The Golden Rock by Theo Varlet

Author:Theo Varlet [Varlet, Theo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Coat Press
Published: 2013-04-28T00:00:00+00:00

XIV. The Triumph of the Franc

I had not been in Paris—for good reasons—in November 1918, when the Armistice was agreed, but I have some slight mistrust of the current assertion that those who were not lucky enough to be in Paris on the historic day when the franc reached Paris could only form an approximate idea of it by recalling the day of the Armistice.

The scale of human emotions does not vary much, of course, and they only have a limited series of words and actions, always the same, for their expression. The triumphant joy was analogous in both cases, but there were essential differences between the end of the war and the victory of the franc, for which reason there were more than nuances between the kinds of delight manifested on the two occasions. The second celebrated a bland victory, which put an end to years of malaise, not years of slaughter. Moreover, it lacked something of the clarity and conclusiveness of the armistice—the signing of the treaty between the German and allied plenipotentiaries. It lacked soldiers to be embraced and carried in triumph. The franc triumphed, but without its enemies having capitulated; a counter-offensive remained possible.

In sum, the price of things, which remained immovable, contributed to leaving opinion, at first, slightly surprised, as if wrong-footed, without knowing where to pin its future certainty.

It was in that state in which I found the capital as I came out of Claridge’s, but in the course of the following hours, which I spent wandering around Paris on my own—because Jen-Paul Rivier was dining with Monsieur Germain-Lucas, and I did not care, effervescent as I was after by conversation with Frédérique, to dine alone beneath the “gilded paneling” of the house in the Avenue de Villiers, served by flunkeys as grave and severe as judges—the kind of dissatisfaction that underlay that victory faded away to the point of disappearing.

The great news, repeated by everyone, cried out to anyone—the pound finally at parity at the close of the Bourse—filled Paris with a clucking of joyful voices and was inscribed in the headlines of the newspapers. On store-fronts, strings of white or colored light-bulbs added to the habitual luxury of illumination as bright as daylight; on the terraces of the cafés, which were overflowing, orchestras played the Marseillaise and the Madelon, and street-hawkers sang new songs, composed by some unknown bard, celebrating the victory of the franc...

On the Boulevard de la Madeleine, I saw the traffic gradually easing, and I had not yet arrived at the Opéra when it had ceased almost completely; the buses were going back to the depot, the taxis to the garage. It was a general strike of rejoicing that Paris granted itself that evening, and the boulevards were soon surrendered to pedestrians alone, whose flood filled them, their feet kicking up the dust of fine holiday evenings, in the odor of fireworks that were being let off here and there. Then there were the open-air dances, which I found

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