Only a few years before, this same man had circumvented the policy of England and imparted a vigorous stimulus to French diplomacy in Europe. Then he fell with honour, and was followed in his retirement by a profound but honourable unpopularity. And now, behold his powers are unequal to the task of dislodging a ball from a tree. Such is the frailty of man. As for his daughter, Marie’s daughter, a sort of presentiment forbade me to look in her face. And then when at length I did look at her, I could not tear myself away from such a sorrowful object of contemplation. She was no longer the little pink and white child I had seen in the Champs-Elysées; she had grown taller and thinner, and her face was wan as a waxen taper. Her languid eyes were encircled with blue rings. And her temples . . . what invisible hand had laid those two sad violets upon her temples?
“There! there! there!” cried the old man as he stretched forth a trembling arm which pointed aimlessly in all directions.
The first thing to be done was to help him. By means of a stone which I threw up into the tree, I soon managed to bring the ball down. X . . . witnessed its fall with childish delight. He had not recognized me. I hurriedly escaped to spare him the trouble of thanking me and myself the agony of seeing the change that had taken place in Marie’s daughter.
10th August
I seldom go out. I am no longer moved by the beauty of things. Or to speak more truly, the more pleasurable and splendid aspects of nature give me pain. All day long I sully sheet after sheet of paper and beguile the tedious hours with the half-faded recollections of my childhood. What I am writing will be burned. I should be ashamed that pages, tear-stained and dream-haunted, should fall beneath the eyes of grave, sober-minded folk. What would they see in them? Naught but childish faces.
20th August
To-day I went for a stroll by the river in whose blue waters are mirrored the willows and the houses that befringe its banks. There is a seductive charm about running waters. They bear along with them as they flow all those idlers who love to dream their time away.
The river lured me as far as the château de- —— — which had witnessed the betrothal and the death of Marie, and the birth of Marguerite. My heart tolled a knell within me when I saw once more that peaceful abode, which, despite the scenes of sorrow enacted within its walls, speaks, with its white pillared façade, of naught save elegant opulence and luxurious repose. I was so overcome that, to save myself from falling, I clung to the bars of the park gate and gazed at the wide lawns which stretched away as far as the flight of steps which the hem of Marie’s robe had kissed so often. I had been there some minutes when the gate was opened and X ... came out.
On this occasion, also, he was accompanied by his child: but this time she was not walking. She was lying in a perambulator which was being pushed by a governess. With her head resting on an embroidered pillow in the shadow of the lowered hood, she resembled one of those little waxen images of saint or martyr, embellished with silver filigree, on whose wounds and gems the nuns of Spain are wont to pore in the solitude of their cells.
Her father, elegantly dressed, presented a faded, tear-stained countenance. He advanced towards me with little faltering steps, took me by the hand and led me to his little girl.
“Tell me,” he said in the tone of a child asking a favour, “you don’t think she has changed since you last saw her, do you? It was the day she threw her ball up into the tree.”
The perambulator which we were following in silence came to a halt in the Bois Saint-Jean. The governess lowered the hood. Marguerite lay with her head thrown back, her eyes big with terror, and she was stretching out her arms to push aside something that we could not see. Oh, I guessed well enough what invisible hand it was. The same hand that had touched the mother was now laid upon the child. I fell on my knees. But the phantom departed and Marguerite, raising her head, lay resting peacefully. I gathered some flowers and laid them reverently beside her. She smiled. Seeing her come back to life I gave her more flowers and sang to her, endeavouring to beguile her. The air and the feeling of happiness she now experienced brought back to her that desire to live which had forsaken her. At the end of an hour her cheeks were almost rosy. When it grew cool and we had to take the little suffering child back to the château again, her father took my hand as we parted and, pressing it, said in suppliant tones:
“Come again to-morrow.”
21st August
I returned next day. On the steps of the Empire château I encountered the family doctor. He is a spare, elderly man whom you meet wherever there is good music to be heard. He seems like a man perpetually listening to the harmonies of some inward concert. He is for ever under the spell of sounds and lives by his ear alone. He is specially noted for his treatment of nervous complaints. Some say he is a genius; others that he is mad. Certainly there is something peculiar about him. When I saw him he was coming down the steps; his feet, his finger and his lips moving in time to some intricate measure.
“Well, doctor,” I said with an involuntary quaver in my voice, “and how is your little patient?”
“She means to live,” he answered.
“You will pull her through for us, won’t you?” I said eagerly.
“I tell you she means to live.”
“And you think, doctor, that people live just as long as they really want to and that we do not die save with our own consent?”
“Certainly.”
I walked with him along the gravel path. He stopped for a moment at the gate, his head bowed as if in thought.
“Certainly,” he said again, “but they must really want to and not merely think they want to. Conscious will is an illusion that can deceive none save the vulgar. People who believe they will a thing because they say they will it, are fools. The only genuine act of volition is that in which all the obscure forces of our nature take part. That will is unconscious, it is divine. It moulds the world. By it we exist, and when it fails we cease to be. The world wills, otherwise it would not exist.”
