Complete Works of Anatole France

by Anatole France

  The berline was already moving, and brother Ange, hanging by the door with outstretched hand, pursued us, begging for alms.

  I sank back on the cushions.

  “Alas! Monsieur,” I exclaimed, “you told me that Jael was imprisoned behind triple bolts.”

  “My son,” replied my good master, “you ought not to have had such confidence in them, for young women make light of jealousy and padlocks. And if the door be shut they jump from the window. You have no idea, Tournebroche, of the cunning of women. The ancient writers have given us many admirable examples, and you will find several in the book of Apuleius, where they are like salt seasoning the narrative of the Golden Ass. But where this cunning is best to be seen is in an Arabian tale which Monsieur Galland has lately made known to Europe, and which I will relate to you:

  “Schariar, Sultan of Tartary, and his brother Schahzenan, were walking one day by the sea, when they suddenly espied a black column rising above the waters and advancing towards the land. They recognised a Djinn of the fiercest kind, in the form of a giant of prodigious height bearing on his head a glass box fastened with four iron locks. This sight inspired them with such fear that they went and hid in the fork of a tree near by. Meanwhile the Djinn stepped out on the beach with the box, which he carried to the foot of the tree where the two princes were hid. Then lying down himself, he was not long in falling asleep. His legs stretched as far as the sea and his breathing shook heaven and earth. While he took his repose in this terrifying manner, the lid of the box was lifted and out stepped a lady of majestic height and perfect beauty. She raised her head...”

  At this point I interrupted the story to which I was scarcely listening.

  “Ah, Monsieur,” I cried, “what do you think Jael and Monsieur d’Anquetil are saying to one another now, alone in the coupé?”

  “I do not know,” replied my good master, “that is their business, not ours. But let us finish this Arabian tale, which is full of meaning. You thoughtlesly interrupted me, Tournebroche, at the moment when the lady, raising her head, discovered the two princes in the tree where they were hidden. She made signs to them to come to her, and, seeing them hesitate, divided between desire to respond to the appeal of so beautiful a person and fear of approaching so terrible a giant, she said to them in a low but animated voice, ‘Come down at once or I will wake the Djinn!’ They understood by her imperious and resolute look that it was no mere threat and that the safest and most agreeable way was to come down. They did so, taking all possible precautions not to wake the Djinn. When they got down again, the lady took them by the hand and going a little way off with them she made them clearly understand she was ready to give herself straightway to both one and the other. They lent themselves with a good grace to this fancy, and as they were men of stout heart their fears did not spoil their pleasure. Having obtained all she wished, and noticing that each wore a ring on his finger, she asked for it. Then returning to the box wherein she dwelt she drew forth a chaplet of rings which she showed to the princes.

  “‘Do you know,’ she said to them, ‘the meaning of these threaded rings? They are those of all the men to whom I have been as gracious as to you. There are ninety-eight all told, which I keep in remembrance of them. I asked you for yours for the same reason and to make up the hundred. So there,’ she said, ‘are a hundred lovers whom I have had up to now, despite the vigilance and care of this wicked Djinn who never leaves me. Let him shut me in a glass case and keep me hidden at the bottom of the sea, I deceive him as often as I please.”

  “This ingenious apologue,” added my good master, “shows you woman to be as cunning in the East where she is kept in seclusion as amongst the Europeans where she is free. If one of them has formed a scheme, neither husband, lover, father, uncle nor guardian can prevent its being carried out. You need not be surprised then, my son, that to betray the vigilance of that old Mordecai was but mere play for Jael who, with her perverse talent, mingles the skill of our courtesans with oriental perfidy. I suspect her to be as greedy for pleasure as she is for gold and silver, and worthy of the race of Aholah and Aholibah.

  “Her beauty bites and stings the sense, and I myself feel it in some degree, though age, sublime meditation, and the wretchedness of a troubled life have much deadened the sentiment of carnal pleasure in me. Judging by the pain that the success of her adventure with Monsieur d’Anquetil causes you, my son, I conclude that you feel the piercing fang of desire far more keenly than do I, and that you are wrung with jealousy. That is why you blame an action, irregular it is true and contrary to vulgar conventions, but indifferent in itself — or at least which adds little to the universal ill. You condemn me in your heart for having had a share in it, and you think you uphold the moral view of the question when you are but following the prompting of your passions. So do we colour our worst instincts in our own eyes, my son. The morals of mankind have no other origin. Nevertheless confess that it would have been a pity to leave such a handsome girl any longer to that old madman. Agree that Monsieur d’Anquetil, young and handsome as he is, is better suited to such a charming person, and be resigned to what you cannot prevent. Such philosophy is difficult, but it would be still more so were it your mistress who had been taken. Then you would feel teeth of iron torturing your flesh and your mind would be filled with odious and over-definite pictures. These considerations, my son, should mitigate your present suffering. For the matter of that, life is full of pains and suffering. That is what has made us conceive the hope of eternal beatitude.”

