Gotthold Ephraim Lessing - "Minna von Barnhelm"

Mary W. Tileston - "Daily Strength for Daily Needs"

Emile Zola - "Pot bouille"

Benjamin Disraeli - "The Rise of Iskander"

A  /  B  /  C  /  D  /  E  /   F  /  G  /  H  /  I  /  J  /   K  /  L  /  M  /  N  /  O   P  /  R  /  S  /  T  /  U  /  V  /  W  /  X  /  Y  /  Z

The Queen Pedauque by Anatole France

A >> Anatole France >> The Queen Pedauque




The priest looked on me and said:

"Now he is already a grown-up boy. Modesty is painted on his
features and he reads the 'Life of St Margaret' with attention."

"Oh!" exclaimed my mother, "he also reads the prayer for chilblains
and that of 'St Hubert,' which Friar Ange has given him, and the
history of that fellow who has been devoured, in the Saint Marcel
suburb, by several devils for having blasphemed the holy name of our
Lord."

My father looked admiringly on me, and then he murmured into the
priest's ear that I learned anything I wanted to know with a native
and natural facility.

"Wherefore," replied the priest, "you must form him to become a man
of letters, which to be, is one of the honours of mankind, the
consolation of human life and a remedy against all evils, actually
against those of love, as it is affirmed by the poet Theocritus."

"Simple cook as I am," was my father's reply, "I hold knowledge in
high esteem, and am quite willing to believe that it also is, as
your reverence says, a remedy for love. But I do not think that it
is a remedy against hunger."

"Well, perhaps it is not a sovereign ointment," replied the priest;
"but it gives some solace, like a sweet balm, although somewhat
imperfect."

As he spoke Catherine the lacemaker appeared on the threshold, with
her bonnet sideways over her ear and her neckerchief very much
creased. Seeing her, my mother frowned and let slip three meshes of
her knitting.

"Monsieur Menetrier," said Catherine to my father, "come and say a
word to the sergeants of the watch. If you do not, they doubtless
will lock up Friar Ange. The good friar came to the _Little
Bacchus_, where he drank two or three pots without paying for
them, so as not to go contrary to the rules of St Francis, he said.
But the worst of it is, that he, seeing me in company under the
arbour, came near me to teach me a new prayer. I told him it was not
the right moment to do so, and he insisting on it, the limping
cutler, who was sitting by me, tore his beard rather roughly. Friar
Ange threw himself on the cutler, who fell to the ground, and by his
fall upset the table and pitchers.

"The taverner, running up, seeing the table knocked over, the wine
spilt, and Friar Ange with one foot on the cutler's head, swinging a
stool with which he struck anyone approaching him, this vile
taverner swore like a real devil and called for the watch. Monsieur
Menetrier, do come at once and take the little friar out of the
watch's clutches. He is a holy man, and quite excusable in this
affair."

My father was inclined to oblige Catherine, but for this once the
lacemaker's words had not the effect she expected. He said plainly
that he could not find any excuse for the Capuchin, and that he
wished him to get a good punishment by bread and water in the
darkest corner of the cellars of the convent, of which he was the
shame and disgrace.

He warmed up in talking:

"A drunkard and a dissipated fellow, to whom I give daily good wine
and good morsels and who goes to the tavern to play the deuce with
some ill-famed creatures, depraved enough to prefer the company of a
hawking cutler and a Capuchin friar to that of honest sworn
tradesmen of the quarter. Fie! fie!"

Therewith he suddenly stopped his scoldings and looked sideways on
my mother, who, standing up at the entry to the staircase, pushed
her knitting needles with sharp little strokes.

Catherine, surprised by this unfriendly reception, said drily:

"Then you don't want to say a good word to the taverner and the
sergeant?"

"If you wish it, I'll tell them to take the cutler and the friar."

"But," she replied, and laughed, "the cutler is your friend."

"Less mine than yours," said my father sharply. "A ragamuffin and a
humbug, who hops about----"

"Oh!" she exclaimed, "that's true, really true, that he hops. He
hops, hops, hops!"

And she left the shop, shaking with laughter.

My father turned round to the priest, who was picking a bone:

"It is as I had the honour to say to your reverence! For each
reading and writing lesson that Capuchin friar gives to my child, I
pay him with a goblet of wine and a fine piece of meat, hare,
rabbit, goose, or a tender poulet or a capon. He is a drunkard and
evil liver!"

"Don't doubt about that," said the priest.

"But if ever he dares to come over my threshold again, I'll drive
him out with a broomstick."

