“It was,” thought the mulatto, “at the time that I was writing articles for the Grand Universal Encyclopedia. I was living in a fine furnished room in a hotel in the Rue de Seine. I must have my amiable visitor’s card somewhere still.” Stretching out his thin brown arm he reached an old cigar box full of papers from the mantelpiece, and began to rummage in it.
The slowly accumulated contents of a drawer had doubtless been emptied bodily into the box at the time of some removal, for the papers on the top were the oldest. An envelope which he opened only recalled distant and confused souvenirs. “Ah!” he thought, “this is from my poor brother, the coffee merchant at Saint Paul. He was not attracted to Paris; he was not wrought upon as I was by ideas,” and he read out haphazard:
“You must have learnt from the newspapers that a cyclone has passed over Bourbon Island and destroyed all the plantations. So I have gone into guano. And you? are you still writing rot for Parisian rags?”
“Unhappy man! unhappy man!” murmured Godet-Laterrasse. Leaning on his pillow he opened another letter in the same writing and read once more:
“I can’t send you any money, because, coffee having fallen, I had to invest all my available capital while the market was glutted with low-priced products. I did a magnificent stroke of business. You will understand, therefore, that it is impossible for me to send you any money. Durand, who has just returned from Paris, tells me that you are still going in for public meetings and riots on the boulevards. You will get your head broken one of these days, and your friends will say you belonged to the secret police. When you are tired of playing the fool, come back to Bourbon. You can keep my shop; it is a lazy man’s work which will suit you perfectly.”
“Keep his shop! what blasphemy,” cried Monsieur Godet-Laterrasse.
And he flung aside the impious letter. The bottom of the box was full of invitations to nonreligious funerals, judgment summonses, bills, and cuttings from newspapers. One of these, on the back of which was a pedicure’s advertisement, illustrated by a bare foot on a stool, he read with a smile:
“One of our most valiant spirits, one of our most hardy pioneers of progress, Monsieur Godet-Laterrasse, a creole from Réunion Island, is putting the finishing touches to his great book, ‘The Regeneration of Society by the Black Races.’ One of the principal chapters of this important work is to appear immediately in The Literary Funnel “Alas!” thought Godet-Laterrasse, “just as the chapter was about to appear The Literary Funnel died. How many journals perish thus in the flower of their youth!”
ALIDOR SAINTE-LUCIE
BARRISTER
Formerly Minister of Public Instruction, and of the Navy, Member of the Chamber of Deputies, President of the Haitian Artistic Commission
GRAND HOTEL, PARIS
At last he found among a handful of visiting cards the one he was looking for. He considered it attentively and read it over:
And, in the midst of the smoke which filled the room, Godet-Laterrasse saw a vision of the gigantic mulatto arriving from Haïti, all smiles and money. He blew out the candle and went to sleep.
His dreams were peopled with spectres. The shade of the restaurant-keeper in Bather’s Alley advanced limping towards him, and said, in a terrifyingly gentle voice, “Don’t forget me, Monsieur Godet.”
It was nearly nine o’clock, and it was still raining, when the first streak of day entered the room: when it did come, it was only the disgusting reflection of a dirty borrowed light. The room had no other outlook than on to the wall propping up the neighbouring house, a house which, with its five plaster storeys, overlooked all the roofs in the passage. This rugged bulging wall, cracked, broken, green, and sweating, was terminated by the brickwork balcony of an Italian terrace five or six yards higher than Godet-Laterrasse’s room, which it clothed in eternal shadow. The window was separated from the wall by a boggy alley, two yards wide, strewn with salad leaves, egg-shells, and the remnants of paper kites.
When the mulatto awoke, he looked at the dripping window-panes, picked up his heavy boots, which had left a damp mark on the floor, and put them on regretfully. Then, having finished his austere toilet, he seized the ruins of his umbrella, and left the room. A confused grumbling met him as he passed the concierge’s lodge.
“I have not forgotten your little bill, Madame Alexandre,” he said.
