love weighs! What sorrows accompany it, what silences to endure! Now
that the miracle has been accomplished, I am beautiful and renowned.
Croniamantal is ugly, he has wasted his property in a short time; he is
poor, lacking in elegance, no longer gay; the slightest of his gestures
make him a hundred enemies.
"I love him no longer. I need him no longer, my admirers are enough for
me. I shall rid me of him gradually. But that is going to be very
annoying. Either I must go away, or he must disappear, so that he
doesn't bother me, and so that he isn't able to reproach me."
And after eight days, Tristouse became the mistress of Paponat, although
still seeing Croniamantal, whom she treated more and more coldly. The
less she came to see him, the more desperately he cared for her. When
she did not come at all, he spent hours in front of the house she lived
in in the hope of seeing her come out, and if by chance she did, he
would escape like a thief, fearing that she might accuse him of spying
on her.
* * *
It was by running around after Tristouse Bailerinette that Croniamantal
continued his literary education.
One day as he was wandering about Paris, he suddenly found himself at
the Seine. He crossed a bridge and walked for some time, when suddenly
perceiving before him M. François Coppée, Croniamantal regretted that
this passerby was dead. But there is nothing against talking with the
dead, and the encounter passed off very pleasantly.
"Come," thought Croniamantal, "to a passerby he would appear to be
nothing but a passerby, and the very author of the _Passerby._[11] He is
a clever and spiritual rhymester, with some feeling for reality. Let us
speak to him about rhyme."
The poet of the _Passerby_ was smoking a dark cigarette. He was dressed
in black, his visage black; he stood bizarrely on a high stone, and
Croniamantal saw quite easily by his pensive air that he was composing
verses. He came alongside of him and after having greeted him, said
brusquely:
"Dear master, how sombre you seem."
He replied courteously.
"It is because my statue is of bronze. That exposes me constantly to
scorn. Thus the other day."
_Passing by one day the negro Sam MacVea
Seeing I was the blacker, sat down and muttered:
'Yea.'_
"See how adroit those lines are. Did you notice how well the couplet I
just recited for you rhymes for the eye."
"Indeed," said Croniamantal, "for it is pronounced _Sam MacVee_, like
_Shakespeer._"
"Well here is something that comes off better," continued the statue:
_Passing by one day the negro Sam MacVea
Christened this tablet with a flask of eau-de-vie._
"There is a bit of refinement that ought to appeal to you. It is the
_rime riche_, the perfect rhyme to delight the ear."
"You certainly enlighten me on the rhyme," said Croniamantal. "I am very
happy, dear master, to have met you in passing by."
"It is my first success," replied the metallic poet. "But I have just
composed a little poem bearing the same title: it is about a gentleman
who passes by. _The Passerby_, across the corridor of a railroad coach;
he perceives a charming lady with whom, instead of going only to
Brussels, he stops at the Dutch frontier:
_They passed at least eight days at Rosendael
He tasted the ideal, she the real
In all things, it chanced, their ways differed,
It was from veritable Love they suffered._
"I call your attention to the last two lines, which through rhyming
somewhat imperfectly contain a subtle dissonance, which is further
emphasized by the fact of their being morbidly feminine rhymes."
"Dear master," exclaimed Croniamantal, "speak to me of vers libre."
"Long live liberty!" cried the bronze statue.
And having saluted him, Croniamantal went his way looking for
Tristouse.
* * *
On another day Croniamantal was walking along the boulevards. Tristouse
had missed an appointment with him, and he hoped to find her in a tea
room where she sometimes went with her friends. He turned the corner of
the rue Le Peletier, when a gentleman, dressed in a pearl-grey cape,
accosted him, saying:
"Sir, I am going to reform literature. I have found a superb subject: it
is about the sensations of a well bred young bachelor who permits an
improper sound to escape in an assemblage of ladies and young people of
good family."
Croniamantal was properly amazed at the novelty of the subject, but
understood at once how much it would take to test the sensibilities of
the author.
Croniamantal fled... A lady stepped on his feet. She was also an
authoress, and did not neglect to inform him that this incident would
furnish him with a subject of fresh and delicate character.
Croniamantal took to his heels and reached the Pont des Saint Pères
where three people were disputing over the subject of a novel and begged
him to decide who was right; it was about the case of an officer.
