Everybody agrees that life at watering-places is very poetic, abounding in adventures of every sort, especially adventures of the heart. Read the novels L’Anneau d’Argent of Charles de Bernard, George Sand’s Lavinia, etc.
If watering-place life is a romance, it is in the books that it is so. To see great men in these places, you must carry them bound in calf in your trunk.
It is equally agreed that conversation at watering-places is extremely brilliant, that you meet only artists, superior men, people of the great world; that ideas, grace and elegance are lavished there, and that the flower of all pleasures and all thought there comes into bloom. The truth is that you use up a great many hats, eat a great many peaches, say a great many words, and, in the matter of men and of ideas, you find very much what you find elsewhere.
Here is the catalogue of a salon better made up than many another:
An old nobleman, somewhat resembling Balzac’s M. de Mortsauf, an officer previous to 1830, very brave, and capable of reasoning exactly, when he was hard pushed. He had a great long cartilaginous neck, that turned all together and with difficulty, like a rusty machine; his feet shook about in his square-toed shoes; the skirts of his frock-coat hung like flags about his legs. His body and his clothes were stiff, awkward, old-fashioned and scant, like his opinions; a dotard, moreover, fastidious, peevish, busy all day long in sifting over nothings and complaining about trifles; he pestered his servant a whole hour about a grain of dust overlooked on the skirt of his coat, explaining the method of removing dust, the danger of leaving dust, the defects of a negligent spirit, the merits of a diligent spirit, with so much monotony and tenacity and so slowly, that at last one stopped up one’s ears or went to sleep. He took snuff, rested his chin on his cane, and looked straight ahead with the torpid, dull expression of a mummy. Rustic life, the want of conversation and action, the fixedness of mechanical habits, had extinguished him.
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Beside him sat an English girl and her mother. The young woman had not succeeded in extinguishing herself, she was frozen at her birth; however, she was motionless as he. She carried a jeweller’s shop on her arms, bracelets, chains, of every form and all metals, which hung and jingled like little bells. The mother was one of those hooked stalks of asparagus, knobby, stuck into a swelling gown, such as can flourish and come to seed only amidst the fogs of London. They took tea and only talked with each other.
In the third place one remarked a very noble young man, dressed to perfection, curled every day, with soft hands, forever washed, brushed, adorned and beautified, and handsome as a doll. His was a formal and serious self-conceit. His least actions were of an admirable correctness and gravity. He weighed every word when he asked for soup. He put on his gloves with the air of a Roman emperor. He never laughed; in his calm gestures you recognized a man penetrated with self-respect, who raises conventionalities into principles. His complexion, his hands, his beard, and his mind, had been so scoured, rubbed, and perfumed by etiquette, that they seemed artificial.
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Ordinarily he gave the cues to a Moldavian lady, who kept the conversation alive. This lady had travelled all over Europe, and related her travels in such a piercing and metallic voice, that you wondered if she had not a clarion somewhere in her body. She held forth unassisted, sometimes for a quarter of an hour together, principally about rice and the degree of civilization among the Turks, on the barbarism of the Russian generals, and on the baths of Constantinople. Her well-filled memory only overflowed in tirades: it was almost as amusing as a gazetteer.
Near her was a pale, slender, meagre Spaniard, with a face like a knife-blade. We knew, by some words he let fall, that he was rich and a republican. He spent his life with a newspaper in his hand,—he read twelve or fifteen of them in a day, with little dry, jerking movements, and nervous contractions that passed over his face like a shiver. He sat habitually in a corner, and you saw gleaming in his countenance feeble desires of proclamations and professions of faith. In the very same moment his glance died away like a too sudden fire that blazes up and falls again. He only spoke in monosyllables, and to ask for tea. His wife knew no French, and sat all the evening motionless in her arm-chair.
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Must we speak of an old lady from Saumur, a frequenter of the baths, watchful of the heat, the cold, the currents of air, the seasoning, determined not to enrich her heirs any sooner than it was necessary, who trotted about all day, and played with her dog in the evening? Of an abbÉ and his pupil, who dined apart, to escape the contagion of worldly conversation? etc. The truth is that there is nothing to paint, and that in the next restaurant you will see the same people.
Now, in good faith, what can be the conversation in such a society? As the answer is important, I beg the reader to run over the subjoined classification of interesting conversations; he will judge for himself as to the likelihood of meeting at a watering-place with anything similar.
First sort: Circumlocutions, oratorical argumentation, exordiums full of insinuation, smiles and bows, which may be translated by the following phrase: “Monsieur, help me to make a thousand francs.” Second sort: Periphrases, metaphysical disquisitions, the voice of the soul, gestures and genuflexions, ending in this phrase: “Madame, allow me to be your very humble servant.”
