But this scheme, whose realization would probably have immersed me in botany – a study for which I believe I was born – failed owing to one of those unexpected blows which upset the best laid plans. I was fated gradually to become an example of human misery. It was as if the Providence who summoned me to these great ordeals removed with His own hand every obstacle that might have saved me from undergoing them. On an expedition to the mountain-tops in search of genipi, a rare plant which only grows in the Alps and which M. Grossi required, poor Anet got so overheated that he contracted a pleurisy from which his genipi could not save him, although it is said to be efficacious in such cases.* Despite all Grossi’s art – and he was certainly a very clever man – and despite the infinite care we took of him, his kind mistress and I, he died in our arms on the fifth day, after the cruellest suffering, with no other spiritual exhortations than my own; and these I lavished on him amidst transports of such heart-felt grief that if he had been in the state to understand me, he should have received some consolation. In that way I lost the staunchest friend I had had in all my life; a rare and estimable man in whom nature supplied the defects of education and who, though in the position of a servant, possessed all the virtues of a great man, only lacking, perhaps, in order to prove himself one to all the world, some more years of life and a suitable post.
Next day I was talking of him to Mamma, in the deepest and sincerest of grief, when suddenly, in the middle of our conversation, the vile and unworthy thought came to me that I should inherit his clothes, and particularly a fine black coat which had caught my fancy. No sooner did it occur to me than I gave utterance to my thought; for in her presence thought and speech were to me as one. Nothing made her more conscious of her loss than those mean and odious words, for disinterestedness and nobility had been outstanding qualities in the dead man. The poor woman did not reply, but turned away and began to weep. Dear and precious tears! They were understood and flowed right into my heart, from which they washed away every trace of that low and contemptible thought. Never since then has any similar thought entered there.
Her loss caused Mamma as much harm as sorrow. From that moment her affairs never ceased to deteriorate. Anet had been an exact and methodical young man, who kept order in his mistress’s house. They were afraid of his watchfulness, and extravagance was checked. She herself was afraid of his criticism and grew more restrained in her wastefulness. His affection was not enough for her; she wanted to retain his respect, and she was afraid of the merited reproaches he sometimes ventured to make her, to the effect that she was squandering other people’s money as well as her own. I thought as he did, and even said so; but I had not the same ascendancy over her, and my protests had not the same effect as his. When he was gone, I was compelled to take his place, but I had neither the taste nor the aptitude for it, and filled it badly. I was not very careful, I was very timid; while I grumbled to myself I let things go their own way. Besides, though I had her confidence I had not Anet’s authority. I saw the confusion, I groaned and complained, and was not heard. I was too young and too lively to have earned the right to be sensible, and when I tried to interfere and became censorious Mamma slapped me playfully on the cheeks, called me her little mentor and forced me to resume the part which suited me.
My profound conviction that her unlimited extravagance was bound sooner or later to plunge her into distress affected me much more now that I was the overseer of her household and could judge for myself of the disproportion between her expenditure and her income. From that epoch I date the tendency to avarice to which I have been subject ever since. I have never been madly prodigal except by fits and starts; but up to that time I had never felt greatly concerned whether I had much money or little. Now I began to pay the matter some attention, and to take care of my purse. I became mean from the noblest of motives. For in truth I was only thinking of husbanding something for Mamma against the catastrophe which 1 foresaw. I was afraid that her creditors might lay hold on her pension, and that it might be altogether stopped and, taking a narrow view of things, I imagined that my little hoard might then be of great help to her. But in order to collect it, and even more to keep it, I had to conceal things from her: for when she was hard pressed for money it would never have done if she had known that I had a tidy sum put by. So I went about looking for little hiding-places in which I would stow a few louis, intending continually to increase my store up to the moment when I would place it at her feet. But I was so unskilful in the choice of my hiding-places that she always smelt them out. Then, to show me that she had discovered them, she would take out the money I had put in, and replace it by a larger sum in different coinage. Whereupon I would feel ashamed and restore my little treasure to the common purse, and she would never fail to spend it on clothes or other articles for my use, such as a silver sword, or a watch, or something of that kind.
