THE EDUCATION OF A PHILOSOPHER.
The installation of the adopted stable-boy was thus happily effected,
and the wheels of life continued to run smoothly in the Doctor’s house.
Jean-Marie did his horse and carriage duty in the morning; sometimes
helped in the housework; sometimes walked abroad with the Doctor, to
drink wisdom from the fountain-head; and was introduced at night to the
sciences and the dead tongues. He retained his singular placidity of
mind and manner; he was rarely in fault; but he made only a very
partial progress in his studies, and remained much of a stranger in the
family.
The Doctor was a pattern of regularity. All forenoon he worked on his
great book, the “Comparative Pharmacopoeia, or Historical Dictionary of
all Medicines,” which as yet consisted principally of slips of paper
and pins. When finished, it was to fill many personable volumes, and to
combine antiquarian interest with professional utility. But the Doctor
was studious of literary graces and the picturesque; an anecdote, a
touch of manners, a moral qualification, or a sounding epithet was sure
to be preferred before a piece of science; a little more, and he would
have written the “Comparative Pharmacopoeia’ in verse! The article
“Mummia,” for instance, was already complete, though the remainder of
the work had not progressed beyond the letter A. It was exceedingly
copious and entertaining, written with quaintness and colour, exact,
erudite, a literary article; but it would hardly have afforded guidance
to a practising physician of to-day. The feminine good sense of his
wife had led her to point this out with uncompromising sincerity; for
the Dictionary was duly read aloud to her, betwixt sleep and waning, as
it proceeded towards an infinitely distant completion; and the Doctor
was a little sore on the subject of mummies, and sometimes resented an
allusion with asperity.
After the midday meal and a proper period of digestion, he walked,
sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by Jean-Marie; for madame would
have preferred any hardship rather than walk.
She was, as I have said, a very busy person, continually occupied about
material comforts, and ready to drop asleep over a novel the instant
she was disengaged. This was the less objectionable, as she never
snored or grew distempered in complexion when she slept. On the
contrary, she looked the very picture of luxurious and appetising ease,
and woke without a start to the perfect possession of her faculties. I
am afraid she was greatly an animal, but she was a very nice animal to
have about. In this way, she had little to do with Jean-Marie; but the
sympathy which had been established between them on the first night
remained unbroken; they held occasional conversations, mostly on
household matters; to the extreme disappointment of the Doctor, they
occasionally sallied off together to that temple of debasing
superstition, the village church; madame and he, both in their Sunday’s
best, drove twice a month to Fontainebleau and returned laden with
purchases; and in short, although the Doctor still continued to regard
them as irreconcilably anti-pathetic, their relation was as intimate,
friendly, and confidential as their natures suffered.
I fear, however, that in her heart of hearts, madame kindly despised
and pitied the boy. She had no admiration for his class of virtues; she
liked a smart, polite, forward, roguish sort of boy, cap in hand, light
of foot, meeting the eye; she liked volubility, charm, a little
vice—the promise of a second Doctor Desprez. And it was her
indefeasible belief that Jean-Marie was dull. “Poor dear boy,” she had
said once, “how sad it is that he should be so stupid!” She had never
repeated that remark, for the Doctor had raged like a wild bull,
denouncing the brutal bluntness of her mind, bemoaning his own fate to
be so unequally mated with an ass, and, what touched Anastasie more
nearly, menacing the table china by the fury of his gesticulations. But
she adhered silently to her opinion; and when Jean-Marie was sitting,
stolid, blank, but not unhappy, over his unfinished tasks, she would
snatch her opportunity in the Doctor’s absence, go over to him, put her
arms about his neck, lay her cheek to his, and communicate her sympathy
with his distress. “Do not mind,” she would say; “I, too, am not at all
clever, and I can assure you that it makes no difference in life.”
The Doctor’s view was naturally different. That gentleman never wearied
of the sound of his own voice, which was, to say the truth, agreeable
enough to hear. He now had a listener, who was not so cynically
indifferent as Anastasie, and who sometimes put him on his mettle by
the most relevant objections. Besides, was he not educating the boy?
