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The Queen Pedauque

by Anatole France · English · Gutenberg #6571 · 442,096 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Queen Pedauque

Author: Anatole France

Translator: Jos. A. V. Stritzko


        
Release date: September 1, 2004 [eBook #6571]
                Most recently updated: October 5, 2016

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUEEN PEDAUQUE ***




Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team







THE QUEEN PEDAUQUE

By Anatole France


Translated By Jos. A. V. Stritzko


Introduction By James Branch Cabell



Contents:

     I. Why I recount the singular Occurrences of my Life

    II. My Home at the Queen Pedauque Cookshop--I turn the Spit and
        learn to read--Entry of Abbe Jerome Coignard

   III. The Story of the Abbe’s Life

    IV. The Pupil of M. Jerome Coignard--I receive Lessons in Latin,
        Greek and Life

     V. My Nineteenth Birthday--Its Celebration and the Entrance of
        M. d’Asterac

    VI. Arrival at the Castle of M. d’Asterac and Interview with the
        Cabalist

   VII. Dinner and Thoughts on Food

  VIII. The Library and its Contents

    IX. At Work on Zosimus the Panopolitan--I visit my Home and hear
        Gossip about M. d’Asterac

     X. I see Catherine with Friar Ange and reflect--The Liking of
        Nymphs for Satyrs--An Alarm of Fire--M. d’Asterac in his Laboratory

    XI. The Advent of Spring and its Effects--We visit Mosaide

   XII. I take a Walk and meet Mademoiselle Catherine

  XIII. Taken by M. d’Asterac to the Isle of Swans I listen to his
        Discourse on Creation and Salamanders

   XIV. Visit to Mademoiselle Catherine--The Row in the Street and
        my Dismissal

    XV. In the Library with M. Jerome Coignard--A Conversation on
        Morals--Taken to M. d’Asterac’s Study-Salamanders again--
        The Solar Powder--A Visit and its Consequences

   XVI. Jahel comes to my Room--What the Abbe saw on the Stairs--His
        Encounter with Mosaide

  XVII. Outside Mademoiselle Catherine’s House--We are invited in by
        M. d’Anquetil--The Supper--The Visit of the Owner and the
        horrible Consequences

 XVIII. Our return--We smuggle M. d’Anquetil in--M. d’Asterac on
        Jealousy--M. Jerome Coignard in Trouble-What happened while
        I was in the Laboratory--Jahel persuaded to elope

   XIX. Our last Dinner at M. d’Asterac’s Table--Conversation of M.
        Jerome Coignard and M. d’Asterac--A Message from Home--Catherine
        in the Spittel--We are wanted for Murder-Our Flight--Jahel
        causes me much Misery--Account of the Journey-The Abbe Coignard
        on Towns--Jahel’s Midnight Visit--We are followed--The Accident
        --M. Jerome Coignard is stabbed

    XX. Illness of M. Jerome Coignard

   XXI. Death of M. Jerome Coignard

  XXII. Funeral and Epitaph

 XXIII. Farewell to Jahel--Dispersal of the Party.

  XXIV. I am pardoned and return to Paris--Again at the Queen
        Pedauque--I go as Assistant to M. Blaizot--Burning of the
        Castle of Sablons--Death of Mosaide and of M. d’Asterac.

   XXV. I become a Bookseller--I have many learned and witty
        Customers but none to equal the Abbe Jerome Coignard, D.D., M. A




INTRODUCTION

What one first notes about _The Queen Pedauque_ is the fact that in this
ironic and subtle book is presented a story which, curiously enough, is
remarkable for its entire innocence of subtlety and irony. Abridge the
“plot” into a synopsis, and you will find your digest to be what is
manifestly the outline of a straightforward, plumed romance by the elder
Dumas.

Indeed, Dumas would have handled the “strange surprising adventures” of
Jacques Tournebroche to a nicety, if only Dumas had ever thought to
have his collaborators write this brisk tale, wherein d’Astarac and
Tournebroche and Mosaide display, even now, a noticeable something in
common with the Balsamo and Gilbert and Althotas of the _Memoires d’un
Medecin_. One foresees, to be sure, that, with the twin-girthed Creole
for guide, M. Jerome Coignard would have waddled into immortality not
quite as we know him, but with somewhat more of a fraternal resemblance
to the Dom Gorenflot of _La Dame de Monsoreau;_ and that the blood of
the abbe’s death-wound could never have bedewed the book’s final pages,
in the teeth of Dumas’ economic unwillingness ever to despatch any
character who was “good for” a sequel.

And one thinks rather kindlily of _The Queen Pedauque_ as Dumas would
have equipped it... Yes, in reading here, it is the most facile and
least avoidable of mental exercises to prefigure how excellently Dumas
would have contrived this book,--somewhat as in the reading of Mr.
Joseph Conrad’s novels a many of us are haunted by the sense that the
Conrad “story” is, in its essential beams and stanchions, the sort of
thing which W. Clark Russell used to put together, in a rather different
way, for our illicit perusal. Whereby I only mean that such seafaring
was illicit in those aureate days when, Cleveland being consul for
the second time, your geography figured as the screen of fictive
reading-matter during school-hours.

One need not say that there is no question, in either case, of
“imitation,” far less of “plagiarism”; nor need one, surely, point out
the impossibility of anybody’s ever mistaking the present book for a
novel by Alexandre Dumas. Ere Homer’s eyesight began not to be what it
had been, the fact was noted by the observant Chian, that very few sane
architects commence an edifice by planting and rearing the oaks which
are to compose its beams and stanchions. You take over all such supplies
ready hewn, and choose by preference time-seasoned timber. Since Homer’s
prime a host of other great creative writers have recognised this axiom
when they too began to build: and “originality” has by ordinary been,
like chess and democracy, a Mecca for little minds.

Besides, there is the vast difference that M. Anatole France has
introduced into the Dumas theatre some preeminently un-Dumas-like
stage-business: the characters, between assignations and combats, toy
amorously with ideas. That is the difference which at a stroke dissevers
them from any helter-skelter character in Dumas as utterly as from any
of our clearest thinkers in office.

It is this toying, this series of mental _amourettes_, which
incommunicably “makes the difference” in almost all the volumes of M.
France familiar to me, but our affair is with this one story. Now in
this vivid book we have our fill of color and animation and gallant
strangenesses, and a stir of characters who impress us as living with a
poignancy unmastered as yet by anybody’s associates in flesh and blood.
We have, in brief, all that Dumas could ever offer, here utilised not
to make drama but background, all being woven into a bright undulating
tapestry behind an erudite and battered figure,--a figure of odd
medleys, in which the erudition is combined with much of Autolycus, and
the unkemptness with something of à Kempis. For what one remembers of
_The Queen Pédauque_ is l’Abbé Jérôme Coignard; and what one remembers,
ultimately, about Coignard is not his crowded career, however opulent in
larcenous and lectual escapades and fisticuffs and broached wineflasks;
but his religious meditations, wherein a merry heart does, quite
actually, go all the way.

Coignard I take to be a peculiarly rare type of man (there is no female
of this species), the type that is genuinely interested in religion.
He stands apart. He halves little with the staid majority of us, who
sociably contract our sacred tenets from our neighbors like a sort
of theological measles. He halves nothing whatever with our more
earnest-minded juniors who--perennially discovering that all religions
thus far put to the test of nominal practice have, whatever their
paradisial _entrée_, resulted in a deplorable earthly hash--perennially
run yelping into the shrill agnosticism which believes only that one’s
neighbors should not be permitted to believe in anything.

The creed of Coignard is more urbane. “Always bear in mind that a sound
intelligence rejects everything that is contrary to reason, except
in matters of faith, where it is necessary to believe blindly.” Your
opinions are thus all-important, your physical conduct is largely
a matter of taste, in a philosophy which ranks affairs of the mind
immeasurably above the gross accidents of matter. Indeed, man can win to
heaven only through repentance, and the initial step toward repentance
is to do something to repent of. There is no flaw in this logic, and in
its clear lighting such abrogations of parochial and transitory human
laws as may be suggested by reason and the consciousness that nobody is
looking, take on the aspect of divinely appointed duties.

Some dullard may here object that M. France--attestedly, indeed, since
he remains unjailed-cannot himself believe all this, and that it is with
an ironic glitter in his ink he has recorded these dicta. To which the
obvious answer would be that M. France (again like all great creative
writers) is an ephemeral and negligible person beside his durable
puppets; and that, moreover, to reason thus is, it may be precipitately,
to disparage the plumage of birds on the ground that an egg has no
feathers... Whatever M. France may believe, our concern is here with
the conviction of M. Coignard that his religion is all-important and
all-significant. And it is curious to observe how unerringly the
abbe’s thoughts aspire, from no matter what remote and low-lying
starting-point, to the loftiest niceties of religion and the high thin
atmosphere of ethics. Sauce spilt upon the good man’s collar is but a
reminder of the influence of clothes upon our moral being, and of how
terrifyingly is the destiny of each person’s soul dependent upon such
trifles; a glass of light white wine leads not, as we are nowadays
taught to believe, to instant ruin, but to edifying considerations
of the life and glory of St. Peter; and a pack of cards suggests,
straightway, intransigent fine points of martyrology. Always this
churchman’s thoughts deflect to the most interesting of themes, to the
relationship between God and His children, and what familiary etiquette
may be necessary to preserve the relationship unstrained. These problems
alone engross Coignard unfailingly, even when the philosopher has
had the ill luck to fall simultaneously into drunkenness and a public
fountain, and retains so notably his composure between the opposed
assaults of fluidic unfriends.

What, though, is found the outcome of this philosophy, appears a
question to be answered with wariness of empiricism. None can deny
that Coignard says when he lies dying: “My son, reject, along with the
example I gave you, the maxims which I may have proposed to you during
my period of lifelong folly. Do not listen to those who, like myself,
subtilise over good and evil.” Yet this is just one low-spirited moment,
as set against the preceding fifty-two high-hearted years. And the
utterance wrung forth by this moment is, after all, merely that
sentiment which seems the inevitable bedfellow of the moribund,--“Were I
to have my life over again, I would live differently.” The sentiment is
familiar and venerable, but its truthfulness has not yet been attested.

To the considerate, therefore, it may appear expedient to dismiss
Coignard’s trite winding-up of a half-century of splendid talking,
as just the infelicitous outcropping, in the dying man’s enfeebled
condition, of an hereditary foible. And when moralising would approach
an admonitory forefinger to the point that Coignard’s manner of living
brought him to die haphazardly, among preoccupied strangers at a casual
wayside inn, you do, there is no questioning it, recall that a more
generally applauded manner of living has been known to result in a
more competently arranged-for demise, under the best churchly and legal
auspices, through the rigors of crucifixion.

So it becomes the part of wisdom to waive these mundane riddles, and to
consider instead the justice of Coignard’s fine epitaph, wherein we
read that “living without worldly honors, he earned for himself eternal
glory.” The statement may (with St. Peter keeping the gate) have been
challenged in paradise, but in literature at all events the unhonored
life of Jérome Coignard has clothed him with glory of tolerably longeval
looking texture. It is true that this might also be said of Iago and
Tartuffe, but then we have Balzac’s word for it that merely to be
celebrated is not enough. Rather is the highest human desideratum
twofold,--_D’être célèbre et d’être aimé_. And that much Coignard
promises to be for a long while.

James Branch Cabell

Dumbarton Grange,

July, 1921,




THE QUEEN PEDAUQUE




CHAPTER I

Why I recount the singular Occurrences of my Life


I intend to give an account of some odd occurrences in my life. Some
have been exquisite, some queer Recollecting them, I am myself in doubt
if I have not dreamed them. I have known a Gascon cabalist, of whom I
could not say that he was wise, because he perished miserably, but he
delivered sublime discourses to me, on a certain night on the Isle of
Swans, speeches [Footnote: The original manuscript, written in a fine
hand, of the eighteenth century, bears the sub-heading “Vie et Opinions
de M. l’Abbé Jérôme Coignard” [_The Editor_].] I was happy enough
to keep in my memory, and careful enough to put into writing. Those
speeches referred to magic and to occult sciences, with which people
were very much infatuated in my days.

Everyone speaks of naught else but Rosicrucian mysteries.[Footnote:
This writing dates from the second half of the eighteenth century [_The
Editor_]]. Besides I do not myself expect to gain great honour by these
revelations. Some will say that everything is of my own invention, and
that it is not the true doctrine, others that I only said what one had
already known. I own that I am not very learned in cabalistic lore, my
master having perished at the beginning of my initiation. But, little as
I have learned of his craft, it makes me vehemently suspect that all of
it is illusion, deception and vanity.

I think it quite sufficient to repudiate magic with all my strength,
because it is contrary to religion. But still I believe myself to be
obliged to explain concerning one point of this false science, so that
none may judge me to be more ignorant than I really am. I know that
cabalists generally think that Sylphs, Salamanders, Elves, Gnomes and
Gnomides are born with a soul perishable like their bodies and that they
acquire immortality by intercourse with the magicians. [Footnote: This
opinion is especially supported in a little book of the Abbé Montfaucon
de Villars, “Le Comte de Gabalis au Entretiens sur les sciences secrètes
et mystérieuses suivant les principes des anciens mages ou sages
cabbalistes,” of which several editions are extant. I only mention
the one published at Amsterdam (Jacques Le Jeune, 1700, 18mo, with
engravings), which contains a second part not included in the original
edition [_The Editor_]] On the contrary my cabalist taught me that
eternal life does not fall to the lot of any creature, earthly or
aerial. I follow his sentiment without presuming myself to judge it.

He was in the habit of saying that the Elves kill those who reveal their
mysteries, and he attributes the death of M. l’Abbé Coignard, who was
murdered on the Lyons road, to the vengeance of those spirits. But I
know very well that this much lamented death had a more natural cause. I
shall speak freely of the air and fire spirits. One has to run some risk
in life and that with Elves is an extremely small one.

I have zealously gathered the words of my good teacher M. l’Abbé Jérôme
Coignard, who perished as I have said. He was a man full of knowledge
and godliness. Could his soul have been less troubled he would have been
the equal in virtue of M. l’Abbé Rollin, whom he far surpassed in extent
of knowledge and penetration of intellect.

He had at least the advantage over M. Rollin that he had not fallen into
Jansenism during the agitation of a troubled life, because the soundness
of his mind was not to be shaken by the violence of reckless doctrines,
and before Him I can attest to the purity of his faith. He had a wide
knowledge of the world, obtained by the frequentation of all sorts of
companies. This experience would have served him well with the Roman
histories he, like M. Rollin, would doubtless have composed should
he have had time and leisure, and if his life could have been better
matched to his genius. What I shall relate of this excellent man will
be the ornament of these memoirs. And like Aulus Gellius, who culled the
most beautiful sayings of the philosophers into his “Attic Nights,” and
him who put the best fables of the Greeks into the “Metamorphoses,” I
will do a bee’s work and gather exquisite honey. But I do not flatter
myself to be the rival of those two great authors, because I draw all
my wealth from my own life’s recollections and not from an abundance of
reading. What I furnish out of my own stock is good faith. Whenever some
curious person shall read my memoirs he will easily recognise that
a candid soul alone could express itself in language so plain and
unaffected. Where and with whomsoever I have lived I have always been
considered to be entirely artless. These writings cannot but confirm it
after my death.




CHAPTER II

My Home at the Queen Pédauque Cookshop--I turn the Spit and learn to
read--Entry of Abbe Jerome Coignard.


My name is Elme Laurent Jacques Ménétrier. My father, Léonard Ménétrier,
kept a cookshop at the sign of _Queen Pédauque,_ who, as everyone knows,
wag web-footed like the geese and ducks.

His penthouse was opposite Saint Benoit le Bétourné between Mistress
Gilles the haberdasher at the _Three Virgins_ and M. Blaizot, the
bookseller at the sign of _Saint Catherine,_ not far from the _Little
Bacchus,_ the gate of which, decorated with vine branches, was at the
corner of the Rue des Cordiers. He loved me very much, and when, after
supper, I lay in my little bed, he took my hand in his, lifted one after
the other of my fingers, beginning with the thumb, and said:

“This one has killed him, this one has plucked him, this one has
fricasseed him and that one has eaten him, and the little _Riquiqui_
had nothing at all. Sauce, sauce, sauce,” he used to add, tickling the
hollow of my hand with my own little finger.

And mightily he laughed, and I laughed too, dropping off to sleep, and
my mother used to affirm that the smile still remained on my lips on the
following morning.

My father was a good cookshop-keeper and feared God. For this he carried
on holidays the banner of the Cooks’ Guild, on which a fine-looking St
Laurence was embroidered, with his grill and a golden palm. He used to
say to me:

“Jacquot, thy mother is a holy and worthy woman.”

He liked to repeat this sentence frequently. True, my mother went to
church every Sunday with a prayer-book printed in big type. She could
hardly read small print, which, as she said, drew the eyes out of her
head.

My father used to pass an hour or two nightly at the tavern of the
_Little Bacchus_; there also Jeannetæ the hurdy-gurdy player and
Catherine the lacemaker were regular frequenters. And every time he
returned home somewhat later than usual he said in a soft voice, while
pulling his cotton night-cap on:

“Barbe, sleep in peace; as I have just said to the limping cutler: ‘You
are a holy and worthy woman.’”

I was six years old when, one day, readjusting his apron, with him
always a sign of resolution, he said to me:

“Miraut, our good dog, has turned my roasting-spit during these last
fourteen years. I have nothing to reproach him with. He is a good
servant, who has never stolen the smallest morsel of turkey or goose. He
was always satisfied to lick the roaster as his wage. But he is getting
old. His legs are getting stiff; he can’t see, and is no more good to
turn the handle. Jacquot, my boy, it is your duty to take his place.
With some thought and some practice, you certainly will succeed in doing
as well as he.”

Miraut listened to these words and wagged his tail as a sign of
approbation. My father continued:

“Now then, seated on this stool, you’ll turn the spit. But to form your
mind you’ll con your horn-book, and when, afterwards, you are able to
read type, you’ll learn by heart some grammar or morality book, or
those fine maxims of the Old and New Testaments. And that because the
knowledge of God and the distinction between good and evil are also
necessary in a working position, certainly of but trifling importance
but honest as mine is, and which was my father’s and also will be yours,
please God.”

And from this very day on, sitting from morn till night, at the corner
of the fireplace, I turned the spit, the open horn-book on my knees.
A good Capuchin friar, who with his bag came a-begging to my father,
taught me how to spell. He did so the more willingly as my father, who
had a consideration for knowledge, paid for his lesson with a savoury
morsel of roast turkey and a large glass of wine, so liberally that
by-and-by the little friar, aware that I was able to form syllables and
words tolerably well, brought me a fine “Life of St Margaret,” wherewith
he taught me to read fluently.

On a certain day, having as usual laid his wallet on the counter, he
sat down at my side, and, warming his naked feet on the hot ashes of the
fireplace, he made me recite for the hundredth time:

  “Pucelle sage, nette et fine,
  Aide des femmes en gésine
   Ayez pitié de nous.”

At this moment a man of rather burly stature and withal of noble
appearance, clad in the ecclesiastical habit, entered the shop and
shouted out with an ample voice:

“Hello! host, serve me a good portion!” With grey hair, he still looked
full of health and strength. His mouth was laughing and his eyes were
sprightly, his cheeks were somewhat heavy and his three chins dropped
majestically on a neckband which, maybe by sympathy, had become as
greasy as the throat it enveloped.

My father, courteous by profession, lifted his cap and bowing said:

“If your reverence will be so good as to warm yourself near the fire,
I’ll soon serve you with what you desire.”

Without any further preamble the priest took a seat near the fire by the
side of the Capuchin friar.

Hearing the good friar reading aloud:

 “Pucelle sage, nette et fine,
  Aide des femnies en gésine,”

he clapped his hands and said:

“Oh, the rare bird! The unique man! A Capuchin who is able to read! Eh,
little friar, what is your name?”

“Friar Ange, an unworthy Capuchin,” replied my teacher.

My mother, hearing the voices from the upper room descended to the shop,
attracted by curiosity.

The priest greeted her with an already familiar politeness and said:

“That is really wonderful, mistress; Friar Ange is a Capuchin and knows
how to read.”

“He is able to read all sorts of writing,” replied my mother.

And going near the friar, she recognised the prayer of St Margaret by
the picture representing the maiden martyr with a holy-water sprinkler
in her hand.

“This prayer,” she added, “is difficult to read because the words of it
are very small and hardly divided, but happily it is quite sufficient,
when in labour-pains, to apply it like a plaster on the place where the
most pain is felt and it operates just as well, and rather better, than
when it is recited. I had the proof of it, sir, when my son Jacquot was
born, who is here present.”

“Do not doubt about it, my good dame,” said Friar Ange. “The orison of
St Margaret is sovereign for what you mentioned, but under the special
condition that the Capuchins get their Maundy.”

In saying so, Friar Ange emptied the goblet of wine which my mother had
filled up for him and, throwing his wallet over his shoulder, went off
in the direction of the _Little Bacchus_.

My father served a quarter of fowl to the priest, who took out of his
pocket a piece of bread, a flagon of wine and a knife, the copper handle
of which represented the late king on a column in the costume of a Roman
emperor, and began to have his supper.