We walked on a few steps farther.
“Look here,” he exclaimed, tapping his stick against the bark of an oak tree that spread out its broad canopy of grey branches above our heads, “if that fellow there had not willed to grow, I should like to know what power could have made him do so.”
But I had ceased to listen.
“So you have hopes,” I said at length, “that Marguerite . . .”
But he was a stubborn little old fellow.
He murmured as he walked away: “The Will’s crowning Victory is Love.”
And I stood and watched him as he departed with little quick steps, beating time to a tune that was running in his head.
I went quickly back to the château and found little Marguerite. The moment I saw her, I realized that she had the will to live. She was still very pale and very thin, but her eyes had more colour in them and were not so big, and her lips, lately so dead-looking and so silent, were gay with prattling talk.
“You are late,” she said. “Come here, see! I have a theatre and actors. Play me a beautiful piece. They say that ‘Hop o’ my Thumb’ is nice. Play ‘Hop o’ my Thumb’ for me.”
You may be sure I did not refuse. However, I encountered great difficulties at the very outset of my undertaking. I pointed out to Marguerite that the only actors she had were princes and princesses, and that we wanted woodmen, cooks and a certain number of folks of all sorts.
She thought for a moment and then said:
“A prince dressed like a cook; that one there looks like a cook, don’t you think?”
“Yes, I think so too.”
“Well, then, we’ll make woodmen and cooks out of all the princes we have over.”
And that’s what we did. O Wisdom, what a day we spent together!
Many others like it followed in its train. I watched Marguerite taking an ever firmer hold on life. Now she is quite well again. I had a share in this miracle. I discovered a tiny portion of that gift wherein the apostles so richly abounded when t
hey healed the sick by the laying on of hands.
Editor’s Note. — I found this manuscript in a train on the Northern Railway. I give it to the public without alteration of any sort, save that, as the names were those of well-known persons, I have thought it well to suppress them.
Anatole France.
THE JUGGLER OF NOTRE DAME
Translated by Henri Pène du Bois
I.
THERE lived in France, in the time of King Louis, a poor juggler, native of Compiègne, named Barnabas, who went through the cities making tricks of strength and skill. On market days he extended on the public square an old carpet, all worn out, and, after having attracted the children and idlers by pleasing phrases, which he had learned from an old juggler and of which he never changed anything, he assumed attitudes which were not natural, and he placed a pewter plate on his nose and balanced it there. The crowd looked at him at first with indifference.
But when, with hands and head on the ground, he threw in the air and caught with his feet six copper balls which shone in the sun, or when, throwing himself backward till his neck touched his heels, he gave to his body the form of a perfect wheel, and juggled, in that posture, with twelve knives, a murmur of admiration rose from the spectators, and pieces of money rained on the carpet.
Nevertheless, like most of those who live off their talents. Barnabas of Compiègne had a great deal of trouble to live.
Earning his bread by the sweat of his brow, he carried more than his share of the miseries attached to the sin of Adam, our father.
Moreover, he could not work as much as he wished. To display his fine learning, as for the trees to give flowers and fruits, he needed the warmth of the sun and the light of day. In winter he was only a tree despoiled of its leaves and almost dead. The congealed earth was hard for the juggler. And, like the cicada whereof Marie of France writes, he suffered from cold and hunger in the bad season. But, as his heart was simple, he suffered his ills in patience.
He had never reflected on the origin of riches nor on the inequality of human conditions. He believed firmly that, if this world is bad, the other world cannot fail to be good, and this hope supported him. He did not imitate the miscreants who have sold their souls to the devil. He never took the name of God in vain; he lived honestly, and, although he had no wife, he did not covet his neighbor’s, for woman is the enemy of strong men, as appears by the history of Samson which is related in the Scriptures.
In truth, his mind was not inclined toward material desires, and it would have cost him more to renounce mugs than women. For, although he never failed in sobriety, he liked to drink when it was warm. He was a good man, fearing God and very devout to the Holy Virgin.
He never failed, when he went into a church, to kneel before the image of the Mother of God and to address to her this prayer:
“Madame, take care of my life until it may please God that I shall die, and when I die let?ne have the joys of paradise.”
II.
One night, after a day of rain, while he was walking, sad and bent, carrying under his arm his balls and his knives hidden in his old carpet, and seeking for a barn where he might go to bed, without supper, he saw on the road a monk who was going the same way, and bowed to him courteously. As they were walking together they exchanged ideas.
“Friend,” said the monk, “how is it that you are dressed in green? Is it to play the personage of a clown in some mystery-play?”
“No, father,” replied Barnabas, “such as I am, I am Barnabas, and ray trade is that of a juggler. It would be the most beautiful trade in the world if one in it could eat every day.”
“Friend Barnabas,” said the monk, “be careful of what you are saying. There is no more beautiful trade than the monastic one. In it are celebrated the praise of God, of the Virgin, and the saints, and the life of the monk is a perpetual canticle to the Lord.”
