St. Droctoveus and the early abbots of Saint-Germain-des-Pres have
been occupying me for the past forty years; but I do not know whether
I shall be able to write their history before I go to join them. It is
already quite a long time since I became an old man. One day last
year, on the Pont des Arts, one of my fellow-members at the Institute
was lamenting before me over the _ennui_ of becoming old.
"Still," Sainte-Beuve replied to him, "it is the only way that has yet
been found of living a long time."
I have tried this way, and I know just what it is worth. The trouble
of it is not that one lasts too long, but that one sees all about him
pass away--mother, wife, friends, children. Nature makes and unmakes
all these divine treasures with gloomy indifference, and at last we
find that we have not loved,--we have only been embracing shadows. But
how sweet some shadows are! If ever creature glided like a shadow
through the life of a man, it was certainly that young girl whom I
fell in love with when--incredible though it now seems--I was myself a
youth.
A Christian sarcophagus from the catacombs of Rome bears a formula of
imprecation, the whole terrible meaning of which I only learned with
time. It says:--"_Whatsoever impious man violates this sepulchre, may
he die the last of his own people!_" In my capacity of archaeologist I
have opened tombs and disturbed ashes, in order to collect the shreds
of apparel, metal ornaments, or gems that were mingled with those
ashes. But I did it only through that scientific curiosity which does
not exclude the feelings of reverence and of piety. May that
malediction graven by some one of the first followers of the Apostles
upon a martyr's tomb never fall upon me! I ought not to fear to
survive my own people so long as there are men in the world; for there
are always some whom one can love.
But the power of love itself weakens and gradually becomes lost with
age, like all the other energies of man. Example proves it; and it is
this which terrifies me. Am I sure that I have not myself already
suffered this great loss? I should surely have felt it, but for the
happy meeting which has rejuvenated me. Poets speak of the Fountain of
Youth: it does exist; it gushes up from the earth at every step we
take. And one passes by without drinking of it!
The young girl I loved, married of her own choice to a rival, passed,
all gray-haired, into the eternal rest. I have found her daughter--so
that my life, which before seemed to me without utility, now once more
finds a purpose and a reason for being.
To-day I "take the sun," as they say in Provence; I take it on the
terrace of the Luxembourg, at the foot of the statue of Marguerite de
Navarre. It is a spring sun, intoxicating as young wine. I sit and
dream. My thoughts escape from my head like the foam from a bottle of
beer. They are light, and their fizzing amuses me. I dream; such a
pastime is certainly permissible to an old fellow who has published
thirty volumes of texts, and contributed to the Journal des Savants
for twenty-six years. I have the satisfaction of feeling that I
performed my task as well as it was possible for me, and that I
utilized to their fullest extent those mediocre faculties with which
nature endowed me. My efforts were not all in vain, and I have
contributed, in my own modest way, to that renaissance of historical
labors which will remain the honor of this restless century. I shall
certainly be counted among those ten or twelve who revealed to France
her own literary antiquities. My publication of the poetical works of
Gautier de Coincy inaugurated a judicious system and made a date. It
is in the austere calm of old age that I decree to myself this
deserved credit, and God, who sees my heart, knows whether pride or
vanity have aught to do with this self-award of justice.
But I am tired; my eyes are dim; my hand trembles, and I see an image
of myself in those old men of Homer, whose weakness excluded them from
the battle, and who, seated upon the ramparts, lifted up their voices
like crickets among the leaves.
So my thoughts were wandering, when three young men seated themselves
near me. I do not know whether each one of them had come in three
boats, like the monkey of La Fontaine, but the three certainly
displayed themselves over the space of twelve chairs. I took pleasure
in watching them, not because they had anything very extraordinary
about them, but because I discerned in them that brave joyous manner
which is natural to youth. They were from the schools. I was less
assured of it by the books they were carrying than by the character of
their physiognomy. For all who busy themselves with the things of the
mind can be at once recognized by an indescribable something which is
common to all of them. I am very fond of young people; and these
pleased me, in spite of a certain provoking wild manner which recalled
to me my own college days with marvelous vividness. But they did not
wear velvet doublets and long hair, as we used to do; they did not
walk about, as we used to do, with a death's-head; they did not cry
out, as we used to do, "Hell and malediction!" They were quite
properly dressed, and neither their costume nor their language had
anything suggestive of the Middle Ages. I must also add that they paid
considerable attention to the women passing on the terrace, and
expressed their admiration of some of them in very animated language.
But their reflections, even on this subject, were not of a character
to oblige me to flee from my seat. Besides, so long as youth is
studious, I think it has a right to its gayeties.
One of them having made some gallant pleasantry which I forget, the
smallest and darkest of the three exclaimed, with a slight Gascon
accent:--
"What a thing to say! Only physiologists like us have any right to
occupy ourselves about living matter. As for you, Gelis, who only live
in the past,--like all your fellow archivists and paleographers,--you
will do better to confine yourself to those stone women over there,
who are your contemporaries."
