XVIISOME PHILOSOPHERSIHAVE frequently seen monarchs whose profession consisted in ruling the crowd. I have sometimes seen crowds that appeared to me mightier than the greatest of monarchs.More rarely I have encountered philosophers, out of touch with everything, who yet were able to create kingdoms within themselves. These last have seemed to me more affecting than the proudest of monarchs or the most impressive of crowds. Characteristic traits of some of these are worthy of being described here. I should like to try to do so, because of the emotions they have aroused in me.We were living at Passy, my mother and I, in a house situated in the centre of a garden. One day I heard some animated music coming from the street. I ran to the gate to look at the makers of this joyful harmony. A man and a woman were passing. The man played an accordion as he walked with short steps. He was blind, and his wife led him. The music was so sprightly, so different from the folk who were making it, that I hailed the pair. I wanted the man to play in thegarden, behind the house, so that my mother, who was paralysed, might hear him. They consented very willingly. I made them sit down under a tree, near my mother’s chair, and the man played on the accordion until a servant came to say that lunch was served. I asked the man and his wife if they had eaten. When I discovered they had had nothing since the day before, I told the maid they were going to share our meal.LOIE FULLER IN HER GARDEN AT PASSYLOIE FULLER IN HER GARDEN AT PASSYAt table we had a long conversation. The man had always been blind. I asked him if he could perceive difference among colours. No. But he was able, at least, to tell without fear of making a mistake, whether the weather was clear or cloudy, dull or pleasant. He was extremely sensitive to differences of texture.I placed a rose in his hand and asked him what it was. Without hesitation and without raising the flower to his nostrils he replied:“It is a rose.”Almost immediately, grasping it gently in his fingers, he added:“It is a beautiful one, too, this rose, very beautiful.”A little more and he would have told me whether it was aLa France, aMaréchal Niel, or some other species of rose.As he had used the word “beautiful” I asked him what seemed to him the most beautiful thing in the world.“The most beautiful thing alive is woman.”I then asked him who the person was in whose company I had found him. His voice took on a tender tone as he said:“It is my wife, my dear wife.”After that I looked with more attention at the self-effacing and almost dumb soul who accompanied the blind musician. Confused, embarrassed, she had lowered her eyes, which she kept obstinately fixed upon an apron, of a faded blue, on which the patches appeared to be more extensive than the original material.She was unattractive, poor thing, and at least twenty years older than her companion.Quietly, without concerning myself with the beseeching looks the poor woman cast at me from under wrinkled and reddened eyebrows, I asked the blind musician:“She satisfies you, does she?”“Certainly.”“You find her beautiful?”“Very beautiful.”“More beautiful than other women?”As he had peopled his darkness with beauty my optimist replied:“I do not say that, for all women are beautiful. But she is better, yes, better than most of them, and it is that which, in my sight, constitutes the purest beauty.”“What makes you think she is better than the others?”“Oh, everything. Her whole life, her whole manner of existence as regards me.”And in words so convincing that for a moment I felt that he could see, he added:“Just look at her, my good lady. Isn’t it a fact that goodness is written on her face?”The woman, with her eyes lowered, kept looking at her blue apron. I then asked the blind man how he had made his living up to this time, and how they had become acquainted, he and his companion.“I used to be, owing to infirmity, a real burden upon my family. I did whatever I could but I could not do much. I washed the dishes, lighted the fire, picked the vegetables, swept the floor, washed the windows, made the beds—perhaps badly, but at any rate I did all that, and although we were very poor at home they kept me. The day came, however, when my mother died. Then it was my father’s turn. I had to leave the empty house. I went on the road armed with my accordion, asking for alms. My accordion became my best friend. But I blundered along the roads. Then I met my dear companion who is with me, and I married her.”She was a cook, the woman told me this herself in an undertone, who had become too old to keep her place, and who consented to join herfate with that of the wandering blind man, serving as his guide along the roads. The blind man found this arrangement a blessing from Heaven, a kindness bestowed upon him by Providence. They were married without delay.“But how do you manage to live?” I asked.“Well, it is not always easy to make both ends meet, for alas! now and then, one of us falls ill. We are getting old, you understand. When it is not fatigue that gets the better of us, then there is always the cold. There are times when we cannot go out. Then it is necessary to take a notch in one’s girdle.”Each day they visited one district of Paris. They had divided the city into blocks, and they sometimes walked miles before arriving at their destination, for they lived far from the centre, in one of the poorest suburbs.