deadly grave; I take off my cuffs hastily, I open the piano, I run
my fingers over the keys, I am always in a desperate hurry. If they
keep me waiting a moment, I cry out as if they were robbing me of a
crown piece: in an hour from now I must be so and so; in two hours,
with the duchess of so and so; I am expected to dine with a
handsome marchioness, and then, on leaving her, there is a concert
at the baron's....
_I._--And all the time nobody is expecting you anywhere at all?
_He._--No.
_I._--What vile arts!
_He._--Vile, forsooth! Why vile? They are customary among people
like me; I don't lower myself in doing like everybody else. I was
not the inventor of them, and it would be most absurd and stupid in
me not to conform to them. Of course, I know very well that if you
go to certain principles of some morality or other, which all the
world have in their mouths, and which none of them practise, you
will find black is white, and white will become black. But, my
philosopher, there is a general conscience, just as there is a
general grammar; and then the exceptions in each language that you
learned people call--what is it you call them?
_I._--Idioms.
_He._--Ah, exactly; well, each condition of life has its exceptions
to the general conscience, to which I should like to give the title
of idioms of vocation.
_I._--I understand. Fontenelle speaks well, writes well, though his
style swarms with French _idioms_.
_He._--And the sovereign, the minister, the banker, the magistrate,
the soldier, the man of letters, the lawyer, the merchant, the
artisan, the singing master, the dancing master, are all most
worthy folk, though their practice strays in some points from the
general conscience, and abounds in moral idioms. The older the
institution, the more the idioms; the worse the times, the more do
idioms multiply. The man is worth so much, his trade is worth the
same; and reciprocally. At last, the trade counts for so much, the
man for the same. So people take care to make the trade go for as
much as they can.
_I._--All that I gather clearly from this twisted stuff is, that
there are very few callings honestly carried on, and very few
honest men in their callings.
_He._--Good, there are none at all; but in revenge, there are few
rogues out of their own shops; and all would go excellently but for
a certain number of persons who are called assiduous, exact,
fulfilling their strict duty most rigorously, or, what comes to the
same thing, for ever in their shops, and carrying on their trade
from morning until night, and doing nothing else in the world. So
they are the only people who grow rich and are esteemed.
_I._--By force of idioms.
_He._--That is it; I see you understand me. Now, an idiom that
belongs to nearly all conditions--for there are some that are
common to all countries and all times, just as there are follies
that are universal--a common idiom, is to procure for one's self as
many customers as one possibly can; a common folly is to believe
that he is cleverest who has most of them. There are two
exceptions to the general conscience, with which you must comply.
There is a kind of credit; it is nothing in itself, but it is made
worth something by opinion. They say, _good character is better
than golden girdle_: yet the man who has a good character has not a
golden girdle, and I see nowadays that the golden girdle hardly
stands in much need of character. One ought, if possible, to have
both girdle and character, and that is my object when I give myself
importance by what you describe as vile arts, and poor unworthy
tricks. I give my lesson and I give it well; behold the general
rule. I make them think I have more lessons to give than the day
has hours; behold the idiom.
_I._--And the lesson; you do give it well?
_He._--Yes, not ill; passably. The thorough bass of the dear master
has simplified all that. In old days I used to steal my pupil's
money. Yes, I stole it, that is certain; now I earn it, at least
like my neighbours.
_I._--And did you steal it without remorse?
_He._--Oh, without remorse. They say that if one thief pilfers from
another, the devil laughs. The parents were bursting with a
fortune, which had been got the Lord knows how. They were people
about the court, financiers, great merchants, bankers. I helped to
make them disgorge, I and the rest of the people they employed. In
nature, all species devour one another; so all ranks devour one
another in society. We do justice on one another, without any
meddling from the law. The other day it was Deschamps, now it is
Guimard, who avenges the prince of the financier; and it is the
milliner, the jeweller, the upholsterer, the hosier, the draper,
the lady's-maid, the cook, the saddler, who avenge the financier of
Deschamps. In the midst of it all, there is only the imbecile or
the sloth who suffers injury without inflicting it. Whence you see
that these exceptions to the general conscience, or these moral
idioms about which they make such a stir, are nothing, after all,
and that you only need to take a clear survey of the whole.
_I._--I admire yours.
_He._--And then misery! The voice of conscience and of honour is
terribly weak, when the stomach calls out. Enough to say that if
ever I grow rich I shall be bound to restore, and I have made up my
mind to restore in every possible fashion, by eating, drinking,
gambling, and whatever else you please.
_I._--I have some fears about your ever growing rich.
_He._--I have suspicions myself.
_I._--But if things should fall so, what then?
_He._--I would do like all other beggars set on horseback: I would
be the most insolent ruffler that has ever been seen. Then I should
recall all that they have made me go through, and should pay them
back with good interest all the advances that they have been good
enough to make me. I am fond of command, and I will command. I am
fond of praise, and I will make them praise me. I will have in my
pay the whole troop of flatterers, parasites, and buffoons, and
I'll say to them, as has been said to me: "Come, knaves, let me be
amused," and amused I shall be; "Pull me some honest folk to
pieces," and so they will be, if honest folk can be found. We will
be jolly over our cups, we will have all sorts of vices and
whimsies; it will be delicious. We will prove that Voltaire has no
genius; that Buffon, everlastingly perched upon his stilts, is only
a turgid declaimer; that Montesquieu is nothing more than a man
with a touch of ingenuity; we will send D'Alembert packing to his
fusty mathematics. We will welcome before and behind all the pigmy
Catos like you, whose modesty is the prop of pride, and whose
sobriety is a fine name for not being able to help yourselves.
_I._--From the worthy use to which you would put your riches, I
perceive what a pity it is that you are a beggar. You would live
thus in a manner that would be eminently honourable to the human
race, eminently useful to your countrymen, and eminently glorious
for yourself.
_He._--You are mocking me, sir philosopher. But you do not know
whom you are laughing at. You do not suspect that at this moment I
represent the most important part of the town and the court. Our
millionaires in all ranks have, or have not, said to themselves
exactly the same things as I have just confided to you; but the
fact is, the life that I should lead is precisely their life. What
a notion you people have; you think that the same sort of happiness
is made for all the world. What a strange vision! Yours supposes a
certain romantic spirit that we know nothing of, a singular
character, a peculiar taste. You adorn this incongruous mixture
with the name of philosophy; but now, are virtue and philosophy
made for all the world? He has them who can get them, and he keeps
them who can. Imagine the universe sage and philosophical; agree
that it would be a most diabolically gloomy spot. Come, long live
philosophy! The wisdom of Solomon for ever! To drink good wines, to
cram one's self with dainty dishes, to rest in beds of down: except
that, all, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.
_I._--What, to defend one's native land?
_He._--Vanity; there is native land no more; I see nought from pole
to pole but tyrants and slaves.
_I._--To help one's friends?
_He._--Vanity; has one any friends? If one had, ought we to turn
them into ingrates? Look well, and you will see that this is all
you get by doing services. Gratitude is a burden, and every burden
is made to be shaken off.
_I._--To have a position in society and fulfil its duties?
_He._--Vanity; what matters it whether you have a position or not,
provided you are rich, since you only seek a position to become
rich? To fulfil one's duties, what does that lead to? To jealousy,
trouble, persecution. Is that the way to get on? Nay, indeed: to
see the great, to court them, study their taste, bow to their
fancies, serve their vices, praise their injustice--there is the
secret.
_I._--To watch the education of one's children?
_He._--Vanity; that is a tutor's business.
_I._--But if this tutor, having picked up his principles from you,
happens to neglect his duties, who will pay the penalty?
_He._--Not I, at any rate, but most likely the husband of my
daughter, or the wife of my son.
_I._--But suppose that they both plunge into vice and debauchery?
_He._--That belongs to their position.
_I._--Suppose they bring themselves into dishonour?
_He._--You never come into dishonour, if you are rich, whatever you
do.
_I._--Suppose they ruin themselves?
_He._--So much the worse for them.
_I._--You will not pay much heed to your wife?
_He._--None whatever, if you please. The best compliment, I think,
that a man can pay his dearer half, is to do what pleases himself.
In your opinion, would not society be mightily amusing if everybody
in it was always attending to his duties?