Being now convinced that I should never succeed in saving, and that, after all, what I set aside could be of little avail to her, I felt that my only means of combating the disaster I feared would be to put myself in the position to provide for her subsistence as soon as she ceased to provide for me and found herself on the point of starvation. Unfortunately I shaped my plans according to my own tastes, and foolishly persisted in seeking my fortune in music. I felt themes and songs springing up in my head, and believed that as soon as I was in a state to make use of them I should become a famous man, a modern Orpheus, whose music would attract all the wealth of Peru. Now that I was beginning to read music fairly well, the next thing was to learn composition. The difficulty was to find someone to teach me. For I did not expect to learn by myself, with only my Rameau for assistance, and there was no one in Savoy who knew anything of harmony.
Here is another example of the inconsistencies which fill my life, and have often led me right away from my goal at the moment when I imagined that I was heading directly for it. Venture had talked to me a great deal about the Abbé Blanchard, his composition master, a man of great merit and talents, who was at that time choirmaster of Besançon Cathedral, and now occupies that post at the Chapel of Versailles. I conceived the idea of going to Besançon and taking lessons with the Abbé; and I thought the idea such a reasonable one that I succeeded in making Mamma think so too. So she immediately started getting a little outfit together for me, with the same extravagance with which she did everything. So, firm in my purpose of staving off her bankruptcy and of one day repairing the consequences of her squandering, I began at the outset to cause her an outlay of eight hundred francs. In fact in order to put myself in a position to prevent her ruin I accelerated it. Foolish though this conduct of mine was, the illusion was complete on my side and on hers too. We were both of us convinced, I that I was working for her benefit, and she that I was doing a good thing for myself.
I had expected to find Venture still at Annecy, and to get a letter from him to the Abbé Blanchard. He was no longer there. I could learn nothing of him, and had to be satisfied with a four-part mass of his composition, written out in his own hand, which he had left for me. With this introduction, I went to Besançon, by way of Geneva, where I visited my relations, and of Nyon, where I called on my father, who received me in his usual way and undertook to send my trunk on after me, for it was following me since I was on horseback. I came to Besançon, where the Abbé Blanchard welcomed me, promised to teach me, and offered to assist me in every way. We were just about to begin when I learned from a letter of my father’s that my trunk had been seized and confiscated at Rousses, a French customs office on the Swiss frontier. Alarmed at this news, I made use of the acquaintances I had formed at Besançon to inquire the reason for this confiscation. For I was quite certain that it contained no contraband, and I could not imagine what pretext there had been for its seizure. In the end I found out, and the reason was so curious that I must relate it.
At Chambéry I used to see an old fellow from Lyons, a very decent man called M. Duvivier, who had worked in the passport office under the
Regency, and who, being without employment, had come to assist in the land survey. He had lived in the world of fashion, possessed some talent and a little learning, was kind-hearted and well-mannered. He understood music, and as I shared a room with him we grew to prefer each other’s company to that of the ill-licked cubs all around us. He had correspondents in Paris who kept him supplied with those little trifles, those ephemeral publications, which circulate for no reason and die one knows not how, without anyone ever giving them another thought once they have ceased to be talked of. As I sometimes took him to dine with Mamma he to some extent cultivated me and, to make himself pleasant, tried to get me interested in these silly trifles, for which I have always felt such a disgust that never in my life have I read one for my own pleasure. Unfortunately one of these wretched papers happened to be in the breast-pocket of a new coat that I had worn two or three times, in order to get it through the customs. This paper was an insipid Jansenist parody of the great scene from Racine’s Mithridates. I had not read ten lines of it, but had inadvertently left it in that pocket, which was the reason for the confiscation of my luggage. At the head of the inventory of that trunk, the customs officials had set out an imposing report, which assumed that this document had come from Geneva to be printed and distributed in France, and in which they launched into pious invectives against the enemies of God and the Church, and in praise of their own holy vigilance which had prevented the execution of this devilish plan. No doubt they thought that my shirts too smelt of heresy. For on the strength of this dreadful paper everything was confiscated, and I have never received any account or news of my poor outfit. The revenue officers to whom we applied demanded so many instructions, proofs, affidavits, and statements that I was continually lost in the maze, and was compelled to give the whole thing up. I am really sorry that I did not keep the report of the customs office at Rousses; it was a document which would have taken a distinguished place in the collection with which I intend to supplement this narrative.
