“But your Salamander (whose name I could easily discover were I indiscreetly curious) has perhaps not spoken to you of one of her strongest passions — which is jealousy. This characteristic is common to all her kind. Bear well in mind, my son — Salamanders do not allow themselves to be betrayed with impunity. They wreak a terrible vengeance on the perjured. The divine Paracelsus relates an example which will doubtless suffice to inspire you with a wholesome dread. Therefore I will make it known to you. In a town in Germany called Staufen there was a spagyric philosopher who, like you, had dealings with a Salamander. He was depraved enough to betray her ignominiously with a woman, pretty it is true, but not impossibly beautiful. One evening as he was supping with his new mistress and some friends, the guests saw a glistening limb of marvellous form above their heads. The Salamander showed it in order that they might be sensible that she did not merit the wrong done her by her lover. Whereafter the outraged daughter of the skies struck the faithless one with apoplexy. The vulgar, which is born to be deceived, thought it a natural death, but the initiated knew by what hand the blow came. My son, it was my duty to give you this advice and this example.”
They were less useful to me than Monsieur d’Astarac thought. While listening to them I cherished other matter for alarm. My face doubtless betrayed my anxiety, for the great cabalist having turned his gaze on me asked me whether I did not fear that a pledge undertaken under such severe penalties would prove trying to my youth.
“I can reassure you on that point,” he added. “The Salamander’s jealousy is only roused if one puts them on a rival footing with women, and truth to tell it is more resentment, indignation and disgust than real jealousy. Salamanders have too fine a soul and too subtle an intelligence to be envious one of another and to suffer a feeling which harks back to the barbarity in which mankind is still half immersed. On the contrary, they make a pleasure of sharing with their companions the delights they enjoy in the company of a sage, and amuse themselves by bringing the prettiest of their sisters to their lovers. You will soon experience that they actually push amiability to the point I have described, and not a year nor even six months will pass before your rooms will be a meeting-place for five or six daughters of the light vying with one another who shall loose before you their dazzling girdles. Do not fear to respond to their caresses, my son. Your friend will take no umbrage, and how should she take offence since she is so wise? In your turn, do not be vexed should your Salamander leave you for a time to visit another philosopher. Look upon this over-weening jealousy which men bring to the union of sexes as a savage feeling founded on the most absurd illusion. It rests on the idea that a woman is yours when she has given herself to you, which is simply a play upon words.”
While thus holding forth to me, Monsieur d’Astarac had entered on the mandragora path and we already perceived Mosaïde’s cottage through the foliage, when a terrible voice rang in my ears and made my heart beat violently. It rolled out raucous sounds, accompanied by gnashing of teeth, and on drawing near one realised that the sounds were modulated and each phrase terminated in a sort of feeble recitative, which one could not hear without shuddering.
After taking a few steps forward we could, by straining our ears, grasp the meaning of these strange words. The voice said:
“Listen to the malediction of Elisha and his curse on the joyful and insolent children. Hark to the anathema which Barak launched at Meroz.
“I condemn thee in the name of Archithariel, also called the lord of battles who holds the shining sword. I devote thee to perdition in the name of Sardaliphon who presents his master with the acceptable flowers and the garlands of merit offered by the children of Israel.
“Be accursed O dog! — and anathema, O swine!” On looking whence the voice came we saw Mosaïde standing at his doorway — his arms raised, his hands like claws with their curved nails which the sunlight appeared to redden. Crowned with his dirty headdress, wrapped in his gaudy robe which opening allowed his thin, bowed legs to appear in their ragged breeches, he looked like some mendicant soothsayer, eternal and aged.
His eyes gleamed. He said:
“Be thou accursed in the name of the Globes — Be thou accursed in the name of the Wheels — Be thou accursed in the name of the mysterious Beasts which Ezekiel saw,” and he stretched out his long clawed-like arms before him, repeating: —
“In the name of the Globes, in the name of the Wheels, in the name of the mysterious Beasts — Go thou down among those who are no more.”
