THE SIMONIAC
"La malle bouche, elle a raté si traistre
Qu'elle a baisé et vendu nostre maistre."
Charles de la Huetrie,
_Contreblason de la Bouche_.
Hubert had no desire whatever to think, but it is not given to all
persons to be able to regulate cerebral activity and to dismiss the
serious affairs until the morrow. Neither the reading of a naturalistic
novel, nor meditation upon the most abtruse propositions and scholia
of the contemporary thinkers, nor the contemplation of the eternal
verities, prevented him from bewailing his recent foolish behavior.
Ah! how well he judged things from a distance, how well he saw _what he
should have done_. No one had to a higher degree his presence of mind
at the foot of the staircase.
Immediate analysis was always slightly confused and did not force any
precise conclusions. Without doubt, it was always three or four minutes
after the occasion had passed that he was able to unravel the thoughts
and the mental reservations of his partner, and by the forth minute he
already knew _what he should have done_ at the first second, but he
never knew it so pertinently as after a night's sleep.
No disturbance of his heart had ever prevented him from sleeping; he
thanked heaven for having granted him lucid mornings.
The more he thought, this morning, the more the moving sands of
indecision shifted.
Having taken an awkward step, he had seen how pernicious action had
proved to him; to wait was sterile: it is like the sower of pebbles
who, pausing along the fields in spring, is astonished not to see any
germination.
"Well," thought Hubert, "one cannot know, everything happens and the
absurd especially. I should be pleased if some miracle would occur
in my favor. We shall see this evening, and," he added, smiling at
himself, "the following days."
Impatient for the night, and fearing the surliness of the hours, he
went out in search of casual diversion.
The street was inclement. The quays, swept by a sharp and humid wind,
stood out gloomily under their closed boxes, truly an unfavorable
sight to those restless plunderers of knowledge. What becomes of the
disconsolate vagabonds, amateurs of printed foolishness, in those
days of enforced idleness? He perceived one, with sad eyes and weary
movements, who was examining the sky, holding out against the storm and
waiting for a lull. Entragues knew him: he was an old man of letters
who spent his days here. No book was unknown to him, he dipped into
all of them, saluted them with a smile, but purchased only those which
concerned the Auvergne, his native country. In a vast garret he had
fifteen thousand books of this kind and did not despair of doubling the
number.
Entragues wished to lead him away from these desolate banks; he
resisted, like a lover who has decided to sleep across the bolted door
of his mistress.
This constancy pleased Entragues.
"Just come as far as the rue de Richelieu. There is a big Moorish room
where you can also find some books, and you are in shelter."
"Yes, it is all right, but you can't take them with you."
Entragues left him at this word whose bitterness he understood, for he
too belonged to those who can only read with pleasure the books that
one owns. Books, women, pictures, horses, statues and the rest, the
very grass and trees and everything one enjoys can only be half-enjoyed
if it is not owned. That explains the little success of museums,
usually deserted except on rainy Sundays; a great indifference or a
great detachment is necessary to bestow enthusiastic feelings on the
contemplation of a picture which an imbecile glance will pollute the
moment after.
Rue de Richelieu has a special atmosphere which can only be breathed
there. As soon as one enters, a little chill strikes the hands and
feet, and once installed in the chair and in a numbered place, one
feels the cruel feverish embraces of books.
Entragues could not remain seated. He walked along the aisle, examining
the heads at his right and the books at his left. Evidently, all
those heads believed in knowledge and came here to imbibe books, in
which--as one knows--all knowledge is contained. Pliny, too, believed
in knowledge, and Paracelsus, and Erasmus, and Salmasius, and where is
their knowledge, Villon! It is where your verses shall never go, poor
scholar! You knew, and among other things you knew that who-ever dies,
"dies in grief." Work, work and some day knowledge, like gall, will
rend your heart. Work, if it is necessary to live; that is an excuse,
although, according to a certain preface, one must not attach too much
value to one's daily bread. But," continued Entragues, "must humanity
grow weary intentionally so that there may be amateurs of labor!"
"What, you, Oury? I thought you were in the provinces."
"I made for myself," answered Oury, "a corner of the provinces in
Paris, and as you see I am alive, or at least I appear to be so."
"And what are you doing?"
"Nothing."
"What do you mean, nothing? when I find you leaning against the big
catalogues!"
"I came here to rest my eyes a little, for I do not work, I watch
others work."
"Ah!"
"Yes, I come here each noon and remain till closing time. In summer
this takes place at six o'clock, so I do a good day's work. In winter I
have hardly time to install myself."
"And you do nothing?"
"No, I wait. I am like the scholar in the legend: I wait until the
others leave."
"My dear Oury, your psychology is really interesting. 'I wait until
the others leave!' Your device is the very device of humanity. It is
admirable, it is the scheme of life. You are a man, Oury, you are the
man, you are symbolic."
"Perhaps, but I do not get any vanity from the fact. Yet my existence
is singular and I imagine that few creatures will have lived whole days
so destitute of incidents. Sit down and we will talk; I really can
sacrifice an hour or two to an old friend."
