..."Now there!" adds Jeanne, by way of conclusion; and then she changes her voice again to a flute-tone in order to say all kinds of sweet things to the cat.
"He is horribly thin," I observe, looking at the wretched animal;--"moreover, he is horribly ugly." Jeanne thinks he is not ugly at all, but she acknowledges that he looks even more stupid than he looked at first: this time she thinks it not indecision, but surprise, which gives that unfortunate aspect to his countenance.
She asks us to imagine ourselves in his place;--then we are obliged to acknowledge that he cannot possibly understand what has happened to him.And then we all burst out laughing in the face of the poor little beast, which maintains the most comical look of gravity.
Jeanne wants to take him up; but he hides himself under the table, and cannot even be tempted to come out by the lure of a saucer of milk.
We all turn our backs and promise not to look; when we inspect the saucer again, we find it empty.
"Jeanne," I observe, "your protege has a decidedly tristful aspect of countenance; he is of sly and suspicious disposition; I trust he is not going to commit in the City of Books any such misdemeanours as might render it necessary for us to send him back to his chemist's shop.In the meantime we must give him a name.Suppose we call him 'Don Gris de Gouttiere'; but perhaps that is too long.'Pill,'
'Drug,' or 'Castor-oil' would be short enough, and would further serve to recall his early condition in life.What do you think about it?
"'Pill' would not sound bad," answers Jeanne, "but it would be very unkind to give him a name which would be always reminding him of the misery from which we saved him.It would be making him pay too dearly for our hospitality.Let us be more generous, and give him a pretty name, in hopes that he is going to deserve it.See how he looks at us! He knows that we are talking about him.And now that he is no longer unhappy, he is beginning to look a great deal less stupid.I am not joking! Unhappiness does make people look stupid,--I am perfectly sure it does.""Well, Jeanne, if you like, we will call your protege Hannibal.
The appropriateness of that name does not seem to strike you at once.
But the Angora cat who preceded him here as an intimate of the City of Books, and to whom I was in the habit of telling all my secrets--for he was a very wise and discreet person--used to be called Hamilcar.It is natural that this name should beget the other, and that Hannibal should succeed Hamilcar."We all agreed upon this point.
"Hannibal!" cried Jeanne, "come here!"
Hannibal, greatly frightened by the strange sonority of his own name, ran to hid himself under a bookcase in an orifice so small that a rat could not have squeezed himself into it.
A nice way of doing credit to so great a name!
I was in a good humour for working that day, and I had just dipped the nib of my pen into the ink-bottle when I heard some one ring.
Should any one ever read these pages written by an unimaginative old man, he will be sure to laugh at the way that bell keeps ringing through my narrative, without ever announcing the arrival of a new personage or introducing any unexpected incident.On the stage things are managed on the reverse principle.Monsieur Scribe never has the curtain raised without good reason, and for the greater enjoyment of ladies and young misses.That is art! I would rather hang myself than write a play,--not that I despise life, but because I should never be able to invent anything amusing.Invent! In order to do that one must have received the gift of inspiration.
It would be a very unfortunate thing for me to possess such a gift.
Suppose I were to invent some monkling in my history of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pres! What would our young erudites say?
What a scandal for the School! As for the Institute, it would say nothing and probably not even think about the matter either.Even if my colleagues still write a little sometimes, they never read.
They are of the opinion of Parny, who said, "Une paisible indifference Est la plus sage des vertus."["The most wise of the virtues is a calm indifference."]
To be the least wise in order to become the most wise--this is precisely what those Buddhists are aiming at without knowing it.
If there is any wiser wisdom than that I will go to Rome to report upon it....And all this because Monsieur Gelis happened to ring the bell!
This young man has latterly changed his manner completely with Jeanne.He is now quite as serious as he used to be frivolous, and quite as silent as he used to be chatty.And Jeanne follows his example.We have reached the phase of passionate love under constraint.For, old as I am, I cannot be deceived about it:
these two children are violently and sincerely in love with each other.Jeanne now avoids him--she hides herself in her room when he comes into the library--but how well she knows how to reach him when she is alone! alone at her piano! Every evening she talks to him through the music she plays with a rich thrill of passional feeling which is the new utterance of her new soul.
Well, why should I not confess it? Why should I not avow my weakness?
Surely my egotism would not become any less blameworthy by keeping it hidden from myself? So I will write it.Yes! I was hoping for something else;--yes! I thought I was going to keep her all to myself, as my own child, as my own daughter--not always, of course, not even perhaps for very long, but just for a few short years more.I am so old! Could she not wait? And, who knows? With the help of the gout, I would not have imposed upon her patience too much.That was my wish; that was my hope.I had made my plans--I had not reckoned upon the coming of this wild young man.But the mistake is none the less cruel because my reckoning happened to be wrong.
