I.—Everybody does, according to the measure of his intelligence.
He.—No; hardly anybody. Could you tell me what people look for in them?
I.—Amusement and instruction.
He.—But what instruction, for that is the point?
I.—The knowledge of one’s duties, the love of virtue, the hatred of vice.
He.—For my part, I gather from them all that one ought to do, and all that one ought not to say. Thus, when I read the Avare, I say to myself: “Be a miser if thou wilt, but beware of talking like the miser.” When I read Tartufe, I say: “Be a hypocrite if thou wilt, but do not talk like a hypocrite. Keep the vices that are useful to thee, but avoid their tone and the appearances that would make thee laughable.” To preserve thyself from such a tone and such appearances, it is necessary to know what they are. Now these authors have drawn excellent pictures of them. I am myself, and I remain what I am, but I act and I speak as becomes the character. I am not one of those who despise moralists; there is a great deal of profit to be got from them, especially with those who have applied morality to action. Vice only hurts men from time to time; the characteristics of vice hurt them from morning to night. Perhaps it would be better to be insolent than to have an insolent expression. One who is insolent in character only insults people now and again; one who is insolent in expression insults them incessantly. And do not imagine that I am the only reader of my kind. I have no other merit in this respect than having done on system, from a natural integrity of understanding, and with true and reasonable vision, what most others do by instinct. And so their readings make them no better than I am, and they remain ridiculous in spite of themselves, while I am only so when I choose, and always leave them a vast distance behind me; for the same art which teaches me how to escape ridicule on certain occasions teaches me also on certain others how to incur it happily. Then I recall to myself all that the others said, and all that I read, and I add all that issues from my own originality, which is in this kind wondrous fertile.
I.—You have done well to reveal these mysteries to me, for otherwise I should have thought you self-contradictory.
He.—I am not so in the least, for against a single time when one has to avoid ridicule, happily there are a hundred when one has to provoke it. There is no better part among the great people than that of fool. For a long time there was the king’s fool; at no time was there ever the king’s sage, officially so styled. Now I am the fool of Bertin and many others, perhaps yours at the present moment, or perhaps you are mine. A man who meant to be a sage would have no fool, so he who has a fool is no sage; if he is not a sage he is a fool, and perhaps, even were he the king himself, the fool of his fool. For the rest, remember that in a matter so variable as manners, there is nothing absolutely, essentially, and universally true or false; if not that one must be what interest would have us be, good or bad, wise or mad, decent or ridiculous, honest or vicious. If virtue had happened to be the way to fortune, then I should either have been virtuous, or I should have pretended virtue, like other persons. As it was, they wanted me to be ridiculous, and I made myself so; as for being vicious, nature alone had taken all the trouble that was needed in that. When I use the term vicious, it is for the sake of talking your language; for, if we came to explanations, it might happen that you called vice what I call virtue, and virtue what I call vice.
Then we have the authors of the Opéra Comique, their actors and their actresses, and oftener still their managers, all people of resource and superior merit. And I forget the whole clique of scribblers in the gazettes, the Avant Coureur, the Petites Affiches, the Année littéraire, the Observateur littéraire.
I.—The Année littéraire, the Observateur littéraire! But they detest one another.