Part 9

“Well, my poor Limasset, when are you coming down to see us? The air is excellent down there. That is what I need. I cannot breathe in Paris. We never breathe enough. I hope, monsieur,” and he turned to me, “that you are not an advocate of these new methods of teaching. Science, nothing but science; and my God, gentlemen scholars, what do you make of it?” Then returning to M. Limasset: “In my day, in our day, I may say, everybody had a respect for authority and for duty. Education was not absolutely neglected for instruction. You remember our chaplain, the Abbé Habert, and how he could talk? What health he had! How he could walk in all sorts of weather without an overcoat! But you, Limasset, how old are you? Sixty-five, hey? Sixty-five, and not an ache! not one? Do you not think I am better since I have lived among the mountains? I am never very ill, but there is always some little thing the matter with me. Indeed, I would rather be really ill. At least I should get well then.”

If I repeat these incoherent words, as they come back to my memory, my dear master, it is first, that you may know the value of the intellect of this man who, as my mother has told me, has brought your venerated name into my case; it is also that you understand with what feelings I arrived, four days after, at the château when I ran into so terrible dangers.

The marquis had accepted me at the first visit, and insisted upon taking me with him in his landau. During the journey from Clermont to Aydat, he had leisure to tell me about his family. He explained with his invincible garrulity, constantly interrupted by some remarks about his person, that his wife and daughter did not care much for society, and that they were excellent housekeepers; that his oldest son Count André, was home for a fortnight and that I must not be annoyed at his brusqueness, for it covered the best of hearts, that his other son, Lucien, had been ailing and that his restoration to health was the most important thing of all. Then at the word health he started, and, after an hour of confidences regarding his headaches, his digestion, his sleep, his ailments past, present, and future, being fatigued no doubt by the keen air and the flux of words, he fell asleep in a corner of the carriage.

I recall the plans which I formed when, freed from this tormentor, who was already the object of my contempt, I looked at the beautiful country through which we were passing between mountain ravines and woods, now turning yellow in the autumn, with the Puy de la Vache at the horizon, with the hollow of its crater all plowed up, and quite red with volcanic dust.

What I had already seen of the marquis, and what he had told me of his family, had convinced me that I was about to be exiled among people whom I called barbarians. I had given this name to those persons whom I judge to be irreparable strangers to the intellectual life.

The prospect of this exile did not alarm me. The doctrine by which I should regulate my existence was so clear to my mind! I was so resolved to live only in myself, to defend myself against all intrusion from without. The château to which I was going, and the people who inhabited it would be only subjects for the most profitable study.

My programme was made out: during the twelve or fourteen months that I should live there I would employ my leisure in studying German, and in mastering the contents of “Beaunais’ Physiology,” which was in my small trunk, bound behind the carriage, together with your works, my dear master, my “Ethics,” several volumes of M. Ribot, of M. Taine, of Herbert Spencer, some analytical romances and the books necessary to the preparation for my licentiate. I intended to pass this examination in July.

A new notebook awaited the notes which I proposed to make upon the character of my hosts. I had promised myself to take them to pieces, wheel by wheel, and I had bought for this purpose a book, closed by a lock and key, upon the fly-leaf of which I had written this sentence from the “Anatomy of the Will.”

“Spinoza boasts of having studied human sentiments as the mathematician studies his geometric figures; modern psychology must study them as chemical combinations elaborated in a retort, while regretting that this retort may not be as transparent and as manageable as those of the laboratory.”

I tell you this childishness to prove the degree of my sincerity, and to show how little I resemble the poor and ambitious young man that so many romances have described.

With my taste for duplication, I remember to have remarked this difference with pleasure. I recalled Julien Sorel of “Rouge et Noir,” arriving at the house of M. de Rênal, the temptations of Rubempré, in Balzac, in front of the house of the Bargetons, some pages also of the “Vingtras de Vallés.” I analyzed the sensations which were concealed behind the lusts and the revolts of these different heroes.

There is always a surprise in passing from one society to another, but there was not a trace of envy or maliciousness in me. I looked at the marquis as he slept, wrapped, on this cool November afternoon, in a furred coat whose turned-up collar half-concealed his face. A robe of dark soft wool covered his legs. Dark embroidered skin gloves protected his hands. His hat of felt as fine as silk was pulled down over his eyes. I only felt that these details represented a kind of existence very different from ours with the poor and petty economy of our home which only my mother’s scrupulous neatness saved from meanness.

