XVII
MONSIEUR NICODÈME
hile, at the sign of the Image de Sainte Catherine, my good master, seated on the highest rung of the ladder, was reading Cassiodorus with great pleasure, an elderly man came into the shop, of an arrogant air, and severe aspect. He went straight to Monsieur Blaizot, who smilingly stretched his head over the counter.
"Monsieur," he said, "you are sworn bookseller, and I must take you for a well-conducted man. Nevertheless, in your display of goods a volume of the works of Ronsard is open at the frontispiece, which represents a naked woman. And it is a thing not fit to be looked at."
"Pardon me, Monsieur," replied Monsieur Blaizot, gently, "it is a frontispiece of Léonard Gautier's who, in his day, was considered a very able draughtsman."
"It matters little to me," replied the elder, "that the draughtsman was clever. All that I take into consideration is that he represented nudities. This figure has nothing on but its hair, and I am grievously surprised, Monsieur, that a man of age and prudence, such as you appear, should expose it to the gaze of the young men who frequent the Rue St. Jacques. You would do well to burn it, following the example of Father Garasse, who expended his means in acquiring, in order to burn them, a number of books opposed to public decency and to the Society of Jesus. At least, it would be more decent in you to hide it in the most secret recess of your shop, which conceals, I fear, many a book calculated to excite minds to vice, not only by their text, but by their plates."
Monsieur Blaizot replied, reddening, that such a suspicion was unjust, and it grieved him coming from a worthy man.
"I must tell you who I am," said the elder. "You see before you Monsieur Nicodème, the President of the Purity League. The end that I pursue is to outdo in niceness in the matter of modesty the regulations of the Lieutenant de Police. I busy myself, with the help of a dozen Parliamentary councillors, and two hundred churchwardens from the principal parishes, in clearing away nudities exposed in public places, such as squares, boulevards, streets, alleys, quays, courts, and gardens. And, not content with establishing modesty in the public way, I exert myself to spread its dominion even into the salon, the study, and the bedroom, whence it is but too often banished. Know, Monsieur, that the Society that I have founded has trousseaux made for young married people, containing long and ample night-garments which permit these young spouses chastely to go about the execution of God's commandment relative to increase and multiplication. And, to mingle charm, if I may say so, with austerity, these garments are trimmed with pleasing embroidery. I plume myself on having thus invented garments of an intimate nature so well designed to make another Sarah and Tobias of all our young couples, and to cleanse the sacrament of marriage from the impurities which unfortunately have clung to it."
My good master, who, his nose in Cassiodorus, had been listening to their discourse, replied with the utmost gravity from the top of his ladder, that he thought the invention admirable, and praiseworthy, but that he had a still more excellent one of the kind.
"I would that our young spouses," said he, "were rubbed from head to foot with blacking before they met, making their skin like boot-leather, which would greatly damp the criminal ardours of the flesh, and be a grievous obstacle to the caresses, kisses, and endearments that lovers practise too generally between the sheets."
Monsieur Nicodème, lifting his head at these words, saw my good master on the ladder, and saw also from his demeanour that he was laughing at him.
"Monsieur l'Abbé," said he, with sadness and indignation, "I would forgive you did you merely laugh at me. But you ridicule at the same time, decency and public morals, and there you are much to blame. In spite of wicked jokes, the Society that I have founded has already done good and useful work. Crack your jokes, sir! We have fixed six hundred vine or fig-leaves on the statues in the king's gardens."
"Admirable indeed, sir," responded my good master, adjusting his spectacles, "and at that rate every statue will soon have its leaf. But (seeing that objects have no meaning for us save by association of ideas) in placing vine-leaves and fig-leaves on statues, you transfer the quality of indecency to the leaves; so that one can no longer see vine or fig-tree on the countryside without conceiving them as sheltering some indecency; and it is no small sin, my good sir, to fix immodesty on these innocent plants. Allow me to tell you further that it is a dangerous thing to make a study, as you do, of everything that may cause disquietude and uneasiness to the flesh, without reflecting that if a given shape be such as to scandalise souls, each of us who bears the original of that shape will scandalise himself, except he be less than a man—a thing one does not like to contemplate."
