His mother and the women of her society, marveling at the sight of an intelligent and sensitive young man who composed ballads and songs, decided his vocation. He wanted to be a poet and a philosopher; the titles of that double merit were easily accorded to him by his judges. They never wearied of listening to him; but he often escaped them by plunging alone into the middle of forests or wandering on the ramparts of the Valley. He was sometimes seen sitting on the projecting ledge of one of the rocks on that wall, transfixing by his tones a crowd of shepherds assembled down below.
From the talent of speech he soon tried to pass on to that of style. Glory was nothing to him; he had no idea of it, but the beautiful verse of Racine and the beautiful prose of Fénelon resounded in his ears, and the pleasure procured for him by the reading of those celebrated men caused him to conceive a very great desire to imitate them. The inheritor of his father’s tastes, he had also studied the English language, and to form his style he translated various highly esteemed morsels from that language.
I shall only transcribe one of them, but I ought to say beforehand that the talents of young Renou had no merit for us. Several times, the governor advised him to abandon all his writings in order to occupy himself with one of the labors useful to society, but the advice was rejected with disdain. It was then necessary to come to the ultimate expedient.
“There is not one métier in the Valley,” it was said to him, “that does not have its value; agriculture is the foremost of them, but the others work for it, and the weaver, the blacksmith and the carpenter produce things that are necessary to it, and for which is pays in exchange. But of what utility for any of our workshops can the art of aligning punctuation or rhyming words be? Your pretended talent, far from being useful, might be harmful, since it might furnish a text to contestations and to disputes. Leave your verbiage alone, believe me, and work like us, or I warn you that you will end up only having sounds and the wind in exchange for our words.”
Young Renou was deaf to the voice of wisdom. It required, in order to correct him, that a lesson should come to him from experience, which is always the best master in such things. His audience, which had initially assembled in large numbers, abandoned him as soon as he had lost the charm of novelty. The distribution of wheat that they had shared with him ceased with the pleasure they had in listening to him. Thus, the orator was soon reduced to preaching in the desert—but he could not, like Saint John, accustom himself to living on grasshoppers or roots; he was then forced to take up some useful work.
That purely manual labor was repulsive to him at first, but gradually, he adapted to it, and after a few months he was one of the good agriculturalists of the Valley. In the meantime, literature did not lose its rights over him, but he only devoted the moments of his leisure to it, and became by virtue of that a model that no one any longer blushed to admire.
XX
Here, now, is young Renou’s translation.
The Hermit, by Mr. Parnell.41
In the depths of a desert unknown to the world, a venerable hermit had been living since his youth. His abode was a cave, his bed a little moss, his nourishment fruits, and his beverage a mountain spring. Far from men, he was ever in the presence of God; his sole occupation was prayer, and his sole pleasure adoration.
That calm, so pure, and that life, the very image of Heaven, came to be troubled by an idea. If vice were triumphant on the earth, and if virtue was subjugated by it, what would become of the wisdom of Providence?
From that moment on, the future darkened in the pious sight of the solitary, and his soul lost its repose. Thus, while the waters of a lake present a placid surface, nature reflects therein a tranquil image; the shore is distinct at its edge, the trees shade it with their suspended crowns, and the firmament sends down the paint of its various colors; but if a stone falls into the bosom of that humble element, the troubled crystal is immediately split by circles that extend in all direction; the sunlight is broken into fragments; the bank, the trees and the firmament flee is frightful disorder.
Impatient so clarify his doubts, to know the world himself, to know which of his books or the shepherds of the desert he ought to add faith—for he had not yet seen any of the human species but a few pastors gone astray in their nocturnal march—he quit his cell, took his pilgrim’s staff in his hand, lowered his hood over his forehead, and departed at sunrise, resolved to examine everything with a profound attention.
The morning was well advanced when he emerged from the vast desert in which no past had been perceptible, and the sun was in the middle of its course when he saw, paused on the high road, a young man properly dressed, whose charming face was ornamented by blond hair falling in loose curls.
“Greetings, Father,” said the young man, drawing nearer.
“Good day, my Son,” replied the respectable old man
A conversation is engaged; questions and replies succeed one another rapidly, and the pleasure of a thousand various remarks charms the tedium of the route. Enchanted by one another, if they differed in years, they were united by sentiments. Thus, an old elm supports a tender ivy; thus the young ivy embraces the old elm.
Meanwhile, the sun was near to setting; the final hour of the day advanced, enveloped with its modest colors, and nature was silently inviting the earth to repose when the travelers saw a superb palace not far from the road. They directed their steps toward it, in the moonlight, along an avenue of tall trees that formed crowns of verdure to either side.
The noble master of that palace had long given hospitality to strangers. His generosity, however, adulterated by praise, was no longer anything but the vain display of a spendthrift luxury. The companions arrived; liveried servants were waiting for them and the lord of the manor came to welcome them at the door. The supper table was groaning under the magnificent profusion of dishes, and everything was shining with a gleam that good and simple hospitality does not have. Taken thereafter to their apartment, they forgot the fatigues of the day and plunged into a profound sleep on silk and down.
