The Salt Smugglers (2 page)

But these days I'm beginning to get somewhat frightened about the penalties that threaten to befall any newspaper in violation of the slightest letter of the new law. A fine of fifty francs per copy seized, — this is enough to drive even the most stalwart into retreat. For newspapers with a circulation of a mere twenty-five thousand, — and there are several of these, — the fines would amount to over a million francs. One can therefore understand how a
broad
interpretation of the law might enable the government to squash any opposition by entirely legal means. Out-and-out censorship would be far preferable. Back in the days of the
Ancien Régime
, the approbation of a censor, — a censor, moreover, whom one was allowed to hand pick, — was all that was needed to ensure the safe publication of one's ideas, and the liberty one enjoyed was at times astonishing. I have read books officially approved by Louis and Phélippeaux which would without the slightest doubt be banned today.

As chance would have it, I had occasion to experience government censorship first-hand in Vienna. Finding myself in somewhat straitened circumstances after a series of unanticipated travel expenditures, and unable to surmount the difficulties involved in having money transferred to me from France, I hit upon the simple expedient of writing for the local newspapers. They paid one hundred fifty francs per page (which came out to sixteen short columns). I wrote two series of articles; but first they had to be submitted to the censor for approval.

I let a few days go by. There was no word of anything. — So I had no choice but to go pay a private visit to M. Pilat, the director of the bureau of censorship, and to explain that I had been kept waiting far too long for the
visa
of approval. He was extremely courteous toward me, — unlike his virtual homonym, M. Pilat was certainly not going to wash his hands of the injustice to which I had alerted him. I mentioned that I was furthermore being deprived of access to French newspapers, seeing as how the local coffee houses only received the
Journal des Débats
and
La Quotidienne.
M. Pilat said to me: « You happen to be standing in the freest spot of the Empire (i.e. the bureau of censorship); you can come here every day and read whatsoever you please, including
Le National
or
Le Charivari
. »

It is only among Germanic functionaries that one encounters this degree of decorous wit and magnanimity; the only drawback is that their very mannerliness makes one all the more willing to endure the arbitrariness of their decisions.

I have never had the same luck with the French system of censorship, — at least as it is applied to the theater, — and I doubt that if book or newspaper censorship were reintroduced we would have anything to boast about. Given our national character, there is always the tendency to exert force simply because one possesses it, or to abuse power simply because one happens to exercise it. — What to expect of a situation that so seriously endangers the interests and even the security of non-political writers?

I was recently mentioning my plight to a scholar whom it would be fruitless to designate as anything other than a
bibliophile.
He said to me: « Don't base your history of the abbé de Bucquoy on the incidents recounted in Madame Dunoyer's
Lettres galantes
. The title of this book alone is enough to disqualify it from
serious consideration; wait until the Bibliothèque Nationale reopens (it was currently in recess), and you're sure to find the book you read in Frankfurt. »

I paid no attention to the malicious smile that was no doubt playing on the bibliophile's pinched lips, — and when the first of October came around, I was among the first in line to get into the Bibliothèque Nationale.

M. D*** is a gentleman of immense erudition and courtesy. He had his assistants undertake a search, but they came back empty-handed after half an hour. He consulted Brunet and Quérard, discovered that both in fact listed the book, and asked me to come back in three days; — they had not been able to locate it. « Perhaps, said M. D*** to me with his legendary patience, — perhaps the book has been catalogued among the novels. »

I trembled: «
Among the novels?
... but it's a work of history! ... it should be in the collection of Memoirs relating to the century of Louis XIV. The book specifically deals with the history of the Bastille; it provides details about the Camisard uprising, the expulsion of the Protestants, and the famous league of Salt Smugglers in the Lorraine, whom Mandrin later recruited into the rebel troops who managed to fight off the regular army and to capture such towns as Beaune and Dijon! ...

— I know, said M. D***, but given the vagaries of classification over time, errors often creep into our catalogue system. The mistakes can only be mended if and when a reader happens to request a particular work. The only person here who could solve your problem is M. R***... Unfortunately, this is not
his week.
»

I waited for M. R***'s week. — The following Monday I was lucky enough to meet an acquaintance of his in the reading room who offered to introduce me. M. R*** gave me a very polite welcome and said to me: « I am delighted to have had the chance to make your acquaintance; all I ask is that you grant me several more days. You see, this week I belong to the general reading public. Next week I shall be entirely at your service. »

Since I had been formally introduced to M. R***, I was no longer a member of the general reading public! I had become a private acquaintance, — and therefore had no right to impinge on his official time.

This was entirely as things should be, — but you have to admire my stroke of bad luck! ... There was really nothing or nobody else I could blame.

The bunglings of the Bibliothèque Nationale have often been commented upon. They derive in part from the shortage of personnel and in part from ancient traditions that continue to exercise their hold. The most accurate criticism that has been leveled at the place is that too much of the time and energy of its highly qualified and underpaid staff is devoted to dealing with the six hundred readers who come there every day in search of books they could just as easily find on the open shelves of any private lending library, — a state of affairs that does considerable harm not just to the aforesaid lending libraries, but to publishers and authors as well, for it would seem that nobody wants to pay for their reading matter anymore.

