You all know Theodore. I have come to strew some flowers upon his grave,
praying heaven that the earth may touch him lightly.
These two familiar phrases will tell you plainly that I am about to
consecrate some pages to him as an obituary notice or funeral oration.
It is twenty years since Theodore retired from the world, to work or to
be idle: which of the two was a great secret. He dreamed, and no one
knew what he dreamed about. He passed his life surrounded by books, and
occupied himself with nothing else, which gave some people the idea that
he was writing a book which would supersede all other books; but they
were evidently mistaken.
Theodore had studied too much not to know that this book had been
written three hundred years ago. It was the thirteenth chapter of the
first book of Rabelais.
Theodore no longer talked, nor laughed, neither played cards or gambled,
nor ate, no longer went to balls or to the theatre. The women whom he
had loved in his youth no longer attracted him, or at most he looked
only at their feet; and when some elegant and brilliantly colored
footgear caught his attention, alas! he would say, heaving a sigh from
the depths of his chest, there is a great waste of good morocco! He had
formerly followed the fashions. Those who remember the time, tell us
that he was the first to tie his cravat on the left side,
notwithstanding the dictum of Garat, who tied his on the right, and in
spite of the common herd, who still continue to tie theirs in the
middle.
[Illustration]
Theodore was no longer worried by the fashions. He had only one dispute
with his tailor during twenty years: “Sir,” he said to him one day, “it
will be the last coat I shall take from you, if you again forget to make
my pockets in quarto.”
[Illustration]
Politics, by whose vagaries so many fools have made their fortunes, had
never tempted him from his reveries for more than a moment. Politics
put him in a bad temper. After Napoleon’s futile enterprise in the
North, which raised the price of russia leather, he welcomed the French
intervention in the Spanish revolution. “This,” he said, “is a good
chance to bring chivalric romances and the _Cancioneros_ from the
Peninsula.” But the expeditionary army did not think of it, and he was
vexed. When any one said _Trocadero_ to him, he would reply ironically,
_Romancero_, which made him pass for a Liberal.
M. de Bourmont’s campaign on the African coast transported him with joy.
“Thank heaven!” he said, rubbing his hands; “we shall have cheap levant
morocco.” This made him pass for a Carlist.
He was walking one summer’s day in a crowded street, collating a book,
when some men, who were coming with a staggering gait from a saloon,
commanded him, knife at throat, to cry in the name
[Illustration]
of liberty, “Long live the Poles!” “I ask nothing better,” said
Theodore, whose perpetual thought was an eternal cry in favor of the
human race; “but may I ask why?” “Because we declare war against
Holland, who oppresses Poland under the pretext that they do not like
the Jesuits,” replied the friend of light, who was a rude geographer and
a fearless logician. “God forgive us!” muttered our friend, crossing his
hands piteously. “Shall we not in this case be obliged to use M.
Montgolfier’s imitation Holland paper?”
[Illustration]
The product of modern civilization answered by breaking Theodore’s leg
with a blow of his stick.
Theodore stayed in his bed for three months, examining book-catalogues.
Always disposed to carry his feelings to extremes, this reading fevered
his blood.
Even in his convalescence his sleep was horribly uneasy. One night his
wife roused him from the tortures of the nightmare. “You came just in
time,” he said, embracing her, “to save me from dying of grief and fear.
I was surrounded by monsters who would give me no quarter.”
“What monsters do you dread, my dear?” she said,--“you who have never
injured any one.”
“It was, if I remember rightly, the ghost of Purgold whose fatal shears
devoured an inch and a half of the margins of my uncut Aldus, while the
shade of Heudier pitilessly plunged my most beautiful _editio princeps_
into a devouring acid, withdrawing it entirely bleached; but I have
good reason to think that they are at least both in purgatory.”
[Illustration]
His wife thought that he was talking Greek, because he knew a little
Greek, and as a proof of his knowledge three shelves in his library were
filled with Greek books with uncut leaves. He never opened them either,
but was satisfied to show them by the side or back to his most intimate
acquaintances, telling with calm assurance the place where they were
printed, the date, and the printer’s name. The simple-minded considered
him a sorcerer. But about this there is a difference of opinion.
[Illustration]
As he was wasting away under their very eyes, his family called in a
physician, who was both a philosopher and a man of intelligence.