This loss made me return to Chambéry at once, without having learnt anything from the Abbé Blanchard. There, after weighing things up carefully and seeing the misfortunes that pursued me in all my enterprises, I resolved to attach myself entirely to Mamma, to share her fortune and to give up my useless concern about a future which I was powerless to affect. She welcomed me as if I had brought back treasures and gradually replaced my small wardrobe. So my mishap, which was equally serious for us both, was forgotten almost as soon as it occurred.
Although this mishap had damped my musical enthusiasm, I still did not give up studying my Rameau. By hard work I finally managed to understand it and to make a few small efforts at composition, the success of which encouraged me. The Count de Bellegarde, the Marquis d’Antremont’s son, had returned from Dresden after the death of King Augustus. He had lived for a long time in Paris, was extremely fond of music, and had a passion for Rameau. His brother, the Count de Nangis, played the violin, and their sister, the Countess de La Tour, sang a little. All this set up a fashion for music at Chambéry, and something like public concerts were arranged, the direction of which they at first decided to entrust to me. But the task was soon seen to be beyond my powers, and other arrangements were made. This did not deter me from giving them some little pieces of my composition, among them a cantata which was much liked. It was not a well-made piece, but it was full of new tunes and effects, which they had not expected from me. Seeing that I read music so badly, these gentlemen could not believe that I was capable of composing passable tunes, and they had no doubt that I had taken credit for someone else’s work. To verify their suspicions M. de Nangis called on me one morning with a cantata of Clérambault’s which he had transposed, he said, for convenience of singing, and which required a fresh bass part, since the transposition had made the original unsuitable for the instrument. I answered that this was a considerable job, and could not be done on the spot. He thought that I was looking for an excuse and pressed me to write the bass of at least one recitative. I did so, therefore, badly no doubt, because if I am to do anything successfully I always require liberty and leisure. But at least I did it according to the rules; and as he was a witness he could not doubt that I knew the elements of composition. So I did not lose my girl pupils, but it somewhat cooled my enthusiasm for music to see that they could hold a concert and do without me.
It was at more or less this time that peace was made and the French army came back across the mountains. Several officers came to see Mamma, amongst others the Count de Lautrec – colonel of the Orléans regiment, afterwards Plenipotentiary at Geneva, and finally Marshal of France – to whom she introduced me. After hearing her account of me, he seemed to view me with great interest, and made me several promises, which he did not remember till the last year of his life, when I no longer needed him. The young Marquis de Sennecterre, whose father was then ambassador at Turin, passed through Chambéry at the same time. He dined at Mme de Menthon’s on a day when I was also dining there. After dinner there was some talk about music, of which he had some knowledge. The opera Jephtha was then a novelty. He spoke of it, and the score was brought in. He made me shudder by suggesting that we two should run it through, and as he opened the book he lighted on that famous piece for two choirs:
La terre, l’enfer, le ciel même,
Tout tremble devant le Seigneur.*
‘How many parts will you take?’ he asked me. ‘I will take these six.’ I was not yet accustomed to this French impetuousness, and though I had sometimes stumbled through a score, I did not see how the same man could take six parts at once, or even two. I have never found anything so difficult in the practice of music as this airy leaping from part to part, with one’s eye on the whole score at once. From the way I evaded this ordeal, M. de Sennecterre must have been tempted to conclude that I knew nothing about music. It was perhaps in order to verify his suspicions that he proposed I should score a song which he intended to give to Mme de Menthon. I could not get out of it. As he sang it, I wrote it down, without asking for too many repetitions. He then read it over, and remarked that it was quite correct, as was the case. He had noticed my embarrassment, and was pleased to call attention to my trifling success. It was, however, a very simple matter. Really I had a considerable knowledge of music; I only lacked that power of reading at sight which was never mine in any subject, and which can only be acquired in music by constant practice. However that may be, I was grateful for his honest endeavours to make good my slight embarrassment and to efface the memory of it from the minds of the others. Twelve or fifteen years later, indeed, when I met him at various Paris houses I was often tempted to remind him of this incident, and to show him that I had not forgotten it. But he had lost his sight since then, and I was afraid of giving him fresh pain by recalling the use he had once made of it. So I remained silent.
