Chapter XX: Appendix: Rameau's Nephew: a Translation (1)

[See vol. i. p. 348.]

[I have omitted such pages in the following translation as refer simply to personages who have lost all possibility of interest for our generation; nor did any object seem to be served by reproducing the technical points of the musical discussion. Enough is given, and given as faithfully as I know how, to show the reader what _Rameau's Nephew_ is.]

In all weathers, wet or fine, it is my practice to go, towards five
o'clock in the evening, to take a turn in the Palais Royal. I am he
whom you may see any afternoon sitting by himself and musing in
D'Argenson's seat. I keep up talk with myself about politics, love,
taste, or philosophy; I leave my mind to play the libertine
unchecked; and it is welcome to run after the first idea that
offers, sage or gay, just as you see our young beaux in the Foy
passage following the steps of some gay nymph, with her saucy mien,
face all smiles, eyes all fire, and nose a trifle turned up; then
quitting her for another, attacking them all, but attaching
themselves to none. My thoughts,--these are the wantons for me. If
the weather be too cold or too wet, I take shelter in the Regency
coffee-house. There I amuse myself by looking on while they play
chess. Nowhere in the world do they play chess so skilfully as in
Paris, and nowhere in Paris as they do at this coffee-house; 'tis
here you see Legal the profound, Philidor the subtle, Mayot the
solid; here you see the most astounding moves, and listen to the
sorriest talk, for if a man may be at once a wit and a great
chess-player, like Legal, you may also be a great chess-player and
a sad simpleton, like Joubert and Mayot.

One day I was there after dinner, watching intently, saying little,
and hearing the very least possible, when there approached me one
of the most eccentric figures in the country, where God has not
made them lacking. He is a mixture of elevation and lowness, of
good sense and madness; the notions of good and bad must be mixed
up together in strange confusion in his head, for he shows the good
qualities that nature has bestowed on him without any ostentation,
and the bad ones without the smallest shame. For the rest, he is
endowed with a vigorous frame, a particular warmth of imagination,
and an astonishing strength of lungs. If you ever meet him, and if
you are not arrested by his originality, you will either stuff your
fingers into your ears, or else take to your heels. Heavens, what a
monstrous pipe! Nothing is so little like him as himself. One time
he is lean and wan, like a patient in the last stage of
consumption; you could count his teeth through his cheeks; you
would say he must have passed several days without tasting a
morsel, or that he is fresh from La Trappe. A month after, he is
stout and sleek, as if he had been sitting all the time at the
board of a financier, or had been shut up in a Bernardine
monastery. To-day in dirty linen, his clothes torn or patched, with
barely a shoe to his foot, he steals along with a bent head; you
are tempted to hail him and fling him a shilling. To-morrow all
powdered, curled, in a fine coat, he marches past with head erect
and open mien, and you would almost take him for a decent worthy
creature. He lives from day to day, from hand to mouth, downcast or
sad, just as things may go. His first care in a morning, when he
gets up, is to know where he will dine; and after dinner, he begins
to think where he may pick up a supper. Night brings disquiets of
its own. Either he climbs to a shabby garret that he has, unless
the landlady, weary of waiting for her rent, has taken the key away
from him; or else he slinks to some tavern on the outskirts of the
town, where he waits for daybreak over a piece of bread and a mug
of beer. When he has not threepence in his pocket, as sometimes
happens, he has recourse either to a hackney carriage belonging to
a friend, or to the coachman of some man of quality, who gives him
a bed on the straw beside the horses. In the morning, he still has
bits of his mattress in his hair. If the weather is mild, he
measures the Champs Elysees all night long. With the day he
reappears in the town, dressed over night for the morrow, and from
the morrow sometimes dressed for the rest of the week.

I do not rate these originals very highly. Other people make
familiar acquaintances, and even friends, of them. They detain me
perhaps once in a twelvemonth, if I happen to fall in with them.
Their character stands out from the rest of the world, and breaks
that wearisome uniformity which our bringing-up, our social
conventions, and our arbitrary fashions have introduced. If one of
them makes his appearance in a company, he is a piece of leaven
which ferments and restores to each a portion of his natural
individuality. He stirs people up, moves them, invites to praise or
blame; he is the means of bringing out the truth, he gives honest
people a chance of showing themselves, he unmasks the rogues; this
is the time when a man of sense listens, and distinguishes his
company.