And education, philosophers are agreed, is the most philosophical of
duties. What can be more heavenly to poor mankind than to have one’s
hobby grow into a duty to the State? Then, indeed, do the ways of life
become ways of pleasantness. Never had the Doctor seen reason to be
more content with his endowments. Philosophy flowed smoothly from his
lips. He was so agile a dialectician that he could trace his nonsense,
when challenged, back to some root in sense, and prove it to be a sort
of flower upon his system. He slipped out of antinomies like a fish,
and left his disciple marvelling at the rabbi’s depth.
Moreover, deep down in his heart the Doctor was disappointed with the
ill-success of his more formal education. A boy, chosen by so acute an
observer for his aptitude, and guided along the path of learning by so
philosophic an instructor, was bound, by the nature of the universe, to
make a more obvious and lasting advance. Now Jean-Marie was slow in all
things, impenetrable in others; and his power of forgetting was fully
on a level with his power to learn. Therefore the Doctor cherished his
peripatetic lectures, to which the boy attended, which he generally
appeared to enjoy, and by which he often profited.
Many and many were the talks they had together; and health and
moderation proved the subject of the Doctor’s divagations. To these he
lovingly returned.
“I lead you,” he would say, “by the green pastures. My system, my
beliefs, my medicines, are resumed in one phrase—to avoid excess.
Blessed nature, healthy, temperate nature, abhors and exterminates
excess. Human law, in this matter, imitates at a great distance her
provisions; and we must strive to supplement the efforts of the law.
Yes, boy, we must be a law to ourselves and for ourselves and for our
neighbours—lex armata—armed, emphatic, tyrannous law. If you see a
crapulous human ruin snuffing, dash from him his box! The judge, though
in a way an admission of disease, is less offensive to me than either
the doctor or the priest. Above all the doctor—the doctor and the
purulent trash and garbage of his pharmacopoeia! Pure air—from the
neighbourhood of a pinetum for the sake of the turpentine—unadulterated
wine, and the reflections of an unsophisticated spirit in the presence
of the works of nature—these, my boy, are the best medical appliances
and the best religious comforts. Devote yourself to these. Hark! there
are the bells of Bourron (the wind is in the north, it will be fair).
How clear and airy is the sound! The nerves are harmonised and quieted;
the mind attuned to silence; and observe how easily and regularly beats
the heart! Your unenlightened doctor would see nothing in these
sensations; and yet you yourself perceive they are a part of
health.—Did you remember your cinchona this morning? Good. Cinchona
also is a work of nature; it is, after all, only the bark of a tree
which we might gather for ourselves if we lived in the locality.—What a
world is this! Though a professed atheist, I delight to bear my
testimony to the world. Look at the gratuitous remedies and pleasures
that surround our path! The river runs by the garden end, our bath, our
fishpond, our natural system of drainage. There is a well in the court
which sends up sparkling water from the earth’s very heart, clean,
cool, and, with a little wine, most wholesome. The district is
notorious for its salubrity; rheumatism is the only prevalent
complaint, and I myself have never had a touch of it. I tell you—and my
opinion is based upon the coldest, clearest processes of reason—if I,
if you, desired to leave this home of pleasures, it would be the duty,
it would be the privilege, of our best friend to prevent us with a
pistol bullet.”
One beautiful June day they sat upon the hill outside the village. The
river, as blue as heaven, shone here and there among the foliage. The
indefatigable birds turned and flickered about Gretz church tower. A
healthy wind blew from over the forest, and the sound of innumerable
thousands of tree-tops and innumerable millions on millions of green
leaves was abroad in the air, and filled the ear with something between
whispered speech and singing. It seemed as if every blade of grass must
hide a cigale; and the fields rang merrily with their music, jingling
far and near as with the sleigh-bells of the fairy queen. From their
station on the slope the eye embraced a large space of poplar’d plain
upon the one hand, the waving hill-tops of the forest on the other, and
Gretz itself in the middle, a handful of roofs. Under the bestriding
arch of the blue heavens, the place seemed dwindled to a toy. It seemed
incredible that people dwelt, and could find room to turn or air to
breathe, in such a corner of the world. The thought came home to the
boy, perhaps for the first time, and he gave it words.
