May.
Who would recognise the City of Books now? There are flowerseverywhere--even upon all the articles of furniture. Jeanne was right:those roses do look very nice in that blue china vase. She goes tomarket every day with Therese, under the pretext of helping the oldservant to make her purchases, but she never brings anything back withher except flowers. Flowers are really very charming creatures. And oneof these days, I must certainly carry out my plan, and devote myself tothe study of them, in their own natural domain, in the country--with allthe science and earnestness which I possess.
For what have I to do here? Why should I burn my eyes out over these oldparchments which cannot now tell me anything worth knowing? I used tostudy them, these old texts, with the most ardent enjoyment. What wasit which I was then so anxious to find in them? The date of a piousfoundation--the name of some monkish imagier or copyist--the price ofa loaf, of an ox, or of a field--some judicial or administrativeenactment--all that, and yet something more, a Something vaguelymysterious and sublime which excited my enthusiasm. But for sixty yearsI have been searching in vain for that Something. Better men than I--themasters, the truly great, the Fauriels, the Thierrys, who found so manythings--died at their task without having been able, any more than Ihave been, to find that Something which, being incorporeal, has no name,and without which, nevertheless, no great mental work would ever beundertaken in this world. And now that I am only looking for what Ishould certainly be able to find, I cannot find anything at all; andit is probable that I shall never be able to finish the history of theAbbots of Saint-Germain-des-Pres.
"Guardian, just guess what I have in my handkerchief."
"Judging from appearances, Jeanne, I should say flowers."
"Oh, no--not flowers. Look!"
I look, and I see a little grey head poking itself out of thehandkerchief. It is the head of a little grey cat. The handkerchiefopens; the animal leaps down upon the carpet, shakes itself, pricks upfirst one ear and then the other, and begins to examine with due cautionthe locality and the inhabitants thereof.
Therese, out of breath, with her basket on her arm, suddenly makes herappearance in time to take an objective part in this examination, whichdoes not appear to result altogether in her favour; for the young catmoves slowly away from her, without, however, venturing near my legs, orapproaching Jeanne, who displays extraordinary volubility in the use ofcaressing appellations. Therese, whose chief fault is her inabilityto hide her feelings, thereupon vehemently reproaches Mademoiselle forbringing home a cat that she did not know anything about. Jeanne, inorder to justify herself, tells the whole story. While she was passingwith Therese before a chemist's shop, she saw the assistant kick alittle cat into the street. The cat, astonished and frightened, seemedto be asking itself whether to remain in the street where it was beingterrified and knocked about by the people passing by, or whether to goback into the chemist's even at the risk of being kicked out a secondtime. Jeanne thought it was in a very critical position, and understoodits hesitation. It looked so stupid; and she knew it looked stupid onlybecause it could not decide what to do. So she took it up in her arms.And as it had not been able to obtain any rest either indoors outout-of-doors, it allowed her to hold it. Then she stroked and petted itto keep it from being afraid, and boldly went to the chemist's assistantand said,
"If you don't like that animal, you mustn't beat it; you must give it tome."
"Take it," said the assistant.
... "Now there!" adds Jeanne, by way of conclusion; and then she changesher voice again to a flute-tone in order to say all kinds of sweetthings to the cat.
"He is horribly thin," I observe, looking at the wretchedanimal;--"moreover, he is horribly ugly." Jeanne thinks he is not uglyat all, but she acknowledges that he looks even more stupid than helooked at first: this time she thinks it not indecision, but surprise,which gives that unfortunate aspect to his countenance. She asks us toimagine ourselves in his place;--then we are obliged to acknowledge thathe cannot possibly understand what has happened to him. And then we allburst out laughing in the face of the poor little beast, which maintainsthe most comical look of gravity. Jeanne wants to take him up; but hehides himself under the table, and cannot even be tempted to come out bythe lure of a saucer of milk.
We all turn our backs and promise not to look; when we inspect thesaucer again, we find it empty.
"Jeanne," I observe, "your protege has a decidedly tristful aspect ofcountenance; he is of sly and suspicious disposition; I trust he is notgoing to commit in the City of Books any such misdemeanours as mightrender it necessary for us to send him back to his chemist's shop. Inthe meantime we must give him a name. Suppose we call him 'Don Grisde Gouttiere'; but perhaps that is too long. 'Pill,' 'Drug,' or'Castor-oil' would be short enough, and would further serve to recallhis early condition in life. What do you think about it?
"'Pill' would not sound bad," answers Jeanne, "but it would be veryunkind to give him a name which would be always reminding him of themisery from which we saved him. It would be making him pay too dearlyfor our hospitality. Let us be more generous, and give him a prettyname, in hopes that he is going to deserve it. See how he looks at us!He knows that we are talking about him. And now that he is no longerunhappy, he is beginning to look a great deal less stupid. I am notjoking! Unhappiness does make people look stupid,--I am perfectly sureit does."