But having hardly taken the first morsel in his mouth he turned round on
my father and asked for some salt, rather surprised that no salt cellar
had been presented to him offhand.

“So did the ancients use it,” he said, “they offered salt as a sign
of hospitality. They also placed salt cellars in the temples on the
tablecloths of the gods.”

My father presented him with some bay salt out of the wooden shoe which
was hung on the mantelpiece. The priest took what he wanted of it and
said:

“The ancients considered salt to be a necessary seasoning of all
repasts, and held it in so high esteem that they metaphorically called
salt the wit which gives flavour to conversation.”

“Ah!” said my father, “high as the ancients may have valued it, the
excise of our days puts it still higher.”

My mother, listening the while she knitted a woollen stocking, was glad
to say a word:

“It must be believed that salt is a good thing, because the priests put
a grain of it on the tongues of the babies held over the christening
font. When my Jacques felt the salt on his tongue he made a grimace; as
tiny as he was he already had some sense. I speak, Sir Priest, of my son
Jacques here present.”

The priest looked on me and said:

“Now he is already a grown-up boy. Modesty is painted on his features
and he reads the ‘Life of St Margaret’ with attention.”

“Oh!” exclaimed my mother, “he also reads the prayer for chilblains and
that of ‘St Hubert,’ which Friar Ange has given him, and the history
of that fellow who has been devoured, in the Saint Marcel suburb, by
several devils for having blasphemed the holy name of our Lord.”

My father looked admiringly on me, and then he murmured into the
priest’s ear that I learned anything I wanted to know with a native and
natural facility.

“Wherefore,” replied the priest, “you must form him to become a man of
letters, which to be, is one of the honours of mankind, the consolation
of human life and a remedy against all evils, actually against those of
love, as it is affirmed by the poet Theocritus.”

“Simple cook as I am,” was my father’s reply, “I hold knowledge in
high esteem, and am quite willing to believe that it also is, as your
reverence says, a remedy for love. But I do not think that it is a
remedy against hunger.”

“Well, perhaps it is not a sovereign ointment,” replied the priest; “but
it gives some solace, like a sweet balm, although somewhat imperfect.”

As he spoke Catherine the lacemaker appeared on the threshold, with
her bonnet sideways over her ear and her neckerchief very much creased.
Seeing her, my mother frowned and let slip three meshes of her knitting.

“Monsieur Ménétrier,” said Catherine to my father, “come and say a word
to the sergeants of the watch. If you do not, they doubtless will lock
up Friar Ange. The good friar came to the _Little Bacchus_, where
he drank two or three pots without paying for them, so as not to go
contrary to the rules of St Francis, he said. But the worst of it is,
that he, seeing me in company under the arbour, came near me to teach
me a new prayer. I told him it was not the right moment to do so, and
he insisting on it, the limping cutler, who was sitting by me, tore his
beard rather roughly. Friar Ange threw himself on the cutler, who fell
to the ground, and by his fall upset the table and pitchers.

“The taverner, running up, seeing the table knocked over, the wine
spilt, and Friar Ange with one foot on the cutler’s head, swinging a
stool with which he struck anyone approaching him, this vile taverner
swore like a real devil and called for the watch. Monsieur Ménétrier, do
come at once and take the little friar out of the watch’s clutches. He
is a holy man, and quite excusable in this affair.”

My father was inclined to oblige Catherine, but for this once the
lacemaker’s words had not the effect she expected. He said plainly that
he could not find any excuse for the Capuchin, and that he wished him
to get a good punishment by bread and water in the darkest corner of the
cellars of the convent, of which he was the shame and disgrace.

He warmed up in talking:

“A drunkard and a dissipated fellow, to whom I give daily good wine
and good morsels and who goes to the tavern to play the deuce with some
ill-famed creatures, depraved enough to prefer the company of a hawking
cutler and a Capuchin friar to that of honest sworn tradesmen of the
quarter. Fie! fie!”

Therewith he suddenly stopped his scoldings and looked sideways on
my mother, who, standing up at the entry to the staircase, pushed her
knitting needles with sharp little strokes.

Catherine, surprised by this unfriendly reception, said drily:

“Then you don’t want to say a good word to the taverner and the
sergeant?”

“If you wish it, I’ll tell them to take the cutler and the friar.”

“But,” she replied, and laughed, “the cutler is your friend.”

“Less mine than yours,” said my father sharply. “A ragamuffin and a
humbug, who hops about----”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, “that’s true, really true, that he hops. He hops,
hops, hops!”

And she left the shop, shaking with laughter.

My father turned round to the priest, who was picking a bone:

“It is as I had the honour to say to your reverence! For each reading
and writing lesson that Capuchin friar gives to my child, I pay him with
a goblet of wine and a fine piece of meat, hare, rabbit, goose, or a
tender poulet or a capon. He is a drunkard and evil liver!”

“Don’t doubt about that,” said the priest.

“But if ever he dares to come over my threshold again, I’ll drive him
out with a broomstick.”

“And you’ll do well by it,” said the priest; “that Capuchin is an ass,
and he taught your son rather to bray than to talk. You’ll act wisely by
throwing into the fire that ‘Life of St Catherine,’ that prayer for the
cure of chilblains and that history of the bugbear, with which that monk
poisoned your son’s mind. For the same price you paid for Friar Ange’s
lessons, I’ll give him my own; I’ll teach him Latin and Greek, and
French also, that language which Voiture and Balzac have brought to
perfection. And in such way, by a luck doubly singular and favourable,
this Jacquot Tournebroche will become learned and I shall eat every
day.”

“Agreed!” said my father. “Barbara, bring two goblets. No business is
concluded without the contracting parties having a drink together as
a token of agreement. We will drink here. I’ll never in my life put my
legs into the _Little Bacchus_ again, so repugnant have that cutler and
that monk become to me.”

The priest rose and, putting his hands on the back of his chair, said in
a slow and serious manner:

“Before all, I thank God, the Creator and Conserver of all things, for
having guided me into this hospitable house. It is He alone who governs
us and we are compelled to recognise His providence in all matters
human, notwithstanding that it is foolhardy and sometimes incongruous to
follow Him too closely. Because being universal He is to be found in all
sorts of encounters, sublime by the conduct which He keeps, but obscene
or ridiculous for the part man takes in it and which is the only part
where they appear to us. And therefore one must not shout, in the manner
of Capuchin monks and goody-goody women, that God is to be seen in
every trifle. Let us praise the Lord; pray to Him to enlighten me in the
teachings I’ll give to that child, and for the rest let us rely on His
holy will, without searching to understand it in all its details.”

And raising his goblet, he drank deeply.

“This wine,” he said, “infilters into the economy of the human body a
sweet and salutary warmth. It is a liquor worthy to be sung at Teos and
at the Temple by the princes of bacchic poets, Anacreon and Chaulieu. I
will anoint with it the lips of my young disciple.”

He held the goblet under my chin and exclaimed:

“Bees of the Academy, come, come and place yourselves in harmonious
swarms on the mouth of Jacobus Tournebroche, henceforth consecrated to
the Muses.”

“Oh! Sir Priest,” said my mother, “it is a truth that wine attracts the
bees, particularly sweet wine. But it is not to be wished that those
nefarious flies should place themselves on the mouth of my Jacquot, as
their sting is cruel. One day in biting into a peach a bee stung me on
the tongue, and I had to suffer fiendish pains. They would be calmed
only by a little earth, mixed up with spittle, which Friar Ange put into
my mouth in reciting the prayer of St Comis.”

The priest gave her to understand that he spoke of bees in an
allegorical sense only. And my father said reproachfully: “Barbe, you’re
a holy and worthy woman, but many a time I have noticed that you have a
peevish liking to throw yourself thoughtlessly into serious conversation
like a dog into a game of skittles.”

“Maybe,” replied my mother. “But had you followed my counsels better,
Léonard, you would have done better. I may not know all the sorts of
bees, but I know how to manage a home and understand the good manners
a man of a certain age ought to practise, who is the father of a family
and standard-bearer of his guild.”

My father scratched his ear, and poured some wine for the priest, who
said with a sigh:

“Certainly, in our days, knowledge is not as much honoured in our
kingdom of France, as it had been by the Romans, although degenerated at
the time when rhetoric brought Eugenius to the Emperor’s throne. It is
not a rarity in our century to find a clever man in a garret without
fire or candle. _Exemplum ut talpa_--I am an example.”

Thereafter he gave us a narration of his life, which I’ll report just as
it came out of his own mouth--that is, as near it as the weakness of
my age allowed me to hear distinctly and hereafter keep in my memory. I
believe I have been able to restore it after the confidences he gave me
at a later time, when he honoured me with his friendship.




CHAPTER III

The Story of the Abbé’s Life


“As you see me,” he said, “or rather as you do not see me, young,
slender, with ardent eyes and black hair, I was a teacher of liberal
arts at the College of Beauvais under Messrs Dugué, Guérin, Coffin
and Baffier. I had been ordained, and expected to make a big name in
letters. But a woman upset my hopes. Her name was Nicole Pigoreau and
she kept a bookseller’s shop at the _Golden Bible_ on the square near
the college. I went there frequently to thumb the books she received
from Holland and also those bipontic editions illustrated with notes,
comments and commentaries of great erudition. I was amiable and Mistress
Pigoreau became aware of it, which was my misfortune.

“She had been pretty, and still knew how to be pleasing. Her eyes spoke.
One day the Cicero, Livy, Plato and the Aristotle, Thucydides, Polybius
and Varro, the Epictetus, Seneca, Boethius and Cassiodorus, the Homer,
Æschylus. Sophocles, Euripides, Plautus and Terence, the Diodorus of
Sicily and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, St John Chrysostom and St Basil,
St Jerome and St Augustine, Erasmus, Saumaise, Turnebe and Scaliger, St
Thomas Aquinas, St Bonaventure, Bossuet dragging Ferri with him, Lenain,
Godefroy, Mézeray, Maimbourg, Fabricius, Father Lelong and Father Pitou,
all the poets, all the historians, all the fathers, all the doctors, all
the theologians, all the humanists, all the compilers, assembled high
and low on the walls, became witnesses to our kisses.

“‘I could not resist you,’ she said to me; ‘don’t conceive a bad opinion
of me.’

“She expressed her love for me in singular raptures. Once she made me
try on neck and wrist bands of fine lace, and finding them suit me
well she insisted on my accepting them. I did not want to. But on
her becoming irritated by my refusal, which she considered an offence
against love, I finally consented to accept them, afraid to offend her.

“My good fortune lasted till I was to be replaced by an officer. I
became spiteful over it, and in the ardour of avenging myself I informed
the College Regents that I did not go any longer to the _Golden Bible_,
for fear of seeing there expositions rather offensive to the modesty of
a young clerical. To say the truth, I had not to congratulate myself
on this contrivance. Madame Pigoreau, becoming aware of my sayings,
publicly accused me of having robbed her of a set of lace neck and wrist
bands. Her false complaint reached the ears of the College Regents,
who had my boxes searched; therein was found the garment, a matter of
considerable value. I was expelled from college and had, like Hippolyte
and Bellerophon, to put up with the wiles and wickedness of woman.

“Finding myself in the streets with my few rags and my copybooks, I ran
great risk of starving, when, dressed in my clerical suit, I recommended
myself to a Huguenot gentleman, who employed me as secretary and
dictated to me libels on our religion.”

“Ah!” exclaimed my father, “that was wrong of your reverence. An honest
man ought not to lend his hand to such abominations. And as far as I am
concerned, although ignorant, and of a working condition, I cannot bear
the smell of Colas’ cow.”

“You’re quite right, my host,” continued the priest. “It is the worst
point in my life. The very one I am most sorry for. But my man was a
Calvinist. He employed me to write against Lutherans and Socinians only;
these he could not stand at all, and, I assure you, he compelled me to
treat them worse than ever it was done at the Sorbonne.”

“Amen,” said my father. “Lambs graze together while wolves devour one
the other.”

The priest continued his narrative:

“Besides, I did not remain for long with that gentleman, who made more
fuss about the letters of Ulric von Hutten than of the harangues of
Demosthenes, and in whose house water was the only drink. Afterwards I
followed various callings, but all without success. I became a pedlar, a
strolling player, a monk, a valet, and at last, by resuming my clerical
garb, I became secretary to the Bishop of Séez and edited the catalogue
of the precious MSS. contained in his library. This catalogue consists
of two volumes in folio, which were placed in his gallery, bound in red
morocco, with his crest on and the edges gilded. I venture to say it was
a good work.

“It would have depended on myself alone to get old and grey in studies
and peace with the right reverend prelate, but I became enamoured of the
waiting-maid of the bailiff’s lady. Do not blame me severely. Dark she
was, buxom, vivacious, fresh. St Pacomus himself would have loved her.
One day she took a seat in the stage coach to travel to Paris in quest
of luck. I followed her. But I did not succeed as well as she did. On
her recommendation I entered the service of Mistress de Saint Ernest,
an opera dancer, who, aware of my talents, ordered me to write after
her dictation a lampoon on Mademoiselle Davilliers, against whom she
had some grievance. I was a pretty good secretary, and well deserved the
fifty crowns she had promised me. The book was printed at Amsterdam
by Marc-Michel Key, with an allegoric frontispiece, and Mademoiselle
Davilliers received the first copy of it just when she went on the stage
to sing the great aria of Armida.

“Anger made her voice hoarse and shaky. She sang false and was hooted.
Her song ended, she ran as she was, in powder and hoop petticoats, to
the Intendant of the Privy Purse, who could not refuse her anything.
She fell on her knees before him, shed abundant tears and shouted for
vengeance. And soon it became known that the blow was struck by Mistress
de Saint Ernest.

“Questioned, hard pressed, sharply threatened, she denounced me as the
author, and I was put into the Bastille, where I remained four years.
There I found some consolation in reading Boethius and Cassiodorus.

“Since then I have kept a public scrivener’s stall at the Cemetery of
the Saints Innocent, and lend to servant girls in love a pen, which
should rather have described the illustrious men of Rome and commented
on the writings of the holy fathers. I earn two farthings for every love
letter, and it is a trade by which I rather die than live. But I do not
forget that Epictetus was a slave and Pyrrho a gardener.

“Just now, unexpectedly, I have been paid a whole crown for an anonymous
letter. I have not had anything to eat for two days. Therefore I at once
looked out for a cook-shop. From outside in the street I perceived your
illuminated sign and the fire of your chimney throwing joyful flaming
lights on the windows. On your threshold I smelt delicious odours. I
came in, and now, my dear host, you have the history of my life.”

“I have become aware that it is the life of a good man,” said my father,
“and with the exception of Colas’ cow there is hardly anything to
complain of. Give me your hand! We are friends, what’s your name?”

“Jérôme Coignard, doctor of divinity, master of arts.”




CHAPTER IV

The Pupil of M. Jérôme Coignard--I receive Lessons in Latin Greek and
Life.


The marvellous in the affairs of mankind is the concatenation of effects
and causes. M. Jérôme Coignard was quite right in saying: “To consider
that strange following of bounds and rebounds wherein our destinies
clash, one is obliged to recognise that God in His perfection is in want
neither of mind nor of imagination nor comic force; on the contrary He
excels in imbroglio as in everything else, and if after having inspired
Moses, David and the Prophets He had thought it worth while to inspire
M. le Sage or the interluders of a fair, He would dictate to them the
most entertaining harlequinade.” And in a similar way it occurred that I
became a Latinist because Friar Ange was taken by the watch and put into
ecclesiastical penance for having knocked down a cutler under the arbour
of the _Little Bacchus_. M. Jérôme Coignard kept his promise. He gave me
lessons and, finding me tractable and intelligent, he took pleasure in
instructing me in the ancient languages.

In but a few years he made me a tolerably good Latinist.

In memory of him I have conceived a gratitude which will not come to an
end but with my life. The obligation I am under to him is easily to be
conceived when I say that he neglected nothing to shape my heart and
soul, together with my intellect. He recited to me the “Maxims of
Epictetus,” the “Homilies of St Basil” and the “Consolations of
Boethius.” By beautiful extracts he opened to me the philosophy of the
Stoics, but he did not make it appear in its sublimity without showing
its inferiority to Christian philosophy. He was a subtle theologian
and a good Catholic. His faith remained whole on the ruins of his most
beloved illusions, of his most cherished hopes. His weaknesses, his
errors, his faults, none of which he ever tried to dissemble or to
colour, have never shaken his confidence in the Divine goodness. And
to know him well, it must be known that he took care of his eternal
salvation on occasions when, to all appearance, he cared the least about
it. He imbued me with the principles of an enlightened piety. He also
endeavoured to attach me to virtue as such, and to render it to me, so
to say, homely and familiar by examples drawn from the life of Zeno.

To make me acquainted with the dangers of vice, he went for arguments
to the nearest fountain-head, confessing to me that by having loved wine
and women too much, he had lost the honour of taking the professor’s
chair of a college in long gown and square cap.

To these rare merits he joined constancy and assiduity, and he gave his
lessons with an exactitude hardly to be expected of a man given as he
was to the freaks of a strolling life, and always carried away by a luck
less doctoral than picaresque. This zeal was the effect of his kindness
and also of his liking of that good St James’s Street, where he found
occasion to satisfy equally the appetites of his body and intellect.
After having given me, during a succulent repast, some profitable
lesson, he indulged in a stroll to the _Little Bacchus_ and the _Image
of St Catherine_, finding in that narrow piece of ground that which was
his paradise--fresh wine and books.

He became a constant visitor of M. Blaizot the bookseller, who received
him well, notwithstanding that he only used to thumb the books without
ever making the smallest purchase. And it was quite marvellous to see
my good teacher in the most remote part of the shop, his nose closely
buried in some little book recently arrived from Holland, suddenly
raising his head to discourse, as it might happen, with the same
abundant and laughing knowledge, on the plans of an universal monarchy
attributed to the late king, or, it may be, to the _aventures galantes_
of a financier with a ballet girl. M. Blaizot was never tired of
listening to him. This M. Blaizot was a little old man, dry and neat,
in flea-coloured coat and breeches and grey woollen stockings. I admired
him very much, and could not think of anything more glorious than, like
him, to sell books at the _Image of St Catherine_.

One recollection of mine gave to M. Blaizot’s shop quite a mysterious
charm. It was there, I was still very young, I saw for the first time
the nude figure of a female. I can see her now. It was an Eve in an
illustrated Bible. Her stomach was rather big, her legs were rather
short, and she held converse with a serpent in a Dutch landscape. The
proprietor of this engraving inspired me with a consideration which grew
afterwards when I took, thanks to M. Coignard, a great liking for books.

At the age of sixteen I knew Latin pretty well, and also a little Greek.
My good teacher said to my father:

“Do you not think, my dear host, that it is rather an indecency to let a
young Ciceronian go about dressed as a scullion?”

“I never thought of it,” replied my father.

“It is true,” said mother, “that it would be suitable to give our son a
dimity vest. He is of an agreeable appearance, has good manners and is
well taught. He will do honour to his dress.”

For a moment my father remained thoughtful and then he asked if it would
be quite suitable for a cook to wear a dimity vest. But M. Coignard
reminded him that, being suckled by the Muses, I would never become a
cook, and that the time was not far off when I should wear a clerical
neckband.

My father sighed, thinking that never would I be the banner-bearer of
the Guild of Parisian Cooks, and my mother became quite glittering with
pleasure and pride at the idea of her son belonging to the Church.

The first effect my dimity vest produced was to give me a certain
confidence in myself, and to encourage me to get a more complete idea
of women than the one I had from the Eve of M. Blaizot. I reasonably
thought first on Jeannette the hurdy-gurdy player, and on Catherine the
lacemaker, both of whom I saw pass our shop twenty times a day, showing
when it rained, a fine ankle and a tiny foot, the toes of which turned
from one stone to the other. Jeannette was not so pretty as Catherine.
She was somewhat older and less well dressed. She came from Savoy and
did her hair _en marmotte_, with a checked kerchief covering her head.
But her merit was, not to stick to ceremony and to understand what was
wanted of her without being spoken to. This character agreed well with
my timidity. One evening under the porch of St Benoît le Bétourné, where
there are stone seats all round, she taught me what till then I had not
known, but which she had known for a long time.

But I was not so grateful to her as it should have been my duty to be,
and thought of nothing else but to bring the science she had taught me
to others, prettier ones. As an excuse for my ingratitude I ought to
say that Jeannette the hurdy-gurdy player did not value her lessons
any higher than I did myself, and that she willingly gave them to every
ragamuffin of the district.

Catherine was of more reserved manners. I stood in awe of her and did
not dare to tell her how pretty I considered her to be. She made me
doubly uncomfortable by making game of me and not losing a single
occasion of jeering at me. She teased me by reproaching my chin for
being hairless. I blushed over it and wished to be swallowed by the
earth. On seeing her I affected a sullen mien and chagrin. I pretended
to scorn her. But she was really too pretty for my scorn to be true.




CHAPTER V

My Nineteenth Birthday--Its Celebration and the Entrance of M.
d’Asterac.


