Part 20 (1/2)
Nothing proves, my son, that you have not been begot by a Sylph. It is the very thing I prefer to believe, in so far as your spirit, still delicate, shall grow in strength and beauty.”
”Oh, sir! don't speak like that,” replied my tutor, and smiled. ”You oblige him to hide his spirit so as not to damage his mother's good name. But if you knew her better you could not but think with me that she never had any intercourse with a Sylph; she is a good Christian who has never accomplished the work of the flesh with any other man than her husband, and who carries her virtue written distinctly on her features, very different from the mistress of that other cookshop, Madame Quonion, about whom they talked so much in Paris, as well as in the provinces, in the days of my youth. Have you never heard of her, sir? Her lover was M.
Mariette, who later on became secretary to M. d'Angervilliers. He was a stout man, who left a jewel every time he visited his beloved; one day a Cross of Lorraine or a Holy Ghost; another day a watch or a chatelaine, or perhaps a handkerchief, a fan, a box. For her sake he rifled the jewellers and seamstresses of the fair of St Germain. He gave her so much that, finding his shop decorated like a shrine, the master-cook became suspicious that all that wealth could not have been honestly acquired. He watched her, and very soon surprised her with her lover. It must be said that the husband was but a jealous fellow. He flew into a temper, and gained nothing by it, but very much the reverse. For the amorous couple, plagued by his wrangling, swore to get rid of him. M.
Mariette had no little influence. He got a _lettre de cachet_ in the name of that unhappy Quonion. On a certain day the perfidious woman said to her husband:
”Take me, I beg of you, on Sunday next out to dinner somewhere in the country. I promise myself uncommon pleasure from such an excursion.”
She became caressing and pressing, and the husband, flattered, agreed to all her demands. On the Sunday, he got with her into a paltry hackney coach to go to Porcherons. But they had hardly got to Roule when a posse of constables placed in readiness by Marietta arrested him, and took him to Bicetre, from whence he was sent to the Mississippi, where he still remains. Someone composed a song which finished thus:
'Un mari sage et commode N'ouvre les yeux qu'a demi Il vaut mieux etre a la mode, Que de voir Mississippi.'
And such is, doubtless, the most solid lesson to be derived from the example given by Quonion the cook.
”As to the story itself, it only needs to be narrated by a Petronius or by an Apuleius to equal the best Milesian fables. The moderns are inferior to the ancients in epic poetry and tragedy. But if we do not surpa.s.s the Greeks and Latins in story-telling it is net the fault of the ladies of Paris, who never cease enriching the material for tales by their ingenious and graceful inventions. You certainly know, sir, the stories of Boccaccio. I am sure that had that Florentine lived in our days in France he would make of Quonion's misfortune one of his pleasantest tales. As far as I am myself concerned I have been reminded of it at this table for the sole purpose, and by the effect of contrast, to make the virtue of Madame Leonard Tournebroche s.h.i.+ne. She is the honour of cookshops, of which Madame Quonion is the disgrace. Madame Tournebroche, I dare affirm it, has never abandoned those ordinary commonplace virtues the practice of which is recommended in marriage, which is the only contemptible one of the seven sacraments.”
”I do not deny it,” said M. d'Asterac. ”But Mistress Tournebroche would be still more estimable if she should have had intercourse with a Sylph, as Semiramis had and Olympias and the mother of that grand pope Sylvester II.”
”Ah, sir,” said the Abbe Coignard, ”you are always talking to us of Sylphs and Salamanders. Now, in simple good faith, have you ever seen any of them?”
”As clearly as I see you this very moment,” replied M. d'Asterac, ”and certainly closer, at least as far as Salamanders are concerned.”
”That is not sufficient, my dear sir, to make me believe in their existence, which is against the teachings of the Church. For one may be seduced by illusions. The eyes, and all our senses, are messengers of error and couriers of lies. They delude us more than they teach us, and bring us but uncertain and fugitive images. Truth escapes them, because truth is eternal, and invisible like eternity.”
”Ah!” said M. d'Asterac, ”I did not know you were so philosophical, nor of so subtle a mind.”
”That's true,” replied my good master. ”There are days on which my soul is heavier, and with preference attached to bed and table. But last night I broke a bottle on the head of an extortioner, and my mind is very much exalted over it. I feel myself capable of dissipating the phantoms which are haunting you, and to blow off all that mist. For after all, sir, these Sylphs are but vapours of your brain.”
