Part 29 (1/2)
It was this delineation, worthy of Virgil, which first raised a doubt as to Delille's superiority over Gourdon. The word ”disc,” contested by the opinionated Brunet, gave matter for discussions which lasted eleven months; in fact, until Gourdon the scientist, one evening when all present were on the point of getting seriously angry, annihilated the anti-discers by observing:--
”The moon, called a _disc_ by poets, is undoubtedly a ball.”
”How do you know that?” retorted Brunet. ”We have never seen but one side.”
The third canto told the regulation story,--in this instance, the famous anecdote of the cup-and-ball which all the world knows by heart, concerning a celebrated minister of Louis XVI. According to the sacred formula delivered by the ”Debats” from 1810 to 1814, in praise of these glorious words, Gourdon's ode ”borrowed fresh charms from poesy to embellish the tale.”
The fourth canto summed up the whole, and concluded with these daring words,--not published, be it remarked, from 1810 to 1814; in fact, they did not see the light till 1824, after Napoleon's death.
'Twas thus that I sang in the time of alarms.
Oh, if kings would consent to bear no other arms, And people enjoyed what was best for them all, The sweet little game of the Cup and the Ball, Our Burgundy then might be free of all fear, And return to the good days of Saturn and Rhea.
These fine verses were published in a first and only edition from the press of Bournier, printer of Ville-aux-Fayes. One hundred subscribers, in the sum of three francs, guaranteed the dangerous precedent of immortality to the poem,--a liberality that was all the greater because these hundred persons had heard the poem from beginning to end a hundred times over.
Madame Soudry had lately suppressed the cup-and-ball, which usually lay on a pier-table in the salon and for the last seven years had given rise to endless quotations, for she finally discovered in the toy a rival to her own attractions.
As to the author, who boasted of future poems in his desk, it is enough to quote the terms in which he mentioned to the leading society of Soulanges a rival candidate for literary honors.
”Have you heard a curious piece of news?” he had said, two years earlier. ”There is another poet in Burgundy! Yes,” he added, remarking the astonishment on all faces, ”he comes from Macon. But you could never imagine the subjects he takes up,--a perfect jumble, absolutely unintelligible,--lakes, stars, waves, billows! not a single philosophical image, not even a didactic effort! he is ignorant of the very meaning of poetry. He calls the sky by its name. He says 'moon,'
bluntly, instead of naming it 'the planet of night.' That's what the desire to be thought original brings men to,” added Gourdon, mournfully.
”Poor young man! A Burgundian, and sing such stuff as that!--the pity of it! If he had only consulted me, I would have pointed out to him the n.o.blest of all themes, wine,--a poem to be called the Baccheide; for which, alas! I now feel myself too old.”
This great poet is still ignorant of his finest triumph (though he owes it to the fact of being a Burgundian), namely, that of living in the town of Soulanges, so rounded and perfected within itself that it knows nothing of the modern Pleiades, not even their names.
A hundred Gourdons made poetry under the Empire, and yet they tell us it was a period that neglected literature! Examine the ”Journal de la Libraire” and you will find poems on the game of draughts, on backgammon, on tricks with cards, on geography, typography, comedy, etc.,--not to mention the vaunted masterpieces of Delille on Piety, Imagination, Conversation; and those of Berchoux on Gastromania and Dansomania, etc. Who can foresee the chances and changes of taste, the caprices of fas.h.i.+on, the transformations of the human mind? The generations as they pa.s.s along sweep out of sight the last fragments of the idols they found on their path and set up other G.o.ds,--to be overthrown like the rest.
Sarcus, a handsome little man with a dapple-gray head, devoted himself in turn to Themis and to Flora,--in other words, to legislation and a greenhouse. For the last twelve years he had been meditating a book on the History of the Inst.i.tution of Justices of the Peace, ”whose political and judiciary role,” he said, ”had already pa.s.sed through several phases, all derived from the Code of Brumaire, year IV.; and to-day that inst.i.tution, so precious to the nation, had lost its power because the salaries were not in keeping with the importance of its functions, which ought to be performed by irremovable officials.” Rated in the community as an able man, Sarcus was the accepted statesman of Madame Soudry's salon; you can readily imagine that he was the leading bore. They said he talked like a book. Gaubertin prophesied he would receive the cross of the Legion of honor, but not until the day when, as Leclercq's successor, he should take his seat on the benches of the Left Centre.
Guerbet, the collector, a man of parts, a heavy, fat, individual with a b.u.t.tery face, a toupet on his bald spot, gold earrings, which were always in difficulty with his s.h.i.+rt-collar, had the hobby of pomology.
