“Monsieur de Saint-Sylvain,” he said one morning, after a bad night, “you have several times spoken to me of Dr. Rodrigue. Send for him.”
At that moment Dr. Rodrigue was reported to be at the Cape, in Melbourne, and in St. Petersburg. Cablegrams and radiograms were instantly despatched to these places. Less than a week had passed before the King was urgently asking for Dr. Rodrigue. As the days went by, he asked every minute: “Will he not be here soon?” It was pointed out to him that His Majesty was not a client to be despised, and that Rodrigue was wont to travel with astonishing swiftness. But nothing could calm the sick man’s impatience.
“He will not come,” he sighed. “You’ll see that he will not come.”
A telegram arrived from Genoa, announcing that Rodrigue was sailing on board the Preussen. Three days later the world-famed doctor, after having paid a visit of insolent deference to his colleagues, Saumon and Machellier, presented himself at the Palace.
He was younger and better looking than Dr. Saumon, with a prouder and more aristocratic air. Out of respect for Nature, whom he obeyed in all things, he allowed his hair and beard to grow, so that he bore a resemblance to those ancient philosophers whom the Greeks have represented in marble.
After examining the King, he said:
“Sire, the physicians, who speak of illnesses as the blind speak of colours, say that you are suffering from neurasthenia, or weakness of the nerves. But, when they have diagnosed your complaint, they will not be any better able to cure it, for an organic tissue cannot be reconstituted save by the same means that Nature employed to build it up, and of these means they are ignorant. Now what are the means, the processes, of Nature? She knows neither hand nor tool; she is subtle and spiritual; for her most powerful and massive constructions she employs the infinitely tenuous particles of matter, the atom, the protyle. From an impalpable mist she makes rocks, metals, plants, animals, and men. How? By attraction, gravitation, transpiration, penetration, imbibition, endosmosis, affinity and sympathy. She makes a grain of sand exactly as she made the Milky Way; the harmony of the spheres reigns equally in both; they both exist by reason of the movement of the particles which compose them, which is their musical soul, amorous and always in motion. Between the stars in the sky, and the dust which is dancing in the ray of sunlight crossing this room, there is no structural difference, and the smallest of these atoms of dust is as wonderful as Sirius, for the miracle in all the bodies of the universe is the infinite minuteness of which they are compact, and by which they are animated. That is how Nature works. From the imperceptible, the impalpable, the imponderable, she has derived this vast world, accessible to our senses, which our mind weighs and measures, and that of which we ourselves are made is no more than a breath. Let us work, as she does, through the imponderable, the impalpable, the imperceptible, by loving attraction and subtle penetration. That is the principle. How shall it be applied in the present case? How to restore life to the exhausted nerves? That is what we have to consider.
“First of all, what are the nerves? If we ask for a definition the meanest physiologist, even a Machellier or a Saumon, will give it us. What are the nerves? They are cords, fibres, which proceed from the brain and the spinal column, and distribute themselves through every part of the body, in order to transmit sensorial excitations, and to cause the motor organs to function. They are therefore sensation and movement. That is enough to teach us their inward constitution, to reveal their essence: by whatever name we call it, it is identical with that which in the order of sensations we call Pleasure, and in the moral order Happiness. Whereever there is an atom of Pleasure and Happiness there will be found the material that repairs the nerves. When I speak of an atom of Pleasure I refer to a material object, a definite substance, a body capable of passing through the four states, solid, liquid, gaseous and radiant, a body of which one can determine the atomic weight. The joy and sadness of which men, animals, and plants have experienced the effect since the dawn of things are real substances; they are matter, since they are mind, and since under her three aspects of matter, mind, and movement, Nature is one. It is therefore merely a matter of procuring atoms of joy in sufficient numbers, and of introducing them into the system by endosmosis and cutaneous aspiration. For this reason I prescribe that you must wear the shirt of a happy man.”
“What!” cried the King. “You wish me to wear the shirt of a happy man?”