On that night, the night of Epiphany and the nineteenth anniversary of
my birth, the sky poured down with the melting snow a cold ill-humour,
penetrating to the bone, while an icy wind made the signboard of the
_Queen Pédauque_ grate, a clear fire, perfumed by goose grease, sparkled
in the shop and the soup steamed in the tureen on the table; round which
M. Jérôme Coignard, my father and myself were seated. My mother, as was
her habit, stood behind her husband’s chair, ready to serve him. He had
already filled the priest’s dish when, through the suddenly open door,
we saw Friar Ange, very pale, the nose red, the beard soaked. In his
surprise my father elevated the soup ladle up to the smoked beams of the
ceiling.

My father’s surprise was easily explained. Friar Ange, after his fight
with the cutler, had at first disappeared for a lapse of six months, and
now two whole years had passed without his giving any sign of life. On a
certain day in spring he went off with a donkey laden with relics, and,
worse still, he had taken with him Catherine dressed as a nun. Nobody
knew what had become of them, but there was a rumour at the _Little
Bacchus_ that the little friar and the little sister had had some sort
of difference with the authorities between Tours and Orleans. Without
forgetting that one of the vicars of St Benoît shouted everywhere,
and like one possessed, that that rascal of a Capuchin had stolen his
donkey.

“What,” exclaimed my father, “this rogue does not lie in a dungeon?
There is then no more justice in this kingdom.”

But Friar Ange recited the _Benedicite_ and made the sign of the cross
over the soup-tureen.

“Hola!” continued my father. “Peace to all cant, my beautiful monk!
Confess that you have passed in an ecclesiastical prison at least one of
the two years that your Beelzebub-face has not been seen in our parish.
James Street has been more honest for your absence and the whole quarter
of the town more respectable. Look on that fine Olibrius, who goes into
the fields with the donkey of someone and the girl of everyone.”

“Maybe,” replied Friar Ange, eyes on the ground and hands in his
sleeves. “Maybe, Master Léonard, you have Catherine in mind. I have had
the happiness to convert her to a better life, so much and so well that
she ardently wished to follow me, and the relics I was carrying, and to
go with me on some nice pilgrimage, especially to the Black Virgin
of Chartres! I consented under the condition that she clad herself in
ecclesiastical dress, which she did without a murmur.”

“Hold your tongue!” replied my father, “you are a dissipated fellow. You
have no respect for your cloth. Return to where you came from and
look, if you please, in the street, if Queen Pédauque is suffering from
chilblains.”

But my mother made the friar a sign to sit down under the
chimney-mantel, which he softly did.

“One has to forgive much to Capuchins,” said the abbé, “because they sin
without malice.”

My father begged of M. Coignard not to speak any more of the breed, the
name alone of which burnt his ears.

“Master Léonard,” said the priest, “philosophy conducts the soul to
clemency. As far as I am concerned I willingly give absolution to
knaves, rogues and rascals and all the wretched. And more, I owe no
grudge to good people, though in their case there is much insolence.
And if, Master Léonard, like myself, you should have been familiar with
respectable people, you would know that they are not a rap better than
the others, and are often of a less agreeable companionship. I have been
seated at the third table of the Bishop of Séez and two attendants, both
clad in black, were at my sides: constraint and weariness.”

“It must be acknowledged,” said my mother, “that the servants of his
Grace had some queer names. Why did he not call them Champagne, Olive or
Frontin as is usual?”

The priest continued:

“It’s true, certain persons get easily accustomed to the inconveniences
to be borne by living with the great. There was at the second table
of the bishop a very polite canon who kept on ceremony till his last
moment. When the news of his bodily decline reached the bishop he went
to his room and found him dying. ‘Alas,’ said the canon, ‘I beg your
Grace’s pardon to be obliged to die before your eyes.’ ‘Do, do! Don’t
mind me,’ said the bishop with the utmost kindness.”

At this moment my mother brought the roast and put it on the table with
a movement of homely gravity which caused my father some emotion; with
his mouth full he shouted:

“Barbe, you’re a holy and worthy woman.”

“Mistress,” said my dear teacher, “is as a fact to be compared to the
strong women of the scripture. She is a godly wife.”

“Thank God!” said my mother, “I have never been a traitor to the
faithfulness I owe unto Léonard Ménétrier, my husband, and I reckon
well, now that the most difficult part is passed, not to fail him till
my last hour is come. I wish he would keep his faith to me as I keep
mine to him.”

“Madam, when first I looked on you I could see you to be an honest
woman,” replied the priest, “because I have experienced near you a
quietude more connected with heaven than with this world.”

My mother, who was simple-minded, but not stupid, understood very well
what he wanted to say, and replied that if he had known her twenty years
ago, he would have found her to be quite another than she had become in
this cookshop, where her good looks had vanished with the fire of the
spit and the fumes of the dishes. And as she was touched she mentioned
that the baker at Auneau had found her to be so much to his liking that
he had offered her cakes every time she passed his shop. “Besides,”
 she added angrily, “there is neither girl nor woman ugly enough to be
incapable of doing wrong if she had a fancy to do it.”

“This good woman is right,” said my father. “I remember when I was a
prentice at the cookshop of the _Royal Goose_ near the Gate of St Denis,
my master, who was then the banner-bearer of the guild, as I myself am
to-day, said to me: ‘I’ll never be a cuckold, my wife is too ugly.’ This
saying gave me the idea to attempt what he thought to be impossible. I
succeeded at my first attempt, one morning when he went to La Vallée.
He spoke the truth, his wife was very ugly, but high spirited and
grateful.”

At this anecdote my mother broke out and said that such things ought not
to be told by a father to his wife and son, if he wanted to have their
respect.

M. Jérôme Coignard, seeing her become red with anger, changed the
conversation with kindly meant ability. He addressed himself abruptly to
Friar Ange, who, hands in his sleeves, sat humbly at the corner of the
fireside:

“Little friar, what kind of relics did you carry on the second vicar’s
donkey’s back in company with Sister Catherine? Was it your small
clothes you gave the devotees to kiss, in the manner of some grey
friars, of whom Henry Estienne has narrated the adventures?”

“Ah! your reverence,” meekly said Friar Ange with the expression of a
martyr suffering for truth, “it was not my small clothes, it was a foot
of St Eustache.”

“I should have taken my oath on it, if it would not be a sin to do
so,” exclaimed the priest, brandishing the drumstick of a fowl. “Those
Capuchins turn out saints utterly ignored by good authors, who work on
ecclesiastical history. Neither Tillemont nor Fleury speak of that St
Eustache to whom a church is consecrated, very wrongly, at Paris, when
so many saints recognised by writers well deserving to be believed,
are still waiting for a similar honour. The ‘Life of St Eustache’ is
a tissue of ridiculous fables; the same is the case of that of St
Catherine, who has never existed except in the imagination of some
wicked Byzantine monk. But I do not want to attack her too hardly, as
he is the patroness of men of letters, and serves as a signboard to the
bookshop of that good M. Blaizot, which is the most delectable abode in
this world.”

“I also had,” continued quickly the little friar, “a rib of St Mary the
Egyptian.”

“Ah! Ah!’” shouted the priest, throwing the chicken bone across the
room, “concerning this one, I do consider her to be very, very holy, as
during her lifetime she gave a fine example of humility.”

“You know, madam,” he said and took mother’s sleeve, “that St Mary the
Egyptian, going on pilgrimage to the sepulchre of our Lord, was stopped
by a deep flowing river, and not possessing a single farthing to pay for
the passage on the ferry-boat she offered to the boatmen her own body as
a payment. What do you say to that, my good mistress?”

First of all my mother asked if the story was quite true. After she had
been assured that the matter had been printed in a book and painted on a
stained window in the Church of La Jussienne she believed it.

“I think,” she said, “that one has to be as holy as she was to do the
like without committing a sin. I must say that I should not like to do
it.”

“As far as I am concerned,” said the priest, “I approve of the conduct
of that saint, quite in accord with the most subtle doctors. It is a
lesson for honest women stubborn in too much pride of their haughty
virtue. Thinking well over it there is some sensuality in prizing too
highly the flesh and guarding excessively what one ought to despise.
There are some matrons to be met with who believe they have a treasure
and who visibly exaggerate the interest God and the angels may have in
them. They believe themselves to be a kind of natural Holy Sacrament. St
Mary the Egyptian was a better judge. Pretty and divinely shaped as she
was, she considered that it would be all too proud of her flesh to stop
in the course of a holy pilgrimage for a paltry indifferent reason which
is no more than a piece of mortification and far from being a precious
jewel. She humbled herself, madam, and entered by using so admirable
a humility the road of penitence, where she accomplished marvellous
works.”

“Your reverence,” said my mother, “I do not understand you. You are too
learned for me.”

“That grand saint.” said Friar Ange, “is painted in a state of nature
in the chapel of my convent, and by the grace of God all her body is
covered with long and thick hair. Reproductions of this picture have
been printed, and I’ll bring you a fully blessed one, my dear madam.”

Tenderly touched, my mother passed the soup-tureen to him, behind the
back of my teacher. And the holy friar, seated on the cinder board,
silently soaked his bread in the savoury liquid.

“Now is the moment,” said my father, “to uncork one of those bottles
which I keep in reserve for the great feasts, which are Christmas,
Twelfth Night, and St Laurence’s Day. Nothing is more agreeable than to
drink a good wine quietly at home secure of unwelcome intruders.”

Hardly had these words been uttered when the door was opened and a tall
man in black entered the shop in a squall of snow and wind exclaiming:

“A Salamander! A Salamander!”

And without taking notice of anyone he bent over the grate, rummaging
in the cinders with the end of his walking stick, very much to
the detriment of Friar Ange, who coughed fit to give up the ghost,
swallowing the ashes and coal-dust thrown into his soup plate. And
the man in black still continued to rummage in the fire, shouting, “A
Salamander! I see a Salamander!” while the stirred-up flames made the
shadow of his bodily form tremble on the ceiling like a large bird of
prey.

My father was surprised and rather annoyed by the manners of the
visitor. But he knew how to restrain himself. And so he rose, his napkin
under his arm, and went to the fireplace, bending to the hearth, both
his fists on his thighs.

When he had sufficiently considered the disordered fireplace, and Friar
Ange covered with ashes, he said:

“Your lordship will excuse me. I cannot see anything but this paltry
monk, and no Salamander.

“Besides,” my father went on, “I have but little regret over it. I have
it from hearsay that it is an ugly beast, hairy and horned, with big
claws.”

“What an error!” replied the man in black. “Salamanders resemble women,
or, to speak precisely, nymphs, and they are perfectly beautiful! But
I feel myself rather a simpleton to ask you if you’re able to see this
one. One has to be a philosopher to see a Salamander, and I do not think
philosophers could be found in this kitchen.”

“You may be mistaken, sir,” said the Abbé Coignard. “I am a Doctor of
Divinity and Master of Arts. I have also studied the Greek and Latin
moralists, whose maxims have strengthened my soul in the vicissitudes of
my life, and I have particularly applied Boethius as an antidote for
the evils of existence. And here near me is Jacobus Tournebroche, my
disciple, who knows the sentences of Publius Syrus by heart.”

The stranger turned his yellow eyes on the priest, eyes strangely marked
over a nose like the beak of an eagle, and excused himself with more
courtesy than his fierce mien led one to expect, for not having at once
recognised a person of merit, and further he said:

“It is very likely that this Salamander has come for you or your
pupil. I saw it very distinctly in passing along the street before this
cookshop. She would appear better if the fire were fiercer; for this
reason it is necessary to stir the fire vigorously when you believe A
Salamander to be in it.”

At the first movement the stranger made to rummage again in the fire,
Friar Ange anxiously covered the soup-tureen with a flap of his frock
and shut his eyes.

“Sir,” said the Salamander-man, “allow your young pupil to approach
the fireplace to say if he does not see something resembling a woman
hovering over the flames.”

At this very moment the smoke rising under the slab of the chimney bent
itself with a peculiar gracefulness, and formed rotundities quite
likely to be taken for well-arched loins by a rather strangely strained
imagination. Therefore I did not tell an absolute lie by saying that,
maybe, I saw something.

No sooner had I given this reply than the stranger, raising his huge
arm, gave me a straight hander on the shoulder so powerful that I
thought my collar-bone was broken. But at once he said to me, with a
very sweet voice and a benevolent look:

“My child, I have been obliged to give you so strong an impression that
you may never forget that you have seen a Salamander, which is a sign
that your destiny is to become a learned man, perhaps a magician. Your
face also made me surmise favourably of your intelligence.”

“Sir,” said my mother, “he learns anything he wants to know and he’ll be
a priest if it pleases our Lord.”

M. Jérôme Coignard added that I had profited in a certain way by his
lessons, and my father asked the stranger if his lordship would not be
disposed to eat a morsel.

“I am not in want of anything,” said the stranger, “and it’s easy for me
to go without any food for a year or longer because of a certain elixir
the composition of which is known only to the philosophical. This
faculty is not confined to myself alone, it is the common property of
all wise men, and it is known that the illustrious Cardan went without
food during several years without being incommoded by it. On the
contrary his mind became singularly vivacious. But still I’ll eat what
it pleases you to offer me, simply to please you.”

And he took a seat at our little table without any ceremony. At once
Friar Ange also noiselessly pushed his stool between mine and that of
my teacher and sat on it to receive his portion of the partridge pie my
mother was dishing up.

The philosopher having thrown his cape over the back of his seat,
we could see that he wore diamond buttons on his coat. He remained
thoughtful. The shadow of his nose fell on his mouth and his hollow
cheeks went deep into his jaws. His gloomy humour took possession of the
whole company. No other noise was audible but the one made by the little
friar munching his pie.

Suddenly the philosopher said:

“The more I think it over, the more I am convinced that yonder
Salamander came for this lad.” And he pointed his knife at me.

“Sir,” I replied, “if the Salamanders are really as you say, this one
honours me very much, and I am truly obliged to her. But, to say the
truth, I have rather guessed than seen her, and this first encounter has
only awakened my curiosity without giving me full satisfaction.”

Unable to speak at his ease, my good teacher was suffocating. Suddenly,
breaking out very loud, he said to the philosopher:

“Sir, I am fifty-one years old, a master of arts and a doctor of
divinity. I have read all the Greek and Latin authors, who have not been
annihilated either by time’s injury or by man’s malice, and I have never
seen a Salamander, wherefrom I conclude that no such thing exists.”

“Excuse me,” said Friar Ange, half suffocated by partridge pie and half
by dismay; “excuse me! Unhappily some Salamanders do exist and a learned
Jesuit father, whose name I have forgotten, has discoursed on their
apparition. I myself have seen, at a place called St Claude, at a
cottager’s, a Salamander in a fireplace close to a kettle. She had a
cat’s head, a toad’s body and the tail of a fish. I threw a handful of
holy water on the beast, and it at once disappeared in the air, with a
frightful noise like sudden frying and I was enveloped in acrid fumes,
which very nearly burnt my eyes out. And what I say is so true that for
at least a whole week my beard smelt of burning, which proves better
than anything else the maliciousness of the beast.”

“You want to make game of us, little friar,” said the abbé. “Your toad
with a cat’s head is no more real than the Nymph of that gentleman, and
it is quite a disgusting invention.”

The philosopher began to laugh, and said Friar Ange had not seen the
wise man’s Salamander. When the Nymphs of the fire meet with a Capuchin
they turn their back on him.

“Oh! Oh!” said my father, bursting out laughing, “the back of a Nymph is
still too good for a Capuchin.”

And being in a good humour, he sent a mighty slice of the pie to the
little friar.

My mother placed the roast in the middle of the table, and took
advantage of it to ask if the Salamanders are good Christians, of which
she had her doubts, as she had never heard that the inhabitants of fire
praised the Lord.

“Madam,” replied my teacher, “several theologians of the Society of
Jesus have recognised the existence of a people of incubus and succubus
who are not properly demons, because they do not let themselves be
routed by an aspersion of holy water and who do not belong to the Church
Triumphant; glorified spirits would never have attempted, as has been
the case at Perouse, to seduce the wife of a baker. But if you wish for
my opinion, they are rather the dirty imaginations of a sneak than the
views of a doctor.

“You must hate and bewail that sons of the Church, born in light, could
conceive of the world and of God a less sublime idea than that formed
by a Plato or a Cicero in the night of ignorance and of paganism. God is
less absent, I dare say, from the Dream of Scipio than from those black
tractates of demonology the authors of which call themselves Christians
and Catholics.”

“Sir,” replied the priest, “I found a very old MS. of Cicero spoke with
effluence and facility, but he was but a commonplace intellect, and
not very learned in holy sciences. Have you ever heard of Hermes
Trismegistus and of the Emerald Table?”

“Sir,” replied the priest, “I found a very old MS. of the Emerald Table
in the library of the Bishop of Séez, and I should have marvelled over
it one day or another, but for the chamber-maid of the bailiff’s lady
who went to Paris to make her fortune and who made me ride in the coach
with her. There was no witchcraft used, Sir Philospher, and I only
succumbed to natural charms:

  ‘Non facit hoc verbis; facie tenerisque lacertis
  Devovet et flavis nostra puella comis.’”

“That’s a new proof,” said the philosopher, “women are great enemies of
science, and the wise man ought to keep himself aloof from them.”

“In legitimate marriage also?” inquired my father.

“Especially in legitimate marriage,” replied the philosopher.

“Alas!” my father continued to question, “what remains to your poor wise
men when they feel disposed for a little fun?”

The philosopher replied:

“There remains for them the Salamanders.”

At these words Friar Ange raised a frightened nose over his plate and
murmured:

“Don’t speak like that, my good sir; in the name of all the saints of my
order, do not speak like that! And do not forget that the Salamander is
naught but the devil, who assumes, as everyone knows, the most divergent
forms, pleasant now and then when he succeeds in disguising his natural
ugliness, hideous sometimes when he shows his true constitution.”

“Take care on your part, Friar Ange,” replied the philosopher, “and as
you’re afraid of the devil, don’t offend him too much and do not excite
him against you by inconsiderate tittle-tattle. You know that this old
Adversary, this powerful Contradictor, has kept, in the spiritual world,
such a power, that God Almighty Himself reckons with him. I’ll say
more, God, who was in fear of him, made him His business man. Be on your
guard, little friar, the two understand one another.”

In listening to this speech, the poor Capuchin thought he heard and
saw the devil himself, whom the stranger resembled, pretty near, by his
fiery eyes, his hooked nose, his black complexion and his long and thin
body. His soul, already astonished, became engulfed in a kind of holy
terror, feeling on him the claws of the Malignant, he began to tremble
in all his limbs, hastily put in his wide pockets all the decent
eatables he could get hold of, rose gently and reached the door by
backward steps, muttering exorcisms all the while.

The philosopher did not take any notice of this. He took from his
pocket a little book covered with horny parchment, which he opened and
presented to my dear teacher and myself. It contained an old Greek text,
full of abbreviations and ligatures which at first gave me the effect
of an illegible scrawl. But M. Coignard, having put on his barnacles and
placed the book at the necessary distance, began to read the characters
easily; they looked more like balls of thread that had been unrolled by
a kitten than the simple and quiet letters of my St John Chrysostom, out
of which I studied the language of Plato and the New Testament. Having
come to the end of his reading he said:

“Sir, this passage is to be translated as: _Those of the Egyptians who
are well informed study first the writings called epistolographia, then
the hieratic, of which the hierogrammatists make use, and finally the
hieroglyphics._”

And then taking off his barnacles and shaking them triumphantly he
continued:

“Ah! Ah! Master Philosopher, I am not to be taken as a greenhorn. This
is an extract of the fifth book of the _Stromata_, the author of
which, Clement of Alexandria, is not mentioned in the martyrology, for
different reasons, which His Holiness Benedict XI. has indicated, the
principal of which is, that this Father was often erroneous in matters
of faith. It may be supposed that this exclusion was not sensibly felt
by him, if one takes into consideration what philosophical estrangement
had during his lifetime inspired this martyr. He gave preference to
_exile_ and took care to save his persecutors a crime, because he was
a very honest man. His style of writing was not elegant; his genius was
lively, his morals were pure, even austere. He had a very pronounced
liking for allegories and for lettuces.”

The philosopher extended his arm, which seemed to me to be remarkably
elongated as it reached right over the whole of the table, to take back
the little book from the hands of my learned tutor.

“It is sufficient,” he said, pushing the _Stromata_ back into his
pocket. “I see, reverend sir, that you understand Greek, You have well
translated this passage, at least in a vulgar and literal sense. I
intend to make your and your pupil’s fortune; I’ll employ both of you to
translate at my house the Greek texts I have received from Egypt.”

And turning towards my father, he continued:

“I think, Master Cook, you will consent to let me have your son to
make him a learned man and a great one. Should it be too much for your
fatherly love to give him entirely to me, I would pay out of my own
pocket for a scullion as his substitute in your cookshop.”

“As your lordship understands it like that,” replied my father, “I shall
not prevent you doing good to my son.”

“Always under the condition,” said my mother, “that it is not to be at
the expense of his soul. You’ll have to affirm on your oath to me that
you are a good Christian.”

“Barbe,” said my father, “you are a holy and worthy woman, but you
oblige me to make my excuses to this gentleman for your want of
politeness, which is caused less, to say the truth, by the natural
disposition, which is a good one, than by your neglected education.”

“Let the good woman have her say,” remarked the philosopher, “and let
her be reassured; I am a very religious man.”

“That’s right!” exclaimed my mother. “One has to worship the holy name
of God.”