“How small it looks!” he sighed.
“Ay,” replied the Doctor, “small enough now. Yet it was once a walled
city; thriving, full of furred burgesses and men in armour, humming
with affairs;—with tall spires, for aught that I know, and portly
towers along the battlements. A thousand chimneys ceased smoking at the
curfew bell. There were gibbets at the gate as thick as scarecrows. In
time of war, the assault swarmed against it with ladders, the arrows
fell like leaves, the defenders sallied hotly over the drawbridge, each
side uttered its cry as they plied their weapons. Do you know that the
walls extended as far as the Commanderie? Tradition so reports. Alas,
what a long way off is all this confusion—nothing left of it but my
quiet words spoken in your ear—and the town itself shrunk to the hamlet
underneath us! By-and-by came the English wars—you shall hear more of
the English, a stupid people, who sometimes blundered into good—and
Gretz was taken, sacked, and burned. It is the history of many towns;
but Gretz never rose again; it was never rebuilt; its ruins were a
quarry to serve the growth of rivals; and the stones of Gretz are now
erect along the streets of Nemours. It gratifies me that our old house
was the first to rise after the calamity; when the town had come to an
end, it inaugurated the hamlet.”
“I, too, am glad of that,” said Jean-Marie.
“It should be the temple of the humbler virtues,” responded the Doctor
with a savoury gusto. “Perhaps one of the reasons why I love my little
hamlet as I do, is that we have a similar history, she and I. Have I
told you that I was once rich?”
“I do not think so,” answered Jean-Marie. “I do not think I should have
forgotten. I am sorry you should have lost your fortune.”
“Sorry?” cried the Doctor. “Why, I find I have scarce begun your
education after all. Listen to me! Would you rather live in the old
Gretz or in the new, free from the alarms of war, with the green
country at the door, without noise, passports, the exactions of the
soldiery, or the jangle of the curfew-bell to send us off to bed by
sundown?”
“I suppose I should prefer the new,” replied the boy.
“Precisely,” returned the Doctor; “so do I. And, in the same way, I
prefer my present moderate fortune to my former wealth. Golden
mediocrity! cried the adorable ancients; and I subscribe to their
enthusiasm. Have I not good wine, good food, good air, the fields and
the forest for my walk, a house, an admirable wife, a boy whom I
protest I cherish like a son? Now, if I were still rich, I should
indubitably make my residence in Paris—you know Paris—Paris and
Paradise are not convertible terms. This pleasant noise of the wind
streaming among leaves changed into the grinding Babel of the street,
the stupid glare of plaster substituted for this quiet pattern of
greens and greys, the nerves shattered, the digestion falsified—picture
the fall! Already you perceive the consequences; the mind is
stimulated, the heart steps to a different measure, and the man is
himself no longer. I have passionately studied myself—the true business
of philosophy. I know my character as the musician knows the ventages
of his flute. Should I return to Paris, I should ruin myself gambling;
nay, I go further—I should break the heart of my Anastasie with
infidelities.”
This was too much for Jean-Marie. That a place should so transform the
most excellent of men transcended his belief. Paris, he protested, was
even an agreeable place of residence. “Nor when I lived in that city
did I feel much difference,” he pleaded.
“What!” cried the Doctor. “Did you not steal when you were there?”
But the boy could never be brought to see that he had done anything
wrong when he stole. Nor, indeed, did the Doctor think he had; but that
gentleman was never very scrupulous when in want of a retort.
“And now,” he concluded, “do you begin to understand? My only friends
were those who ruined me. Gretz has been my academy, my sanatorium, my
heaven of innocent pleasures. If millions are offered me, I wave them
back: _Retro_, _Sathanas_!—Evil one, begone! Fix your mind on my
example; despise riches, avoid the debasing influence of cities.
Hygiene—hygiene and mediocrity of fortune—these be your watchwords
during life!”
