People had been talking about it for three months. M. Bergeret learned
that he had friends in Paris who had never seen him, and friends such
as these are the surest; their actions are governed by sensible,
masterly, positive reasons, and, if only their report is favourable,
they are sure of a hearing. M. Bergeret’s friends thought that his
place was in Paris, and suggested bringing him there. M. Leterrier did
all he could to bring this about, and at last it was arranged.
M. Bergeret was appointed Professor at the Sorbonne. As he left the
house of M. le Doyen Torquet, who had apprised him in the most formal
terms of his nomination, M. Bergeret, finding himself in the street
again, looked at the slate roofs, the familiar free-stone walls,
the shaving basin that swung gently to and fro over the door of the
hairdresser, the sign of the red cow over the milkman’s, and the little
bronze Triton, with water streaming from his mouth, at the corner of
the Faubourg de Josde; and all these familiar things appeared suddenly
strange in his eyes. His feet had suddenly become unacquainted with
the pavements on which he had so long and so often gone his way, with
feet rendered heavy by sadness or fatigue, or made light by some
slight happiness or amusement. The town, with its towers and steeples
standing up against the grey sky, looked to him like some strange,
far-away dream city, rather the picture of a city than the reality.
And the picture grew smaller and smaller. People, as well as things,
seemed far-away and diminished in his eyes. The postman, two women, and
the clerk of the court whom he met, looked, to him, like people on a
cinematograph screen, absolutely unreal and belonging to quite another
world than his.
After a few minutes of this strange feeling, he pulled himself up,
for he was both thoughtful and quick to read his own motives, thus
providing himself with an inexhaustible subject for surprise, sarcasm,
and pity.
“Come now,” he said to himself, “here is a town in which I have lived
for fifteen years, and which suddenly becomes strange to me because
I am about to leave it. More than that, it has, to a certain extent,
already become unreal to me. Now that it is no longer my own town, it
ceases to exist, and is nothing but a vain image. The reason is that
the many interesting things it contains were only interesting in so
far as they directly affected me. As soon as they cease to do that,
they practically do not exist as far as I am concerned. And thus, this
populous city, situated on the hills that border a great river, this
ancient Gaulish town, this colony where the Romans built temples and
a circus; this strong city that went through three memorable sieges,
where two councils were held, which was enriched with a basilica, the
crypt of which is still in existence, a cathedral, a college, sixteen
parish churches, plus sixty chapels, a town hall, markets, hospitals,
and palaces; this town which in very ancient times formed a part of the
royal domain, became the capital of a vast province, and still bears
on the fronton of the governor’s palace, now turned into barracks,
the civic coat of arms surrounded by lions and the Virtues; this town
which to-day contains an archbishop’s palace, a Faculty of Letters,
a Faculty of Science, a Court of Appeal, and a Court of Justice; the
chief town of a rich department only existed in reference to myself. It
was peopled by myself alone; I was the only cause of its existence. It
is high time for me to go; the town is fading away. I never knew that
my mind was subjective to such a mad extent. A man never knows himself,
and is a monster without realizing it.”
Thus did M. Bergeret examine himself with praiseworthy sincerity. As
he was passing the church of Saint-Exupère, however, he stopped under
the porch of the Last Judgment. He had always loved the old legendary
sculptures, and taken an interest in the stories graven upon the stone.
One devil in particular, who had a dog’s head on his shoulders, and
a man’s face on the nether portion of his anatomy, had a peculiar
fascination for him. He was occupied in dragging a long file of damned
souls chained together, and his two countenances expressed absolute
contentment. There was also a little monk whom an angel was trying to
draw up by his hands, while a devil dragged him down by the feet. M.
Bergeret loved that one, but he had never before looked with so much
interest at these objects which he was now on the point of leaving.
He could not take his eyes away from them. The naïve idea of the
universe expressed in stone by men who had been dead for more than five
hundred years touched him, and seemed to him lovable in its absurdity.
He regretted never having studied it more closely or examined it more
sympathetically. He remembered that this porch of the Last Judgment
which he had seen gilded by the rays of the sun and whitened by the
moonbeams, in the joyous summer time and the dark winter days, would
be with him only a little longer, and then he would see it no more.
He realized then that he was attached to things by invisible links not
to be broken asunder without pain, and his heart was suddenly filled
with great veneration for his town. He loved her old walls and her old
trees. He went out of his way to go up the Mall and look at a favourite
elm that grew there, the one he always sat beneath at the close of
the long summer days. The beautiful tree was now bare of foliage, and
its strong, slender framework stood out naked and black against the
sky. M. Bergeret gazed at it long. The tranquil giant was motionless
and silent, and the mystery of its peaceful life gave rise to deep
meditation on the part of the man who was about to enter upon a new
phase of his destiny.
It was thus M. Bergeret learned that he loved his mother soil and the
town where he had suffered tribulation and tasted quiet happiness.