“I don’t know anything about it,” said my mother, “but I am not surprised at what you tell me, Monsieur, for I have noticed that people of quality have many more names than common people. I come from Auneau, near the town of Chartres, and I was quite small when the lord of the manor passed from this world to the next; now I well remember how when the herald cried the death of the deceased lord he gave him nearly as many names as are to be found in the litany of saints. I readily believe that God has more names than had my lord of Auneau, because He has a still higher position. Educated people are very lucky to know them all. And if you help my son Jacques to advance in this knowledge I shall be very much obliged to you, Monsieur.”
“Then that matter is settled,” said the philosopher. “And as to you, Monsieur l’Abbé, you will not be averse from translating from the Greek — in consideration of a salary, be it understood.” My good master, who for some moments past had been trying to collect those few wits which were not already hopelessly bemused with the fumes of wine, filled his goblet, rose up, and said:
“Master philosopher, with my whole heart I accept your generous offer. You are a magnificent being. I am honoured, Monsieur, to be in your service. Of furniture, there are two pieces I hold high in esteem, the bed and the board. The board, which laden, turn by turn about, with learned books and succulent dishes, serves to support the nourishment of body and mind; the bed, propitious to the sweets of repose as to the torments of love. It was surely an inspired man who gave to the Sons of Deucalion the bed and the board. If I find at your house, Monsieur, these two precious pieces of furniture, I will sound your name, as that of my benefactor, in eternal praise, and I will celebrate you in Greek and Latin verse of divers metres.”
Thus he spoke, and drank a great gulp of wine.
“That is well said,” replied the philosopher. “I shall expect you both to-morrow morning at my house. You must follow the route to St. Germain as far as the Cross of Les Sablons. From the foot of this Cross reckon a hundred paces going west and you will find a small green door in a garden wall. Raise the knocker, which is in the shape of a veiled figure, its finger on its lips. You must ask the old man who opens the door for Monsieur d’Astarac.”
“My son,” said my good master, pulling me by the sleeve, “keep all this in your memory. Cross, knocker, and all the rest, so that we may be able to-morrow to find this gate of fortune. And you, Monsieur Mæcenas...”
But the philosopher had already disappeared without any one having seen him go.
V
THE next day we fared early, my master and I, along the road to St. Germain. The snow which covered the ground under the reddish light from the sky, made the atmosphere dead and still. The road was deserted. We walked in great cart-ruts between the walls of market-gardens, tumble-down palings, and low houses whose windows watched us with suspicious eye. Then, having left behind us two or three broken-down hovels of wattle and daub, we saw in the midst of a desolate common, the Cross of Les Sablons. Fifty paces beyond was the beginning of an immense park enclosed by a ruined wall. This wall was pierced by a small green door whose knocker was in the shape of a horrible face, its finger on its lips. We readily recognised it for that which the philosopher had described to us, and lifted it and knocked.
After a considerable time, an old serving-man came and let us in and signed to us to follow him across a deserted park. Statues of nymphs, which had witnessed the youth of the late king, hid under the ivy their melancholy and their scars. At the end of the alley whose ditches were masked with snow, rose a mansion of brick and stone, which was as gloomy as the château of Madrid, its neighbour, and which topped by a roof of slate, all awry, seemed the very castle of the Sleeping Beauty.
While we followed the steps of the uncommunicative serving-man, the Abbé said in my ear:
“I confess to you, my son, that the dwelling does not smile upon the view. It bears witness to the rude condition of French manners still inveterate at the time of Henry IV and it induces depression and even melancholy in the mind by the state of neglect into which it has been allowed to lapse. How far sweeter would it be to mount the enchanting slopes of Tusculum, in the hope of hearing Cicero discourse on virtue under the pines and terebinths of his villa, dear to philosophers. And have you not noticed, my son, that we did not pass a single inn or hostelry of any sort on the road and that it is necessary to cross the bridge and climb the hill as far as the crossing of the avenues of Bergères, to drink a glass of wine? It is true that there is the inn at the sign of the Cheval Rouge where I remember Madame de St. Ernest taking me once to dine, along with her monkey and her lover. You cannot imagine, Tournebroche, what good cheer is to be had there. The Cheval Rouge is as renowned for its lunches as for the number of its horses and its posting facilities. I assured myself of that while pursuing into the stables a certain serving-wench who seemed to me to be pretty. But she was not so; one might more justly have called her ugly. I lent her the illumination of my amorous fancy. Such is the state of men given over to themselves: piteous are their mistakes. We are abused by vain images, we follow dreams, and we embrace shadows. In God alone is truth and steadfastness.”