Barnabas replied:
“Father, I confess that I have talked like an ignorant man. Your trade may not be compared with mine, and, although there is some merit in dancing while holding a coin balanced on a stick on one’s nose, this merit does not reach the height of yours. I would like to sing every day like you, father, the office of the Holy Virgin, to whom I have devoted a special piety, I would willingly abandon the art in which I am known from Soissons to Beauvais, in more than six hundred cities and villages, in order to embrace the monastic life.”
The monk was moved by the juggler’s simplicity, and, as the monk was not lacking in discernment, he recognized in Barnabas one of the men of good-will whereof out Lord has said: “Let peace be with them on earth.” That is why he replied;
“Friend Barnabas, come with me, and I will make you enter the convent whereof I am the prior. The one who led Mary the Egyptian in the desert placed me on your path to lead you in the way of salvation.”
It is thus that Barnabas became a monk. In the convent where he was received, the religious celebrated the cult of the Holy Virgin, and each one used in her service ail the learning and all the skill that God had given to him.
The prior, for his part, composed books which treated, in accordance with the rules of scholasticism, of the virtues of the Mother of God.
Friar Maurice copied with a learned hand these treatises on leaves of vellum.
Friar Alexander painted fine miniatures. One could see in them the Queen of Heaven, seated on the throne of Solomon, at the foot of which four lions watch. Around her head, which has a halo, are seven doves, which are the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost: gifts of fear, of piety, of science, of force, of advice, of intelligence, and of wisdom. She had as companions six virgins with golden hair: Humility, Prudence, Retirement, Respect, Virginity, and Obedience.
At her feet two small nude and white figures stood in respectful attitude. They were souls that implored for their salvation, and certainly not in vain, her all-powerful intercession.
Friar Alexander represented on another page Eve with eyes toward Mary, so that one might see at the same time the sin and the redemption, the humiliated woman and the exalted Virgin, One could admire, moreover, in this book the Well of Living Waters, the Fountain, the Lily, the Moon, the Sun, and the Garden sung in the canticle, the Door of Heaven and the City of God, and these were images of the Virgin.
Friar Marbode was, similarly, one of the most tender children of Mary.
He carved stone images incessantly, so that his beard, his eyebrows, and his hair were white with dust, and his eyes were perpetually swollen and tearful; but he was full of strength and of joy in his old age, and, visibly, the Queen of Paradise protected the declining years of her child. Marbode represented her seated in a pulpit, with a nimbus around her forehead, the orb of which was in pearls. And he was careful that the folds of her gown should cover the feet of the one whereof the prophet has said, “My beloved is like a closed garden.”
At times, also, he represented her with the features of a child full of grace, and she seemed to say, “Lord, you are my Lord!”
There were also in the convent poets who composed Latin hymns in honor of the Virgin Mary, and there was even a Picardian who related the miracles of Notre Dame in ordinary terms and in rhyming verses.
III.
Seeing such a competition in praises and such a beautiful harvest of work, Barnabas lamented his ignorance and his simplicity.
“Alas!” he sighed, while he walked alone in the small garden of the convent, “I am very unfortunate not to be able, like my brothers, to praise worthily the Holy Mother of God, to whom I have devoted the tenderness of my heart. Alas! alas! I am a rough and artless man, and I have at my service, Madame the Virgin, neither edifying sermons nor treatises well divided according to the rules, nor fine paintings, nor statues correctly sculptured, nor verses walking In measure. I have nothing, alas!”
He moaned in this manner and yielded to sadness. One night that the monks were conversing, he heard one of them relate the history of a religious who knew how to recite only the Ave Maria
. This monk was disdained for his ignorance: but when he died five roses came out of his mouth in honor of the five letters of the name of Maria, and thus his sanctity was manifested.
While he listened to this tale, Barnabas admired once more the kindness of the Virgin; but he was not consoled by the example of that death, for his heart was full of zeal, and he wished to serve the glory of his lady who is in heaven.
He sought for the means of doing this without being able to find them, and his affliction increased day by day; but one morning he awoke joyfully, ran to the chapel, and stayed there alone for more than an hour. He returned after dinner.
And from this moment he went every day to that chapel, at the hour when it was deserted, and passed there a great part of the time that the other monks consecrated to the liberal and mechanical arts. He was no longer sad and he no longer complained.
A behavior so singular excited the curiosity of the monks.
They asked themselves in the community why Friar Barnabas made retreats so frequently.
The prior, whose duty it is to ignore nothing of the behavior of the religious, decided to watch Barnabas in his solitude. One day that he was closeted in the chapel, Dom Prior came, accompanied by two elders of the convent; and observed through cracks in the door the things that were happening in the interior.
They saw Barnabas, who, before the altar of the Holy Virgin, head downward, his feet in the air, was juggling with six copper balls and twelve knives. He was doing, in honor of the Holy Mother of God, the feats of his trade which had provoked the most applause. Not comprehending that this simple man, thus placed his talent and his learning at the service of the Holy Virgin, the two elders cried that it was a sacrilege.
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 391