# Colas Breugnon/Chapter 13

XIII
PLUTARCH'S LIVES
October 30th.
I was much depressed by my accident, as may be imagined. If only the Lord had been pleased to break any other bone in my body, I thought, but here I was pinned by the leg! It is true that I should have grumbled somewhat if I had broken an arm or a rib; but now, I was ready to curse Him for His cruelty; (Praise be to His Holy Name!) and to swear that He had picked out the very thing that would vex me the most.
He knows well that my hard-won liberty, child not of gods, but of men, is to me as the breath of my nostrils; dearer than gold and silver, food and drink; and that is why He must laugh to Himself when He sees me lying here on my back like a beetle, staring at the beams and spider's webs of my garret ceiling. All the same, there is some fight left in me, though I am tied and trussed up here like a fowl on the spit. My body cannot stir an inch, it is true; but how about the spirit? My free fancies fly away on strong wings, with not a broken ​bone among them; and he had need to be swift who would catch and stop them.
For the first day or two I was in an execrable humor, and made good use of my tongue as the only weapon I had with which to hit out at every one, right and left; so that it was hardly safe to come near me. The worst of all was that in my heart I knew that my accident was entirely my own fault; and what made it harder to bear was that every one I saw dinned the same thing into my ears; telling me that a man of my age had no business to be climbing up ladders, like a fly on a wall; reminding me that I had had ample warning, and lamenting that I had such an obstinate nature that good advice was thrown away on me. The moral drawn, of course, was that I richly deserved my fate.
All this naturally was extremely consoling to me,—as if it was not bad enough to be in my miserable condition, without being told that I was a fool into the bargain. Martine and her husband, and all my friends and neighbors seemed to have agreed among themselves to harp on the same string whenever they came to see me, while I had to lie and listen to it all, like a helpless wild creature caught in a trap; until I lost all patience one day, when even my little Glodie began to sing the same tune: ​"You were a naughty Grandad to climb up ladders!"
I tore my nightcap off my head and threw it at her." Get out of this, you little beast!" I yelled; and then I was alone, and found that, after all, I did not like that much better.
After a while my daughter proposed, like the good girl that she is, to carry my mattress down into the room behind the shop; but I was just perverse enough to say no, again, because I had said it before; though by this time I was dying to give in. On the other hand, I hated to have strangers see me in such a state, and then Martine kept at me like a fly, (or a woman,) and could not understand that she talked too much about it, and so injured her own cause. I knew also that if I yielded I should never hear the last of it; so I told her to let me alone, and that is what it finally came to: they all went away and left me to myself, as I had wished; so surely I had nothing to complain of.
I had not been willing to tell my real reason, which was, that being a dependent in that house, I hated to give any more trouble than was necessary; but for a man who wanted people to love him, the stupidest thing I could have done was to drive them all away from me; for they took me at ​my word and soon forgot me,—"Out of sight, out of mind,"—and no one came to see me any more, not even Glodie, though I could hear her laughing downstairs, and smiled at the sound of it; and then sighed, because I could not go and join in the fun as I used to do.
"Ungrateful little puss," I thought, but I knew that I should have done the same in her place, so I blew a kiss towards the stairs." Have a good time, my pretty one!"—Job lay on his dunghill, you know, and railed at his fate, and I was somewhat in the same position by this time.
One day while I was thus agreeably occupied, old Paillard came in; he had a package in his hand, and sat down awkwardly enough, on the foot of my bed; while I received him in a rather crusty manner. He began to talk of one thing and another, but I contradicted every word he said; till at last he was completely put out of countenance, and sat there, clearing his throat, and tapping on the footboard of the bed. I begged him to stop, in an icy tone, and after that he simply did not dare to move a finger. I could hardly help laughing, and thought: "He reproaches himself because he knows that if he had lent me money, I should not have tried to build the wall, and so break my leg. If it had not been for his meanness, none of all this ​would have happened." And he did not know what to say, and I would not speak, we kept silence for some time, till at last I broke out, "Why don't you say something? Any one would think that I was actually at the last gasp; but there's no use in sitting staring at me like a stuck pig! If you can't talk, go home! You do not go to see sick people just to hold your tongue; and for goodness' sake stop fiddling with that book, or whatever it is you have got there!"