“Next your shin, Sire, in order that your dry skin may aspire the particles of Happiness which the sudorific glands of the happy man have exhaled through the excretory canals of his thriving dermis. For you are not ignorant of the functions of the skin; it inspires and exhales, and effects incessant exchanges according to the environment in which it is placed.”
“Then that is the remedy which you order me, Monsieur Rodrigue?”
“Sire, it would be impossible to order a more rational one. I find nothing in the pharmacopeia which would takes its place. Ignorant of nature, and incapable of imitating her, our quacks merely concoct a few drugs in their laboratories which are always dangerous and seldom efficacious. The medicaments which we cannot concoct, such as leeches, mountain air, natural thermal waters, asses’ milk, wild cat’s skin, and the humours exuding from a happy man, we must take ready made....
Do you not know that a raw potato carried in the pocket removes rheumatic pains? You do not want a natural remedy. You prefer artificial or chemical remedies; drugs; you must have drops and powders; but have you much reason to be satisfied with your drops and powders?”
The King apologized, and promised to obey.
Dr. Rodrigue, who had already reached the door, turned and said:
“Let it be slightly warmed before you put it
CHAPTER III. MESSIEURS DE QUATREFEUILLES AND DE SAINT-SYLVAIN SEARCH FOR A HAPPY MAN IN THE KING’S PALACE
(ANXIOUS to wear this shirt, by which he expected to be healed, Christophe V sent for Monsieur de Quatrefeuilles, his First Equerry, and Monsieur de Saint-Sylvain, his private secretary, and directed them to procure it for him with the least possible delay. It was arranged that they should maintain an absolute secrecy with regard to the object of their search. There was indeed reason to fear that if the public came to know the kind of remedy the King required, a host of afflicted persons, and in particular the most unfortunate, the most hopelessly crippled by poverty, would offer their shirts in the hope of a reward. It was also feared that the anarchists might send poisoned shirts.
These two gentlemen considered that they would be able to obtain Dr. Rodrigue’s remedy without leaving the Palace, and took up a position in the royal ante-chamber, where they could watch the courtiers go by. Those they saw had a despondent air and emaciated faces; they were consumed with a longing for an appointment, an order, a privilege or a button. But on descending to the great apartments, they found Monsieur du Bocage asleep in an arm-chair. The corners of his mouth turned up to his cheek-bones; his nostrils dilated, his cheeks round and shining like two suns, his throat melodious, his belly quiet and rhythmical; smiling, exuding joy from the top of his glistening cranium down to the turned-out toes of the light slippers which terminated his widely separated legs.
At the sight of him, Quatrefeuilles said:
“We need seek no farther. When he wakes up we will ask him for his shirt.”
At that moment the sleeper rubbed his eyes, stretched himself, and looked piteously about him. The corners of his mouth dropped, his cheeks fell, and his eyelids drooped like the washing outside poor folks’ windows; his whole person expressed boredom, regret, and disappointment.
Recognizing the equerry and the private secretary, he said:
“Ah, gentlemen, I have just had a beautiful dream. I dreamed that the King had raised my lands of La Bocage to a Marquisate. Alas, it is nothing but a dream, and I know only too well that the King’s intentions are quite otherwise.”
“Let us get on,” said Saint-Sylvain. “It is getting late; we have no time to lose.”
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In the gallery, they came across a peer of the realm who astonished everybody by the strength of his character, and the profundity of his mind. His enemies did not deny his disinterestedness, his sincerity, or his courage. It was known that he was writing his memoirs, and every one flattered him in the hope that they might cut a respectable figure there in the eyes of posterity.
“Perhaps he is happy,” said Saint-Sylvain.
“Let’s ask him,” said Quatrefeuilles.
They accosted him, exchanged a few remarks, and then, turning the conversation to the subject of Happiness, put to him the question that interested them.
