Читать книгу Two banks of the Seine (Les Deux Rives) - Fernand Vandérem - Страница 5

ACADEMIC INDISCRETIONS

The commission that is to bestow the Vital-Gerbert prize of fifteen thousand francs upon the best history book of the year will shortly meet at the French Academy. If one is to believe the rumors, the fight will be a hot one as there are several candidates. We are assured that one of them is M. Eusèbe Raindal, of the Institute, the author of that Life of Cleopatra which a certain section of the press has much boomed within the last month. M. Rainda candidacy, however, meets with serious opposition in academic circles. Several members consider the success of his book to be largely due to the obscene details which abound in it and which have attracted a special class of readers. Without desiring in any way to prejudice this delicate controversy, we are nevertheless compelled to admit that this book is one of the most immoral productions which have for a long time been published by a member of the Institute. The footnotes especially, although written in Latin, show signs of a revolting indecency. The author may claim in his defense that he has merely translated Egyptian pamphlets of the period and that, moreover, he has translated them only into Latin. It is nevertheless a fact that, wittingly or otherwise, he has given publicity to a mass of veritable filth. We know that history has its rights and the historian his duties. But M. Raindal will have some difficulty in establishing that it was his duty as a historian to show us Cleopatra coughing out disgusting words in the most abject surrenders of her love-making or going one better in the shameless expressions of debauchery than a female Nero. We think it is for other works, that treat of wider questions, and from a social and lofty point of view, that the academic prizes should be reserved. The “Immortals” of the Academy must decide whether we are right or wrong. To prove our contention they have this year only the difficulty of selection.

Cyprien kneaded the paper into a ball and threw it on the floor.

“Well,” he concluded, “a pretty savage attack!... It has no importance whatsoever since, as I told you, only Jews read this letter.... However, if you were to authorize me, I should be very glad to go and pull the ears of the sneak who let his pen....”

M. Rainda face had grown pale with suffering as his brother had proceeded with his reading. He lifted his hand with a philosophical gesture and murmured in a voice that he had not yet steadied:

“No use.... These are the little come-backs of fame.... And then, I know the source!”

“Who?”

“I am sure that it was inspired, if not written, by my colleague and competitor Saulvard.... Lemeunier de Saulvard, of the Sciences Morales.... I recognize his hand.... He wants the prize for his History of the Freed Men in the Roman Empire.... I am in his way.... He gets someone to vilify me.... It is a classical method.... One can only be sorry for the wretch and smile....”

M. Raindal gave a painful smile, but his throat was obstructed by that rage, like bitter gall, which one feels under patent injustice. He spat out the word:

“Obscene!”

He paused awhile, then, his voice relieved, he repeated:

“Obscene!... No, I had never heard that in the course of my career; yet I have seen much jealousy, smallness of mind and calumny among members of my profession.... If you knew what sewers run under what is called the pure regions of science!... And the filth that is poured down in them! Obscene!... After a career like mine!... The scoundrels!”

He laughed disdainfully.

“Ha! ha!... To call a man obscene who led an almost pure, blameless youth!... A man who has worked twelve hours a day for the last forty years.... It is all they have found.... See! I am laughing!... It is too amusing! It is too funny for words!”

His brother Cyprien remained silent so as to allow full swing to this revolt, the vehemence of which was a delight to his own instincts. He pressed his brothe hand.

“Tha right! Tha the way to speak.... I can see you are a true Raindal. You do not like to be goaded.... You kick.... Tha right! I hope when you meet that person....”

“I am seeing him to-night,” M. Raindal said, putting a sudden damper on his eagerness.

“To-night?” the ex-official muttered with surprise. “How?... Where?...”

“At his house.... He is giving a dance....”

“And you are going?”

“Well, yes!... A marriage for Thérèse.... A young man, a young savant, is to be introduced to us.”

Cyprien laid a hand on the polished dome of his head and said dreamily:

“Ah! ah! A match for my nephew.” (He always called Thérèse his nephew because of her masculine ways.) “Good! That is a reason.... Well, I have an idea that my nephew will not accept that young savant.... However, you are right; one has to see.... But be cautious! Your Saulvard seems to me utterly worthless ... and I would not be inclined to trust anything that came from that quarter....”

M. Raindal rose to his feet.

“Do worry. I shall look out.... Besides, you are wrong.... When his ambitions are not concerned Saulvard is not such a bad fellow....”

Cyprien whistled incredulously:

“Phew!... That may be.... Well, see you later ... seven lock.”

And he accompanied his brother to the top of the steps.

The lamp-posts were lit outside when M. Raindal reached his home in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs.

Rapidly he put on his brown smoking-jacket and his felt slippers, and passed quietly through the dark hall towards his study. Two large rectangular oak tables, face to face as in a bank, almost filled the room. Thérèse was sitting at one of them, writing by the light of an oil lamp. The green cardboard shade threw back on her the crude light which her bowed forehead reflected in spots.

“Already at work!” M. Raindal exclaimed.

He took her head between his two hands as one does with a little girl and kissed her with a recrudescent selfish tenderness, with that need for a closer contact which those who are dear to us inspire after we have suffered from the wickedness of others.