Third sort: Two persons who have need of each other are together; abstract of their conversation: “You are a great man.”
“And so are you.” Fourth sort: You are seated at the fireside with an old friend; you stir up the embers and talk of—no matter what, for instance: “Would you like some tea? My cigar is out.” Or, what is better, you say nothing at all, and listen to the singing of the tea-kettle; all actions, which mean: “You are a good fellow, and would do me a service in case of need.”
Fifth sort: New general ideas and freely expressed; sort lost sight of these hundred years. It was known in the salons of the eighteenth century; genus to-day fossil.
Sixth, and last sort: Discharges of wit, fireworks of brilliant speeches, images struck out, colors displayed, profusion of animation, originality and gayety. A sort infinitely rare and diminished every day, by the fear of compromising one’s self, by the important air, by the affectation of morality.
These six sorts wanting—and they are evidently wanting—what remains? Conversation such as Henri Monnier paints, and M. Prudhomme makes. Only the manners here are better; for instance, we know that we ought to help ourselves last to soup, and first to salad; we are provided with certain proper phrases which we exchange for other proper phrases; we answer to an anticipated motion by an anticipated motion, after the fashion of the Chinese; we come to yawn inwardly and smile outwardly, in company and in state. This comedy of affectations and the commerce of ennui form the conversation at the springs and elsewhere.
Accordingly many people go to take the air in the streets.
II.
The street is full of downcast faces; lawyers, bankers, people tired with office work, or bored with having too much fortune and too little trouble. In the evening, they go to Frascati or watch the loungers who elbow each other among the shops on the course. During the day they drink and bathe a little, ride and smoke a good deal. The bloated patients, stretched on arm-chairs, digest their food; the lean study the newspapers; the young men talk with the ladies about the weather; the ladies are busy in rounding their petticoats aright: the old, who are critics and philosophers, take snuff, or look at the mountains with glasses, to ascertain if the engravings are exact. It is not worth the trouble of having so much money, merely to have so little pleasure.
This ennui proves that life resembles the opera; to be happy there, you must have money for your ticket, but, also, the sentiment of music. If the money is wanting, you remain outside in the rain among the boot-blacks; if you have no taste for music, you sleep sullenly in your superb box. I conclude that we must try to earn the four francs for the parterre, but above all to make ourselves acquainted with music.
The promenades are too neat and recall the Bois de Boulogne; here and there a tired broom leans against a tree its slanting silhouette. From the depths of a thicket the sergents de ville cast on you their eagle glance, and the dung decorates the alleys with its poetic heaps.
An invalid always brings with him one or more companions. Where is the being so disinherited by heaven as not to have a relation or friend who is bored? And where is the friend or relation so thankless as to refuse a service which is a pleasure party? The invalid drinks and bathes; the friend wears gaiters or rides, hence the species of tourists.
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This species comprises several varieties, which are distinguished by the song, the plumage, and the gait. These are the principal:
FIRST.
The first has long legs, lean body, head bent forward, large and powerful feet, vigorous hands, excellent at grasping and holding on. It is provided with canes, ferruled sticks, umbrellas, cloaks, india-rubber top-coats. It despises dress, shows itself but little in society, knows thoroughly guides and hotels. It strides over the ground in an admirable manner, rides with saddle, without saddle, in every way and all possible beasts. It walks for the sake of walking, and to have the right of repeating several fine, ready-made phrases.
I found, and picked up, at Eaux-Chaudes, the journal of one of these walking tourists. It is entitled: My Impressions.
“15th July.—Ascent of Vignemale. Set out at midnight, came back at ten o’clock in the evening. Appetite on the summit; excellent dinner, pate, fowls, trout, claret, kirsch. My horse stumbled eleven times. Feet galled. Rondo, good guide. Total: sixty-seven francs.
“20th July.—Ascent of the Pic du Midi de Bigorre. Fifteen hours. Sanio, fair guide; knows neither songs nor stories. Good sleep for an hour at the top. Two bottles broken, which rather spoiled the provisions. Thirty-eight francs.
“21st July.—Excursion to the Valley of HÉas. Too many stones in the road. Twenty-one miles. Must exercise every day. To-morrow will walk twenty-four. "24th July.—Excursion to the Valley of Aspe. Twenty-seven miles.
“1st August.—Lake of Oo. Good water, very cold; the bottles were well cooled.
“2d August.—Valley of the Arboust. Met three caravans; two of donkeys, one of horses. Thirty miles. Throat raw. Corns on the feet.
“3d August.—Ascent of the Maladetta. Three days. Sleep at the Rencluse de la Maladetta. My large double cloak with the fur collar keeps me from being frozen. In the morning I make the omelette myself. Punch with snow. Second night in the Vale of Malibierne. Passage of the Glacier. My right shoe gets torn. Arrival at the summit. View of three bottles left by the preceding tourists. For amusement, I read a number of the Journal des Chasseurs. On my return, I am entertained by the guides. Bagpipes in the evening at my door; great bouquet with a ribbon. Total: one hundred and sixty-eight francs.
