M. Bergeret made no reply. He was just then passing the shop of Madame Fusellier, the stationer, and, stopping in front of the window in which sundry drawing models were displayed, he looked with interest at the Farnese Hercules who was showing off his muscles amid these examples of scholastic art.
“I feel kindly disposed towards him,” remarked M. Bergeret.
“Towards whom?” asked M. Goubin, wiping his glasses.
“Hercules,” replied M. Bergeret. “He was a good man. He himself said: ‘My life is laborious and tends to a high ideal.’ He toiled much upon this earth ere he received the reward of death, which, in truth, is the only guerdon of life. He had no time to give to meditation, and prolonged thought never marred the simplicity of his soul. But when evening came a feeling of melancholy would steal over him, and, in default of an enquiring mind, his great heart would reveal to him the vanity of effort, and the necessity which compels all men, even the best, to do evil even when they do good. This man of might was extraordinarily gentle. Like the rest of us when we commit ourselves to action, he found that he destroyed indiscriminately both the innocent and the guilty, the meek and the violent, and, when he mused over all this, it doubtless caused him more than one regret. Perhaps he even felt compassion for the unhappy monsters he had destroyed for the benefit of mankind: the poor Cretan bull, the poor Lernæan hydra, or the beautiful lion who, when he died, provided him with such an excellently warm cloak. More than once, when the day was over and his work done, his club must have weighed heavily upon him.” M. Bergeret raised aloft his umbrella with an effort as though it had been a heavy weapon. Then he continued his discourse. “He was strong, yet weak. We love him because he is like ourselves.”
“Hercules?” asked M. Goubin.
“Yes,” replied M. Bergeret. “Like ourselves, he was born unhappy, the child of a god and a woman. From this mixed origin he derived the sadness of a thoughtful spirit and the cravings of a ravening body. All his life long he was subject to the caprices of a whimsical king. Are not we too the children of Zeus and the hapless Alcmena, and the slaves of Eurystheus? I am at the mercy of the Minister of Public Instruction, who may take it into his head at any moment to ship me off to Algiers, just as Hercules was sent to the land of the Nasamones.”
“You are not leaving us, dear Master?” asked M. Goubin anxiously.
“See how sad he is!” went on M. Bergeret. “How wearily he leans upon his club, letting his arm hang limply at his side! His head is bowed, he is thinking of his heavy labours. The Farnese Hercules was certainly conceived after the statue by Lysippus, who was a blacksmith’s apprentice before becoming a sculptor, and it is undoubtedly that sturdy sculptor of a sturdy hero who fixed the type of Hercules.”
Having wiped his glasses once again with his handkerchief, M. Goubin tried to catch a glimpse of the principal points mentioned by the master, and while he was thus engaged Madame Fusellier, the proprietress of the shop, on hearing the clock strike nine, extinguished the gas under the disciple’s peering eyes. The poor man had no idea why he could see nothing, for he was so short-sighted as to be an utter stranger to that imaginary world in which most men have their being.
And, as M. Bergeret continued to walk and talk, he followed the sound of his voice, for he trusted only to what he heard others say to guide him along those pathways of the earth whereon his youthful prudence told him he might venture.