The Salt Smugglers (20 page)

« And this how people write history these days! » he sneered.
⁹

You'll probably tell me that I should have just borrowed the history of the abbé de Bucquoy from M. de Montmerqué or some other bibliophile. To which I would reply that a serious bibliophile never lends his books. In fact he does not even read his books, for fear of wearing them out.

There was a famous bibliophile who had a friend; — this friend had fallen in love with a
sextodecimo
edition of Anacreon, printed in Lyon in the sixteenth century and bound together with the poetry of Bion, Moschus, and Sappho. The owner of the book would not have defended his wife as vigorously as this
sexto
. Every time his friend dropped by for lunch, he would cross through the library with a studied indifference, casting a secret covetous glance at the
Anacreon
.

One day he said to his friend, « What are you planning to do with that poorly bound sixteenmo with the cut pages? I'd be happy to trade you the Italian version of the
Dream of Polyphile
in the Aldine
editio princeps
, with engravings by Bellini. The book is only of interest to me because I want to round out my collection of Greek poets. »

The owner merely smiled.

« What else could you want in exchange?

— Nothing, I don't like swapping books.

— What if I also threw in my
Romaunt of the Rose
, with annotations in the hand of Marguerite de Valois?

— Nothing doing ... Let's just drop the subject.

— You know I'm not a rich man, but I'd gladly offer a thousand francs.

— Forget it . . .

— Well, fifteen hundred then.

— Money matters shouldn't come between friends. »

The bibliophile's resistance only served to whet the desire of his friend. After several more offers, all of which were rejected, the friend, unable to contain his passion any longer, blurted out:

« Well, I shall have the book at your death, when they sell off your estate.

— At my death? But I'm younger than you are . . .

— That may be, but you have a wicked cough.

— And what about your sciatica?

— You can make it to eighty with sciatica! »

I'll stop here. This discussion could easily be a scene out of Molière or one of those illustrations of human folly that only Erasmus was capable of treating in light-hearted fashion . . . The long and the short of it was that the bibliophile died several months later and his friend was able to get the book for six hundred francs.

« And to think that he refused to sell it to me for fifteen hundred», he would inevitably remark when showing off his treasure. But, once one got off the topic of this book (which had been the only cloud in their fifty-year friendship), his eyes would mist with tears as he affectionately remembered his fine friend.

This anecdote may serve a useful purpose in an age when the art of collecting, be it of books, autographs, or objets d'art, is no longer generally understood in France. It may also explain some of the difficulties I encountered in trying to procure the
Abbé de Bucquoy
.

Last Saturday, at seven in the evening, I returned to Paris from Soissons, — where I had been looking for further information on the Bucquoys, — in order to be present at Techener's for the auctioning off of the library of M. Motteley, — an auction that has been going on for some time now and that was the object of an article in the
Indépendance de Bruxelles
the day before yesterday.

An auction of books or of curiosities holds the same attraction for the collector as the green felt of a gaming table holds for the gambler. The paddle with which the auctioneer pushes the books toward the buyers and rakes in the money makes this comparison all the more exact.

The bidding was lively. There was one book alone that went for six hundred francs. At a quarter of ten, the
History of the abbé de Bucquoy
was put on the auction block at twenty-five francs . . . When the price reached fifty-five francs, the regulars and even M. Techener himself called it quits: there was just one other person left bidding against me.

At sixty-five francs, my competitor bowed out.

The mallet of the auctioneer
¹⁰
awarded me the book for sixty-six francs.

I subsequently had to come up with another three francs and twenty centimes to pay the auction fee.

I have since learned that my competitor was a representative from the Bibliothèque Nationale.

The book is thus mine; I am now in a position to continue on with my work.

Yours, etc.

GÉRARD DE NERVAL

CONTINUATION AND CONCLUSION OF THE FOREWORD. — SAINT-MÉDARD THE ARCHIVES. — THE LONGUEVAL DE BUCQUOY CASTLE. — REFLECTIONS, ETC.

It takes only an hour and a half to walk from Ver to Dammartin. — I set off one fine morning, and was delighted by the ten-league horizon stretching out on all sides of the once redoubtable old castle that dominates the countryside. Its tall towers have been demolished, but you can still see the original location of its entranceway and courtyards on a raised site that has since been replanted with rows of lime trees to create an esplanade. The remaining moats have been safely hedged
off with thorn bushes and belladonna, — although an archery range has been set up in one of them just on the outskirts of town.

Sylvain has returned home; — leaving me to continue on toward Soissons through the forest of Villers-Cotterets; all the leaves are down, but here and there one comes across green patches of pine that have been planted in an effort to reforest the huge areas that had formerly been
thinned out
here. — That evening, I arrived in Soissons, the celebrated
Augusta Suessonium
where the destiny of France was decided in the 6th century.

It was after Clovis triumphed at the battle of Soissons that this Frankish king underwent the humiliation of having to give up the golden vase he had acquired during the sack of Reims. Perhaps he thought that by rendering this sacred and precious object he might make his peace with the Church. But one of his warrior chieftains insisted that this vase be portioned out along with the rest of the booty that was to be shared in common, — equality being one of the cardinal principles of these Frankish tribes who had originated in Asia. — The golden vase was therefore broken up in parts, as was the head of this egalitarian chieftain when it eventually fell victim to Clovis's hatchet (or
francisque
). Such was the origin of our monarchy.

