The Bacchantes. Leon Daudet
Читать онлайн книгу.
to the first problem—that of the aircraft—a closed horizon, but with regard to the second, the waves of time, an open horizon.
When he was about thirty, he had believed, as Ramon Lull9 once had, in discovery determined by means of a skillful and balanced play of the mathematical and the qualitative; now he saw that as a chimera, analogous to that of the possession of free will. Linked to his wife by secret bonds, discovery was even more fugitive than womankind.
When he got back to Avenillon, his house, deprived of Tullie, seemed to him to be dreadfully empty. It was still light. He decided to go and ask Dévonet whether he could have supper at his house, a comfortable dwelling at the entrance to the village, not far from Bénalep’s.
When he went in, the brunette Mélanie was alone, reading Baudelaire. She was wearing a quilted jacket in green silk, as depicted in a painting by Vermeer, a white skirt, and she was making silver slippers dance at the end of her slender feet. Although her figure was charming, and even utterly desirable, he had not thus far experienced the slightest excitement on contact with her, even though everything about him attracted the young woman.
He told her about his trip to Paris, his meeting with the minister, and the latter’s proposal. She put on a semblance of listening, but was asking herself, all the time: Why that Tullie, and not me?
That caused her to interrupt him with a question. “She’s gone back to Arges, then?”
“Undoubtedly,” her astonished interlocutor replied. “You know, she’s a extraordinary person, a farmer’s wife with hands as white as one ever sees. I suspect that she’s the natural daughter of a Neapolitan aristocrat.”
“How the devil did Père Calvat unearth her?”
“Pure hazard, she tells me. She had to settle some business at a bank in Blois. So had he. They met there and struck up a conversation. She was alone, with no money, melancholy, doubtless disillusioned with regard to love, friendship and everything else. She was beautiful. He desired her. It was a rather banal adventure, save for the disproportion of age and education.”
“Today it’s the stepson who’s conquered her, if popular rumor can be trusted.”
“It’s possible, but she’s worth more than that. She has an absolutely original nature. She never says anything banal, and although I believe she’s as capable of lying as you are, she’s often brutally frank. She also sings like a bird, and carries you away to the land of dreams that way.”
The contained distress of the jealous Mélanie had reached its peak when her husband came back, carrying a basket full of wild strawberries.
When he learned that their guest would be dining with them, Dévonet’s consular face expressed a frank pleasure. “Phone Bénalep and ask him to come, darling. We’ll have chicken à la crême—and as I passed by, I saw a magnificent gâteau in the patissier’s window.”
Soon, the three sorcerers were united around a good and genuine country soup with herbs and a base of potato purée, the recipe for which Caroline, the cook at the Villa Dyonisos, had passed on to the Dévonets’ housemaid. Two chilled bottles of Saint-Martin-le-Beau, from a good year, seemed to have come up from the cellar of their own accord, followed by two bottles of Bourgeuil, for the guests were thirsty.
Ségétan was famished. The prospect of meeting up the next day—in the proper sense of meeting up—with Tullie, alone at the farm of Les Arges, was putting him in a excellent humor, when Bénalep, tucking the corner of his embroidered napkin into his collar, said: “Some singular phenomena have been occurring here in the village, and also in Brancheville and five kilometers away in Quatrebois, for some time. Two young women and one older one, and then a farmer, recently showed me dermatitis of an unknown variety on their wrists and legs. I sent them to see Dévonet—didn’t I, old man?—who was amazed. At Les Arges, livestock have died suddenly of an illness that the veterinarian declares to be inexplicable. No other outbreak in the region. But that’s not all. The children in the schools in Avenillon and Brancheville have given evidence this year of a precocity that amazes their headmaster, to such a point that he’s been obliged to triple the prizes and citations. In that regard he’s counting on you, as usual, to buy the books.”
“The dermatitis,” Dévonet added, “was analogous to that provoked by solar radiation, but of a more exfoliated variety. I took a small sample from one of them, and I’m in the process of examining it. There’s something else: the number of births, between here and Châteaudun, has doubled, and according to the gendarmerie’s statistics, the number of homicides and brawls has doubled too. Some of the peasants are convinced that it’s connected with your experiments and waves, but others make fun of then. Among the former, Père Calvat’s son has been mentioned.”
“That was bound to happen,” said Ségétan, laughing. “But you, Félix, who are trying to understand insects, and you, Bénalep, who are marrying plants in the soil, pass, as I do, for spell-casters.”
“To a certain extent,” Bénalep remarked, “we’re interfering with what are claimed to be the laws of nature—or the idea that people have of them—and the supposition of a disturbance due to that intervention isn’t totally absurd. I’ve been told about lawsuits prompted by rockets converting hail into rain, which victims of disaster accuse of having diverting storms over their fields.”
While he was speaking the chicken à la crème circulated, embellished with soft mushrooms, and the Bourgueil poured out its crimson flood. The conversation turned to the difficulty of discerning, calculating and detecting in the waves of time the epoch to which it was necessary to attribute them.
Ségétan, in a firm voice, said: “We’re still at the astrological stage. The hour of astronomy will sound, and new forms of calculation, like quanta—or hyperquanta, if you prefer—will permit us to draw up tables, according to the frequency of their vibrations, of the ages of the waves and their periodicities. All of that won’t come about without new distresses, excitations and unexpected intoxications leaking out for that vast guinea-pig, the human species. The railway has had its accidents, aviation too. The waves of duration will have theirs. Everything down here has a price; Abbé Parroy tells us so.”
During dessert, as was his custom, Bénalep made a speech. He was a philosophical improviser comparable to a Chopin or a Paganini, who extracted ingenious and powerful themes from the circumstances and ambiance. Mélanie’s presence visibly inspired him.
“The mind,” he said, “actually has two forms, which intermingle or separate in the most mysterious fashion: words and numbers; or, more precisely, verbal roots and numbers. The former is applied to movement and action, the second to mechanism, whether theoretical, technical or terrestrial. The former is qualitative the latter quantitative. Hence there are two forms of civilization. Ancient Egypt and present-day America are quantitative civilizations, with a predominance of numbers and machines. Perhaps that’s a trifle schematic, but it’s food for thought.”
The coffee and cigars were brought in.
“Tomorrow evening, if the weather’s as fine and calm as today,” Ségétan concluded, getting up from the table. “I invite you to a wave experiment behind the farm at Les Arges. I think there’s what I call a ‘station of yesteryear’ there—or, if you prefer, an echo of temporal waves—which it will be interesting to capture, and, if possible, situate. Besides which, we’ll have a full moon, and the spectacle will be charming. I’ll invite the Duc d’Ignacio.”
“And the beautiful Ariana?” asked Mélanie, sarcastically.
“Certainly.”
“And the no-less-beautiful Tullie?”
“Of course. The temperature is exceptionally warm. I shall ask all of you to come in evening dress.”
* * * *
Having returned home, Romain Ségétan found a letter on his desk in long, free-flowing handwriting, like a Breton shower. It was a hymn from Tullie Moneuse,