Chapter 27

Both for home and for out-of-doors use the mystifications practised by Vivier were as numerous as they were varied. In an omnibus, when some grave old lady had just risen from her seat, Vivier would assume an expression of the utmost astonishment, and suddenly take from the place where she had been sitting an egg, which meanwhile he had been concealing up his sleeve.

Or, asked to pass a coin to the conductor, he would gravely put it into his pocket. A well-dressed, well-bred gentleman, of charming manners, could scarcely be suspected of any intention to misappropriate a two-sous piece. But it interested Vivier to see what, in the circumstances, the lawful owner of the coin would do. On one occasion Vivier, in an omnibus, alarmed his fellow passengers by pretending to be mad. He indulged in the wildest gesticulations, and then, as if in despair, drew a pistol from his pocket. The conductor was called upon by acclamation to interfere, and Vivier was on the point of being disarmed when suddenly he broke the pistol in two, handed half to the conductor and began to eat the other half himself. It was made of chocolate!

Vivier could not bear to see people in a hurry. According to him, there was nothing in life worth hurrying for; and living on the Boulevard just opposite the Rue Vivienne, he was much annoyed at seeing so many persons hastening, towards six o'clock, to the post office on the Place de la Bourse. He determined to pay them out, and for that purpose bought a calf, which he took up to his apartments at night and exhibited the next afternoon at a few minutes before six o'clock, in the balcony of his second floor. In spite of their eagerness to catch the post, many persons could not help stopping to look at the calf. Soon a crowd collected, and messengers stayed their steps in order to gaze at the unwonted apparition. Six o'clock struck, and soon after a number of men who had missed the post returned in an irritated condition, and, stopping before Vivier's house, shook their fists at him. Vivier went down to them, and asked the meaning of this insolence.

"We were not shaking our fists at you," replied the angered ones, "but at that calf."

"Ah! you know him then?" returned Vivier. "I was not aware of it."

In time Vivier's calf became the subject of a legend, according to which the animal (still in Vivier's apartments) grew to be an ox, and so annoyed the neighbours by his lowing that; the proprietor of the house insisted on its being sent away. Vivier told him to come; and take it, when it was found that the calf of other days had grown to such a size that it was impossible to get it downstairs.

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

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 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 amusements 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 coarse. 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, assuming 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-à-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 assembly 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 Guénégaud. 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 passing before the window. She was there, behind the glass--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--_sacré 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 button-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 passed 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 button-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 sunshiny 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 noble intelligence and order. The actors read books and were men of letters and gentlemen, holding a not unkindly relationship 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 ennobling, 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 petit navire"

There were three sailors of Bristol city, Who took a boat and went to sea. But first with beef and captain's biscuits And pickled pork they loaded she.

There was gorging Jack and guzzling Jimmy, And the youngest he was little Billee. Now when they got as far as the Equator They'd nothing left but one split pea.

Says gorging Jack to guzzling Jimmy, "I am extremely hungaree." To gorging Jack says guzzling Jimmy, "We've nothing left, us must eat we."

Says gorging Jack to guzzling Jimmy, "With one another we shouldn't agree! There's little Bill, he's young and tender, We're old and tough, so let's eat he.

"Oh, Billy, we're going to kill and eat you, So undo the button of your chimie." When Bill received this information, He used his pocket-handkerchie.

"First let me say my catechism Which my poor mammy taught to me." "Make haste, make haste," says guzzling Jimmy, While Jack pulled out his snickersnee.

So Billy went up to the main-top gallant mast, And down he fell on his bended knee. He scarce had come to the twelfth commandment When up he jumps, "There's land I see.

"Jerusalem and Madagascar, And North and South Amerikee: There's the British flag a-riding at anchor, With Admiral Napier, K.C.B."

So when they got aboard of the Admiral's He hanged fat Jack and flogged Jimmee; But as for little Bill, he made him The Captain of a Seventy-Three.

THE SOUTH COUNTRY [Sidenote: _Hilaire Belloc_]

When I am living in the Midlands That are sodden and unkind, I light my lamp in the evening: My work is left behind; And the great hills of the South Country Come back into my mind.

