The next day, at dawn, Albina received the Abbot of Antinoe at the nunnery.
“Thou art welcome to our tabernacles of peace, venerable father, for no doubt, thou comest to bless the saint thou hast given us. Thou knowest that God, in his mercy, has called her to Him; how couldst thou fail to know tidings that the angels have carried from desert to desert? It is true that Thais is about to meet her blessed death. Her labours are accomplished, and I ought to inform thee, in a few words, as to her conduct whilst she was still amongst us. After thy departure, when she was confined in a cell sealed with thy seal, I sent her, with her food, a flute, similar to those which girls of her profession play at banquets. I did that to prevent her from falling into a melancholy mood, and that she should not show less skill and talent before God than she had shown before men. In this I showed prudence and foresight, for all day long Thais praised the Lord upon the flute, and the virgins, who were attracted by the sound of this invisible flute, said, ‘We hear the nightingale of the heavenly groves, the dying swan of Jesus crucified.’ Thus did Thais perform her penance, when, after sixty days, the door which thou hadst sealed opened of itself, and the clay seal was broken without being touched by any human hand. By that sign I knew that the trial thou hadst imposed upon her was at an end, and that God had pardoned the sins of the flute-player. From that time she has shared the ordinary life of my nuns, working and praying with them. She was an example to them by the modesty of her acts and words, and seemed like a statue of purity amongst them. Sometimes she was sad; but those clouds soon passed. When I saw that she was really drawn towards God by faith, hope, and love, I did not hesitate to employ her talent, and even her beauty, for the improvement of her sisters. I asked her to represent before us the actions of the famous women and wise virgins of the Scriptures. She acted Esther, Deborah, Judith, Mary, the sister of Lazarus, and Mary, the mother of Jesus. I know, venerable father, that thy austere mind is alarmed at the idea of these performances. But thou thyself wouldest have been touched if thou hadst seen her in these pious scenes, shedding real tears, and raising to heaven arms graceful as palm leaves. I have long governed a community of women, and I make it a rule never to oppose their nature. All seeds give not the same flowers. Not all souls are sanctified in the same way. It must also not be forgotten that Thais gave herself to God whilst she was still beautiful, and such a sacrifice is, if not unexampled, at least very rare. This beauty — her natural vesture — has not left her during the three months’ fever of which she is dying. As, during her illness, she has incessantly asked to see the sky, I have her carried every morning into the courtyard, near the well, under the old fig tree, in the shade of which the abbesses of this convent are accustomed to hold their meetings. Thou wilt find her there, venerable father; but hasten, for God calls her, and this night a shroud will cover that face which God made both to shame and to edify this world.”
Paphnutius followed her into a courtyard flooded with the morning light. On the edge of the brick roofs, the pigeons formed a string of pearls. On a bed, in the shade of the fig tree, Thais lay quite white, her arms crossed. By her side stood veiled women, reciting the prayers for the dying.
“Have mercy, upon me, O God, according to Thy loving kindness: according unto the multitude of Thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.”
He called her —
“Thais!”
She raised her eyelids, and turned the whites of her eyes in the direction of the voice.
Albina made a sign to the veiled women to retire a few paces.
“Thais!” repeated the monk.
She raised her head; a light breath came from her pale lips.
“Is it thou, my father? . . . Dost thou remember the water of the spring, and the dates that we picked? . . . That day, my father, love was born in my heart — the love of life eternal.”
She was silent, and her head fell back.
Death was upon her, and the sweat of the last agony bedewed her forehead. A pigeon broke the still silence with its plaintive cooing. Then the sobs of the monk mingled with the psalms of the virgins.
“Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.”
Suddenly Thais sat up in the bed. Her violet eyes opened wide, and with a rapt gaze, her arms stretched towards the distant hills, she said in a clear, fresh voice —
“Behold them — the roses of the eternal dawn!”
Her eyes shone; a slight flush suffused her face. She had revived, more sweet and more beautiful than ever. Paphnutius knelt down, and threw his long black arms around her.
“Do not die!” he cried, in a strange voice, which he himself did not recognise. “I love thee! Do not die! Listen, my Thais. I have deceived thee? I was but a wretched fool. God, heaven — all that is nothing. There is nothing true but this worldly life, and the love of human beings. I love thee! Do not die! That would be impossible — thou art too precious! Come, come with me! Let us fly? I will carry thee far away in my arms. Come, let us love! Hear me, O my beloved, and say, ‘I will live; I wish to live.’ Thais, Thais, arise!”
She did not hear him. Her eyes gazed into infinity.
She murmured —
“Heaven opens. I see the angels, the prophets, and the saints. . . . The good Theodore is amongst them, his hands filled with flowers; he smiles on me and calls me. . . . Two angels come to me. They draw near. . . . How beautiful they are! I see God!”
She uttered a joyful sigh, and her head fell back motionless on the pillow. Thais was dead.
Paphnutius held her in a last despairing embrace; his eyes devoured her with desire, rage, and love.
