The Wisdom of Father Brown Page 3
THREE -- The Duel of Dr Hirsch
M. MAURICE BRUN and M. Armand Armagnac were crossing the sunlit ChampsElysee with a kind of vivacious respectability. They were both short,brisk and bold. They both had black beards that did not seem to belongto their faces, after the strange French fashion which makes real hairlook like artificial. M. Brun had a dark wedge of beard apparentlyaffixed under his lower lip. M. Armagnac, by way of a change, had twobeards; one sticking out from each corner of his emphatic chin. Theywere both young. They were both atheists, with a depressing fixity ofoutlook but great mobility of exposition. They were both pupils of thegreat Dr Hirsch, scientist, publicist and moralist.
M. Brun had become prominent by his proposal that the common expression"Adieu" should be obliterated from all the French classics, and a slightfine imposed for its use in private life. "Then," he said, "the veryname of your imagined God will have echoed for the last time in the earof man." M. Armagnac specialized rather in a resistance to militarism,and wished the chorus of the Marseillaise altered from "Aux armes,citoyens" to "Aux greves, citoyens". But his antimilitarism was of apeculiar and Gallic sort. An eminent and very wealthy English Quaker,who had come to see him to arrange for the disarmament of the wholeplanet, was rather distressed by Armagnac's proposal that (by way ofbeginning) the soldiers should shoot their officers.
And indeed it was in this regard that the two men differed most fromtheir leader and father in philosophy. Dr Hirsch, though born in Franceand covered with the most triumphant favours of French education, wastemperamentally of another type--mild, dreamy, humane; and, despite hissceptical system, not devoid of transcendentalism. He was, in short,more like a German than a Frenchman; and much as they admired him,something in the subconsciousness of these Gauls was irritated at hispleading for peace in so peaceful a manner. To their party throughoutEurope, however, Paul Hirsch was a saint of science. His large anddaring cosmic theories advertised his austere life and innocent, ifsomewhat frigid, morality; he held something of the position of Darwindoubled with the position of Tolstoy. But he was neither an anarchistnor an antipatriot; his views on disarmament were moderate andevolutionary--the Republican Government put considerable confidence inhim as to various chemical improvements. He had lately even discovereda noiseless explosive, the secret of which the Government was carefullyguarding.
His house stood in a handsome street near the Elysee--a street which inthat strong summer seemed almost as full of foliage as the park itself;a row of chestnuts shattered the sunshine, interrupted only in one placewhere a large cafe ran out into the street. Almost opposite to thiswere the white and green blinds of the great scientist's house, an ironbalcony, also painted green, running along in front of the first-floorwindows. Beneath this was the entrance into a kind of court, gay withshrubs and tiles, into which the two Frenchmen passed in animated talk.
The door was opened to them by the doctor's old servant, Simon, whomight very well have passed for a doctor himself, having a strict suitof black, spectacles, grey hair, and a confidential manner. In fact, hewas a far more presentable man of science than his master, Dr Hirsch,who was a forked radish of a fellow, with just enough bulb of a head tomake his body insignificant. With all the gravity of a great physicianhandling a prescription, Simon handed a letter to M. Armagnac. Thatgentleman ripped it up with a racial impatience, and rapidly read thefollowing:
I cannot come down to speak to you. There is a man in this house whom Irefuse to meet. He is a Chauvinist officer, Dubosc. He is sitting on thestairs. He has been kicking the furniture about in all the other rooms;I have locked myself in my study, opposite that cafe. If you love me,go over to the cafe and wait at one of the tables outside. I will tryto send him over to you. I want you to answer him and deal with him. Icannot meet him myself. I cannot: I will not.
There is going to be another Dreyfus case.
P. HIRSCH