“What day do you go by here?”“Every Sunday, before mass. Many people of this quarter go to church, and we encounter them going and coming.”“Do they give you something?”“It is a rich neighbourhood. We have several very good clients.”“Good what?” I asked. “Good clients?”“Yes, good clients,” he repeated simply.“And who are these clients?”“They are servants of the rich.”“Servants?”“Yes, some of them are very good. They give us old clothes; food and money when they can.”“And the rich people themselves?”“We do not see them often. This is the first time a client has ever invited us to lunch, and we have been going through this street for seven years. No one ever asked us to come in before.”“What do you do when you are tired?”“We sit down on a bench or on one of the steps, and we eat whatever we have in our pockets. Here we eat while they are at church.”“Very well. You will have no need to bring anything to eat the day you come by here. I invite you for every Sunday.”I expected impassioned thanks. The man said simply:“We thank you very much, good lady.”Shortly after, I left for a long tour in America, and during my absence my domestics received them every Sunday. From their point of view I was merely a sure client.One day I gave them tickets for a great concert. I was in the hall and observed them.The woman was overcome at seeing so many fashionable people. As for the man, his features aglow with an unearthly light, his head thrown a little back after the way of the blind, he was in ecstasy, intoxicated with the music.After four years they disappeared. I never saw them again.The man, whom I had seen to be failing, probably died, and the woman, the poor old thing, so unattractive in her blue apron, undoubtedly did not dare to return alone.At Marseilles I saw another blind man, a very old man, seated on a folding stool against a wall.Beside him stood a basket, guarded by a very young dog, who sniffed at all the passers-by and barked after each one. I stopped to talk to the old man.“Do you live all alone?” I asked him.“Oh, no,” he replied. “I have two dogs. But I cannot bring the other one with me. He makes a continual disturbance, leaps and fidgets so much that he never gets fat and any one would think to see him that I don’t give him anything to eat. As a matter of fact, you see, I cannot show him without being ashamed of him. People would suppose that I was allowing him to die of hunger. Anyway I need only one dog here. As for the other I leave him at the house, where he serves as watch dog.”“Oh, you have a house,” I said.“That is to say, I have a room, I call it my house.”“Who does your cooking for you? Who makes the fire at your house?”“I do,” he replied. “I light a match and then by the crackling of the wood I know whether it has caught.”“How do you clean your vegetables?”“Oh, that is easy. I can tell by the feeling when the potatoes are well peeled.”“And the fruits and the salad?”“Oh, that is something we do not have very often.”“I suppose you eat meat.”“Not very often, either. We have bread and vegetables, and when we are rich we buy some cheese.”“Why does your dog sniff so at every one passing by? Why does he bark so spitefully?”“Ah, madam, you see each time that any one hands me a sou, thanks to his grimaces, I give him a little piece of bread. There, look at him now.”At this moment somebody had just thrown a coin into the blind man’s bowl. The old man drew from his pocket a little piece of dry bread.The animal fell upon it with such a cry of joy that one might have supposed he had just received the daintiest titbit in the world. He nearly devoured his master with caresses.“At what time do you eat? Do you go home to your lunch?”“No. I carry my lunch in a basket.”I looked. It contained some crusts of bread and nothing else.“Is that all that you have to eat?”“Why, yes. Like the dog, I don’t ruin my digestion.”“Where do you drink when you are thirsty?”He pointed to a corner of the alley, where there was a little fountain, alongside of which hung a goblet attached to a chain.“And the dog?”“He leads me to the fountain when he is thirsty and I give him his share.”“Do you come here every day?”“Yes. This is the entrance to the baths. We do a good business here.”“How much do you make a day?”“Twenty sous, sometimes thirty. That depends on the day. There have been times when we have made more than two francs. But that is rare. I have my rent to pay and three mouths to feed, my two dogs and myself.”“Where do you get your clothes?”“They are given me by one and another. The butcher, the grocer, the cabinetmaker, these are very kind to me.”“Are you happy all alone so?”“I am not all alone. I have my dogs. The only thing I lack is my eyesight. But I thank Providence every day for keeping me in good health.”It was in consequence of a malignant fever that he had lost his eyesight, for unlike my blind man at Passy, this man was not born blind. Formerly he had been able to admire nature, to see pretty girls in a country flooded with sunlight, to enjoywith his own eyes the smile in other eyes, in eyes tender and well loved. In short he had seen. What sadness his must be, to be unable to see again!With much diplomacy I asked him about this.He had far less difficulty in answering me.