We went a few steps into the wood to see the object to which Mosaïde extended his arms, and his wrath, and my surprise was great at discovering Monsieur Jérôme Coignard hanging on a thorn tree by his coat. The night’s disorder showed all over his person, his cape and hands all torn, his stockings stained with mud, his shirt half open, all were pitiable reminders of our common misadventures, and, worst of all, his swollen nose, now spoilt that fine and smiling expression which never left his face. —
I rushed towards him and drew him so successfully out of the thorn-bush that he left there but a fragment of his breeches. And Mosaïde having nothing left to curse went back into his house. As he only wore slippers I was enabled to see that his leg was in the middle of his foot so to speak, so that the heel was nearly half as far out behind as the instep in front. This formation rendered his walk extremely ungraceful, which would otherwise have been rather noble.
“Jacques Tournebroche, my son,” said my good master with a sigh, “that Jew must be Isaac Laquedem himself to swear thus in all languages. He consigned me to a violent and early death with an abundance of imagery, and he called me a pig in fourteen different idioms, if I counted aright. I should take him to be Anti-Christ, did he not lack several of the signs by which that enemy of the Almighty is to be recognised. In any case he is a wicked Jew, and never has the wheel been applied in sign of infamy on the garb of a wilder miscreant. As for him, he deserves not only the wheel which they formerly fastened to the Jews’ cloaks, but that wheel to which they fasten evil-doers.”
And my good master, irritated beyond all measure, in his turn shook his fist at Mosaïde’s back, accusing him of crucifying children and devouring the flesh of new-born infants.
Monsieur d’Astarac came up to him and touched him on the chest with the ruby he wore on his finger.
“It is useful,” said the great cabalist, “to know the property of precious stones. The ruby appeases resentment and you will soon see Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard return to his usual gentleness.”
My good master was already smiling, more from the effect of a philosophy which raised this admirable man above all human passions, than from the virtue of the stone. For I must own even at the time when my recital darkens and becomes saddened, Monsieur Jérôme Coignard showed me an example of wisdom in circumstances where it is rarest of all to meet with it.
We asked him the reason of the quarrel. But I understood by the vagueness of his embarrassed replies that he had no wish to satisfy our curiosity. I had suspected from the first that Jael was mixed up in it in some manner, my indication being that we heard mingled with the grinding voice of Mosaïde the grinding of locks and the outburst of a quarrel in the cottage between the uncle and niece. Having done my very best again to extract some enlightenment from my good master, he said: “Hatred of Christians is deep-rooted in the heart of the Jews, and this Mosaïde is an odious example of it. I thought I could discern in his horrid mouthings, some portion of the imprecation vomited last century by the synagogue on a little Dutch Jew called Baruch or Benedict, known later under the name of Spinoza, for having formulated a philosophy which was utterly refuted almost at its birth by able theologians. But this old Mordecai added to them, it seemed to me, many imprecations more horrible still, and I confess that they touched me a little. I was just meditating escape by flight from this torrent of abuse when, to my misfortune, I was caught up in these thorns, and so well seized in different parts of my clothes and my skin, that I thought I should
have left both one and the other there; and I should be there still in the liveliest pain had not Tournebroche, my pupil, delivered me.”
“Thorns are nothing,” said Monsieur d’Astarac. “But I fear, Monsieur l’Abbé, that you may have stepped on a mandragora.”
“That is the least of my anxieties,” said the Abbé.
“You are wrong,” said Monsieur d’Astarac with vivacity. “It is enough to put your foot on a mandragora to be tangled in some criminal love and perish miserably therein.”
“Ah, Monsieur!” said my good master, “these are perils indeed, and I see that it is necessary to live close confined within the eloquent walls of the Astaracian, that queen of libraries. I quitted it for a moment and received at my head the Beasts of Ezekiel, without counting the rest.”
“Have you nothing to tell me of Zozimus the Panopolitan?” asked Monsieur d’Astarac.
“He goes on his way,” replied my good master, “he goes on his way, although a little languidly for the moment.”
“Bethink yourself, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said the cabalist, “that the possession of the greatest secrets is bound up in the knowledge of these ancient texts.”