"And you'll do well by it," said the priest; "that Capuchin is an
ass, and he taught your son rather to bray than to talk. You'll act
wisely by throwing into the fire that 'Life of St Catherine,' that
prayer for the cure of chilblains and that history of the bugbear,
with which that monk poisoned your son's mind. For the same price
you paid for Friar Ange's lessons, I'll give him my own; I'll teach
him Latin and Greek, and French also, that language which Voiture
and Balzac have brought to perfection. And in such way, by a luck
doubly singular and favourable, this Jacquot Tournebroche will
become learned and I shall eat every day,"

"Agreed!" said my father. "Barbara, bring two goblets. No business
is concluded without the contracting parties having a drink together
as a token of agreement. We will drink here. I'll never in my life
put my legs into the _Little Bacchus_ again, so repugnant have
that cutler and that monk become to me."

The priest rose and, putting his hands on the back of his chair,
said in a slow and serious manner:

"Before all, I thank God, the Creator and Conserver of all things,
for having guided me into this hospitable house. It is He alone who
governs us and we are compelled to recognise His providence in all
matters human, notwithstanding that it is foolhardy and sometimes
incongruous to follow Him too closely. Because being universal He is
to be found in all sorts of encounters, sublime by the conduct which
He keeps, but obscene or ridiculous for the part man takes in it and
which is the only part where they appear to us. And therefore one
must not shout, in the manner of Capuchin monks and goody-goody
women, that God is to be seen in every trifle. Let us praise the
Lord; pray to Him to enlighten me in the teachings I'll give to that
child, and for the rest let us rely on His holy will, without
searching to understand it in all its details."

And raising his goblet, he drank deeply.

"This wine," he said, "infilters into the economy of the human body
a sweet and salutary warmth. It is a liquor worthy to be sung at
Teos and at the Temple by the princes of bacchic poets, Anacreon and
Chaulieu. I will anoint with it the lips of my young disciple."

He held the goblet under my chin and exclaimed:

"Bees of the Academy, come, come and place yourselves in harmonious
swarms on the mouth of Jacobus Tournebroche, henceforth consecrated
to the Muses."

"Oh! Sir Priest," said my mother, "it is a truth that wine attracts
the bees, particularly sweet wine. But it is not to be wished that
those nefarious flies should place themselves on the mouth of my
Jacquot, as their sting is cruel. One day in biting into a peach a
bee stung me on the tongue, and I had to suffer fiendish pains. They
would be calmed only by a little earth, mixed up with spittle, which
Friar Ange put into my mouth in reciting the prayer of St Comis."

The priest gave her to understand that he spoke of bees in an
allegorical sense only. And my father said reproachfully: "Barbe,
you're a holy and worthy woman, but many a time I have noticed that
you have a peevish liking to throw yourself thoughtlessly into
serious conversation like a dog into a game of skittles."

"Maybe," replied my mother. "But had you followed my counsels
better, Leonard, you would have done better. I may not know all the
sorts of bees, but I know how to manage a home and understand the
good manners a man of a certain age ought to practise, who is the
father of a family and standard-bearer of his guild."

My father scratched his ear, and poured some wine for the priest,
who said with a sigh:

"Certainly, in our days, knowledge is not as much honoured in our
kingdom of France, as it had been by the Romans, although
degenerated at the time when rhetoric brought Eugenius to the
Emperor's throne. It is not a rarity in our century to find a clever
man in a garret without fire or candle. _Exemplum ut talpa_--I
am an example."

Thereafter he gave us a narration of his life, which I'll report
just as it came out of his own mouth--that is, as near it as the
weakness of my age allowed me to hear distinctly and hereafter keep
in my memory. I believe I have been able to restore it after the
confidences he gave me at a later time, when he honoured me with his
friendship.




CHAPTER III

The Story of the Abbe's Life


"As you see me," he said, "or rather as you do not see me, young,
slender, with ardent eyes and black hair, I was a teacher of liberal
arts at the College of Beauvais under Messrs Dugue, Guerin, Coffin
and Baffier. I had been ordained, and expected to make a big name in
letters. But a woman upset my hopes. Her name was Nicole Pigoreau
and she kept a bookseller's shop at the _Golden Bible_ on the
square near the college. I went there frequently to thumb the books
she received from Holland and also those bipontic editions
illustrated with notes, comments and commentaries of great
erudition. I was amiable and Mistress Pigoreau became aware of it,
which was my misfortune.

