Diderot and the Encyclopaedists Volume II Part 22

_He._--In the house of a Jew. He had at first surprised pity, then goodwill, then entire confidence, for that is how it always happens: we count so strongly on our kindness, that we seldom hide our secrets from anybody on whom we have heaped benefits. How should there not be ingrates in the world, when we expose this man to the temptation of being ungrateful with impunity? That is a just reflection which our Jew failed to make. He confided to the renegade that he could not conscientiously eat pork. You will see the advantage that a fertile wit knew how to get from such a confession. Some months pa.s.sed, during which our renegade redoubled his attentions; when he believed his Jew thoroughly touched, thoroughly captivated, thoroughly convinced that he had no better friend among all the tribes of Israel ... now admire the circ.u.mspection of the man! He is in no hurry; he lets the pear ripen before he shakes the branch; too much haste might have ruined his design. It is because greatness of character usually results from the natural balance between several opposite qualities.

_I._--Pray leave your reflections, and go straight on with your story.

_He._--That is impossible. There are days when I cannot help reflecting; 'tis a malady that must be allowed to run its course.

Where was I?

_I._--At the intimacy that had been established between the Jew and the renegade.

_He._--Then the pear was ripe.... But you are not listening; what are you dreaming about?

_I._--I am thinking of the curious inequality in your tone, now so high, now so low.

_He._--How can a man made of vices be one and the same?... He reaches his friend's house one night, with an air of violent perturbation, with broken accents, a face as pale as death, and trembling in every limb. "What is the matter with you?"--"We are ruined." "Ruined, how?"--"Ruined, I tell you, beyond all help."--"Explain."--"One moment, until I have recovered from my fright."--"Come, then, recover yourself," says the Jew.... "A traitor has informed against us before the Holy Inquisition, you as a Jew, me as a renegade, an infamous renegade...." Mark how the traitor does not blush to use the most odious expressions. It needs more courage than you may suppose to call one's self by one's right name; you do not know what an effort it costs to come to that.

_I._--No, I daresay not. But "the infamous renegade----"

_He._--He is false, but his falsity is adroit enough. The Jew takes fright, tears his beard, rolls on the ground, sees the officers at his door, sees himself clad in the _Sanbenito_, sees his _auto-da-fe_ all made ready. "My friend," he cries, "my good, tender friend, my only friend, what is to be done?"

"What is to be done? Why show ourselves, affect the greatest security, go about our business just as we usually do. The procedure of the tribunal is secret but slow; we must take advantage of its delays to sell all you have. I will hire a boat, or I will have it hired by a third person--that will be best; in it we will deposit your fortune, for it is your fortune that they are most anxious to get at; and then we will go, you and I, and seek under another sky the freedom of serving our G.o.d, and following in security the law of Abraham and our own consciences. The important point in our present dangerous situation is to do nothing imprudent."

No sooner said than done. The vessel is hired, victualled, and manned, the Jew's fortune put on board; on the morrow, at dawn, they are to sail, they are free to sup gaily and to sleep in all security; on the morrow they escape their prosecutors. In the night, the renegade gets up, despoils the Jew of his portfolio, his purse, his jewels, goes on board, and sails away. And you think that this is all? Good: you are not awake to it. Now when they told me the story, I divined at once what I have not told you, in order to try your sagacity. You were quite right to be an honest man; you would never have made more than a fifth-rate scoundrel. Up to this point the renegade is only that; he is a contemptible rascal whom n.o.body would consent to resemble. The sublimity of his wickedness is this, that he was himself the informer against his good friend the Israelite, of whom the Inquisition took hold when he awoke the next morning, and of whom a few days later they made a famous bonfire. And it was in this way that the renegade became the tranquil possessor of the fortune of the accursed descendant of those who crucified our Lord.

_I._--I do not know which of the two is most horrible to me--the vileness of your renegade, or the tone in which you speak of it.

_He._--And that is what I said: the atrocity of the action carries you beyond contempt, and hence my sincerity. I wished you to know to what a degree I excelled in my art, to extort from you the admission that I was at least original in my abas.e.m.e.nt, to rank me in your mind on the line of the great good-for-noughts, and to hail me henceforth--_Vivat Mascarillus, fourb.u.m imperator_!

[Here the discussion is turned aside, by Rameau's pantomimic performance of a fugue, to various topics in music.[224]]

[224] Vol. v. pp. 457-468.

_I._--How does it happen that with such fine tact, such great sensibility for the beauties of the musical art, you are so blind to the fine things of morality, so insensible to the charms of virtue?

_He._--It must be because there is for the one a sense that I have not got, a fibre that has not been given to me, a slack string that you may play upon as much as you please, but it never vibrates. Or it may be because I have always lived with those who were good musicians but bad men, whence it has come to pa.s.s that my ear has grown very fine, and my heart has grown very deaf. And then there is something in race. The blood of my father and the blood of my uncle is the same blood; my blood is the same as that of my father; the paternal molecule was hard and obtuse, and that accursed first molecule has a.s.similated to itself all the rest.

_I._--Do you love your child?

_He._--Do I love it, the little savage! I dote on it.

_I._--Will you not then seriously set to work to arrest in it the consequences of the accursed paternal molecule?

_He._--I shall labour in vain, I fancy. If he is destined to grow into a good man, I shall not hurt him; but if the molecule meant him for a ne'er-do-well like his father, then all the pains that I might have taken to make a decent man of him would only be very hurtful to him, Education incessantly crossing the inclination of the molecule, he would be drawn as it were by two contrary forces, and would walk in zigzags along the path of life, as I see an infinity of other people doing, equally awkward in good and evil.