“I worship all His names, my good lady. He has more than one. He is
called Adonai, Tetragrammaton, Jehovah, Otheres, Athanatos and Schyros.
And there are many more names.”

“I did not know,” said my mother. “But what you say, sir, does not
surprise me; I have remarked that people of condition have always more
names than the lower people. I am a native of Auneau, near the town of
Chartres, and I was but a child when the lord of our village left this
world for another. I remember very well when the herald proclaimed the
demise of the late lord, he gave him nearly as many names as you find in
the All Saints litany. I willingly believe that God has more names than
the Lord of Auneau had, as His condition is a much higher one. Learned
people are very happy to know them all, and if you will advance my son
Jacques in this knowledge I shall, my dear sir, be very much obliged to
you.”

“Well, the matter is understood,” said the philosopher, “and you,
reverend sir, I trust it will please you to translate from the Greek,
for salary, let it be understood.”

My good tutor, who was collecting all this while the few thoughts in
his brain which were not already desperately mixed up with the fumes of
wine, refilled his goblet, rose and said:

“Sir Philosopher, I heartily accept your generous offer. You are one of
the splendid mortals; it is an honour, sir, for me to be yours. If there
are two kinds of furniture I hold in high esteem, they are the bed
and the table. The table, filled up by turns with erudite books and
succulent dishes, serves as support to the nourishment both of body and
spirit; the bed propitious for sweet repose as well as for cruel love.
He certainly was a divine fellow who gave to the sons of Deucalion
bed and table. If I find with you, sir, those two precious pieces
of furniture, I’ll follow your name, as that of my benefactor, with
immortal praise, and I’ll celebrate you in Greek and Latin verses of all
sorts of metres.”

So he said, and drank deeply.

“That’s well,” replied the philosopher. “I’ll expect both of you
to-morrow morning at my house. You will follow the road to St Germain
till you come to the Cross of the Sablons, from that cross you’ll count
one hundred paces, going westward, and you’ll find a small green door in
a garden wall. You’ll use the knocker which represents a veiled figure
having a finger in her mouth. An old follower will open the door to you;
you’ll ask to see M. d’Asterac.”

“My son,” said my good tutor, pulling my coat sleeve, “put all that in
your memory, put cross, knocker, and the rest, so that we’ll be able to
find, to-morrow, the enchanted door. And you, Sir Mæcenas----”

But the philosopher was gone. No one had seen him leaving.




CHAPTER VI

Arrival at the Castle of M. d’Asterac and Interview with the Cabalist.


On the following day at an early hour we walked, my tutor and I, on the
St Germain road. The snow which covered the earth under the russet
light of the sky, rendered the atmosphere dull and heavy. The road
was deserted. We walked in wide furrows between the walls of
orchards, tottering fences and low houses, the windows of which
looked suspiciously on us. And, after having left behind two or three
tumbledown huts built of clay and straw, we saw in the middle of a
disconsolate heath the Cross of the Sablons. At fifty paces farther
commenced a very large park, closed in by a ruined wall, wherein was
the little door, and on it the knocker representing a horrible-looking
figure with a finger in her mouth. We recognised it easily as the one
the philosopher had described, and used the knocker.

After some rather considerable time, an old servant opened it and made
us a sign to follow him across the untidy park. Statues of nymphs, who
must have seen the boyhood of the late king, secreted under tree ivy
their gloominess and mutilations. At the end of an alley, the sloughs
of which were covered with snow, stood a castle of stone and brick, as
morose as the one of Madrid, which, oddly covered by a high slate roof,
looked like the castle of the Sleeping Beauty in the wood.

Following the silent valet, M. Coignard whispered to me:

“I confess, my son, that this lodging has no smiling appearance. It
shows the ruggedness wherein the customs of Frenchmen were still immured
in the time of King Henry IV., and it drives the soul to gloom and
nearly to melancholy by the state of forlornness in which unhappily
it has been left. How much sweeter it would be to climb the enchanted
hillocks of Tusculum with the hope of hearing Cicero discourse
of virtue, under the firs and pines of his villa so dear to the
philosopher! And have you not observed, my boy, that all along yonder
road neither taverns nor hostels are to be met with, and that it would
be necessary to cross the bridge and go up the hill to the Bergères
to get a drink of fresh wine? There is thereabout a hostel of the _Red
Horse_, where, if I remember well, Madame de St Ernest took me once to
dinner in the company of her monkey and her lover. You can’t imagine,
Tournebroche, how excellent the victuals are there. The _Red Horse_ is
as well known for its morning dinners as for the abundance of horses and
carriages which it has on hire. I convinced myself of it when I followed
to the stables a certain wench who seemed to be rather pretty. But she
was not; it would be a truer saying to call her ugly. But I illuminated
her with the colours of my longings. Such is the condition of men when
left to themselves; they err wretchedly. We are all abused by empty
images; we go in chase of dreams and embrace shadows. In God alone is
truth and stability.”

Meanwhile we ascended, behind the old servant, the disjointed flight of
steps.

“Alas!” said my tutor, “I begin to regret your father’s cookshop, where
we ate such good morsels while explaining Quintilian.”

After having scaled the first flight of large stone stairs, we were
introduced into a saloon, where M. d’Asterac was occupied with writing
near a big fire, in the midst of Egyptian coffins of human form raised
against the walls, their lids painted with sacred figures and golden
faces with long glossy eyes.

Politely M. d’Asterac invited us to be seated and said:

“Gentlemen, I expected you. And as you have both kindly consented to do
me the favour of staying with me, I beg of you to consider this house as
your own. You’ll be occupied in translating Greek texts I have brought
back with me from Egypt. I have no doubt you will do your best to
accomplish this task when you know that it is connected with the work
I have undertaken, to discover the lost science by which man will
be re-established in his original power over the elements. I have no
intention of raising the veil of nature and showing you Isis in her
dazzling nudity; but I will entrust you with the object of my studies
without fear that you’ll betray the mystery, because I have confidence
in your integrity and also in the power I have to guess and to forestall
all that may be attempted against me and to dispose for my vengeance of
secret and terrible forces. From the defaults of a fidelity, of which I
do not doubt; my power, gentlemen, assures me of your silence.

“Know then that man came out of Jehovah’s hands with that perfect
knowledge he has since lost. He was very powerful and very wise when he
was created, that’s to be seen in the books of Moses. But it’s necessary
to understand them. Before all it is clear that Jehovah is not God, but
a grand Demon, because he has created this world. The idea of a God
both perfect and creative is but a reverie of a barbarity worthy of a
Welshman or a Saxon. As little polished as one’s mind may be one cannot
admit that a perfect being tags anything to his own perfection, be it
a hazelnut. That’s common sense; God has no understanding, as he is
endless how could he understand? He does not create, because he ignores
time and space, which are conditions indispensable to all constructions.
Moses was too good a philosopher to teach that the world was created by
God. He took Jehovah for what he really is--for a powerful Demon, or if
he is to be called anything, for the Demiurgos.

“It follows that Jehovah, creating man, gave him knowledge of the
visible and the invisible world. The fall of Adam and Eve, which I’ll
explain to you another day, had not fully destroyed that knowledge of
the first man and the first woman, who passed their teachings on to
their children. Those teachings, on which the domination of nature
relies, have been consigned to the book of Enoch. The Egyptian priests
have kept the tradition which they fixed with mysterious signs on the
walls of the temples and the coffins of the dead. Moses, brought up in
the sanctuary of Memphis, was one of the initiated. His books, numbering
five, perhaps six, contain like very precious archives the treasures of
divine knowledge. You’ll discover there the most beautiful secrets if
you have cleared them of the interpolations which dishonour them; one
scorns the literal and coarse sense, to attach oneself to the most
subtle. I have penetrated to the largest part, as it will appear to you
also later on. Meanwhile, the truth, kept like virgins in the temples of
Egypt, passed to the wizards of Alexandria, who enriched them still
more and crowned them with all the pure gold bequeathed to Greece by
Pythagoras and his disciples, with whom the forces of the air conversed
familiarly. Wherefore, gentlemen, it is convenient to explore the books
of the Hebrews, the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians and those treatises
of the Greeks which are called Gnostic precisely because they possessed
knowledge. I reserve for myself, as is quite equitable, the most
arduous part of this extensive work. I apply myself to decipher those
hieroglyphics which the Egyptians used to inscribe in the temples of
their gods and on the graves of their priests. Having brought over from
Egypt a great number of those inscriptions, I fathom their sense by
means of a key I was able to discover with Clement of Alexandria.

“The Rabbi Mosaïde, who lives in retirement with me, works on the
re-establishment of the true sense of the Pentateuch. He is an old man
very well versed in magic, who has lived seventeen years shut up in the
crypt of the Great Pyramid, where he read the books of Toth. Concerning
yourselves, gentlemen, I intend to employ your knowledge, in reading the
Alexandrian MSS. which I have collected myself in great numbers. There
you’ll find, no doubt, some marvellous secrets, and I do not doubt that
with the help of these three sources of light-the Egyptian, the Hebrew
and the Greek--I’ll soon acquire the means I still want, to command
absolutely nature, visible as well as invisible. Believe me I shall know
how to reward your services by making you in some way participators of
my power.

“I do not speak to you of a more vulgar means to recognise them. At the
point I have reached in my philosophical labours, money is for me but a
trifle.”

Arrived at this part of M. d’Asterac’s discourse my good tutor
interrupted by saying:

“Sir, I’ll not conceal from you that this very money, which seems to
be a trifle to you, is for myself a smarting anxiety, because I have
experienced that it is not easy to earn some and remain an honest man
or even otherwise. Therefore I should be thankful for the assurance you
would kindly give on that subject.”

M. d’Asterac, with a movement which seemed to remove an invisible
object, gave M. Jerome Coignard the wished-for assurance; for myself,
curious as I was of all I saw, I did not wish for anything better than
to enter into a new life.

At his master’s call, the old servant who had opened the door to us
appeared in the study.

“Gentlemen,” said our host, “I give you your liberty till dinner at
noon. Meanwhile I should be very much obliged to you for ascending to
the rooms I have had prepared for you, and let me know that there is
nothing wanting for your comfort. Criton will conduct you.”

Having assured himself that we were following him, silent Criton went
out and began to ascend the stairs. He went up to the roof timbers,
then, having taken some steps down a long passage, he indicated to us
two very clean rooms where fires sparkled. I could never have believed
that a castle as shattered on the outside, the front of which showed
nothing but cracked walls and dark windows, was as habitable in some of
its inner parts. My first care was to know where I was. Our rooms looked
on the fields, the view from them embraced the marshy slopes of
the Seine, extending up to the Calvary of Mont Valérien. Eyeing our
furniture, I could see, laid out on my bed, a grey coat, breeches to
match and a sword. On the carpet were buckle shoes neatly coupled, the
heels joined and the points separated just as if they had of themselves
the sentiment of a fine deportment.

I augured favourably of the liberality of our master, To do him honour,
I dressed very carefully and spread abundantly on my hair the powder a
box full of which I found on a small table. And very welcome were the
laced shirt and white stockings I discovered in one of the drawers of
the chest.

Having put on shirt, stockings, breeches, vest and coat, I walked up
and down my room with hat under the arm, hand on the guard of my
sword, thinking all the time on the looking-glass, and regretting that
Catherine, the lace-maker, could not see me in such finery.

In this way I was occupied for a little while, when M. Jerome Coignard
came into my room with a new neckband and very respectable clerical
garb.

“Tournebroche,” he exclaimed, “is it you, my boy? Never forget that you
owe these fine clothes to the knowledge I have given you. They fit a
humanist like yourself, as who says humanities says also elegance.
But look on me and say if I have a good mien. In this dress I consider
myself to be a very honest man. This M. d’Asterac seems to be tolerably
magnificent. It’s a pity he’s mad. Wise he is in one way, as he calls
his valet Criton, which means judge. And it’s very true that our valets
are the witnesses of all our actions. When Lord Verulam, Chancellor of
England, whose philosophy I esteem but little, entered the great hall
to be tried, his lackeys, who were clad with an opulence by which the
copiousness of the Chancellor’s household could be judged, rose to
render him due honour. Lord Verulam said to them: ‘Sit down, your rising
is my falling.’ As a fact, those knaves, by their extravagance, had
pushed him to ruin and compelled him to do things for which he was
indicted as a peculator. Tournebroche, my boy, always remember this
misfortune of Lord Verulam, Chancellor of England and author of the
‘Novum Organum.’ But to return to that Sire d’Asterac, in whose service
we are; it is a great pity that he is a sorcerer and given to cursed
science. You know, my boy, I pride myself on my delicacy in matters of
faith I find it hard to serve a cabalist who turns our Holy Scriptures
upside down under the pretext to understand them better that way.
However, if he is, as his name and speech indicate, a Gascon nobleman,
we have nothing to be afraid of. A Gascon may make a contract with the
devil and you may be sure that the devil will be done.”

The dinner bell interrupted our conversation.

But while descending the stairs, my kind tutor said: “Tournebroche, my
boy, remember, during the whole meal, to follow all my movements, to
enable you to imitate them. Having dined at the third table of the
Bishop of Seez, I know how to do it. It’s a difficult art. It’s harder
to dine than to speak like a gentleman.”




CHAPTER VII

Dinner and Thoughts on Food


We found in the dining-room a table laid for three, where M. d’Asterac
made us take our places.

Criton, who acted as butler, served us with jellies, and thick soup
strained a dozen times. But we could not see any joints. As well as we
could, my kind tutor and myself tried to hide our surprise. M. d’Asterac
guessed it and said:

“Gentlemen, this is only an attempt, and may seem to you an unfortunate
one. I shall not persist in it. I’ll have some more customary dishes
served for you and I shall not disdain to partake of them. If the dishes
I offer you to-day are badly prepared, it is less the fault of my cook
than that of chemistry, which is still in its infancy. But they will at
all events give you an idea of what will be in the future. At present
men eat without philosophy. They do not nourish themselves like
reasonable beings. They do not think of such. But of what are they
thinking? Most of them live in stupidity and actually those who
are capable of reflection occupy their minds with silly things like
controversies and poetry. Consider mankind, gentlemen, at their meals
since the far-away times when they ceased their intercourse with Sylphs
and Salamanders. Abandoned by the genii of the air they grew heavy and
dull in ignorance and barbarity Without policy and without art they
lived, nude and miserable, in caverns, on the border of torrents or in
the trees of the forest. The chase was their only industry. After having
surprised or captured by quickness a timid animal, they devoured that
prey still palpitating.

“They also fed on the flesh of their companions and infirm relatives;
the first sepulchres of human beings were living graves, famished and
insensible intestines. After long fierce centuries a divine man made his
appearance: the Greeks call him Prometheus. It cannot be doubted that
this sage had intercourse in the homes of the Nymphs with the Salamander
folks. He learnt of them and showed to the unhappy mortals the art of
producing and conserving fire. Of all the innumerable advantages that
men have drawn from this celestial present, one of the happiest was the
possibility of cooking food, and by this treatment, to render it
lighter and more subtle. And it’s in a large part due to the effect of
a nourishment submitted to the action of the flame that slowly and by
degrees mankind became intelligent, industrious, meditative and apt to
cultivate the arts and sciences. But that was only a first step, and it
is grievous to think that so many millions of years had to pass before
a second step was made. From the time when our ancestors toasted beasts’
quarters on fires of brambles in the shelter of a rock, we have not
made any true progress in cooking, for sure, gentlemen, you cannot put
a higher value on the inventions of Lucullus and that gross pie to
which Vitellius gave the name of Shield of Minerva than on our roasts,
patties, stews, our stuffed meats and all the fricassees which still
suffer from the ancient barbarity.

“At Fontainebleau, the king’s table, where a whole stag is dished up
in his skin and his antlers, presents to the eye of the philosopher a
spectacle as rude as that of the troglodytes, cowering round the smoking
cinders, gnawing horse bones. The brilliant paintings of the hall, the
guards, the richly clad officers, the musicians playing the melodies of
Lambert and Lulli in the gallery, the golden goblets, the silver plate,
the silken tablecloth, the Venetian glass, the chased epergnes full of
rare flowers, the heavy candlesticks--they cannot change, cannot lend
a dissimulating charm to the true nature of this unclean charnel-house,
where men and women assemble over animal bodies, broken bones and torn
meats to gloat greedily over them. Oh, what unphilosophical nourishment!
We swallow with stupid gluttony muscle, fat and intestines of beasts
without discerning in those substances such parts as are truly adapted
to our nourishment and those much more abundant which we ought to
reject; and we fill our stomach indiscriminately with good and bad,
useful and injurious. That’s the very point, where a separation is to
be made, and, if the whole medical faculty could boast of a chemist
and philosopher, we should no more be compelled to partake of such
disgusting feasts.

“They would prepare for us, gentlemen, distilled meats, containing
nothing but what is in sympathy and affinity with our body. Nothing
would be used but the quintessence of oxen and pigs, the elixir of
partridges and capons, and all that is swallowed could be digested. I do
not give up all hope, gentlemen, of obtaining such results by thinking
somewhat deeper over chemistry and medicine than I have had leisure to
do up till now.”

At these words of our host, M. Jérôme Coignard, raising his eyes over
the thin black broth in his plate, looked uneasily at M. d’Asterac, who
continued to say:

“But that would still be quite insufficient progress. No honest man
can eat animal flesh without disgust, and people cannot call themselves
refined as long as they keep slaughter-houses and butchers’ shops
in their towns. But the day will come when we shall know exactly the
nourishing elements contained in animal carcasses, and it will become
possible to extract those very same elements from bodies without life,
and which will furnish an abundance of them. Those bodies without life
contain, as a fact, all that is to be found in living beings, because
the animal has been built up by the vegetable, which has itself drawn
the substance out of the inert ground.

“Then people will feed on extracts of metal and mineral conveniently
treated by physicians. I have no doubt but that the taste of them
will be exquisite and the absorption salutary. Cookery will be done
in retorts and stills and alchemists will be our cooks. Are you not
impatient, gentlemen, to see such marvels? I promise them to you at a
very near time. But you are not able at present to unravel the excellent
effects that they will produce.”

“In truth, sir, I do not unravel them,” said my kind tutor, and had a
long draught of wine.

“If such is the case,” said M. d’Asterac, “listen to me for a moment.
No more burdened with slow digestions, mankind will become marvellously
active, their sight will become singularly piercing, and they will see
the ships gliding on the seas of the moon. Their understanding will be
clearer, their ways softer. They will greatly advance in their knowledge
of God and nature.

“But it also seems necessary to look forward on all the changes which
cannot fail to occur. Even the structure of the human body will be
modified. It is an uncontradictable fact that without exercise all
organs flatten and end by disappearing altogether. It has been observed
that fishes deprived of light become blind. I myself have seen in Valais
that shepherds who fed on curdled milk lost their teeth very early; some
of them never had any at all, When men feed on the balms I have spoken
of, their intestines will be shortened by ells and the volume of the
stomach will shrink considerably.”

“For once, sir,” said my tutor, “you go too quickly and risk making a
mess of it. I never considered it to be disagreeable when women get a
little corporation, especially if all the remainder of her body is
well proportioned. It’s a kind of beauty I’m rather partial to. Do not
transform it inconsiderately.”

“No matter, we’ll leave woman’s body and flanks formed after the canons
of the Greek sculptors. That will be to give you pleasure, reverend sir,
and also in due consideration of the labours of maternity. It is true, I
intend in that case also, to make several changes of which I’ll speak to
you on a future day. But to return to our subject. I have to acknowledge
that all I have till now predicted is nothing but a preparatory measure
for the real nourishment, which is that of the Sylphs and all aerial
spirits. They drink light, which is sufficient to give to their bodies
marvellous strength and subtility. It is their only potion, one day it
will be ours also. Nothing more is to be done than to render the rays of
the sun drinkable. I confess that I do not see with sufficient clearness
the means to arrive at it, and I do foresee many encumbrances and great
obstacles on the road. But whensoever some sage shall be able to do it,
mankind will be the equal of Sylphs and Salamanders in intelligence and
beauty.”

My good tutor listened to these words, folded in himself, his head sadly
lowered. He seemed to contemplate the changes to himself from the kind
of food imagined by our host.

“Sir,” he said after a while, “did you not speak at yonder cookshop of
an elixir which dispenses with all kinds of food?”

“True, I did,” replied M. d’Asterac, “but that liquor is only good for
philosophers, and by that you may understand how restricted is the use
of it. It will be better not to mention it.”

One doubt tormented me. I asked leave of our host to submit it to him,
certain that he would enlighten me at once. He allowed me to speak and I
said:

“Sir, those Salamanders, who you say are so beautiful, and of whom,
after your relation, I have conceived a charming idea, have they
unhappily spoiled their teeth by light drinking, as the shepherds at
Valais lost theirs by feeding only on milk diet? I confess I am rather
uneasy about it.”

“My son,” replied M. d’Asterac, “your curiosity pleases me and I will
satisfy it. The Salamanders have no teeth that we should call such. But
their gums are furnished with two ranges of pearls, very white and very
brilliant, lending to their smiles an inconceivable gracefulness. You
should know that these pearls are light-hardened.”

