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CHAPTER XXX - M. PAUL
Yet the reader is advised not to be in any hurry with his kindly
conclusions, or to suppose, with an over-hasty charity, that from that
day M. Paul became a changed character--easy to live with, and no
longer apt to flash danger and discomfort round him.
No; he was naturally a little man of unreasonable moods. When over-
wrought, which he often was, he became acutely irritable; and,
besides, his veins were dark with a livid belladonna tincture, the
essence of jealousy. I do not mean merely the tender jealousy of the
heart, but that sterner, narrower sentiment whose seat is in the head.
I used to think, as I Sat looking at M. Paul, while he was knitting
his brow or protruding his lip over some exercise of mine, which had
not as many faults as he wished (for he liked me to commit faults: a
knot of blunders was sweet to him as a cluster of nuts), that he had
points of resemblance to Napoleon Bonaparte. I think so still.
In a shameless disregard of magnanimity, he resembled the great
Emperor. M. Paul would have quarrelled with twenty learned women,
would have unblushingly carried on a system of petty bickering and
recrimination with a whole capital of coteries, never troubling
himself about loss or lack of dignity. He would have exiled fifty
Madame de Staels, if, they had annoyed, offended, outrivalled, or
opposed him.
I well remember a hot episode of his with a certain Madame Panache--a
lady temporarily employed by Madame Beck to give lessons in history.
She was clever--that is, she knew a good deal; and, besides,
thoroughly possessed the art of making the most of what she knew; of
words and confidence she held unlimited command. Her personal
appearance was far from destitute of advantages; I believe many people
would have pronounced her "a fine woman;" and yet there were points in
her robust and ample attractions, as well as in her bustling and
demonstrative presence, which, it appeared, the nice and capricious
tastes of M. Paul could not away with. The sound of her voice, echoing
through the carre, would put him into a strange taking; her long free
step--almost stride--along the corridor, would often make him snatch
up his papers and decamp on the instant.
With malicious intent he bethought himself, one day, to intrude on her
class; as quick as lightning he gathered her method of instruction; it
differed from a pet plan of his own. With little ceremony, and less
courtesy, he pointed out what he termed her errors. Whether he
expected submission and attention, I know not; he met an acrid
opposition, accompanied by a round reprimand for his certainly
unjustifiable interference.
Instead of withdrawing with dignity, as he might still have done, he
threw down the gauntlet of defiance. Madame Panache, bellicose as a
Penthesilea, picked it up in a minute. She snapped her fingers in the
intermeddler's face; she rushed upon him with a storm of words. M.
Emanuel was eloquent; but Madame Panache was voluble. A system of
fierce antagonism ensued. Instead of laughing in his sleeve at his
fair foe, with all her sore amour-propre and loud self-assertion, M.
Paul detested her with intense seriousness; he honoured her with his
earnest fury; he pursued her vindictively and implacably, refusing to
rest peaceably in his bed, to derive due benefit from his meals, or
even serenely to relish his cigar, till she was fairly rooted out of
the establishment. The Professor conquered, but I cannot say that the
laurels of this victory shadowed gracefully his temples. Once I
ventured to hint as much. To my great surprise he allowed that I might
be right, but averred that when brought into contact with either men
or women of the coarse, self-complacent quality, whereof Madame
Panache was a specimen, he had no control over his own passions; an
unspeakable and active aversion impelled him to a war of
extermination.
Three months afterwards, hearing that his vanquished foe had met with
reverses, and was likely to be really distressed for want of
employment, he forgot his hatred, and alike active in good and evil,
he moved heaven and earth till he found her a place. Upon her coming
to make up former differences, and thank him for his recent kindness,
the old voice--a little loud--the old manner--a little forward--so
acted upon him that in ten minutes he started up and bowed her, or
rather himself, out of the room, in a transport of nervous irritation.
To pursue a somewhat audacious parallel, in a love of power, in an
eager grasp after supremacy, M. Emanuel was like Bonaparte. He was a
man not always to be submitted to. Sometimes it was needful to resist;
it was right to stand still, to look up into his eyes and tell him
that his requirements went beyond reason--that his absolutism verged
on tyranny.
