by Voltaire
But while they were at table, the unfortunate young woman’s sickness took a sinister turn. Her blood was overheated and a raging fever had set in. She was in agony, but she made no complaint, because she did not want to disturb the cheerfulness of the party. Her brother, knowing she was not asleep, went to her bedside and was taken aback at her condition. The others hastened to the scene with her lover at the head of, them; he was of course the most alarmed and affected of them all, but he had learned to add discretion to the other gifts with which Nature had so liberally endowed him, and a ready sense of decorum came to his aid.
A local doctor was immediately summoned. He was one of those who visit their patients in a hurry, confuse the malady they have just seen with the one they are at present attending, and blindly practise a science which is uncertain and dangerous at best, even when conducted by a man of mature and healthy judgement. He made matters twice as bad by hastening to prescribe a remedy then fashionable. There are fashions even in medicine! This mania was too often the craze in Paris. But even more dangerous than her doctor was the sadness of Mademoiselle de St Yves herself. Her soul was destroying her body. Her jostling thoughts carried into her veins a poison more dangerous than the most virulent fever.
CHAPTER 20
THE DEATH OF THE LOVELY ST YVES, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
ANOTHER doctor was called in. Instead of helping Nature and leaving her to work upon a young person all of whose organs were rallying to life, he busied himself only with opposing his fellow doctor. In two days the illness became mortal. The brain, supposedly the seat of the understanding, was attacked as violently as the heart, allegedly the seat of the passions.
‘What incomprehensible mechanism is it that puts the organs of the body at the mercy of thought and feeling? How is it that one painful notion can upset the circulation of the blood and that this disturbance can in turn influence the understanding? Who can doubt the existence of an unknown liquid, more volatile than light, that in less than the twinkling of an eye invades all the channels of life, producing sensations, memory, sadness or joy, reason or madness? It can even recall horrors which were better forgotten, and make a thinking being into an object of admiration or a subject for pity and tears.’
These were the reflexions of the worthy Gordon. Natural – though unusual – as they were, they did nothing, for he was not one of those unhappy philosophers who force themselves to be unfeeling. He was as much moved by the fate of this young girl, as if he had been a father watching the lingering death of a beloved child. The Abbé de St Yves was in despair; the Prior and his sister shed torrents of tears. But who can describe the state of her lover? No language has the resources for such a climax of distress, for languages are far from perfect.
Mademoiselle de Kerkabon was almost unconscious, but she held the dying girl’s head in her feeble arms, while her brother was on his knees at the foot of the bed. Her lover was holding her hand and bathing it with his tears, while sobs kept breaking from him. He called her his benefactress, his hope, his life, the other half of himself, his mistress, his wife. On hearing the word ‘wife’ she sighed, then looked at him with unutterable tenderness, and suddenly uttered a cry of horror; then, when a calmer moment of relief from the worst of her sufferings gave her opportunity and strength enough to express what was in her mind, she cried out:
‘Your wife! Dearest one, that name, that happiness, that prize were not for me. I am dying, and deservedly. Lord of my heart! You whom I have sacrificed to infernal devils! All is over with me; I am punished! But you must live happily.’
Nobody could understand these tender yet terrible words, which filled their hearts with horror and compassion; but at last she had the courage to explain them.
A shudder of astonishment passed through all who were present; grief and pity were aroused at each word she uttered. They were all at one in detesting a man in power who had repaired a horrible injustice only by committing a crime, and had compelled that innocence that is most worthy of respect to be his accomplice.
‘But why should you think yourself guilty?’ cried her lover. ‘No, indeed you are not. A crime must come from the heart, and yours is devoted to virtue, and to me.’ He confirmed this statement with words which seemed to bring the lovely St Yves back to life. She was comforted and astonished to find that he still loved her. Old Gordon would certainly have condemned her in his Jansenist days; but he had learned wisdom, and now he admired her, and wept.
This scene of so much grief and fear, when every heart was filled with consternation at the danger to their beloved girl, was interrupted by the announcement of a messenger from the Court. Who could have sent him, and why had he come?