He mounted the ten topmost steps of the Passage Cotin, and walked, in a river of mud, past the desolate façade of the Swiss Chalet, and the stone yards of the Votive Church. At the bottom of the Rue Lepic he stopped short, so as not to walk over two bits of straw which formed a cross on the pavement, in front of a packer’s shop. Having avoided this danger (for he was sure that to walk over a cross would bring him ill luck), his lofty mood returned to him, and with his magnificent head thrown back again he continued on his way, an intellectual conqueror, towards the heart of Paris, carrying high the eight-pointed framework of his dilapidated umbrella, which looked like the complicated weapon of a savage warrior.
CHAPTER II
MONSIEUR ALIDOR SAINTE- LUCIE, son of a rich merchant of Port-au-Prince, studied for the law in Paris, and returned to Haiti to be present at the coronation of Soulouque, crowned emperor under the name of Faustin I. As a coloured man, and a man of means, he had everything to fear from his black Majesty. He went bravely ahead in the face of danger, and made himself remarked in the imperial palace by his zeal in upholding the sovereign’s policy. Appointed Attorney-General at the imperial court of Port-au-Prince, he had a few of his fellow-citizens shot, quite unmaliciously. He accepted from the emperor the office of Minister of Public Instruction, and of the Navy; then, thinking that he perceived a secret but energetic opposition springing up against him, he took a holiday, and made a trip to France.
From Paris he wrote letters warmly supporting the revolution which put an end to the sanguinary gaieties of the black empire, and returned to Haïti to be elected member of the Chamber of Deputies. His first act in the Assembly was to introduce a measure proposing to erect an expiatory monument to the memory of the victims of tyranny. Certainly, the least that the former Attorney-General could do for some of these victims, was to give them a tomb.
The project was taken into consideration, the proposition carried, and the citizen, Alidor Sainte-Lucie, was made president of the commission charged with the execution of this national work. Monsieur Alidor quite understood the advantage which this presidentship conferred on him. Whenever there was any shooting going on in the island he took out a passport and went to Paris to get new plans for the monument. He adored Paris because of its little theatres and its political cafés. At the end of twenty years the artistic commission was still in full activity.
Monsieur Alidor Sainte-Lucie was a very handsome mulatto, with an immense athletic frame. He carried his copper-coloured face proudly, and had, in spite of his flat nose, a grand air, especially since his hair, retreating from his brow, had left it shining like bronze. He made no attempt to disguise his age, and wore his grizzled beard clipped close. Very particular about his personal appearance, he affected white waistcoats and patent leather shoes, and saturated himself with heavy, sickly perfumes.
Thus well dressed and scented, his powerful figure showing off well in clothes of faultless English cut, he walked up and down his room at the Grand Hotel, waiting for the tutor, while his son drew caricatures on the cover of a book, and a waiter laid a table for three persons, near the fire.
Sketches, models, plaster casts, sepia drawings, photographs, and plans of every sort for the commemorative monument to the victims of tyranny, lay about and encumbered the furniture. On a side table was a little pyramid of painted plaster covered with gilded palms; on the secretary stood a terra - cotta column surmounted by a sort of winged monkey, with the following inscription on the pedestal: “To the Genius of Black Liberty.” A photograph on the chimney-piece in front of the mirror represented a negress standing before a sarcophagus, on which she was depositing a roll of paper bearing
these simple words: “Artistic Commission; Monsieur Sainte-Lucie, president.” Nothing more!
On the ground was a half-open hand in cast iron, a gigantic hand emerging from a curtain-like sleeve. A label hung from the wrist: “Portion of Design No. 17, full size, E.D.”
Three little golden brown rolls lay on the table-napkins. Monsieur Sainte-Lucie looked at the clock. Perhaps the crisp glazed crust of the bread aroused his appetite, or perhaps he was afraid of being kept waiting; his sleepy eyes, which a few moments before had shone so gently under their somewhat distended lids, suddenly flashed with a wild light. They softened again, however, when Godet-Laterrasse appeared in the doorway. As the waiter held back the curtain, one saw first a chin with an Adam’s apple showing prominently above a white cotton cravat. Godet-Laterrasse bowed.