Albina cried to him —
“Avaunt, accursed wretch!”
And she gently placed her fingers on the eyelids of the dead girl. Paphnutius staggered back, his eyes burning with flames and feeling the earth open beneath his feet.
The virgins chanted the song of Zacharias:
“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel.”
Suddenly their voices stayed in their throat. They had seen the monk’s face, and they fled in affright, crying —
“A vampire! A vampire!”
He had become so repulsive, that passing his hand over his face, he felt his own hideousness.
AT THE SIGN OF THE REINE PÉDAUQUE
Translated by Mrs. Wilfred Jackson
At the Sign of the Reine Pedauque was written in 1892, and published the following year by Calmann -Levy. The work is probably one of the author’s better known novels and contains one of his most interesting character creations. The narrative centres on the young man Jacques Menetrier; he is the son of a lecherous cook and a poor, long-suffering mother. Brother Ange appears on the scene and begins to teach Jacques to read and write, but this arrangement is quickly terminated when Brother Ange is imprisoned for drunken brawling. Jacques is soon tutored by the priest Jerome Coignard, an intriguing and unconventional character. Despite cloaking himself with the title of priest, Coignard’s behaviour and his philosophy on living diverge radically from traditional Catholic theology. He believes that to truly repent one must first truly sin, which involves lechery, theft and cheating in his case. He leads a hedonist lifestyle, while still maintaining a spiritual outlook. Coignard is also a man of great learning and intelligence, espousing a bleak philosophy regarding the idea of progress for humanity, and ridiculing humankind as being no different from animals in their passions.
The slight eccentric nobleman d’Astarac is introduced into the novel and an element of the occult permeates the work when d’Astarac invites Jacques and Coignard to live with him at his old estate to decipher and translate ancient texts. The only other inhabitant of the property is the elderly Jewish scholar Mosaide, whose beautiful niece visits the estate and becomes entangled and enmeshed in Jacques’ complicated love life. France crafts a novel which is often funny, frequently engaging and occasionally quite bizarre.
The first edit
ion’s title page
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PREFACE
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
INTRODUCTION
THE novel of which the following pages are a translation was published in 1893, the author’s forty-ninth year, and comes more or less midway in the chronological list of his works. It thus marks the flood tide of his genius, when his imaginative power at its brightest came into conjunction with the full ripeness of his scholarship. It is, perhaps, the most characteristic example of that elusive point of view which makes for the magic of Anatole France. No writer is more personal. No writer views human affairs from a more impersonal standpoint. He hovers over the world like a disembodied spirit, wise with the learning of all times and with the knowledge of all hearts that have beaten, yet not so serene and unfleshly as not to have preserved a certain tricksiness, a capacity for puckish laughter which echoes through his pages and haunts the ear when the covers of the book are closed. At the same time he appears unmistakably before you, in human guise, speaking to you face to face, in human tones. He will present tragic happenings consequent on the little follies, meannesses and passions of mankind with an emotionlessness which would be called delicate cruelty were the view point that of one of the sons of earth, but ceases to be so when the presenting hands are calm and immortal; and yet shining through all is the man himself, loving and merciful, tender and warm.
The secret of this paradox lies in the dual temperament of the artist and the philosopher. One is ever amused by the riddle of life, dallies with it in his study, and seeks solutions scholarwise in the world of the past, knowing full well that all endeavours to pierce the veil are vanity, and that measured by the cosmic scale the frying of a St. Lawrence and the chilblain on a child’s foot are equally insignificant occurrences. The other penetrated by the beauty and interest of the world is impelled by psychological law to transmit through the prism of his own individuality his impressions, his rare sense of relative values, his passionate conviction of the reality and importance of things. The result of the dual temperament is entertaining. What the artist, after infinite travail, has created, the easy philosopher laughs at. What the artist has set up as God, the philosopher flouts as Baal. In most men similarly endowed there has been conflict between the twin souls which has generally ended in the strangling of the artist; but in the case of Anatole France they have worked together in bewildering harmony. The philosopher has been mild, the artist unresentful. In amity therefore they have proclaimed their faith and their unfaith, their aspirations and their negations, their earnestness and their mockery. And since they must proclaim them in one single voice, the natural consequence, the resultant as it were of the two forces, has been a style in which beauty and irony are so subtly interfused as to make it perhaps the most alluring mode of expression in contemporary literature.
