Let us frame M. de Lamennais, the great philosopher, poet and humanitarian, between a false priest and a false god. Christ was crucified after His bloody passion between two thieves. We are now going to relate the adventures and expose the doctrines of Mapah or of the being who was Gannot. He was one of the most eccentric of the gods produced during the years 1831 to 1845. The ancients divided their gods into dii majores and dii minores; Mapah was a minor god. He was not any the less entertaining on that account. The name of Mapah was the favourite title of the god, and the one under which he wished to be worshipped; but, not forgetting that he had been a man before he became a god, he humbly and modestly permitted himself to be called, and at times even called himself, by his own personal name as, he who was Gannot. He had indeed, or rather he had had, two very distinct existences; that of a man and that of a god. The man was born about 1800, or, at all events, he would seem to have been nearly my own age when I knew him. He gave his age out to be then as between twenty-eight and thirty. I was told that, when he became a god, he maintained he had been contemporaneous with all the ages and even to have preexisted, under a double symbolic form, Adam and Eve, in whom he became incarnate when the father and mother of the human race were yet one and the self-same flesh! The man had been an elegant dandy, a fop and frequenter of the boulevard de Gand, loving horses and adoring women, and an inveterate gambler; he was an adept at every kind of play, specially at billiards. He was as good a billiard player as was Pope Gregory XVI., and supposing the latter had staked his papacy on his skilful play against Gannot, I would assuredly have bet on Gannot. To say that Gannot played billiards better than other games does not mean that he preferred games of skill to those of chance; not at all: he had a passion for roulette, for la rouge et la blanche, for trente-et-un, for le biribi, and, in fact, for all kinds of games of chance. He was also possessed of all the happy superstitious optimism of the gambler: none knew better than he how to puff at a cigar and to creak about in varnished boots upon the asphalted pavements whilst he dreamt of marvellous fortunes, of coaches, tilburys, tandems harnessed to horses shod in silver; of mansions, hotels, palaces, with soft thick carpets like the grass in a meadow; of curtains, of imitation brocades, tapestries, figured silk, crystal lustres and Boule furniture. Unluckily, the gold he won flowed through his extravagant fingers like water. Unceasingly bandied about from misery to abundance, he passed from the goddess of hunger to that of satiety with regal airs that were a delight to witness. Debauchery was none the less pleasing to him, but it had to be debauchery on a huge scale: the feast of Trimalco or the nuptials of Gamacho. But, in other ways, he was a good friend, ever ready to lend a helping hand—throwing his money broadcast, and his heart among the women, giving his life to everybody not suspecting his future divinity, but already performing all kinds of miracles. Such was Gannot, the future Mapah, when I had the honour of making his acquaintance, about 1830 or 1831, at the café de Paris. Still less than he himself could I foretell his future divinity, and, if anybody had told me that, when I left him at two o'clock in the morning to return to my third storey in the rue de l'Université, I had just shaken the hand of a god, I should certainly have been very much surprised indeed.
I have said that even before he became a god, Gannot worked miracles; I will recount one which I almost saw him do. It was somewhere about 1831—to give the precise date of the year is impossible—and a friend of Gannot, an innocent debtor who was as yet only negotiating his first bill of exchange, went to find Gannot to lay before him his distress in harrowing terms. Gannot was the type of man people always consulted in difficult crises,—his mind was quick in suggestions; he was clear-sighted and steady of hand. Unluckily, Gannot was going through one of his periods of poverty, days when he could have given points even to Job. He began, therefore, by confessing his personal inability to help, and when his friend despaired—
"Bah!" he said, "we have seen plenty of other people in as bad a plight!"
This was a favourite expression with Gannot, who had, indeed, seen all shades of life.
"All very well," said his friend; "but meantime, how am I to get out of this fix?"
"Have you anything of value you could raise money on, if it were but twenty, ten, or even five francs?"
"Alas!" said the young fellow, "there is only my watch ..."
"Silver or gold?"
"Gold."