All of a sudden he gave a cry.
‘I have it!’ he said. ‘Remorse! There’s a passion that suits my dramatic temperament.’
He looked at himself in the mirror, assuming an expression which was drawn and convulsed as if by some supernatural horror.
‘That’s it!’ he concluded. ‘Nero! Macbeth! Orestes! Hamlet! Erostratus! The ghosts! Oh, yes, I want to see some real ghosts too! Like all those lucky fellows who could not take a single step without meeting a ghost.’
He struck his forehead.
‘But how? . . . I’m as innocent as a lamb unwilling to be born.’
And after another pause he went on:
‘But that doesn’t matter! Where there’s a will there’s a way! I’m entitled to become what I ought to be, whatever the cost. I’m entitled to be a man. Do I have to commit crimes in order to feel remorse? All right, so be it: what does it matter, provided it is in a good cause? Yes indeed, so be it!’
At this point he began to improvise a dialogue.
‘I shall perpetrate some dreadful crimes . . . When? . . . Straight away. I cannot wait until tomorrow . . . What crimes? . . . A single one! But a grandiose crime, of extraordinary cruelty, calculated to rouse all the Furies from the Underworld! . . . And what crime is that? . . . Why, the most impressive of all! I have it! A fire! I just have time to start a fire, pack my bags, come back, duly hidden behind the window of a cab, to enjoy my victory in the midst of the horrified crowd, collect the curses of the dying—and catch the train for the north-west with enough remorse put by to last me the rest of my days. Then I shall go and hide in my brightly-lit eyrie on the shores of the Ocean—where the police will never find me, for the simple reason that my crime is disinterested. And there I shall die alone.’
Here Chaudval drew himself up and improvised this positively classical line:
‘Saved from suspicion by the grandeur of the crime.’
The great artist looked around to make sure he was alone, picked up a stone, and concluded:
‘Well, that’s settled. And from now on you won’t reflect anybody else.’
And he threw the stone at the mirror which shattered into a thousand shining pieces.
Having performed this duty, Chaudval made off in a hurry—as if satisfied with this first energetic feat—and rushed towards the boulevards, where, a few minutes later, he hailed a cab, jumped into it, and disappeared.
Two hours later, the flames of a huge fire, coming from some big warehouses stocked with petroleum, oil, and matches, were reflected in every window-pane in the Faubourg du Temple. Soon squads of firemen, rolling and pushing their pumps, came running up from all sides, the mournful wail of their horns rousing the inhabitants of that populous district from their sleep. Countless hurried steps rang out on the pavement: the Place du Château-d’Eau and the adjoining streets were crowded with people. Already human chains were being hurriedly organized. Within less than a quarter of an hour a cordon of troops had been formed round the fire. In the blood-red light of the torches, policemen were holding the people back.
The carriages, trapped in the crowds, had come to a standstill. Everybody was shouting. Distant screams could be made out amidst the dreadful crackling of the flames. The victims of the fire, caught in the inferno, were howling, and the roofs of the houses falling in on them. About a hundred families, those of the workers employed in the burning buildings, were left penniless and homeless.
In the distance, a solitary cab, loaded with two bulky trunks, was standing behind the crowd at the Château-d’Eau. And in that cab sat Esprit Chaudval, born Lepeinteur and known as Monanteuil, drawing aside the blind from time to time and contemplating his handiwork.
‘Oh!’ he whispered to himself. ‘How loathsome I feel in the eyes of God and men! Yes, that’s the work of a criminal, sure enough!’
The kindly old actor’s face lit up.
‘O wretched man!’ he muttered. ‘What sleepless nights I’m going to enjoy among the ghosts of my victims! I can feel burgeoning within me the soul of Nero, burning Rome out of artistic fervour, of Erostratus, burning the temple of Ephesus out of a desire for glory, of Rostopchin, burning Moscow out of patriotism, of Alexander, burning Persepolis out of love for his immortal Thaïs! . . . I for my part burn out of duty, having no other means of existence. I burn because I owe it to myself. I burn to fulfil an obligation. What a man I’m going to be! How I’m going to live! Yes, at last I’m going to find out what it’s like to be tortured by remorse. What wonderful nights of delicious horror I’m going to spend! Ah, I breathe again! I’m born again! I exist! When I think that I was an actor! Now, as I’m nothing in the coarse eyes of mankind but a gallows-bird, let us fly like the wind! Let us hide in our lighthouse, to enjoy our remorse there in peace.’
In the evening, two days later, Chaudval, reaching his destination safely, took possession of his lonely old lighthouse on the north coast: a ruined building with an antiquated beacon which ministerial compassion had rekindled for his sake.
