Laura

W
HEN I MET M. HARTZ
, he was a naturalist and dealer who ran his business affairs in a quiet way, selling minerals, insects or plants to collectors. Entrusted with an errand for him, I had been taking little interest in the precious objects which cluttered his shop when, while chatting to him about the mutual friend who had put us in touch, and mechanically touching an egg-shaped stone which lay within my reach, I dropped it. It split into two almost equal halves, which I hastened to pick up, begging the shopkeeper to forgive my clumsiness.

Do not distress yourself, he replied kindly; it was
destined
to be broken with a blow from a hammer. It is a geode of no great value and, moreover, isn’t everyone curious to see the inside of a geode?

I do not know exactly what a geode is, I told him, and I have no desire to know.

Why? he asked; are you not an artist?

Yes, I try to be; but the critics do not want artists giving the impression that they know anything outside their art, and the public do not like the artist to appear to know any more than they do about anything at all.

I think the public, the critic and yourself are all
mistaken
. The artist was born to be a traveller; everything is a journey for his spirit, and without leaving his fireside or the shady spots in his garden, he is entitled to range over all the highways and byways of the world. Give him
anything
to read or look at, be it a lively study or dry as dust; he will be passionate about anything that is new to him.
He will naively be astonished not to have yet lived like that, and he can translate the pleasure of his discovery into any form at all, without ceasing to be himself. The artist is no better able to choose his type of life and the nature of his impressions than are other human beings. From outside, he receives sun and rain, shadow and light, like everyone else. Do not ask him to create beyond the confines of what strikes him. He is subject to the action of the surroundings he passes through, and it is very good that it is so, for were that action to cease he would be extinguished and become sterile. So, went on M. Hartz, you have a perfect right to educate yourself, if it entertains you and if the
opportunity
presents itself. There is no danger therein for anyone who is truly an artist.

In the same way that a true scholar can be an artist, if this excursion into the realm of art does not harm his serious studies?

Yes, replied the honest shopkeeper; the entire
question
is to be something determinate and somewhat solid in one direction or the other. That, I agree, is not given to everyone! And, he added with a kind of sigh, if you doubt yourself, do not look too long at that geode.

Is it some stone with a magical influence?

All stones have that influence, but above all geodes, in my opinion.

You have aroused my curiosity … So, what do you mean by “geode”?

In mineralogy, a “geode” means any hollow stone whose interior is lined with crystals or incrustations; and any mineral whose interior contains voids or little caverns, which you can see in this one, is called a geodic stone.

He gave me a magnifying glass, and I saw that these voids did indeed look like mysterious grottoes furnished with stalactites of extraordinary brilliance; then,
considering
the geode as a whole and several others which the shopkeeper handed me, I saw peculiarities of shape and colour which, enlarged by the imagination, constituted Alpine areas, deep ravines, grandiose mountains, glaciers, everything that makes up an imposing, sublime natural tableau.

Everyone has noticed this, I said to M. Hartz; a
hundred
times in my mind, I myself have compared the pebble I picked up at my feet to the mountain looming up above my head, and found that the specimen was a sort of summary of the mass; but, today, I am more
powerfully
struck by it than before, and these choice crystals you show me put me in mind of a fantastical world where all is transparency and crystallisation. It is not a matter of confusion or vague bedazzlement, as I imagined when reading those fairytales in which people explore diamond palaces. I see here that nature works better than fairies. These transparent bodies are grouped in such a way as to produce slender shadows, smooth reflections, and the fusion of shades does not prevent the composition from being logical and harmonious. Truly, this enchants me and makes me eager to look in your shop.

No, said M. Hartz, taking the rock specimens from my hands, you must not travel that road too quickly: you see here a man who was almost a victim of the crystal!

A victim of the crystal? What a strange conjunction of words!

It is because in those days I was neither yet learned nor
an artist that I encountered the danger … But it would be too long a story, and you do not have the time to listen to it.

No sooner said than done, I cried out, I adore stories whose titles I do not understand. I have all the time in the world, tell it to me!

I would tell it very badly, replied the shopkeeper, but I wrote it down in my youth.

And, extracting a yellowed manuscript from the depths of a drawer, he read me the following:

I was nineteen years old when I was appointed assistant to the deputy-assistant curator of the natural history institute, mineralogy section, in the learned and famous town of Fischausen, in Fischemburg. My office, which was entirely pointless, had been created for me by one of my uncles, the director of the establishment, in the judicious hope that, having absolutely nothing to do there, I would be in my element and could wondrously develop the remarkable aptitude I had demonstrated for utter idleness.

My first exploration of the long gallery containing the collection produced in me only a frightful sinking feeling. What! I was going to live here, in the midst of these inert things, in company with these innumerable pebbles of every shape, size and colour, all as dumb as each other, and all labelled with barbarous names, of which I
promised
myself never to remember a single one!

My pleasant existence had been no more than truancy in the most literal meaning of the word, and my uncle, who had noticed the shrewdness with which, from early childhood, I had found the wild blackberries and green
dwarf apple trees behind fences, and the patience with which I had ferreted around in the hedge before pouncing on the nests of thrushes and linnets, had flattered himself that sooner or later he would see the instincts of a
serious
nature-lover awaken in me; but, as subsequently I had been the most able gymnast at school when it came to scaling a wall and escaping, my uncle wanted to punish me a little by shutting me away in the austere
contemplation
of the globe’s bones, making me, moreover, regard the study of plants and animals as future compensation.

What a long way it was, from this dead world to which I was consigned, to the aimless and nameless delights of my wanderings! I spent several weeks seated in a corner, as gloomy as the columns of prismatic basalt which made up the monument’s peristyle, as sad as the bench made from fossilised oysters, at which I saw my patrons cast glances filled with fatherly affection.