"Fine subject," cried Croniamantal.
"Listen," said his neighbor, a bearded man, "I claim that the subject is
too new and too unusual for the present day public."
And the third man explained that it was about an officer of a restaurant
company, the man who held office, who presided over the soiled dishes...
Croniamantal did not reply to them but made off to visit an old cook who
wrote verse, and at whose place he hoped to find Tristouse at tea time.
Tristouse was not there, but Croniamantal was hugely entertained by the
mistress of the house who declaimed some poems to him.
It was a poetry that was full of profundity, and in which words had a
new meaning entirely. Thus _archipel_ was only used in the sense of
_papier buvard._[12]
* * *
Some time later, the rich Paponat, proud of being the lover of the
renowned Tristouse, and desirous of not losing her, for she did him
honor, decided to take his mistress for a trip through Central Europe.
"Fine," said Tristouse, "but we will not travel as lovers, for even
though you are nice to me, I don't love you enough, or at least I force
myself to the point of not loving you. We shall travel as two friends,
and I shall dress up as a young man; my hair is rather short, and I have
often been told that I have the air of a handsome young man."
"Very well," said Paponat, "and since we both are in need of repose we
shall make our retreat in Moravia in a convent of Brünn where my uncle,
the prior of Crepontois, retired after the expulsion of the monks. It is
one of the richest and finest convents in the world. I shall present you
as one of my friends, and have no fear, we shall be taken for lovers
just the same."
"That suits me," said Tristouse, "for I love to pass for that which I am
not. We leave tomorrow."
XV. VOYAGE
Croniamantal went perfectly mad upon hearing of the departure of
Tristouse. But at this time he began to become famous, and as his
poetical repute waxed so did his vogue as a dramatist.
The theatres played his plays and the crowd applauded his name, but at
the same moment the enemies of poets and poetry were increasing in
number and growing in audacious hatred.
He only became more and more sorrowful, his soul shrinking within his
enfeebled body.
When he learned of the departure of Tristouse he did not protest, but
simply asked the concierge if she knew the destination of the voyage.
"All that I know," said the woman, "is that she has gone to Central
Europe."
"Very well," said Croniamantal, and returning to his quarters he
gathered up the several thousand francs he still possessed and took the
train for Germany at the Gare du Nord.
On the following day, Christmas eve, the train was engulfed in the
enormous terminal of Cologne. Croniamantal, carrying a little valise,
descended last from his third-class coach.
On the platform of the opposite track the red cap of the station master,
the spiked helmets of policemen, and the silk hats of high functionaries
indicated that an important person was awaited by the next train. And to
be sure Croniamantal heard a little old man, with quick gestures,
explaining to his fat wife who gaped with astonishment at the spiked
helmets, the red cap, and the silk hats:
"Krupp... Essen... No orders... Italy."
Croniamantal followed the crowd of passengers who had come in on his
train. He walked behind two girls, who must have been pigeon-toed, so
much did their gait resemble that of the goose. They kept their hands
concealed under short cloaks; the head of the first one was covered with
a small black hat, from which there dangled a bouquet of blue roses, as
well as some straight, black feathers, with the stem trimmed except at
the tip, which trembled as if with cold. The hat of the other girl was
of a soft, almost brilliant felt, an enormous knot of satinette
shrouding her with ridicule. They were probably two servant maids out of
a job, for they were pounced upon at the exit by a group of strait-laced
and ugly ladies wearing the ribbon of the Catholic Society for the
Protection of Young Girls. The ladies of the Protestant Society for the
same purpose stood a little further off. Croniamantal following behind a
stout man with a short, hard and russet beard, dressed in green,
descended the stairway that led to the vestibule of the station.
Outside he saluted the Dome, solitary in the midst of the irregular
square which it filled with its bulk. The station heaped its modern mass
close to the huge cathedral. Hotels spread their signs in hybrid
languages and appeared to hold their respectful distance from the gothic
colossus. Croniamantal sniffed the odour of the town for a long time. He
seemed to be disappointed.
"She is not here," he said to himself, "my nose would smell her, my
nerves would vibrate, my eyes would see her."
He crossed the town, passed the fortifications on foot as if driven by
un unknown force along the main road, downstream, on the right bank of
the Rhine. And in truth, Tristouse and Paponat had arrived the night
before in Cologne, taken an automobile and continued their journey; they
had taken the right bank of the Rhine in the direction of Coblenz, and
Croniamantal was following their trail.
