ' is a symbol of healthy fecundity. The fisherman is vastly superior in social value to the French workman of today, ruined by alcohol and tuberculosis, and reduced to the level of a "bete de troupeau" by the tyranny of the labor union. Pep^te is an individualist who, sensing a trap, shakes the dust of unionism from his feet. None of the specious doctrines of the radical can win him from his superb love of liberty, of which, in a world enslaved by socialist tyranny, he will be one of the last defenders. La Concession de Madame Petitgand Jacques Roustan is a carter of Provengal origin, who is known throughout the south of Algeria by the name of P^lissier, a sobriquet which he had received because his father had served under Marshal Pelissier during the Second Empire. The carter, by using the greater part of his modest savings, is able to lease part of an estate known as "La Concession de Madame Petit- gand", situated near the town of Cheraia. Colonists who had heretofore attempted to develop this property had either been driven away by thefts and the destruction of their crops, or had been assassinated. These crimes were by common report attributed to the neighboring Arabs. Pelissier felt himself to be on good terms with most of these natives, however, and counted, besides, upon the support of the powerful Mayor of Cheraia, Philippe Nonded6o, who was a relative by marriage. It soon becomes evident that some secret foe is attempting to drive him from the property, for all of his farm animals are either killed or stolen, and his crops are burned. The unfortu- nate colonist learns that the Mayor had long coveted the prop- erty, and wished to keep it unoccupied so that he might eventually buy it at a low price. Other considerations confirm in the mind of Pelissier the suspicion that Philippe is the cause of his mis- fortunes, which finally result in his complete ruin. Driven to desperation by the thought of the injustice and the cruelty of which he has been the undeserving victim, Pelissier shoots his ' The preface to the new edition was signed at Paris on June 15, 1920. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OP NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 77 persecutor, killing him instantly. The story ends with this act of justice, as the colonist firmly believes it to be. P^lissier is described as having the classic Roman face so common among the Provencal peasants of the Var and the Bouches-du-Rhone, with the low forehead, the straight and short nose, the rounded chin, the square and protruding jaws and the tiny black mustache. His nature also bore the stamp of his Provencal origin, for he was a voluble and cheerful talker, with a joke and a laugh for everyone. African that he was, half peasant and half adventurer, Pelissier made it a habit and a principle never to tell the truth. He considered it his duty to lie when his interests were involved, and when an issue was un- important he prevaricated from a sort of artistic need to be consistent. At an early age he had been drawn instinctively to the mysterious South by its vague but irresistible charm, and had allowed himself to drift through life, like the nomad, at- tracted by the rough, free existence of the desert. When the story opens, Pelissier, at the age of forty-one, had realized that it was time to make a place for himself and to have a home of his own. Philippe Nond^deo, as a type of successful African, merits description here. He is a colossus in size and strength, whose vast physical proportions intensify the effect produced by his brutal and arrogant air. His intelligent glance tempers some- what the impression caused by the massiveness of his herculean frame. Of Spanish origin, he had displayed qualities of endur- ance and energy during the early years when he was getting his start in life. Beginning with a small concession, he had gradually extended his holdings by these qualities and by the exercise of astute trickery and the cynical use of force. Every one fears him, for he suffers no rival, and crushes without pity any at- tempt at independence on the part of the Arabs or the colonists about him. The former especially were in abject terror of the Mayor, for, controlling the legal machinery of the commune, he bent the unfortunate natives to his will by fines and imprison- ment. The Bedouins worked for Nondedeo for very small pay, or, as it was rumored, often for nothing. 78 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERT RAND Pelissier naturally hesitates to antagonize such a redoubtable person, by taking part against him in any of the racial and political quarrels by which the commune was divided. When reproached by Cosquin, the most important French farmer of the neighborhood, for his subserviency to the Mayor, Pelissier answers that the latter is a relative. Cosquin replies:" Oh! des parents comme celui-la! ... II n'y a pas de quoi etre fier! . . . Mais ce qui me tourne les sangs, c'est que toi, un Frangais, tu t'acoquines avec cette racaille d'Espagnols et de Calabrais, qui deshonorent le pays!"^ This simple story, as M. Bertrand tells us in his preface to the book, is only one episode among a thousand dealing with the incessant struggle which the Algerian colonist has had to sustain against the hostility of nature and of man. The military conquest of North Africa — difficult though it was — did not cost as much toil and suffering as the conquest of the soil by the plow. In France few know that the beautiful estates and the immense vineyards which today cover the colony were literally carved out morsel by morsel from the invading brushwood, the marshes and the stony and arid plains. A multitude of obscure lives wore themselves out at this labor. Many naive hopes were thwarted; many nameless efforts and sacrifices received no recompense. A whole people of hardy pioneers: Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians, Maltese exhausted their strength and their modest savings in this great task. ^ * La Concession de Madame Petitgand^ p. 135. ' Ihid., Avant-propos, p. 5. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 79 VI The Influence of Flaubert upon the Style AxVd the Literary Methods of Louis Bertrand In considering the influence of Flaubert, and more particulatly of Salammho, upon the African novels of Louis Bertrand, it seems desirable to examine first certain phases of the work of the disciple which lend themselves most readily to comparison with ideas which M. Bertrand himself has extolled in the master, as summarized in Chapter III of this paper. Salammbo, says the author of Le Sang des races, first revealed to him the attraction of the mysterious South. As he himself is not more specific, perhaps because the charm exercised by the unknown is some- what difficult to define, w^e may turn to a distinguished French critic for a possible explanation. Emile Faguet believes that Flaubert avails himself of the attraction of the mysterious as a method of awakening interest, and that he invented the Zaimph, the sacred veil of the Goddess Tanit, with this effect in view. » Louis Bertrand frequently depicts his heroes as feeling the lure of the unknown, which he typifies by the mirages of the deserts of the South of Algeria, to which he so frequently alludes. M. Bertrand has, again, told us how the moving and colorful crowds so vividly depicted in Salammbo enabled him to under- stand and to visualize the African of today. - The favorite method of the author of the Cycle africain of painting his chosen races is to describe them when they are assembled in crowds. Such descriptions are never inserted merely for their own sake, but always produce an effect upon one of the characters of the story, and in this way contribute to advance the development of the action. A comparison between a passage of Salammbo and one from Le Sang des races will illustrate this point which their authors have in common, as well as several other points of ^ Emile Faguet, Flaubert, p. 50. 