I had known my present man long ago. He used to frequent a house to
which his clever parts had opened the door. There was an only
daughter. He swore to the father and mother that he would marry
their daughter. They shrugged their shoulders, laughed in his face,
told him he was out of his senses, and I saw in an instant that his
business was done. He wanted to borrow a few crowns from me, which
I gave him. He worked his way, I cannot tell how, into some houses
where he had his plate laid for him, but on condition that he
should never open his lips without leave. He held his tongue and
ate away in a towering rage: it was excellent to watch him in this
state of constraint. If he could not resist breaking the treaty,
and ever began to open his mouth, at the first word all the guests
called out _Rameau!_ Then fury sparkled in his eyes, and he turned
to his plate in a worse passion than ever. You were curious to know
the man's name, and now you know it: 'tis Rameau, pupil of the
famous man who delivered us from the plain-song that we had been
used to chant for over a hundred years; who wrote so many
unintelligible visions and apocalyptic truths on the theory of
music, of which neither he nor anybody else understood a word; and
from whom we have a certain number of operas that are not without
harmony, refrains, random notions, uproar, triumphs, glories,
murmurs, breathless victories, and dance-tunes that will last to
all eternity; and who, after burying Lulli, the Florentine, will be
himself buried by the Italian virtuosi,--a fate that he had a
presentiment of, which made him gloomy and chagrined; for nobody is
in such ill-humour, not even a pretty woman who awakes with a
pimple on her nose, as an author threatened with loss of his
reputation.

He comes up to me. Ah, ah! here you are, my philosopher! And what
are you doing among this pack of idlers? Can it be possible that
you too waste your time in pushing the wood?...

_I._--No, but when I have nothing better to do, I amuse myself by
watching people who push it well.

_He._--In that case you are amusing yourself with a vengeance.
Except Philidor and Legal, there is not one of them who knows
anything about it.

_I._--What of M. de Bussy?

_He._--He is as a chess-player what Mademoiselle Clairon is as an
actress; they know of their playing, one and the other, as much as
anybody can learn.

_I._--You are hard to please, and I see you can forgive nothing
short of the sublimities.

_He._--True, in chess, women, poetry, eloquence, music, and all
such fiddle-faddle. What is the use of mediocrity in these matters?

_I._--Little enough, I agree. But the thing is that there must be a
great number of men at work, for us to make sure of the man of
genius: he is one out of a multitude. But let that pass. 'Tis an
age since I have seen you. Though I do not often think about you
when you are out of sight, yet it is always a pleasure to me to
meet you. What have you been about?

_He._--What you, I, and everybody else are about--some good, some
bad, and nothing at all. Then, I have been hungry, and I have eaten
when opportunity offered; after eating, I have been thirsty, and
now and then have had something to drink. Besides that, my beard
grew, and as it grew I had it shaved.

_I._--There you were wrong; it is the only thing wanting to make a
sage of you.

_He._--Ay, ay; I have a wide and furrowed brow, a glowing eye, a
firm nose, broad cheeks, a black and bushy eyebrow, a clean cut
mouth, a square jaw. Cover this enormous chin with amplitude of
beard, and I warrant you it would look vastly well in marble or in
bronze.

_I._--By the side of a Caesar, a Marcus Aurelius, a Socrates.

_He._--Nay, I should be better between Diogenes, Lais, and Phryne.
I am brazenfaced as the one, and I am happy to pay a visit to the
others.

_I._--Are you always well?

_He._--Yes, commonly; but I am no great wonders to-day.

_I._--Why, you have a paunch like Silenus, and a face like....

_He._--A face you might take for I don't know what. The ill humour
that dries up my dear master seems to fatten his dear pupil.

_I._--And this dear master, do you ever see him now?

_He._--Yes, passing along the street.

_I._--Does he do nothing for you?

_He._--If he has done anything for anybody, it is without knowing
it. He is a philosopher after his fashion. He thinks of nobody but
himself. His wife and his daughter may die as soon as they please;
provided the church bells that toll for them continue to sound the
_twelfth_ and the _seventeenth_, all will be well. It is lucky for
him, and that is what I especially prize in your men of genius.
They are only good for one thing; outside of that, nothing. They do
not know what it is to be citizens, fathers, mothers, kinsfolk,
friends. Between ourselves, it is no bad thing to be like them at
every point, but we should not wish the grain to become common. We
must have men; but men of genius, no; no, on my word; of them we
need none. 'Tis they who change the face of the globe; and in the
smallest things folly is so common and so almighty, that you cannot
mend it without an infinite disturbance. Part of what they have
dreamt comes to pass, and part remains as it was; hence two
gospels, the dress of a harlequin. The wisdom of Rabelais's moral
is the true wisdom both for his own repose and that of other
people: to do one's duty so so, always to speak well of the prior,
and to let the world go as it lists. It must go well, for most
people are content with it. If I knew history enough, I should
prove to you that evil has always come about here below through a
few men of genius, but I do not know history, no more than I know
anything else. The deuce take me, if I have learnt anything, or if
I find myself a pin the worse for not having learnt anything. I was
one day at the table of the minister of the King of----, who has
brains enough for four, and he showed as plain as one and one make
two, that nothing was more useful to people than falsehood, nothing
more mischievous than truth. I don't remember his proofs very
clearly, but it evidently followed from them that men of genius are
detestable, and that if a child at its birth bore on its brow the
mark of that dangerous gift of nature, it ought to be smothered or
else thrown to the ducks.

_I._--Yet such people, foes as they are to genius, all lay claim to
it.

