En la ciudad sin límites

A few years ago at this airport I happened to catch an interview with a famous actor in his late thirties who proudly declared that he no longer listened to popular music.  One may suppose that statements like these are made to signal the person’s entry into the world of adult values where the bubblegum sensibilities of youth are replaced by stiff drinks and Chopin études.  But this actor, who has never won any accolades for his work, was clearly indicating that his good looks were no longer important: he wanted serious roles about serious life problems.  No more action adventures; no more slasher flicks; no more comedy; no more preposterously overplotted thrillers.  What remains from the spectrum of opportunities is essentially twofold (let us omit, for now, cartoon voiceovers): period pieces, usually royalty getting the better of other royalty, and the most fundamental category of them all, that of drama itself.  Yes, all these famous faces went or should have gone to drama school and learned the fine craft of beseeching, antagonizing, brooding, and door slamming.  It was precisely drama that bored me silly as a child and teenager because it necessarily involves problems and relationships I could not possibly have understood at the time.  And melodrama, according to its etymology, was originally the combination of theater and music full of violent gesticulation, overacting and general histrionics.  Nevertheless, when you leave out melodrama’s highs and lows (as this great critic suggests), you have the essence of our daily interaction, our secrets, our compromises, our tragedies.  Not a bad introduction to this recent film.

We find ourselves amidst moneyed Spaniards in Paris, at a family reunion that would seem far more festive were it not for the brief opening scene in which an elderly man is standing on a ledge.  A ledge, mind you, that might be entirely in his mind.  This man is Maximiliano Martini (the late Fernando Fernán−Gómez), a Spanish industrialist.  His French wife of fifty years, Marie (Geraldine Chaplin), senses the end and summons her three sons, Victor (Leonardo Sbaraglia), Luis and Alberto to France to bid farewell to their father.  Once the brothers see their father evincing all the typical signs of dementia, they go about their usual business: Victor finally introduces his half−Argentine girlfriend to the family; Luis brings along his children and shrew of an ex−wife, as well as his much younger girlfriend, the children’s nanny; and, as heir apparent to Max’s company, Alberto is too busy negotiating with Dutch clients to notice Victor’s blatant love affair with his wife.  Apart from one rather restrained scene, there are no outbreaks of vulgarities, smashed china, or nails dug deep into a younger woman’s unwrinkled skin.  The tension mounts and dismounts but never raises its legs in attack.

In fact, one of the film’s main attributes is that it continues to include the small details of the everyday life and struggles of the Martinis without losing sight of the main plotline.  And what might that plotline entail?  Don Maximiliano has something on his mind, which, apparently, works perfectly fine when the nurses aren’t buzzing about.  He choose Victor to confide in because of his three sons, Victor is the dreamer, the most romantic and idealistic. But what he reveals in small hints does not initially lead anywhere.  There is, he is most genuinely convinced, a plot afoot against him.  Most frequently, he speaks of a friend he cannot name: “I cannot tell you who he is.  I cannot tell you where he is.  But we must find him.”  That riddle or an anagram thereof is all Victor, intrigued in his father’s rantings for the simple reason that any cry for help means his father is still mentally fit, gets from Max for the first third of the film.  Then he gets a place (“The Fountain”) and finally a name: Rancel.

It turns out The Fountain was a watering hole for Spanish communists in the 1940s and 1950s.  “Did you know your father was a Communist?” asks Victor’s girlfriend, as if the choice between Franco and the radical left were at all palatable.  After tangling himself in speculation, Victor confronts his mother, who reluctantly admits that Rancel and Max were friends and colleagues when they were both staunch anti−Francoist spies after the Second World War.  They carried messages over the border from France and back for four successful years until, one day, Rancel left on a mission and never returned.  Someone, she whispers, must have tipped off the government.  And who was most likely to have given in to the simple temptations of money and security than the greedy future industrialist himself?  Isn’t our conscience most devastating as we await death’s shroud?