Meanwhile, following the old servant, we climbed the disjointed steps of the old terrace.
“Alas,” said the Abbé in my ear, “I begin to regret your good father’s cook-shop, where we ate many a choice morsel, expounding Quintilian the while.”
Having scaled the first flight of a large stone staircase we were ushered into a room where Monsieur d’Astarac was busy writing near a big fire, surrounded by Egyptian coffins of human form, ranged against the wall, their cases painted with sacred emblems, and their faces in gold, with long shining eyes.
Monsieur d’Astarac invited us politely to sit down, and said:
“Messieurs, I was expecting you, and since you are both good enough to render me the favour of your services I beg you to consider this house as yours. You will be occupied here in translating Greek texts which I have brought back from Egypt. I have no doubt that you will put all your zeal into the accomplishment of this labour, when you learn that it concerns the work I have undertaken, which is to rediscover the lost knowledge whereby man shall be re-established in his original authority over the elements. Though I have no intention to-day of lifting from your eyes the veil of nature and of showing you Isis in all her dazzling nudity, I will confide to you the object of my studies without fear that you should betray the mystery, for I rely on your probity, and also on the power that I have of divining and of preventing anything that may be attempted against me, and of disposing of terrible and secret forces to avenge myself. In default of a fidelity which I do not question, my powers, Messieurs, assure me of your silence, and I risk nothing in exposing myself to you. You must know that man came from the hands of Jehovah perfect in the knowledge he has since lost. At his birth he had great power and great wisdom. One sees it in the book of Moses. Yet it is needful to understand it. First of all, it is clear that Jehovah is not God, but a mighty Demon, for he created the world. The idea of a God at one and the same time a creator and perfect is but a barbarous fancy, a barbarism fit for a Celt or a Saxon. One cannot admit, however little one’s intelligence may be formed, that a perfect being can add anything whatever to his perfection, were it but a hazel-nut. That stands to reason. God can have no conception. For, being infinite what can He well conceive? He does not create, for He is beyond time and space, conditions necessary to any construction. Moses was too good a philosopher to teach that the world was created by God. He knew Jehovah for what he is in reality, namely for a mighty Demon, and, to give him the name, for a Demiurge. Now, when Jehovah created man, he gave him the knowledge of the visible and invisible worlds. The fall of Adam and Eve, which I will one day explain to you, did not altogether destroy this knowledge in the first man and the first woman, whose enlightenment descended to their children. These doctrines, on which lordship over nature depends, were transcribed in the book of Enoch. The Egypti
an priests kept the tradition, which they fixed in mysterious signs on the walls of temples and on the coffins of the dead. Moses, brought up in the sanctuary of Memphis, was one of the initiated. His books, to the number of five or even six, enclose like so many precious arks, the treasures of divine knowledge. One finds in them the noblest of secrets, if after having purged them of unworthy interpolations one is careful to disdain the gross and literal meaning, to follow but the more subtle, which I have in great measure penetrated to, as will be made plain to you later on. However the truths whose virginity was guarded in the temples of Egypt passed to the sages of Alexandria, who added further to them, and crowned them with all the pure gold left as a legacy to Greece by Pythagoras and his disciples, with whom the powers of air held familiar converse. Therefore, Messieurs, we must explore the books of the Hebrews, the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians, and the treatises of those Greeks whom they call gnostics, because they had knowledge. For myself, as is only just, I have reserved the most arduous part of this great labour. I devote myself to deciphering the hieroglyphics that the Egyptians inscribed in the temples of their gods and on the tombs of the priests. Having brought back from Egypt many of these inscriptions, I am getting at their meaning with the help of the key that I have been able to find in the writing of Clement of Alexandria.
