Books: The Ink Stain, v1
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Rene Bazin >> The Ink Stain, v1
"No, with a d."
"I asked, you know, because I once knew a General Mouillart who had been
through the Crimea, a charming man. But he can not have been a relative,
for his name ended with a t."
My good tutor spoke with a delightful simplicity, evidently wishing to be
pleasant and to show some interest in me.
"Are you married, young man?"
"No, sir; but I have no conscientious objections."
"Marry young. Marriage is the salvation of young men. There must be
plenty of pretty heiresses in Bourges."
"Heiresses, yes. As to their looks, at this distance--"
"Yes, I understand, at this distance of course you can't tell. You
should do as I did; make inquiries, go and see. I went all the way to
Forez myself to look for my wife."
"Madame Flamaran comes from Forez?"
"Just so; I stayed there a fortnight, fourteen days exactly, in the
middle of term-time, and brought back Sidonie. Bourges is a nice town."
"Yes, in summer."
"Plenty of trees. I remember a grand action I won there. One of my
learned colleagues was against me. We had both written opinions,
diametrically opposed, of course. But I beat him--my word, yes!"
"I dare say."
"My boy, there was nothing left of him. Do you know the case?"
"No."
"A magnificent case! My notes must be somewhere about; I will get them
out for you."
The good man beamed. Evidently he had not had a talk all day, and felt
he must expand and let himself out to somebody. I appeared in the nick
of time, and came in for all his honey. He rose, went to a bookcase, ran
his eye along a shelf, took down a volume, and began, in a low tone:
"'Cooperation is the mighty lever upon which an effete society relies to
extricate itself from its swaddling-clothes and take a loftier flight.'
Tut, tut! What stuff is this? I beg your pardon. I was reading from a
work on moral philosophy. Where the deuce is my opinion?"
He found it and, text in hand, began a long account of the action, with
names, dates, moments of excitement, and many quotations in extenso.
"Yes, my young friend, two hundred and eighteen thousand francs did I win
in that action for Monsieur Prebois, of Bourges; you know Prebois, the
manufacturer?"
"By name."
At last he put the note-book back on its shelf, and deigned to remember
that I had come about the Junian Latins.
"In which of the authorities do you find a difficulty?"
"My difficulty lies in the want of authorities, sir, I wish to find out
whether the Junian Latins had not a special dress."
"To be sure." He scratched his head. "Gaius says nothing on the point?"
"No."
"Papinian?"
"No."
"Justinian?"
"No."
"Then I see only one resource."
"What is that?"
"Go to see Charnot."
I felt myself growing pale, and stammered, with a piteous look:
"Monsieur Charnot, of the Acad--"
"The Academy of Inscriptions; an intimate friend of mine, who will
welcome you like a son, for he has none himself, poor man!"
"But perhaps the question is hardly important enough for me to trouble
him like this--"
"Hey? Not important enough? All new questions are important. Charnot
specializes on coins. Coins and costumes are all one. I will write to
tell him you are coming."
"I beg, sir--"
"Nonsense; Nonsense; I'll write him this very evening. He will be
delighted to see you. I know him well, you understand. He is like me;
he likes industrious young men."
M. Flamaran held out his hand.
"Good-by, young man. Marry as soon as you have taken your degree."
I did not recover from the shock till I was halfway across the Luxembourg
Gardens, near the Tennis Court, when I sat down, overcome. See what
comes of enthusiasm and going to call on your tutor! Ah, young three-
and-twenty, when will you learn wisdom?
CHAPTER III
AN APOLOGY
9 P.M.
I have made up my mind. I shall go to see M. Charnot. But before that
I shall go to his publisher's and find out something about this famous
man's works, of which I know nothing whatever.
December 31st
He lives in the Rue de l'Universite.
I have called. I have seen him. I owe this to an accident, to the
servant's forgetting her orders.
As I entered, on the stroke of five, he was spinning a spiral twist of
paper beneath the lamplight to amuse his daughter--he a member of the
Institute, she a girl of eighteen. So that is how these big-wigs employ
their leisure moments!
The library where I found them was full of book cases-open bookcases,
bookcases with glass doors, tall bookcases, dwarf bookcases, bookcases
standing on legs, bookcases standing on the floor--of statuettes yellow
with smoke, of desks crowded with paper-weights, paper-knives, pens, and
inkstands of "artistic" pat terns. He was seated at the table, with his
back to the fire, his arm lifted, and a hairpin between his finger and
thumb--the pivot round which his paper twist was spinning briskly.
