Diderot and the Encyclopaedists Volume II Part 19

_I._--Suppose they ruin themselves?

_He._--So much the worse for them.

_I._--You will not pay much heed to your wife?

_He._--None whatever, if you please. The best compliment, I think, that a man can pay his dearer half, is to do what pleases himself.

In your opinion, would not society be mightily amusing if everybody in it was always attending to his duties?

_I._--Why not? The evening is never so fair to me as when I am satisfied with my morning.

_He._--And to me also.

_I._--What makes the men of the world so dainty in their amus.e.m.e.nts, is their profound idleness.

_He._--Pray do not think that; they are full of trouble.

_I._--As they never tire themselves, they are never refreshed.

_He._--Don't suppose that either. They are incessantly worn out.

_I._--Pleasure is always a business for them, never the satisfaction of a necessity.

_He._--So much the better; necessity is always a trouble.

_I._--They wear everything out. Their soul gets blunted, weariness seizes them. A man who should take their life in the midst of all their crushing abundance would do them a kindness. The only part of happiness that they know is the part that loses its edge. I do not despise the pleasures of the senses: I have a palate, too, and it is tickled by a well-seasoned dish or a fine wine; I have a heart and eyes, and I like to see a handsome woman. Sometimes with my friends, a gay party, even if it waxes somewhat tumultuous, does not displease me. But I will not dissemble from you that it is infinitely pleasanter to me to have succoured the unfortunate, to have ended some th.o.r.n.y business, to have given wholesome counsel, done some pleasant reading, taken a walk with some man or woman dear to me, pa.s.sed instructive hours with my children, written a good page, fulfilled the duties of my position, said to the woman that I love a few soft things that bring her arm round my neck. I know actions which I would give all that I possess to have done.

_Mahomet_ is a sublime work; I would a hundred times rather have got justice for the memory of the Calas. A person of my acquaintance fled to Carthagena; he was the younger son in a country where custom transfers all the property to the eldest.

There he learns that his eldest brother, a petted son, after having despoiled his father and mother of all that they possessed, had driven them out of the castle, and that the poor old souls were languishing in indigence in some small country town. What does he do--this younger son who in consequence of the harsh treatment he had received at the hand of his parents had gone to seek his fortune far away? He sends them help; he makes haste to set his affairs in order, he returns with his riches, he restores his father and mother to their home, and finds husbands for his sisters. Ah, my dear Rameau, that man looked upon this period as the happiest in his life; he had tears in his eyes when he spoke to me of it, and even as I tell you the story, I feel my heart beat faster, and my tongue falter for sympathy.

_He._--Singular beings, you are!

_I._--'Tis you who are beings much to be pitied, if you cannot imagine that one rises above one's lot, and that it is impossible to be unhappy under the shelter of good actions.

_He._--That is a kind of felicity with which I should find it hard to familiarise myself, for we do not often come across it. But, then, according to you, we should be good.

_I._--To be happy, a.s.suredly.

_He._--Yet I see an infinity of honest people who are not happy, and an infinity of people who are happy without being honest.

_I._--You think so.

_He._--And is it not for having had common sense and frankness for a moment, that I don't know where to go for a supper to-night?

_I._--Nay, it is for not having had it always; it is because you did not perceive in good time that one ought first and foremost to provide a resource independent of servitude.

_He._--Independent or not, the resource I had provided is at any rate the most comfortable.

_I._--And the least sure and least decent.

_He._--But the most conformable to my character of sloth, madman, and good-for-nought.

_I._--Just so.

_He._--And since I can secure my happiness by vices which are natural to me, which I have acquired without labour, which I preserve without effort, which go well with the manners of my nation, which are to the taste of those who protect me, and are more in harmony with their small private necessities than virtues which would weary them by being a standing accusation against them from morning to night, why, it would be very singular for me to go and torment myself like a lost spirit, for the sake of making myself into somebody other than I am, to put on a character foreign to my own, and qualities which I will admit to be highly estimable, in order to avoid discussion, but which it would cost me a great deal to acquire, and a great deal to practise, and would lead to nothing, or possibly to worse than nothing, through the continual satire of the rich among whom beggars like me have to seek their subsistence. We praise virtue, but we hate it, and shun it, and know very well that it freezes the marrow of our bones--and in this world one must have one's feet warm. And then all that would infallibly fill me with ill-humour; for why do we so constantly see religious people so harsh, so querulous, so unsociable? 'Tis because they have imposed a task upon themselves which is not natural to them. They suffer, and when people suffer, they make others suffer too. That is not my game, nor that of my protectors either; I have to be gay, supple, amusing, comical.

Virtue makes itself respected, and respect is inconvenient; virtue insists on being admired, and admiration is not amusing. I have to do with people who are bored, and I must make them laugh. Now it is absurdity and madness which make people laugh, so mad and absurd I must be; and even if nature had not made me so, the simplest plan would still be to feign it. Happily, I have no need to play hypocrite; there are so many already of all colours, without reckoning those who play hypocrite with themselves.... If your friend Rameau were to apply himself to show his contempt for fortune, and women, and good cheer, and idleness, and to begin to Catonise, what would he be but a hypocrite? Rameau must be what he is--a lucky rascal among rascals swollen with riches, and not a mighty paragon of virtue, or even a virtuous man, eating his dry crust of bread, either alone, or by the side of a pack of beggars.

And, to cut it short, I do not get on with your felicity, or with the happiness of a few visionaries like yourself.