2 Pages 33 to 36 of this paper. 80 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND similarity, which will be treated in the pages immediately following. The scene selected from Salammbo is the banquet of the mercenaries in the garden of the palace of Hamilcar. "... le soleil se couchait, et le parfum des citronniers rendait encore plus lourde I'exhalaison de cette foule en sueur. **I1 y avait la des hommes de toutes les nations, des Ligures, des Lusitaniens, des Baleares, des Negres et des fugitifs de Rome. On entendait, a cote du lourd patois dorien, retentir les syllabes celtiques bruissantes comme des chars de bataille, et les terminaisons ioniennes se heurtaient aux consonnes du d6sert, ^pres comme des cris de chacal. Le Grec se recon- naissait a sa taille mince, I'Egyptien a ses epaules remontees, le Cantabre a ses larges mollets. Des Cariens balangaient orgueilleusement les plumes de leurs casques, des archers de Cappadoce s'etaient peint de larges fleurs sur le corps, et quelques Lydiens portant des robes de femme dinaient en pantoufles et avec des boucles d'oreilles. D'autres, qui s'etaient par pompe barbouilles de vermilion, ressemblaiet a des statues de corail. **I1 ss'allongeaient sur des coussins, ils mangeaient accroupis autour de grands plateaux, ou bien, couches sur le ventre, ils tiraient a eux des morceaux de viande, et se rassasaient appuyes sur les coudes, dans la pose pacifique des lions lorsqu'ilsdepecent leur proie .... La joie de pouvoir enfin se gorger a I'aise dilatait tous les yeux; ga et 1^ les chansons commengaient. . . . La surprise des nourritures nouvelles excitait la cupidit6 des estomacs. . . Les soldats. . . avalaient a pleine gorge tous les vins grecs qui sont dans les outres, les vins de Campanie en- fermes dans des amphores, les vins de Cantabres que Ton apporte dans les tonneaux, et les vins de jujubier, de cinnamone et de lotus ... La fumee des viandes montait dans les feuillages avec la vapeur des haleines. . . . "A measure qu'augmentait leur ivresse, ils se rappelaient de plus en plus I'injustice de Carthage." ^ The detailed enumera- tion of the dishes served to the mercenaries is omitted from the 1 Gustave Flaubert, Salammbo, pp. 3, 4 and 5. All citations from Flaubert in this chapter are from the Conart edition of his works. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 8t above citation, since this enumeration adds little to the action, which is motivated largely by the drunkenness of the soldiers. This intoxication leads them into an orgy of destruction, in- creases their feeling of grievance against Carthage, and also causes them to free Ilamilcar's slaves, among whom is the important character of Spendius. The following passage from Le Sang des races offers some striking parallels with that from Sala-inmho. One night as Ramon enters a tavern near his home: "Des mots de toutes les langues mediterraneennes surgissaient parfois dans le tumulte, puis la rumeur grandissante couvrait tout, et un roulement continu grondait comme sur les galets des plages. " * II y avait la des hommes de toutes les nations', des terrassiers piemontais, les plus bruyants de tous, avec leurs faces roses de Gaulois aux longues moustaches blondes et leurs yeux bleus. Par-ci par-la, eclataient les tailloles multicolores des petits charretiers de la Camargue et de la val^e du Rh6ne, qui gesticu- laient entre les larges epaules des Piemontais. . . . Tous se comprenaient, s'excitaient, s'enivraient de leurs propos, que les Piemontais martelaient de rudes accents toniques. Le vin coulait dans les verres, incendiait les visages et dilatait les yeux. ". . . . Pres des Espagnols, il y avait des tables entieres de Maltais, de Napolitains, de Mahonnais, tous charretiers ou magons, tres a I'aise et parlant haut comme des gens qui sont chez eux. ... Or tous ces hommes se repassaient des nourri- tures avec une sorte de fureur qui etait belle a voir. lis rom- paient le jeOne des ancetres, ils disaient adieu h. la frugalite et k la misere des pays arides, ils s'epanouissaient a Tabondance et a la richesse venues du Nord ... La fumee des cigarettes commengait a noyer la lueur des lampes a petrole pendues aux solives. Des guitares decrochees des nurs pergaient la rumeur des voix; et, de toute cette foule montait une large odeur envelop- pante, ou se fondaient les emanations des lieux ou ils vivaient. La senteur des mulcts et des fourrages, celle des pl^tres neufs et des poussieres apres des batisses, la fraicheur saline des carrieres, ou filtrent des sources, envahissait la salle. S2 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND "Ram6n s'enthousiasmait. ...» The whole scene intensifies in Ramon a desire to follow the free life of the carter, a desire which is also to be the "faculte maitresse" of his son Rafael. The exhilaration engendered in Ram6n by feasting, by drinking and by the companiojiship of his fellows also hastens his courtship of Rosa, and in this way advances the action of the novel. ^ The direct borrowing of the line from Salammbo is of great significance, for this sentence strikes the key-note of all of the African novels of Louis Bertrand: namely, the depiction of the mingling of the Mediterranean peoples upon the soil of Africa. In both editions of Le Sang des races ^ the line is enclosed in quotation marks and is supported by the footnote, "G. Flaubert, Salammbo, I," thus indicating to the general public, to whom Louis Bertrand was unknown in 1899, his debt to Flaubert. The one other direct reference to Salammho which appears in the first novel of Louis Bertrand is less happy, in that he appears to have created an incident for the express purpose of mentioning Flaubert's work. Rafael calls at the dressmaking establishment in which his fiancee is an apprentice, and is shown the zaimph which is being made for an actress who is to play the role of Salammbo at a local theater. " In La Cina its author speaks of "le souffle devorateur du vieux Moloch s6mitique"; clearly a reference to the "Moloch le devorateur" of Salammbo.'' In » Le Sang des races, pp. 21, 22, 23 and 24. 2 The passage supports the opinion of Paul Adam, who finds that Louis Bertrand imparts more life, reality and splendor to an idea in expressing it by masses of men rather than by one person. Paul Adam, Le Saint Augustin de M. Louis Bertrand; published posthumously in La Minerve frangaise, April 15, 1920. ^ The second or 1920 edition of Le Sang des races differs in no important detail from the first or 1899 edition, except that the former has a preface in which are summarized many of the more important doctrines and theories of Louis Bertrand, most of which are given in Chapter IV of this paper. * Le Sang des races, p. 302. <* Salammbo, p. 332. Arthur Hamilton, in Sources of the Religious Element in Flaubert's Salammbo (Johns Hopkins Press, 1917), p. 41, expresses the opinion that Flaubert revived the term "le devorateur" which had been obsolete since the 18th century. A PHASE OF THE RENASCECNE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 83 Le Rival de don Juan La Galliego plans for the coming season a dance which is to be like that of the priestesses of Tanit, as practiced in Africa "au temps de Salammbo." » Mautoucher, the literary critic who appears in the same novel, mentions Flaubert twice, though not in connection with Africa. * The opening line of each of the two authors shows that both evoke an atmosphere in somewhat the same manner. Flaubert's particularly acute feeling for odors is shown by the fact that the first sense impression which he notes in depicting the mer- cenaries is the odor of their perspiring bodies. On the other hand Louis Bertrand, while he also shows keen perception for odors, does not mention the impression which they produce until after he has described the scene