At another time, this remark of the king would have been flattering to Voltaire; but it was now uttered with such irony, that the philosopher was surprised, and it reminded him of the blunder he had committed. He had wit enough to repair it, but would not. The king's ill-temper excited him, and he replied: "No, sire: Madame Clairon would have disgraced my tragedy had she obeyed; and I cannot think the world has a police-system brutal enough to bury beauty, genius, and weakness in a dungeon."
This reply, added to others, and especially the brutal ridicule, cynical laughter,&c., reported to the king by the officious Poelnitz, super-induced the rupture with which all are acquainted, and supplied Voltaire with the means of making the most piquant complaints, most comical imprecations, and most bitter reproaches. Consuelo was more than ever forgotten, while Clairon left the Bastile in triumph. Deprived of her piano, the poor girl appealed to her courage, and continued to sing and compose at night. She succeeded, and did not fail to discover that her beautiful voice was improved by this most difficult practice. The fear of lunacy made her very circumspect. She was enabled to attend to herself alone, and a constant exercise of memory and mind was required. Her manner became more serious, and nearer perfection. Her compositions became more simple, and, at Spandau, she was the author of airs of wonderful beauty and grand sadness. Before long, however, she became aware of the injury which the loss of her piano did to her health and calmness. Knowing the necessity of ceaseless occupation, and unwilling to repose after exciting and stormy production and execution, by more tranquil study and research, she became aware that fever was gradually kindling in her veins, and she was plunged in grief. Her active character, which was happy and full of affectionate expansion, was not formed for isolation and the absence of sympathy. She would, in a few weeks have been sacrificed to this cruel régime, had not Providence sent her a friend whom she certainly did not expect to meet.
[11]Royalty in Europe always uses the plural. The meaning of the phrase is, "And you SPEAK not so loudly!"
[CHAPTER XVIII]
Beneath the cell, which our recluse occupied, a large smoky room (a thick and mournful vault, which received no other light than that of the fire in a vast chimney, continually filled with iron pots, boiling and hissing) contained the Swartz family. While the wife made the greatest possible number of dinners out of the smallest number of comestibles, the husband sat before a table, blackened with ink and oil, and, by the light of a lamp which burned constantly in this dark sanctuary, wrote out immense bills containing the most fabulous items imaginable. The miserable dinners were for the large number of prisoners whom Swartz had contrived to number among his boarders; the bills were to be presented to their relations or bankers without being always submitted to the recipients of this luxurious alimentation. While the speculative couple were devoting themselves with all their power to toil, two more peaceable personages, in the chimney-corner, sat by in silence, perfect strangers to the advantage and profit of what was going on. The first was a poor starved cat, thin and famished, whose whole existence seemed wasted in sucking its paws. The second was a young man, or rather a lad, if possible uglier than the cat, who wasted his life in reading a book, if possible, more greasy than his mother's pots, and whose eternal reveries seemed to partake more of tranquil idiocy than the meditation of a sentient being. The cat had been christened Belzebub, as an antithesis to the name conferred by Herr and Vrau Swartz on the lad, who was called Gottlieb.
Gottlieb, intended for the church, until he was fifteen had made rapid progress in Protestant Theology. For four years, however, he had been inert and invalid, hanging over the hearth side, unwilling to see the sun, and unable to continue his studies. A rapid and irregular growth had reduced him to a state of languor and indolence. His long, thin legs scarcely sufficed to support his unnatural and ungainly height. His arms were so feeble, and his hands so clumsy, that he could touch nothing without breaking it. His avaricious mother had, therefore, forbidden him to interfere at all, and he was ready enough to obey her. His face was coarse and beardless, terminated by a high forehead, and was altogether not unlike a ripe pear. His features were irregular as his figure. His eyes seemed decidedly astray, so cross and diverging were they. His thick lips had a stupid smile; his nose was shapeless, his complexion colorless, his ears flat, and sticking close to his head. A few coarse, wiry hairs covered his head, which was more like a turnip than the poll of a Christian: this, at least, was the poetical comparison of his good mother.
In spite of his natural disadvantages, in spite of the shame and disappointment with which Vrau Swartz regarded him, Gottlieb, her only son, an inoffensive and patient invalid, was yet the pride and joy of the authors of his existence. They flattered themselves, when he became less ugly, that some day he would be a handsome man. They had expected, from his studious childhood, that his success in life would be brilliant. Notwithstanding the precarious state to which he was reduced, they hoped he would recover strength, power, intelligence, and beauty, as soon as his growth had stopped. It is, besides, needless to remark, that maternal love becomes used to anything, and is satisfied with little. Vrau Swartz, though she abused, adored him, and had she not seen him all day long planted like a pillar of salt (such were her words) at the corner of the fireplace, would have been unable to mix her sauces or remember the items of her bills. Old Swartz, who, like many men, had more self-love than tenderness in his paternal regard, persisted in jewing and robbing his prisoners, in the hope that some day Gottlieb would be a minister and a famous preacher. This was his fixed idea, because, before he became rich, the young man had always displayed great facility of expression. For four years, however, he had not said one single sensible thing, and if he ever united two or three sentences together, he spoke them to his cat Belzebub. In fine, Gottlieb was said by the physicians to be an idiot, and his parents, alone thought that he could be cured.
Gottlieb, however, once shook off his apathy, and told his parents that he wished to learn a trade, to amuse himself, and make his tiresome hours profitable. They yielded to this innocent desire, though it scarcely conformed with the dignity attached to a preacher of the reformed church to work with his hands. The mind of Gottlieb appeared, however, so sunk in repose, that it was deemed prudent to permit him to acquire the art of making shoes in a cobbler's stall. His father would have wished him to study a more elegant profession. In vain did they exhibit to him every branch of industry; he had a decided predilection for the craft of Saint Crispin, and said that he was satisfied Providence called him to embrace it. As this wish became a fixed idea, and as the very fear of being interfered with threw him into an intense melancholy, he was suffered to pass a month in the shop of a master workman, whence he came one day with all the tools of the trade, and installed himself in the chimney-corner, saying that he knew enough, and had no need of further instruction. This was not probable; and his parents, hoping that his experience had disgusted him, and that he probably would resume the study of theology, neither reproached nor laughed at him on his return. A new era in Gottlieb's life then began, which was entirely delighted by the prospect of the manufacture of an imaginary pair of shoes. Three or four hours a-day, he took his last and worked at a shoe, which no one over wore, for it was never finished. Every day it was stitched, stretched beaten, pointed, and took all possible shapes, except that of a shoe. The artisan was, however, delighted with his work, and was attentive, careful, patient, and content, so that he utterly disregarded all criticism. At first, his parents were afraid of this monomania, but gradually became used to it, and the great shoe and the volume of sermons and prayers alternated in his hands. Nothing more was required of him than to go from time to time with his father through the galleries and courts, to get fresh air. These promenades gave Swartz a great deal of annoyance, because the children of the other keepers of the prison ran after Gottlieb, imitating his idle and negligent gait, and shouting out "Shoes! shoes! Cobbler, make me a pair of shoes! Take my measure—who wants shoes?" For fear of getting him into difficulty with this rabble, Swartz dragged him along, and the shoemaker was not at all troubled nor distressed at being thus hurried from his work.
In the early part of her imprisonment, Consuelo had been humbly requested by Swartz to get into conversation with Gottlieb, and try to awaken in him the memory of and taste for that eloquence with which he had been endowed in his childhood. While he owned the unhealthy state and the apathy of his heir, Swartz, faithful to the law of nature, so well defined by La Fontaine—