Denis Diderot (1769)

Rameau’s Nephew

Vertumnis, quotquot sunt, natus iniquis
(Horat., Lib. II, Satyr. VII)
[Born under every changeful star]

Source: http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/diderot/rameau_E.htm;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) Ian C. Johnston of Malaspina University-College, Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada 2002.

No matter what the weather, rain or shine, it’s my habit every evening at about five o’clock to take a walk around the Palais Royal. I’m the one you see dreaming on the bench in Argenson’s Alley, always alone. I talk to myself about politics, love, taste, or philosophy. I let my spirit roam at will, allowing it to follow the first idea, wise or foolish, which presents itself, just as we see our dissolute young men on Foy’s Walk following in the footsteps of a prostitute with a smiling face, an inviting air, and a turned-up nose, then leaving her for another, going after all of them and sticking to none. For me, my thoughts are my prostitutes.

If the weather is too cold or too rainy, I take refuge in the Regency Café. I like to watch the games of chess. The best chess players in the world are in Paris, and the best players in Paris are in the Regency Café. Here, in Rey’s establishment, they battle it out – Legal the Profound, Philidor the Subtle, Mayot the Solid. One sees the most surprising moves and hears the stupidest remarks. For one can be an intelligent man and a great chess player, like Legal, but one can also be a great chess player and a fool, like Foubert and Mayot.

One day I was there after dinner, looking on a great deal but not saying much, listening as little as possible, when I was accosted by one of the most bizarre people in this country (and God has made sure we don’t lack such types). He is a mixture of loftiness and depravity, of good sense and buffoonery. The notions of honesty and dishonesty must be really badly confused in his head, for he shows without ostentation that nature has given him fine qualities, and has no shame in revealing that he has also received some bad ones. Beyond that, he’s endowed with a strong constitution, a remarkably warm imagination, and an extraordinary lung power. If you ever meet him and his originality does not hold your attention, you’ll either put your fingers in your ears or run off. God, what terrible lungs!

Nothing is more unlike him than himself. Sometimes he is thin and haggard, like an invalid in the final stages of consumption. You can count his teeth through his cheeks. You’d say he’d spent several days without a meal or had just left a Trappist monastery. The next month, he’s sleek and plump, as if he’d been eating steadily at a banker’s table or had been shut up inside a Bernadine convent. Today, in dirty linen and torn trousers, dressed in rags, almost barefoot, he slinks along with his head down. One is tempted to call to him to give him a hand out. Tomorrow, he marches along with his head high, powdered, his hair curled, well dressed, with fine shoes. He shows himself off, and you’d almost take him for a gentleman. He lives from day to day, sad or happy, according to circumstances. His first concern in the morning, when he gets up, is to know where he’ll have lunch. After lunch, he thinks about where he’ll go for supper.

Night time also brings uncertainties. Should he return on foot to the little garret where he lives, assuming that the caretaker, in her irritation at not getting the rent, has not asked him to return his key, or should he settle for a working-class tavern to wait for daylight over a slice of bread and a mug of beer? When he hasn’t got even six pennies in his pocket, which happens sometimes, he resorts to one of his friends who drives a cab or the coachman of a noble lord who gives him a pallet in the straw beside the horses. In the morning there are still bits of his mattress in his hair. If the season is mild, he paces all night along the Cours or the Champs Élysées. He reappears in town with the dawn, dressed up for today in yesterday’s clothes, and dressed up today perhaps for the rest of the week.

I don’t think much of these eccentrics. Some people turn them into familiar acquaintances, even friends. Once a year they interest me, when I meet them, because their character stands in contrast to others and they break that fastidious uniformity which our education, our social conventions, and our habitual proprieties have introduced. If one of them appears in company, he’s a grain of yeast which ferments and gives back to everyone some part of his natural individuality. He shakes things up. He agitates us. He makes us praise or blame. He makes the truth come out, revealing who has value. He unmasks the scoundrels. So that’s the time a man with sense pays attention and sorts his world out.

The man I’ve described I knew from some time back. He used to hang about a house where his talent had opened doors for him. There was an only daughter. He swore to the father and mother that he would marry their daughter. They shrugged their shoulders and laughed in his face, telling him he was mad. I saw it happen. He used to ask me for money, which I gave him. He got himself introduced, I don’t know how, into some good homes, where he had a place for dinner, but on condition he didn’t speak without first getting permission. He kept silent and ate in anger. It was really good to see him under this constraint. If he was seized by a desire to break this agreement and opened his mouth, with his first word all the guests would cry out “O Rameau!” Then his fury would burn in his eyes, and he’d go back to his meal even more enraged.

You were curious to know this man’s name, and now you do. He is the nephew of that famous musician who delivered us from the plain song of Lully,^[1] which we’ve been chanting for more than a century, and who wrote so much unintelligible visionary stuff and apocalyptic truths about the theory of music, none of which ever made sense either to him or anyone else. He left us a certain number of operas where there is some harmony, scraps of song, some disconnected ideas, noise, flights, triumphal marches, lances, glories, murmurs, victories that leave one breathless, and dance tunes which will last forever. He buried the Florentine but will now be buried by Italian virtuosi, a fact which he saw coming and which made him gloomy, sad, and surly. For no one, not even a pretty woman who wakes up with a pimple on her nose, is as moody as an author who threatens to outlive his reputation – just look at Marivaux and the younger Crebillon.

He greets me. “Ah, ha, so there you are, Mister Philosopher. What are you doing here in this pile of idlers? Are you also wasting time pushing wood around?” That’s how people speak contemptuously of chess or checkers.

ME: No. But when I don’t have anything better to do, I amuse myself for a bit by watching those who push well.

HIM: In that case you don’t get to enjoy yourself often. Except for Legal and Philidor, the others have no idea about the game.

ME: What about Mr. de Bissy?

HIM: That man plays chess the way Miss Clairon acts.^[2] They both know everything about their respective games that one can learn.

ME: You’re harsh. I see you honour only men of genius.

HIM: Yes. In chess, in checkers, poetry, oratory, music and other similar nonsense. What good is mediocrity in things like that?

ME: Not much, I agree. But large numbers of men must work at them before the man of genius appears, one man in a multitude. But let’s drop that subject. It’s been an eternity since I last saw you. I hardly think of you when I don’t see you. But I’m always pleased to see you again. What have you been doing?

HIM: What you, I, and all the others do – some good, some bad – and nothing. Then when I was hungry, I ate when I had a chance. After eating, I was thirsty and I drank sometimes. However, I grew a beard, and when that came, I shaved it off.

ME: You shouldn’t have done that. It’s the one thing you need to be a wise man.

HIM: That’s right. I have a lofty wrinkled forehead, a burning eye, a jutting nose, large cheeks, black bushy eyebrows, a clean-cut mouth, curving lips, a square face. If this vast chin was covered with a long beard, can you imagine how splendid that would look in bronze or marble?

ME: Up there beside Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, and Socrates.

HIM: No. I’d go better between Diogenes the philosopher and Phryne the prostitute. Like one of them I’m impudent, and I happily hang around the houses of the other.

ME: Is your health still good?

HIM: Yes, normally it is. But it’s not so marvelous today.

ME: Why’s that? There you are with a belly like Silenus and a face ...

HIM: A face one might mistake for what’s behind the belly. That’s because the humour which is making my uncle waste away is apparently making his dear nephew fat.

ME: What about your uncle – do you ever see him?^[3]

HIM: Yes – he walks past me in the street.

ME: Hasn’t he done anything for you?

HIM: If he’s done anything for anyone, he’s done it without being aware of what he’s doing. The man’s a philosopher in his own way. He thinks only of himself. To him the rest of the universe isn’t worth a damn. His daughter and his wife might as well die whenever they want. So long as the parish bells which toll for them continue to resonate at the twelfth and seventeenth intervals, all will be fine. That’s a good thing for him. And that’s what I especially value in people of genius. They are good at only one thing. Other than that, nothing. They’ve no idea what it is to be citizens, fathers, mothers, brothers, parents, friends. Just between us, we should try to be like them in every way, but without wanting their breed to become something common. We must have men, but men of genius, no. No, my goodness, we don’t need them. They’re the ones who change the face of the earth. And in the smallest things stupidity is so common and so powerful that no one can reform it without making a great fuss. That sets up, at least in part, what men of vision see. And part remains just as it was. Thus, we have two gospels, the costume of Harlequin. The wisdom of the monk Rabelais is true wisdom, for his own peace of mind and that of others – do one’s duty, somehow or other, always speak well of your master the prior, and leave the world to its fantasies. That works well, because the majority is happy with it. If I understood history, I’d show you that evil has always come here below from some man of genius. But I don’t know history, because I don’t know anything. The devil take me if I’ve ever learned a thing and if I’m any the worse off for having learned nothing. One day I was at the table of one of the King’s ministers who had brains enough for four men. Well, he demonstrated to us, as clearly as one and one adds up to two, that nothing is more useful to nations than lies, nothing more harmful than the truth. I don’t recall his proofs very well, but it evidently follows that people of genius are detestable and that if a child at birth bears on its forehead the characteristics of this dangerous natural gift, one should either smother the child or throw it to the dogs.