"She had been pretty, and still knew how to be pleasing. Her eyes
spoke. One day the Cicero, Livy, Plato and the Aristotle,
Thucydides, Polybius and Varro, the Epictetus, Seneca, Boethius and
Cassiodorus, the Homer, AEschylus. Sophocles, Euripides, Plautus and
Terence, the Diodorus of Sicily and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, St
John Chrysostom and St Basil, St Jerome and St Augustine, Erasmus,
Saumaise, Turnebe and Scaliger, St Thomas Aquinas, St Bonaventure,
Bossuet dragging Ferri with him, Lenain, Godefroy, Mezeray,
Maimbourg, Fabricius, Father Lelong and Father Pitou, all the poets,
all the historians, all the fathers, all the doctors, all the
theologians, all the humanists, all the compilers, assembled high
and low on the walls, became witnesses to our kisses.

"'I could not resist you,' she said to me; 'don't conceive a bad
opinion of me.'

"She expressed her love for me in singular raptures. Once she made
me try on neck and wrist bands of fine lace, and finding them suit
me well she insisted on my accepting them. I did not want to. But on
her becoming irritated by my refusal, which she considered an
offence against love, I finally consented to accept them, afraid to
offend her.

"My good fortune lasted till I was to be replaced by an officer. I
became spiteful over it, and in the ardour of avenging myself I
informed the College Regents that I did not go any longer to the
_Golden Bible_, for fear of seeing there expositions rather
offensive to the modesty of a young clerical. To say the truth, I
had not to congratulate myself on this contrivance. Madame Pigoreau,
becoming aware of my sayings, publicly accused me of having robbed
her of a set of lace neck and wrist bands. Her false complaint
reached the ears of the College Regents, who had my boxes searched;
therein was found the garment, a matter of considerable value. I was
expelled from college and had, like Hippolyte and Bellerophon, to
put up with the wiles and wickedness of woman.

"Finding myself in the streets with my few rags and my copybooks, I
ran great risk of starving, when, dressed in my clerical suit, I
recommended myself to a Huguenot gentleman, who employed me as
secretary and dictated to me libels on our religion."

"Ah!" exclaimed my father, "that was wrong of your reverence. An
honest man ought not to lend his hand to such abominations. And as
far as I am concerned, although ignorant, and of a working
condition, I cannot bear the smell of Colas' cow."

"You're quite right, my host," continued the priest. "It is the
worst point in my life. The very one I am most sorry for. But my man
was a Calvinist. He employed me to write against Lutherans and
Socinians only; these he could not stand at all, and, I assure you,
he compelled me to treat them worse than ever it was done at the
Sorbonne."

"Amen," said my father. "Lambs graze together while wolves devour
one the other."

The priest continued his narrative:

"Besides, I did not remain for long with that gentleman, who made
more fuss about the letters of Ulric von Hutten than of the
harangues of Demosthenes, and in whose house water was the only
drink. Afterwards I followed various callings, but all without
success. I became a pedlar, a strolling player, a monk, a valet, and
at last, by resuming my clerical garb, I became secretary to the
Bishop of Seez and edited the catalogue of the precious MSS.
contained in his library. This catalogue consists of two volumes in
folio, which were placed in his gallery, bound in red morocco, with
his crest on and the edges gilded. I venture to say it was a good
work.

"It would have depended on myself alone to get old and grey in
studies and peace with the right reverend prelate, but I became
enamoured of the waiting-maid of the bailiff's lady. Do not blame me
severely. Dark she was, buxom, vivacious, fresh. St Pacomus himself
would have loved her. One day she took a seat in the stage coach to
travel to Paris in quest of luck. I followed her. But I did not
succeed as well as she did. On her recommendation I entered the
service of Mistress de Saint Ernest, an opera dancer, who, aware of
my talents, ordered me to write after her dictation a lampoon on
Mademoiselle Davilliers, against whom she had some grievance. I was
a pretty good secretary, and well deserved the fifty crowns she had
promised me. The book was printed at Amsterdam by Marc-Michel Key,
with an allegoric frontispiece, and Mademoiselle Davilliers received
the first copy of it just when she went on the stage to sing the
great aria of Armida.

"Anger made her voice hoarse and shaky. She sang false and was
hooted. Her song ended, she ran as she was, in powder and hoop
petticoats, to the Intendant of the Privy Purse, who could not
refuse her anything. She fell on her knees before him, shed abundant
tears and shouted for vengeance. And soon it became known that the
blow was struck by Mistress de Saint Ernest.

"Questioned, hard pressed, sharply threatened, she denounced me as
the author, and I was put into the Bastille, where I remained four
years. There I found some consolation in reading Boethius and
Cassiodorus.

"Since then I have kept a public scrivener's stall at the Cemetery
of the Saints Innocent, and lend to servant girls in love a pen,
which should rather have described the illustrious men of Rome and
commented on the writings of the holy fathers. I earn two farthings
for every love letter, and it is a trade by which I rather die than
live. But I do not forget that Epictetus was a slave and Pyrrho a
gardener.

