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5 Margaret Catchpole. _Cobbold._
6 John Steggall, the Suffolk Gipsy. _Ditto._
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15 Life of a Beauty. _Author of “Jilt.”_
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50 Old Dower House. _Mrs. Grey._
51 Parsons and Widows. _Author of “Peter Priggins.”_
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53 Mountain Marriage. _Mayne Reid._
54 Money and Misery. _Balzac._
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57 Adventures of Mr. Wilderspin. _Andrew Halliday._
58 Eccentric Personages. _Russell._
59 Paid in Full. _H. J. Byron._
60 Nick of the Woods. _R. Bird._
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62 Brought to Light. _Author of “Foolish Margaret.”_
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4 How Could He Help It? _Author of “I’ve Been Thinking.”_
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THE ILLUSTRIOUS DR. MATHÉUS.
THE
ILLUSTRIOUS DR. MATHÉUS.
BY
MM. ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN,
_Authors of “Madame Thérèse,” “The Conscript,” “The Blockade,”
“Waterloo,” “The Story of a Peasant,” &c._
LONDON:
WARD, LOCK, AND, TYLER,
WARWICK HOUSE, PATERNOSTER ROW.
THE
ILLUSTRIOUS DR. MATHÉUS.
CHAPTER I.
In the little woodland town of Graufthal, on the borders of the Vosges
and of Alsace, there lived one of those respectable rural doctors who
still wore perruques, large square-tailed coats, knee-breeches, and
silver-buckled shoes.
This worthy man was named Frantz Mathéus. He inherited from his ancestors
the oldest house in the place, an orchard, some arable land on the
mountain, a few acres of meadow in the valley; and if you add to this
modest patrimony eggs, milk, cheese, and, from time to time, a lean fowl,
sent to the Doctor by the honest peasants out of the fulness of their
gratitude, you will have the whole of Maître Frantz’s income: it sufficed
for his maintenance and that of his old servant Martha, as well as his
horse Bruno.
Maître Frantz was a curious type of the old _doctores medicinæ_,
_theologiæ_ or _philosophiæ_ of the good German school. His face
expressed the gentlest placidity, the most perfect good-nature; his
ruling passion was metaphysics. The same pleasure which you, I imagine,
might take in reading _Candide_ or _The Sentimental Journey_, he
experienced in meditating the _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_ of Baruch
Spinosa, or the _Monadologie_ of Leibnitz. He also made experiments in
physics and chemistry for his own amusement.
Having one day put some flour of ergot-rye into a bottle of water,
he perceived, at the end of a month or two, that his rye had given
birth to a number of little eels, which speedily produced a crowd of
others. Mathéus, transported with enthusiasm at this discovery, at
once concluded from it that if eels can be made with rye-flour, men
may be made with the flour of wheat. But after reflecting more on
the subject the learned Doctor thought that this transformation must
be effected slowly—progressively; that from rye would come eels—from
eels fish of all kinds; from these fishes, reptiles, quadrupeds,
birds, and so on, up to man inclusive—the whole by virtue of the law
of progress. He called this progression “the ladder of being;” and
as he had studied Greek, Latin, and several other languages, he set
himself to compose a magnificent work, in sixteen volumes, entitled,
_Palingenesis-Psychologico-Anthropo-Zoology_, explaining spontaneous
generation, the transformation of bodies, and the peregrination of
souls; citing Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, Isis and Osiris, Thales of Miletus,
Heraclitus, Democritus—in short, all the cosmological philosophers, both
ancient and modern.
He sent several copies of this work to the German universities, and what
was more astonishing, a good number of philosophers adopted his system;
titles were conferred on him of Corresponding Member of the Surgical
Institution of Prague, of the Royal Society of Sciences of Gœttingen,
and of Veterinary Councillor of the Stud of Wurtzbourg.
Mathéus, encouraged by these tokens of appreciation, resolved to bring
out a second edition of his _Palingenesis_, enriched with notes in Hebrew
and Syriac in elucidation of the text.
