THE OLD BOTANIST.
On the trunk of a tree overthrown by a storm in Meudon Woods a man was
seated.
Under his grizzled wig he showed a mild and shrewd visage. His brown
coat was of good cloth, as were his breeches; and his gray waistcoat
was worked on the flaps. His gray cotton stockings imprisoned well-made
and muscular legs; his buckled shoes, though dusty in patches, had been
washed at the top by the morning dews.
Near him, on the trunk, was a green box, open and stuffed with freshly
gathered plants. Between his legs he held a cane with a crutch handle,
ending in a sort of pick.
He was eating a piece of bread, and tossing crumbs to the wild birds,
which flew down on the pieces and took them off to their nooks with
joyful peeps.
Suddenly he heard hurried steps, and seeing on looking up, a young man
with disquieting aspect, he rose. He buttoned up his coat and closed
his overcoat above it.
His air was so calming that the intruder on his peace came to a stop
and doffed his hat.
It was Gilbert. Gilbert, much the worse for his roaming the woods
through the night since he had fled from Luciennes in order not to lose
his freedom.
Remarking this sudden timidity, the old man appeared to be put at ease
by it.
"Do you want to speak to me, my friend?" he asked, smiling, and laying
the piece of bread on the tree.
"Yes, for I see that you are throwing away bread on the birds as though
it were not written that the Lord provides for the sparrows."
"The Lord provides," returned the old gentleman, "no doubt, young man;
but the hand of man is one of the means. You are wrong if you said
that as a reproach, for never is cast-away bread--in the desert or on
the crowded street--lost to living creatures. Here, the birds get it;
there, the beggars."
"Though this be the wilds, I know of a man who wants to dispute that
bread with the birds," said Gilbert, though struck by the soft and
penetrating voice of the stranger.
"Are you the man--and are you hungered?"
"Sharply so, and if you would allow----"
With eager compassion the gentleman took up the crust, but, suddenly
reflecting, he scrutinized Gilbert with a quick yet profound glance.
Gilbert was not so like a starving man that the meditation was
warranted. His dress was decent, though earth-stained in places. His
linen was white, for he had at Versailles, on the previous evening,
changed his shirt out of his parcel; but from its dampness, it was
visible that he had slept in the woods. In all this and his white and
taper hands, the man of vague reverie was revealed rather than the hard
worker.
Not wanting for tact, Gilbert understood the distrust and hesitation of
the stranger in respect to him, and hastened to annul conjectures which
might be unfavorable.
"After twelve hours, hunger begins, and I have eaten nothing for
four-and-twenty," he observed.
The truth of the words was supported by his emotion, the quaver of his
voice and the pallor of his face. The old gentleman therefore ceased
to waver, or rather to fear. He held out not only the bread, but a
handkerchief in which he was carrying cherries.
"I thank you," said Gilbert, repulsing the fruit gently; "only the
bread, which is ample."
Breaking the crust in two, he took one portion and pushed back the
other. Then he sat on the grass, a yard or two away from the old
gentlemen, who viewed him with increasing wonder. The meal did not last
long, as the bread was scant and Gilbert hungry. With no words did the
observer trouble him, but continued his mute and furtive examination
while apparently only attending to his plants and flowers in the box.
But seeing that Gilbert was going to drink at a pool, he quickly called
out:
"Do not drink that water, young man. It is infected by the detritus
of the plants dead last year and by the frog-spawn swimming on the
surface. You had better take some cherries, as they will quench thirst
better than water. I invite you to partake as I see you are not an
importunate guest."
"It is true, sir; importunity is the opposite of my nature. I fear
nothing so much as being importunate, as I have just been proving at
Versailles."
"Oh! so you come from Versailles?" queried the stranger, looking hard
at him. "A rich place, where only the proud or the poor die of want."
"I am both, sir."
"Have you quarreled with your master?"
"I have no master."
"That is a very lofty answer," said the other, putting away the plants
in the box, while regarding the young man.
"Still it is exact."
