“May I? … The Counterfeiters,” said Bernard. “But now you tell us—who are these Counterfeiters?”
“Oh dear! I don’t know,” said Edouard.
Bernard and Laura looked at each other and then looked at Sophroniska. There was a long sigh; I think it was drawn by Laura.
In reality, Edouard had in the first place been thinking of certain of his fellow novelists when he began to think of The Counterfeiters, and in particular of the Comte de Passavant. But this attribution had been considerably widened; according as the wind blew from Rome or from elsewhere, his heroes became in turn either priests or freemasons. If he allowed his mind to follow its bent, it soon tumbled headlong into abstractions, where it was as comfortable as a fish in water. Ideas of exchange, of depreciation, of inflation, etc., gradually invaded his book (like the theory of clothes in Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus) and usurped the place of the characters. As it was impossible for Edouard to speak of this, he kept silent in the most awkward manner, and his silence, which seemed like an admission of penury, began to make the other three very uncomfortable.
“Has it ever happened to you to hold a counterfeit coin in your hands?” he asked at last.
“Yes,” said Bernard; but the two women’s “No” drowned his voice.
“Well, imagine a false ten-franc gold piece. In reality it’s not worth two sous. But it will be worth ten francs as long as no one recognizes it to be false. So if I start from the idea that. …”
“But why start from an idea?” interrupted Bernard impatiently. “If you were to start from a fact and make a good exposition of it, the idea would come of its own accord to inhabit it. If I were writing The Counterfeiters I should begin by showing the counterfeit coin—the little ten-franc piece you were speaking of just now.”
So saying, he pulled out of his pocket a small coin, which he flung on to the table.
“Just hear how true it rings. Almost the same sound as the real one. One would swear it was gold. I was taken in by it this morning, just as the grocer who passed it on to me had been taken in himself, he told me. It isn’t quite the same weight, I think; but it has the brightness and the sound of a real piece; it is coated with gold, so that, all the same, it is worth a little more than two sous; but it’s made of glass. It’ll wear transparent. No; don’t rub it; you’ll spoil it. One can almost see through it, as it is.”
Edouard had seized it and was considering it with the utmost curiosity.
“But where did the grocer get it from?”
“He didn’t know. He thinks he has had it in his drawer some days. He amused himself by passing it off on me to see whether I should be taken in. Upon my word, I was just going to accept it! But as he’s an honest man, he undeceived me; then he let me have it for five francs. He wanted to keep it to show to what he calls ‘amateurs.’ I thought there couldn’t be a better one than the author of The Counterfeiters; and it was to show you that I took it. But now that you have examined it, give it back to me! I’m sorry that the reality doesn’t interest you.”
“Yes, it does”; said Edouard, “but it disturbs me too.”
“That’s a pity,” rejoined Bernard.
Edouard’s Journal
Tuesday evening.—Sophroniska, Bernard and Laura have been questioning me about my novel. Why did I let myself go to speak of it? I said nothing but stupidities. Interrupted fortunately by the return of the two children. They were red and out of breath, as if they had been running. As soon as she came in, Bronja fell into her mother’s arms; I thought she was going to burst into sobs.
“Mamma!” she cried, “do scold Boris. He wanted to undress and lie down in the snow without any clothes on.”
Sophroniska looked at Boris, who was standing in the doorway, his head down, his eyes with a look in them of almost hatred; she seemed not to notice the little boy’s strange expression, but with admirable calm:
“Listen, Boris,” she said. “That’s a thing you mustn’t do in the evening. If you like we’ll go there tomorrow morning; first of all you must begin with bare feet. …”
She was gently stroking her daughter’s forehead; but the little girl suddenly fell on the ground and began rolling about in convulsions. It was rather alarming. Sophroniska lifted her and laid her on the sofa. Boris stood motionless, watching the scene with a dazed, bewildered expression.
Sophroniska’s methods of education seem to me excellent in theory, but perhaps she miscalculates the children’s powers of resistance.
“You behave,” said I, when I was alone with her a little later (after the evening meal I had gone to enquire after Bronja, who was too unwell to come downstairs), “as if good were always sure to triumph over evil.”
“It is true,” she said, “I firmly believe that good must triumph. I have confidence.”
“And yet, through excess of confidence you might make a mistake. …”
“Every time I have made a mistake, it has been because my confidence was not great enough. Today, when I allowed the children to go out, I couldn’t help showing them I was a little uneasy. They felt it. All the rest followed from that.”
She had taken my hand.
“You don’t seem to believe in the virtue of convictions. … I mean in their power as an active principle.”
“You are right,” I said laughing. “I am not a mystic.”
“Well, as for me,” she cried in an admirable burst of enthusiasm, “I believe with my whole soul that without mysticism nothing great, nothing fine can be accomplished in this world.”
Discovered the name of Victor Strouvilhou
