The Bed-Book of Happiness Part 35

MONSIEUR SYLVESTRE BONNARD: A CONFESSION [Sidenote: _Anatole France, translated by Lafcadio Hearn_]

I can see once more, with astonis.h.i.+ng vividness, a certain doll which, when I was eight years old, used to be displayed in the window of an ugly little shop of the Rue de la Seine. I was very proud of being a boy; I despised little girls; and I longed impatiently for the day (which, alas! has come) when a strong white beard should bristle on my chin. I played at being a soldier; and, under the pretext of obtaining forage for my rocking-horse, I used to make sad havoc among the plants my poor mother used to keep on her window-sill. Manly amus.e.m.e.nts those, I should say! and nevertheless, I was consumed with longing for a doll.

Characters like Hercules have such weaknesses occasionally. Was the one I had fallen in love with at all beautiful? No. I can see her now. She had a splotch of vermilion on either cheek, short soft arms, horrible wooden hands, and long sprawling legs. Her flowered petticoat was fastened at the waist with two pins. It was a decidedly vulgar doll--smelt of the faubourg. I remember perfectly well that, even child as I was then, before I had put on my first pair of trousers, I was quite conscious in my own way that this doll lacked grace and style--that she was gross, that she was coa.r.s.e. 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 as nothing in my eyes. I ceased to stick sprigs of heliotrope and veronica into the mouth of my rocking-horse. That doll was all the world to me. I invented ruses worthy of a savage to oblige Virginie, my nurse, to take me by the little shop in the Rue de la Seine. I would press my nose against the window until my nurse had to take my arm and drag me away. "Monsieur Sylvestre, it is late, and your mamma will scold you." Monsieur Sylvestre in those days made very little of either scoldings or whippings. But his nurse lifted him up like a feather, and Monsieur Sylvestre 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 from telling my mother about the object of my love. Thence all my sufferings.

For many days that doll, incessantly present in fancy, danced before my eyes, stared at me fixedly, opened her arms to me, a.s.suming in my imagination a sort of life which made her appear at once mysterious and weird, and thereby all the more charming and desirable.

Finally, one day--a day I shall never forget--my nurse took me to see my uncle, Captain Victor, who had invited me to breakfast. I admired my uncle a great deal, as much because he had fired the last French cartridge at Waterloo as because he used to make with his own hands, at my mother's table, certain chapons-a-l'ail, which he afterwards put into the chicory-salad. I thought that was very fine! My Uncle Victor also inspired me with much respect by his frogged coat, and still more by his way of turning the whole house upside down from the moment he came into it. Even now I cannot tell just how he managed it, but I can affirm that whenever my Uncle Victor found himself in any a.s.sembly of twenty persons, it was impossible to see or to hear anybody but him. My excellent father, I have reason to believe, never shared my admiration for Uncle Victor, who used to sicken him with his pipe, gave him great thumps on the back by way of friendliness, and accused him of lacking energy. My mother, though always showing a sister's indulgence to the captain, sometimes advised him to fondle the brandy bottle a little less frequently. But I had no part either in these repugnances or these reproaches, and Uncle Victor inspired me with the purest enthusiasm. It was therefore with a feeling of pride that I entered into the little lodging-house where he lived, in the Rue Guenegaud. The entire breakfast, served on a small table close to the fireplace, consisted of pork-meats and confectionery.

The Captain stuffed me with cakes and pure wine. He told me of numberless injustices to which he had been a victim. He complained particularly of the Bourbons; and as he neglected to tell me who the Bourbons were, I got the idea--I can't tell how--that the Bourbons were horse-dealers established at Waterloo. The Captain, who never interrupted his talk except for the purpose of pouring out wine, furthermore made charges against a number of _morveux_, of _jeanfesses_, 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 I heard the Captain say my father was a man who could be led anywhere by the nose; but I am not quite sure that I understood him. I had a buzzing in my ears; and it seemed to me that the table was dancing.

My uncle put on his frogged coat, took his _chapeau tromblon_, and we descended to the street, which seemed to me singularly changed. It looked 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 la Seine, the idea of my doll suddenly returned to my mind, and excited me in an extraordinary way. My head was on fire. I resolved upon a desperate expedient. We were pa.s.sing before the window. She was there, behind the gla.s.s--with her red cheeks, 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--_sacre bleu_!" cried my uncle, in a voice of thunder. "Do you wish to dishonour yourself? And it is that old Mag there that you want! Well, I must compliment you, my young fellow! If you grow up with such tastes as that, you will never have any pleasure in life; and your comrades will call you a precious ninny. If you asked me for a sword or a gun, my boy, I would buy them for you with the last silver crown of my pension. But to buy a doll for you--a thousand thunders!--to disgrace you! Never in the world! Why, if I were even to see you playing with a puppet rigged out like that, monsieur, my sister's son, I would disown you for my nephew!"