“I used to admire many pretty things,” he said. “I still have them carefully enclosed under my eyelids. I see them again whenever I wish, just as if they were there before me once again. And so, you see, as these are things of my youth it seems to me that, in spite of everything, in spite of being such an old hulk as I am, I have remained young. And I thank the dear Lord for having been kind enough not to have made me blind from birth.”“And how old are you?”“Eighty years, madam.”This old man had a long walk before him to get back to his residence. As I commiserated him regarding this, he replied:“There is no reason for complaining, madam, I have such a good guide, such a brave little comrade!”He made an almost theatrical gesture, and said, in a voice filled with emotion:“My dog!”“Does he guide you through the streets of Marseilles?”“He does!”“And no accident happens to you?”“Never. One day I was crossing a street. My dog pulled at me so hard from behind that I fell backward. I was just in time. A step more and I should have been crushed by a tramcar, which grazed me. I am mighty lucky, come now, to have a dog like that.”In all circumstances this old man was willing to see only the favourable side of things. That side, at least with the eyes of imagination, the blind man could see.One day the charwoman who came to our house at Passy to help the servants arrived very late.As she was ordinarily exceedingly punctual, I reproached her in a way I should not have done if she had been habitually unpunctual. Here is what I found out about this brave woman.Three years before one of her neighbours, a working woman, had had an attack of paralysis. This neighbour was poor, old, without relatives and no one would bother with her. The poor little charwoman, encumbered with a drunken husband and six children, agreed to take care of the paralytic and her home if the other neighbours would be willing to provide the bare necessities of life. She succeeded in overcoming the selfishness of each and every one in the warmth of her kindness. From that time on she never ceased in the rare hours when she was free to look after the paralytic. She attended to the housework, the cooking, the washing. The neighbour’s condition grew worse.The case was one of complete paralysis. The assistance which she had to give to this half-dead woman was often of the most repulsive kind. Always smiling, always tidy, always cheerful, she gave to the human hulk she had taken under her protection the most thorough and intelligent care.My little charwoman had always, at all times, been cheerful. I wondered what kind of gaiety she would exhibit when at last the paralytic’s death should free her from the load with which she had benevolently burdened her life. This morning, the morning on which she came late, she was crying. She wept warm tears.I supposed that my reproach had caused this tearful outpouring. But not at all. She said to me between sobs:“I am crying—crying—because—she’s dead—the poor woman.”It was her neighbour the paralytic for whom she wept.In the north of Ireland I once saw some children barefooted in the snow, during an intensely cold February. With some friends I visited the poor quarter of a provincial city, where, I was told, people working in the mills lived twelve or even more in cabins containing but two rooms.We placed no especial credence in these stories and we decided to look into the matter for ourselves. It was all true, nevertheless. In some cases the conditions were even worse.On reaching the district in question we noticed that a little boy had followed our carriage. At a trot sharp enough to run his little legs off he continued for about a mile and a half, all in the hope of getting twopence.The small boy came forward to open the door of our carriage. The coachman rebuked him brutally. The child had so odd an expression that I began to talk to him. He had five brothers and sisters. He did the best he could to pick up something in the streets, and he made from sixpence to eightpence a day. Just at present he was trying to get a little money to buy some coal for his mother.I, doubting the truth of these statements, made him take me to his hut, which he had pointed out to us.“That is where I live, madam.”Certainly there was no coal in the house, but there were three sick people. The father swept snow in the streets to make a few pennies, for in this cold weather the mill where he worked was not running.There was complete wretchedness, frightful wretchedness, irreparable wretchedness. And yet our little lad sang while he trotted behind our carriage, just as his father whistled as he swept the snow.Is not misery the school, the sadly sovereign school, of philosophy?
IHAVE frequently seen monarchs whose profession consisted in ruling the crowd. I have sometimes seen crowds that appeared to me mightier than the greatest of monarchs.
