THE MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN (Complete Edition: Volumes 1-5). Alexandre Dumas
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On the trunk of a tree overthrown by a storm in Meudon Woods a man was seated.
Under his grizzled wig he showed a mild and shrewd visage. His brown coat was of good cloth, as were his breeches; and his gray waistcoat was worked on the flaps. His gray cotton stockings imprisoned well-made and muscular legs; his buckled shoes, though dusty in patches, had been washed at the top by the morning dews.
Near him, on the trunk, was a green box, open and stuffed with freshly gathered plants. Between his legs he held a cane with a crutch handle, ending in a sort of pick.
He was eating a piece of bread, and tossing crumbs to the wild birds, which flew down on the pieces and took them off to their nooks with joyful peeps.
Suddenly he heard hurried steps, and seeing on looking up, a young man with disquieting aspect, he rose. He buttoned up his coat and closed his overcoat above it.
His air was so calming that the intruder on his peace came to a stop and doffed his hat.
It was Gilbert. Gilbert, much the worse for his roaming the woods through the night since he had fled from Luciennes in order not to lose his freedom.
Remarking this sudden timidity, the old man appeared to be put at ease by it.
"Do you want to speak to me, my friend?" he asked, smiling, and laying the piece of bread on the tree.
"Yes, for I see that you are throwing away bread on the birds as though it were not written that the Lord provides for the sparrows."
"The Lord provides," returned the old gentleman, "no doubt, young man; but the hand of man is one of the means. You are wrong if you said that as a reproach, for never is cast-away bread—in the desert or on the crowded street—lost to living creatures. Here, the birds get it; there, the beggars."
"Though this be the wilds, I know of a man who wants to dispute that bread with the birds," said Gilbert, though struck by the soft and penetrating voice of the stranger.
"Are you the man—and are you hungered?"
"Sharply so, and if you would allow——"
With eager compassion the gentleman took up the crust, but, suddenly reflecting, he scrutinized Gilbert with a quick yet profound glance.
Gilbert was not so like a starving man that the meditation was warranted. His dress was decent, though earth-stained in places. His linen was white, for he had at Versailles, on the previous evening, changed his shirt out of his parcel; but from its dampness, it was visible that he had slept in the woods. In all this and his white and taper hands, the man of vague reverie was revealed rather than the hard worker.
Not wanting for tact, Gilbert understood the distrust and hesitation of the stranger in respect to him, and hastened to annul conjectures which might be unfavorable.
"After twelve hours, hunger begins, and I have eaten nothing for four-and-twenty," he observed.
The truth of the words was supported by his emotion, the quaver of his voice and the pallor of his face. The old gentleman therefore ceased to waver, or rather to fear. He held out not only the bread, but a handkerchief in which he was carrying cherries.
"I thank you," said Gilbert, repulsing the fruit gently; "only the bread, which is ample."
Breaking the crust in two, he took one portion and pushed back the other. Then he sat on the grass, a yard or two away from the old gentlemen, who viewed him with increasing wonder. The meal did not last long, as the bread was scant and Gilbert hungry. With no words did the observer trouble him, but continued his mute and furtive examination while apparently only attending to his plants and flowers in the box.
But seeing that Gilbert was going to drink at a pool, he quickly called out:
"Do not drink that water, young man. It is infected by the detritus of the plants dead last year and by the frog-spawn swimming on the surface. You had better take some cherries, as they will quench thirst better than water. I invite you to partake as I see you are not an importunate guest."
"It is true, sir; importunity is the opposite of my nature. I fear nothing so much as being importunate, as I have just been proving at Versailles."
"Oh! so you come from Versailles?" queried the stranger, looking hard at him. "A rich place, where only the proud or the poor die of want."
"I am both, sir."
"Have you quarreled with your master?"
"I have no master."
"That is a very lofty answer," said the other, putting away the plants in the box, while regarding the young man.
"Still it is exact."
"No, young man, for everybody has a master here, as we all suffer the domination of a higher power. Some are ruled by men, some by principles: and the sternest masters are not always those who order or strike with the human voice or hand."
"I confess I am ruled by principles," replied Gilbert. "They are the only masters which the mind may acknowledge without shame."
"Oh, those are your principles, are they? You seem very young to have any settled principles."
"I am young but I have studied, or rather read a little in such works as 'On the Inequality of Classes,' and 'The Social Contract;' out of them comes all my knowledge, and perhaps all my dreams."
These words kindled a flame in the hearer's eyes; he so started that he broke a flower rebellious to being packed away.
"These may not be your principles, but they are Rousseau's."
"Dry stuff for a youth," said the other; "sad matter for contemplation at twenty years of age; a dry and scentless flower for imagination in the springtide of life."
"Misfortune ripens a man unseasonably, sir."
"As you study the philosopher of Geneva, do you make a personal allusion there?"
"I do not know anything about him," rejoined Gilbert, candidly.
"Know, young man, that he is an unhappy creature." With a sigh he said it.
"Impossible! Jean Jacques Rousseau unhappy? Is there no justice above more than on earth? The man unhappy who has consecrated his life to the welfare of the race."
"I plainly see that you do not know him; so let us rather speak of yourself. Whither are you going?"
"To Paris. Do you belong there?"
"So far as I am living there, but I was not born in it. Why the question?"
"It is attached to the subject we were talking of; if you live in Paris, you may have seen the Philosopher Rousseau."
"Oh, yes, I have seen him."
"He is looked at as he passes along—they point to him as the benefactor of humanity?"
"No; the children follow him, and, encouraged by their parents, throw stones at him."
"Gracious! still he has the consolation of being rich," said Gilbert, with painful stupefaction.
"Like yourself, he often wonders where the next meal is coming from."
"But, though poor, he is powerful, respected and well considered?"
"He does not know of a night, in lying down, that he will not wake in the Bastille."
"How he must hate men!"
"He neither loves not hates them: they fill him with disgust, that is all."
"I do not understand how he can not hate those who ill use him," exclaimed Gilbert.
"Rousseau has always been free, and strong enough to rely on himself. Strength and liberty make men meek and good; it is only weakness and slavery which create the wicked."
"I guessed this as you explain it; and that