The poor old fellow stood up. "I am going. Colas," he said gently. "I can see that the sight of me puts you out, but I thought—I had brought you this book,—Lives of Celebrated Men, by Plutarch; it is translated by Jacques Amyot, Bishop of Auxerre;—would you like it?—it might amuse you. It would perhaps be some consolation or companionship!" I could see that his mind was not quite made up, for it was like drawing teeth for him to lend his books, which he cherished even more dearly than his ducats.
If any one dared touch one of the precious volumes in his library, he was like a lover who sees rude hands laid on the lady of his affections. I was touched and softened by the greatness of the sacrifice, and held out my hand to my old comrade, telling him how grateful I was for his kindness to ​such a brute as I had shown myself to be; and I took the book from his reluctant fingers.
"Take good care of it," said he.
"Make your mind easy, it shall lie under my pillow," and with this reassuring reply I let him depart.
Plutarch of Cheronaeus was a stout little volume, as broad as it was long, of about thirteen hundred closely printed pages; the words all heaped one upon another, like corn in a bin. "There is three years' provender there, for three donkeys," thought I. At the head of each chapter were round medallion portraits of the illustrious subjects of the memoirs, surrounded by wreaths of laurel; these diverted me extremely; they only lacked a bunch of parsley in their mouths to be complete.
"What are all these Greeks and Romans to me?" I thought. "We are living, and they are long since dead, and can teach me nothing but what I knew before; that man is a wicked creature, but agreeable enough; that age improves wine, and spoils women; that in all countries, the big fishes swallow the little ones, and the weak jeer at their oppressors.—These Romans are terrible fellows to make long speeches; and I am not by any means opposed to eloquence; only I want to warn these gentlemen that turn and turn about is fair play."
​Fluttering the leaves with a condescending air, I threw my eyes along the pages, as an angler draws his line along a stream, and hang me if I did not hook something at the very first cast. No one ever saw better fishing; the cork went under as soon as it touched the water; and such fish as I pulled up! Gold and silver, some with shining scales like jewels, scattering a shower of sparks around them; jumping and twisting, too, with quivering fins, and flapping tails. To think of my saying that they were dead!
From that day, the world might have come to an end without my knowing what had happened; my eye was fastened on my fishing line, waiting for a bite. What monster am I now to draw from the deep? Ha! look at this splendid fellow, with his white belly and his coat of mail, changeable green and blue, all shining in the sun. Honestly, the best part of my life, (days, weeks, or years,—I kept no count of them,) was spent then: and God be thanked! who gave us eyes, through which the wonderful visions in books can reach our brains. Give us only those closely packed little black marks, between the borders of the white page, and from their sight the magician conjures up long-dispersed armies, ruined cities, great orators of Rome, fierce enemies, heroes and the beauties that beguile them, ​the winds that blow, the sparkling sea, the hot eastern sun, and the snows of winter.
Here I can see imperial Cæsar, pale and thin, reclining in his litter surrounded by his grim old soldiers; or that guzzler, Antony, with his dishes and cups, on his way to some green nook, where he and his parasites can stuff and swill to their hearts' content; devouring eight roasted boars at one sitting. Then Pompey passes, stiff and formal, with Flora whom he loves;—Poliorcites decked with a gold mantle, embroidered with the sun, moon and stars; and Artaxerxes, like a great bull among his herd of four hundred women.
Now comes Alexander, beautiful as the god Bacchus, whose dress he wears, returning in his triumph from India. See him high in a great car drawn by eight horses and covered with rich carpets and garlands of green leaves; hear the strains of flutes and hautboys as he feasts and drinks with his generals, all of them crowned with flowers: women leaping about him in the dance, and his great army at his back. Wasn't it marvelous? Then there was Queen Cleopatra, Lamia the flute-player, and Statira, who was so beautiful that it hurt your eyes to look at her! In spite of Antony, Alexander, and Artaxerxes, all these enchantresses are mine, now at my pleasure. I can enter their ​bowers, drink with Thais, embrace Roxana, and carry Cleopatra away in my arms wrapped in her carpet. It is possible for me even to imitate Antiochus, who was in love with his mother-in-law, although that is a singular idea to my notion.