presented to the eye of the observer. The contrast between the two writers in the matter of priority of sense perceptions is the more striking if we remem- ber that the mercenaries are in an open garden, where the odor from their bodies would be less immediately noticeable than had they been crowded into a closed room, as were the Algerian workmen. In the passage from Le Sang des races, it appears natural that one who, like Ramon, had been walking in a quiet street, and who suddenly opened the door of a small room filled with men who were talking loudly, would naturally be almost at once strongly impressed by the confused sounds which greeted him. After having established the atmosphere or general effect of the scene which he is to describe, each author proceeds to the elaboration of the "characteristic detail". In this, again, M. Bertrand shows that he receives sense impressions in a different sequence than does Flaubert. The spectator of the scene in the tavern would naturally glance about and observe the general characteristics of those most immediately within the range of his vision, before his attention was attracted by specific words which were being uttered. In Salammho the enumeration of the men "de toutes les nations" rather spoils the ^ Le Rival de don Juan, p. 197. » Ibid, pp. 12, 290. 14 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND effect which Flaubert probably intended to produce, since the sun was setting and the onlooker would hardly at once have realized that the figures before his eyes were those of Ligurians, Lusitanians, etc. It should be noted that characteristic details of the appearance of the mercenaries are not given until after the effect produced by their dialects has been noted. ^ The passage from Salann^ibo brings out in a striking manner Flaubert's sense of color, odors and contrast, which characterize him, in Faguet's opinion, 2 while that from Le Sang des races illustrates the insistence of its author upon odors and contrast, and upon colors only to a slightly lesser extent. The "terras- siers piemontais . . . avec leurs faces roses de Gaulois aux longues moustaches blondes et leurs yeux bleus," and the "tailloles multicolores, " seen through the smoky air of the tavern, evoke the image which the author wishes to paint as vividly as does the picture of the mercenaries "qui s'etaient par pompe barbouilles de vermilion," and thus " ressemblaient a des statues de corail." The portrayal of the satisfaction of hunger is executed with mastery in both passages, but the phrase of Louis Bertrand, "une sorte de fureur qui etait belle a voir" and the sentence following, lend a touch of animation and vivid gaiety to his description which is lacking in the quota- tion from Salaninibo. While Louis Bertrand has, as a Belgian critic has pointed out, the clear lines and the color of Flaubert, ^ he imparts, in my opinion, an intensity and a vigor to his descriptions which those of the master do not possess, to the same degree at least. Jules Bertaut seems to have grasped the dominating trait of the style of Louis Bertrand, when he says that the author of the Cycle africain is fascinated by everything intense and gran- diose; that he does things on a vast scale, and that he is a painter ^ Sainte-Beuve, in Salamtnbo, Noveaux Lundis, Vol. IV, p. 68, criticized Flaubert rather sharply for a tendency to describe in a scene things which a spectator of it could not be expected to see. ^ Emile Faguet, opus cit., p. 44. 3 Canon Halflants, locus cit. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 85 of frescoes and a writer of imposing epics, working on vast masses, and careless of details. * Are we not justified in believing that M. Bertaut, eager to establish his main point, that of the grandiose character of M. Bertrand's work, has yielded to a desire to be epigrammatic, and thus to set off more strikingly this outstanding characteristic of the novelist by the statement that he is "careless of detail"? Again we may turn to the scene in the tavern for an illustration of this point. The picture of the Neo-Africans who "s'epanouissaient k I'abondance et k la richesse venues du Nord" is certainly "intense" and "epic", but the mention of the cigarettes and the guitars rather relieves the tension and gives an air of homely reality to the scene by a skillfully introduced touch of detail. The introduction of such simple but effective touches is characteristic of the "frescoes" which abound in the novels of Louis Bertrand. Flaubert, of course, was particularly noted for the care which he devoted to questions of detail, as exemplified by his passionate search for the "mot juste", examples of which may be found on nearly every one of his pages, thinks a careful student of his works. ^ The passage of Salammho here cited contains several of these laboriously elaborated expressions, of which the most striking are naturally those in which words are employed in an unusual sense or connection, as for example: "les syllabes celtiques bruissantes comme des chars de bataille," "consonnes du desert, apres comme des cris de chacal" and "La surprise des nourritures nouvelles excitait la cupidite des estomacs." Louis Bertrand does not, either here or elsewhere, elaborate his details to the same degree; his "mot juste" is seldom more than a single word, or at most two or three. He shows less tendency than Flaubert to use words in a rare or new sense, and is entirely devoid of the trace of "preciosite" noticeable in the ^ Jules Bertaut, Les Romanciers du Nouveau Sihle, pp. 116, 117. 2 Agnes Rutherford Riddell, Flaubert and Maupassant: a Literary Relation- ship, The University of Chicago Press, 1920, p. 29. This writer gives a number of examples of the use of the "mot juste" by Flaubert on pages 30 and 31 of her paper. 86 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERT RAND last mentioned sentence from Salammbo. In the quotation from Le Sang des races the verbs "surgissaient", "grondait" and "martelaient" are impressive rather by their inherent force and their eminent fitness for the function which they are to fill, than by any effect of surprise at their unexpected use. Examples of the employment of nouns and adjectives in the r61e of the "mot juste", which produce an impressive but by no means labored effect, will be found in the next citation from Le Sang des races. Such examples are: "la bande blanche de la route", "le reseau fr^le des vapeurs" and "cette heure etait vraiment feminine." Both writers use descriptions of nature and of landscapes to motivate the action of their stories, which is advanced by exalting the sentiments or modifying the characters of the actors in these tales. In the works of Louis Bertrand, as one critic has so aptly phrased it, descriptions are the action itself; the effect of objects upon human beings. Each of the pictures which M. Bertrand has painted, seemingly only to please the eye, is found reflected in the hearts of his characters in the form of images which are translated into action. ^ Flaubert's doctrine of "art for art's sake," however, permits him to indulge in much longer and more detailed descriptions that his disciple cares to use. The famous picture of sunrise over Carthage which begins. "Mais une barre lumineuse s'eleva du cote de I'Orient''^ is too well known to need quotation here. ^ The contemplation of the splendors of the city awakes the covetousness of Spendius, who remarks to Matho, "Ah! quelles richesses! et les hommes qui les poss^dent n'ont pas meme de fer pour les defendre ! ' ' The glory of the scene which he has witnessed reacts in a different way upon the soul of the latter, and, disdaining the cupidity of his servant, the negro chieftain dreams of Salammbo with a more intense longing than before. * 1 Fidus, locus cit. 2 Salammbo, p, 21. ' The selection is cited by Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux Lundis, IV, p. 49, and by Louis Bertrand, Gustave Flaubert, p. 158. * Salammbo, pp. 22, 23, 24. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 87 Similarly; one morning as Rafael is approaching a wayside inn, he catches a glimpse of a certain Carmen, a waitress in the tavern, and by no means a stranger to him: "Les montagnes de Boghar se revetaient de lilas et d'or, les terres, a perte de vue, refl6taient les nuances changeantes de I'air, et la bande blanche de la route qui s'enfonce vers le desert de Bougzoul semblait conduire a un pays d'enchantements et de prestiges. Les reflets nacres de I'orieht se muaient en opales et en amethystes aux transparences indecises. On ne distinguait pas encore les montagnes de Guelt-es-Stel. Cependant les contours des choses restaient nets et lumineux. A travers le r6seau frele des vapeurs matinales, la courbe de I'horizon se dessinait sur le ciel comme les bords d'une mer calme. *'Au millieu de tous ces voiles qui flottaient dans I'air a cette heure de crepuscule, Rafael sentait son corps allege et sa pensee plus agile. Le sang rafraichi par I'aube, il \ oyait se lever devant lui des promesses de felicites si belles qu'elles faisaient bondir sa marche. Cette heure etait vraiment feminine, enveloppante et tendre, comme si I'influence de Carmen se fGt melee aux d61ices de I'air, au jeu voluptueux des formes et de la lumiere. . . ." ^ Here a comparison of artistic excellence between the two passages is needless, for both seem to have attained absolute perfection. From the point of view of the relative importance of the actions motivated by the two scenes described, the advan- tage is all with Flaubert, for the intensification of the will of Spendius to power and plunder, and of Matho to possess Salammb6 has more effect upon the plot of the story than in Le Sang des races, in which Rafael simply engages in one more of a score of amorous adventures. It almost seems as though Louis Bertrand himself had been moved by his own marvellous description, for the love scene which follows between Rafael and Carmen is one of the most vividly realistic which can be imagined. Both in Salammho and in the Cycle africain material things, 1 Le Sang des races, pp. 207, 208. f8 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND and especially garments, are used as symbols. Thus the za'imph symbolizes the power of Carthage, while the smock of Rafael, the traditional garment of the carter, represents the love of the Neo-African for the desert highway, and the silk cap of Balthasar typifies the fondness for display characteristic of the Latin of Africa. M. Bertrand observes that for him, "la cuirasse et le casque d'Hector n'ont pas plus de splendeur . . que la blouse de Rafael ou la casquette de Balthasar." ^ Turning from a comparison between Flaubert and Louis Bertrand in questions of details of style to similarities of a more general nature, we find that the African works of both have been characterized as distinctly romantic in tendency. Emile Faguet believes that Salammbo and La Tentation de Samt Antoi7:.e are the expression of the romantic side of Flaubert, a phase of his work largely due to his love of imaginative dreaming. ^ In speaking of Louis Bertrand, M. Ernest-Charles seems to have expressed a somewhat exaggerated viewpoint when he says that novels of the Cycle africain show the "lyrisme debordant, le pittoresque torrentueux, la fougueuse passion, la violence coloree naturelle a un jeune romantique attarde." ^ I prefer the opinion which Lucien Maury, the most careful critic of Louis Bertrand, has expressed of his earlier work. M. Maury believes that in the Cycle africain its author showed a tumultuous abun- dance of picturesque gifts: an exuberant sense of color and an ardent and exact understanding of the violent and passionate side of life. ■» The eloquent, and on the whole accurate estimate of Louis Bertrand made by Fidus might well be applied to the author of Salammbo. The critic compares M. Bertrand to a sculptor, who carves startling bas-reliefs from solid blocks of unknown and stubborn material, and extracts from unexplored * Pepele et Balthasar, Preface, p. 5. 2 Emile Faguet, opus cit, p. 42. 3 J. Ernest-Charles, La Revue Bleue, 5th Series, Vol. II, September 10, 1904. * Lucien Maury, De Peplle le Bien-Aime d Saint Augustin, Revue Bleue, 51st year, 2d Sem., November 22, 1913. In the second edition M. Bertrand changed the name of his fourth novel to Pephte et Balthasar. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 89 depths a whole world of complex and moving things — a world made up of all the brutal realities and all the discordant aspira tions of struggling humanity, and he reconciles all of these elements in the harmonious rhythm of life. ^ When Florian- Parmentier observes that the broad visions of the synthetic novels of Louis Bertrand, by freeing their author from the tyranny of detail, have thrown into striking relief his epic poem of the Mediterranean peoples, ^ the critic suggests to me an important point in which M. Bertrand has surpassed Flaubert. For while Salammbo shows a "broad vision", it is likely to produce an effect of monotony, from the point of view of the action, by its endless accumulation of details. Louis Bertrand does not run this risk; thus his principal characters, with their salient traits, stand out more vividly than those of Flaubert, just as a cathedral in a vast open space leaves a clearer imprint upon the memory than one closely surrounded by many lesser structures. The direct influence of Sala^nmbo upon the style and the literary methods of Louis Bertrand is much more apparent in Le Sang des races than in the later novels of the Cycle africain. In La Cina it is shown only by a very few direct references. In Pep He et Balthasar there is at least one passage which suggests rather directly a similar one in Salammbo. A comparison of the two will exemplify in more detail a point which has already been mentioned; the sensitiveness of both novelists to odors. Thus, as Pepete is wandering through a narrow street of the native quarter of Algiers: "... dans le courant d'air des ruelles toutes pleines de boutiques, il venait des bouffees de graillons et d'huile ranee, des ralents de saumure, des effluves de safran, de piment rouge, d'anis et de cumin . . . , des fumees d'encens, de kif, de pastilles du serail; . . . Pepete se delectait dans cette atmosphere capiteuse . . . il se laissait glisser ... a cette vie tres antique . . . qui fait voisiner les rales du rut avec les * Fidus, locus cit. * Florian-Parmentier, La Litterature et VEpoque, pp. 514, 528. 90 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND genuflections de la pri^re et qui mele les essences suaves aux exhalations de la pourriture." ^ When Hamilcar visits his workshops, he enters the room where perfumes are manufactured. "Du myrobalon, du bdel- lium, du safran et desviolettes en debordaient. . . . on 6touffait dans les senteurs, malgr6 les tourbillons de styrax qui gresillait au milieu sur un trepied d'airain. ... Le Chef des odeurs suaves . . . s'avanga vers Hamilcar." 2 In La Concession de Madame Petitgand there is nothing which can be definitely cited as having been suggested by Flaubert. In general, it may safely be said that Louis Bertrand has found in Salammho a source of inspiration rather than material for imitation. Some of the points in which the two writers seem most closely in contact are probably to be explained by the fact that they have laid the scenes of their novels in the same land, and have treated many of the same types of primitive men. For those elements of his style which contribute most to the beauty and originality of his novels, Louis Bertrand is indebted much less to Flaubert than to his own robust and original genius. 1 PepHe et Balthasar, p. 130. 2 Salammbo, p. 178. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 91 VII A Critical Estimate of the African Novels of Louis Bertrand Like Flaubert, his disciple ^ has painted Africa and its people with great intensity of color and relief, ^ but has added a note of love and hope to the dark picture of strife and cruelty presented in Salammbo. Flaubert, in writing the book, was guided only by the ideal of art for art's sake, ^ while Louis Bertrand declares that he has devoted his life to illustrating, developing and presenting in all of its phases the idea of the union of the Latin peoples, as being the only means of revivifying them and of rendering to them the preponderant place which they once held in the world. < Flaubert, detesting present reality, undertook the writing of Salammbo as a means of escaping from it, ^ while his disciple prefers to paint life in its most living and most active phases. In spite of these wide divergences of aim, there are certain minor points in which the content of the works of Louis Bertrand, like his style, shows similarities to that of Flau- bert. Thus, the well-known hatred of Flaubert for the bour- geoisie has a parallel in two of M. Bertrand's early novels, '' ^ Lucien Maury, De Flaubert d Paul Adam, Revue Bleue, 60th year, 1st sem., January 21, 1922. The critic observes that no one will deny that Louis Bertrand is the spiritual son of Flaubert, Louis Lefebvre, locus cit., declares that M. Bertrand continues rather than imitates the work of Flau- bert. 2 In La Correspondance de Gustave Flaubert, Vol. Ill, p. 274 (Croisset, January 26, 1861) Flaubert writes to Michelet that from his (the latter's) works he drew "couleur et relief". 3 Flaubert, Ibid., p. 30, (To L. Bouilhet, Croisset, May 10, 1855) and p. 164, (To Mile, de Chantepie, Paris, January 23, 1858). * Louis Bertrand, Les pays m editerran eens et la guerre, p. 186. 5 Flaubert, Corr., Vol. Ill, p. 85, (To Mme. des Genettes, 1856) and p. 181, (To Mile, de Chantepie, Croisset, July 11, 1858). ^ La Cina, pp. 314, 335. Le Rival de don Juan, p. 282. 92 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND and in the fact that nearly all of the characters which Louis Bertrand has drawn with the most enthusiasm are proletarians. These proletarians, though seemingly of a simple psychology, are inreality quite complicated for one who really wishes to under- stand them, asserts their creator, ^ while Flaubert wrote to Sainte- Beuve, a propos of Salammbo, "Rien de plus complique qu'un Barbare." ^ The emphasis which the author of the Cycle africain places upon the Semitic characteristics of the Carthaginian, and the ideas which he develops concerning the Semitization of the Neo- African, were probably suggested by the description in Salammbo of the Council of the Ancients, whose members were distinguished especially by their noses "recourb^s comme ceux des colosses assyriens" and by ** un aspect de ruse et de violence." » Louis Bertrand, while continuing the work of Flaubert, in describing "le civilise qui se barbarise" (as, Claude in La Cina) and the "canaille" who have flocked to Africa, has overlooked "le barbare qui se civilise." In fact the barbarian, in the sense of the Moslem native of Africa, is so noticeably absent from the works of the author of Le Sang des races that his African novels might well bear the sub-title: "L*Alg6rie sans les Arabes," as Andre Bellessort has so justly observed. < The only role which M. Bertrand assigns to these natives seems to be that of a sort of anvil, against which the Latin immigrant is to be tempered to sufficient hardness. No other writer who has treated of Algeria has so completely ignored the native as has Louis Ber- trand, who has, in fact, devoted himself exclusively to the Latin colonist. M. Bertrand's attitude does not pass without challenge, for Charles G^niaux, in the dedication to his Le Choc des races, says that the book will displease "les chantres de I'Afrique latine, ce beau sujet de rh6torique. Malheureusement la racaille espagnole, sicilienne et calabraise, rencontr^e par moi au Maroc, * Le Sang des races, Preface, p. 8. » Flaubert, Corr., Ill, p. ZZZ, December 23, 24, 1862. » Salammbd, p. 148. * Andr^ Bellessort, locus cit. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 93 en Alg^rie et en Tunisie, m'a donn6 I'horreur d'une M6diterran6e latine." This writer asserts that he knows the Musselman intimately, and finds him superior to the immigrant from Spain and Italy. The French, he continues, are morally bound to defend these natives, their prot6g6s, from those European elements which would despoil and insult them. ' The point of view of the Tharaud brothers, as Fidus has so justly observed, also difTers from that of Louis Bertrand in that they have as- signed, notably in La Fete arabe, the "beau role" to the native, who is, for the author of La Cina, merely a dangerous savage and an enemy of progress. The attitude of J6r6me and Jean Tharaud is based on sympathy and sentiment, while that of M. Bertrand is founded upon the reason and the will.' The position of Pierre Mille upon the subject of the native is much like that of Louis Bertrand. The latter is possibly some- what overstating the attitude of the author of Sur la vaste Terre when he says that compared to Barnavaux, ^ freed and ennobled by centuries of Christian education and of traditions of chivalry, the Annamites, Sengalese, Arabs and Moors are slaves and "attardes".* It is natural that a writer of strong and original tempera" ment, most of whose heroes are simple and primitive men, should, by certain aspects of his talent, suggest a comparison to Emile Zola. M. Ernest-Charles again overstates the point he wishes to make when he asserts that M. Bertrand proceeds from the author of Germinal more than from any other writer, and that to the naturalistic romanticism of the latter, he adds simply a profound knowledge of classical letters, a taste for tradition, and the tranquility of a happy and healthy soul to which pessimism has not access. The critic believes that M. Bertrand might justly inscribe in the introductions of his earlier ' Chades Geniaux, Le Choc des races, pp. 5 and 6. 2 Fidus, Silhouettes contemporaines. Jerome et Jean Tharaud. ^ La Revue des Deux Mondes, Vol. 64, July 15, 1921. 5 Barnavaux is a sort of French version of Kipling's Mulvaney. * Le Sens de I'Ennemi, p. 285. 94 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND novels what Zola wrote in the preface of Therhse Raquin: that the book was a study of temperaments and not of characters, and that he had depicted human beings dominated by their nerves and their blood — human brutes and nothing more. ^ In this category should be included, continues the critic, Carmelo, Pep^te and even the cultivated Mautoucher. Nor do these characters harmonize very well, it is claimed, with the professed theory of the author of La Renaissance classique that the abnormal and the monstrous should be excluded from the novel. 2 In speaking of Pepete , M. Ernest-Charles gently admonishes the young author not to seek for his books, which now please the discriminating, the favor of readers spiritually related to the mistresses of the young fisherman. In this connection a dis- tinguished churchman and man of letters, while deploring certain liberties of description in the earlier movels of Louis Bertrand, classes him now as among the best and most sincere of Catholic writers. ^ Mindful, possibly, of some of the criticism of Pepete, one of his favorite characters, M. Bertrand defends his creation stoutly, saying that the sardine fisherman is a colonizer, a founder of cities and of races, who can on occasion be a hero, as he was in the past war. ^ Louis Bertrand's novels treat the relations of the sexes in a fearlessly realistic manner. Robert Randau, in a letter to the writer of this paper, expresses the not altogether unfounded apprehension that foreign readers of M. Bertrand may be struck by the almost universal sensuality of the "barbares". But he forewarns us that they are "des gens pour qui I'amour est une fonction au meme titre que le boire et le manger." While M. Randau's characterization of "Tamour" is an accurate one as applied to the earlier adventures of Rafael and P6p^te, yet when these young men are ready to establish themselves they choose wives who seem likely to conform to accepted standards of their class, and to become good comrades and helpmates. 