Queen Pedauque

Anatole France

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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. I. Why I recount the singular Occurrences of my Life

Informations

• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 23 octobre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819918998
• Langue: English

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CONTENTS
I. Why I recount the singular Occurrences of myLife
II. My Home at the Queen Pedauque Cookshop – I turnthe Spit and learn to read – Entry of Abbe Jerome Coignard
III. The Story of the Abbe's Life
IV. The Pupil of M. Jerome Coignard – I receiveLessons in Latin, Greek and Life
V. My Nineteenth Birthday – Its Celebration and theEntrance of M. d'Asterac
VI. Arrival at the Castle of M. d'Asterac andInterview with the Cabalist
VII. Dinner and Thoughts on Food
VIII. The Library and its Contents
IX. At Work on Zosimus the Panopolitan – I visit myHome and hear Gossip about M. d'Asterac
X. I see Catherine with Friar Ange and reflect – TheLiking of Nymphs for Satyrs – An Alarm of Fire – M. d'Asterac inhis Laboratory
XI. The Advent of Spring and its Effects – We visitMosaide
XII. I take a Walk and meet MademoiselleCatherine
XIII. Taken by M. d'Asterac to the Isle of Swans Ilisten to his Discourse on Creation and Salamanders
XIV. Visit to Mademoiselle Catherine – The Row inthe Street and my Dismissal
XV. In the Library with M. Jerome Coignard – AConversation on Morals – Taken to M. d'Asterac's Study-Salamandersagain – The Solar Powder – A Visit and its Consequences
XVI. Jahel comes to my Room – What the Abbe saw onthe Stairs – His Encounter with Mosaide
XVII. Outside Mademoiselle Catherine's House – Weare invited in by M. d'Anquetil – The Supper – The Visit of theOwner and the horrible Consequences
XVIII. Our return – We smuggle M. d'Anquetil in – M.d'Asterac on Jealousy – M. Jerome Coignard in Trouble-What happenedwhile I was in the Laboratory – Jahel persuaded to elope
XIX. Our last Dinner at M. d'Asterac's Table –Conversation of M. Jerome Coignard and M. d'Asterac – A Messagefrom Home – Catherine in the Spittel – We are wanted for Murder-OurFlight – Jahel causes me much Misery – Account of the Journey-TheAbbe Coignard on Towns – Jahel's Midnight Visit – We are followed –The Accident – M. Jerome Coignard is stabbed
XX. Illness of M. Jerome Coignard
XXI. Death of M. Jerome Coignard
XXII. Funeral and Epitaph
XXIII. Farewell to Jahel – Dispersal of theParty.
XXIV. I am pardoned and return to Paris – Again atthe Queen Pedauque – I go as Assistant to M. Blaizot – Burning ofthe Castle of Sablons – Death of Mosaide and of M. d'Asterac.
XXV. I become a Bookseller – I have many learned andwitty Customers but none to equal the Abbe Jerome Coignard, D.D.,M. A
INTRODUCTION
What one first notes about The Queen Pedauque is the fact that in this ironic and subtle book is presented astory which, curiously enough, is remarkable for its entireinnocence of subtlety and irony. Abridge the "plot" into asynopsis, and you will find your digest to be what is manifestlythe outline of a straightforward, plumed romance by the elderDumas.
Indeed, Dumas would have handled the "strangesurprising adventures" of Jacques Tournebroche to a nicety, if onlyDumas had ever thought to have his collaborators write this brisktale, wherein d'Astarac and Tournebroche and Mosaide display, evennow, a noticeable something in common with the Balsamo and Gilbertand Althotas of the Memoires d'un Medecin . One foresees, tobe sure, that, with the twin-girthed Creole for guide, M. JeromeCoignard would have waddled into immortality not quite as we knowhim, but with somewhat more of a fraternal resemblance to the DomGorenflot of La Dame de Monsoreau; and that the blood of theabbe's death-wound could never have bedewed the book's final pages,in the teeth of Dumas' economic unwillingness ever to despatch anycharacter who was "good for" a sequel.
And one thinks rather kindlily of The QueenPedauque as Dumas would have equipped it... Yes, in readinghere, it is the most facile and least avoidable of mental exercisesto prefigure how excellently Dumas would have contrived this book,– somewhat as in the reading of Mr. Joseph Conrad's novels a manyof us are haunted by the sense that the Conrad "story" is, in itsessential beams and stanchions, the sort of thing which W. ClarkRussell used to put together, in a rather different way, for ourillicit perusal. Whereby I only mean that such seafaring wasillicit in those aureate days when, Cleveland being consul for thesecond time, your geography figured as the screen of fictivereading-matter during school-hours.
One need not say that there is no question, ineither case, of "imitation," far less of "plagiarism"; nor needone, surely, point out the impossibility of anybody's evermistaking the present book for a novel by Alexandre Dumas. EreHomer's eyesight began not to be what it had been, the fact wasnoted by the observant Chian, that very few sane architectscommence an edifice by planting and rearing the oaks which are tocompose its beams and stanchions. You take over all such suppliesready hewn, and choose by preference time- seasoned timber. SinceHomer's prime a host of other great creative writers haverecognised this axiom when they too began to build: and"originality" has by ordinary been, like chess and democracy, aMecca for little minds.
