The Poor Relations - First Episode - Taschenbuch

THE POOR RELATIONS FIRST EPISODE CO USIN BE TTE PIERRE GRASSOLl THE GIRL WITH THE GOLDEN E YES - VOLUME I - 1896, -- It is not the Roman prince, nor the heir of the illustrious house of Cajetani, which has given popes to Christendom, , to whom I dedicate this small fragment of a long story, but the learned commentator of Dante. To you I owe my comprehension of the marvelous framework of ideas, whereon the greatest of Italian poets constructed his poem, the only poem that the moderns have to offer in emulation of that, of Homer. Until I had heard your voice the Divina Cornmedia seemed to me a stupendous enigma, to which no one had been able to find the key, the commentators least of all. To understand Dante thus is to be great like him but all forms of greatness are familiar to you. An intelligent Frenchman might build up a reputation for himself, might earn a professorship and many a decoration, by publishing, in a dogmatic volume, the improvisation with which you assisted us to while away the hours of one of those evenings . when we were resting from the fatigue of a day of sight-seeing in Rome. Perhaps you are not aware that most of our professors live upon Germany, England, the Orient or the North, as insects upon a 3 tree and, like the insect, they become an integral part of their subject, borrowing their value from its value. Now, Italy has not yet had justice done her from the professors chair. I shall never receive the credit due to me as a man of letters for my selfrestraint. I might, by appropriating your ideas, have become a learned man with the authority of three Schlegels whereas I am content to remain a simple doctor of social medicine, the veterinary surgeon for incurablediseases, were it only that I might bear witness to my gratitude to my cicerone, and add your illustrious name to the names of Porcia, San-Severino, Pareto, Di Negro and Belgiojoso, which represent, in the Combdie Humaine, the close and enduing alliance between Italy and France, which I Bishop Bandello, author of divers extremely amusing tales, perpetuated in the same way, in the sixteenth century, in that magnificent collection of novels, whence several of Shakespeares plays were derived, in some cases entire rales verbatim ef lit eratim. The two sketches which I dedicate to you constitute the two ever-enduring faces of the same fact. Homo duplex, our great Buffon has said why not add Res duplex Everything is two-fold, even virtue. So Moliere always presents both sides of every human problem and in imitation of him Diderot wrote one day Ceci nest pas un conte, which may perhaps be considered Diderots masterpiece, wherein he presents the sublime figure of Mademoiselle de Lachaux sacrificed by Gardanne, COUSIN BETTE 5 in contrast to the figure of an unexceptionable lover slain by his mistress. My two novels are placed together, therefore, like twins of different sexes. It is a literary caprice which one may gratify once in a way, especially in a work wherein one seeks to portray all the forms in which thought may be clothed. Mat disputes among men, are due to the fact that there are people, learned and ignorant alike, so constituted that they can see but one aspect of a fact or an idea, and invariably claim that the one they have seen is the only true, the only sound one. So it was that the Holy Book prophetically announced God will give the world over to dissension...