The Queen Pedauque by Anatole France

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THE QUEEN PEDAUQUE

ANATOLE FRANCE

Translated by JOS. A. V. STRITZKO

Introduction by JAMES BRANCH CABELL

I. Why I recount the singular Occurrences of my Life

II. My Home at the Queen Pedauque Cookshop--I turn the Spit and
learn to read--Entry of Abbe Jerome Coignard

III. The Story of the Abbe's Life

IV. The Pupil of M. Jerome Coignard--I receive Lessons in Latin,
Greek and Life

V. My Nineteenth Birthday--Its Celebration and the Entrance of
M. d'Asterac

VI. Arrival at the Castle of M. d'Asterac and Interview with the
Cabalist

VII. Dinner and Thoughts on Food

VIII. The Library and its Contents

IX. At Work on Zosimus the Panopolitan--I visit my Home and hear
Gossip about M. d'Asterac

X. I see Catherine with Friar Ange and reflect--The Liking of
Nymphs for Satyrs--An Alarm of Fire--M. d'Asterac in his Laboratory

XI. The Advent of Spring and its Effects--We visit Mosaide

XII. I take a Walk and meet Mademoiselle Catherine

XIII. Taken by M. d'Asterac to the Isle of Swans I listen to his
Discourse on Creation and Salamanders

XIV. Visit to Mademoiselle Catherine--The Row in the Street and
my Dismissal

XV. In the Library with M. Jerome Coignard--A Conversation on
Morals--Taken to M. d'Asterac's Study-Salamanders again--
The Solar Powder--A Visit and its Consequences

XVI. Jahel comes to my Room--What the Abbe saw on the Stairs--His
Encounter with Mosaide

XVII. Outside Mademoiselle Catherine's House--We are invited in by
M. d'Anquetil--The Supper--The Visit of the Owner and the
horrible Consequences

XVIII. Our return--We smuggle M. d'Anquetil in--M. d'Asterac on
Jealousy--M. Jerome Coignard in Trouble-What happened while
I was in the Laboratory--Jahel persuaded to elope

XIX. Our last Dinner at M. d'Asterac's Table--Conversation of M.
Jerome Coignard and M. d'Asterac--A Message from Home--Catherine
in the Spittel--We are wanted for Murder-Our Flight--Jahel
causes me much Misery--Account of the Journey-The Abbe Coignard
on Towns--Jahel's Midnight Visit--We are followed--The Accident
--M. Jerome Coignard is stabbed

XX. Illness of M. Jerome Coignard

XXI. Death of M. Jerome Coignard

XXII. Funeral and Epitaph

XXIII. Farewell to Jahel--Dispersal of the Party.

XXIV. I am pardoned and return to Paris--Again at the Queen
Pedauque--I go as Assistant to M. Blaizot--Burning of the
Castle of Sablons--Death of Mosaide and of M. d'Asterac.

XXV. I become a Bookseller--I have many learned and witty
Customers but none to equal the Abbe Jerome Coignard, D.D., M. A

INTRODUCTION

What one first notes about _The Queen Pedauque_ is the fact
that in this ironic and subtle book is presented a story which,
curiously enough, is remarkable for its entire innocence of subtlety
and irony. Abridge the "plot" into a synopsis, and you will find
your digest to be what is manifestly the outline of a straightforward,
plumed romance by the elder Dumas.

Indeed, Dumas would have handled the "strange surprising adventures"
of Jacques Tournebroche to a nicety, if only Dumas had ever thought
to have his collaborators write this brisk tale, wherein d'Astarac
and Tournebroche and Mosaide display, even now, a noticeable
something in common with the Balsamo and Gilbert and Althotas of the
_Memoires d'un Medecin_. One foresees, to be sure, that, with
the twin-girthed Creole for guide, M. Jerome Coignard would have
waddled into immortality not quite as we know him, but with somewhat
more of a fraternal resemblance to the Dom Gorenflot of _La Dame
de Monsoreau;_ and that the blood of the abbe's death-wound could
never have bedewed the book's final pages, in the teeth of Dumas'
economic unwillingness ever to despatch any character who was "good
for" a sequel.

And one thinks rather kindlily of _The Queen Pedauque_ as Dumas
would have equipped it... Yes, in reading here, it is the most
facile and least avoidable of mental exercises to prefigure how
excellently Dumas would have contrived this book,--somewhat as in
the reading of Mr. Joseph Conrad's novels a many of us are haunted
by the sense that the Conrad "story" is, in its essential beams and
stanchions, the sort of thing which W. Clark Russell used to put
together, in a rather different way, for our illicit perusal.
Whereby I only mean that such seafaring was illicit in those aureate
days when, Cleveland being consul for the second time, your
geography figured as the screen of fictive reading-matter during
school-hours.

