Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  The critical moment had come, one side or the other had to win a victory, and the traders, determined that the victory should be on their side, came out armed with hatchets and knives and great earthenware jars, every weapon they could lay hands on, and all night long the war was waged through the rue Coupe-Gueule, rue du Gros-Pet, rue de la Grande Truanderie, rue du Pet, rue Mederal, rue du Cul-de-Pet, rue Pute-y-Muce, rue Coup-de-Baton, rue Prise-Miche, rue de Trou-Punais, rue Tire-Pet, rue du Petit-Pet, and through the narrow laneways, stews and entanglements of these streets. It is said that three hundred students were killed during the course of the night, and their bodies thrown into the river, for they had to be got rid of. The traders too must have lost many, so fierce was the fighting, the Canon said, and after speaking of the great number of wounded students, many hundreds, the Canon’s guests sallied forth in the hope that they would reach home in safety, it not being likely that after so severe a defeat the students would attempt to attack the hapless passenger, an assumption that proved true for that evening at least. Canon Fulbert’s guests reached Notre-Dame without meeting with any disagreeable adventure, nothing more than the spectacle of a duel in progress, an excellent swordsman who had come out without his sword defending himself with a cane against a street bully.

  And philosophers, lute-players and prelates watched him striving to reach his opponent’s eyes and mouth, where the cane could wound. Now he will be killed for certain, said Alberic, and he and Romuald were about to intervene when with a simple dégagement a dangerous thrust was parried and the cane passing over the assailant’s guard entered his open mouth, putting an end to the combat. A fine swordsman, said Alberic, who would have put you all to flight had he been armed. Whereupon the friends of the wounded man cried: so thou wouldst argue the point with us? But seeing that Alberic and Romuald had friends behind them they desisted, and Alberic and Romuald returned to their friends, who rated them for their foolhardiness, asking why they should come between friends who had chosen to quarrel. Why, indeed, said Romuald, since swordsmanship proceeds out of friendship, like the egg from the hen; we can’t have one without the other. Whereupon somebody said that it would be well to hasten, for delay might cause them to fall in with some prowling students who might claim their friendship. So they marched on, all in agreement that Paris was at that moment much too friendly, and that it was unwise for those living on either bank of the river to remain on the city island after dusk. And before reaching the Little Bridge it was remembered that the evenings would be shorter next week, that they were nearing the end of the still autumn weather without doubt, though it seemed hard to believe that in a few days loud winds would be whirling round corners of streets and the dry streets under their feet would be turned once more into a very liquid mud. An aureoled moon, somebody said, is a certain sign of a change in the weather.

  CHAP. V.

  I HOPE OUR guests will arrive home safely, and she stood looking up and down the street, still full of students. A hazy moon is a sure sign of rain, said the Canon; we shall have rain to-morrow or the next day, and high winds, and no further venturing out to assemblies for singing and luteplaying or theological discussion. If it hadn’t been for thy courage ill blows would have been exchanged and our philosophers carried home on stretchers, in thy words, like students after a broil in a wineshop. No more assemblies this year? Héloïse said. Ah! so thou’rt craving after more luteplaying and singing, and maybe the lute-players, too, have a place in thy thoughts. I was thinking, uncle, of the philosophers rather than the lute-players. For before coming to fisticuffs they argued well, and I don’t know now whether Nominalism or Realism would have had the upper hand if charges of heresy hadn’t been made. So, niece, thy clever brain was able to follow the argument, a subtle one; well-matched the sides were and equal the weapons; and it is a pity that heresy cannot be barred and reason given fair play, the last word, of course, being with the Church. At that moment the Canon turned into the house, and sitting face to face the twain talked before bedtime, Héloïse putting questions and learning from her uncle that Roscelin, Canon of Compïègne, was the first exponent of the doctrine of Nominalism, carrying it even to its extreme, not hesitating to say that the three persons of the Trinity were made from different substances, thereby falling into the heresy of Tritheism, the doctrine that there are three Gods.

  The Canon would have liked to expatiate in the arguments put forward by Roscelin and his opponent William de Champeaux, but Héloïse, who had heard Plato and Aristotle spoken of, was eager to know how they came into the controversy, and she asked which was the Nominalist and which the Realist. The Canon shuffled, for his knowledge of Plato was not enough to make this plain to her. I have the Timæus, he said, and thou’lt find Socrates in it; but as he has no care for the science of nature he passes over the task of exposition to the Pythagorean philosopher. Of Socrates I have heard, Héloïse replied, but know very little about him, no more than that he was a great Dialectician. He was that, Fulbert answered, but not after the manner of the two Dialecticians who were about to break each other’s heads half-an-hour ago in the room above us. All we have of Plato in Latin is the Timæus, and it is pretty hard reading, I can tell thee; very unsuited for a girl’s brain, but being given to learning as a girl never was before, take it. He put the book into her hands, which she opened at once. No, no, not now; leave it on thy desk and to-morrow morning thou canst take thy fill of it. But thou hast not given me Aristotle, uncle, and I would compare him with Plato.

