Firmin

“ Firmin began business as a girdler and mercer. His shop was at Three Kings Court, in Lombard Street; he had a garden at Hoxton, in which he took great delight. Slender as were his means he contrived to keep a table for his friends, especially ministers. His frank hospitality brought him (after 1655) into relations with such men as Whitchcote, Worthington, Wilkins, Fowler, and Tillotson. In this way, somewhat earlier, he became acquainted with Biddle, whose influence on Firmin's philanthropic spirit was important. ”

“ His name, Firminius (I suppose) in Latin, Firmin in French,—so to be remembered here in Picardy. Firmin, not Firminius; as Denis, not Dionysius; coming out of space—no one tells what part of space. But received by the pagan Amienois with surprised welcome, and seen of them—forty days—many days, we may read—preaching acceptably, and binding with baptismal vows even persons in good society: and that in such numbers, that at last he is accused to the Roman governor, by the priests of Jupiter and Mercury, as one turning the world upside-down. ”

“ A man of Firmin’s character and disposition, however, never accepts good advice. His egotism is too great, his mind too stupid for that. So now, with a supercilious smile, Firmin listens to Andoche’s not wholly unreasonable or irrelevant harangue. ”

“ No witnesses to his chastisement having been present, Firmin had decided to tell his own story. If the gamekeeper had said nothing concerning the encounter at Balance Rock, Firmin doubtless would have kept silent. ”

“ Germaine's maid, Irma, came to the door leading into the outer hall, which Firmin, according to his usual custom, had left open, and peered in wonder at the silent group.
"I have it!" cried the Duke at last. "There is a way out."
"What is it?" said the millionaire, rising and coming to the middle of the hall.
"What time is it?" said the Duke, pulling out his watch.
The millionaire pulled out his watch. Germaine pulled out hers. Firmin, after a struggle, produced from some pocket difficult of access an object not unlike a silver turnip. ”

“ For instance, he had made the Théâtre-Français take up again an old piece of his, played, I believe, under the Empire the Proscrit, or les Guelfes et les Gibelins. The piece fell flat. Who did the furious Academician blame for it?—Firmin! Why Firmin? Firmin, delightful, enthusiastic and conscientious player, who enjoyed much lasting favour from the public, although his memory began to fail him,—Firmin played the part of Tébaldo, head of the Ghibellines and brother of Uberti, head of the Guelfs, in the play. The other parts were played by Ligier, Joanny and Duchesnois. ”

“ He sometimes took pleasure in seeing in him one of the victims of this Abbé Guitrel, whose intellectual and moral poverty must (so he firmly believed) injure and depress an intelligent and quick-sighted pupil. He flattered himself that, if better trained in the future, Firmin, although too weak ever to give to the Church one of those powerful leaders whom she so much needs, would at least produce for religion, perhaps, a Péreyve or a Gerbet, one of those priests who carry into the priesthood the heart of a young mother. ”

“ And yet Firminus, born in a high estate in his parents’ house, ran his course through the prosperous paths of this world, was increased in wealth, and elevated to honors. At the same time, the slave, the yoke of his condition being still unrelaxed, continued to serve his masters as Firminus, who knew him, was able to report.
9. Upon hearing and believing these things related by so reliable a person all my resistance melted away. ”

“ Firminger never went about without some potent witch-charm upon him, which at once protected him from the malice of such creatures, and enabled him to detect them when disguised, and upon this occasion he had nothing less than a relic of the great Kentish saint, Thomas à Becket, being a small piece of the hair-shirt of that holy man, cut off shortly after his death by one of the monks of Canterbury, who happened to be a Firminger, and religiously preserved in the Firminger family ever afterwards. ”

“ What Guy Firminger thought—or rather what he took for granted, for he was not built up on depths of reflection—will probably appear from this narrative.
"Yes, indeed; things have come to a pass that's awful for us," the girl announced.
"For us, you mean," said Firminger. "We're hunted like the ostrich; we're trapped and stalked and run to earth. We go in fear—I assure you we do."
"Are you hunted, Guy?" Mrs. Gosselin asked, with an inflection of her own.
"Yes, Mrs. Gosselin, even moi qui vous parle, the ordinary male of commerce, inconceivable as it may appear. ”