  Thus spoke my good master, while the elms lining the royal road fled past us on either side. I refrained from telling him that he merely irritated me in wishing to ease my woes and that unconsciously he touched an open wound.

  Our first relay was at Juvisy where we arrived in the rain in the early morning. Entering the posting inn I found Jael in the chimney-corner where five or six chickens were turning on three spits. She was warming her feet and showing a little bit of silk stocking which greatly disturbed me by the thought of the leg which I pictured to myself, the fine grain of the skin, and its down and all sorts of arresting details.

  Monsieur d’Anquetil leant over the back of her chair, his cheek on his hand. He was calling her his life and his soul, he asked her if she were not hungry, and when she replied that she was, he went out to give orders. Left alone with the faithless one, I looked into her eyes, which reflected the flame of the fire.

  “Ah, Jael!” I exclaimed, “I am very unhappy; you have deceived me, and you love me no longer.”

  “Who has told you that I love you no longer?” she replied, looking at me with a glance of velvet and of flame.

  “Alas! Mademoiselle, it is sufficiently apparent in your behaviour.” —

  “What, Jacques — do you mean to say you grudge me the outfit of fine Dutch linen and the embossed plate this gentleman is going to give me? I ask you only to be discreet until his promises are realised, and you shall see me what I was at the Cross of Les Sablons.”

  “Alas, Jael, meanwhile my rival will enjoy your favours.”

  “I feel,” said she, “that he will not mean much to me, and nothing can efface the memory I have of you. Do not torment yourself about such trifles; they are only of value by your idea of them.”

  “Oh,” I exclaimed, “the very idea is terrible to me, and I fear I shall not survive your treachery.” She looked at me in sympathetic raillery and said, smiling:

  “Believe me, my friend, we shall neither of us die of it. Bethink yourself, Jacques, that I must have linen and plate. Be prudent, do not allow the feelings which trouble you to be seen, and I promise to reward you for your discretion later.”

  This hope somewhat softened my consuming grief. Mine hostess came and laid the lavender-scented cloth, and put the tin-plates, goblets, and jugs on the table. I was very hungry, and when Monsieur d’Anquetil came into the inn with the Abbé and invited us to eat something, I took my place willingly between Jael and my good master. In fear of be
ing pursued we left after hastily devouring three omelets and two small chickens. It was agreed upon that in this pressing danger we should not halt until we got to Sens, where we decided to spend the night.

  I had horrible thoughts of this night, thinking it was to witness the consummation of Jael’s treachery. And this only too legitimate apprehension troubled me to such an extent that I lent but a distracted attention to my good master’s speech — whom the smallest incidents of the journey inspired with admirable reflections.

  My fears were not vain. Alighting at Sens, at the wretched hostelry of the Homme-Armé, scarcely had we eaten our supper when Monsieur d’Anquetil led Jael away to his room, which happened to be next to mine, and I could not taste a moment’s repose. I rose up in the dawn, and fleeing this hateful room I went and sat down mournfully in the carriage-entrance amid the post boys who were drinking white wine and ogling the maid-servants. There I remained for two or three hours meditating on my troubles. The horses were already put to, when Jael appeared under the archway, shivering under her black cloak. I could not bear to look at her. I turned away my eyes. She came up to me and sitting down by me on the door-post said gently that I was not to distress myself, that what I imagined to be so monstrous was really nothing much, that one must be guided by reason, that I was too sensible a man to want a woman to myself alone, and that in that case one took a housekeeper with neither wit nor beauty, and even then there was great risk to be run.

  “I must leave you,” she added, “I hear Monsieur d’Anquetil’s step on the stairs.”

  And she gave me a kiss on the mouth which she lingered over and prolonged in a rapture of fear, for her lover’s boots were creaking on the stairs near us, and the pretty gambler was risking the loss of her Dutch linen and embossed silver centre-piece.

  The postilion lowered the step of the coupé, but Monsieur d’Anquetil asked Jael if it would not be pleasanter for all to sit together in the body of the carriage, and it did not escape me that it was the first result of his intimacy with Jael, and that fulfilling of his desires had rendered solitude with her less attractive. My good master had taken care to borrow five or six bottles of white wine from the cellar of the Homme-Armé, which he had arranged under the cushions and which we drank to pass the time on the way.

  At mid-day we arrived at Joigny, which is quite a pretty town. Foreseeing that I should come to the end of my funds before the close of our journey, and not being able to bear the thought of Monsieur d’Anquetil paying my share of the reckoning without being reduced thereto by the most extreme need, I resolved to sell a ring and a medal of my mother’s that I had by me. I searched the town for a jeweller. I found one in the market-place opposite to the church, who had a shop full of chains and crosses at the sign of the Bonne Foi.

