A light breeze sweeps away, along with the dust of the pavements, the winged seeds of the plane trees, and the fragments of hay dropped from the mouths of the horses.The dust is nothing remarkable in itself; but as I watch it flying, I remember a moment in my childhood when I watched just such a swirl of dust; and my old Parisian soul is much affected by that sudden recollection.All that I see from my window--that horizon which extends to the left as far as the hills of Chaillot, and enables me to distinguish the Arc de Triomphe like a die of stone, the Seine, river of glory, and its bridges, the ash-trees of the terrace of the Tuileries, the Louvre of the Renaissance, cut and graven like goldsmithwork; and on my right, towards the Pont-Neuf (pons Lutetiae Novus dictus, as it is named on old engravings), all the old and venerable part of Paris, with its towers and spires:--all that is my life, it is myself; and I should be nothing but for all those things which are thus reflected in me through my thousand varying shades of thought, inspiring me and animating me.That is why I love Paris with an immense love.
And nevertheless I am weary, and I know that there can be no rest for me in the heart of this great city which thinks so much, which has taught me to think, and which for ever urges me to think more.
And how avoid being exited among all these books which incessantly tempt my curiosity without ever satisfying it? At one moment it is a date I have to look for; at another it is the name of a place I have to make sure of, or some quaint term of which it is important to determine the exact meaning.Words?--why, yes! words.As a philologist, I am their sovereign; they aer my subjects, and, like a good king, I devote my whole life to them.But shall I not be able to abdicate some day? I have an idea that there is somewhere or other, quite far from here, a certain little cottage where I could enjoy the quiet I so much need, while awaiting that day in which a greater quiet--that which can be never broken--shall come to wrap me all about.I dream of a bench before the threshold, and of fields spreading away out of sight.But I must have a fresh smiling young face beside me, to reflect and concentrate all that freshness of nature.I could then imagine myself a grandfather, and all the long void of my life would be filled....
I am not a violent man, and yet I become easily vexed, and all my works have caused me quite as much pain as pleasure.And I do not know how it is that I still keep thinking about that very conceited and very inconsiderated impertinence which my young friend of the Luxembourg took the liberty to utter about me some three months ago.
I do not call him "friend" in irony, for I love studious youth with all it temerities and imaginative eccentricities.Still, my young friend certainly went beyond all bounds.Master Ambroise Pare, who was the first to attempt the ligature of arteries, and who, having commenced his profession at a time when surgery was only performed by quack barbers, nevertheless succeeded in lifting the science to the high place it now occupies, was assailed in his old age by all the young sawbones' apprentices.Being grossly abused during a discussion by some young addlehead who might have been the best son in the world, but who certainly lacked all sense of respect, the old master answered him in his treatise De la Mumie, de la Licorne, des Venins et de la Peste."I pray him," said the great man--"I pray him, that if he desire to make any contradictions to my reply, he abandon all animosities, and treat the good old man with gentleness." This answer seems admirable from the pen of Ambroise Pare; but even had it been written by a village bonesetter, grown grey in his calling, and mocked by some young stripling, it would still be worthy of all praise.
It might perhaps seem that my memory of the incident had been kept alive only by a base feeling of resentment.I thought so myself at first, and reproached myself for thus dwelling on the saying of a boy who could not yet know the meaning of his own words.But my reflections on this subject subsequently took a better course:
that is why I now note them down in my diary.I remembered that one day when I was twenty years old (that was more than half a century ago) I was walking about in that very same garden of the Luxembourg with some comrades.We were talking about our old professors; and one of us happened to name Monsieur Petit-Radel, an estimable and learned man, who was the first to throw some light upon the origins of early Etruscan civilisation, but who had been unfortunate enough to prepare a chronological table of the lovers of Helen.We all laughed a great deal about that chronological table; and Icried out, "Petit-Radel is an ass, not in three letters, but in twelve whole volumes!"This foolish speech of my adolescence was uttered too lightly to be a weight on my conscience as an old man.May God kindly prove to me some day that I never used an less innocent shaft of speech in the battle of life! But I now ask myself whether I really never wrote, at any time in my life, something quite as unconsciously absurd as the chronological table of the lovers of Helen.The progress of science renders useless the very books which have been the greatest aids to that progress.As those works are no longer useful, modern youth is naturally inclined to believe they never had any value; it despises them, and ridicules them if they happen to contain any superannuated opinion whatever.That is why, in my twentieth year, I amused myself at the expense of Monsieur Petit-Radel and his chronological table; and that was why, the other day, at the Luxembourg, my young and irreverent friend...
"Rentre en toi-meme, Octave, et cesse de te plaindre.Quoi! tu veux qu'on t'epargne et n'as rien epargne!" [ "Look into thyself, Octavius, and cease complaining.What! thou wouldst be spared, and thou thyself hast spared none!"]
June 6.
