The Bohemians

CHAPTER TEN: The Terrible Effects of Causes

c h a p t e r t e n The Terrible Effects of Causes “What a country! What a landscape! Miserable inhabitants!” So spoke the illustrious Séché to the band on the rutted tracks leading to the abbey of Mont-Dieu:1 “Look at this unfortunate hamlet: scrawny, starving livestock; filthy, sickening, exhausted peasant women, real remedies for love;2 flies eating away at the thin carcasses of man and beast alike. But then! a half-starved priest and greedy tax-gatherers swoop down on whatever meager sustenance these unfortunate villagers have left.” Séché’s speech seemed so eminently unanswerable to his colleagues that for once, none of them tried to refute it. But the Demon of Diatribe—the darkest, noisiest, weariest in all Hell, the quarrelsome child of Controversy—was so annoyed by the general agreement prevailing among our voyagers, to philosophy’s disgrace, that he whispered a question in Félicité’s ear: “What is the cause of all these problems?” Little Félicité repeats these words aloud like a parrot taught to say dominus vobiscum:3 scarcely has she pronounced the fateful phrase than the philosophical elements grow excited and combine: dark black vapors rise from every limb of our thinkers’ bodies toward their brains, their animal spirits crowd into the base of their tongues, and they all begin shouting their answers at the same time: Lungiet: “It’s all because of Liberty!” Séché: “It’s because of the Violation of Natural Right!” Bissot: “It’s the lack of Lex Talionis!” Mordanes: “It’s the Maréchaussée police!”4 Séchant stood there with his mouth agape, since he always agreed with The Terrible Effects of Causes 73 the current orator and it was hard for him—not to have so many different opinions at once, nothing in the world is commoner—but to repeat so many different catchphrases at once. So the worthy priest assumed the posture of a devotee ready to receive her Maker, opening her mouth as wide as the holy sepulcher of Jerusalem and apparently trying to bring it into proportion with the greatness of the One about to enter it. Meanwhile Voragine, still full of last night’s events, clung to Tifarès’s arm and pinched his withered cheeks to no avail. Dehydration glued his yellow parchment so flat onto the bones of his face that a crucial incision would have needed no second cut of the scalpel to reveal all the apophyses, epiphyses, holes, and cavities in the twenty-one bones of his head.5 Félicité was following with some difficulty, since the presence of the reverend fathers had restricted her morning toilette to a manual lavabo;6 the poor girl’s vessel was filled with the essence-of-philosopher Bissot had poured into it, and the part that had spread over her lips had combined with the dust raised by the winds to form globulous and uncomfortable corpuscles that now stuck to various stray little hairs and scraped away at her. —Where was that? —Where? You are too curious; I told this anecdote only ad usum7 for our young ladies leaving the convent, where they have been permitted to wash nothing but their hands: entering society, and ignorant of what happens to a young girl leaving the convent, they expose and betray themselves if they do not take precautions. So it is only right to teach them that mothers are sometimes curious, and laundresses indiscreet . . . Moreover, Englishwomen, who are the most philosophical and shrewd women in our world of woe, never neglect this: a neatly positioned handkerchief is the best protection against evidence that would be difficult to deny—unless, of course, they want a divorce , in which case they save all the evidence they can get to present before my lord the Archbishop of Canterbury, so as to get rid of an annoying and inconvenient husband.8 That worthy successor of the martyr Becket, wishing to rule only on incontestable proof, always summons chambermaids and laundresses:9 “Susannah , do you swear on the Holy Bible and the damnation of your soul that you will tell the truth?” “Yes, my Lord, God help me.” “Susannah, have you seen Some Stains On Your Masters’ Linen?” “Yes, milord, yes.” “And what kind of stains?” 74 chapter ten “Futuum, milord.” “Futuum! How well you know Latin, Susannah.”10 As for you, curious little lady...