He had been sent by the King’s confessor to the Prior of the Mountain; it was not Father de La Chaise who wrote, but Brother Vadbled, his valet – a very important man in those days. He it was who informed archbishops of the Reverend Father’s wishes, who granted audiences and promised benefices, and who sometimes arranged for orders of imprisonment to be despatched. He wrote to the Abbé saying ‘that His Reverence had been told of his nephew’s adventures, that his imprisonment was just a mistake, that little accidents like these often happened and should be over-looked, and finally that the Prior was to come and present his nephew next day and bring the worthy Gordon with him, and that Brother Vadbled would introduce them to His Reverence and to Monseigneur de Louvois, who would have a word with them in the antechamber.’
He added that the story of the Child of Nature and his fight against the English had been told to the King, that the King would undoubtedly take notice of him as he strolled in the gallery, and might even give him a nod. The letter ended by expressing the hope that all the ladies of the Court would hasten to invite the Abbé’s nephew to their levées, and that several would say ‘Good-morning, Monsieur Child of Nature’; and that he would certainly be mentioned at the King’s supper-table. The letter was signed, ‘Your affectionate brother Jesuit, Vadbled’.
The letter was read aloud by the Prior. It put his nephew in a fury, but he contained his anger and said nothing to the messenger; then, turning to his companion in misfortune, he asked him what he thought of this way of addressing people. Said Gordon in reply:
‘This is just treating men like monkeys! First they are whipped and then they are made to dance.’
Resuming his old character, which always returned at moments of great emotional stress, the Child of Nature tore the letter to pieces and threw them in the messenger’s face.
‘There’s my answer,’ he said.
His uncle was terrified; he thought he saw thunderbolts and twenty imprisonment orders descending upon him, and hurried off to write and excuse as best he could what he took to be a young man’s fit of passion, which was really the flash of a great spirit.
But more grievous cares took charge of all their hearts. The lovely but unfortunate St Yves now felt her end approaching; she was quite composed, but with the terrifying composure of a nature so exhausted that it has no more strength to fight.
‘My darling,’ she said, in faltering tones. ‘Death punishes me for my weakness, but I die with the consolation of knowing you are free. I adored you even as I betrayed you, and I adore you now as I bid you an eternal farewell.’
She made no vain attempt at steadiness; she had no notion of that wretched pride in making a few neighbours say that she died courageously. Who at the age of twenty could lose her lover, her life, and what is called honour, without regret and without heart-rending? She felt all the horror of her position, and she made others feel it by words and by those dying glances that have such power to speak. And then she wept like the others, in those brief intervals when she still had strength to weep.
Let others seek to praise the pompous deaths of those who face annihilation with insensibility. That is the fate of animals. We die like them only when age or sickness makes us their equals through the dullness of our senses. Whoever meets with great loss has great regrets; to stifle them is to ca
rry vanity into the arms of death.
When the fatal moment came, all who stood around cried out, and wept. The Child of Nature fainted away. When the strong in spirit are tender-hearted their feelings are much more violent than other people’s. The worthy Gordon knew him well enough to fear that when he came to he might take his life. All weapons were removed; when the unfortunate young man noticed it, he said to his relatives and to Gordon, without so much as a tear, a groan, or any sign of agitation:
‘Do you really think that there is anyone on earth with the right or the power to stop me from taking my life?’
Gordon refrained from reciting to him those commonplaces which attempt to prove that we are not permitted to use our freewill by ceasing to exist when we are in a horrible predicament, that we must not leave the house when we can no longer live in it, and that man is on this earth like a soldier on duty. As though it were of any importance to the Supreme Being whether a collection of a few particles of matter is in one place rather than another! A man whose despair is firm and resolute disdains to listen to such ineffectual reasons, to which Cato replied merely by a dagger thrust.
