The colour-washing of our geometricians’ maps also gave me a taste for drawing. I bought some colours, and started painting flowers and landscapes. It is sad that I have found very little talent in myself for this art. The inclination was always there right enough. I could have spent whole months with my crayons and pencils, without ever going out. This hobby became too attractive to me, and I had to be dragged away from it. It is always the same with any pursuit to which I begin to devote myself; it grows and becomes a passion, and soon I can see nothing else in the world but the amusement that occupies me. Age has not cured me of this weakness, nor has it even diminished it. And even as I write this, I have become infatuated, like any old scatter-brain, by yet one more new and useless pursuit,* which I know nothing about and which even those who have devoted themselves to it in their youth are compelled to abandon by the age at which I am trying to begin it.
That was the time that would have been right for it. The opportunity was a good one, and I had some temptation to profit by it. The pleasure that I saw in Anet’s eyes when he came back carrying new plants brought me two or three times almost to the point of going out to botanize with him. I am pretty sure that if once I had done so the idea would have captured me, and to-day I might, perhaps, have been a great botanist. For I know no study in the world so close to my natural tastes as that of plants, and the country life I have been leading for the last ten years has been nothing but one continual botanization, though without purpose or progress. But having no idea of botany at that time I had conceived a sort of contempt, even a disgust, for it; I looked on it as no better than a study for apothecaries. Mamma, who was very fond of it, carried it no further herself. She merely looked for the common plants she required for her medicaments. So botany, chemistry, and anatomy were confused in my mind under the name of medicine, and served only to furnish me with sarcastic jokes all day long, and to earn me an occasional box on the ears. Besides, a different pursuit, and one too much contrasted with it, was gradually engrossing me, and soon absorbed all others. I am speaking of music. I certainly must have been born for that art, for I began to love it in my childhood, and it is the only one I have loved constantly throughout my life. The astonishing thing is that an art for which I was born should, nevertheless, have cost me so much trouble to learn, and that my progress in it has been so slow that after a life-time’s practice I have never managed to sing accurately at sight. What made this pursuit particularly pleasant for me was that I could practise it with Mamma. Though otherwise so different in our tastes, we had in music a meeting-ground of which I loved to take advantage. She was not reluctant. I was at that time more or less advanced as she, and at the second or third attempt we could read a tune. Sometimes when I saw her busy at her furnace I would say: ‘Here is a charming duet, Mamma, which seems just the thing to give your drugs a smell of burning.’ ‘Oh, indeed,’ she would reply, ‘if you make me burn them, I’ll make you eat them.’ As. we argued I would drag her to her clavichord. Then everything was forgotten; the extract of juniper or wormwood was burnt to a cinder, she smeared my face with it, and everything was delightful.
You can see that though I had little spare time I had many things to fill it with. But I had one amusement more, which was worth all the rest. We lived in such a stifling dungeon that we had to go into the country sometimes to get some air. Anet persuaded Mamma to rent a garden in the suburbs, in which to grow plants. Attached to this garden was a pretty little summerhouse which was furnished in the regulation way: it contained a bed. We often went there to dine, and sometimes I slept there. Insensibly I grew attached to this little retreat; I brought some books there and many prints. I spent a good deal of my time decorating it, and preparing pleasant surprises there for Mamma when she came out walking. Sometimes I left her, to give myself over to her there and think of her with greater pleasure. This is another whim which I neither excuse nor explain, but to which I confess because that is how it was. I remember Mme de Luxembourg once telling me with a laugh about a man who left his mistress in order to write to her. I answered that I could easily have been that man, and I might have added that I sometimes was. I have never felt when with Mamma, however, that need to leave her in order to love her better. For when I was alone with her I was as much at my ease as when I was by myself, and that has never happened to me with any other person, man or woman, whatever the affection I have felt for them. But she was so often surrounded by people who were uncongenial to me that boredom and annoyance sent me to my refuge, where I had her as I wanted her and was in no fear that tiresome people might come and follow us there.
