CHAPTER X.
THE FLAME WHICH WOULD BE SEEN IF MAN WERE TRANSPARENT.
What! this woman, this extravagant thing, this libidinous dreamer, avirgin until the opportunity occurred, this bit of flesh as yet unfreed,this bold creature under a princess's coronet; this Diana by pride, asyet untaken by the first comer, just because chance had so willed it;this bastard of a low-lived king who had not the intellect to keep hisplace; this duchess by a lucky hit, who, being a fine lady, played thegoddess, and who, had she been poor, would have been a prostitute; thislady, more or less, this robber of a proscribed man's goods, thisoverbearing strumpet, because one day he, Barkilphedro, had not moneyenough to buy his dinner, and to get a lodging--she had had theimpudence to seat him in her house at the corner of a table, and to puthim up in some hole in her intolerable palace. Where? never mind where.Perhaps in the barn, perhaps in the cellar; what does it matter? Alittle better than her valets, a little worse than her horses. She hadabused his distress--his, Barkilphedro's--in hastening to do himtreacherous good; a thing which the rich do in order to humiliate thepoor, and to tie them, like curs led by a string. Besides, what did theservice she rendered him cost her? A service is worth what it costs. Shehad spare rooms in her house. She came to Barkilphedro's aid! A greatthing, indeed. Had she eaten a spoonful the less of turtle soup for it?had she deprived herself of anything in the hateful overflowing of hersuperfluous luxuries? No. She had added to it a vanity, a luxury, a goodaction like a ring on her finger, the relief of a man of wit, thepatronization of a clergyman. She could give herself airs: say, "Ilavish kindness; I fill the mouths of men of letters; I am hisbenefactress. How lucky the wretch was to find me out! What a patronessof the arts I am!" All for having set up a truckle bed in a wretchedgarret in the roof. As for the place in the Admiralty, Barkilphedro owedit to Josiana; by Jove, a pretty appointment! Josiana had madeBarkilphedro what he was. She had created him. Be it so. Yes, creatednothing--less than nothing. For in his absurd situation he felt bornedown, tongue-tied, disfigured. What did he owe Josiana? The thanks duefrom a hunchback to the mother who bore him deformed. Behold yourprivileged ones, your folks overwhelmed with fortune, your parvenus,your favourites of that horrid stepmother Fortune! And that man oftalent, Barkilphedro, was obliged to stand on staircases, to bow tofootmen, to climb to the top of the house at night, to be courteous,assiduous, pleasant, respectful, and to have ever on his muzzle arespectful grimace! Was not it enough to make him gnash his teeth withrage! And all the while she was putting pearls round her neck, andmaking amorous poses to her fool, Lord David Dirry-Moir; the hussy!
Never let any one do you a service. They will abuse the advantage itgives them. Never allow yourself to be taken in the act of inanition.They would relieve you. Because he was starving, this woman had found ita sufficient pretext to give him bread. From that moment he was herservant; a craving of the stomach, and there is a chain for life! To beobliged is to be sold. The happy, the powerful, make use of the momentyou stretch out your hand to place a penny in it, and at the crisis ofyour weakness make you a slave, and a slave of the worst kind, the slaveof an act of charity--a slave forced to love the enslaver. What infamy!what want of delicacy! what an assault on your self-respect! Then all isover. You are sentenced for life to consider this man good, that womanbeautiful; to remain in the back rows; to approve, to applaud, toadmire, to worship, to prostrate yourself, to blister your knees by longgenuflections, to sugar your words when you are gnawing your lips withanger, when you are biting down your cries of fury, and when you havewithin you more savage turbulence and more bitter foam than the ocean!
It is thus that the rich make prisoners of the poor.
This slime of a good action performed towards you bedaubs and bespattersyou with mud for ever.
An alms is irremediable. Gratitude is paralysis. A benefit is a stickyand repugnant adherence which deprives you of free movement. Thoseodious, opulent, and spoiled creatures whose pity has thus injured youare well aware of this. It is done--you are their creature. They havebought you--and how? By a bone taken from their dog and cast to you.They have flung that bone at your head. You have been stoned as much asbenefited. It is all one. Have you gnawed the bone--yes or no? You havehad your place in the dog-kennel as well. Then be thankful--be everthankful. Adore your masters. Kneel on indefinitely. A benefit impliesan understood inferiority accepted by you. It means that you feel themto be gods and yourself a poor devil. Your diminution augments them.Your bent form makes theirs more upright. In the tones of their voicesthere is an impertinent inflexion. Their family matters--theirmarriages, their baptisms, their child-bearings, their progeny--allconcern you. A wolf cub is born to them. Well, you have to compose asonnet. You are a poet because you are low. Isn't it enough to make thestars fall! A little more, and they would make you wear their old shoes.