The next day, at first light, as soon as the light breeze came to play on the surface of the long canal, caress the flowers in the cheerful beds and agitate the bushy crowns of the nearby trees, the guests got up, docile to nature’s signal. They found an excellent breakfast served in a magnificent room. The affable master did the honors, and invited the travelers to drink an excellent sparkling wine from a golden cup. Finally, they emerged from the portico, satisfied and grateful. The lord of the manor was the only one who had cause to complain; his precious cup had vanished; the younger guest had stolen it covertly.
Sometimes a traveler encounters in his path a snake with brilliant skin, lying in the sun; full of anxiety he stops, and precipitately moves away from the danger; then he resumes his march at a timid pace, darting anxious glances to either side. Such was the old man when, already far from the palace, he perceived the stolen object glittering in his sly companion’s pocket.
Nonplussed, he stops; he is burning, but he dreads proposing that they separate, and continues the route with a tremulous heart, his eyes raised to the heavens, mournful that generosity should be so poorly recompensed.
While they were walking dark clouds covered the firmament and veiled the glory of the sun; noises in the air announced the approach of rain, and the livestock traversing the plain ran for the stable. Warned by those presages, the traveling couple hastened their pace to seek shelter in a nearby edifice. It was a tower flanked by turrets, raised on an eminence surrounded by a wide ditch. The inhospitable, grim and repellent spirit of its owner had made a desert of the surrounding area.
As they approached that sad dwelling, the fury of the wind augmented; rapid lightning flashes flickered among the torrents of rain, and the loud thunder burst above their heads. They knocked at the door for a long time; for a long time their shouts combined with the noise of the hammer, while they were prey to the precipitate assault of the deluge and the wind.
Finally, a slight hin
t of pity slips into the barbarian’s heart. For the first time, he goes to exercise hospitality. With a chagrined hand he causes the door to rotate on its rusty hinges and regretfully receives the travelers, shivering with cold, under his roof. A miserly faggot illuminates the cold heart. A little brown bread and acidic wine is served as their dinner, and the tempest has scarcely begun to appease when a prompt adieu instructs them to go in peace.
The observant hermit cannot understand why an individual as rich condemns himself to such a miserable life. What motive, he wonders, can lead one to lock away, to go completely to waste, the subsistence of a thousand unfortunates? But what new astonishment bursts forth in his expression when he sees his young companion take from his pocket the precious cup that he stole from their previous host, so generous, and pay with it for the miserable welcome of the second, so sordid and so harsh.
But the storm clouds have already dispersed; the sun is rising in an azure firmament, the green meadows exhale sweet perfumes, and the leaves shiny with dew mark their joy at the return of day with their tremors. At that signal the travelers quit their sad refuge, as the master contents himself with closing the door carefully.
While they drew away, the pilgrim’s mind was profoundly agitated by various thoughts. The action of his companion, deprived of their motives, appear to him now as a crime and then as an extravagance. Penetrated with horror for the one and compassion for the other, he lost himself in the explanation of so much eccentricity.
Meanwhile, the shadows of night returned to veil the firmament, and the travelers, already occupied in seeking a retreat, perceived nearby a very proper house in the midst of a perfectly cultivated field. Beneath its simple exterior, which presented neither the spectacle of sorry indigence nor that of vain grandeur, the dwelling responded to the character of its master, a happy man who loved virtue and fled praise.
Our pedestrians turned their wary feet in that direction, and, blessing the modest manor with their good wishes, bowed before its worthy possessor, who replied to their salutation: “Without pride as without envy, I render to the one who has lavished a part of his benefits upon us; he it is who sent you; receive, therefore, on his behalf, a frugal meal given with a good heart.”
He spoke the hospitable table was served. Then he entertained them with wisdom and virtue until the sound of the bell, reassembling the honest domestics, came to close the day with prayer.
Eventually, dawn broke, nuanced with a thousand colors, and the world, renewed by tranquil slumber, recommenced the cycle of its works. But before the departure of the travelers, the younger of the two approaches the cradle where a child is asleep, seizes him and strangles him. O ultimate horror! O monstrous ingratitude! The only son of such a generous host, the nascent pride of the house; his face turns black, he shivers; utters a sigh and dies.
What becomes of our hermit at the sight of that horrible murder? No, Hell, Hell itself, opening its profound abysms before him and enveloping him with its devouring flames, could not have struck him with more terror. Bewildered and confused, he wants to flee, but his trembling knees betray his desires. The young man pursues him and catches up with him.
The road intersecting with several others, a domestic had come to serve as a guide. They arrived on the edge of a torrent that traversed the road; the passage was difficult.
The domestic goes ahead, over the long oak branches that take the place of a bridge. The young man, who seemed to be on the lookout for an opportunity for a crime, approaches the unsuspecting guide and precipitates him into the abyss. The unfortunate man disappears immediately, rises to the surface again momentarily, and then falls back forever into the gulf of death.