“15th August.—Leave the Pyrenees. Three hundred and ninety-one leagues in a month, on foot as well as on horse and in carriage. Eleven ascents, eighteen excursions. I have used up two ferruled sticks, a top-coat, three pairs of trousers, five pairs of shoes. Good year.
“P.S.—Sublime country. My spirit bows beneath these great emotions.”
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SECOND.
The second variety comprises thoughtful methodical people, generally wearing spectacles, endowed with a passionate confidence in the printed letter. You know them by the guide-book, which they always carry in their hand. This book is to them the law and the prophets. They eat trout at the place named in the book, make all the stops advised by the book, dispute with the innkeeper when he asks more than is marked in the book. You see them at the remarkable points with their eyes fixed on the book, filling themselves with the description, and informing themselves exactly of the sort of emotion which it is proper to feel. On the eve of an excursion, they study the book and learn in advance the order and connection of the sensations they ought to experience: first, surprise; a little further on a tender impression; three miles beyond, chilled with horror; finally a calm sensibility. They do and feel nothing but with documents in hand and on good authority. On reaching a hotel, their first care is to ask their neighbor at the table if there is any place of reunion; at what hour people meet there; how the different hours of the day are filled up; what walk is taken in the afternoon; what other in the evening. The next day they follow all these directions conscientiously. They are clad in watering-place fashion; they change their dress as many times as the custom of the places deems proper; they make all the excursions they ought to make at the necessary hour, in the proper equipage. Have they any taste? It is impossible to say; the book and public opinion have thought and decided for them. They have the consolation of thinking that they have walked in the broad road and are imitators of the human kind. These are the docile tourists.
THIRD.
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The third variety walks in troops and makes its excursions by families. You see from afar a great peaceable cavalcade; father, mother, two daughters, two tall cousins, one or two friends and sometimes donkeys for the little boys.
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They beat the donkeys, which are restive; they advise the fiery youths to be prudent; a glance retains the young ladies about the green veil of the mother. The distinctive traits of this variety are the green veil, the bourgeois spirit, the love of siestas and meals on the grass; an unfailing sign is the taste for little social games. This variety is rare at Eaux-Bonnes, more common at BagnÈres de Bigorre and at BagnÈres de Luchon. It is remarkable for its prudence, its culinary instincts, its economical habits. The individuals making the excursion stop at a spot selected the day before; they unload pÂtÉs and bottles.
If they have brought nothing, they go and knock at the nearest hut for milk; they are astonished at having to pay three sous a glass for it: they find that it strongly resembles goat’s milk, and they say to each other, after they have drunken, that the wooden spoon was not over-clean. They look curiously at the dark stable, half underground, where the cows ruminate on beds of heather; after which, the great fat men seat themselves or lie down. The artist of the family draws out his album and copies a bridge, a mill, and other album views. The young girls run and laugh, and let themselves drop out of breath upon the grass; the young men run after them. This variety, indigenous in the great cities, in Paris above all, wishes to revive among the Pyrenees the pleasure parties of Meudon or Montmorency.
FOURTH.
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Fourth kind: dining tourists. At Louvie, a family from Carcassonne, father, mother, son, daughter and servant, alighted from the interior. For the first time in their life they were undertaking a pleasure trip. The father was one of those florid bourgeois, pot-bellied, important, dogmatic, well-clad in fine cloth, carefully preserved, who educate their cooks, arrange their house en bonbonniÈre, and establish themselves in their comfort, like an oyster in its shell. They entered stupefied into a dark dining-room, where the half-empty bottles strayed among the cooling dishes. The cloth was soiled, the napkins of a doubtful white. The father, indignant, asked for a cup of tea, and began walking up and down with a tragic air. The rest looked at each other mournfully and sat down. The dishes came helter-skelter, all of them failures. Our Carcassonne friends helped themselves, turned the meat over on their plates, looked at it, and did not eat. They ordered tea a second time; the tea did not appear; the travellers were called for the coach, and the landlord demanded twelve francs. Without saying a word, with a gesture of concentrated horror, the head of the family paid. Then, approaching his wife, he said to her: “It was your wish, madam!” A quarter of an hour later the storm burst forth: he poured his complaint into the bosom of the conductor. He declared that the company would fail if it changed horses at such a poisoner’s; he trusted that disease would soon carry off such dirty people. They told him that everybody in the country was so, and that they lived happily for eighty years. He raised his eyes to heaven, repressed his grief, and directed his thoughts toward Carcassonne.
FIFTH.
Fifth variety; rare: learned tourists.