You will discover if this was the case. This physician saw that
congestion of the brain was imminent, and made an elaborate report of
this disease in the “Journal des Sciences Médicales,” where it figures
under the name of morocco monomania or bibliomaniac’s typhus; but it was
not a question for the Academy of Sciences, because the illness was in
conjunction with cholera morbus.
They advised him to take exercise; and, as the idea amused him, we
started out early one day, for I could not trust him to go a step alone.
We turned toward the quays, and I was rejoicing because I thought that
the sight of the river would revive him; but he never took his eyes from
the level of the parapets. They were as free from show-cases as if they
had been visited early in the morning by the public censor, who in
February had sent the archiepiscopal library in swimming.[4] We were
more fortunate at the Quai aux Fleurs, where books were in profusion.
But what books! All the works which the newspapers had puffed during the
last month, and which had gone from the
[Illustration]
publisher’s office, or the bookseller, into the ten-cent box. Authors of
every kind and sort, philosophers, historians, poets, novelists, who
could not be wafted to immortality by the most alluring advertisements,
and whose works go unheeded from the shelves of the store to the banks
of the Seine, a deep Lethe, where they contemplate, while decaying, the
certain end of their presumptive flight. I turned over there the pages
of some of my octavos, which were placed between those of five or six of
my friends.
Theodore sighed, but it was not because he saw the works of my brain
exposed to the rain, owing to the scanty protection of an oil-cloth
cover.
“What has become of the golden age of the outdoor venders of old books?
It was here, certainly, that my famous friend Barbier collected his
treasures until he was able to make a precise bibliography of several
thousand items. It was here that Monmerqué, on his way to the Palais,
and wise Labouderie, while leaving the city, walked for hours with
instruction and profit. It was from here that old Boulard carried away
daily a yard of rarities, measuring them with his surveyor’s
cane,--volumes for which there was no place reserved in his six houses
stuffed with books. How often on such occasions had he desired the
modest _angulus_[5] of Horace, or the elastic cover of the fairies’
tent, which if necessary could shield the whole army of Xerxes, and
which might be carried as easily in one’s belt as the knife-sheath of
Jeannot’s grandfather. Now, more’s the pity, you see only fragments of
modern literature which will never become ancient, whose life will have
evaporated in twenty-four hours, like that of the flies of the river
Hypanis: a literature worthy in truth of the charcoal ink and pulp paper
used by mercenary printers, who are almost as foolish as the books. It
is profaning the name of books to give it to these black-blotted rags,
whose destinies have not even changed in leaving the basket on the
rag-picker’s shoulders. The quays henceforth are the morgue for
contemporary celebrities.”
[Illustration]
He sighed again, and I sighed too, but it was for a different reason.
I was in a hurry to lead him away, because his increasing excitement
seemed to threaten him at any moment with a fatal attack. It must have
been an unlucky day, for everything combined to increase his melancholy.
[Illustration]
“See,” he said, in passing the showy shop-front of Ladvocat, “the
_Galliot du Pré_[6] of the debased literature of the nineteenth
century; a liberal, industrious bookseller, who deserved to have been
born in a better time, but whose deplorable activity has cruelly
multiplied new books, to the everlasting injury of the old; an
unpardonable patron of cotton-made paper, of incorrect spelling, and of
stilted illustrations; a fatal protector of academic prose and
fashionable poetry: as if France had produced any poetry since Ronsard,
or any prose after Montaigne! This bookseller’s palace is like the
Trojan horse that held the thieves of the Palladium--like Pandora’s box,
which let loose all the evils of the earth. But yet I like this
cannibal, and I shall be a chapter in his book, but I shall not see him
again!”
“Look,” he continued, “there is Crozet’s store with the green walls. He
is the most agreeable of our young booksellers, the man of all Paris who
can best distinguish between a binding by Derome the elder and Derome
the younger, and the last hope of a passing generation of amateurs, if
the cult of old books should return in the midst of our barbarity. But I
shall not enjoy his conversation to-day, even though I always learn
something from it. He is in England, where he is competing, by the right
of retaliation, with the greedy usurers of Soho Square and Fleet Street
for the precious fragments of the monuments of our beautiful language
which have been forgotten for two centuries on the ungrateful soil that
produced them. _Macte animo, generoso puer!_...”
“Here,” he said, retracing his steps,--“here is the Pont-des-Arts, with
its useless side-rails only a few centimeters wide, affording no support
for the noble folios of three centuries, majestic volumes with pigskin
covers and bronze clasps, which have delighted the eyes of ten
generations. This is truly an emblematic bridge, leading from the Palais
to the Institute by a path which is not the path of science. I do not
know whether I am mistaken, but the invention of a bridge of this kind
should be a startling illustration to the erudite of the decadence of
good literature.”