One need not say that there is no question, in either case, of
"imitation," far less of "plagiarism"; nor need one, surely, point
out the impossibility of anybody's ever mistaking the present book
for a novel by Alexandre Dumas. Ere Homer's eyesight began not to be
what it had been, the fact was noted by the observant Chian, that
very few sane architects commence an edifice by planting and rearing
the oaks which are to compose its beams and stanchions. You take
over all such supplies ready hewn, and choose by preference time-
seasoned timber. Since Homer's prime a host of other great creative
writers have recognised this axiom when they too began to build: and
"originality" has by ordinary been, like chess and democracy, a
Mecca for little minds.

Besides, there is the vast difference that M. Anatole France has
introduced into the Dumas theatre some preeminently un-Dumas-like
stage-business: the characters, between assignations and combats,
toy amorously with ideas. That is the difference which at a stroke
dissevers them from any helter-skelter character in Dumas as utterly
as from any of our clearest thinkers in office.

It is this toying, this series of mental _amourettes_, which
incommunicably "makes the difference" in almost all the volumes of
M. France familiar to me, but our affair is with this one story. Now
in this vivid book we have our fill of color and animation and
gallant strangenesses, and a stir of characters who impress us as
living with a poignancy unmastered as yet by anybody's associates in
flesh and blood. We have, in brief, all that Dumas could ever offer,
here utilised not to make drama but background, all being woven into
a bright undulating tapestry behind an erudite and battered figure,--
a figure of odd medleys, in which the erudition is combined with
much of Autolycus, and the unkemptness with something of a Kempis.
For what one remembers of _The Queen Pedauque_ is l'Abbe Jerome
Coignard; and what one remembers, ultimately, about Coignard is not
his crowded career, however opulent in larcenous and lectual
escapades and fisticuffs and broached wineflasks; but his religious
meditations, wherein a merry heart does, quite actually, go all the
way.

Coignard I take to be a peculiarly rare type of man (there is no
female of this species), the type that is genuinely interested in
religion. He stands apart. He halves little with the staid majority
of us, who sociably contract our sacred tenets from our neighbors
like a sort of theological measles. He halves nothing whatever with
our more earnest-minded juniors who--perennially discovering that
all religions thus far put to the test of nominal practice have,
whatever their paradisial _entree_, resulted in a deplorable
earthly hash--perennially run yelping into the shrill agnosticism
which believes only that one's neighbors should not be permitted to
believe in anything.

The creed of Coignard is more urbane. "Always bear in mind that a
sound intelligence rejects everything that is contrary to reason,
except in matters of faith, where it is necessary to believe
blindly." Your opinions are thus all-important, your physical
conduct is largely a matter of taste, in a philosophy which ranks
affairs of the mind immeasurably above the gross accidents of
matter. Indeed, man can win to heaven only through repentance, and
the initial step toward repentance is to do something to repent of.
There is no flaw in this logic, and in its clear lighting such
abrogations of parochial and transitory human laws as may be
suggested by reason and the consciousness that nobody is looking,
take on the aspect of divinely appointed duties.

Some dullard may here object that M. France--attestedly, indeed,
since he remains unjailed-cannot himself believe all this, and that
it is with an ironic glitter in his ink he has recorded these dicta.
To which the obvious answer would be that M. France (again like all
great creative writers) is an ephemeral and negligible person beside
his durable puppets; and that, moreover, to reason thus is, it may
be precipitately, to disparage the plumage of birds on the ground
that an egg has no feathers... Whatever M. France may believe, our
concern is here with the conviction of M. Coignard that his religion
is all-important and all-significant. And it is curious to observe
how unerringly the abbe's thoughts aspire, from no matter what
remote and low-lying starting-point, to the loftiest niceties of
religion and the high thin atmosphere of ethics. Sauce spilt upon
the good man's collar is but a reminder of the influence of clothes
upon our moral being, and of how terrifyingly is the destiny of each
person's soul dependent upon such trifles; a glass of light white
wine leads not, as we are nowadays taught to believe, to instant
ruin, but to edifying considerations of the life and glory of St.
Peter; and a pack of cards suggests, straightway, intransigent fine
points of martyrology. Always this churchman's thoughts deflect to
the most interesting of themes, to the relationship between God and
His children, and what familiary etiquette may be necessary to
preserve the relationship unstrained. These problems alone engross
Coignard unfailingly, even when the philosopher has had the ill luck
to fall simultaneously into drunkenness and a public fountain, and
retains so notably his composure between the opposed assaults of
fluidic unfriends.