The light was of scarcely any use: it was just an excrescence, a sinecure, a dwelling with a lamp on top, which nobody needed except Chaudval.
So the worthy tragedian, having moved his bed into the lighthouse, together with stocks of food and a tall mirror in which to study his facial expressions, promptly shut himself up there, secure from all human suspicion.
Around him moaned the sea, in which the ancient abyss of the heavens bathed the light of its stars. He watched the waves attacking his tower under the shifts of the winds, much as the Stylite must have gazed at the sands being hurled against his column by the shimiel.
In the distance he followed with unthinking eyes the smoke of steamships or the sails of fishing boats.
As he went up and down the stone staircase, the dreamer kept forgetting his fire.
On the evening of the third day, sitting in his room, sixty feet above the waves, he was re-reading a Paris newspaper which told the story of the catastrophe which had taken place two days before.
An unknown malefactor had thrown some matches into the petroleum cellars. A colossal fire, which had kept the firemen and the people out in the Faubourg du Temple.
Nearly a hundred victims had died; unfortunate families had been plunged into the direst poverty.
The whole place was in mourning and still smoking.
The name of the person who had committed this heinous crime was unknown, and so above all was the criminal’s motive.
When he read this, Chaudval jumped for joy and, feverishly rubbing his hands, exclaimed:
‘What a triumph! What a wonderful scoundrel I am! How I’m going to be haunted! How many ghosts I’m going to see! I knew that I should become a Man! Oh, I admit that the means I used was drastic, but it had to be, it had to be!’
Reading the Paris newspaper again, Chaudval noticed that a special performance was being given in aid of those who had suffered from the fire, and murmured:
‘Well, well! I ought to have put my talent at the service of my victims. It would have been my farewell performance. I would have declaimed Orestes, I would have been marvellously true to life . . .’
Thereupon Chaudval began living in his lighthouse.
And the evenings and the nights fell, and followed one after another. Something happened which astounded the actor. Something horrifying!
Contrary to his hopes and expectations, his conscience failed to torment him. Not a single ghost appeared. He felt nothing, absolutely nothing!
He could not believe the Silence. He could not get over it.
Sometimes, looking at himself in the mirror, he noticed that his debonair expression had not changed. Then he would hurl himself in a fury on his signals, altering them in the radiant hope of sinking some far-off ship, so as to rouse, quicken, stimulate his rebellious remorse, and awaken the longed-for ghosts.
It was all to no purpose.
His attempted crimes came to nothing. His efforts were in vain. He felt nothing. His efforts we
re in vain. He felt nothing. He did not see a single threatening phantom. He found it impossible to sleep any more, he was so stifled by shame and despair. The result was that when, one night, he suffered a stroke in his luminous eyrie, he had a death-agony in which—amid the noise of the ocean, with the sea-winds buffeting his tower lost in infinity—he cried out:
‘Ghosts! . . . For the love of God! . . . Let me see one ghost at least! . . . I’ve earned it!’
But the God he was invoking did not grant him this favour—and the old actor died, still expressing, in his vain rhetoric, his ardent longing to see some ghosts . . . without realizing that he himself was what he was looking for.
Memnon,or Human Wisdom
Voltaire was the pen-name of François Marie Arouet (1694-1778), French philosopher, playwright and satirist whose most famous work is Candide (1764).
Memnon one day took it into his head to become a great philosopher. There are few men who have not, at some time or other, conceived the same wild project. Says Memnon to himself: To be a perfect philosopher, and of course to be perfectly happy, I have nothing to do but to divest myself entirely of passions; and nothing is more easy, as everybody knows. In the first place, I will never be in love; for, when I see a beautiful woman, I will say to myself, These cheeks will one day grow wrinkled, these eyes be encircled with vermilion, that bosom become flabby and pendant, that head bald and palsied. Now I have only to consider her at present in imagination, as she will afterwards appear; and certainly a fair face will never turn my head.
In the second place, I will be always temperate. It will be in vain to tempt me with good cheer, with delicious wines, or the charms of society. I will have only to figure to myself the consequences of excess, an aching head, a loathing stomach, the loss of reason, of health, and of time. I will then only eat to supply the waste of nature; my health will be always equal, my ideas pure and luminous. All this is so easy that there is no merit in accomplishing it.