The personal note in Anatole France’s novels is never more surely felt than when he himself, in some disguise, is either the protagonist or the raisonneur of the drama. It is the personality of Monsieur Bergeret that sheds its sunset kindness over the sordid phases of French political and social life presented in the famous series. It is the charm of Sylvestre Bonnard that makes an idyll of the story of his crime. It is Doctor Trublet in Histoire Comique who gives humanity to the fantastic adventure. It is Maître Jérôme Coignard whom we love unreservedly in La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque. And saving the respect due to Anatole France, Monsieur Bergeret, Sylvestre Bonnard, Doctor Trublet and Maître Jérôme Coignard are but protean manifestations of one and the same person. Of them all we cannot but love most Maître Jérôme Coignard. And the reason is plain. He is the only scapegrace of the lot. Even were he a layman we should call him a pretty scoundrel; but, priest that he is, we have no words wherein to summarise the measure of his fall from grace. He drinks, he brawls, he cheats at cards; he cannot pass a pretty girl on the stairs but his arm slips round her waist; to follow in Pandarus’s foot-steps causes him no compunction; he “borrows” half a dozen bottles of wine from an inn, and runs away with his employer’s diamonds. At first sight he appears to be an unconscionable villain. But endow him with the inexhaustible learning, the philosophy, the mansuetude, the wit of Monsieur Bergeret, imagine him a Sylvestre Bonnard qualified for the personal entourage of Pantagruel, and you have a totally different conception of his character. He becomes for you the bon Maître of Tournebroche, his pupil, a personage cast in heroic mould who, at all events, drank in life with great lungs and died like a man and a Christian. Now there dwells in the heart of the mildest scholar a little demon of unrest whom academies may imprison but cannot kill. It is he who cries out for redemption from virtue and proclaims the glories of the sinful life. He whispers — of course mendaciously, for demons and truth are known to be sworn enemies — that there is mighty fine living in the world of tosspots and trulls and rufflers, and having insidiously changed the good man’s pen into a rapier, and his ink-pot into a quart measure, leads him forth on strange literary adventures.
On such an adventure has the scholar (at the same time mocking philospher and exquisite artist) gone in the Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque. He has gone in all lustiness, in a spaciousness of enjoyment granted only to the great imaginers, and vested in Maître Coignard’s wine-stained cassock he comes to you with all the irresistible charm of his personality.
WILLIAM J. LOCKE.
PREFACE
IT is my design to recount the singular chances of my life. Some of them have been strange and some beautiful. In bringing them to memory it is doubtful even to me whether I have not dreamt them. I once knew a Gascon cabalist, whom I cannot call wise for he perished very unhappily, who, however, one night, in the Isle of Swans, entranced me with his sublime discourse which I have been fortunate enough to keep in mind and careful to put in writing. His discourses treated of magic and the occult sciences which run so much in peoples’ heads to-day. One hears of nothing but the Rosy-Cross. For the matter of that I do not flatter myself that I shall gain much honour by these revelations. Some will say that I have invented it all, and that it is not the true doctrine; others, that I have only told what every one knew before. I allow that I am not very well grounded in the cabala, my master having perished at the beginning of my initiation. But the little that I did learn of his art made me very strongly suspect that it is all illusion, fraud, and vanity. Besides, it is enough for me to know that magic is contrary to religion for me to reject it with my whole heart. Nevertheless I think I ought to make myself clear on one point of his false science in order that I may not be thought more ignorant than I am. I know that cabalists in general think that sylphs, salamanders, elves, gnomes, and gnomides, are born with a soul as perishable as their bodies, and that they acquire immortality by commerce with the magi. My cabalist taught me, on the contrary, that eternal life was the birthright of no creature, whether terrestrial or aerial. I have followed his opinion without pretending to judge of it.
He was in the habit of saying that elves kill those who reveal their mysteries, and he attributed to the vengeance of these sprites the death of Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, who was assassinated on the Lyons Road. But I well knew that his death, ever to be deplored, had a more natural cause. I shall speak freely of the genii of water and fire. One must needs run divers risks in life, and that from the sprites is small in the extreme.
I have jealously garnered the sayings of my good master, Monsieur l’Abbé Jérôme Coignard, who perished as I have just said. ’Twas a man full of wisdom and piety. Had he known mo
re peace of soul he might have equalled Monsieur l’Abbé Rollin in virtue as he far surpassed him in range of knowledge and depth of understanding. At least he had in the turmoil of a troubled life the advantage over Monsieur Rollin in that he did not fall into Jansenism. For the strength of his intelligence remained unshaken by any violence of rash doctrines, and I can bear witness before God to the purity of his faith. He had a great knowledge of the world, acquired by frequenting every-kind of company. This experience would have served him well in the history of Rome, which he would doubtless have composed after the style of Monsieur Rollin, had not time and leisure failed him, and if his way of life had better assorted with his genius. What I can relate of so excellent a man will be an ornament to my memoirs. Like Aulus Gellius who gives the finest passage of the philosophers in his Attic Nights, like Apuleius who puts in his Golden Ass the best fables of the Greeks, I undertake a bee-like industry and hope to gather the most exquisite honey. Nevertheless I cannot flatter myself to the point of thinking that I can emulate these two great authors, since it is only from the souvenirs of my own life and not from wide and varied reading that I draw all my riches. What I supply of my own material is my good faith. If ever any one is curious enough to read my memoirs he will recognise that only a simple soul could express itself in language so simple and coherent. I was always thought simple-minded in every company I have mixed in, and this work can but perpetuate this opinion after my death.
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 54