More rarely I have encountered philosophers, out of touch with everything, who yet were able to create kingdoms within themselves. These last have seemed to me more affecting than the proudest of monarchs or the most impressive of crowds. Characteristic traits of some of these are worthy of being described here. I should like to try to do so, because of the emotions they have aroused in me.
We were living at Passy, my mother and I, in a house situated in the centre of a garden. One day I heard some animated music coming from the street. I ran to the gate to look at the makers of this joyful harmony. A man and a woman were passing. The man played an accordion as he walked with short steps. He was blind, and his wife led him. The music was so sprightly, so different from the folk who were making it, that I hailed the pair. I wanted the man to play in thegarden, behind the house, so that my mother, who was paralysed, might hear him. They consented very willingly. I made them sit down under a tree, near my mother’s chair, and the man played on the accordion until a servant came to say that lunch was served. I asked the man and his wife if they had eaten. When I discovered they had had nothing since the day before, I told the maid they were going to share our meal.
LOIE FULLER IN HER GARDEN AT PASSYLOIE FULLER IN HER GARDEN AT PASSY
LOIE FULLER IN HER GARDEN AT PASSY
At table we had a long conversation. The man had always been blind. I asked him if he could perceive difference among colours. No. But he was able, at least, to tell without fear of making a mistake, whether the weather was clear or cloudy, dull or pleasant. He was extremely sensitive to differences of texture.
I placed a rose in his hand and asked him what it was. Without hesitation and without raising the flower to his nostrils he replied:
“It is a rose.”
Almost immediately, grasping it gently in his fingers, he added:
“It is a beautiful one, too, this rose, very beautiful.”
A little more and he would have told me whether it was aLa France, aMaréchal Niel, or some other species of rose.
As he had used the word “beautiful” I asked him what seemed to him the most beautiful thing in the world.
“The most beautiful thing alive is woman.”
I then asked him who the person was in whose company I had found him. His voice took on a tender tone as he said:
“It is my wife, my dear wife.”
After that I looked with more attention at the self-effacing and almost dumb soul who accompanied the blind musician. Confused, embarrassed, she had lowered her eyes, which she kept obstinately fixed upon an apron, of a faded blue, on which the patches appeared to be more extensive than the original material.
She was unattractive, poor thing, and at least twenty years older than her companion.
Quietly, without concerning myself with the beseeching looks the poor woman cast at me from under wrinkled and reddened eyebrows, I asked the blind musician:
“She satisfies you, does she?”
“Certainly.”
“You find her beautiful?”
“Very beautiful.”
“More beautiful than other women?”
As he had peopled his darkness with beauty my optimist replied:
“I do not say that, for all women are beautiful. But she is better, yes, better than most of them, and it is that which, in my sight, constitutes the purest beauty.”
“What makes you think she is better than the others?”
“Oh, everything. Her whole life, her whole manner of existence as regards me.”
And in words so convincing that for a moment I felt that he could see, he added:
“Just look at her, my good lady. Isn’t it a fact that goodness is written on her face?”
The woman, with her eyes lowered, kept looking at her blue apron. I then asked the blind man how he had made his living up to this time, and how they had become acquainted, he and his companion.
“I used to be, owing to infirmity, a real burden upon my family. I did whatever I could but I could not do much. I washed the dishes, lighted the fire, picked the vegetables, swept the floor, washed the windows, made the beds—perhaps badly, but at any rate I did all that, and although we were very poor at home they kept me. The day came, however, when my mother died. Then it was my father’s turn. I had to leave the empty house. I went on the road armed with my accordion, asking for alms. My accordion became my best friend. But I blundered along the roads. Then I met my dear companion who is with me, and I married her.”
She was a cook, the woman told me this herself in an undertone, who had become too old to keep her place, and who consented to join herfate with that of the wandering blind man, serving as his guide along the roads. The blind man found this arrangement a blessing from Heaven, a kindness bestowed upon him by Providence. They were married without delay.
“But how do you manage to live?” I asked.
“Well, it is not always easy to make both ends meet, for alas! now and then, one of us falls ill. We are getting old, you understand. When it is not fatigue that gets the better of us, then there is always the cold. There are times when we cannot go out. Then it is necessary to take a notch in one’s girdle.”