The dawnings, the first developments of peculiar talent appearing
within his range, and under his rule, curiously excited, even
disturbed him. He watched its struggle into life with a scowl; he held
back his hand--perhaps said, "Come on if you have strength," but would
not aid the birth.
When the pang and peril of the first conflict were over, when the
breath of life was drawn, when he saw the lungs expand and contract,
when he felt the heart beat and discovered life in the eye, he did not
yet offer to foster.
"Prove yourself true ere I cherish you," was his ordinance; and how
difficult he made that proof! What thorns and briers, what flints, he
strewed in the path of feet not inured to rough travel! He watched
tearlessly--ordeals that he exacted should be passed through--
fearlessly. He followed footprints that, as they approached the
bourne, were sometimes marked in blood--followed them grimly, holding
the austerest police-watch over the pain-pressed pilgrim. And when at
last he allowed a rest, before slumber might close the eyelids, he
opened those same lids wide, with pitiless finger and thumb, and gazed
deep through the pupil and the irids into the brain, into the heart,
to search if Vanity, or Pride, or Falsehood, in any of its subtlest
forms, was discoverable in the furthest recess of existence. If, at
last, he let the neophyte sleep, it was but a moment; he woke him
suddenly up to apply new tests: he sent him on irksome errands when he
was staggering with weariness; he tried the temper, the sense, and the
health; and it was only when every severest test had been applied and
endured, when the most corrosive aquafortis had been used, and failed
to tarnish the ore, that he admitted it genuine, and, still in clouded
silence, stamped it with his deep brand of approval.
I speak not ignorant of these evils.
Till the date at which the last chapter closes, M. Paul had not been
my professor--he had not given me lessons, but about that time,
accidentally hearing me one day acknowledge an ignorance of some
branch of education (I think it was arithmetic), which would have
disgraced a charity-school boy, as he very truly remarked, he took me
in hand, examined me first, found me, I need not say, abundantly
deficient, gave me some books and appointed me some tasks.
He did this at first with pleasure, indeed with unconcealed
exultation, condescending to say that he believed I was "bonne et pas
trop faible" (i.e. well enough disposed, and not wholly destitute of
parts), but, owing he supposed to adverse circumstances, "as yet in a
state of wretchedly imperfect mental development."
The beginning of all effort has indeed with me been marked by a
preternatural imbecility. I never could, even in forming a common
acquaintance, assert or prove a claim to average quickness. A
depressing and difficult passage has prefaced every new page I have
turned in life.
So long as this passage lasted, M. Paul was very kind, very good, very
forbearing; he saw the sharp pain inflicted, and felt the weighty
humiliation imposed by my own sense of incapacity; and words can
hardly do justice to his tenderness and helpfulness. His own eyes
would moisten, when tears of shame and effort clouded mine; burdened
as he was with work, he would steal half his brief space of recreation
to give to me.
But, strange grief! when that heavy and overcast dawn began at last to
yield to day; when my faculties began to struggle themselves, free,
and my time of energy and fulfilment came; when I voluntarily doubled,
trebled, quadrupled the tasks he set, to please him as I thought, his
kindness became sternness; the light changed in his eyes from a beam
to a spark; he fretted, he opposed, he curbed me imperiously; the more
I did, the harder I worked, the less he seemed content. Sarcasms of
which the severity amazed and puzzled me, harassed my ears; then
flowed out the bitterest inuendoes against the "pride of intellect." I
was vaguely threatened with I know not what doom, if I ever trespassed
the limits proper to my sex, and conceived a contraband appetite for
unfeminine knowledge. Alas! I had no such appetite. What I loved, it
joyed me by any effort to content; but the noble hunger for science in
the abstract--the godlike thirst after discovery--these feelings were
known to me but by briefest flashes.
Yet, when M. Paul sneered at me, I wanted to possess them more fully;
his injustice stirred in me ambitious wishes--it imparted a strong
stimulus--it gave wings to aspiration.
In the beginning, before I had penetrated to motives, that
uncomprehended sneer of his made my heart ache, but by-and-by it only
warmed the blood in my veins, and sent added action to my pulses.