Soissons, a fortified town of the second class, contains a number of curious antiquities. The cathedral, whose tall spire commands some seven leagues of surrounding countryside, also boasts a lovely Rubens behind its high altar. The original cathedral is far more curious with its lacy, festooned steeples, but unfortunately only its façade and towers still stand. There is another church that they are in the process of restoring with that exquisite stone and Roman mortar which are the pride of this region. I stopped to chat with some of the stone carvers who were having lunch around a fire of briar roots and who seemed to me to know their art history extremely well. They lamented the fact (as I had) that Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, the town's original cathedral, was not being restored and that they were instead repairing this dreary church, — which had apparently been deemed more
commodious
. In these days of lukewarm faith, the flock of the faithful can only be attracted by a certain level of elegance and comfort.

The stone carvers told me that
Saint-Médard
was worth visiting, — it was just outside of town, beyond the bridge and the railroad station on the Aisne. The modern part of it has been remodeled into an establishment for the deaf-and-dumb. But there was a surprise in store for me. First, the crumbling tower where Abelard had briefly been held prisoner. You can still see the Latin inscriptions scrawled on the walls in his own hand. — Then, there were the huge vaults that have only recently been cleared out and where they discovered the tomb of Louis the Fair, — a kind of large stone vat that reminded me of tombs of Egypt.

Near these vaults, which are made up of underground cells with niches here and there as in Roman catacombs, one can see the prison where this same emperor was held by his children, the ledge where he slept on a mat, as well as various other details, all perfectly preserved because the limestone caverns, together with fossilized debris that sealed off these underground chambers, kept the humidity out. All they had to do was clear away the debris, — an operation that
is still underway at the present, with new discoveries being made every day. It's a Carlovingian Pompeii.

As I left Saint-Médard, I strayed along the banks of the Aisne which flows among the reddish stands of osier and the naked poplars. The weather was splendid, the grass was green, and two kilometers downstream I found myself in a village by the name of Cuffy, which provides an excellent view of Soissons with its towers in jagged profile and its Flemish roofs flanked by stone stairs.

They serve a refreshing local white wine in this village, as bubbly as real champagne.

And indeed, the lay of the land here is virtually identical to Épernay. It's an outcropping of the nearby Champagne region, and the southern exposure of its slopes makes for red and white wines that are fairly tangy. All the houses are built out of millstones that have been perforated like sponges by snails and tendrils. The church is old, but rustic. There is a glassworks at the top of the hill.

It was no longer possible to lose my way back to Soissons. I returned to town to continue my research at the local library and archives. — I found nothing in the library that was not equally available in Paris. The archives are at the subprefecture and probably contain some interesting items, given how far the town dates back. The secretary said to me, « Sir, our archives are up there in the attic, but they haven't been sorted into any kind of order.

— Why not?

— Because the town has allocated no funds for this purpose. Most of the items are in Gothic and Latin . . . We'd need to have some sort of specialist sent over from Paris. »

It was obviously not going to be easy to dig up anything about the Bucquoys there. As for the current condition of the Soissons archives, let me merely mention it in passing to concerned paleographers. — If France proves to have the resources to pay specialists to examine the memories of its past, I shall be happy to have somehow contributed to the undertaking.

There are so many other things I would have liked to have brought to your attention: the great fair that was at that moment going on in town, the municipal theater (which was playing
Lucrèce Borgia
), the local customs which have been well-preserved in the region, given the absence of any rail links to the rest of the country, — even though the residents of these parts resent this situation. They had hoped the Northern Line would pass through here, for it would have created numerous economic advantages . . . A person of great influence had apparently managed to convince the Strasbourg Line to run its tracks through the surrounding wood-lands (on account of the access to the timber this would permit), — but these are merely local suppositions and rumors whose truth cannot be substantiated.

I have finally reached the goal of my excursion. The Soissons to Reims diligence dropped me off at Braine. An hour later, I was at Longueval, the cradle of the Bucquoys. Here it was, the home of the lovely Angélique and the chief residence of her father — who seems to have had as many castles as his ancestor, the great count de Bucquoy, conquered during the wars of Bohemia. — The towers have all crumbled, as at Dammartin. But the underground vaults still exist. The site of the castle, which dominates the village below in its narrow gorge, is covered with new buildings, all built
within the last seven or eight years (which is when the ruins were finally sold). Having thus soaked up enough local color to make any novel appealing or any work of history credible, I proceeded on to Château-Thierry, site of the celebrated statue of La Fontaine, who stands there dreaming on the banks of the Marne, a stone's throw from the tracks of the Strasbourg Line.

« And then . . . (This is how Diderot began one of his stories, someone is bound to remind me.)

— Go on!

— You have merely imitated Diderot.

— Who had imitated Sterne . . .

— Who had imitated Swift.

— Who had imitated Rabelais.

— Who had imitated Merlinus Coccaius . . .

— Who had imitated Petronius . . .

— Who had imitated Lucian. And Lucian had imitated numerous others . . . And most particularly, the author of the
Odyssey
who led his hero around the Mediterranean for ten years before finally bringing him home to that fabled Ithaca, whose queen, hounded as she was by some fifty suitors, spent every night undoing what she had woven that day.