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

My uncle, suddenly calming down, returned to his ideas about the Bourbons; but I, still smarting from the blow of his indignation, felt an unspeakable shame. My resolve was quickly made. I promised myself never to disgrace myself--I firmly and for ever renounced that red-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 memory nevertheless honoured--not merely because you were a brave soldier, but also because you revealed to your little nephew in petticoats the sentiment of heroism! Pride and laziness had made you almost insupportable, O my Uncle Victor!--but a great heart used to beat under those frogs upon your coat. You always used to wear, I now remember, a rose in your b.u.t.ton-hole. That rose which you allowed, as I now have reason to believe, the shop-girls to pluck for you--that, large, open-hearted flower, scattering its petals to all the winds, was the symbol of your glorious youth. You despised neither absinthe nor tobacco; but you despised life. Neither delicacy nor common sense could have been learned from you, captain; but you taught me, even at an age when my nurse had to wipe my nose, a lesson of honour and self-abnegation that I will never forget.

THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS [Sidenote: _Dean Swift_]

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

The latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.

When a true genius appeareth in the world you may know him by this infallible sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps as few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold, which the owner knows not of.

If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth, and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last!

The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.

"He who does not provide for his own house," St. Paul says, "is worse than an infidel." And I think, he who provides only for his own house is just equal with an infidel.

An idle reason lessens the value of the good ones you gave before.

When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.

Very few men, properly speaking, _live_ at present, but are providing to live another time.

If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.

As universal a practice as lying is, and as easy a one as it seems, I do not remember to have heard three good lies in all my conversation, even from those who were most celebrated in that faculty.

GOETHE IN HIS OLD AGE [Sidenote: _W.M. Thackeray_]

In 1831, though he had retired from the world, Goethe would nevertheless very kindly receive strangers. His daughter-in-law's tea-table was always spread for us. We pa.s.sed hour after hour there, and night after night, with the pleasantest talk and music. We read over endless novels and poems in French, English, and German. My delight in those days was to make caricatures for children. I was touched to find (in 1855) that they were remembered and some even kept to the present time; and very proud to be told, as a lad, that the great Goethe had looked at some of them.

He remained in his private apartments, where only a very few privileged persons were admitted; but he liked to know all that was happening, and interested himself about all strangers. Whenever a countenance took his fancy there was an artist settled in Weimar who made a portrait of it.

Goethe had quite a gallery of heads, in black and white, taken by this painter. His house was all over pictures, drawings, casts, statues and medals.

Of course, I remember very well the perturbation of spirit with which, as a lad of nineteen, I received the long-expected intimation that the Herr Geheimrath would see me on such a morning. This notable audience took place in a little antechamber of his private apartments, covered all round with antique carts and bas-reliefs. He was habited in a long grey or drab redingote, with a white neckcloth and a red ribbon in his b.u.t.ton-hole. He kept his hands behind his back just as in Rauch's statuette. His complexion was very clear, bright, and rosy. His eyes extraordinarily dark, piercing, and brilliant. I felt quite afraid before them, and remember comparing them to the eyes of the hero of a certain romance called "Melmoth the Wanderer," which used to alarm us boys thirty years ago; eyes of an individual who had made a bargain with a Certain Person, and at an extreme old age retained these eyes in their awful splendour. I fancy Goethe must have been still more handsome as an old man than even in the days of his youth. His voice was very rich and sweet. He asked me questions about myself, which I answered as best I could. I recollect I was at first astonished, and then somewhat relieved, when I found he spoke French with not a good accent.

_Vidi tantum._ I saw him but three times. Once walking in the garden of his house in the _Frauenplan_; once going to step into his chariot on a suns.h.i.+ny day, wearing a cap and a cloak with a red collar. He was caressing at the time a beautiful little golden-haired granddaughter, over whose sweet fair face the earth has long since closed, too.

Any of us who had books or magazines from England sent them to him, and he examined them eagerly. _Fraser's Magazine_ had recently come out, and I remember he was interested in those admirable outline portraits which appeared for a while in its pages. But there was one, a very ghastly caricature of Mr. Rogers, which, as Madame de Goethe told me, he shut up and put away from him angrily. "They would make me look like that," he said; though, in truth, I can fancy nothing more serene, majestic, and _healthy_-looking than the grand old Goethe.

Though his sun was setting, the sky round about was calm and bright, and that little Weimar illumined by it. In every one of those kind salons the talk was still of Art and Letters. The theatre, though possessing no extraordinary actors, was still connected with a n.o.ble intelligence and order. The actors read books and were men of letters and gentlemen, holding a not unkindly relations.h.i.+p with the _Adel_. At Court the conversation was exceedingly friendly, simple, and polished.... In the respect paid by this court to the Patriarch of Letters, there was something enn.o.bling, I think, alike to the subject and the sovereign.

With a five-and-twenty years' experience since those happy days of which I write, and an acquaintance with an immense variety of human kind, I think I have never seen a society more simple, charitable, courteous, gentlemanlike, than that of the dear little Saxon city where the good Schiller and the great Goethe lived and lie buried.

LITTLE BILLEE [Sidenote: _W.M. Thackeray_]

Air--"Il y avait un pet.i.t navire"