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One day, at the foot of a damp rock, I saw a little lean man coming toward me, with a nose like an eagle’s beak; a hatchet face, green eyes, grizzling locks, nervous, jerky movements, and something quaint and earnest in his countenance. He had on huge gaiters, an old black, rain-beaten cap, trousers spattered to the knee with mud, a botanical case full of dents on his back, and in his hand a small spade. Unfortunately I was looking at a plant with long, straight, green stalk, and white, delicate corolla, which grew near some hidden springs. He took me for a raw fellow-botanist. “Ah, here you are, gathering plants! What, by the stalk, clumsy? What will it do in your herbarium without roots? Where is your case? your weeder?”
“But, sir—”
“Common plant, frequent in the environs of Paris, Parnassia palustris: stem simple, erect, a foot in height, glabrous, radical leaves petiolate (sheathing caulis, sessile), cordiform, entirely glabrous; simple flower, white, terminal, the calix with lanceolate leaves, petals rounded, marked with hollow lines, nectaries ciliate and furnished with yellow globules at the extremity of the cilia resembling pistils; helleboraceous. Those nectaries are curious; good study, plant well chosen. Courage! you’ll get on.”
“But I am no botanist!”
“Very good, you are modest. However, since you are in the Pyrenees, you must study the flora of the country; you will not find another such opportunity. There are rare-plants here which you should absolutely carry away. I gathered near Oleth, the Menziesra Daboeci, an inestimable godsend. I will show you at the house the Ramondia Pyrenaica, solanaceous with the aspect of the primrose. I scaled Mont Perdu to find the Ranunculus parnassifolius mentioned by Ramond, and which grows at a height of 2,700 mÈtres. Hah! what is that! the Aquilcgia Pyrenaica!”
And my little man started off like an isard, clambered up a slope, carefully dug the soil about the flower, took it up, without cutting a single root, and returned with sparkling eyes, triumphant air, and holding it aloft like a banner.
“Plant peculiar to the Pyrenees. I have long wanted it; the specimen is excellent. Come, my young friend, a slight examination: you don’t know the species, but you recognize the family?”
“Alas! I don’t know a word of botany.”
He looked at me stupefied. “And why do you gather plants?”
“To see them, because they are pretty.”
He put his flower into his case, adjusted his cap, and went off without adding another word.
SIXTH.
Sixth variety; very numerous: sedentary tourists. They gaze on the mountains from their windows; their excursions consist in going from their room to the English garden, from the English garden to the promenade. They take a siesta upon the heath, and read the journal stretched on a chair; after which they have seen the Pyrenees.
SEVENTH.
There was a grand ball yesterday. Paul presented there a young creole from Venezuela in America; the young man has as yet seen nothing; he has just left ship at Bordeaux, whence he comes here; a very fine fellow, however, of a fine, olive complexion; great hunter, and better fitted for frequenting mountains than drawing-rooms. He comes to France to form himself, as they say; Paul pretends that it is to be deformed.
We have taken our place in a corner; and the young man has asked Paul to define to him a ball.
“A great funereal and penitential ceremony.”
“Pshaw!”
“No doubt of it, and the custom goes back a long way.”
“Indeed?”
“Back to Henry III. who instituted assemblies of flagellants. The men of the court bared their backs, and met together to lash one another over the shoulders. Nowadays there is no longer any whipping, but the sadness is the same. All the men who are here come to expiate great sins or have just lost their relations.” "That is the reason why they are dressed in black.”
“Precisely.”
“But the ladies are in magnificent dresses.”
“They mortify themselves only the better for that. Each one has hung around the loins a sort of haircloth, that horrible load of petticoats which hurts them and finally makes them ill. This is after the example of the saints, the better to work out salvation.”
“But all the men are smiling.”
“That is the finest thing about it; cramped as they are, shut up in their winding-sheet of black cloth. They impose restraint on themselves, and give proof of virtue. Go forward six steps, you will see.”
The young man advanced; not yet used to the movements of a drawing-room, he stepped on the feet of a dancer and smashed the hat of a melancholy gentleman. He returned, covered with confusion, to hide himself beside us.
“What did your two poor devils say to you?”
“I don’t at all understand. The first, after an involuntary wry face, looked at me amiably. The other put his hat under his other arm and bowed.”
“Humility, resignation, a wish to suffer in order to enhance their merits. Under Henry III. they thanked him who had strapped them the best. I will make a musician talk; listen. Monsieur Steuben, what quadrille are you playing there?”
“L’Enfer, a fantastic quadrille. It is the legend of a young girl carried off alive in the clutches of the devil.”
“It is, indeed?”
“Very expressive. The finale expresses her cries of grief and the howling of the demons. The young girl makes the air, the demons the bass.
“And you play after that?”