_I._--Why not? The evening is never so fair to me as when I am
satisfied with my morning.
_He._--And to me also.
_I._--What makes the men of the world so dainty in their
amusements, is their profound idleness.
_He._--Pray do not think that; they are full of trouble.
_I._--As they never tire themselves, they are never refreshed.
_He._--Don't suppose that either. They are incessantly worn out.
_I._--Pleasure is always a business for them, never the
satisfaction of a necessity.
_He._--So much the better; necessity is always a trouble.
_I._--They wear everything out. Their soul gets blunted, weariness
seizes them. A man who should take their life in the midst of all
their crushing abundance would do them a kindness. The only part of
happiness that they know is the part that loses its edge. I do not
despise the pleasures of the senses: I have a palate, too, and it
is tickled by a well-seasoned dish or a fine wine; I have a heart
and eyes, and I like to see a handsome woman. Sometimes with my
friends, a gay party, even if it waxes somewhat tumultuous, does
not displease me. But I will not dissemble from you that it is
infinitely pleasanter to me to have succoured the unfortunate, to
have ended some thorny business, to have given wholesome counsel,
done some pleasant reading, taken a walk with some man or woman
dear to me, passed instructive hours with my children, written a
good page, fulfilled the duties of my position, said to the woman
that I love a few soft things that bring her arm round my neck. I
know actions which I would give all that I possess to have done.
_Mahomet_ is a sublime work; I would a hundred times rather have
got justice for the memory of the Calas. A person of my
acquaintance fled to Carthagena; he was the younger son in a
country where custom transfers all the property to the eldest.
There he learns that his eldest brother, a petted son, after having
despoiled his father and mother of all that they possessed, had
driven them out of the castle, and that the poor old souls were
languishing in indigence in some small country town. What does he
do--this younger son who in consequence of the harsh treatment he
had received at the hand of his parents had gone to seek his
fortune far away? He sends them help; he makes haste to set his
affairs in order, he returns with his riches, he restores his
father and mother to their home, and finds husbands for his
sisters. Ah, my dear Rameau, that man looked upon this period as
the happiest in his life; he had tears in his eyes when he spoke to
me of it, and even as I tell you the story, I feel my heart beat
faster, and my tongue falter for sympathy.
_He._--Singular beings, you are!
_I._--'Tis you who are beings much to be pitied, if you cannot
imagine that one rises above one's lot, and that it is impossible
to be unhappy under the shelter of good actions.
_He._--That is a kind of felicity with which I should find it hard
to familiarise myself, for we do not often come across it. But,
then, according to you, we should be good.
_I._--To be happy, assuredly.
_He._--Yet I see an infinity of honest people who are not happy,
and an infinity of people who are happy without being honest.
_I._--You think so.
_He._--And is it not for having had common sense and frankness for
a moment, that I don't know where to go for a supper to-night?
_I._--Nay, it is for not having had it always; it is because you
did not perceive in good time that one ought first and foremost to
provide a resource independent of servitude.
_He._--Independent or not, the resource I had provided is at any
rate the most comfortable.
_I._--And the least sure and least decent.
_He._--But the most conformable to my character of sloth, madman,
and good-for-nought.
_I._--Just so.
_He._--And since I can secure my happiness by vices which are
natural to me, which I have acquired without labour, which I
preserve without effort, which go well with the manners of my
nation, which are to the taste of those who protect me, and are
more in harmony with their small private necessities than virtues
which would weary them by being a standing accusation against them
from morning to night, why, it would be very singular for me to go
and torment myself like a lost spirit, for the sake of making
myself into somebody other than I am, to put on a character
foreign to my own, and qualities which I will admit to be highly
estimable, in order to avoid discussion, but which it would cost me
a great deal to acquire, and a great deal to practise, and would
lead to nothing, or possibly to worse than nothing, through the
continual satire of the rich among whom beggars like me have to
seek their subsistence. We praise virtue, but we hate it, and shun
it, and know very well that it freezes the marrow of our bones--and
in this world one must have one's feet warm. And then all that
would infallibly fill me with ill-humour; for why do we so
constantly see religious people so harsh, so querulous, so
unsociable? 'Tis because they have imposed a task upon themselves
which is not natural to them. They suffer, and when people suffer,
they make others suffer too. That is not my game, nor that of my
protectors either; I have to be gay, supple, amusing, comical.
Virtue makes itself respected, and respect is inconvenient; virtue
insists on being admired, and admiration is not amusing. I have to
do with people who are bored, and I must make them laugh. Now it is
absurdity and madness which make people laugh, so mad and absurd I
must be; and even if nature had not made me so, the simplest plan
would still be to feign it. Happily, I have no need to play
hypocrite; there are so many already of all colours, without
reckoning those who play hypocrite with themselves.... If your
friend Rameau were to apply himself to show his contempt for
fortune, and women, and good cheer, and idleness, and to begin to
Catonise, what would he be but a hypocrite? Rameau must be what he
is--a lucky rascal among rascals swollen with riches, and not a
mighty paragon of virtue, or even a virtuous man, eating his dry
crust of bread, either alone, or by the side of a pack of beggars.
And, to cut it short, I do not get on with your felicity, or with
the happiness of a few visionaries like yourself.
_I._--I see, my friend, that you do not even know what it is, and
that you are not even made to understand it.
_He._--So much the better, I declare; so much the better. It would
make me burst with hunger and weariness, and may be, with remorse.
_I._--Very well, then, the only advice I have to give you, is to
find your way back as quickly as you can into the house from which
your impudence drove you out.
_He._--And to do what you do not disapprove absolutely and yet is a
little repugnant to me relatively?
_I._--What a singularity!
_He._--Nothing singular in it at all; I wish to be abject, but I
wish to be so without constraint. I do not object to descend from
my dignity.... You laugh?
_I._--Yes, your dignity makes me laugh.
_He._--Everybody has his own dignity. I do not object to come down
from mine, but it must be in my own way, and not at the bidding of
others. Must they be able to say to me, Crawl--and behold me,
forced to crawl? That is the worm's way, and it is mine; we both of
us follow it--the worm and I--when they leave us alone, but we turn
when they tread on our tails. They have trodden on my tail, and I
mean to turn. And then you have no idea of the creature we are
talking about. Imagine a sour and melancholy person, eaten up by
vapours, wrapped twice or thrice round in his dressing-gown,
discontented with himself, and discontented with every one else;
out of whom you hardly wring a smile, if you put your body and soul
out of joint in a hundred different ways; who examines with a cold
considering eye the droll grimaces of my face, and those of my
mind, which are droller still. I may torment myself to attain the
highest sublime of the lunatic asylum, nothing comes of it. Will he
laugh, or will he not? That is what I am obliged to keep saying to
myself in the midst of my contortions; and you may judge how
damaging this uncertainty is to one's talent. My hypochondriac,
with his head buried in a night-cap that covers his eyes, has the
air of an immovable pagod, with a string tied to its chin, and
going down under his chair. You wait for the string to be pulled,
and it is not pulled; or if by chance the jaws open, it is only to
articulate some word that shows he has not seen you, and that all
your drolleries have been thrown away. This word is the answer to
some question which you put to him four days before; the word
spoken, the mastoid muscle contracts, and the jaw sticks.
[Then he set himself to imitate his man. He placed himself on a
chair, his head fixed, his hat coming over his eyebrows, his eyes
half-shut, his arms hanging down, moving his jaw up and down like
an automaton:] Gloomy, obscure, oracular as destiny itself--such is
our patron.
At the other side of the room is a prude who plays at importance,
to whom one could bring one's self to say that she is pretty,
because she is pretty, though she has a blemish or two upon her
face. _Item_, she is more spiteful, more conceited, and more silly
than a goose. _Item_, she insists on having wit. _Item_, you have
to persuade her that you believe she has more of it than anybody
else in the world. _Item_, she knows nothing, and she has a turn
for settling everything out of hand. _Item_, you must applaud her
decisions with feet and hands, jump for joy, and scream with
admiration:--"How fine that is, how delicate, well said, subtly
seen, singularly felt! Where do women get that? Without study, by
mere force of instinct, and pure light of nature! That is really
like a miracle! And then they want us to believe that experience,
study, reflection, education, have anything to do with the
matter!..." And other fooleries to match, and tears and tears of
joy; ten times a day to kneel down, one knee bent in front of the
other, the other leg drawn back, the arms extended towards the
goddess, to seek one's desire in her eyes, to hang on her lips, to
wait for her command, and then start off like a flash of lightning.
