Here then are the first lines of the manuscript:
« I continued to be hounded by ill fortune, and this time it was in the person of a man I had known for over seven years and had frequented for two full years without really caring for him. One night at Saint-Rimault, this fellow entered my room on the pretext of paying court to my mother’s chambermaid Beauregard. He approached my bed and said to me: “I beg your pardon.” Then, drawing even closer, he said these words to me: “Oh, it’s been so long that I have loved you.” To which I replied: “I do not love you in the least, nor do I hate you in the least. But you must leave at once, lest my father find out that you have been here at this hour.”
« The following morning, I made so bold as to try to get a glimpse of the man who had declared his love to me the night before. As I looked him over, the only thing I found disagreeable about him was his low station, which was causing him to act in a very reserved manner, even though he did not take his eyes off me. Over the following days, he made considerable efforts to make his outward appearance as pleasing as possible to my sight. And indeed, I found him worthy of love, for he conducted himself in a fashion that made one forget his origins, and he was most brave and noble of heart. »
This young man, as we learn from the narrative of a Celestine monk who was a cousin of Angélique’s, was called La Corbinière and he was none other than the son of a pork butcher from Clermont-sur-Oise who worked for the count d’Haraucourt. It is true that the count, being a marshal of the royal armies, ran his household along military lines and his domestic staff, sporting moustaches and spurs, therefore wore uniforms rather than livery. This may partially explain Angélique’s illusion.
She was very sorry to see La Corbinière leave; he was off to Charleville with her father to visit the duke de Longueville who was suffering from dysentery. — What a terrible illness, the young girl reflected naïvely, for it was preventing her from seeing the man « whose affection did not displease her. » She subsequently met up with him again at Verneuil. Their reunion took place in church. The young man had acquired considerable polish at the court of the duke de Longueville. He was dressed in pearl-gray Spanish cloth and was wearing a lace collar and a gray hat decorated with pearl-gray and yellow plumes. He drew close to her without anybody noticing and said: « Madame, please accept these scented bracelets which I have brought back from Charleville where I was most despondent. »
Senlis. — The evening of All Saints’ Day2 . — (Continued.)
La Corbinière resumed his duties at the castle. He continued to pretend he was infatuated with Beauregard the chambermaid and he convinced her he was visiting her mistress only for her sake. « This simple girl, — Angélique said, — actually took him at his word ... Every evening the three of us would spend two or three jolly hours in the white room of the dungeon of Verneuil. »
The suspicions of a valet by the name of Dourdillie who had been spying on them brought these trysts to an end. The lovers were reduced to corresponding by letters. One night however, Angélique’s father having gone off to Rouen to join up with the duke de Longueville, La Corbinière managed to climb up a crack in the wall and, upon approaching Angélique’s window, threw a pebble at the pane.
The young lady recognized him and, still engaging in her usual deception, said to her chambermaid Beauregard : « I think your lover is out of his mind. He’s in the garden; quick, go down and open up the terrace door. Meanwhile I’ll get dressed and light a candle. »
They saw to it that the young man got some supper « which consisted primarily of liquid viands. The three of us, — the young lady adds, — spent the entire night laughing. »
But, alas, as far as poor gullible Beauregard was concerned, she remained utterly unaware that La Corbinière and the young lady were above all secretly laughing at her for believing he indeed loved her.
When morning came, they hid the young man in the so-called King’s chambers where no one ever set foot; — and from which they would again fetch him once night had fallen. « Over the course of these three days, Angélique notes, his meals consisted of fresh chicken which I brought to him hidden between my chemise and my petticoats. »
In the end La Corbinière was forced to rejoin the count in Paris. One year went by, a melancholy year for Angélique, — whose only distraction was provided by the letters she would write her lover. « I had no other diversions, she observes, for in the absence of his conversation, neither fine jewelry nor beautiful carpets nor elegant clothing could please me ... Only those who have truly loved could fully imagine the bliss of our reunion at Saint-Rimault. I found him even more attractive in the scarlet outfit he was wearing ... »
The nightly trysts resumed. Doudillie the valet had left the castle and his room was now occupied by a falconer by the name of Lavigne who pretended to notice nothing.
Their relations (which remained chaste) continued on in this manner, interrupted only by the La Corbinière’s periodic absences whenever he was called away to accompany the count on his tours of military duty. « It would be impossible, writes Angélique, to describe our bliss during those three years in France. »3
One day, La Corbinière became more brazen. Perhaps he had been somewhat spoiled by the female companionship available to him in Paris. — He came to Angélique’s room very late one night. Her chambermaid was asleep on the floor, she was in her bed. Following their standard charade, he started off by kissing the maid. Then he said: « Let me give your mistress a scare. »
« It was at this point, Angélique adds, that he slipped into my bed while I was asleep, wearing only his under-things. More frightened than delighted, I told him that if he truly loved me he would immediately leave, for it was impossible to take a single step or say a single word in my room without my father hearing. I had great difficulty convincing him to leave. »
Somewhat perplexed, the lover returned to Paris. But by the next time they saw each other, their mutual affection had clearly increased, — as had the suspicions of her parents. — One day when the young lady was sleeping in the so-called King’s chamber, La Corbinière hid himself under a large Turkish rug that covered a table and « went to place himself by her side». Fifty times she begged him to leave, fearing that her father might burst in on them. But even asleep in each other’s arms, their caresses remained pure ...