What, though, is found the outcome of this philosophy, appears a
question to be answered with wariness of empiricism. None can deny
that Coignard says when he lies dying: "My son, reject, along with
the example I gave you, the maxims which I may have proposed to you
during my period of lifelong folly. Do not listen to those who, like
myself, subtilise over good and evil." Yet this is just one low-
spirited moment, as set against the preceding fifty-two high-hearted
years. And the utterance wrung forth by this moment is, after all,
merely that sentiment which seems the inevitable bedfellow of the
moribund,--"Were I to have my life over again, I would live
differently." The sentiment is familiar and venerable, but its
truthfulness has not yet been attested.

To the considerate, therefore, it may appear expedient to dismiss
Coignard's trite winding-up of a half-century of splendid talking,
as just the infelicitous outcropping, in the dying man's enfeebled
condition, of an hereditary foible. And when moralising would
approach an admonitory forefinger to the point that Coignard's
manner of living brought him to die haphazardly, among preoccupied
strangers at a casual wayside inn, you do, there is no questioning
it, recall that a more generally applauded manner of living has been
known to result in a more competently arranged-for demise, under the
best churchly and legal auspices, through the rigors of crucifixion.

So it becomes the part of wisdom to waive these mundane riddles, and
to consider instead the justice of Coignard's fine epitaph, wherein
we read that "living without worldly honors, he earned for himself
eternal glory." The statement may (with St. Peter keeping the gate)
have been challenged in paradise, but in literature at all events
the unhonored life of Jerome Coignard has clothed him with glory of
tolerably longeval looking texture. It is true that this might also
be said of Iago and Tartuffe, but then we have Balzac's word for it
that merely to be celebrated is not enough. Rather is the highest
human desideratum twofold,--_D'etre celebre et d'etre aime_.
And that much Coignard promises to be for a long while.

James Branch Cabell

Dumbarton Grange,
July, 1921,

THE QUEEN PEDAUQUE

CHAPTER I

Why I recount the singular Occurrences of my Life

I intend to give an account of some odd occurrences in my life. Some
have been exquisite, some queer Recollecting them, I am myself in
doubt if I have not dreamed them. I have known a Gascon cabalist, of
whom I could not say that he was wise, because he perished
miserably, but he delivered sublime discourses to me, on a certain
night on the Isle of Swans, speeches [Footnote: The original
manuscript, written in a fine hand, of the eighteenth century, bears
the sub-heading "Vie et Opinions de M. l'Abbe Jerome Coignard"
[_The Editor_].] I was happy enough to keep in my memory, and
careful enough to put into writing. Those speeches referred to magic
and to occult sciences, with which people were very much infatuated
in my days.

Everyone speaks of naught else but Rosicrucian mysteries.[Footnote:
This writing dates from the second half of the eighteenth century
[_The Editor_]]. Besides I do not myself expect to gain great
honour by these revelations. Some will say that everything is of my
own invention, and that it is not the true doctrine, others that I
only said what one had already known. I own that I am not very
learned in cabalistic lore, my master having perished at the
beginning of my initiation. But, little as I have learned of his
craft, it makes me vehemently suspect that all of it is illusion,
deception and vanity.

I think it quite sufficient to repudiate magic with all my strength,
because it is contrary to religion. But still I believe myself to be
obliged to explain concerning one point of this false science, so
that none may judge me to be more ignorant than I really am. I know
that cabalists generally think that Sylphs, Salamanders, Elves,
Gnomes and Gnomides are born with a soul perishable like their
bodies and that they acquire immortality by intercourse with the
magicians. [Footnote: This opinion is especially supported in a
little book of the Abbe Montfaucon de Villars, "Le Comte de Gabalis
au Entretiens sur les sciences secretes et mysterieuses suivant les
principes des anciens mages ou sages cabbalistes," of which several
editions are extant. I only mention the one published at Amsterdam
(Jacques Le Jeune, 1700, 18mo, with engravings), which contains a
second part not included in the original edition [_The Editor_]]
On the contrary my cabalist taught me that eternal life does not
fall to the lot of any creature, earthly or aerial. I follow his
sentiment without presuming myself to judge it.