“Some contra-dances on di tanti palpiti.”
“Won’t you please give me the idea of that air.”
“It is at the return of Tancred. The point is to paint the most touching sadness.”
“Excellent choice. And no mazurkas, no waltzes?”
“Presently; here is a great book of Chopin, he is our favorite. What a master! What fever! what cries, sorrowful, uncertain, broken! All these mazurkas make one want to weep.
“That is why they are danced; you see, my dear child, only afflicted people could select such music. By the way, how do they dance in your country?”
“With us? we jump and stir about, we laugh out, shout, perhaps.”
“What comical folks! and why?”
“Because they are happy and want to stir their limbs."
“Here, four steps forward, as many back, a turn cramped by the conflict of neighboring dresses, two or three geometric inclinations. The cotton-spinners in the prison at Poissy make precisely the same motions.”
“But these people talk.”
“Go forward and listen; there is nothing inconsiderate about it, I assure you.”
He returns after a minute.
“What did the man say?”
“The gentleman came up briskly, smiled delicately, and, with a gesture as of a happy discoverer, he remarked that it was warm.”
“And the lady?”
“The lady’s eyes flashed. With an enchanting smile of approval, she answered that it was indeed.”
“Judge what constraint they must have imposed on themselves. The gentleman is thirty years old; for twelve years he has known his phrase; the lady is twenty-two, she has known hers for seven years. Each has made and heard the question and answer three or four thousand times, and yet they appear to be interested, surprised. What empire over self! What force of nature! You see clearly that these French who are called light are stoics on occasion.”
“My eyes smart, my feet are swollen, I have been swallowing dust; it is one o’clock in the morning, the air smells bad, I should like to go. Will they remain much longer?”
“Until five o’clock in the morning.”
EIGHTH.
Two days after there was a concert. The creole said in coming out that he was very tired, and had understood nothing of all that buzzing, and begged Paul to explain to him what pleasure people found in such noise.
“For,” said he, “they have enjoyed it, since they paid six francs for admission, and applauded vehemently.”
“Music awakes all sorts of agreeable reveries.”
“Let us see.”
“Such an air suggests scenes of love; such another makes you imagine great landscapes, tragic events.”
“And if you don’t have these reveries, the music bores you?”
“Certainly; unless you are professor of harmony.” "But the audience were not professors of harmony?”
“No indeed.”
“So that they have all had all those reveries you talk about, otherwise they would be bored; and, if they were bored, they would neither have paid nor applauded.”
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“Well argued.”
“Explain then to me the reveries they have had; for example, that serenade mentioned in the programme, the serenade from Don Pasquale.”
“It paints a happy love, full of pleasure and unconcern. You see a handsome youth with laughing eyes and blooming cheek, in a garden in Italy; under a tranquil moon, by the whispering of the breeze, he awaits his mistress, thinks of her smile, and little by little, in measured notes, joy and tenderness spring harmoniously from his heart.”
“What, they imagined all that! What happy country-folk are your people! What fulness of emotion and thought! What discreet countenances! I should never have suspected, to see them, that they were having so sweet a dream.”
“The second piece was an andante of Beethoven.”
“What about Beethoven?”
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“A poor, great man, deaf, loving, misunderstood, and a philosopher, whose music is full of gigantic or sorrowful dreams.”
“What dreams?”
“‘Eternity is a great eyry, whence all the centuries, like young eaglets, have flown in turn to cross the heavens and disappear. Ours is in its turn come to the brink of the nest; but they have clipped its wings, and it awaits death while gazing upon space, into which it cannot take flight.’”
“What is that you are reciting to me?”
“A sentence of de Musset, which translates your andante.”
“What! In three minutes they passed from the first idea to this. What men! What flexibility of spirit! I should never have believed in such readiness. Without tripping, as a matter of course, they entered this reverie on leaving a serenade? What hearts! What artists! You make me thoroughly ashamed of myself: I shall never again dare to say a word to them.”
“The third piece, a duo of Mozart’s, expresses quite German sentiments, an artless candor, melancholy, contemplative tenderness, the half-defined smile, the timidity of love.”
“So that their imagination, which was still in a perfect state of distraction, is in a moment so transformed as to represent the confidence, the innocence, the touching agitation of a young girl?”
“Certainly.”
“And there are seven or eight pieces in a concert?”
“At least. Moreover, these pieces being taken from three or four countries and two or three centuries, the audience must suddenly assume the sentiments, opposite as they are and varied, of all these centuries and of all these countries.”
“And they were crowded on benches, under a glaring light.”
“And in the pauses, the men talked railroads, the ladies dresses.”
