I
In his study M. Bergeret, professor of literature at the University,
was preparing his lesson on the eighth book of the _Æneid_ to the
shrill mechanical accompaniment of the piano, on which, close by, his
daughters were practising a difficult exercise. M. Bergeret’s room
possessed only one window, but this was a large one, and filled up one
whole side. It admitted, however, more draught than light, for the
sashes were ill-fitting and the panes darkened by a high contiguous
wall. M. Bergeret’s table, pushed close against this window, caught
the dismal rays of niggard daylight that filtered through. As a matter
of fact this study, where the professor polished and repolished his
fine, scholarly phrases, was nothing more than a shapeless cranny, or
rather a double recess, behind the framework of the main staircase
which, spreading out most inconsiderately in a great curve towards
the window, left only room on either side for two useless, churlish
corners. Trammelled by this monstrous, green-papered paunch of masonry,
M. Bergeret had with difficulty discovered in his cantankerous study—a
geometrical abortion as well as an æsthetic abomination—a scanty flat
surface where he could stack his books along the deal shelves, upon
which yellow rows of Teubner classics were plunged in never-lifted
gloom. M. Bergeret himself used to sit squeezed close up against the
window, writing in a cold, chilly style that owed much to the bleakness
of the atmosphere in which he worked. Whenever he found his papers
neither torn nor topsy-turvy and his pens not gaping cross-nibbed, he
considered himself a lucky man! For such was the usual result of a
visit to the study from Madame Bergeret or her daughters, where they
came to write up the laundry list or the household accounts. Here, too,
stood the dressmaker’s dummy, on which Madame Bergeret used to drape
the skirts she cut out at home. There, bolt upright, over against the
learned editions of Catullus and Petronius, stood, like a symbol of the
wedded state, this wicker-work woman.
M. Bergeret was preparing his lesson on the eighth book of the
_Æneid_, and he ought to have been devoting himself exclusively to
the fascinating details of metre and language. In this task he would
have found, if not joy, at any rate mental peace and the priceless
balm of spiritual tranquillity. Instead, he had turned his thoughts
in another direction: he was musing on the soul, the genius, the
outward features of that classic world whose books he spent his life in
studying. He had given himself up to the longing to behold with his own
eyes those golden shores, that azure sea, those rose-hued mountains,
those lovely meadows through which the poet leads his heroes. He was
bemoaning himself bitterly that it had never been his lot to visit the
shores where once Troy stood, to gaze on the landscape of Virgil, to
breathe the air of Italy, of Greece and holy Asia, as Gaston Boissier
and Gaston Deschamps had done. The melancholy aspect of his study
overwhelmed him and great waves of misery submerged his mind. His
sadness was, of course, the fruit of his own folly, for all our real
sorrows come from within and are self-caused. We mistakenly believe
that they come from outside, but we create them within ourselves from
our own personality.
So sat M. Bergeret beneath the huge plaster cylinder, manufacturing
his own sadness and weariness as he reflected on his narrow, cramped,
and dismal life: his wife was a vulgar creature, who had by now lost
all her good looks; his daughters, even, had no love for him, and
finally the battles of Æneas and Turnus were dull and boring. At last
he was aroused from this melancholy train of thought by the arrival of
his pupil, M. Roux, who made his appearance in red trousers and a blue
coat, for he was still going through his year of military service.
“Ha!” said M. Bergeret, “so I see they’ve turned my best Latin scholar
into a hero.”
And when M. Roux denied the heroic impeachment, the professor
persisted: “I know what I’m talking about. I call a man who wears a
sabre a hero, and I’m quite right in so doing. And if you only wore a
busby, I should call you a great hero. The least one can decently do is
to bestow a little flattery on the people one sends out to get shot.
One couldn’t possibly pay them for their services at a cheaper rate.
But may you never be immortalised by any act of heroism, and may you
only earn the praises of mankind by your attainments in Latin verse! It
is my patriotism, and nothing else, that moves me to this sincere wish.
For I am persuaded by the study of history that heroism is mainly to
be found among the routed and vanquished. Even the Romans, a people by
no means so eager for war as is commonly supposed, a people, too, who
were often beaten, even the Romans only produced a Decius in a moment
of defeat. At Marathon, too, the heroism of Kynegeirus was shown
precisely at the moment of disaster for the Athenians, who, if they did
succeed in arresting the march of the barbarian army, could not prevent
them from embarking with all the Persian cavalry which had just been
recuperating on the plains. Besides, it is not at all clear that the
Persians made any special effort in this battle.”
M. Roux deposited his sabre in a corner of the study and sat down in a
chair offered him by the professor.
“It is now four months,” said he, “since I have heard a single
intelligent word. During these four months I have been concentrating
all the powers of my mind on the task of conciliating my corporal and
my sergeant-major by carefully calculated tips. So far, that is the
only side of the art of warfare that I can really say I have mastered.
It is, however, the most important side. Yet I have in the process
lost all power of grasping a general idea or of following a subtle
thought. And here you are, my dear sir, telling me that the Greeks were
conquered at Marathon and that the Romans were not warlike. My head
whirls.”