The Queen Pedauque by Anatole France

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"I consider myself to be over them," said M. d'Asterac quietly, "as
this library is a great deal more precious than all those you have
named. The King's Library is but an old bookshop in comparison with
mine--that is, if you do not consider the number of books only and
the quantity of blackened paper. Gabriel Naude and your Abbe Bignon,
both librarians of fame, are, compared to me, indolent shepherds of
a vile herd of sheep-like books. I concede that the Benedictines are
diligent, but they have no high spirit and their libraries reveal
the mediocrity of the souls by whom they have been collected. My
gallery, sir, is not on the pattern of others. The works I have got
together form a whole which doubtless will procure me knowledge. My
library is gnostic, oecumenic and spiritual. If all the lines traced
on those numberless sheets of paper and parchment could enter in
good order into your brain, you, sir, would know all, could do all,
would be the master of Nature, the plasmator of things, you would
hold the whole world between the two fingers of your hand as I now
hold these grains of tobacco."

With these words he offered his snuff-box to my tutor.

"You are very polite," said M. Jerome Coignard.

Letting his transported looks wander over the learned walls he
continued:

"Between these third and fourth windows are shelves bearing an
illustrious burden. There is the meeting place of Oriental MSS., who
seem to converse together. I see ten or twelve venerable ones under
shreds of purple and gold figured silks, their vestments. Like a
Byzantine emperor, some of them wear jewelled clasps on their
mantles, others are mailed in ivory plates."

"They are the writings of Jewish, Arabian and Persian cabalists,"
said M. d'Asterac. "You have just opened 'The Powerful Hand.' Close
to it you'll find 'The Open Table,' 'The Faithful Shepherd,' 'The
Fragments of the Temple' and 'The Light of Darkness.' One place is
empty, that of 'Slow Waters,' a precious treatise, which Mosaide
studies at present. Mosaide, as I have already said to you,
gentlemen, is in my house, occupied with the discovery of the
deepest secrets contained in the scriptures of the Hebrews, and,
over a century old as he is, the rabbi consents not to die, before
penetrating into the sense of all cabalistic symbols. I owe him much
gratitude, and beg of you gentlemen, when you see him, to show him
the same regard as I do myself.

"But let us pass that over and come to what is your special concern.
I thought of you, reverend sir, to transcribe and put into Latin
some Greek MSS. of inestimable value. I confide in your knowledge
and in your zeal, and have no doubt that your young disciple cannot
but be of great help to you."

And addressing me specially he said:

"Yes, my son, I lay great hopes on you. They are based for a large
part on the education you have received. For, you have been brought
up, so to say, in the flames, under the mantel of the chimney
haunted by Salamanders. That is a very considerable circumstance."

Without interrupting his speech, he took up an armful of MSS. and
deposited them on the table.

"This," he said, showing a roll of papyrus, "comes from Egypt. It is
a book of Zosimus the Panopolitan, which was thought to be lost and
which I found myself in a coffin of a priest of Serapis.

"And what you see here," he added, showing us some straps of glossy
and fibrous leaves on which Greek letters traced with a brush were
hardly visible, "are unheard-of revelations, due, one to Gophar the
Persian, the other to John, the arch-priest of Saint Evagia.

"I should be very glad if you would occupy yourselves with these
works before any others. Afterwards we will study together the MSS.
of Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemy, of Olympiodorus and Stephanus, which
I discovered at Ravenna, in a vault where they have been locked up
since the reign of that ignoramus Theodosius who has been surnamed
the Great."

As soon as M. d'Asterac was gone, my tutor sat down over the papyrus
of Zosimus and, with the help of a magnifying glass commenced to
decipher it. I asked him if he was not surprised by what he had just
heard.

Without raising his head he replied:

"My dear boy, I have known too many kinds of persons and traversed
fortunes too various to be surprised at anything. This gentleman
seems to be demented, less because he really is so, but from his
thoughts differing in excess from those of the vulgar. But if one
listened to discourses commonly held in this world, there would be
found still less sense than in those of that philosopher. Left to
itself, the sublimest human reason builds its castles and temples in
the air and, truly, M. d'Asterac is a pretty good gatherer of
clouds. Truth is in God alone, never forget it, my boy. But this is
really the book 'Jmoreth' written by Zosimus the Panopolitan for his
sister Theosebia. What a glory and what a delight to read this
unique MS. rediscovered by a kind of prodigy! I'll give it my days
and night watches. How I pity, my boy, the ignorant fellows whom
idleness drives into debauchery! What a miserable life they lead!
What is a woman in comparison with an Alexandrian papyrus? Compare,
if you please, this noble library with the tavern of the _Little
Bacchus_ and the entertainment of this precious MS. with the
caresses given to a wench under the bower; and tell me, my boy,
where true contentment is to be found. For me, a companion of the
Muses, and admitted to the silent orgies of meditation of which the
rhetor of Madama speaks with so much eloquence, I thank God for
having made me a respectable man."