Christmas eve came. An old prophet of a rabbi from Dollendorf, just as
he was venturing upon the bridge which links Bonn with Buel, was
repulsed by a violent gust of wind. The snow fell in a great rage. The
sound of the gale drowned all the Christmas songs, but the thousand
lights of the trees glittered in each house.
The old Jew swore:
"_Kreuzdonnerwetter..._ I shall never get to _Haenchen..._ Winter, my
old friend, thou canst avail nothing against my old and joyous carcass,
let me cross without hindrance this old Rhine which is as drunken as
thirty-six drunkards. As to myself, I bend my steps toward the noble
tavern frequented by the Borussians only to tipple in company with those
white bonnets and at their cost, like a good Christian, although I am a
Jew."
The sound of the gale doubled in fury, strange voices made themselves
heard. The old rabbi shivered and raised his head crying:
"Donnerkeil! Ui jeh, ch, ch, ch. Eh! Say, up there, you ought to go
about your business instead of making life miserable for poor happy
devils whose fate sends them abroad on such nights... Eh! mothers, are
you no longer under the domination of Solomon? ...Ohey! Ohey! Tseilom
Kop! Meicabl! Farwaschen Ponim! Beheime! You want to prevent me from
drinking the excellent Moselle wines with the students of Borussia who
are only too happy to toast with me because of my science and my
inimitable lyricism, not to mention all my talents for sorcery and
prophecy.
"Accursed spirits! know ye that I might have drunk also Rhine wines, not
to mention the wines of France. Nor should I have neglected to polish
off some champagne in your honor, my old friends!... At midnight, the
hour when the _Christkindchen_ is made, I should have rolled under the
table and have slept at least during the brawling... But you unchain the
winds, you make an infernal uproar during this saintly night which
should have been peaceful... as to being calm, you seem to be twisting
his pigtail up there, sweet ladies... To amuse Solomon, no doubt...
Lilith! Naama! Aguereth! Mahala! Ah! Solomon, for thy pleasure they are
going to kill all the poets on this earth.
"Ah Solomon! Solomon! jovial king whose entertainers are the four
nocturnal spectres moving from the Orient to the North, thou desirest my
death, for I am also a poet like all the Jewish prophets and a prophet
like all the poets.
"Farewell drunkenness for tonight... Old Rhine, I must turn my back to
thee. I am going back to prepare me for death and dictate my last and
most lyrical prophecies..."
A horrible crash, like a stroke of thunder, burst just then. The old
prophet pressed his lips together, lowering his head and looking down;
then he bent down and held his ear quite close to the ground. When he
straightened up he murmured:
"The earth herself can no longer suffer the unbearable contact with
poets."
Then he took his way across the streets of Buel, turning his back on the
Rhine. When the rabbi had traversed the railroad track he found himself
before a crossing and as he hesitated not knowing which to take, he
lifted his head again by chance. He saw before him a young man with a
valise coming from Bonn; the old rabbi did not recognize the person and
cried to him:
"Are you mad to go out in such weather, sir?"
"I am hurrying to rejoin someone whom I have lost and whose track I am
following," replied the stranger.
"What is your profession," cried the Jew.
"I am a poet."
The prophet stamped with his foot and as the young man disappeared he
cursed him horribly because of the pity he felt, then lowering his head
he went to look at the signposts along the road. Wheezing, he took the
road straight ahead of him.
"Happily the wind is fallen... at least one can walk... I had thought at
first that he was coming to kill me. But, no, he will probably die even
before me, this poet who is not even a Jew. Well, let us go quick and
merrily to prepare us a glorious death."
The old rabbi walked faster; with his long cloak he gave the effect of a
returned spirit, and some children who were returning from Putzchen
after the Christmas Tree party passed him crying with terror, and for a
long time they threw stones in the direction in which he had
disappeared.
* * *
Croniamantal covered in this way part of Germany and the Austrian
Empire; the force that propelled him drew him across Thuringia, Saxony,
Bohemia, Moravia, up to Brünn, where he decided to stop.