As you might imagine, a twist or two will be provided.  Yet these twists are thankfully not the sort to provoke groans of disbelief or mockery; they are sufficiently logical within the context.  Marie dismisses the whole enterprise by showing Victor a letter where Rancel’s fate is documented.  But then Victor happens to find a book entitled “The City without limits,” and is struck by a few coincidences, including the fact that his father has mentioned the same cryptic phrase among his many other mysteries.  So even if you find the second half of the film a bit odd, it is correct and perfectly paced.  No acceleration, no overdrive, no explosions.  Just some serious problems that require equally serious explanations.

Pushkin, "Медный всадник" (part 2)

The final part of Pushkin's masterpiece ("The Bronze Horseman").  You can read the original here.

And so, gorged on destruction's scent,      
Fatigued by wanton havoc's pace,             
The Neva turned away and bent              
Admiring its own scornful face,                  
And carelessly forsook its loot.               
Then villains in ferocious gangs                
In rampage through the farmland flew,   
They broke, they cut, they crashed, they banged,
They robbed, they shattered, howled and scratched,
Alarm and vulgar violence raged ...
And burdened with their plundered batch 
Pursuit seemed likely, so they waged  
A quick retreat for home to stay,           
And dropped some goods along the way.

Receding water came to pass,                
The bridges drew and our Eugene           
Made haste, his heart like ice hard-cast,   
In hope, in fear, and yearning's plea                    
Up to the newly gentled seas.                  
But full of solemn triumph's burn,              
Malicious waves recoiled and seethed,    
As if below a fiery urn                            
Concealed as yet its foamy teeth,        
The Neva panted in attack.         
A warrior steed from battle back. 
Eugene looked and beheld a boat:        
And running to what he thought lost,    
He beckoned to a ferryman;                
Indifferent, the latter tossed                 
His hand out for a silver piece –               
The price to ride the wave-tops fierce. 

And long upon the stormy crests,           
The grizzled rower fought his way;      
While deep beneath these strata strayed          
Still hiding their emboldened chests         
Some swimmers by our lonely craft –  
And then he reached the shore at last. 
          A well-known street                  
Caught his sad steps                                         
To well-known haunts.  He looked and found      
It all too strange.  A horrid view!          
Before him lay upon the ground                   
All jettisoned, expelled, eschewed,  
Distorted thresholds, roofs collapsed        
And houses razed or drowned in foam,             
Near were – as foulest sight perhaps,            
As if on battlefields he roamed –                  
Cadavers floating.  Our Eugene                  
Moved headlong, mindful of no thing,   
Exhausted from the tortures seen        
And felt, and so himself did bring          
To where an unknown fate detained    
A dooming letter foreordained.             
His paths criss-crossed the suburb map:   
Here was the gulf, and then a house,        
Now what was this? ...                                   
    He stopped, quite rapt.                                
Then turned around and headed back.              
He looked, he walked, then looked agape: 
Here was the land their home once cloaked;    
The willow, too; here were the gates.         
Removed, it seemed.  What of their home? 
To twilight cares was he so yoked            
And on he walked, and on he roamed,          
Conversing loudly with himself,                  
When suddenly, his forehead met              
His open palm,                                         
       And then he laughed.                  
The nighttime gloom beset our town; 
But residents took little sleep,                 
Discussing thoughts that victims keep 
Of yesterday.                                 
       At dawn the light                         
In pale and tired rays came down,        
The wan and quiet capital,                   
Without a trace of recent thrall        
To crimson woe; so evil passed,     
No longer visible at last.                  
The prior order reigned anew.          
And on free streets patrolled the folk, 
Insensible to what occurred;           
High-ranking persons left their homes,
Their nighttime shelter, without a word,           
And went to work.  And pedlars brave 
Began to open basement caves,         
The Neva's burial work undone,           
And swallowed their big minus sums,              
To relocate.  The boats set forth,
From the same gates.                       
       Khvostov the Count,                  
A poet loving satin skies,           
Had sung immortal verse and cried  
Misfortune for the Neva shores.

