第75章

Trembling with old age and delight, he stretched out his pointed nose towards the long nose of his master; but his master did not respond with the customary "Down, Blaireau!"Marcasse had fainted.

This loving soul, no more able than Blaireau to express itself in words, had sunk beneath the weight of his own happiness. Patience ran and fetched him a large mug of wine of the district, in its second year--that is to say, the oldest and best possible. He made him swallow a few drops; its strength revived him. The hidalgo excused his weakness on the score of fatigue and the heat. He would not or could not assign it to its real sense. There are souls who die out, after burning with unsurpassable moral beauty and grandeur, without ever having found a way, and even without ever having felt the need, of revealing themselves to others.

When Patience, who was as demonstrative as his friend was the contrary, had recovered from his first transports, he turned to me and said:

"Now, my young officer, I see that you have no wish to remain here long. Let us make haste, then, to the place you are burning to reach.

There is some one who will be much surprised and much delighted, you may take my word."We entered the park, and while crossing it, Patience explained the change which had come over his habitation and his life.

"For myself," he said to me, "you see that I have not changed. The same appearance, the same ways; and if I offered you some wine just now, that does not prevent me from drinking water myself. But I have money, and land, and workmen--yes, I have. Well, all this is in spite of myself, as you will see. Some three years ago Mademoiselle Edmee spoke of the difficulty she had in bestowing alms so as to do real good. The abbe was as unskilful as herself. People would impose on them every day and use their money for bad ends; whereas proud and hard-working day-labourers might be in a state of real distress without any one being able to discover the fact. She was afraid that if she inquired into their wants they might take it as an insult; and when worthless fellows appealed to her she preferred being their dupe to erring against charity. In this manner she used to give away a great deal of money and do very little good. I then made her understand how money was the thing that was the least necessary to the necessitous. I explained that men were really unfortunate, not when they were unable to dress better than their fellows, or go to the tavern on Sundays, or display at high-mass a spotlessly white stocking with a red garter above the knee, or talk about 'My mare, my cow, my vine, my barn, etc.,' but rather when they were afflicted with poor health and a bad season, when they could not protect themselves against the cold, and heat and sickness, against the pangs of hunger and thirst. I told her, then, not to judge of the strength and health of peasants by myself, but to go in person and inquire into their illnesses and their wants.

"These folk are not philosophers," I said; "they have their little vanities, they are fond of finery, spend the little they earn on cutting a figure, and have not foresight enough to deprive themselves of a passing pleasure in order to lay by something against a day of real need. In short, they do not know how to use their money; they tell you they are in debt, and, though that may be true, it is not true that they will use the money you give them to pay what they owe.

They take no thought of the morrow; they will agree to as high a rate of interest as may be asked, and with your money they will buy a hemp-field or a set of furniture so as to astonish their neighbours and make them jealous. Meanwhile their debts go on increasing year by year, and in the end they have to sell their hemp-field and their furniture, because the creditor, who is always one of themselves, calls for repayment or for more interest than they can furnish.

Everything goes; the principal takes all their capital, just as the interest has taken all their income. Then you grow old and can work no longer; your children abandon you, because you have brought them up badly, and because they have the same passions and the same vanities as yourself. All you can do is to take a wallet and go from door to door to beg your bread, because you are used to bread and would die if you had to live on roots like the sorcerer Patience, that outcast of Nature, whom everybody hates and despises because he has not become a beggar.

"The beggar, moreover, is hardly worse off than the day-labourer;probably he is better off. He is no longer troubled with pride, whether estimable or foolish; he has no longer to suffer. The folks in his part of the country are good to him; there is not a beggar that wants for a bed or supper as he goes his round. The peasants load him with bits of bread, to such an extent that he has enough to feed both poultry and pigs in the little hovel where he has left a child and an old mother to look after his animals. Every week he returns there and spends two or three days, doing nothing except counting the pennies that have been given him. These poor coins often serve to satisfy the superfluous wants which idleness breeds. A peasant rarely takes snuff;many beggars cannot do without it; they ask for it more eagerly than for bread. So the beggar is no more to be pitied than the labourer;but he is corrupt and debauched, when he is not a scoundrel and a brute, which, in truth, is seldom enough.

" 'This, then, is what ought to be done,' I said to Edmee; 'and the abbe tells me that this is also the idea of your philosophers. You who are always ready to help the unfortunate, should give without consulting the special fancies of the man who asks, but only after ascertaining his real wants.'