A HUMAN DOCUMENT
"How many a rustic Milton has passed by
Stifling the speechless longing of his heart,
In unremitting drudgery and care.
How many a vulgar Cato has compelled
His energies, no longer tameless then
To mould a pin or fabricate a nail.
How many a Newton to whose passive ken
These mighty spheres that gem infinity
Were only specks of tinsel fixed in heaven
To light the midnights of his native town."
SHELLEY, "Queen Mab."
The inside of the fly being stuffy and the view impeded from that
position, I decided to make the return journey from the Pont du Gard
on the box. Tartarin was too philosophic and too polite to show any
surprise at this new form of Britannic madness, so we set off, and the
good _cocher_ proved a most entertaining companion.
He had read a great deal in one way and another, and had developed quite
a philosophy of his own, Epicurean in the true, not the popular sense
of the word, strange as it may appear. Hard experience had wrung it out
of him as wine from the wine-press. He was born at Tarascon, and had one
sister who had also lived in the city of St. Martha since her birth. The
two did not live together; no, she was a little--_enfin_, she had her
ways of living and he had his. He liked his liberty, and she--well, she
did _not_ like it: _his_ liberty, _bien entendu_. She could not support
that he should have a key of the house; she would always sit up for him
if he was out in the evenings, and it was _gênant_. Not that Tartarin
cared to stay out late, he was quiet in his tastes. "_Je ne fais pas
la noce moi_," he explained; "_c'est vide tout ça; néomoins il faut que
je suis maître de moi-même; quoique je ne le suis pas_," he added with
a philosophic shrug and a good-natured "Ain!" to his horse. He lodged
"_chez Bottin_" in the main street with a number of his colleagues.
They were hired to drive the carriages, and if they did not get many
fares the _patron_ reproached them for laziness. Most of the drivers
were eager to make a good haul, for if they were very unsuccessful the
employer might discharge them. Tartarin's attitude was characteristic.
He made his effort; set forth the attractions of Tarascon and the Castle
of Beaucaire, and calmly awaited the result. If the visitors took the
carriage he was pleased; if one after another passed him, "_Eh! bien, tant
pis_"; he hoped for better luck next time. And resolutely he abstained
from adding to the little turn of ill-fortune the pain of regret.
After all, he had "_le bon soleil_." When it was cold--and it _can_ be
cold in the Midi--he needed all his philosophy: to wait and wait for
visitors who never came, to pass hours and days in the bitter wind, and
to have time to think about life and what it must always be for him!
Yes, there were moments, "_Mais que voulez-vous? C'est la vie._" One
thing he was sure of: _la vie_ was always more or less like that _même
pour les riches_ (Oh! deep-visioned Tartarin!).
He had not always lived at Tarascon. When he was a boy he had been full
of ambition. He would make his fortune and have a merry time of it. He had
wandered far and wide in his own country, seeking fortune and experience.
And he had found experience but not fortune. Among other adventures, he
joined a band of athletes and used to perform in the streets of Paris,
in tights, with two other youths and a girl in spangles. She was the
daughter of the employer, his first love, "_c'est à dire le premier
amour sérieux. Ah! comme elle était belle!_" But he had no luck; she
loved another, "_un animal de joueur sur le mandolin_." And she would
not look at Tartarin when the gay rival was present.
The rejected one wandered farther afield for fresh adventures; engaged
himself with a travelling theatrical company, first in the capacity
of scene-shifter, but later he was offered a temporary post as
walking-gentleman, and probably he would have gone far in the profession
but for another amorous complication. The leading-lady had pleased his
fancy and appeared to reciprocate his sentiments. But one day, in the
side-scenes, he discovered her in a non-professional love episode with
the permanent villain, and after a painful interview, during which he
and the villain came to blows, Tartarin resolved to leave the perfidious
one and the troupe, and throw up such chances as might there offer
themselves. Dispirited and disillusioned, he returned to his native
town, where he engaged himself to Bottin and earned his little crust of
bread in peace, if not too gaily. He had given up all idea of marriage,
not because he was indifferent to _les femmes_, "_au contraire_," but
he did not care to ask a woman to share so poor a life. "_Je suis mieux
seul._" As it was, he had not to reproach himself for bringing another
into the struggle of life.