And he pointed to the statues of the Ladies of Ancient France which
towered up, all white, in a half-circle under the trees of the
terrace. This joke, though in itself trifling, enabled me to know that
the young man called Gelis was a student at the Ecole des Chartes.
From the conversation which followed I was able to learn that his
neighbor, blond and wan almost to diaphaneity, taciturn and sarcastic,
was Boulmier, a fellow-student. Gelis and the future doctor (I hope he
will become one some day) discoursed together with much fantasy and
spirit. In the midst of the loftiest speculations they would play upon
words, and make jokes after the peculiar fashion of really witty
persons--that is to say, in a style of enormous absurdity. I need
hardly say, I suppose, that they only deigned to maintain the most
monstrous kind of paradoxes. They employed all their powers of
imagination to make themselves as ludicrous as possible, and all their
powers of reasoning to assert the contrary of common-sense. All the
better for them! I do not like to see young folks too rational.
The student of medicine, after glancing at the title of the book that
Boulmier held in his hand, exclaimed:--
"What!--you read Michelet--you?"
"Yes," replied Boulmier very gravely. "I like novels."
Gelis, who dominated both by his fine stature, imperious gestures, and
ready wit, took the book, turned over a few pages rapidly, and said:--
"Michelet always had a great propensity to emotional tenderness. He
wept sweet tears over Maillard, that nice little man who introduced
_la paperasserie_ into the September massacres. But as emotional
tenderness leads to fury, he becomes all at once furious against the
victims. There is no help for it. It is the sentimentality of the age.
The assassin is pitied, but the victim is considered quite
unpardonable. In his later manner Michelet is more Michelet than ever
before. There is no common-sense in it; it is simply wonderful!
Neither art nor science, neither criticism nor narrative; only furies
and fainting spells and epileptic fits over matters which he never
deigns to explain. Childish outcries--_envies de femme grosse!_--and a
style, my friends!--not a single finished phrase! It is astounding!"
And he handed the book back to his comrade. "This is amusing madness,"
I thought to myself, "and not quite so devoid of common-sense as it
appears. This young man, though only playing, has sharply touched the
defect in the cuirass."
But the Provencal student declared that history was a thoroughly
despicable exercise of rhetoric. According to him, the only true
history was the natural history of man. Michelet was in the right path
when he came in contact with the fistula of Louis XIV., but he fell
back into the old rut almost immediately afterwards.
After this judicious expression of opinion, the young physiologist
went to join a party of passing friends. The two archivists, less well
acquainted in the neighborhood of a garden so far from the Rue
Paradis-aux-Marais, remained together, and began to chat about their
studies. Gelis, who had completed his third class-year, was preparing
a thesis, on the subject of which he expatiated with youthful
enthusiasm. Indeed, I thought the subject a very good one,
particularly because I had recently thought myself called upon to
treat a notable part of it. It was the 'Monasticum Gallicanum.' The
young erudite (I give him the name as a presage) wants to describe all
the engravings made about 1690 for the work which Dom Michel Germain
would have had printed, but for the one irremediable hindrance which
is rarely foreseen and never avoided. Dom Michel Germain left his
manuscript complete, however, and in good order when he died. Shall I
be able to do as much with mine?--but that is not the present
question. So far as I am able to understand, M. Gelis intends to
devote a brief archaeological notice to each of the abbeys pictured by
the humble engravers of Dom Michel Germain.
His friend asked him whether he was acquainted with all the
manuscripts and printed documents relating to the subject. It was then
that I pricked up my ears. They spoke at first of original sources;
and I must confess they did so in a satisfactory manner, despite
their innumerable and detestable puns. Then they began to speak about
contemporary studies on the subject.
"Have you read," asked Boulmier, "the notice of Courajod?"
"Good!" I thought to myself.
"Yes," replied Gelis; "it is accurate."
"Have you read," said Boulmier, "the article by Tamisey de Larroque in
the Revue des Questions Historiques?"
"Good!" I thought to myself, for the second time.
"Yes," replied Gelis, "it is full of things...."
"Have you read," said Boulmier, "the 'Tableau des Abbayes Benedictines
en 1600,' by Sylvestre Bonnard?"
"Good!" I said to myself, for the third time.
"_Ma foi!_ no!" replied Gelis. "Bonnard is an idiot!"
Turning my head, I perceived that the shadow had reached the place
where I was sitting. It was growing chilly, and I thought to myself
what a fool I was to have remained sitting there, at the risk of
getting the rheumatism, just to listen to the impertinence of those
two young fellows!
"Well! well!" I said to myself as I got up. "Let this prattling
fledgeling write his thesis, and sustain it! He will find my colleague
Quicherat, or some other professor at the school, to show him what an
ignoramus he is. I consider him neither more nor less than a rascal;
and really, now that I come to think of it, what he said about
Michelet awhile ago was quite insufferable, outrageous! To talk in
that way about an old master replete with genius! It was simply
abominable!"