1 Emile Zola, ThSrkse Raquin, Preface, p. II. ' J. Ernest-Charles, locus cit. ' Canon Halflants, locus cit. * Les pays mediterranSens el la guerre, p. 19. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 95 Most readers of the Cycle africain will probably agree with Fidus, who believes that the portraits which Louis Bertrand has traced are really those of an ^lite, who form a sort of pro- letarian aristocracy either of beauty, of strength or of activity, and are always examples of a jealously independent individuality. These characters, continues the critic, are simple only for those who do not know how to understand them. M. Bertrand's workmen, impulsive and thievish, with their confused and violent discussions, their conflicts of interests, of races and of social castes, their outbursts of vanity, their fits of imperious dignity, are as living, complex and mobile as the waves that bathe the shores of their country. The reader does not feel that he is in the presence of proletarians manufactured by literature to produce an antithesis to the bourgeois. Louis Bertrand's heroes are so human that there is no entirely admirable character among them, nor any In whom there is nothing to be liked. ^ Thus Pelissier is at first depicted as being something of a rascal, yet his good temper and courage soon win the respect of the reader. M. Bertrand, admiringly declares Louis Lefebvre, is, like Balzac, a master psychologist. The study which the author of the Cycle africain makes of the human soul is direct, firm and clear, like his style. He seizes the soul, locates it in the place and epoch which he has chosen, follows it, constrains it gently, and only abandons this soul when it has given up all of its truth in accordance with his own lucid will. 2 Lucien Maury's commendation of Louis Bertrand as a psychologist, though not quite so unreserved as the above, will probably appeal more strongly to most readers of the Cycle africai^i. Conscientious artist that he is, writes the critic, M. Bertrand penetrates souls, not to dissect them coldly, but to make them live and act before our eyes, and to move and exalt us by contact with adventures, ^ Fidus, Silhouettes contemporaines. M. Louis Bertrand. La Revue des Deux Mondes, Vol. 63, June 15, 192L The critic must have forgotten Philippe Nondedeo. ' Louis Lefebvre, locus cit. 96 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERT RAND thoughts and sentiments. The novelist, by the skillful use of variety, by his love of colorful detail and by his understanding of the humble difificulties of life, communicates to us an intense impression of the reality of his heroes. ' The following opinion of Jules Bertaut does not seem to be fundamentally in contra- diction with that of M. Maury, but rather to present in a vigorous form a different and enlarged phase of somewhat the same idea. While admitting that Louis Bertrand paints well the gestures and the actions which are the key to the soul, M. Bertaut thinks that the novelist dislikes to analyze the soul itself. The exterior type of life so characteristic of the South has so fas- cinated the author of the Cycle africain that he scarcely per- ceives the interior world, and must have movement in order to be able to create living images. Louis Bertrand, continues the critic, needs to depict his heroes in the act of putting forth an immense effort, in open spaces, under the bright sunlight, if he is to display to the best advantage his powerful genius. ^ Upon the question of the reality of the African characters of M. Bertrand, and their trueness to life, the opinion of literary men who are natives of the country is of considerable impor- tance. The principal critic and historian of North African letters, M. Arthur Pellegrin, in a letter to the writer of this paper, says of Louis Bertrand : "II se distingue surtout par son style chaud et colore, plutot que par la verite et le relief de ses personnages. Pour qui connait le milieu qu'il a voulu etudier, ses romans sont peu representatifs, dans leur ensemble, de la vie nord-africaine. II montre par endroits des qualites d'observa- tion et un certain soin du detail pittoresque qui renforcent I'intrigue un peu l§,che de ses oeuvres d'imagination. II excelle dans la description romantique a grandes fresques'' lyriques. ^ Lucien Maury, De PSpkte le Bien-AimS d Saint AugusUn, Revue BleuCt 51st year, 2d Sem. November 22, 1913. 2 Jules Bertaut, opus cit., pp. 128-131. ^ In outlining the development of the ideal classical novel, Louis Bertrand uses the same word as M. Pellegrin, saying that:". . . I'ccuvre se d6veloppe comme une fresque et comme le fronton d'un temple." La Renaissance classigue, p. 32. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 97 A cet 6gard son ouvrage Les Villes d'or est caracteristique. "A notre point de vue Louis Bertrand est un tcrivain de valeur, un auteur exotique, rattach6 seulement au mouvement litt^raire nord-africain par les sujets qu'il a traites et non par sa maniere, ses qualit^s ou ses d^fauts." Robert Randau would certainly not agree with this estimate, for he includes Louis Bertrand in a small list of French writers who have depicted "maints personnages muscles et vivants, bien de notre pays," and who have described in their books "de justes africanites". ^ These ideas are further developed in a letter which M. Raudau has written to me from the French Soudan, where he holds an important administrative position. He says of Louis Bertrand: **. . . j'ai une grande admiration pour les livres de cet ecrivain qui, avec une intensite remarquable, a revele a la France les harmonies du monde m6diterraneen, et la joie de vivre de la race nouvelle qui se brasse en Algerie. . . . nous (le peuple neo-africain) sommes des jeunes, nous avons des dents longues, nous habitons un pays dur, ou nous ne prosperons qu' a force d'energie. Mais nous prosperons. Nos ambitions sont terre a terre, mais precises, et nous savons ce que nous voulons: nous vouloiis etre, nous le voulons avec ferocity. "Louis Bertrand est venu tater le pouls a la nouvelle Afrique; il I'a trouvee plus puissante que belle; il a eu raison; nous allions en nous I'obstination farouche du paysan berbere a I'astuce du Carthaginois, a I'esprit d'ordre du Romain, a I'esprit d'aventure de TArabe, au fanatisme de I'Espagnol. Helas! il nous manque le sens de I'esthetique. Nos paysages ne sont que lumiere; nous autres Africains en restons bien facheusement k I'ombre. "Ce sont des scenes de notre vie intime que vous trouverez dans Bertrand; il a pris des modeles autour de lui; il a vecu avec 1 Robert Randau, Le mouvement litteraire dans V Afrique du Nord, Belles- Lettres, (Paris) for November, 1920. Note: Lucien Maury, in Litterature coloniale. Revue Bleue, 50th year, 1st Sem., February 17, 1912, while depre- cating the crudeness of the style of the novels of M. Randau, accords a grudg- ing but sincere admiration to the vigor of his talent. 