Droll Stories, vol 3 | Page 7

seeing that
the silversmith had great powerful nervous arms, so wonderfully strong
that when he closed his fist the cleverest trick of the roughest fellow
could not open it; from which you may be sure that whatever he got
hold of he stuck to. More than this, he had teeth fit to masticate iron, a
stomach to dissolve it, a duodenum to digest it, a sphincter to let it out
again without tearing, and shoulders that would bear a universe upon

them, like that pagan gentleman to whom the job was confided, and
whom the timely arrival of Jesus Christ discharged from the duty. He
was, in fact, a man made with one stroke, and they are the best, for
those who have to be touched are worth nothing, being patched up and
finished at odd times. In short, Master Anseau was a thorough man,
with a lion's face, and under his eyebrows a glance that would melt his
gold if the fire of his forge had gone out, but a limpid water placed in
his eyes by the great Moderator of all things tempered this great ardour,
without which he would have burnt up everything. Was he not a
splendid specimen of a man?
With such a sample of his cardinal virtues, some persist in asking why
the good silversmith remained as unmarried as an oyster, seeing that
these properties of nature are of good use in all places. But these
opinionated critics, do they know what it is to love? Ho! Ho! Easy! The
vocation of a lover is to go, to come, to listen, to watch, to hold his
tongue, to talk, to stick in a corner, to make himself big, to make
himself little, to agree, to play music, to drudge, to go to the devil
wherever he may be, to count the gray peas in the dovecote, to find
flowers under the snow, to say paternosters to the moon, to pat the cat
and pat the dog, to salute the friends, to flatter the gout, or the cold of
the aunt, to say to her at opportune moments "You have good looks,
and will yet write the epitaph of the human race." To please all the
relations, to tread on no one's corns, to break no glasses, to waste no
breath, to talk nonsense, to hold ice in his hand, to say, "This is good!"
or, "Really, madam, you are very beautiful so." And to vary that in a
hundred different ways. To keep himself cool, to bear himself like a
nobleman, to have a free tongue and a modest one, to endure with a
smile all the evils the devil may invent on his behalf, to smother his
anger, to hold nature in control, to have the finger of God, and the tail
of the devil, to reward the mother, the cousin, the servant; in fact, to put
a good face on everything. In default of which the female escapes and
leaves you in a fix, without giving a single Christian reason. In fact, the
lover of the most gentle maid that God ever created in a good-tempered
moment, had he talked like a book, jumped like a flea, turned about like
dice, played like King David, and built for the aforesaid woman the
Corinthian order of the columns of the devil, if he failed in the essential

and hidden thing which pleases his lady above all others, which often
she does not know herself and which he has need to know, the lass
leaves him like a red leper. She is quite right. No one can blame her for
so doing. When this happens some men become ill- tempered, cross,
and more wretched than you can possibly imagine. Have not many of
them killed themselves through this petticoat tyranny? In this matter the
man distinguishes himself from the beast, seeing that no animal ever
yet lost his senses through blighted love, which proves abundantly that
animals have no souls. The employment of a lover is that of a
mountebank, of a soldier, of a quack, of a buffoon, of a prince, of a
ninny, of a king, of an idler, of a monk, of a dupe, of a blackguard, of a
liar, of a braggart, of a sycophant, of a numskull, of a frivolous fool, of
a blockhead, of a know-nothing, of a knave. An employment from
which Jesus abstained, in imitation of whom folks of great
understanding likewise disdain it; it is a vocation in which a man of
worth is required to spend above all things, his time, his life, his blood,
his best words, besides his heart, his soul, and his brain; things to which
the women are cruelly partial, because directly their tongues begin to
go, they say among themselves that