Read The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard Page 3


  May 7, 1851

  I have passed the winter according to the ideal of the sages, in angellocum libello; and now the swallows of the Quai Malaquais find me on theirreturn about as when they left me. He who lives little, changes little;and it is scarcely living at all to use up one's days over old texts.

  Yet I feel myself to-day a little more deeply impregnated than everbefore with that vague melancholy which life distils. The economy ofmy intelligence (I dare scarcely confess it to myself!) has remaineddisturbed ever since that momentous hour in which the existence of themanuscript of the Clerk Alexander was first revealed to me.

  It is strange that I should have lost my rest simply on account of a fewold sheets of parchment; but it is unquestionably true. The poor man whohas no desires possesses the greatest of riches; he possesses himself.The rich man who desires something is only a wretched slave. I am justsuch a slave. The sweetest pleasures--those of converse with some oneof a delicate and well-balanced mind, or dining out with a friend--areinsufficient to enable me to forget the manuscript which I know that Iwant, and have been wanting from the moment I knew of its existence. Ifeel the want of it by day and by night: I feel the want of it in all myjoys and pains; I feel the want of it while at work or asleep.

  I recall my desires as a child. How well I can now comprehend theintense wishes of my early years!

  I can see once more, with astonishing vividness, a certain doll which,when I was eight years old, used to be displayed in the window of anugly little shop of the Rue de Seine. I cannot tell how it happenedthat this doll attracted me. I was very proud of being a boy; I despisedlittle girls; and I longed impatiently for the day (which alas! hascome) when a strong beard should bristle on my chin. I played at beinga soldier; and, under the pretext of obtaining forage for myrocking-horse, I used to make sad havoc among the plants my poor motherdelighted to keep on her window-sill. Manly amusements those, Ishould say! And, nevertheless, I was consumed with longing for a doll.Characters like Hercules have such weaknesses occasionally. Was the oneI had fallen in love with at all beautiful? No. I can see her now. Shehad a splotch of vermilion on either cheek, short soft arms, horriblewooden hands, and long sprawling legs. Her flowered petticoat wasfastened at the waist with two pins. Even now I cans see the blackheads of those two pins. It was a decidedly vulgar doll--smelt of thefaubourg. I remember perfectly well that, child as I was then, beforeI had put on my first pair of trousers, I was quite conscious in my ownway that this doll lacked grace and style--that she was gross, that shewas course. But I loved her in spite of that; I loved her just for that;I loved her only; I wanted her. My soldiers and my drums had become asnothing in my eyes, I ceased to stick sprigs of heliotrope and veronicainto the mouth of my rocking-horse. That doll was all the world to me. Iinvented ruses worthy of a savage to oblige Virginie, my nurse, to takeme by the little shop in the Rue de Seine. I would press my nose againstthe window until my nurse had to take my arm and drag me away. "MonsieurSylvestre, it is late, and your mamma will scold you." MonsieurSylvestre in those days made very little of either scoldings orwhippings. But his nurse lifted him up like a feather, and MonsieurSylvestre yielded to force. In after-years, with age, he degenerated,and sometimes yielded to fear. But at that time he used to fear nothing.

  I was unhappy. An unreasoning but irresistible shame prevented me fromtelling my mother about the object of my love. Thence all my sufferings.For many days that doll, incessantly present in fancy, danced beforemy eyes, stared at me fixedly, opened her arms to me, assuming in myimagination a sort of life which made her appear at once mysterious andweird, and thereby all the more charming and desirable.

  Finally, one day--a day I shall never forget--my nurse took me to see myuncle, Captain Victor, who had invited me to lunch. I admired my unclea great deal, as much because he had fired the last French cartridgeat Waterloo, as because he used to prepare with his own hands, at mymother's table, certain chapons-a-l'ail [Crust on which garlic has beenrubbed], which he afterwards put in the chicory salad. I thought thatwas very fine! My Uncle Victor also inspired me with much respect byhis frogged coat, and still more by his way of turning the whole houseupside down from the moment he came into it. Even now I cannot tell justhow he managed it, but I can affirm that whenever my Uncle Victor foundhimself in any assembly of twenty persons, it was impossible to see orto hear anybody but him. My excellent father, I have reason to believe,never shared my admiration for Uncle Victor, who used to sicken him withhis pipe, give him great thumps in the back by way of friendliness,and accuse him of lacking energy. My mother, though always showing asister's indulgence to the Captain, sometimes advised him to fold thebrandy-bottle a little less frequently. But I had no part either inthese repugnances or these reproaches, and Uncle Victor inspired me withthe purest enthusiasm. It was therefore with a feeling of pride that Ientered into the little lodging he occupied in the Rue Guenegaud. Theentire lunch, served on a small table close to the fireplace, consistedof cold meats and confectionery.