Where is the man who would subject himself to play such a part, if
it is not the wretch, who finds there two or three times a week the
wherewithal to still the tribulation of his inner parts?
_I._--I should never have thought you were so fastidious.
_He._--I am not. In the beginning I watched the others, and I did
as they did, even rather better, because I am more frankly
impudent, a better comedian, hungrier, and better off for lungs. I
descend apparently in a direct line from the famous Stentor....
[And to give me a just idea of the force of his organ, he set off
laughing, with violence enough to break the windows of the
coffee-house, and to interrupt the chess-players.]
_I._--But what is the good of this talent?
_He._--You cannot guess?
_I._--No; I am rather slow.
_He._--Suppose the debate opened, and victory uncertain; I get up,
and, displaying my thunder, I say: "That is as mademoiselle
asserts.... That is worth calling a judgment. There is genius in
the expression." But one must not always approve in the same
manner; one would be monotonous, and seem insincere, and become
insipid. You only escape that by judgment and resource; you must
know how to prepare and place your major and most peremptory tones,
to seize the occasion and the moment. When, for instance, there is
a difference in feeling, and the debate has risen to its last
degree of violence, and you have ceased to listen to one another,
and all speak at the same time, you ought to have your place at the
corner of the room which is farthest removed from the field of
battle, to have prepared the way for your explosion by a long
silence, and then suddenly to fall like a thunder-clap over the
very midst of the combatants. Nobody possesses this art as I do.
But where I am truly surprising is in the opposite way--I have low
tones that I accompany with a smile, and an infinite variety of
approving tricks of face; nose, lips, brow, eyes, all make play; I
have a suppleness of reins, a manner of twisting the spine, of
shrugging the shoulders, extending the fingers, inclining the head,
closing the eyes, and throwing myself into a state of stupefaction,
as if I had heard a divine angelic voice come down from heaven;
that is what flatters. I do not know whether you seize rightly all
the energy of that last attitude. I did not invent it, but nobody
has ever surpassed me in its execution. Behold, behold!
_I._--Truly, it is unique.
_He._--Think you there is a woman's brain that could stand that?
_I._--It must be admitted that you have carried the talent of
playing the madman, and of self-debasement, as far as it can
possibly be carried.
_He._--Try as hard as they will, they will never touch me--not the
best of them. Palissot, for instance, will never be more than a
good learner. But if this part is amusing at first, and if you have
some relish in inwardly mocking at the folly of the people whom you
are intoxicating, in the long run that ceases to be exciting, and
then after a certain number of discoveries one is obliged to repeat
one's self. Wit and art have their limits. 'Tis only God Almighty
and some rare geniuses, for whom the career widens as they advance.
_I._--With this precious enthusiasm for fine things, and this
facility of genius of yours, is it possible that you have invented
nothing?
_He._--Pardon me; for instance, that admiring attitude of the back,
of which I spoke to you; I regard it as my own, though envy may
contest my claim. I daresay it has been employed before: but who
has felt how convenient it was for laughing in one's sleeve at the
ass for whom one was dying of admiration! I have more than a
hundred ways of opening fire on a girl under the very eyes of her
mother, without the latter suspecting a jot of it; yes, and even of
making her an accomplice. I had hardly begun my career before I
disdained all the vulgar fashions of slipping a _billet-doux_; I
have ten ways of having them taken from me, and out of the number I
venture to flatter myself there are some that are new. I possess in
an especial degree the gift of encouraging a timid young man; I
have secured success for some who had neither wit nor good looks.
If all that was written down, I fancy people would concede me some
genius.
_I._--And would do you singular honour.
_He._--I don't doubt it.
_I._--In your place, I would put those famous methods on paper. It
would be a pity for them to be lost.
_He._--It is true; but you could never suppose how little I think
of method and precepts. He who needs a protocol will never go far.
Your genius reads little, experiments much, and teaches himself.
Look at Caesar, Turenne, Vauban, the Marquise de Tencin, her brother
the cardinal, and the cardinal's secretary, the Abbe Trublet, and
Bouret! Who is it that has given lessons to Bouret? Nobody; 'tis
nature that forms these rare men.
_I._--Well, but you might do this in your lost hours, when the
anguish of your empty stomach, or the weariness of your stomach
overloaded, banishes slumber.
_He._--I'll think of it. It is better to write great things than to
execute small ones. Then the soul rises on wings, the imagination
is kindled; whereas it shrivels in amazement at the applause which
the absurd public lavishes so perversely on that mincing creature
of a Dangeville, who plays so flatly, who walks the stage nearly
bent double, who stares affectedly and incessantly into the eyes of
every one she talks to, and who takes her grimaces for finesse, and
her little strut for grace; or on that emphatic Clairon, who
becomes more studied, more pretentious, more elaborately heavy,
than I can tell you. That imbecile of a pit claps hands to the
echo, and never sees that we are a mere worsted ball of
daintinesses ('Tis true the ball grows a trifle big, but what does
it matter?), that we have the finest skin, the finest eyes, the
prettiest bill; little feeling inside, in truth; a step that is not
exactly light, but which for all that is not as awkward as they
say. As for sentiment, on the other hand, there is not one of these
stage dames whom we cannot cap.
_I._--What do you mean by all that? Is it irony or truth?
_He._--The worst of it is that this deuced sentiment is all
internal, and not a glimpse of it appears outside; but I who am now
talking to you, I know, and know well, that she has it. If it is
not that, you should see, if a fit of ill-humour comes on, how we
treat the valets, how the waiting-maids are cuffed and trounced,
what kicks await our good friend, if he fails in an atom of that
respect which is our due. 'Tis a little demon, I tell you, full of
sentiment and dignity. Ah, you don't quite know where you are, eh?
_I._--I confess I can hardly make out whether you are speaking in
good faith or in malice. I am a plain man. Be kind enough to be a
little more outspoken, and to leave your art behind for once....
_He._--What is it? why it is what we retail before our little
patroness about the Dangeville or the Clairon, mixed up here and
there with a word or two to put you on the scent. I will allow you
to take me for a good-for-nothing, but not for a fool; and 'tis
only a fool, or a man eaten up with conceit, who could say such a
parcel of impertinences seriously.
_I._--But how do people ever bring themselves to say them?
_He._--It is not done all at once, but little by little you come to
it. _Ingenii largitor venter._
_I._--Then hunger must press you very hard.
_He._--That may be; yet strong as you may think them, be sure that
those to whom they are addressed are much more accustomed to listen
to them than we are to hazard them.
_I._--Is there anybody who has courage to be of your opinion?
_He._--What do you mean by anybody? It is the sentiment and
language of the whole of society.
_I._--Those of you who are not great rascals must be great fools.
_He._--Fools! I assure you there is only one, and that is he who
feasts us to cheat him.
_I._--But how can people allow themselves to be cheated in such
gross fashion? For surely the superiority of the Dangeville and the
Clairon is a settled thing.
_He._--We swallow until we are full to the throat any lie that
flatters us, and take drop by drop a truth that is bitter to us.
And then we have the air of being so profoundly penetrated, so
true.
_I._--Yet you must once, at any rate, have sinned against the
principles of art, and let slip, by an oversight, some of those
bitter truths that wound; for, in spite of the wretched, abject,
vile, abominable part you play, I believe you have at bottom some
delicacy of soul.
_He._--I! not the least in the world. Deuce take me if I know what
I am! In a general way, I have a mind as round as a ball, and a
character fresh as a water-willow. Never false, little interest as
I have in being true; never true, little interest as I have in
being false. I say things just as they come into my head; sensible
things, then so much the better; impertinent things, then people
take no notice. I let my natural frankness have full play. I never
in all my life gave a thought, either beforehand, what to say, or
while I was saying it, or after I had said it. And so I offend
nobody.
_I._--Still that did happen with the worthy people among whom you
used to live, and who were so kind to you.