Such chastity was in the air, — the vogue for Italian poets had ushered a Platonism worthy of Petrarch into fashion, especially in the provinces. The traces of this particular outlook can been observed in the style of the lovely penitent who is the author of these confessions.
The following morning, La Corbinière left the large hall somewhat late. The count, who had gotten up early, noticed him leaving; although he couldn’t be sure whether he had just left his daughter’s quarters or not, he had his suspicions.
« This is why, the young lady adds, my sweet father fell into such a deep melancholy that day and spent all his time talking with my mother; nothing, however, was said to me. »
Three days later the count had to go attend the funeral of his brother-in-law Manicamp. He asked La Corbinière to come along with him, — joined by one of his sons, a groom, and two lackeys. When they had gotten to the middle of the forest of Compiègne, the count went up to the young lover, disarmed him by pulling his sword out of its hilt and placed his pistol to his throat, saying to one of the lackeys: « Take this traitor’s spurs off and frisk him ... »
I don’t know whether this simple story of a young lady and a pork butcher’s son will prove to be entertaining for my readers. It at least has one thing going for it: it is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, entirely true. Everything that I have summarized for you today can be verified in the National Archives. — I have in my possession other documents, no less authentic, that will flesh out this tale.
I am at this very moment traveling through the region where all this took place; you can therefore not cast my exactitude into doubt ...
INTERRUPTION. — RESPONSE TO M. AUGUSTE BERNARD, OF
THE NATIONAL PRINTING HOUSE, MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY OF FRENCH ANTIQUARIANS. — A FABLE. — COMPIÈGNE SENLIS. — CONTINUATION OF THE HISTORY OF THE GREAT AUNT OF THE ABBÉ DE BUCQUOY
In La Presse I come across another well-meaning attack on me to which I am happy to be able to reply en passant, — to use one of the phrases of its author.
I have been accused, in an article of mine deemed quite witty (not much of consolation, this: here in France, everybody is a wit), accused, I say, of having told some tall tales some two months ago, — while discussing the invention of printing. The article is signed by someone whom I must consider my master, — having myself once been, for a while, an apprentice typesetter. But clearly I am still navigating through dangerous waters. — I stand accused of turning vague hearsay into history, of indulging in fables or, worse, of perpetrating novels! — Well, why not just go all the way! Go ahead, denounce me to the commissioners whose business it is, — faithful to the stipulations of the Riancey amendment, — to read through our feuilletons in order to sift the true from the false. This would not be kind on the part of a typographer who is my superior by two hierarchical degrees; — and indeed, perhaps you are unaware of the pickle these sorts of allegations could get me into.
You speak of Gutenberg, Faust, and Schoeffer, making of the first an inventor, of the second a simple capitalist, and of the third the assistant of the second, — who supposedly discovered the idea of movable type all on his own. Let me try to explain to you, historically, that is, what exactly movable type is.
At Upsala there exists a Bible in Latin from the fourth century, entirely printed in movable type. Here is how:
Punches were fabricated to represent all the letters of the alphabet. One would heat them up until they were red-hot and then stamp them one by one in painstaking succession onto sheets of parchment so that they would leave black imprints. It was an abbé from the south of France who, with the help of his monks, managed to carry out this hare-brained scheme. — Except that the idea was not exactly new.
The Romans had long been familiar with this technique of printing names and legends onto the painted frescoes of temple cupolas. The heated punch would mark the letters on the painted surface. Fragments of these inscriptions have been conserved.
While I was recently visiting the museum of Naples, I recognized the bronze punches that had been found in the ruins of Pompeii, — and which contained in relief inscriptions of several lines intended to mark pieces of textile. — And you want to speak about the invention of xylographic printing!
Nobody has ever invented anything: — one simply rediscovers. — If you pass through Harlem, the land of tulips, you will see in its central square a statue of Laurent Coster, before whom I stopped in order to pay my respects and to write a sonnet, which I certainly don’t want to inflict on my readers but which contains a line alluding to the three inventors whose medallion portraits grace the title pages of our stereotype editions:Laurent Coster! Their master ... or rival.
I salute thee!
All the Dutch believe that the image-maker and print-seller Laurent Coster is the true inventor of xylographic printing — to the extent that he came up with a technique to carve into relief on wood the names of Alexander, Caesar, Pallas, and Hector — these blocks of wood in turn being used to print up maps.
But the Dutch are deluding themselves, — and I have no compunctions whatsoever about making this claim, even if they were to attend Techener’s auction on November 20th with the express purpose of hiking up to an impossible price the edition of the History of the escapes from prison of the abbé de Bucquoy which is scheduled to be put up for sale!