"Who have you got there, my dear? How ugly he is! Who is that man?"
"I do not know. A sort of scholar, whom I feed."
Thus converse these idiots, without even lowering their voice. You hear,and remain mechanically amiable. If you are ill, your masters will sendfor the doctor--not their own. Occasionally they may even inquire afteryou. Being of a different species from you, and at an inaccessibleheight above you, they are affable. Their height makes them easy. Theyknow that equality is impossible. By force of disdain they are polite.At table they give you a little nod. Sometimes they absolutely know howyour name is spelt! They only show that they are your protectors bywalking unconsciously over all the delicacy and susceptibility youpossess. They treat you with good-nature. Is all this to be borne?
No doubt he was eager to punish Josiana. He must teach her with whom shehad to deal!
O my rich gentry, because you cannot eat up everything, because opulenceproduces indigestion seeing that your stomachs are no bigger than ours,because it is, after all, better to distribute the remainder than tothrow it away, you exalt a morsel flung to the poor into an act ofmagnificence. Oh, you give us bread, you give us shelter, you give usclothes, you give us employment, and you push audacity, folly, cruelty,stupidity, and absurdity to the pitch of believing that we are grateful!The bread is the bread of servitude, the shelter is a footman's bedroom,the clothes are a livery, the employment is ridiculous, paid for, it istrue, but brutalizing.
Oh, you believe in the right to humiliate us with lodging andnourishment, and you imagine that we are your debtors, and you count onour gratitude! Very well; we will eat up your substance, we will devouryou alive and gnaw your heart-strings with our teeth.
This Josiana! Was it not absurd? What merit had she? She hadaccomplished the wonderful work of coming into the world as a testimonyof the folly of her father and the shame of her mother. She had done usthe favour to exist, and for her kindness in becoming a public scandalthey paid her millions; she had estates and castles, warrens, parks,lakes, forests, and I know not what besides, and with all that she wasmaking a fool of herself, and verses were addressed to her! AndBarkilphedro, who had studied and laboured and taken pains, and stuffedhis eyes and his brain with great books, who had grown mouldy in oldworks and in science, who was full of wit, who could command armies, whocould, if he would, write tragedies like Otway and Dryden, who was madeto be an emperor--Barkilphedro had been reduced to permit this nobody toprevent him from dying of hunger. Could the usurpation of the rich, thehateful elect of chance, go further? They put on the semblance of beinggenerous to us, of protecting us, and of smiling on us, and we woulddrink their blood and lick our lips after it! That this low woman of thecourt should have the odious power of being a benefactress, and that aman so superior should be condemned to pick up such bribes falling fromsuch a hand, what a frightful iniquity! And what social system is thiswhich has for its base disproportion and injustice? Would it not be bestto take it by the four corners, and to throw pell-mell to the ceilingthe damask tablecloth, and the festival, and the orgies, and thetippling and drunkenness, and the guests, and those with their elbows onthe table, and those with t
heir paws under it, and the insolent who giveand the idiots who accept, and to spit it all back again in the face ofProvidence, and fling all the earth to the heavens? In the meantime letus stick our claws into Josiana.
Thus dreamed Barkilphedro. Such were the ragings of his soul. It is thehabit of the envious man to absolve himself, amalgamating with hispersonal grievance the public wrongs.
All the wild forms of hateful passions went and came in the intellectof this ferocious being. At the corners of old maps of the world of thefifteenth century are great vague spaces without shape or name, on whichare written these three words, _Hic sunt leones_. Such a dark corner isthere also in man. Passions grow and growl somewhere within us, and wemay say of an obscure portion of our souls, "There are lions here."
Is this scaffolding of wild reasoning absolutely absurd? does it lack acertain justice? We must confess it does not.
It is fearful to think that judgment within us is not justice. Judgmentis the relative, justice is the absolute. Think of the differencebetween a judge and a just man.
Wicked men lead conscience astray with authority. There are gymnasticsof untruth. A sophist is a forger, and this forger sometimes brutalizesgood sense.
A certain logic, very supple, very implacable, and very agile, is at theservice of evil, and excels in stabbing truth in the dark. These areblows struck by the devil at Providence.
