Read The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard Page 23


  June 4.

  I like to look out of my window at the Seine and its quays on thosesoft grey mornings which give such an infinite tenderness of tint toeverything. I have seen that azure sky which flings so luminous a calmover the Bay of Naples. But our Parisian sky is more animated, morekindly, more spiritual. It smiles, threatens, caresses--takes an aspectof melancholy or a look of merriment like a human gaze. At this momentit is pouring down a very gentle light on the men and beasts of the cityas they accomplish their daily tasks. Over there, on the opposite bank,the stevedores of the Port Saint-Nicholas are unloading a cargo of cow'shorns; while two men standing on a gangway are tossing sugar-loaves fromone to the other, and thence to somebody in the hold of a steamer. Onthe north quay, the cab-horses, standing in a line under the shade ofthe plane-trees each with its head in a nose-bag, are quietly munchingtheir oats, while the rubicund drivers are drinking at the counter ofthe wine-seller opposite, but all the while keeping a sharp lookout forearly customers.

  The dealers in second-hand books put their boxes on the parapet. Thesegood retailers of Mind, who are always in the open air, with blousesloose to the breeze, have become so weatherbeaten by the wind, therain, the frost, the snow, the fog, and the great sun, that they endby looking very much like the old statues of cathedrals. They are allfriends of mine, and I scarcely ever pass by their boxes without pickingout of one of them some old book which I had always been in need of upto that very moment, without any suspicion of the fact on my part.

  Then on my return home I have to endure the outcries of my housekeeper,who accuses me of bursting all my pockets and filling the house withwaste paper to attract the rats. Therese is wise about that, and itis because she is wise that I do not listen to her; for in spite of mytranquil mien, I have always preferred the folly of the passions to thewisdom of indifference. But just because my own passions are not of thatsort which burst out with violence to devastate and kill, the commonmind is not aware of their existence. Nevertheless, I am greatly movedby them at times, and it has more than once been my fate to lose mysleep for the sake of a few pages written by some forgotten monk orprinted by some humble apprentice of Peter Schaeffer. And if thesefierce enthusiasms are slowly being quenched in me, it is only becauseI am being slowly quenched myself. Our passions are ourselves. My oldbooks are Me. I am just as old and thumb-worn as they are.

  A light breeze sweeps away, along with the dust of the pavements, thewinged seeds of the plane trees, and the fragments of hay dropped fromthe mouths of the horses. The dust is nothing remarkable in itself; butas I watch it flying, I remember a moment in my childhood when I watchedjust such a swirl of dust; and my old Parisian soul is much affected bythat sudden recollection. All that I see from my window--that horizonwhich extends to the left as far as the hills of Chaillot, and enablesme to distinguish the Arc de Triomphe like a die of stone, the Seine,river of glory, and its bridges, the ash-trees of the terrace ofthe Tuileries, the Louvre of the Renaissance, cut and graven likegoldsmith-work; and on my right, towards the Pont-Neuf (pons LutetiaeNovus dictus, as it is named on old engravings), all the old andvenerable part of Paris, with its towers and spires:--all that is mylife, it is myself; and I should be nothing but for all those thingswhich are thus reflected in me through my thousand varying shades ofthought, inspiring me and animating me. That is why I love Paris with animmense love.

  And nevertheless I am weary, and I know that there can be no rest for mein the heart of this great city which thinks so much, which has taughtme to think, and which for ever urges me to think more. And how avoidbeing exited among all these books which incessantly tempt my curiositywithout ever satisfying it? At one moment it is a date I have to lookfor; at another it is the name of a place I have to make sure of,or some quaint term of which it is important to determine the exactmeaning. Words?--why, yes! words. As a philologist, I am theirsovereign; they are my subjects, and, like a good king, I devote mywhole life to them. But shall I not be able to abdicate some day? I havean idea that there is somewhere or other, quite far from here, a certainlittle cottage where I could enjoy the quiet I so much need, whileawaiting that day in which a greater quiet--that which can be neverbroken--shall come to wrap me all about. I dream of a bench before thethreshold, and of fields spreading away out of sight. But I must have afresh smiling young face beside me, to reflect and concentrate all thatfreshness of nature. I could then imagine myself a grandfather, and allthe long void of my life would be filled....

  I am not a violent man, and yet I become easily vexed, and all my workshave caused me quite as much pain as pleasure. And I do not know howit is that I still keep thinking about that very conceited and veryinconsiderated impertinence which my young friend of the Luxembourg tookthe liberty to utter about me some three months ago. I do not call him"friend" in irony, for I love studious youth with all it temerities andimaginative eccentricities. Still, my young friend certainly went beyondall bounds. Master Ambroise Pare, who was the first to attempt theligature of arteries, and who, having commenced his profession at a timewhen surgery was only performed by quack barbers, nevertheless succeededin lifting the science to the high place it now occupies, was assailedin his old age by all the young sawbones' apprentices. Being grosslyabused during a discussion by some young addlehead who might havebeen the best son in the world, but who certainly lacked all sense ofrespect, the old master answered him in his treatise De la Mumie, de laLicorne, des Venins et de la Peste. "I pray him," said the great man--"Ipray him, that if he desire to make any contradictions to my reply, heabandon all animosities, and treat the good old man with gentleness."This answer seems admirable from the pen of Ambroise Pare; but even hadit been written by a village bonesetter, grown grey in his calling, andmocked by some young stripling, it would still be worthy of all praise.

  It might perhaps seem that my memory of the incident had been kept aliveonly by a base feeling of resentment. I thought so myself at first, andreproached myself for thus dwelling on the saying of a boy who couldnot yet know the meaning of his own words. But my reflections on thissubject subsequently took a better course: that is why I now note themdown in my diary. I remembered that one day when I was twenty years old(that was more than half a century ago) I was walking about in that verysame garden of the Luxembourg with some comrades. We were talking aboutour old professors; and one of us happened to name Monsieur Petit-Radel,an estimable and learned man, who was the first to throw some light uponthe origins of early Etruscan civilisation, but who had been unfortunateenough to prepare a chronological table of the lovers of Helen. We alllaughed a great deal about that chronological table; and I cried out,"Petit-Radel is an ass, not in three letters, but in twelve wholevolumes!"

  This foolish speech of my adolescence was uttered too lightly to be aweight on my conscience as an old man. May God kindly prove to me someday that I never used an less innocent shaft of speech in the battle oflife! But I now ask myself whether I really never wrote, at any time inmy life, something quite as unconsciously absurd as the chronologicaltable of the lovers of Helen. The progress of science renders uselessthe very books which have been the greatest aids to that progress. Asthose works are no longer useful, modern youth is naturally inclined tobelieve they never had any value; it despises them, and ridicules themif they happen to contain any superannuated opinion whatever. That iswhy, in my twentieth year, I amused myself at the expense of MonsieurPetit-Radel and his chronological table; and that was why, the otherday, at the Luxembourg, my young and irreverent friend...

  "Rentre en toi-meme, Octave, et cesse de te plaindre. Quoi! tu veuxqu'on t'epargne et n'as rien epargne!" [ "Look into thyself, Octavius,and cease complaining. What! thou wouldst be spared, and thou thyselfhast spared none!"]