“I bethink myself of it with the greatest solicitude,” said the Abbé.
And Monsieur d’Astarac, on receiving this assurance, strode off under the trees at the call of the Salamanders, leaving us by the Faun who fingered his flute, careless of his head fallen in the grass beneath him.
My good master took me by the arm in the manner of one who can at length talk openly:
“Jacques Tournebroche, my son,” said he, “I must not conceal from you that a somewhat strange meeting took place this morning under the house-roof, while you were detained on the first floor by that mad fire-blower. For I overheard him perfectly asking you to help him with his cooking, which is far less odorous and Christian than that of Maître Léonard, your father. Alas! when shall I see again the cook-shop of the Reine Pédauque, and Monsieur Blaizot’s book-shop, at the sign of St. Catherine, where I took such pleasure in turning over the new books from Amsterdam and The Hague!” —
“Alas!” I exclaimed — with tears in my eyes, “when shall I myself see them again? When shall I see once more the Rue St. Jacques where I was born, and my dear parents to whom the news of our misfortunes will cause the most acute grief? But deign to explain, my good master, this somewhat strange meeting which you say took place this morning and also the occurrences of to-day.” Monsieur Jérôme Coignard consented to enlighten me as I wished. Which he did as follows: “You must know, my son, that without hindrance I reached the top floor of the château along with this Monsieur d’Anquetil, whom I like well enough, though he is somewhat ill-mannered and illiterate. His mind is not acquainted with what is finest, nor curious beyond its depth. The vivacity of youth sparkles agreeably in him and the generosity of his blood expends itself in amusing sallies. He knows the world as he knows women, from his upper station and without philosophy. It is mere ingenuousness on his part to call himself an atheist. His impiety carries no malice and you will see it will vanish of itself when the heat of his feelings subsides. God has no other enemies in this soul but horses, cards and women. In the soul of a true libertine such as Monsieur Bayle, for instance, truth meets with more redoubtable and cunning adversaries. But I see, my son, that I am drawing you a portrait and a character when what you want of me is but a plain recital.
“I will satisfy your wish. Having then reached the top floor of the château along with Monsieur d’Anquetil, I showed the young gentleman into your room, and I begged him, in accordance with our promise to him before the fountain, to make use of the room as if it were his own. He did so without more ado, undressed, and merely retaining his boots, got into your bed, whose curtains he closed so as not to be troubled with the piercing light of early dawn, and was not long in falling asleep.
“As for me, my son, having reached my own room, although overcome with fatigue, I did not wish to taste repose before seeking in Boethius a passage suitable to my position. I found none quite fitting, and in truth the great Boethius had no need to meditate on the disgrace of having broken a Farmer-general’s head with a bottle from his own cellar. But I gathered from his admirable treatise some maxims here and there which permitted of application to the present juncture.
“Whereupon, drawing my night-cap over my eyes, and recommending my soul to God, I fell asleep quite peacefully. After a period which seemed to me short, without my having had the means to measure it — for our actions are the sole measure of time, my son, which is, so to speak, suspended for us during sleep, I felt myself being pulled by the arm and heard a voice crying in my ear:— ‘Eh! l’Abbé, eh! l’Abbé, wake up then!’ I thought it was a police officer come to arrest me and take me before the magistrate, and I deliberated within myself if ‘twere not better to break his head with my candlestick. It is unhappily but too true, my son, that once having left the straight path of gentleness and equity, where the sage walks with firm and prudent steps, one sees oneself forced to meet violence with violence, and cruelty with cruelty, in such wise that the consequence of a first transgression is to produce others. We must bear this in mind if we are to understand the life of the Roman Emperors, which Monsieur Crévier has set down with exactitude. These princes were born no worse than other men, Caius, surnamed Caligula, lacked neither natural talent nor judgment, and was even capable of friendship. Nero had an innate love of virtue, and his temperament inclined him towards all that is just and sublime. A first transgression flung them, both one and the other, on the criminal path they followed to their wretched end. That is what Monsieur Crévier shows us in his book. I knew him as