The Queen Pedauque by Anatole France

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In this way the reading and translating of the Panopolitan advanced
quickly. I hardly contributed to it. Such kind of work was above my
knowledge and I had enough to do to learn the figure that the Greek
letters make on papyrus. Sometimes I assisted my tutor by consulting
the authors who could enlighten him in his researches, and foremost
Olympiodorus and Plotinus, with whom since then I have remained
familiar. The small services I was able to render him increased
considerably my self-esteem.

After a long sharp winter I was on the way to become a learned
person, when the spring broke in suddenly with her gallant equipage
of light, tender green and singing birds; the perfume of the lilacs
coming into the library windows caused me vague reveries, out of
which my tutor called me by saying:

"Jacquot Tournebroche, please climb up that ladder and tell me if
that rascal Manethon does not mention a god Imhotep, who by his
contradictions tortures one like a devil."

And my good master filled his nose with tobacco and looked quite
content.

On another occasion he said:

"My boy, it is remarkable how great an influence our garments have
on our moral state. Since my neckband has become spotted with
different sauces I have dropped upon it I feel a less honest man.
Now that you are dressed like a marquis, Tournebroche, does not the
desire tickle you to assist at the toilet of an opera girl, and to
put a roll of spurious gold pieces on a faro-table--in one word, do
you not feel yourself to be a man of quality? Do not take what I say
amiss, and remember that it is sufficient to give a coward a busby
to make him hasten to become a soldier and be knocked on the head in
the king's service. Tournebroche, our sentiments are composed of a
thousand things we cannot detect for their smallness, and the
destiny of our immortal soul depends sometimes on a puff too light
to bend a blade of grass. We are the toy of the winds. But pass me,
if you please, 'The Rudiments of Vossius,' the red edges of which I
see stand out under your left arm."

On this same day, after dinner at three o'clock, M. d'Asterac led
us, my teacher and myself, to walk in the park. He conducted us to
the west, where Rueil and Mont Valerien are visible. It was the
deepest and most desolate part. Ivy and grass, cropped by the
rabbits, covered the paths, now and then obstructed by large trunks
of dead trees. The marble statues on both sides of the way smiled,
unconscious of their ruin. A nymph, with her broken hand near her
mouth, made a sign to a shepherd to remain silent. A young faun, his
head fallen to the ground, still tried to put his flute to his lips.
And all these divine beings seemed to teach us to despise the
injuries inflicted by time and fortune. We followed the banks of a
canal where the rainwater nourished the tree frogs. Round a circus
rose sloping basins where pigeons went to drink. Arrived there we
went by a narrow pathway driven through a coppice.

"Walk with care," said M. d'Asterac. "This pathway is somewhat
dangerous, as it is lined by mandrakes which at night-time sing at
the foot of the trees. They hide in the earth. Take care not to put
your feet on them; you will get love sickness or thirst after
wealth, and would be lost, because the passions inspired by
mandrakes are unhappy."

I asked how it was possible to avoid the invisible danger. M.
d'Asterac replied that one could escape it by means of intuitive
divination, and in no other way.

"Besides," he added, "this pathway is fatal."

It went on in a direct line to a brick pavilion, hidden under ivy,
which no doubt had served in time gone by as a guard house. There
the park came to an end close to the monotonous marshes of the
Seine.

"You see this pavilion," said M. d'Asterac; "in it lives the most
learned of men. Therein Mosaide, one hundred and twenty years old,
penetrates, with majestic self-will, the mysteries of nature. He has
left Imbonatus and Bartoloni far behind. I wanted to honour myself,
gentlemen, by keeping under my roof the greatest cabalist since
Enoch, son of Cain. Religious scruples have prevented Mosaide taking
his place at my table, which he supposes to be a Christian's, by
which he does me too much honour. You cannot conceive the violence
of hate, of this sage, of everything Christian. I had the greatest
difficulty to make him dwell in the pavilion, where he lives alone
with his niece, Jahel. Gentlemen, you shall not wait longer before
becoming acquainted with Mosaide and I will at once present both of
you to this divine man."

And having thus spoken, M. d'Asterac pushed us inside the pavilion,
where between MSS. strewn all round was seated in a large arm-chair
an old man with piercing eyes, a hooked nose, and a couple of thin
streams of white beard growing from a receding chin; a velvet cap,
formed like an imperial crown, covered his bald skull, and his body,
of an inhuman emaciation, was wrapped up in an old gown of yellow
silk, resplendent but dirty.

