Meanwhile M. Bergeret was re-reading the meditations of Marcus
Aurelius. He had a fellow-feeling for Faustina’s husband, yet he found
it impossible really to appreciate all the fine thought contained in
this little book, so false to nature seemed its sentiments, so harsh
its philosophy, so scornful of the softer side of life its whole tone.
Next he read the tales of Sieur d’Ouville, and those of Eutrapel, the
_Cymbalum_ of Despériers, the _Matinées_ of Cholière and the _Serées_
of Guillaume Bouchet. He took more pleasure in this course of reading,
for he perceived that it was suitable to one in his position and
therefore edifying, that it tended to diffuse serene peace and heavenly
gentleness in his soul. He returned grateful thanks to the whole band
of romance-writers who all, from the dweller in old Miletus, where was
told the Tale of the Wash-tub, to the wielders of the spicy wit of
Burgundy, the charm of Touraine, and the broad humour of Normandy,
have helped to turn the sorrow of harassed hearts into the ways of
pleasant mirth by teaching men the art of indulgent laughter.[8]
[8] In his study of mediæval romances, M. Bergeret devotes
himself to the _Conte badin_, or jesting tale of ludicrous
adventure by which so much of Chaucer’s work was inspired.
This school of short stories starts with the tales of
Aristeides of Miletus, a writer of the second century
B.C. His _Milésiaques_, as they are called,
were followed by the fabliaux of the Middle Ages, and in
the fifteenth century and onwards by the _Cent Nouvelles
nouvelles_ of Louis XI’s time, by the _Heptaméron_ of the
Queen of Navarre, the _Decameron_ of Boccaccio and the
_Contes_ of Despériers, of Guillaume Bouchet, of Noël du
Fail and others. La Fontaine retold many of the older tales
in verse and Balzac tried to revive the Gallic wit and even
the language of the fabliaux in his _Contes drôlatiques_.
“These romancers,” thought he, “who make austere moralists knit their
brows, are themselves excellent moralists, who should be loved and
praised for having gracefully suggested the simplest, the most natural,
the most humane solutions of domestic difficulties, difficulties which
the pride and hatred of the savage heart of man would fain solve by
murder and bloodshed. O Milesian romancers! O shrewd Petronius! O Noël
du Fail,” cried he, “O forerunners of Jean de La Fontaine! what apostle
was wiser or better than you, who are commonly called good-for-nothing
rascals? O benefactors of humanity! you have taught us the true science
of life, a kindly scorn of the human race!”
Thus did M. Bergeret fortify himself with the thought that our pride
is the original source of all our misery, that we are, in fact, but
monkeys in clothes, and that we have solemnly applied conceptions of
honour and virtue to matters where these are ridiculous. Pope Boniface
VIII, in fact, was wise in thinking that, in his own case, a mountain
was being made out of a mole-hill, and Madame Bergeret and M. Roux
were just about as worthy of praise or blame as a pair of chimpanzees.
Yet, he was too clear-sighted to pretend to deny the close bond that
united him to these two principal actors in his drama. But he only
regarded himself as a meditative chimpanzee, and he derived from the
idea a sensation of gratified vanity. For wisdom invariably goes astray
somewhere.
M. Bergeret’s, indeed, failed in another point: he did not really
adapt his conduct to his maxims, and although he showed no violence,
he never gave the least hint of forbearance. Thus he by no means
proved himself the follower of those Milesian, Latin, Florentine, or
Gallic romance-writers whose smiling philosophy he admired as being
well suited to the absurdity of human nature. He never reproached
Madame Bergeret, it is true, but neither did he speak a word, or throw
a glance in her direction. Even when seated opposite her at table,
he seemed to have the power of never seeing her. And if by chance he
met her in one of the rooms of the flat, he gave the poor woman the
impression that she was invisible.
He ignored her, he treated her not only as a stranger, but as
non-existent. He ousted her both from visual and mental consciousness.
He annihilated her. In the house, among the numberless preoccupations
of their life together, he neither saw her, heard her, nor formed any
perception of her. Madame Bergeret was a coarse-grained, troublesome
woman, but she was a homely, moral creature after all; she was human
and living, and she suffered keenly at not being allowed to burst
out into vulgar chatter, into threatening gestures and shrill cries.
She suffered at no longer feeling herself the mistress of the house,
the presiding genius of the kitchen, the mother of the family, the
matron. Worst of all, she suffered at feeling herself done away with,
at feeling that she no longer counted as a person, or even as a thing.
During meals she at last reached the point of longing to be a chair
or a plate, so that her presence might at least be recognised. If M.
