Страница 48 из 65
"Then after a silence he resumes his discourse, and making no account of the murders, but dwelling only on the crimes of which the punishment, foreseen by canonic law, can be fixed by the Church, he demands that Gilles be smitten with double excommunication, first as an evoker of demons, a heretic, apostate and renegade, second as a sodomist and perpetrator of sacrilege.
"Gilles, who has listened to this incisive and scathing indictment, completely loses control of himself. He insults the judges, calls them simonists and ribalds, and refuses to answer the questions put to him. The Prosecutor and advocates are unmoved; they invite him to present his defence.
"Again he denounces them, insults them, but when called upon to refute them he remains silent.
"The Bishop and Vice Inquisitor declare him in contempt and pronounce against him the sentence of excommunication, which is soon made public. They decide in addition that the hearing shall be continued next day-"
A ring of the doorbell interrupted Durtal's perusal of his notes. Des Hermies entered.
"I have just seen Carhaix. He is ill," he said.
"That so? What seems to be the matter?"
"Nothing very serious. A slight attack of bronchitis. He'll be up in a few days if he will consent to keep quiet."
"I must go see him tomorrow," said Durtal.
"And what are you doing?" enquired Des Hermies. "Working hard?"
"Why, yes. I am digging into the trial of the noble baron de Rais. It will be as tedious to read as to write!"
"And you don't know yet when you will finish your volume?"
"No," answered Durtal, stretching. "As a matter of fact I wish it might never be finished. What will become of me when it is? I'll have to look around for another subject, and, when I find one, do all the drudgery of pla
"And, charitably, it lessens the distress of us few who still love art."
"Few indeed!"
"And the number keeps diminishing. The new generation no longer interests itself in anything except gambling and jockeys."
"Yes, you're quite right. The men can't spare from gambling the time to read, so it is only the society women who buy books and pass judgment on them. It is to The Lady, as Schopenhauer called her, to the little goose, as I should characterize her, that we are indebted for these shoals of lukewarm and mucilaginous novels which nowadays get puffed."
"You think, then, that we are in for a pretty literature. Naturally you can't please women by enunciating vigorous ideas in a crisp style."
"But," Durtal went on, after a silence, "it is perhaps best that the case should be as it is. The rare artists who remain have no business to be thinking about the public. The artist lives and works far from the drawing-room, far from the clamour of the little fellows who fix up the custom-made literature. The only legitimate source of vexation to an author is to see his work, when printed, exposed to the contaminating curiosity of the crowd."
"That is," said Des Hermies, "a veritable prostitution. To advertise a thing for sale is to accept the degrading familiarities of the first comer."
"But our impenitent pride-and also our need of the miserable sous-make it impossible for us to keep our manuscripts sheltered from the asses. Art ought to be-like one's beloved-out of reach, out of the world. Art and prayer are the only decent ejaculations of the soul. So when one of my books appears, I let go of it with horror. I get as far as possible from the environment in which it may be supposed to circulate. I care very little about a book of mine until years afterward, when it has disappeared from all the shop windows and is out of print. Briefly, I am in no hurry to finish the history of Gilles de Rais, which, unfortunately, is getting finished in spite of me. I don't give a damn how it is received."
"Are you doing anything this evening?"
"No. Why?"
"Shall we dine together?"
"Certainly."
And while Durtal was putting on his shoes, Des Hermies remarked, "To me the striking thing about the so-called literary world of this epoch is its cheap hypocrisy. What a lot of laziness, for instance, that word dilettante has served to cover."
"Yes, it's a great old alibi. But it is confounding to see that the critic who today decrees himself the title of dilettante accepts it as a term of praise and does not even suspect that he is slapping himself. The whole thing can be resolved into syllogism:
"The dilettante has no personal temperament, since he objects to nothing and likes everything.
"Whoever has no personal temperament has no talent."
"Then," rejoined Des Hermies, putting on his hat, "an author who boasts of being a dilettante, confesses by that very thing that he is no author?"
"Exactly."
CHAPTER XVII
Toward the end of the afternoon Durtal quit work and went up to the towers of Saint Sulpice.
He found Carhaix in bed in a chamber co
To Durtal's questions he replied, "It is nothing. Des Hermies gives me permission to get up tomorrow. But what a frightful medicine!" and he showed Durtal a potion of which he had to take a teaspoonful every hour.
"What is it he's making you take?"
But the bell-ringer did not know. Doubtless to spare him the expense, Des Hermies himself always brought the bottle.
"Isn't it tiresome lying in bed?"
"I should say! I am obliged to entrust my bells to an assistant who is no good. Ah, if you heard him ring! It makes me shudder, it sets my teeth on edge."
"Now you mustn't work yourself up," said his wife. "In two days you will be able to ring your bells yourself."
But he went on complaining. "You two don't understand. My bells are used to being well treated. They're like domestic animals, those instruments, and they obey only their master. Now they won't harmonize, they jangle. I can hardly recognize their voices."
"What are you reading?" asked Durtal, wishing to change a subject which he judged to be dangerous.
"Books about bells! Ah, Monsieur Durtal, I have some inscriptions here of truly rare beauty. Listen," and he opened a worm-bored book, "listen to this motto printed in raised letters on the bronze robe of the great bell of Schaffhausen, 'I call the living, I mourn the dead, I break the thunder.' And this other which figured on an old bell in the belfry of Ghent, 'My name is Roland. When I toll, there is a fire; when I peal, there is a tempest in Flanders.'"
"Yes," Durtal agreed, "there is a certain vigour about that one."
"Ah," said Carhaix, seeming not to have heard the other's remark, "it's ridiculous. Now the rich have their names and titles inscribed on the bells which they give to the churches, but they have so many qualities and titles that there is no room for a motto. Truly, humility is a forgotten virtue in our day."