  What was my astonishment at finding my good master there, who, standing before the counter, and drawing from a twist of paper five or six small diamonds which I easily recognised as those which Monsieur d’Astarac had shown us, asked the jeweller what price he thought he could give for the stones!

  The jeweller examined them, then looking at the Abbé over his spectacles said:

  “Monsieur, these stones would be very valuable if they were real. But they are false and there is no need of the touchstone to be assured of it. They are beads of glass, only fit for children’s playthings — unless one were to stick them in the crown of some village statue of Our Lady, where they would make a fine effect.”

  On hearing this Monsieur Coignard took up his diamonds and turned his back on the jeweller. In doing so he perceived me and seemed somewhat confused at the meeting. I finished my business in a very short time, and finding my good master in the doorway, I represented to him the wrong he did himself and his companions in making off with stones which, had they been real, might have been his undoing.

  “My son,” he replied, “God in His desire to keep me guiltless has willed that they should be jewels only in appearance and seeming. I confess that I did wrong to go off with them. You see that I am regetting it, and it is a page in the book of my life I should like to tear out, where several leaves, to speak plainly, are not as clean and immaculate as they should be. I feel keenly how reprehensible my behaviour has been in this particular. But man should not be over-much cast down when he falls into fault; now is the moment for me to say to myself, as did a famous divine, ‘Consider your great weakness, which you put to the proof only too often on the slightest occasion, and nevertheless it is for your good that these things or others like unto them happen to you. All is not over for you if you find yourself often afflicted and sorely tempted, and that though you succumb to temptation. You are man and not God; you are human flesh and no angel. How can you always remain in the same virtuous state when this fidelity has failed the very angels in Heaven and the first man in Paradise?’ Such, Jacques, my son, is the only spiritual discourse and sound self-communion which meet my present state of mind. But is it not time, after this unfortunate step over which we will not linger, to return to our inn, and there in company with the post-boys who are simple folk and easy to deal with, drink one or two bottles of the wine of the place?”

  I sided with this view, and we regained the posthouse where we found Monsieur d’Anquetil, who had also returned from the town bringing back some cards. He played piquet with my good master and when we were on our way again they continued playing in the carriage. This passion for play, by which my rival was carried away, afforded me some freedom with Jael, who talked more willingly with me now that she was deserted. I found a bitter pleasure in these talks. Reproaching her with her treachery and her unfaithfulness I eased my sorrow by complaints now low now loud.

  “Alas, Jael,” said I, “the memory and the vision of our caresses, which were once my dearest delight, have become but cruel torture to me, through the thought that to-day you are for another what you once were for me.”

  She made answer:

  “A woman is not the same with every one.”

  And when I lengthily prolonged my wailings and reproaches, she said:

  “I understand that I have caused you sorrow. But that is no reason why you should overwhelm me a hundred times a day with your useless complaining.”

  When Monsieur d’Anquetil lost, his temper became troublesome. He molested Jael at every opportunity, who, not being patient, threatened to write to her uncle Mosaïde to come and fetch her away. These quarrels at first afforded me some glimmer of hope and rejoicing, but after they had been renewed several times, I saw them arise with anxiety, having recognised the fact that they were followed by impetuous reconciliations which proclaimed themselves to my ears in sudden kisses, whisperings and lustful sighs. Monsieur d’Anquetil could scarcely endure me. But, on the other hand, he had a lively affection for my good master, who deserved it by his equable and smiling temper and the incomparable elegance of his wit. They played and drank together in a sympathy which grew with every day. With knees approached to support the table on which they threw down the cards, they laughed, joked, and teased one another, and though it sometimes happened that they threw the cards at each other’s heads, exchanging abuse that would have made blush the dockmen of the Port St. Nicholas or the boatmen of the Mall, and though Monsieur d’Anquetil swore before God, the Virgin and all the saints that he had never in his life seen a worse scoundrel than Abbé Coignard even at the end of a rope, one felt that he dearly loved my good master, and it was amusing to hear him a moment after say laughingly:

  “L’Abbé — you shall be my chaplain and my partner at piquet. You must also hunt with us. We must search the whole county of Perche for a horse strong enough to carry you, and you shall have a hunting-outfit such as I have seen on the bishop of Uzès. It is high time anyway that you had some new clothes, for, without complaining, Monsieur l’Abbé, your breeches really scarcely cover you at the back.”

  Jael also yielded to the irresistible attraction which inclined souls to my good master. She resolved to repair as well as possible the d
isorder of his toilet. She pulled one of her dresses to pieces and made him a present of a lace handkerchief to make some bands. My good master received these small gifts with graceful dignity. I had occasion to remark it several times: he carried himself gallantly towards women. He showed an interest in them which never became indiscreet, praised them with the insight of a connoisseur, gave them counsel gained in his long experience, and shielded them with the infinite indulgence of a heart ready to pardon all weaknesses, and yet neglected no occasion to make them listen to great and useful truths.

