Diderot and the Encyclopaedists Volume II Part 23

_I._--I get the price that I ask.

_He._--If that were true, you would not be wearing that common suit, that rough waistcoat, those worsted stockings, those thick shoes, that ancient wig.

_I._--I grant that; a man must be very maladroit not to be rich, if he sticks at nothing in order to become rich. But the odd thing is that there are people like me who do not look on riches as the most precious thing in the world; bizarre people, you know.

_He._--Bizarre enough. A man is not born with such a twist as that.

He takes the trouble to give it to himself, for it is not in nature.

_I._--In the nature of man?

_He._--No; for everything that lives, without exception, seeks its own wellbeing at the expense of any prey that is proper to its purpose; and I am perfectly sure that if I let my little savage grow up without saying a word to him on the matter, he would wish to be richly clad, sumptuously fed, cherished by men, loved by women, and to heap upon himself all the happiness of life.

_I._--If your little savage were left to himself, let him only preserve all his imbecility, and add to the scanty reason of the child in the cradle the violent pa.s.sions of a man of thirty--why he would strangle his father and dishonour his own mother.

_He._--That proves the necessity of a good education, and who denies it? And what is a good education but one that leads to all sorts of enjoyments without danger and without inconvenience?

_I._--I am not so far from your opinion, only let us keep clear of explanations.

_He._--Why?

_I._--Because I am afraid that we only agree in appearance, and that if we once begin to discuss what are the dangers and the inconveniences to avoid, we should cease to understand one another.

_He._--What of that?

_I._--Let us leave all this, I tell you; what I know about it I shall never get you to learn, and you will more easily teach me what I do not know, and you do know, in music. Let us talk about music, dear Rameau, and tell me how it has come about that with the faculty for feeling, retaining, and rendering the finest pa.s.sages in the great masters, with the enthusiasm that they inspire in you, and that you transmit to others, you have done nothing that is worth....

Instead of answering me, he shrugged his shoulders, and pointing to the sky with his finger, he cried: The star! the star! When Nature made Leo, Vinci, Pergolese, Duni, she smiled. She put on a grave and imposing air in shaping my dear uncle Rameau, who for half a score years they will have called the great Rameau, and of whom very soon n.o.body will say a word. When she tricked up his nephew, she made a grimace, and a grimace, and again a grimace. [And as he said this, he put on all sorts of odd expressions: contempt, disdain, irony; and he seemed to be kneading between his fingers a piece of paste, and to be smiling at the ridiculous shapes that he gave it; that done, he flung the incongruous paG.o.d[225] away from him, and said:] It was thus she made me, and flung me by the side of the other paG.o.ds, some with huge wrinkled paunches, and short necks, and great eyes projecting out of their heads, stamped with apoplexy; others with wry necks; some again with wizened faces, keen eyes, hooked noses. All were ready to split with laughing when they espied me, and I put my hands to my sides and split with laughter when I espied them, for fools and madmen tickle one another; they seek and attract one another. If when I got among them, I had not found ready-made the proverb about _the money of fools being the patrimony of people with wits_, they would have been indebted to me for it. I felt that nature had put my lawful inheritance into the purses of the paG.o.ds, and I devised a thousand means of recovering my rights.

[225] These little china images of G.o.ds, with nodding heads, were then a fas.h.i.+onable toy in Paris.

_I._--Yes, I know all about your thousand means; you have told me of them, and I have admired them vastly. But with so many resources, why not have tried that of a fine work?...

_He._--When I am alone I take up my pen and intend to write; I bite my nails and rub my brow; your humble servant, good-bye, the G.o.d is absent. I had convinced myself that I had genius; at the end of the time I discover that I am a fool, a fool, and nothing but a fool.

But how is one to feel, to think, to rise to heights, to paint in strong colours, while haunting with such creatures as those whom one must see if one is to live; in the midst of such talk as one has to make and to hear, and such idle gossip: "How charming the boulevard was to-day!" "Have you heard the little Marmotte? Her playing is ravis.h.i.+ng." "Mr. So-and-so had the handsomest pair of grays in his carriage that you can possibly imagine." "The beautiful Mrs. So-and-so is beginning to fade; who at the age of five-and-forty would wear a headdress like that?" "Young Such-and-such is covered with diamonds, and she gets them cheap."

"You mean she gets them dear."

"No, I do not."

"Where did you see her?"

"At the play."

"The scene of despair was played as it had never been played before." "The Polichinelle of the Fair has a voice, but no delicacy, no soul." "Madame So-and-so has produced two at a birth; each father will have his own child...." And yet you suppose that this kind of thing, said and said again, and listened to every day of the week, sets the soul aglow and leads to mighty things.

_I._--Nay, it were better to turn the key of one's garret, drink cold water, eat dry bread, and seek one's true self.

