“Monsieur,” I said, “do you not think there was a certain imprudence in furnishing such information to so pleasure-loving and headstrong a gentleman?”
My good master appeared not to hear me.
“My snuff-box,” said he, “unhappily burst open during the scuffle last night, and the snuff contained therein, mixed with wine in my pocket, is now no more than a disgusting mess. I dare not ask Criton to powder me a few leaves, the countenance of that old Rhadamanthus and serving man appears so cold and severe. I suffer all the more at not being able to take snuff since my nose tickles violently as a result of the blow I received last night, and you see me quite worried by this untimely solicitation to which I have nothing to give. I must bear this small misfortune with an equal mind — whilst waiting till Monsieur d’Anquetil gives me a few grains from his box. And to return to this young gentleman, my son, he expressly said to me— ‘I love this girl — I would have you know, l’Abbé, that I shall take her with us in the post-chaise. If I have to stay here a week — a month — six months or more — I shall not leave without her.’ I represented to him the dangers that might be incurred by the least delay. But he answered me that those dangers troubled him the less; that they were great for us but small for him.
“‘You, l’Abbé,’ said he, ‘are in a fair way to be hanged with Tournebroche, while, as for me I only risk being sent to the Bastille, where I shall find both cards and women, and whence my family will soon liberate me, for my father will interest some duchess or some dancer in my case, and not withstanding my mother having become pious, she will know how, on my behalf, to bring herself to the memory of two or three princes of the blood. So it is a settled thing — I leave with Jael — or not at all. You are at liberty, l’Abbé, to hire a postchaise with Tournebroche.’
“The wretch well knew, my son, that we had not the means to do so. I tried to make him go back on his word. I was pressing, unctuous, and even exhortatory. It was pure waste, and in vain I made use of an eloquence which in the pulpit of a good parish church would have been worth both honour and money to me. Alas! my son — it is decreed that none of my actions should bear good fruit in this world, and it is for me that it is written in Ecclesiastes:
Quid habet amplius homo de universo labore suo, quo labor at sub sole?
“Far from making him more reasonable, my speech strengthened the young man in his obstinacy, and I will not conceal the fact from you, my son, that he made plain to me that he counted on me absolutely for the success of his wishes, and he pressed me to go and find Jael, so as to persuade her to agree to an elopement with the promise of a trousseau of fine linen, silver plate, jewels and a good income.”
“Oh! Monsieur,” I exclaimed, “this Monsieur d’Anquetil is uncommonly insolent. What do you think Jael will reply to these proposals when she hears of them?”
“My son,” he replied, “she knows them by this time and I think will accede to them.”
“In that case,” I replied quickly, “we must warn Mosaïde.”
“Mosaïde,” answered my master, “is only too well warned. You heard a little time ago, in the neighbourhood of the cottage, the last outburst of his anger.”
“What, Monsieur,” said I deeply moved, “you warned that Jew of the dishonour about to touch his family. It was just like you. Allow me to embrace you. But then Mosaïde’s wrath, to which we were witness, threatened Monsieur d’Anquetil, and not you?”
“My son,” replied the Abbé, in an honest and noble manner, “a natural indulgence for human frailty, an obliging gentleness, the imprudent benevolence of a heart too easily touched, all these lead men oftentimes to ill-considered measures, and expose them to the severity of the world’s empty judgment. I will not hide from you, Tournebroche, that, yielding to the young gentleman’s earnest appeals, I obligingly promised to go and find Jael for him, and to neglect nothing to make her agree to an elopement.”
“Alas!” I exclaimed, “and you fulfilled that dismal promise! I cannot tell you to what extent your action wounds and afflicts me!”
“Tournebroche,” answered my good master sternly, “you speak like a Pharisee. A divine, amiable as he was austere, has said: — Turn your eyes upon yourself, and beware of judging the actions of others. Judging others, one works in vain; one is often mistaken, and easily falls into sin, whereas in self-examination and self-judgment the occupation is profitable. It is written: Thou shalt not fear the judgment of men! St. Paul the Apostle has said: — It is a very small thing that I should be judged... of men’s judgment.