While I lived a life of sweet repose, divided between work, pleasure, and instruction, Europe was not so calm. France and the Emperor had just declared war on one another; the King of Sardinia had joined in the quarrel, and the French army was marching through Piedmont to invade the Milanese. One column passed through Chambéry, and amongst others the regiment of Champagne to whose colonel, the Duke de la Trémouille, I was presented. He made me a great number of promises, and I am quite sure that he has never thought of me since that day. Our little garden was right at the edge of the suburb through which the troops entered, so that I could enjoy the pleasure of seeing them pass to my heart’s content; and I was as anxious for the success of this war as if I had myself great interests at stake. Up to that time it had never entered my head to think of public affairs; and I started to read the newspapers for the first time, but with so much partiality on the side of the French that my heart pounded with joy at their smallest successes, and their reverses distressed me as much as if I had suffered them myself. If this folly had only been a passing one I should not consider it worth mentioning, but it gained so deep a root in my heart, for no reason, that when afterwards, in Paris, I was playing the anti-despot and proud Republican, I unwillingly felt a secret partiality for that same nation which I adjudged servile, and even for their government which I set out to condemn. The funny part of it was that, being ashamed of a prejudice so contrary to my principles, I dared not confess it to anyone, and jeered at the French in their defeats while my heart bled for them more than did their own. I am surely the only man who has lived with a people who treated him well and whom he adored, and yet has assumed a pretence of scorn for them to their faces. Indeed, this predilection of mine has been so disinterested, so strong, so constant, and so invincible that even since I have left the kingdom, even since its government, magistrates and writers have vied with one another in attacking me, and since it has become good form to shower slanders and abuse upon me, I have been unable to cure myself of my folly. I love the French in spite of myself, and although they ill use me.
I have for a long time sought the reason for this partiality, and I have never been able to find it anywhere except in the occasion that gave it birth. A growing taste for literature made me love French books, the authors of those books, and the country of those authors. At the very moment when the French army was marching past my eyes I was reading Brantôme’s Great Captains. I had my head full of the Clissons and Bayards, the Lautrecs and Colignys, the Mont-morencys and La Trémouilles, and felt an affection for their descendants as the heirs of their virtue and their courage. In every regiment that passed I seemed to see again those famous black bands which had once performed such deeds in Piedmont. In fact I applied to what I saw the ideas I drew from my books. My continuous reading, always confined to French authors, nurtured my affection for France, and finally transformed it into so blind a passion that nothing has been able to conquer it. I have since had occasion to observe in my travels that this feeling is not peculiar to me, and that by influencing more or less in all countries that part of the nation which loves reading and cultivates literature, it acts as a counter-weight to the general hatred which the French incur by their conceited manners. Their novels rather than the men themselves win the hearts of the women in all lands; and their dramatic masterpieces win the young people’s affection for their theatres. The fame of the Paris stage att
racts crowds of foreigners who return home enthusiastic. In short, the excellence and good taste of their literature wins the minds of all those who have any; and in the unfortunate war from which they have just emerged I have seen their authors and philosophers supporting the glory of the French name, which their soldiers have tarnished.
So I was an ardent Frenchman, and that made me a collector of news. I stood with a crowd of gapers waiting in the square for the arrival of the couriers; and, even stupider than the ass in the fable, I was greatly concerned to know what master’s saddle I should have the honour of wearing. For it was declared at that time that we were to belong to France; Savoy was to be exchanged for the Milanese. I must admit, however, that I had some cause for fear. For if that war had gone badly for the allies Mamma’s pension would have been in great danger. But I was full of confidence in my good friends; and this time, despite M. de Broglie’s surprise, this confidence was not deceived – thanks to the King of Sardinia, whom I had never thought of.