"_Et quelque fois on va au marché et on achette des enfants_," he added
fantastically, "_et alors, que voulez-vous?_" After that the deluge, he
seemed to imply.
"_Je gagne 40 francs_," he said, "_avec le logement_."
"_Par semaine?_"
"_Et mon Dieu non: si c'etait par semaine!_" He raised his eyes to heaven
as if he had a vision of beatitude. "_Non, par mois._"
That and a few tips given him by his clients was all he had to live upon.
But that did not trouble him, in itself. His fear was of losing his health
and not being able to work. But he put away black thoughts, and turned
his mind to the good that he possessed. After all, he had his health
and his livelihood, so where was the profit of thinking of a possible
time when he might lose both? Would that help him? He had suffered when
he was young and full of ambition; _mon Dieu_, he had always desired
something he did not possess, and if after great efforts he acquired
what he wanted, always the desire ceased and there was some new thing
that made him restless.
"_A quoi bon se tourmenter toujours de cette façon?_"
And so he came to see that all his happiness, if ever he was to enjoy
any, was stored in his own consciousness, and that nothing from without
would avail him, though it were riches and honours without end.
"_Néomoins_," he added, with a naïve little gesture, "_néomoins_, if
chance _were_ to make him the possessor of a little fortune, he would
buy a little house--_toute petite_, with a garden; he would have one
servant whom he would treat very well, and he would have a little trap
and horse which he would drive himself. And then he would envy no man!"
After all then a desire still lingered.
"_Ah ça ne me fait pas de mal!_" he said with a shrug, "_ç'a m'amuse_."
"I am not unhappy in knowing it can never come. _Voilà la différence!_"
Poor Tartarin! And yet in truth was he to be pitied or envied? He must
have seemed somewhat strange to his comrades. They would get excited and
troubled over all sorts of trivial things, and they would offend one
another and flare up into quarrels. Not so Tartarin. He would quietly
evade points of difference, laugh off some threatening dispute, make
peace between hot-headed combatants. Such things seemed to him needless,
foolish. "_A quoi bon?_" as he asked. "_Ça ne vaut pas la peine, mon
Dieu!_"
As we were nearing our destination his confidences grew more rapid.
After all a man who had thought and felt about things to this extent
must have badly needed a means of expression at times.
One is so apt to imagine that the lives one touches thus casually are
all more or less what one calls "normal." But when the veil is lifted
by some accident, it is not often the purely normal that one finds
below it. When Tartarin mentioned that he and his sister were born at
Tarascon, I had vaguely pictured an ordinary well-conducted French family.
But I found my mistake. The man spoke hesitatingly of his childhood.
He had the Frenchman's conventional and inconsequent respect for his
mother--inconsequent considering the unceremonious manner in which she
has previously been treated, as a woman. In this case the conduct of
the mother had been painfully out of order. The Frenchman reverences his
mother surprisingly indeed, but on strict condition that she carries out
her _rôle_ in absolute conformity with expected sentiments. _La mère_ is
_la mère_, neither more nor less, an esteemed functionary rather than
a private individual. Is this to be doubted in the country under whose
laws the mother is unhesitatingly sacrificed in the case of having to
choose between her life and the child's?
So poor Tartarin's state of mind must have been most complex, for his
mother had shown a spirit anything but official. She could not stand
uninterrupted family life, it appears, and used to go off at intervals
in a sort of exasperation, for a week or a month of solitude. Tartarin
spoke of it with bated breath, not severely, but sadly, for was she not
_la mère_? She appears to have shown singularly small appreciation of the
creditable fact. What she had, at moments, permitted herself to remark
about _les enfants et la famille_ generally, her good son refrained from
quoting, but I gathered that it was something truly appalling! Of course
this led to quarrels; the neighbours were scandalised, and incited the
husband to take strong measures, and that was the end.