“My son, Remi,” said Sainte-Lucie, presenting the young man, who, consenting to leave his unfinished sketch, came forward with a lazy swagger.
He was a handsome boy, with a pure olive complexion, who rolled his big, bored-looking eyes, and seemed to open his great sensual mouth at random.
When they sat down, Monsieur Sainte-Lucie took up twice as much room as Monsieur Godet-Laterrasse. The mulatto from Haïti was of a warm, golden tone, which appeared richer still when contrasted with the other’s which seemed to have been smeared with soot and then badly washed. The mulatto from Bourbon was weak-looking, rumpled, and muddy; but his naïvely pompous expression, and his childish pride, inspired the kind of pity one feels for a learned dog or an unfortunate genius.
The affair which brought them together was broached between the devilled kidneys and the green peas. It was Godet-Laterrasse who opened the question.
“Well, my friend,” said he, tapping his future pupil on the shoulder, “so we are going to take our degree at the old university?”
Monsieur Alidor rose to the bait and said, crumbling his bread nonchalantly:
“As I wrote to you, my dear Godet — and, by-the-bye, I had a great deal of trouble to find your address. It was Brandt — you know Brandt, the tailor — who discovered it by the merest chance; it seems he was looking for you also.”
“It is quite possible,” said Godet-Laterrasse, making a movement as though to brush something away.
“As I wrote to you, I am counting on you to prepare this scamp here for his degree, and to make a man of him.”
Monsieur Godet-Laterrasse braced himself against the back of his chair till his head was almost horizontal, and said:
“Before we go further, my dear Sainte-Lucie, I must make my profession of faith. My principles are unshakable. I am a man of iron, whom you may break, but you cannot bend.”
“I know, I know,” said Sainte-Lucie, as he continued to crumble his bread.
“The education which I shall give your son will be essentially a liberal education.”
“I know, I know.”
“It is a civic degree which I shall ensure our Remi winning gloriously. In preparing him for it, I shall consider not so much the candidate for university honours as the legislator of the Haitian Republic. After all, what does that pedantic old witch of a university matter to me?”
The former Minister, who was a practical as well as an eloquent man, signed to him with his eyebrows not to talk in this way before his pupil; but the liberal preceptor, carried away by the sublimity of his personal ideas, went on:
“The university means monopoly, the university means routine, the university represents the enemy! Down with the university!” Then laying his hand on the arm of the young man, who seemed too indifferent to be surprised: “My friend, if I prepare you to take your degree, I shall teach you the primordial truths; so that when, on leaving my hands, you present yourself before the examiners at the Sorbonne, you will be their judge rather than they yours. You can say to the Caros and the Taillandiers, ‘I have principles, and you have none. It is that man of iron, it is Godet-Laterrasse, who has formed my mind.’ Ha! these fine gentlemen will know who I am some day!”
During this speech young Remi was tranquilly occupied in surreptitiously extracting lumps of sugar from the basin and slipping them into his pocket.
Monsieur Alidor, who was naturally inclined to appreciate eloquence, thought this method of preparing for an examination was fine, but a little perilous. As he was naturally very obstinate, however, he did not give up the idea of confiding his son to the creole from Bourbon.
“Remi,” he said, carelessly drawing a louis from his pocket, “go and get some cigars downstairs. Say that they are for me.”
Left alone with his guest, he continued to crumble his bread silently. He had a special way of holding his tongue, which was mysterious and imposing. Then, in the gentle voice of a man sure of his own strength, he pointed out to the future preceptor that it was a question of working to pass the examinations — an essentially practical enterprise; that the programme must be followed to the letter; and that, as a matter of fact, Greek and Latin were of more importance than primordial truths.
“Certainly, certainly,” replied the man of iron.
Asked if he had had any experience of teaching, his reply was vague.
They then came to the question of money.
The former Minister asked the tutor to accept a monthly salary of two hundred francs; but Godet-Laterrasse refused to consider this bagatelle, with an indignant shake of the head.
