Thus the days passed, then weeks, then months, and he would have thought himself happy in this habitation of despair, if he had not been in love.
As a good-natured man he often felt sad as he remembered the worthy Prior of Our Lady of the Mountain and the affectionate Mademoiselle de Kerkabon. ‘How ungrateful they will think I am,’ he often said to himself, ‘to get no news of me.’
This idea tormented him, and he was far more sorry for those he loved than he was for himself.
CHAPTER 11
THE CHILD OF NATURE DEVELOPS HIS TALENTS
READING enlarges the mind, and the company of an enlightened friend brings it comfort. Our captive was enjoying two benefits, neither of which he had tasted before.
‘I shall be tempted to believe in metamorphoses,’ he remarked, ‘for I have been transformed from a brute into a man.’
He was allowed to spend some of his money, and amassed a choice collection of books. His friend encouraged him to set down his reflexions, and this is what he wrote on ancient history:
I imagine that the nations were for a long time in the state I have been in, that they were not educated until very late in life, and that for many centuries they lived only for the present moment, thinking little about the past and never about the future. I have travelled five or six hundred leagues across Canada, without discovering a single monument; nobody there knows anything about what his great-grandfather did. Would not that be the natural state of man? The human race on this continent seems to me superior to what is found over there. For several centuries they have cultivated themselves by the pursuit of art and learning. Is that because they have beards on their chins, and God has denied beards to the Americans? I do not believe it, because I see that the Chinese have scarcely any beard, and they have been cultivating the arts for more than five thousand years. For if they have records going back more than four thousand years, it stands to reason that they must have been united as a nation, and flourishing too for more than fifty centuries.
One thing in particular strikes me about this ancient history of China, and that is that nearly everything in it is credible and natural. I admire it because there are no prodigies in it, nothing out of the course of nature.
Why is it that all the other nations have given themselves fabulous origins? The ancient chroniclers of the history of France, who are not so very ancient, make out that the French are descended from one Francus, son of Hector. The Romans claimed that they were the issue of a Phrygian, though there is not a single word in their language that bears the least resemblance to the Phrygian tongue. The gods have lived for ten thousand years in Egypt, and the devils had inhabited Scythia, where they gave birth to the Huns. Before the time of Thucydides, I can find nothing but tales like that of Amadis and much less entertaining. They are concerned all the time with apparitions, oracles, prodigies, sorcery, metamorphoses, the interpretation of dreams: fantasies that control the destiny of the greatest empires and the smallest states. Here you find beasts that talk, there you find beasts that are worshipped, gods transformed into men and men into gods. If we must have fables, for heaven’s sake let them at least be emblems of truth. I love philosophers’ fables, but I laugh at children’s, and I hate those that are foisted upon us by priests.
One day he came across a history of the emperor Justinian. He read there that some numskulls of Constantinople had put out an edict, in atrocious Greek, against the greatest captain of the century, because in the heat of conversation he had let fall these words:
‘Truth shines with its own light, and you cannot illuminate the mind by flames from the stake.’
The numskulls declared that this statement was a heresy, or at any rate smelled of heresy, and that the contrary axiom was Catholic, universal, and Greek :
‘You can only illuminate the mind by flames from the stake, and the truth cannot shine with its own light.’
This was the way these ‘budge doctors’ condemned many of the captain’s sayings, and pronounced an edict against him.
‘What on earth is this?’ cried the Child of Nature. ‘Such creatures as these pronouncing edicts!’
‘These are not edicts,’ sighed Gordon. ‘These are counter-edicts, and were the laughing-stock of everyone in Constantinople, and first and foremost the Emperor. He was a wise prince and he knew how to manage numskulls in cap and gown so as to use them for the common good. He knew that these gentlemen and several other image-bearers had tried the patience of preceding emperors with their counter-edicts, on more important matters.’
‘He did well,’ replied the Child of Nature. ‘Priests have to be both sustained and contained.’
He committed to paper many other observations which alarmed old Gordon.
‘Can this be?’ he said to himself. ‘I have spent fifty years educating myself and I am afraid I shall never attain the natural commonsense of this half-savage boy! I fear I have been hard at work strengthening prejudices, whereas he listens only to the voice of nature.’
The worthy old fellow had some of those essays in criticism, those periodical pamphlets, in which writers who are themselves incapable of original work disparage the work of others, where creatures like Visé insult Racine, and where a Faidi can affront a Fénelon. The Child of Nature looked through some of them.
‘They seem to me,’ said he, ‘to resemble those little flies which choose the finest horses and lay their eggs in their backsides; but that does not hinder the horses from running.’ The two philosophers barely condescended to look at this excrement of literature.
They turned their attention next to studying the rudiments of astronomy. The Child of Nature sent for some globes, and was entranced by the magnificent spectacle.
‘How hard it is,’ he sighed, ‘to scrape acquaintance with the sky only when I am deprived of the right to look at it! Jupiter and Saturn revolve in those immense spaces, millions of suns light up thousands of millions of worlds, and in this corner of the earth where my lot is cast there are people who deprive me, a seeing and thinking being, of all those worlds to which my sight could reach, and of this one where God decided I should be born! The light given to the whole universe is lost to me. It was not kept from me in those Northern latitudes where I passed my childhood and my youth. Without you, my dear Gordon, I should be utterly annihilated here.’