Right piercing looks were turned on us, but he gave no sign that he
noticed our arrival. His face had an expression of painful
stubbornness, and he slowly rolled between his rigid fingers the
reed which served him for writing.

"Do not expect idle words from Mosaide," said M. d'Asterac to us.
"For a long time this sage does not communicate with anyone but the
genii and myself. His discourses are sublime. As he will never
converse with you, gentlemen, I'll endeavour to give you in a few
words an idea of his merits. First he has penetrated into the
spiritual sense of the books of Moses, after that into the value of
the Hebrew characters, which depends on the order of the letters of
the alphabet. This order has been thrown into confusion from the
eleventh letter forward. Mosaide has re-established it, which
Atrabis, Philo, Avicenne, Raymond Lully, P. de la Mirandola,
Reuchlin, Henry More and Robert Flydd have been unable to do.
Mosaide knows the number of the gold which corresponds to Jehovah in
the world of spirits, and you must agree, gentlemen, that that is of
infinite consequence."

My dear tutor took his snuff-box in hand, presented it civilly to
us, took a pinch himself and said:

"Do you not believe, M. d'Asterac, that this sort of knowledge is
the very kind to bring one to the devil at the end of this transient
life?

"After all, this sire Mosaide plainly errs in his interpretation of
the Holy Scriptures. When our Lord expired on the cross for the
salvation of mankind the synagogue felt a bandage slip over her
eyes, she staggered like a drunken woman and the crown fell from her
head. Since then the interpretation of the Old Testament is confined
to the Catholic Church, to which in spite of my many iniquities I
belong."

At these words Mosaide, like a goat god, smiled in a hideous manner,
and said to my dear tutor, in a slow and musty voice sounding as
from far away:

"The Masorah has not confided to thee her secrets and the Mischna
has not revealed to thee her mysteries."

"Mosaide," continued M. d'Asterac, "not only interprets the books of
Moses but also that of Enoch, which is much more important, and
which has been rejected by the Christians, who were unable to
understand it; like the cock of the Arabian fable, who disdained the
pearl fallen in his grain. That book of Enoch, M. Abbe Coignard, is
the more precious because therein are to be seen the first talks the
daughters of man had with the Sylphs. You must understand that those
angels which as Enoch shows us had love connection with women were
Sylphs and Salamanders."

"I will so understand, sir," replied my good master, "not wishing to
gainsay you. But from what has been conserved of the book of Enoch,
which is clearly apocryphal, I suspect those angels to have been not
Sylphs but simply Phoenician merchants."

"And on what do you found," asked M. d'Asterac, "so singular an
opinion?"

"I found it, sir, on what is said in that very book that the angels
taught the women how to use bracelets and necklaces, to paint the
eyebrows and to employ all sorts of dyes. It is further said in the
same book, that the angels taught the daughters of men the peculiar
qualities of roots and trees, enchantments, and the art of observing
the stars. Truly, sir, have not those angels the appearance of
Syrians or Sidonians gone ashore on some half-deserted coast and
unpacking in the shadow of rocks their trumpery wares to tempt the
girls of the savage tribes? These traffickers gave them copper
necklaces, armlets and medicines in exchange for amber, frankincense
and furs. And they astonished these beautiful but ignorant creatures
by speaking to them of the stars with a knowledge acquired by
seafaring. That's clear, I think, and I should like to know in what
M. Mosaide could contradict me."

Mosaide kept mute and M. d'Asterac, smiling again, said:

"M. Coignard, you do not reason so badly, ignorant as you still are
of gnosticism and the Cabala. And what you say makes me think that
there may have been some metallurgistic and gold-working Gnomes
among the Sylphs who joined themselves in love with the daughters of
men. The Gnomes, and that is a fact, occupied themselves willingly
with the goldsmith's art, and it is probable that those ingenious
demons forged the bracelets you believe to have been of Phoenician
manufacture.

"But I warn you, you'll be at some disadvantage, sir, to compete
with Mosaide in the knowledge of human antiquities. He has
rediscovered monuments which were believed to have been lost; among
others, the column of Seth and the oracles of Sambethe the daughter
of Noah and the most ancient of the sybils."