Each day, I listened to lectures; that is, a series of words that furnished me with no meaning and which returned to me in dreams like cabbalistic incantations; or else I attended geology classes given by my worthy uncle. The dear man would not have lacked for eloquence, had ungrateful nature not afflicted its most fervent adorer with an insurmountable stammer. His well-meaning colleagues assured him that his lecture was all the more valuable, and that his infirmity had the useful feature of
exercising
a mnemotechnic influence on the audience, who were enchanted to hear the principal syllables of the words repeated several times over.

As for me, I escaped the benefits of this method by
regularly
falling asleep as soon as each session began. From
time to time, a sharp explosion of the old man’s halting voice would make me leap up on my bench; I would
half-open
my eyes and, through the clouds of my lethargy, would spot his bald pate, gleaming in the light from a stray May sunbeam, or his hand, cupping a fragment of rock which he seemed to want to throw at my head. I quickly closed my eyes again and went back to sleep on these consoling words: “This, gentlemen, is a well-determined specimen of the material which forms the subject of this lesson. The chemical analysis gives, etc.”

Sometimes, a neighbour with a cold would also catch me unawares by blowing his nose with a trumpeting sound. Then I would see my uncle drawing the outlines of geological events in chalk on the enormous blackboard behind him. He turned his back to the audience, and the oversized collar of his suit, cut in the
directoire
style, pushed up his ears in the strangest way. Then, everything would become confused in my brain, the corners of his drawing with those of his person, and I came to see in him nothing but insane straightenings-out and discordant
stratifications
. I had strange fantasies bordering on hallucination. One day, when he was giving us a lecture on volcanoes, I imagined I could see, in the gaping mouths of certain old adepts who were arranged around him, an equal number of little craters about to erupt, and to me the sound of the applause appeared to be the signal for those
subterranean
detonations which throw out blazing stones and vomit incandescent lava.

My Uncle Tungstenius (the
nom de guerre
which had replaced his family name) was rather malicious beneath his apparent bonhomie. He had sworn that he would get
to the bottom of my resistance, whilst appearing not to have noticed it. One day, he came up with the idea of making me undergo a formidable ordeal, which was to place me once again in the presence of my cousin Laura.

Laura was the daughter of my Aunt Gertrude, sister of my late father, who was Tungstenius’ younger brother. Laura was an orphan, although her father was alive. He was an active trader who, following some second-rate
business
affairs, had left for Italy, from where he had passed into Turkey. There, it was said, he had found the means to make himself wealthy; but you were never sure of
anything
with him. He wrote very little, and reappeared at such rare intervals, that we scarcely knew him. On the other hand, his daughter and I had known each other a great deal, for we had been brought up together in the country; then the time had come to separate us and send us to boarding school and we had forgotten each other, or very nearly.

I had left a thin, yellow child; now I found a girl of
sixteen
, slender, rose-pink, with magnificent hair, azure eyes, a smile filled with the incomparable graces of gaiety and goodness. I don’t know if she was pretty; she was
delectable
and my surprise was so dazzling that it plunged me into the most complete idiocy.

Now then, Cousin Alexis, she said to me, what are you doing, and how do you spend your time here?

I dearly wish I could have found an answer other than the one I gave her; but for all my searching and
stammering
, I had to confess that I spent my time doing nothing.

What! she exclaimed with deep astonishment,
nothing
? Is it possible to live without doing anything, unless
one is ill? Are you ill then, my poor Alexis? And yet you don’t look as if you are.

I had to confess once again that I was perfectly well.

Then, she said, touching my forehead with her sweet little finger, which wore a pretty ring of white cornelian, your sickness is here: you are bored in town.

That is the truth, Laura, I cried out fervently; I miss the countryside and the time when we were so happy together.

I was proud to have at last found such a fine retort; but the peal of laughter that greeted it sent a mountain of confusion tumbling down upon my heart.

I believe you are mad, said Laura. You may miss the countryside, but not the happiness we savoured together; for we always went our own ways, you pillaging, picking, spoiling everything, and me making little gardens where I loved to see things germinate, grow green and blossom. The countryside was a paradise for me, because I love it for its own sake; as for you, it is your freedom for which you weep, and I feel sorry for you, not knowing how to occupy yourself as a consolation. This proves that you understand nothing of the beauty of nature, and that you are not worthy of freedom.

I do not know if Laura was repeating a phrase
composed
by our uncle and learned by heart; but she reeled it off so well that I was crushed. I fled, hid myself in a corner, and dissolved into tears.

In the days that followed, Laura did not speak to me again except to say hello and goodnight, and I was stunned to hear her talking about me in Italian with her governess. As they were constantly looking at me, it clearly
did concern my poor self; but what were they saying? Sometimes it seemed to me that one of them spoke of me with contempt, and the other defended me with an air of compassion. However, as they often changed roles, it was impossible for me to know which of them really did feel sorry for me and sought to make excuses for me.

I remained living with my uncle, that is to say in a part of the establishment where he had assigned me a little pavilion, separated from the one he lived in by the
botanical
gardens. Laura spent her holidays with him, and I saw her at meal times. I found her always busy, either reading, embroidering, painting flowers or making music. I saw clearly that she was never bored; but I dared not speak to her again and ask her the secret of taking pleasure in any and every occupation.

At the end of a fortnight, she left Fischausen for
Fischerburg
, where she was to stay with her governess and an elderly female cousin who took the place of her mother. I had not dared break the ice; but the blow had hit home, and I set to studying ardently, without arguing, examining, selecting or reasoning, every element of the programme devised by Uncle Tungstenius.