_He._--What would you have? It is a mishap, an unlucky moment, such
as there always are in life; there is no such thing as unbroken
bliss: I was too well off, it could not last. We have, as you
know, the most numerous and the best chosen company. It is a school
of humanity, the renewal of hospitality after the antique. All the
poets who fall, we pick them up; all decried musicians, all the
authors who are never read, all the actresses who are hissed, a
parcel of beggarly, disgraced, stupid, parasitical souls, and at
the head of them all I have the honour of being the brave chief of
a timorous flock. It is I who exhort them to eat the first time
they come, and I who ask for drink for them--they are so shy. A few
young men in rags who do not know where to lay their heads, but who
have good looks; a few scoundrels who bamboozle the master of the
house, and put him to sleep, for the sake of gleaning after him in
the fields of the mistress of the house. We seem gay, but at bottom
we are devoured by spleen and a raging appetite. Wolves are not
more famishing, nor tigers more cruel. Like wolves when the ground
has been long covered with snow, we raven over our food, and
whatever succeeds we rend like tigers. Never was seen such a
collection of soured, malignant, venomous beasts. You hear nothing
but the names of Buffon, Duclos, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire,
D'Alembert, Diderot; and God knows the epithets that bear them
company! Nobody can have any parts if he is not as stupid as
ourselves. That is the plan on which Palissot's play of _The
Philosophers_ has been conceived. And you are not spared in it, any
more than your neighbours.
_I._--So much the better. Perhaps they do me more honour than I
deserve. I should be humiliated if those who speak ill of so many
clever and worthy people took it into their heads to speak well of
me.
_He._--Everybody must pay his scot. After sacrificing the greater
animals, then we immolate the others.
_I._--Insulting science and virtue for a living, that is
dearly-earned bread!
_He._--I have already told you, we are without any consistency; we
insult all the world, and afflict nobody. We have sometimes the
heavy Abbe d'Olivet, the big Abbe Le Blanc, the hypocrite Batteux.
The big abbe is only spiteful before he has had his dinner; his
coffee taken, he throws himself into an arm-chair, his feet against
the ledge of the fireplace, and sleeps like an old parrot on its
perch. If the noise becomes violent he yawns, stretches his arms,
rubs his eyes, and says: "Well, well, what is it?" "It is whether
Piron has more wit than Voltaire." "Let us understand; is it wit
that you are talking about, or is it taste? For as to taste, your
Piron has not a suspicion of it." "Not a suspicion of it?" "No."
And there we are, embarked in a dissertation upon taste. Then the
patron makes a sign with his hand for people to listen to him, for
if he piques himself upon one thing more than another, it is taste.
"Taste," he says, "taste is a thing...." But, on my soul, I don't
know what thing he said that it was, nor does he.
Then sometimes we have friend Robbe. He regales us with his
equivocal stories, with the miracles of the convulsionnaires which
he has seen with his own eyes, and with some cantos of a poem on a
subject that he knows thoroughly. His verses I detest, but I love
to hear him recite them--he has the air of an energumen. They all
cry out around him: "There is a poet worth calling a poet!..."
Then there comes to us also a certain noodle with a dull and stupid
air, but who has the keenness of a demon, and is more mischievous
than an old monkey. He is one of those figures that provoke
pleasantries and sarcasms, and that God made for the chastisement
of those who judge by appearances, and who ought to have learnt
from the mirror that it is as easy to be a wit with the air of a
fool as to hide a fool under the air of a wit. 'Tis a very common
piece of cowardice to immolate a good man to the amusement of the
others; people never fail to turn to this man; he is a snare that
we set for the new-comers, and I have scarcely known one of them
who was not caught ...
[I was sometimes amazed at the justice of my madman's observations
on men and characters, and I showed him my surprise.] That is, he
answered, because one derives good out of bad company, as one does
out of libertinism. You are recompensed for the loss of your
innocence by that of your prejudices; in the society of the bad,
where vice shows itself without a mask, you learn to understand
them. And then I have read a little.
_I._--What have you read?
_He._--I have read, and I read, and I read over and over again
Theophrastus and La Bruyere and Moliere.
_I._--Excellent works, all of them.
_He._--They are far better than people suppose; but who is there
who knows how to read them?
_I._--Everybody does, according to the measure of his intelligence.
_He._--No; hardly anybody. Could you tell me what people look for
in them?
_I._--Amusement and instruction.
_He._--But what instruction, for that is the point?
_I._--The knowledge of one's duties, the love of virtue, the hatred
of vice.
_He._--For my part, I gather from them all that one ought to do,
and all that one ought not to say. Thus, when I read the _Avare_, I
say to myself: "Be a miser if thou wilt, but beware of talking like
the miser." When I read _Tartufe_, I say: "Be a hypocrite if thou
wilt, but do not talk like a hypocrite. Keep the vices that are
useful to thee, but avoid their tone and the appearances that would
make thee laughable." To preserve thyself from such a tone and such
appearances, it is necessary to know what they are. Now these
authors have drawn excellent pictures of them. I am myself, and I
remain what I am, but I act and I speak as becomes the character. I
am not one of those who despise moralists; there is a great deal
of profit to be got from them, especially with those who have
applied morality to action. Vice only hurts men from time to time;
the characteristics of vice hurt them from morning to night.
Perhaps it would be better to be insolent than to have an insolent
expression. One who is insolent in character only insults people
now and again; one who is insolent in expression insults them
incessantly. And do not imagine that I am the only reader of my
kind. I have no other merit in this respect than having done on
system, from a natural integrity of understanding, and with true
and reasonable vision, what most others do by instinct. And so
their readings make them no better than I am, and they remain
ridiculous in spite of themselves, while I am only so when I
choose, and always leave them a vast distance behind me; for the
same art which teaches me how to escape ridicule on certain
occasions teaches me also on certain others how to incur it
happily. Then I recall to myself all that the others said, and all
that I read, and I add all that issues from my own originality,
which is in this kind wondrous fertile.
_I._--You have done well to reveal these mysteries to me, for
otherwise I should have thought you self-contradictory.
_He._--I am not so in the least, for against a single time when one
has to avoid ridicule, happily there are a hundred when one has to
provoke it. There is no better part among the great people than
that of fool. For a long time there was the king's fool; at no time
was there ever the king's sage, officially so styled. Now I am the
fool of Bertin and many others, perhaps yours at the present
moment, or perhaps you are mine. A man who meant to be a sage would
have no fool, so he who has a fool is no sage; if he is not a sage
he is a fool, and perhaps, even were he the king himself, the fool
of his fool. For the rest, remember that in a matter so variable as
manners, there is nothing absolutely, essentially, and universally
true or false; if not that one must be what interest would have us
be, good or bad, wise or mad, decent or ridiculous, honest or
vicious. If virtue had happened to be the way to fortune, then I
should either have been virtuous, or I should have pretended
virtue, like other persons. As it was, they wanted me to be
ridiculous, and I made myself so; as for being vicious, nature
alone had taken all the trouble that was needed in that. When I use
the term vicious, it is for the sake of talking your language; for,
if we came to explanations, it might happen that you called vice
what I call virtue, and virtue what I call vice.
Then we have the authors of the Opera Comique, their actors and
their actresses, and oftener still their managers, all people of
resource and superior merit. And I forget the whole clique of
scribblers in the gazettes, the _Avant Coureur_, the _Petites
Affiches_, the _Annee litteraire_, the _Observateur litteraire_.
_I._--The _Annee litteraire_, the _Observateur litteraire_! But
they detest one another.
_He._--Quite true, but all beggars are reconciled at the porringer.
That cursed _Observateur litteraire_, I wish the devil had had both
him and his sheet! It was that dog of a miserly priest who caused
my disaster. He appeared on our horizon for the first time; he
arrived at the hour that drives us all out of our dens, the hour
for dinner. When it is bad weather, lucky the man among us who has
a shilling in his pocket to pay for a hackney-coach! He is free to
laugh at a comrade for coming besplashed up to his eyes and wet to
the skin, though at night he goes to his own home in just the same
plight. There was one of them some months ago who had a violent
brawl with the Savoyard at the door. They had a running account;
the creditor insisted on being paid, and the debtor was not in
funds, and yet he could not go upstairs without passing through the
hands of the other.
