714
PARTISAN REVIEW
His inherited sadism finds its outlet in two exclusive passions: killing all
the animals that come into his sight, and keeping his whole family bent
over knitting machines from dawn to sunset. The family, the neighbors,
the local priest have been asking for mercy, and preaching Christian
virtues to him. All in vain. Until, one day, Saint Francis in person appears
to him, and hands him a copy of the
Little Flowers.
Reading of Saint
Francis, Count Clerambard undergoes absolute conversion. No work any
more, no concern for the future, and mercy even for flies, spiders and
fleas. Pure Franciscanism is now the inflexible law. The whole family
must now take the open road, preaching poverty and meekness, and
living by charity. Resistance to such a strong character is impossible, but
there is a lot of frightened objection by the family, and a detennined
effort on the part of the parish priest to introduce a sceptical nota into
such frenzy. But all doubt is overcome when, evoked by Clerambard,
Saint Francis makes himself visible to the assembled family. Not to the
priest, however, who is left to his positivistic bewilderment.
The farce, of course, has no particular meaning, and it would be
absurd to ask oneself whether Ayme sides with Clerambard or with the
priest. He sides with the most comical, naturally, and this is up to the
spectator to decide on.
Yet, after the first performance of the play, Franc;ois Mauriac, that
jansenistic champion of Western civilization, wrote a sulphurous article
denouncing Aymes frivolous impiety, and threatening him with the same
hell where Voltaire, Rousseau, and Anatole France, are burning. Marcel
Ayme could have retorted with one of his stories, which is about Paradise
during a certain war, when all the worst characters were admitted, pro–
vided they wore uniforms, and the crowd was so big that there was not
a single place left for a true believer.
Nicola Chiaromonte