The Doctor’s system of hygiene strikingly coincided with his tastes;
and his picture of the perfect life was a faithful description of the
one he was leading at the time. But it is easy to convince a boy, whom
you supply with all the facts for the discussion. And besides, there
was one thing admirable in the philosophy, and that was the enthusiasm
of the philosopher. There was never any one more vigorously determined
to be pleased; and if he was not a great logician, and so had no right
to convince the intellect, he was certainly something of a poet, and
had a fascination to seduce the heart. What he could not achieve in his
customary humour of a radiant admiration of himself and his
circumstances, he sometimes effected in his fits of gloom.
“Boy,” he would say, “avoid me to-day. If I were superstitious, I
should even beg for an interest in your prayers. I am in the black fit;
the evil spirit of King Saul, the hag of the merchant Abudah, the
personal devil of the mediæval monk, is with me—is in me,” tapping on
his breast. “The vices of my nature are now uppermost; innocent
pleasures woo me in vain; I long for Paris, for my wallowing in the
mire. See,” he would continue, producing a handful of silver, “I denude
myself, I am not to be trusted with the price of a fare. Take it, keep
it for me, squander it on deleterious candy, throw it in the deepest of
the river—I will homologate your action. Save me from that part of
myself which I disown. If you see me falter, do not hesitate; if
necessary, wreck the train! I speak, of course, by a parable. Any
extremity were better than for me to reach Paris alive.”
Doubtless the Doctor enjoyed these little scenes, as a variation in his
part; they represented the Byronic element in the somewhat artificial
poetry of his existence; but to the boy, though he was dimly aware of
their theatricality, they represented more. The Doctor made perhaps too
little, the boy possibly too much, of the reality and gravity of these
temptations.
One day a great light shone for Jean-Marie. “Could not riches be used
well?” he asked.
“In theory, yes,” replied the Doctor. “But it is found in experience
that no one does so. All the world imagine they will be exceptional
when they grow wealthy; but possession is debasing, new desires spring
up; and the silly taste for ostentation eats out the heart of
pleasure.”
“Then you might be better if you had less,” said the boy.
“Certainly not,” replied the Doctor; but his voice quavered as he
spoke.
“Why?” demanded pitiless innocence.
Doctor Desprez saw all the colours of the rainbow in a moment; the
stable universe appeared to be about capsizing with him. “Because,”
said he—affecting deliberation after an obvious pause—“because I have
formed my life for my present income. It is not good for men of my
years to be violently dissevered from their habits.”
That was a sharp brush. The Doctor breathed hard, and fell into
taciturnity for the afternoon. As for the boy, he was delighted with
the resolution of his doubts; even wondered that he had not foreseen
the obvious and conclusive answer. His faith in the Doctor was a stout
piece of goods. Desprez was inclined to be a sheet in the wind’s eye
after dinner, especially after Rhone wine, his favourite weakness. He
would then remark on the warmth of his feeling for Anastasie, and with
inflamed cheeks and a loose, flustered smile, debate upon all sorts of
topics, and be feebly and indiscreetly witty. But the adopted
stable-boy would not permit himself to entertain a doubt that savoured
of ingratitude. It is quite true that a man may be a second father to
you, and yet take too much to drink; but the best natures are ever slow
to accept such truths.
The Doctor thoroughly possessed his heart, but perhaps he exaggerated
his influence over his mind. Certainly Jean-Marie adopted some of his
master’s opinions, but I have yet to learn that he ever surrendered one
of his own. Convictions existed in him by divine right; they were
virgin, unwrought, the brute metal of decision. He could add others
indeed, but he could not put away; neither did he care if they were
perfectly agreed among themselves; and his spiritual pleasures had
nothing to do with turning them over or justifying them in words. Words
were with him a mere accomplishment, like dancing. When he was by
himself, his pleasures were almost vegetable. He would slip into the
woods towards Acheres, and sit in the mouth of a cave among grey
birches. His soul stared straight out of his eyes; he did not move or
think; sunlight, thin shadows moving in the wind, the edge of firs
against the sky, occupied and bound his faculties. He was pure unity, a
spirit wholly abstracted. A single mood filled him, to which all the
objects of sense contributed, as the colours of the spectrum merge and
disappear in white light.
So while the Doctor made himself drunk with words, the adopted
stable-boy bemused himself with silence.