I said to M. d’Asterac that I was glad it was so and he continued:

“Men’s teeth are a sign of ferocity. Once people are properly fed,
their teeth will give way to some ornament similar to the pearls of the
Salamander. Then it will become incomprehensible that a lover could,
without horror and disgust, contemplate dogs’ teeth in the mouth of his
beloved.”




CHAPTER VIII

The Library and its Contents


After dinner our host conducted us to a vast gallery adjoining his
study; it was the library. There were to be seen ranged on oaken shelves
an innumerable army, or rather a grand assembly, of books in duodecimo,
in octavo, in quarto, in folio, clad in calf, sheep, morocco leather,
in parchment and in pigskin. The light fell through six windows on this
silent assembly extended from one end of the hall to the other,
all along the high walls. Large tables, alternated with globes and
astronomical apparatus, occupied the middle of the gallery. M. d’Asterac
told us to make choice of the place most convenient for our work.

My dear tutor, his head high, with look and breath inhaled all these
books drivelling with joy.

“By Apollo!” he exclaimed, “what a splendid library! The Bishop of
Séez’s, over rich in works of canonical law, is not to be compared to
this. There is no pleasanter abode in my opinion, actually the Elysian
Fields as described by Virgil. At first sight I can discover such rare
books and precious collections that I have my doubts, sir, if any other
private library prevails over this, which is inferior in France only to
the Mazarin and the Royal. I dare say, seeing all these Greek and Latin
MSS. closely pressed together in this single corner, one may, after the
Bodleian, the Ambrosian, the Laurentinian and the Vatican also name,
sir, the Asteracian. Without flattering myself I may say that I smell
truffles and books at a long distance and I consider myself from now,
to be the equal of Peiresc, of Grolier and of Canevarius, who are the
princes of bibliophiles.”

“I consider myself to be over them,” said M. d’Asterac quietly, “as this
library is a great deal more precious than all those you have named. The
King’s Library is but an old bookshop in comparison with mine--that
is, if you do not consider the number of books only and the quantity of
blackened paper. Gabriel Naudé and your Abbé Bignon, both librarians
of fame, are, compared to me, indolent shepherds of a vile herd of
sheep-like books. I concede that the Benedictines are diligent, but they
have no high spirit and their libraries reveal the mediocrity of the
souls by whom they have been collected. My gallery, sir, is not on the
pattern of others. The works I have got together form a whole which
doubtless will procure me knowledge. My library is gnostic, oecumenic
and spiritual. If all the lines traced on those numberless sheets of
paper and parchment could enter in good order into your brain, you,
sir, would know all, could do all, would be the master of Nature, the
plasmator of things, you would hold the whole world between the two
fingers of your hand as I now hold these grains of tobacco.”

With these words he offered his snuff-box to my tutor.

“You are very polite,” said M. Jérôme Coignard.

Letting his transported looks wander over the learned walls he
continued:

“Between these third and fourth windows are shelves bearing an
illustrious burden. There is the meeting place of Oriental MSS., who
seem to converse together. I see ten or twelve venerable ones under
shreds of purple and gold figured silks, their vestments. Like a
Byzantine emperor, some of them wear jewelled clasps on their mantles,
others are mailed in ivory plates.”

“They are the writings of Jewish, Arabian and Persian cabalists,” said
M. d’Asterac. “You have just opened ‘The Powerful Hand.’ Close to it
you’ll find ‘The Open Table,’ ‘The Faithful Shepherd,’ ‘The Fragments
of the Temple’ and ‘The Light of Darkness.’ One place is empty, that of
‘Slow Waters,’ a precious treatise, which Mosaïde studies at present.
Mosaïde, as I have already said to you, gentlemen, is in my house,
occupied with the discovery of the deepest secrets contained in the
scriptures of the Hebrews, and, over a century old as he is, the rabbi
consents not to die, before penetrating into the sense of all cabalistic
symbols. I owe him much gratitude, and beg of you gentlemen, when you
see him, to show him the same regard as I do myself.

“But let us pass that over and come to what is your special concern.
I thought of you, reverend sir, to transcribe and put into Latin some
Greek MSS. of inestimable value. I confide in your knowledge and in your
zeal, and have no doubt that your young disciple cannot but be of great
help to you.”

And addressing me specially he said:

“Yes, my son, I lay great hopes on you. They are based for a large part
on the education you have received. For, you have been brought up, so
to say, in the flames, under the mantel of the chimney haunted by
Salamanders. That is a very considerable circumstance.”

Without interrupting his speech, he took up an armful of MSS. and
deposited them on the table.

“This,” he said, showing a roll of papyrus, “comes from Egypt. It is a
book of Zosimus the Panopolitan, which was thought to be lost and which
I found myself in a coffin of a priest of Serapis.

“And what you see here,” he added, showing us some straps of glossy and
fibrous leaves on which Greek letters traced with a brush were hardly
visible, “are unheard-of revelations, due, one to Gophar the Persian,
the other to John, the arch-priest of Saint Evagia.

“I should be very glad if you would occupy yourselves with these
works before any others. Afterwards we will study together the MSS.
of Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemy, of Olympiodorus and Stephanus, which I
discovered at Ravenna, in a vault where they have been locked up since
the reign of that ignoramus Theodosius who has been surnamed the Great.”

As soon as M. d’Asterac was gone, my tutor sat down over the papyrus of
Zosimus and, with the help of a magnifying glass commenced to decipher
it. I asked him if he was not surprised by what he had just heard.

Without raising his head he replied:

“My dear boy, I have known too many kinds of persons and traversed
fortunes too various to be surprised at anything. This gentleman seems
to be demented, less because he really is so, but from his thoughts
differing in excess from those of the vulgar. But if one listened to
discourses commonly held in this world, there would be found still less
sense than in those of that philosopher. Left to itself, the sublimest
human reason builds its castles and temples in the air and, truly, M.
d’Asterac is a pretty good gatherer of clouds. Truth is in God alone,
never forget it, my boy. But this is really the book ‘Jmoreth’ written
by Zosimus the Panopolitan for his sister Theosebia. What a glory
and what a delight to read this unique MS. rediscovered by a kind of
prodigy! I’ll give it my days and night watches. How I pity, my boy, the
ignorant fellows whom idleness drives into debauchery! What a miserable
life they lead! What is a woman in comparison with an Alexandrian
papyrus? Compare, if you please, this noble library with the tavern of
the _Little Bacchus_ and the entertainment of this precious MS. with the
caresses given to a wench under the bower; and tell me, my boy, where
true contentment is to be found. For me, a companion of the Muses,
and admitted to the silent orgies of meditation of which the rhetor of
Madama speaks with so much eloquence, I thank God for having made me a
respectable man.”




CHAPTER IX

At Work on Zosimus the Panopolitan--I visit my Home and hear Gossip
about M. d’Asterac.


During all the next month or six weeks, M. Coignard applied himself,
day and night, just as he had promised, to the reading of Zosimus the
Panopolitan. During the meals we partook of at the table of M. d’Asterac
the conversation turned on the opinions of the gnostics and on the
knowledge of the ancient Egyptians. Being only an ignorant scholar I was
of little use to my good master. I did my best by making such researches
as he wanted me to make; I took no little pleasure in it. Truly, we
lived happily and quietly. At about the seventh week, M. d’Asterac gave
me leave to go and see my parents at their cookshop. The shop appeared
strangely smaller to me. My mother was there alone and sad. She cried
aloud on seeing me fitted out like a prince.

“My Jacques,” she said, “I am very happy!”

And she began to cry. We embraced, then wiping her eyes with a corner of
her canvas apron she said:

“Your father is at the _Little Bacchus_. Since you left he often goes
there; in your absence the house is less pleasant for him. He’ll be glad
to see you again. But say, my Jacques, are you satisfied with your new
position? I regretted letting you go with that nobleman; I even accused
myself in confession to the third vicar of giving preference to your
bodily well-being over that of your soul and not having thought of God
in establishing you. The third vicar reproved me kindly over it, and
exhorted me to follow the example of the pious women in the Scriptures,
of whom he named several to me; but there are names there that I’ll
never be able to remember. He did not explain his meaning minutely as it
was a Saturday evening and the church was full of penitents.”

I reassured my good mother as well as I could and told her that M.
d’Asterac made me work in Greek, which was the language in which the New
Testament was written; this pleased her, but she remained pensive.

“You’ll never guess, my dear Jacquot,” she said, “who spoke to me of M.
d’Asterac. It was Cadette Saint-Avit, the serving-woman of the Rector of
St Benoît. She comes from Gascony, and is a native of a village called
Laroque-Timbaut, quite near Saint Eulalie, of which M. d’Asterac is the
lord. You know that Cadette Saint-Avit is elderly, as the waiting-woman
of a rector ought to be. In her youth she knew, in her country, the
three Messieurs d’Asterac, one of whom was captain of a man-of-war and
has since been drowned. He was the youngest. The second was colonel of a
regiment, went to war and was killed. The eldest, Hercules d’Asterac,
is the sole survivor of the three brothers. It is the same one in
whose service you are for your good, at least I hope so. He dressed
magnificently in his youth, was liberal in his manners but of a sombre
humour. He kept aloof from all public business and was not anxious to go
into the king’s service, as his two brothers had done and found in it an
honourable end. He was accustomed to say that it was no glory to carry
a sword at one’s side, that he did not know of a more ignoble thing than
the calling of arms, and that a village scavenger was, in his opinion,
high over a brigadier or a marshal of France. Those were his sayings.
I confess it does not seem to me either bad or malicious, rather daring
and whimsical. But in some way they must be blameable, as Cadette
Saint-Avit said that the rector of her parish considered them to be
contrary to the order established by God in this world and opposed to
that part of the Bible where God is given a name which means Lord of
Hosts, and that would be a great sin.

“This M. Hercules had so little sympathy with the court that he refused
to travel to Versailles to be presented to his Majesty according to his
birthright. He said, ‘The king does not come to me and I do not go to
him,’ and anyone of sense, my Jacquot, can understand that such is not a
natural saying.”

My good mother looked inquiringly and anxiously at me and went on:

“What more I have to inform you about, my dear Jacquot, is still less
believable. However, Cadette Saint-Avit spoke of it as of a certainty.
And so I will tell you that M. Hercules d’Asterac, when he lived on his
estate, had no other care but to bottle the rays of the sun. Cadette
Saint-Avit does not know how he managed it, but she is sure that after a
time, in the flagons well corked and heated in water baths, tiny little
women took form, charming figures and dressed like theatre princesses.
You laugh, Jacquot; however, one ought not to joke over such things when
one can see the consequence. It is a great sin to create in such a way
creatures who cannot be baptised and who never could have a part in the
eternal blessings. You cannot suppose that M. d’Asterac carried those
grotesque figures to a priest in their bottles to hold them over the
christening font. No godmother could have been found for them.”

“But, my dear mamma,” I replied, “the dolls of M. d’Asterac were not in
want of christening, they had no participation in original sin.”

“I never thought of that,” said my mother. “And Cadette Saint-Avit
herself did not mention it, although she was the servant of a rector.
Unhappily she left Gascony when quite young, came to France and had no
more news of M. d’Asterac, of his bottles and his puppets. I sincerely
hope, my dear Jacquot, that he renounced his wicked works, which could
not be accomplished without the help of the devil.”

I asked:

“Tell me, my dear mother, did Cadette Saint-Avit, the rector’s servant,
see the bodies in the bottles with her own eyes?”

“No, my dear child; M. d’Asterac kept his dolls very secret and did not
show them to anybody. But she heard of them from a churchman of the name
of Fulgence, who haunted the castle, and swore he had seen those little
creatures step out of their glass prisons and dance a minuet. And she
had every reason to believe it. It is possible to doubt of what one
sees, but you cannot doubt the word of an honest man, especially when
he belongs to the Church. There is another misfortune with such secret
practices, they are extremely costly and it is hard to imagine, as
Cadette Saint-Avit said, what money M. Hercules spent to procure all
those bottles of different forms, those furnaces and conjuring books
wherewith he filled his castle. But after the death of his brothers he
became the richest gentleman of his province, and while he dissipated
his wealth in follies, his good lands worked for him. Cadette Saint-Avit
rates him, with all his expenses, as still a very rich man.”

These last words spoken, my father entered the shop. He embraced
me tenderly and confided to me that the house had lost half its
pleasantness in consequence of my departure and that of M. Jérôme
Coignard, who was honest and jovial. He complimented me on my dress and
gave me a lesson in deportment, assuring me that trade had accustomed
him to easy manners by the continuous obligation he was under to
greet his customers like gentlemen, if as a fact they were only vile
riff-raff. He gave me, as a precept, to round off the elbows and to turn
my toes outward and counselled me, beyond this, to go and see Léandre at
the fair of Saint Germain and to adjust myself exactly on him.

We dined together with a good appetite, and we parted shedding floods of
tears. I loved them well, both of them, and what principally made me cry
was that, after an absence of six weeks only, they had already become
somewhat strange to me. And I verily believe that their sadness was
caused by the same sentiment.




CHAPTER X

I see Catherine with Friar Ange and reflect--The Liking of Nymphs for
Satyrs--An Alarm of Fire--M. d’Asterac in his Laboratory.


When I came out of the cookshop, the night was black. At the corner of
the Rue des Ecrivains I heard a fat and deep voice singing:

  “Si ton honneur elle est perdue
  La bell’, c’est tu l’as bien voulu.”

And soon I could see on the other side, whence the voice sounded,
Friar Ange, with wallet dangling on his shoulder, holding Catherine the
lacemaker round the waist, walking in the shadow with a wavering
and triumphal step, spouting the gutter water under his sandals in a
magnificent spirit of mire which seemed to celebrate his drunken glory,
as the basins of Versailles make their fountains play in honour of the
king. I put myself out of the way against the post in the corner of
a house door, so as not to be seen by them, which was a needless
precaution as they were too much occupied with one another. With her
head lying on the monk’s shoulder, Catherine laughed. A moonray
trembled on her moist lips and in her eyes, like the water sparkles in
a fountain; and I went my way, with my soul irritated and my heart
oppressed, thinking on the provoking waist of that fine girl pressed by
the arm of a dirty Capuchin.

“Is it possible,” I said to myself, “that such a pretty thing could be
in such ugly hands? And if Catherine despises me need she render her
despisal more cruel by the liking she has for that naughty Friar Ange?”

This preference appeared singular to me and I conceived as much surprise
as disgust at it. But I was not the disciple of M. Jérôme Coignard for
nothing. This incomparable teacher had formed my mind to meditate.
I recalled to myself the satyrs one can see in gardens carrying off
nymphs, and reflected that if Catherine was made like a nymph, those
satyrs, at least as they are represented to us, are as horrible as
yonder Capuchin. And I concluded that I ought not to be so very much
astonished by what I had just seen. My vexation, however, was not
dissipated by my reason, doubtless because it had not its source there.
These meditations got me along through the shadows of the night and
the mud of the thaw to the road of Saint Germain, where I met M. Jérôme
Coignard, who was returning home to the Cross of the Sablons after
having supped in town.

“My boy,” he said, “I have conversed of Zosimus and the gnostics at the
table of a very learned ecclesiastic, quite another Peiresc. The wine
was coarse and the fare but middling, but nectar and ambrosia floated
through the discourse.”

Then my dear tutor spoke of the Panopolitan with an inconceivable
eloquence. Alas! I listened badly, thinking of that drop of moonlight
which had this very night fallen on the lips of Catherine the lacemaker.

At last he came to a stop and I asked on what foundation the Greeks
had established the liking of the nymphs for satyrs. My teacher was so
widely learned that he was always ready to reply to all questions. He
told me:

“That liking is based on a natural sympathy. It is lively but not
so ardent as the liking of the satyrs for the nymphs, with which
it corresponds. The poets have observed this distinction very well.
Concerning it I’ll narrate you a singular adventure I have read in a MS.
belonging to the library of the Bishop of Séez. It was (I still have it
before my eyes) a collection in folio, written in a good hand of last
century. This is the singular fact reported in it. A Norman gentleman
and his wife took part in a public entertainment, disguised, he as a
satyr, she as a nymph. By Ovid it is known with what ardour the satyrs
pursue the nymphs; that gentleman had read the ‘Metamorphoses.’ He
entered so well into the spirit of his disguise that nine months after,
his wife presented him with a baby whose forehead was horned and whose
feet were those of a buck. It is not known what became of the father
beyond that he had the common end of all creatures, to wit, that he
died, and that beside that capriped he left another younger child, a
Christian one and of human form. This younger son went to law claiming
that his brother should not get a part of the deceased father’s
inheritance for the reason that he did not belong to the species
redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ. The Parliament of Normandy,
sitting at Rouen, gave a verdict in his favour, which was duly
recorded.”

I asked my teacher if it was possible that a disguise could have such
an effect on nature and if the shape of the child could follow that of a
garment. M. Jérôme Coignard advised me not to believe it.

“Jacques Tournebroche, my son,” he said, “remember always that a good
mind repels all that is contrary to reason, except in matters of faith,
wherein it is convenient to believe implicitly. Thank God! I have never
erred about the dogmas of our very holy religion, and I trust to find
myself in the same disposition in the article of death.”

Conversing in this manner we arrived at the castle. The roof seemed in
a red glow in the dark. Out of one in dark shadows. We heard the roaring
of the fire, like fiery rain under the dense smoke wherewith the sky
was veiled. We both believed the flames to be devouring the building. My
good tutor tore his hair and moaned:

“My Zosimus, my papyrus, my Greek MSS.! Help! Help! my Zosimus!”

Running up the great lane over puddles of water reflecting the glare
of the fire, we crossed the park buried in dark shadows. We heard the
roaring of the fire, which filled the sombre staircase. Two at a time
we ran up the steps, stopping now and again to listen whence came that
appalling noise.

It appeared to us to come from a corridor on the third floor where we
had never been. In that direction we fumbled our way, and seeing through
the slits of a door the red brightness, we knocked with all our might on
the panel. It opened at once.

M. d’Asterac, who opened the door, stood quietly before us. His long
black figure seemed to be enveloped in flaming air. He asked quietly on
what pressing business we were looking for him at so late an hour. There
was no conflagration but a terrible fire, burning in a big furnace with
reflectors, which as I have since learned are called athanors. The
whole of the rather large room was full of glass bottles with long
necks twined round glass tubes of a duck-beak shape, retorts, resembling
chubby cheeks out of which came noses like trumpets, crucibles, cupels,
matrasses, cucurbits and vases of all forms.

My dear old tutor wiping his face shining like live coals said:

“Oh, sir, we were afraid that the castle was alight like straw. Thank
God, the library is not burning. But are you practising the spagyric
art, sir?”

“I do not want to conceal from you,” said M. d’Asterac, “that I have
made great progress in it, but withal I have not found the theorem
capable of rendering my work perfect. At the moment you knocked at the
door I was picking up the Spirit of the World, and the Flower of Heaven,
which are the veritable Fountains of Youth. Have you some understanding
of alchemy, Monsieur Coignard?”

The abbé replied that he had got some notions of it from certain books,
but that he considered the practice of it to be pernicious and contrary
to religion. M. d’Asterac smiled and said:

“You are too knowing a man, M. Coignard, not to be acquainted with the
Flying Eagle, the Bird of Hermes, the Fowl of Hermogenes, the Head of a
Raven, the Green Lion and the Phoenix.”

“I have been told,” said my good master, “that by these names are
distinguished the philosopher’s stone in its different states. But I
have doubts about the possibility of a transmutation of metals.”

With the greatest confidence M. d’Asterac replied:

“Nothing is easier, my dear sir, than to bring your uncertainty to an
end.”

He opened an old rickety chest standing in the wall and took out of it
a copper coin, bearing the effigy of the late king, and called our
attention to a round stain crossing the coin from side to side.

“That,” he said, “is the effect of the stone, which has transmuted the
copper into silver, but that’s only a trifle.”

He went back to the chest and took out of it a sapphire the size of
an egg, an opal of marvellous dimensions and a handful of perfect fine
emeralds.

“Here are some of my doings,” he said, “which are proof enough that the
spagyric art is not the dream of an empty brain.”

At the bottom of the small wooden bowl lay five or six little diamonds,
of which M. d’Asterac made no mention. My tutor asked him if they also
were of his make, and, the alchemist having acknowledged it:

“Sir,” said the abbé, “I should counsel you to show the curious those
diamonds prior to the other stones by way of caution. If you let them
look first at the sapphire, opal and the emeralds, you run the risk of a
persecution for sorcery, because everyone will say that the devil alone
was capable of producing such stones. Just as the devil alone could lead
an easy life in the midst of these furnaces, where one has to breathe
flames. As far as I am concerned, having stayed a single quarter of an
hour, I am already half baked.”

Letting us out, with a friendly smile M. d’Asterac spoke as follows:

“Well knowing what to think of the devil and the Other, I willingly
consent to speak of them with persons who believe in them. The devil and
the Other are, as it were, characters; one may speak of them just as of
Achilles and Thersites. Be assured, gentlemen, if the devil is like what
he is said to be, he does not live in so subtle an element as fire. It
is wholly wrong to place so villainous a beast in the sun. But as I had
the honour to say, Master Tournebroche, to the Capuchin so dear to your
mother, I reckon that the Christians slander Satan and his demons. That
in some unknown world there may exist beings still worse than man is
possible, but hardly conceivable. Certainly, if such exist, they inhabit
regions deprived of light, and if they are burning, it would be in ice,
which, as a fact, causes the same smarting pain, and not in illustrious
flames among the fiery daughters of the stars. They suffer because they
are wicked, and wickedness is an evil; but they can only suffer from
chilblains. With regard to your Satan, gentlemen, who is a horror for
your theologians, I do not consider him to be despicable, if I judge him
by all you say of him, and, should he peradventure exist, I would think
him to be, not a nasty beast, but a little Sylph, or at least a Gnome,
and a metallurgist a trifle mocking but very intelligent.”