Across the table stood his daughter, leaning forward with her chin on her
hands and her white teeth showing as she laughed for laughing's sake, to
give play to her young spirits and gladden her old father's heart as he
gazed on her, delighted.
I must confess it made a pretty picture; and M. Charnot at that moment
was extremely unlike the M. Charnot who had confronted me from behind the
desk.
I was not left long to contemplate.
The moment I lifted the 'portiere' the girl jumped up briskly and
regarded me with a touch of haughtiness, meant, I think, to hide a slight
confusion. To compare small things with great, Diana must have worn
something of that look at sight of Actaeon. M. Charnot did not rise,
but hearing somebody enter, turned half-round in his armchair, while his
eyes, still dazzled with the lamplight, sought the intruder in the
partial shadow of the room.
I felt myself doubly uneasy in the presence of this reader of the Early
Text and of this laughing girl.
"Sir," I began, "I owe you an apology--"
He recognized me. The girl moved a step.
"Stay, Jeanne, stay. We shall not take long. This gentleman has come to
offer an apology."
This was a cruel beginning.
She thought so, too, perhaps, and withdrew discreetly into a dim corner,
near the bookcase at the end of the room.
"I have felt deep regret, sir, for that accident the other day--I set
down the penholder clumsily, in equilibrium--unstable equilibrium--
besides, I had no notion there was a reader behind the desk. Of course,
if I had been aware, I should--I should have acted differently."
M. Charnot allowed me to flounder on with the contemplative satisfaction
of an angler who has got a fish at the end of his line. He seemed to
find me so very stupid, that as a matter of fact I became stupid. And
then, there was no answer--not a word. Silence, alas! is not the
reproof of kings alone. It does pretty well for everybody. I stumbled
on two or three more phrases quite as flatly infelicitous, and he
received them with the same faint smile and the same silence.
To escape from my embarrassment:
"Sir," I said, "I came also to ask for a piece of information."
"I am at your service, sir."
"Monsieur Flamaran has probably written to you on the matter?"
"Flamaran?"
"Yes, three days ago."
"I have received no letter; have I, Jeanne?"
"No, father."
"This is not the first time that my excellent colleague has promised to
write a letter and has not written it. Never mind, sir; your own
introduction is sufficient."
"Sir, I am about to take my doctor's degree."
"In arts?"
"No, in law; but I have a bachelor's degree in arts."
"You will follow it up with a degree in medicine, no doubt?"
"Really, sir--"
"Why--Why not, since you are collecting these things? You have, then, a
bent toward literature?"
"So I have been told."
"A pronounced inclination--hey? to scribble verse."
"Ah, yes!"
"The old story; the family driving a lad into law; his heart leaning
toward letters; the Digest open on the table, and the drawers stuffed
with verses! Isn't that so?"
I bowed. He glanced toward his daughter.
"Well, sir, I confess to you that I don't understand--don't understand at
all--this behavior of yours. Why not follow your natural bent? You
youngsters nowadays--I mean no offence--you youngsters have no longer any
mind of your own. Take my case; I was seventeen when I began to take an
interest in numismatics. My family destined me for the Stamp Office;
yes, sir, the Stamp Office. I had against me two grandfathers, two
grandmothers, my father, my mother, and six uncles--all furious. I held
out, and that has led me to the Institute. Hey, Jeanne?"
Mademoiselle Jeanne had returned to the table, where she was standing
when I entered, and seemed, after a moment, to busy herself in arranging
the books scattered in disarray on the green cloth. But she had a secret
object--to regain possession of the paper spiral that lay there
neglected, its pin sticking up beside the lamp-stand. Her light hand,
hovering hither and thither, had by a series of cunning manoeuvres got
the offending object behind a pile of duodecimos, and was now withdrawing
it stealthily among the inkstands and paperweights.
M. Charnot interrupted this little stratagem.
She answered very prettily, with a slight toss of the head:
"But, father, not everybody can be in the Institute."
"Far from it, Jeanne. This gentleman, for instance, devotes himself to
one method of inking parchment that never will make him my colleague.
Doctor of Laws and Master of Arts,--I presume, sir, you are going to be a
notary?"
"Excuse me, an advocate."
"I was sure of it. Jeanne, my dear, in country families it is a standing
dilemma; if not a notary, then an advocate; if not an advocate, then a
notary."
