This is the second chapter of the second volume of Pierre Drieu la Rochelle’s masterpiece Gilles. You can find the first volume on our website.
Galant often stopped by the ministry and stayed a long time chatting with Gilles. Or sometimes he would visit Gilles apartment, on Murillo street, very early in the morning, before he got up. Gilles had never seen him so often as in those days. He wondered when Cyrille, who went to bed very late, slept. He drank coffee all day long.
“Little Morel is surprising, you know. He absolutely hates his father.”
Gilles scoffed.
“And you think he’s serious? After all, he’s just a dumb kid.”
Galant shook his little head.
“Better than that.”
Gilles knew the calm assurance with which Galant changed his opinions, depending on the needs of the day. He understood that he flattered Paul to win over him, but that it happened in front of him, Gilles, that he showed him some interest, revolted him.
“Anyways, I’m sure that you hate him, deep down.”
He quickly gathered himself, remembering Paul’s subtle vivacity the other night.
“Maybe I’m mistaken.”
Gilles accepted his concession with satisfaction.
He paced far and wide across the room. An insatiable energy and incessant worry carried him. Gilles continued:
“But, you know, watch yourself. Paul is nuts. He ran away twice, at fourteen and at sixteen.”
“Ah, yes, well, well… bah! That boy could be useful to us, in the affair of which I’ve spoken to you about.”
Caël and his friends had given two or three memorable sittings in a small diverse circle where all kinds of intellectual beggars rubbed shoulders: the half-baked upper crust, jewish neurotics, studious bourgeois, young vagrants of literature and art. The big idea was to simulate a tribunal, where this or that famous person was placed on trial. Emphatic diatribes had been shouted against Anatole France, Marshal Joffre, and others.
“If we hold our Trial of Presidents, I have no doubt that Paul will take a stand against his father with the utmost audacity. It will cause quite a scandal.”
“So you’re going to get mixed up with politics? I thought that you despised it.”
“We strike all public figures. Even the political ones.”
Gilles shuddered and smiled. He too, hated Morel. Morel had given to France a veneration, not of hate, which can be a broad and full feeling, broad enough and full enough as to be equivalent to love, but of suspicion. In all his speaches, he taught a fearful and mean-spirited suspicion of Germany, all while allowing his ministers to reinforce it. Gilles saw France, paralyzed by Morel’s petty advice, letting the hour of destiny pass; unable to take any generous initiative, to either destroy Germany or to disarm. Every day when he arrived at the Quai, he shuddered with apprehension at the thought of lost time. He had come to hate Berthelot as much as Morel. Beneath his infinitely understanding facade, beneath his indulgent facade of a great corrupt liberal, he was for Europe the most cunning, the most indifferent, the most pernicious of tyrants; he was accumulating inexpiable hatred against France. However, Gilles remained still a little surprised by his character; wherever he saw ambition and calculation, he was ready to be amazed, because that aspect of life was foreign to him. On the other hand, he could despise Morel in every way; he spat on the hypocrite, the bourgeois who had become a socialist, the socialist who had become a bourgeois, the fool who with his weak and timid hands was trying to rebuild the house he had demolished.
“And you? Are you coming to the sitting?” Asked Galant.
“Yes”
Galant seemed a little surprised and very content. Until then Gilles had done enough to compromise himself with them, but not enough to satisfy them. Would he risk his position at the Quai d’Orsay? That was what tempted him the most. What pleased him the least, was to do live a mediocre life in an equally mediocre enterprise. He joined these destroyers out of despair, because he saw little strength around him except in destruction. Carentan, now aged, wrote to him: “These are the last days of this famous ‘civilization’. The Europe which was not destroyed in 1918 is slowly falling into ruin. France has failed in its ‘mission’. The miserable ‘elite’ has done nothing with a victory that, moreover, was not its own. It was America that won in 1918. But America is nothing; it proved this by disappearing. Geneva is all the misery of the ‘modern world’, its filthy hypocrisy of capitalism, Freemasonry, Jewry, socialist democracy, all its impotence... I understand that you are tempted to shake the last pillars, my poor little Samson without the jawbone of an ass. In the meantime, have fun with your Delilahs. As for me, I will soon be out of here.”
