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THE QUEEN PEDAUQUE
By Anatole France
Translated By Jos. A. V. Stritzko
Introduction By James Branch Cabell
Contents:
I. Why I recount the singular Occurrences of my Life
II. My Home at the Queen Pedauque Cookshop--I turn the Spit and
learn to read--Entry of Abbe Jerome Coignard
III. The Story of the Abbe’s Life
IV. The Pupil of M. Jerome Coignard--I receive Lessons in Latin,
Greek and Life
V. My Nineteenth Birthday--Its Celebration and the Entrance of
M. d’Asterac
VI. Arrival at the Castle of M. d’Asterac and Interview with the
Cabalist
VII. Dinner and Thoughts on Food
VIII. The Library and its Contents
IX. At Work on Zosimus the Panopolitan--I visit my Home and hear
Gossip about M. d’Asterac
X. I see Catherine with Friar Ange and reflect--The Liking of
Nymphs for Satyrs--An Alarm of Fire--M. d’Asterac in his Laboratory
XI. The Advent of Spring and its Effects--We visit Mosaide
XII. I take a Walk and meet Mademoiselle Catherine
XIII. Taken by M. d’Asterac to the Isle of Swans I listen to his
Discourse on Creation and Salamanders
XIV. Visit to Mademoiselle Catherine--The Row in the Street and
my Dismissal
XV. In the Library with M. Jerome Coignard--A Conversation on
Morals--Taken to M. d’Asterac’s Study-Salamanders again--
The Solar Powder--A Visit and its Consequences
XVI. Jahel comes to my Room--What the Abbe saw on the Stairs--His
Encounter with Mosaide
XVII. Outside Mademoiselle Catherine’s House--We are invited in by
M. d’Anquetil--The Supper--The Visit of the Owner and the
horrible Consequences
XVIII. Our return--We smuggle M. d’Anquetil in--M. d’Asterac on
Jealousy--M. Jerome Coignard in Trouble-What happened while
I was in the Laboratory--Jahel persuaded to elope
XIX. Our last Dinner at M. d’Asterac’s Table--Conversation of M.
Jerome Coignard and M. d’Asterac--A Message from Home--Catherine
in the Spittel--We are wanted for Murder-Our Flight--Jahel
causes me much Misery--Account of the Journey-The Abbe Coignard
on Towns--Jahel’s Midnight Visit--We are followed--The Accident
--M. Jerome Coignard is stabbed
XX. Illness of M. Jerome Coignard
XXI. Death of M. Jerome Coignard
XXII. Funeral and Epitaph
XXIII. Farewell to Jahel--Dispersal of the Party.
XXIV. I am pardoned and return to Paris--Again at the Queen
Pedauque--I go as Assistant to M. Blaizot--Burning of the
Castle of Sablons--Death of Mosaide and of M. d’Asterac.
XXV. I become a Bookseller--I have many learned and witty
Customers but none to equal the Abbe Jerome Coignard, D.D., M. A
INTRODUCTION
What one first notes about _The Queen Pedauque_ is the fact that in this
ironic and subtle book is presented a story which, curiously enough, is
remarkable for its entire innocence of subtlety and irony. Abridge the
“plot” into a synopsis, and you will find your digest to be what is
manifestly the outline of a straightforward, plumed romance by the elder
Dumas.
Indeed, Dumas would have handled the “strange surprising adventures” of
Jacques Tournebroche to a nicety, if only Dumas had ever thought to
have his collaborators write this brisk tale, wherein d’Astarac and
Tournebroche and Mosaide display, even now, a noticeable something in
common with the Balsamo and Gilbert and Althotas of the _Memoires d’un
Medecin_. One foresees, to be sure, that, with the twin-girthed Creole
for guide, M. Jerome Coignard would have waddled into immortality not
quite as we know him, but with somewhat more of a fraternal resemblance
to the Dom Gorenflot of _La Dame de Monsoreau;_ and that the blood of
the abbe’s death-wound could never have bedewed the book’s final pages,
in the teeth of Dumas’ economic unwillingness ever to despatch any
character who was “good for” a sequel.
And one thinks rather kindlily of _The Queen Pedauque_ as Dumas would
have equipped it... Yes, in reading here, it is the most facile and
least avoidable of mental exercises to prefigure how excellently Dumas
would have contrived this book,--somewhat as in the reading of Mr.
Joseph Conrad’s novels a many of us are haunted by the sense that the
Conrad “story” is, in its essential beams and stanchions, the sort of
thing which W. Clark Russell used to put together, in a rather different
way, for our illicit perusal. Whereby I only mean that such seafaring
was illicit in those aureate days when, Cleveland being consul for
the second time, your geography figured as the screen of fictive
reading-matter during school-hours.
One need not say that there is no question, in either case, of
“imitation,” far less of “plagiarism”; nor need one, surely, point out
the impossibility of anybody’s ever mistaking the present book for a
novel by Alexandre Dumas. Ere Homer’s eyesight began not to be what it
had been, the fact was noted by the observant Chian, that very few sane
architects commence an edifice by planting and rearing the oaks which
are to compose its beams and stanchions. You take over all such supplies
ready hewn, and choose by preference time-seasoned timber. Since Homer’s
prime a host of other great creative writers have recognised this axiom
when they too began to build: and “originality” has by ordinary been,
like chess and democracy, a Mecca for little minds.