M. Charnot spoke with an exasperating half-smile.
I ought to have laughed, to be sure; I ought to have shown sense enough
at any rate to hold my tongue and not to answer the gibes of this
vindictive man of learning. Instead, I was stupid enough to be nettled
and to lose my head.
"Well," I retorted, "I must have a paying profession. That one or
another--what does it matter? Not everybody can belong to the Institute,
as your daughter remarked; not everybody can afford himself the luxury of
publishing, at his own expense, works that sell twenty-seven copies or
so."
I expected a thunderbolt, an explosion. Not a bit of it. M. Charnot
smiled outright with an air of extreme geniality.
"I perceive, sir, that you are given to gossiping with the booksellers."
"Why, yes, sir, now and then."
"It's a very pretty trait, at your age, to be already so strong in
bibliography. You will permit me, nevertheless, to add something to your
present stock of notions. A large sale is one thing to look at, but not
the right thing. Twenty-seven copies of a book, when read by twenty-
seven men of intelligence, outweigh a popular success. Would you believe
that one of my friends had no more than eight copies printed of a
mathematical treatise? Three of these he has given away. The other five
are still unsold. And that man, sir, is the first mathematician in
France!"
Mademoiselle Jeanne had taken it differently. With lifted chin and
reddened cheek she shot this sentence at me from the edge of a lip
disdainfully puckered:
"There are such things as 'successes of esteem,' sir!"
Alas! I knew that well, and I had no need of this additional lesson to
teach me the rudeness of my remark, to make me feel that I was a brute,
an idiot, hopelessly lost in the opinion of M. Charnot and his daughter.
It was cruel, all the same. Nothing was left for me but to hurry my
departure. I got up to go.
"But," said M. Charnot in the smoothest of tones, "I do not think we have
yet discussed the question that brought you here."
"I should hesitate, sir, to trespass further on your time."
"Never mind that. Your question concerns?"
"The costume of the Latini Juniani."
"Difficult to answer, like most questions of dress. Have you read the
work, in seventeen volumes, by the German, Friedchenhausen?"
"No."
"You must have read, at any rate, Smith, the Englishman, on ancient
costume?"
"Nor that either. I only know Italian."
"Well, then, look through two or three treatises on numismatics, the
'Thesaurus Morellianus', or the 'Praestantiora Numismata', of Valliant,
or Banduri, or Pembrock, or Pellerin. You may chance upon a scent."
"Thank you, thank you, sir!"
He saw me to the door.
As I turned to go I noticed that his daughter was standing motionless
still, with the face of an angry Diana. She held between her fingers the
recovered spiral.
I found myself in the street.
I could not have been more clumsy, more ill-bred, or more unfortunate.
I had come to make an apology and had given further offence. Just like
my luck! And the daughter, too--I had hurt her feelings. Still, she had
stood up for me; she had said to her father, "Not every one can be in the
Institute," evidently meaning, "Why are you torturing this poor young
man? He is bashful and ill at ease. I feel sorry for him." Sorry--yes;
no doubt she felt sorry for me at first. But then I came out with that
impertinence about the twenty-seven copies, and by this time she hates me
beyond a doubt. Yes, she hates me. It is too painful to think of.
Mademoiselle Charnot will probably remain but a stranger to me, a
fugitive apparition in my path of life; yet her anger lies heavy upon me,
and the thought of those disdainful lips pursues me.
I had rarely been more thoroughly disgusted with myself, and with all
about me. I needed something to divert me, to distract me, to make me
forget, and so I set off for home by the longest way, going down the Rue
de Beaune to the Seine.
I declare, we get some perfect winter days in Paris! Just now, the folks
who sit indoors believe that the sun is down and have lighted their
lamps; but outside, the sky--a pale, rain-washed blue--is streaked with
broad rays of rose-pink. It is freezing, and the frost has sprinkled
diamonds everywhere, on the trees, the roofs, the parapets, even on the
cabmen's hats, that gather each a sparkling cockade as they pass along
through the mist. The river is running in waves, white-capped here and
there. On the penny steamers no one but the helmsman is visible. But
what a crowd on the Pont de Carrousel! Fur cuffs and collars pass and
repass on the pavements; the roadway trembles beneath the endless line of
Batignolles--Clichy omnibuses and other vehicles. Every one seems in a
hurry. The pedestrians are brisk, the drivers dexterous. Two lines of
traffic meet, mingle without jostling, divide again into fresh lines and
are gone like a column of smoke. Although slips are common in this
crowd, its intelligent agility is all its own. Every face is ruddy, and
almost all are young. The number of young men, young maidens, young
wives, is beyond belief, Where are the aged? At home, no doubt, by the
chimney-corner. All the city's youth is out of doors.