an able man when he taught literature at the College of Beauvais, as I should be doing to-day had not my life been crossed by a thousand obstacles and had not the natural easiness of my spirit led me to divers snares wherein I fell. Monsieur Crévier, my son, was a man of pure life, he professed a severe morality, and I once heard him say that a woman who has broken her marriage vows is capable of the greatest crimes, such as murder and arson. I quote this maxim to give you an idea of the holy austerity of this priest. But I see I am wandering from the point and I hasten to take up my story where I left off. I thought then that the hand of the police was on me, and I already saw myself in the Archbishop’s prison, when I recognised the face and voice of Monsieur d’Anquetil. ‘L’Abbé,’ said the young gentleman, ‘a singular thing has happened to me in Tournebroche’s room. A woman entered the room while I was asleep, slipped into my bed and awoke me with a rain of caresses, tender names, soft murmurings and ardent kisses. I opened the curtains to distinguish the features of my good fortune. I saw she was dark, of a passionate eye, and the most beautiful creature in the world. But she then and there gave a loud cry, and fled away in vexation, not so quickly though but that I was enabled to rejoin her in the corridor and hold her in a close embrace. She began by defending herself and scratching my face; when I was scratched enough for the satisfaction of her honour we commenced explanations. She heard with pleasure that I was a gentleman and none so poor. I soon ceased to appear odious to her and she had begun to wish me well when a scullion passing along the corridor caused her to fly without returning.
“‘As far as I can see,’ added Monsieur d’Anquetil, ‘this adorable creature came, not for me but for another; she mistook the door, and her surprise was the reason of her flight. But I re-assured her well and had it not been for the scullion I should have won her heart.’ I confirmed him in this supposition. We considered for whom this pretty person could well have come, and we both were of accord that it must have been, as I have already told you, Tournebroche, for that old madman of a d’Astarac, who visits her in intimacy in a room near to yours, or, maybe unknown to you, in your own. Do you not think so?”
“Nothing is more likely,” I replied.
“There is no need to doubt it,” said my good master. “This magician mocks us with his Salamanders. And the truth is that he embrace
s that pretty girl. He is an imposter.”
I begged my good master to continue his recital. He did so with a good grace.
“I abridge the discourse held with me by Monsieur d’Anquetil,” said he. “It is the sign of a low and vulgar mind to enlarge on small events. On the contrary, we ought to put them into few words, tending to conciseness and keeping for moral instruction and exhortation the abundant rush of words which it is then fitting to pour down like the snow from the mountains. So I shall have instructed you enough in Monsieur d’Anquetil’s remarks when I tell you that he assured me he had found in this young girl, a beauty, a charm, and an extraordinary grace. He ended his speech by asking me if I knew her name and who she was. ‘From the picture you have given me,’ I replied, ‘I recognise her as Jael, niece of the rabbi Mosaïde, whom I happened to embrace on the same staircase — with this difference that it was between the second and third floor.’
“‘I hope,’ said Monsieur d’Anquetil, ‘that there were other differences for I, for my part, held her close to me. I am also grieved to hear you say she is a Jewess. For without believing in God, a certain sentiment within me would prefer her to be a Christian. But what does one know of her? Who knows but what she may be a stolen child. Jews and Bohemians go off with some every day. And then one so often fails to remember that the blessed Virgin was a Jewess. Jewess or no, she pleases me. I want her and I will have her.’ Thus spoke the foolish youth. But my son, permit me to take a seat on this moss-grown bank, for last night’s work, my combats and my flight, have weakened my legs.”
He sat down and drawing his empty snuff-box from his pocket looked at it sadly.
I sat down by him in a state of agitation and depression. His narrative caused me acute pain. I cursed the fate which had put a rough fellow in my place at the very moment when my beloved mistress came to seek me with all the appearance of ardent love, not knowing that I meanwhile was busied piling logs on the alchemist’s stove. Jael’s more than probable faithfulness cut me to the heart, and I could have wished that my good master had at least observed more discretion before my rival. I risked reproaching him respectfully for having given up Jael’s name.
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 68