Droll Stories, vol 3 | Page 8

if they have not the whole of a man
they have none of him. Be sure, also, that there are cats, who, knitting
their eyebrows, complain that a man does but a hundred things for them,
for the purpose of finding out if there be a hundred, at first seeing that
in everything they desire the most thorough spirit of conquest and
tyranny. And this high jurisprudence has always flourished among the
customs of Paris, where the women receive more wit at their baptism
than in any other place in the world, and thus are mischievous by birth.
But our silversmith, always busy at his work, burnishing gold and
melting silver, had no time to warm his love or to burnish and make
shine his fantasies, nor to show off, gad about, waste his time in
mischief, or to run after she-males. Now seeing that in Paris virgins do
not fall into the beds of young men any more than roast pheasants into
the streets, not even when the young men are royal silversmiths, the
Touranian had the advantage of having, as I have before observed, a
continent member in his shirt. However, the good man could not close
his eyes to the advantage of nature with which were so amply furnished
the ladies with whom he dilated upon the value of his jewels. So it was

that, after listening to the gentle discourse of the ladies, who tried to
wheedle and to fondle him to obtain a favour from him, the good
Touranian would return to his home, dreamy as a poet, wretched as a
restless cuckoo, and would say to himself, "I must take to myself a wife.
She would keep the house tidy, keep the plates hot for me, fold the
clothes for me, sew my buttons on, sing merrily about the house, tease
me to do everything according to her taste, would say to me as they all
say to their husbands when they want a jewel, 'Oh, my own pet, look at
this, is it not pretty?' And every one in the quarter will think of my wife
and then of me, and say 'There's a happy man.' Then the getting married,
the bridal festivities, to fondle Madame Silversmith, to dress her
superbly, give her a fine gold chain, to worship her from crown to toe,
to give her the whole management of the house, except the cash, to give
her a nice little room upstairs, with good windows, pretty, and hung
around with tapestry, with a wonderful chest in it and a fine large bed,
with twisted columns and curtains of yellow silk. He would buy her
beautiful mirrors, and there would always be a dozen or so of children,
his and hers, when he came home to greet him." Then wife and children
would vanish into the clouds. He transferred his melancholy imaginings
to fantastic designs, fashioned his amorous thoughts into grotesque
jewels that pleased their buyers well, they not knowing how many
wives and children were lost in the productions of the good man, who,
the more talent he threw into his art, the more disordered he became.
Now if God had not had pity upon him, he would have quitted this
world without knowing what love was, but would have known it in the
other without that metamorphosis of the flesh which spares it,
according to Monsieur Plato, a man of some authority, but who, not
being a Christian, was wrong. But, there! these preparatory digressions
are the idle digressions and fastidious commentaries which certain
unbelievers compel a man to wind about a tale, swaddling clothes about
an infant when it should run about stark naked. May the great devil
give them a clyster with his red-hot three- pronged fork. I am going on
with my story now without further circumlocution.
This is what happened to the silversmith in the one-and-fortieth year of
his age. One Sabbath-day while walking on the left bank of the Seine,
led by an idle fancy, he ventured as far as that meadow which has since

been called the Pre-aux-Clercs and which at that time was in the
domain of the abbey of St. Germain, and not in that of the University.
There, still strolling on the Touranian found himself in the open fields,
and there met a poor young girl who, seeing that he was well-dressed,
curtsied to him, saying "Heaven preserve you, monseigneur." In saying
this her voice had such sympathetic sweetness that the silversmith felt
his soul ravished by this feminine melody, and conceived an affection
for the girl, the more so as, tormented with ideas of marriage as he was,
everything was favourable thereto. Nevertheless, as he had passed the
wench by he dared not go back, because he was as timid as a