"Oh!" exclaimed my tutor as he stamped on the powdery floor so that
a cloud of dust whirled up. "Oh! what dreams! It is too much, you
make fun of me! And M. Mosaide cannot have so much foolery in his
head, under his large bonnet, resembling the crown of Charlemagne;
that column of Seth is a ridiculous invention of that shallow
Flavius Josephus, an absurd story by which nobody has been imposed
upon before you. And the predictions of Sambethe, Noah's daughter, I
am really curious to know them; and M. Mosaide, who seems to be
pretty sparing of his words, would oblige by uttering a few by words
of mouth, because it is not possible for him, I am quite pleased to
recognise it, to pronounce them by the more secret voice in which
the ancient sybils habitually gave their mysterious responses."

Mosaide, who seemed to hear nothing, said suddenly:

"Noah's daughter has spoken; Sambethe has said: 'The vain man who
laughs and mocks will not hear the voice which goes forth from the
seventh tabernacle, the infidel walketh miserably to his ruin.'"

After this oracular pronouncement all three of us took leave of
Mosaide.

CHAPTER XII

I take a Walk and visit Mademoiselle Catherine

In that year the summer was radiant, and I had a longing to go
walking. One day, strolling under the trees of the Cours-la-Reine
with two little crowns I had found that very morning in the pocket
of my breeches, and which were the first by which my goldmaker had
shown his munificence, I sat down at the door of a small coffee-
house, at a table so small that it was quite appropriate to my
solitude and modesty. Then I began to think of the oddness of my
destiny, while at my side some musketeers were drinking Spanish wine
with girls of the town. I was not quite sure that Croix-des-Sablons,
M. d'Asterac, Mosaide, the papyrus of Zosimus and my fine clothes
were not dreams, out of which I should wake to find myself clad in
the dimity vest, back again turning the spit at the _Queen
Pedauque_.

I came out of my reverie on feeling my sleeve pulled, and saw
standing before me Friar Ange, his face nearly hidden by his beard
and cowl.

"Monsieur Jacques Menetrier," he said in a very low voice, "a lady,
who wishes you well, expects you in her carriage on the highway,
between the river and the Porte de la Conference."

My heart began to beat violently. Afraid and charmed by this
adventure, I went at once to the place indicated by the Capuchin,
but at a quiet pace, which seemed to me to be more becoming. Arrived
at the embankment I saw a carriage and a tiny hand on the door.

This door was opened at my coming, and very much surprised I was to
find inside the coach Mam'selle Catherine, dressed in pink satin,
her head covered with a hood of black lace, underneath which her
fair hair seemed to sport.

Confused I remained standing on the step.

"Come in," she said, "and sit down near me. Shut the door if you
please; you must not be seen. Just now in passing on the Cours I saw
you sitting at the cafe. Immediately I had you fetched by the good
friar, whom I had attached to me for the Lenten exercises, and whom
I have kept since, because, in whatever position one may be, it is
necessary to have piety. You looked very well, M. Jacques, sitting
before your little table, your sword across your thighs and with the
sad look of a man of quality. I have always been friendly disposed
towards you and I am not of that kind of women who in their
prosperity disregard their former friends."

"Eh! What? Mam'selle Catherine," I exclaimed, "this coach, these
lackeys, this satin dress----"

"They are the outcome," she replied, "of the kindness of M. de la
Gueritude, who is of the best set and one of the richest financiers.
He has lent money to the king. He is an excellent friend whom, for
all the world, I should not wish to offend. But he is not as amiable
as you, M. Jacques. He has also given me a little house at Grenelle,
which I will show you from the cellar to the garret. M. Jacques, I
am mighty glad to see you on the road to fortune. Real merit is
always discovered. You'll see my bedroom, which is copied from that
of Mademoiselle Davilliers. It is covered all over with looking-
glass and there are lots of grotesque figures. How is the old fellow
your father? Between ourselves, he somewhat neglects his wife and
his cook-shop. It is very wrong of a man in his position. But let us
speak of yourself."

"Let us speak of you, Mam'selle Catherine," said I. "You are so very
pretty and it is a great pity you love the Capuchin." Nothing could
be said against a government contractor.

"Oh!" she said, "do not reproach me with Friar Ange. I have him for
my salvation only and if I would give a rival to M. de la Gueritude
it would be----"

"Would be?"

"Don't ask me, M. Jacques; you're an ungrateful man, for you know
that I always singled you out, but you do not care about me."

"Quite the contrary, Mam'selle Catherine. I smarted under your
mockery. You sneered at my beardless chin. Many a time you have told
me that I am but a ninny."

"And that was true, M. Jacques, truer than you believed it to be.
Why could you not see that I had a liking for you?"