CHAPTER 12
THE CHILD OF NATURE’S OPINIONS ON PLAYS
THE Child of Nature was like one of those hardy trees which begin life in unpromising soil and throw out their roots and branches as soon as they are transplanted into a more favourable locality. Strange as it may seem, it was life in prison which provided this locality.
Among the books which occupied the leisure of the two captives, there was some poetry, some translations of Greek tragedy, and a few French plays. The love poetry he read filled the soul of our Child of Nature with both pleasure and grief, for it all spoke to him of his dear St Yves. La Fontaine’s fable of the two pigeons touched him to the very heart, for it was so far beyond his power to return to his dovecot.
He was delighted with Molière, who made him acquainted with the customs of Paris and indeed of the human race.
‘Which of his comedies is your favourite?’
‘Tartuffe, without a doubt.’
‘I agree with you,’ said Gordon. ‘It was a Tartuffe who plunged me into this dungeon, and perhaps it is the Tartuffes who are responsible for your misfortunes. What do you think of these Greek tragedies?’
‘Good enough for the Greeks,’ replied the Child of Nature. But when he read our modern plays about Iphigenia, Phaedra, Andromache, and Athalia, he was in ecstasy; he sighed, he wept, and he learnt them by heart without even intending to.
‘Read Corneille’s Rodogune,’ Gordon told him. ‘They say that is the great masterpiece of the theatre. The other plays that have given you so much pleasure are not to be compared with it.’
Before he had finished the first page, the young man said to him : ‘It isn’t by the sa
me author.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I can’t tell yet. But these verses appeal neither to my ear nor to my heart.’
‘Oh, that’s only the versification,’ replied Gordon.
The Child of Nature retorted: ‘Why write in verse, then?’ He read the play with great care, and no other motive than to find pleasure in it; then he looked at his friend with dry and puzzled eyes, not knowing what to say. At last, pressed to describe what he had felt, he replied in these terms :
‘I hardly understood the beginning, I was shocked by the middle, I was much moved by the last scene, although it seemed to me rather improbable. I could not feel concerned about any of the characters, and I have not remembered twenty lines, though I can remember them all when I like them.’
‘But this play is considered to be the best we have.’
‘If that is so,’ replied the Huron, ‘it is perhaps like so many people who do not deserve their positions. After all, it is a question of taste; no doubt mine isn’t formed yet, and I could be mistaken. But, as you know, I am used to saying what I think, or rather what I feel. I suspect that men’s judgements are often influenced by delusion, by fashion, or by caprice. I spoke straight from Nature, and my idea of Nature may be very imperfect, but it may also be that most people rarely consult Nature at all.’
Then he repeated some lines from Racine’s Iphigénie, of which his head was full, and though he did not recite well, he put so much truth and earnestness into it that he reduced the old Jansenist to tears. After that, he read Cinna; it did not make him weep, but it impressed him.
CHAPTER 13
THE LOVELY ST YVES GOES TO VERSAILLES
THUS our unfortunate hero was finding more to enlighten than to console him. His intelligence developed with powerful and rapid strides, after having been so long starved; and as nature completed her work in him, she took her revenge for the outrages of fortune.
But what, meanwhile, had been happening to the Prior and his worthy sister, and to the lovely St Yves in her enforced retreat? For the first month they were worried, and by the third they were in distress, a prey to false conjectures and ill-founded rumours. At the end of six months, they thought he must be dead. At last Monsieur and Mademoiselle Kerkabon learnt, from an old letter which one of the King’s Guard had sent home to Brittany, that a young man resembling the Child of Nature had arrived one evening at Versailles, but had been carried off during the night, and that no one had heard of him since.
‘Our nephew must have done something stupid,’ said Mademoiselle de Kerkabon with a sigh. ‘He will have got himself into some awkward scrape! He’s young, he’s a Low Breton, he could not know how to behave at Court. My dear brother, I have never seen Versailles, or Paris either; here is a good opportunity. Perhaps we shall find our poor nephew; after all, he is our brother’s son, and it is our duty to help him. Who knows but we may eventually succeed in making him a sub-deacon, when the fire of youth has cooled! He was well disposed to learning. Do you remember how he used to argue about the Old and the New Testament? We are responsible for his soul, for it was we who had him baptized; and Mademoiselle de St Yves whom he loves so dearly spends her days weeping. Assuredly, we must go to Paris. If he is hidden in one of those vile bawdy-houses that I have heard so much about, we will rescue him.’
The Prior was moved by his sister’s words; he went off to find the Bishop of St Malo, who had baptized the Huron, and asked for his protection and advice. The prelate approved of the journey, and gave the Prior letters of introduction, one of them addressed to Father de La Chaise, the King’s confessor and the most important person in the kingdom, and others to Harlai, the Archbishop of Paris, and to Bossuet, the Bishop of Meaux.