My poor Eugene, my poor Eugene ...    
His troubled mind could be no match    
For horrid thoughts and awful fears.     
The Neva swirled in noisy crash,      
And mutiny screamed in his ears.          
He wandered off in silent haze,           
And then fell prey to baleful dreams.        
A week was gone, then thirty days,    
Yet he did not revisit home.                
His cozy, empty corner spot               
Was rented out at deadline's stroke      
To an impoverished poet when                  
His landlord thought Eugene done in.     
But for his things Eugene came not.    
So soon did he detest the world,          
So alien now.  All day on foot             
He strayed; and on the pier he curled 
In sleep; on measly alms he fed,                  
His worn-out clothes decayed, in shreds; 
And hateful children pelted him                      
With stones and rocks cast forth in vim.        
It was no rarity to taste                 
The lashes of a passing cab;                 
He never could make out in haste        
The map of streets; to all the drab,      
Faint hum of men he paid no heed;    
Alarm within was noise indeed.           
And so his woeful time dragged on,        
Not here, not there, not of this earth,     
Not human or beast, neither one,    
Not dead man's ghost ...                  
       He found a berth                      
One time upon the Neva's pier.              
The days of summer were few left;          
Unfriendly wind and billows dark               
Splashed on the pier, as foamy sparks    
Still murmured, beating on smooth steps,
An applicant behind the door                      
Of judges unobeyed before.                         
Our poor Eugene awoke to night,           
A darkness thick; here dreary gales       
Attacked with rain, and in this fight           
The sentry called forth the assailed ...   
Eugene jumped up; his memory cropped         
To the last horror.  With due haste                  
He rose, began to roam, then stopped            
Most suddenly.  His eyes gave chase                                 
Around his person while his face             
Was wild in illness unexplained.            
By columns he had left his sleep,                      
Of a large house, above whose wing,      
With elevated paw to roam,              
As if alive, two lions moaned.    
And straight within these blackish heights,   
Above the statue medal-bound,                   
An idol with an outstretched hand             
Upon a bronzy horse was found.

Eugene was startled; curious thoughts 
Appeared to him.  He knew the place   
In which the flood's incessant rage,        
And greedy waves had stacked and fought
Around him like a battle waged.      
He knew the lions, square and who,   
Unmoving, arched his bronzy brow      
To dark's long reign, whose fateful will
Had made a city rise that now               
Each heart and mind ne'er ceased to thrill...
So horrid was he in the gloom! 
What power lay within that frame! 
What intellect that skull entombed!  
And then within that steed what flame! 
Proud horse, wherever will you leap?     
Where will you leave your cloven mark?  
O mighty lord of fate and chart!          
Above this chasm was it thus,           
On high with reins in iron truss,  
That Russia reared its legs to sweep?

Around the idol's plinth anon              
Our poor sick lad began to pace,        
With savage looks upon that face,      
Our hemisphere's great hegemon.      
His heart was shy; he leaned his skull
Against the railing cold and blue,      
Within the fog his eyes went dull,      
A flame bequeathed its strength anew.  
His blood a-boil, he came to speak          
Before the haughty idol's glance,                
Each tooth tight-clenched, his fists in knots,
As if by blackest force entranced:
"O wondrous builder," whispered he,  
Still quivering in obvious spite,          
"You I salute!" Then headlong flight
He undertook.  For he had seen –           
If for a moment – the Tsar's face,            
At such affront inflamed with wrath,      
Cut with a smile a treach'rous path ... 

He ran onto the empty square,  
Behind him came a sound unreal –
As if of thunder and its peal,          
The heavy ringing of hard hooves,  
Upon the shaken roadway grooves. 
And then beneath the pale moonlight,
A hand held out in unmatched height,
Behind him rode the Horseman Bronze 
Upon a horse in ringing bounds! 
And that whole night our poor sick lad,
Wherever he would turn his course,
Behind him came the Horseman Bronze,
In tireless trot and heavy force. 