Remi came back with the cigars, followed by a slight good-looking man whose golden beard swept his chest. He did not take off the small soft hat he wore on the back of his head like a cap.
“You are welcome, Labanne,” said Sainte-Lucie, without rising to greet him. “Will you have a cigar?”
Labanne’s only answer was to take an amber-mounted meerschaum pipe and a tobacco-pouch with the arms of Brittany from his pocket. He walked round the room, looking with the air of a connoisseur at the photograph on the mantelpiece. Finally he threw a side-glance at the terra-cotta column.
“Who,” said he, “is the joker who furnished you with this model of a stove-pipe?” Then, affecting to be interested in the gilded pyramid, he closed his eyes and said:— “They have forgotten the slit to put the pennies through.” As the others did not understand, he added:— “Of course, the thing was meant for a money-box.”
“What can I do? I take what is given me,” said Sainte-Lucie philosophically. “You haven’t brought your design, have you, Labanne?”
“I am working at it,” replied the sculptor.
“No later than yesterday I read in a medical journal a most interesting article on the pigmentum of the black races; and I bought this morning, at a book-stall on the Quai Voltaire kept by a friend of mine, a treatise on the geological formation of the Antilles.”
“And what for?” asked Sainte-Lucie absolutely at a loss, although he knew the man he was dealing with.
“If I wish to execute my idea for the monument,” said Labanne in a disdainful tone, “I must, before I even touch the clay, have read fifteen hundred volumes. All is contained in all. It is an artificial and wrong method to attempt to treat any subject in an isolated fashion. Hullo! you here, Godet! By what chance? I didn’t see you before.”
The mulatto from Bourbon Island, who was leaning against the mantelpiece, his right hand stuck between the buttons of his frock-coat, smiled bitterly.
The sculptor, having re-lighted his pipe, went on:
“I am not merely a natural force, a brute force. I am not like the bird who laid that monkey,” pointing with the stem of his pipe to the genius of Black Liberty. “I am an intelligence, a conscience; I put thought into my work.”
Monsieur Alidor Sainte-Lucie nodded his head approvingly; but he insisted on the sculptor giving him a drawing, a simple sketch, which he could show to the Commissioners. He was leaving for Haïti in a week.
Labanne flung himself on the sofa and seemed lost in profound meditation.
At last, after knocking the ashes from his pipe and spitting on the carpet, he looked up at the
ceiling and said:
“What right have we to create imaginary beings? Phidias, or Michael-Angelo, or So-and-So makes a figure which has a semblance of life, which forces itself on our attention and penetrates to our imaginations. It is the Athene of the Parthenon, it is Moses, or the Nymph of Asnières. It is spoken about, it is dreamed about. There is a being the more in the world! What will it do then? It will perturb minds, corrupt hearts, inflame the senses, and make a fool of the public generally. Every work of art, every creation of human genius is a dangerous illusion and a guilty fraud. Sculptors, painters, and poets are magnificent liars, sublime scoundrels — nothing more. I who now speak to you, I was madly in love for six months with the Antiope of the Salon Carré, which means that for six months that rascal of a Correggio had the laugh of me.
“Do you know my friend Branchut the moralist? He is ugly, but he doesn’t know it. He is poor and full of talent. His knowledge of Greek is the astonishment of all the cafés of the Quartier, and he has read Hegel. He lives on a roll of bread and a drink from the street fountains. When he has finished his bird-like repast, he writes divine things in the public gardens, or under doorways if it is raining. When he remembers, he comes and sleeps in my studio. One night he wrote a most subtle and learned commentary on the Phædo on the wall. Such is Branchut.
“Last year I lent him a coat and took him to see a Russian princess whose bust I was going to do; but she wanted the bust in marble and I could only see it in bronze. One can but realise what one sees, so the bust was never done. She was looking for a professor of literature for her daughter Fédora, an extremely beautiful girl. I proposed Branchut, and he was accepted. Thanks to my recommendation and his shabby appearance, he was paid a month in advance. He bought two shirts, took a furnished room, and made acquaintance with German sausage.
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 294