Its step is animated; that is the way of it. It is wideeyed, and in its
eyes is the sparkle of life. The looks of the young are always full of
the future; they are sure of life. Each has settled his position, his
career, his dream of commonplace well-being. They are all alike; and
they might all be judges, so serious they appear about it. They walk in
pairs, bolt upright, looking neither right nor left, talking little as
they hurry along toward the old Louvre, and are soon swallowed out of
sight in the gathering mist, out of which the gaslights glimmer faintly.
They are all on their way to dine on the right bank.
I am going to dine on the left bank, at Carre's, where one sees many odd
customers. Farewell, river! Good night, old Charnot! Blessings on you,
Mademoiselle Jeanne!
CHAPTER IV
THE STORY OF SYLVESTRE
8 P.M.
I am back in my study. It is very cold; Madame Menin, my housekeeper,
has let the fire out. Hallo! she has left her duster, too, lying on the
manuscript of my essay.
Is it an omen, a presage of that dust which awaits my still unfinished
work? Who can fathom Dame Fortune's ironic humor?
Eight o'clock.... Counsellor Mouillard has finished his pleadings and
must be sitting down to a game of whist with Counsellors Horlet and
Hublette, of the Court of Bourges. They wait for me to make up the four.
Perish the awful prospect!
And M. Charnot? He, I suppose, is still spinning the paper spiral.
How easily serious people are amused! Perhaps I am a serious person.
The least thing amuses me. By the way, is Mademoiselle Jeanne fair or
dark? Let me try to recollect. Why, fair, of course. I remember the
glint of gold in the little curls about her temples, as she stood by the
lamp. A pleasant face, too; not exactly classic, but rosy and frank; and
then she has that animation which so many pretty women lack.
Madame Menin has forgotten something else. She has forgotten to shut my
window. She has designs upon my life!
I have just shut the window. The night is calm, its stars twinkling
through a haze. The year ends mournfully.
I remember at school once waking suddenly on such a night as this, to
find the moonlight streaming into my eyes. At such a moment it is always
a little hard to collect one's scattered senses, and take in the midnight
world around, so unhomely, so absolutely still. First I cast my eyes
along the two rows of beds that stretched away down the dormitory--two
parallel lines in long perspective; my comrades huddled under their
blankets in shapeless masses, gray or white according as they lay near or
far from the windows; the smoky glimmer of the oil lamp half-way down the
room; and at the end, in the deeper shadows, the enclosure of yellow
curtains surrounding the usher's bed.
Not a sound about me; all was still. But without, my ear, excited and
almost feverishly awake, caught the sound of a strange call, very sweet,
again and again repeated--fugitive notes breathing appeal, tender and
troubled. Now they grew quite distant, and I heard no more than a
phantom of sound; now they came near, passed over my head, and faded
again into the distance. The moon's clear rays invited me to clear up
the mystery. I sprang from my bed, and ran in my nightshirt to open the
window. It was about eleven o'clock. Together the keen night-air and
the moonlight wrapped me round, thrilling me with delight. The large
courtyard lay deserted with its leafless poplars and spiked railings.
Here and there a grain of sand sparkled. I raised my eyes, and from one
constellation to another I sought the deep blue of heaven in vain; not a
shadow upon it, not one dark wing outlined. Yet all the while the same
sad and gentle cry wandered and was lost in air, the chant of an
invisible soul which seemed in want of me, and had perhaps awakened me.
The thought came upon me that it was the soul of my mother calling to me
--my mother, whose voice was soft and very musical.
"I am caring for thee," said the voice. "I am caring for thee; I can see
thee," it said, "I can see thee. I love thee! I love thee!"
"Reveal thyself!" I called back. "Oh, mother, reveal thyself!" And I
strove feverishly to catch sight of her, following the voice as it swept
around in circles; and seeing nothing, I burst into tears.
Suddenly I was seized roughly by the ear.
"What are you doing here, you young rascal? Are you mad? The wind is
blowing right on to my bed. Five hundred lines!"
The usher, in nightdress and slippers, was rolling his angry eyes on me.
"Yes, sir; certainly, sir! But don't you hear her?"
"Who is it?"
"My mother."