M. d'Asterac stopped him with a kind gesture and said:
”I beg your pardon, abbe; do you believe in demons?”
”Without difficulty I can reply,” said my good master, ”that I believe of demons all that is reported of them in the Scriptures, and that I reject as error and superst.i.tion all and every belief in spells, charms and exorcism. Saint Augustine teaches that when the Scriptures exhort us to resist the demons, it requires us to resist our pa.s.sions and intemperate appet.i.tes. Nothing is more detestable than the deviltries wherewith the Capuchins frighten old women.”
”I see,” said M. d'Asterac, ”you do your best to think as an honest man.
You hate as much as I do myself the coa.r.s.e superst.i.tions of the monks.
But, after all, you do believe in demons, and I have not had much trouble to make you avow it. Know, then, that they are no other than Sylphs and Salamanders, ignorance and fear have disfigured them in timid imaginations. But, as a fact, they are beautiful and virtuous. I will not lead you in the ways of the Salamanders, as I am not quite sure of the purity of your morals; but I can see no impediment, abbe, to a frequentation of the Sylphs, who inhabit the fields of air, and voluntarily approach man in a spirit of friendliness and affection, so that they have been rightly named helping genii. Far from driving us to perdition, as the theologians believe, who change them into devils, they protect and safeguard their terrestrial friends. I could make you acquainted with numberless examples of the help they give. But to be short I'll repeat to you one single case which was told to me by Madame la Marechale de Grancey herself. She was middle-aged, and a widow for several years, when, one night, in her bed, she received the visit of a Sylph, who said to her: 'Madame, have a search made in the wardrobe of your deceased husband. In the pocket of a pair of his breeches a letter will be found, which, if it became known, would ruin M. des Roches, my good friend and yours. Find that letter and burn it.'
”The marechale promised not to neglect this recommendation and inquired after news of the defunct marechal from the Sylph, who, however, disappeared without giving any reply. On waking she summoned her women, and bade them look if some of the late marechal's garments remained in his wardrobe. The attendants reported that nothing was left, and that the lackeys had sold them all to old clothes dealers. Madame de Grancey insisted on her women trying to find at least one pair of breeches.
”Having searched in every corner they finally discovered a very old-fas.h.i.+oned pair of black satin, embroidered with carnations, and handed them to their mistress, who found a letter in one of the pockets, which contained more than would have been needed to incarcerate M. des Roches in one of the state prisons. She burned the letter at once, and so that gentleman was saved by his good friends the Sylph and the marechale.
”Are such, I ask you, abbe, the manners of demons? But let me give you another startling hit on the matter, which will impress you more, and will I am sure go to the heart of a learned man such as yourself. It is doubtless known to you that the Academy of Dijon is rich in wits. One of them, whose name cannot be unknown to you, living in the last century, prepared with great labour an edition of Pindar. One night, worrying over five verses the sense of which he could not disentangle, so much was the text corrupt, he dozed off, quite despairing, at c.o.c.kcrow.
During his sleep, a Sylph, who wished him well, transported his spirit to Stockholm into the palace of Queen Christina, conducted him to the library, and took from one of the shelves a ma.n.u.script of Pindar's showing him the difficult pa.s.sage. The five verses were there, as well as two or three annotations which rendered them perfectly intelligible.
”In the violence of his contentment, our savant woke up, struck a light, and pencilled down the verses as they appeared to him in his sleep.
After that he went to sleep again profoundly. On the following morning, thinking over his night's adventure, he at once resolved to try to get a confirmation. M. Descartes happened at that very time to be in Sweden, reading to the queen on philosophy. Our Pindarist knew him, but was on still closer terms with M. Chanut, the Swedish amba.s.sador in France. He wrote requesting him to forward a letter to M. Descartes, in which he asked him to be informed if there really was in the queen's library at Stockholm a ma.n.u.script of Pindar containing the version he mentioned.
M. Descartes, an extremely courteous man, replied to the academician of Dijon that, as a fact, her Majesty possessed a ma.n.u.script of Pindar, and that he had himself read there the verses, with the various readings contained in the letter.”
M. d'Asterac, who had been peeling an apple during his narration, looked at M. Coignard to enjoy the success of his discourse.