He was in the habit of saying that the Elves kill those who reveal
their mysteries, and he attributes the death of M. l'Abbe Coignard,
who was murdered on the Lyons road, to the vengeance of those
spirits. But I know very well that this much lamented death had a
more natural cause. I shall speak freely of the air and fire
spirits. One has to run some risk in life and that with Elves is an
extremely small one.

I have zealously gathered the words of my good teacher M. l'Abbe
Jerome Coignard, who perished as I have said. He was a man full of
knowledge and godliness. Could his soul have been less troubled he
would have been the equal in virtue of M. l'Abbe Rollin, whom he far
surpassed in extent of knowledge and penetration of intellect.

He had at least the advantage over M. Rollin that he had not fallen
into Jansenism during the agitation of a troubled life, because the
soundness of his mind was not to be shaken by the violence of
reckless doctrines, and before Him I can attest to the purity of his
faith. He had a wide knowledge of the world, obtained by the
frequentation of all sorts of companies. This experience would have
served him well with the Roman histories he, like M. Rollin, would
doubtless have composed should he have had time and leisure, and if
his life could have been better matched to his genius. What I shall
relate of this excellent man will be the ornament of these memoirs.
And like Aulus Gellius, who culled the most beautiful sayings of the
philosophers into his "Attic Nights," and him who put the best
fables of the Greeks into the "Metamorphoses," I will do a bee's
work and gather exquisite honey. But I do not flatter myself to be
the rival of those two great authors, because I draw all my wealth
from my own life's recollections and not from an abundance of
reading. What I furnish out of my own stock is good faith. Whenever
some curious person shall read my memoirs he will easily recognise
that a candid soul alone could express itself in language so plain
and unaffected. Where and with whomsoever I have lived I have always
been considered to be entirely artless. These writings cannot but
confirm it after my death.

CHAPTER II

My Home at the Queen Pedauque Cookshop--I turn the Spit and learn to
read--Entry of Abbe Jerome Coignard.

My name is Elme Laurent Jacques Menetrier. My father, Leonard
Menetrier, kept a cookshop at the sign of _Queen Pedauque,_
who, as everyone knows, wag web-footed like the geese and ducks.

His penthouse was opposite Saint Benoit le Betourne between Mistress
Gilles the haberdasher at the _Three Virgins_ and M. Blaizot,
the bookseller at the sign of _Saint Catherine,_ not far from
the _Little Bacchus,_ the gate of which, decorated with vine
branches, was at the corner of the Rue des Cordiers. He loved me
very much, and when, after supper, I lay in my little bed, he took
my hand in his, lifted one after the other of my fingers, beginning
with the thumb, and said:

"This one has killed him, this one has plucked him, this one has
fricasseed him and that one has eaten him, and the little
_Riquiqui_ had nothing at all. Sauce, sauce, sauce," he used to
add, tickling the hollow of my hand with my own little finger.

And mightily he laughed, and I laughed too, dropping off to sleep,
and my mother used to affirm that the smile still remained on my
lips on the following morning.

My father was a good cookshop-keeper and feared God. For this he
carried on holidays the banner of the Cooks' Guild, on which a fine-
looking St Laurence was embroidered, with his grill and a golden
palm. He used to say to me:

"Jacquot, thy mother is a holy and worthy woman."

He liked to repeat this sentence frequently. True, my mother went to
church every Sunday with a prayer-book printed in big type. She
could hardly read small print, which, as she said, drew the eyes out
of her head.

My father used to pass an hour or two nightly at the tavern of the
_Little Bacchus_; there also Jeannetae the hurdy-gurdy player
and Catherine the lacemaker were regular frequenters. And every time
he returned home somewhat later than usual he said in a soft voice,
while pulling his cotton night-cap on:

"Barbe, sleep in peace; as I have just said to the limping cutler:
'You are a holy and worthy woman.'"

I was six years old when, one day, readjusting his apron, with him
always a sign of resolution, he said to me:

"Miraut, our good dog, has turned my roasting-spit during these last
fourteen years. I have nothing to reproach him with. He is a good
servant, who has never stolen the smallest morsel of turkey or
goose. He was always satisfied to lick the roaster as his wage. But
he is getting old. His legs are getting stiff; he can't see, and is
no more good to turn the handle. Jacquot, my boy, it is your duty to
take his place. With some thought and some practice, you certainly
will succeed in doing as well as he."