_He._--I daresay they think so in their own minds, but I doubt if
they would venture to admit it.

_I._--Ah, that is their modesty. So you conceived from that a
frightful antipathy to genius.

_He._--One that I shall never get over.

_I._--Yet I have seen the time when you were in despair at the
thought of being only a common man. You will never be happy if the
pro and the con distress you alike. You should take your side, and
keep to it. Though people will agree with you that men of genius
are usually singular, or as the proverb says, _there are no great
wits without a grain of madness_, yet they will always look down on
ages that have produced no men of genius. They will pay honour to
the nations among whom they have existed; sooner or later, they
rear statues to them, and regard them as the benefactors of the
human race. With all deference to the sublime minister whom you
have cited, I still believe that if falsehood may sometimes be
useful for a moment, it is surely hurtful in the long-run; and so,
on the other hand, truth is surely useful in the long-run, though
it may sometimes chance to be inconvenient for the moment. Whence I
should be tempted to conclude that the man of genius who cries down
a general error, or wins credit for a great truth, is always a
creature that deserves our veneration. It may happen that such an
one falls a victim to prejudice and the laws; but there are two
sorts of laws, the one of an equity and generality that is
absolute, the other of an incongruous kind, which owe all their
sanction to the blindness or exigency of circumstance. The latter
only cover the culprit who infringes them with passing ignominy, an
ignominy that time pours back on the judges and the nations, there
to remain for ever. Whether is Socrates, or the authority that bade
him drink the hemlock, in the worst dishonour in our day?

_He._--Not so fast. Was he any the less for that condemned? Or any
the less put to death? Or any the less a bad citizen? By his
contempt for a bad law did he any the less encourage blockheads to
despise good ones? Or was he any the less an audacious eccentric?
You were close there upon an admission that would have done little
for men of genius.

_I._--But listen to me, my good man. A society ought not to have
bad laws, and if it had only good ones, it would never find itself
persecuting a man of genius. I never said to you that genius was
inseparably bound up with wickedness, any more than wickedness is
with genius. A fool is many a time far worse than a man of parts.
Even supposing a man of genius to be usually of a harsh carriage,
awkward, prickly, unbearable; even if he be thoroughly bad, what
conclusion do you draw?

_He._--That he ought to be drowned.

_I._--Gently, good man. Now I will not take your uncle Rameau for
an instance; he is harsh, he is brutal, he has no humanity, he is a
miser, he is a bad father, bad husband, bad uncle; but it has never
been settled that he is particularly clever, that he has advanced
his art, or that there will be any talk of his works ten years
hence. But Racine, now? He at any rate had genius, and did not pass
for too good a man. And Voltaire?

_He._--Beware of pressing me, for I am not one to shrink from
conclusions.

_I._--Which of the two would you prefer; that he should have been a
worthy soul, identified with his till, like Briasson, or with his
yard measure, like Barbier, each year producing a lawful babe, good
husband, good father, good uncle, good neighbour, decent trader,
but nothing more; or that he should have been treacherous,
ambitious, envious, spiteful, but the author of _Andromaque_,
_Britannicus_, _Iphigenie_, _Phedre_, _Athalie_?

_He._--For his own sake, on my word, perhaps of the two men it
would have been a great deal better that he should have been the
first.

_I._--That is even infinitely more true than you think.

_He._--Ah, there you are, you others! If we say anything good and
to the purpose, 'tis like madmen or creatures inspired, by a
hazard; it is only you wise people who know what you mean. Yes, my
philosopher, I know what I mean as well as you do.

_I._--Let us see. Now why did you say that of him?

_He._--Because all the fine things he did never brought him twenty
thousand francs, and if he had been a silk merchant in the Rue
Saint Denis or Saint Honore, a good wholesale grocer, an apothecary
with plenty of customers, he would have amassed an immense fortune,
and in amassing it, he could have enjoyed every pleasure in life;
he would have thrown a pistole from time to time to a poor devil of
a droll like me; we should have had good dinners at his house,
played high play, drunk first-rate wines, first-rate liqueurs,
first-rate coffee, had glorious excursions into the country. Now
you see I know what I meant. You laugh? But let me go on. It would
have been better for everybody about him.

_I._--No doubt it would, provided that he had not put to unworthy
use what gain he had made in lawful commerce, and had banished from
his house all those gamesters, all those parasites, all those idle
flatterers, all those depraved ne'er-do-wells, and had bidden his
shop-boys give a sound beating to the officious creature who offers
to play pander.

_He._--A beating, sir, a beating! No one is beaten in any
well-governed town. It is a decent enough trade; plenty of people
with fine titles meddle with it. And what the deuce would you have
him do with his money, if he is not to have a good table, good
company, good wines, handsome women, pleasures of every colour,
diversion of every sort? I would as lief be a beggar as possess a
mighty fortune without any of these enjoyments. But go back to
Racine. He was only good for people who did not know him, and for a
time when he had ceased to exist.