I go out to exterminate the Gauls; I come, I see, I conquer; and the best of it all is that it does not cost me one single drop of blood! Then, too, my riches are beyond counting; each story is a caravel, laden with the treasures of the East or Barbary; bringing precious metals, old wines, strange beasts, and captured slaves of the rarest beauty:—such breasts, such ivory limbs! All this is mine, these empires rose, flourished and disappeared, only to give me pleasure. I feel as if I were at a Carnival, where in turn I can wear every man's mask and disguise, even to putting on his skin, and with it his thoughts and passions. Thus I am at once the music, and the dancer, the book and old Plutarch, who was inspired to write it in a most fortunate hour.
How good it is to let the rhythm of words and phrases carry you off, dancing and laughing, into space, free from all trammels of the body. This mind, this thought of ours is God Himself. Praise be to His Holy Spirit!—Sometimes I pause in the ​midst of the story to imagine how it will turn out, and then compare my own fancy with the image which nature or art had created. In the case of art, I am so sharp that I can generally guess right; and then how I laugh at my own cleverness! But the old witch, life, is often too much for me!—her resources are beyond our feeble comprehension. There is only one part of the tale which she never troubles herself to vary; all her stories end in the same way—wit, war, love—you know what happens to them—they disappear into the darkness; and on this one point she certainly does repeat herself.
She is like a naughty child, breaking her toys when she is tired of them, till I am provoked to blame her for being so destructive, and snatch the pieces out of her hands; but it is too late; they are broken past repair; and all that I can do, is to cherish what is left, as Glodie rocks the remains of her doll in her arms.
At each revolution of the dial this Death comes nearer and nearer, like a beautiful refrain: "Strike hour! ring bells, ding dong ding." Now, I fancy myself Cyrus, Emperor of Persia, Conqueror of Asia; hear what I say:—"Friend, envy me not the small space of earth, which covers my poor body."—I stand beside Alexander as he reads this epitaph ​and trembles, for in it he seems to hear his own voice rising from the tomb.
Now that you are dead, great Cyrus and Alexander, how near you both seem to me; do I dream? or are they really there? I pinch myself to find out if I am awake, yes, there on the table by my side are two coins which I dug up in my vineyard last year, with the profiles of bearded Commodus dressed as Hercules, and Crispina Augusta, with her heavy chin and her shrewish nose.—"This is no dream," say I; "for here is Rome between my thumb and forefinger."
My greatest pleasure was to lose myself in reflections on moral issues; to raise once more, questions long settled by force; should I cross the Rubicon,—or not? I could never make up my mind! I fought Brutus and Caesar in turn; changed my opinion and argued on either side with so much eloquence that I could not tell what I believed. In this way the subject takes possession of you, as you give and take, strike out and hit back, till at last you are transfixed by your own blade! Did you ever hear of such an idea? But it all comes of reading Plutarch, with his smooth tongue, and pleasant way of calling you" my friend "! He gets you first on one side and then on the other; and has as many points of view as he has stories to tell you; so that ​the hero I love best is always the last one that I have read about.
We are all chained to Fortune's car; her triumphs over history are greater than Pompey's, as her wheel turns, never resting for a moment. She has as many phases as the moon, says Menelaus, in the words Sophocles puts into his mouth; and for those who are still in her first quarter, that is a comforting reflection.
I would sometimes say to myself: "What does all this matter, Breugnon? What to you are the glories of Rome, and the crimes and follies of these old rascals? You have your own faults and troubles to think of, why go out of your way to worry over those of people who have been dead and gone for eighteen hundred years? To a sober middle-class citizen of Clamecy, Cæsar, Antony, and their light-o'-love, Cleopatra, these Persian princes who murdered their sons and married their daughters, were extremely depraved people; the most virtuous thing they ever did was to die; so peace to their ashes!—but how can a respectable man find pleasure in reading about such insanities? Think of Alexander, who spent the treasures of a nation on the burial of his beautiful favorite, Ephestion, Are you not shocked by such extravagance?—It is bad enough to murder a lot of people, for men are ​savage beasts; but when it comes to wasting so much good money, that these tyrants had never earned, how can you smile at such wickedness? It is really absurd to see you sitting up with your eyes wide open, as proud as if you yourself had been fool enough to scatter these millions to the wind. Surely the worst idiot of all is he who delights in the follies of others!"