“And if I thus lecture on the finest moral texts, it is to instruct you, Tournebroche, and to recall you to the humble and gentle modesty which suits you, and not to make myself appear innocent, weighed down and overcome as I am by the multitude of my sins. It is hard not to slip into sin, and it befits us not to fall into despair at each step we take in this world, where all participate equally in the original curse, and in the redemption effected by the blood of the Son of God. I do not want to lend colour to my faults, and I confess to you that the embassy which I undertook on behalf of Monsieur d’Anquetil proceeds from the fall of Eve, and is, so to speak, one of the innumerable consequences of it, conflicting with the dolorous and abject opinion I hold of it at present, which is drawn from the desire and hope of my eternal salvation. For you must imagine mankind balanced between damnation and redemption, and tell yourself that I am at this moment at the right end of the see-saw, after being at the wrong end this morning. I own, then, that having taken the mandragora path which leads to Mosaïde’s cottage, I hid myself behind a thorn-bush, waiting for Jael to appear at her window. She soon showed herself. I discovered myself and signed to her to come down. She came and found me behind the bush at a time when she thought to deceive the vigilance of her old guardian. There I told her in a low voice the night’s adventures, of which she was still in ignorance, I made known to her the designs the impetuous young man had upon her, I represented to her that it was necessary in his interest as well as in yours and mine, Tournebroche, that she should assure our flight by her own departure. I dangled before her eyes Monsieur d’Anquetil’s promises. ‘If,’ said I, ‘you consent to follow him to-night, you shall have a good welcome, a trousseau richer than that of an opera singer, or that of an Abbess de Panthémont, and a fine service of silverplate.’
“‘He takes me for a light woman,’ said she, ‘he is over bold.’
“‘He loves you,’ I replied. ‘Do you wish to be worshipped?’ —
“‘I must have a silver centre-piece and a massive one. Did he speak to you of that? Go and tell him, Monsieur l’Abbé...
“‘What shall I tell him?’
‘That I am an honest woman.’
‘What more?’
“‘That he is very forward!’
‘Is that all? Jael, think of our safety!’
“‘Tell him then, I only consent to go providing a note in proper form is signed the evening before.’, “‘He will sign it. Consider it done.’
“‘No, l’Abbé — nothing can be done until he undertakes to give me lessons with Monsieur Couperin. I want to learn music.’
“We were at this clause of our conference when, as ill-luck had it, the aged Mosaïde surprised us, and without hearing our conversation divined its drift. For he began to call me suborner and to load me with abuse. Jael ran to hide in her room, and I remained alone exposed to the fury of this deicide, in the state in which you saw me and whence you extricated me. Truth to tell the affair was so to speak concluded, the elopement agreed upon, our flight assured. The Wheels and the Beasts of Ezekiel shall not prevail against the silver centre-piece. I only fear lest that old Mordecai should enclose his niece behind triple bolts and bars.”
“In truth,” I replied, without being able to disguise my satisfaction, “I heard a great noise of keys and bolts at the very moment when I drew you from among the thorns. But is it really true that Jael agreed so quickly to proposals which were far from honest and must
have cost you something to transmit to her. It confounds me. Tell me once more, my good master, did she not speak of me — did she not pronounce my name, sighing, or otherwise?”
“No, my son,” replied Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, “she did not pronounce it, at least not perceptibly. Neither did I hear her murmur that of Monsieur d’Astarac her lover, which should have been more present with her than yours. But be not surprised that she should forget her alchemist. The mere possessing of a woman does not suffice to imprint upon her mind any profound or durable impression. Minds are impenetrable to one another, and this shows you the cruel emptiness of love. The wise man will say to himself: — I am as nothing in the nothing that this creature is. To hope to leave a memory in the heart of a woman is to wish to stamp the imprint of a seal on the face of running water. Let us then beware of setting our hearts upon what passes away, and lay hold on that which is undying.”
