第92章

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.

A hundred Gourdons made poetry under the Empire, and yet they tell us it was a period that neglected literature! Examine the "Journal de la Libraire" and you will find poems on the game of draughts, on backgammon, on tricks with cards, on geography, typography, comedy, etc.,--not to mention the vaunted masterpieces of Delille on Piety, Imagination, Conversation; and those of Berchoux on Gastromania and Dansomania, etc.Who can foresee the chances and changes of taste, the caprices of fashion, the transformations of the human mind? The generations as they pass along sweep out of sight the last fragments of the idols they found on their path and set up other gods,--to be overthrown like the rest.

Sarcus, a handsome little man with a dapple-gray head, devoted himself in turn to Themis and to Flora,--in other words, to legislation and a greenhouse.For the last twelve years he had been meditating a book on the History of the Institution of Justices of the Peace, "whose political and judiciary role," he said, "had already passed through several phases, all derived from the Code of Brumaire, year IV.; and to-day that institution, so precious to the nation, had lost its power because the salaries were not in keeping with the importance of its functions, which ought to be performed by irremovable officials."

Rated in the community as an able man, Sarcus was the accepted statesman of Madame Soudry's salon; you can readily imagine that he was the leading bore.They said he talked like a book.Gaubertin prophesied he would receive the cross of the Legion of honor, but not until the day when, as Leclercq's successor, he should take his seat on the benches of the Left Centre.

Guerbet, the collector, a man of parts, a heavy, fat, individual with a buttery face, a toupet on his bald spot, gold earrings, which were always in difficulty with his shirt-collar, had the hobby of pomology.

Proud of possessing the finest fruit-garden in the arrondissement, he gathered his first crops a month later than those of Paris; his hot-

beds supplied him with pine-apples, nectarines, and peas, out of season.He brought bunches of strawberries to Madame Soudry with pride when the fruit could be bought for ten sous a basket in Paris.

Soulanges possessed a pharmaceutist named Vermut, a chemist, who was more of a chemist than Sarcus was a statesman, or Lupin a singer, or Gourdon the elder a scientist, or his brother a poet.Nevertheless, the leading society of Soulanges did not take much notice of Vermut, and the second-class society took none at all.The instinct of the first may have led them to perceive the real superiority of this thinker, who said little but smiled at their absurdities so satirically that they first doubted his capacity and then whispered tales against it; as for the other class they took no notice of him one way or the other.

Vermut was the butt of Madame Soudry's salon.No society is complete without a victim,--without an object to pity, ridicule, despise, and protect.Vermut, full of his scientific problems, often came with his cravat untied, his waistcoat unbuttoned, and his little green surtout spotted.

The little man, gifted with the patience of a chemist, could not enjoy (that is the term employed in the provinces to express the abolition of domestic rule) Madame Vermut,--a charming woman, a lively woman, capital company (for she could lose forty sous at cards and say nothing), a woman who railed at her husband, annoyed him with epigrams, and declared him to be an imbecile unable to distil anything but dulness.Madame Vermut was one of those women who in the society of a small town are the life and soul of amusement and who set things going.She supplied the salt of her little world, kitchen-salt, it is true; her jokes were somewhat broad, but society forgave them; though she was capable of saying to the cure Taupin, a man of seventy years of age, with white hair, "Hold your tongue, my lad."

The miller of Soulanges, possessing an income of fifty thousand francs, had an only daughter whom Lupin desired for his son Amaury, since he had lost the hope of marrying him to Gaubertin's daughter.