I cannot forget the slightest shade of his expression as he stood one day, on the platform of his classroom, chalk in hand, ready to write out an outline on the blackboard, waiting, while the yelling crowd of “manifestants,” mostly young men in flowing black neckties, with straggling attempts at beards on their pimply faces, stamped and hooted and shrieked out, “Dirty Jew! What were you paid? Shut up! Shut up! What was your price, dirty Jew?” and other things less printable. And yet, although I can shut my eyes now and see that harsh, big-nosed, deeply-lined old face, with the small, bright eyes under the bristling white eyebrows, I can not think of any words to describe its expression—not scornful, not actively courageous, not resentful, not defiant; rather the quiet, unexcited, waiting look of a man in ordinary talk who waits to go on with what he has to say until a pounding truck of iron rails has time to pass the windows. He stood looking at his assailants, the chalk ready in his bony fingers, and from him emanated so profound a sense of their entire unimportance, of the utterly ephemeral quality of their emotion compared to the life of the consonant he was about to discuss, that little by little they were silenced. Their furious voices flattened out to an occasional scream which sounded foolish even to their own ears. They looked at each other, got up in a disorderly body and stamped out of the room. The last one might have heard Professor Meyer’s high, squeaky voice stating, “Thus in Picardy and in the north of Normandy, Latin C before a did not undergo the change noted in other provinces, and we still find it pronounced....”
The pale, keen seminarists in their long, black gowns, and the American girl, whipped out their notebooks and were at once caught up into the Paul-Meyer world where no storms blew.
When, three or four years after the beginning of this friendship—it was not precisely that, but I cannot think of another name to call it—I made my final choice and stepped out of his safe, windless realm into human life, it was with some apprehension that I went to tell him that I was engaged to be married and would study Philology no more. I might have known better than to be apprehensive. What did he care? What was one more or less among the disciples of Philology, as long as the words were there? Also, he laughingly refused to consider my decision as final. He seemed to stand at the door of Philology, calling after me with perfect good humor, as I walked away, “When you’re tired of all that, come back. I’m always here.”
In the years after this, whenever we passed through Paris I went to see him, stepping back into my girlhood as I stepped over the threshold of the École des Chartes. Professor Meyer was very old now, but showed not the slightest sign of weakness or infirmity. One evening when I went hurriedly to say good-by before we sailed for home, I found him in his study, in that rich, half-basement room, lined with books. The green-shaded lamp burned clear and steady as though there were no wind in the world to shake a flame. The gray, plain, old man looked up from the yellow parchment he was deciphering, and in a sudden gust I had a new revelation of the insatiability of the human heart. I was a complete, fulfilled, vigorous woman, a happy wife, a writer beginning to feel an intoxicating interest in creative work, joyously awaiting the birth of my first child; but I knew for an instant there, the bitterest envy of the lot of the old scholar, half buried though he was in the earth, safe in the infinite security of his active brain.
The last time I saw him was two years later. We had been in Italy and were to pass through Paris on the way home. My little daughter was eighteen months old, a mere baby still, and I wrote Professor Meyer to ask him if he could not for once reverse the usual procedure and come to see me. He answered, setting a day, and informing me that he had been and still was very ill. “I will give you details when I see you.”
When he came into the room I was shocked at his appearance, and horrified when he told me what had happened to him. He had been as usual in the summer, at Oxford, delving in the unclassified treasures of the Bodleian, and had started home. The Channel steamer arrived late at night at Boulogne, and he had chosen to sleep there, instead of taking the night train to Paris.
He had gone to sleep apparently in his usual health, but when he woke up in the morning he had lost his control of words. He could not bring them into the simplest order. He could not command a single one to his use. He could not say who he was, nor where he wanted to go, although he knew these facts perfectly. The moment he tried to speak, there swooped down between him and his meaning, a darkening throng of words. All the words in the world were there, Greek, Sanscrit, Provençal, Italian, Old-French, tearing furiously through his mind. But not the simple words in his own language to say that he was Professor Paul Meyer of the École des Chartes, who wanted to buy a ticket to Paris. He stood there, helpless, facing the staring chambermaids, cut off from them, from every one by this wild, invisible storm. They thought him an idiot, escaped from his friends, and ran away from him. As he told me about it, he looked sick and gray, and the sweat stood out on his forehead.
It had lasted for three days. For three days and three nights he had felt himself drowning in words, words that flooded up about him so that he was fighting for air. Never for an instant was he able to take his attention from their crazy flight through his mind, and never able to stop one long enough to use it. He suffered, suffered more than he had thought any human being could and retain consciousness, had after the first day fallen into a high fever, so that they feared for his life. Hour after hour he had lain on his bed, helpless, trying with all his strength to fight away those words long enough to remember what he wished to say.
And then, on the morning of the fourth day, click! Something snapped into place inside his mind, and there he was, very worn, very weak, but perfectly himself again, Professor Paul Meyer of the École des Chartes. He had reached home safely, though strengthless and exhausted, and the next morning had wakened again to that horror. It had lasted an hour then, but it had come twice since—once as he was lecturing before his class!