And from that time, whenever he      
So happened to traverse that square,
Upon his face one clearly gleaned       
Confusion. Though to his own chest   
His wretched hand was tightly pressed,
As if to quell some torture there;
He bore a pointed cap well-worn,
His troubled eyes were never torn
From where he trod. 
       Upon the shore      
A tiny island could be seen.       
And sometimes moored with fishing trawl,
An angler late to find his catch,             
Would cook his meager mealtime batch,
Or an official came to call,    
A Sunday boat ride the excuse, 
And visit the deserted isle.                           
Not one grass blade adorned that earth.             
More floods had brought a wretched hut,
Above the water it would perch,      
A blackish bush or orphaned mutt. 
And this past spring this hut they took   
Aboard a barge, and it was bare,           
Caved in, destroyed.  The threshold held  
Our poor sick lad still lying there.  
His cold corpse was interred apace,
For God's own sake in that same place.

Pushkin, "Медный всадник" (part 1)

The middle part of Pushkin's masterpiece ("The Bronze Horseman").  You can read the original here.

Above the darkened Petrograd        
November breathed its autumn chill.
Here splashed in noisesome wavelets glad
On edges of its graceful frill,
The Neva tossed and turned, still sick –
A patient in his restless bed,
The darkness ever late and thick.
Into the window rainy wrath                  
Descended with the howling wind.            
That same time from the homeward path 
A young Eugene his tie unpinned.              
Our hero shall be called as such;                
A pleasant name, and one long known     
To both my nib's loquacious touch 
And slothful thoughts' enchanted tones. 
Professions were for him untruth;
That said, in recent times, perhaps,  
From Karamzin's delightful scraps 
He came to ponder native hues
The legends that all Russia knew. 
Yet now as in a flash they fell    
Forgotten. In Kolomna lived   
Our hero (serving, hard to tell
Where) shunning friends, although ungrieved
About his kin in endless rest, 
And rites and ways that they knew best.

And so Eugene, by home and hearth,
His greatcoat brushed, undressed, retired;
Yet long did sleep remain quite far,
As sundry thoughts revolved untired. 
What kept him tense? What stopped his dreams?   
That he was poor, that his day's toil,                      
His independence and esteem                                
Could not transcend this mortal coil.                           
What more could God then grant Eugene?        
Some wisdom, money – and his foils,             
The empty happy, lucky swells                   
Of little mind and lazy bones,                    
For whom sweet life rings all its bells! 
And here he's worked two years and groaned;
He also thought the weather fast,      
Unchanged; and that the river purled       
Unchecked; that bridges stretching past 
The Neva were still of this world,                  
That Paraskevi in two days,                   
Perhaps in three, and he would part.         
And here Eugene sighed forth in rage,          
And like a poet, dreamt out his chart:  

"Am I to wed? And yet, why not?     
A burden yes, a noxious plight;          
But young and hale, I take this lot     
Prepared to toil both day and night;  
And somehow I will find a roof,        
A simple shelter built on peace         
For Paraskevi to approve.                
A year, perhaps, or two I'll need                    
To gain this place, and then I'll ask               
My love to form a family,                            
And raise our children as her task ...            
And so we'll live and so we'll have,     
Bound hand in hand by oaths we gave,
Our sons of sons to bless our grave ..."

And so he dreamt.  But sadness spent   
That night with him, and so he wished     
That evening weren't of dismal bent,      
That rain would not bang, slam and swish      
With such contempt ...
       Then sleep-filled eyes
He finally shut.  And here the gloom
Of that mad night thinned out and died,
And palest day began to loom ...
O horrid day!                  
       That long hoarse night, 
Sea-bound, the Neva riled the storm  
Not conquering its foolish form, 
Unable to sustain the fight.  
Above its shores by morning's patience
Тhe masses gaped at nature's thrills,
The sprays and mounts gained admiration,
As did the raging foamy hills. 
By windy force by gulf propelled,
The Neva crossed each borderline,
It came and went, it roared, rebelled,
And drowned the isles in loving brine; 
The weather moved towards endless rage, 
The Neva rose and howled and cried,
A cauldron swirled in bubbly haze,
And suddenly, like beasts gone wild,
It fell upon the city's maze.               
All fled; and soon one could descry        
An empty town as water breached        
The basements past ground-level eye,
On grills the sewers came to meet;
And Petropol swam like Triton,
A waist-high sea as horizon. 

