1.F.3.7. THE WISDOM OF THOLOMYES
IN the meantime, while some sang, the rest talked together
tumultuously all at once; it was no longer anything but noise.
Tholomyes intervened.
"Let us not talk at random nor too fast," he exclaimed.
"Let us reflect, if we wish to be brilliant. Too much improvisation
empties the mind in a stupid way. Running beer
gathers no froth. No haste, gentlemen. Let us mingle
majesty with the feast. Let us eat with meditation; let us
make haste slowly. Let us not hurry. Consider the springtime;
if it makes haste, it is done for; that is to say, it gets
frozen. Excess of zeal ruins peach-trees and apricot-trees.
Excess of zeal kills the grace and the mirth of good dinners.
No zeal, gentlemen! Grimod de la Reyniere agrees with
Talleyrand."
A hollow sound of rebellion rumbled through the group.
"Leave us in peace, Tholomyes," said Blachevelle.
"Down with the tyrant!" said Fameuil.
"Bombarda, Bombance, and Bambochel!" cried Listolier.
"Sunday exists," resumed Fameuil.
"We are sober," added Listolier.
"Tholomyes," remarked Blachevelle, "contemplate my calmness
[mon calme]."
"You are the Marquis of that," retorted Tholomyes.
This mediocre play upon words produced the effect of a
stone in a pool. The Marquis de Montcalm was at that time
a celebrated royalist. All the frogs held their peace.
"Friends," cried Tholomyes, with the accent of a man who
had recovered his empire, "Come to yourselves. This pun
which has fallen from the skies must not be received with too
much stupor. Everything which falls in that way is not
necessarily worthy of enthusiasm and respect. The pun is the
dung of the mind which soars. The jest falls, no matter
where; and the mind after producing a piece of stupidity
plunges into the azure depths. A whitish speck flattened
against the rock does not prevent the condor from soaring
aloft. Far be it from me to insult the pun! I honor it in
proportion to its merits; nothing more. All the most august,
the most sublime, the most charming of humanity, and perhaps
outside of humanity, have made puns. Jesus Christ
made a pun on St. Peter, Moses on Isaac, AEschylus on Polynices,
Cleopatra on Octavius. And observe that Cleopatra's
pun preceded the battle of Actium, and that had it not been
for it, no one would have remembered the city of Toryne, a
Greek name which signifies a ladle. That once conceded, I
return to my exhortation. I repeat, brothers, I repeat, no
zeal, no hubbub, no excess; even in witticisms, gayety, jollities,
or plays on words. Listen to me. I have the prudence of
Amphiaraus and the baldness of Caesar. There must be a
limit, even to rebuses.
Est modus in rebus.
"There must be a limit, even to dinners. You are fond of
apple turnovers, ladies; do not indulge in them to excess.
Even in the matter of turnovers, good sense and art are requisite.
Gluttony chastises the glutton, Gula punit Gulax. Indigestion
is charged by the good God with preaching morality
to stomachs. And remember this: each one of our passions,
even love, has a stomach which must not be filled too full. In
all things the word finis must be written in good season;
self-control must be exercised when the matter becomes
urgent; the bolt must be drawn on appetite; one must set one's
own fantasy to the violin, and carry one's self to the post.
The sage is the man who knows how, at a given moment, to
effect his own arrest. Have some confidence in me, for I have
succeeded to some extent in my study of the law, according
to the verdict of my examinations, for I know the difference
between the question put and the question pending, for I have
sustained a thesis in Latin upon the manner in which torture
was administered at Rome at the epoch when Munatius
Demens was quaestor of the Parricide; because I am going to
be a doctor, apparently it does not follow that it is absolutely
necessary that I should be an imbecile. I recommend you to
moderation in your desires. It is true that my name is Felix
Tholomyes; I speak well. Happy is he who, when the hour
strikes, takes a heroic resolve, and abdicates like Sylla or
Origenes."
Favourite listened with profound attention.
"Felix," said she, "what a pretty word! I love that name.
It is Latin; it means prosper."
Tholomyes went on: —
"Quirites, gentlemen, caballeros, my friends. Do you wish
never to feel the prick, to do without the nuptial bed, and to
brave love? Nothing more simple. Here is the receipt:
lemonade, excessive exercise, hard labor; work yourself to
death, drag blocks, sleep not, hold vigil, gorge yourself with
nitrous beverages, and potions of nymphaeas; drink emulsions
of poppies and agnus castus; season this with a strict diet,
starve yourself, and add thereto cold baths, girdles of herbs,
the application of a plate of lead, lotions made with the
subacetate of lead, and fomentations of oxycrat."
"I prefer a woman," said Listolier.
"Woman," resumed Tholomyes; "distrust her. Woe to him
who yields himself to the unstable heart of woman! Woman
is perfidious and disingenuous. She detests the serpent from
professional jealousy. The serpent is the shop over the way."
"Tholomyes!" cried Blachevelle, "you are drunk!"
"Pardieu," said Tholomyes.
"Then be gay," resumed Blachevelle.
"I agree to that," responded Tholomyes.
And, refilling his glass, he rose.
"Glory to wine! Nunc te, Bacche, canam! Pardon me
ladies; that is Spanish. And the proof of it, senoras, is this:
like people, like cask. The arrobe of Castile contains sixteen
litres; the cantaro of Alicante, twelve; the almude of the
Canaries,twenty-five; the cuartin of the Balearic Isles, twenty-six;
the boot of Tzar Peter, thirty. Long live that Tzar who
was great, and long live his boot, which was still greater!
