September 20.
It is done!--they are betrothed. Gelis, who is an orphan, as Jeanne is,did not make his proposal to me in person. He got one of his professors,an old colleague of mine, highly esteemed for his learning andcharacter, to come to me on his behalf. But what a love messenger! GreatHeavens! A bear--neat a bear of the Pyrenees, but a literary bear, andthis latter variety of bear is much more ferocious than the former.
"Right or wrong (in my opinion wrong) Gelis says that he does not wantany dowry; he takes your ward with nothing but her chemise. Say yes,and the thing is settled! Make haste about it! I want to show you twoor three very curious old tokens from Lorraine which I am sure you neversaw before."
That is literally what he said to me. I answered him that I wouldconsult Jeanne, and I found no small pleasure in telling him that myward had a dowry.
Her dowry--there it is in front of me! It is my library. Henri andJeanne have not even the faintest suspicion about it; and the fact is Iam commonly believed to be much richer than I am. I have the face ofan old miser. It is certainly a lying face; but its untruthfulness hasoften won for me a great deal of consideration. There is nobody so muchrespected in this world as a stingy rich man.
I have consulted Jeanne,--but what was the need of listening for heranswer? It is done! They are betrothed.
It would ill become my character as well as my face to watch these youngpeople any longer for the mere purpose of noting down their words andgestures. Noli me tangere:--that is the maxim for all charming loveaffairs. I know my duty. It is to respect all the little secrets of thatinnocent soul intrusted to me. Let these children love each otherall they can! Never a word of their fervent outpouring of mutualconfidences, never a hint of their artless self-betrayals, will be setdown in this diary by the old guardian whose authority was so gentle andso brief.
At all events, I am not going to remain with my arms folded; and if theyhave their business to attend to, I have mine also. I am preparing acatalogue of my books, with a view to having them all sold at auction.It is a task which saddens and amuses me at the same time. I linger overit, perhaps a good deal longer than I ought to do; turning the leavesof all those works which have become so familiar to my thought, to mytouch, to my sight--even out of all necessity and reason. But it isa farewell; and it has ever been in the nature of man to prolong afarewell.
This ponderous volume here, which has served me so much for thirty longyears, how can I leave it without according it every kindness thata faithful servant deserves? And this one again, which has so oftenconsoled me by its wholesome doctrines, must I not bow down before itfor the last time, as to a Master? But each time that I meet with avolume which led me into error, which ever afflicted me with falsedates, omissions, lies, and other plagues of the archaeologist, I say toit with bitter joy: "Go! imposter, traitor, false-witness! flee thou faraway from me for ever;--vade retro! all absurdly covered with goldas thou art! and I pray it may befall thee--thanks to thy usurpedreputation and thy comely morocco attire--to take thy place in thecabinet of some banker-bibliomaniac, whom thou wilt never be able toseduce as thou has seduced me, because he will never read one singleline of thee."
I laid aside some books I must always keep--those books which were givento me as souvenirs. As I placed among them the manuscript of the"Golden Legend," I could not but kiss it in memory of Madame Trepof,who remained grateful to me in spite of her high position and all herwealth, and who became my benefactress merely to prove to me that shefelt I had once done her a kindness.... Thus I had made a reserve. Itwas then that, for the first time, I felt myself inclined to commita deliberate crime. All through that night I was strongly tempted; bymorning the temptation had become irresistible. Everybody else in thehouse was still asleep. I got out of bed and stole softly from my room.
Ye powers of darkness! ye phantoms of the night! if while lingeringwithin my home after the crowing of the cock, you saw me stealing abouton tiptoe in the City of Books, you certainly never cried out, as MadameTrepof did at Naples, "That old man has a good-natured round back!" Ientered the library; Hannibal, with his tail perpendicularly erected,came to rub himself against my legs and purr. I seized a volume fromits shelf, some venerable Gothic text or some noble poet of theRenaissance--the jewel, the treasure which I had been dreaming aboutall night, I seized it and slipped it away into the very bottom of thecloset which I had reserved for those books I intended to retain, andwhich soon became full almost to bursting. It is horrible to relate:I was stealing from the dowry of Jeanne! And when the crime had beenconsummated I set myself again sturdily to the task of cataloguing,until Jeanne came to consult me in regard to something about a dress ora trousseau. I could not possibly understand just what she wastalking about, through my total ignorance of the current vocabulary ofdress-making and linen-drapery. Ah! if a bride of the fourteenth centuryhad come to talk to me about the apparel of her epoch, then, indeed, Ishould have been able to understand her language! But Jeanne does notbelong to my time, and I have to send her to Madame de Gabry, who onthis important occasion will take the place of her mother.
... Night has come! Leaning from the window, we gaze at the vast sombrestretch of the city below us, pierced with multitudinous points oflight. Jeanne presses her hand to her forehead as she leans upon thewindow-bar, and seems a little sad. And I say to myself as I watch her:All changes even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what weleave behind us is a part of ourselves: we must die to one life beforewe can enter into another!