A siege!  Attack!  The evil waves,        
Like robbers, crashed the window panes, 
Canoes ran through their sterns like knaves           
Below the sea-strong crest impaled;                  
The shreds of huts, of logs, of roofs,             
The warehouse goods, what care behooves, 
The victuals of dull penury,                            
The fallen bridges in unsafe knots                  
The tombs of flooded graveyard plots          
All swam upon the open streets!                   
          The folk
Divine wrath saw, swift death provoked.  
Alas!  All will die, flesh and food!    
Where could they flee?               
       Yet that wild year        
The late Tsar had all Russia steered 
Adroitly. Now on balcony  
He stood, sad, crestfallen, to brood.                   
And here he said: "No tsar is born                                   
To rule the realm of God unshorn."         
His mournful eyes beheld the woe           
That in his mind grew real below.               
The squares had turned to luscious lakes,      
Wide rivers pierced their every side,             
The streets were filled with wat'ry peaks,      
The palace seemed an isle untried.               
The Tsar talked on, from end to end,           
In closer streets and those less near,            
Amidst the raging waters' vent           
His generals set out. In fear             
Did people drown at home, and so     
These generals would save their souls. 

On Peter's Square, the corner home  
So newly built, above whose wing,      
With elevated paw to roam,          
As if alive two lions moaned.                               
On guard they watched the wild waves fling.  
Upon the marble beast on high,              
His arms crossed o'er, bereft of cap,         
So still, in shocking wanness trapp'd,                     
Our man Eugene sat terrified –          
Not for himself.  He did not hear         
The greedy billows rise and sway             
His soles long since had washed away,                       
As rain met face, then mouth and ears,  
As wind in spinning fury pinched      
His hat from him so suddenly,       
Looks of despair then slowly inched       
Towards one edge so carefully,                        
Unmoving now.  As if the mounts              
From the mad maelstrom's deadly core    
Rose up and raged in endless count,    
A storm unbound, with shards galore ... 
O God, O God, alas, look there!                                
So close, as in the gulf's own lair,                    
A shoddy house swam on the crest,             
With an unpainted fence left bare,               
A willow and – surely we jest –             
His Paraskevi and her mom,                        
The widow! Dreams, they were but dreams! 
But were they now?  He thought quite dumb, 
Was life no more than what it seemed?
A smirking sky above our earth? 

And he, as if from marble forged          
As if bewitched by ancient rite,          
Could not get down!  The water gorged 
Itself on all and everything!                 
And his back turned against the height, 
The tower of unshaken might       
Above the raging Neva's course     
He stands with outstretched, rigid arm,
His idol thus the bronzy horse. 

Pushkin, "Медный всадник" (Introduction)

The first part to a masterpiece ("The Bronze Horseman") by this Russian poet.  You can read the original here.

Upon the shore of empty tide,           
Stood He pierced on thoughts' flailing thorn;        
When far he looked at waters wide,  
The river bore in unmatched stride         
A lone canoe left lost, forlorn.       
By mossy, marshy shoreline's bends              
Were blackened huts stretched past all sight,  
Alee for squalid Ingrians;                                 
And woods unswept by sunshine bright,                 
Amidst the gloom of hidden light,                     
Were loud to sense.

       And so he mused:
"Our settlement is Sweden's bane,
Here will our city rise to grace
To spite our haughty neighbors' fame.
'Tis here Fate wills that we be placed,
An open window Europe-faced,
With heavy step turned to the sea.
Upon new waves our hopes are cast,
All flags will fall to us at last,
And we will feast on liberty." 