Besides, there is the vast difference that M.Anatole France has introduced into the Dumas theatre somepreeminently un-Dumas-like stage-business: the characters, betweenassignations and combats, toy amorously with ideas. That is thedifference which at a stroke dissevers them from any helter-skeltercharacter in Dumas as utterly as from any of our clearest thinkersin office.
It is this toying, this series of mental amourettes , which incommunicably "makes the difference" inalmost all the volumes of M. France familiar to me, but our affairis with this one story. Now in this vivid book we have our fill ofcolor and animation and gallant strangenesses, and a stir ofcharacters who impress us as living with a poignancy unmastered asyet by anybody's associates in flesh and blood. We have, in brief,all that Dumas could ever offer, here utilised not to make dramabut background, all being woven into a bright undulating tapestrybehind an erudite and battered figure, – a figure of odd medleys,in which the erudition is combined with much of Autolycus, and theunkemptness with something of à Kempis. For what one remembers of The Queen Pédauque is l'Abbé Jérôme Coignard; and what oneremembers, ultimately, about Coignard is not his crowded career,however opulent in larcenous and lectual escapades and fisticuffsand broached wineflasks; but his religious meditations, wherein amerry heart does, quite actually, go all the way.
Coignard I take to be a peculiarly rare type of man(there is no female of this species), the type that is genuinelyinterested in religion. He stands apart. He halves little with thestaid majority of us, who sociably contract our sacred tenets fromour neighbors like a sort of theological measles. He halves nothingwhatever with our more earnest-minded juniors who – perenniallydiscovering that all religions thus far put to the test of nominalpractice have, whatever their paradisial entrée , resulted ina deplorable earthly hash – perennially run yelping into the shrillagnosticism which believes only that one's neighbors should not bepermitted to believe in anything.
The creed of Coignard is more urbane. "Always bearin mind that a sound intelligence rejects everything that iscontrary to reason, except in matters of faith, where it isnecessary to believe blindly." Your opinions are thusall-important, your physical conduct is largely a matter of taste,in a philosophy which ranks affairs of the mind immeasurably abovethe gross accidents of matter. Indeed, man can win to heaven onlythrough repentance, and the initial step toward repentance is to dosomething to repent of. There is no flaw in this logic, and in itsclear lighting such abrogations of parochial and transitory humanlaws as may be suggested by reason and the consciousness thatnobody is looking, take on the aspect of divinely appointedduties.
Some dullard may here object that M. France –attestedly, indeed, since he remains unjailed-cannot himselfbelieve all this, and that it is with an ironic glitter in his inkhe has recorded these dicta. To which the obvious answer would bethat M. France (again like all great creative writers) is anephemeral and negligible person beside his durable puppets; andthat, moreover, to reason thus is, it may be precipitately, todisparage the plumage of birds on the ground that an egg has nofeathers... Whatever M. France may believe, our concern is herewith the conviction of M. Coignard that his religion isall-important and all-significant. And it is curious to observe howunerringly the abbe's thoughts aspire, from no matter what remoteand low-lying starting-point, to the loftiest niceties of religionand the high thin atmosphere of ethics. Sauce spilt upon the goodman's collar is but a reminder of the influence of clothes upon ourmoral being, and of how terrifyingly is the destiny of eachperson's soul dependent upon such trifles; a glass of light whitewine leads not, as we are nowadays taught to believe, to instantruin, but to edifying considerations of the life and glory of St.Peter; and a pack of cards suggests, straightway, intransigent finepoints of martyrology. Always this churchman's thoughts deflect tothe most interesting of themes, to the relationship between God andHis children, and what familiary etiquette may be necessary topreserve the relationship unstrained. These problems alone engrossCoignard unfailingly, even when the philosopher has had the illluck to fall simultaneously into drunkenness and a public fountain,and retains so notably his composure between the opposed assaultsof fluidic unfriends.
What, though, is found the outcome of thisphilosophy, appears a question to be answered with wariness ofempiricism. None can deny that Coignard says when he lies dying:"My son, reject, along with the example I gave you, the maximswhich I may have proposed to you during my period of lifelongfolly. Do not listen to those who, like myself, subt