Diderot and the Encyclopaedists Volume II Part 21

Then we have the authors of the Opera Comique, their actors and their actresses, and oftener still their managers, all people of resource and superior merit. And I forget the whole clique of scribblers in the gazettes, the _Avant Coureur_, the _Pet.i.tes Affiches_, the _Annee litteraire_, the _Observateur litteraire_.

_I._--The _Annee litteraire_, the _Observateur litteraire_! But they detest one another.

_He._--Quite true, but all beggars are reconciled at the porringer.

That cursed _Observateur litteraire_, I wish the devil had had both him and his sheet! It was that dog of a miserly priest who caused my disaster. He appeared on our horizon for the first time; he arrived at the hour that drives us all out of our dens, the hour for dinner. When it is bad weather, lucky the man among us who has a shilling in his pocket to pay for a hackney-coach! He is free to laugh at a comrade for coming besplashed up to his eyes and wet to the skin, though at night he goes to his own home in just the same plight. There was one of them some months ago who had a violent brawl with the Savoyard at the door. They had a running account; the creditor insisted on being paid, and the debtor was not in funds, and yet he could not go upstairs without pa.s.sing through the hands of the other.

Dinner is served; they do the honours of the table to the abbe--they place him at the upper end. I come in and see this.

"What, abbe, you preside? That is all very well for to-day, but to-morrow you will come down, if you please, by one plate; the day after by another plate, and so on from plate to plate, now to right and now to left, until from the place that I occupied one time before you, Freron once after me, Dorat once after Freron, Palissot once after Dorat, you become stationary beside me, poor rascal as you are--_che siedo sempre come_"--[an Italian proverb not to be decently reproduced].

The abbe, who is a good fellow, and takes everything in good part, bursts out laughing; Mademoiselle, struck by my observation and by the aptness of my comparison, bursts out laughing; everybody to right and left burst out laughing, except the master of the house, who flies into a huff, and uses language that would have meant nothing if we had been by ourselves--

"Rameau, you are an impertinent."

"I know I am, and it is on that condition that I was received here."

"You are a scoundrel."

"Like anybody else."

"A beggar."

"Should I be here, if I were not?"

"I will have you turned out of doors."

"After dinner I will go of my own will."

"I recommend you to go."

We dined: I did not lose a single toothful. After eating well and drinking amply, for after all Messer Gaster is a person with whom I have never sulked, I made up my mind what to do, and I prepared to go; I had pledged my word in presence of so many people that I was bound to keep it. For a considerable time I hunted up and down the room for my hat and cane in every corner where they were not likely to be, reckoning all the time that the master of the house would break out into a new torrent of injuries, that somebody would interpose, and that we should at last make friends by sheer dint of altercation. I turned on this side and that, for I had nothing on my heart; but the master, more sombre and dark-browed than Homer's Apollo as he lets his arrows fly among the Greeks, with his cap plucked farther over his head than usual, marched backwards and forwards up and down the room. Mademoiselle approaches me: "But, mademoiselle," say I, "what has happened beyond what happens every day? Have I been different from what I am on other days?"

"I insist on his leaving the house."--"I am leaving.... But I have given no ground of offence."--"Pardon me; we invite the abbe and...." It was he who was wrong to invite the abbe, while at the same time he was receiving me, and with me so many other creatures of my sort.--"Come, friend Rameau, you must beg the abbe's pardon."--"I shall not know what to do with his pardon."--"Come, come, all will be right."--They take me by the hand, and drag me towards the abbe's chair; I look at him with a kind of admiring wonder, for who before ever asked pardon of the abbe? "All this is very absurd, abbe; confess, is it not?" And then I laugh, and the abbe laughs too. So that is my forgiveness on that side; but I had next to approach the other, and that was a very different thing. I forget exactly how it was that I framed my apology.--"Sir, here is the madman...."--"He has made me suffer too long; I wish to hear no more about him."--"He is sorry."--"Yes, I am very sorry."--"It shall not happen again."--"Until the first rascal...."--I do not know whether he was in one of those days of ill-humour when mademoiselle herself dreads to go near him, or whether he misunderstood what I said, or whether I said something wrong: things were worse than before. Good heavens, does he not know me?

Does he not know that I am like children, and that there are some circ.u.mstances in which I let anything and everything escape me? And then, G.o.d help me, am I not to have a moment of relief? Why, it would wear out a puppet made of steel, to keep pulling the string from night to morning, and from morning to night! I must amuse them, of course, that is the condition; but I must now and then amuse myself. In the midst of these distractions there came into my head a fatal idea, an idea that gave me confidence, that inspired me with pride and insolence: it was that they could not do without me, and that I was indispensable.

_I._--Yes, I daresay that you are very useful to them, but that they are still more useful to you. You will not find as good a house every day; but they, for one madman who falls short, will find a hundred to take his place.

_He._--A hundred madmen like me, sir philosopher; they are not so common, I can tell you! Flat fools--yes. People are harder to please in folly than in talent or virtue. I am a rarity in my own kind, a great rarity. Now that they have me no longer, what are they doing? They find time as heavy as if they were dogs. I am an inexhaustible bagful of impertinences. Every minute I had some fantastic notion that made them laugh till they cried; I was a whole Bedlam in myself.

_I._--Well, at any rate you had bed and board, coat and breeches, shoes, and a pistole a month.