"Why, Catherine, you are so pretty as to make one fear. I did not
dare to look at you. And one day I clearly Law that you were
thoroughly offended with me."

"I had every reason for it, M. Jacques; you took that Savoyard in
preference to me, that scum of the Port Saint Nicolas."

"Ah! be quite sure, Catherine, that I did not do so by wish or
inclination, but only because she found ways and means energetic
enough to vanquish my timidity."

"Oh! my friend, you may believe me, as I am the elder of us two,
timidity is a great sin against love. But did you not see that that
beggar had holes in her stockings and a seam of filth and mud, half-
an-ell high, on the bottom of her petticoat?"

"I saw it, Catherine."

"Have you not seen, Jacques, how badly she is made and that really
she is skinny?"

"I saw it, Catherine."

"And withal you loved that Savoyard she-monkey, you who have a white
skin and distinguished manners!"

"I cannot understand it myself, Catherine. It must have been that at
that moment my imagination was full of you. And it was your image
only gave me the pluck and strength you reproach me with to-day.
Imagine yourself, Catherine, my rapture to press you in my arms,
yourself or only a girl who resembled you a little. Because I loved
you desperately."

She took my hand and sighed, and in a tone of sadness I continued to
say:

"Yes, I did love you, Catherine, and I could still love you except
for that disgusting monk."

She cried out:

"What a suspicion! You offend me. It is a folly."

"Then you do not love the Capuchin?"

"Fie!"

As I did not consider it to be any use to press the subject further,
I took her round the waist, we embraced, our lips met and all my
being seemed to melt in voluptuousness.

After a short moment of luxurious confusion, she disentangled
herself, her cheeks rosy, her eyes moistened, her lips half
separated. It is from that day that I knew how much a woman is
embellished and adorned by a kiss lovingly pressed on her mouth.
Mine had made roses of the sweetest hue bloom on Catherine's cheeks
and strewn into the flowery blue of her eyes drops of diamantine
dew.

"You are a baby," she said, readjusting her hood. "Go! you cannot
remain a moment longer. M. de la Gueritude will be here at once. He
loves me with an impatience which continually runs ahead of the
meeting time."

Reading in my face how upset I was by this saying she spoke again
with a quick vivacity:

"Listen, Jacques, he returns every night at nine to his old woman,
who shrewish by age, cannot bear his infidelities since she herself
is unable to pay him in the same coin and has become awfully
jealous. Come to-night at half-past nine. I'll receive you. My house
is at the corner of the Rue du Bac. You'll recognise it by its three
windows on every floor and by its balcony covered with roses; you
know I always did like flowers. Good-bye till to-night."

Caressingly she pushed me back, hardly able to hide the wish to keep
me with her, then placing one finger over her mouth she whispered
again:

"Till to-night."

CHAPTER XIII

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

I really do not know how it was possible to tear myself out of
Catherine's arms. But it is a fact that in jumping out of her
carriage I nearly fell on M. d'Asterac, whose tall figure leant
against a tree on the roadside. Courteously I saluted him and showed
the surprise I felt at this pleasant encounter.

"Chance," he said, "lessens as knowledge grows; for me it is
suppressed. I knew, my son, that I had to meet you at this place. It
is necessary for me to have a conversation with you already too long
delayed. Let's go, if you please, in quest of solitude and quietness
required by what I wish to tell you. Do not become anxious. The
mysteries I desire to unveil before you are sublime, it is true, but
pleasant also."

Having so spoken he conducted me to the bank of the Seine opposite
the Isle of Swans, which rose out of the middle of the river like a
ship built of foliage. There he made a sign to a ferryman, whose
boat brought us quickly to the green isle, frequented only by
invalids, who on fine days play there at bowls and drink their pint
of wine. Night lit her first stars in the sky and lent a humming
voice to the myriads of insects in the grass. The isle was deserted.
M. d'Asterac sat down on a wooden bench at the end of an alley of
walnut-trees, invited me to sit close to him and spoke:

"There are three sorts of people, my son, from whom the philosopher
has to hide his secrets. They are princes, because it would be
imprudent to enlarge their power; the ambitious, whose pitiless
genius must not be armed, and the debauchees, who would find in
hidden sciences the means to satiate their evil passions. But I can
talk freely to you, who are neither debauched--for I quite overlook
the error you nearly gave way to in the arms of yonder girl--nor
ambitious, having lived, till recently, contented to turn the
paternal spit. Therefore I may disclose to you the hidden laws of
the universe.