On the very night of his arrival, he scoured the town. Along the streets
surrounding the old palace enormous Swiss guards in breeches and cocked
hats, were standing before the doors. They leaned on long canes with
crystal heads. Their gold buttons gleamed like the eyes of cats.
Croniamantal lost his way; he wandered about for some time in poor
streets where shadows passed vividly across drawn blinds. Officers in
long blue coats passed by. Croniamantal turned to glance at them, then
he walked outside of the town with night coming on, to look at the
sombre mass of the Spielberg. While he was looking at the old state
prison, he heard the sound of feet dose by and then saw three monks pass
gesticulating and talking loudly. Croniamantal ran after them and asked
them directions.
"You are French," they said; "come with us."
Croniamantal examined them and noticed that they wore above their frocks
little beige cloaks that were very elegant. Each one carried a light
cane and wore a melon-shaped hat. On the way one of the monks said to
Croniamantal:
"You have wandered far from your hotel, we will show you the way if you
wish. But if you care to, you may certainly come to the convent with us:
you will be well received because you are a foreigner and you can pass
the night there."
Croniamantal accepted joyfully, saying:
"I shall be very glad to come, for aren't you brothers to me, who am a
poet."
They began to laugh. The oldest, who wore a gold-framed lorgnon and
whose belly puffed out of his fashionable waistcoat, raised his arms and
cried:
"A poet! Is it possible!"
And the two others, who were thinner, choked with laughter, bending down
and holding their bellies as if they had the colic.
"Let us be serious," said the monk with the lorgnon, "we are going to
pass through a street inhabited by the Jews."
In the streets, at every step, old women standing like pines in a
forest, called them, making signals.
"Let us flee from this stench," said the fat monk, who was a Czech and
who was called Father Karel by his companions.
Croniamantal and the monks stopped at last before a great convent door.
At the sound of the bell the porter came to let them in. The two thin
monks said good-bye to Croniamantal, who remained alone with Father
Karel in a parlor that was richly furnished.
"My child," said Father Karel, "you are in a unique convent. The monks
who inhabit it are all very proper people. We have old archdukes, and
even former architects, soldiers, scientists, poets, inventors, a few
monks expelled from France, and some lay guests of good breeding. All of
them are saints. I, myself, such as you see me, with my lorgnon and my
pot-belly, am a saint. I shall show you your room, where you may stay
until nine o'clock; then you will hear the bell ring and I shall come to
look for you."
Father Karel guided Croniamantal through long corridors. Then they went
up a stairway of white marble and on the second floor, Father Karel
opened a door and said:
"Your room."
He showed him the electric button and left.
The room was round, the bed and the chairs were round; on the chimney
piece a skull looked like an old cheese.
Croniamantal stood by the window, under which spread the teeming
darkness of a large monastery garden, from which there seemed to rise
laughter, sighs, cries of joy, as if a thousand couples were embracing
each other. Then a woman's voice in the garden sang a song which
Croniamantal had heard before:
_...Croquemitaine
Wears the rose and the lilac
The King is a-coming
--Hello Germaine
--Croquemitaine
Wilt thou come back again?_
And Croniamantal began to sing the rest:
--_Hello Germaine
I come to love among thine arms._
Then he heard the voice of Tristouse continuing the couplet.
And voices of men here and there, sang airs that were strange or grave,
while the cracked voice of an old man stuttered:
_Vexilla regis prodeunt..._
At this moment Father Karel entered the room, as a bell rang full
force.
"Well, my boy! Listening to the sounds of our fine garden? It is full of
memories, this earthly paradise. Tychobrahé made love there with a
pretty Jewess who said to him all the time: Chazer,--which means pig in
the jargon.[13] I myself, have seen such and such an archduke play with
a pretty boy whose behind was shaped like a heart. Let us come to
dinner."
They arrived in a vast refectory still empty, and the poet examined at
his leisure the frescoes which covered the wall.
One was of Noah, dead-drunk on a couch. His son Cham was uncovering his
nakedness, that is to say the root of a vine naively and prettily
painted whose branches served as a genealogical tree, or something of
the sort, for they had painted the names of all the abbés in red
letters on all the leaves.
The marriage of Cana showed a Mannekenpis pissing wine into the casks
while the spouse, at least eight months with child, offered her belly to
someone who was writing on it in charcoal: TOKAI.