ME: But people like that, so hostile to genius, all pretend to have some.

HIM: I’m sure they think that about themselves deep inside, but I don’t think they dare admit the fact.

ME: That’s just their modesty. So from that point on you’ve developed a terrible hatred against genius.

HIM: Something I’ll never put behind me.

ME: But I’ve seen the time when you were desperate to be anything but an ordinary person. You’ll never be happy if the arguments for and against affect you equally. You have to pick a side and stick to it. I quite agree with you that men of genius are usually odd or, as the proverb states, that there are no great minds without a grain of folly. One can’t deny the fact. But we despise the ages which have not produced men of genius, and men will honour those nations among whom genius has lived. Sooner or later, we raise statues to them and consider them benefactors of the human race. I don’t mean to disparage the sublime minister you mentioned to me, but I think that even if a lie can be useful momentarily, it is necessarily harmful in the long run, and by contrast, the truth is useful over time, even though it could be harmful at a particular moment. From that I’m temped to conclude that the man of genius who speaks out against a common error or who establishes a great truth is always a being worthy of our veneration. It could happen that such a being is the victim of prejudice and the law, but there are two kinds of laws, those which are based on equity, which are universally true, and others which are peculiar and derive their authority only from blindness or from the needs of certain circumstances. This second type confers upon the man who breaks them merely a passing ignominy, a shame which time turns back on the judges and countries who condemned him. The shame stays with them for ever. Think of Socrates and the magistrate who made him drink the hemlock – which of those two is the dishonourable man today?

HIM: That’s a great help to Socrates! Does that make him any less condemned, any less put to death? Was he any less a rebellious citizen? With his contempt for a bad law, didn’t he encourage fools to disregard good laws? Was he any less an audacious and odd individual? Just now you were not so far from expressing how little you liked men of genius.

ME: My dear fellow, listen to me. A society should never have bad laws. And if it had only good ones, it would never be in a position to persecute a man of genius. I didn’t say that genius was inseparably attached to malice or malice to genius. A fool is more often an evil person than a man of intelligence is. And if a man of genius were characteristically hard to get along with, difficult, prickly, and unbearable, even if he were bad, what would you conclude from that?

HIM: He should be drowned.

ME: Gently, my dear fellow. Now, tell me – I won’t take your uncle as an example. He’s a hard man, brutal, inhuman, and miserly. He’s a bad father, a bad husband, a bad uncle. And it’s by no means clear that he’s a man of genius who has pushed his art a long way, so that in ten years we’ll be discussing his works. But what about Racine? He certainly had genius, and he didn’t have much of a reputation as a good man. What about Voltaire?

HIM: Don’t press me on this question. I can give you an argument.

ME: Which of these two options would you prefer – that Racine had been a good man, known for his business, like Briasson, or for his yardstick, like Barbier, getting his wife regularly pregnant every year with legitimate children, a good husband, a good father, a good uncle, a good neighbour, an honest merchant, but nothing more – or that he had been deceitful, treacherous, ambitious, envious, and nasty, but the author of Andromache, Britannicus, Iphigeneia, Phedre, and Athalie?

HIM: For him I imagine it would perhaps have been better if he’d been the first of the two.

ME: What you’ve just said is infinitely truer than you think.

HIM: There you go, you others! If we say something good, it’s as if we’re mad or inspired – just a fluke. It’s only you others who really understand what you’re saying. Yes, Mister Philosopher, I understand what I’m saying, and I understand that just as much as you understand what you’re saying.

ME: All right, let’s see. Why would that have been better for Racine?

HIM: The point is that all these beautiful things he created didn’t bring him twenty thousand francs. If he’d been a good silk merchant on Saint Denis or Saint Honore street, a fine wholesale grocer, or a well-connected apothecary, he’d have amassed an immense fortune, and, in the process of getting it, he could’ve enjoyed no end of pleasures. From time to time he could’ve given a few coins to a poor foolish devil like myself, who’d have made him laugh and occasionally procured for him a young woman to relieve the boredom of his eternal co-habitation with his wife. We’d have had some excellent meals at his home, played for high stakes, drunk some fine wines, fine liqueurs, fine coffees, and gone for picnics in the country. You see I know what I’m talking about. You laugh. But let me continue. That would’ve been better for those around him.

ME: No disagreement there, provided he didn’t use the money he got from legitimate business for dishonest purposes and kept far away from his home all gamblers, hangers on, all those self-satisfied tasteless people, all those lay-abouts, all those useless perverts, and made his shop assistants beat senseless the officious gentlemen who in various ways relieve husbands of the disgust they feel at a never-ending life with their wives.

HIM: Beat senseless, my dear chap, beat up! We don’t beat anyone senseless in a well-policed town. Pimping is a respectable profession. Many people, even those with titles, are mixed up in it. And what in the devil do you want us to use our money for, if not for a good table, good company, good wines, fine women, pleasures of all sorts, amusement of all kinds. I’d have no desire to possess a large fortune without these enjoyments. But let’s get back to Racine. The man was good only for those he didn’t know and for a time when he was no longer alive.

ME: I agree. But weigh the good and bad. A thousand years from now, he’ll still make people cry and win men’s admiration. In all countries of the world he will inspire humanity, sympathy, tenderness. People will ask who he was, what country he came from, and they’ll envy France. He made a few people suffer who are no longer alive and in whom we have hardly any interest. We have nothing to fear from his vices or faults. No doubt it would’ve been better if nature had given him the virtues of a good man along with the talents of a great man. He’s a tree which has caused some trees planted near him to wither up and has suffocated the plants growing at his feet. But he carried his top right up into the sky – his branches stretched a long way. He provided shade to those who came, who come, and who will come to rest alongside his majestic trunk. He produced fruits with an exquisite taste which replenish themselves continuously. We could also wish that Voltaire had had the sweetness of Duclos, the ingenuousness of Abbé Trublet, the honesty of Abbé d’Olivet. But since that’s impossible, let’s look at the really interesting side of this issue. Let’s forget for the moment the point which we occupy in space and time and extend our vision into the centuries to come, into the most distant regions, into nations yet to be born. Let’s think of the well being of our species. If we are not generous enough, let’s at least forgive nature for having been wiser than we are. If you throw cold water on Greuze’s head, perhaps you will extinguish his talent along with his vanity. If you make Voltaire less sensitive to criticism, he will not know how to descend into the soul of Merope. He will no longer move you.

HIM: But if nature was as powerful as she was wise, why didn’t she make those men good in the same way she made them great?

ME: But don’t you see that with that sort of reasoning you confound the general order. If everything here below were excellent, then nothing would be excellent.

HIM: You’re right. The important point is that you and I exist and that we exist as you and I. Let everything beyond that go ahead however it can. The best order of things, in my view, is one in which I had to exist. Who cares about the most perfect of worlds, if I’m not on it? I prefer to exist, even as an impertinent quibbler, than not to exist at all.

ME: There’s no one who doesn’t think just as you do and who doesn’t put existing order on trial, without noticing he’s renouncing his own existence.

HIM: That’s true.

ME: So let’s accept things as they are. Let’s see what they cost us and what they bring us, leaving aside everything we don’t know well enough to assign praise or blame – what’s perhaps neither good nor bad, but what’s necessary, as many respectable people think.

HIM: I don’t understand much about that pitch you’ve just made to me. It seems like philosophy, and I warn you I’ll not get mixed up in that. All I know is that I’d be quite happy to be someone else, on the off-chance I’d be a genius, a great man. Yes, I have to admit it. There’s something there which speaks to me. I’ve never heard a single genius praised without such tributes to him making me secretly enraged. I get envious. When I learn about some detail of their private lives which demeans them, I listen with pleasure. That brings us closer together, and I bear my mediocrity more easily. I say to myself, “It’s true you never could have created Mahomet, but you’d never have praised Maupeou.” So I’ve been mediocre, and I’m angry with my mediocrity. Yes, yes, I am mediocre and angry. I’ve never heard the overture to Les Indes Galantes or heard anyone sing Profonds Abîmes du Ténaire, Nuit, Éternelle Nuit, without feeling pain and saying to myself, “There’s something you’d never create.” Hence I was jealous of my uncle, and if at his death there’d been some fine compositions for the keyboard in his portfolio, I wouldn’t have hesitated to remain myself and to be him as well.

ME: If that’s the only thing bothering you, it’s not worth the trouble.

HIM: It’s nothing – they’re just passing moments.

Then he started to sing the overture to Indes Galantes and the song Profonds Abîmes, adding, “That something or other inside me which talks to me says, ‘Rameau, you’d love to have composed those two pieces. If you’d done these two, you’d probably have done two others. And when you’d composed a certain number, people would play and sing you all over the place. When you walked along, you’d hold your head high. Your own awareness would confirm your own merit for you. Others would point you out. They’d say ‘There’s the man who wrote those lovely gavottes.’”