But his old servant—a woman of great sense—represented to him that this
glorious enterprise had already cost him half of all he was worth; and
that he would be obliged to sell his horse, his orchard, and his meadows,
to print his Syriac notes. She begged him to think a little more of
mundane matters, and to moderate his anthropo-zoological ardour.
These judicious considerations greatly vexed Maître Frantz, but he could
not help seeing that the good woman was right; he sighed deeply, and kept
his aspirations after glory to himself.
Now all this had happened a long time ago. Mathéus had returned to his
habitual mode of life; he mounted his horse early in the morning to go
and visit his patients; he returned late, harassed with fatigue; in the
evening, instead of shutting himself up in his library, he went down into
the garden to prune his vine, to clear his trees of caterpillars, and to
hoe his lettuces; after supper, Jean-Claude Wachtmann the schoolmaster,
Christian the _garde champêtre_, and a few gossips of the neighbourhood
with their spinning-wheels dropped in. They all sat round a table, and
chatted about the weather, Mathéus entertaining them with news of his
patients; and, at nightfall, he went tranquilly to bed, to recommence on
the morrow.
Thus passed the days, months, and years. But this peaceful mode of
existence could not console Maître Frantz for having missed his
vocation. Often, in his distant rides, alone in the midst of the woods,
he reproached himself for his fatal inaction: “Frantz,” he said to
himself, “Graufthal is not the place for you! All those whom the Being
of beings has made depositaries of the treasures of science belong to
humanity. What will you answer to that Great Being when the time for
rendering an account of yourself shall have come? Will He not say to
you, in a voice of thunder: ‘Frantz Mathéus, I had gifted you with the
most magnificent intelligence, I had unveiled to you things divine and
human, I had destined you from the beginning of time to spread the lights
of sound philosophy; where are your works? In vain for you to try to
excuse yourself on the plea of its being necessary for you to attend to
the sick; these vulgar duties were not made for you; others would have
filled your place. Go, Frantz, go; you were not worthy of the confidence
I placed in you, and I condemn you to redescend the ladder of being!’”
Sometimes even the good soul woke himself in the middle of the night with
crying out, “Frantz! Frantz! you are highly culpable!”
His old servant would rush to his bedside in alarm, exclaiming—
“Good heavens! what’s the matter?”
“It is nothing—it is nothing,” Mathéus would answer; “I have had a bad
dream—that’s all.”
This moral condition of the illustrious doctor could not endure for ever;
the repression of his metaphysical tendencies was too severe.
One evening, as he was returning to the village along the bank of the
Zinsel, he met one of those hawkers of bibles and almanacs who make
their way even to the tops of the mountains to sell their wares. Maître
Frantz had not lost the taste for worm-eaten books; he dismounted, and
looked over the hawker’s stock. By the merest chance this one possessed a
copy of the _Anthropo-Zoology_, which he had not been able to dispose of
for fifteen years; and, seeing Mathéus regard this work with a thoroughly
paternal love, he did not fail to tell him that nothing sold better than
that, that everybody wanted to read this book, that no more copies were
to be had, and that in consequence of this great demand the work was
every day becoming more rare.
Maître Frantz’s heart beat strongly, his hand trembled.
“Oh, Great Demiourgos! Great Demiourgos!” he murmured to himself; “here
I recognise thine infinite wisdom. Out of the mouths of the simple thou
recallest the sages to their duties!”
Maître Frantz returned to Graufthal in a state of extreme agitation: he
went about vaguely; a crowd of incoherent ideas pressed upon his mind.
Should he go and live at Gœttingen? Should he go to Prague? Ought he to
reprint the _Palingenesis_ with new notes? Or ought he to apostrophise
the age on its indifference to the subject of anthropo-zoology?
All this tormented, distressed him; but the means appeared to him too
long, and his impatience admitting of no delay, he resolved to follow the
example of the old prophets—to go forth himself into the universe and
preach his own doctrine.