Miraut listened to these words and wagged his tail as a sign of
approbation. My father continued:

"Now then, seated on this stool, you'll turn the spit. But to form
your mind you'll con your horn-book, and when, afterwards, you are
able to read type, you'll learn by heart some grammar or morality
book, or those fine maxims of the Old and New Testaments. And that
because the knowledge of God and the distinction between good and
evil are also necessary in a working position, certainly of but
trifling importance but honest as mine is, and which was my father's
and also will be yours, please God."

And from this very day on, sitting from morn till night, at the
corner of the fireplace, I turned the spit, the open horn-book on my
knees. A good Capuchin friar, who with his bag came a-begging to my
father, taught me how to spell. He did so the more willingly as my
father, who had a consideration for knowledge, paid for his lesson
with a savoury morsel of roast turkey and a large glass of wine, so
liberally that by-and-by the little friar, aware that I was able to
form syllables and words tolerably well, brought me a fine "Life of
St Margaret," wherewith he taught me to read fluently.

On a certain day, having as usual laid his wallet on the counter, he
sat down at my side, and, warming his naked feet on the hot ashes of
the fireplace, he made me recite for the hundredth time:

"Pucelle sage, nette et fine,
Aide des femmes en gesine
Ayez pitie de nous."

At this moment a man of rather burly stature and withal of noble
appearance, clad in the ecclesiastical habit, entered the shop and
shouted out with an ample voice:

"Hello! host, serve me a good portion!" With grey hair, he still
looked full of health and strength. His mouth was laughing and his
eyes were sprightly, his cheeks were somewhat heavy and his three
chins dropped majestically on a neckband which, maybe by sympathy,
had become as greasy as the throat it enveloped.

My father, courteous by profession, lifted his cap and bowing said:

"If your reverence will be so good as to warm yourself near the
fire, I'll soon serve you with what you desire."

Without any further preamble the priest took a seat near the fire by
the side of the Capuchin friar.

Hearing the good friar reading aloud:

"Pucelle sage, nette et fine,
Aide des femnies en gesine,"

he clapped his hands and said:

"Oh, the rare bird! The unique man! A Capuchin who is able to read!
Eh, little friar, what is your name?"

"Friar Ange, an unworthy Capuchin," replied my teacher.

My mother, hearing the voices from the upper room descended to the
shop, attracted by curiosity.

The priest greeted her with an already familiar politeness and said:

"That is really wonderful, mistress; Friar Ange is a Capuchin and
knows how to read."

"He is able to read all sorts of writing," replied my mother.

And going near the friar, she recognised the prayer of St Margaret
by the picture representing the maiden martyr with a holy-water
sprinkler in her hand.

"This prayer," she added, "is difficult to read because the words of
it are very small and hardly divided, but happily it is quite
sufficient, when in labour-pains, to apply it like a plaster on the
place where the most pain is felt and it operates just as well, and
rather better, than when it is recited. I had the proof of it, sir,
when my son Jacquot was born, who is here present."

"Do not doubt about it, my good dame," said Friar Ange. "The orison
of St Margaret is sovereign for what you mentioned, but under the
special condition that the Capuchins get their Maundy."

In saying so, Friar Ange emptied the goblet of wine which my mother
had filled up for him and, throwing his wallet over his shoulder,
went off in the direction of the _Little Bacchus_.

My father served a quarter of fowl to the priest, who took out of
his pocket a piece of bread, a flagon of wine and a knife, the
copper handle of which represented the late king on a column in the
costume of a Roman emperor, and began to have his supper.

But having hardly taken the first morsel in his mouth he turned
round on my father and asked for some salt, rather surprised that no
salt cellar had been presented to him offhand.

"So did the ancients use it," he said, "they offered salt as a sign
of hospitality. They also placed salt cellars in the temples on the
tablecloths of the gods."

My father presented him with some bay salt out of the wooden shoe
which was hung on the mantelpiece. The priest took what he wanted of
it and said:

"The ancients considered salt to be a necessary seasoning of all
repasts, and held it in so high esteem that they metaphorically
called salt the wit which gives flavour to conversation."

"Ah!" said my father, "high as the ancients may have valued it, the
excise of our days puts it still higher."

My mother, listening the while she knitted a woollen stocking, was
glad to say a word:

"It must be believed that salt is a good thing, because the priests
put a grain of it on the tongues of the babies held over the
christening font. When my Jacques felt the salt on his tongue he
made a grimace; as tiny as he was he already had some sense. I
speak, Sir Priest, of my son Jacques here present."

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