Just now M. Bergeret was on his way to the restaurant, for every
evening he spent an hour at the Café de la Comédie. Everybody blamed
him for doing so, but here he could enjoy a cheery warmth which had
nothing to do with wedded bliss. Here, too, he could read the papers
and look on the faces of people who bore him no ill-will. Sometimes,
too, he met M. Goubin here—M. Goubin, who had become his favourite
pupil since M. Roux’s treachery. M. Bergeret had his favourites, for
the simple reason that his artistic soul took pleasure in the very
act of making a choice. He had a partiality for M. Goubin, though
he could scarcely be said to love him, and, as a matter of fact, M.
Goubin was not lovable. Thin and lank, poverty-stricken in physique,
in hair, in voice, and in brain, his weak eyes hidden by eye-glasses,
his lips close-locked, he was petty in every way, and endowed, not only
with the foot, but with the mind of a young girl. Yet, with these
characteristics, he was accurate and painstaking, and to his puny frame
had been fitted vast and powerful protruding ears, the only riches with
which nature had blessed this feeble organism. M. Goubin was naturally
qualified to be a capital listener.
M. Bergeret was in the habit of talking to M. Goubin, while they sat
with two large beer-glasses in front of them, amidst the noise of the
dominoes clicking on the marble tables all around them. At eleven
o’clock the master rose and the pupil followed his example. Then they
walked across the empty Place du Théâtre and by back ways until they
reached the gloomy Tintelleries.
In such fashion they proceeded one night in May when the air, which had
been cleared by a heavy storm of rain, was fresh and limpid and full of
the smell of earth and leaves. In the purple depths of the moonless,
cloudless sky hung points of light that sparkled with the white gleam
of diamonds. Amid them, here and there, twinkled bright facets of red
or blue. Lifting his eyes to the sky, M. Bergeret watched the stars.
He knew the constellations fairly well, and, with his hat on the back
of his head and his face turned upwards, he pointed out Gemini with
the end of his stick to the vague, wandering glance of M. Goubin’s
ignorance. Then he murmured:
“Would that the clear star of Helen’s twin brothers
Might ’neath thy barque the wild waters assuage,
Would that to Pœstum o’er seas of Ionia ...”[9]
[9] “Oh! soit que l’astre pur des deux frères d’Hélène
Calme sous ton vaisseau la vague ionienne,
Soit qu’aux bords de Pœstum ...”
Then he said abruptly:
“Have you heard, Monsieur Goubin, that news of Venus has reached us
from America and that the news is bad?”
M. Goubin tried obediently to look for Venus in the sky, but the
professor informed him that she had set.
“That beautiful star,” he continued, “is a hell of fire and ice. I have
it from M. Camille Flammarion himself, who tells me every month, in the
excellent articles he writes, all the news from the sky. Venus always
turns the same side to the sun, as the moon does to the earth. The
astronomer at Mount Hamilton swears that it is so. If we pin our faith
to him, one of the hemispheres of Venus is a burning desert, the other,
a waste of ice and darkness, and that glorious luminary of our evenings
and mornings is filled with naught but silence and death.”
“Really!” said M. Goubin.
“Such is the prevailing creed this year,” answered M. Bergeret. “For
my part, I am not far from being convinced that life, at any rate
in the form which it presents on earth, is the result of a disease
in the constitution of the planet, that it is a morbid growth, a
leprosy, something loathsome, in fact, which would never be found in
a healthy, well-constituted star. By life I mean, of course, that
state of activity manifested by organic matter in plants and animals.
I derive pleasure and consolation from this idea. For, indeed, it is
a melancholy thing to fancy that all these suns that flame above our
heads bring warmth to other planets as miserable as our own, and that
the universe gives birth to suffering and squalor in never-ending
succession.
“We cannot speak of the planets attendant on Sirius or Aldebaran,
on Altaïr or Vega, of those dark masses of dust that may perchance
accompany these points of fire that lie scattered over the sky, for
even that they exist is not known to us, and we only suspect it by
virtue of the analogy existing between our sun and the other stars of
the universe. But if we try to form some conception of the planets in
our own system, we cannot possibly imagine that life exists there in
the mean forms which she usually presents on our earth. One cannot
suppose that beings constructed on our model are to be found in the
weltering chaos of the giants Saturn and Jupiter. Uranus and Neptune
have neither light nor heat, and therefore that form of corruption
which we call organic life cannot exist on them. Neither is it credible
that life can be manifested in that star-dust dispersed in the ether
between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, for that dust is but the
scattered material of a planet. The tiny ball Mercury seems too blazing
hot to produce that mouldy dampness which we call animal and vegetable
life. The moon is a dead world, and we have just discovered that the
temperature of Venus does not suit what we call organic life. Thus, we
can imagine nothing at all comparable with man in all the solar system,
unless it be on the planet Mars, which, unfortunately for itself,
has some points in common with the earth. It has both air and water;
it has, alas! maybe, the materials for the making of animals like
ourselves.”
“Isn’t it true that it is believed to be inhabited?” asked M. Goubin.
“We have sometimes been disposed to imagine so,” answered M. Bergeret.
“The appearance of this planet is not very well known to us. It seems
to vary and to be always in confusion. On it canals can be seen, whose
nature and origin we cannot understand. We cannot be absolutely certain
that this neighbour of ours is saddened and degraded by human beings
like ourselves.”