  Reaching Montbard on the fourth day we stopped on a height whence we could perceive the whole town, lying in a small compass as if it had been painted on canvas by some clever workman careful to put in all the details.

  “Look upon these walls, these towers, belfries and roofs which rise above the verdure,” said my good master. “They constitute a town, and without seeking to know its name or its history, it befits us to reflect upon it as one of the most worthy subjects of meditation that can be offered us on the face of the globe. Indeed, a town of any kind affords the mind subject for speculation. The postboys tell us this is Montbard. The place is unknown to me. Nevertheless, I do not fear to affirm by analogy that the people who dwell there, like ourselves, are egoistic, cowardly, treacherous, greedy and debauched. Otherwise they would not be men, nor descended from Adam, in whom, being at once miserable and yet worthy of veneration, all our instincts even down to the very lowest have their august source. The only point on which one might hesitate is to know whether those people down there are more disposed to the love of food than to reproduction of their kind. Yet no doubt is permissable; a philosopher will form the sane opinion that hunger, for these unfortunate beings, is a more pressing goad than love. In my salad days I thought the human animal was inclined above all things to the union of the sexes. But it was merely a snare; and it is plain that men are more interested in preserving life than in giving it. Hunger is the axis of humanity: but as it is idle to dispute the matter here I will say, if you wish, that mortal life has two poles, hunger and love. And now is the moment to lend me your ears and your hearts! These hideous creatures, who are bent on furiously devouring or embracing one another, live together under laws which straitly forbid them the satisfying of this double and deep-seated concupiscence. These ingenuous animals, having become citizens, willingly impose on themselves privations of all kinds, respect the property of others, which is a prodigious thing considering their greedy nature, and observe a modesty, a common but enormous hypocrisy, consisting in rarely speaking of what they think of continually. For own, in all good faith, Messieurs, when we see a woman it is not the beauty of her soul and the qualities of her mind on which our thoughts fix themselves, and in talk with her it is her natural traits we have principally in view. And the charming creature knows it so well, that dressed by a clever milliner she has taken care only to veil her attractions by heightening them with various artifices. And Mademoiselle Jael, who is no savage, would be quite distressed if art in her had the upper hand over nature to such a point that one could not see the fulness of her bosom and the roundness of her form. So, in whatever way we regard men since the fall of Adam we see them hungry and incontinent. Whence comes it then that gathered together in towns they impose privations of all sorts on themselves, and submit themselves to a regimen completely opposed to their corrupt nature. It has been said that they found it to their advantage, and that they felt that this constraint was the price of their safety. But that is to suppose them unreasonable, and, what is more, using a wrong reasoning, for it is ridiculous to save one’s life at the cost of what constitutes its excuse and its value. It has also been said that fear held them obedient, and it is true that imprisonment, the gallows and the wheel, all successfully insure obedience to laws. But certain it is that prejudice has gone hand in hand with the laws, and one cannot well see how constraint has been so universally established. One defies laws as the necessary relations of things, but we have just seen that these relations, far from being necessary, are in flat contradiction to nature. Hence, Messieurs, I seek the source and origin of laws not in mankind but beyond them, and I believe that being strange to mankind they come from God, Who has shaped with His mysterious Hands not only the earth and the water, plants and animals, but even nations and societies. I believe that laws emanate straight from Him, from His first decalogue and that they are inhuman because they are divine. You quite understand that I am considering codes in their underlying principles and essence, without wishing to enter into their laughable diversity and pitiable complications. The details of custom and prescription both written and spoken, are man’s part in it, and this part may be disdained. But do not let us fear to acknowledge it. The City is a divine institution. From which it results that every government should be a theocracy. A priest noted for the share he took in the Declaration of 1682, Monsieur Bossuet, was not mistaken in wanting to lay down political rules after the maxims of Holy Scripture, and if he failed miserably, one can only blame the weakness of his genius which dully clung to examples drawn from the book of Judges and Kings, failing to see that God, when He works in this world, has regard to time and space and knows how to differentiate between the French and the Israelites. The City, re-established under this, the only true and lawful authority, would not be the city of Joshua, Saul, nor David, it would more likely be the city of the Gospel, the city of the poor, where the workman and the prostitute will not be put to shame by the Pharisee. Oh, Messieurs, how well it would be to draw from the Scriptures a more beautiful and sacred policy than that which was painfully extracted by Monsieur Bossuet, so strict and harsh in style. What a City, more harmonious than that which Orpheus raised to the sounds of his lyre, shall rise on the teachings of Jesus Christ, the day when His priests, no longer sold to emperors and kings, shall show themselves as the true princes of the people!”