And in mentally recalling the horrible face of Lafolie the butcher, M. Guitrel felt no repugnance whatever.
IX
Meanwhile M. Bergeret was re-reading the meditations of Marcus Aurelius. He had a fellow-feeling for Faustina’s husband, yet he found it impossible really to appreciate all the fine thought contained in this little book, so false to nature seemed its sentiments, so harsh its philosophy, so scornful of the softer side of life its whole tone. Next he read the tales of Sieur d’Ouville, and those of Eutrapel, the Cymbalum of Despériers, the Matinées of Cholière and the Serées of Guillaume Bouchet. He took more pleasure in this course of reading, for he perceived that it was suitable to one in his position and therefore edifying, that it tended to diffuse serene peace and heavenly gentleness in his soul. He returned grateful thanks to the whole band of romance-writers who all, from the dweller in old Miletus, where was told the Tale of the Wash-tub, to the wielders of the spicy wit of Burgundy, the charm of Touraine, and the broad humour of Normandy, have helped to turn the sorrow of harassed hearts into the ways of pleasant mirth by teaching men the art of indulgent laughter.[8]
[8] In his study of mediæval romances, M. Bergeret devotes himself to the Conte badin, or jesting tale of ludicrous adventure by which so much of Chaucer’s work was inspired. This school of short stories starts with the tales of Aristeides of Miletus, a writer of the second century B.C. His Milésiaques, as they are called, were followed by the fabliaux of the Middle Ages, and in the fifteenth century and onwards by the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles of Louis XI’s time, by the Heptaméron of the Queen of Navarre, the Decameron of Boccaccio and the Contes of Despériers, of Guillaume Bouchet, of Noël du Fail and others. La Fontaine retold many of the older tales in verse and Balzac tried to revive the Gallic wit and even the language of the fabliaux in his Contes drôlatiques.
“These romancers,” thought he, “who make austere moralists knit their brows, are themselves excellent moralists, who should be loved and praised for having gracefully suggested the simplest, the most natural, the most humane solutions of domestic difficulties, difficulties which the pride and hatred of the savage heart of man would fain solve by murder and bloodshed. O Milesian romancers! O shrewd Petronius! O Noël du Fail,” cried he, “O forerunners of Jean de La Fontaine! what apostle was wiser or better than you, who are commonly called good-for-nothing rascals? O benefactors of humanity! you have taught us the true science of life, a kindly scorn of the human race!”
Thus did M. Bergeret fortify himself with the thought that our pride is the original source of all our misery, that we are, in fact, but monkeys in clothes, and that we have solemnly applied conceptions of honour and virtue to matters where these are ridiculous. Pope Boniface VIII, in fact, was wise in thinking that, in his own case, a mountain was being made out of a mole-hill, and Madame Bergeret and M. Roux were just about as worthy of praise or blame as a pair of chimpanzees. Yet, he was too clear-sighted to pretend to deny the close bond that united him to these two principal actors in his drama. But he only regarded himself as a meditative chimpanzee, and he derived from the idea a sensation of gratified vanity. For wisdom invariably goes astray somewhere.
M. Bergeret’s, indeed, failed in another point: he did not really adapt his conduct to his maxims, and although he showed no violence, he never gave the least hint of forbearance. Thus he by no means proved himself the follower of those Milesian, Latin, Florentine, or Gallic romance-writers whose smiling philosophy he admired as being well suited to the absurdity of human nature. He never reproached Madame Bergeret, it is true, but neither did he speak a word, or throw a glance in her direction. Even when seated opposite her at table, he seemed to have the power of never seeing her. And if by chance he met her in one of the rooms of the flat, he gave the poor woman the impression that she was invisible.
He ignored her, he treated her not only as a stranger, but as non-existent. He ousted her both from visual and mental consciousness. He annihilated her. In the house, among the numberless preoccupations of their life together, he neither saw her, heard her, nor formed any perception of her. Madame Bergeret was a coarse-grained, troublesome woman, but she was a homely, moral creature after all; she was human and living, and she suffered keenly at not being allowed to burst out into vulgar chatter, into threatening gestures and shrill cries. She suffered at no longer feeling herself the mistress of the house, the presiding genius of the kitchen, the mother of the family, the matron. Worst of all, she suffered at feeling herself done away with, at feeling that she no longer counted as a person, or even as a thing. During meals she at last reached the point of longing to be a chair or a plate, so that her presence might at least be recognised. If M. Bergeret had suddenly drawn the carving-knife on her, she would have cried for joy, although she was by nature timid of a blow. But not to count, not to matter, not to be seen, was insupportable to her dull, heavy temperament. The monotonous and incessant punishment that M. Bergeret inflicted on her was so cruel that she was obliged to stuff her handkerchief into her mouth to stifle her sobs. And M. Bergeret, shut up in his study, used to hear her noisily blowing her nose in the dining-room while he himself was placidly sorting the slips for his Virgilius nauticus, unmoved by either love or hate.