Besides, there is the vast difference that M. Anatole France has
introduced into the Dumas theatre some preeminently un-Dumas-like
stage-business: the characters, between assignations and combats, toy
amorously with ideas. That is the difference which at a stroke dissevers
them from any helter-skelter character in Dumas as utterly as from any
of our clearest thinkers in office.
It is this toying, this series of mental _amourettes_, which
incommunicably “makes the difference” in almost all the volumes of M.
France familiar to me, but our affair is with this one story. Now in
this vivid book we have our fill of color and animation and gallant
strangenesses, and a stir of characters who impress us as living with a
poignancy unmastered as yet by anybody’s associates in flesh and blood.
We have, in brief, all that Dumas could ever offer, here utilised not
to make drama but background, all being woven into a bright undulating
tapestry behind an erudite and battered figure,--a figure of odd
medleys, in which the erudition is combined with much of Autolycus, and
the unkemptness with something of à Kempis. For what one remembers of
_The Queen Pédauque_ is l’Abbé Jérôme Coignard; and what one remembers,
ultimately, about Coignard is not his crowded career, however opulent in
larcenous and lectual escapades and fisticuffs and broached wineflasks;
but his religious meditations, wherein a merry heart does, quite
actually, go all the way.
Coignard I take to be a peculiarly rare type of man (there is no female
of this species), the type that is genuinely interested in religion.
He stands apart. He halves little with the staid majority of us, who
sociably contract our sacred tenets from our neighbors like a sort
of theological measles. He halves nothing whatever with our more
earnest-minded juniors who--perennially discovering that all religions
thus far put to the test of nominal practice have, whatever their
paradisial _entrée_, resulted in a deplorable earthly hash--perennially
run yelping into the shrill agnosticism which believes only that one’s
neighbors should not be permitted to believe in anything.
The creed of Coignard is more urbane. “Always bear in mind that a sound
intelligence rejects everything that is contrary to reason, except
in matters of faith, where it is necessary to believe blindly.” Your
opinions are thus all-important, your physical conduct is largely
a matter of taste, in a philosophy which ranks affairs of the mind
immeasurably above the gross accidents of matter. Indeed, man can win to
heaven only through repentance, and the initial step toward repentance
is to do something to repent of. There is no flaw in this logic, and in
its clear lighting such abrogations of parochial and transitory human
laws as may be suggested by reason and the consciousness that nobody is
looking, take on the aspect of divinely appointed duties.
Some dullard may here object that M. France--attestedly, indeed, since
he remains unjailed-cannot himself believe all this, and that it is with
an ironic glitter in his ink he has recorded these dicta. To which the
obvious answer would be that M. France (again like all great creative
writers) is an ephemeral and negligible person beside his durable
puppets; and that, moreover, to reason thus is, it may be precipitately,
to disparage the plumage of birds on the ground that an egg has no
feathers... Whatever M. France may believe, our concern is here with
the conviction of M. Coignard that his religion is all-important and
all-significant. And it is curious to observe how unerringly the
abbe’s thoughts aspire, from no matter what remote and low-lying
starting-point, to the loftiest niceties of religion and the high thin
atmosphere of ethics. Sauce spilt upon the good man’s collar is but a
reminder of the influence of clothes upon our moral being, and of how
terrifyingly is the destiny of each person’s soul dependent upon such
trifles; a glass of light white wine leads not, as we are nowadays
taught to believe, to instant ruin, but to edifying considerations
of the life and glory of St. Peter; and a pack of cards suggests,
straightway, intransigent fine points of martyrology. Always this
churchman’s thoughts deflect to the most interesting of themes, to the
relationship between God and His children, and what familiary etiquette
may be necessary to preserve the relationship unstrained. These problems
alone engross Coignard unfailingly, even when the philosopher has
had the ill luck to fall simultaneously into drunkenness and a public
fountain, and retains so notably his composure between the opposed
assaults of fluidic unfriends.
What, though, is found the outcome of this philosophy, appears a
question to be answered with wariness of empiricism. None can deny
that Coignard says when he lies dying: “My son, reject, along with the
example I gave you, the maxims which I may have proposed to you during
my period of lifelong folly. Do not listen to those who, like myself,
subtilise over good and evil.” Yet this is just one low-spirited moment,
as set against the preceding fifty-two high-hearted years. And the
utterance wrung forth by this moment is, after all, merely that
sentiment which seems the inevitable bedfellow of the moribund,--“Were I
to have my life over again, I would live differently.” The sentiment is
familiar and venerable, but its truthfulness has not yet been attested.
