The kind-hearted bookbinder harassed his son with no reproaches.
After dinner he went and sat at his shop-door, and looked at the
first star that peeped out in the evening sky.
"My boy," said he, "I am not a man of learning like you; but
I have a notion--and you must not rob me of it, because it is
a comfort to me--that, when I have finished binding books, I
shall go to that star. The idea occurred to me from what I have
read in the paper that the stars are all worlds. What is that
star called?"
"Venus, father."
"In my part of the world, they say it is the shepherd's star.
It's a beautiful star, and I think your mother is there. That
is why I should like to go there."
The old man passed his knotted fingers across his brow, murmuring:
"God forgive me, how one forgets those who are gone!"
Jean sought balm for his wounded spirit in reading poetry and in
long, dreamy walks. His head was filled with visions--a welter of
sublime imaginings, in which floated such figures as Ophelia and
Cassandra, Gretchen, Delia, Phædra, Manon Lescaut, and Virginia,
and hovering amid these, shadows still nameless, still almost
formless, and yet full of seduction! Holding bowls and daggers
and trailing long veils, they came and went, faded and grew vivid
with colour. And Jean could hear them calling to him; "If ever
we win to life, it will be through you. And what a bliss it will
be for you, Jean Servien, to have created us. How you will love
us!" And Jean Servien would answer them; "Come back, come back,
or rather do not leave me. But I cannot tell how to make you
visible; you vanish away when I gaze at you, and I cannot net
you in the meshes of beautiful verse!"
Again and again he tried to write poems, tragedies, romances;
but his indolence, his lack of ideas, his fastidiousness brought
him to a standstill before half a dozen lines were written, and
he would toss the all but virgin page into the fire. Quickly
discouraged, he turned his attention to politics. The funeral
of Victor Noir, the Belleville risings, the _plébiscite_, filled
his thoughts; he read the papers, joined the groups that gathered
on the boulevards, followed the yelping pack of white blouses,
and was one of the crowd that hooted the Commissary of Police as
he read the Riot Act. Disorder and uproar intoxicated him; his
heart beat as if it would burst his bosom, his enthusiasm rose
to fever pitch, amid these stupid exhibitions of mob violence.
Then to end up, after tramping the streets with other gaping idlers
till late at night, he would make his way back, with weary limbs
and aching ribs, his head whirling confusedly with bombast and
loud talk, through the sleeping city to the Faubourg Saint-Germain.
There, as he strode past some aristocratic mansion and saw the
scutcheon blazoned on its façade and the two lions lying white
in the moonlight on guard before its closed portal, he would
cast a look of hatred at the building. Presently, as he resumed
his march, he would picture himself standing, musket in hand, on
a barricade, in the smoke of insurrection, along with workmen
and young fellows from the schools, as we see it all represented
in lithographs.
One day in July, he saw a troop of white blouses moving along
the boulevard and shouting: "To Berlin!" Ragamuffin street-boys
ran yelping round. Respectable citizens lined the sidewalks,
staring in wonder, and saying nothing; but one of them, a stout,
tall, red-faced man, waved his hat and shouted:
"To Berlin! long live the Emperor!"
Jean recognized Monsieur Bargemont.