I rejoiced that I did not feel any envy, not the least atom, at the sight of these signs of prosperous fortune, neither envy nor embarrassment. I had myself completely under control, and was steeled against all vulgar prejudice by my doctrine, your doctrine, and by the sovereign superiority of my ideas. I will have traced a perfect portrait of my mind at this time if I add that I had resolved to erase love from the programme of my life. I had had, since my adventure with Marianne, another little experience, with the wife of a professor at the Lyceum, so absolutely silly and withal so ridiculously pretentious that I came out of it strengthened in my contempt for the “Dame,” speaking after Schopenhauer, and also in my disgust for sensuality.

I attribute to the profound influences of Catholic discipline this repulsion from the flesh which has survived the dogmas of spirituality. I know very well, from an experience too often repeated, that this repulsion was insufficient to hinder profound relapses, but I depended upon the silence of the château to free me from all temptation and to practice in its full rigor the great maxim of the ancient sage: “Force all your sex to mount to the brain.” Ah! this idolatry of the brain, of my thinking Self, it has been so strong in me that I have thought seriously of studying the monastic rules that I might apply them to the culture of my mind. Yes, I have contemplated making my meditations every day, like the monks, upon the articles of my philosophic _credo_, of celebrating every day, like the monks, the _fête_ of one of my saints, of Spinoza, of Hobbes, of Stendhal, of Stuart Mill, of you, my dear master, in evoking the image and the doctrines of the initiative thus chosen, and impregnating myself with his example.

I know that all this was very youthful and very naïve, but, you see, I was not such a man as this family stigmatizes to-day, the intriguing plebeian who was dreaming of a fine marriage, and the idea connecting my life with that of Mlle, de Jussat was implanted, inspired, so to speak, by circumstances.

I do not write to you to paint myself in a romantic light, and I do not know why I should conceal from you that, among the circumstances which urged me toward this enterprise so far from my thought on my arrival, the first was the impression produced on me by Count André the brother of the poor dead girl, whose remembrance, now that I am approaching the drama, becomes almost a torture; but let us go back to this arrival.

It is almost five o’clock. The landau moves rapidly along. The marquis is awake. He points out the frozen bosom of the little lake, all rosy under a setting sun, which empurples the dried foliage of the beeches and oaks; and, beyond the château, a large building of modern construction, white, with its slender towers and its pepper-box roof, grows nearer at every turn of the gray road.

The steeple of a village, rather of a hamlet, raises its slates above some houses with thatched roofs. It is passed. We are now in the avenue of trees which leads to the château, then before the _perron_ and immediately in the vestibule.

We entered the salon. How peaceful it was, lighted by lamps with large shades, with the fire burning gayly in the chimney. The Marquise de Jussat with her daughter, was working at some knitting for the poor; my future pupil was looking over a book of engravings, as he stood against the open piano; Mlle. Charlotte’s governess and a _religieuse_ were seated, farther off, sewing. Count André was reading a paper, which he put down at the moment of our arrival.

Yes, this was a peaceful place, and who could have told that my entrance would be the end of all peace for these persons who in an instant were impressed on my memory with the distinctness of portraits?

I noticed first the face of the marquise, a tall and strong woman with features slightly gross, so different from what my imagination had conceived of a great lady. She was truly the model housekeeper whom the marquis had described, but a housekeeper with a finished education, and who put me at once at my ease simply by speaking of the beautiful day that we had had for our journey.

I perceived the inexpressive face of Mlle. Eliza Largeyx, the governess, with its ever-approving smile; she was the innocent type of happy servility, of a life all complaisance and of material happiness.

There was sister Anaclet with her peasant’s eyes and her thin mouth. She lived permanently at the château that she might serve as nurse for the marquis who was always apprehensive of a possible attack.

There was little Lucien with the fat cheeks of the idle child. There, too, was the young girl, who is no more, with her beautiful form in its light dress, her gentle gray eyes, her chestnut hair, and the delicate outline of her oval face. I can still see the gesture with which she offered her hand to her father and a cup of tea to me. I hear her voice saying to the marquis:

“Father, did you see how rosy the little lake was this evening?”

And the voice of M. de Jussat responding between two swallows of his grog:

“I saw that there was some fog in the meadows and some rheumatism in the air.”

And the voice of Count André:

“Yes, but what fine shooting to-morrow!” then turning to me: “Do you shoot, Monsieur Greslon?”

“No, monsieur,” I answered.

“Do you ride?” he asked again.

“I do not.”

“I pity you,” said he, laughing; “after war, these are the two greatest pleasures that I know of.”

This is nothing, this bit of dialogue, and, thus transcribed, it will not explain why these simple phrases were the cause of my regarding André de Jussat as a being apart from any I had known until then; why, when I had gone to my room, where a servant commenced to unpack my trunk, I thought more of him than of his fragile and graceful sister: nor why, at dinner and all the evening, I had eyes only for him.