The great hills of the South Country, They stand along the sea: And it's there walking in the high woods, That I could wish to be, And the men that were boys when I was a boy, Walking along with me.

The men that live in North England, I saw them for a day: Their hearts are set upon the waste fells, Their skies are fast and grey; From their castle walls a man may see The mountains far away.

The men that live in West England They see the Severn strong, A-rolling on rough water brown Light aspen leaves along. They have the secret of the rocks, And the oldest kind of song.

But the men that live in the South Country Are the kindest and most wise, They get their laughter from the loud surf, And the faith in their happy eyes Comes surely from our Sister the Spring, When over the sea she flies; The violets suddenly bloom at her feet She blesses us with surprise.

I never get between the pines But I smell the Sussex air; Nor I never come on a belt of sand But my home is there. And along the sky the line of the Downs So noble and so bare.

A lost thing could I never find, Nor a broken thing mend: And I fear I shall be all alone When I get towards the end. Who will there be to comfort me, Or who will be my friend?

I will gather and carefully make my friends Of the men of the Sussex Weald, They watch the stars from silent folds, They stiffly plough the field. By them and the God of the South Country My poor soul shall be healed.

If ever I become a rich man, Or if ever I grow to be old, I will build a house with deep thatch To shelter me from the cold, And there shall the Sussex songs be sung And the story of Sussex told.

I will hold my house in the high wood Within a walk of the sea, And the men that were boys when I was a boy Shall sit and drink with me.

ARAB LOVE-SONG [Sidenote: _Francis Thompson_]

The hunchèd camels of the night[11] Trouble the bright And silver waters of the moon. The Maiden of the Morn will soon Through Heaven stray and sing, Star gathering.

Now while the dark about our loves is strewn, Light of my dark, blood of my heart, O come! And night will catch her breath up, and be dumb.

Leave thy father, leave thy mother And thy brother; Leave the black tents of thy tribe apart! Am I not thy father and thy brother, And thy mother? And thou--what needest with thy tribe's black tents Who hast the red pavilion of my heart?

OUT OF THE MOUTH OF BABES [Sidenote: _Wilfrid Maynell_]

As high up in a house as a nest In a tree, They have gone for the night to their rest, The Babes three.

One will say, when they wake, with arms crossed, "Jesus blest!" One will cry "Mother mine"--and be lost In that breast.

"Ta-ra-ra," then the littlest maid saith, Two and gay; And loud laughs with the last of her breath, "Boom-de-ay!"

What they say, in their nests, these dear birds, Is all even: For their speech, be whatever their words, Is of Heaven.

THEIR BEST [Sidenote: _Wilfrid Maynell_]

She is a very simple maid-- Nicknamed a "tweeny"; The cook's and housemaid's riven aid, Christ-named Irene. And when, in lower regions, she Hears hurled request, She laughs or cries: "Oh, right you be, I'll do my best."

Her very best, be very sure! She holds it fast-- Religion undefiled and pure. And, at the last, When Life, from this sad house of her, Flits like a guest, She'll curtsy to the Judge: "O Sir, I did my best."

The Judge, for sure, will bow His head; And, round the throne, Angels will know to God they've led His very own. This sentence then shall gently fall: "Irene, you Have done your best: and that is all Even God can do."

MAGNIFICENT ENDS [Sidenote: _Disraeli in "Vivian Grey"_]

In the plenitude of his ambition he stopped one day to enquire in what manner he could obtain his magnificent ends: "The Bar--pooh! law and bad jokes till we are forty; and then with the most brilliant success, the prospect of gout and a coronet. Besides, to succeed as an advocate, I must be a great lawyer, and to be a great lawyer, I must give up my chance of being a great man. The Services in war time are only fit for desperadoes (and that truly am I); but, in peace, are fit only for fools. The Church is more rational. Let me see: I should certainly like to act Wolsey, but the thousand and one chances against me! and truly I feel _my_ destiny should not be on a chance. Were I the son of a millionaire, or a noble, I might have _all_. Curse on my lot! that the want of a few rascal counters, and the possession of a little rascal blood should mar my fortunes!"

GENIUS, WHEN YOUNG [Sidenote: _Disraeli in "Coningsby"_]