The other night I went to the Champs-Elysées theatre to see a show given by American soldiers of the 88th Division. One act opens with Hiram Scarum bringing a military trunk into his hotel. Staggering under the weight, Hiram hobbles across the stage, plants his trunk on the floor, and sits down on it to mop his brow. He spies a paper across the room, and investigates to find it is the tag belonging to the trunk. Pulling himself together, Hiram spits on his hands, wearily shoulders the burden again, and carries it across the room where he ties the tag to the handle of the trunk. Then he picks up the trunk and carries it back where he had first put it down. Hiram is like French commerce. The Frenchman, with a sense of self-congratulation on his own industry, carries the trunk to the tag. He is surprised to discover that while he has been carrying the trunk to the tag, his German competitor has carried a great many tags and has tied them to a great many trunks. We hear much in these days about the war after the war. We are told by Paris newspapers how the French business men are going to capture trade from Germany. How can the French win in the commercial game? I'm sure I don't know. One is concerned lest the inability to take the large view end in disappointment and disaster for the Frenchmen we love. We are just as sure that our French friends will continue to carry the trunk to the tag as we are that they ought to get a hustle on, give up their old ways, and win the game.
CHAPTER VIII
AT THE BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE
THERE are many libraries in Paris. Some of them are so famous that I ought to hesitate to call the Bibliothèque Nationale simply "the library." But I do call it that, not because it is the largest in the world (a fact that calls forth instinctively admiration and respect from Americans), but because we love the Bibliothèque from long and habitual association. It is a part of our life like our home.
In the beginning of the fellowship year, Herbert came to realize that books could do more for him than lecturers. A magnetic and enthusiastic lecturer communicates his inspiration: but most professors are decidedly non-conductors. And then, with rare exceptions, university professors are not sources themselves. What they do is to stand between you and the sources. When they have something original and suggestive to say, why not let them speak to you from the covers of a book? If a book does not hold you, you can throw it aside and take up another: the lecturer has you fast for an hour, and you often suffer because his baby did not sleep well the night before. But when the professor speaks from the printed page, he has had a chance to eliminate in his final revision whatever effects of insomnia there may have been in the first draft. If he hasn't done so, you do not need to read him.
When students become full fledged post-graduates, they are at the parting of the ways. Either they go directly to the sources, form independent judgments, and produce original work as a result of constructive thinking, or they continue to remain in intellectual dependence upon their teachers. The latter alternative is the more pleasant course. It requires less effort, and does not make one restless and unhappy. The pleasant days of taking in are prolonged and the agonizing days of giving out are postponed. But if a youngster is face to face with books all day long every day, he either stops studying or commences to produce for himself. Then, too, he is constantly under the salutory influence of being confronted with his own appalling ignorance. Whatever effort he makes, the volumes he summons from the shelves to his desk keep reminding him that others have given years to what he hopes to compass in days. The Bibliothèque teaches two lessons, and teaches them with every tick of the clock from nine a. m. to four p. m.—humility and industry.
There was, of course, much to be learned at the Sorbonne. But my husband had already passed through three years of post-graduate work, and was tired of chasing around from one lecture to another. There were hours between courses that could not be utilized, and the habit of loafing is the easiest formed in the world. It was because we were jealous of every hour in the Golden Year that Herbert and I first turned from the Sorbonne to the Bibliothèque. Later we came to realize that the only thing in common between Salles de Conférences of the Sorbonne and the Salle de Lecture of the Bibliothèque was the lack of fresh air—the universal and unavoidable torture of indoors everywhere in France.
Nine to four, five days in the week, Herbert lived in the Bibliothèque, and I went there mornings—when Scrappie was not on my conscience! One did not have to go out to lunch, as the fare of the buvette was quite acceptable to those interested in books and manuscripts. The old law of the time of Louis XIV holds good in this day. No light but that of heaven has ever been introduced into the Bibliothèque. After gas was discovered, the law was not changed. Even when electricity came, presenting an infinitesimal risk of fire, the Government refused to have the vast building wired. The prohibition of lights extends, of course, to smoking. You cannot strike a match in the sacred precincts. So, after lunch we used to go across the street and sit for half an hour in the Square Louvois.
Do you know the Square Louvois? I'll wager you do not. For when one passes afoot up the Rue Richelieu, he is generally in a hurry to get to the Bourse or the Grands Boulevards. If you go on the Clichy-Odéon bus, you whizz by one of the most delightful little green spots in the city of green spots without noticing it. The Square Louvois has on the side opposite the Bibliothèque Nationale a good-sized hotel, which was named after the square. The boundary streets on the north and south are lined with modest restaurants and coffee bars, within the purse of petits commis and midinettes. In Europe there is not the hurry over the mid-day meal that seems universal in America. Dyspepsia is unknown. The humblest employee or laborer has from one hour and a half to two hours off at noon. There is competition for benches and chairs in the Square Louvois between twelve-thirty and two. Mothers who are their own nursemaids have to resist the temporary encroachment of the Quarter's business world. We from the Bibliothèque make an additional demand. We must have our smoke and fresh air. And we never tire of the noble monument to the rivers of France that is the fountain in the center of the Square.
"Funny, isn't it," said I, "how things turn out to be different from what you expected—your thesis for instance. Gallicanism is simply a closed door for the present."