The worst of it was that Barkilphedro had a presentiment. He wasundertaking a heavy task, and he was afraid that after all the evilachieved might not be proportionate to the work.
To be corrosive as he was, to have within himself a will of steel, ahate of diamond, a burning curiosity for the catastrophe, and to burnnothing, to decapitate nothing, to exterminate nothing; to be what hewas, a force of devastation, a voracious animosity, a devourer of thehappiness of others, to have been created (for there is a creator,whether God or devil), to have been created Barkilphedro all over, andto inflict perhaps after all but a fillip of the finger--could this bepossible? could it be that Barkilphedro should miss his aim? To be alever powerful enough to heave great masses of rock, and when sprung tothe utmost power to succeed only in giving an affected woman a bump inthe forehead--to be a catapult dealing ruin on a pole-kitten! Toaccomplish the task of Sisyphus, to crush an ant; to sweat all over withhate, and for nothing at all. Would not this be humiliating, when hefelt himself a mechanism of hostility capable of reducing the world topowder! To put into movement all the wheels within wheels, to work inthe darkness all the mechanism of a Marly machine, and to succeedperhaps in pinching the end of a little rosy finger! He was to turn overand over blocks of marble, perchance with the result of ruffling alittle the smooth surface of the court! Providence has a way of thusexpending forces grandly. The movement of a mountain often onlydisplaces a molehill.
Besides this, when the court is the dangerous arena, nothing is moredangerous than to aim at your enemy and miss him. In the first place, itunmasks you and irritates him; but besides and above all, it displeasesthe master. Kings do not like the unskilful. Let us have no contusions,no ugly gashes. Kill anybody, but give no one a bloody nose. He whokills is clever, he who wounds awkward. Kings do not like to see theirservants lamed. They are displeased if you chip a porcelain jar on theirchimney-piece or a courtier in their cortege. The court must be keptneat. Break and replace; that does not matter. Besides, all this agreesperfectly with the taste of princes for scandal. Speak evil, do none; orif you do, let it be in grand style.
Stab, do not scratch, unless the pin be poisoned. This would be anextenuating circumstance, and was, we may remember, the case withBarkilphedro.
Every malicious pigmy is a phial in which is enclosed the dragon ofSolomon. The phial is microscopic, the dragon immense. A formidablecondensation, awaiting the gigantic hour of dilation! Ennui consoled bythe premeditation of explosion! The prisoner is larger than the prison.A latent giant! how wonderful! A minnow in which is contained a hydra.To be this fearful magical box, to contain within him a leviathan, is tothe dwarf both a torture and a delight.
Nor would anything have caused Barkilphedro to let go his hold. Heawaited his time. Was it to come? What mattered that? He watched for it.Self-love is mixed up in the malice of the very wicked man. To makeholes and gaps in a court fortune higher than your own, to undermine itat all risks and perils, while encased and concealed yourself, is, werepeat, exceedingly interesting. The player at such a game becomeseager, even to passion. He throws himself into the work as if he werecomposing an epic. To be very mean, and to attack that which is great,is in itself a brilliant action. It is a fine thing to be a flea on alion.
The noble beast feels the bite, and expends his mighty anger againstthe atom. An encounter with a tiger would weary him less; see how theactors exchange their parts. The lion, humiliated, feels the sting ofthe insect; and the flea can say, "I have in my veins the blood of alion."
However, these reflections but half appeased the cravings ofBarkilphedro's pride. Consolations, palliations at most. To vex is onething; to torment would be infinitely better. Barkilphedro had a thoughtwhich returned to him without ceasing: his success might not go beyondjust irritating the epidermis of Josiana. What could he hope formore--he so obscure against her so radiant? A scratch is worth butlittle to him who longs to see the crimson blood of his flayed victim,and to hear her cries as she lies before him more than naked, withouteven that garment the skin! With such a craving, how sad to bepowerless!
Alas, there is nothing perfect!
However, he resigned himself. Not being able to do better, he onlydreamed half his dream. To play a treacherous trick is an object afterall.
What a man is he who revenges himself for a benefit received!Barkilphedro was a giant among such men. Usually, ingratitude isforgetfulness. With this man, patented in wickedness, it was fury. Thevulgar ingrate is full of ashes; what was within Barkilphedro? Afurnace--furnace walled round by hate, silence, and rancour, awaitingJosiana for fuel. Never had a man abhorred a woman to such a pointwithout reason. How terrible! She was his dream, his preoccupation, hisennui, his rage.
Perhaps he was a little in love with her.