Whatever my powers--feminine or the contrary--God had given them, and
I felt resolute to be ashamed of no faculty of his bestowal.
The combat was very sharp for a time. I seemed to have lost M. Paul's
affection; he treated me strangely. In his most unjust moments he
would insinuate that I had deceived him when I appeared, what he
called "faible"--that is incompetent; he said I had feigned a false
incapacity. Again, he would turn suddenly round and accuse me of the
most far-fetched imitations and impossible plagiarisms, asserting that
I had extracted the pith out of books I had not so much as heard of--
and over the perusal of which I should infallibly have fallen down in
a sleep as deep as that of Eutychus.
Once, upon his preferring such an accusation, I turned upon him--I
rose against him. Gathering an armful of his books out of my desk, I
filled my apron and poured them in a heap upon his estrade, at his
feet.
"Take them away, M. Paul," I said, "and teach me no more. I never
asked to be made learned, and you compel me to feel very profoundly
that learning is not happiness."
And returning to my desk, I laid my head on my arms, nor would I speak
to him for two days afterwards. He pained and chagrined me. His
affection had been very sweet and dear--a pleasure new and
incomparable: now that this seemed withdrawn, I cared not for his
lessons.
The books, however, were not taken away; they were all restored with
careful hand to their places, and he came as usual to teach me. He
made his peace somehow--too readily, perhaps: I ought to have stood
out longer, but when he looked kind and good, and held out his hand
with amity, memory refused to reproduce with due force his oppressive
moments. And then, reconcilement is always sweet!
On a certain morning a message came from my godmother, inviting me to
attend some notable lecture to be delivered in the same public rooms
before described. Dr. John had brought the message himself, and
delivered it verbally to Rosine, who had not scrupled to follow the
steps of M. Emanuel, then passing to the first classe, and, in his
presence, stand "carrement" before my desk, hand in apron-pocket, and
rehearse the same, saucily and aloud, concluding with the words,
"Qu'il est vraiment beau, Mademoiselle, ce jeune docteur! Quels yeux--
quel regard! Tenez! J'en ai le coeur tout emu!"
When she was gone, my professor demanded of me why I suffered "cette
fille effrontee, cette creature sans pudeur," to address me in such
terms.
I had no pacifying answer to give. The terms were precisely such as
Rosine--a young lady in whose skull the organs of reverence and
reserve were not largely developed--was in the constant habit of
using. Besides, what she said about the young doctor was true enough.
Graham _was_ handsome; he had fine eyes and a thrilling: glance.
An observation to that effect actually formed itself into sound on my
lips.
"Elle ne dit que la verite," I said.
"Ah! vous trouvez?"
"Mais, sans doute."
The lesson to which we had that day to submit was such as to make us
very glad when it terminated. At its close, the released, pupils
rushed out, half-trembling, half-exultant. I, too, was going. A
mandate to remain arrested me. I muttered that I wanted some fresh air
sadly--the stove was in a glow, the classe over-heated. An inexorable
voice merely recommended silence; and this salamander--for whom no
room ever seemed too hot--sitting down between my desk and the stove--
a situation in which he ought to have felt broiled, but did not--
proceeded to confront me with--a Greek quotation!
In M. Emanuel's soul rankled a chronic suspicion that I knew both
Greek and Latin. As monkeys are said to have the power of speech if
they would but use it, and are reported to conceal this faculty in
fear of its being turned to their detriment, so to me was ascribed a
fund of knowledge which I was supposed criminally and craftily to
conceal. The privileges of a "classical education," it was insinuated,
had been mine; on flowers of Hymettus I had revelled; a golden store,
hived in memory, now silently sustained my efforts, and privily
nurtured my wits.
A hundred expedients did M. Paul employ to surprise my secret--to
wheedle, to threaten, to startle it out of me. Sometimes he placed
Greek and Latin books in my way, and then watched me, as Joan of Arc's
jailors tempted her with the warrior's accoutrements, and lay in wait
for the issue. Again he quoted I know not what authors and passages,
and while rolling out their sweet and sounding lines (the classic
tones fell musically from his lips--for he had a good voice--
remarkable for compass, modulation, and matchless expression), he
would fix on me a vigilant, piercing, and often malicious eye. It was
evident he sometimes expected great demonstrations; they never
occurred, however; not comprehending, of course I could neither be
charmed nor annoyed.