And as if answering my thought, the young girl murmurs to me,
"My guardian, I am so happy; and still I feel as if I wanted to cry!"
The Last Page
August 21, 1869.
Page eighty-seven.... Only twenty lines more and I shall have finishedmy book about insects and flowers. Page eighty-seventh and last.... "Aswe have already seen, the visits of insects are of the utmost importanceto plants; since their duty is to carry to the pistils the pollen ofthe stamens. It seems also that the flower itself is arranged and madeattractive for the purpose of inviting this nuptial visit. I think Ihave been able to show that the nectary of the plant distils a sugaryliquid which attracts the insects and obliges it to aid unconsciouslyin the work of direct or cross fertilisation. The last method offertilisation is the more common. I have shown that flowers are colouredand perfumed so as to attract insects, and interiorly so constructed asto offer those visitors such a mode of access that they cannot penetrateinto the corolla without depositing upon the stigma the pollen withwhich they have been covered. My most venerated master Sprengelobserves in regard to that fine down which lines the corolla of thewood-geranium: 'The wise Author of Nature has never created a singleuseless hair!' I say in my turn: If that Lily of the Valley whereof theGospel makes mention is more richly clad than King Solomon in all hisglory, its mantle of purple is a wedding-garment, and that rich apparelis necessary to the perpetuation of the species."
"Brolles, August 21, 1869."
[Monsieur Sylvestre Bonnard was not aware that several very illustriousnaturalists were making researches at the same time as he in regard tothe relation between insects and plants. He was not acquainted withthe labours of Darwin, with those of Dr. Hermann Muller, nor withthe observations of Sir John Lubbock. It is worthy of note that theconclusions of Monsieur Sylvestre Bonnard are very nearly similar tothose reached by the three scientists above mentioned. Less important,but perhaps equally interesting, is the fact that Sir John Lubbock is,like Monsieur Bonnard, an archaeologist who began to devote himself onlylate in life to the natural sciences.--Note by the French Editor.]
Brolles! My house is the last one you pass in the single street of thevillage, as you go to the woods. It is a gabled house with a slate roof,which takes iridescent tints in the sun like a pigeon's breast. Theweather-vane above that roof has won more consideration for me among thecountry people than all my works upon history and philology. There isnot a single child who does not know Monsieur Bonnard's weather-vane. It
is rusty, and squeaks very sharply in the wind. Sometimes it refusesto do any work at all--just like Therese, who now allows herself to beassisted by a young peasant girl--though she grumbles a good deal aboutit. The house is not large, but I am very comfortable in it. My roomhas two windows, and gets the sun in the morning. The children's room isupstairs. Jeanne and Henri come twice a year to occupy it.
Little Sylvestre's cradle used to be in it. He was a very pretty child,but very pale. When he used to play on the grass, his mother would watchhim very anxiously; and every little while she would stop her sewing inorder to take him upon her lap. The poor little fellow never wanted togo to sleep. He used to say that when he was asleep he would go away,very far away, to some place where it was all dark, and where he sawthings that made him afraid--things he never wanted to see again.
Then his mother would call me, and I would sit down beside his cradle.He would take one of my fingers in his little dry warm hand, and say tome,
"Godfather, you must tell me a story."
Then I would tell him all kinds of stories, which he would listen tovery seriously. They all interested him, but there was one especiallywhich filled his little soul with delight. It was "The Blue Bird."Whenever I finished that, he would say to me, "Tell it again! tell itagain!" And I would tell it again until his little pale blue-veined headsank back upon the pillow in slumber.
The doctor used to answer all our questions by saying,
"There is nothing extraordinary the matter with him!"
No! There was nothing extraordinary the matter with little Sylvestre.One evening last year his father called me.
"Come," he said, "the little one is still worse."
I approached the cradle over which the mother hung motionless, as iftied down above it by all the powers of her soul.
Little Sylvestre turned his eyes towards me; their pupils had alreadyrolled up beneath his eyelids, and could not descend again.
"Godfather," he said, "you are not to tell me any more stories."
No, I was not to tell him any more stories!
Poor Jeanne!--poor mother!
I am too old now to feel very deeply; but how strangely painful amystery is the death of a child!
To-day, the father and mother have come to pass six weeks under the oldman's roof. I see them now returning from the woods, walking arm-in-arm.Jeanne is closely wrapped in her black shawl, and Henri wears a crapeband on his straw hat; but they are both of them radiant with youth,and they smile very sweetly at each other. They smile at the earth whichsustains them; they smile at the air which bathes them; they smile atthe light which each one sees in the eyes of the other. From my window Iwave my handkerchief at them,--and they smile at my old age.
Jeanne comes running lightly up the stairs; she kisses me, and thenwhispers in my ear something which I divine rather than hear. And I makeanswer to her: "May God's blessing be with you, Jeanne, and with yourhusband, and with your children, and with your children's children forever!"... Et nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine!
The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard Page 38