A century pass'd, and our young town, 
The gorgeous pride of midnight lands,   
From darkest woods and swampy mounds, 
Has borne itself in sumptuous bounds,               
Where once the Finnish angler man, 
Sad stepchild in sweet nature's debt,           
Alone upon the scurvy sands,               
In unknown waters cast his net.             

His old net flew on lively seas,               
Where masses of the strongest rock        
Of palaces and towers breathed;            
Then ships from every place and stock    
Strove forth to our unhumble piers,    
Our richest wharves became the fad, 
With granite was the Neva clad,                   
By bridges hung above so mocked; 
And gardens of the darkest green
Devoured islands like a horde,
And Moscow, its might unrestored, 
Would fade against the endless sheen.
And unheard to the newest queen – 
A porphyritic widow's sigh. 

I love thee, City Peter built,                                 
I love thy harsh and horrid gaze;
The mighty flow of Neva silt
The shoreline granite by thy haze;
Thy filigreed wall iron-cast,                                      
Тhy lucid dusk and moonless shine
Of pensive days that ever last,
While I, room-bound, my thoughts untwine;
And read and write bereft of lamp, 
As clear and sleeping masses ramp
Up empty streets beneath the fire
Of thy taut admiralty spire. 
Without the gloaming to corrupt
The gilded clouds that linger long,
Til hasty dawn shall interrupt
Brief night's half-hour twilit song. 

I love thy cruel winter reign,
Unmoving air and frosted dread;
The race of sleighs by river's plain, 
Each glad child's face a brighter red; 
The flash and noise of ballroom talk,
And at the idle feasting hour,
A hundred foamy glasses squawk 
In punchbowl flames of bluest glower.
I love thy warlike stance, thy teeth
Of playful troops of Mars the great,
The infantry and fiery steeds
The peerless beauty of their gait.  
The ripple as they glide in rank,
With tattered pennants, triumph's toll;
The shine of helmets' bronzy tank,
As bullet tides bring seas of woe.

 
O martial city, thee I love
In thickest smoke does thunder roam,
The midnight queen that reigns above,
Who gives her son to kingly home,
Or victory against our foes,
As Russia celebrates anew,
Or breaking its blue ice right through, 
To seaside's calm the Neva flows,  
The joy of endless days is true.  

Boast now, O City Peter sent,  
Impregnable as Russia's whole, 
With thee shall die, or so I'm told,
Our nature's vanquished elements. 
May Finnish waves our wars forsake,
Those bitter captive days of yore; 
Vain spite shall never Peter wake   
From sweetest sleep forever more!

It was a time of horror's reign,    
Fresh are the thoughts that do us plague ...
My friends, for you, I wax and wane 
About this time I shall explain,
And sad shall be my lovely tale.

Comment on paie ses dettes quand on a du génie

A brief essay ("How to pay your debts when you're a genius") by this French man of letters on another French man of letters.  You can read the original here.

The following story was told to me with the request that I never repeat it; and for that reason I wish to tell absolutely everyone.

He was sad judging by his knitted brows, his large mouth less distended and lippy than normal; his manner of speaking was punctuated by brusque pauses as he paced the double passage of the Opera; he was sad.   

He it was indeed, the greatest business and literary mind of the nineteenth century; he, the poetic intellect lined in figures like the office of a treasurer; he, the man of mythological bankruptcies, and phantasmagoric and hyperbolic enterprises whose light he always forgot to turn on; the greatest pursuer of dreams endlessly in search of the absolute; he, the most curious, the most comical, the most interesting and the most vain character in The Human Comedy; he, that eccentric as unbearable in life as he was delicious on paper, that fat child and bloated genius so brimming with qualities that he hesitated to subtract some for fear of losing others, and to spoil that incorrigible and fatal monstrosity.

What could make such a great man fall into such a black mood and walk as he was walking, his chin on his paunch?  What could make him scrunch his forehead into The Skin of Chagrin?

