V
Chalifour was a locksmith. I knew him in my childhood. You would have said that he was just a simple country laborer. Why has he left the memory of a rich and powerful man? His image will always be for me that of the “master of metals.”
He worked in a mean, encumbered room, full of the pungent, acrid odor of the forge, which seemed to me a sort of annex to those other underground vaults that used to be peopled by the earth-spirits.
How I loved to see him, with his little apron of blackened leather! He would seize a bar of iron and this iron at once became his. He had his own way of handling the object of his labor that was full of love and authority. His gnarled hands touched everything with a mixture of respect and daring; I used to admire them as if they were the somber workmen of some sovereign power.
It seemed as if some pact had been made between Chalifour and the hard metal, which gave the man complete mastery over the material. One might have thought that solemn vows had been exchanged.
I see him again with his pensive air working the panting bellows and watching the metal whose incandescence was almost transparent. I see him at the anvil: the hammer, handled forcefully, delicately, obeying like a subject demon. I see him before the drill, starting the great wheel, following the measured exigencies of a ceremonial rite. Especially I see him before the smoky window with its pale flood of light, surveying, with that fine smile under his white beard, the conquered piece of metal, the creature of his will, which he had charged with destiny.
O ancient laborer, great, simple man, how rich and enviable you were, you who aspired to just one thing: to do well what you were doing, to possess intimately the object of your toil! No one better than you has understood the ponderous, obedient iron, no one than you has worked it with greater love and constancy.
Somewhere there exists, I believe, an unhappy man eaten up with nerves and stomach-disorder. He lives crouched up against his telephone, and sends his orders to all the stock exchanges of the world. People call him the “iron king,” for some reason that has to do with finance. I don’t believe he has ever touched or weighed a morsel of real iron. Let us smile, Chalifour! Let us smile, my master!