My tutor stopped his ears with his fingers and took to flight so as not
to hear anything more.

“What impiety, Tournebroche, my boy,” he exclaimed, when we reached the
staircase. “What blasphemies! Have you felt all the odium in the maxims
of that philosopher? He pushes atheism to a joyous frenzy, which makes
me wonder. But this indeed renders him almost innocent, for being apart
from all belief, he cannot tear up the Holy Church like those who remain
attached to her by some half-severed, still bleeding limb. Such, my
son, are the Lutherans and the Calvinists, who mortify the Church till a
separation occurs. On the contrary, atheists damn themselves alone, and
one may dine with them without committing a sin. That’s to say, that we
need not have any scruple about living with M. d’Asterac, who believes
neither in God nor devil. But did you see, Tournebroche, my boy, the
handful of little diamonds at the bottom of the wooden bowl?--the number
of which apparently he did not know, and which seemed to be of pure
water. I have my doubts about the opal and the sapphires, but those
diamonds looked genuine.” When we reached our chambers we wished each
other a very good-night.




CHAPTER XI

The Advent of Spring and its Effects--We visit Mosaïde


Up till springtime my tutor and myself led a regular and secluded life.
All the mornings we were at work shut up in the gallery, and came back
here after dinner as if to the theatre. Not as M. Jérôme Coignard used
to say, to give ourselves in the manner of gentlemen and valets a paltry
spectacle, but to listen to the sublime, if contradictory, dialogues of
the ancient authors.

In this way the reading and translating of the Panopolitan advanced
quickly. I hardly contributed to it. Such kind of work was above my
knowledge and I had enough to do to learn the figure that the Greek
letters make on papyrus. Sometimes I assisted my tutor by consulting
the authors who could enlighten him in his researches, and foremost
Olympiodorus and Plotinus, with whom since then I have remained
familiar. The small services I was able to render him increased
considerably my self-esteem.

After a long sharp winter I was on the way to become a learned person,
when the spring broke in suddenly with her gallant equipage of light,
tender green and singing birds; the perfume of the lilacs coming into
the library windows caused me vague reveries, out of which my tutor
called me by saying:

“Jacquot Tournebroche, please climb up that ladder and tell me if
that rascal Manéthon does not mention a god Imhotep, who by his
contradictions tortures one like a devil.”

And my good master filled his nose with tobacco and looked quite
content.

On another occasion he said:

“My boy, it is remarkable how great an influence our garments have on
our moral state. Since my neckband has become spotted with different
sauces I have dropped upon it I feel a less honest man. Now that you are
dressed like a marquis, Tournebroche, does not the desire tickle you
to assist at the toilet of an opera girl, and to put a roll of spurious
gold pieces on a faro-table--in one word, do you not feel yourself to be
a man of quality? Do not take what I say amiss, and remember that it
is sufficient to give a coward a busby to make him hasten to become a
soldier and be knocked on the head in the king’s service. Tournebroche,
our sentiments are composed of a thousand things we cannot detect for
their smallness, and the destiny of our immortal soul depends sometimes
on a puff too light to bend a blade of grass. We are the toy of the
winds. But pass me, if you please, ‘The Rudiments of Vossius,’ the red
edges of which I see stand out under your left arm.”

On this same day, after dinner at three o’clock, M. d’Asterac led us,
my teacher and myself, to walk in the park. He conducted us to the west,
where Rueil and Mont Valérien are visible. It was the deepest and most
desolate part. Ivy and grass, cropped by the rabbits, covered the
paths, now and then obstructed by large trunks of dead trees. The marble
statues on both sides of the way smiled, unconscious of their ruin. A
nymph, with her broken hand near her mouth, made a sign to a shepherd to
remain silent. A young faun, his head fallen to the ground, still tried
to put his flute to his lips. And all these divine beings seemed to
teach us to despise the injuries inflicted by time and fortune. We
followed the banks of a canal where the rainwater nourished the tree
frogs. Round a circus rose sloping basins where pigeons went to drink.
Arrived there we went by a narrow pathway driven through a coppice.

“Walk with care,” said M. d’Asterac. “This pathway is somewhat
dangerous, as it is lined by mandrakes which at night-time sing at the
foot of the trees. They hide in the earth. Take care not to put your
feet on them; you will get love sickness or thirst after wealth, and
would be lost, because the passions inspired by mandrakes are unhappy.”

I asked how it was possible to avoid the invisible danger. M. d’Asterac
replied that one could escape it by means of intuitive divination, and
in no other way.

“Besides,” he added, “this pathway is fatal.”

It went on in a direct line to a brick pavilion, hidden under ivy, which
no doubt had served in time gone by as a guard house. There the park
came to an end close to the monotonous marshes of the Seine.

“You see this pavilion,” said M. d’Asterac; “in it lives the most
learned of men. Therein Mosaïde, one hundred and twenty years old,
penetrates, with majestic self-will, the mysteries of nature. He has
left Imbonatus and Bartoloni far behind. I wanted to honour myself,
gentlemen, by keeping under my roof the greatest cabalist since Enoch,
son of Cain. Religious scruples have prevented Mosaïde taking his place
at my table, which he supposes to be a Christian’s, by which he does me
too much honour. You cannot conceive the violence of hate, of this sage,
of everything Christian. I had the greatest difficulty to make him dwell
in the pavilion, where he lives alone with his niece, Jahel. Gentlemen,
you shall not wait longer before becoming acquainted with Mosaïde and I
will at once present both of you to this divine man.”

And having thus spoken, M. d’Asterac pushed us inside the pavilion,
where between MSS. strewn all round was seated in a large arm-chair an
old man with piercing eyes, a hooked nose, and a couple of thin streams
of white beard growing from a receding chin; a velvet cap, formed like
an imperial crown, covered his bald skull, and his body, of an inhuman
emaciation, was wrapped up in an old gown of yellow silk, resplendent
but dirty.

Right piercing looks were turned on us, but he gave no sign that he
noticed our arrival. His face had an expression of painful stubbornness,
and he slowly rolled between his rigid fingers the reed which served him
for writing.

“Do not expect idle words from Mosaïde,” said M. d’Asterac to us. “For
a long time this sage does not communicate with anyone but the genii and
myself. His discourses are sublime. As he will never converse with you,
gentlemen, I’ll endeavour to give you in a few words an idea of his
merits. First he has penetrated into the spiritual sense of the books of
Moses, after that into the value of the Hebrew characters, which depends
on the order of the letters of the alphabet. This order has been
thrown into confusion from the eleventh letter forward. Mosaïde has
re-established it, which Atrabis, Philo, Avicenne, Raymond Lully, P. de
la Mirandola, Reuchlin, Henry More and Robert Flydd have been unable to
do. Mosaïde knows the number of the gold which corresponds to Jehovah
in the world of spirits, and you must agree, gentlemen, that that is of
infinite consequence.”

My dear tutor took his snuff-box in hand, presented it civilly to us,
took a pinch himself and said:

“Do you not believe, M. d’Asterac, that this sort of knowledge is the
very kind to bring one to the devil at the end of this transient life?

“After all, this sire Mosaïde plainly errs in his interpretation of the
Holy Scriptures. When our Lord expired on the cross for the salvation of
mankind the synagogue felt a bandage slip over her eyes, she staggered
like a drunken woman and the crown fell from her head. Since then the
interpretation of the Old Testament is confined to the Catholic Church,
to which in spite of my many iniquities I belong.”

At these words Mosaïde, like a goat god, smiled in a hideous manner, and
said to my dear tutor, in a slow and musty voice sounding as from far
away:

“The Masorah has not confided to thee her secrets and the Mischna has
not revealed to thee her mysteries.”

“Mosaïde,” continued M. d’Asterac, “not only interprets the books of
Moses but also that of Enoch, which is much more important, and which
has been rejected by the Christians, who were unable to understand it;
like the cock of the Arabian fable, who disdained the pearl fallen in
his grain. That book of Enoch, M. Abbé Coignard, is the more precious
because therein are to be seen the first talks the daughters of man had
with the Sylphs. You must understand that those angels which as Enoch
shows us had love connection with women were Sylphs and Salamanders.”

“I will so understand, sir,” replied my good master, “not wishing to
gainsay you. But from what has been conserved of the book of Enoch,
which is clearly apocryphal, I suspect those angels to have been not
Sylphs but simply Phoenician merchants.”

“And on what do you found,” asked M. d’Asterac, “so singular an
opinion?”

“I found it, sir, on what is said in that very book that the angels
taught the women how to use bracelets and necklaces, to paint the
eyebrows and to employ all sorts of dyes. It is further said in the same
book, that the angels taught the daughters of men the peculiar qualities
of roots and trees, enchantments, and the art of observing the stars.
Truly, sir, have not those angels the appearance of Syrians or Sidonians
gone ashore on some half-deserted coast and unpacking in the shadow
of rocks their trumpery wares to tempt the girls of the savage tribes?
These traffickers gave them copper necklaces, armlets and medicines in
exchange for amber, frankincense and furs. And they astonished these
beautiful but ignorant creatures by speaking to them of the stars with
a knowledge acquired by seafaring. That’s clear, I think, and I should
like to know in what M. Mosaïde could contradict me.”

Mosaïde kept mute and M. d’Asterac, smiling again, said:

“M. Coignard, you do not reason so badly, ignorant as you still are of
gnosticism and the Cabala. And what you say makes me think that there
may have been some metallurgistic and gold-working Gnomes among the
Sylphs who joined themselves in love with the daughters of men. The
Gnomes, and that is a fact, occupied themselves willingly with the
goldsmith’s art, and it is probable that those ingenious demons forged
the bracelets you believe to have been of Phoenician manufacture.

“But I warn you, you’ll be at some disadvantage, sir, to compete with
Mosaïde in the knowledge of human antiquities. He has rediscovered
monuments which were believed to have been lost; among others, the
column of Seth and the oracles of Sambéthé the daughter of Noah and the
most ancient of the sybils.”

“Oh!” exclaimed my tutor as he stamped on the powdery floor so that a
cloud of dust whirled up. “Oh! what dreams! It is too much, you make fun
of me! And M. Mosaïde cannot have so much foolery in his head, under his
large bonnet, resembling the crown of Charlemagne; that column of Seth
is a ridiculous invention of that shallow Flavius Josephus, an absurd
story by which nobody has been imposed upon before you. And the
predictions of Sambéthé, Noah’s daughter, I am really curious to know
them; and M. Mosaïde, who seems to be pretty sparing of his words, would
oblige by uttering a few by words of mouth, because it is not possible
for him, I am quite pleased to recognise it, to pronounce them by the
more secret voice in which the ancient sybils habitually gave their
mysterious responses.”

Mosaïde, who seemed to hear nothing, said suddenly:

“Noah’s daughter has spoken; Sambéthé has said: ‘The vain man who laughs
and mocks will not hear the voice which goes forth from the seventh
tabernacle, the infidel walketh miserably to his ruin.’”

After this oracular pronouncement all three of us took leave of Mosaïde.




CHAPTER XII

I take a Walk and visit Mademoiselle Catherine


In that year the summer was radiant, and I had a longing to go walking.
One day, strolling under the trees of the Cours-la-Reine with two little
crowns I had found that very morning in the pocket of my breeches, and
which were the first by which my goldmaker had shown his munificence, I
sat down at the door of a small coffee-house, at a table so small that
it was quite appropriate to my solitude and modesty. Then I began to
think of the oddness of my destiny, while at my side some musketeers
were drinking Spanish wine with girls of the town. I was not quite sure
that Croix-des-Sablons, M. d’Asterac, Mosaïde, the papyrus of Zosimus
and my fine clothes were not dreams, out of which I should wake to
find myself clad in the dimity vest, back again turning the spit at the
_Queen Pédauque_.

I came out of my reverie on feeling my sleeve pulled, and saw standing
before me Friar Ange, his face nearly hidden by his beard and cowl.

“Monsieur Jacques Ménétrier,” he said in a very low voice, “a lady, who
wishes you well, expects you in her carriage on the highway, between the
river and the Porte de la Conférence.”

My heart began to beat violently. Afraid and charmed by this adventure,
I went at once to the place indicated by the Capuchin, but at a quiet
pace, which seemed to me to be more becoming. Arrived at the embankment
I saw a carriage and a tiny hand on the door.

This door was opened at my coming, and very much surprised I was to find
inside the coach Mam’selle Catherine, dressed in pink satin, her head
covered with a hood of black lace, underneath which her fair hair seemed
to sport.

Confused I remained standing on the step.

“Come in,” she said, “and sit down near me. Shut the door if you please;
you must not be seen. Just now in passing on the Cours I saw you sitting
at the café. Immediately I had you fetched by the good friar, whom I
had attached to me for the Lenten exercises, and whom I have kept since,
because, in whatever position one may be, it is necessary to have piety.
You looked very well, M. Jacques, sitting before your little table, your
sword across your thighs and with the sad look of a man of quality. I
have always been friendly disposed towards you and I am not of that kind
of women who in their prosperity disregard their former friends.”

“Eh! What? Mam’selle Catherine,” I exclaimed, “this coach, these
lackeys, this satin dress----”

“They are the outcome,” she replied, “of the kindness of M. de la
Guéritude, who is of the best set and one of the richest financiers. He
has lent money to the king. He is an excellent friend whom, for all the
world, I should not wish to offend. But he is not as amiable as you, M.
Jacques. He has also given me a little house at Grenelle, which I will
show you from the cellar to the garret. M. Jacques, I am mighty glad to
see you on the road to fortune. Real merit is always discovered. You’ll
see my bedroom, which is copied from that of Mademoiselle Davilliers. It
is covered all over with looking-glass and there are lots of grotesque
figures. How is the old fellow your father? Between ourselves, he
somewhat neglects his wife and his cook-shop. It is very wrong of a man
in his position. But let us speak of yourself.”

“Let us speak of you, Mam’selle Catherine,” said I. “You are so very
pretty and it is a great pity you love the Capuchin.” Nothing could be
said against a government contractor.

“Oh!” she said, “do not reproach me with Friar Ange. I have him for
my salvation only and if I would give a rival to M. de la Guéritude it
would be----”

“Would be?”

“Don’t ask me, M. Jacques; you’re an ungrateful man, for you know that I
always singled you out, but you do not care about me.”

“Quite the contrary, Mam’selle Catherine. I smarted under your mockery.
You sneered at my beardless chin. Many a time you have told me that I am
but a ninny.”

“And that was true, M. Jacques, truer than you believed it to be. Why
could you not see that I had a liking for you?”

“Why, Catherine, you are so pretty as to make one fear. I did not dare
to look at you. And one day I clearly Law that you were thoroughly
offended with me.”

“I had every reason for it, M. Jacques; you took that Savoyard in
preference to me, that scum of the Port Saint Nicolas.”

“Ah! be quite sure, Catherine, that I did not do so by wish or
inclination, but only because she found ways and means energetic enough
to vanquish my timidity.”

“Oh! my friend, you may believe me, as I am the elder of us two,
timidity is a great sin against love. But did you not see that
that beggar had holes in her stockings and a seam of filth and mud,
half-an-ell high, on the bottom of her petticoat?”

“I saw it, Catherine.”

“Have you not seen, Jacques, how badly she is made and that really she
is skinny?”

“I saw it, Catherine.”

“And withal you loved that Savoyard she-monkey, you who have a white
skin and distinguished manners!”

“I cannot understand it myself, Catherine. It must have been that at
that moment my imagination was full of you. And it was your image only
gave me the pluck and strength you reproach me with to-day. Imagine
yourself, Catherine, my rapture to press you in my arms, yourself
or only a girl who resembled you a little. Because I loved you
desperately.”

She took my hand and sighed, and in a tone of sadness I continued to
say:

“Yes, I did love you, Catherine, and I could still love you except for
that disgusting monk.”

She cried out:

“What a suspicion! You offend me. It is a folly.”

“Then you do not love the Capuchin?”

“Fie!”

As I did not consider it to be any use to press the subject further,
I took her round the waist, we embraced, our lips met and all my being
seemed to melt in voluptuousness.

After a short moment of luxurious confusion, she disentangled herself,
her cheeks rosy, her eyes moistened, her lips half separated. It is from
that day that I knew how much a woman is embellished and adorned by a
kiss lovingly pressed on her mouth. Mine had made roses of the sweetest
hue bloom on Catherine’s cheeks and strewn into the flowery blue of her
eyes drops of diamantine dew.

“You are a baby,” she said, readjusting her hood. “Go! you cannot remain
a moment longer. M. de la Guéritude will be here at once. He loves me
with an impatience which continually runs ahead of the meeting time.”

Reading in my face how upset I was by this saying she spoke again with a
quick vivacity:

“Listen, Jacques, he returns every night at nine to his old woman,
who shrewish by age, cannot bear his infidelities since she herself is
unable to pay him in the same coin and has become awfully jealous. Come
to-night at half-past nine. I’ll receive you. My house is at the corner
of the Rue du Bac. You’ll recognise it by its three windows on every
floor and by its balcony covered with roses; you know I always did like
flowers. Good-bye till to-night.”

Caressingly she pushed me back, hardly able to hide the wish to keep me
with her, then placing one finger over her mouth she whispered again:

“Till to-night.”




CHAPTER XIII

Taken by M. d’Asterac to the Isle of Swans I listen to his Discourse on
Creation and Salamanders.


I really do not know how it was possible to tear myself out of
Catherine’s arms. But it is a fact that in jumping out of her carriage
I nearly fell on M. d’Asterac, whose tall figure leant against a tree on
the roadside. Courteously I saluted him and showed the surprise I felt
at this pleasant encounter.

“Chance,” he said, “lessens as knowledge grows; for me it is suppressed.
I knew, my son, that I had to meet you at this place. It is necessary
for me to have a conversation with you already too long delayed. Let’s
go, if you please, in quest of solitude and quietness required by what
I wish to tell you. Do not become anxious. The mysteries I desire to
unveil before you are sublime, it is true, but pleasant also.”

Having so spoken he conducted me to the bank of the Seine opposite the
Isle of Swans, which rose out of the middle of the river like a ship
built of foliage. There he made a sign to a ferryman, whose boat brought
us quickly to the green isle, frequented only by invalids, who on fine
days play there at bowls and drink their pint of wine. Night lit her
first stars in the sky and lent a humming voice to the myriads of
insects in the grass. The isle was deserted. M. d’Asterac sat down on a
wooden bench at the end of an alley of walnut-trees, invited me to sit
close to him and spoke:

“There are three sorts of people, my son, from whom the philosopher has
to hide his secrets. They are princes, because it would be imprudent to
enlarge their power; the ambitious, whose pitiless genius must not be
armed, and the debauchees, who would find in hidden sciences the means
to satiate their evil passions. But I can talk freely to you, who are
neither debauched--for I quite overlook the error you nearly gave way to
in the arms of yonder girl--nor ambitious, having lived, till recently,
contented to turn the paternal spit. Therefore I may disclose to you the
hidden laws of the universe.

“It must not be believed that life is limited by narrow rules wherein
it is manifested to the eyes of the profane. When they teach
that creation’s object and end was man, your theologians and your
philosophers reason like the multiped of Versailles or the Tuileries,
who believe the humidity of the cellars is made for their special use
and that the remainder of the castle is uninhabitable. The system of
the world, as Canon Copernicus taught in the last century, following
the doctrines of Aristarchus of Samos and Pythagorean philosophers,
is doubtless known to you, as there have actually been prepared some
compendiums of them for the urchins of village schools and dialogues
abstracted from them for the use of town children. You have seen at my
house a kind of machine which shows it distinctly by means of a kind of
clockwork.

“Raise your eyes, my son, and you’ll see over your head David’s chariot,
drawn by Mizar and her two illustrious companions, circling round the
pole; Arcturus, Vega of the Lyre, the Virgin’s Sword, the Crown of
Ariadne and its charming pearls. Those are suns. One single look on that
world will make it clear to you that the whole of creation is the work
of fire and that life, in its finest forms, is fed on flames.

“And what are the planets? Drops of a mixture of mind, a little mire and
plenty of moisture. Behold the august choir of the stars, the assembly
of the suns; they equal or excel ours in magnitude and power and after I
have shown you on a clear winter’s night, through my telescope, Sirius,
your eyes and soul will be dazzled.

“Do you in good faith believe that Sirius Altair, Regulus, Aldebaran,
all these suns are luminary only? Do you believe that this old Phoebus,
who incessantly forces into space, wherein we are swimming, his
inordinate surge of heat and light, has no other function but to light
the earth and some other paltry and imperceptible planets? What a
candle! A million times greater than the dwelling.