“ Blinded by the evening sun, he felt for Firmian’s hand, crying, “Where’s your hand, dear friend? and do not say ‘No.’”
But Firmian, quite carried away by emotion (for this sudden outburst of Leibgeber’s long pent-up excitement was most contagious) , speechless, and all in tears, like an evening shade, knelt down before his friend and fell on his breast, and said in a low tone (for he could do no otherwise) , “I am ready to die for you a thousand deaths, any death you please: only say what death I can die for you. ”

“ The surest token that these hearts were all lying fettered in the eternal dungeon of need and necessity, was that none could make a single witty allusion either to the bird or the kingship. It is only concerning matters which leave our souls free and unshackled that we notice similitudes and connection.
“This bird,” thought Firmian, “is the decoy of all these men, and the money is what baits the lure.” But he himself had three reasons for desiring to be king: firstly, to laugh himself to death at his own coronation; secondly, on account of his Lenette: thirdly, on account of the Saxon. ”

“ We would make a compromise of our theories, our principles, with even perhaps a slight leaning of the balance towards the traditional; and in the result—well, those were but plans, elevations, as it were. The whole, into which the infinite parts were compacted, exists for any one to see who likes.1 It is the only work of mine in which heart and soul and brain made a common cause of it to achieve perfection. It has not achieved it, of course, for Fifine was not perfection. But what approach to it it makes was her doing and hers alone. There is sunshine in it, which they call sunshine. ”

“ Æolian harps, breathed on by zephyrs, seemed to be sending forth their tones from out the evening-red, their melodies flowed softly on into the wide realm of sleep, and there took the form of dreams. Firmian’s heart, moved to its very centre, yearned for love—and for very longing he felt impelled to press his flowers into the white hands of a pretty child in Johannes—just that he might touch a human hand.
Go, dear Firmian, with that softened heart of yours, to your deeply-moved friend, whose inner being, too, stretches its arms out towards its likeness ”

“ Firmian loved family and society miniature pictures when (as in this case) they were exceedingly poor as works of art. Nathalie saw and read this; she took the book in haste, snapped the clasp to, and then, when she had done so, said, “You have no objection, have you?”
Courage towards women is not inborn, but acquired. Firmian had had familiar experience of very few; wherefore this natural awe made him look upon every feminine body—particularly if of any standing in society—as a kind of sacred Ark of the Covenant whereon no finger might be laid ”

“ Like a negro slave, you have killed yourself to obtain your freedom and reach the Gold Coast of your silver coast; and it would be damnable, indeed, if you were to be damned now after your decease.” “I can never thank you enough, you dear friend,” said Firmian; “but you should not make things harder for me than they are, and draw yourself back like a hand from the clouds the moment you have emptied yourself. Why is it that I am not to see you again after we have said good-bye? ”

“ The man who could “pinch” his own soul of buds, like a prize chrysanthemum, in order to develop one monstrous head, was always a fool to me. I prefer, improving upon Ancient Pistol, to make the world not only mine oyster, but my pepper, my Chablis, my feast of a hundred dishes from hors-d’œuvre to savoury; and so, if you like, the last decanter being drained, to sleep under the table. Most properly, Death is the only drunkard who never wakes with a headache.
Well, Fifine interested me; but Fifine was not my universe. ”

“ Miami murmured, who was examining the visitors’ cards on the hall table undismayed by the eye of Ernest.
“It’s odd she should so procrastinate; but la jeunesse, c’est le temps ou l’on s’amuse,” Mrs. Mouth blandly declared, seating herself tranquilly by her husband’s side.
“Dair noddin’, I hope, de matteh....”
“Eh, suz, my deah! Eh, suz.” Reassuringly, she tapped his arm.
“Sir Victor Virtue, Lady Bird, Princess Altamisal,” Miami tossed their cards.
“Sh’o it was a charming ebenin’! Doh I was sorry for de duchess, wid de duke, an’ he all nasty drunk wid spirits.” ”