"No, young man, for everybody has a master here, as we all suffer
the domination of a higher power. Some are ruled by men, some by
principles: and the sternest masters are not always those who order or
strike with the human voice or hand."
"I confess I am ruled by principles," replied Gilbert. "They are the
only masters which the mind may acknowledge without shame."
"Oh, those are your principles, are they? You seem very young to have
any settled principles."
"I am young but I have studied, or rather read a little in such works
as 'On the Inequality of Classes,' and 'The Social Contract;' out of
them comes all my knowledge, and perhaps all my dreams."
These words kindled a flame in the hearer's eyes; he so started that he
broke a flower rebellious to being packed away.
"These may not be your principles, but they are Rousseau's."
"Dry stuff for a youth," said the other; "sad matter for contemplation
at twenty years of age; a dry and scentless flower for imagination in
the springtide of life."
"Misfortune ripens a man unseasonably, sir."
"As you study the philosopher of Geneva, do you make a personal
allusion there?"
"I do not know anything about him," rejoined Gilbert, candidly.
"Know, young man, that he is an unhappy creature." With a sigh he said
it.
"Impossible! Jean Jacques Rousseau unhappy? Is there no justice above
more than on earth? The man unhappy who has consecrated his life to the
welfare of the race."
"I plainly see that you do not know him; so let us rather speak of
yourself. Whither are you going?"
"To Paris. Do you belong there?"
"So far as I am living there, but I was not born in it. Why the
question?"
"It is attached to the subject we were talking of; if you live in
Paris, you may have seen the Philosopher Rousseau."
"Oh, yes, I have seen him."
"He is looked at as he passes along--they point to him as the
benefactor of humanity?"
"No; the children follow him, and, encouraged by their parents, throw
stones at him."
"Gracious! still he has the consolation of being rich," said Gilbert,
with painful stupefaction.
"Like yourself, he often wonders where the next meal is coming from."
"But, though poor, he is powerful, respected and well considered?"
"He does not know of a night, in lying down, that he will not wake in
the Bastille."
"How he must hate men!"
"He neither loves not hates them: they fill him with disgust, that is
all."
"I do not understand how he can not hate those who ill use him,"
exclaimed Gilbert.
"Rousseau has always been free, and strong enough to rely on himself.
Strength and liberty make men meek and good; it is only weakness and
slavery which create the wicked."
"I guessed this as you explain it; and that is why I wished to be
free." I see that we agree on one point, our liking for Rousseau.
"Speak for yourself, young man: youth is the season for illusions."
"Nay; one may be deceived upon things, but not on men."
"Alas, you will learn by and by, that it is men particularly about whom
deception is easiest. Perhaps Rousseau is a little fairer than other
men; but he has his faults, and great ones."
Gilbert shook his head, but the stranger continued to treat him with
the same favor, though he was so uncivil.
"You said you had no master?"
"None, though it dwelt with me to have a most illustrious one; but I
refused on the condition that I should make the amusement of noble
idlers. Being young, able to study and make my way, I ought not to lose
the precious time of youth and compromise in my person the dignity of
man."
"This was right," said the stranger gravely; "but have you determined
on a career?"
"I should like to be a physician."
"A grand and noble career, where one may decide between true science,
modest and martyr-like, and quackery, impudent, rich and bloated. If
you love truth, young man, be a doctor. If you love popular applause,
be a doctor."
"I am afraid it will cost a lot of money to study, although Rousseau
learned for nothing."
"Nothing? oh, young man," said the plant-collector, with a
mournful smile, "do you call nothing the most precious of heavenly
blessings--candor, health and sleep? That was the price the Genevian
seeker of wisdom paid for the little he knows."
"Little! when he is a great musical composer!"
"Pooh, because the king sings 'I have lost my servant,' that does not
prove 'The Village Sorcerer' to be a good opera."
"He is a noted botanist!"
"An herb-gatherer, very humble and ignorant amid the marvels known as
plants and flowers."
"He is a Latin scholar, for I read that he had translated Tacitus."