“Any way,” I replied, “Jael is under sound locks, and we may trust to the vigilance of her guardian.”
“My son,” continued my good master, “this very night she should join us at the Cheval Rouge. Darkness is propitious to escapes, ravishments, furtive attempts, and clandestine actions. We must rely on the cunning of this girl. As to yourself, take care that you are at the cross roads of Bergères at twilight. You know that Monsieur d’Anquetil is not patient and that he is just the man to go off without you.”
As he gave me this advice the bell rang for breakfast.
“Have you not a needle and thread?” he asked me, “my clothes are torn in several places, and before I appear at table I should like to restore them, with a few stitches, to their former decency. My breeches particularly disquiet me. They are so injured that unless I come to their assistance promptly it will be all over with them.”
XVIII
SO I took my usual place at the cabalist’s table with the distressing thought that it was for the last time. Jael’s black treachery weighed on my heart. “Alas!” I said to myself, “my dearest wish was to fly with her. There was no likelihood of its being realised. Nevertheless it is to be and in the most cruel fashion.” And I fell to admiring once again my good master’s wisdom, who, one day I wanted too keenly that something should succeed, answered me with these words from the Bible: “Et tribuit eis petitionem eorum.” My sorrows and my anxieties took away all my appetite and I hardly put the various viands to my lips. However, my good master kept his unalterable suavity of mind. He overflowed with agreeable conversation and one would have said that he was one of those sages shown to us in Télémaque conversing in the shades of the Elysian fields, rather than a man sought for as a murderer and reduced to a wretched and wandering life.
Monsieur d’Astarac, thinking I had passed the night at the cook-shop, asked me kindly for news of my good parents, and as he could not abstract himself for a moment from his visions he added: “When I speak of that cook as your father it is to be understood that I express myself thus according to the world and not according to nature. For there is nothing to prove, my son, that you were not fathered by a Sylph. It is indeed what I should prefer to believe, however little your still youthful talent may grow in strength and beauty.”
“Oh — do not speak thus, Monsieur,” replied my good master with a smile, “you will force him to hide his wits that he may not injure his mother’s good name. But if you knew her better, you would think, as I do, that she has never had any dealings with a Sylph; she is a good Christian who has known no man but her husband, and who bears her good character written on her face, very different from that other cook’s wife, Madame Quonian, of whom there was much talk in Paris and the provinces in the days of my youth. Did you never hear of her, Monsieur? She had the Sieur Mariette for a lover, he who later became secretary to Monsieur d’Angervilliers. He was a burly man, who, each time that he saw his lady-love, left her some bauble as a remembrance — one day a Croix de Lorraine, another day a St. Esprit, a watch or a chatelaine. Or, yet again, a handkerchief, a fan, or a casket; he stripped the jewelers’ and drapers’ shops at the fair of St. Germain for her, till at last the cook, seeing his wife decked like a shrine, had a suspicion that it was not all honestly come by. He watched her and it was not long before he surprised her with her lover. You must understand that the husband was a mere jealous wretch. He was angry, and gained nothing thereby — quite the contrary. For the two lovers, annoyed by his outcry, swore to be rid of him.
“The Sieur Mariette had a long arm. He obtained a lettre de cachet in the name of the wretched Quonian. Meanwhile, the treacherous wife said to her husband:
“‘Take me to dine in the country next Sunday, I beg of you., I look forward with pleasure to this little excursion.’
“She was loving and urgent. The husband, flattered, agreed to what she asked. Sunday come, he mounted into a ramshackle carriage with her to go to Porcherons. But scarcely had they reached Roule, when a troup of police, posted there by Mariette, arrested him and took him to Bicêtre, whence he was sent out to the Mississippi where he is still. They made a song about it which ended thus:
Wise husbands will live undistressed
Nor open their eyes over wide.
It is better to be as the rest,
Than to see Mississippi’s far tide.
“And that, no doubt, is the most valuable lesson to be drawn from the case of poor Quonian of the spit.