While there was fighting in Italy there was singing in France. Rameau’s operas began to excite notice, and called attention to his theoretical works, the obscurity of which put them out of the reach of all but the few. I heard by chance of his Treastise on Harmony, and I knew no rest until I had acquired the book. By another chance I fell ill with an inflammation. The attack was short and sharp, but my convalescence was long, and it was months before I was fit to go out. During this time I ran through and devoured my Treatise. But it was so long, so diffuse, and so ill-arranged that I felt it would take me a considerable time to study and unravel it. I suspended my efforts, and refreshed myself with music. Bernier’s cantatas, at which I practised, were continuously in my head. I learned four or five of them by heart, among others ‘The Sleeping Lovers’, which I have never seen since then and which I still know almost complete, as I do ‘Love stung by a Bee’, a very pretty cantata of Clérambault’s, which I learned at about the same time.
To crown all, there arrived from the Val d’Aosta a young organist, the Abbé Palais, a good musician, a good man, and an excellent accompanist upon the clavichord. I made his acquaintance, and we became inseparable. He was the pupil of an Italian monk, who was a fine organist. He talked to me of his theories and I compared them with my Rameau’s. I filled my head with accompaniments, chords, and harmonies. My ear needed training for all this, and I proposed to Mamma that she should give a little concert every month; she agreed. Then I was so full of this concert that I could think of nothing else, night or day; and indeed I had plenty to do in collecting the music, the performers, and the instruments, writing out the parts and so on. Mamma sang, and Father Caton, of whom I have spoken and of whom I have still to speak, sang also. A dancing-master by the name of Roche and his son played the violin. Canavas, a Piedmontese musician, who worked on the survey and has since married in Paris, played the’ cello. The Abbé Palais accompanied on the clavichord, and I had the honour of conducting with a rough-and-ready baton. You can imagine how lovely it all was, not quite like the concert at M. de Treytorens’, but almost as good.
The little concert at Mme de Warens’, the recent convert who was said to live on the King’s charity, aroused protests from the ultra-devout; but it was enjoyed by many good people. No one will guess whom I put first among them on this occasion. A friar, but a friar of real talent, indeed a charming man, whose subsequent misfortunes deeply distressed me, and whose memory, linked with that of my good times, is still dear to me. I am thinking of Father Caton, a Franciscan, who jointly with Count Dortan had caused the poor kitten’s music to be seized at Lyons; which is not the pleasantest incident in his life. He was a Bachelor of the Sorbonne, had lived long in Paris in the most fashionable circles, and had especially frequented the Marquis d’Antremont, then Sardinian ambassador. He was a large, well-built man with a full face, prominent eyes, and dark hair which fell in natural curls on his temples. His manner was at once noble, frank, and modest. His appearance was simple and pleasing. He had not that hypocritical or insolent bearing common in friars, nor the haughty attitude of a man of the world, although he was one. He had the assurance of an honourable man, who does not blush for his cloth but knows his value and always feels in his proper place in honourable company. Although Father Caton had not much learning for a doctor, he had plenty for a man of the world, and, not feeling compelled to display his knowledge, made such opportune use of it that it appeared greater than it was. Having lived long in society, he had cultivated pleasing accomplishments rather than solid learning. He had a witty tongue, wrote verses, talked well, sang better, had a fine voice, and played the organ and the clavichord. This was more than enough to make him sought after, and so he was. But so little did this cause him to neglect the duties of his profession that he succeeded, in spite of jealous rivals, in being elected Deputy to the Chapter for his province, in other words, in becoming one of the great pillars of his order.
Father Caton made Mamma’s acquaintance at the Marquis d’Antre-mont’s. He heard of our concerts and expressed a wish to take part in them. He did so, and made them delightful. Soon we became attached by our common taste for music, which was an intense passion on both sides; though with this difference, that he was a true musician, and I was no more than a strummer. We went with Canavas and the Abbé Palais to play with him in his room, and sometimes, on feast days, we would have music on the organ. We often dined at his modest table. For he had another quality surprising in a friar – he was generous, profuse, and enjoyed the things of the flesh, through not grossly. On the days of our concerts he supped at Mamma’s. These suppers were very gay and most entertaining. We spoke with absolute freedom, and we sang duets. I was at my ease. I displayed wit and humour. Father Caton was charming, Mamma was adorable, and the Abbé Palais, with his bull’s voice, was the common butt. Sweet moments of foolish youth, how long it is since you departed!