But, says Memnon, I must think a little of how I am to regulate my fortune: why, my desires are moderate, my wealth is securely placed with the Receiver General of the finances of Nineveh: I have wherewithal to live independent; and that is the greatest of blessing. I shall never be under the cruel necessity of dancing attendance at court: I will never envy anyone, and nobody will envy me; still, all this is easy. I have friends, continued he, and I will preserve them, for we shall never have any difference; I will never take amiss anything they may say or do; and they will behave in the same way to me. There is no difficulty in all this.
Having thus laid his little plan of philosophy in his closet, Memnon put his head out of the window. He saw two women walking under the plane trees near his house. The one was old, and appeared quite at her ease. The other was young, handsome, and seemingly much agitated: she sighed, she wept, and seemed on that account still more beautiful. Our philosopher was touched, not to be sure, with the beauty of the lady (he was too much determined not to feel any uneasiness of that kind) but with the distress which he saw her in. He came downstairs and accosted the young Ninevite in the design of consoling her with philosophy. That lovely person related to him, with an air of great simplicity, and in the most affecting manner, the injuries she sustained from an imaginary uncle; with what art he had deprived her of some imaginary property, and of the violence which she pretended to dread from him. ‘You appear to me,’ said she, ‘a man of such wisdom that if you will condescend to come to my house and examine into my affairs, I and persuaded you will be able to draw me from the cruel embarrassment I am at present involved in.’ Memnon did not hesitate to follow her, to examine her affairs philosophically and to give her sound counsel.
The afflicted lady led him into a perfumed chamber, and politely made him sit down with her on a large sofa, where they both placed themselves opposite to each other in the attitude of conversation, their legs crossed; the one eager in telling her story, the other listening with devout attention. The lady spoke with downcast eyes, whence there sometimes fell a tear, and which, as she now and then ventured to raise them, always met those of the sage Memnon. Their discourse was full of tenderness, which redoubled as often as their eyes met. Memnon took her affairs exceedingly to heart, and felt himself every instant more and more inclined to oblige a person so virtuous and so happy. By degrees, in the warmth of conversation, they ceased to sit opposite; they drew nearer; their legs were no longer crossed. Memnon counseled her so closely and gave her such tender advices that neither of them could talk any longer of business nor well knew what they were about.
At his interesting moment, as may easily be imagined, who should come in but the uncle; he was armed from head to foot, and the first thing he said was, that he would immediately sacrifice, as was just, the sage Memnon and his niece; the latter, who made her escape, knew that he was well enough disposed to pardon, provided a good round sum were offered to him. Memnon was obliged to purchase his safety with all he had about him. In those days people were happy in getting so easily quit. America was not then discovered, and distressed ladies were not nearly as dangerous as they are now.
Memnon, covered with shame and confusion, got home to his own house; there he found a card inviting him to dinner with some of his intimate friends. If I remain at home alone, said he, I shall have my mind so occupied with this vexatious adventure that I shall not be able to eat a bit, and I shall bring upon myself some disease. It will therefore be prudent in me to go to my intimate friends, and partake with them of a frugal repast. I shall forget in the sweets of their society that folly I have this morning been guilty of. Accordingly, he attends the meeting; he is discovered to be uneasy at something, and he is urged to drink and banish care. A little wine, drunk in moderation, comforts the heart of god and man: so reasons Memnon the philosopher, and becomes intoxicated. After the repast, play is proposed. A little play with one’s intimate friends is a harmless pastime. He plays and loses all that is in his purse, and four times as much on his word. A dispute arises on some circumstances in the game, and the disputants grow warm: one of his intimate friends throws a dice box at his head, and strikes out one of his eyes. The philosopher Memnon is carried home to his house, drunk and penniless, with the loss of an eye.
He sleeps out his debauch, and when his head has got a little clear, he sends his servant to the Receiver General of the finances of Nineveh to draw a little money to pay his debts of honor to his intimate friends. The servant returns and informs him that the Receiver General had that morning been declared a fraudulent bankrupt and that by this means an hundred families are reduced to poverty and despair. Memnon, almost beside himself, puts a plaster on his eye and a petition in his pocket, and goes to court to solicit justice from the king against the bankrupt. In the saloon he meets a number of ladies all in the highest spirits, and sailing along with hoops four-and-twenty feet in circumference. One of them, who knew him a little, eyed him askance, and cried aloud, ‘Ah! What a horrid monster!’ Another, who was better acquainted with him thus accosts him, ‘Good-morrow, Mr. Memnon. I hope you are very well, Mr. Memnon. La, Mr. Memnon, how did you lose your eye?’ And, turning upon her heel, she tripped away without waiting an answer. Memnon hid himself in a corner and waited for the moment when he could throw himself at the feet of the monarch. That moment at last arrived. Three times he kissed the earth, and presented his petition. His gracious majesty received him very favorably, and referred the paper to one of his satraps, that he might give him an account of it. The satrap takes Memnon aside and says to him with a haughty air and satirical grin, ‘Hark ye, you fellow with the one eye, you must be a comical dog indeed, to address yourself to the king rather than to me; and still more so, to dare to demand justice against an honest bankrupt, whom I honor with my protection, and who is nephew to the waiting-maid of my mistress. Proceed no further in this business, my good friend, if you wish to preserve the eye you have left.’