_He._--That is the profit side of the account; you say not a word of the cost of it all. First, if there was a whisper of a new piece (no matter how bad the weather), one had to ransack all the garrets in Paris, until one had found the author; then to get a reading of the play, and adroitly to insinuate that there was a part in it which would be rendered in a superior manner by a certain person of my acquaintance.--"And by whom, if you please?"--"By whom? a pretty question! There are graces, finesse, elegance."--"Ah, you mean Mademoiselle Dangeville? Perhaps you know her?"--"Yes, a little; but 'tis not she."--"Who is it, then?"--I whispered the name very low. "She?"--"Yes, she," I repeated with some shame, for sometimes I do feel a touch of shame; and at this name you should have seen how long the poet's face grew, if indeed he did not burst out laughing in my face. Still, whether he would or not, I was bound to take my man to dine; and he, being naturally afraid of pledging himself, drew back, and tried to say "No, thank you." You should have seen how I was treated, if I did not succeed in my negotiation! I was a blockhead, a fool, a rascal; I was not good for a single thing; I was not worth the gla.s.s of water which they gave me to drink. It was still worse at their performance, when I had to go intrepidly amid the cries of a public that has a good judgment of its own, whatever may be said about it, and make my solitary clap of the hand audible, draw every eye to me, and sometimes save the actress from hisses, and hear people murmur around me--"He is one of the valets in disguise belonging to the man who.... Will that knave be quiet?" They do not know what brings a man to that; they think it is stupidity, but there is one motive that excuses anything.

_I._--Even the infraction of the civil laws.

_He._--At length, however, I became known, and people used to say: "Oh, it is Rameau!" My resource was to throw out some words of irony to save my solitary applause from ridicule, by making them interpret it in an opposite sense.

Now agree that one must have a mighty interest to make one thus brave the a.s.sembled public, and that each of these pieces of hard labour was worth more than a paltry crown? And then at home there was a pack of dogs to tend, and cats for which I was responsible. I was only too happy if Micou favoured me with a stroke of his claw that tore my cuff or my wrist. Criquette is liable to colic; 'tis I who have to rub her. In old days mademoiselle used to have the vapours; to-day, it is her nerves. She is beginning to grow a little stout; you should hear the fine tales they make out of this.

_I._--You do not belong to people of this sort, at any rate?

_He._--Why not?

_I._--Because it is indecent to throw ridicule on one's benefactors.

_He._--But is it not worse still to take advantage of one's benefits to degrade the receiver of them?

_I._--But if the receiver of them were not vile in himself, nothing would give the benefactor the chance.

_He._--But if the personages were not ridiculous in themselves they would not make subjects for good tales. And then, is it my fault if they mix with rascaldom? Is it my fault if, after mixing themselves up with rascaldom, they are betrayed and made fools of? When people resolve to live with people like us, if they have common sense, there is an infinite quant.i.ty of blackness for which they must make up their minds. When they take us, do they not know us for what we are, for the most interested, vile, and perfidious of souls. Then if they know us, all is well. There is a tacit compact that they shall treat us well, and that sooner or later we shall treat them ill in return for the good that they have done us. Does not such an agreement subsist between a man and his monkey or his parrot?... If you take a young provincial to the menagerie at Versailles, and he takes it into his head for a freak to push his hands between the bars of the cage of the tiger or the panther, whose fault is it? It is all written in the silent compact, and so much the worse for the man who forgets or ignores it. How I could justify by this universal and sacred compact the people whom you accuse of wickedness, whereas it is in truth yourselves whom you ought to accuse of folly.... But while we execute the just decrees of Providence on folly, you who paint us as we are, you execute its just decrees on us. What would you think of us, if we claimed, with our shameless manners, to enjoy public consideration? That we are out of our senses. And those who look for decent behaviour from people who are born vicious and with vile and bad characters--are they in their senses? Everything has its true wages in this world.

There are two Public Prosecutors, one at your door, chastising offences against society; nature is the other. Nature knows all the vices that escape the laws. Give yourself up to debauchery, and you will end with dropsy; if you are c.r.a.pulous, your lungs will find you out; if you open your door to ragam.u.f.fins, and live in their company, you will be betrayed, laughed at, despised. The shortest way is to resign, one's self to the equity of these judgments, and to say to one's self: That is as it should be; to shake one's ears and turn over a new leaf, or else to remain what one is, but on the conditions aforesaid....

_I._--You cannot doubt what judgment I pa.s.s on such a character as yours?

_He._--Not at all; I am in your eyes an abject and most despicable creature; and I am sometimes the same in my own eyes, though not often: I more frequently congratulate myself on my vices than blame myself for them; you are more constant in your contempt.

_I._--True; but why show me all your turpitude?

_He._--First, because you already know a good deal of it, and I saw that there was more to gain than to lose, by confessing the rest.

_I._--How so, if you please?

_He._--It is important in some lines of business to reach sublimity; it is especially so in evil. People spit upon a small rogue, but they cannot refuse a kind of consideration to a great criminal; his courage amazes you, his atrocity makes you shudder.

In all things, what people prize is unity of character.

_I._--But this estimable unity of character you have not quite got: I find you from time to time vacillating in your principles; it is uncertain whether you get your wickedness from nature or study, and whether study has brought you as far as possible.

_He._--I agree with you, but I have done my best. Have I not had the modesty to recognise persons more perfect in my own line than myself. Have I not spoken to you of Bouret with the deepest admiration? Bouret is the first person in the world for me.

_I._--But after Bouret you come.

_He._--No.

_I._--Palissot, then?

_He._--Palissot, but not Palissot alone.

_I._--And who is worthy to share the second rank with him?

_He._--The Renegade of Avignon.

_I._--I never heard of the Renegade of Avignon, but he must be an astonishing man.

_He._--He is so, indeed.

_I._--The history of great personages has always interested me.

_He._--I can well believe it. This hero lived in the house of a good and worthy descendant of Abraham, promised to the father of the faithful in number equal to the stars in the heavens.

_I._--In the house of a Jew?