Entragues willingly consented.
"You thought that I was in the provinces?" commenced Oury. "I am a man
who has disappeared, but not a provincial. Do you see that gray-haired,
very amiable man down there, at the desk. I bow to him, he smiles and
offers me a little paper which I take. I also smile, for this paper
which is used to ask for a book is useless to me. I do not come here to
work, but to watch others work.
"I spend five or six agreeable hours here.
"It is quite different at home in the morning. Time creeps like a
serpent, writhes, yawns, bites me, instills me with the cataleptic
venom of boredom.
"I sometimes open my window in fine weather and gaze upon the distant
trees; other mornings I read Ronsard. Time goes! time goes! No, it lies
heavy, useless and tenacious.
"I had two or three months of respite, several years ago.
_Paint me, Janet, the beauties of my darling._
"I set out in quest of this visionary portrait. Why had Thomas de Leu
not engraved it? He is without an equal in frilling a starched collar,
in lengthening ferociously the face of a leaguer, but delicately that
of a princess. As this picture does not exist, and I knew it did not
exist, I sought it perseveringly, for I was at least sure of never
touching the final disillusion with my finger.
"But my weary steed staggered; a whip lashed his croup; I found my
princess, painted by Janet, in the Louvre. I recognized her by her long
and pale figure, her almond eyes, her large white collar, her slender
shape made still more delicate by a pointed bodice, her Mary Stuart
chapeau, her gray gloves, her gauntlets, her undeniable Renaissance
air. I fell in love with her.
"As I am quite regular in my habits, the princess never failed to
appear on the mornings that followed the first vision. She was ever
the same, ever the princess. She entered the Louvre, I unfortunately
went to the library, for I could neither stop myself nor follow her, so
that it was a long time before I knew if it was a hallucination or the
tangible reality of a woman endowed with flesh and bones.
"We left each other under the vault where the Egyptian and Assyrian
perspectives are situated: she entered by the right and I continued
on my way. I might have entered and followed her, doubtless, but the
hours spent here are sacred to me: it is true that I do not work, but I
might work: I wish, at least, to preserve the possibility of the duty.
All that is left of my will has been transmuted into habits: to snap
the thread would be to resolve the series of learned movements into an
eternal immobility.
"You see that I know myself somewhat. The more I go on, the more I lack
initial force. I can continue anything, I can commence nothing. Between
the will and the act is a hollow ditch into which I would fall if I
attempted to leap it: it is a physical impression.
"One day, finally, my princess appeared in a Van Dyck hat which
threw very ugly shadows on her white figure: farewell to my princess
painted by Janet! She was a woman like all other women and could not,
decidedly, atone for this fault by any other merit.
"That is my adventure.
"I find that life, at bottom, is quite tolerable after the noon hour.
I wait for inspiration, I watch others work, and that is an occupation."
"It is an occupation," said Entragues. "Good-by. Are you not coming out
with me?"
"Oh, no," Oury replied, "it is impossible. Not before four o'clock."
Entragues left him and continued his walk, seeking some head familiar
to his eyes among the bowed skulls. Vain search! Then he withdrew
alone, without the companion he would have liked, and strolled up the
street as far as the boulevard. Oury had thrown a gloom over him.
Entragues was afraid of growing indifferent because of the confidences
of this sad invalid, once an intelligent boy whom his friends had
thought destined to write interesting retrospective criticism, a sort
of history of the Pleiade, less puerile and braver than that of the
doleful Sainte-Beuve. These sicknesses of the will were contagious:
he decided to shun this intellectual leper and abolish at once all
remembrance of the meeting. A like malady might entrap his nerves and
lay low his will in the beaten path of habit; he was not eager for a
sojourn, not even for a tourist's excursion, within the borders of
madness.
He sauntered along, visited some editorial offices in search of Van
Baël, whom he wished to consult on a detail of costume, passed a half
hour in an auction room where he bought some ancient silks and a lot of
faded church ornaments, ugly, but sacred and smelling of simony.
A simoniac priest had haunted him for years; his was a lean face with
malignant eyes, a rigid skeleton-like body, long hands, white hands,
supple hands with square nails, hands of a seller of stuffs, hands of
one who blesses, hands of a Jew quickly returned into the cloak with
the prize of blood. In what century and country lived he?
"To reach some appropriateness of analysis," thought Entragues, while
returning to his dwelling, a chasuble on his knees and a great heap
of sacerdotal embroideries filling the rest of the carriage, "to
instill true life into this simoniac, he should be modern. It would
be necessary for me to be able to enter into his church, take a seat
some evening and kneel down in his confessional, drinking the wine from
his chalice and taking the consecrated wafers from his pyx. Like him I
would have to be simoniacal and sacrilegious, Ah! what a test! and like
him I would have to feel the irrevocable damnation and daily glorify
myself with the opprobrious secret of my lies!"
Sixtine came to his rescue: the red robe rid him of the black robe.
The hour of the meeting, given the evening before, rang.
"Madame has gone out!"
"Ah!"
That was all. Why even open the mouth again?