Bergeret had suddenly drawn the carving-knife on her, she would have
cried for joy, although she was by nature timid of a blow. But not to
count, not to matter, not to be seen, was insupportable to her dull,
heavy temperament. The monotonous and incessant punishment that M.
Bergeret inflicted on her was so cruel that she was obliged to stuff
her handkerchief into her mouth to stifle her sobs. And M. Bergeret,
shut up in his study, used to hear her noisily blowing her nose in the
dining-room while he himself was placidly sorting the slips for his
_Virgilius nauticus_, unmoved by either love or hate.
Every evening Madame Bergeret was sorely tempted to follow her husband
into the study that had now become his bedroom as well, and the
impregnable fastness of his impregnable will. She longed either to ask
his forgiveness, or to overwhelm him with the lowest abuse, to prick
his face with the point of a kitchen-knife or to slash herself in the
breast—one or the other, indifferently, for all she wanted was to
attract his notice to herself, just to exist for him. And this thing
which was denied her, she needed with the same overpowering need with
which one craves bread, water, air, salt.
She still despised M. Bergeret, for this feeling was hereditary and
filial in her nature. It came to her from her father and flowed in her
blood. She would no longer have been a Pouilly, the niece of Pouilly of
the Dictionary, if she had acknowledged any kind of equality between
herself and her husband. She despised him because she was a Pouilly
and he was a Bergeret, and not because she had deceived him. She had
the good sense not to plume herself too much on this superiority, but
it is more than probable that she despised him for not having killed
M. Roux. Her scorn was a fixed quantity, capable neither of increase
nor decrease. Nevertheless, she felt no hatred for him, although until
lately, she had rather enjoyed tormenting and annoying him in the
ordinary affairs of every day, by scolding him for the untidiness of
his clothes and the tactlessness of his behaviour, or by telling him
interminable anecdotes about the neighbours, trivial and silly stories
in which even the malice and ill-nature were but commonplace. For this
windbag of a mind produced neither bitter venom nor strange poison and
was but puffed up by the breath of vanity.
Madame Bergeret was admirably calculated to live on good terms with a
mate whom she could betray and brow-beat in the calm assurance of her
power and by the natural working of her vigorous physique. Having no
inner life of her own and being exuberantly healthy of body, she was
a gregarious creature, and when M. Bergeret was suddenly withdrawn
from her life, she missed him as a good wife misses an absent husband.
Moreover, this meagre little man, whom she had always considered
insignificant and unimportant, but not troublesome, now filled her
with dread. By treating her as an absolute nonentity, M. Bergeret made
her really feel that she no longer existed. She seemed to herself
enveloped in nothingness. At this new, unknown, nameless state, akin
to solitude and death, she sank into melancholy and terror. At night,
her anguish became cruel, for she was sensitive to nature and subject
to the influence of time and space. Alone in her bed, she used to
gaze in horror at the wicker-work woman on which she had draped her
dresses for so many years and which, in the days of her pride and
light-heartedness, used to stand in M. Bergeret’s study, proudly
upright, all body and no head. Now, bandy-legged and mutilated, it
leant wearily against the glass-fronted wardrobe, in the shadow of
the curtain of purple rep. Lenfant the cooper had found it in his
yard amongst the tubs of water with their floating corks, and when he
brought it to Madame Bergeret, she dared not set it up again in the
study, but had carried it instead into the conjugal chamber where,
wounded, drooping, and struck by emblematic wrath, it now stood like a
symbol that represented notions of black magic to her mind.
She suffered cruelly. When she awoke one morning a melancholy ray
of pale sunlight was shining between the folds of the curtain on
the mutilated wicker dummy and, as she lay watching it, she melted
with self-pity at the thought of her own innocence and M. Bergeret’s
cruelty. She felt instinct with rebellion. It was intolerable, she
thought, that Amélie Pouilly should suffer by the act of a Bergeret.
She mentally communed with the soul of her father and so strengthened
herself in the idea that M. Bergeret was too paltry a man to make her
unhappy. This sense of pride gave her relief and supplied her with
confidence to bedeck herself, buoying her mind with the assurance that
she had not been humiliated and that everything was as it always had
been.
It was Madame Leterrier’s At Home day, and Madame Bergeret set out,
therefore, to call on the rector’s highly respected wife. In the blue
drawing-room she found her hostess sitting with Madame Compagnon, the
wife of the mathematical professor, and after the first greetings were
over, she heaved a deep sigh. It was a provocative sigh, rather than a
down-trodden one, and while the two university ladies were still giving
ear to it, Madame Bergeret added:
“There are many reasons for sadness in this life, especially for anyone
who is not naturally inclined to put up with everything.... You are a
happy woman, Madame Leterrier, and so are you, Madame Compagnon!...”