He looked to see whether I were awake; cocked his head to one side and
listened; then shut the window angrily and went off shrugging his
shoulders.
"It's only the plovers flying about the moon," said he. "Five hundred
lines!"
I did my five hundred lines. They taught me that dreaming was illegal
and dangerous, but they neither convinced nor cured me.
I still believe that there are scattered up and down in nature voices
that speak, but which few hear; just as there are millions of flowers
that bloom unseen by man. It is sad for those who catch a hint of it.
Perforce they come back and seek the hidden springs. They waste their
youth and vigor upon empty dreams, and in return for the fleeting
glimpses they have enjoyed, for the perfect phrase half caught and lost
again, will have given up the intercourse of their kind, and even
friendship itself. Yes, it is sad for the schoolboys who open their
windows to gaze at the moon, and never drop the habit! They will find
themselves, all too soon, solitaries in the midst of life, desolate as I
am desolate tonight, beside my dead fire.
No friend will come to knock at my door; not one. I have a few comrades
to whom I give that name. We do not loathe one another. At need they
would help me. But we seldom meet. What should they do here? Dreamers
make no confidences; they shrivel up into themselves and are caught away
on the four winds of heaven. Politics drive them mad; gossip fails to
interest them; the sorrows they create have no remedy save the joys that
they invent; they are natural only when alone, and talk well only to
themselves.
The only man who can put up with this moody contrariety of mine is
Sylvestre Lampron. He is nearly twenty years older than I. That
explains his forbearance. Besides, between an artist like him and a
dreamer like myself there is only the difference of handiwork. He
translates his dreams. I waste mine; but both dream. Dear old Lampron!
Kindly, stalwart heart! He has withstood that hardening of the moral and
physical fibre which comes over so many men as they near their fortieth
year. He shows a brave front to work and to life. He is cheerful, with
the manly cheerfulness of a noble heart resigned to life's disillusions.
When I enter his home, I nearly always find him sitting before a small
ground-glass window in the corner of his studio, bent over some
engraving. I have leave to enter at all hours. He is free not to stir
from his work. "Good-day," he calls out, without raising his head,
without knowing for certain who has come in, and goes on with the
engraving he has in hand. I settle down at the end of the room, on the
sofa with the faded cover, and, until Lampron deigns to grant me
audience, I am free to sleep, or smoke, or turn over the wonderful
drawings that lean against the walls. Among them are treasures beyond
price; for Lampron is a genius whose only mistake is to live and act with
modesty, so that as yet people only say that he has "immense talent."
No painter or engraver of repute--and he is both--has served a more
conscientious apprenticeship, or sets greater store on thoroughness in
his art. His drawing is correct beyond reproach--a little stiff, like
the early painters. You can guess from his works his partiality for the
old masters--Perugino, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Memling, Holbein--who,
though not the masters in fashion, will always be masters in vigor of
outline, directness, in simple grace, and genuine feeling. He has copied
in oils, water-colors, pen, or pencil, nearly all the pictures of these
masters in the Louvre, in Germany, in Holland, and especially in Italy,
where he lived for many years. With tastes such as his came the habit,
or rather the fixed determination, never to paint or engrave any but
sacred subjects. Puffs and cliques are his abomination. His ideal is
the archaic rendered by modern methods. An artist of this type can but
obtain the half-grudging esteem of his own profession, and of the few
critics who really understand something about art. Gladly, and with
absolute disdain, he leaves to others the applause of the mob, the gilded
patronage of American purchasers, and the right to wear lace cuffs. In
short, in an age when the artist is often half a manufacturer and half a
charlatan, he is an artist only.
Now and then he is rich, but never for long. Half of his earnings goes
in alms; half into the pockets of his mendicant brethren. They hear the
gold jingle before it is counted, and run with outstretched palms. Each
is in the depths of misfortune; on the eve of ascending the fatal slope;
lost, unless the helpful hand of Lampron will provide, saved if he will
lend wherewithal to buy a block of marble, to pay a model, to dine that
evening. He lends--I should say gives; the words mean the same in many
societies. Of all that he has gained, fame alone remains, and even this
he tries to do without--modest, retiring, shunning all entertainments.
I believe he would often be without the wherewithal to live were it
not for his mother, whom he supports, and who does him the kindness to
need something to live on. Madame Lampron does not hoard; she only fills
the place of those dams of cut turf which the peasants build in the
channels of the Berry in spring; the water passes over them, beneath
them, even through them, but still a little is left for the great
droughts.