_I._--I see, my friend, that you do not even know what it is, and that you are not even made to understand it.

_He._--So much the better, I declare; so much the better. It would make me burst with hunger and weariness, and may be, with remorse.

_I._--Very well, then, the only advice I have to give you, is to find your way back as quickly as you can into the house from which your impudence drove you out.

_He._--And to do what you do not disapprove absolutely and yet is a little repugnant to me relatively?

_I._--What a singularity!

_He._--Nothing singular in it at all; I wish to be abject, but I wish to be so without constraint. I do not object to descend from my dignity.... You laugh?

_I._--Yes, your dignity makes me laugh.

_He._--Everybody has his own dignity. I do not object to come down from mine, but it must be in my own way, and not at the bidding of others. Must they be able to say to me, Crawl--and behold me, forced to crawl? That is the worm's way, and it is mine; we both of us follow it--the worm and I--when they leave us alone, but we turn when they tread on our tails. They have trodden on my tail, and I mean to turn. And then you have no idea of the creature we are talking about. Imagine a sour and melancholy person, eaten up by vapours, wrapped twice or thrice round in his dressing-gown, discontented with himself, and discontented with every one else; out of whom you hardly wring a smile, if you put your body and soul out of joint in a hundred different ways; who examines with a cold considering eye the droll grimaces of my face, and those of my mind, which are droller still. I may torment myself to attain the highest sublime of the lunatic asylum, nothing comes of it. Will he laugh, or will he not? That is what I am obliged to keep saying to myself in the midst of my contortions; and you may judge how damaging this uncertainty is to one's talent. My hypochondriac, with his head buried in a night-cap that covers his eyes, has the air of an immovable paG.o.d, with a string tied to its chin, and going down under his chair. You wait for the string to be pulled, and it is not pulled; or if by chance the jaws open, it is only to articulate some word that shows he has not seen you, and that all your drolleries have been thrown away. This word is the answer to some question which you put to him four days before; the word spoken, the mastoid muscle contracts, and the jaw sticks.

[Then he set himself to imitate his man. He placed himself on a chair, his head fixed, his hat coming over his eyebrows, his eyes half-shut, his arms hanging down, moving his jaw up and down like an automaton:] Gloomy, obscure, oracular as destiny itself--such is our patron.

At the other side of the room is a prude who plays at importance, to whom one could bring one's self to say that she is pretty, because she is pretty, though she has a blemish or two upon her face. _Item_, she is more spiteful, more conceited, and more silly than a goose. _Item_, she insists on having wit. _Item_, you have to persuade her that you believe she has more of it than anybody else in the world. _Item_, she knows nothing, and she has a turn for settling everything out of hand. _Item_, you must applaud her decisions with feet and hands, jump for joy, and scream with admiration:--"How fine that is, how delicate, well said, subtly seen, singularly felt! Where do women get that? Without study, by mere force of instinct, and pure light of nature! That is really like a miracle! And then they want us to believe that experience, study, reflection, education, have anything to do with the matter!..." And other fooleries to match, and tears and tears of joy; ten times a day to kneel down, one knee bent in front of the other, the other leg drawn back, the arms extended towards the G.o.ddess, to seek one's desire in her eyes, to hang on her lips, to wait for her command, and then start off like a flash of lightning.

Where is the man who would subject himself to play such a part, if it is not the wretch, who finds there two or three times a week the wherewithal to still the tribulation of his inner parts?

_I._--I should never have thought you were so fastidious.

_He._--I am not. In the beginning I watched the others, and I did as they did, even rather better, because I am more frankly impudent, a better comedian, hungrier, and better off for lungs. I descend apparently in a direct line from the famous Stentor....

[And to give me a just idea of the force of his organ, he set off laughing, with violence enough to break the windows of the coffee-house, and to interrupt the chess-players.]

_I._--But what is the good of this talent?

_He._--You cannot guess?

_I._--No; I am rather slow.

_He._--Suppose the debate opened, and victory uncertain; I get up, and, displaying my thunder, I say: "That is as mademoiselle a.s.serts.... That is worth calling a judgment. There is genius in the expression." But one must not always approve in the same manner; one would be monotonous, and seem insincere, and become insipid. You only escape that by judgment and resource; you must know how to prepare and place your major and most peremptory tones, to seize the occasion and the moment. When, for instance, there is a difference in feeling, and the debate has risen to its last degree of violence, and you have ceased to listen to one another, and all speak at the same time, you ought to have your place at the corner of the room which is farthest removed from the field of battle, to have prepared the way for your explosion by a long silence, and then suddenly to fall like a thunder-clap over the very midst of the combatants. n.o.body possesses this art as I do.

But where I am truly surprising is in the opposite way--I have low tones that I accompany with a smile, and an infinite variety of approving tricks of face; nose, lips, brow, eyes, all make play; I have a suppleness of reins, a manner of twisting the spine, of shrugging the shoulders, extending the fingers, inclining the head, closing the eyes, and throwing myself into a state of stupefaction, as if I had heard a divine angelic voice come down from heaven; that is what flatters. I do not know whether you seize rightly all the energy of that last att.i.tude. I did not invent it, but n.o.body has ever surpa.s.sed me in its execution. Behold, behold!

_I._--Truly, it is unique.

_He._--Think you there is a woman's brain that could stand that?

_I._--It must be admitted that you have carried the talent of playing the madman, and of self-debas.e.m.e.nt, as far as it can possibly be carried.