"Well, Jeanne, if you like, we will call your protege Hannibal. Theappropriateness of that name does not seem to strike you at once. Butthe Angora cat who preceded him here as an intimate of the City ofBooks, and to whom I was in the habit of telling all my secrets--for hewas a very wise and discreet person--used to be called Hamilcar. It isnatural that this name should beget the other, and that Hannibal shouldsucceed Hamilcar."
We all agreed upon this point.
"Hannibal!" cried Jeanne, "come here!"
Hannibal, greatly frightened by the strange sonority of his own name,ran to hid himself under a bookcase in an orifice so small that a ratcould not have squeezed himself into it.
A nice way of doing credit to so great a name!
I was in a good humour for working that day, and I had just dipped thenib of my pen into the ink-bottle when I heard some one ring. Should anyone ever read these pages written by an unimaginative old man, hewill be sure to laugh at the way that bell keeps ringing through mynarrative, without ever announcing the arrival of a new personage orintroducing any unexpected incident. On the stage things are managedon the reverse principle. Monsieur Scribe never has the curtain raisedwithout good reason, and for the greater enjoyment of ladies and youngmisses. That is art! I would rather hang myself than write a play,--notthat I despise life, but because I should never be able to inventanything amusing. Invent! In order to do that one must have receivedthe gift of inspiration. It would be a very unfortunate thing for meto possess such a gift. Suppose I were to invent some monkling in myhistory of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pres! What would our youngerudites say? What a scandal for the School! As for the Institute, itwould say nothing and probably not even think about the matter either.Even if my colleagues still write a little sometimes, they never read.They are of the opinion of Parny, who said,
"Une paisible indifference Est la plus sage des vertus." ["The most wise of the virtues is a calm indifference."]
To be the least wise in order to become the most wise--this is preciselywhat those Buddhists are aiming at without knowing it. If there is anywiser wisdom than that I will go to Rome to report upon it.... And allthis because Monsieur Gelis happened to ring the bell!
This young man has latterly changed his manner completely with Jeanne.He is now quite as serious as he used to be frivolous, and quite assilent as he used to be chatty. And Jeanne follows his example. We havereached the phase of passionate love under constraint. For, old as Iam, I cannot be deceived about it: these two children are violentlyand sincerely in love with each other. Jeanne now avoids him--she hidesherself in her room when he comes
into the library--but how well sheknows how to reach him when she is alone! alone at her piano! Everyevening she talks to him through the music she plays with a rich thrillof passional feeling which is the new utterance of her new soul.
Well, why should I not confess it? Why should I not avow my weakness?Surely my egotism would not become any less blameworthy by keeping ithidden from myself? So I will write it. Yes! I was hoping for somethingelse;--yes! I thought I was going to keep her all to myself, as my ownchild, as my own daughter--not always, of course, not even perhaps forvery long, but just for a few short years more. I am so old! Could shenot wait? And, who knows? With the help of the gout, I would not haveimposed upon her patience too much. That was my wish; that was my hope.I had made my plans--I had not reckoned upon the coming of this wildyoung man. But the mistake is none the less cruel because my reckoninghappened to be wrong. And yet it seems to me that you are condemningyourself very rashly, friend Sylvestre Bonnard: if you did want to keepthis young girl a few years longer, it was quite as much in her owninterest as in yours. She has a great deal to learn yet, and you arenot a master to be despised. When that miserable notary Mouche--whosubsequently committed his rascalities at so opportune a moment--paidyou the honour of a visit, you explained to him your ideas of educationwith all the fervour of high enthusiasm. Then you attempted to put thatsystem of yours into practice;--Jeanne is certainly an ungrateful girl,and Gelis a much too seductive young man!
But still,--unless I put him out of the house, which would be adetestably ill-mannered and ill-natured thing to do,--I must continue toreceive him. He has been waiting ever so long in my little parlour, infront of those Sevres vases with which King Louis Philippe so graciouslypresented me. The Moissonneurs and the Pecheurs of Leopold Robert arepainted upon those porcelain vases, which Gelis nevertheless dares tocall frightfully ugly, with the warm approval of Jeanne, whom he hasabsolutely bewitched.
"My dear lad, excuse me for having kept you waiting so long. I had alittle bit of work to finish."
I am telling the truth. Meditation is work, but of course Gelis does notknow what I mean; he thinks I am referring to something archaeological,and, his question in regard to the health of Mademoiselle Jeanne havingbeen answered by a "Very well indeed," uttered in that extremely drytone which reveals my moral authority as guardian, we begin toconverse about historical subjects. We first enter upon generalities.Generalities are sometimes extremely serviceable. I try to inculcateinto Monsieur Gelis some respect for that generation of historians towhich I belong. I say to him,
"History, which was formerly an art, and which afforded place for thefullest exercise of the imagination, has in our time become a science,the study of which demands absolute exactness of knowledge."