Dinner is served; they do the honours of the table to the
abbe--they place him at the upper end. I come in and see this.
"What, abbe, you preside? That is all very well for to-day, but
to-morrow you will come down, if you please, by one plate; the day
after by another plate, and so on from plate to plate, now to right
and now to left, until from the place that I occupied one time
before you, Freron once after me, Dorat once after Freron, Palissot
once after Dorat, you become stationary beside me, poor rascal as
you are--_che siedo sempre come_"--[an Italian proverb not to be
decently reproduced].
The abbe, who is a good fellow, and takes everything in good part,
bursts out laughing; Mademoiselle, struck by my observation and by
the aptness of my comparison, bursts out laughing; everybody to
right and left burst out laughing, except the master of the house,
who flies into a huff, and uses language that would have meant
nothing if we had been by ourselves--
"Rameau, you are an impertinent."
"I know I am, and it is on that condition that I was received
here."
"You are a scoundrel."
"Like anybody else."
"A beggar."
"Should I be here, if I were not?"
"I will have you turned out of doors."
"After dinner I will go of my own will."
"I recommend you to go."
We dined: I did not lose a single toothful. After eating well and
drinking amply, for after all Messer Gaster is a person with whom I
have never sulked, I made up my mind what to do, and I prepared to
go; I had pledged my word in presence of so many people that I was
bound to keep it. For a considerable time I hunted up and down the
room for my hat and cane in every corner where they were not likely
to be, reckoning all the time that the master of the house would
break out into a new torrent of injuries, that somebody would
interpose, and that we should at last make friends by sheer dint of
altercation. I turned on this side and that, for I had nothing on
my heart; but the master, more sombre and dark-browed than Homer's
Apollo as he lets his arrows fly among the Greeks, with his cap
plucked farther over his head than usual, marched backwards and
forwards up and down the room. Mademoiselle approaches me: "But,
mademoiselle," say I, "what has happened beyond what happens every
day? Have I been different from what I am on other days?"
"I insist on his leaving the house."--"I am leaving.... But I have
given no ground of offence."--"Pardon me; we invite the abbe
and...." It was he who was wrong to invite the abbe, while at the
same time he was receiving me, and with me so many other creatures
of my sort.--"Come, friend Rameau, you must beg the abbe's
pardon."--"I shall not know what to do with his pardon."--"Come,
come, all will be right."--They take me by the hand, and drag me
towards the abbe's chair; I look at him with a kind of admiring
wonder, for who before ever asked pardon of the abbe? "All this is
very absurd, abbe; confess, is it not?" And then I laugh, and the
abbe laughs too. So that is my forgiveness on that side; but I had
next to approach the other, and that was a very different thing. I
forget exactly how it was that I framed my apology.--"Sir, here is
the madman...."--"He has made me suffer too long; I wish to hear no
more about him."--"He is sorry."--"Yes, I am very sorry."--"It
shall not happen again."--"Until the first rascal...."--I do not
know whether he was in one of those days of ill-humour when
mademoiselle herself dreads to go near him, or whether he
misunderstood what I said, or whether I said something wrong:
things were worse than before. Good heavens, does he not know me?
Does he not know that I am like children, and that there are some
circumstances in which I let anything and everything escape me? And
then, God help me, am I not to have a moment of relief? Why, it
would wear out a puppet made of steel, to keep pulling the string
from night to morning, and from morning to night! I must amuse
them, of course, that is the condition; but I must now and then
amuse myself. In the midst of these distractions there came into my
head a fatal idea, an idea that gave me confidence, that inspired
me with pride and insolence: it was that they could not do without
me, and that I was indispensable.
_I._--Yes, I daresay that you are very useful to them, but that
they are still more useful to you. You will not find as good a
house every day; but they, for one madman who falls short, will
find a hundred to take his place.
_He._--A hundred madmen like me, sir philosopher; they are not so
common, I can tell you! Flat fools--yes. People are harder to
please in folly than in talent or virtue. I am a rarity in my own
kind, a great rarity. Now that they have me no longer, what are
they doing? They find time as heavy as if they were dogs. I am an
inexhaustible bagful of impertinences. Every minute I had some
fantastic notion that made them laugh till they cried; I was a
whole Bedlam in myself.
_I._--Well, at any rate you had bed and board, coat and breeches,
shoes, and a pistole a month.
_He._--That is the profit side of the account; you say not a word
of the cost of it all. First, if there was a whisper of a new piece
(no matter how bad the weather), one had to ransack all the garrets
in Paris, until one had found the author; then to get a reading of
the play, and adroitly to insinuate that there was a part in it
which would be rendered in a superior manner by a certain person of
my acquaintance.--"And by whom, if you please?"--"By whom? a pretty
question! There are graces, finesse, elegance."--"Ah, you mean
Mademoiselle Dangeville? Perhaps you know her?"--"Yes, a little;
but 'tis not she."--"Who is it, then?"--I whispered the name very
low. "She?"--"Yes, she," I repeated with some shame, for sometimes
I do feel a touch of shame; and at this name you should have seen
how long the poet's face grew, if indeed he did not burst out
laughing in my face. Still, whether he would or not, I was bound to
take my man to dine; and he, being naturally afraid of pledging
himself, drew back, and tried to say "No, thank you." You should
have seen how I was treated, if I did not succeed in my
negotiation! I was a blockhead, a fool, a rascal; I was not good
for a single thing; I was not worth the glass of water which they
gave me to drink. It was still worse at their performance, when I
had to go intrepidly amid the cries of a public that has a good
judgment of its own, whatever may be said about it, and make my
solitary clap of the hand audible, draw every eye to me, and
sometimes save the actress from hisses, and hear people murmur
around me--"He is one of the valets in disguise belonging to the
man who.... Will that knave be quiet?" They do not know what brings
a man to that; they think it is stupidity, but there is one motive
that excuses anything.
_I._--Even the infraction of the civil laws.
_He._--At length, however, I became known, and people used to say:
"Oh, it is Rameau!" My resource was to throw out some words of
irony to save my solitary applause from ridicule, by making them
interpret it in an opposite sense.
Now agree that one must have a mighty interest to make one thus
brave the assembled public, and that each of these pieces of hard
labour was worth more than a paltry crown? And then at home there
was a pack of dogs to tend, and cats for which I was responsible. I
was only too happy if Micou favoured me with a stroke of his claw
that tore my cuff or my wrist. Criquette is liable to colic; 'tis I
who have to rub her. In old days mademoiselle used to have the
vapours; to-day, it is her nerves. She is beginning to grow a
little stout; you should hear the fine tales they make out of this.
_I._--You do not belong to people of this sort, at any rate?
_He._--Why not?
_I._--Because it is indecent to throw ridicule on one's
benefactors.
_He._--But is it not worse still to take advantage of one's
benefits to degrade the receiver of them?
_I._--But if the receiver of them were not vile in himself, nothing
would give the benefactor the chance.
_He._--But if the personages were not ridiculous in themselves they
would not make subjects for good tales. And then, is it my fault if
they mix with rascaldom? Is it my fault if, after mixing themselves
up with rascaldom, they are betrayed and made fools of? When people
resolve to live with people like us, if they have common sense,
there is an infinite quantity of blackness for which they must make
up their minds. When they take us, do they not know us for what we
are, for the most interested, vile, and perfidious of souls. Then
if they know us, all is well. There is a tacit compact that they
shall treat us well, and that sooner or later we shall treat them
ill in return for the good that they have done us. Does not such an
agreement subsist between a man and his monkey or his parrot?... If
you take a young provincial to the menagerie at Versailles, and he
takes it into his head for a freak to push his hands between the
bars of the cage of the tiger or the panther, whose fault is it? It
is all written in the silent compact, and so much the worse for the
man who forgets or ignores it. How I could justify by this
universal and sacred compact the people whom you accuse of
wickedness, whereas it is in truth yourselves whom you ought to
accuse of folly.... But while we execute the just decrees of
Providence on folly, you who paint us as we are, you execute its
just decrees on us. What would you think of us, if we claimed, with
our shameless manners, to enjoy public consideration? That we are
out of our senses. And those who look for decent behaviour from
people who are born vicious and with vile and bad characters--are
they in their senses? Everything has its true wages in this world.