_I._--Granted, but weigh the good and bad. A thousand years from
now he will draw tears, he will be the admiration of men in all the
countries of the earth; he will inspire compassion, tenderness,
pity. They will ask who he was, and to what land he belonged, and
France will be envied. He brought suffering on one or two people
who are dead, and in whom we take hardly any interest; we have
nothing to fear from his vices or his foibles. It would have been
better, no doubt, that he should have received from nature the
virtues of a good man, instead of the talents of a great one. He is
a tree which made a few other trees planted near him wither up, and
which smothered the plants that grew at his feet; but he reared his
height to the clouds, and his branches spread far; he lends his
shadow to all who came, or come now, or ever shall come, to repose
by his majestic trunk; he brought forth fruits of exquisite savour
which are renewed again and again without ceasing.

We might wish that Voltaire had the mildness of Duclos, the
ingenuousness of the Abbe Trublet, the rectitude of the Abbe
d'Olivet. But as that cannot be, let us look at the thing on the
side of it that is really interesting; let us forget for an instant
the point we occupy in space and time, and let us extend our
vision over centuries to come, and peoples yet unborn, and distant
lands yet unvisited. Let us think of the good of our race: if we
are not generous enough, at least let us forgive nature for being
wiser than ourselves. If you throw cold water on Greuze's head,
very likely you will extinguish his talent along with his vanity.
If you make Voltaire less sensitive to criticism, he will lose the
art that took him to the inmost depths of the soul of Merope, and
will never stir a single emotion in you more.

_He._--But if nature be as powerful as she is wise, why did she not
make them as good as she made them great?

_I._--Do you not see how such reasoning as that overturns the
general order, and that if all were excellent here below, then
there would be nothing excellent.

_He._--You are right. The important point is that you and I should
be here; provided only that you and I are you and I, then let all
besides go as it can. The best order of things, in my notion, is
that in which I was to have a place, and a plague on the most
perfect of worlds, if I don't belong to it! I would rather exist,
and even be a bad hand at reasoning, than not exist at all.

_I._--There is nobody but thinks as you do, and whoever brings his
indictment against the order of things, forgets that he is
renouncing his own existence.

_He._--That is true.

_I._--So let us accept things as they are; let us see how much they
cost us and how much they give us, and leave the whole as it is,
for we do not know it well enough either to praise or blame it; and
perhaps after all it is neither good nor ill, if it is necessary,
as so many good folk suppose.

_He._--Now you are going beyond me. What you say seems like
philosophy, and I warn you that I never meddle with that. All that
I know is that I should be very well pleased to be somebody else,
on the chance of being a genius and a great man; yes, I must agree.
I have something here that tells me so. I never in my life heard a
man praised, that his eulogy did not fill me with secret fury. I am
full of envy. If I hear something about their private life that is
a discredit to them, I listen with pleasure: it brings us nearer to
a level; I bear my mediocrity more comfortably. I say to myself:
Ah, thou couldst never have done _Mahomet_, nor the eulogy on
Maupeou. So I have always been, and I always shall be, mortified at
my own mediocrity. Yes, I tell you I am mediocre, and it provokes
me. I never heard the overture to the _Indes galantes_ performed,
nor the _Profonds abimes de Tenare, Nuit, eternelle nuit_, sung
without saying to myself: That is what thou wilt never do. So I was
jealous of my uncle.

_I._--If that is the only thing that chagrins you, it is hardly
worth the trouble.

_He._--'Tis nothing, only a passing humour. [Then he set himself to
hum the overture and the air he had spoken of, and went on:]

The something which is here and speaks to me says: Rameau, thou
wouldst fain have written those two pieces: if thou hadst done
those two pieces, thou wouldst soon do two others; and after thou
hadst done a certain number, they would play thee and sing thee
everywhere. In walking, thou wouldst hold thy head erect, thy
conscience would testify within thy bosom to thy own merit; the
others would point thee out, There goes the man who wrote the
pretty gavottes [and he hummed the gavottes. Then with the air of a
man bathed in delight and his eyes shining with it, he went on,
rubbing his hands:] Thou shalt have a fine house [he marked out its
size with his arms], a famous bed [he stretched himself luxuriously
upon it], capital wines [he sipped them in imagination, smacking
his lips], a handsome equipage [he raised his foot as if to mount],
a hundred varlets who will come to offer thee fresh incense every
day [and he fancied he saw them all around him, Palissot,
Poinsinet, the two Frerons, Laporte, he heard them, approved of
them, smiled at them, contemptuously repulsed them, drove them
away, called them back; then he continued:] And it is thus they
would tell thee on getting up in a morning that thou art a great
man; thou wouldst read in the _Histoire des Trois Siecles_ that
thou art a great man, thou wouldst be convinced of an evening that
thou art a great man, and the great man Rameau would fall asleep to
the soft murmur of the eulogy that would ring in his ears; even as
he slept he would have a complacent air; his chest would expand,
and rise, and fall with comfort; he would move like a great man ...
[and as he talked he let himself sink softly on a bench, he closed
his eyes, and imitated the blissful sleep that his mind was
picturing. After relishing the sweetness of this repose for a few
instants he awoke, stretched his arms, yawned, rubbed his eyes, and
looked about him for his pack of vapid flatterers].

