FRANCE: A Blow for Bonaparte

Each Sunday a gaunt, austere figure with sideburns, long frock coat and tight, narrow trousers leaves his home in Paris’ Latin Quarter, crosses the Seine and heads for Père-Lachaise Cemetery. For hours he strolls among the dead marshals, statesmen and courtiers of the dead Napoleonic Empire; he never fails to pause before the tombstone of the Comtesse de Girardin, the greatest beauty of the Little Corporal’s court. Jean Auguste Louis Armand Fèvre, by profession adealer in rare books, by appearance a bourgeois gentleman of Napoleon’s day, has chosen to live in the past.

In his dingy, one-room flat on the Rue Bonaparte, oil lamps and candles light up the empire fauteuils, the portraits of Napoleon and the etchings of Napoleon’s greatest battles. Fèvre has never ridden in the subway or a bus; he steadfastly refuses to switch on an electric light or read a daily paper. “What men call progress,” he says bitterly, “is nothing but a sham. Transportation has improved, but noble sentiments become rarer.”

Recently young Pierre Merindol, a freelance journalist, thought he would have some fun with Fèvre, get some publicity into the bargain. In the men’s magazine Adam he described him as an “homme déshydrate” (a dehydrated fogy),* and got some friends to show the article to Fèvre. Fèvre’s Bonapartist pride was stung.

He sought out Merindol, fixed the penpusher with a cold stare. “I read your article,” he said, “and I resent it. People in the Quarter are beginning to call me a ‘dried fruit’ and ‘ancient vegetable.'”

Said Merindol: “So what?”

Said Fèvre: “II faut alter sure le pre!” (We must settle this on the lawn).

Said Merindol: “Send me your witnesses!”

One day last week two cars carrying the duelists, their seconds and their doctors, drove out of Paris. In a clearing in the Forest of Senart, Fèvre and Merindol got out and took their positions. Merindol had frantically practiced saber fighting for four days, but he was no match for Fèvre’s skill. After a few parries the heavy cavalry sword dropped from his bleeding hand. The umpire pronounced him fit to fight on, but had to stop the duel a few seconds later. Fèvre was striking out so furiously (see cut”) that he feared Merindol might get seriously hurt.

“Do you agree to a reconciliation?” the umpire asked. Fèvre bowed icily, shook his opponent’s hand, and stalked back to the waiting car. Said the umpire: “Honor has been satisfied.” The most loyal of France’s few remaining Bonapartists had struck a telling blow for his great emporer.

* A reference to the novel L’Homme à l’Oreille Cassée by Edmond About (1828-85), in which a Colonel Fougas of Napoleon’s Grande Armee is captured, and dehydrated by a German scientist. This process preserves him intact—except for a chipped ear—for 47 years. Revived by “lukewarm vapors” in 1859, he promptly cries: “Vive I’Empereur!”, takes a troubled look at the “modern” world and decides that “with a thousand [steam] engines like these, two thousand of your new guns and 200,000 gaillards [huskies] like me, Napoleon would have conquered the world in six weeks.”