  The Captain stuffed me with cakes and undiluted wine. He told me ofnumberless injustices to which he had been a victim. He complainedparticularly of the Bourbons; and as he neglected to tell me who theBourbons were, I got the idea--I can't tell how--that the Bourbonswere horse-dealers established at Waterloo. The Captain, who neverinterrupted his talk except for the purpose of pouring out wine,furthermore made charges against a number of dirty scoundrels,blackguards, and good-for-nothings whom I did not know anything about,but whom I hated from the bottom of my heart. At dessert I thought Iheard the Captain say my father was a man who could be led anywhere bythe nose; but I am not quite sure that I understood him. I had a buzzingin my ears; and it seemed to me that the table was dancing.

  My uncle put on his frogged coat, took his bell shaped hat, and wedescended to the street, which seemed to me singularly changed. Itlooked to me as if I had not been in it before for ever so long a time.Nevertheless, when we came to the Rue de Seine, the idea of my dollsuddenly returned to my mind and excited me in an extraordinary way. Myhead was on fire. I resolved upon a desperate expedient. We were passingbefore the window. She was there, behind the glass--with her red checks,and her flowered petticoat, and her long legs.

  "Uncle," I said, with a great effort, "will you buy that doll for me?"

  And I waited.

  "Buy a doll for a boy--sacrebleu!" cried my uncle, in a voice ofthunder. "Do you wish to dishonour yourself? And it is that old Magthere that you want! Well, I must compliment you, my young fellow! Ifyou grow up with such tastes as that, you will never have any pleasurein life; and your comrades will call you a precious ninny. If you askedme for a sword or a gun, my boy, I would buy them for you with the lastsilver crown of my pension. But to buy a doll for you--by all that'sholy!--to disgrace you! Never in the world! Why, if I were ever to seeyou playing with a puppet rigged out like that, Monsieur, my sister'sson, I would disown you for my nephew!"

  On hearing these words, I felt my heart so wrung that nothing butpride--a diabolical pride--kept me from crying.

  My uncle, suddenly calming down, returned to his ideas about theBourbons; but I, still smarting under the weight of his indignation,felt an unspeakable shame. My resolve was quickly made. I promisedmyself never to disgrace myself--I firmly and for ever renounced thatred-cheeked doll.

  I felt that day, for the first time, the austere sweetness of sacrifice.

  Captain, though it be true that all your life you swore like a pagan,smoked like a beadle, and drank like a bell-ringer, be your memorynevertheless honoured--not merely because you were a brave soldier,but also because you revealed to your little nephew in petticoatsthe sentiment of heroism! Pride and laziness had made you almostinsupportable, Uncle Victor!--but a great heart used to beat under thosefrogs upon your coat. You always used to wear, I now remember, a rosein your button-hole. That rose which you offered so readily to theshop-girls--that large, open-hearted flower, scattering its petalsto all the winds, was the symbol of your glorious youth. You d
espisedneither wine nor tobacco; but you despised life. Neither delicacy norcommon sense could have been learned from you, Captain; but you taughtme, even at an age when my nurse had to wipe my nose, a lesson of honourand self-abrogation that I shall never forget.

  You have now been sleeping for many years in the Cemetery ofMont-Parnasse, under a plain slab bearing the epitaph:

  CI-GIT ARISTIDE VICTOR MALDENT, Capitaine d'Infanterie, Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur.

  But such, Captain, was not the inscription devised by yourself to beplaced above those old bones of yours--knocked about so long on fieldsof battle and in haunts of pleasure. Among your papers was found thisproud and bitter epitaph, which, despite your last will none could haveventured to put upon your tomb:

  CI-GIT UN BRIGAND DE LA LOIRE

  "Therese, we will get a wreath of immortelles to-morrow, and lay them onthe tomb of the Brigand of the Loire."...

  But Therese is not here. And how, indeed, could she be near me,seeing that I am at the rondpoint of the Champs-Elysees? There, at thetermination of the avenue, the Arc de Triomphe, which bears under itsvaults the names of Uncle Victor's companions-in-arms, opens its giantgate against the sky. The trees of the avenue are unfolding to the sunof spring their first leaves, still all pale and chilly. Beside me thecarriages keep rolling by to the Bois de Boulogne. Unconsciously I havewandered into this fashionable avenue on my promenade, and halted, quitestupidly, in front of a booth stocked with gingerbread and decanters ofliquorice-water, each topped by a lemon. A miserable little boy, coveredwith rags, which expose his chapped skin, stares with widely openedeyes at those sumptuous sweets which are not for such as he. With theshamelessness of innocence he betrays his longing. His round, fixed eyescontemplate a certain gingerbread man of lofty stature. It is a general,and it looks a little like Uncle Victor. I take it, I pay for it,and present it to the little pauper, who dares not extend his hand toreceive it--for, by reason of precocious experience, he cannot believein luck; he looks at me, in the same way that certain big dogs do, withthe air of one saying, "You are cruel to make fun of me like that!"

  "Come, little stupid," I say to him, in that rough tone I am accustomedto use, "take it--take it, and eat it; for you, happier than I wasat your age, you can satisfy your tastes without disgracingyourself."...And you, Uncle Victor--you, whose manly figure has beenrecalled to me by that gingerbread general, come, glorious Shadow, helpme to forget my new doll. We remain for ever children, and are alwaysrunning after new toys.