A certain tyrant of Sparta by the name of Agis was in the habit of consulting the entrails of victims before launching into battle. He himself was only half-convinced about the validity of these practices, but one had to go with the spirit of the times.
The auguries had been quite discouraging on a number of occasions, perhaps on account of some hocuspocus on the part of the priests ... The tyrant came up with an idea: he would write the word NIKH (victory) on his left palm with a greasy, black substance. He would even write it backwards. — Here, it seems to me, we have an early conception of typography.
In his role as sovereign, it was his duty to rip open the skin of the victims in order to reveal the whitish membrane covering their entrails. Carefully placing his greased left palm on this surface, he printed the word NIKH on it. The Spartans, encouraged by this message from the gods, went on to victoriously wage their battle.
This was a very astute tyrant, — and without rereading his history, I imagine that he probably remained on the throne of Sparta for quite a long time, — a city that was republican only in name, a republic governed by kings! ...
As you see, there is nothing new under the sun.
I have deliberately avoided mentioning the Chinese: a nation that locates the antiquity of its race some seventy-two thousand years in the past clearly has no real value for us as historians. I have seen examples of their typography that only predate our era by one thousand years. It is perhaps correct to maintain that they don’t seem to have invented movable type: — their printing involved strips of wood which were pressed on paper, just as in engraving.
Let’s return via an obvious transition to the abbé de Bucquoy, — whose elusive book might well have been produced by a phantom printing press. Nonetheless Techener will be selling it the 20th. — Until then, let’s try to fill up this feuilleton which is being published under his auspices.
In the neighborhood of Sparta there was another town described by La Fontaine in “The Power of Fables” as a city fickle. A certain orator was haranguing its denizens about the dangers threatening the Republic. No one listened. What did the orator do?A new resource the speaker found.
« Ceres, in a lower tone said he,
Went forth her harvest fields to see.
An eel, as a such might be,
And swallow were her company. »
Having depicted the eel swimming and the swallow flying in order to cross a river, he paused for a moment.
The crowd cried out as one:«And Ceres what did she?
— Why, what she pleased; but first
Yourselves she justly cursed —
A people puzzling up your brains
With children’s tales and children’s play
While Greece puts on her steel array,
To save her limbs from tyrant chains!
Why ask you not what Philip does? »
And the gentleman (a rather false gentleman) then concludes:This feather stuck in Fable’s cap:
We’re all Athenians mayhap
This fable, so true, reminds me of a scene I once witnessed in a public square.
A snake-oil salesman used to set up shop every day on the square of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois; — I imagine this would be prohibited these days. First he would set up his table on a pair of sawhorses, then he would pull three birds out of a crate, taking great care to caress them gently one after the other with his hands, — pretending to lull them asleep.
When the birds appeared to have reached a state of utter immobility, he would call his audience around him by making little tweeting sounds that he produced by means of a tiny bird whistle hidden in his cheeks: « Now, ladies and gentlemen, as you can all see I have just put these birds to sleep. They have been trained to remain completely motionless for several hours. So that the audience can fully appreciate the serenity they have achieved, I will leave them in this state until I have managed to sell twenty bottles of this patent medicine which will not only destroy all insects but cure all illnesses. »
This patter, though familiar to most, nonetheless always impressed a certain number of gawkers.
The sale of twenty vials at fifty centimes a piece was pretty much the maximum the quack could hope for. As a result, after a few vials had been sold, the crowd usually thinned out and all that remained were the usual hangers-on, — curious to see what might happ
en next, — but worldly enough not to allow themselves to be separated from a half a franc. The salesman, unable to unload a decent number of vials, would snatch up his three sleeping birds in a fit of pique and shut them back into their crate, complaining about how bad business was these days.
The people who had gathered around said: « They’re not asleep: they’re dead!»
Or: « They’re just stuffed birds!»
Or: « He’s probably slipped them a potion! ... »
One day, the crowd was finally reduced to a single spectator, — one of those Parisian street urchins who won’t take no for an answer and always wants to get to the bottom of things. — The birds were just being put back into their crate when some out-of-towners chanced by and bought up far more than the requisite twenty vials.
Since they had not heard the first portion of the patter, they left the scene without demanding to see the birds wake up again and go back to work in front of the public.
But the urchin hadn’t missed a trick: having carefully counted up the number of bottles that had been sold, he sauntered up to the table and said:
« So what about the birds? »
The salesman looked at him with a mixture of contempt and compassion, proceeded to close up the crate, and addressed the child with a well-known phrase in argot, which I won’t quote here out of respect for the ladies, — but which more or less meant: « Get a life! »
Please don’t accuse me of regaling you with mere frivolities: this little story can be read as an allegory of the workings of political parties. How often has the gullible public been swindled by dead, — or stuffed, — birds!
I would not want to play a similar role vis-à-vis my readers. I am not even trying to here imitate those story-tellers of Constantinople or Cairo who, falling back on a time-honored stratagem, interrupt their tale just as the suspense is reaching its height so that the crowd will return to the same café the following day. — The history of the abbé de Bucquoy indeed exists; I shall locate it in due course.
The Salt Smugglers Page 6