“I have to present to you first of all the idea that the universe is
composed of suns and that the planets which may be in it are less than
nothing. But as I foresee your wish to make an objection, I’ll reply
to it beforehand. The suns, you want to say, put themselves out in the
course of centuries and by that also change into mud. No! is my reply;
they keep themselves alive by means of comets which they attract and
which fall on them. It is the dwelling of true life. The planets and
this our earth are but the abode of ghosts. Such are the verities of
which I have to convince you.

“Now that you understand, my son, that fire is the principal element,
you’ll easier comprehend what I wish to teach you and which is of
greater importance than anything you may have learned up to now, or
was even known to Erasmus, Turnebe or Scaliger. I do not speak of
theologians like Quesnel or Bossuet who, between ourselves, I consider
as the lees of human spirit, and who have no better understanding than
a simple captain of guards. Don’t let us hamper ourselves by despising
those brains comparable in volume, as well as in construction, to wrens’
eggs, but let us at once enter fully into the object of our conference.

“Whilst those earth-born creatures do not surpass a degree of perfection
which, by beauty of form, has been attained by Antinoüs and by Madame de
Parabère, and at which they alone have arrived by the faculty known to
Democritus and myself; the beings formed by fire enjoy a wisdom and an
intelligence of which we cannot possibly conceive the limit.

“Such is, my son, the nature of the glorious children of the suns; they
know the laws of the universe just as we know the rules of chess, and
the course of the stars does not trouble them any more than the moves
on the chessboard of the king and the other men trouble us. Those genii
create worlds in such spaces of the infinite where none at present
exist, and organise them at their will. It distracts them momentarily
from their principal business, which is to unite among themselves in
unspeakable love. Only last night I turned my telescope on the Sign of
the Virgin and saw on it a far-away vortex of light. No doubt, my son,
that was the still unfinished work of one of those fire beings.

“Truly the universe has no other origin; far from being the effect of
a single will, it is the result of the sublime freaks of a great many
genii, recreating themselves by working on it each in his own turn and
on his own side. That’s what explains the diversity, the splendour and
the imperfection. For the force and foresight of those genii, immense
as they were, had still their limits. I should deceive you were I to say
that a man, philosopher or magician, can have familiar intercourse with
them.

“None of them gave me a direct manifestation of himself, and what I tell
you of them is known to me by induction only, and by hearsay. Certain
as their existence is, I should not attempt to describe their habits and
their character. It is necessary to know when not to know, my son, and I
make it a point not to bring forward other than perfectly well-observed
facts.

“Let those genii, or rather demiurguses, abide in their glory, and let
us treat of illustrious beings who stand nearer to us. Here, my son, is
where one has to lend an open ear.

“If in speaking of the planets I have given vent to a feeling of
disdain, it was that I only took into consideration the solid surface
and shell of those little balls or tops and the animals who sadly crawl
on them. I should have spoken in quite another tone, if in my mind I
had included with the planets the air and the vapours wherein they are
enveloped. For the air is an element in no way of lesser nobility than
fire, whence it follows that the dignity and importance of the planets
is in the air wherein they are bathed. Those clouds, soft vapours, puffs
of wind, transparencies, blue waves, moving islets of purple and gold
which pass over our heads, are the abode of adorable people. They are
called Sylphs and Salamanders, and are creatures infinitely amiable and
lovely. It is possible for us, and convenient, to form with them unions,
the delights of which are hardly conceivable.

“The Salamanders are such that in comparison with them the prettiest
person at court or in the city is but an ugly woman. They surrender
themselves willingly to philosophers. Doubtless you have heard of that
marvel by which M. Descartes was accompanied on his travels. Some
say that she was a natural daughter of his, that he took with him
everywhere; others think that she was an automaton manufactured with
inimitable art. As a fact she was a Salamander, whom that clever man had
taken as his lady love. He never left her. During a voyage in the Dutch
Sea he took her with him on board, shut in a box of precious wood lined
with the softest satin. The form of this box, and the precaution with
which M. Descartes took care of it, drew the attention of the captain,
who, while the philosopher was asleep, raised the cover and discovered
the Salamander. This ignorant, rude fellow imagined that such a
marvellous creature was the creation of the devil. In his dismay, he
threw it into the sea. But you will easily believe that the beautiful
little person was not drowned, and that it was no trouble to her to
rejoin M. Descartes. She remained faithful to him during his natural
life, and when he died she left this world never more to return.

“I give you this example, chosen from many, to make you acquainted with
the loves between philosophers and Salamanders. These loves are
too sublime to be in need of contracts, and you will agree that the
ridiculous display usual at human weddings would be entirely out of
place at such unions. It would be indeed fine, if a proctor in a wig and
a fat priest put their noses together over it! That sort of gentleman is
good only to join vulgar man to woman. The marriages of Salamanders and
sages have witnesses more august. The aerial people celebrate them in
ships which, moved by celestial breath, glide, their sterns crowned with
roses, to the sound of harps, on invisible waves. But do not believe
that, not being entered in a dirty register in a shabby vestry, they
would be of little solidity and could be easily torn asunder. They have
for guarantors the spirits who gambol on the clouds whence flashes the
lightning and roars the thunder. I reveal matters to you, my son, which
be useful to you to know, because I conclude from certain indications
that your destiny is the bed of a Salamander.”

“Alas! monsieur,” I exclaimed, “this destiny alarms me, and I have
nearly as many scruples as the Dutch captain who threw the lady love of
Descartes into the sea. I cannot help thinking these aerial dames are
demons. I should fear to lose my soul with them, for after all, sir,
such marriages are against nature and in opposition to the divine law.
Oh! why is not M. Jérôme Coignard, my good tutor, present to hear you!
I am sure he would strengthen me by his valuable arguments against the
delights of your Salamanders, sir, and your eloquence.”

“The Abbé Coignard,” said M. d’Asterac, “is an admirable translator of
Greek. But you must not want anything from him beyond his books. He has
no philosophy. As far as you are in question, my son, you reason with
the infirmity of ignorance, and the weakness of your arguments afflicts
me. You say, those unions are against nature. What do you know about it?
What means have you to gain knowledge of it? How is it possible to make
a distinction between what is natural and what is not? Is the universal
Isis known enough to discriminate between what is assisting her and
what thwarts her? But to speak better still; nothing thwarts her and
everything assists her, because nothing exists which does not enter into
the functions of her organs and does not follow the numberless attitudes
of her body. I beg of you to say, whence could enemies come to offend
her? Nothing acts against her nor outside of her; the forces which seem
to fight against her are nothing else but movements of her own life.

“The ignorant alone have assurance enough to decide if an action is
natural or not. Let’s admit their illusions for a moment and their
prejudice, and let us feign to recognise the possibility of committing
acts against nature. These acts, are they for that reason worse and
condemnable? On this point I cannot but remember the vulgar opinion
of moralists who represent virtue as an effort over instincts, as an
enterprise on the inclinations we carry within us, as a fight with the
original man. They own themselves that virtue is against nature, and
going further on that opinion they cannot condemn an action of whatever
kind, for what is common to it and virtue alike.

“I have made this digression, my son, to call your attention to the
contemptible lightness of your reason. I should offend you by believing
you still have any doubts of the innocence of the sensual intercourse
men may have with Salamanders. Know then, now, that such marriages, far
from being interdicted by religious law, are commanded by that law to
the exclusion of all others I will give you some conclusive evidence for
it.”

He stopped talking, took his snuff-box from his pocket, and filled his
nose with a pinch.

The night was densely dark. The moon shed her limpid light over the
river, and tremblingly enlaced with the reflections of the street lamps.
The flying ephemerides enveloped us like a vaporous eddy. The shrill
voice of insects rose into the world’s silence. Such a sweetness fell
slowly down from the sky that it seemed as if milk had been mixed with
the sparkling of the stars.

M. d’Asterac spoke again:

“The Bible, my son, and especially the books of Moses, contains grand
and useful verities. Such an opinion may appear absurd and unreasonable,
in consequence of the treatment the theologians have inflicted on what
they call the Scriptures, and of which they have made, by means of
their commentaries, explications, and meditations, a manual of errors,
a library of absurdities, a magazine of foolery, a cabinet of lies, a
gallery of stupidities, a lyceum of ignorance, a museum of silliness,
and a repository of human imbecility and wickedness. Know, my son, that
at its origin it was a temple filled with celestial radiance.

“I have been fortunate enough to re-establish it in its primal
splendour. Truth obliges me to acknowledge that Mosaïde has very much
assisted me with his deep comprehension of the language and the alphabet
of the Hebrews. But let us not lose sight of our principal subject.
Be informed from the outset, my son, that the sense of the Bible is
figurative, and that the capital error of the theologians was to take
it literally, whereas it is to be understood as symbolical. Follow this
truth in the whole course of my discourse.

“When Demiurge, who is commonly called Jehovah, and by many more names,
as all terms expressing quality or quantity are generally applied to
him, had, I do not want to say ‘created’ the world--for such would be
an absurdity--but had laid out a small corner of the universe, as a
dwelling place for Adam and Eve, there were some subtle creatures in
space, which Jehovah had not formed, was not capable of forming. They
were the work of several other demiurges, older and more skillful. His
craft was not beyond that of a very clever potter, capable of kneading
clay beings in the manner of pots, such as we men are now. What I say is
not to slight him, because such work is still much beyond human power.

“But it became necessary to brand the inferior character of the work of
the seven days. Jehovah worked, not in and with fire, which alone gives
birth to the masterpieces of life, but with mud, out of which he could
not produce other than the work of a clever ceramist. We are nothing,
my son, but animated earthenware. Jehovah is not to be reproached for
having illusions over the quality of his work. If he did find it well
done in the first moment, and in the ardour of composition, he did not
take long to recognise his error, the Bible is full of expressions of
his discontent, which often becomes ill-humour, sometimes actual rage.

“Never has artisan treated the objects of his industry with more disgust
and aversion. He intended to destroy them, and, in fact, did drown the
larger part. This deluge, the memory of which has been conserved by
Jews, Greeks and Chinese alike, gave a last deception to the unhappy
demiurges, who, aware of the uselessness and ridiculousness of such
violence, became discouraged, and fell into an apathy, the progress of
which has not been stopped from Noah’s time to our present day, wherein
it is extreme. But I see I have advanced too far. The inconvenience of
these extensive subjects is the impossibility of remaining within their
limits.

“Our mind thrown into them resembles yonder sons of the suns, who cross
the whole of the universe in one single jump.

“Let us return to the earthly paradise, wherein the demiurge had placed
the two vases formed by his hand, Adam and Eve. They did not live there
alone, between the animals and plants. The spirits of the air, created
by the demiurges of the fire, were flowing over and looking at them with
a curiosity mixed with sympathy and pity. It was exactly as Jehovah
had foreseen. Let us hasten to say, to his praise, he had relied on the
genii of the fire, to whom we may now give their true names of Elves and
Salamanders, to ameliorate and perfect his clay figures. In his prudence
he may have said to himself: ‘My Adam and my Eve, opaque and cemented
in clay, are in want of air and light. I have failed to give them wings.
But united to Elves and Salamanders, the creations of a demiurge more
powerful and more subtle than myself, they will give birth to children,
equally originated by light and clay, and who in their turn will have
children still more luminous than themselves, till in the end their
issue will be equal in beauty to the sons and daughters of air and
fire.’

“It must be said he had neglected nothing to attract the eyes of Sylphs
and Salamanders in forming Adam and Eve. He had modelled the woman in
form of an amphora, with a harmony of curved lines quite sufficient
to make him recognised as the prince of geometers, and he succeeded in
amending the coarseness of the material by the magnificent charm of
the form. For modelling Adam he made use of a less caressing, but more
energetic, hand, forming his body with such order, and in such perfect
proportions, that, applied later by the Greeks to their architecture,
those same ordinances and measures made the beauty of the temples.

“You see, my son, that Jehovah applied his best means to render his
creatures worthy of the aerial kisses he expected for them. I shall not
insist on the care he took with a view of making these unions prolific.
The harmony between the sexes is an ample proof of his wisdom in this
regard. And surely at the outset he had reason to congratulate himself
on his shrewdness and ability.

“I have said the Sylphs and Salamanders looked on Adam and Eve with that
curiosity, sympathy and tenderness which are the first ingredients of
love. They approached them, and fell into the clever traps Jehovah had
disposed and spread intentionally in the body and on the belly of these
two amphoræ.

“The first man and the first woman enjoyed during centuries the
delicious embraces of the genii of the air, which conserved them in
eternal youth.

“Such was their lot, and such could still be ours. Why was it that the
parents of the human species, fatigued by celestial luxury, should try
to find criminal enjoyments with one another?

“But what could you expect, my son? Kneaded of clay they had a taste for
mud. Alas! they became acquainted with one another in the same way as
they had known the genii.

“And that was what the demiurge had expressly forbidden them. Afraid,
and with reason, that they would produce between them children as clumsy
as themselves, terrestrial and heavy, he forbade them, under severest
penalties, to approach each other. Such is the sense of Eve’s words:
‘But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God
hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it lest ye
die.’ For you well understand, my son, that the apple which tempted
wretched Eve was not the fruit of an apple-tree; that was an allegory
the sense of which I have explained to you. Although imperfect, and
sometimes violent and capricious, Jehovah was too intelligent a demiurge
to be offended about an apple or a pomegranate. One has to be a bishop
or a Capuchin to support such extravagant imaginations. And the proof
that the apple was what I said, is that Eve was stricken by a
punishment suitable to her fault. She had not been told ‘You will digest
laboriously,’ but it was said to her ‘You’ll give birth in pain’; for
logic sake what connection can be established, I beg of you, between
an apple and difficult confinement? On the other hand, the suffering is
correctly applied if the fault has been such as I showed you.

“That is, my son, the truthful explanation of original sin. It will
teach you your duty, which is, to keep away from women. To follow
this bent is fatal. All children born by those means are imbecile and
miserable.”

I was stupefied, and exclaimed:

“But, sir, could children be born in another way?”

“Happily, some are born in another way,” was his reply; “a considerable
number by the union of men with genii of the air. And such are
intelligent and beautiful. By such means were born the giants of whom
Hesiod and Moses speak. Thus also Pythagoras was born, to whose bodily
formation his mother, a Salamander, had contributed a thigh of pure
gold. Such also Alexander the Great, said to have been the son of
Olympias and a serpent; Scipio Africanus, Aristomenes of Messina, Julius
Caesar, Porphyry, the Emperor Julian, who re-established the oath of
fire abolished by Constantine the Apostate, Merlin the enchanter, child
of a Sylph and a nun daughter of Charlemagne; Saint Thomas Aquinas,
Paracelsus and, but recently, M. Van Helmont.”

I promised M. d’Asterac, as such were the facts, that I would be willing
to lend myself to the friendship of a Salamander, if one were to be
found obliging enough to wish for me. He assured me that I should meet
not one but a score or more, between whom I should have my free choice.
And less by longing for the adventure than to give him pleasure, I asked
the philosopher how it is possible to enter into communication with
these aerial persons.

“Nothing easier,” he replied. “All that’s wanted is a glass ball, the
use of which I’ll explain to you. I have always at home a pretty good
number of such balls, and in my study I’ll very soon give you all
necessary enlightenment. But, for to-day, my son, enough is said of it.”

He rose, and walked in the direction of the ferry, where the ferryman
waited for us, lying outstretched on his back and snoring at the moon.
As soon as we had reached the opposite shore he quickly went on, and was
soon lost in the darkness.




CHAPTER XIV

Visit to Mademoiselle Catherine--The Row in the Street and my Dismissal.


A confused sentiment as of a dream remained with me after this long
conversation, but the thoughts of Catherine became keener. In despite
of the sublimities I had been listening to, I was overcome by a powerful
desire to see her, although I had not had any supper. The ideas of
philosophy had not sufficiently penetrated me to cause anything like a
disgust at that pretty girl. I was resolved to follow my good fortune to
its end before becoming the prey of one of those beautiful furies of the
air, who do not want any human rival. My only fear was that Catherine,
at so late an hour, had become tired of waiting for me. So running along
the river bank, and passing the royal bridge at a gallop, I stormed
into the Rue du Bac. Within a single minute I had reached the Rue de
Grenelle, where I heard shouting mixed up with the clashing of swords.
The noise came out of the very house Catherine had described to me. In
front of it, on the pavement, shadows and lanterns were visible, and
voices to be heard.

“Help, Jesus! I’m being murdered!... fall on the Capuchin! Forward!
Spike him!... Jesus, Mary, help me!... Look on the pretty favourite
lover! On him! On him! Spike him, rascals, spike him hard!”

The windows of the adjoining houses were opened, heads in night-caps
appeared.

Suddenly all this noise and bustle passed before me like a hunt in the
forest, and I recognised Friar Ange running away at such a speed that
his sandals hammered on his behind, while three long devils of lackeys,
armed like Swiss guards, followed him closely, larding him with the
points of their javelins. Their master, a young gentleman, thick-set and
ruddy-faced, continued to encourage them by voice and gesture, just as
he would have done with dogs:

“Fall on! Fall on! Spike! The beast is tough!”

As he came close to me, I said:

“Oh! sir, have you no pity?”

“Sir,” he replied, “it’s easily seen that yonder Capuchin has not
caressed your mistress, and you have not surprised madam, whom you see
here, in the arms of this stinking beast. One cannot say anything about
her financier, because one has manners. But a Capuchin cannot be borne.
Burn the brazen-faced hussy!”

And he showed me Catherine under the doorway, clad in nothing but
a chemise, her eyes glistening with tears, wringing her hands, more
beautiful than ever, and murmuring in a dying voice, which cut deep into
my soul:

“Don’t kill him! It’s Friar Ange, the little friar!”

The rascally lackeys returned, announcing that they had given up the
pursuit at the appearance of the watch, but not without driving half
a finger deep their pikes in the holy man’s behind. The night-caps
vanished from the windows, which were closed again, and whilst the young
nobleman talked to his followers, I went up to Catherine, whose tears
began to dry in the pretty folds of her smile. She said to me:

“The poor friar is safe, but I trembled for him. Men are terrible. When
they love you they will not listen to anything.”

“Catherine,” I said, with no slight grudge, “did you make me come here
for no other purpose than to listen to the quarrels of your friends?
Alas! I have no right to take part in them.”

“You would have had, M. Jacques,” she said, “you should have had, if you
had wanted.”

“But,” I continued, “you are the most courted lady in Paris. You never
mentioned yonder young gentleman.”

“I had no occasion to think of him. He came quite unexpectedly.”

“And he surprised you with Friar Ange?”

“He fancied he saw things which did not occur. He is hot-headed and does
not want to listen to any reason.”

The half-opened chemise disclosed under transparent laces a breast
swollen like a beautiful fruit and adorned like a budding rose. I took
her in my arms and covered her bosom with kisses.

“Heavens!” she exclaimed, “in the street! Before M. d’ Anquetil, who
sees us.”

“Who is M. d’Anquetil?”

“Pardi! he is the murderer of Friar Ange. Who else do you fancy he may
be?”

“True, Catherine, no others are wanted. Your friends surround you in
sufficient numbers.”

“M. Jacques, do not insult me, if you please.”

“I do not insult you, Catherine. I acknowledge your charms, to which I
should like to render the same homage that others do.”

“M. Jacques, what you have now said smells odiously of the cookshop, of
that old codger who is your father.”

“Not so very long ago, Mam’selle Catherine, you were mighty glad to
smell its cooking-stove.”

“Fie! the villain! the mean rascal! He outrages a woman!”

And now she began to squeak and squeal, and M d’Anquetil left his
servants, came up to us, and pushed her into the house, calling her a
cheat and a rake, went into the passage behind her, and slammed the door
in my face.




CHAPTER XV

In the Library with M. Jerome Coignard--A Conversation on Morals--Taken
to M. d’Asterac’s Study--Salamanders again--The Solar Powder--A Visit
and its Consequences.


The thought of Catherine occupied my mind all the week following that
vexatious adventure. Her image glittered on the leaves of the folios
over which I bent in the library, close to my dear tutor; so much so
that Plotinus, Olympiodorus, Fabricius, Vossius spoke of nothing else to
me than a tiny damsel in a lace chemise. These visions rendered me lazy.
But, indulgent to others, as to himself, M. Jerome Coignard had a kind
smile for my trouble and distraction.

“Jacques Tournebroche,” he said to me, one day, “are you not struck by
the variations in morals during the course of the centuries? The books
in this admirable Asteracian collection witness to the uncertainties of
mankind on this subject. If I reflect upon it, my son, it is to put into
your mind that solid and salutary idea that no good morals are to be
found outside religion, and that the maxims of the philosophers, who
pretend to institute a natural morality, are nothing but whims and
babblings of foolish trash. The rationality of good morals is not to
be found in nature, which in itself is indifferent, ignorant of good or
evil. It is in the divine word, which is not to be trespassed against
without after regret. The laws of humanity are based on utility, and
that can only be an apparent and illusory utility, for nobody knows
naturally what is useful to mankind, nor what is really appropriate to
them. And we must not forget that our habits contain a good moiety
of articles which are of prejudice alone. Upheld by the menace of
chastisement, human laws may be eluded by cunning and dissimulation.
Every man capable of reflection stands above them. Really they are
nothing but booby traps.