And Madame Bergeret, becoming humble, discreet and self-controlled,
said nothing more, though fully conscious of the inquiring glances
directed towards her. But this was quite enough to give people to
understand that she was ill-used and humiliated in her home. Before,
there had been whispers in the town about M. Roux’s attentions to her,
but from that day forth Madame Leterrier set herself to put an end
to the scandal, declaring that M. Roux was a well-bred, honourable
young man. Speaking of Madame Bergeret, she added, with moist lips and
tear-filled eyes:
“That poor woman is very unhappy and very sensitive.”
Within six weeks the drawing-rooms of the county town had made up their
minds and come over to Madame Bergeret’s side. They declared that M.
Bergeret, who never paid calls, was a worthless fellow. They suspected
him of secret debauchery and hidden vice, and his friend, M. Mazure,
his comrade at the academy of old books, his colleague at Paillot’s,
was quite sure that he had seen him one evening going into the
restaurant in the Rue des Hebdomadiers, a place of questionable repute.
Whilst M. Bergeret was thus being tried by the tribunal of society
and found wanting, the popular voice was crowning him with quite a
different reputation. Of the vulgar symbol that had lately appeared on
the front of his own house only very indistinct traces remained. But
phantoms of the same design began to increase and multiply in the town,
and now M. Bergeret could not go to the college, nor on the Mall, nor
to Paillot’s shop, without seeing his own portrait on some wall, drawn
in the primitive style of all such ribaldries, surrounded by obscene,
suggestive, or idiotic scrawls, and either pencilled or chalked or
traced with the point of a stone and accompanied by an explanatory
legend.
M. Bergeret was neither angered nor vexed at the sight of these
_graffiti_; he was only annoyed at the increasing number of them. There
was one on the white wall of Goubeau’s cow-house on the Tintelleries;
another on the yellow frontage of Deniseau’s agency in the Place
Saint-Exupère; another on the grand theatre under the list of admission
rates at the second pay-box; another at the corner of the Rue de la
Pomme and the Place du Vieux-Marché; another on the outbuildings of
the Nivert mansion, next to the Gromances’ residence; another on the
porter’s lodge at the University; and yet another on the wall of the
gardens of the prefecture. And every morning M. Bergeret found yet
newer ones. He noted, too, that these _graffiti_ were not all from the
same hand. In some, the man’s figure was drawn in quite primitive
style; others were better drawn, without showing, however, upon
examination, any approach to individual likeness or the difficult art
of portraiture. But in every case the bad drawing was supplemented by a
written explanation, and in all these popular caricatures M. Bergeret
wore horns. He noticed that sometimes these horns projected from a bare
skull, sometimes from a tall hat.
“Two schools of art!” thought he.
But his refined nature suffered.
X
M. Worms-Clavelin had insisted on his old friend, Georges Frémont,
staying to déjeuner. Frémont, an inspector of fine art, was going
on circuit through the department. When they had first met in the
painters’ studios at Montmartre, Frémont was young and Worms-Clavelin
very young. They had not a single idea in common, and they had
no points of agreement at all. Frémont loved to contradict, and
Worms-Clavelin put up with it; Frémont was fluent and violent in
speech, Worms-Clavelin always yielded to his vehemence and spoke but
little. For a time they were comrades, and then life separated them.
But every time that they happened to meet, they once more became
intimate and quarrelled zestfully. For Georges Frémont, middle-aged,
portly, beribboned, well-to-do, still retained something of his
youthful fire. This morning, sitting between Madame Worms-Clavelin in
a morning gown and M. Worms-Clavelin in a breakfast jacket, he was
telling his hostess how he had discovered in the garrets at the museum,
where it had been buried in dust and rubbish, a little wooden figure
in the purest style of French art. It was a Saint Catherine habited in
the garb of a townswoman of the fifteenth century, a tiny figure with
wonderful delicacy of expression and with such a thoughtful, honest
look that he felt the tears rise to his eyes as he dusted her. M.
Worms-Clavelin inquired if it were a statue or a picture, and Georges
Frémont, glancing at him with a look of kindly scorn, said gently:
“Worms, don’t try to understand what I am saying to your wife! You are
utterly incapable of conceiving the Beautiful in any form whatever.
Harmonious lines and noble thoughts will always be written in an
unknown tongue as far as you are concerned.”