He sang the gavottes, and then, looking like a man deeply moved, swimming in joy, his eyes damp, he added, rubbing his hands together, “You’d have a fine house” – he measured its extent with his arms – “a fine bed” – he pretended to stretch himself out on it nonchalantly – “good wines” – which he tasted by smacking his tongue against his palate – “a fine horse and carriage” – he raised his foot as if to climb in – “beautiful women” – he embraced their breasts and gazed at them voluptuously – “A hundred hangers-on would come to sing my praises every day” – he imagined he saw them all around him – Palissot, Poincinet, the two Frérons, father and son, La Porte – he listened to them, he puffed himself up, agreed with what they said, smiled at them, ignored them, scorned them, sent them off, called them back. Then he continued “That’s the way people would tell you every morning that you’re a great man. You’d read in the history of Trois Siècles that you were a great man. You’d be convinced in the evening that you were great man, and that great man, Rameau the nephew, would fall asleep to the soft murmur of praise which echoed in his ears. Even while he was sleeping, he would have a satisfied air – his chest would expand, rise, and fall with assurance, and he’d snore like a great man.” As he was saying this, he moved over and lay gently on a bench. He closed his eyes and imitated the happy sleep he’d just imagined. After having enjoyed this relaxed repose for a few moments, he woke up, stretched his arms, yawned, rubbed his eyes, and looked around him for any dull admirers still there.

ME: So you think that a happy man sleeps like that?

HIM: Do I think so! I’m a poor wretch, and when I go back to my garret in the evening and tuck myself in on my pallet, I’m shriveled up under my coverlet – my chest is tight and my breathing short, like a weak moan that’s hardly audible; whereas, a financier makes his apartment reverberate and amazes his entire street. But what bothers me today is not that I sleep and snore meanly like someone destitute.

ME: But that’s sad.

HIM: What’s happened to me is much worse.

ME: So what is it?

HIM: You’ve always taken some interest in me because I’m a good little devil whom deep down you despise – but I amuse you.

ME: That’s true.

HIM: And I’m going to tell you.

Before beginning, he sighs deeply and puts both hands on his forehead. Then he recovers his calm appearance and says to me: “You know that I’m ignorant – a silly man, a fool – impertinent, lazy, what we Burgundians call an incorrigible crook, a swindler, a thief ...”

ME: What a panegyric!

HIM: It’s true, all of it. I don’t take back a word of it. Let’s please not argue about it. No one knows me better than I do, and I’m not saying everything.

ME: I don’t want to upset you, so I’ll accept everything you say.

HIM: All right. I used to live with people who liked me precisely because I was endowed with all those qualities to an unusual extent.

ME: That’s odd. Up to the present I believed that people hid them from themselves or forgave them in themselves and condemned them in other people.

HIM: Hide them from oneself – is that possible? Rest assured that when Palissot is alone and reflects on himself, he tells himself something different. You can be sure that in a tête-à-tête with his colleague, they frankly confess that they are nothing but two outstanding rogues. Despise such defects in others! My people were fairer than that – their character made me a marvelous success in their company. I was in clover. They fêted me. They were sorry every moment I was away from them. I was their little Rameau, their beautiful Rameau, their Rameau the foolish, the impertinent, the ignorant, the lazy, the greedy, the clown, the great beast. There wasn’t one of these familiar labels which didn’t earn me a smile, a caress, a pat on the shoulder, a slap, a kick, at table a fine morsel tossed onto my plate for me, away from the table a liberty which I tolerated as of no consequence, for I myself was of no consequence. People make of me, with me, and in front of me anything they want, without my taking exception. And all the small presents which showered down on me? I’m such a stupid dog I lost them all! I lost everything because once – the only time in my life – I had common sense. May that never happen to me again!

ME: What was it about?

HIM: It was an incomparable stupidity – incredible, unpardonable.

ME: What stupidity?

HIM: Rameau, Rameau, people didn’t accept you for your common sense! The idiocy of having had a little taste, a little intelligence, a little reason. Rameau, my friend, this will teach you to remain the man God made you, the man your patrons wanted you to be. So they grabbed you by the scruff of the neck, marched you to the door, and said: “Imposter, get out. And don’t come back. I believe it wants to have some sense, some reason! Beat it. We have these qualities to spare.” You went off biting your nails. You should’ve bitten off your damned tongue long before that. Because you didn’t think about it, here you are on the pavement, the ground, with no idea where to go next. You’d been eating high on the hog, and now you’ll return to slops; you’d been well lodged, and now you’ll be very lucky if they let you have your garret back; you had a nice place to sleep, and now the straw is waiting for you between Mr. de Soubise’s coachman and your friend Robbé. Instead of a soft and peaceful sleep, as you used to have, you’ll be listening with one ear to the neighing and stomping of horses and with the other to a sound a thousand times more unbearable – dry, hard, and barbarous verse. Miserable, stupid fool, possessed by a million devils!

ME: But isn’t there some way to go back? Is the fault you committed unforgivable? In your place, I’d go to find my people again. You’re more necessary to them than you think.

HIM: Oh, I’m certain that right now, when they don’t have me around to make them laugh, they’re bored to death.

ME: Then I’d go get them back. I wouldn’t leave them the time to learn to do without me, to turn to some decent amusement. Who knows what could happen?

HIM: That’s not what I’m afraid of. That won’t happen.

ME: No matter how wonderful you are, another could replace you.

HIM: That would be difficult.

ME: I agree. However, I’d go back with this dejected face, these wild eyes, this disheveled collar, tousled hair – in the truly tragic state you’re in right now. I’d throw myself at the feet of that goddess, stick my face against the earth, and, without getting up, I’d say to her in a low and sobbing voice, “Pardon, madame! Forgive me! I’m unworthy, despicable. That was an unfortunate moment, for you know I’m not subject to having common sense, and I promise you I’ll never have it again in my life.”

What was amusing was that while I was having this conversation with him, he carried out the pantomime. He threw himself down, stuck his face against the ground, and seemed to hold between his two hands the toe of a slipper. He was crying and sobbing the words, “Yes, my little queen. Yes, I do promise. I’ll never have it in my life, never.” Then he got up quickly and added in a serious and deliberate tone:

HIM: Yes, you’re right. I think that would be best. She’s a good woman. Mr. Viellard says that she is so kind. And I know a little bit that she is. Nonetheless, to go humiliate oneself in front of an ugly bitch! To cry for pity at the feet of a miserable little actress who’s always followed by the hissing from the theatre stalls! Me, Rameau, son of Mr. Rameau, apothecary of Dijon, a man of means, who’s never bent his knee to anyone at all! Me, Rameau, nephew of the man who calls himself the Great Rameau, the man people see walking upright on the Palais Royal with his arms waving in the air, ever since Mr. Carmontelle made that drawing of him bent over with his hand under the tails of his coat. I, who have composed pieces for the keyboard which no one plays but which may well be the only ones which our posterity finds agreeable enough to play. I, well, I ... I would go ... but look here, sir, it’s impossible.

Then, putting his right hand to his chest, he added, “I feel something there rising up – it says to me, ‘Rameau, you’ll do none of that.’ There must be a certain dignity attached to human nature which nothing can extinguish. The most trivial thing will awaken it – something trifling. There are other days when it would cost me nothing to be as vile as anyone could wish. On those days for a penny I’d kiss the ass of the little Hus girl.” ^[4]

ME: But, my friend, she’s white, pretty, young, soft, chubby – it’s an act of humility that even a man more refined than you could sometimes stoop to.

HIM: Let’s understand each other – there’s literal ass kissing and metaphorical ass kissing. Ask fat Bergier who kisses the ass of Madame de La Mark both literally and figuratively – my God, with them the literal and figurative disgust me equally.

ME: If the course of action I’m suggesting doesn’t suit you, then have the courage to be a beggar.

HIM: It’s hard to be poor, as long as there are so many wealthy idiots one can rely upon for one’s living. And then contempt for oneself, that’s unbearable.

ME: Do you know that feeling?