CHAPTER IX

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

During all the next month or six weeks, M. Coignard applied himself,
day and night, just as he had promised, to the reading of Zosimus
the Panopolitan. During the meals we partook of at the table of M.
d'Asterac the conversation turned on the opinions of the gnostics
and on the knowledge of the ancient Egyptians. Being only an
ignorant scholar I was of little use to my good master. I did my
best by making such researches as he wanted me to make; I took no
little pleasure in it. Truly, we lived happily and quietly. At about
the seventh week, M. d'Asterac gave me leave to go and see my
parents at their cookshop. The shop appeared strangely smaller to
me. My mother was there alone and sad. She cried aloud on seeing me
fitted out like a prince.

"My Jacques," she said, "I am very happy!"

And she began to cry. We embraced, then wiping her eyes with a
corner of her canvas apron she said:

"Your father is at the _Little Bacchus_. Since you left he
often goes there; in your absence the house is less pleasant for
him. He'll be glad to see you again. But say, my Jacques, are you
satisfied with your new position? I regretted letting you go with
that nobleman; I even accused myself in confession to the third
vicar of giving preference to your bodily well-being over that of
your soul and not having thought of God in establishing you. The
third vicar reproved me kindly over it, and exhorted me to follow
the example of the pious women in the Scriptures, of whom he named
several to me; but there are names there that I'll never be able to
remember. He did not explain his meaning minutely as it was a
Saturday evening and the church was full of penitents."

I reassured my good mother as well as I could and told her that M.
d'Asterac made me work in Greek, which was the language in which the
New Testament was written; this pleased her, but she remained
pensive.

"You'll never guess, my dear Jacquot," she said, "who spoke to me of
M. d'Asterac. It was Cadette Saint-Avit, the serving-woman of the
Rector of St Benoit. She comes from Gascony, and is a native of a
village called Laroque-Timbaut, quite near Saint Eulalie, of which
M. d'Asterac is the lord. You know that Cadette Saint-Avit is
elderly, as the waiting-woman of a rector ought to be. In her youth
she knew, in her country, the three Messieurs d'Asterac, one of whom
was captain of a man-of-war and has since been drowned. He was the
youngest. The second was colonel of a regiment, went to war and was
killed. The eldest, Hercules d'Asterac, is the sole survivor of the
three brothers. It is the same one in whose service you are for your
good, at least I hope so. He dressed magnificently in his youth, was
liberal in his manners but of a sombre humour. He kept aloof from
all public business and was not anxious to go into the king's
service, as his two brothers had done and found in it an honourable
end. He was accustomed to say that it was no glory to carry a sword
at one's side, that he did not know of a more ignoble thing than the
calling of arms, and that a village scavenger was, in his opinion,
high over a brigadier or a marshal of France. Those were his
sayings. I confess it does not seem to me either bad or malicious,
rather daring and whimsical. But in some way they must be blameable,
as Cadette Saint-Avit said that the rector of her parish considered
them to be contrary to the order established by God in this world
and opposed to that part of the Bible where God is given a name
which means Lord of Hosts, and that would be a great sin.

"This M. Hercules had so little sympathy with the court that he
refused to travel to Versailles to be presented to his Majesty
according to his birthright. He said, 'The king does not come to me
and I do not go to him,' and anyone of sense, my Jacquot, can
understand that such is not a natural saying."

My good mother looked inquiringly and anxiously at me and went on:

"What more I have to inform you about, my dear Jacquot, is still
less believable. However, Cadette Saint-Avit spoke of it as of a
certainty. And so I will tell you that M. Hercules d'Asterac, when
he lived on his estate, had no other care but to bottle the rays of
the sun. Cadette Saint-Avit does not know how he managed it, but she
is sure that after a time, in the flagons well corked and heated in
water baths, tiny little women took form, charming figures and
dressed like theatre princesses. You laugh, Jacquot; however, one
ought not to joke over such things when one can see the consequence.
It is a great sin to create in such a way creatures who cannot be
baptised and who never could have a part in the eternal blessings.
You cannot suppose that M. d'Asterac carried those grotesque figures
to a priest in their bottles to hold them over the christening font.
No godmother could have been found for them."