Proud of possessing the finest fruit-garden in the arrondiss.e.m.e.nt, he gathered his first crops a month later than those of Paris; his hot-beds supplied him with pine-apples, nectarines, and peas, out of season. He brought bunches of strawberries to Madame Soudry with pride when the fruit could be bought for ten sous a basket in Paris.
Soulanges possessed a pharmaceutist named Vermut, a chemist, who was more of a chemist than Sarcus was a statesman, or Lupin a singer, or Gourdon the elder a scientist, or his brother a poet. Nevertheless, the leading society of Soulanges did not take much notice of Vermut, and the second-cla.s.s society took none at all. The instinct of the first may have led them to perceive the real superiority of this thinker, who said little but smiled at their absurdities so satirically that they first doubted his capacity and then whispered tales against it; as for the other cla.s.s they took no notice of him one way or the other.
Vermut was the b.u.t.t of Madame Soudry's salon. No society is complete without a victim,--without an object to pity, ridicule, despise, and protect. Vermut, full of his scientific problems, often came with his cravat untied, his waistcoat unb.u.t.toned, and his little green surtout spotted.
The little man, gifted with the patience of a chemist, could not enjoy (that is the term employed in the provinces to express the abolition of domestic rule) Madame Vermut,--a charming woman, a lively woman, capital company (for she could lose forty sous at cards and say nothing), a woman who railed at her husband, annoyed him with epigrams, and declared him to be an imbecile unable to distil anything but dulness. Madame Vermut was one of those women who in the society of a small town are the life and soul of amus.e.m.e.nt and who set things going. She supplied the salt of her little world, kitchen-salt, it is true; her jokes were somewhat broad, but society forgave them; though she was capable of saying to the cure Taupin, a man of seventy years of age, with white hair, ”Hold your tongue, my lad.”
The miller of Soulanges, possessing an income of fifty thousand francs, had an only daughter whom Lupin desired for his son Amaury, since he had lost the hope of marrying him to Gaubertin's daughter. This miller, a Sarcus-Taupin, was the Nucingen of the little town. He was supposed to be thrice a millionaire; but he never transacted business with others, and thought only of grinding his wheat and keeping a monopoly of it; his most noticeable point was a total absence of politeness and good manners.
The elder Guerbet, brother of the post-master at Conches, possessed an income of ten thousand francs, besides his salary as collector. The Gourdons were rich; the doctor had married the only daughter of old Monsieur Gendrin-Vatebled, keeper of the forests and streams, whom the family were now _expecting to die_, while the poet had married the niece and sole heiress of the Abbe Taupin, the curate of Soulanges, a stout priest who lived in his cure like a rat in his cheese.
This clever ecclesiastic, devoted to the leading society, kind and obliging to the second, apostolic to the poor and unfortunate, made himself beloved by the whole town. He was cousin of the miller and cousin of the Sarcuses, and belonged therefore to the neighborhood and to its mediocracy. He always dined out and saved expenses; he went to weddings but came away before the ball; he paid the costs of public wors.h.i.+p, saying, ”It is my business.” And the parish let him do it, with the remark, ”We have an excellent priest.” The bishop, who knew the Soulanges people and was not at all misled as to the true value of the abbe, was glad enough to keep in such a town a man who made religion acceptable, and who knew how to fill his church and preach to sleepy heads.
It is unnecessary to remark that not only each of these worthy burghers possessed some one of the special qualifications which are necessary to existence in the provinces, but also that each cultivated his field in the domain of vanity without a rival. Pere Guerbet understood finance, Soudry might have been minister of war; if Cuvier had pa.s.sed that way incognito, the leading society of Soulanges would have proved to him that he knew nothing in comparison with Monsieur Gourdon the doctor.
”Adolphe Nourrit with his thread of a voice,” remarked the notary with patronizing indulgence, ”was scarcely worthy to accompany the nightingale of Soulanges.” As to the author of the ”Cup-and-Ball” (which was then being printed at Bournier's), society was satisfied that a poet of his force could not be met with in Paris, for Delille was now dead.
This provincial bourgeoisie, so comfortably satisfied with itself, took the lead through the various superiorities of its members. Therefore the imagination of those who ever resided, even for a short time, in a little town of this kind can conceive the air of profound satisfaction upon the faces of these people, who believed themselves the solar plexus of France, all of them armed with incredible dexterity and shrewdness to do mischief,--all, in their wisdom, declaring that the hero of Essling was a coward, Madame de Montcornet a manoeuvring Parisian, and the Abbe Brossette an ambitious little priest.