HIM: Do I know it? How many times have I said to myself, “How come there are ten thousand fine tables in Paris, each with fifteen or twenty places, and there’s no place for you! There are purses full of gold spilling over left and right, and no piece falls on you! A thousand fine half wits without talent or merit, a thousand tiny creatures without charm, a thousand insipid schemers are well dressed, and you’d walk around naked? In this business how could you be so stupid? Couldn’t you lie, swear, forswear, promise, and then perform or fail to perform, like everyone else? Couldn’t you crawl on hands and knees like the others? Couldn’t you promote a lady’s affair and carry a love letter from a gentleman, like any other man? Couldn’t you encourage this young man to speak to this young lady and persuade her to listen to him, like other men? Couldn’t you tell the daughter of one of our bourgeois that she is badly dressed, that some fine earrings, a little rouge, lace, and a Polish-style dress would make her look ravishing, that those little feet of hers were not made to walk along the road, that there’s a fine gentleman, young and rich, who has a coat trimmed in gold, a superb horse and carriage, and six huge footmen, who saw her passing by and who finds her charming and who, since that day, has lost his desire for food and drink, doesn’t sleep, and will die for her. ‘But what about my father?’ ‘Yes, yes, your father! He will be a little angry at first.’ ‘And what about Mummy? She’s told me so often to be an honest girl. She says there’s nothing in the world but honour’ ‘An ancient saying which doesn’t mean a thing.’ ‘And my father confessor?’ ‘You won’t see him any more. Or if you continue the fairy tale of going to him to tell the story of your amusements, it will cost you some pounds of sugar and coffee.’ ‘But he’s a strict man who has already refused me absolution for singing Viens dans ma cellule.’ ’That’s because you didn’t have anything to give him, but when you appear before him in a lace dress ...’ ‘Then I’ll have a lace dress?’ ‘There’s no doubt about it, all sorts of them, and diamond earrings.’ ‘So I’ll have beautiful diamond earrings?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Just like the ones belonging to that marquise who comes sometimes to buy gloves in our shop?’ ‘That’s right. In a fine carriage with dappled gray horses, two large footmen, a small Negro, and a man running in front; you’ll have rouge, beauty spots, a train carried behind you.’ ‘To a ball.’ ‘To a ball, to the opera, to the theatre.’ Her heart is already quivering with joy. You play with a sheet of paper between your fingers. ‘What’s that?’ ‘It’s nothing.’ ‘It seem to me to be ...’ ‘It’s a letter.’ ‘For whom?’ ‘For you, if you are at all curious.’ ‘Curious? I’m really curious. Let’s see it.’ She reads. ‘A meeting. That’s impossible.’ ‘Perhaps when you are going to mass.’ ‘Mamma always comes with me. But if he came here early in the morning. I get up first, and I’m at the counter before they get up.’ He comes. He is pleasing. One fine day at dusk the girl disappears, and I get paid my two thousand écus. How come you possess such talent and are short of bread. You wretched man, aren’t you ashamed?” I remember a group of scoundrels who couldn’t hold a candle to me and who were loaded with money. I was in a buckram overcoat, and they were dressed in velvet, leaning on gold-headed canes shaped like ravens’ beaks, with pictures of Aristotle or Plato on cameo rings on their fingers. But who were they? For the most part they were incompetent musicians – nowadays a sort of nobility. At the time it gave me courage, raised my spirits, made my mind more subtle, capable of everything. But these happy states of mind apparently didn’t last, because up to now I haven’t been able to make any headway. Whatever the case, those are the words of my frequent soliloquies, which you can paraphrase however you like, provided you conclude from them that I understand disgust for oneself or the torment of conscience which arises from the uselessness of the gifts given to us by heaven. It’s the cruelest thing of all. It would almost be better for a man not to be born.

I listened to him. While he was acting out the scene of the procurer and the young girl being seduced, I was pulled in two opposite directions – I didn’t know whether to give in to my desire to laugh or get carried away with anger. I was perplexed. Twenty time a fit of laughter prevented my anger from bursting out – twenty times the anger arising at the bottom of my heart ended in a burst of laughter. I was taken aback by so much cleverness and base behaviour, by such valid ideas alternating with false ones, by such a general perversity of feeling and such complete depravity and such rare frankness. He noticed the conflict going on inside me. “What’s the matter with you?” he said.

ME: Nothing.

HIM: You seem upset.

ME: Well, I am.

HIM: What do you think I should do?

ME: Change the subject. You poor man, to be born or fall into such a debased condition.

HIM: I agree. However don’t let my condition affect you too much. In revealing myself to you I didn’t mean to cause you distress. From those people I’ve saved up something. Remember that I didn’t need anything, absolutely nothing, and they gave me a considerable allowance for my trifling pleasures.

Then he began hitting his forehead again with one of his fists, biting his lip, rolling his wild eyes up to the ceiling, commenting, “But that business is over and done with. I’ve set something aside. Time has gone by. It’s always that much more of a gain.”

ME: You mean more of a loss.

HIM: No, no. More of a gain. We become richer every moment. It’s one less day to go on living, or one écu more – it’s all one. The important point is to keep emptying one’s bowels easily, freely, pleasurably, copiously every night. O stercus pretiosum [O precious shit]! That’s the grand result of life in all conditions. In the last analysis, everyone is equally rich – Samuel Bernard, who by dint of robbery, pillaging, and bankruptcies leaves twenty-seven million in gold, or Rameau, who won’t leave anything, Rameau, for whom charity will provide a floor cloth as a shroud to wrap him in. A dead man doesn’t hear the bells tolling. It’s a waste of time for one hundred priests to shout themselves hoarse on his behalf or for him to be preceded and followed by a long line of burning torches. His soul does not walk alongside the master of ceremonies. To rot under marble or to rot under the earth – it’s still rotting. To have around your coffin choirboys in red and choirboys in blue or none at all – what does that matter? Take a good look at this wrist. It used to be stiff as the devil. These ten fingers were like so many sticks stuck into a wooden metacarpal. And these tendons were old cords of catgut – drier, stiffer, and more inflexible that those used to turn a lathe operator’s wheel. But I’ve tormented, broken, and abused them so much. You don’t want to move, but, by God, I say that you will and that’s that!

As he said this, with his right hand he grabbed the fingers and wrist of his left hand and bent them back and forth. The tips of his fingers were touching his arm. His joints were cracking. I was afraid he’d end up dislocating the bones.

ME: Be careful, I say to him. You’re going to hurt yourself.

HIM: Don’t worry. They can stand it. For ten years I’ve given them a hard time. Whatever they felt like, the little buggers had to get used to it and learn to strike the keys and fly over the strings. So right now they’re working. Yes, they’re working fine.

At that moment he takes on the pose of a violin player. He hums an allegro from Locatelli, and his right arm imitates the movement of the bow, while his left hand and his fingers seem to move along the length of the neck. If he hits a wrong note, he stops, tightens or loosens the string and plucks the string with his nail, to make sure that it’s just right. He resumes playing the piece where he has stopped. He keeps time with his feet, and thrashes about with his head, feet, hands, arms, and body.

Perhaps at some concert of spiritual music you’ve had occasion to see Ferrari or Chiabran or some other virtuoso in the same sort of convulsions, presenting a picture of the same torture. That gives me almost as much pain, for surely it’s agonizing to watch the torment of someone who is busy giving me a representation of pleasure. If he simply has to show me a patient under torture, then draw a curtain between the man and me, something to conceal me. In the midst of his agitation and cries, if there was a moment when the note had to be held, one of those harmonious spots when the bow is drawn slowly across several strings at once, his face took on an ecstatic expression, his voice softened, and he listened in rapture. He was sure the harmony was resonating in his ears and mine. Then, placing his instrument under his left arm using the same hand he was holding it with and letting his right hand holding the bow fall, he said, “Well, what do you think of that?”

ME: Wonderful.

HIM: That was all right, I thought. That sounded almost like the others.

All at once he crouches down like a musician sitting down at a keyboard. I say to him, “Have mercy on yourself and me.”

HIM: No, no. Since I’ve got your attention, you’ll listen. I don’t want anyone’s approval unless they know why. You’ll praise me with a more confident tone, and that might be worth another pupil to me.

ME: I don’t go out very much, and you’re going to exhaust yourself to no purpose.

HIM: I’m never tired.

Since I saw that my wish to pity the man was useless, for the violin sonata had left him bathed in sweat, I decided to let him do what he wanted. So there he was, seated at the keyboard, his legs bent, his head raised towards the ceiling where one would have said he was looking at a written musical score, singing, playing a prelude, working through a piece by Alberti or Galuppi, I don’t know which of the two. His voice went like the wind, and his fingers flew across the keys, sometimes abandoning the upper part to play the bass, sometimes abandoning the accompaniment to return to the upper register. A series of emotions went in succession across his face. You could see there tenderness, anger, pleasure, sadness. You could feel the soft notes and the loud ones.

I’m sure that someone more astute than myself would have recognized the piece from the movement and style, from his expressions, and from some snatches of melody coming out of him now and then. But what was really strange was that from time to time he groped around and started again, as if he had made a mistake and was upset at himself for not having the piece at his finger tips. Finally he straightened up, wiped the beads of sweat running down his cheeks, and said, “You see that we also know how to play a tritone or an augmented fifth, and that we’re familiar with transitions of dominants. Those enharmonic passages which my dear uncle has made such a fuss about, there’s not all that much to it. We’ll get a handle on it.”

ME: You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to show me that you’ve got great skill. But I’m a man who would’ve taken your word for it.

HIM: Great skill? Oh no! I know a few tricks of the trade, and that’s more than one needs. After all, in this country does anyone have to understand what he teaches?

ME: No more than people have to understand what they learn.

HIM: That’s well said, my God, very apt. There, Mister Philosopher, cross your heart and tell the truth. There was a time when you weren’t as well off as you are today.

HE: I’m not all that well off even now.

HIM: But you’ll no longer be going to the Luxembourg in summer. You remember ...

ME: Drop that subject. Yes, I do remember.

HIM: In a gray plush frock coat.

ME: Yes, yes.

HIM: All worn out on one side, with frayed cuffs and black wool stockings stitched up the back with white thread.

ME: Yes, indeed. Everything just as you like.

HIM: What did you do then in the Alley of Sighs?

