And yet it seems to me that you are condemning yourself very rashly, friend Sylvestre Bonnard: if you did want to keep this young girl a few years longer, it was quite as much in her own interest as in yours.She has a great deal to learn yet, and you are not a master to be despised.When that miserable notary Mouche--who subsequently committed his rascalities at so opportune a moment--paid you the honour of a visit, you explained to him your ideas of education with all the fervour of high enthusiasm.Then you attempted to put that system of yours into practice;--Jeanne is certainly an ungrateful girl, and Gelis a much too seductive young man!
But still,--unless I put him out of the house, which would be a detestably ill-mannered and ill-natured thing to do,--I must continue to receive him.He has been waiting ever so long in my little parlour, in front of those Sevres vases with which King Louis Philippe so graciously presented me.The Moissonneurs and the Pecheurs of Leopold Robert are painted upon those porcelain vases, which Gelis nevertheless dares to call frightfully ugly, with the warm approval of Jeanne, whom he has absolutely bewitched.
"My dear lad, excuse me for having kept you waiting so long.I had a little bit of work to finish."I am telling the truth.Meditation is work, but of course Gelis does not know what I mean; he thinks I am referring to something archaeological, and, his question in regard to the health of Mademoiselle Jeanne having been answered by a "Very well indeed,"uttered in that extremely dry tone which reveals my moral authority as guardian, we begin to converse about historical subjects.We first enter upon generalities.Generalities are sometimes extremely serviceable.I try to inculcate into Monsieur Gelis some respect for that generation of historians to which I belong.I say to him, "History, which was formerly an art, and which afforded place for the fullest exercise of the imagination, has in our time become a science, the study of which demands absolute exactness of knowledge."Gelis asks leave to differ from me on this subject.He tells me he does not believe that history is a science, or that it could possibly ever become a science.
"In the first place," he says to me, "what is history? The written representation of past events.But what is an event? Is it merely a commonplace fact? It is any fact? No! You say yourself it is a noteworthy fact.Now, how is the historian to tell whether a fact is noteworthy or not? He judges it arbitrarily, according to his tastes and his caprices and his ideas--in short, as an artist? For facts cannot by reason of their own intrinsic character be divided into historical facts and non-historical facts.But any fact is something exceedingly complex.Will the historian represent facts in all their complexity? No, that is impossible.Then he will represent them stripped of the greater part of the peculiarities which constituted them, and consequently lopped, mutilated, different from what they really were.As for the inter-relation of facts, needless to speak of it! If a so-called historical fact be brought into notice--as is very possible--by one or more facts which are not historical at all, and are for that very reason unknown, how is the historian going to establish the relation of these facts one to another? And in saying this, Monsieur Bonnard, I am supposing that the historian has positive evidence before him, whereas in reality he feels confidence only in such or such a witness for sympathetic reasons.History is not a science; it is an art, and one can succeed in that art only through the exercise of his faculty of imagination."Monsieur Gelis reminds me very much at this moment of a certain young fool whom I heard talking wildly one day in the garden of the Luxembourg, under the statue of Marguerite of Navarre.But at another turn of the conversation we find ourselves face to face with Walter Scott, whose work my disdainful young friend pleases to term "rococo, troubadourish, and only fit to inspire somebody engaged in making designs for cheap bronze clocks." Those are his very words!
"Why!" I exclaim, zealous to defend the magnificent creator of 'The Bride of Lammermoor' and 'The Fair Maid of Perth,' "the whole past lives in those admirable novels of his;--that is history, that is epic!""It is frippery," Gelis answers me.
And,--will you believe it?--this crazy boy actually tells me that no matter how learned one may be, one cannot possibly know just how men used to live five or ten centuries ago, because it is only with the very greatest difficulty that one can picture them to oneself even as they were only ten or fifteen years ago.In his opinion, the historical poem, the historical novel, the historical painting, are all, according to their kind, abominably false as branches of art.
"In all the arts," he adds, "the artist can only reflect his own soul.His work, no matter how it may be dressed up, is of necessity contemporary with himself, being the reflection of his own mind.
What do we admire in the 'Divine Comedy' unless it be the great soul of Dante? And the marbles of Michael Angelo, what do they represent to us that is at all extraordinary unless it be Michael Angelo himself? The artist either communicates his own life to his creations, or else merely whittles out puppets and dresses up dolls."What a torrent of paradoxes and irreverences! But boldness in a young man is not displeasing to me.Gelis gets up from his chair and sits down again.I know perfectly well what is worrying him, and whom he is waiting for.And now he begins to talk to me about his being able to make fifteen hundred francs a year, to which he can add the revenue he derives from a little property that he has inherited--two thousand francs a year more.And I am not in the least deceived as to the purpose of these confidences on his part.