The old man can no longer contain his fury. With sparkling eyes, he cries: “O execrable monster…!” But scarcely has he opened his mouth than his strange companion has quit the human form. His young face is imprinted with a mild majesty; his robe, having become a dazzling white, floats down to the ground; a brilliant aureole crowns his head; the air around him is perfumed by a celestial odor, and dazzling wings cover his shoulders with their tinted plumes. In brief, he has taken on a divine form, and his gait in that of an angel of light.
At the sight of this prodigy, the fury in the hermit’s heart gives way to admiration; his tongue is immobile, his mind struck by a profound astonishment. The amiable angel, with a voice similar to delightful music, is the first to break the silence.
“Your prayers, your homages and your innocent life, have risen on the wing of a sweet memory to the supreme throne. Of such perfections are the joy of the celestial empire made; an inhabitant of that brilliant abode, I have descended at the behest of the Omnipotent to calm your anxieties. Cease to prostrate yourself before me; I am merely your equal.
“Learn the secret of the government of the great Being, and your conscience will cease to be alarmed.
“The just creator, in forming the world, desired that it should be submissive to laws of nature, and that it would be in passing via secondary causes that everything here should progress to its goal. It is thus that, retired far from the terrestrial sphere, the sovereign master exercises his power. He makes the actions of humans concur without contradicting his will; he demands above all that they trust firmly in his wisdom.
“Doubtless nothing is more surprising than the events that have just struck your eyes. However, when you are instructed as to their motives, you will recognize the justice of the Omnipotent and you will learn to submit your reason to things that we cannot explain.
“That superb man surrounded by a pompous luxury, whose life was too sumptuous to be innocent, who receives his guests at a table encrusted with ivory and regales them in the morning with an exquisite sparkling wine in golden cups, in losing one of those precious cups, has been corrected for his impudent ostentation; he will continue to be hospitable, but with more simplicity.
“It was to the wretch tormented by eternal suspicions, whose worm-eaten door never opens to a poor traveler, that I gave the cup, in order to make him know that heaven is able to recompense kindly mortals. At the sight of that vessel he recognized the price of the virtue that he had abjured, and his grateful soul has opened itself to pity. Thus a mineral, penetrated by the active heat of the burning coal packed around it, soon melts, and disengaged from its matrix, the silver that it conceals flows into the crucible.
“After long years of virtuous conduct, the heat of our pious friend had been partly detached from his God, drawn away by the love of a child in a cradle. For him he lived in anxiety, and already he was recommencing with his eyes the course of his troubles on the earth. Into what extravagances might such a delirium have precipitated him?
“God, to save the father, has taken possession of the child. Thanks to my skill, everyone, except you, thought that he had died of a convulsion. Now the father, in tears, humiliated in the dust, recognizes the justice of his chastisement.
“However, all would have been over for the fortune of that man had his perfidious servant set foot in his house again; he would have stolen his master’s treasure this very night, and what a loss that would have been for the poor!
“Such are the enlightenments that Heaven has charged me with giving you. Return in peace, be resigned, and no longer accuse Providence.”
With those words, the young Seraph deployed his sonorous wings and took fight before the wonderstruck eyes of the sage. Such was Elisha when his celestial master rose above the clouds in a celestial chariot. Thus, at the sight of the chariot of fire rising into the heavens, was the dazzled prophet inflamed by the desire to rise after it.
“O Lord,” cried the prostrate hermit, “let thy will be done on earth as in Heaven!” Then, turning back with his mind satisfied, he returned to his ancient dwelling and finished his life in piety and in peace.42
I am only consigning that writing here as a monument to the power that the Aerial Valley possesses to rise to the glory that immortalized the finest centuries off Athens and Rome, and simultaneously
as a proof of its wisdom, not only in not having aspired to that glory, but in having extinguished the desire for it permanently. In fact, what would have been the fruit for us of that intelligence so vaunted on the earth, which consists in vain phrases? We have no idlers to amuse; all the members of our society, without exception, are devoted to useful labor. They would listen gratefully to the man who taught them some means of improving agriculture or the métiers that occupy them. They need common sense in action and not intellect in words. The States that have a superfluity of population can squander it at their whim, but for the sake of our interest as well as our prosperity, we need to inspect in each individual the employment of his time and his faculties. It is necessary that everything works to the common advantage of society.
Meanwhile, the Council assembled in order to weigh up the advantages and inconveniences of the journey outside the Valley, and to decide whether there ought to be any further communication with the earth. The expedition had procured the introduction of the potato and bees. The former was an infallible guarantee against the dearth of wheat, and in that regard and of incalculable value. The honey of the bees not only furnished us with an agreeable foodstuff, but a salutary remedy against several maladies.
The evils of which the expedition had brought the seeds, however, were at least equal, if not superior, to the benefits that it had introduced. What advantage could compensate for the smallpox, which had destroyed a part of the population, and whose poison, now incurably, threatened all posterity, and for the moral vice, more disastrous still, that had attacked the government and mores in their principal root?
The Aerial Valley Page 15