ME: I was a sorry enough sight.

HIM: When you left there, you used to scurry along the pavement.

ME: That’s right.

HIM: You gave lessons in mathematics.

ME: Without understanding a word of it. Isn’t that where you want to go?

HIM: Exactly.

ME: I learned by teaching others, and I produced some good students.

HIM: That may well be, but with music things aren’t the same as in algebra or geometry. Now, these days you are a grand gentleman ...

ME: Not so grand.

HIM: But you’re well-to-do.

ME: Not really.

HIM: You provide tutors for your daughter.

ME: Not any more. It’s her mother who’s concerned about her education, and one has to have peace at home

HIM: Peace at home? My God, one only has that when one is the servant or the master. And it’s essential to be the master. I had a wife. God rest her soul, but when she got the idea now and then to answer back, my hackles rose. I let go with my thunder and said, like God, “Let there be light.” And there was light. So over a four-year period, we didn’t raise our voices in a row ten times. How old is your child?

ME: That’s got nothing to do with it.

HIM: How old is your child?

ME: What the devil – leave my child and her age out of it, and let’s get back to the teachers she’ll have.

HIM: My goodness, I know nothing as stubborn as a philosopher. If one supplicates you very humbly, might one not be able to learn from Monsieur the Philosopher the approximate age of Mademoiselle his daughter?

ME: Let’s assume she’s eight years old.

HIM: Eight! She should have had her fingers on the keys four years ago.

ME: But perhaps I don’t worry very much about putting into the plan for her education a study which is so time-consuming and which is so little use.

HIM: And what are you intending to teach her? Please tell me.

ME: To reason correctly, if I can. That’s something uncommon among men and even rarer still among women.

HIM: Let her reason badly, as much as she likes, provided she’s pretty, amusing, and flirtatious.

ME: Since in her case nature has been so ungrateful as to give her a delicate constitution with a sensible soul and to expose her to the same pains of life as if she had a strong constitution and a heart made of bronze, I’ll teach her, if I can, to bear those pains bravely.

HIM: Oh, leave her to cry, suffer, and simper, with delicate nerves, like the others, provided she is pretty, amusing, and flirtatious. What, no dancing?

ME: No more than what’s necessary for her to curtsey and have a decent carriage, to present herself well, and to know how to move.

HIM: No singing?

ME: No more than is necessary for her to enunciate well.

HIM: No music?

ME: If there was a good teacher of harmony, I would willingly entrust her to him for two hours a day for one or two years, no more.

HIM: And in the place of these essential things you are cutting out ...

ME: I put grammar, literature, history, geography, a little drawing, and a great deal of moral instruction.

HIM: It would be so easy for me to prove to you the uselessness of all those subjects in a world like ours. Did I say uselessness – perhaps I should have said danger. But for the moment I’ll confine myself to one question: Won’t one or two teachers be necessary?

ME: Undoubtedly.

HIM: Ah, well there we are again! And these teachers – you hope they’ll know something about the grammar, literature, history, geography, and morality which they’re teaching her in her lessons? That’s just a song and dance, my dear sir, a song and dance. If they grasped these matters well enough to teach them, they wouldn’t be teaching them.

ME: Why not?

HIM: Because they would have spent their lives studying them. It’s necessary to be profound in art or in science in order to grasp the basics well. Educational works can only be properly produced by those who have grown white in harness. It’s the middle and the end which illuminate the shadows at the beginning. Ask your friend Mr. d’Alembert, the leading light in the mathematical sciences, if he would be too good to teach the basics. Only after twenty or thirty years of practice did my uncle glimpse the first faint light of musical theory.

ME: Oh you idiot, you total idiot! How is it that in your wretched head there are such reasonable ideas all mixed up higgledy piggledy with so many absurdities?

HIM: Who the devil knows? Chance throws them out to you, and they stay with you. Still, when we don’t know everything, we don’t know anything well. We don’t know where something is going or where something else comes from, where this or that should fit, which should go first or whether it would be better to go second. Can anyone teach well without a method? And where is that method born? You see, my philosopher, I have this notion that physics will always be a poor science, a drop of water picked up by a needle from the vast ocean, a grain detached from the mountain range of the Alps. And the reasons for phenomena? In truth, it would be just as good to be ignorant about them as to understand them so little and so badly. That was exactly where I was when I made myself a teacher of accompaniment and composition. What are you dreaming about?

ME: I’m dreaming that everything you’ve just said is more specious than substantial. But let’s leave that. Did you say you taught accompaniment and composition?

HIM: Yes.

ME: And you didn’t understand them at all?

HIM: No, my goodness, not at all. And that’s the reason there were worse teachers than me – those who believed they understood something. At least I didn’t ruin the judgment or the hands of the children. When they left me for a good teacher, they’d learned nothing, and so at least they didn’t have to unlearn anything. And that was always so much money and time saved.

ME: How did you manage that?

HIM: How they all do. I arrived. I threw myself into a chair. “What dreadful weather! How tiring the pavement is!” I chattered about some news: “Miss Lemierre was to have taken on the role of a vestal virgin in the new opera. But she is pregnant for the second time. They don’t know who will take her place. Miss Arnould has just left her count. People say she is negotiating with Bertin. The little count, however, has just found out about Mr. de Montamy’s porcelain. At the last concert for the lovers of music there was an Italian woman who sang like an angel. That Preville is an exceptional fellow. You must see him in the Mercure galant. The part about the riddle is priceless. And poor Dumesnil no longer knows what she’s saying or doing. Come, Mademoiselle, take your book.” While the young lady, who’s in no hurry, looks for her book, which she has mislaid, and while the maid is being summoned and chastised, I keep going, “That Clairon is truly incomprehensible. People are talking about a really crazy marriage – one with Miss What’s-Her-Name, a little creature he’s been supporting, with whom he’s had two or three children and who’s been kept by so many others.” “Come now, Rameau, that’s not possible. You’re rambling on.” “No, I’m not rambling. They even say that the marriage has taken place. There’s a rumour going around that Voltaire is dead. So much the better.” “Why’s that good?” “Well, that means he’s going to give us some fine foolishness. He has a habit of dying two weeks before he does so.” What else shall I tell you? I told her a few naughty remarks which I’d brought back from some homes where I’d been, for we are all great gossips. I played the fool, and they listened to me. They laughed. They cried out, “He’s always charming.” However, the young lady’s book was finally recovered from under an armchair, where it had been dragged, chewed, and ripped by a young pug dog or by a kitten. She sat at the keyboard. At first she made some noise there, all by herself. Then I came up, after having given her mother a sign of approval. The mother said, “That isn’t bad. One need only to want to do it, but one doesn’t want to. One prefers to waste one’s time with chit-chat, clothes, running around, and I don’t know what. As soon as you’re gone, the book is closed and it’s not opened again until you return. And then you never reprimand her ...” However, since I had to do something, I took her hands and placed them in a different position. I got upset. I cried out, “G, G, G, mademoiselle. It’s a G.” The mother, “Young lady, don’t you have an ear? I’m not even at the keyboard, and I’m not looking at your book, but I feel that that must be a G. You’re giving this gentleman a great deal of trouble. I don’t understand his patience. You don’t retain anything he tells you. You’re not progressing at all ...” Then I eased the blows a little, by shaking my head and saying, “Excuse me, madam, excuse me. Yes, that could go better, if the young lady wanted to, if she studied a little. But it’s not going badly.” The mother: “In your place, I’d keep her on the same piece for a year.” “That’s all right – she won’t leave it until she has surmounted all the difficulties, and that won’t take as long as madam thinks.” The mother: “Mr. Rameau, you’re flattering her. You’re too kind. That’s the only thing she’ll remember from her lesson, and she’ll know the right time to repeat it in front of me.” The hour went by. My pupil gave me the small fee, with a graceful movement of her arm and the curtsy she had learned from her dancing master. I put it in my pocket, while the mother said, “Very good, mademoiselle. If Javillier were here, he’d applaud you.” I kept chatting for a moment longer out of courtesy, then disappeared. There you have it – that’s what people used to call a lesson in accompaniment in those days.

ME: And nowadays, it’s something different.

HIM: My God, I should think so. I arrive. I’m serious. I’m in a rush to take off my coat. I open the keyboard. I test the keys. I’m always in a hurry. If anyone makes me wait for a moment, I cry out as if they’ve stolen an écu from me. In an hour from now I have to be over there, in two hours at madam’s house, the duchess of something or other. I’m expected to dine at the home of a beautiful marquise, and once I leave there, to go to a concert in the house of Baron de Bacq, in Rue Neuve des Petits Champs.

ME: Of course, you’re not expected anywhere?

HIM: That’s the truth.

ME: So why do you use all these vile little schemes?

HIM: Vile? Why vile, if you please? They’re what’s customary in my profession. I don’t demean myself in acting just like everyone else. I’m not the one who invented them. And I’d be really odd and tactless if I didn’t conform. Of course, I know very well that if you’re going to apply certain universal principles from I don’t know what morality which all of them mouth but none of them practices, it will end up that what’s white will really be black and what’s black will really be white. But, Mister Philosopher, there’s a universal conscience, just as there’s a universal grammar, and then there are exception in every language. You call them, I think, you scholarly types, some ... give me some help here ... some ...

