"Now he sits in his castle, rich as Crœsus, but lonely, and educates his housekeeper's children, which are his, but which cannot bear his name. His evening meal consists of gruel, and he goes to bed at half-past nine. He dares not use his wine-cellar, for then his great toe aches. His solitary comparative pleasure is to be able to walk, in order to eat his gruel and be able to sleep. Envy nobody!"
The Galley-slaves of Ambition.—The teacher said: "Balzac speaks in one place of the galley-slaves of ambition, and describes their condition very much as Swedenborg describes certain of his hells, or as Homer depicts Tantalus, Ixion, and the Danaides. They are ceaselessly haunted by their passion to be superior to others; to be seen and heard before all others. The malice and love of power which this involves are necessarily punished. When the ambitious man cannot be the first and only one he becomes ill. Voltaire had to go to bed when a prince travelled past his house without visiting him. If one of such people's letters remains unanswered they think it is a sign that their credit has sunk, and they worry about the reason of it till they grow how hypochondriacal. If they read in the paper such and such important people were present when the king landed, and their names are omitted, the world is darkened for them. That is to say, it is not enough for them that they should be praised and called the greatest; they suffer pains like death when others are eulogised. They feel perpetual fear lest they should be set aside and their juniors get ahead of them. In that they resemble a great criminal who expects to be detected. The portrait of an ambitious man has a great resemblance to that of a galley-slave. Imperiousness, hatred, fear—especially fear—are depicted in his face.
"Balzac, on the other hand, was impelled by the noble ambition to make discoveries, and to do good work in which he took pleasure. But his own life was hidden. Unknown and misunderstood in his own Paris, which he had discovered, he saw petty chroniclers obtain the first prizes without being made ill by it. And when, at the age of fifty-one, he had succeeded in making a home for himself, into which he was about to bring his first and only wife, he died on the day of the publication of the banns. A fine death after a life of renunciation!"
Hard to Disentangle.—The teacher said: "With age, as is well known, one arrives at a different view of life than one had formerly. Then, on account of its wealth and variety, life is almost immeasurable, and above all, very difficult to disentangle.
"At the age of forty I came home after an absence of many years. On my arrival I received a dunning letter from an antiquarian bookseller. Curiously enough, without my being able to explain why, this debt caused me no further uneasiness of conscience. But then a friend came and advised me to settle the matter, as the bookseller was spreading an evil report about me. I went and paid the trifling account, but the bookseller looked so uneasy and strange, was so polite and grateful, that I began to reflect about him. When I came home I remembered this: twenty years previously I had entrusted him with an antique work of art to sell. After I had visited the man several times in his shop and the article had not been sold, I felt ashamed to go any more, began to think of something else, and forgot the matter. His present thankfulness showed that he had not forgotten it; we were then quits, if he did not still owe me something.
"Now I felt ashamed on his account, and determined not to mention the matter. But then it occurred to me that I owed his predecessor a sum of money for books. I went again, found him showing the same uneasy manner as before, and asked for his predecessor's address. He was in America. I asked whether he had relatives here in the town. He had none. I went home and thought to myself, 'Then we must drop that matter also.' In this way, in old age, one must alternate pay and let go; now as a debtor, now as creditor. But who strikes the balance of accounts? The goddess of justice, and she is neither deaf nor blind."
The Art of Settling Accounts.—The teacher continued: "It really looks as though we could not go hence till everything is settled, great and small alike. Recently there died an early friend of mine, who, at an important juncture, had helped me with a hundred kronas.[1] I had at first regarded it as a loan. But he never dunned me, and during the forty years which have since elapsed he was gradually transformed in my memory into a benefactor, and all was well. When at last he died a millionaire, I did not wish to trouble his executors with the trifle, but sent a wreath to the funeral with a sigh of gratitude and many kindly thoughts. Was that the end? No! Shortly afterwards I felt a kind of inward admonition to resume relations with a bookbinder whom I had ceased to employ on account of his carelessness. He came and was glad to get work again; he was greatly pleased, and declared that I had appeared just in time to deliver him. When I understood his difficulties, for he had a family, I was willing to give him fifty kronas in advance, but as I had no change I gave him a hundred, though reluctantly. I saw how his back straightened itself, and his confidence in life reawoke. He went—and never returned. I was angry at first, because he had treated me like a fool, and I dunned him with letters. But then the memory of my departed friend recurred; various thoughts wove themselves together in my mind—the pleasure of calling him a scamp, the fifty-krona note which had turned into a hundred-krona note, the scamp's need, and the part I had played as deliverer. In my own mind I gave him a discharge, and became quite quiet."
[1] A krona = 1s. 3d.
Growing Old Gracefully.—The teacher continued: "When one becomes old, one wonders at first how men have, as it were, permission to do one an injustice. If one complains, one finds no sympathy. Even our friends take the part of those who injure us. But when we have discovered the secret of it, we take it all quietly. One is cheated in ordinary business, and says to oneself, 'This is in requital for that.' Our children prove ungrateful and difficult to manage, exactly like we were. Young people are insolent and pert towards us, and we see our former selves reflected in them. Servants do their work badly, and perpetrate petty thefts; we must put up with it, when we think of our own work scamped on various occasions. Friends are faithless, just as we have been ourselves. By practice one comes at last so far, that one asks for no more, demands no more, and is no longer angry. I then always think of David when Shimei cast stones at him and cursed him, and Abishai wanted to strike off the calumniator's head. David declined to take vengeance, saying, 'Let him curse, for the Lord hath bidden him.' When the same king, because of his sins, had to choose between famine, pestilence, or raids of the enemy, he prayed 'to fall into the hands of God, and not into the hands of man.'
"He understood how to grow old gracefully, and to make up his accounts. So he departed praising God, 'Who proveth the heart and loveth uprightness.'"