_I._--You think, then, the happy mortal has his sleep?

_He._--Think so! A sorry wretch like me! At night when I get back
to my garret, and burrow in my truckle-bed, I shrink up under my
blanket, my chest is all compressed, and I can hardly breathe; it
seems like a moan that you can barely hear. Now a banker makes the
room ring and astonishes a whole street. But what afflicts me
to-day, is not that I snore and sleep meanly and shabbily, like a
paltry outcast.

_I._--Yet that is a sorry thing enough.

_He._--What has befallen me is still more so.

_I._--What is that?

_He._--You have always taken some interest in me, because I am a
_bon diable_, whom you rather despise at bottom, but who diverts
you.

_I._--Well, that is the plain truth.

_He._--I will tell you. [Before beginning he heaved a profound
sigh, and clasped his brow with his two hands. Then he recovers his
tranquillity and says:]

You know that I am an ignoramus, a fool, a madman, an impertinent,
a sluggard, a glutton....

_I._--What a panegyric!

_He._--'Tis true to the letter, there is not a word to take away;
prithee, no debate on that. No one knows me better. I know myself
and I do not tell the whole.

_I._--I have no wish to cross you, and I will agree to anything.

_He._--Well, I used to live with people, who took a liking for me,
plainly because I was gifted with all these qualities to such a
rare degree.

_I._--That is curious. Until now I always thought that people hid
these things even from themselves, or else that they granted
themselves pardon, while they despised them in others.

_He._--Hide them from themselves! Can men do that? You may be sure
that when Palissot is all alone and returns upon himself, he tells
a very different tale; you may be sure that when he talks quietly
with his colleague, they candidly admit that they are only a pair
of mighty rogues. Despise such things in others! My people were far
more equitable, and they took my character for a perfect nonesuch;
I was in clover; they feasted me, they did not lose me from their
sight for a single instant without sighing for my return. I was
their excellent Rameau, their dear Rameau, their Rameau the mad,
the impertinent, the lazy, the greedy, the merry-man, the lout.
There was not one of these epithets which did not bring me a smile,
a caress, a tap on the shoulder, a cuff, a kick; at table, a titbit
tossed on to my plate; away from the table, a freedom that I took
without consequences, for, do you see, I am a man without
consequence. They do with me and before me and at me whatever they
like, without my standing on any ceremony. And the little presents
that showered on me! The great hound that I am, I have lost all! I
have lost all for having had common sense once, one single time in
my life. Ah! if that ever chances again!

_I._--What was the matter, then?

_He._--Rameau, Rameau, did they ever take you for that? The folly
of having had a little taste, a trifle of wit, a spice of reason;
Rameau, my friend, that will teach you the difference between what
God made you, and what your protectors wanted you to be. So they
took you by the shoulder, they led you to the door, and cried: "Be
off, rascal; never appear more. He would fain have sense, reason,
wit, I declare! Off with you; we have all these qualities and to
spare!" You went away biting your thumb; it was your infernal
tongue, that you ought to have bitten before all this. For not
bethinking you of that, here you are in the gutter without a
farthing, or a place to lay your head. You were well housed, and
now you will be lucky if you get your garret again; you had a good
bed, and now a truss of straw awaits you between M. de Soubise's
coachman and friend Robbe. Instead of the gentle quiet slumber that
you had, you will have the neighing and stamping of horses all
night long--you wretch, idiot, possessed by a million devils!

_I._--But is there no way of setting things straight? Is the fault
you committed so unpardonable? If I were you, I should go find my
people again. You are more indispensable to them than you suppose.

_He._--Oh, as for that, I know that now they have me no longer to
make fun for them, they are dull as ditch-water.

_I._--Then I should go back: I would not give them time enough to
learn how to get on without me, or to turn to some more decent
amusement. For who knows what may happen?

_He._--That is not what I am afraid of: that will never come to
pass.

_I._--But sublime as you may be, some one else may replace you.

_He._--Hardly.

_I._--Hardly, it is true. Still I would go with that lacklustre
face, those haggard eyes, that open breast, that tumbled hair, in
that downright tragic state in which you are now. I would throw
myself at the feet of the divinity, and without rising I would say
with a low and sobbing voice: "Forgive me, madam! Forgive me! I am
the vilest of creatures. It was only one unfortunate moment, for
you know I am not subject to common sense, and I promise you, I
will never have it again so long as I live."

