throat of any decent person and then expect loud and happy approval of his poor victims and their friends.
The best thing he did after entering my home was to restore the results of Mylord's bad taste and institute in its stead the luxury which is considered normal among people of considerable financial wealth. Every noon and every evening my table was laid for eight persons; six places were always occupied by poets, musicians and painters. In the interest of their bellies they squandered their corruptible incense, like slaves, on my Croesus. My home was a tribunal where talent and the arts were judged with the same superiority as in the literary saloon of Madame T… All the good authors were run down and hacked to pieces with a smile, just as at her place. Only the bad ones found favor in their eyes; yes, those were veritably placed on a pedestal. I have heard this rabble degrade the incomparable letters written by the author of “The Temple of Cnidus.” They even threw stink-bombs, as it were, at the respectable Abbe Pellegrin to support their opinion that his “Lettres Juifs” was merely a jumble of ideas, taken from “Baby-lone,” the “Bibliotheque universelle du Clerc,” even from “L'espion turc” and many other works. Every single idea was supposedly horribly maimed and each one of the mangled sentences betrayed the Provencal language. This poor priest, whose only disadvantages were his extreme destitution and his uncleanliness, but whose slovenly body enveloped a beautiful soul — this hapless man who has always been the butt of unwarranted sarcasms — possessed an excellent power of judgment. I must admit to his credit that, if I have any taste for the good things in life at all and if I know how to protect myself from the contagious fever of pretension to wit and culture, it is only because I have tried to follow his outstanding advice. It was he who opened my eyes about the small and transitory value of our drones of Parnassus and who made me aware that true intelligence and imagination are a pure, divine fire, a gift from Heaven, and that it is not within the power of Man to acquire it. It is very important not to confuse this prophetic genius, who is impelled by divine ardor, with the despicable multitude of quill-drivers who color their scribblings with so-called aesthetic assumed names. Those nicknames are now considered a disgrace by decent people, and even though the confessions laid down in Pellegrin's letters belong to the most noble works in literature, one feels embarrassed to support them because of the bad name this legion of vermin has given to letter-writing in our society.
“You could hardly guess,” he said to me one day, “why Paris has been infected with this accursed rabble. It is simply because this trade requires neither talent nor brains. If you want to convince yourself, just teach your coachman a dozen words from the newly published encyclopedia and send him for one or two months to the Cafe Procope. I guarantee you that, upon his return, he will be as much a literary wit as the others. Aah,” he added with a deep sigh, “I owe all the misery and ridicule which has been heaped upon my head for such a long time to the cruelty of my own family. These barbarous people forced me to enter this order when I was still a youngster. My initial opposition against the monastic class grew stronger when I became older. I have lamented many a year since I was forced to don the cowl and I would have died of frustration if it had not been for my discovery of a way to secularize. But, without friends, without money, and stripped bare of almost everything, my freedom soon became a burden to me. I had almost reached the point where I started to yearn for the fetters that had been strangling me. And, since I did not know where to go, my indecision led me to come here. In the beginning I managed to make ends meet with the proceeds of my celebrations of the Mass and the writing of sermons which I used to sell to other mendicant friars. My misery and inaction did not permit me to be too squeamish in the selection of my acquaintanceships. I frequented a small tobacco parlor near the market place of Saint-Germain where tightrope walkers, puppeteers, a few mimics from the Opera comique, and — among others — Monsieur Colin, the well- known candle cleaner of the Comedie francaise, used to get together. I was lucky enough to be liked by these gentlemen, and they gave me tickets to watch their performances. Soon an inordinate desire to scribble upon paper overwhelmed me. I risked my chances and tried my hand at a few bad scenes, and was ridiculously overpaid for them. I would have preferred to make my peace with both the Church and the Theater so that I could still cash in on my daily tributes to the altar. However, the bishop decided to rob me of this small but regular income by forbidding me to function as a preacher and I lost fifteen sous daily which were the proceeds of my Masses and my only true means of support. So, in order to compensate for this loss, I decided to become a professional poet and I started to put together comedies, operas and tragedies which I succeeded to have performed under the name of my brother, the cavalier. Or, I sold them to just about anybody who had the desire to become known as an author. Aside from that I traded wholesale and retail in everything that belongs to the domain of the mind. Whoever wanted a poem to go with a bouquet of flowers, or a verse to brighten weddings, or a spiritual song, or sermons for lent; he could find them all — and at favorable prices — in my repository. I count upon your honor to remain silent about this, but many an honored member of this Society of Promiscuous Chatterboxes in the Louvre has not found it beneath his dignity to seek refuge with me and beg me to write his speech of acceptance. Who would not believe that such a thriving business nevertheless did not even permit me to own at least a carriage? But I ask you to judge for yourself about the gains I have made. Look at me. I have composed millions of poems during the past fifty years, and I do not even own a pair of trousers.”