“ These recollections, with all their tears, brought back the belief that he was soon to die; and this he must tell Nathalie. He saw the wide expanse of night stretched over the world like some great corpse but her shadowy limbs quiver under the moonlit-branches at the first touches of the morning breeze awaking in the east. She rises towards the coming sun as a dissolving vapour, an all-embracing cloud, and man says “It is day.” Two crape-covered thoughts, like hideous spectres, fought within Firmian’s soul. The one said, “He is going to die of apoplexy, so he never can see her more.” ”

“ Maybe when we stop some day, our journey done, they will overtake us. Would not that be beautiful, my Fifine—to turn, and find you, with your dream and your glory? And in the meantime I am not going to mope and snivel because a certain incomparable loveliness in my past cannot be repeated. Perfection never can. ”

“ As she stood up, the picture she made—her face, half in glow half in shadow, the vivid life of her contrasting with the golden ruins of the walls—wrought with such ardour upon my imagination, that I felt that, if I failed in that moment to take advantage of the creative impulse its beauty awoke in me, I deserved to be writ down for ever more the emasculate cypher of her strictures. So very quietly I got out the block, pencils, and a handful of coloured crayons which I made it my constant practice to carry about with me.
“Fifine,” I said, “don’t move: stand just as you are. ”

“ But the fashionable convention, I supposed, when once acquired was ineradicable; and, no doubt, to have dined in undress would have seemed tantamount with Fifine to bathing in public.
But, to my surprise, she took my sarcasm, if sarcasm it was, in good part.
“This apparition is of your own invoking,” she said. “And I did not want to deny you that pride in yourself which you had a right to feel. The strange comrade who has come to you out of the shadows is, after all, only your own lay-figure, Cousin; and—and the dress is very pretty.” ”

“ Could orthodoxy have shewn a better case for love? But let the matter rest there. If stones are to be cast, here am I, blithe to be made their target. I am jealous for her good fame; not a copper farthing for my own.
But, while I insist on that specific truth, I make generally no pretence of drawing the portrait of any Fifine but the one commonly known to me. ”

“ Wherefore it is that we are eternally compelled to regard ourselves, our little passions and our brief histories, as stories not ended but begun; and wherefore it is that, in spite of all our cosmic diminutiveness, Fifine and I shall feel as entitled as any others to talk about ourselves.
And what will it all matter in a few years’ time? I am more reasonable than most rationalists, and I say I don’t know. Nothing may matter; or so much, that any philosophical callousness to which I resolved to discipline my soul now might be found to have worked its own retribution in our eternal severance. ”

“ Fifine was Fifine to me, and that was all sufficient. If I thought lazily beyond that bare fact, tasting even a piquancy in speculation, it was to present myself with the portrait of a young lady of very feminine but independent views, having a knowledge, or at least a cognizance of the Bohemian side of Paris, entertaining seedy violoncellists, and capable of coming to definite conclusions with herself on a variety of subjects, from art and dress to conduct. Comely too, and yet unspoilt, be it said; and, if a worldling, one with the highest capacity for self-sacrifice to an ideal devotion. ”

“ I have heard it, then—I will never believe but that I have heard it. Could she bear to withhold from me, even in death, one charm that had not been mine?
And so ends Fifine’s story. No man in all his life has known a sweeter love; no man a bitterer desolation. ”

“ A poplar or two hung above the river for foreground; there was hardly a ripple there to shake the pictured rushes; it was as lovely an impression of antique peace as I have ever encountered. Fifine, after we had passed it all, made a little gesture to me, and I came and sat by her side, when she stole her hand into mine. I thought I knew what was in her heart—something emotional, a little piteous, the sense of a loveliness spent and of doubts to come. I pressed the soft palm in reassurance.
And so at last—Paris. The benediction of the season remained with us to the end. ”

“ To claim recognition solely through the achievements of one’s ancestry is really a very pretty form of modesty, if looked at rightly. Besides, we owe something to those to whom we owe our own distinguished position, do we not? I admire you for doing that credit to your ancient lineage, I can assure you I do; and should think less of you if you were capable of accepting favours easily, like a commoner soul. Really, Cousin Fifine, you know, your rank is a very attractive part of you to me. ”