These are what we call _especes_, of all epithets the most to be dreaded, because it marks mediocrity and the very lowest degree of contempt. A great scoundrel is a great scoundrel, but he is not an _espece_. Before the paternal molecule had got the upper hand, and had brought him to the perfect abjection at which I have arrived, it would take endless time, and he would lose his best years. I do not meddle at present; I let him come on. I examine him; he is already greedy, cunning, idle, lying, and a cheat; I'm much afraid that he is a chip of the old block.

_I._--And you will make him a musician, so that the likeness may be exact?

_He._--A musician! Sometimes I look at him and grind my teeth, saying: If thou wert ever to know a note of music, I believe I would wring thy neck.

_I._--And why so, if you please?

_He._--Music leads to nothing.

_I._--It leads to everything.

_He._--Yes, when people are first-rate. But who can promise himself that his child shall be first-rate. The odds are ten thousand to one that he will never be anything but a wretched sc.r.a.per of catgut. Are you aware that it would perhaps be easier to find a child fit to govern a realm, fit to be a great king, than one fit for a great violin player.

_I._--It seems to me that agreeable talents, even if they are mediocre, among a people who are without morals, and are lost in debauchery and luxury, get a man rapidly on in the path of fortune.

_He._--No doubt, gold and gold; gold is everything, and all the rest without gold is nothing. So instead of cramming his head with fine maxims which he would have to forget, on pain of remaining a beggar all the days of his life, what I do is this: when I have a louis, which does not happen to me often, I plant myself in front of him, I pull the louis out of my pocket, I show it to him with signs of admiration, I raise my eyes to heaven, I kiss the louis before him, and to make him understand still better the importance of the sacred coin, I point to him with my finger all that he can get with it, a fine frock, a pretty cap, a rich cake; then I thrust the louis into my pocket, I walk proudly up and down, I raise the lappet of my waistcoat, I strike my fob; and in that way I make him see that it is the louis in it that gives me all this a.s.surance.

_I._--Nothing could be better. But suppose it were to come to pa.s.s that, being so profoundly penetrated by the value of the louis, he were one day....

_He._--I understand you. One must close one's eyes to that; there is no moral principle without its own inconvenience. At the worst 'tis a bad quarter of an hour, and then all is over.

_I._--Even after hearing views so wise and so bold, I persist in thinking that it would be good to make a musician of him. I know no other means of getting so rapidly near great people, of serving their vices better, or turning your own to more advantage.

_He._--That is true; but I have plans for a speedier and surer success. Ah, if it were only a girl! But as we cannot do all that we should like, we must take what comes, and make the best of it, and not be such idiots as most fathers, who could literally do nothing worse, supposing them to have deliberately planned the misery of their children--namely, give the education of Lacedaemon to a child who is destined to live in Paris. If the education is bad, the morals of my country are to blame for that, not I. Answer for it who may; I wish my son to be happy, or what is the same thing, rich, honoured, and powerful. I know something about the easiest ways of reaching this end, and I will teach them to him betimes. If you blame me, you sages, the mult.i.tude and success will acquit me. He will put money in his purse, I can tell you. If he has plenty of that, he will lack nothing else, not even your esteem and respect.

_I._--You may be mistaken.

_He._--Then perhaps he will do very well without it, like many other people.

[There was in all this a good deal of what pa.s.ses through many people's minds, and much of the principle according to which they shape their own conduct; but they never talk about it. There, in short, is the most marked difference between my man and most of those about us. He avowed the vices that he had, and that others have; but he was no hypocrite. He was neither more nor less abominable than they; he was only more frank, and more consistent, and sometimes he was profound in the midst of his depravity. I trembled to think what his child might become under such a master.

It is certain that after ideas of bringing-up, so strictly traced on the pattern of our manners, he must go far, unless prematurely stopped on the road.]

_He._--Oh, fear nothing. The important point, the difficult point, to which a good father ought to attend before everything else, is not to give to his child vices that enrich, or comical tricks such as make him valuable to people of quality--all the world does that, if not on system as I do, at least by example and precept. The important thing is to impress on him the just proportion, the art of keeping out of disgrace and the arm of the law. There are certain discords in the social harmony that you must know exactly how to place, to prepare, and to hold. Nothing so tame as a succession of perfect chords; there needs something that stimulates, that resolves the beam, and scatters its rays.

_I._--Quite so; by your image you bring me back from morals to music, and I am very glad, for, to be quite frank with, you, I like you better as musician than as moralist.

_He._--Yet, I am a mere subaltern in music, and a really superior figure in morals.

_I._--I doubt that; but even if it were so, I am an honest man, and your principles are not mine.

_He._--So much the worse for you. Ah, if I only had your talents!

_I._--Never mind my talents; let us return to yours.

_He._--If I could only express myself like you! But I have an infernally absurd jargon--half the language of men of the world and of letters, half of Billingsgate.

_I._--Nay, I am a poor talker enough. I only know how to speak the truth, and that does not always answer, as you know.

_He._--But it is not for speaking the truth--on the contrary, it is for skilful lying that I covet your gift. If I knew how to write, to cook up a book, to turn a dedicatory epistle, to intoxicate a fool as to his own merits, to insinuate myself into the good graces of women!

_I._--And you do know all that a thousand times better than I. I should not be worthy to be so much as your pupil.

_He._--How many great qualities lost, of which you do not know the price.