Gelis asks leave to differ from me on this subject. He tells me he doesnot believe that history is a science, or that it could possibly everbecome a science.
"In the first place," he says to me, "what is history? The writtenrepresentation of past events. But what is an event? Is it merelya commonplace fact? It is any fact? No! You say yourself it is anoteworthy fact. Now, how is the historian to tell whether a fact isnoteworthy or not? He judges it arbitrarily, according to his tastes andhis caprices and his ideas--in short, as an artist? For facts cannot byreason of their own intrinsic character be divided into historical factsand non-historical facts. But any fact is something exceedingly complex.Will the historian represent facts in all their complexity? No, that isimpossible. Then he will represent them stripped of the greater partof the peculiarities which constituted them, and consequentlylopped, mutilated, different from what they really were. As for theinter-relation of facts, needless to speak of it! If a so-calledhistorical fact be brought into notice--as is very possible--by one ormore facts which are not historical at all, and are for that very reasonunknown, how is the historian going to establish the relation ofthese facts one to another? And in saying this, Monsieur Bonnard, I amsupposing that the historian has positive evidence before him, whereasin reality he feels confidence only in such or such a witness forsympathetic reasons. History is not a science; it is an art, and onecan succeed in that art only through the exercise of his faculty ofimagination."
Monsieur Gelis reminds me very much at this moment of a certainyoung fool whom I heard talking wildly one day in the garden of theLuxembourg, under the statue of Marguerite of Navarre. But at anotherturn of the conversation we find ourselves face to face with WalterScott, whose work my disdainful young friend pleases to term "rococo,troubadourish, and only fit to inspire somebody engaged in makingdesigns for cheap bronze clocks." Those are his very words!
"Why!" I exclaim, zealous to defend the magnificent creator of 'TheBride of Lammermoor' and 'The Fair Maid of Perth,' "the whole past livesin those admirable novels of his;--that is history, that is epic!"
"It is frippery," Gelis answers me.
And,--will you believe it?--this crazy boy actually tells me that nomatter how learned one may be, one cannot possibly know just how menused to live five or ten centuries ago, because it is only with the verygreatest difficulty that one can picture them to oneself even as theywere only ten or fifteen years ago. In his opinion, the historical poem,the historical novel, the historical painting, are all, according totheir kind, abominably false as branches of art.
"In all the arts," he adds, "the artist can only reflect his ownsoul. His work, no matter how it may be dressed up, is of necessitycontemporary with himself, being the reflection of his own mind. What dowe admire in the 'Divine Comedy' unless it be the great soul of Dante?And the marbles of Michael Angelo, what do they represent to us thatis at all extraordinary unless it be Michael Angelo himself? The artisteither communicates his own life to his creations, or else merelywhittles out puppets and dresses up dolls."
What a torrent of paradoxes and irreverences! But boldness in a youngman is not displeasing to me. Gelis gets up from his chair and sitsdown again. I know perfectly well what is worrying him, and whom he iswaiting for. And now he begins to talk to me about his being able tomake fifteen hundred francs a year, to which he can add the revenuehe derives from a little property that he has inherited--two thousandfrancs a year more. And I am not in the least deceived as to the purposeof these confidences on his part. I know perfectly well that he is onlymaking his little financial statements in order to persuade me thathe is comfortably circumstanced, steady, fond of home, comparativelyindependent--or, to put the matter in the fewest words possible, able tomarry. Quod erat demonstrandum,--as the geometricians say.
He has got up and sat down just twenty times. He now rises for thetwenty-first time; and, as he has not been able to see Jeanne, he goesaway feeling as unhappy as possible.
The moment he has gone, Jeanne comes into the City of Books, under thepretext of looking for Hannibal. She is also quite unhappy; and hervoice becomes singularly plaintive as she calls her pet to give him somemilk. Look at that sad little face, Bonnard! Tyrant, gaze upon thy work!Thou hast been able to keep them from seeing each other; but they havenow both of them the same expression of countenance, and thou mayestdiscern from that similarity of expression that in spite of thee theyare united in thought. Cassandra, be happy! Bartholo, rejoice! This iswhat it means to be a guardian! Just see her kneeling down there on thecarpet with Hannibal's head between her hands!
Yes, caress the stupid animal!--pity him!--moan over him!--we know verywell, you little rogue, the real cause of all these sighs and plaints!Nevertheless, it makes a very pretty picture. I look at it for a longtime; then, throwing a glance around my library, I exclaim,
"Jeanne, I am tired of all those books; we must sell them."
The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard Page 37
