"And why," I asked myself, "why should I have learned that this precious book exists, if I am never to possess it--never even to see it? I would go to seek it in the burning heart of Africa, or in the icy regions of the Pole if I knew it were there.But I do not know where it is.I do not know if it be guarded in a triple-locked iron case by some jealous biblomaniac.I do not know if it be growing mouldy in the attic of some ignoramus.I shudder at the thought that perhaps its tore-out leaves may have been used to cover the pickle-jars of some housekeeper."August 30, 1850
The heavy heat compelled me to walk slowly.I kept close to the walls of the north quays; and, in the lukewarm shade, the shops of the dealers in old books, engravings, and antiquated furniture drew my eyes and appealed to my fancy.Rummaging and idling among these, I hastily enjoyed some verses spiritedly thrown off by a poet of the Pleiad.I examined an elegant Masquerade by Watteau.I felt, with my eye, the weight of a two-handed sword, a steel gorgerin, a morion.What a thick helmet! What a ponderous breastplate--Seigneur! A giant's garb? No--the carapace of an insect.The men of those days were cuirassed like beetles; their weakness was within them.To-day, on the contrary, our strength is interior, and our armed souls dwell in feeble bodies.
...Here is a pastel-portrait of a lady of the old time--the face, vague like a shadow, smiles; and a hand, gloved with an openwork mitten, retains upon her satiny knees a lap-dog, with a ribbon about its neck.That picture fills me with a sort of charming melancholy.
Let those who have no half-effaced pastels in their own hearts laugh at me! Like the horse that scents the stable, I hasten my pace as I near my lodgings.There it is--that great human hive, in which I have a cell, for the purpose of therein distilling the somewhat acrid honey of erudition.I climb the stairs with slow effort.
Only a few steps more, and I shall be at my own door.But I divine, rather than see, a robe descending with a sound of rustling silk.
I stop, and press myself against the balustrade to make room.The lady who is coming down is bareheaded; shi is young; she sings; her eyes and teeth gleam in the shadow, for she laughs with lips and eyes at the same time.She is certainly a neighbor, and a very familiar one.She holds in her arms a pretty child, a little boy--quite naked, like the son of a goddess; he has a medal hung round his neck by a little silver chain.I see him sucking his thumb and looking at me with those big eyes so newly opened on this old universe.
The mother simultaneously looks at me in a sly, mysterious way; she stops--I think blushes a little--and holds out the little creature to me.The baby has a pretty wrinkle between wrist and arm, a pretty wrinkle about his neck, and all over him, from head to foot, the daintiest dimples laugh in his rosy flesh.
The mamma shows him to me with pride.
"Monsieur," she says, "don't you think he is very pretty--my little boy?"She takes one tiny hand, lifts it to the child's own lips, and, drawing out the darling pink fingers again towards me, says, "Baby, throw the gentleman a kiss."Then, folding the little being in her arms, she flees away with the agility of a cat, and is lost to sight in a corridor which, judging by the odour, must lead to some kitchen.
I enter my own quarters.
"Therese, who can that young mother be whom I saw bareheaded on the stairs just now, with a pretty little boy?"And Therese replies that it was Madame Coccoz.
I stare up at the ceiling, as if trying to obtain some further illumination.Therese then recalls to me the little book-peddler who tried to sell me almanacs last year, while his wife was lying in.
"And Coccoz himself?" I asked.
I was answered that I would never see him again.The poor little man had been laid away underground, without my knowledge, and, indeed, with the knowledge of very few people, on a short time after the happy delivery of Madame Coccoz.I leaned that his wife had been able to console herself: I did likewise.
"But, Therese," I asked, "has Madame Coccoz got everything she needs in that attic of hers?""You would be a great dupe, Monsieur," replied my housekeeper, "if you should bother yourself about that creature.They gave her notice to quit the attic when the roof was repaired.But she stays there yet--in spite of the proprietor, the agent, the concierge, and the bailiffs.I think she has bewitched every one of them.She will leave the attic when she pleases, Monsieur; but she is going to leave in her own carriage.Let me tell you that!"Therese reflected for a moment; and then uttered these words:
"A pretty face is a curse from Heaven."
"Then I ought to thank Heaven for having spared me that curse.But here! put my hat and cane away.I am going to amuse myself with a few pages of Moreri.If I can trust my old fox-nose, we are going to have a nicely flavoured pullet for dinner.Look after that estimable fowl, my girl, and spare your neighbors, so that you and your old master may be spared by them in turn."Having thus spoken, I proceeded to follow out the tufted ramifications of a princely genealogy.
May 7, 1851
I have passed the winter according to the ideal of the sages, in angello cum libello; and now the swallows of the Quai Malaquais find me on their return about as when they left me.He who lives little, changes little; and it is scarcely living at all to use up one's days over old texts.
Yet I feel myself to-day a little more deeply impregnated than ever before with that vague melancholy which life distils.The economy of my intelligence (I dare scarcely confess it to myself!) has remained disturbed ever since that momentous hour in which the existence of the manuscript of the Clerk Alexander was first revealed to me.