I am now coming to a moment when my past life begins to connect with my present. Several friendships of those days have endured till now, and have become very precious to me. They have often made me regret that happy obscurity in which those who called themselves my friends were so and loved me for myself, out of pure good will and not out of vanity at being intimate with a well-known man, or out of a secret desire for acquiring more opportunities of injuring him. It is from this time that I date my earliest acquaintance with my old friend Gauffecourt, who has always been true to me despite every effort that has been made to alienate him from me. Always! No. Alas, I have just lost him. But his love for me only ceased with his life, and our friendship only ended when he did. M. de Gauffecourt was one of the most charming men who have ever lived. It was impossible to see him without loving him, or to live with him without becoming utterly attached to him. I have never in all my life seen more frank and kindly features, nor a face that expressed greater serenity, more feeling or more intelligence, nor one that inspired greater confidence. No one, however reserved, could possibly help being as familiar with him, at a first meeting, as if he had known him twenty years;
and I, who had such difficulty in being at my ease with new faces, was comfortable with him from the first moment. His manner, his way of speaking, and his conversation were in perfect keeping with his countenance. His tone of voice was clear and full and ringing, a fine bass, sonorous and incisive, which filled the ear and sounded upon the heart. It is impossible to imagine a more equable and kindly gaiety, or more genuine and simple graces, or talents at once so natural and so nicely cultivated. Add to this an affectionate heart – a little too indiscriminately affectionate – a nature anxious to oblige though with little discretion, serving his friends zealously, or rather making friends of those whom he could serve, and capable of cleverly managing his own affairs whilst warmly pursuing the interests of others. Gauffe-court was the son of a simple clock-maker, and had been a clock-maker himself. But his appearance and merits called him into another sphere, which he was not slow in entering. He made the acquaintance of M. de la Closure, the French Resident in Geneva, who took a liking for him, and secured other acquaintances for him in Paris. These were useful to him, and through their influence he obtained the privilege of supplying Valais salt, which was worth twenty thousand francs a year to him. This, so far as the world of men was concerned, was the limit of his fortune, which was fair enough. But in regard to women things were more difficult; he had to make a choice, and did what he thought best. The rarest and most honourable thing about him was that, having connexions with all classes, he was everywhere beloved, and sought after by everyone, without ever incurring anyone’s hatred or jealousy; and I think that he died without ever in his life having had a single enemy. Happy man! Every year he visited the baths at Aix, where good society gathers from the neighbouring countries. Intimate with all the nobility of Savoy, he came from Aix to Chambéry to see the Count de Bellegarde and his father the Marquis d’Antremont, at whose house Mamma met him and introduced him to me. This acquaintance, which seemed likely to lead to nothing and which was interrupted for a number of years, was renewed on an occasion that I shall mention and became a genuine bond. This is enough to justify me in speaking of a friend with whom I was so intimately connected. But even if I had no personal interest in remembering him, he was so charming a man and born under such a lucky star, that I should always think his memory worth preserving for the honour of the human race. This delightful man had, nevertheless, his faults like others, as will be seen hereafter. Yet if he had had none perhaps he would not have been so lovable. To make him as attractive as he was, there had to be something about him that required pardoning.