98 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND eux, il a cherche notre ^me. . . . Tout, dans Bertrand crle la splendeur plastlque de nos climats; il les aime, il est sincere dans sa passion, et c'est pour cela qu'il a ecrit de la beaut6. . ." The characteristics of the Neo- African, as enumerated by M. Randau, are the result of the desperate struggle which the colonist is obliged to wage for his very existence. These charac- teristics, with the exception of the "fanatisme de I'Espagnol" are all exemplified in the hero of La Concessio7i de Madame Petitgatid. This novel, alone of the Cycle africain, has as its central idea the portrayal of the fascinating drama of this struggle for existence. It marks the transition from the first manner of its author, the "roman de moeurs", as illustrated in his first four novels, to the historical novel of his second and present period. ^ The action in this tale, and in the historical novels which follow it, is of a different type from that in the first three of the Cycle africain. Pelissier, unlike Pepete, is more than the living symbol of the obscure forces of nature. He does not drift helplessly at the command of his instincts, or under the pressure of circumstances, but acts in accordance with plans which he has definitely thought out. He struggles bravely against an adverse fate, and his failure, in which lies the tragedy of the drama, will arouse the sympathy of those readers who have at some time waged an unsuccessful fight for a coveted end, and who can thus identify their emotions with those of the unfortunate colonist. This new tendency towards the emphasis of the subjectively human interest element of the plot is even more clearly marked in the historical novels of the author. That his African novels have had a considerable influence is attested by the fact that the name of Louis Bertrand is famous throughout South Algeria. To the very confines of the desert * In Une Evolution nouvelle du Roman historique, Revue de Paris, 28th year, Vol. Ill, May 15, 1921, M. Bertrand sustains the thesis that the only real difference between the novel of manners and the historical novel is that the action of the former takes place in the present, and that of the latter in the past. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 99 his heroes are legendary, one of his critics tells us, and there are now in the country wayside inns bearing the name of PepHe ei Balthasar. The admirers of the author of the Cycle africain, especially numerous among the youth of France, continues the critic, find in his books a source of renewal of vitality and enthu- siasm. He has enlarged the horizon of his countrymen by directing towards action, which generates virtues, and towards observation of realities, which dissipates Utopias, the anxious dreams of many young men. In preaching Africa to the youth of France, M. Bertrand directed them to the best possible school of enterprise and of will. ^ The doctrines and the work of Louis Bertrand, in the opinion of M. Maury, tend to incorporate in the consciousness of the French an activity, an object and virtues of whose fecundity and amplitude they have long been unaware. It is true that the idea of Latinity cannot triumph in Africa without coming to an understanding with the Moslem native, and that Louis Bertrand does not tell us how this is to be brought about. Nor is it his task to do so, for the artist creates values which enrich and multiply life; he procreates turbulent children whose destiny he cannot foresee. It is the duty of statesmanship to follow up this progeny, to assign to it a useful role, and to derive all possible benefit from its efforts. 2 For a quarter of a century Louis Bertrand has, says a friend of his early manhood, labored for the advancement and the honor of Latin civilization, and has striven to fortify among the Mediterranean peoples the sentiment of fraternity which formerly united them. His whole work celebrates the grandeur of Mediterranean civilization, and strengthens in his countrymen the faith which they should have in their destiny. ^ ^ Fidus, locus cit. - Lucien Maury, Louis Bertrand^ imperialiste, Revue Bleue, 59th year, June 18, 1921. » Andre Bellessort, locus cit. 100 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND VIII Conclusion "... Every work of art is, at bottom, unique, and it is the business of the critic not to label it and pigeon-hole it, but to seek for its inner intent and content, and to value it according as that intent is carried out and that content is valid and worth while." ^ Taking as a measure of the "intent" of Louis Ber- trand the doctrines which he has so conscientiously elaborated, let us examine briefly those phases of their application in his novels which have not been fully dealt with in the two preceding chapters. In Le Sang des races its author was undoubtedly constantly mindful of his evident purpose to continue the unfinished African epic where Flaubert left it off, for the Mediterranean mer- cenaries are depicted as struggling for the rich plunder of this country which is so full of the good things of life. The energetic barbarian peoples the novel in force, but unfortunately there are almost no Frenchmen in it to be revitalized by cbrttact with him. Ramon, Rafael and others, perfect types of their kind, are presented under a variety of circumstances, and when the author leaves them, have accomplished a marked and genuine progress, within the measure of their abilities. La Cina and its sequel, Le Rival de don Juan, testify to the beginning of a struggle in the mind of their author between Flaubert's precept of impersonality, and the desire on the part of Louis Bertrand to advocate theories which were increasing in number and definiteness under the influence of his own studies and observations, and of the pressure from without of 1 Thus does H. L. Mencken {Prejudices, First Series, p. 212) summarize a favorite doctrine of Goethe and Carlyle. This most trenchant if unorthodox of American critics continues: "This is the precise opposite of the academic critical attitude. The professor is nothing if not a maker of card-indexes; he must classify or be damned." A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 101 the doctrines of the renascence of national energy. Of course, as we have already seen, the characters of the book who express the same ideas as those which their creator champions, are depicted as being highly educated men, and the "logic of their characters" might account for their conceptions. It is at least possible that Louis Bertrand often heard discussed about him such theories as that of Latin continuity and of barbarization, or even that he acquired these doctrines in part by frequenting certain circles of Algerian society. ^ Claude is the only character in the book to realize any marked progress in that he finds his vocation in life. He is also the only Frenchman of the Cycle africain to re-barbarize himself, in the best sense of the word, and this rather by travel and the influence of the sage advice of the sturdy Alsatian farmer than by contact with any par- ticular barbarians. It is also this Alsatian, Schirrer, who advocates a fair and humane treatment of the Arab. Possibly M. Bertrand had in mind the doctrines advocated by this colonist when he says that if novelists are coming to consider the Arab as a social being, rather than as a subject of picturesque description, the change in attitude may be due to the battle which he himself has waged against romantic exotism. - Neither Pepete, Balthasar, nor any of the other characters portrayed in M. Bertrand's fourth novel are of a sufficiently high mentality to understand or to express the more literary and historical ideas of the novelist. While it is true that these Africans are perfect specimens of their type, yet the symbolic beauty of this type is likely to escape readers who are unfor- tunately not endowed with any very high degree of poetic imagination. ^ Compare in the preface to La Cina, p. IX, " Je m'en tiens a la methode strictement impersonnelle qu'inaugurerent les maitres du roman vers la seconde moitie du XIXe siecle, et qui consiste uniquement k representer. Je n'ai fait que repeter sous une forme litteraire ce que j'avais entendu autour de moi, ou conformer la pensee de mes heros k la logique de leurs caracteres." 2 Le Sens de I'Ennemi, p. 209. 