"If you had but let me go now and then I would not have left you," she
cried, as she fled from the house never to return. And thus Tartarin and
his sister had been deprived in their early years of _la tendresse d'une
mère_. He spoke of it with a sort of self-pity, evidently engendered
by the comments of indignant neighbours and by the sentiments of a
maiden-aunt who joyfully seized the happy opportunity to fill the place
thus left vacant. The brother and sister had therefore enjoyed all the
_tendresse_ that they could have desired, and evidently it was as like
the ordinary _tendresse d'une mere_ as one egg is like another. For
there was nothing in the way of alternate embracings and irrelevant
punishments that had been lacking in the system of education of that
admirable aunt. She had worshipped the children; so altogether it was
difficult to see what the pair had missed. They had certainly gained the
prestige of their misfortune, for all Tarascon had petted and pitied them.
"And where do _I_ come in?" the aunt might have inquired, but she never
did. On the contrary, she started the chorus and shed the signal-tear,
so that little Tartarin and Antoinette evidently had a splendid time of
it.
And was the truant mother still living? Yes, she had a little property,
a little house at Arles where she passed her days. And now and then
Tartarin and his sister went to see her. The mother was glad to welcome
them, and, as far as I could gather, she was fond of Tartarin, not exactly
as a son, but as a good fellow whose _bonhomie_ and urbane philosophy
appealed to her. It was a curious story, and a most unexpected one in
this out of the way city of the south.
The drive had taken about a couple of hours, time well spent, apart from
the charm of the country we had passed through, for a human life, in
its emotions as well as in its events, had been unrolled before me.
And strangely pathetic it was; the life of this good-hearted,
disillusioned, unembittered philosopher, who, with a sort of sad
cheerfulness, waited in fair weather and foul under the plane-trees in
the main street, trying to tempt the tourist to take the round of the
sights--preferably the whole round, but if that piece of good-luck failed
him, then "_sans Beaucaire_."
Yes, sometimes his heart was a little heavy; he was more or less dependent
on his employer, he was solitary though he had many good comrades among
the people of his native town. But he was spared anxiety in that his
risks were his own and his alone; but he had no one to live for, no
one to care for. A wife, as he had before declared, he would not have;
_la misère à deux_ was not the route to happiness; and in his case _la
famille_ had not proved comforting. Often when he went back to Bottin's
after the day's work, he felt a sinking of the heart, for, after all,
was it a life, this? But "_enfin, que voulez-vous?_" He was better off
than many a poor devil, and so he said to himself: "_Raphael_" (for
that was poor Tartarin's real name), "_Raphael, mon vieux, tu es donc
un imbécile_."
And that usually restored him to a more satisfactory frame of mind; though
there were times when even this rousing adjuration lost its efficacy.
At these moments the gloom would last the night and pursue him when he
went to his work next morning, and he would feel as if he could endure
the empty monotony no longer.
Then suddenly--a ray of sunshine, the flight of a bird, and all the dark
thoughts would melt away!
I almost started as Tartarin said these words. As a philosopher I already
knew him, but here was an artist!
We parted with many expressions of good-will, I promising to send him a
copy of Maeterlinck's "La Sagesse et la Destinée," for I thought he might
gain comfort and enjoyment from a philosophy which had many points in
common with his own. Perhaps the Belgian poet would help him a step or
two further on his road, and teach him to know the value of the wisdom
he had already won.
In acknowledgment, he sent me an illustrated post-card of the Pont du
Gard, with a charming little inscription expressing his gratitude for
my having thus remembered "_le pauvre cocher_."
And this good-hearted philosopher will hereafter always be to me the
real Tartarin de Tarascon.