“I am getting confused. I, when I dream, want to be alone, at my ease, or at most with a friend. If music touches me, it is in a little dark room, when some one plays airs of one sort, that suit my state of mind. It is not necessary that any one should talk to me about positive things. Dreams do not come to me at will; they fly away in spite of me. I see clearly that I am on another continent, with an entirely different race. One learns in travelling.”
A suspicion seized him: “Perhaps they had come there for penance? When they came out, I saw them yawning, and dejected in countenance.”
“Don’t believe anything of it. It is because they restrain themselves. Otherwise, they would burst into tears and throw themselves on your neck.”
NINTH.
In the evening our creole, who had been thinking, said to Paul:
"Since you are such musicians in France, your well-educated girls must all learn music?”
“Three hours of scales every day, for thirteen years, from seven to twenty; total, fourteen thousand hours.”
“They profit by it?”
“One out of eight; of the other seven, three become good hand-organs, four poor hand-or-gans.”
“I suppose for a compensation they are made to read?”
“Le Ragois, La Harpe, and other dictionaries, all sorts of little treatises of florid piety.”
“What then is your education?”
“A pretty case embalmed with incense, perfumed, securely padlocked, where the mind sleeps while the finders turn a bird-organ.”
“Well, that is encouraging for the husband. And what does he do?”
“He receives the key of the case, opens it; a little devil in a white dress jumps at his nose, eager to dance and get out.”
“Very well, the husband serves as guide. Has he other cares?”
“Perhaps so.”
“For instance?”
“An apartment, third floor, costs two thousand francs, the dress of the wife fifteen hundred, the education of a child, a thousand; the husband earns six thousand.”
“I understand; while dancing, they think of all sorts of melancholy things.”
“Of economizing, keeping up appearances, flattering, calculating.”
“What then is marriage with you?”
“An act of society between a minister of foreign relations and a minister of the interior.”
“And for preparation they have learned—”
“To roll off scales, to shine in trills, to shift their wrists. Prestidigitation instructs in housekeeping.”
“Decidedly, you Europeans have a fine logic. And the eighth girl, the one who does not become a hand-organ?”
“The piano forms her too. It answers for everything, everywhere. Beneficent machine!”
“How is that?”
“It exalts and refines. Mendelssohn surrounds them with ardent, delicate, morbid imaginings. Rossini fills their nerves with an expansive and voluptuous joy. The sharp, tormented desires, the broken, rebel cries of modern passions, rise from every strain of Meyerbeer. Mozart awakens in them a swarm of affections and dim longings. They live in a cloud of emotions and sensations.”
“The other arts would do as much.”
“Not a bit of it. Literature is a living psychology, painting a living physiology. Music alone invents all, copies nothing, is a pure dream, gives free rein to dreams.”
“And probably they strike out into it.”
“With all the ardor of their ignorance, their sex, imagination, idleness, and their twenty years.”
“Well, of evenings they have the poetry of the family and the world for pasture.”
“In the evening, a night-capped gentleman, their husband, talks to them of his reports and his practice. The children in their cradle are spoiled or grumble. The cook brings her account. They bow to fifteen men in their salon, and compliment fifteen ladies on their dresses. In addition, once in awhile, the penitential and funereal ceremony you saw three days ago.”
“But then the piano seems chosen expressly.”
“To resign them at the outset to the meanness of a commonplace condition, the nothingness of the feminine condition, the wretchedness of the human condition. It is plain that all will be content, that none will become languishing or sharp. Dear and beneficent instrument! Salute it with respect, when you enter a room. It is the source of domestic concord, of feminine patience and conjugal bliss.”
“Saint Jacques, I swear that my wife shall not know music!”
“You are making bachelor’s vows, my dear friend. Nowadays every girl who wears gloves has made her fingers run over that machine; otherwise she would think herself no better than a washerwoman.”
“I will marry my washerwoman.”
“The day after your wedding she will have a piano brought in.”
Paul has sprained his foot and spent two days in his room, occupied in watching a poultry yard. He improved the occasion by writing the following little treatise for the use of the young creole, a sort of viaticum, with which he will nourish himself for the better understanding of the world. I thought the treatise melancholy and skeptical. Paul replies, that one should be so at first, in order not to be afterward, and that it is well to be a little skeptical if you wish not to be too skeptical.
I was born in a cask, at the back of a hay-loft: the light fell on my closed eyelids, so that the first eight days, everything appeared rose-colored to me.
The eighth, it was still better; I looked, and saw a great fall of light upon the dark shade; the dust and insects danced in it. The hay was warm and fragrant; the spiders hung in sleep from the tiles; the gnats hummed; everything seemed happy; that emboldened me; I wanted to go and touch the white patch where those little diamonds were whirling and which rejoined the roof by a column of gold. I rolled over like a ball; my eyes were burned, my sides bruised; I was choking, and I coughed till nightfall.
II.