And then again there was a fresco of the soldiers of Gideon relieving
themselves of the awful colic caused by the water they had drunk.
The long table that covered the middle of the hall was spread with a
rare sumptuousness. The glasses and decanters were of Bohemian
cut-glass, and of the finest red crystal. The superb silver pieces
glittered on the whiteness of the cloth strewn with violets.
The monks arrived one by one, their hoods on their heads, arms folded on
their breasts. On entering they greeted Croniamantal and took their
accustomed places. As they came in, Father Karel informed Croniamantal
of their name and what country they came from. The table was soon filled
and Croniamantal counted fifty-six of them. The Abbé, an Italian with
narrow eyes, said grace and the repast began, but Croniamantal anxiously
awaited the arrival of Tristouse.
A bouillon was served in which there swam little brains of birds and
sweet peas...
* * *
"Our two French guests have just left," said a French monk who had been
the prior of Crepentois. "I could not hold them here: the companion of
my nephew was just singing in the garden in his pretty soprano voice. He
almost fainted at hearing some one in the convent sing the close of the
song. They left just now and took the train, for their automobile was
not ready. We shall send it on to them by rail. They did not impart to
me the destination of their journey, but I think that the pious children
are bound for Marseilles. At least, I think I heard them talk of that
town."
Croniamantal, pale as a sheet, rose, then:
"Excuse me, good fathers," he said, "but it was wrong of me to accept
your hospitality. I must go away, do not ask me the reason. But I shall
keep a fond memory of the simplicity, the gaiety, the liberty that reign
here. All that is dear to me to the highest degree, why, why, alas, can
I not profit of it?"
XVI. PERSECUTION
At this time prizes for poetry were being awarded every day. Thousands
of societies had been founded for this purpose and their members lived
on the fat of the land, while making upon fixed dates large benefices to
poets. But the 26th of January was the day upon which the largest
associations, companies, boards of directors, academies, committees,
juries, etc., of the whole world bestowed their awards. Upon this day
8,019 prizes for poetry were distributed, the total of which aggregated
50,005,225 francs.[14] On the other hand, since the taste for poetry had
never spread among any class of the population of any country, public
opinion had risen powerfully against the poets who were called
parasites, lazy, useless, and so forth. The 26th of January of this year
passed without incident, but on the following day the great newspaper,
La Voix, published at Adelaide (Australia) in the French language,
contained an article by the distinguished agricultural chemist Horace
Tograth (a German born at Leipzig), whose discoveries and inventions had
frequently seemed to border on the miraculous. The article, entitled
_The Laurel_, contained a sort of chronology of the culture of the
laurel in Judea, in Greece, in Italy, in Africa and in Provence. The
author gave counsel to those who had laurel trees in their gardens,
indicating the multiple usage of the laurel, as a food, in art, in
poetry, and its rôle as a symbol of poetic glory. He then began to talk
of mythology, making allusions to Apollo and the fable of Daphné.
Finally, Horace Tograth changed his tone brusquely and concluded his
article as follows:
"And furthermore, I say candidly, this useless tree is still too common,
and we have less glorious symbolisms to which people attribute the
famous savour of the laurel. The laurel holds too large a place upon our
overpopulated earth, the laurels are unworthy of living. Each one of
them takes the place of two in the sun. Let them be chopped down, and
let their leaves be feared as a poison. Hitherto symbols of poetry and
literary science, they are nothing more today than that death-glory
which is to glory as death is to life, and as the hand of glory is to
the key.
"True glory has abandoned poetry for science, philosophy, acrobatics,
philanthropy, sociology, etc. ...Poets are good for nothing more
nowadays than to receive money which they do not earn, since they
scarcely ever work and most of them (except for the minstrels) have no
talent and no excuse whatsoever. As to those who have some gifts, they
are even more obnoxious, for if they receive nothing they make more
noise than a regiment and din our ears with their being persecuted. None
of these people have any _raison d'être._ The prizes which are awarded
them are stolen from workers, inventors, scientists, philosophers,
acrobats, philanthropists, sociologists, and so forth. The poets must
disappear. Lycurgus would have banished them from the Republic, we too
must banish them. Otherwise, the poets, lazy fiefs, will become our
princes and while doing nothing, live off our work, oppressing us, and
mocking us. In short, we must rid ourselves immediately of the poets'
tyranny.