The candid and naive manner in which this good man expressed himself convinced me that of all the professions that of a literary wit was the most thankless and thoughtless one, but the true merits of the man also assured me that literature, like any other profession, has its share of fortunate people and that there exists a considerable number of authors who earned their fame and reputation more thanks to their lucky stars than with the help of their talents. Oh, how many false celebrities have I known in Paris about whom not a single soul would have ever heard were it not for the protection of some influential personage at Court or for a whore who vouchsafed for his credit and good standing. I know of so many who are considered high-ranking pupils of Apollo thanks to the aforementioned authorities, and who would never be capable of milking the sterile brains for just a mere fraction of the brilliant ideas that flowed out of the mind of the good Abbe Pellegrin. I beg indulgence for the odious comparison, but the poor devil reminds me of the Jester at the fairs, generating the mockery and derisive laughter of the common people, and being doomed to remain eternally a plaything for his colleagues, albeit he is fundamentally of far more value than all of them together. We can safely draw the conclusion that any amount of talent is absolutely useless unless it gets help from Fate. It depends upon the circumstances, to create great men; Nature merely supplies ability.
But, let us go back to our great provider, the money man. The authorities had selected him to travel the circuit, which means that he had to see to it that his underlings dealt severely enough with the people in squeezing them dry and robbing them blind, and to find out if any other methods could be applied to milk them for even more. We therefore relinquished our mutual contract while remaining good friends, and I was free once more.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. A WIDOW AGAIN
I should have answered a question a long time ago, a question which my readers have undoubtedly asked themselves more than once. How was it possible for Margot, who was obviously born with the temperament of a Messalina, to get any satisfaction out of affairs with people she met only for personal gain and who for the most part were considerably less than Hercules in the art of making love? No question makes more sense and it is only right that I satisfy your curiosity. So it may please you to learn, my dear gentlemen readers, that I had in my service — following the example of the duchesses of the Old Court and many of my own colleagues (but, please, let that remain a secret between us)-a young and strong lackey who made me feel comfortable, so comfortable indeed that, even though at times my conscience bothered me somewhat, I never changed my methods. Aside from the fact that these fellows remain unimportant, they supply their services at an instant's notice and they are never boring like honorable people. And it is also very easy to get rid of them if they become impudent or bold. Just give them a solid whipping, pay them and send them away; that is not difficult at all. Personally I have never had any need for these ultimate measures because I have always been careful to get them fresh from the country. I have the satisfaction of training them myself and bend them according to my own desires. I definitely forbid them to have any contact with their own kind because I am afraid that those fellows could spoil their innocence and divert their attention from the work at hand. I keep them, as it were, on a chain. They are well-kept and fed, like roosters in a hen house; or, to be less descriptive, like those fortunate superiors of the nuns who have no other care in the world than to keep them piously in good condition and surrender unconditionally to whatever else may arise.
There you have it, gentlemen — since you kept insisting — the recipe I use daily to temper the glowing fire of my unfulfilled passions. With the use of this ingenious system, I avoid mixing my pleasures with that certain tinge of bitterness. I take my enjoyment in peace and quiet, without having to be afraid of the caprices and bad temper of