She released herself with a smile, and said gently:

“Let me alone, father!... I am reading the proofs of your article for La Revue. They are coming for them at 5.30. You can see that there is no time to lose.”

“Quite right! I obey,” M. Raindal said.

He sat facing her at the other table and took up some papers on which he began to make notes. Everything was dark about the room with the exception of a few golden threads shining in the texture of the gold curtains and the thin yellow circle which the lamp threw on the ceiling. The only sounds were the somewhat halting breathing of M. Raindal, the crackling of the coke in the fireplace, and now and then a neighboring bell giving out at long intervals a few isolated, mournful sounds. Suddenly the master exclaimed:

“What about your mother?... Has she come home yet?”

“No,” Thérèse replied, “but she will not be long.... She cannot be much longer.”

And without ceasing to write, she added with a slight touch of sarcasm:

“It seemed to me.... No, I ought not to tell you.... Well, since I have begun, let it go!... I thought before I came in that I saw Mother entering the Church of St. Germain-des-Prés!”

“Again!” M. Raindal murmured with a tone of commiseration.... “That is at least the second time since this morning.... It is deplorable!”

Thérèse smiled and looked at her father.

“What can you expect?... It makes her happy and soothes her!”

M. Raindal made a melancholy grimace.

He, a philosophical and contemptuous atheist, whose only faith was in science, whom religious faith, even on the part of his friends, irritated as a proof of lack of understanding—had he not done everything he could in the past to bring to his wife that calm happiness which he enjoyed? If Mme. Raindal had not forgotten, she better than anyone else could testify to the patience and abnegation with which he had done so!...

It had been an unpleasant surprise. Mlle. Desjannières was so gay and merry, so childish, despite her twenty years; her father, a Marseilles barrister, who had chanced to seek his fortune in Egypt, was such a brilliant talker, such a good fellow, a singer of such catchy tunes! No one could have suspected the secret fervor at work in the mind of the girl. Well, M. Raindal had not minded because he was in love with his fiancée. He would take care of her, cure her of it! On the very day that had followed their wedding in Alexandria, and later in Paris where they had settled, he had begun the cure and pursued it methodically. Every day he had discussed it with his wife for hours, preached to her and reasoned with her. She had lent herself willingly to the régime and tried in her tenderness to surmount her fears. After three months, one morning, she threw herself on her knees before her husband, weeping and crying for mercy. She begged him to put a stop to the martyrdom, to let her return to the confessional. In presence of her affliction, M. Raindal had been compelled to agree.

She was moved by a superhuman force, an unconquerable fear, the dread of the punishments which follow sin. An old Provençal maid, a kind of Domestic Dante, had inoculated her when she was quite young with the germs of the sickness. In the evenings she had described to her, as if she had been there herself, the lurid sights, the burning horrors, the eternal pangs which torment the sinners in the lands of Hell, the pains of damnation, the torments of the senses, the howls, the moans, the diabolical contortions. And as the child grew up, her soul became gradually narrower at the flame of those tales, more sensitive, more fearful of sins. The slightest of them weighed upon her as an irremissible fault, a thorny burden that choked her heart. She must needs at once rush to a priest, unload before his indulgence that weight of anguish which was heavier than a load of lead. Often as she emerged from a sanctuary she was halted by a scruple, by the semblance of a neglect which brought her hastily back to implore once more the help of the priest as he left the sacred enclosure. And since her marriage, for the last thirty-two years, she had been living thus, forever urged toward churches by new torments of her conscience, hiding her terrors when at home, unable to dominate them when outside, dreading the sarcasm of her family and weeping over their damnation.

“Her happiness! Her peace of mind!” M. Raindal was grunting as he wrote.... “If only she had had the energy to trust me with them.”

Just then the doorbell rang hurriedly twice.

“Hark!” the master said. “Here comes your mother.... I am anxious to hear what she has to say....”

Mme. Raindal stood on the threshold. A long quilted silk cape, lined with minever and slightly worn about the shoulders, encased her form. All out of breath, she panted:

“Wait!”

Her hand went under the cape and lay over her heart to suppress its beating. She explained:

“I climbed the stairs too fast.”

“Sit down! Rest yourself!” M. Raindal said calmly.

“No, no! It is passed! I feel better!”

She unhooked her cape and went to kiss her husband, then her daughter. Her cheeks carried the frost of the wind outside; they were cold as a window pane; she was still panting as she bent over each of them.

“Where have you been, to return so late?” M. Raindal inquired, without lifting his eyes from his work.

She protested.

“So late!... But it is not ‘so late’!... It is not more than 5.15.... I went to Guerbois, to order a pie for to-night.... Cyprie coming to dinner, is he?”

“Oh, yes ... Cyprie coming.”

She did not dwell on the matter. She was choking with a new fear; she had almost sinned by telling an untruth. She poked the red lumps of coke and lowered the wick of the smoking lamp. Then, feeling the weight of the silence which was pregnant with irony and with suspicion perhaps, she left the room, her cheeks now suddenly aflame, her breast heavy with sighs.

Thérèse and her father simultaneously raised their heads and exchanged a knowing smile.

“Did you hear that?... her pie?...”

He shrugged his shoulders quite discouraged. The young girl murmured with compassion:

“Poor mother!... She is so kind!...”