Chapter 22 - Inspiration

"Arrogance! What damnable arrogance." Apparently, Amand understood Joseph's words.

　　"Perhaps not arrogance." Joseph said thoughtfully, "but rather just isolation - the isolation of the top from the bottom. The people of France are filled with anger at the top, but the top may not perceive it, or even feel it at all. The king and queen were surrounded by fawning favorites, living in places where they couldn't see the bottom at all, and any other voices didn't reach them, so they did what they did. This is bad because it can lead to explosive consequences. Accumulated anger, if not channeled, is bound to have devastating consequences when it erupts. It's like a flood breaking a levee. Art should really serve two purposes at this point, one is to warn the higher-ups of the danger. Because art is one of the few ways to get the top to notice the bottom. The other is to pacify the lower classes. Something like Mr. Beaumarchais' "The Marriage of Figaro," for example, actually tries hard to accomplish such a task. His satire of Count Almaviva is a warning to the upper classes, and his making Figaro happy in the play is, in a sense, a way of placating the lower classes. Nowadays, though, it seems that his warnings carry insufficient weight and don't seem to have really alerted the upper classes, and it's hard to say how much of a pacifying effect they have had. So the comedians then increased the power of satire even further, but from the looks of it, it's been months since the play was performed and nothing has happened to the comedians, so I guess it's still not very effective."

　　Everyone nodded as they listened. Only Fanny didn't seem to understand and asked:

　　"So, Mr. Bonaparte, what, if anything, has happened at the Comedy Club to indicate that it's working?"

　　"No matter what happens, even if it means that the Comedy Troupe is arrested in one fell swoop and stuffed under a bus to feed the rats, or even that one by one, their heads are chopped off, that would at least show that the upper echelons care about these things. Now, what about now, after all this time and nothing has happened, it only shows that the top doesn't care at all." Joseph replied.

　　"So, The Marriage of Figaro still isn't snarky enough." Samuel said.

　　"Joseph, maybe we should write a script that's a little more exciting, let's see, what should we write ..." Amand pondered.

　　"How about writing about Charles I? The English king who got his head chopped off." Joseph said. He knew that if history didn't change drastically, Louis XVI, King of France, ended up with his head cut off for treason, just like Charles I.

　　"This is too revealing." Samuel shook his head, "If you write this, you and Armand could literally be thrown into the Bastille and fed to the rats. Besides, there aren't many theater companies that would dare to perform something so vitriolic. I think, if we really want to write about it, let's write about North American independence. That's revolting against a tyrant, too."

　　"That seems good," Armand said, "Samuel, you've had firsthand experience with just the right kind of thing to help us."

　　"But North America is alone overseas. And considering the role France played in the independence of North America, if we write this, maybe, the king will think we are singing our praises." Joseph said.

　　"How is that possible? The king isn't a fool." Samuel said.

　　"There's nothing impossible, the king isn't, but some of the guys around him will confuse him and mislead him. Even the scripts that His Majesty sees, the performances that he sees, are not always normal." Joseph shook his head. This similar tactic of confusing the top was, in his opinion, too simple.

　　"Jesus, how did you come up with this? Joseph, you have a chance to be a traitorous minister." Amand looked at Joseph and kept shaking his head.

　　"You can't insult me like that." Joseph's eyes widened as he put on a very angry look and retorted, "You have to know, how can someone like me become a traitorous minister? At least it should be a big traitor ah."

　　Everyone laughed at these words, even Fanny, who was a bit worried at first because of Joseph's very harsh tone, laughed out loud in spite of herself.

　　Amang pressed his hand against his stomach while pounding his hand on the armrest of his chair, and after a while he said, "Joseph, I apologize, you won't be a traitor, you'll be a great big clown ... hahahahaha!"

　　Everyone laughed for a moment before Amand added, "Stop laughing, seriously, do you guys have any more suggestions? I mean about my new play."

　　"How about Spartacus?" Fanny snapped, "Well, Spartacus was the bottom of the resistance, that can't be changed, and ... and the historical accounts of him are sketchy, which leaves very ample room for freewheeling creativity, it should be a good choice!"

　　Now that Fanny had opened her mouth, Armand immediately voiced his support, "I think it's good. I came up with a series of great plots almost immediately. Well, like how Spartacus fights a tiger in a gladiator arena, and then ..."