“It is not the same thing, my boy, with laws divine. They are
indefeasible, unavoidable and lasting. Their absurdity is in appearance
only, and hides an inconceivable wisdom. If they wound our reason, it
is because they are superior to it, and agree with the true issues of
mankind, and not with the visible ends. It is useful to observe them
when one has the good luck to know them. Yet I find no difficulty in
confessing that the observance of those laws, contained in the Decalogue
and in the commandments of the Church, is difficult at most times,
even impossible without grace, and that sometimes has to be waited
for, because it is a duty to hope. And therefore we are all miserable
sinners.

“And that is where the dispositions of the Christian religion must be
admired, which founds salvation principally on repentance. It must not
be overlooked, my boy, that the greatest saints are penitents, and, as
repentance is proportioned to the sin, it is in the greatest sinners
that the material is found for the greatest saints. I could illustrate
this doctrine with scores of admirable examples. But I have said enough
to make you feel that the raw material of sanctity is concupiscence,
incontinencies, all impurities of flesh and mind. After having collected
the raw material nothing signifies but to fashion it according it
theologic art and to model, so to say, a figure of penitence, which is a
matter of a few years, a few days, sometimes of a single moment only, as
is to be seen in the case of a perfect contrition. Jacques Tournebroche,
if you listen well to my sayings, you will not consume yourself in
miserable cares to become an honest man in a worldly sense, and you’ll
exclusively study to satisfy divine justice.”

I could not help feeling the elevated wisdom enshrined in the maxims of
my dear, good tutor; I was only afraid that these morals, should they be
exercised without discrimination, would carry man to a disorderly life.
I unfolded my doubts to M. Jerome Coignard, who reassured me in the
following terms:

“Jacobus Tournebroche, you do not take note of what I have just
expressly told you, to wit, that what you call disorder is only such
in the opinion of laymen and judges in law--ordinary and
ecclesiastical--and in its bearing on human laws, which are arbitrary
and transitory, and, in a word, to follow these laws is the act of a
silly soul. A sensible man does not pride himself on acting according to
the rules in force at the Châtelet and at the gaol.

“He is uneasy about his salvation, and does not think himself
dishonoured by going to heaven by indirect ways as followed by the
greatest saints. If the blessed Pélagie had not followed the same
profession by which Jeannette, the hurdy-gurdy player you know, earned
her living, under the portico of the Church of Saint Benoît le Bétourné,
that saint would not have been compelled to do full and copious
penitence; and it is extremely probable that, after having lived in
indifferent and banal chastity, she would not, at this very moment speak
of her, be playing the psaltery before the tabernacle where the Holy of
Holies reposes in his glory. Do you call disorder, so fine a regulation
of a predestinated life? Certainly not! Leave such mean ways of speech
to the Superintendent of Police, who after his death will hardly
find the smallest place behind the unfortunates whom now he carries
ignominiously to the spittel. Beyond the loss of the soul and eternal
damnation there can be no other disorders, crimes or evils whatsoever
in this perishable world, where one and all is to be ruled and adjusted
with regard to a divine world. Confess, Tournebroche, my boy, that acts
the most reprehensible in the opinion of men can lead to a good end,
and do not try to reconcile the justice of men with the justice of God,
which alone is just, not in our sense but with finality. And now,
my boy, you’ll greatly oblige me by looking into Vossius for the
signification of five or six rather obscure words which the Panopolitan
employs, and wherewith one has to do battle in the darkness of that
insidious manner which astonished even the willing heart of Ajax,
as reported by Homer, prince of poets and historians. These ancient
alchemists had a tough style. Manilius, may it not displease M.
d’Asterac, writes on the same subjects with more elegance.”

Hardly had my tutor said these last words when a shadow arose between
him and myself. It was that of M. d’Asterac, or rather it was M.
d’Asterac himself, thin and black like a shadow.

It may be that he had not heard that talk, maybe he disdained it, for
certainly he did not show any kind of resentment. On the contrary, he
congratulated M. Jerome Coignard on his zeal and knowledge, and further
said that he relied on his enlightenment for the achievement of the
greatest work that man had ever attempted. And turning to me he said:

“Be so good as to come for a moment to my study, where I intend to make
known to you a secret of consequence.”

 I went with him to the same room where he had first received us, my
tutor and myself, on the day we entered his service. I found there,
exactly as on that occasion, ranged along the walls, the ancient
Egyptians with golden faces. A glass globe of the size of a pumpkin
stood on a table. M. d’Asterac sank on a sofa, and signed to me to take
a seat near him, and having twice or thrice passed a hand covered with
jewels and amulets across his forehead said:

“My son, I do not wish to injure you by believing that, after our
conversation on the Isle of Swans, you still doubt of the existence of
Sylphs and Salamanders, who are as real as men and perhaps more so, if
one measures reality by the duration of the appearances by which it is
displayed, their existence being very much longer than ours. Salamanders
range from century to century in unalterable youth; some of them have
seen Noah, Moses and Pythagoras. The wealth of their recollections and
the freshness of their memory render their conversation attractive to
the utmost. It has been pretended that they gain immortality in the arms
of men, and that the hope of never dying led them into the beds of the
philosophers, But those are fables unfit to seduce a reflecting mind.
All union of sexes, far from ensuring immortality to lovers, is a sign
of death, and we could not know love were we to live indefinitely. It
could not be otherwise with the Salamanders, who look in the arms of the
wise for nothing else but for one single kind of immortality--that is,
of the race. It is also the only one which can be reasonably expected.
And, much as I promise myself to prolong human life in a notable
manner--that is, to extend it over at least five or six centuries--I
have never flattered myself to assure it perpetuity. It would be insane
to want to go against the established rules of nature, Therefore, my
son, reject as a vain fable the idea of immortality to be sucked in with
a kiss. It is to the shame of more than one of the cabalists to have
ever conceived such an idea. But for all that it is quite evident
that Salamanders are inclined to man’s love. You’ll soon experience it
yourself. I have sufficiently prepared you for a visit from them, and
as, since the night of your initiation, you have not had any impure
intercourse with a woman you will obtain the reward of your continency.”

My natural candidness suffered by receiving praise which I had merited
against my own will, and I wished to confess to M. d’Asterac my guilty
thoughts. But he did not give me time to do so, and continued with
vivacity:

“Nothing now remains for me, my son, but to give you the key which opens
the empire of the genii. That is what I am going to do at once.”

Rising he put a hand on the globe which covered one half of the table.

“This globe,” he said, “is full of a solar powder which escapes being
visible to you by its own purity. It is much too delicate to be seen by
means of the coarse senses of men. So comes it, my son, that the finest
parts of the universe are concealed from our sight and reveal themselves
only to the learned, provided with apparatus proper for this discovery.
The rivers and the aerial landscapes, for example, remain invisible,
even as their aspect is a thousand times richer and more variegated than
the most beautiful terrestrial landscape.

“Know, then, that in this bowl is a solar powder superlatively proper
to exalt the fire we have within us. The effect of this exaltation is
imminent. It consists of a subtlety of the senses allowing us to see and
touch the aerial figures floating around us. As soon as you have
broken the seal which locks the aperture of this globe, and inhaled
the escaping solar powder, you will in this room discover one or more
creatures resembling women by the system of curved outlines forming
their bodies, but much more beautiful than was ever any woman, and
who are in fact Salamanders. No doubt the one I saw last year in your
father’s cookshop will be the first one to appear here to you, as she
has a liking for you, and I strongly counsel you to hasten to comply
with her wishes. And now make yourself easy in that arm-chair, open the
globe, and gently inhale the contents. Very soon you will see all I have
announced to you realised, point by point. I leave you. Good-bye.”

And he disappeared in a manner which was strangely sudden. I remained
alone before that glass globe, hesitating to unlock it, afraid lest some
stupefying exhalation should escape from it. I thought that perhaps M.
d’Asterac had put in it, as an artifice, some of those vapours which
benumb those who inhale them and make them dream of Salamanders. I was
still not enough of a philosopher to be desirous of becoming happy
by such means. Possibly, I said to myself, such vapours predispose to
madness; and finally I became defiant enough to think of going to the
library to ask advice of M. Jerome Coignard. But I soon became aware
that such would be a needless trouble; as soon as I began to speak
to him of solar powder and aerial genii he would start: “Jacques
Tournebroche, remember, my boy, that you must never put faith in
absurdities, but bring home to your reason all matters except those of
our holy religion. Stuff and nonsense all these globes and powders, with
all the other follies of the cabala and the spagyric art.”

I imagined I could hear him talk like that in the interval between two
pinches of snuff, and I really did not know what to reply to such a
Christian speech. On the other hand, I thought in advance how puzzled I
should be to reply to M. d’Asterac when he inquired of me after news of
the Salamander. What could I say? How was I to avow my reserve and
my abstention without betraying my defiance and fear? And after all,
without being aware of it, I was curious to try the adventure. I am not
credulous. On the contrary I am marvellously inclined to doubt, and
by this inclination to brave common-sense, as well as evidence and
everything else. Of the strangest things that may be told me, I say to
myself, “Why not?” This “Why not?” wronged my natural intelligence in
sight of that globe. This “Why not?” pushed me towards credulity, and
it may be interesting to remark, on this occasion, to believe in nothing
means to believe in everything, and that the mind is not to be kept too
free and too vacant, for fear that commodities of extravagant form and
weight should enter by a loophole, commodities of a kind which could not
find room in minds reasonably and tolerably well furnished with belief.
And while, with my hand on the wax seal, I remembered what my mother had
narrated to me of the magic bottle, my “Why not?” whispered to me that
perhaps, after all, aerial fairies may be visible through the dust of
the sun. But as soon as this idea, having entered into my mind, began to
become easy therein, I found it to be odd, absurd and grotesque. Ideas,
when they impose themselves, very soon become impudent. But few are apt
to be better than pleasant passers-by; and, decidedly, this very one had
somehow an air of madness. During the time I asked myself, “Shall I open
it?” “Shall I not?” the seal, which I had held continuously between my
pressing fingers, broke suddenly in my hand, and the flagon was open.

I waited, I observed, I saw nothing, I felt nothing. And I was
disappointed, so much the hope of stepping out of nature is prone and
ready to glide into our souls! Nothing! Not even a vague or confused
illusion, an uncertain image! What I had foreseen occurred. What a
deception! I felt somewhat vexed. Reclined in my arm-chair I vowed to
myself, before all the black-haired Egyptians surrounding me, to close
my soul better in the future to the lies of the cabalists; and once more
recognised my dear teacher’s wisdom and resolved, like him, to be
guided by reason in all matters not connected with faith, Christian and
Catholic. Expecting the visit of a lady Salamander, what silliness! Is
it possible that Salamanders exist? But what is known about it, and “Why
not?”

Since noon the air was heavy, now it became stifling. Rendered torpid by
long days of quietness and seclusion, I felt a weight on my forehead and
eyes. The approach of a thunderstorm lay heavy on me. I let my arms hang
down, and, with head thrown back, and eyes closed, I glided into a doze
full of golden Egyptians and lustful shadows. In this uncertain state
the sense of love alone was alive in my body, like a fire in the night.
How long it had lasted I could not say, when I was awakened by a sound
of light steps and the rustling of a dress. I opened my eyes and gave a
great shout.

A marvellous creature stood before me, clad in black satin, a lace veil
on her head--a dark woman with blue eyes, of resolute features in a
juvenile and pure skin, round cheeks and the mouth animated as by an
invisible kiss. The short skirt let little feet be seen, dancing,
jolly, spirited feet. She held herself upright, but was round, somewhat
thick-set, in her voluptuous perfection. Under the black velvet ribbon
round her throat a little square of her bosom was visible, brown, but
dazzling. She looked on me with an air of curiosity. I have said already
how sleep had rendered me amorous. I rose quickly, and stepped forward.

“Excuse me,” she said, “I am looking for M. d’Asterac.”

I said to her:

“Madam, there is no M. d’Asterac. There is you and I. I expected you.
You are a Salamander. I have opened the crystal flagon. You have come.
You are mine.”

I took her in my arms and covered with kisses all places my lips could
find uncovered by her dress.

She tore herself away and said:

“You are mad.”

“That is quite natural,” I replied. “Who in my place could remain sane?”

She lowered her eyes, blushed, and smiled. I fell at her feet.

“As M. d’Asterac is not here,” she said, “I had better retire.”

“Remain!” I cried, and bolted the door.

“Do you know if he will soon be back?”

“No, madam! He will not return for a long time. He left me alone with
the Salamanders. But I want one only, and that one is you.”

I lifted her in my arms, carried her to the sofa, fell down on it
with her, and smothered her with kisses. I was out of my senses. She
screamed, I did not hear her; she pushed me back with outstretched
hands; her fingernails scratched me all over, and her vain defence only
excited my frenzy. I pressed, enlaced her, she fell back worn out. Her
mollified body gave way, she closed her eyes and soon, in my triumph,
her beautiful arms, reconciled, pressed me on her bosom.

Released, alas! from that delicious embrace, we looked at one another
with surprise. Occupied to get up again decently she put her dress in
order and remained silent.

“I love you,” I said. “What is your name?”

I did not think her to be a Salamander, and to say the truth never did
think so.

“My name is Jahel,” she said.

“What! you’re the niece of Mosaïde?”

“Yes; but keep quiet. If he should know--”

“What would he do?”

“Oh! nothing to me--nothing. But to you the worst. He dislikes
Christians.”

“And you?”

“Oh! I? I dislike the Jews.”

“Jahel, do you love me a little?”

“It seems to me, sir, that after what we have just now said to one
another, your question is an offence.”

“True, mademoiselle, but I try to obtain forgiveness for a vivacity, an
ardour, which did not take the leisure to consult your sentiments.”

“Oh! monsieur, do not make yourself out to be more guilty than you
really are. All your violence, and all your passion, would not have
served you at all, had I not found you lovable. When I saw you sleeping
in that arm-chair, I liked your looks, waited for your awakening--the
rest you know.”

As reply I gave her a kiss, she gave it me back, what a kiss! I fancied
fresh-gathered strawberries melting in my mouth. My desire revived and
passionately I pressed her on my heart.

“This time,” she said, “be less hasty, and do not think only of
yourself. You must not be selfish in love. Young men do not sufficiently
know that. But we teach them.”

And we immersed ourselves in an unfathomable depth of deliciousness.

After that the divine Jahel asked of me:

“Have you a comb? I look like a witch.”

“Jahel,” I answered, “I have no comb. I had expected a Salamander. I
adore you.”

“Adore me, dearest, but remain secret. You do not know Mosaïde.”

“What, Jahel. Is he still so terrible as that, at the age of one hundred
and thirty years, of which he has lived sixty-five inside a pyramid?”

“I see, my friend, that stories of my uncle have been told you and that
you were simple enough to believe them. Nobody knows his age; I myself
am ignorant of it, but I have always known him as an old man. I know
only that he is robust and of uncommon strength. He has been a banker at
Lisbon, where he killed a Christian he surprised in the arms of my Aunt
Myriam. He took to flight, and carried me with him. Since then he loves
me with the tenderness of a mother. He tells me things that are told to
little children only, and he cries when he sees me asleep.”

“Do you live with him?”

“Yes, in the keeper’s lodge, at the other end of the park.”

“I know; you reach it by the lane where mandrakes are to be found. How
is it that I did not meet you before? By what sinister destiny, living
so near you, have I lived without seeing you? But what do I say, lived?
Is it to live without knowing you? Are you shut up in yonder lodge?”

“It is true I am somewhat of a recluse, and cannot go for walks as I
wish, to the shops, to theatres. Mosaïde’s tenderness does not leave me
any liberty. He guards me jealously, and, besides six small gold cups
he brought with him from Lisbon, he loves but me on earth. As he is much
more attached to me than he was to my Aunt Myriam, he would kill you,
dear, with a better heart than he killed the Portuguese. I warn you so,
to impress the necessity of discretion on you, and because it is not
a consideration which could stop a brave gentleman. Are you of a good
family, my friend?”

“Alas! no; my father applies himself to a mechanic art, and has a sort
of trade.”

“And he is not of any of the professions? Does not belong to the banking
world? No? It is a pity. Well, you’re to be loved for yourself. But
speak the truth. Is M. d’Asterac to be back shortly?”

At this name and question a terrible doubt came in my mind. I suspected
the enchanting Jahel to have been sent by the cabalist to play the part
of a Salamander with me. I went so far as to excuse her in my mind of
being the nymph of that old fool. To obtain an immediate explanation
I bluntly and coarsely asked her if she was in the habit of acting the
Salamander in the castle.

“I don’t understand you,” she replied, looking at me with eyes full of
innocent surprise. “You speak like M. d’Asterac himself, and I could
believe you to be attacked by his mania also, if I had not proved that
you do not share the aversion to women that he has. He cannot stand
any female, and it is a real annoyance to me to see and speak with him.
Nevertheless I was looking for him when I found you.”

The pleasure of being reassured made me again smother her with kisses.

She managed to let me see that she had black stockings which, over the
knees, were held up by garters ornamented with diamond buckles and
that sight brought back my mind to ideas pleasant to her. Besides she
entreated me on the welcome subject with much ability and fervour, and
I was aware that she became excited over the game at the very moment I
began to get fatigued from it, However I did my best, and was fortunate
enough to spare the beautiful girl a disgrace which she did not deserve
in the least. It seemed to me that she was not discontented with me. She
rose, very quietly, and said:

“Do you really not know if M. d’Asterac will soon be back? I confess to
you that I came to ask him for a small amount of that pension he owes to
my uncle, a trifle only. I very badly want it just now.”

I took my purse out and handed her, with due excuses, the three crowns
it contained. It was all that remained of the too rare liberalities of
the cabalist who, professing to dislike money, unluckily forgot to pay
me my salary.

I asked Mademoiselle Jahel if I should not have the pleasure of seeing
her again.

“You will,” she replied.

And we agreed that she should ascend at night-time to my room whenever
she could escape from the lodge, where she was pretty nearly a prisoner.

“Take care to remember,” I told her, “that my room is the fourth on the
right of the corridor and Abbé Coignard’s the fifth. The others give
access to the lofts, where two or three scullions lodge, and hundreds of
rats.”

She assured me that she would be very careful not to make a mistake, and
would scratch on my door and not on any other.

“Besides,” she continued, “your Abbé Coignard seems to be a very good
man, and I am pretty sure that we have in no way to be afraid of him. I
looked at him, through a peephole, on the day he came with you to visit
my uncle! I thought him amiable, though I could not hear what he said.
Principally his nose I thought to be really ingenious and capable. A man
with such a nose ought to be full of expedients and I very much wish
to become acquainted with him. One can but better one’s mind by having
intercourse with people of high spirit. I am only sorry that my uncle
was not pleased with his words and scoffing humour. Mosaïde hates him,
and of his capacity for hate no Christian can form an idea.”

“Mademoiselle,” I replied, “Monsieur l’Abbé Jérôme Coignard is a very
learned man, and he has in addition philosophy and kindness. He knows
the world, and you are quite right in believing him to be a good
counsellor. I regulate myself fully after his advice. But, tell me, did
you see me also, on yonder day, at the lodge, through the peephole you
spoke of?”

“I saw you,” she said to me, “and I will not hide from you that I was
pleased. But I must return to my uncle. Good-bye.”

The same evening, after supper, M. d’Asterac did not fail to ask me for
news of the Salamander. His curiosity troubled me somewhat. My answer
was that the meeting had surpassed all my expectations, but that I
thought it my duty to confine myself to a discretion due to such kind of
adventures.

“That discretion, my son,” he said, “is not of so much use in your
case as you represent. Salamanders do not want their amours to be kept
secret, they are not ashamed of them. One of those nymphs who loves me
does not know of a sweeter pastime than to engrave my initials enlaced
with hers on the bark of trees, as you can see for yourself by examining
the stems of five or six Scotch firs, the exquisite tops of which you
can see from yonder windows. But have you not, my son, learned that that
kind of amour, truly sublime, far from leaving any fatigue behind,
lends to the heart a new vigour? I am sure that after what passed to-day
you’ll employ your night in translating at least sixty pages of Zosimus
the Panopolitan.”

I confessed that on the contrary I felt very sleepy, which he explained
by reason of the astonishment produced by such a first meeting. And
so the great man remained convinced that I had had intercourse with a
Salamander. I felt some scruples at deceiving him, but I was compelled
to do it and, besides, he deceived himself to such a degree that it
was hardly possible to add anything to his illusions. So I ascended
peacefully to my room, went to bed, and blew the candle out at the end
of the most glorious day of my life.




CHAPTER XVI

Jahel comes to my Room--What the Abbé saw on the Stairs--His Encounter
with Mosaïde.


Jahel kept her word. On the second day after, she scratched at my door.
We were a great deal more comfortable in my room than we had been in M.
d’Asterac’s study, and what had taken place at our first meeting was
but child’s play in comparison to what love inspired us at our second
opportunity. She tore herself out of my arms at the dawn with a thousand
oaths to join me again very soon, calling me her soul, her life, her
dearest sweetheart.

That day I rose very late. When I reached the library, my master was
already sitting over the papyrus of Zosimus, his pen in one hand, his
magnifying-glass in the other, and worthy of the admiration of anyone
having due consideration for good literature.

“Jacques Tournebroche,” he said to me, “the principal difficulty of this
reading consists in not a few of the letters being easily confounded
with others, and it is important for the 

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