When my paws had become firm, I went out and soon made friends with a goose, an estimable creature, for she had a warm belly; I cowered underneath, and during this time her philosophic conversation was forming me. She used to say that the poultry yard was a republic of allies; that the most industrious, man, had been chosen for chief, and that the dogs, although turbulent, were our guardians. I shed tears of emotion under my kind friend’s belly.
One morning the cook appeared looking as if butter would not melt in her mouth, and showing a handful of barley. The goose stretched forth her neck, which the cook grasped, drawing a big knife. My uncle, an active philosopher, ran up and began to exhort the goose, which was uttering indecorous cries: “Dear sister,” said he, “the farmer, when he shall have eaten your flesh, will have a clearer intelligence, and will watch better over your welfare; and the dogs, nourished with your bones, will be the more capable of defending you.” Thereupon the goose became silent, for her head was cut off, and a sort of red pipe stuck out beyond the bleeding neck. My uncle ran for the head and carried it nimbly away; as for me, a little frightened, I drew near to the pool of blood, and, without thinking, I dipped my tongue into it; the blood was very good, and I went to the kitchen to see if I could not have some more of it.
III.
My uncle, a very old and experienced animal, taught me universal history.
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At the beginning of things, when he was born, the master being dead, the children at the funeral and the servants at a dance, all the animals found themselves free. It was a frightful hubbub; a turkey, whose feathers were too fine, was stripped by his comrades. In the evening, a ferret, which had slipped in, sucked the jugular vein of three-quarters of the combatants, who, naturally, made no further outcry. The spectacle in the farmyard was fine; here and there was a dog swallowing a duck; the horses in pure sportiveness were breaking the backs of the dogs; my uncle himself crunched a half-dozen little chickens. That was the golden age, said he.
In the evening, when the people came home, the whipping began. Uncle received a lash which took off a strip of his fur. The dogs, well flogged and tied up, howled with repentance and licked the hands of their new master. The horses resumed their burden with administrative zeal. The fowls, protected, clucked their benedictions; only, six months after, when the dealer passed, they killed fifty at once. The geese, among whose number was my late kind friend, flapped their wings, saying that everything was in good order, and praising the farmer, the public benefactor.
IV.
My uncle, although surly, acknowledges that things are better than they used to be. He says that at first our race was savage, and that there are still in the woods cats who are like our first ancestors, which, at long intervals, catch a mole or dormouse, but oftener the contents of a shot-gun. Others, lean, short-haired, run over the roofs and think that mice are very rare. As for us, brought up on the summit of earthly felicity, we whisk a flattering tail in the kitchen, we utter tender little mewings, we lick the empty plates, and at the utmost we put up with a dozen cuffs in the course of the day.
V.
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Music is a heavenly art, and it is certain that our race has the privilege of it; it springs from the depths of our entrails; men know this so well that they borrow them from us when they want to imitate us with their violins.
Two things inspire in us these heavenly songs: the view of the stars and love. Men, clumsy copyists, cram themselves ridiculously into a low hall, and skip about thinking to equal us. It is on the summit of the roofs, in the splendor of the night, when all the skin shivers, that the divine melody can find vent. Out of jealousy they curse us and fling stones at us. Let them burst with rage. Never will their expressionless voice attain to those serious rumblings, those piercing notes, mad arabesques, inspired and unexpected fancies, which soften the soul of the most stubborn she, and give her over to us, all trembling, while up above the voluptuous stars twinkle and the moon grows pale with love.
How happy is youth, and how hard it is to lose its holy illusions! And I too, I have loved and have haunted the roofs, modulating the while the roll of my bass. One of my cousins was touched thereby, and two months after brought into the world six pink and white kittens. I ran to them and wanted to eat them; I certainly had a right, since I was their father. Who would believe it! My cousin, my spouse, to whom I was willing to give her share of the banquet, flew at my eyes. This brutality roused my indignation, and I strangled her on the spot; after which I swallowed the entire litter.
But the hapless little rogues were good for nothing, not even to nourish their father: their flabby flesh weighed on my stomach for three days. Disgusted with the strong passions, I gave up music, and returned to the kitchen.
VI.
I have thought much on the ideal happiness, and I think I have made thereupon some notable discoveries.
It evidently consists, in warm weather, in sleeping near the barnyard pool. A delicious odor arises from the fermenting dung; lustrous straws shine in the sunlight. The turkeys ogle lovingly, and let their crest of red flesh fall on their beak. The fowls scratch up the straw, and bury their broad bellies to take in the rising heat. The pool gleams, swarming with moving insects which make the bubbles rise to its surface. The harsh whiteness of the walls renders yet deeper the bluish recesses where the gnats hum. With eyes half closed you dream; and, as you have almost ceased to think, you no longer wish for anything. In winter, happiness is in sitting at the fireside in the kitchen. The little tongues of flame lick the log and shoot amidst the sparks; the twigs snap and writhe, while the twisted smoke rises in the dark chimney to the very sky. Meanwhile the spit turns with a harmonious and pleasing ticktack. The fowl that is impaled reddens, turns brown, becomes splendid; the fat which moistens it softens its hues; a delightful odor irritates the olfactories; your tongue involuntarily caresses your lips; you take in the divine emanations of the fat; with eyes lifted to heaven in a serious transport, you wait till the cook takes off the creature and offers you the part that belongs to you.