  A strange girl, indeed, he said, and going to his cupboard he took out the Categories and handed them to her, saying: now to bed; Madelon is in hers, and we should follow her example. To-morrow will be long enough to satisfy thy curiosity. At these words, uttered superciliously, Héloïse sulked a little, not liking her desire of learning to be sneered at; all the same she had no heart for books at the moment, being tired, and went to her bed wondering how much Nominalism and Realism she would find in the Greeks. A wonderful people, she said, and fell asleep full of projects for the study of the Greek language. The arts and learning began and were completed by the Greeks. A wonderful people, she said to herself during the night; for since their day the world has done little else than to remember and forget. And in the morning while lying awake thinking of the two books that awaited her, her almost dream words returned to her. With which shall I begin? she asked herself. A suspicion that Plato was the Realist decided her choice, and the day was spent in the pleasure of a new book without it becoming apparent to her how Plato had come to concern himself with the questions that now agitated all men. She pursued her inquiry steadily, though disappointed to find little of the Dialectic, the new science, or the old science that Plato had invented, or was it Socrates — who was more or less Plato’s invention — in the Timœus. Instead of what she was looking for she found an account of the world’s soul, which was not God but one of God’s creatures, and the story that from out the world’s soul came the spirits that guide the planets. And then, she said, turning the page, we seem to come down to human souls. But what is this? God plunges the soul into the flux of matter, which has a perturbing influence; and the souls have to recover their original nature, and when they have done this they return to the stars, whence they came. But Plato could not have meant all this literally, she said, and resolving not to be turned aside from the book (which was, of course, one of the world’s books) by certain surface difficulties, she plunged into the physics of the Timœus and read on, page after page, all that day and the next day and many days after, now and again laying the book aside to pick up the Categories of Aristotle and indulge herself in another bewilderment. But though he was easier to understand than Plato he did not please her so much, and she laid the Categories aside, saying: if Plato can be attractive in physics, how much more attractive must he be in the other books? Why haven’t we got the Banquet? Ah! I must learn Greek; and she fell to thinking how long it would take her to learn to read Greek as easily as Latin. Two or three years, sh
e said, and took up the Categories again, saying to herself: there’s no use thinking about learning Greek; if I cannot understand these books in Latin how much less shall I understand them in Greek?

  After diligent reading her curiosity was partly satisfied. There is, she said, one day, certainly a hint in Aristotle of the doctrine of the Nominalists. Here we have it: there are no primary substances but individuals.

  She became so absorbed in the writings of these two great men that she hardly noticed the Canon in the evenings. Even when she laid her book aside, her thoughts were far away; and she did not seem to feel the cold, though the winter was now upon them, great violence of wind raging round the pointed towers and the peaked gables, storms of wind and rain, bleak, cold rain that only just escaped being snow. The Canon often asked himself of what she could be thinking as she sat looking into the smouldering log, the last one that they dared to throw into the grate that evening. He guessed her to be lost in Plato, so impassive was her face. No, she replied to his question: art thinking of Plato or Aristotle? no; I was not thinking of either. I was thinking, she said, of the wonderful Greek language, which, alas! we do not trouble to learn. Her casual sententiousness annoyed the Canon, but he restrained himself, saying to himself: let her think of the wonderful Greek language, and begin it when she pleases. But how is all this to end? And forgetful of her, he fell to considering the mistake he had made, for he was now certain that he had not done well when he yielded to his conscience (or to some nervous scruple that he had mistaken for his conscience) and sent Madelon to Argenteuil with instructions that she was to bring Héloïse back with her. On a more senseless errand a woman was never sent, so it seemed to him in his present petulance, for if Héloïse were seriously minded to take the veil, it were folly to bring her to Paris; and if she were not seriously minded to take the veil, how could he have been beguiled into believing that she would return to Argenteuil at the end of a week’s visit?

  To be just, she had never asked to extend her visit. It was to please him that she consented to spend the autumn with him — his purpose being that she should read Virgil, and after Virgil Ovid, and after Ovid Tibullus. But now she was reading Plato and Aristotle, and with the same interest as she had read the poets. He did not know, and as likely as not she did not know herself, whether she preferred poetry to philosophy or philosophy to poetry; she was earnest and studious but without direction in her studies, and mere acquisition of knowledge for knowledge’s sake is vanity. But this new craze would not last; the next one might be astronomy or — He hoped it would not be astrology, for the Church looks with no kindly eye on that science.... If he had been true to his instinct and left her in the convent, only going to see her when she took the white veil, perhaps not then — not till she took her final vows — her life would have been settled advantageously, for with her intelligence and gift for study she could not fail to reach the position of abbess in some great community: Benedictines, Cistercians or Carmelites, it mattered not which. But the abbess he foresaw, himself had killed. She would not return to the nuns. Her ambition would find satisfaction in the books that he had locked up so that she should not see them (for his instinct was right from the beginning); but alas! he had put Virgil’s Æneid into her hands, and humoured by her eagerness and admiration of the hexameters he had said that she must not return yet awhile to Argenteuil, not before she had read all the Latin poets. Himself was the source and origin of all this vexation, and his thoughts taking a sudden turn, he remembered that she had never spoken of religion and had no care for stories of miracles, listening with unmoved face and catching at the first chance to speak of something else, wearing usually a smile on her lips when the talk was about relics; she had even laughed a little when one of his colleagues spoke of the Virgin’s milk, a flask of which was now being brought to Europe, saying that she did not see how the milk could have been preserved through the centuries. The preservation was part of the miracle, and though it might be argued that miracles were becoming perhaps a little common, Héloïse’s scorn of the story (if scorn was too strong a word, lack of reverence was not) showed him that his mistake in sending Madelon to fetch her from Argenteuil was not such a mistake as it seemed at first sight. For the further knowledge that he had acquired of her during this visit led him to doubt if there were the makings of a nun in her; she would have returned to him sooner or later, and if that were so, it was well she had not delayed longer in the convent, for she was a well-figured girl, pleasant to look upon: her shapely head framed in brown shining hair, her grey, idealistic eyes and her alert voice were enough to win for her some great baron or count. Her intelligence and learning had already made her known to everybody in Paris, and would make her known to everybody who came to Paris at Easter. But here again Héloïse seemed to fail him, for men did not attract her; and he remembered that she spoke to one man as she did to the next one, to Alberic as she did to Romuald, and from Romuald he had seen her turn to one of his friends, a man as old as himself, with the same smile on her face, the same look in her eyes.