　　"And then, for example, we could have Spartacus, through his victory in the gladiatorial arena, have already qualified as a free man, but he decides that all men should be born free. It is considered the duty of every good man to overthrow slavery, in which man oppresses man and man exploits man. So although he had won freedom for himself, he was not satisfied with it, but threw himself into the struggle to free all slaves!" Joseph, in the spirit of watching what was going on, added.

　　"Right, right! We can also say, through the mouth of Spartacus, 'All men are created equal, and the pursuit of freedom and happiness and resistance to oppression is a sacred and inalienable right'." Samuel also hastened to interject.

　　"Are you going to make Spartacus from thousands of years ago recite the North American Declaration of Independence? That's a bit too much." Fanny spoke up.

　　"What else would it be? Do we make him open his mouth and recite the Gospels?" Samuel said, "Even though Spartacus is thousands of years old, we wrote him in order to give him the voice that we need to give in modern times."

　　"Mr. Fermat is right." Joseph agreed, "All history is contemporary history. Interpretations of history have never been in the service of reality. If you ask me, perhaps we could be even more daring, after the Battle of Apulia, Crassus crucified all six thousand or so captured slaves. We could well represent this scene on stage, posing the crucified slaves in the same manner as Christ on the cross, and even prepare a choir to sing a hymn of the rebels at this very moment."

　　"This ... Joseph ... I remember that your godfather was a bishop." Amand was rather dumbfounded.

　　"The bishop agreed that the Church today has departed from the spirit of Christ in many places." Joseph said without changing his face.

　　"I rather think that Monsieur Bonaparte's idea is very original, and I think that if Monsieur Voltaire were still alive, he would like it very much. Well, Mr. Bonaparte, are you good at music?" Fanny asked with a twinkle in her eye.

　　Joseph listened and smiled, "I'm practically illiterate when it comes to music."

　　"That's so." Fanny said with a bit of disappointment, "We're all a bunch of musical illiterates here as well, so who can we get to write this hymn for the rebels?"

　　"Fanny, this isn't that hard, we just need to write the lyrics and then find a musician to set it to a tune." Armand said, "Of course, good lyrics, as well as good tunes aren't easy to come by. Well, I'm filled with the desire to create now."

　　"Brother, your desire to create won't last even a week." Fanny smiled.

　　"You're right, Fanny. If I didn't have such a problem, I would be the new Sophocles. I'll try to keep it under control, though. Also, Joseph, you have to help me." Armand said.

　　"If I'm free, I'll do my best." Joseph said, "But at least lately, I'm afraid I can't help much. As you know, I've been rather busy lately."

　　"What have you been busy with lately, Mr. Bonaparte?" Samuel asked.

　　"Joseph has had an important experiment to do recently." Armand said, "It seems to be about how to determine the speed of light. My uncle praised the experiment as being very cleverly designed. In addition, he also has to make some preparations to enter the Officers' School in Paris as a math teacher. Well, Joseph, your brother is at the Paris Officers' School. Did he have any reaction when he found out that you were going to be his teacher?"

　　"I haven't told him yet." Joseph said, "Because I want to see how he reacts in class when he suddenly finds out that the math teacher is me."

　　"I can imagine that would be very interesting." Fanny laughed.

　　The conversation then turned back to how to tease their brother. Fanny was very much offering suggestions, many of which according to her his brother had used to tease her in the first place.

　　Everyone was energized and offered Joseph suggestions on how to play tricks on his brother. If the butler hadn't come over and reminded them that dinner was ready, there was no telling how many bad ideas the guys would have come up with.

　　"Alright, let's go to the dining room." Viscount Lavoisier stood up and said, "I just got a few bottles of nice wine ..."

　　The rules for dinner at Amand's house were completely different from Joseph's house. There were none of those stereotypical rules at all, and everyone could still talk and laugh even during dinner. Everyone again went from Viscount Lavoisier's red wine and messed around all the way to Ceylon's black tea then to Mediterranean mackerel, then somehow to the Nile's crocodiles and hippos. But the French really deserve to be Europe's foodies, pulling to go, pulling to something although more, but the topic is always only so three things: can eat? Is it good? How to eat? I have to say, in this regard, the French are very much like the Chinese.