_He._--Maybe, but I have not the courage. And then the idea of sacrificing one's happiness for the sake of a success that is doubtful! And the name that I bear? Rameau! It is not with talents as it is with n.o.bility; n.o.bility transmits itself, and increases in l.u.s.tre by pa.s.sing from grandfather to father, and from father to son, and from son to grandson, without the ancestor impressing a spark of merit on his descendant; the old stock ramifies into an enormous crop of fools; but what matter? It is not so with talents.

Merely to obtain the renown of your father, you must be cleverer than he was; you must have inherited his fibre. The fibre has failed me, but the wrist is nimble, the fiddle-bow sc.r.a.pes away, and the pot boils; if there is not glory, there is broth.

_I._--If I were in your place, I would not take it for granted; I would try.... Whatever it be that a man applies himself to, nature meant him for it.

_He._--She makes mighty blunders. For my part, I do not look down from heights, whence all seems confused and blurred,--the man who prunes a tree with his knife, all one with the caterpillar who devours its leaf; a couple of insects, each at his proper task. Do you, if you choose, perch yourself on the epicycle of the planet Mercury, and thence distribute creation, in imitation, of Reaumur; he, the cla.s.ses of flies into seamstresses, surveyors, reapers; you, the human species into joiners, dancers, singers, tilers. That is your affair, and I will not meddle with it. I am in this world, and in this world I rest. But if it is in nature to have an appet.i.te--for it is always to appet.i.te that I come back, and to the sensation that is ever present to me--then I find that it is by no means consistent with good order not to have always something to eat. What a precious economy of things! Men who are over-crammed with everything under the sun, while others, who have a stomach just as importunate as they, a hunger that recurs as regularly as theirs, have not a bite. The worst is the constrained posture to which want pins us down. The needy man does not walk like anybody else; he jumps, he crawls, he wriggles, he limps, he pa.s.ses his whole life in taking and executing artificial postures.

_I._--What are postures?

_He._--Ask Noverre.[226] The world offers far more of them than his art can imitate.

[226] A famous dancing-master of the time.

_I._--Ah, there are you too--to use your expression or Montaigne's--_perched on the epicycle of Mercury_, and eyeing the various pantomimes of the human race.

_He._--No, no, I tell you; I'm too heavy to raise myself so high.

No sojourn in the fogs for me. I look about me, and I a.s.sume my postures, or I amuse myself with the postures that I see others taking. I am an excellent pantomime as you shall judge.

[Then he set himself to smile, to imitate the admirer, the suppliant, the fawning complaisant; he expects a command, receives it, starts off like an arrow, returns, the order is executed, he reports what he has done; he is attentive to everything; he picks up something that has fallen; he places a pillow or a footstool; he holds a saucer; he brings a chair, opens a door, closes a window, draws the curtains, gazes on the master and mistress; he stands immovable, his arms hanging by his side, his legs exactly straight; he listens, he seeks to read their faces, and then he adds:--That is my pantomime, very much the same as that of all flatterers, courtiers, valets, and beggars.

The buffooneries of this man, the stories of the abbe Galiani, the extravagances of Rabelais, have sometimes thrown me into profound reveries. They are three stores whence I have provided myself with ridiculous masks that I place on the faces of the gravest personages, and I see Pantaloon in a prelate, a satyr in a president, a pig in a monk, an ostrich in a minister, a goose in his first clerk.]

_I._--But according to your account, I said to my man, there are plenty of beggars in the world, and yet I know n.o.body who is not acquainted with some of the steps of your dance.

_He._--You are right. In a whole kingdom there is only one man who walks, and that is the sovereign.

_I._--The sovereign? There is something to be said on that. For do you suppose that one may not from time to time find even by the side of him, a dainty foot, a pretty neck, a bewitching nose, that makes him execute his pantomime. Whoever has need of another is indigent, and a.s.sumes a posture. The king postures before his mistress, and before G.o.d he treads his pantomimic measure. The minister dances the step of courtier, flatterer, valet, and beggar before his king. The crowd of the ambitious cut a hundred capers, each viler than the rest, before the minister. The abbe, with his bands and long cloak, postures at least once a week before the patron of livings. On my word, what you call the pantomime of beggars is only the whole huge bustle of the earth....

_He._--But let us bethink ourselves what o'clock it is, for I must go to the opera.

_I._--What is going on?

_He._--Dauvergne's _Trocqueurs_. There are some tolerable things in the music; the only pity is that he has not been the first to say them. Among those dead, there are always some to dismay the living.

What would you have? _Quisque suos patimur manes._ But it is half-past five, I hear the bell ringing my vespers. Good day, my philosopher; always the same, am I not?

_I._--Alas, you are; worse luck.

_He._--Only let me have that bad luck for forty years to come! Who laughs last has the best of the laugh.

THE END.