"Bah, because in his conceit he wanted to be master of all crafts. But
Tacitus, who is a rough antagonist to wrestle with, tired him. No,
no, my good young man, in spite of your admiration, there are no more
Admirable Crichtons, and what man gains in breadth he loses in depth.
Rousseau is a superficial man whose surface is a trifle wider than most
men's, that is all."
"Many would like to attain his mark," said the youth.
"Do you slur at me?" asked the stranger with a good nature disarming
Gilbert.
"God forbid, for it is too much pleasure to chat for me to disoblige
you. You draw me out and I am amazed at the language I am using, for
I only picked it out of books, which I did not clearly follow. I have
read too much, but I will read again with care. But I forget that while
your talk is valuable to me, mine only wastes your time, for you are
herb-gathering."
"No," said the botanist, fixing his gray eyes on the youth, who made
a move to go but wanted to be detained. "My box is clearly full and I
only want certain mosses; I heard that capillary grows round here."
"Stay, I saw some yonder."
"How do you know capillarys?"
"I was born on the woodland; the daughter of the nobleman on whose
estate I was reared, liked botany; she had a collection and the objects
had their names on labels attached. I noticed that what she called
capillary was called by us rustics maidenhair fern."
"So you took a taste for botany?"
"It was this way. I sometimes heard Nicole--she is the maid to
Mademoiselle Andrea de Taverney--say that her mistress wanted such and
such a plant for her herbarium, so I asked her to get a sketch of them,
and I searched in the woods till I raked them up. Then I transplanted
them where she must find them, and used to hear the lady, in taking her
walk, cry out: 'How odd! here is the very thing I was looking for!'"
The old gentleman looked with more heed and it made Gilbert lower his
eyes blushing, for the interest had tenderness in it.
"Continue to study botany, which leads as a flowery path to medicine.
Paris has free schools, and I suppose your folks will supply your
maintenance."
"I have no relations, but I can earn my living at some trade."
"Yes, Rousseau says in his 'Emile,' that every one should learn a trade
even though he were a prince's son."
"I have not read that book, but I have heard Baron Taverney mock at the
maxim, and pretend grief at not having made his son a joiner. Instead,
he made him a soldier, so that he will dismember instead of joining."
"Yes, these nobles bring their sons up to kill and not to nourish. When
revolution comes, they will be forced to beg their bread abroad or sell
their sword to the foreigners, which is more shameful. But you are not
noble, and you have a craft?"
"No, I have a horror for rough toil; but give me a study and see how I
will wear out night and day in my tasks."
"You have been to school, if not to college?"
"I know but to read and write," said Gilbert, shaking his head. "My
mother taught me to read, for seeing me slight in physique, she said,
'You will never be a good workman, but must try to be priest or
scholar. Learn to read, Gilbert, and you will not have to split wood,
guide the plow or hew stone.' Unhappily my mother died before I could
more than read, so I taught myself writing. First I traced letters on
sand with a sharp stick till I found that the letters used in writing
were not those of print, which I was copying. Hence I hope to meet some
one who will need my pen, a blind man who will need my eyes, or a dumby
who needs my tongue."
"You appear to have willingness and courage; but do you know what it
will cost you to live in town?--at least three times what it did in the
country."
"Well, suppose I have shelter and for rest after toil, I can shift on
six cents a day."
"That is the right talk. I like this kind of man," said the plant
collector. "Come with me to Paris and I will find you an independent
profession by which you may live."
"Oh, my friend," exclaimed Gilbert, intoxicated with delight. "I accept
your offer and I am grateful. But what will I have to do in your
company?"
"Nothing but toil. But you will mete out the amount of your work. You
will exercise your right of youth, freedom, happiness and even of
idleness after you earn the right to be at leisure," added the unnamed
benefactor, smiling as though in spite of his will.
Then, raising his eyes to heaven, he ejaculated: "Oh, youth, vigor and
liberty!" with an inexpressibly poetical melancholy spreading over his
fine, pure lineaments.
"Now, lead me to the spot where the maidenhair is to be found," he said.
Gilbert stepped out before the old gentleman and the pair disappeared
in the underwood.