  A strange, perplexing girl, he said; one who takes as much pleasure in talking to the oldest canon as she does in talking to the youngest man. Everybody likes her, everybody praises her, but nobody takes her into the corners of the room to talk apart with her, nor does she encourage anybody to follow her into corners for private little talks; her coldness chills; and looking still more deeply into her character he concluded that her vice was a certain aloofness, if aloofness may be called a vice. Well, there are plenty of the other sort about, so it may be well that there should be one like her. And thus did the Canon think of his niece whilst he and she shivered together by the insufficient fire, and so did he often think as he left the house to go to the Cathedral; and if he met a colleague on his way thither the first words that were addressed to him were a question: how is Héloïse? Is she reading Aristotle or is she reading Plato, or has she gone back to Virgil? Everybody admires Héloïse, everybody likes her, everybody talks about her, and I am proud of her, he said. But when I am no longer by her, when she is alone in the world — And he fell to thinking of his years. And then, his thoughts returning to Philippe, he said: I should not like to meet him on the thither side and not be able to tell him that she was well married or an abbess — if not already an abbess, at least on her way to being one.

  So whether going to the Cathedral or from the Cathedral, he was always thinking of Héloïse, making plans for her, saying to himself: it does not follow, because she did not like the few students I was able to invite to my house, that she might not love a great noble, a count, a baron; men and women usually love those within their own circle. Héloïse is a Coetlogon on her mother’s side, and her grandparents may one day relent; if they do, Héloïse may accept their patronage. Or she might be influenced by the story — the story that I told her, fool that I was. But we are guided by our instincts rather than by what we hear, and of her instincts I know nothing, but Madelon, who has known Héloïse since she was a little child, will be able to give me a rough and ready but a true reading of her character and temperament.

  The opportunity to take Madelon into his confidence came a few days later, on the doorstep.

  He blurted out a good many of his perplexities before giving her time to close the door against the storm, and the servant replied: she must have been very much on your mind indeed, for you to begin telling the story in the middle of the driving snow. A man of your age too! Yes, it’s very cold, he answered, and they went up to the company-room, for if they talked in the parlour Héloïse, who was in the study, would come out to meet them. But in the company-room, the Canon said, she will not mind us; she is too busy with her book. And walking up and down, back and forth, to keep himself warm, he related all his misgivings; he had done wrong in sending Madelon to Argenteuil to fetch Héloïse. She would have become a nun for certain if she hadn’t been brought to Paris. But no sooner was this opinion of Héloïse out of his mouth than he sought to qualify it, saying that
as far as he could see she showed no religious inclinations, attending Mass on Sundays, of course, but wellnigh unwilling. And he continued to tell all his thoughts about her and about himself, till Madelon was past her patience. But what can I do? she asked. I can do nothing. A great deal, Madelon, he answered; if thou wilt but listen. But I have been listening, she replied, and the Canon, overcoming his rising irritation against his servant, begged her to tell him her reading of Héloïse’s character. For I can make nothing of it, he said. Is she indifferent to men as she is to the Church? Will she marry, and if she won’t what will befall her? I am thinking of my death, Madelon; and thou hast known her since she was a little child. Tell me. My brother Philippe put her in my charge. But I’m no wise woman, Canon, nor reader of the stars. Madelon, I will not be spoken to — Checking him self again, he said: Madelon, thou hast an insight into her character, though nobody else has. And you would like to hear the truth from me? she answered. Well, it’s easily told, for what is she but a child, seventeen — hardly that? — yet you expect her to know her own mind. Thinkest I am impatient, Madelon? Well, well! Impatient you were born and impatient you’ll die. Impatient! Should we find a more impatient man if we were to travel the world over? I doubt it. Impatient for your dinner and impatient if anybody talks to you. Impatient in your stall in the Cathedral. Impatient —