Each day they visited one district of Paris. They had divided the city into blocks, and they sometimes walked miles before arriving at their destination, for they lived far from the centre, in one of the poorest suburbs.
“What day do you go by here?”
“Every Sunday, before mass. Many people of this quarter go to church, and we encounter them going and coming.”
“Do they give you something?”
“It is a rich neighbourhood. We have several very good clients.”
“Good what?” I asked. “Good clients?”
“Yes, good clients,” he repeated simply.
“And who are these clients?”
“They are servants of the rich.”
“Servants?”
“Yes, some of them are very good. They give us old clothes; food and money when they can.”
“And the rich people themselves?”
“We do not see them often. This is the first time a client has ever invited us to lunch, and we have been going through this street for seven years. No one ever asked us to come in before.”
“What do you do when you are tired?”
“We sit down on a bench or on one of the steps, and we eat whatever we have in our pockets. Here we eat while they are at church.”
“Very well. You will have no need to bring anything to eat the day you come by here. I invite you for every Sunday.”
I expected impassioned thanks. The man said simply:
“We thank you very much, good lady.”
Shortly after, I left for a long tour in America, and during my absence my domestics received them every Sunday. From their point of view I was merely a sure client.
One day I gave them tickets for a great concert. I was in the hall and observed them.
The woman was overcome at seeing so many fashionable people. As for the man, his features aglow with an unearthly light, his head thrown a little back after the way of the blind, he was in ecstasy, intoxicated with the music.
After four years they disappeared. I never saw them again.
The man, whom I had seen to be failing, probably died, and the woman, the poor old thing, so unattractive in her blue apron, undoubtedly did not dare to return alone.
At Marseilles I saw another blind man, a very old man, seated on a folding stool against a wall.
Beside him stood a basket, guarded by a very young dog, who sniffed at all the passers-by and barked after each one. I stopped to talk to the old man.
“Do you live all alone?” I asked him.
“Oh, no,” he replied. “I have two dogs. But I cannot bring the other one with me. He makes a continual disturbance, leaps and fidgets so much that he never gets fat and any one would think to see him that I don’t give him anything to eat. As a matter of fact, you see, I cannot show him without being ashamed of him. People would suppose that I was allowing him to die of hunger. Anyway I need only one dog here. As for the other I leave him at the house, where he serves as watch dog.”
“Oh, you have a house,” I said.
“That is to say, I have a room, I call it my house.”
“Who does your cooking for you? Who makes the fire at your house?”
“I do,” he replied. “I light a match and then by the crackling of the wood I know whether it has caught.”
“How do you clean your vegetables?”
“Oh, that is easy. I can tell by the feeling when the potatoes are well peeled.”
“And the fruits and the salad?”
“Oh, that is something we do not have very often.”
“I suppose you eat meat.”
“Not very often, either. We have bread and vegetables, and when we are rich we buy some cheese.”
“Why does your dog sniff so at every one passing by? Why does he bark so spitefully?”
“Ah, madam, you see each time that any one hands me a sou, thanks to his grimaces, I give him a little piece of bread. There, look at him now.”
At this moment somebody had just thrown a coin into the blind man’s bowl. The old man drew from his pocket a little piece of dry bread.
The animal fell upon it with such a cry of joy that one might have supposed he had just received the daintiest titbit in the world. He nearly devoured his master with caresses.
“At what time do you eat? Do you go home to your lunch?”
“No. I carry my lunch in a basket.”
I looked. It contained some crusts of bread and nothing else.
“Is that all that you have to eat?”
“Why, yes. Like the dog, I don’t ruin my digestion.”
“Where do you drink when you are thirsty?”
He pointed to a corner of the alley, where there was a little fountain, alongside of which hung a goblet attached to a chain.
“And the dog?”
“He leads me to the fountain when he is thirsty and I give him his share.”
“Do you come here every day?”
“Yes. This is the entrance to the baths. We do a good business here.”
“How much do you make a day?”
“Twenty sous, sometimes thirty. That depends on the day. There have been times when we have made more than two francs. But that is rare. I have my rent to pay and three mouths to feed, my two dogs and myself.”
“Where do you get your clothes?”
“They are given me by one and another. The butcher, the grocer, the cabinetmaker, these are very kind to me.”
“Are you happy all alone so?”