[The diverting part of it was that, while I discoursed to him in
this way, he executed it pantomimically, and threw himself on the
ground; with his eyes fixed on the earth, he seemed to hold between
his two hands the tip of a slipper, he wept, he sobbed, he cried:
"Yes, my queen, yes, I promise, I never will, so long as I live, so
long as ever I live...." Then recovering himself abruptly, he went
on in a serious and deliberate tone:]

_He._--Yes, you are right; I see it is the best. Yet to go and
humiliate one's self before a hussy, cry for mercy at the feet of a
little actress with the hisses of the pit for ever in her ears! I,
Rameau, son of Rameau, the apothecary of Dijon, who is a good man
and never yet bent his knee to a creature in the world! I, Rameau,
who have composed pieces for the piano that nobody plays, but which
will perhaps be the only pieces ever to reach posterity, and
posterity will play them--I, I, must go! Stay, sir, it cannot be
[and striking his right hand on his breast, he went on:] I feel
here something that rises and tells me: Never, Rameau, never. There
must be a certain dignity attached to human nature that nothing can
stifle; it awakes _a propos des bottes_; you cannot explain it; for
there are other days when it would cost me not a pang to be as vile
as you like, and for a halfpenny there is nothing too dirty for me
to do.

_I._--Then if the expedient I have suggested to you is not to your
taste, have courage enough to remain a beggar.

_He._--'Tis hard being a beggar, while there are so many rich
fools at whose expense one can live. And the contempt for one's
self, it is insupportable.

_I._--Do you know that sentiment?

_He._--Know it! How many times have I said to myself: What, Rameau,
there are ten thousand good tables in Paris, with fifteen or twenty
covers apiece, and of these covers not one for thee! There are
purses full of gold which is poured out right and left, and not a
crown of it falls to thee! A thousand witlings without parts and
without worth, a thousand paltry creatures without a charm, a
thousand scurvy intriguers, are all well clad, while thou must go
bare! Canst thou be such a nincompoop as all this? Couldst thou not
flatter as well as anybody else? Couldst thou not find out how to
lie, swear, forswear, promise, keep or break, like anybody else?
Couldst thou not favour the intrigue of my lady, and carry the
love-letter of my lord, like anybody else? Couldst thou not find
out the trick of making some shopkeeper's daughter understand how
shabbily dressed she is, how two fine earrings, a touch of rouge,
some lace, and a Polish gown would make her ravishing; that those
little feet were not made for trudging through the mud; that there
is a handsome gentleman, young, rich, in a coat covered with lace,
with a superb carriage and six fine lackeys, who once saw her as he
passed, who thought her charming and wonderful, and that ever since
that day he has taken neither bite nor sup, cannot sleep at nights,
and will surely die of it?... He comes, he pleases, the little maid
vanishes, and I pocket my two thousand crowns. What, thou hast a
talent like this, and yet in want of bread? Shame on thee, wretch!
I recalled a crowd of scoundrels who were not a patch upon me, and
yet were rolling in money. There was I in serge, and they in
velvet; they leaned on gold-headed canes, and had fine rings on
their fingers. And what were they? Wretched bungling strummers, and
now they are a kind of fine gentlemen. At such times I felt full of
courage, my soul inflamed and elevated, my wits alert and subtle,
and capable of anything in the world. But this happy turn did not
last, it would seem, for so far I have not been able to make much
way. However that may be, there is the text of my frequent
soliloquies, which you may paraphrase as you choose, provided you
are sure that I know what self-contempt is, and that torture of
conscience which comes of the usefulness of the gifts that heaven
has bestowed on us; that is the cruellest stroke of all. A man
might almost as well never have been born.

[I had listened to him all the time, and as he enacted the scene
with the poor girl, with my heart moved by two conflicting
emotions, I did not know whether to give myself up to the longing I
had to laugh, or to a transport of indignation. I was distressingly
perplexed between two humours; twenty times an uncontrollable burst
of laughter kept my anger back, and twenty times the anger that was
rising from the bottom of my soul suddenly ended in a burst of
laughter. I was confounded by so much shrewdness and so much
vileness, by ideas now so just and then so false, by such general
perversity of sentiments, such complete turpitude, and such
marvellously uncommon frankness. He perceived the struggle going on
within me:] What ails you? said he.

_I._--Nothing.

_He._--You seem to be disturbed.

_I._--And I am.

_He._--But now, after all, what do you advise me to do?

_I._--To change your way of talking. You unfortunate soul, to what
abject state have you fallen!

_He._--I admit it. And yet, do not let my state touch you too
deeply; I had no intention, in opening my mind to you, to give you
pain. I managed to scrape up a few savings when I was with the
people. Remember that I wanted nothing, not a thing, and they made
me a certain allowance for pocket-money.

[He again began to tap his brow with one of his fists, to bite his
lips, and to roll his eyes towards the ceiling, going on to say:]

But 'tis all over; I have put something aside; time has passed, and
that is always so much gained.

_I._--So much lost, you mean.