There are two Public Prosecutors, one at your door, chastising
offences against society; nature is the other. Nature knows all the
vices that escape the laws. Give yourself up to debauchery, and you
will end with dropsy; if you are crapulous, your lungs will find
you out; if you open your door to ragamuffins, and live in their
company, you will be betrayed, laughed at, despised. The shortest
way is to resign, one's self to the equity of these judgments, and
to say to one's self: That is as it should be; to shake one's ears
and turn over a new leaf, or else to remain what one is, but on the
conditions aforesaid....
_I._--You cannot doubt what judgment I pass on such a character as
yours?
_He._--Not at all; I am in your eyes an abject and most despicable
creature; and I am sometimes the same in my own eyes, though not
often: I more frequently congratulate myself on my vices than blame
myself for them; you are more constant in your contempt.
_I._--True; but why show me all your turpitude?
_He._--First, because you already know a good deal of it, and I saw
that there was more to gain than to lose, by confessing the rest.
_I._--How so, if you please?
_He._--It is important in some lines of business to reach
sublimity; it is especially so in evil. People spit upon a small
rogue, but they cannot refuse a kind of consideration to a great
criminal; his courage amazes you, his atrocity makes you shudder.
In all things, what people prize is unity of character.
_I._--But this estimable unity of character you have not quite got:
I find you from time to time vacillating in your principles; it is
uncertain whether you get your wickedness from nature or study, and
whether study has brought you as far as possible.
_He._--I agree with you, but I have done my best. Have I not had
the modesty to recognise persons more perfect in my own line than
myself. Have I not spoken to you of Bouret with the deepest
admiration? Bouret is the first person in the world for me.
_I._--But after Bouret you come.
_He._--No.
_I._--Palissot, then?
_He._--Palissot, but not Palissot alone.
_I._--And who is worthy to share the second rank with him?
_He._--The Renegade of Avignon.
_I._--I never heard of the Renegade of Avignon, but he must be an
astonishing man.
_He._--He is so, indeed.
_I._--The history of great personages has always interested me.
_He._--I can well believe it. This hero lived in the house of a
good and worthy descendant of Abraham, promised to the father of
the faithful in number equal to the stars in the heavens.
_I._--In the house of a Jew?
_He._--In the house of a Jew. He had at first surprised pity, then
goodwill, then entire confidence, for that is how it always
happens: we count so strongly on our kindness, that we seldom hide
our secrets from anybody on whom we have heaped benefits. How
should there not be ingrates in the world, when we expose this man
to the temptation of being ungrateful with impunity? That is a just
reflection which our Jew failed to make. He confided to the
renegade that he could not conscientiously eat pork. You will see
the advantage that a fertile wit knew how to get from such a
confession. Some months passed, during which our renegade redoubled
his attentions; when he believed his Jew thoroughly touched,
thoroughly captivated, thoroughly convinced that he had no better
friend among all the tribes of Israel ... now admire the
circumspection of the man! He is in no hurry; he lets the pear
ripen before he shakes the branch; too much haste might have
ruined his design. It is because greatness of character usually
results from the natural balance between several opposite
qualities.
_I._--Pray leave your reflections, and go straight on with your
story.
_He._--That is impossible. There are days when I cannot help
reflecting; 'tis a malady that must be allowed to run its course.
Where was I?
_I._--At the intimacy that had been established between the Jew and
the renegade.
_He._--Then the pear was ripe.... But you are not listening; what
are you dreaming about?
_I._--I am thinking of the curious inequality in your tone, now so
high, now so low.
_He._--How can a man made of vices be one and the same?... He
reaches his friend's house one night, with an air of violent
perturbation, with broken accents, a face as pale as death, and
trembling in every limb. "What is the matter with you?"--"We are
ruined." "Ruined, how?"--"Ruined, I tell you, beyond all
help."--"Explain."--"One moment, until I have recovered from my
fright."--"Come, then, recover yourself," says the Jew.... "A
traitor has informed against us before the Holy Inquisition, you as
a Jew, me as a renegade, an infamous renegade...." Mark how the
traitor does not blush to use the most odious expressions. It needs
more courage than you may suppose to call one's self by one's right
name; you do not know what an effort it costs to come to that.
_I._--No, I daresay not. But "the infamous renegade----"
_He._--He is false, but his falsity is adroit enough. The Jew takes
fright, tears his beard, rolls on the ground, sees the officers at
his door, sees himself clad in the _Sanbenito_, sees his
_auto-da-fe_ all made ready. "My friend," he cries, "my good,
tender friend, my only friend, what is to be done?"
"What is to be done? Why show ourselves, affect the greatest
security, go about our business just as we usually do. The
procedure of the tribunal is secret but slow; we must take
advantage of its delays to sell all you have. I will hire a boat,
or I will have it hired by a third person--that will be best; in it
we will deposit your fortune, for it is your fortune that they are
most anxious to get at; and then we will go, you and I, and seek
under another sky the freedom of serving our God, and following in
security the law of Abraham and our own consciences. The important
point in our present dangerous situation is to do nothing
imprudent."
No sooner said than done. The vessel is hired, victualled, and
manned, the Jew's fortune put on board; on the morrow, at dawn,
they are to sail, they are free to sup gaily and to sleep in all
security; on the morrow they escape their prosecutors. In the
night, the renegade gets up, despoils the Jew of his portfolio, his
purse, his jewels, goes on board, and sails away. And you think
that this is all? Good: you are not awake to it. Now when they told
me the story, I divined at once what I have not told you, in order
to try your sagacity. You were quite right to be an honest man; you
would never have made more than a fifth-rate scoundrel. Up to this
point the renegade is only that; he is a contemptible rascal whom
nobody would consent to resemble. The sublimity of his wickedness
is this, that he was himself the informer against his good friend
the Israelite, of whom the Inquisition took hold when he awoke the
next morning, and of whom a few days later they made a famous
bonfire. And it was in this way that the renegade became the
tranquil possessor of the fortune of the accursed descendant of
those who crucified our Lord.
_I._--I do not know which of the two is most horrible to me--the
vileness of your renegade, or the tone in which you speak of it.
_He._--And that is what I said: the atrocity of the action carries
you beyond contempt, and hence my sincerity. I wished you to know
to what a degree I excelled in my art, to extort from you the
admission that I was at least original in my abasement, to rank me
in your mind on the line of the great good-for-noughts, and to hail
me henceforth--_Vivat Mascarillus, fourbum imperator_!
[Here the discussion is turned aside, by Rameau's pantomimic performance
of a fugue, to various topics in music.[224]]
[224] Vol. v. pp. 457-468.
_I._--How does it happen that with such fine tact, such great
sensibility for the beauties of the musical art, you are so blind
to the fine things of morality, so insensible to the charms of
virtue?
_He._--It must be because there is for the one a sense that I have
not got, a fibre that has not been given to me, a slack string that
you may play upon as much as you please, but it never vibrates. Or
it may be because I have always lived with those who were good
musicians but bad men, whence it has come to pass that my ear has
grown very fine, and my heart has grown very deaf. And then there
is something in race. The blood of my father and the blood of my
uncle is the same blood; my blood is the same as that of my father;
the paternal molecule was hard and obtuse, and that accursed first
molecule has assimilated to itself all the rest.
_I._--Do you love your child?
_He._--Do I love it, the little savage! I dote on it.
_I._--Will you not then seriously set to work to arrest in it the
consequences of the accursed paternal molecule?
_He._--I shall labour in vain, I fancy. If he is destined to grow
into a good man, I shall not hurt him; but if the molecule meant
him for a ne'er-do-well like his father, then all the pains that I
might have taken to make a decent man of him would only be very
hurtful to him, Education incessantly crossing the inclination of
the molecule, he would be drawn as it were by two contrary forces,
and would walk in zigzags along the path of life, as I see an
infinity of other people doing, equally awkward in good and evil.
These are what we call _especes_, of all epithets the most to be
dreaded, because it marks mediocrity and the very lowest degree of
contempt. A great scoundrel is a great scoundrel, but he is not an
_espece_. Before the paternal molecule had got the upper hand, and
had brought him to the perfect abjection at which I have arrived,
it would take endless time, and he would lose his best years. I do
not meddle at present; I let him come on. I examine him; he is
already greedy, cunning, idle, lying, and a cheat; I'm much afraid
that he is a chip of the old block.
