There will be days when you will be like a peaceful sovereign seated
under a tree: the whole world will come to render homage to you and
bring you tribute. Those will be your days of contemplation.
There will be days when you will have to take your staff and wallet
and go and seek your living along the highways. On these days you must
be contented with what you gain from observing, from hunting; have no
fear: it will be beautiful.
It is sweet to receive; it is thrilling to take. You must, by turns,
charm and compel the universe. When you have gazed long at the tawny
rock, with its lichens, its velvety mosses, it is most amusing to
lift it up: then you will discover its weight and the little nest of
orange-bellied salamanders that live there in the cool.
You have only to lie among the hairy mints and the horse-tails to
admire the religious dance of the dragon-fly going to lay its eggs
in the brook, or to hear in early June the clamorous orgy of the
tree-toads, drunk with love; and it is very pleasant, too, to dip one’s
hands in the water, to stir the gravel at the bottom, whence bubble up
a thousand tiny, agile existences, or to pick the fleshy stalk of the
water-lily that lifts its tall head out of the depths.
There are people who have passed a plant a thousand times without ever
thinking of picking one of its leaves and rubbing it between their
fingers. Do this always and you will discover hundreds of new perfumes.
Each of these perfumes may seem quite insignificant, and yet when you
have breathed it once, you wish to breathe it again; you think of it
often, and something has been added to you.
It is an unending game and it resembles love, this possession of a
world that now yields itself, now conceals itself. It is a serious, a
divine game.
Marcus Aurelius, whose philosophy cannot be called futile, does not
hesitate, amid many austere counsels, to urge his friends to the
contemplation of those natural spectacles that are always so rich in
meaning and suggestion: “Everything that comes forth from the works of
nature,” he writes, “has its grace and beauty. The face wrinkles in
middle age, the very ripe olive is almost decomposed, but the fruit
has, for all that, a unique beauty. The bending of the corn toward the
earth, the bushy brows of the lion, the foam that drips from the mouth
of the wild boar and many other things, considered by themselves, are
far from being beautiful; nevertheless, since they are accessory to the
works of nature, they embellish them and add a certain charm. Thus a
man who has a sensitive soul, and who is capable of deep reflection,
will see, in whatever exists in the world, hardly anything that is not
pleasant in his eyes, since it is related, in some way, to the totality
of things.”
This philosopher is right as the poets are right. As our days permit
us, let us reflect and observe, let us never cease to see in each
fragment of the great whole a pure source of happiness. Like children
drawn into a marvelous dance, let us not relax our hold upon the hand
that sustains us and directs us.
V
Chalifour was a locksmith. I knew him in my childhood. You would have
said that he was just a simple country laborer. Why has he left the
memory of a rich and powerful man? His image will always be for me that
of the “master of metals.”
He worked in a mean, encumbered room, full of the pungent, acrid
odor of the forge, which seemed to me a sort of annex to those other
underground vaults that used to be peopled by the earth-spirits.
How I loved to see him, with his little apron of blackened leather!
He would seize a bar of iron and this iron at once became his. He had
his own way of handling the object of his labor that was full of love
and authority. His gnarled hands touched everything with a mixture of
respect and daring; I used to admire them as if they were the somber
workmen of some sovereign power.
It seemed as if some pact had been made between Chalifour and the hard
metal, which gave the man complete mastery over the material. One might
have thought that solemn vows had been exchanged.
I see him again with his pensive air working the panting bellows
and watching the metal whose incandescence was almost transparent.
I see him at the anvil: the hammer, handled forcefully, delicately,
obeying like a subject demon. I see him before the drill, starting
the great wheel, following the measured exigencies of a ceremonial
rite. Especially I see him before the smoky window with its pale flood
of light, surveying, with that fine smile under his white beard, the
conquered piece of metal, the creature of his will, which he had
charged with destiny.
O ancient laborer, great, simple man, how rich and enviable you were,
you who aspired to just one thing: to do well what you were doing, to
possess intimately the object of your toil! No one better than you has
understood the ponderous, obedient iron, no one than you has worked it
with greater love and constancy.
Somewhere there exists, I believe, an unhappy man eaten up with nerves
and stomach-disorder. He lives crouched up against his telephone, and
sends his orders to all the stock exchanges of the world. People call
him the “iron king,” for some reason that has to do with finance. I
don’t believe he has ever touched or weighed a morsel of real iron. Let
us smile, Chalifour! Let us smile, my master!