ME: Idioms.

HIM: That’s it. Well, every profession has its exceptions to the general conscience. I’m happy to call these trade idioms.

ME: I understand. Fontenelle speaks well and writes well, although his style is crawling with French idioms.

HIM: And the sovereign, the minister, the financier, the magistrate, the soldier, the man of letters, the lawyer, the prosecutor, the merchant, the banker, the artisan, the singing master, the dancing master – these are all really honest people, although their conduct goes against the general conscience in several points and is full of moral idioms. The older the business institution, the more idioms there are. The worse times get, the more idioms multiply. Whatever the man is worth, that’s what the job is worth, and conversely, in the end, whatever the job is worth, that’s what the man is worth. So we value the job as much as we can.

ME: What I can see clearly from all this nonsense is that there are few professions honestly practised or few honest people in their professions.

HIM: Right, there aren’t any. But, on the other hand, few of them are rascals outside their own shops, and everything would go well enough if there weren’t a certain number of people whom we call diligent and accurate, who carry out their duties rigorously and strictly, or, what amounts to the same thing, who are always in their shops busy with their trade from morning to evening, doing nothing else. In addition, they’re the only ones who get rich and respected.

ME: Because of idioms.

HIM: That’s it. I see you’ve understood what I’ve been saying. All right, one idiom in almost every profession – for there are idioms common to all countries and all times, just as there are common ways of being foolish – a common idiom is to acquire for oneself the largest number of customers as possible. A common stupidity is to believe that the person who has the most customers is the most expert. There you have two exceptions to the general conscience which we have to bow down to. It’s a sort of credit system. In itself it’s nothing, but it is worth something in public opinion. It’s been said that a good reputation is more valuable than a golden belt. However, the man with a good reputation doesn’t have a golden belt, but I see that nowadays the man with the golden belt rarely lacks a good reputation. It’s necessary, as much as possible to have the good reputation and the belt. And that’s my goal, when I make myself valuable by what you characterize as vile tricks and unworthy little schemes. I give my lesson, and I give it well – there’s the general rule. I let people believe that I’ve more lessons to give than there are hours in the day – that’s the idiom.

ME: And the lesson – you give a good one?

HIM: Yes, not bad, quite good. My dear uncle’s fundamental bass has made it all a lot simpler. Before that I used to rob my pupil of money, yes, I did, that’s for sure. But today I earn it, at least as much as the others.

ME: And did you steal the money without any guilt?

HIM: Oh, none whatsoever. People say that if one robber steals from another, the devil laughs. The parents are overflowing with a fortune they’ve acquired – God knows how – they’re from the court or financiers or great merchants or bankers or business people. I was helping them pay some of it back, me and a crowd of others just like me whom they employed. In nature all species devour each other, and in society all the classes feed on one another. We bring justice to each other without the law getting involved. Earlier that woman Deschamps and nowadays Guimard are the prince’s vengeance on the financier, and then the fashion merchant, the jeweler, the upholsterer, the laundry woman, the swindler, the chambermaid, the cook, the saddle maker get their revenge on Deschamps on behalf of the financier. In the middle of all this, it’s only the idiot or the lay-about who gets hurt, without having upset anyone – and that’s just fine. So from all this you see that these exceptions to the general conscience or these moral idioms about which people make such a fuss, calling them tricks of the trade, are nothing and that, in the last analysis, the only thing one needs is to keep one’s eyes open.

ME: Your eyes are admirable.

HIM: And then there’s poverty. The voice of conscience and honour are really feeble when one’s guts are crying out. If I ever get rich, I’ll certainly have to give the money back, and I’m firmly resolved to do so in all possible ways – dining, gambling, wine, women.

ME: But I’m afraid you’ll never get rich.

HIM: I suspect the same thing myself.

ME: But if things turn out differently, what will you do?

HIM: I’d act like all beggars whose life has turned around. I’d be the most insolent rogue anyone has ever seen. Then I’d remember everything they made me suffer, and I’d pay them back full measure for the humiliations they put me through. I like to give orders, and that’s what I’d do. I like it when people praise me, and praise me they will. I’ll have in my service all Villemorien’s hangers-on, and I’ll speak to them they way they spoke to me, “Come on, you scoundrels, amuse me,” and they’ll amuse me, “Rip some honest people to shreds,” and they’ll tear them apart, if there are any still to be found. And then we’ll have girls, and all address each other as friends when we’re drunk, and we’ll get drunk. We’ll make up stories. We’ll have all sorts of quirks and vices. It will be delicious. We’ll prove that Voltaire has no genius, that Buffon is always strutting formally on stilts and is nothing but a bombastic windbag, that Montesquieu is nothing more than a witty fellow. We’ll consign d’Alembert to his mathematics, and we’ll throw down onto their bellies and backs all those little Catos, like you, who despise us from envy, whose modesty is a coat covering their pride, and whose sobriety is a law arising from their own needs. And music? That’s when we’ll make music.

ME: Given the dignified way you’d use your wealth I see what a great pity it is that you’re a pauper. You’d live in a way that would confer great honour on the human species and would be really useful to your fellow citizens and truly glorious for yourself.

HIM: I think you’re making fun of me, Mister Philosopher. You don’t know who you’re playing with. You don’t suspect that at this moment I represent the most important party in the town and at court. The wealthy people in all professions either have told themselves the same things I’ve confided to you or they have not, but the fact is that the life I’d live in their place is exactly the life they lead. That’s just where you are, too, you others. You believe that happiness is the same thing for everyone. What a strange vision! Your version assumes a certain romantic frame of mind which we don’t have, a peculiar soul, a strange taste. You dress this weirdness up with the name virtue. You call it philosophy. But are virtue and philosophy made for everyone? Some are able to get them, and some can keep them. Imagine a wise and philosophical universe. You’ll concede it would be devilishly sad. So long live philosophy, long live the wisdom of Solomon. Drink good wine, gorge oneself on choice delicacies, roll around on beautiful women, lie on lovely soft beds. Other than that, the rest is nothing but vanity.

ME: What about defending one’s country?

HIM: That’s vanity. There’s no country any more. From one pole to the other all I see is tyrants and slaves.

ME: Helping one’s friends?

HIM: Vanity. Does one really have friends? And if we had, would we have to make them ungrateful? Look closely, and you’ll notice that that’s almost always what you get back for services rendered. Gratitude is a burden, and every burden is put there to be shaken off.

ME: Occupy a position in society and carry out its duties?

HIM: Vanity. What does it matter whether one has a position or not, provided that one is rich, since no one assumes a position except to get rich? Carry out its duties – where does that lead? To jealousy, trouble, persecution. Is that the way one gets ahead? Pay court to people, by God, pay court to them. Observe great people, study their tastes, take part in their fantasies, serve their vices, applaud their injustices. That’s the secret.

ME: Taking care of the education of one’s children?

HIM: Vanity. That’s the business of a tutor.

ME: But if this tutor has fully absorbed your principles and neglects his duties, who’s going to be punished for it?

HIM: My goodness, it won’t be me. Maybe someday my daughter’s husband or my son’s wife.

ME: But what if both your son and daughter hurl themselves into debauchery and vice?

HIM: That’s their look out.

ME: What if they dishonour themselves?

HIM: Whatever one does, one cannot dishonour oneself if one is rich.

ME: What if they ruin themselves.

HIM: Too bad for them.

ME: I see that if you can dispense with taking care of the conduct of your wife, your children, and your servants, you could easily neglect your own affairs.

HIM: Excuse me, but no. It’s sometimes difficult to find money, and it’s prudent to get it well in advance.

ME: You’ll pay little attention to your wife?

HIM: None whatsoever, if you please. The best arrangement which one can have with one’s dear better half, I think, is to do whatever one wants. In your view, wouldn’t society be really amusing if everyone did what was agreeable to them?

ME: Why not? The evening is never more beautiful for me than when I’m happy about my morning.

HIM: The same goes for me.

ME: What makes fashionable people so delicate about their amusements is that they are profoundly idle.

HIM: Don’t you believe it. They run around a lot.

ME: Since they never get tired, they never relax.

HIM: Don’t believe that. They are constantly exhausted from excess.

ME: Pleasure is always a business for them, never a need.

HIM: So much the better. Need is always painful.