Did he of dream of four-cent pineapples, a suspended bridge made from creepers, a stairless villa with boudoirs set in chiffon?  What princess approaching forty would have glanced at him with one of those deep looks which beauty owes to genius?  Or his brain, as heavy as an industrial machine, is it racked by all the Sufferings of an Inventor?

No, alas, no!  The sadness of a great man is a very commonplace form of sadness, earthly, ignoble, shameful and ridiculous.  He was in that mortifying situation we all know in which every passing minute carries on its wings the chance of salvation; in which, his eye pinned to the clock, the genius of invention senses the need to double, triple, decuple its forces in proportion to the time that remains and the approaching speed of that fatal hour.  The illustrious author of the theory of the bill of exchange had a bill of twelve hundred francs to pay by the next day and the evening was already getting on.

In these sorts of cases it sometimes happens that the mind – hurried, devastated, kneaded, and crushed by the cogs of necessity – suddenly hurls itself, by an unexpected and victorious burst, outside that very prison.

This is what probably happened to the great novelist, for a smile appeared on his lips at the contraction that inflicted upon him lines of pride;  his eyes gained their composure, and our man, calm and reseated, made his way towards Rue Richelieu with a sublime and cadenced step.

He entered the house where a rich and prosperous businessman had already abandoned the work of the day to tea and a fireside corner.  He was received with all the honors his name deserved, and after a few minutes expounded the purpose of his visit in these words:   

"Would you like to have, on the day after tomorrow, in Le Siècle and Les Débats, two fabulous articles along the lines of, 'Varieties of the French in their own words,' two fabulous articles written and signed by me?  My fee is fifteen hundred francs.  So for you this is a gold mine."  

It turned out that the publisher, in contrast to his counterparts in the industry, found such an argument quite reasonable because a deal was immediately struck.  Changing his mind, our man insisted that the fifteen hundred francs be delivered upon the appearance of the first article; then he returned peacefully towards the passage of the Opera.
   
A few minutes later he notified a small young man with an aggressive and spiritual physiognomy who had recently served as a breathtaking preface for the Rise and Fall of César Birotteau, and who was already known in journalistic circles for his clownish, almost impish verve; piety had yet to trim his talons, and to him the religious tabloids happily opened their candle snuffers:

"Edward, would you like to have one hundred fifty francs tomorrow?"  "Gee whiz!"  "Alright then, come have a coffee."  

The young man drank a cup of coffee which initially brought his little southern constitution to a fever.

"Edward, tomorrow I must have three large columns on 'The Varieties of the French in their own words'; by morning, mind you, and early at that.   The whole article has to be recopied and signed in my own hand; this point is paramount."

The great man said these words with such admirable accentuation and that arrogant tone which he sometimes offers to a friend he cannot welcome into his home: "A thousand pardons, dear friend, to leave you at the door; I have a private audience with a princess whose honor is at my disposal.  You surely understand ..."

Edward shook his hand as if he were his benefactor and ran off to the task.
   
The great novelist ordered his second article on Rue de Navarin.

The first article appeared two days later in Le Siècle.  Strangely, it was signed neither by the small young man nor by the great author, but by a third name quite well known at that time in Bohemia for his tomcat romances and Comic Opera.

His second friend was and still is fat, lazy and lethargic; moreover, he has no ideas whatsoever and can only string words together in the fashion of Osage necklaces.  And because it takes much longer to cram three long columns of words than to create a whole book of ideas, his article came out only a few days later.  It was included not in Les Débats, but in La Presse.

The bill of twelve hundred francs was paid; everyone was perfectly satisfied except the publisher, who was almost so.  And this is how to pay your debts ... when you're a genius.

If some smart Aleck took all this for a back-page joke, an assault on the glory of the greatest man of our century, he would be shamefully wrong.  I only sought to show that the great poet knew how to settle a bill of exchange as easily as he could write the most mysterious and intriguing of novels.