It has also been quite rightly observed that this establishment, which is without equal in the world, should not function as a place where people come just to keep warm, — and whose patrons, for the most, pose a very
real threat to the existence and conservation of its collections. All the idlers, retirees, widowers, unemployed job-seekers, schoolchildren copying their homework, ancient eccentrics, — like poor old
Carnaval
who used to turn up wearing flowers in his hat and sporting red, pale blue or apple green suits, — all these certainly deserve consideration, but wouldn't it make more sense to open other libraries especially for them? ...

There used to be nineteen editions of
Don Quixote
in the department of printed books. Not a single edition has remained intact. Now that libraries no longer lend out novels, the general reading public invariably requests travel literature, comedies, humorous stories in the vein of M. Thiers and M. Capefigue, and the
Registry of Addresses.

Gradually, over the course of time, an edition loses one of its volumes, a bibliographical curiosity disappears, thanks to the all-too-liberal policy by which readers are not even required to give their names.

The Republic of Letters, unlike other institutions, needs to be imbued with certain standards of aristocracy, — for no one would ever call into question the membership of the republics of science or talent.

The celebrated library of Alexandria was open to established scholars or to poets whose work had been recognized for its merits ... But the hospitality extended by the library was total, and its readers received free board and lodging for the entire duration of their stay.

And while we are on the subject, — allow a traveler who has walked among its ruins and listened to the whisper of the past to defend the memory of the illustrious caliph Omar against the widely held assumption that it was he who burned down the library of Alexandria. Omar never set foot in Alexandria, — despite the claims of many scholars. He never even issued orders concerning the library to his lieutenant Amrou. — The library of Alexandria and the
Serapeon
or almshouse attached to it were burned to the ground in the fourth century by Christians, — who also went on to slaughter the renowned Pythagorean philosopher Hypatia as she was making her way down the street. — To be sure, these excesses can not be solely imputed to the Christian religion, — but at least the unfortunate Arabs should no longer have to stand accused of ignorance, for the wonders of Greek philosophy, medicine, and science were preserved thanks to their translations and thanks to their own scholarship, — all of which directed a continuous beam of light through the obstinate fog of the feudal era.

Pardon these digressions, — I shall keep you abreast of my travels
in search of
the abbé de Bucquoy. — This eccentric and ever-so-slippery figure cannot hope to elude my painstaking investigation for very long.

The staff at the Bibliothèque Nationale couldn't be more helpful. No serious scholar could complain about its current modus operandi; — but should a novelist or serial writer show his face, « all hell breaks loose in the stacks». A bibliographer, a man dealing in a standard field of knowledge, knows exactly what books to request. A
fantaisiste
writer, a writer who runs the risk of perpetrating a
serial novel,
upsets the natural course of things and bothers everybody in sight for the sake of some half-baked idea that has happened to pop into his mind.

It is in circumstances like these that one should admire the patience of the senior librarian, — the lower-level staff are often too young to have mastered this degree of paternal self-abnegation. Occasionally the people who turn up at the library are extraordinarily rude. Convinced that the mere fact of belonging to the reading
public
endows them with a privileged status, they address the librarians in the same peremptory tone one might use to get a waiter's attention in a café. — And faced with this kind of treatment, the famous scholar or academician will respond with the benign resignation of a monk, suffering no end of indignities from the reading public from ten till two thirty sharp.

Having taken pity on my plight, the staff had scoured the catalogues and had even gone so far as to explore the
reserve
collection and rummage through the unappetizing garbage heap of novels, — where the abbé de Bucquoy might have found himself classified by mistake; suddenly one of the assistant librarians shouted out: « We have it! In Dutch! » He read me the title out loud: « Jacques de Bucquoy,
Incidents of the most remarkable sort
...”

— Excuse me, I interrupted, but the book I was looking for is entitled “
Incident of the rarest sort
...”

— Let's have another look then, perhaps there was a translation error: “...
drawn from a sixteen-year voyage to the Indies
, Harlem, 1744.”

— That's not it ... and yet the book dates from exactly the same period as the abbé de Bucquoy, whose first name was indeed Jacques. But what on earth could this fantastic abbé have been doing in the Indies? »

Another assistant librarian appears on the scene: the name has been misspelled; it is not de Bucquoy, but rather Du Bucquoy, and since this may have also been spelled Dubucquoy, the search has to be started all over again, this time under the letter D.

Damn these names with nobiliary particles! Dubucquoy, I said, would be a mere commoner ... whereas the title of the book refers to him as the count de Bucquoy.

A
paleographer
who was working at a nearby table raised his head and said to me: « A particule in a name has never been proof of nobility; on the contrary, it often indicates that the name belongs to the landed gentry, that is, to those people who were originally known as
franc-alleu
folk. They took the name of their property and the various
branches
of a given family were often designated by the different endings of their names. The great families of French history are called Bouchard (Montmorency), Bozon (Périgord), Beaupoil (Saint-Aulaire), Capet (Bourbon), etc. The resultant
de
and
du
are often the product of sheer irregularity or outright usurpation. But this is not all: in Flanders and in Belgium, the
de
is the same article as the German
der
, meaning
the
. — Thus,
de
Muller means the miller, etc. — With the result that a good quarter of France is filled with bogus aristocrats. Béranger used to make light of the
de
in his name which merely indicated his Flemish origins. »