My naïve astonishment in the presence of this proud and manly fellow was derived, however, from a very simple fact; I had grown up in a purely intellectual medium in which the only estimable forms of life were the intellectual. I had had for comrades the first of my class, all as delicate and frail as I was myself, without condescending ever to notice those who excelled in the exercises of the body, and who beside only found in these exercises an excuse for brutality.

All my masters whom I liked best, and the few old friends of my father, were also able men. When I had pictured the heroes of romance, they were always mental machines more or less complicated; but I had never imagined their physical condition.

If I had ever thought of the superiority which the beautiful and firm animal energy of man represents, it was in an abstract manner, but I had never felt it. Count André, who was thirty years old, presented an admirable example of this superiority. Figure to yourself a man of medium size, but lusty as an athlete, with broad shoulders and a slender waist, gestures which betrayed strength and suppleness--gestures in which one felt that the movement was distributed with that perfection which gives adroit and precise agility--hands and feet nervous, showing race, with a martial countenance, one of those _bistre_ complexions behind which the blood flows, rich in iron and in globules; a square forehead under bushy black hair, a mustache of the same color over a firm and tightly closed mouth, brown eyes, very near to a nose which was slightly arched, which gives to the profile a vague suggestion of a bird of prey. Last a bold chin, squarely cut, completed the physiognomy of a character of invincible will. And the will is the whole person; action made man.

It seemed as if there were in this officer, broken to all bodily exercises, ready for all exploits, no rupture of equilibrium between thought and action, and that his whole being passed entire into his smallest gestures.

I have seen him mount a horse so as to realize the ancient fable of the Centaur, put ten balls in succession at thirty paces into a playing card, leap ditches with the lightness of a professional gymnast, and sometimes, to amuse his young brother, leap over a table, only touching it with his hands.

I knew that, during the war and though only sixteen years old, he had enlisted and made the campaign of the Loire, bearing all fatigues and inspiring even the veterans with courage. As I saw him at dinner this first evening, eating steadily, with that fine humor of appetite which reveals the fall life; speaking little, but with a commanding voice, I felt in a surprising degree the impression that I was in the presence of a creature different from myself, but finished and complete of his kind.

It seems to me as though this scene dates from yesterday, and that I am there, while the marquis plays bezique with his daughter, talking with the marquise, and stealthily watching Count André play at billiards alone. I saw him through the open door, supple and robust in his evening dress of some light material, a cigar in the corner of his mouth, pushing the balls about with a precision so perfect that it was beautiful; and I, your pupil, I, so proud of the amplitude of my mind, followed with open mouth the slightest gestures of this young man who was absorbed in a sport so vulgar, with the kind of envious admiration which a learned monk of the middle ages, unskillful in all muscular games, must have felt in presence of a knight in armor.

When I use the word envy I beg you to understand me, and not to attribute to me a baseness which was never mine. Neither this evening nor during the days which followed was I ever jealous of the name of Count André, nor of his fortune, nor of any of the social advantages which he possessed, and of which I was so deprived. Neither have I felt that strange hate of the male for the male, very finely noted by you in your pages on love.

My mother had had the weakness to tell me often in my childhood that I was a pretty boy. Without being a coxcomb, I may say that there was nothing displeasing in me, neither in my face nor in my figure. I say this to you, not from vanity, but to prove that there was not an atom of vanity in the sort of sudden rivalry which made me an adversary, almost an enemy, of Count André from this first evening. There was as much admiration as envy in this antipathy. Upon reflection, I find in the sentiment which I have tried to define the probable trace of an unconscious atavism.

I questioned the marquis later, whose aristocratic pride I thus flattered, upon the genealogy of the Jussat-Randons, and I believe that they are of a pure and conquering race, while in the veins of the descendant of the Lorraine farmers who writes these lines to you flows the blood of ancestors who had been slaves of the soil for centuries. Certainly, between my brain and that of Count André there is the same difference as there is between mine and yours, greater, since I can comprehend you and I defy him to follow my reasonings, even that which I am pursuing now, upon our relations.

To speak frankly, I am a civilized being, he is only a barbarian. But I felt immediately the sensation that my refinement was less aristocratic than his barbarism. I felt there, at once, and in the depths of this instinct of life, into which the mind descends with much difficulty, the revelation of this precedence of race which modern science affirms of all nature and which, by consequence, must be true also of man.

Why even use this word envy, which serves as the label of irrational hostilities like those with which the count immediately inspired me? Why should not this hostility be inherited like the rest? Any human acquisition whatever, that for example of character and of active energy, implies that, during centuries and centuries, files of individuals of which one is the supreme addition, have acted and willed. During this long succession of years, an antipathy, sometimes clear and sometimes obscure, has rendered the individuals of the first group odious to individuals of the second, and when two representatives of this sovereign labor of ages, also typical each in his kind as were the count and myself, meet, why not stand up the one in face of the other, like two beasts of different species?