_He._--No, no; gained. People grow rich every moment; a day less to
live, or a crown to the good, 'tis all one. When the last moment
comes, one is as rich as another; Samuel Bernard, who by pillaging
and stealing and playing bankrupt, leaves seven and twenty million
francs in gold, is just like Rameau, who leaves not a penny, and
will be indebted to charity for a shroud to wrap round him. The
dead man hears not the tolling of the bell; 'tis in vain that a
hundred priests bawl dirges for him, and that a long file of
blazing torches go before: his soul walks not by the side of the
master of the ceremonies. To moulder under marble, or to moulder
under clay, 'tis still to moulder. To have around one's bier
children in red and children in blue, or to have not a creature,
what matters it? And then, look at this wrist, it was stiff as the
devil; the ten fingers, they were so many sticks fastened into a
metacarpus made of wood; and these muscles were like old strings of
catgut, drier, stiffer, harder to bend than if that they had been
used for a turner's wheel; but I have so twisted and broken and
bent them. What, thou wilt not go? And I say that thou shalt....

[And at this, with his right hand he seized the fingers and wrist
of his left hand, and turned them first up and then down. The
extremity of the fingers touched the arm, till the joints cracked
again. I was afraid every instant that the bones would remain
dislocated.]

_I._--Take care, you will do yourself a mischief.

_He._--Don't be afraid, they are used to it. For ten years I have
given it them in a very different style. They had to accustom
themselves to it, however they liked it, and to learn to find their
place on the keys and to leap over the strings. So now they go
where they must.

[At the same moment he threw himself into the attitude of a
violin-player; he hummed an allegro of Locatelli's; his right arm
imitated the movement of the bow; his left hand and his fingers
seemed to be feeling along the handle. If he makes a false note, he
stops, tightens or slackens his string, and strikes it with his
nail, to make sure of its being in tune, and then takes up the
piece where he left off. He beats time with his foot, moves his
head, his feet, his hands, his arms, his body, as you may have seen
Ferrari or Chiabran, or some other virtuoso in the same
convulsions, presenting the image of the same torture, and giving
me nearly as much pain; for is it not a painful thing to watch the
torture of a man who is busy painting pleasure for my benefit? Draw
a curtain to hide the man from me, if he must show me the spectacle
of a victim on the rack. In the midst of all these agitations and
cries, if there occurred one of those harmonious passages where the
bow moves slowly over several of the strings at once, his face put
on an air of ecstasy, his voice softened, he listened to himself
with perfect ravishment; it is undoubted that the chorus sounded
both in his ears and mine. Then replacing his imaginary instrument
under his left arm with the same hand by which he held it, and
letting his right hand drop with the bow in it, said:]

Well, what do you think of it?

_I._--Wonderful!

_He._--Not bad, I fancy; it sounds pretty much like the others....
[And then he stooped down, like a musician placing himself at the
piano.]

_I._--Nay, I beg you to be merciful both to me and to yourself.

_He._--No, no; now that I have got you, you shall hear me. I will
have no vote that is given without your knowing why. You will say a
good word for me with more confidence, and that will be worth a
new pupil to me.

_I._--But I am so little in the world, and you will tire yourself
all to no purpose.

_He._--I am never tired.

[As I saw that it was useless to have pity on my man, for the
sonata on the violin had bathed him in perspiration, I resolved to
let him do as he would. So behold him seated at the piano, his legs
bent, his head thrown back towards the ceiling, where you would
have thought he saw a score written up, humming, preluding, dashing
off a piece of Alberti's or Galuppi's, I forget which. His voice
went like the wind, and his fingers leapt over the imaginary keys.
The various passions succeeded one another on his face; you
observed on it tenderness, anger, pleasure, sorrow; you felt the
piano notes, the forte notes, and I am sure that a more skilful
musician than myself would have recognised the piece by the
movement and the character, by his gestures, and by a few notes of
airs which escaped from him now and again. But the absurd thing was
to see him from time to time hesitate and take himself up as if he
had gone wrong.]

Now, you perceive, said he, rising and wiping away the drops of
sweat which rolled down his cheeks, that we know how to place our
third, our superfluous fifth, and that we know all about our
dominants. Those enharmonic passages, about which the dear uncle
makes such fuss, they are not like having the sea to swallow; we
can manage them well enough.

_I._--You have given yourself a great deal of trouble to show me
that you are uncommonly clever; but I would have taken your word
for it.

_He._--Uncommonly clever; oh no! For my trade, I know it decently,
and that is more than one wants; for in this country is one obliged
to know all that one shows?

_I._--No more than to know all that one teaches.

_He._--That is true, most thoroughly true. Now, sir philosopher,
your hand on your conscience, speak the truth; there was a time
when you were not a man of such substance as you are to-day.

_I._--I am not so very substantial even now.

_He._--But you would not go now to the Luxembourg in
summer-time.... You remember?

_I._--No more of that. Yes, I do remember.

_He._--In an overcoat of gray shag?

_I._--Ay, ay.

_He._--Terribly worn at one side, with one of the sleeves torn; and
black woollen stockings mended at the back with white thread.