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He who eats is happy, he who digests is happier, he who sleeps while digesting is happier still. All the rest is only vanity and vexation of spirit. The fortunate mortal is he who, warmly rolled into a ball with his belly full, feels his stomach in operation and his skin expand. A delightful tickling penetrates and softly stirs the fibres. The outer and the inner creature enjoy with their every nerve. Surely if the universe is a great and blessed God, as our sages say, the earth must be an immense belly busy through all eternity digesting the creatures, and warming its round skin in the sun.
VII.
My mind has been greatly enlarged by reflection. By a sure method, sound conjectures and sustained attention, I have penetrated some of the secrets of nature.
The dog is an animal so deformed, of such an unruly character, that from the earliest times it has been considered to be a monster, born and moulded in despite of all laws. Indeed, when rest is the natural state, how explain an animal that is forever in motion and busy, and that without aim nor need, even when he is gorged and not afraid? When beauty universally consists in suppleness, grace and prudence, how allow an animal to be forever brutal, howling, mad, jumping at the nose of people, running after kicks and rebuffs? When the favorite and masterpiece of creation is the cat, how understand an animal that hates it, runs at it, without having received a single scratch from it, and breaks its ribs without any desire to eat its flesh?
These contradictions prove that dogs are condemned beings; without a doubt the souls of the guilty and punished pass into their bodies. They suffer there; that is why they worry one another, and fret unceasingly. They have lost their reason, so they spoil everything, incite to battle, and are chained three-quarters of the day. They hate the beautiful and the good, consequently they try to throttle us.
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VIII.
Little by little the mind frees itself from the prejudices in which it was reared; light dawns; it thinks for itself; thus it is that I have attained to the true explanation of things.
Our first ancestors (and the gutter cats have retained this belief) said that heaven is a very lofty granary, well covered, where the sun never hurts the eyes.
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In this granary, my great-aunt used to say, there are troops of rats so fat that they can hardly walk, and the more we eat of them, the more there are to eat.
But it is evident that this is the opinion of poor devils, who, since they have never eaten anything but rat, cannot imagine a better diet. Besides, granaries are wood-color or gray, and the sky is blue, which finishes their confusion.
In truth, they rest their opinion upon a sufficiently shrewd remark: “It is evident,” they say, “that the sky is a granary of straw or flour, for there come out of it very often clouds light, as when the wheat is winnowed, or white, as when bread is sprinkled in the kneading-trough.”
But I reply to them that the clouds are not formed by the chaff of grain or the dust of flour; for when they fall, it is water that we receive.
Others, more refined, have maintained that the Dutch oven was God, saying that it is the fount of every blessing, turns unceasingly, goes to the fire without being burned, and that the sight of it is enough to throw one into ecstasy.
In my opinion they have erred here only because they saw it through the window, from a distance, in a poetic, colored, sparkling smoke, beautiful as the sun at evening. But I, who have sat near it during whole hours, I know that it has to be sponged, mended, wiped; and in acquiring knowledge, I have lost the innocent illusions of heart and stomach. The mind must be opened to conceptions more vast, and reason by more certain methods. Nature is everywhere uniform with herself, and in small things offers the image of the great.
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From what do all animals spring? from an egg; the earth then is a very great egg; I even add that it is a broken egg.
You will convince yourself of this if you examine the form and the limits of this valley, which is the visible world. It is concave like an egg, and the sharp edges by which it rejoins the sky are jagged, are keen-edged and white like those of a broken shell.
The white and the yolk, pressed into lumps, have formed these blocks of stone, these houses and the whole solid earth. Some parts have remained soft and form the surface that men plough; the rest runs in water and makes the pools, the rivers; each spring-time there runs a little that is new.
As to the sun, nobody can doubt its use; it is a great red firebrand that is moved back and forth above the egg to cook it gently; the egg has been broken on purpose, in order that it may be the better impregnated with the heat; the cook always does so. The world is a great beaten egg.
Now that I have reached this stage of wisdom, I have nothing more to ask of nature, nor of men, nor of any one; except, perhaps, some little tidbits from the roaster. In future I have only to cradle myself to rest in my wisdom; for my perfection is sublime, and no thinking cat has penetrated into the secret of the world so far as I.
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