"Just now, unexpectedly, I have been paid a whole crown for an
anonymous letter. I have not had anything to eat for two days.
Therefore I at once looked out for a cook-shop. From outside in the
street I perceived your illuminated sign and the fire of your
chimney throwing joyful flaming lights on the windows. On your
threshold I smelt delicious odours. I came in, and now, my dear
host, you have the history of my life."

"I have become aware that it is the life of a good man," said my
father, "and with the exception of Colas' cow there is hardly
anything to complain of. Give me your hand! We are friends, what's
your name?"

"Jerome Coignard, doctor of divinity, master of arts."




CHAPTER IV

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


The marvellous in the affairs of mankind is the concatenation of
effects and causes. M. Jerome Coignard was quite right in saying:
"To consider that strange following of bounds and rebounds wherein
our destinies clash, one is obliged to recognise that God in His
perfection is in want neither of mind nor of imagination nor comic
force; on the contrary He excels in imbroglio as in everything else,
and if after having inspired Moses, David and the Prophets He had
thought it worth while to inspire M. le Sage or the interluders of a
fair, He would dictate to them the most entertaining harlequinade."
And in a similar way it occurred that I became a Latinist because
Friar Ange was taken by the watch and put into ecclesiastical
penance for having knocked down a cutler under the arbour of the
_Little Bacchus_. M. Jerome Coignard kept his promise. He gave
me lessons and, finding me tractable and intelligent, he took
pleasure in instructing me in the ancient languages.

In but a few years he made me a tolerably good Latinist.

In memory of him I have conceived a gratitude which will not come to
an end but with my life. The obligation I am under to him is easily
to be conceived when I say that he neglected nothing to shape my
heart and soul, together with my intellect. He recited to me the
"Maxims of Epictetus," the "Homilies of St Basil" and the
"Consolations of Boethius." By beautiful extracts he opened to me
the philosophy of the Stoics, but he did not make it appear in its
sublimity without showing its inferiority to Christian philosophy.
He was a subtle theologian and a good Catholic. His faith remained
whole on the ruins of his most beloved illusions, of his most
cherished hopes. His weaknesses, his errors, his faults, none of
which he ever tried to dissemble or to colour, have never shaken his
confidence in the Divine goodness. And to know him well, it must be
known that he took care of his eternal salvation on occasions when,
to all appearance, he cared the least about it. He imbued me with
the principles of an enlightened piety. He also endeavoured to
attach me to virtue as such, and to render it to me, so to say,
homely and familiar by examples drawn from the life of Zeno.

To make me acquainted with the dangers of vice, he went for
arguments to the nearest fountain-head, confessing to me that by
having loved wine and women too much, he had lost the honour of
taking the professor's chair of a college in long gown and square
cap.

To these rare merits he joined constancy and assiduity, and he gave
his lessons with an exactitude hardly to be expected of a man given
as he was to the freaks of a strolling life, and always carried away
by a luck less doctoral than picaresque. This zeal was the effect of
his kindness and also of his liking of that good St James's Street,
where he found occasion to satisfy equally the appetites of his body
and intellect. After having given me, during a succulent repast,
some profitable lesson, he indulged in a stroll to the _Little
Bacchus_ and the _Image of St Catherine_, finding in that
narrow piece of ground that which was his paradise--fresh wine and
books.

He became a constant visitor of M. Blaizot the bookseller, who
received him well, notwithstanding that he only used to thumb the
books without ever making the smallest purchase. And it was quite
marvellous to see my good teacher in the most remote part of the
shop, his nose closely buried in some little book recently arrived
from Holland, suddenly raising his head to discourse, as it might
happen, with the same abundant and laughing knowledge, on the plans
of an universal monarchy attributed to the late king, or, it may be,
to the _aventures galantes_ of a financier with a ballet girl.
M. Blaizot was never tired of listening to him. This M. Blaizot was
a little old man, dry and neat, in flea-coloured coat and breeches
and grey woollen stockings. I admired him very much, and could not
think of anything more glorious than, like him, to sell books at the
_Image of St Catherine_.

One recollection of mine gave to M. Blaizot's shop quite a
mysterious charm. It was there, I was still very young, I saw for
the first time the nude figure of a female. I can see her now. It
was an Eve in an illustrated Bible. Her stomach was rather big, her
legs were rather short, and she held converse with a serpent in a
Dutch landscape. The proprietor of this engraving inspired me with a
consideration which grew afterwards when I took, thanks to M.
Coignard, a great liking for books.