ME: They wear everything out. Their souls become stupefied. Boredom grabs hold of them. Whoever took away their lives in the midst of their overwhelming abundance would be doing them a service. The fact is they don’t know anything about happiness except the part which becomes jaded most quickly. I don’t disparage the pleasures of the senses. I have a palate as well, and it really likes a tasty delicacy or a delicious wine. I have a heart and eyes, and I like to see a beautiful woman. I like to have my hands feel the firmness and the roundness of her breasts, to press her lips against mine, to soak up rapture from her looks, and to die in her arms. I’m not against a party with my friends sometimes, a debauch, even one that gets a little out of hand. But I won’t conceal from you that it is infinitely more pleasurable to me to have helped someone in distress, brought some difficult business to a conclusion, given some beneficial advice, read something agreeable, taken a walk with a man or woman close to my heart, passed some instructive hours with my children, written a good page, fulfilled the duties of my position, or told the woman I love something tender and soft, so that she put her arms around my neck. I know the sorts of actions I would give up all I own to have done. Mahomet is a sublime work of literature, but I would prefer to have rehabilitated the memory of Calas.^[5] An acquaintance of mine once took refuge in Cartagena. He was the youngster of the family in a country where custom gives all property to the eldest. There he learned that his older brother, a spoiled child, after stripping his mother and father very easily of everything they possessed, had kicked them out of their chateau and that the good old people were languishing in poverty in a small town in the provinces. So what then did this youngster do, a boy who had been treated harshly by his parents and had gone to see if he could win his fortune far away? He sent them assistance. He quickly wound up his own affairs and returned wealthy. He brought his father and mother back into their home. He arranged for his sisters to be married. Ah, my dear Rameau, the man considered this period the happiest of his life. When he told me of it, he had tears in his eyes. And as I tell you the story, I feel my heart beating for joy, and my delight makes talking difficult.

HIM: You people are so very odd!

ME: And you are creatures who well deserve to be pitied if you can’t see how we’ve raised ourselves above our fate and that it’s impossible to be unhappy under the shelter of two fine actions like the ones I’ve just mentioned.

HIM: Well, that’s a type of happiness which I’ll find it difficult to get familiar with, because we meet it rarely. But, according to you, should we then be decent people?

ME: To be happy? Yes, certainly.

HIM: But I see countless decent people who are not happy, and countless people who are happy without being decent.

ME: So it seems to you.

HIM: But isn’t it because I had some common sense and candour for a moment that I have no idea where to get a meal this evening?

ME: Not at all. The reason is you’ve not had those qualities all along. It’s because you didn’t realize early on that it’s first necessary to create options for yourself which will make you independent, free from serving others.

HIM: Independent or not, what I’ve made for myself is at least the most comfortable.

ME: And the least secure and the least honest.

HIM: But it’s the one best suited to my character as a lazy man, fool, and scoundrel.

ME: I agree with that.

HIM: And since I can find happiness through vices natural to me, which I’ve acquired without working, which I maintain without effort, which are compatible with the customs of my country, which suit the taste of those who protect me and are closer to their small particular needs than virtues which would embarrass them, by criticizing them morning and night, it would be really odd if I were to go on tormenting myself like some soul in hell in order to cut myself up and make myself something other than I am, to give myself a character foreign to my own, very worthy qualities – I’ll concede that, to avoid an argument – but which would cost me a great deal to acquire and to practise, and which would lead to nothing, perhaps worse than nothing, because all the time I’d have to satirize the rich people among whom beggars like me have to find a living. People praise virtue, but they hate it. They run away from it, because it makes them freezing cold, and in this world one has to have warm feet. Besides, it would inevitably make me moody. Why else do we so often see devout people so hard, so angry, so unsociable? It’s because they’ve imposed on themselves a task which isn’t natural to them. They suffer, and when one suffers, one makes others suffer. That’s not what I want, nor my patrons. I have to be happy, flexible, pleasant, funny, amusing. Virtue makes itself respected, and respect is uncomfortable. Virtue makes itself admired, and admiration is not amusing. My business is with people who are bored, and I have to make them laugh. So I have to be ridiculous and funny. And if nature had not made me that way, the simplest thing would be to appear like that. Fortunately, I don’t need to be a hypocrite. There are already so many of them of every stripe, without counting those who are hypocritical even with themselves. Take that Chevalier de la Morlière, who turns up his hat above his ears, who holds his head in the air, who looks at you over his shoulder as you go by, who has a long sword banging against his thigh, who has an insult ready for anyone who doesn’t carry one, and who seems to be issuing a challenge to everyone coming along. What’s he doing? Everything he can to persuade himself that he’s a stout-hearted man. But he’s a coward. Just tweak the end of his nose – he’ll take it quietly. If you want to make him lower his voice, raise you own. Show him your cane, or give him a kick in the ass. He’ll be astonished to find out he’s a coward and will ask you how you found out, who told you. The moment before he was ignorant of the fact, for his long and habitual aping of bravery had impressed on him that he was. He’d gone through the pretence so many times he believed that’s what he was. And that woman who mortifies herself, who visits prisons, who helps at all the charitable meetings, who walks along with her eyes lowered, who would never dare to look a man in the face, always on guard against being seduced by her senses, does all that keep her heart from burning, sighs escaping from her, her temperament catching fire, her desires obsessing her, and her imagination going over and over night and day scenes from the Portier des Chartreux or the Postures de l’Arétin. So then what happens to her? What does her maid think of her when she gets up in her nightdress and rushes to help her mistress as she’s dying? Justine, go back to bed. It’s not you your mistress is calling for in her delirium. And what about friend Rameau, what if one day he began to show signs of contempt for wealth, women, good food, and laziness and started to act like Cato, what would he be? A hypocrite. Rameau has to be what he is – a happy thief among wealthy thieves, and not a virtuous swaggerer or even a virtuous man, gnawing his crust of bread by himself or among beggars. To sum up – I won’t put up with your idea of happiness or the well being of a few visionaries like you.

ME: I see, my dear fellow, that you have no idea what that is and that you’re not even capable of learning what it is.

HIM: So much the better, by God, so much the better. It would probably make me die of hunger, boredom, and remorse.

ME: Given that, the only advice I have for you is to go back quickly to the house where you so imprudently got yourself thrown out.

HIM: And do what you don’t object to literally but find offensive metaphorically?

ME: That’s my advice.

HIM: Regardless of that metaphor which I object to for the moment but which won’t bother me at some other time.

ME: How odd you are!

HIM: There’s nothing odd about it. I’m happy enough to be abject, but I want that to happen without any compulsion. It’s all right with me to abandon my dignity ... What’s so funny?

ME: Your dignity makes me laugh.

HIM: Everyone has his own. I’m happy to forget mine, but at my own discretion, and not on someone else’s orders. Does it have to be the case that when someone can say to me “Crawl” I have to crawl? That’s how a worm operates – and it’s my way, too. We both follow it, when people leave us alone. But we raise ourselves up when someone steps on our tails. People have stepped on my tail, and I straightened up. But then you have no idea of the madhouse we’re talking about. Imagine a melancholy and sullen personality, consumed with vapours, wrapped up in two or three layers of dressing gown, who loves himself but who’s unhappy about everything, a person from whom it’s difficult to get a smile, even if you distort your body and mind in a hundred different ways. He examines coldly the pleasant grimaces of my face and of my judgment, which are even more pleasant, for, between us, that father Christmas, that nasty Benedictine so famous for his grimaces, for all his success at court, is nothing but a wooden Punch in comparison to me – and I say that without praising myself or him. I went to great lengths tormenting myself to reach the highest arts of the idiot house. But it’s no use. Will he laugh? Won’t he? That’s what I’m forced to say to myself in the middle of my contortions, and you can judge how much this uncertainty damages one’s talent. My hypochondriac, with a nightcap pulled down over his head covering his eyes, has the expression of an immobile idol with a string attached around his chin, which goes from there right down under his armchair. One waits for the string to be pulled, but it’s not pulled. If it so happens that the jaws open, it’s to utter a distressing word, a word which informs you that you’ve not even been noticed and that all your monkey tricks have been wasted. This word is a response to a question you asked him four days ago. Once the word has been uttered, the mastoid spring is released, and the jaws snap shut.

Then he began to imitate the man he was talking about. He was seated in a chair with his head fixed, his cap right down to his eyelids, his eyes half shut, his arms hanging down, moving his jaws like a robot. He said: “’Yes, you are right, mademoiselle. One has to be perceptive in these matters.’ That’s the person who decides, who always decides, and there’s no appeal – in the evening, in the morning, at his morning toilet, at dinner, in the café, at the gaming table, in the theatre, at supper, in bed and, God forgive me, in the arms of his mistress, too, I think. I’m not in a position to hear these last decisions, but I’m damn weary of the others. Sad, obscure, cut and dried, like fate – that’s the kind of patron we have.”

“Right across from him there’s a prudish woman who’s pretending to be important. One could persuade oneself that she’s attractive, because she still is, although her face has some scabs here and there and she’s getting as large as Madame Bouvillion. I do like flesh when it’s beautiful, but for all that, too much is too much. Movement is so essential to matter! Item – she is more malicious, more proud, more stupid than a goose. Item – she’d like to have wit. Item – one has to persuade her that people think she’s more witty than anyone else. Item – she knows nothing, but she makes decisions, too. Item – one has to applaud these decisions with one’s feet and hands, to jump for joy, to become paralyzed with admiration: ‘Your decision is so beautiful, delicate, well said, perceptive, uniquely felt. Where do you women get all this? Without any studying, purely by the power of instinct, by your own natural light – it’s miraculous. And then people come to tell us that experience, study, reflection, and education all play a part in it.’ All sorts of other similar stupidities, with tears of joy. To bow down ten times a day, with one knee bent in front and the other leg stuck out behind, one’s arms stretched towards the goddess, looking for her desires in her eyes, hanging onto her lip, waiting for her order, and dashing off like a bolt of lightning. Who could subject himself to such a role, except the poor wretch who, two or three times a week, finds something there to calm the tribulation of his intestines? What is one to think of the others, like Palissot, Fréron, the Poinsinets, Baculard, who do have some property, and whose baseness thus cannot be excused by the rumbling of a suffering stomach?”