The horse that has never been near a lion trembles with fright when his bed is made of the straw upon which one of these creatures has slept. Then fear is inherited, and is not fear one form of hate? Why is not all hate inherited? And in hundreds of cases envy would be, as it surely was in mine, only the echo of hates formerly felt by those whose sons we are, and who continue to pursue, through us, the combats of heart begun centuries ago.

There is a current proverb that antipathies are mutual, and if it is admitted my hypothesis upon the secular origin of antipathies becomes very simple. It happens, however, that this antipathy does not manifest itself in the two beings at once. This is the case when one of the two does not deign to notice the other, and also when the other dissimulates.

I do not believe that Count André experienced at first the aversion that he would have felt if he had read to the bottom of my soul. In the beginning he paid very little attention to a young man of Clermont who had come to the château to be tutor; then I had decided on a constant dissimulation of my real Self, imprisoned among strangers. I felt no more repugnance for this defensive hypocrisy than the gardener would have had in putting straw around the currant bushes to preserve their fruit against snows and frosts. The falseness of attitude corresponded too well with my intellectual pride to prevent me from giving myself up to it with delight.

On the other hand Count André had no motive for concealing his character from me, and on this same evening, at the hour of retiring, he asked me to come into his study to talk a little. He had hardly looked at me, and I understood plainly that his intention was not to put any more familiarity between us, but to give me his opinions on my rôle as preceptor.

He occupied a suite of three rooms in a wing of the château, a bedroom, a dressing-room and the smoking-room in which we now found ourselves. A large upholstered divan, several armchairs and a massive desk, constituted the furniture of this room.

On the walls glittered arms of all kinds, guns of Tangiers, sabres and muskets of the first empire, and a Prussian helmet, which the count pointed out to me almost as soon as we had entered. He had lighted a short brierwood pipe, prepared two glasses of brandy mixed with seltzer water, and lamp in hand, he showed me the helmet saying:

“I am very sure that I knocked that fellow over. You do not know anything about the sensation of holding an enemy at the point of your gun, of taking aim, of seeing him fall, and thinking: Another one gone? It happened in a village not far from Orléans. I was on guard at daybreak, in a corner of the cemetery. I saw a head above the wall, it looked over, then the shoulders followed. It was this inquisitive fellow who wanted to see what we were doing. He did not go back to tell.”

He put down the lamp, and, after laughing a little at this remembrance, he became serious. I had felt obliged, for the sake of politeness, to moisten my lips in the mixture of gaseous water and alcohol, and the count continued:

“I wished to talk with you about Lucien, monsieur, to explain his character and in what way he is to be directed. His old tutor was an excellent man, but very weak, very indolent. I have encouraged your coming because you are a young man, and a young man is more suitable for Lucien. Teaching, monsieur, is worse than nothing, sometimes, when it falsifies ideas. The great thing in this life, I ought almost say the only thing, is character.”

He made a pause as if to ask my opinion, I answered with some _banal_ phrase which supported his view.

“Very well,” he continued, “we understand one another. At present, for a man of our name, there is in France only one profession, that of a soldier. So long as our country is in the hands of the _canaille_ and so long as we have the Germans to fight, our duty is in the only place that remains to us--the army. Thank God my father and my mother share these opinions. Lucien will be a soldier, and a soldier has no need of knowing all that the people prate about to-day. Having honor, sangfroid, muscles and loving France, everything is right. I had all the trouble in the world to take my degree. This year must be for Lucien, above everything else, a year of outdoor life; and, for studies, these must be conversations only. It is to your talks with him that I wish to call your attention. You must insist on the practical, on the positive, and on principles. He has some faults which must be corrected. You will find him very good, but very soft; he must learn to endure.”

“Insist, for example, upon his going out in all sorts of weather, that he walk two or three hours every day. He is very inexact, and I insist that he shall become as punctual as a chronometer. He also is untruthful. I think this the most horrible of vices. I can pardon everything, yes, many, many follies. I never forgive a falsehood. We have had, from my father’s old master, such good recommendation of you, of your life with your mother, of your dignity, of your strictness, that we depend very much on your influence. Your age permits you to be as much a companion as a preceptor for Lucien. Example, you see, is the best kind of teaching. Tell a conscript that it is a noble and fine thing to march up to the fire, and he will listen to you without understanding you. March in front of him, swaggering, and he becomes more of a blusterer than you are.

“As for me, I rejoin my regiment in a few days, but absent or present, you can depend on my support; if it should ever be a question what to do, that this child become what he ought to become, a man who can serve his country bravely, and, if God permit, his king.”