"But, my dear mamma," I replied, "the dolls of M. d'Asterac were not
in want of christening, they had no participation in original sin."

"I never thought of that," said my mother. "And Cadette Saint-Avit
herself did not mention it, although she was the servant of a
rector. Unhappily she left Gascony when quite young, came to France
and had no more news of M. d'Asterac, of his bottles and his
puppets. I sincerely hope, my dear Jacquot, that he renounced his
wicked works, which could not be accomplished without the help of
the devil."

I asked:

"Tell me, my dear mother, did Cadette Saint-Avit, the rector's
servant, see the bodies in the bottles with her own eyes?"

"No, my dear child; M. d'Asterac kept his dolls very secret and did
not show them to anybody. But she heard of them from a churchman of
the name of Fulgence, who haunted the castle, and swore he had seen
those little creatures step out of their glass prisons and dance a
minuet. And she had every reason to believe it. It is possible to
doubt of what one sees, but you cannot doubt the word of an honest
man, especially when he belongs to the Church. There is another
misfortune with such secret practices, they are extremely costly and
it is hard to imagine, as Cadette Saint-Avit said, what money M.
Hercules spent to procure all those bottles of different forms,
those furnaces and conjuring books wherewith he filled his castle.
But after the death of his brothers he became the richest gentleman
of his province, and while he dissipated his wealth in follies, his
good lands worked for him. Cadette Saint-Avit rates him, with all
his expenses, as still a very rich man."

These last words spoken, my father entered the shop. He embraced me
tenderly and confided to me that the house had lost half its
pleasantness in consequence of my departure and that of M. Jerome
Coignard, who was honest and jovial. He complimented me on my dress
and gave me a lesson in deportment, assuring me that trade had
accustomed him to easy manners by the continuous obligation he was
under to greet his customers like gentlemen, if as a fact they were
only vile riff-raff. He gave me, as a precept, to round off the
elbows and to turn my toes outward and counselled me, beyond this,
to go and see Leandre at the fair of Saint Germain and to adjust
myself exactly on him.

We dined together with a good appetite, and we parted shedding
floods of tears. I loved them well, both of them, and what
principally made me cry was that, after an absence of six weeks
only, they had already become somewhat strange to me. And I verily
believe that their sadness was caused by the same sentiment.

CHAPTER 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.

When I came out of the cookshop, the night was black. At the corner
of the Rue des Ecrivains I heard a fat and deep voice singing:

"Si ton honneur elle est perdue
La bell', c'est tu l'as bien voulu."

And soon I could see on the other side, whence the voice sounded,
Friar Ange, with wallet dangling on his shoulder, holding Catherine
the lacemaker round the waist, walking in the shadow with a wavering
and triumphal step, spouting the gutter water under his sandals in a
magnificent spirit of mire which seemed to celebrate his drunken
glory, as the basins of Versailles make their fountains play in
honour of the king. I put myself out of the way against the post in
the corner of a house door, so as not to be seen by them, which was
a needless precaution as they were too much occupied with one
another. With her head lying on the monk's shoulder, Catherine
laughed. A moonray trembled on her moist lips and in her eyes, like
the water sparkles in a fountain; and I went my way, with my soul
irritated and my heart oppressed, thinking on the provoking waist of
that fine girl pressed by the arm of a dirty Capuchin.

"Is it possible," I said to myself, "that such a pretty thing could
be in such ugly hands? And if Catherine despises me need she render
her despisal more cruel by the liking she has for that naughty Friar
Ange?"

This preference appeared singular to me and I conceived as much
surprise as disgust at it. But I was not the disciple of M. Jerome
Coignard for nothing. This incomparable teacher had formed my mind
to meditate. I recalled to myself the satyrs one can see in gardens
carrying off nymphs, and reflected that if Catherine was made like a
nymph, those satyrs, at least as they are represented to us, are as
horrible as yonder Capuchin. And I concluded that I ought not to be
so very much astonished by what I had just seen. My vexation,
however, was not dissipated by my reason, doubtless because it had
not its source there. These meditations got me along through the
shadows of the night and the mud of the thaw to the road of Saint
Germain, where I met M. Jerome Coignard, who was returning home to
the Cross of the Sablons after having supped in town.