“Riches, and Honour,” he said, “do not interest me, and even the most legitimate and natural affections, family ties, and the pleasures of friendship cannot fill my heart. I care for nothing but the public good; it is the unhappiest of passions, and the most cruelly thwarted of affections.
“I have enjoyed power; I have refused to support, with the funds of the Treasury and the blood of our soldiers, the expeditions organized by filibusters and merchants for their own enrichment, and the public ruin; I did not surrender the army and the fleet as a prey to contractors, and I was subjected to the calumnies of all the rogues who reproached me, amid the plaudits of the imbecile mob, with betraying the sacred interests and the glory of my mother country. No one has supported me against these high-class thieves. Seeing of what folly and cowardice popular opinion is compounded, I regret absolute power. The King’s weakness drives me desperate; the littleness of the great is to me a disgusting spectacle; the incapacity and dishonesty of the ministers, and the ignorance, baseness, and venality of the people’s representatives throw me alternately into fits of rage and stupor. To console myself for the ills which I endure by day I record them at night, and thus I disgorge the gall upon which I feed.”
Quatrefeuilles and Saint-Sylvain raised their hats to the noble peer, and, walking a few steps down the gallery, they found themselves confronted by a very small man, apparently hump-backed, for his back was visible over his head. He was mincing along in a waddling conspicuous manner.
“It is useless to ask him,” said Quatrefeuilles.
“Who knows?” said Saint-Sylvain.
“Believe me; I know him,” replied the Equerry. “I am in his confidence. He is quite pleased with himself, and perfectly satisfied with his appearance; and he has reason to be so. That little hump-back is a favourite with the women. Ladies of the Court and the city, actresses, merchants’ wives, female rakes, cocottes, prudes, religious women — the proudest, the most beautiful are at his feet. In satisfying them, he is losing his health and even his life, and now, having fallen into a melancholy, he is enduring the burden of being a mascot.”
The sun was setting, and learning that the King would not appear that day the last courtiers were quitting the apartments.
“I would gladly give my shirt,” said Quatrefeuilles. “I may say that I have a happy temperament. Always contented, I drink, eat, and sleep well. I am complimented on my cheerful expression, and I am reckoned good looking; I have no complaint to make about my face. But I feel a weight and heat in the bladder, which take all the joy out of life. This morning I got rid of a stone as big as a pigeon’s egg. I fear that my shirt would be of no value to the King.”
“I would gladly give mine,” said Saint-Sylvain, “but I also have a stone. It is my wife. I married the ugliest and most malicious creature that ever existed, and although we know that future is in God’s hands, I make bold to assert that she is the ugliest and most malicious person that ever will exist, for the repetition of such an original is so highly improbable that one may regard it as impossible. There are some tricks which Nature never plays twice.” Then leaving this painful subject, he said: “Quatrefeuilles, my friend, we have been lacking in judgment. It is not at Court, or among the mighty of this world, that we must search for a happy man.”
“You speak like a philosopher,” replied Quatrefeuilles. “You express yourself like that beggarly Jean-Jacques. You do yourself an injustice. There are just as many men who are happy, and worthy of being so, in the palaces of kings, and in the houses of the aristocracy, as in the cafes frequented by men of letters, or the cabarets to which the artisans resort. If we have not found a happy man to-day beneath this roof it is only because it is getting late, and we have not had a suitable chance. Let us visit the Queen’s card-table to-night and we shall have better luck.”
“Look for a happy man at a gaming table!” exclaimed Saint-Sylvain. “One might as well look for a pearl necklace in a turnip-field, or for truth in the mouth of a statesman! The Spanish Ambassador is giving a party to-night; the whole city will be there. Let us go thither, and we shall easily lay our hands on a good and suitable shirt.”