102 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERTRAND In La Concession de Madame Petitgand, its author seems to have kept steadily in mind Flaubert's precept of impersonality, for there is no "preaching or moralizing" in the book. Also, P^lissier is rather a fine type, not far from being an "accom- plished example", and barbarized only to the point of being equipped to wage a successful struggle against any but insuperable obstacles. He is overcome, however, by Philippe Nondedeo, who represents barbarization pushed to its extreme logical conclusion — a conclusion which Louis Bertrand would probably be the first to deplore. Strong characters are most likely to be formed by trials, fatigue and suffering, and nowhere apparently are these things to be found more abundantly than in the African colonies of France. Those who do return to the fatherland after a long stay in these colonies will have been transformed into men of will and energy — future heroes of the Revenge. ^ Certainly after reading a book like La Concession de Madame Petitga7id, none of those enumerated as colonial undesirables by the v/riter of the preceding sentence: failures, prodigal sons, those with too much imagination, and ideologists ^ would be tempted to encumber the colonies with their presence. Thus such a book over and above its literary value might serve a useful purpose. It is possible that the type most desirable for the colonies: the young, energetic and vigorous man, with agricultural experience, might, if he read the African novels of Louis Bertrand, be so fired by the thought of the obstacles to be overcome and the duty he owed to France, as to be willing to attempt the adventure of under- taking a career in North Africa. The fact that colonial life as depicted in the Cycle africain is so little likely to attract any but those of superior patriotic or heroic qualities is due to no lack of talent on the part of the author, but to the nature of his subject: the harshness of the land and the climate and the character of its native and European ^ J-B Piolet, (S. J.) La France hors de France, Notre Emigration, sa Neces site — ses Conditions, (1900), p. 85. 2 Ibid., p. 335, A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE 103 inhabitants. A writer of less scrupulous honesty than M. Bertrand, but animated as he is by the deep-rooted desire to enhance the value of the French colonies, might have yielded to a perfectly natural tendency, and have softened the uninviting nature of the picture he has drawn. That Louis Bertrand has not done so is a high tribute to his conscientiousness as an artist and as an "honnete homme". ^ M. Bertrand has portrayed colonial life as he has seen it, without regard for the result. In him love of truth has been stronger than doctrine; the artist has triumphed over the special pleader. The author of Le Sang des races has, however, never specifically declared it to be his purpose to attract immigrants to Algeria. Let us, then, consider a definition of the object of colonial literature which Louis Bertrand would probably admit to be a standard by which the validity of the content of his work might fairly be judged. It is again to M. Maury to whom we must turn for the most adequate exposition of an ideal which should animate one who aspires to enrich the literature of the colonies of his country. - The critic believes that art and literature have as their supreme mission to express their epoch, to be its living conscience and its most noble, exact and synthetic formula. Art should create life, which in turn should accompany, encourage and ask guidance of art, as of a powerful and clear-sighted auxiliary. Official documents are insufficient to present an exact idea of those countries where French energies are being expended, for we comprehend a distant spectacle only by the imagination and the sensibility; hence none but the writer and the artist can give to France an adequate idea of her colonies. They alone, in the midst of unreasonable debauches of energy, ^ Louis Bertrand, in Gustave Flaubert, p. 259, thus quotes the master: "Le don de I'observation ne f)eut appartenir qu'a un honnlte homme. Car, pour voir les choses en elles-memes, il faut n'y porter aucun interet personnel." 2 Lucien Maur>', Litterature coloniale, Revue Bleue, 50th year, 1st sem., February 17, 1912, The lines here cited are an introduction to a review of books by Robert Randau and Jean d'Estray. 104 THE AFRICAN NOVELS OF LOUIS BERT RAND can discern the renunciation, the abnegation and the underlying bases of reason upon which are founded human societies. The aesthetic and moral values expressed and defined by the novelist are endowed by him with the movement of life. His lofty mission should be, finally, to examine societies which are in process of formation, and to extract from them a new beauty and a new truth which he can present to the admiration of his countrymen. To a writer capable of doing these things it may also be given to outline, for the use of the French of the colonies, a philosophy which will rival successfully Germanic and Anglo- Saxon imperialism — but one more generous, humane and more in conformity with French traditions. Such a "content" is certainly "valid and worth while". By it, as a measure of values, the work of Louis Bertrand should, in the opinion of the writer of this paper, be placed in the very first rank. Lovers of artistic and exotic romanticism might prefer Pierre Loti; admirers of the Arab and the vanishing poetry of his civilization, the Tharaud brothers; seekers of sensuous adventures, Claude Farrere; sentimentalists, little concerned with style, Charles Geniaux; and those who are fond of quietly humorous studies of native and soldier psychology in the Mulvaney manner, Pierre Mille. None, however, who has laid the scenes of his novels in the colonies of France has surpassed Louis Bertrand in amplitude and sanity of conception, solidity and consistency of construction, and sincerity of patriotic inspiration. A PHASE OF THE RENASCENCE OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN FRANCE JOS The Works of Louis Bertrand La Fin du classicisme et le retour k I'antique, 1897, Le Sang des races, 1899. La Cina, 1901. Le Rival de don Juan, 1903. La Renaissance classique, 1903. P6pete et Balthasar, 1904. Le Jardin de la Mort, 1905. L'Invasion, 1907. Les Bains de Phalere, 1908. Le Mirage oriental, 1909. La Grece du soleil et des paysages, 1910. Le Livre de la Mediterranee, 1910. Mademoiselle de Jessincourt, 1911. Gustave Flaubert, 1912. La Concession de Madame Petitgand, 1912. Saint Augustin, 1913. Les plus belles pages de Saint Augustin, 1916. Le Sens de I'Ennemi, 1917. Les pays mediterraneens et la guerre, 1917. L'eternel champ de bataille, 1917. Sanguis martyrum, 1918. L'Infante, 1920. Les Villes d'or, 1921. Autour de Saint Augustin, 1921. L'Homme aux rubans couleur de feu, 1921. Flaubert a Paris, ou le Mort vivant, 1921. 106 THE AFRICAN NOVLES OF LOUIS BERTRAND The Works of Louis Bertrand Arranged by Cycles Le Cycle africain I Le Sang des races VI II La Cina VII III Pepete de Balthasar IV Le Jardln de la Mort VIII V La Concession de Ma- IX dame Petitgand X Saint Augustin Les plus belles pages de Saint Augustin Sanguis martyrum Les Villes d'or Autour de Saint Augus- tin Lb Cycle de la Mediterranee VI Le Livre de la Mediter- I Le Rival de don Juan II L* Invasion III Les Bains de Phalere IV La Grece du soleil et des paysages V Le Mirage oriental ranee VII Les pays mediter- ran^ens et la guerre VIII L'Infante I Mademoiselle sincourt II Le Sens de I'Ennemi La Terre natale de Jes- III L'eternel champ de ba- taille Essays and Criticism I La Fin du classicisme et le retour k I'antique II La Renaissance class- ique III Gustave Flaubert IV Flaubert h Paris, ou le Mort vivant THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. 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