Ladies, take the advice of a friend; make a mistake in your
neighbor if you see fit. The property of love is to err. A love
affair is not made to crouch down and brutalize itself like an
English serving-maid who has callouses on her knees from
scrubbing. It is not made for that; it errs gayly, our gentle
love. It has been said, error is human; I say, error is love.
Ladies, I idolize you all. O Zephine, O Josephine, face more
than irregular, you would be charming were you not all
askew. You have the air of a pretty face upon which some one
has sat down by mistake. As for Favourite, ) nymphs and
muses! one day when Blachevelle was crossing the gutter in the
Rue Guerin-Boisseau, he espied a beautiful girl with white
stockings well drawn up, which displayed her legs. This prologue
pleased him, and Blachevelle fell in love. The one he
loved was Favourite. O Favourite, thou hast Ionian lips. There
was a Greek painter named Euphorion, who was surnamed the
painter of the lips. That Greek alone would have been worthy
to paint thy mouth. Listen! before thee, there was never a
creature worthy of the name. Thou wert made to receive the
apple like Venus, or to eat it like Eve; beauty begins with
thee. I have just referred to Eve; it is thou who hast created
her. Thou deservest the letters-patent of the beautiful
woman. O Favourite, I cease to address you as 'thou,' because
I pass from poetry to prose. You were speaking of my name
a little while ago. That touched me; but let us, whoever we
may be, distrust names. They may delude us. I am called
Felix, and I am not happy. Words are liars. Let us not
blindly accept the indications which they afford us. It would
be a mistake to write to Liege for corks, and to Pau for
gloves.
Miss Dahlia, were I in your place, I would call myself
Rosa. A flower should smell sweet, and woman should have
wit. I say nothing of Fantine; she is a dreamer, a musing,
thoughtful, pensive person; she is a phantom possessed of the
form of a nymph and the modesty of a nun, who has strayed
into the life of a grisette, but who takes refuge in illusions,
and who sings and prays and gazes into the azure without
very well knowing what she sees or what she is doing, and
who, with her eyes fixed on heaven, wanders in a garden
where there are more birds than are in existence. O Fantine,
know this: I, Tholomyes, I am all illusion; but she does not
even hear me, that blond maid of Chimeras! as for the rest,
everything about her is freshness, suavity, youth, sweet morning
light. O Fantine, maid worthy of being called Marguerite
or Pearl, you are a woman from the beauteous Orient. Ladies,
a second piece of advice: do not marry; marriage is a graft;
it takes well or ill; avoid that risk. But bah! what am I
saying? I am wasting my words. Girls are incurable on the
subject of marriage, and all that we wise men can say will
not prevent the waistcoat-makers and the shoe-stitchers from
dreaming of husbands studded with diamonds. Well, so be it;
but, my beauties, remember this, you eat too much sugar. You
have but one fault, O woman, and that is nibbling sugar. O
nibbling sex, your pretty little white teeth adore sugar. Now,
heed me well, sugar is a salt. All salts are withering. Sugar
is the most desiccating of all salts; it sucks the liquids of the
blood through the veins; hence the coagulation, and then the
solidification of the blood; hence tubercles in the lungs, hence
death. That is why diabetes borders on consumption. Then,
do not crunch sugar, and you will live. I turn to the men:
gentlemen, make conquest, rob each other of your well-beloved
without remorse. Chassez across. In love there are no
friends. Everywhere where there is a pretty woman hostility
is open. No quarter, war to the death! a pretty woman is a
casus belli; a pretty woman is flagrant misdemeanor. All the
invasions of history have been determined by petticoats.
Woman is man's right. Romulus carried off the Sabines;
William carried off the Saxon women; Caesar carried off the
Roman women. The man who is not loved soars like a vulture
over the mistresses of other men; and for my own part, to all
those unfortunate men who are widowers, I throw the sublime
proclamation of Bonaparte to the army of Italy:
"Soldiers, you are in need of everything; the enemy has it."
Tholomyes paused.
"Take breath, Tholomyes," said Blachevelle.
At the same moment Blachevelle, supported by Listolier
and Fameuil, struck up to a plaintive air, one of those studio
songs composed of the first words which come to hand, rhymed
richly and not at all, as destitute of sense as the gesture of the
tree and the sound of the wind, which have their birth in the
vapor of pipes, and are dissipated and take their flight with
them. This is the couplet by which the group replied to
Tholomyes' harangue: —
"The father turkey-cocks so grave
Some money to an agent gave,
That master good Clermont-Tonnerre
Might be made pope on Saint Johns' day fair.
But this good Clermont could not be
Made pope, because no priest was he;
And then their agent, whose wrath burned,
With all their money back returned."
This was not calculated to calm Tholomyes' improvisation;
he emptied his glass, filled, refilled it, and began again: —
"Down with wisdom! Forget all that I have said. Let us
be neither prudes nor prudent men nor prudhommes. I propose
a toast to mirth; be merry. Let us complete our course
of law by folly and eating! Indigestion and the digest. Let
Justinian be the male, and Feasting, the female! Joy in the
depths! Live, O creation! The world is a great diamond. I
am happy. The birds are astonishing. What a festival everywhere!
The nightingale is a gratuitous Elleviou. Summer, I
salute thee! O Luxembourg! O Georgics of the Rue Madame,
and of the Allee de l'Observatoire! O pensive infantry
soldiers! O all those charming nurses who, while they guard
the children, amuse themselves! The pampas of America
would please me if I had not the arcades of the Odeon. My
soul flits away into the virgin forests and to the savannas.
All is beautiful. The flies buzz in the sun. The sun has
sneezed out the humming bird. Embrace me, Fantine!"
He made a mistake and embraced Favourite.