Baffled--almost angry--he still clung to his fixed idea; my
susceptibilities were pronounced marble--my face a mask. It appeared
as if he could not be brought to accept the homely truth, and take me
for what I was: men, and women too, must have delusion of some sort;
if not made ready to their hand, they will invent exaggeration for
themselves.
At moments I _did_ wish that his suspicions had been better
founded. There were times when I would have given my right hand to
possess the treasures he ascribed to me. He deserved condign
punishment for his testy crotchets. I could have gloried in bringing
home to him his worst apprehensions astoundingly realized. I could
have exulted to burst on his vision, confront and confound his
"lunettes," one blaze of acquirements. Oh! why did nobody undertake to
make me clever while I was young enough to learn, that I might, by one
grand, sudden, inhuman revelation--one cold, cruel, overwhelming
triumph--have for ever crushed the mocking spirit out of Paul Carl
David Emanuel!
Alas! no such feat was in my power. To-day, as usual, his quotations
fell ineffectual: he soon shifted his ground.
"Women of intellect" was his next theme: here he was at home. A "woman
of intellect," it appeared, was a sort of "lusus naturae," a luckless
accident, a thing for which there was neither place nor use in
creation, wanted neither as wife nor worker. Beauty anticipated her in
the first office. He believed in his soul that lovely, placid, and
passive feminine mediocrity was the only pillow on which manly thought
and sense could find rest for its aching temples; and as to work, male
mind alone could work to any good practical result--hein?
This "hein?" was a note of interrogation intended to draw from me
contradiction or objection. However, I only said--"Cela ne me regarde
pas: je ne m'en soucie pas;" and presently added--"May I go, Monsieur?
They have rung the bell for the second dejeuner" (_i.e._ luncheon).
"What of that? You are not hungry?"
"Indeed I was," I said; "I had had nothing since breakfast, at seven,
and should have nothing till dinner, at five, if I missed this bell."
"Well, he was in the same plight, but I might share with him."
And he broke in two the "brioche" intended for his own refreshment,
and gave me half. Truly his bark was worse than his bite; but the
really formidable attack was yet to come. While eating his cake, I
could not forbear expressing my secret wish that I really knew all of
which he accused me.
"Did I sincerely feel myself to be an ignoramus?" he asked, in a
softened tone.
If I had replied meekly by an unqualified affirmative, I believe he
would have stretched out his hand, and we should have been friends on
the spot, but I answered--
"Not exactly. I am ignorant, Monsieur, in the knowledge you ascribe to
me, but I _sometimes_, not _always_, feel a knowledge of my
own."
"What did I mean?" he inquired, sharply.
Unable to answer this question in a breath, I evaded it by change of
subject. He had now finished his half of the brioche feeling sure that
on so trifling a fragment he could not have satisfied his appetite, as
indeed I had not appeased mine, and inhaling the fragrance of baked
apples afar from the refectory, I ventured to inquire whether he did
not also perceive that agreeable odour. He confessed that he did. I
said if he would let me out by the garden-door, and permit me just to
run across the court, I would fetch him a plateful; and added that I
believed they were excellent, as Goton had a very good method of
baking, or rather stewing fruit, putting in a little spice, sugar, and
a glass or two of vin blanc--might I go?
"Petite gourmande!" said he, smiling, "I have not forgotten how
pleased you were with the pate a la creme I once gave you, and you
know very well, at this moment, that to fetch the apples for me will
be the same as getting them for yourself. Go, then, but come back
quickly."
And at last he liberated me on parole. My own plan was to go and
return with speed and good faith, to put the plate in at the door, and
then to vanish incontinent, leaving all consequences for future
settlement.
That intolerably keen instinct of his seemed to have anticipated my
scheme: he met me at the threshold, hurried me into the room, and
fixed me in a minute in my former seat. Taking the plate of fruit from
my hand, he divided the portion intended only for himself, and ordered
me to eat my share. I complied with no good grace, and vexed, I
suppose, by my reluctance, he opened a masked and dangerous battery.