“The Rabbi Mosaïde, who lives a retired life under my roof, labours to re-establish the true meaning of the Pentateuch. He is an elder, and very learned in magic, who lived for seventeen years shut in the crypts of the great Pyramid, where he read the works of Thoth. As for you, Messieurs, I count on employing your knowledge to read the Alexandrine manuscripts which I have myself collected in large numbers. Doubtless you will find marvellous secrets in them, and I have no fear but that with the help of these three sources of enlightenment, the Egyptian, the Hebraic, and the Greek, I shall soon arrive at possession of the means still lacking to me of ruling absolutely over nature both visible and invisible.
“Rest assured that I shall acknowledge your services by allowing you to participate to some extent in my powers.
“I do not speak to you of a more vulgar method of acknowledgment. At the point I have reached in my philosophic work money is but a mere trifle.”
When Monsieur d’Astarac got to this point of his speech, my good master interrupted him:
“Monsieur,” said he, “I will not conceal from you that this money, which seems but a trifle to you, is for me a burning anxiety, for I have experienced that it is not easy to gain it honestly or even otherwise. I shall therefore be grateful for any assurance you may give me on this subject.”
Monsieur d’Astarac, with a gesture which seemed to sweep aside some invisible object, reassured Monsieur Jérôme Coignard. As for me, curious of all I saw, I only wished to begin my new life.
At his master’s call, the old serving-man who had opened the door, appeared in the study.
“Messieurs,” continued our host, “I give you your liberty until the mid-day meal. I shall be much obliged to you, however, if you will go and see the rooms prepared for you upstairs, and tell me if anything be wanting. Criton will show you the way.”
After having made sure that we were following him, the silent Criton left the room and began to mount the stairs. He climbed to the very top. Then going a few steps down a long corridor, he showed us two very neat rooms where a good fire was burning. I should never have believed that a house outwardly in such a ruined state and whose front showed but cracked walls and blind windows could in some parts be so habitable. My first care was to look where I was. Our rooms gave on to fields, and the view, over the marshy banks of the Seine, spread as far as the Calvary of Mount Valerian.
On taking a look at our furniture, I saw laid out on the bed, a grey coat, breeches to match, a hat, and a sword. On the carpet, a pair of buckled shoes stood genteelly paired, heels together, toes out, as if they had an innate appreciation of gallant bearing.
I augured favourably from all this of our master’s liberality. To do him honour I took great pains over my toilet, and I powdered my hair freely with powder, of which I found a box full on a little table. I found in a drawer of the chest of drawers, a lace shirt and white stockings — all in keeping.
Having clad myself in the shirt, stockings, breeches, coat and waistcoat, I set about walking up and down the room, the hat under my arm, my hand on the hilt of my sword, stopping every moment to lean over the mirror, and regretting that Catherine the lace-maker could not see me thus gallantly equipped.
I had gone through this little performance several times when Monsieur Jérôme Coignard came into my room with new bands and a very respectable clerical collar.
“Is it you Tournebroche, my son?” he exclaimed. “Never forget that you owe these fine clothes to the knowledge that I have instilled into you. They suit a humanist such as you are, for where we speak of the humanities it is as much as to say ornaments. But look at me, I beg of you, and tell me do I not look well. In this coat I feel that I am a man of worthy repute. This Monsieur d’Astarac is of a magnificent turn. ’Tis a pity that he is mad. But he is at least sane on one point — for he calls his valet Criton, that is to say judge. And it is true indeed that our valets are the witnesses of our every action. They are sometimes their instigation. When milord Verulam, Chancellor of England, whose philosophy is not much to my taste, but who was a learned man, entered the Upper House to take his trial, his lackeys, clad with a sumptuousness that gave evidence of the display exhibited by the chancellor in the conduct of his household, rose up as a mark of respect. But milord Verulam said to them:— ‘Be seated! Your aggrandisement has brought me low.’
“In reality, these rogues had by their extravagance rushed him to ruin and constrained him to acts for which he was indicted for corruption. Tournebroche, my son, may the example of milord Verulam, Chancellor of England, and author of the Novum Organon be always before your eyes. But to return to this Seigneur d’Astarac, in whose service we are, it is a great pity that he is a sorcerer and given over to evil knowledge. You know, my son, that I pride myself on my particularity in matters of faith. It costs me something to take service with a cabalist, who turns our sacred writings upside down, on the pretext of understanding them better so. All the same, if, as his name and his speech seem to indicate he is a gentleman of Gascony, we have nothing to fear. A Gascon can make pact with the devil, for you may be sure that it is the devil who will be duped.”