The despair Gilles felt had a regrettably personal origin. When he married Myriam, he believed in himself; now he no longer did: returning to Myriam for a time after the war had debased him. He had acquired the habits of an ignoble world. And he had let his destiny escape him. He had half forgotten his dream of cultivating his feelings and experiences in lively solitude, and of slowly forming thoughts about the march of the world that would have some of the prodigious secret power of prayer. Having met Galant and Clérences, he had been unable to resist the challenge that these brilliant young men had thrown down to him. Their undertakings, the progress they were making in the century, fascinated him and half tore him away from himself. Only half, but enough to render his coherence ineffective. He no longer felt the quiet courage to consider his position at the Quai as a simple means of existence and as an observatory from which he could adjust his view of the planet. He regretted that he no longer felt capable of surprising and routing people with a very rapid career, as Clérences did. With a little care, after all, who knows if he might not become a second Berthelot? Isn’t it our duty to trample on fools? Fools must be crushed. And despite the enormous waste that ambition’s work produces, there are almost always two or three intelligent beings at the top. These two or three good minds avenge the others and deserve to be joined.
The success of Clérences seemed much more certain than that of Galant. No one even know exactly what path the latter would take, while it was clear that the former would become a minister and president of the Council. This was too obvious to please Gilles, who amused himself by dreaming of Galant’s unknown potential; in him, the essential drive of ambition remained in it’s pure form. Gilles admired his ferocity, he who said to himself first “They are idiots, you have to walk over them,” but who added “Some of these idiots have souls. Can I bring myself to hurt those souls?” The experience with Myriam had left him breathless. Galant did not hurt souls, he suffocated them from a distance with a decisive negation once and for all. It was an operation whose difficulty, in Gilles’s eyes, increased his esteem.
“What’s become of your mysterious lady?” he asked.
While recounting his adventures haphazardly, Galant remained mysterious. It was only by chance that he had glimpsed one or two of his affairs. But at that moment, Galant’s reserve seemed about to crack: he had hinted at an upcoming conquest. No doubt the adventure was more brilliant than usual.
“Go on, tell me.”
Gilles had the intermittent feeling that this topic hurt his friend; he couldn’t get him to forget his advantages.
“She’s ra-vi-shing,” Galant exclaimed with his weak jaw. “And a very authentic person, despite appearances.”
“What appearances?”
“You know: an unbearable husband, the world she lives in, her dresses, my predecessors, etc.”
“That all sounds fine to me.”
Gilles hoped to finally play with Galant in a game of two equal and perfectly loyal Don Juans. He would have liked to make his friend shine more, to be better dressed, to be more confident in the little things.
“Are you going to have that tuxedo made?”
Galant looked at him with a slightly painful expression. Gilles had given him some money from time to time, but not enough. For a rich friend to be acceptable, he would have to provide for his poor friend once and for all, rather than helping him out every now and then. What Gilles was saying could only highlight his advantages, and Galant’s disadvantages, who had nothing but a little bit given by his mother. Gilles sometimes thought that if he suddenly renewed his friend’s wardrobe and gave him a round sum of money, he would give him a real advantage; then he thought of other things and his own expenses. So, on that day, he did not insist on the tuxedo. He should have taken Galant to the tailor the very next day. If he had a more brilliant mistress, being poorly dressed would become one of those minor annoyances that trip up a lover.
“Tell me,” asked Galant, “has the American girl made you forget Antoinette completely? You never mention her anymore.”
Gilles never looked at Galant when he talked to him about women, afraid to see the hurt he caused. If he had looked at him, however, at that moment, he would have seen that he was waiting for his answer with concealed anxiety.
“Antoinette, it’s over, completely finished.”
Galant smiled bitterly.
Pierre Drieu la Rochelle’s Gilles, described by Gaëtan Picon as “one of the greatest novels of the century,” will be released chapter by chapter every week. Subscribe now to get notice of the next installment of this great novel…
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