The Elm-Tree on the Mall
1897
The Elm-Tree on the Mall
1897
Translated by M. P. (Mary Patricia) Willcocks
In a sleepy French provincial town during the Third Republic, a bishopric becomes vacant, and the vultures gather. What follows is a merciless dissection of clerical ambition, as France's finest ecclesiastical minds reveal themselves to be as scheming and self-serving as any worldly politician. Abbé Lantaigne, the seminarist director, worries about the Church's integrity while maneuvering just as ruthlessly as his rivals. The Cardinal-Archbishop pontificates from his salon. M. Guitrel, the professor with questionable associations, becomes a pawn in larger games. No one is spared Anatole France's gimlet eye: not the pious, not the powerful, not even the principles they claim to serve. France, who would win the Nobel Prize for literature, deploys his legendary wit to strip bare the gap between Christian vocation and human ambition. This is satire with teeth, anticlericalism raised to high art, and a window into a France wrestling with its own contradictions at the century's close.
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“Creíase bienquisto entre los congregados habituales de Valcombe, y no erraba del todo al suponerlo.””
— Anatole France
“Os povos civilizados são como os cães de caça. Um instinto corrupto os incita a destruir sem proveito nem razão.””
— Anatole France
“Enquanto o Estado se contenta com os recursos que lhe fornecem os pobres, enquanto conta com subsídios bastantes que, com regularidade mecânica, lhe asseguram aqueles que trabalham com as próprias mãos, ele vive feliz, tranquilo, respeitado; os economistas e os financistas se aprazem em atestar-lhe a probidade; mas, do instante em que esse infeliz Estado, movido pela necessidade, faz menção de exigir dinheiro de quem o tem, e de tirar dos ricos alguma exígua contribuição, fazem-no sentir que ele comete um atentado odioso, que viola todos os direitos, que falta ao respeito com as coisas consagradas, que destrói o comércio e a indústria, que esmaga os pobres ao tocar nos opulentos. Não mais se dissimula seu descrédito. E ele fica entregue ao desprezo dos bons cidadãos. Entrementes, a ruína avança, lenta e infalivelmente. O Estado ameaçou as rendas. Está perdido. Os nossos ministros zombam de nós, falando do perigo clerical ou socialista. Não há senão um perigo, o perigo financeiro. A República começa a percebê-lo.””
— Anatole France
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France, Anatole. The Elm-Tree on the Mall. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-elm-tree-on-the-mall-2684f68b-f8d1-451b-aafc-d0bb821a4d95.France, A. (1897). The Elm-Tree on the Mall. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-elm-tree-on-the-mall-2684f68b-f8d1-451b-aafc-d0bb821a4d95France, Anatole. The Elm-Tree on the Mall. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-elm-tree-on-the-mall-2684f68b-f8d1-451b-aafc-d0bb821a4d95.