The bell for our mid-day dinner interrupted our talk.
“Tournebroche, my son,” said my master, going downstairs, “remember during the meal to follow all my movements, so that you may imitate them. Having eaten at the third table of my lord Bishop of Séez I know how to behave myself. It is a difficult art. It is less easy to eat like a gentleman than to speak like one.”
VI
IN the dining-room we found the table laid for three, where Monsieur d’Astarac made us sit down. Criton, who did the office of butler, served us with jellies, extracts and “purées” passed a dozen times through the sieve. We saw no roast appear. Though we were very careful to hide our surprise, my good master and I, Monsieur d’Astarac perceived it and said to us:
“Messieurs, this is only an experiment, and if it seems an unfortunate one to you, I will not persist in it. You shall be served with more ordinary dishes, and I myself will not disdain to partake. If the dishes that I offer you to-day are badly prepared, it is less the fault of my cook than that of the science of chemistry, which is yet in its infancy. All the same, this will give you some notion of what we shall see in the future. At present men eat without philosophy. They do not feed like reasonable beings. They do not even think about it. But what do they think about? They nearly all live in a state of stupidity, and even such as are capable of reflection occupy their mind with follies such as controversy and the making of poetry. Consider, Messieurs, the subject of man and his food since distant times when they ceased all commerce with Sylphs and Salamanders. Abandoned by these spr
ites of air, they sank heavily down into ignorance and barbarism. Without art and without governance, they lived naked and miserable in caves, on the banks of streams, or in the forests. The chase was their only pursuit. When by surprise or superior swiftness they took some timid animal, they devoured their prey while it was yet quivering.
“Moreover, they ate the flesh of their companions, and of their weakly brethren, and the first sepulchres of humanity were living tombs, were bowels, famished and without compassion.
“After long and savage centuries, appeared a man divine whom the Greeks called Prometheus. There is no doubt that this sage had commerce with the race of Salamanders, in the secret resorts of the Nymphs. He learnt from them, and taught to poor mortals, the art of kindling and keeping fire. Among the innumerable gains which mankind has derived from him who is now enskied, one of the happiest was to be able to cook food, and by this treatment to render it lighter and less gross.
“And it is in great measure as a result of their nourishment being submitted to the action of fire, that men have slowly and by degrees become intelligent, industrious, reflective, and apt to cultivate the arts and sciences. But this was but the first step, and it is distressing to think that so many millions of years have rolled by without there having been a second. Since the time when our ancestors broiled a bear’s ham over a brushwood fire, under the shelter of a rock, we have made no real progress in cookery. For you will scarcely reckon as anything, the inventions of Lucullus, and that fat pasty to which Vitellius gave the name of the buckler of Minerva, any more than our toasts, our patties, our stews, our stuffed meats, and all those made dishes which still retain much of the old barbarity.
“The king’s table at Fontainebleau, where they dish a whole stag in his skin, and with his antlers, presents to the eyes of a philosopher as gross a spectacle as that of the troglodytes crouching round the fire gnawing horse-bones. The gay pictures on the walls, the guards, the richly-dressed officers, the musicians playing airs from Lambert and Lulli in the gallery, the silken cloths, the silver service, the cups of gold, the Venetian glass, the sconces, the chased epergnes decked with flowers, all these fail to deceive or to cast a charm which shall hide the true nature of this unclean charnel-house, where men and women meet to feast greedily on the carcasses of beasts, on broken bones and torn flesh. What an unphilosophic repast! We swallow, with stupid greed, muscles, fat and entrails of animals, without making any distinction in these substances between the parts which are really suitable for our nourishment and those, far more plentiful, which should be thrown away; and we bolt without distinction, the good and the bad, the useful and the hurtful. This is, however, where we should make a distinction, and if, in all the faculty, a single doctor of chemistry and philosopher could be found, we should no longer be obliged to sit down to these disgusting orgies.
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 58