Chapter 22: The Simoniac

“La malle bouche, elle a raté si traistre
Qu’elle a baisé et vendu nostre maistre.”
Charles de la Huetrie,
Contreblason de la Bouche.

Hubert had no desire whatever to think, but it is not given to all persons to be able to regulate cerebral activity and to dismiss the serious affairs until the morrow. Neither the reading of a naturalistic novel, nor meditation upon the most abtruse propositions and scholia of the contemporary thinkers, nor the contemplation of the eternal verities, prevented him from bewailing his recent foolish behavior.

Ah! how well he judged things from a distance, how well he saw what he should have done. No one had to a higher degree his presence of mind at the foot of the staircase.

Immediate analysis was always slightly confused and did not force any precise conclusions. Without doubt, it was always three or four minutes after the occasion had passed that he was able to unravel the thoughts and the mental reservations of his partner, and by the forth minute he already knew what he should have done at the first second, but he never knew it so pertinently as after a night’s sleep.

No disturbance of his heart had ever prevented him from sleeping; he thanked heaven for having granted him lucid mornings.

The more he thought, this morning, the more the moving sands of indecision shifted.

Having taken an awkward step, he had seen how pernicious action had proved to him; to wait was sterile: it is like the sower of pebbles who, pausing along the fields in spring, is astonished not to see any germination.

“Well,” thought Hubert, “one cannot know, everything happens and the absurd especially. I should be pleased if some miracle would occur in my favor. We shall see this evening, and,” he added, smiling at himself, “the following days.”

Impatient for the night, and fearing the surliness of the hours, he went out in search of casual diversion.

The street was inclement. The quays, swept by a sharp and humid wind, stood out gloomily under their closed boxes, truly an unfavorable sight to those restless plunderers of knowledge. What becomes of the disconsolate vagabonds, amateurs of printed foolishness, in those days of enforced idleness? He perceived one, with sad eyes and weary movements, who was examining the sky, holding out against the storm and waiting for a lull. Entragues knew him: he was an old man of letters who spent his days here. No book was unknown to him, he dipped into all of them, saluted them with a smile, but purchased only those which concerned the Auvergne, his native country. In a vast garret he had fifteen thousand books of this kind and did not despair of doubling the number.

Entragues wished to lead him away from these desolate banks; he resisted, like a lover who has decided to sleep across the bolted door of his mistress.

This constancy pleased Entragues.

“Just come as far as the rue de Richelieu. There is a big Moorish room where you can also find some books, and you are in shelter.”