"My boy," he said, "I have conversed of Zosimus and the gnostics at
the table of a very learned ecclesiastic, quite another Peiresc. The
wine was coarse and the fare but middling, but nectar and ambrosia
floated through the discourse."

Then my dear tutor spoke of the Panopolitan with an inconceivable
eloquence. Alas! I listened badly, thinking of that drop of
moonlight which had this very night fallen on the lips of Catherine
the lacemaker.

At last he came to a stop and I asked on what foundation the Greeks
had established the liking of the nymphs for satyrs. My teacher was
so widely learned that he was always ready to reply to all
questions. He told me:

"That liking is based on a natural sympathy. It is lively but not so
ardent as the liking of the satyrs for the nymphs, with which it
corresponds. The poets have observed this distinction very well.
Concerning it I'll narrate you a singular adventure I have read in a
MS. belonging to the library of the Bishop of Seez. It was (I still
have it before my eyes) a collection in folio, written in a good
hand of last century. This is the singular fact reported in it. A
Norman gentleman and his wife took part in a public entertainment,
disguised, he as a satyr, she as a nymph. By Ovid it is known with
what ardour the satyrs pursue the nymphs; that gentleman had read
the 'Metamorphoses.' He entered so well into the spirit of his
disguise that nine months after, his wife presented him with a baby
whose forehead was horned and whose feet were those of a buck. It is
not known what became of the father beyond that he had the common
end of all creatures, to wit, that he died, and that beside that
capriped he left another younger child, a Christian one and of human
form. This younger son went to law claiming that his brother should
not get a part of the deceased father's inheritance for the reason
that he did not belong to the species redeemed by the blood of Jesus
Christ. The Parliament of Normandy, sitting at Rouen, gave a verdict
in his favour, which was duly recorded."

I asked my teacher if it was possible that a disguise could have
such an effect on nature and if the shape of the child could follow
that of a garment. M. Jerome Coignard advised me not to believe it.

"Jacques Tournebroche, my son," he said, "remember always that a
good mind repels all that is contrary to reason, except in matters
of faith, wherein it is convenient to believe implicitly. Thank God!
I have never erred about the dogmas of our very holy religion, and I
trust to find myself in the same disposition in the article of
death."

Conversing in this manner we arrived at the castle. The roof seemed
in a red glow in the dark. Out of one in dark shadows. We heard the
roaring of the fire, like fiery rain under the dense smoke wherewith
the sky was veiled. We both believed the flames to be devouring the
building. My good tutor tore his hair and moaned:

"My Zosimus, my papyrus, my Greek MSS.! Help! Help! my Zosimus!"

Running up the great lane over puddles of water reflecting the glare
of the fire, we crossed the park buried in dark shadows. We heard
the roaring of the fire, which filled the sombre staircase. Two at a
time we ran up the steps, stopping now and again to listen whence
came that appalling noise.

It appeared to us to come from a corridor on the third floor where
we had never been. In that direction we fumbled our way, and seeing
through the slits of a door the red brightness, we knocked with all
our might on the panel. It opened at once.

M. d'Asterac, who opened the door, stood quietly before us. His long
black figure seemed to be enveloped in flaming air. He asked quietly
on what pressing business we were looking for him at so late an
hour. There was no conflagration but a terrible fire, burning in a
big furnace with reflectors, which as I have since learned are
called athanors. The whole of the rather large room was full of
glass bottles with long necks twined round glass tubes of a duck-
beak shape, retorts, resembling chubby cheeks out of which came
noses like trumpets, crucibles, cupels, matrasses, cucurbits and
vases of all forms.

My dear old tutor wiping his face shining like live coals said:

"Oh, sir, we were afraid that the castle was alight like straw.
Thank God, the library is not burning. But are you practising the
spagyric art, sir?"

"I do not want to conceal from you," said M. d'Asterac, "that I have
made great progress in it, but withal I have not found the theorem
capable of rendering my work perfect. At the moment you knocked at
the door I was picking up the Spirit of the World, and the Flower of
Heaven, which are the veritable Fountains of Youth. Have you some
understanding of alchemy, Monsieur Coignard?"