“It has happened to me sometimes,” said Quatrefeuilles, “to place my hand on the chemise of a happy woman. It was a real pleasure. But our happiness was but momentary. If I tell you this, it is not to boast (there is really no reason why I should), nor to recall past joys, which may return, for, contrary to the proverb, every age has the same pleasures. My intention is far different; it is more serious, and more virtuous, and refers directly to the august mission with which we are both entrusted: it is to submit to you an idea which has just come into my mind. Don’t you think, Saint-Sylvain, that in prescribing the shirt of a happy man, Dr. Rodrigue was using the term ‘ man’ in the generic sense, regarding the whole human species, without reference to sex, and meaning a woman’s chemise as much as a man’s shirt? For my part, I am inclined to believe it, and if you were of the same opinion we could extend the field of our researches and more than double our chances of success, for in a polished and elegant society such as our own, the women are happier than the men; we do more for them than they for us. Saint-Sylvain, our task being thus enlarged, we could divide it. Thus, for example, from to-night until to-morrow morning I could look for a happy woman while you were searching for a happy man. Admit, my friend, that a lady’s chemise is a delicate article. I have already handled one that would pass through a ring; the batiste was finer than a cobweb. And what do you say, my friend, to that chemise which a lady at the Court of France, in the time of Marie-Antoinette, wore at a ball worked into her head-dress? We should deserve the King’s gratitude, it seems to me, were we to present to the King our master a beautiful linen chemise, with insertions, Valenciennes trimmings, and magnificent rose ribbon shoulder-straps, lighter than a breath, and scented with fragrance of iris and of love.”
But Saint-Sylvain protested vigorously against this interpretation of Dr. Rodrigue’s prescription.
“What are you thinking of, Quatrefeuilles?” he cried. “A woman’s chemise would only provide the King with a woman’s happiness, which would be a source of shame and misery. I shall not at present consider the question, Quatrefeuilles, as to whether woman is more capable of happiness than man. This is neither the time nor the place; it is time to go to dinner. The physiologists attribute to women a more delicate sensibility than our own: but these are only transcendental generalities, which pass over people’s heads, and do not take in anybody. I do not know whether, as you appear to believe, our polished society is better adapted for the happiness of women than for that of men. I notice that, in our world, they neither rear their children nor look after their homes; they know nothing, do nothing, and kill themselves with fatigue. They are consumed by shining; it is the fate of a candle. I do not know that it is an enviable condition. But that is not the question. Some day, perhaps, there will be only one sex; perhaps there may be three, or even more. In that case, sexual morality will be richer, fuller, and more varied. Meanwhile, we have two sexes; there is a good deal of each in the other, a good deal of man in the woman, and of woman in man. Still, they are distinct; they have each their nature, their habits, and their laws, their pleasures and their pains. If you were to emasculate his idea of happiness, with what a frozen gaze our King would thenceforward regard Madame de la Poule! Perhaps, indeed,
owing to hypochondria and weakness, he might go so far as to compromise the honour of our glorious country. Is that what you wish, Quatrefeuilles?
“Cast your eyes, in the gallery of the Royal Palace, upon the history of Hercules, worked in Gobelin tapestry, and see what happened to that hero, who was particularly unfortunate in connection with chemises. For a jest he put on that of Omphale, and afterwards could only spin wool. That is the destiny which your imprudence is preparing for our illustrious monarch.”
“Oh! oh!” said the First Equerry. “We will take it that I never mentioned it, and let us say no more about it.”
CHAPTER IV. JERONIMO
THE Spanish Embassy blazed and twinkled in the night. The clouds were gilded by the reflection of its lights. Garlands of fire, edging the alleys of the park, gave the adjacent foliage the transparency and brilliancy of emeralds. Bengal fire reddened the sky above the lofty black trees. An invisible orchestra cast its voluptuous airs to the light breeze. The elegant crowd of guests covered the lawn; dresses moved restlessly in the shadows; military uniforms shone with crosses and orders; bright figures glided gracefully over the grass, leaving a trail of perfume behind them.
Quatrefeuilles, seeing two illustrious statesmen, the President of the Council and his predecessor, talking together under the statue of Fortune, thought of accosting them. But Saint-Sylvain dissuaded him from his purpose.
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 381