The Child of Nature maintained a gloomy and terrible silence. His melancholy eyes, the trembling of his lips, the shudder that passed through his body, affected all who saw him with such a mixture of compassion and fear as to inhibit all faculties of the soul, and to exclude all speech except for a few half-formed words. The lady of the house and her family had hurried to the scene; his despair made them all tremble. They kept him in sight and watched all his movements. The icy body of the lovely St Yves had already been carried to a lower room far from the sight of her lover, whose eyes still seemed to seek her out though he was no longer in a state to perceive anything.
The corpse lay in state at the street door; two priests beside a font were absently reciting prayers; passers-by sprinkled odd drops of holy water on the bier, having nothing better to do; others were going on their way indifferently; the relatives were weeping; and the lover was near to destroying himself there. In the midst of this scene of death arrived St Pouange, with the lady from Versailles.
His momentary inclination, satisfied only once, had turned into love. The refusal of his favours had roused him. Father de La Chaise would never have thought of coming to this house; but St Pouange, with the image of the lovely St Yves always before his eyes, burning to assuage the passion which by a single indulgence had buried deep in his heart the sharpness of desire, did not hesitate to come in search of her whom he would perhaps not have cared to see three times if she had come to him of her own accord.
He alighted from his carriage. The first object that met his eye was an open coffin. He looked away, with the natural distaste of a man brought up on pleasures who considers he should be spared every sight which might lead him to contemplate human misery. He was starting to go upstairs, when the lady from Versailles, out of curiosity, asked who was to be buried. Mademoiselle de St Yves, she was told. At this name she grew pale and uttered a terrible cry; St Pouange turned round, surprised and grieved. The worthy Gordon was there, his eyes filled with tears. He broke off his mournful prayers to tell the courtier the whole story of the horrible catastrophe, and spoke to him with the authority that grief and virtue confer. St Pouange was not born wicked; the round of business and amusement had so much occupied him that he no longer recognized his better feelings; but he had not reached that moment of old age which normally hardens a Minister’s heart. He listened to Gordon with lowered eyes, and wiped away a few tears, which he was surprised to shed; he knew repentance.
‘I simply must,’ said he, ‘see this extraordinary man you speak of. I pity him almost as much as the innocent victim whose death I have caused.’
Gordon followed him to the room where the Prior, Mademoiselle Kerkabon, the Abbé de St Yves, and a few neighbours were restoring the young man, who had once more fallen into a swoon.
‘I have been the cause of your unhappiness,’ said the Under Secretary to him. ‘I will spend my life repairing it!’
The Child of Nature’s first idea was to kill him, and to kill himself afterwards. Nothing was more appropriate; but he had no arms about him, and he was closely watched.
St Pouange was not discouraged by rebuffs, or by the deserved reproaches, scorn, and horror which were heaped upon him : time softens all. Monseigneur de Louvois at last managed to make an excellent officer of the Child of Nature, who appeared under a different name in Paris and in the army, and was esteemed by all honest men for his fearlessness both in war and in philosophy.
He never mentioned this adventure without a groan, yet it was his consolation to talk about it. He cherished the memory of the tender-hearted St Yves to the end of his days. The Abbé de St Yves and the Prior each got a good benefice. The kind Mademoiselle de Kerkabon much preferred to see her nephew clad in his military honours than in a sub-deacon’s robe. The lady from Versailles kept the diamond earrings, and received another beautiful present. Father All-to-All got boxes of chocolate, coffee, sugar candy, and crystallized fruits, with the Meditations of the Reverend Father Croiset and the Flower of Sanctity bound in morocco. The worthy Gordon lived in closest friendship with the Child of Nature till the end of his life; he got a benefice too, and he forgot all about Efficacious Grace and Concomitant Coincidence. He took as his motto: Misfortune has its uses. How many worthy people in the world have been in a position to say: Misfortune is no use at all!
*There was at that time a Babylonian called Arnou, who according to the newspapers cured and prevented all apoplexies with a bag hung from the patient’s neck. [Voltaire’s note.]
* Chinese words, whose proper meaning is : Li, the light of nature, or reason; and Tien, the sky. They also mean God. [Voltaire’s note.]
* A coach plying between Paris and Versailles which looks like a little covered tipcart. [Voltaire’s note.]