"It must not be believed that life is limited by narrow rules
wherein it is manifested to the eyes of the profane. When they teach
that creation's object and end was man, your theologians and your
philosophers reason like the multiped of Versailles or the
Tuileries, who believe the humidity of the cellars is made for their
special use and that the remainder of the castle is uninhabitable.
The system of the world, as Canon Copernicus taught in the last
century, following the doctrines of Aristarchus of Samos and
Pythagorean philosophers, is doubtless known to you, as there have
actually been prepared some compendiums of them for the urchins of
village schools and dialogues abstracted from them for the use of
town children. You have seen at my house a kind of machine which
shows it distinctly by means of a kind of clockwork.

"Raise your eyes, my son, and you'll see over your head David's
chariot, drawn by Mizar and her two illustrious companions, circling
round the pole; Arcturus, Vega of the Lyre, the Virgin's Sword, the
Crown of Ariadne and its charming pearls. Those are suns. One single
look on that world will make it clear to you that the whole of
creation is the work of fire and that life, in its finest forms, is
fed on flames.

"And what are the planets? Drops of a mixture of mind, a little mire
and plenty of moisture. Behold the august choir of the stars, the
assembly of the suns; they equal or excel ours in magnitude and
power and after I have shown you on a clear winter's night, through
my telescope, Sirius, your eyes and soul will be dazzled.

"Do you in good faith believe that Sirius Altair, Regulus,
Aldebaran, all these suns are luminary only? Do you believe that
this old Phoebus, who incessantly forces into space, wherein we are
swimming, his inordinate surge of heat and light, has no other
function but to light the earth and some other paltry and
imperceptible planets? What a candle! A million times greater than
the dwelling.

"I have to present to you first of all the idea that the universe is
composed of suns and that the planets which may be in it are less
than nothing. But as I foresee your wish to make an objection, I'll
reply to it beforehand. The suns, you want to say, put themselves
out in the course of centuries and by that also change into mud. No!
is my reply; they keep themselves alive by means of comets which
they attract and which fall on them. It is the dwelling of true
life. The planets and this our earth are but the abode of ghosts.
Such are the verities of which I have to convince you.

"Now that you understand, my son, that fire is the principal
element, you'll easier comprehend what I wish to teach you and which
is of greater importance than anything you may have learned up to
now, or was even known to Erasmus, Turnebe or Scaliger. I do not
speak of theologians like Quesnel or Bossuet who, between ourselves,
I consider as the lees of human spirit, and who have no better
understanding than a simple captain of guards. Don't let us hamper
ourselves by despising those brains comparable in volume, as well as
in construction, to wrens' eggs, but let us at once enter fully into
the object of our conference.

"Whilst those earth-born creatures do not surpass a degree of
perfection which, by beauty of form, has been attained by Antinoues
and by Madame de Parabere, and at which they alone have arrived by
the faculty known to Democritus and myself; the beings formed by
fire enjoy a wisdom and an intelligence of which we cannot possibly
conceive the limit.

"Such is, my son, the nature of the glorious children of the suns;
they know the laws of the universe just as we know the rules of
chess, and the course of the stars does not trouble them any more
than the moves on the chessboard of the king and the other men
trouble us. Those genii create worlds in such spaces of the infinite
where none at present exist, and organise them at their will. It
distracts them momentarily from their principal business, which is
to unite among themselves in unspeakable love. Only last night I
turned my telescope on the Sign of the Virgin and saw on it a far-
away vortex of light. No doubt, my son, that was the still
unfinished work of one of those fire beings.

"Truly the universe has no other origin; far from being the effect
of a single will, it is the result of the sublime freaks of a great
many genii, recreating themselves by working on it each in his own
turn and on his own side. That's what explains the diversity, the
splendour and the imperfection. For the force and foresight of those
genii, immense as they were, had still their limits. I should
deceive you were I to say that a man, philosopher or magician, can
have familiar intercourse with them.

"None of them gave me a direct manifestation of himself, and what I
tell you of them is known to me by induction only, and by hearsay.
Certain as their existence is, I should not attempt to describe
their habits and their character. It is necessary to know when not
to know, my son, and I make it a point not to bring forward other
than perfectly well-observed facts.

"Let those genii, or rather demiurguses, abide in their glory, and
let us treat of illustrious beings who stand nearer to us. Here, my
son, is where one has to lend an open ear.

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