To the considerate, therefore, it may appear expedient to dismiss
Coignard’s trite winding-up of a half-century of splendid talking,
as just the infelicitous outcropping, in the dying man’s enfeebled
condition, of an hereditary foible. And when moralising would approach
an admonitory forefinger to the point that Coignard’s manner of living
brought him to die haphazardly, among preoccupied strangers at a casual
wayside inn, you do, there is no questioning it, recall that a more
generally applauded manner of living has been known to result in a
more competently arranged-for demise, under the best churchly and legal
auspices, through the rigors of crucifixion.
So it becomes the part of wisdom to waive these mundane riddles, and to
consider instead the justice of Coignard’s fine epitaph, wherein we
read that “living without worldly honors, he earned for himself eternal
glory.” The statement may (with St. Peter keeping the gate) have been
challenged in paradise, but in literature at all events the unhonored
life of Jérome Coignard has clothed him with glory of tolerably longeval
looking texture. It is true that this might also be said of Iago and
Tartuffe, but then we have Balzac’s word for it that merely to be
celebrated is not enough. Rather is the highest human desideratum
twofold,--_D’être célèbre et d’être aimé_. And that much Coignard
promises to be for a long while.
James Branch Cabell
Dumbarton Grange,
July, 1921,
THE QUEEN PEDAUQUE
CHAPTER I
Why I recount the singular Occurrences of my Life
I intend to give an account of some odd occurrences in my life. Some
have been exquisite, some queer Recollecting them, I am myself in doubt
if I have not dreamed them. I have known a Gascon cabalist, of whom I
could not say that he was wise, because he perished miserably, but he
delivered sublime discourses to me, on a certain night on the Isle of
Swans, speeches [Footnote: The original manuscript, written in a fine
hand, of the eighteenth century, bears the sub-heading “Vie et Opinions
de M. l’Abbé Jérôme Coignard” [_The Editor_].] I was happy enough
to keep in my memory, and careful enough to put into writing. Those
speeches referred to magic and to occult sciences, with which people
were very much infatuated in my days.
Everyone speaks of naught else but Rosicrucian mysteries.[Footnote:
This writing dates from the second half of the eighteenth century [_The
Editor_]]. Besides I do not myself expect to gain great honour by these
revelations. Some will say that everything is of my own invention, and
that it is not the true doctrine, others that I only said what one had
already known. I own that I am not very learned in cabalistic lore, my
master having perished at the beginning of my initiation. But, little as
I have learned of his craft, it makes me vehemently suspect that all of
it is illusion, deception and vanity.
I think it quite sufficient to repudiate magic with all my strength,
because it is contrary to religion. But still I believe myself to be
obliged to explain concerning one point of this false science, so that
none may judge me to be more ignorant than I really am. I know that
cabalists generally think that Sylphs, Salamanders, Elves, Gnomes and
Gnomides are born with a soul perishable like their bodies and that they
acquire immortality by intercourse with the magicians. [Footnote: This
opinion is especially supported in a little book of the Abbé Montfaucon
de Villars, “Le Comte de Gabalis au Entretiens sur les sciences secrètes
et mystérieuses suivant les principes des anciens mages ou sages
cabbalistes,” of which several editions are extant. I only mention
the one published at Amsterdam (Jacques Le Jeune, 1700, 18mo, with
engravings), which contains a second part not included in the original
edition [_The Editor_]] On the contrary my cabalist taught me that
eternal life does not fall to the lot of any creature, earthly or
aerial. I follow his sentiment without presuming myself to judge it.
He was in the habit of saying that the Elves kill those who reveal their
mysteries, and he attributes the death of M. l’Abbé Coignard, who was
murdered on the Lyons road, to the vengeance of those spirits. But I
know very well that this much lamented death had a more natural cause. I
shall speak freely of the air and fire spirits. One has to run some risk
in life and that with Elves is an extremely small one.
I have zealously gathered the words of my good teacher M. l’Abbé Jérôme
Coignard, who perished as I have said. He was a man full of knowledge
and godliness. Could his soul have been less troubled he would have been
the equal in virtue of M. l’Abbé Rollin, whom he far surpassed in extent
of knowledge and penetration of intellect.
He had at least the advantage over M. Rollin that he had not fallen into
Jansenism during the agitation of a troubled life, because the soundness
of his mind was not to be shaken by the violence of reckless doctrines,
and before Him I can attest to the purity of his faith. He had a wide
knowledge of the world, obtained by the frequentation of all sorts of
companies. This experience would have served him well with the Roman
histories he, like M. Rollin, would doubtless have composed should
he have had time and leisure, and if his life could have been better
matched to his genius. What I shall relate of this excellent man will
be the ornament of these memoirs. And like Aulus Gellius, who culled the
most beautiful sayings of the philosophers into his “Attic Nights,” and
him who put the best fables of the Greeks into the “Metamorphoses,” I
will do a bee’s work and gather exquisite honey. But I do not flatter
myself to be the rival of those two great authors, because I draw all
my wealth from my own life’s recollections and not from an abundance of
reading. What I furnish out of my own stock is good faith. Whenever some
curious person shall read my memoirs he will easily recognise that
a candid soul alone could express itself in language so plain and
unaffected. Where and with whomsoever I have lived I have always been
considered to be entirely artless. These writings cannot but confirm it
after my death.