All he had yet said, I could count as mere sound and fury, signifying
nothing: not so of the present attack.
It consisted in an unreasonable proposition with which he had before
afflicted me: namely, that on the next public examination-day I should
engage--foreigner as I was--to take my place on the first form of
first-class pupils, and with them improvise a composition in French,
on any subject any spectator might dictate, without benefit of grammar
or lexicon.
I knew what the result of such an experiment would be. I, to whom
nature had denied the impromptu faculty; who, in public, was by nature
a cypher; whose time of mental activity, even when alone, was not
under the meridian sun; who needed the fresh silence of morning, or
the recluse peace of evening, to win from the Creative Impulse one
evidence of his presence, one proof of his force; I, with whom that
Impulse was the most intractable, the most capricious, the most
maddening of masters (him before me always excepted)--a deity which
sometimes, under circumstances--apparently propitious, would not speak
when questioned, would not hear when appealed to, would not, when
sought, be found; but would stand, all cold, all indurated, all
granite, a dark Baal with carven lips and blank eye-balls, and breast
like the stone face of a tomb; and again, suddenly, at some turn, some
sound, some long-trembling sob of the wind, at some rushing past of an
unseen stream of electricity, the irrational demon would wake
unsolicited, would stir strangely alive, would rush from its pedestal
like a perturbed Dagon, calling to its votary for a sacrifice,
whatever the hour--to its victim for some blood, or some breath,
whatever the circumstance or scene--rousing its priest, treacherously
promising vaticination, perhaps filling its temple with a strange hum
of oracles, but sure to give half the significance to fateful winds,
and grudging to the desperate listener even a miserable remnant--
yielding it sordidly, as though each word had been a drop of the
deathless ichor of its own dark veins. And this tyrant I was to compel
into bondage, and make it improvise a theme, on a school estrade,
between a Mathilde and a Coralie, under the eye of a Madame Beck, for
the pleasure, and to the inspiration of a bourgeois of Labassecour!
Upon this argument M. Paul and I did battle more than once--strong
battle, with confused noise of demand and rejection, exaction and
repulse.
On this particular day I was soundly rated. "The obstinacy of my whole
sex," it seems, was concentrated in me; I had an "orgueil de diable."
I feared to fail, forsooth! What did it matter whether I failed or
not? Who was I that I should not fail, like my betters? It would do me
good to fail. He wanted to see me worsted (I knew he did), and one
minute he paused to take breath.
"Would I speak now, and be tractable?"
"Never would I be tractable in this matter. Law itself should not
compel me. I would pay a fine, or undergo an imprisonment, rather than
write for a show and to order, perched up on a platform."
"Could softer motives influence me? Would I yield for friendship's
sake?"
"Not a whit, not a hair-breadth. No form of friendship under the sun
had a right to exact such a concession. No true friendship would
harass me thus."
He supposed then (with a sneer--M. Paul could sneer supremely, curling
his lip, opening his nostrils, contracting his eyelids)--he supposed
there was but one form of appeal to which I would listen, and of that
form it was not for him to make use.
"Under certain persuasions, from certain quarters, je vous vois
d'ici," said he, "eagerly subscribing to the sacrifice, passionately
arming for the effort."
"Making a simpleton, a warning, and an example of myself, before a
hundred and fifty of the 'papas' and 'mammas' of Villette."
And here, losing patience, I broke out afresh with a cry that I wanted
to be liberated--to get out into the air--I was almost in a fever.
"Chut!" said the inexorable, "this was a mere pretext to run away;
_he_ was not hot, with the stove close at his back; how could I
suffer, thoroughly screened by his person?"
"I did not understand his constitution. I knew nothing of the natural
history of salamanders. For my own part, I was a phlegmatic islander,
and sitting in an oven did not agree with me; at least, might I step
to the well, and get a glass of water--the sweet apples had made me
thirsty?"
"If that was all, he would do my errand."
He went to fetch the water. Of course, with a door only on the latch
behind me, I lost not my opportunity. Ere his return, his half-worried
prey had escaped.
Content of CHAPTER XXX - M. PAUL [Charlotte Bronte's novel: Villette]
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