After a discourse of this kind, the other side of me would make answer: "Colas, you talk like a printed book, but, none the less, I would give my right hand for these things which you call nonsense; and I find more life in the shadows of the men who died two thousand years ago, than in those who move and breathe today. I feel that I know and love them, and would consent to let Alexander kill me as he did Clytus, if afterward he would come and weep over my body. It is all real to me; my heart is in my throat when I see Caesar in the Senate-house, his back against a pillar like a stag at bay, the conspirators' knives searching for his life; and I am in ecstasy when Cleopatra floats by me in her gilded barge, surrounded by Nereids and young pages, naked and beautiful as the day. The perfumed breeze blows across my face, and I open my big nostrils, the better to inhale the delicious fragrance."
​When at the end Antony is drawn up to the loophole in the tower, bleeding, half dead; and his love, struggling with the heavy weight, can hardly pull him in;—I really cannot bear it, and sob like a child! What is it that moves me thus, and binds me to these men and women as if to those of my own blood? except the fact that we are truly of one family, we are Man, each and all of us.
I pity people from the bottom of my heart who know nothing of the profound pleasure of books; they are like disinherited children, but they do not know it, and boast that the present is enough for them. Blind geese! who can see no farther than the end of their noses! Not that I mean to deny the merits of the present; that would come with an ill grace from one like me, who have always kept my hands and my mouth open for anything good. No, those who find fault with the present are ignorant, or else they have a poor digestion: I understand a man who clasps all that he can reach to his heart, but there are those who reach nothing worth while:—he who contents himself with little is of small value; and I have always preferred to take the most that I could get in life.
In Adam's time the present was all very well; there were no clothes to wear, and only one woman ​in the world; but life is fuller now, coming as we do at the end of a long line of ancestors, heirs to all that they have amassed, and we should be fools indeed to neglect the harvests of the past, on the pretext that we can gather others.
I often dwell on the thought of Adam. He and I are really the same person, only I am older and bigger; the same tree, but with more branches. I feel every stroke of the woodman's axe to my remotest leaf; all the joys and sorrows of the world are mine; I laugh with them that rejoice, and weep with them that weep; and this is especially true of the world of books; there, more than in my own life, I feel the bond that unites men, from prince to peasant.
Soon of us all there will remain only a few ashes, and the flame which rises, one yet infinitely multiplied, from our inmost souls towards Heaven. There with its thousand tongues it will sing forever the glory of the Omnipotent Creator.
So I lie dreaming in my garret, while outside the wind falls with the fading light, and the chill wings of the snow brush across the window panes. As the shadows darken my eyes can no longer distinguish the book in my hand, but with my face on the page the human scent comes to my nostrils; ​is it I, or the story that is dying away into the night, that comes, that is here? I am in the forest, my prey eludes me in the long vistas, as I seem to stop and listen with a beating heart to the flight and the pursuit: my eyes slowly close, but they can pierce through the darkness; I am not asleep, the planets are looking at me through the window, I can almost touch the glass, and across the black arch without flashes one shooting star, then another,—a rain of jewels this November night; and I think of Caesar and his comet,—perhaps that is the trail of his blood up yonder!
At dawn I am still there dreaming. It is Sunday; I hear the church bells, and their sound fills the whole house from cellar to garret with its vibrations, giving new life to my vagrant fancies, which spread themselves over poor old Paillard's book. To my ear my dim little chamber resounds to the feet of armies, the wheels of chariots, and the tramp of war-steeds. The windows shake, my ears and my heart thrill with the sound, and I open my mouth to cry: "Ave Caesar Imperator!"—when Florimond, who has come up and is looking out of the window, says with a loud yawn: "There is not a single soul to be seen in the street this morning,—it is as dull as ditch-water!"