The abbe replied that he had got some notions of it from certain
books, but that he considered the practice of it to be pernicious
and contrary to religion. M. d'Asterac smiled and said:

"You are too knowing a man, M. Coignard, not to be acquainted with
the Flying Eagle, the Bird of Hermes, the Fowl of Hermogenes, the
Head of a Raven, the Green Lion and the Phoenix."

"I have been told," said my good master, "that by these names are
distinguished the philosopher's stone in its different states. But I
have doubts about the possibility of a transmutation of metals."

With the greatest confidence M. d'Asterac replied:

"Nothing is easier, my dear sir, than to bring your uncertainty to
an end."

He opened an old rickety chest standing in the wall and took out of
it a copper coin, bearing the effigy of the late king, and called
our attention to a round stain crossing the coin from side to side.

"That," he said, "is the effect of the stone, which has transmuted
the copper into silver, but that's only a trifle."

He went back to the chest and took out of it a sapphire the size of
an egg, an opal of marvellous dimensions and a handful of perfect
fine emeralds.

"Here are some of my doings," he said, "which are proof enough that
the spagyric art is not the dream of an empty brain."

At the bottom of the small wooden bowl lay five or six little
diamonds, of which M. d'Asterac made no mention. My tutor asked him
if they also were of his make, and, the alchemist having
acknowledged it:

"Sir," said the abbe, "I should counsel you to show the curious
those diamonds prior to the other stones by way of caution. If you
let them look first at the sapphire, opal and the emeralds, you run
the risk of a persecution for sorcery, because everyone will say
that the devil alone was capable of producing such stones. Just as
the devil alone could lead an easy life in the midst of these
furnaces, where one has to breathe flames. As far as I am concerned,
having stayed a single quarter of an hour, I am already half baked."

Letting us out, with a friendly smile M. d'Asterac spoke as follows:

"Well knowing what to think of the devil and the Other, I willingly
consent to speak of them with persons who believe in them. The devil
and the Other are, as it were, characters; one may speak of them
just as of Achilles and Thersites. Be assured, gentlemen, if the
devil is like what he is said to be, he does not live in so subtle
an element as fire. It is wholly wrong to place so villainous a
beast in the sun. But as I had the honour to say, Master
Tournebroche, to the Capuchin so dear to your mother, I reckon that
the Christians slander Satan and his demons. That in some unknown
world there may exist beings still worse than man is possible, but
hardly conceivable. Certainly, if such exist, they inhabit regions
deprived of light, and if they are burning, it would be in ice,
which, as a fact, causes the same smarting pain, and not in
illustrious flames among the fiery daughters of the stars. They
suffer because they are wicked, and wickedness is an evil; but they
can only suffer from chilblains. With regard to your Satan,
gentlemen, who is a horror for your theologians, I do not consider
him to be despicable, if I judge him by all you say of him, and,
should he peradventure exist, I would think him to be, not a nasty
beast, but a little Sylph, or at least a Gnome, and a metallurgist a
trifle mocking but very intelligent."

My tutor stopped his ears with his fingers and took to flight so as
not to hear anything more.

"What impiety, Tournebroche, my boy," he exclaimed, when we reached
the staircase. "What blasphemies! Have you felt all the odium in the
maxims of that philosopher? He pushes atheism to a joyous frenzy,
which makes me wonder. But this indeed renders him almost innocent,
for being apart from all belief, he cannot tear up the Holy Church
like those who remain attached to her by some half-severed, still
bleeding limb. Such, my son, are the Lutherans and the Calvinists,
who mortify the Church till a separation occurs. On the contrary,
atheists damn themselves alone, and one may dine with them without
committing a sin. That's to say, that we need not have any scruple
about living with M. d'Asterac, who believes neither in God nor
devil. But did you see, Tournebroche, my boy, the handful of little
diamonds at the bottom of the wooden bowl?--the number of which
apparently he did not know, and which seemed to be of pure water. I
have my doubts about the opal and the sapphires, but those diamonds
looked genuine." When we reached our chambers we wished each other a
very good-night.

CHAPTER XI

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

Up till springtime my tutor and myself led a regular and secluded
life. All the mornings we were at work shut up in the gallery, and
came back here after dinner as if to the theatre. Not as M. Jerome
Coignard used to say, to give ourselves in the manner of gentlemen
and valets a paltry spectacle, but to listen to the sublime, if
contradictory, dialogues of the ancient authors.

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