As I shall have no more to say of this poor Father Caton, let me conclude his sad story here in a few words. His brother monks were jealous, or rather angry, when they saw in him fine qualities and elegant manners without any of the usual monkish coarseness. So they grew to hate him for not being as hateful as themselves. Those in high places combined against him, and stirred up the little friars, who were envious of his position, but who had not dared to look at him before. He was insulted in many ways, dismissed from his office, deprived of his room, which he had furnished tastefully though simply, and banished I do not know where. Finally the wretches overwhelmed him with such indignities that his honest and justifiable pride could stand it no more; he who had been the delight of the most charming society died of grief on a miserable bed in some cell or dungeon, mourned by all the worthy people of his acquaintance, who could find no other fault in him except that of being a friar.
During this short spell I made such rapid progress and was so entirely absorbed in music that I was in no state to think of anything else. I never went to my office except reluctantly; the constraint and assiduity required by my work became an unendurable torture to me, and finally I expressed a wish to give it up in order to devote myself entirely to music. This foolishness, naturally enough, did not escape opposition. To resign a respectable post and a certain salary in order to chase after uncertain pupils was too senseless a proposition to please Mamma. Even supposing my future success to prove as great as [ imagined, it meant fixing very modest limits to my ambitions, to reduce myself for life to the status of musician. Never making any plans which were not great ones, and no longer taking me quite at M. d’Aubonne’s valuation, she was sorry to see me seriously taken up with an accomplishment which she considered so trivial. Often she would repeat to me that country saying, which is less applicable in Paris, to die effect that singing and dancing is a trade that won’t take a man far. On the other hand she saw me swept away by an irresistible attraction. My passion for music was becoming a mania, and it was to be feared that my work would suffer from my distraction and earn me a dismissal, which it would be better
to forestall by resigning. I pointed out to her further that this employment was not for long, that I needed some accomplishment by which to live, and that it was safer to complete by practice my knowledge of the art to which my taste inclined me, and which she had chosen for me, than to put myself at the mercy of patronage, or to try something fresh which might not succeed, and might leave me too old to learn and without the means of gaining a livelihood. At last I extorted her consent rather by persistence and caresses than by any arguments that satisfied her. Then I ran to M. Corelli, general director of the survey, to offer my resignation, and with as much pride as if I were performing a heroic deed, I voluntarily gave up my employment without cause, reason, or excuse, and with as much and even greater joy than I had felt in taking it up two years before. This action, foolish though it was, earned me a sort of consideration in the country, which was useful to me. Some people credited me with means which I did not possess; others, seeing me entirely devoted to music, judged of my talent by my sacrifice, and supposed that with such enthusiasm for the art I must possess outstanding abilities. In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king; I passed for a good teacher, because the rest in the town were bad. Besides 1 did not lack a certain taste for singing, and my age and looks were in my favour. So I soon had more lady pupils than I required to make up the clerk’s pay I had lost.
So far as a pleasant life is concerned, certainly no one can ever have passed more rapidly from one extreme to the other. At the survey, occupied for eight hours a day at the most disagreeable employment with still more disagreeable people; shut up in a melancholy office poisoned by the breath and sweat of all those clods, the majority of whom were extremely ill-kempt and most unclean, I sometimes felt so oppressed by the mental effort, the smells, the constraint and boredom that my head spun. Instead of that, here I was suddenly thrown among the world of fashion, admitted and sought after in the best houses, everywhere welcomed, made much of, fêted. Charming and beautifully dressed young ladies awaited me, and received me with fervour. I saw no objects that were not enchanting, smelt nothing but rose and orange blossom; there was singing, chatter, laughter, amusement; and no sooner did I leave than I went elsewhere to find the same reception. It will be agreed that, all things being equal, one could have no doubt which life to choose. So satisfied was I with mine that I never once repented of it; and I do not even repent of it at this moment, when I weigh the actions of my life on the scales of reason, and am no longer swayed by the rather foolish motives which led me to make that choice.