The Brotherhood of Consolation | Page 4

gave
way to a double contemplation,--of Paris, and of himself! The shadows
deepened, the lights shone out afar, but still he did not move, carried
along as he was on the current of a meditation, such as comes to many
of us, big with the future and rendered solemn by the past.
After a while he heard two persons coming towards him, whose voices
had caught his attention on the bridge which joins the Ile de la Cite
with the quai de la Tournelle. These persons no doubt thought
themselves alone, and therefore spoke louder than they would have
done in more frequented places. The voices betrayed a discussion
which apparently, from the few words that reached the ear of the
involuntary listener, related to a loan of money. Just as the pair
approached the quay, one of them, dressed like a working man, left the

other with a despairing gesture. The other stopped and called after him,
saying:--
"You have not a sou to pay your way across the bridge. Take this," he
added, giving the man a piece of money; "and remember, my friend,
that God Himself is speaking to us when a good thought comes into our
hearts."
This last remark made the dreamer at the parapet quiver. The man who
made it little knew that, to use a proverbial expression, he was killing
two birds with one stone, addressing two miseries,--a working life
brought to despair, a suffering soul without a compass, the victim of
what Panurge's sheep call progress, and what, in France, is called
equality. The words, simple in themselves, became sublime from the
tone of him who said them, in a voice that possesses a spell. Are there
not, in fact, some calm and tender voices that produce upon us the same
effect as a far horizon outlook?
By his dress the dreamer knew him to be a priest, and he saw by the
last gleams of the fading twilight a white, august, worn face. The sight
of a priest issuing from the beautiful cathedral of Saint- Etienne in
Vienna, bearing the Extreme Unction to a dying person, determined the
celebrated tragic author Werner to become a Catholic. Almost the same
effect was produced upon the dreamer when he looked upon the man
who had, all unknowing, given him comfort; on the threatening horizon
of his future he saw a luminous space where shone the blue of ether,
and he followed that light as the shepherds of the Gospel followed the
voices that cried to them: "Christ, the Lord, is born this day."
The man who had said the beneficent words passed on by the wall of
the cathedral, taking, as a result of chance, which often leads to great
results, the direction of the street from which the dreamer came, and to
which he was now returning, led by the faults of his life.
This dreamer was named Godefroid. Whoever reads this history will
understand the reasons which lead the writer to use the Christian names
only of some who are mentioned in it. The motives which led
Godefroid, who lived in the quarter of the Chaussee-d'Antin, to the
neighborhood of Notre-Dame at such an hour were as follows:--
The son of a retail shopkeeper, whose economy enabled him to lay by a
sort of fortune, he was the sole object of ambition to his father and
mother, who dreamed of seeing him a notary in Paris. For this reason,

at the age of seven, he was sent to an institution, that of the Abbe
Liautard, to be thrown among children of distinguished families who,
during the Empire, chose this school for the education of their sons in
preference to the lyceums, where religion was too much overlooked.
Social inequalities were not noticeable among schoolmates; but in 1821,
his studies being ended, Godefroid, who was then with a notary,
became aware of the distance that separated him from those with whom
he had hitherto lived on familiar terms.
Obliged to go through the law school, he there found himself among a
crowd of the sons of the bourgeoisie, who, without fortunes to inherit
or hereditary distinctions, could look only to their own personal merits
or to persistent toil. The hopes that his father and mother, then retired
from business, placed upon him stimulated the youth's vanity without
exciting his pride. His parents lived simply, like the thrifty Dutch,
spending only one fourth of an income of twelve thousand francs. They
intended their savings, together with half their capital, for the purchase
of a notary's practice for their son. Subjected to the rule of this
domestic economy, Godefroid found his immediate state so
disproportioned to the visions of himself and his parents, that he grew
discouraged. In some feeble natures discouragement turns to envy;
others,