The dinner was as charming as the invitation. It was talked of at Versailles, and some fair dames lamented aloud that they had not been invited.
To most of them the donjon would have appeared a hateful abode: one froze in it in winter and was roasted in summer, and every gust of wind threatened to blow it away. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, obstinate dreamer that he was, preserved all his life the most tender and faithful remembrance of his aërial lodging: "It was there," he wrote in his mature age, "in the midst of a profound solitude, and under a bewitching horizon, that I experienced the sweetest joys of my life. I should perhaps still be there if for a whim they had not forced me to turn out in order to pull it down. It was there that I put the finishing touches to my Études de la Nature, and from there I published it."[17] And it is there that one must look upon him in order to do him justice after our earlier sad pictures of him.
Before he had become a morose beggar, suffering with weak nerves, he was, we must remember, possessed with the idea that to a man carrying in his head a book which he believes to be good and useful, all means are fair for accomplishing his destiny of creative artist and intellectual guide. He recognises no choice of means, he is the slave, and at need the victim of a superior power, which commands him to sacrifice his repose and his pride on condition that he acquits himself of his debt towards mankind by giving to it a work which will bring a little happiness to our poor world. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was quite certain that he possessed the magic word which lifts up the heart, and rather than throw it to the four winds of heaven, he would have begged alms on the highway. Was he right? was he wrong? We owe it to his great faith to leave our verdict undecided.
Think of him in his garret, and you will understand that he begged not for himself, but for his book, which is a very different matter. He is avaricious because he hopes still to write another chapter before going on the tramp again. He has only one coat for the whole year, winter and summer. He does his own housekeeping, sweeps, cleans, cooks. He allows himself so little firing that in winter the water remains frozen for eight days in his rooms, and his pitchers burst. He goes on foot to Versailles to see Hennin, and returns in the same way at night; all the better if it is moonlight, all the worse if it rains. His health suffers, but his head recovers, and he is happy; he has a "whole trunk" full of rough draughts, which he copies, corrects, and arranges. "You cannot imagine," he writes to Hennin, "the tenderness of an author for his production; that of a mother for her son is not to be compared to it. I am always adding to or cutting out something of mine. A bear does not lick her cub with more care than I; I fear in the end I shall rub away the muzzle of mine with my licking. I do not wish to touch it any more.... There have been moments when I have caught a glimpse of heaven." (December 18, 1783.)
When the moment arrives to have his work printed, he redoubles his economy. He is sordid and at the same time a greater borrower, more in debt than ever; for after all it is in order to commit some extravagance for his "child"—to have fine paper, to add a print here, a pretty frontispiece there. The extravagance accomplished, he writes to Hennin, one of his principal lenders, to demonstrate to him that this is an excellent speculation:—
"It is not a superfluous expense, even if the print in 12o itself comes to fourteen or fifteen pounds, because it is possible that many people will buy my work for the print alone, as has happened to others. Moreover, I shall raise the price of my edition with it, so as to reap more than I sowed. So...." (June 29, 1784.)
Thus it was as clear as noonday that this lovely engraving would make his fortune, a very important matter to his creditors. We do not possess Hennin's reply, but there is no doubt, after what we know of his kindness, that he made pretence of being convinced.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Poems. Translated by Villemain.
[10] Pecheur d'Islande.