“As for the incident, itself it only wants telling by a Petronius or an Apuleius to equal the best of the Milesian fables. The moderns are inferior to the ancients in tragedy and the minor epic. But if we fail to surpass the Greeks and Latins in the telling of the story, it is not the fault of the ladies of Paris, who never tire of enriching the subject matter by many ingenious turns and pleasing inventions. You are not without knowledge of Boccaccio’s collection of tales, Monsieur: I have often read them for amusement’s sake and I assure you that if the Florentine lived in France to-day he would make poor Quonian’s misfortune the subject of one of his most amusing stories. For my part I have only recounted it while sitting here to make brighter by contrast the virtue of Madame Léonard Tournebroche, who is the pride of her husband’s profession as Madame Quonian was the shame of it. Madame Tournebroche, I dare make the assertion, has never been wanting in the lesser virtues whose practice is recommended in marriage, which alone of the seven sacraments is contemptible.”
“I do not deny it,” replied Monsieur d’Astarac. “But this Madame Tournebroche would be still more estimable had she had dealings with a Sylph, after the example of Semiramis, Olympias, and the mother of the great Pope Sylvester II.”
“Ah! Monsieur,” said l’Abbé Coignard, “you are always talking of Sylphs and Salamanders. In good faith have you ever seen them?”
“As well as I see you,” replied Monsieur d’Astarac, “and even nearer, at least as regards the Salamanders.”
“Monsieur,” continued my good master, “still that is not enough for us to believe in their existence, which is contrary to the teachings of the Church. For we may be led astray by illusions. Our eyes and all our senses are but messengers of error and bearers of falsehood. They deceive us far more than they instruct us. They show us but uncertain and fugitive pictures. Truth escapes them; deriving from the eternal principle, truth is invisible as it.”
“Ah!” said Monsieur d’Astarac, “I did not know you were such a philosopher nor of so subtle a mind.”
“Truly,” said my good master, “there are days when my soul seems heavier, and more attached to the bed and the board. But last night I broke a bottle over the head of a Revenue officer, and it has freshened my wits to an extraordinary degree. I feel capable of scattering the ghosts which haunt you and of blowing away all these vapours. For indeed, Monsieur, these Sylphs are but the exhalations of your brain.”
Monsieur d’Astarac stopped him with a quiet gesture and said:— “Pardon me, Monsieur l’Abbé, but do you believe in demons?”
“I can reply to that without any difficulty,” s
aid my good master, “for I believe all that is told us of demons in good books, and I reject as error and superstition all belief in spells, amulets and exorcisms. St. Augustine tells us that when Scripture exhorts us to resist the devil, it means we should resist our evil passions and our unbridled appetites. Nothing is more detestable than all these bedevilments with which monks terrorise honest women.”
“I see,” said Monsieur d’Astarac, “that you endeavour to think like an honest man. You hate the coarse superstitions of the monks as much as I detest them myself. But still you believe in demons, and I had no difficulty in making you avow it. Know then that they are none other than Sylphs and Salamanders. Ignorance and fear have disfigured them in the imaginations of the timid. But in reality they are beautiful and virtuous. I will not put you in the way of meeting with the Salamanders, not being sufficiently assured of the purity of your morals; but there is nothing to hinder me from inducing you to frequent the Sylphs, Monsieur l’Abbé, they who inhabit the fields of the air, and who approach men willingly in so benevolent and affectionate a spirit that it has been possible to call them the helpful Genii. Far from pushing us towards our ruin, as theologians believe who take them to be devils, they protect and guard their earthly friends from all peril. I could give you an infinite number of examples of the help they give. But as there must be a limit I will permit myself but one story which I have from Madame la Maréchale de Grancey herself. She was of a certain age, and had been a widow for some years, when one night in bed she received a visit from a Sylph, who said to her:— ‘Madame, make search in the wardrobe of your late husband. In the pocket of one of his pairs of knee-breeches will be found a letter, which were its contents known, would prove the undoing of Monsieur des Roches, your good friend and mine. See that it is given to you, and take care to burn it.’
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 69