“I am not all alone. I have my dogs. The only thing I lack is my eyesight. But I thank Providence every day for keeping me in good health.”
It was in consequence of a malignant fever that he had lost his eyesight, for unlike my blind man at Passy, this man was not born blind. Formerly he had been able to admire nature, to see pretty girls in a country flooded with sunlight, to enjoywith his own eyes the smile in other eyes, in eyes tender and well loved. In short he had seen. What sadness his must be, to be unable to see again!
With much diplomacy I asked him about this.
He had far less difficulty in answering me.
“I used to admire many pretty things,” he said. “I still have them carefully enclosed under my eyelids. I see them again whenever I wish, just as if they were there before me once again. And so, you see, as these are things of my youth it seems to me that, in spite of everything, in spite of being such an old hulk as I am, I have remained young. And I thank the dear Lord for having been kind enough not to have made me blind from birth.”
“And how old are you?”
“Eighty years, madam.”
This old man had a long walk before him to get back to his residence. As I commiserated him regarding this, he replied:
“There is no reason for complaining, madam, I have such a good guide, such a brave little comrade!”
He made an almost theatrical gesture, and said, in a voice filled with emotion:
“My dog!”
“Does he guide you through the streets of Marseilles?”
“He does!”
“And no accident happens to you?”
“Never. One day I was crossing a street. My dog pulled at me so hard from behind that I fell backward. I was just in time. A step more and I should have been crushed by a tramcar, which grazed me. I am mighty lucky, come now, to have a dog like that.”
In all circumstances this old man was willing to see only the favourable side of things. That side, at least with the eyes of imagination, the blind man could see.
One day the charwoman who came to our house at Passy to help the servants arrived very late.
As she was ordinarily exceedingly punctual, I reproached her in a way I should not have done if she had been habitually unpunctual. Here is what I found out about this brave woman.
Three years before one of her neighbours, a working woman, had had an attack of paralysis. This neighbour was poor, old, without relatives and no one would bother with her. The poor little charwoman, encumbered with a drunken husband and six children, agreed to take care of the paralytic and her home if the other neighbours would be willing to provide the bare necessities of life. She succeeded in overcoming the selfishness of each and every one in the warmth of her kindness. From that time on she never ceased in the rare hours when she was free to look after the paralytic. She attended to the housework, the cooking, the washing. The neighbour’s condition grew worse.The case was one of complete paralysis. The assistance which she had to give to this half-dead woman was often of the most repulsive kind. Always smiling, always tidy, always cheerful, she gave to the human hulk she had taken under her protection the most thorough and intelligent care.
My little charwoman had always, at all times, been cheerful. I wondered what kind of gaiety she would exhibit when at last the paralytic’s death should free her from the load with which she had benevolently burdened her life. This morning, the morning on which she came late, she was crying. She wept warm tears.
I supposed that my reproach had caused this tearful outpouring. But not at all. She said to me between sobs:
“I am crying—crying—because—she’s dead—the poor woman.”
It was her neighbour the paralytic for whom she wept.
In the north of Ireland I once saw some children barefooted in the snow, during an intensely cold February. With some friends I visited the poor quarter of a provincial city, where, I was told, people working in the mills lived twelve or even more in cabins containing but two rooms.
We placed no especial credence in these stories and we decided to look into the matter for ourselves. It was all true, nevertheless. In some cases the conditions were even worse.
On reaching the district in question we noticed that a little boy had followed our carriage. At a trot sharp enough to run his little legs off he continued for about a mile and a half, all in the hope of getting twopence.
The small boy came forward to open the door of our carriage. The coachman rebuked him brutally. The child had so odd an expression that I began to talk to him. He had five brothers and sisters. He did the best he could to pick up something in the streets, and he made from sixpence to eightpence a day. Just at present he was trying to get a little money to buy some coal for his mother.
I, doubting the truth of these statements, made him take me to his hut, which he had pointed out to us.
“That is where I live, madam.”
Certainly there was no coal in the house, but there were three sick people. The father swept snow in the streets to make a few pennies, for in this cold weather the mill where he worked was not running.
There was complete wretchedness, frightful wretchedness, irreparable wretchedness. And yet our little lad sang while he trotted behind our carriage, just as his father whistled as he swept the snow.
Is not misery the school, the sadly sovereign school, of philosophy?