The brother and sister set off at last; but when they reached Paris they found themselves as bewildered as if they were in a vast labyrinth, without a thread to guide them or any way out. Their means were modest, they needed carriages every day for reconnoitring, and they discovered nothing.
The Prior called upon the Reverend Father de La Chaise, but he had Mademoiselle du Tron with him, and could not give audience to Priors. He went to the Archbishop’s door, but he was closeted with the lovely Madame de Lesdiguières on church business. He hurried to the country house of the Bishop of Meaux, but he was engaged with Mademoiselle de Mauléon in studying Madame Guyon’s doctrine of mystic love. He did succeed, however, in getting a hearing from these two prelates, but they both declared that they could do nothing for his nephew, since he was not a sub-deacon.
At last he saw the Jesuit. The man received him with open arms, protesting that he had always had a particular regard for him, though in fact he had never known him. He swore that the Society of Jesus had always been attached to the Low Bretons.
‘But your nephew,’ he went on, ‘has the misfortune to be a Huguenot, hasn’t he?’
‘Certainly not, Reverend Father.’
‘There’s nothing of the Jansenist about him?’
‘I can assure Your Reverence that he is hardly even a Christian. It is only about eleven months since we baptized him.’
‘That’s good, that’s good, we will look after him. Is your benefice of much value?’
‘No, nothing much; and my nephew is very expensive.’
‘Are there any Jansenists in the neighbourhood? Keep a sharp lookout for them, my dear Prior. They are more dangerous than Huguenots or atheists.’
‘We have none at all, Reverend Father. We don’t know what Jansenists are at Our Lady of the Mountain.’
‘So much the better. That’s splendid! There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you.’
He took a tender farewell of the Prior and thought no more of him.
Time passed, and the Prior and his good sister were in despair. Meanwhile the accursed Magistrate continued to urge the marriage of his great booby of a son to the beautiful St Yves, who had been brought out of her convent for the purpose. She still loved her dear godson as much as she disliked the husband who was offered to her. The insult of having been put in a convent only served to increase her passion, and being ordered to marry the Magistrate’s son was the last straw. Grief, tenderness, and horror were together driving her to distraction. Naturally, the affection felt by an elderly Prior and an aunt of forty-five could not compare with the love of a young girl in ingenuity and enterprise. Moreover, the novels she had secretly read in the convent had given her plenty of ideas.
The lovely St Yves remembered the letter which had been sent to Lower Brittany by one of the officers of the guard and which had been much discussed in the province. She made up her mind to go to Versailles herself and make inquiries; she would throw herself at the Minister’s feet to obtain justice for her husband, if he should turn out to be in prison as they said. Something indefinable whispered to her
that at Court nothing is refused to a pretty girl; but she little knew what it would cost her.
Making up her mind gave her some relief; she calmed down, and no longer repulsed her stupid suitor. She welcomed her detestable father-in-law, cajoled her brother, and spread happiness throughout the house. Then, on the day chosen for the ceremony, she set out secretly at four in the morning with her little wedding-presents and all that she had been able to gather together. She had made her plans so well that she was already more than ten leagues off when they entered her room towards midday. They were overwhelmed with surprise and consternation. The inquisitive Magistrate asked more questions in that one day than he had asked all the week, and the bridegroom was stupider than he had ever been before. The Abbé de St Yves, in a furious rage, decided to run after his sister, and the Magistrate and his son resolved to go with him. Thus it was that fate brought almost the whole canton of Lower Brittany to Paris.
The lovely St Yves was quite expecting them to follow her. As she rode along, she skilfully questioned postilions as to whether they had met a stout Abbe, an enormous Magistrate, and a young booby who were taking the Paris road. When she discovered, on the
third day, that they were not far behind, she took a different route, and as much by good judgement as good luck contrived to reach Versailles while they were searching fruitlessly for her in Paris.
But what was she to do in Versailles? Young, attractive, without advisers or supporters, unknown, exposed to all possible dangers, how would she have the courage to search for an officer of the King’s guard? She had the idea of approaching a Jesuit from one of the lower ranks of the Order, for there were grades to suit all levels of society. Just as the Lord has prescribed different forms of nourishment for the various species of animals, he has ordained that the King shall have his confessor, known to all who seek benefices as the head of the Gallican church. After him come the Princesses’ confessors. Ministers do not have them : they are not so stupid. Then there are Jesuits for the common herd, and in particular, Jesuits for the ladies’ maids, from whom their mistresses’ secrets are learnt; a most important piece of work, this. The lovely St Yves approached one of the last category, who was called Father All-Things-to-All-Men. She confessed herself to him; she described her adventures, her present circumstances, and her dangerous situation, and she begged him to find her a lodging with some devout woman who would protect her against all temptations. Father All-to-All introduced her into the house of the King’s Cupbearer, whose wife was one of his most trustworthy penitents. As soon as she was installed there, she made haste to gain the woman’s confidence and friendship. She inquired about the Breton officer, and sent for him to come and see her. Having learned from him that her lover had been carried off after speaking to a First Secretary, she hurried to see this official, who was softened by the sight of a lovely woman, for it must be admitted that the Lord created women only for the purpose of taming men.