_I._--And you will make him a musician, so that the likeness may be
exact?
_He._--A musician! Sometimes I look at him and grind my teeth,
saying: If thou wert ever to know a note of music, I believe I
would wring thy neck.
_I._--And why so, if you please?
_He._--Music leads to nothing.
_I._--It leads to everything.
_He._--Yes, when people are first-rate. But who can promise himself
that his child shall be first-rate. The odds are ten thousand to
one that he will never be anything but a wretched scraper of
catgut. Are you aware that it would perhaps be easier to find a
child fit to govern a realm, fit to be a great king, than one fit
for a great violin player.
_I._--It seems to me that agreeable talents, even if they are
mediocre, among a people who are without morals, and are lost in
debauchery and luxury, get a man rapidly on in the path of fortune.
_He._--No doubt, gold and gold; gold is everything, and all the
rest without gold is nothing. So instead of cramming his head with
fine maxims which he would have to forget, on pain of remaining a
beggar all the days of his life, what I do is this: when I have a
louis, which does not happen to me often, I plant myself in front
of him, I pull the louis out of my pocket, I show it to him with
signs of admiration, I raise my eyes to heaven, I kiss the louis
before him, and to make him understand still better the importance
of the sacred coin, I point to him with my finger all that he can
get with it, a fine frock, a pretty cap, a rich cake; then I thrust
the louis into my pocket, I walk proudly up and down, I raise the
lappet of my waistcoat, I strike my fob; and in that way I make him
see that it is the louis in it that gives me all this assurance.
_I._--Nothing could be better. But suppose it were to come to pass
that, being so profoundly penetrated by the value of the louis, he
were one day....
_He._--I understand you. One must close one's eyes to that; there
is no moral principle without its own inconvenience. At the worst
'tis a bad quarter of an hour, and then all is over.
_I._--Even after hearing views so wise and so bold, I persist in
thinking that it would be good to make a musician of him. I know no
other means of getting so rapidly near great people, of serving
their vices better, or turning your own to more advantage.
_He._--That is true; but I have plans for a speedier and surer
success. Ah, if it were only a girl! But as we cannot do all that
we should like, we must take what comes, and make the best of it,
and not be such idiots as most fathers, who could literally do
nothing worse, supposing them to have deliberately planned the
misery of their children--namely, give the education of Lacedaemon
to a child who is destined to live in Paris. If the education is
bad, the morals of my country are to blame for that, not I. Answer
for it who may; I wish my son to be happy, or what is the same
thing, rich, honoured, and powerful. I know something about the
easiest ways of reaching this end, and I will teach them to him
betimes. If you blame me, you sages, the multitude and success
will acquit me. He will put money in his purse, I can tell you. If
he has plenty of that, he will lack nothing else, not even your
esteem and respect.
_I._--You may be mistaken.
_He._--Then perhaps he will do very well without it, like many
other people.
* * * * *
[There was in all this a good deal of what passes through many
people's minds, and much of the principle according to which they
shape their own conduct; but they never talk about it. There, in
short, is the most marked difference between my man and most of
those about us. He avowed the vices that he had, and that others
have; but he was no hypocrite. He was neither more nor less
abominable than they; he was only more frank, and more consistent,
and sometimes he was profound in the midst of his depravity. I
trembled to think what his child might become under such a master.
It is certain that after ideas of bringing-up, so strictly traced
on the pattern of our manners, he must go far, unless prematurely
stopped on the road.]
_He._--Oh, fear nothing. The important point, the difficult point,
to which a good father ought to attend before everything else, is
not to give to his child vices that enrich, or comical tricks such
as make him valuable to people of quality--all the world does that,
if not on system as I do, at least by example and precept. The
important thing is to impress on him the just proportion, the art
of keeping out of disgrace and the arm of the law. There are
certain discords in the social harmony that you must know exactly
how to place, to prepare, and to hold. Nothing so tame as a
succession of perfect chords; there needs something that
stimulates, that resolves the beam, and scatters its rays.
_I._--Quite so; by your image you bring me back from morals to
music, and I am very glad, for, to be quite frank with, you, I
like you better as musician than as moralist.
_He._--Yet, I am a mere subaltern in music, and a really superior
figure in morals.
_I._--I doubt that; but even if it were so, I am an honest man, and
your principles are not mine.
_He._--So much the worse for you. Ah, if I only had your talents!
_I._--Never mind my talents; let us return to yours.
_He._--If I could only express myself like you! But I have an
infernally absurd jargon--half the language of men of the world and
of letters, half of Billingsgate.
_I._--Nay, I am a poor talker enough. I only know how to speak the
truth, and that does not always answer, as you know.
_He._--But it is not for speaking the truth--on the contrary, it is
for skilful lying that I covet your gift. If I knew how to write,
to cook up a book, to turn a dedicatory epistle, to intoxicate a
fool as to his own merits, to insinuate myself into the good graces
of women!
_I._--And you do know all that a thousand times better than I. I
should not be worthy to be so much as your pupil.
_He._--How many great qualities lost, of which you do not know the
price.
_I._--I get the price that I ask.
_He._--If that were true, you would not be wearing that common
suit, that rough waistcoat, those worsted stockings, those thick
shoes, that ancient wig.
_I._--I grant that; a man must be very maladroit not to be rich, if
he sticks at nothing in order to become rich. But the odd thing is
that there are people like me who do not look on riches as the most
precious thing in the world; bizarre people, you know.
_He._--Bizarre enough. A man is not born with such a twist as that.
He takes the trouble to give it to himself, for it is not in
nature.
_I._--In the nature of man?
_He._--No; for everything that lives, without exception, seeks its
own wellbeing at the expense of any prey that is proper to its
purpose; and I am perfectly sure that if I let my little savage
grow up without saying a word to him on the matter, he would wish
to be richly clad, sumptuously fed, cherished by men, loved by
women, and to heap upon himself all the happiness of life.
_I._--If your little savage were left to himself, let him only
preserve all his imbecility, and add to the scanty reason of the
child in the cradle the violent passions of a man of thirty--why he
would strangle his father and dishonour his own mother.
_He._--That proves the necessity of a good education, and who
denies it? And what is a good education but one that leads to all
sorts of enjoyments without danger and without inconvenience?
_I._--I am not so far from your opinion, only let us keep clear of
explanations.
_He._--Why?
_I._--Because I am afraid that we only agree in appearance, and
that if we once begin to discuss what are the dangers and the
inconveniences to avoid, we should cease to understand one another.
_He._--What of that?
_I._--Let us leave all this, I tell you; what I know about it I
shall never get you to learn, and you will more easily teach me
what I do not know, and you do know, in music. Let us talk about
music, dear Rameau, and tell me how it has come about that with the
faculty for feeling, retaining, and rendering the finest passages
in the great masters, with the enthusiasm that they inspire in you,
and that you transmit to others, you have done nothing that is
worth....
Instead of answering me, he shrugged his shoulders, and pointing to
the sky with his finger, he cried: The star! the star! When Nature
made Leo, Vinci, Pergolese, Duni, she smiled. She put on a grave
and imposing air in shaping my dear uncle Rameau, who for half a
score years they will have called the great Rameau, and of whom
very soon nobody will say a word. When she tricked up his nephew,
she made a grimace, and a grimace, and again a grimace. [And as he
said this, he put on all sorts of odd expressions: contempt,
disdain, irony; and he seemed to be kneading between his fingers a
piece of paste, and to be smiling at the ridiculous shapes that he
gave it; that done, he flung the incongruous pagod[225] away from
him, and said:] It was thus she made me, and flung me by the side
of the other pagods, some with huge wrinkled paunches, and short
necks, and great eyes projecting out of their heads, stamped with
apoplexy; others with wry necks; some again with wizened faces,
keen eyes, hooked noses. All were ready to split with laughing when
they espied me, and I put my hands to my sides and split with
laughter when I espied them, for fools and madmen tickle one
another; they seek and attract one another. If when I got among
them, I had not found ready-made the proverb about _the money of
fools being the patrimony of people with wits_, they would have
been indebted to me for it. I felt that nature had put my lawful
inheritance into the purses of the pagods, and I devised a thousand
means of recovering my rights.