"Monsieur," responded the aged Nicodème, rather heatedly, "I gather from the language you hold that you are a libertine and a debauchee."
"Monsieur," said my good master, "I am a Christian, and as for living in debauchery, I could not think of such a thing, having enough to do to gain my daily bread, wine, and tobacco. Such as you see me, Monsieur, I know no orgy but the silent orgies of meditation, and the only feast I sit down to is the feast of the Muses. But I, as a wise man, consider that it is a bad thing to outbid in shamefacedness the teachings of the Catholic religion, which on this subject allows a good deal of liberty, and adjusts itself easily to people's customs and prejudices. I take you to be tainted with Calvinism and to be leaning to the heresy of iconoclasm. For, in truth, one does not know whether your zeal will not go so far as to burn images of God and the saints, from hatred of the humanity evident in them. Such words as modesty, decency, and shame, which come so readily from your mouth, have as a matter of fact no precise and constant meaning. Custom and nice feeling can alone define them with truth and moderation. I only acknowledge poets, artists, and pretty women, as judges in these delicate matters. What an extraordinary notion, to set up a row of attorneys in judgment on Grace and Pleasure!"
"But, Monsieur," replied the aged Nicodème, "we have nothing to do with Smiles or Graces, still less with images of God and the saints, and you are maliciously fastening a quarrel on us. We are decent people, who wish to turn aside the eyes of our sons from improper sights, and one knows well enough what is decent and what is not. Do you wish, Monsieur l'Abbé, that our young people should be open to every temptation of the streets?"
"Ah! Monsieur," replied my good master. "We must all be tempted. It is the lot of men and Christians on this earth. And the most formidable temptation comes from within—not from without. You would not take so much trouble to remove from the shop windows any sketch of nude women if, as I have done, you had studied the lives of the Fathers of the desert. There you would have seen how, in a frightful wilderness, far from any carved or painted shape, torn with hair-shirts, macerated with penance, faint from fasting, tossing on a bed of thorns, the anchorites were penetrated to the very marrow with the prickings of carnal desire. In their wretched cells they saw visions a thousand times more voluptuous than this allegory which offends you in Monsieur Blaizot's window.
"The devil, or, as free-thinkers would say, nature, is a better painter of lascivious scenes than Giulio Romano himself. He surpasses all the Italian and Flemish masters in grouping, movement, and colour. Alas! one is powerless against his glowing pictures. Those that shock you are of small account in comparison, and you would do wisely to leave to the care of the Lieutenant de Police, as your fellow citizens are willing it should be left, the guardianship of public decency. Truly your ingenuousness astonishes me; you have little notion what a man is, and what society is, and of the fever and insurgence of a great city. Oh! the silly greybeards, who in the midst of all the uncleanness of a Babylon where every lifted curtain shows the eye or the arm of a courtesan, where busy humanity touch and quicken one another in the public squares, fall a-groaning and complaining of a few naughty pictures hung up on book-sellers' stalls; and carry their lamentations even to the very Parliament of the kingdom when a woman has shown her legs to some fellows in a dancing-saloon—just the most ordinary sight in the world for them."
Thus spoke my good master from the top of his ladder. But Monsieur Nicodème stopped his ears in order not to hear him, and cried out on his cynicism.
"Heavens!" he sighed, "what can be more disgusting than a naked woman, and how shameful to compromise, as does this Abbé, with an immorality which is the ruin of a country, for people can only exist by purity of morals."
"It is true, Monsieur," said my good master, "that peoples are strong only so long as they preserve their morals; but by that is understood a community of rules, opinions, and interests, and a generous-minded obedience to law; not trifles such as occupy you. Beware, moreover, lest shamefacedness, failing as a charm, become but a piece of stupidity, and less the artless dullness of your fears present a ridiculous spectacle and one not a little indecent."
But Monsieur Nicodème had already left the place.