_I._--Yes, anything you like.

_He._--What were you doing in the alley of Sighs?

_I._--Cutting a shabby figure enough, I daresay.

_He._--You used to give lessons in mathematics?

_I._--Without knowing a word about them. Is not that what you want
to come to?

_He._--Exactly so.

_I._--I learnt by teaching others, and I turned out some good
pupils.

_He_--That may be; but music is not like algebra or geometry. Now
that you are a substantial personage....

_I._--Not so substantial, I tell you.

_He._--And have a good lining to your purse....

_I._--Not so good.

_He._--Let your daughter have masters.

_I._--Not yet; it is her mother who looks to her education, for one
must have peace in one's house.

_He._--Peace in one's house? You have only that, when you are
either master or servant, and it should be master. I had a
wife--may heaven bless her soul--but when it happened sometimes
that she played malapert, I used to mount the high horse, and bring
out my thunder. I used to say like the Creator: Let there be light,
and there was light. So for four years we had not ten times in all
one word higher than another. How old is your child?

_I._--That has nothing to do with the matter.

_He._--How old is your child, I say?

_I._--The devil take you, leave my child and her age alone, and
return to the master she is to have.

_He._--I know nothing so pig-headed as a philosopher. In all
humility and supplication, might one not know from his highness the
philosopher, about what age her ladyship, his daughter, may be?

_I._--I suppose she is eight.

_He._--Eight! Then four years ago she ought to have had her fingers
on the keys.

_I._--But perhaps I have no fancy for including in the scheme of
her education a study that takes so much time and is good for so
little.

_He._--And what will you teach her, if you please?

_I._--To reason justly, if I can; a thing so uncommon among men,
and more uncommon still among women.

_He._--Oh, let her reason as ill as she chooses, if she is only
pretty, amusing, and coquettish.

_I._--As nature has been unkind enough to give her a delicate
organisation with a very sensitive soul, and to expose her to the
same troubles in life as if she had a strong organisation and a
heart of bronze, I will teach her, if I can, to bear them
courageously.

_He._--Let her weep and give herself airs, and have nerves all on
edge like the rest, if only she is pretty, amusing, and coquettish.
What, is she to learn no dancing nor deportment?

_I._--Yes, just enough to make a curtsey, to have a good carriage,
to enter a room gracefully, and to know how to walk.

_He._--No singing?

_I._--Just enough to pronounce her words well.

_He._--No music?

_I._--If there were a good teacher of harmony, I would gladly
entrust her to him two hours a day for two or three years, not any
more.

_He._--And instead of the essential things that you are going to
suppress?...

_I._--I place grammar, fables, history, geography, a little
drawing, and a great deal of morality.

_He._--How easy it would be for me to prove to you the uselessness
of all such knowledge in a world like ours? Uselessness, do I say?
Perhaps even the danger! But I will for the moment ask you a single
question, will she not require one or two masters?

_I._--No doubt.

_He._--And you hope that these masters will know the grammar, the
fables, the history, the geography, the morality, in which they
will give her lessons? Moonshine, my dear mentor, sheer moonshine!
If they knew these things well enough to teach them to other
people, they never would teach them?

_I._--And why?

_He._--Because they would have spent all their lives in studying
them. It is necessary to be profound in art and science, to know
its elements thoroughly. Classical books can only be well done by
those who have grown gray in harness; it is the middle and the end
which light up the darkness of the beginning. Ask your friend
D'Alembert, the coryphaeus of mathematics, if he thinks himself too
good to write about the elements. It was not till after thirty or
forty years of practice that my uncle got a glimpse of the
profundities and the first rays of light in musical theory.

_I._--O madman, arch-madman, I cried, how comes it that in thine
evil head such just ideas go pell-mell with such a mass of
extravagances?

_He._--Who on earth can find that out? 'Tis chance that flings them
to you, and they remain. If you do not know the whole of a thing,
you know none of it well; you do not know whither one thing leads,
nor whence another has come, where this and that should be placed,
which ought to pass the first, and where the second would be best.
Can you teach well without method? And method, whence comes that? I
vow to you, my dear philosopher, I have a notion that physics will
always be a poor science, a drop of water raised by a needle-point
from the vast ocean, a grain loosened from an Alpine chain. And
then, seeking the reasons of phenomena! In truth, one might every
whit as well be ignorant, as know so little and know it so ill; and
that was exactly my doctrine when I gave myself out for a
music-master. What are you musing over?

_I._--I am thinking that all you have told me is more specious than
solid. But that is no matter. You taught, you say, accompaniment
and composition.

_He._--Yes.

_I._--And you knew nothing about either.

_He._--No, i' faith; and that is why there were worse than I was,
namely those who fancied they knew something. At any rate, I did
not spoil either the child's taste or its hands. When they passed
from me to a good master, if they had learnt nothing, at all events
they had nothing to unlearn, and that was always so much time and
so much money saved.

_I._--What did you do?