[225] These little china images of gods, with nodding heads, were
then a fashionable toy in Paris.
_I._--Yes, I know all about your thousand means; you have told me
of them, and I have admired them vastly. But with so many
resources, why not have tried that of a fine work?...
_He._--When I am alone I take up my pen and intend to write; I bite
my nails and rub my brow; your humble servant, good-bye, the god is
absent. I had convinced myself that I had genius; at the end of the
time I discover that I am a fool, a fool, and nothing but a fool.
But how is one to feel, to think, to rise to heights, to paint in
strong colours, while haunting with such creatures as those whom
one must see if one is to live; in the midst of such talk as one
has to make and to hear, and such idle gossip: "How charming the
boulevard was to-day!" "Have you heard the little Marmotte? Her
playing is ravishing." "Mr. So-and-so had the handsomest pair of
grays in his carriage that you can possibly imagine." "The
beautiful Mrs. So-and-so is beginning to fade; who at the age of
five-and-forty would wear a headdress like that?" "Young
Such-and-such is covered with diamonds, and she gets them cheap."
"You mean she gets them dear."
"No, I do not."
"Where did you see her?"
"At the play."
"The scene of despair was played as it had never been played
before." "The Polichinelle of the Fair has a voice, but no
delicacy, no soul." "Madame So-and-so has produced two at a birth;
each father will have his own child...." And yet you suppose that
this kind of thing, said and said again, and listened to every day
of the week, sets the soul aglow and leads to mighty things.
_I._--Nay, it were better to turn the key of one's garret, drink
cold water, eat dry bread, and seek one's true self.
_He._--Maybe, but I have not the courage. And then the idea of
sacrificing one's happiness for the sake of a success that is
doubtful! And the name that I bear? Rameau! It is not with talents
as it is with nobility; nobility transmits itself, and increases in
lustre by passing from grandfather to father, and from father to
son, and from son to grandson, without the ancestor impressing a
spark of merit on his descendant; the old stock ramifies into an
enormous crop of fools; but what matter? It is not so with talents.
Merely to obtain the renown of your father, you must be cleverer
than he was; you must have inherited his fibre. The fibre has
failed me, but the wrist is nimble, the fiddle-bow scrapes away,
and the pot boils; if there is not glory, there is broth.
_I._--If I were in your place, I would not take it for granted; I
would try.... Whatever it be that a man applies himself to, nature
meant him for it.
_He._--She makes mighty blunders. For my part, I do not look down
from heights, whence all seems confused and blurred,--the man who
prunes a tree with his knife, all one with the caterpillar who
devours its leaf; a couple of insects, each at his proper task. Do
you, if you choose, perch yourself on the epicycle of the planet
Mercury, and thence distribute creation, in imitation, of Reaumur;
he, the classes of flies into seamstresses, surveyors, reapers;
you, the human species into joiners, dancers, singers, tilers. That
is your affair, and I will not meddle with it. I am in this world,
and in this world I rest. But if it is in nature to have an
appetite--for it is always to appetite that I come back, and to the
sensation that is ever present to me--then I find that it is by no
means consistent with good order not to have always something to
eat. What a precious economy of things! Men who are over-crammed
with everything under the sun, while others, who have a stomach
just as importunate as they, a hunger that recurs as regularly as
theirs, have not a bite. The worst is the constrained posture to
which want pins us down. The needy man does not walk like anybody
else; he jumps, he crawls, he wriggles, he limps, he passes his
whole life in taking and executing artificial postures.
_I._--What are postures?
_He._--Ask Noverre.[226] The world offers far more of them than his
art can imitate.
[226] A famous dancing-master of the time.
_I._--Ah, there are you too--to use your expression or
Montaigne's--_perched on the epicycle of Mercury_, and eyeing the
various pantomimes of the human race.
_He._--No, no, I tell you; I'm too heavy to raise myself so high.
No sojourn in the fogs for me. I look about me, and I assume my
postures, or I amuse myself with the postures that I see others
taking. I am an excellent pantomime as you shall judge.
* * * * *
[Then he set himself to smile, to imitate the admirer, the
suppliant, the fawning complaisant; he expects a command, receives
it, starts off like an arrow, returns, the order is executed, he
reports what he has done; he is attentive to everything; he picks
up something that has fallen; he places a pillow or a footstool; he
holds a saucer; he brings a chair, opens a door, closes a window,
draws the curtains, gazes on the master and mistress; he stands
immovable, his arms hanging by his side, his legs exactly straight;
he listens, he seeks to read their faces, and then he adds:--That
is my pantomime, very much the same as that of all flatterers,
courtiers, valets, and beggars.
The buffooneries of this man, the stories of the abbe Galiani, the
extravagances of Rabelais, have sometimes thrown me into profound
reveries. They are three stores whence I have provided myself with
ridiculous masks that I place on the faces of the gravest
personages, and I see Pantaloon in a prelate, a satyr in a
president, a pig in a monk, an ostrich in a minister, a goose in
his first clerk.]
* * * * *
_I._--But according to your account, I said to my man, there are
plenty of beggars in the world, and yet I know nobody who is not
acquainted with some of the steps of your dance.
_He._--You are right. In a whole kingdom there is only one man who
walks, and that is the sovereign.
_I._--The sovereign? There is something to be said on that. For do
you suppose that one may not from time to time find even by the
side of him, a dainty foot, a pretty neck, a bewitching nose, that
makes him execute his pantomime. Whoever has need of another is
indigent, and assumes a posture. The king postures before his
mistress, and before God he treads his pantomimic measure. The
minister dances the step of courtier, flatterer, valet, and beggar
before his king. The crowd of the ambitious cut a hundred capers,
each viler than the rest, before the minister. The abbe, with his
bands and long cloak, postures at least once a week before the
patron of livings. On my word, what you call the pantomime of
beggars is only the whole huge bustle of the earth....
_He._--But let us bethink ourselves what o'clock it is, for I must
go to the opera.
_I._--What is going on?
_He._--Dauvergne's _Trocqueurs_. There are some tolerable things in
the music; the only pity is that he has not been the first to say
them. Among those dead, there are always some to dismay the living.
What would you have? _Quisque suos patimur manes._ But it is
half-past five, I hear the bell ringing my vespers. Good day, my
philosopher; always the same, am I not?
_I._--Alas, you are; worse luck.
_He._--Only let me have that bad luck for forty years to come! Who
laughs last has the best of the laugh.
THE END.
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh._
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| Transcriber's Notes & Errata |
| |
| Italic text is enclosed in underscores (_). |
| |
| Bold text is enclosed in 'equals' signs (=). |
| |
| 'OE' and 'oe' ligatures have been transcribed as 'o' and |
| 'e', and 'O' and 'e'. |
| |
| The following words were found in both unhyphenated and |
| hyphenated forms. The number of instances of each are given |
| in parentheses. |
| |
| |apiece (1) |a-piece (1) | |
| |demigods (1) |demi-gods (2) | |
| |nightcap (1) |night-cap (1) | |
| |wellbeing (4) |well-being (3) | |
| |
| The following typographical errors have been corrected. |
| |
| |Error |Correction ||
| | | ||
| |sociey |society ||
| | | ||
| |It would, as Mill has said, |It would, as Mill has said, ||
| | imply ignorance of the | imply ignorance of the ||
| | history of philosophy and | history of philosophy and ||
| | of general literature not | of general literature not ||
| | to be aware that in all | to be aware that in all ||
| | ages of philosophy and of | ages of philosophy one of ||
| | general literature, not | its schools has been ||
| | to be aware that in all | utilitarian, not only from ||
| | ages of philosophy one of | the time of Epicurus, but ||
| | its schools has been | long before. ||
| | utilitarian, not only | ||
| | from the time of Epicurus, | ||
| | but long before. | ||
| | | ||
| |beween |between ||
| | | ||
| |sense how |sense of how ||
| | | ||
| |arbitary |arbitrary ||
| |
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End of Project Gutenberg's Diderot and the Encyclopaedists, by John Morley