“The moon, called a disc by poets, is undoubtedly a ball.”
“How do you know that?” retorted Brunet. “We have never seen but one side.”
The third canto told the regulation story,—in this instance, the famous anecdote of the cup-and-ball which all the world knows by heart, concerning a celebrated minister of Louis XVI. According to the sacred formula delivered by the “Debats” from 1810 to 1814, in praise of these glorious words, Gourdon’s ode “borrowed fresh charms from poesy to embellish the tale.”
The fourth canto summed up the whole, and concluded with these daring words,—not published, be it remarked, from 1810 to 1814; in fact, they did not see the light till 1824, after Napoleon’s death.
‘Twas thus that I sang in the time of alarms.
Oh, if kings would consent to bear no other arms,
And people enjoyed what was best for them all,
The sweet little game of the Cup and the Ball,
Our Burgundy then might be free of all fear,
And return to the good days of Saturn and Rhea.
These fine verses were published in a first and only edition from the press of Bournier, printer of Ville-aux-Fayes. One hundred subscribers, in the sum of three francs, guaranteed the dangerous precedent of immortality to the poem,—a liberality that was all the greater because these hundred persons had heard the poem from beginning to end a hundred times over.
Madame Soudry had lately suppressed the cup-and-ball, which usually lay on a pier-table in the salon and for the last seven years had given rise to endless quotations, for she finally discovered in the toy a rival to her own attractions.
As to the author, who boasted of future poems in his desk, it is enough to quote the terms in which he mentioned to the leading society of Soulanges a rival candidate for literary honors.
“Have you heard a curious piece of news?” he had said, two years earlier. “There is another poet in Burgundy! Yes,” he added, remarking the astonishment on all faces, “he comes from Macon. But you could never imagine the subjects he takes up,—a perfect jumble, absolutely unintelligible,—lakes, stars, waves, billows! not a single philosophical image, not even a didactic effort! he is ignorant of the very meaning of poetry. He calls the sky by its name. He says ‘moon,’ bluntly, instead of naming it ‘the planet of night.’ That’s what the desire to be thought original brings men to,” added Gourdon, mournfully. “Poor young man! A Burgundian, and sing such stuff as that!—the pity of it! If he had only consulted me, I would have pointed out to him the noblest of all themes, wine,—a poem to be called the Baccheide; for which, alas! I now feel myself too old.”
This great poet is still ignorant of his finest triumph (though he owes it to the fact of being a Burgundian), namely, that of living in the town of Soulanges, so rounded and perfected within itself that it knows nothing of the modern Pleiades, not even their names.