ME: I’d never have though you were so fussy.

HIM: I’m not. At first I used to watch the others doing it, and I carried on like them, even a little better, because I’m more candidly impudent, a better actor – and I was hungrier and equipped with better lungs. Apparently I trace my descent in a direct line from the famous Stentor.

And to give me a fair idea of the force of this organ of his, he began to cough violently enough to make the windows in the café rattle and to divert the attention of the chess players from their game.

ME: But what good is this talent?

HIM: You can’t guess?

ME: No. I’m a bit limited.

HIM: Supposing a dispute has started and victory is uncertain. I stand up and, displaying my thunder, cry out, “It’s just as Madame has assured us it is. That’s what one calls judgment, a hundred times better than our fine wits. The expression is pure genius.” But one mustn’t always approve in the same way. That would make one monotonous. You’d look false and would become insipid. The only way around that is with judgment and creativity. You need to know how to prepare and when to put in those peremptory major tones, how to seize your chance and the moment, for example, when there is a division of opinion, when the argument has moved up to the final stage of violence, when no one is in agreement any more, when everyone is speaking at once – then you must take up a position some distance away, in the corner of the apartment furthest removed from the field of battle. You must prepare for the eruption with a long silence and then blow up suddenly, like an explosion, in the middle of the contenders. No one has my skill in this art. But where I’m really surprising is in the opposite skill – I have some soft notes which I accompany with a smile, an infinite variety of expressions of approval, bringing into play my nose, mouth, forehead, and eyes. I have a supple back, a way of turning my spine, or raising and lowering my shoulders, extending my fingers, inclining my head, closing my eyes, and being amazed, as if I’d heard the voice of a divine angel coming down from heaven. That’s what does the flattering. I’m not sure if you really understand the full power of the attitude I’ve just mentioned. I didn’t invent it, but no one has pulled it off better than me. Look. Watch this.

ME: It’s certainly unique.

HIM: Do you think that there’s a slightly vain female brain which could hold out against it?

ME: No. I have to concede that you have taken the talent for making fools of people and for demeaning oneself as far as it’s possible to go.

HIM: All those others, however many there are – they’ll do well, but they’ll never get to that point. The best of them, Palissot, for example, will never be anything but a good pupil. But if this role is amusing at first and if you enjoy the pleasure of laughing to yourself at the stupidity of those you are intoxicating, in the long run it loses its appeal. Besides, after a certain number of discoveries, you have to repeat yourself. Wit and art have their limits. Only God or a few rare geniuses could make a career out of it which grows as they advance. Bouret is such a person, perhaps. That man has certain tricks which impress me (yes, even me) as sublime ideas – the little dog, the book of happiness, the torches on the road to Versailles – those are things which stagger me and put me to shame.^[6] It could be enough to make one unhappy with the profession.

ME: What about that little dog? What are you talking about?

HIM: Where have you come from? What – in all seriousness, you don’t know how that extraordinary man set about detaching himself from a little dog and attaching it to the Keeper of the Seals, who’d taken a fancy to it?

ME: I confess I have no idea..

HIM: So much the better. It’s one of the most beautiful things one could imagine. All Europe marveled at it, and there isn’t a single courtier who wasn’t envious of it. You’re a man who doesn’t lack a certain shrewdness – let’s see what you’d have done in his place. Remember that Bouret was loved by his dog. Remember that the odd costume of the minister used to terrify the little animal. And remember that there were only eight days to overcome the difficulties. One has to understand all the conditions attached to the problem in order to appreciate properly the merit of the solution. Well then?

ME: Well, I have to confess to you that in this sort of thing the simplest things baffle me.

HIM: Listen (he says to me, giving me a slight blow on the shoulder – he’s very informal), listen and admire. He has someone make him a mask which looks like the Keeper of the Seals, and he borrows the latter’s voluminous robe from a footman. He covers his face with the mask and puts on the robe. He calls his dog and caresses it. He give it a biscuit. Then all of a sudden, with a change of clothes, he is no longer the Keeper of the Seals, but Bouret. He calls his dog and beats it. In less than two or three days of doing this exercise from morning to night, the dog learns to run away from Bouret the Farmer General and run to Bouret the Keeper of the Seals. But I’m being too kind. You’re a layman who doesn’t deserve to be instructed in the miracles which go on right beside you.

ME: In spite of that, if you don’t mind, the book and the torches?

HIM: No, no. Ask the cobble stones. They’ll tell you about those things. You must profit from the circumstances which have brought us together to learn those things which no one knows except me.

ME: You’re right.

HIM: To borrow the robe and the wig of the Keeper of the Seals – I’d forgotten about the wig! To make a mask which looks like him! It’s the mask above all that turns my head. Also this man is of the highest respectability, and he owns millions. There are men with the Saint Louis cross who don’t have any bread, so why run after the cross at the risk of working oneself to death and not turn to an activity with no danger which never fails to pay? That’s what we call acting in the grand manner. Role models like that are disheartening. One pities oneself and loses interest. That mask! The mask! I’d give one of my fingers to have come up with that mask.

ME: But with this enthusiasm of yours for fine things and the creative genius you possess, have you invented anything?

HIM: Let’s see – well, one example is the attitude of admiration I make with my back which I spoke to you about. I look upon that as mine, although some envious people could perhaps argue with me about it. I think that people used it before, but who realized just how handy it was for having a secret laugh at the fool one was admiring? I have more than a hundred ways to start the seduction of a young girl right under her mother’s nose, without her perceiving a thing, and even making her an accomplice. I’d hardly started on my career when I turned my back on all the common ways to slip someone a love letter. I have ten ways of getting people to snatch it away from me. Among these methods, I dare flatter myself that there are some original ones. Above all, I possess the talent for encouraging a timid young man. I’ve enabled some to succeed who had neither wit nor looks. If that were all written out, I think that people would attribute some genius to me.

ME: Would you get remarkable honours?

HIM: I don’t doubt it.

ME: If I were you, I’d put those things down on paper. It would be a pity if they were lost.

HIM: That’s true, but you have no idea how unimportant method and precepts are to me. Someone who needs written instructions will never get far. Geniuses read little, act a great deal, and create themselves. Look at Caesar, Turenne, Vauban, the Marquise de Tencin, his brother the cardinal, and the cardinal’s secretary, Abbé Trublet. And Bouret? Who gave Bouret lessons? No one. It’s nature that makes exceptional men like that. Do you think that the story of the dog and the mask is written down somewhere?

ME: But in the hours when you have nothing to do – when the agony of your empty stomach or the weariness in your crammed stomach stop you from sleeping ...

HIM: I’ll think about it. It’s better to write about great things than to carry out trivial ones. Then the soul is raised, the imagination heats up, catches fire, and grows, instead of shrinking up beside the little Hus girl, in her amazement at the applause which the idiotic public insists on lavishing on that simpering Dangeville, who acts with so little imagination, who moves through the scene almost doubled over and affects to stare continuously into the eyes of whoever she is talking to, underplays her role, and who confuses her own grimaces with subtlety, her tiny trotting around with graceful movement – or on that bombastic Clairon woman who’s scrawnier, more affected, more mannered, and starchy than anyone could imagine. Those idiots in the pit bring the house down applauding them. They don’t see that we are a pack full of charm. It’s true that the pack is getting somewhat larger, but so what? We have the most beautiful skin, the finest eyes, the best-looking mouths – not much heart inside, to be sure – a walk which is not light, but not as awkward as people maintain. As for feelings, on the other hand, there isn’t one which we couldn’t overtrump.

ME: Why are you saying all this? Are you being truthful or ironical?

HIM: The problem is that this devil of a feeling is all inside and no glimmer of it reaches the outside. But as for me – the one talking to you – I know, and know well, that she has some. Well, if it’s not that exactly, it’s something like it. You need to see how we treat servants, when we’re in the mood, how we slap the chambermaids, how we kick old casual parts Boutin around if he fails to deliver the respect due to us. She’s a little devil, I tell you, full of feeling and dignity... . Hey, you’re not sure what all this is about, are you?

ME: I confess I have no idea how to sort out whether you’re speaking in good faith or maliciously. I’m a decent man, so be good enough to deal with me directly and put away your art.

HIM: That’s just what we say to the little Hus girl about Dangeville and Clairon, mixing in a few words here and there to rouse your suspicions. I don’t mind your taking me for a rascal, but not for an idiot. And only an idiot or a man hopelessly in love could say so many outrageous things seriously.

ME: But how does one bring oneself to say such things?

HIM: That doesn’t happen all at once – one gets there gradually. Ingenii largitor venter [The belly incites genius]