Memnon, having thus in his closet resolved to renounce women, the excesses of the table,
play and quarreling, but especially having determined never to go to court, had been in the short space of four-and-twenty hours, duped and robbed by a gentle dame, had got drunk, had gamed, had been engaged in a quarrel, had got his eye knocked out, and had been at court where he was sneered at and insulted.
Petrified with astonishment, and his heart broken with grief, Memnon returns homeward in despair. As he was about to enter his house, he is repulsed by a number of officers who are carrying off his furniture for the benefit of his creditors: he falls down almost lifeless under a plane tree. There he finds the fair dame, of the morning, who was walking with her dear uncle; and both set up a loud laugh on seeing Memnon with his plaster. The night approached, and Memnon made his bed on some straw near the walls of his house. Here the ague seized him, and he fell asleep in one of the fits, when a celestial spirit appeared to him in a dream.
It was all resplendent with light: it had six beautiful wings, but neither feet nor head nor tail, and could be likened to nothing. ‘What art thou?’ said Memnon. ‘Thy good genius,’ replied the spirit. ‘Restore to me then my eye, my health, my fortune, my reason,’ said Memnon; and he related how he had lost them all in one day. ‘These are adventures which never happen to us in the world we inhabit,’ said the spirit. ‘And what world do you inhabit?’ said the man of affliction. ‘My native country,’ replied the other, ‘is five hundred millions of leagues distant from the sun, in a little star near Sirius, which you see from hence.’ ‘Charming country!’ said Memnon. ‘And are there indeed no jades to dupe a poor devil, no intimate friends that win his money, and knock out an eye for him, no fraudulent bankrupts, no satraps that make a jest of you while they refuse you justice?’ ‘No,’ said the inhabitant of the star, ‘we have nothing of what you talk of; we are never duped by women, because we have none among us; we never commit excesses at table, because we neither eat nor drink; we have no bankrupts, because with us there is neither silver nor gold; our eyes cannot be knocked out because we have not bodies in the form of yours; and satraps never do us injustice because in our world we are all equal.’ ‘Pray, my lord,’ then said Memnon, ‘without women and without eating how do you spend your time?’ ‘In watching,’ said the genius, ‘over the other worlds that are entrusted to us; and I am now come to give you consolation.’ ‘Alas!’ replied Memnon, ‘why did you not come yesterday to hinder me from committing so many indiscretions?’ ‘I was with your elder brother Hassan,’ said the celestial being. ‘He is still more to be pitied than you are. His Most Gracious Majesty the Sultan of the Indies, in whose court he has the honor to serve, has caused both his eyes to be put out for some small indiscretion; and he is now in a dungeon, his hands and feet loaded with chains.’ ‘ ‘Tis a happy thing truly,’ said Memnon, ‘to have a good genius in one’s family, when out of two brothers one is blind of an eye, the other blind of both: one stretched upon straw, the other in a dungeon.’ ‘Your fate will soon change,’ said the animal of the star. ‘It is a true, you will never recover your eye, but, except that, you may be sufficiently happy if you never again take it into your head to be a perfect philosopher.’ ‘It is then impossible?’ said Memnon. ‘As impossible as to be perfectly wise, perfectly strong, perfectly powerful, perfectly happy. We ourselves are very far from it. There is a world indeed where all this is possible; but, in the hundred thousand millions of worlds dispersed over the regions of space, everything goes on by degrees. There is less philosophy, and less enjoyment on the second than in the first, less in the third than in the second, and so forth till the last in the scale, where all are completely fools.’ ‘I am afraid,’ said Memnon, ‘that our little terraqueous globe here is the madhouse of those hundred thousand millions of worlds of which Your Lordship does me the honor to speak.’ ‘Not quite,’ said the spirit, ‘but very nearly: everything must be in its proper place.’ ‘But are those poets and philosophers wrong, then, who tell us that everything is for the best?’ ‘No, they are right, when we consider things in relation to the gradation to the whole universe.’ ‘Oh! I shall never believe it till I recover my eye again,’ said poor Memnon.
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