At the age of sixteen I knew Latin pretty well, and also a little
Greek. My good teacher said to my father:

"Do you not think, my dear host, that it is rather an indecency to
let a young Ciceronian go about dressed as a scullion?"

"I never thought of it," replied my father.

"It is true," said mother, "that it would be suitable to give our
son a dimity vest. He is of an agreeable appearance, has good
manners and is well taught. He will do honour to his dress."

For a moment my father remained thoughtful and then he asked if it
would be quite suitable for a cook to wear a dimity vest. But M.
Coignard reminded him that, being suckled by the Muses, I would
never become a cook, and that the time was not far off when I should
wear a clerical neckband.

My father sighed, thinking that never would I be the banner-bearer
of the Guild of Parisian Cooks, and my mother became quite
glittering with pleasure and pride at the idea of her son belonging
to the Church.

The first effect my dimity vest produced was to give me a certain
confidence in myself, and to encourage me to get a more complete
idea of women than the one I had from the Eve of M. Blaizot. I
reasonably thought first on Jeannette the hurdy-gurdy player, and on
Catherine the lacemaker, both of whom I saw pass our shop twenty
times a day, showing when it rained, a fine ankle and a tiny foot,
the toes of which turned from one stone to the other. Jeannette was
not so pretty as Catherine. She was somewhat older and less well
dressed. She came from Savoy and did her hair _en marmotte_,
with a checked kerchief covering her head. But her merit was, not to
stick to ceremony and to understand what was wanted of her without
being spoken to. This character agreed well with my timidity. One
evening under the porch of St Benoit le Betourne, where there are
stone seats all round, she taught me what till then I had not known,
but which she had known for a long time.

But I was not so grateful to her as it should have been my duty to
be, and thought of nothing else but to bring the science she had
taught me to others, prettier ones. As an excuse for my ingratitude
I ought to say that Jeannette the hurdy-gurdy player did not value
her lessons any higher than I did myself, and that she willingly
gave them to every ragamuffin of the district.

Catherine was of more reserved manners. I stood in awe of her and
did not dare to tell her how pretty I considered her to be. She made
me doubly uncomfortable by making game of me and not losing a single
occasion of jeering at me. She teased me by reproaching my chin for
being hairless. I blushed over it and wished to be swallowed by the
earth. On seeing her I affected a sullen mien and chagrin. I
pretended to scorn her. But she was really too pretty for my scorn
to be true.




CHAPTER V

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


On that night, the night of Epiphany and the nineteenth anniversary
of my birth, the sky poured down with the melting snow a cold ill-
humour, penetrating to the bone, while an icy wind made the
signboard of the _Queen Pedauque_ grate, a clear fire, perfumed
by goose grease, sparkled in the shop and the soup steamed in the
tureen on the table; round which M. Jerome Coignard, my father and
myself were seated. My mother, as was her habit, stood behind her
husband's chair, ready to serve him. He had already filled the
priest's dish when, through the suddenly open door, we saw Friar
Ange, very pale, the nose red, the beard soaked. In his surprise my
father elevated the soup ladle up to the smoked beams of the
ceiling.

My father's surprise was easily explained. Friar Ange, after his
fight with the cutler, had at first disappeared for a lapse of six
months, and now two whole years had passed without his giving any
sign of life. On a certain day in spring he went off with a donkey
laden with relics, and, worse still, he had taken with him Catherine
dressed as a nun. Nobody knew what had become of them, but there was
a rumour at the _Little Bacchus_ that the little friar and the
little sister had had some sort of difference with the authorities
between Tours and Orleans. Without forgetting that one of the vicars
of St Benoit shouted everywhere, and like one possessed, that that
rascal of a Capuchin had stolen his donkey.

"What," exclaimed my father, "this rogue does not lie in a dungeon?
There is then no more justice in this kingdom."

But Friar Ange recited the _Benedicite_ and made the sign of
the cross over the soup-tureen.

"Hola!" continued my father. "Peace to all cant, my beautiful monk!
Confess that you have passed in an ecclesiastical prison at least
one of the two years that your Beelzebub-face has not been seen in
our parish. James Street has been more honest for your absence and
the whole quarter of the town more respectable. Look on that fine
Olibrius, who goes into the fields with the donkey of someone and
the girl of everyone."

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species
Terry Sanderson: From bookshops to art galleries, free expression is being stymied by the aggressive tactics of Christian campaign group

Joe the Plumber becomes Joe the Writer after signing book deal
Obituary: Co-founder of the British Book Awards

What were your favourite books before you could read?
American values set to be the subject of book by man who challenged Barack Obama's tax proposals