[Illustration]
“There,” said Theodore, passing the white sign of an active and
ingenious bookseller in the Place du Louvre, “that sign has made my
heart palpitate for a long time; but I no longer see it without a
sensation of pain, since Techener has reprinted with Tastu’s characters,
on showy paper, and under an enticing cover, the gothic marvels of Jehan
Bonfons of Paris, Jehan Mareschal of Lyons, and Jehan de Chaney of
Avignon, unobtainable trifles until he produced them in delightful
facsimile. Snow-white paper fills me with horror, my friend; and there
is nothing that I like less, except this same paper when it has received
from the stroke of a cruel pressman, the deplorable imprint of the
visions and idiocies of this iron age.”
Theodore sighed more frequently, and was rapidly growing worse.
We thus came in the Rue des Bons-Enfants, to the literary bazaar where
Silvestre held his auction sales. It was a place honored by learned men,
which has seen more priceless curios during a quarter of a century than
the library of the Ptolemies ever held (which library perhaps was not
burned by Omar, whatever our twaddling historians may say). I had never
seen so many splendid books on exhibition.
[Illustration]
“Unfortunate people who have to sell them,” I said to Theodore.
“They are dead,” he said, “or it would kill them.”
But the hall was empty. No one was to be seen except the indefatigable
M. Thour, who was patiently cataloguing upon cards the titles of the
books which had escaped his notice the previous day. The happiest among
all men is he who has at his command, and accurately arranged, a
faithful transcription of the title-pages of all known books. It is
nothing to him if all the productions of printing are destroyed in the
next revolution which the perfection of progress promises us. He can
leave to posterity the complete catalogue of the universal library. He
would have admirable forethought in seeing from afar the necessity for
compiling this inventory of civilization. A few years more, and
civilization will be no longer spoken about.
“God forgive me, Theodore,” said Silvestre; “you have mistaken the day.
Those books that you see were sold yesterday in the last session, and
are waiting for the porter to deliver them.” Theodore reeled and turned
pale. His face assumed the tint of old citron morocco. I felt the blow
that had struck him, to the bottom of my own heart.
[Illustration]
“It is no matter,” he said, with an altered manner. “I recognize only my
usual ill luck in this bad news. But to whom do these things belong,
these pearls and diamonds, these wonderful riches in which the
libraries of de Thou and Grolier would have gloried?”
“As usual, sir,” Silvestre answered, “these original editions of the
classics, these perfect old copies with the autographs of celebrated
scholars, these piquant philological curiosities, of which academy and
university have never heard, rightfully revert to Richard Heber.[7] It
is the British lion’s share, to whom we are willing to surrender, with
good grace, the Greek and Latin classics which we have ceased to
understand. These fine collections of natural history, these
masterpieces of workmanship and pictorial art, belong to Prince ----, who
uses his studious tastes to still further enhance his great fortune.
These mysteries of the middle ages, these phœnix-like precepts whose
counterpart[8] is no longer in existence, these curious dramatic
attempts of our ancestors, will swell the model library of M. de
Soleine. These well-preserved facetiæ, so strikingly subtle and
enjoyable, have been purchased by your friend M. Aimé-Martin. I need not
tell you to whom these fresh, brilliant morocco bindings belong, with
the triple fillets, wide dentelle, and sumptuous panels. He is the
Shakespeare among the minor collectors, the Corneille of melodrama, the
graceful and often eloquent interpreter of the feelings and virtues of
the populace, who, after having depreciated the value of books in the
morning, bought them for their weight in gold in the evening, not,
however, without grinding his teeth like a mortally wounded boar, and
turning a tragic eye, veiled by black eyebrows, upon his rivals.”
Theodore had ceased to listen. He was handling a beautiful volume that
he
[Illustration]
hurriedly measured with his Elzevirometer, a six-inch measure divided
almost to infinity, by which he regulated the price, and, alas! the
intrinsic merit also, of his books. He measured the accursed book ten
times and as many times verified the troublesome calculation, muttered
some words that I did not understand, finally changed color, and
fainted in my arms. I had great difficulty in getting him into a passing
carriage.
[Illustration]
For a long time my attempts to learn the cause of his sudden grief were
futile. He did not speak. He did not hear my words. It is the typhus
fever, I thought, and the crisis of the fever.