Letters From My Windmill Alphonse Daudet (top 10 ebook reader .txt) 📖

have soared high in my time. I used to dine with the Marshal, theprince, and ministers, all those people wanted me then because I amusedthem—or frightened them. Now, no one does. Oh, my eyes! my poor, pooreyes! I'm not welcome anywhere, now. It's unbearable being blind atmeal times…. Do pass me the bread, please…. Oh, those thieves! Theywill make me pay through the nose for this damned tobacconist's shop.I've been wandering through all the ministries clutching my petition,for the last six months. I go in the morning at the time they light thestoves and take His Excellence's horse around the sanded courtyard, andI don't leave until night when they bring in the big lights and thekitchens begin to smell really good….

"All my life is spent sitting on the wooden chests in the antechambers.The ushers know who I am, as well—enough said. Inside the court theycall me That kind man! So, to get them on my side, to amuse them, Ipractise my wit, or, in a corner of their blotters, I draw roughcaricatures without taking the pen off the page…. See what I've cometo after twenty years of outstanding success; look at just what anartist's life amounts to!… And to think there are forty thousandrascals in France who slobber over our work! To think that throughoutParis, every day, locomotives make steam to bring us loads of idiotsthirsting for waffle and printed gossip!… Oh, what a world offantasists. If only Bixiou's suffering could teach them a lesson."

With that, and without another word, he pushed his face towards theplate and began to scoff the food…. It was pitiful to look at. He waslosing his bread, and his fork, and groping for his glass all thetime…. Poor soul! He just hadn't had the time to get used to it allyet.

* * * * *

After a short time, he spoke again:

"Do you know what's even worse? It's not being able to read the damnednewspapers. You have to be in the trade to understand that….Sometimes at night, when I am coming home, I buy one just for the smellof the fresh, moist paper, and newsprint…. It's so good! But there'snot a soul willing to read it to me! My wife could, but she doesn'twant to. She makes out that there are indecent things in the newsitems. Ah-ha! these old mistresses, once they marry you, there's no onemore prudish. That Madame Bixiou has turned herself into a right littlebigot—but only as far as it suits her!… It was she who wanted to merub my eyes in Salette water. And then there was the blessed bread, thepilgrimages, the Holy Child, the Chinese herbal remedies, and God knowswhat else…. We're up to our necks in good works. And yet, it would bea real kindness to read the papers to me…. But there you are, there'sno chance, she simply doesn't want to…. If my daughter was still athome, she would; but since I became blind, I've sent her to theNotre-Dame-des-Arts, so there'd be one less mouth to feed….

"Now there's another one sent to test me! She's only had nine years onearth and already she's had every imaginable illness… And miserable!And ugly! Uglier than I am, if that's possible … a real monster!…What do you expect? I have never known how to face up to myresponsibilities….

"Well, what good company I turned out to be, boring you with my familybusiness. And what's it all got to do with you?… Come on, give me abit more brandy. I'd better be off. When I leave here, I am off to thepublic information service and the ushers are not famed for their senseof humour. They're all retired teachers."

I poured him some brandy. He sipped it and then seemed moved bysomething…. Suddenly, on a whim, I think, he got up, glass in hand,and briefly moved his blind, viper-like head around, with the amiablesmile of someone about to speak, and then speaking in a strident voice,as if holding forth to a banquet for two hundred,

"To the arts! To literature! To the press!"

And there he stood, spouting a toast for fully ten minutes. It was themost wild, the most marvellous improvisation which his clown's braincould devise.

"Imagine a year's-end revue entitled Collection of Letters of 186*;about our literati, our gossip, our quarrels, all the idiocies of aneccentric world, a cesspool of ink, hell in miniature, where you cutyour own throat, disembowel yourself, rob yourself, and outtalk thebourgeoisie about interest rates and money. Where they let you starveto death better than anywhere else; all our cowardice and woes; oldbaron T… of la Tombola going away with a tut-tut to the Tuilerieswith his begging bowl and his flowery clothes. Then there's the year'sdeaths, the burial announcements, the never changing funeral oration ofthe delegate: the Dearly missed! Poor dear! over some unlucky soulwho was refused the means to bury himself; the suicides; and those goneinsane. Imagine all that, told, itemised, and gesticulated by an oratorof genius, and you will then have some idea of what Bixiou'simprovisation was about."

* * * * *

The toast over, his glass empty, he asked me what the time was, andleft in a wild mood, without so much as saying goodbye…. I don't knowhow Monsieur Duruy's ushers were affected by his visit that morning;but I do know that after that awful blind man had left, I have neverfelt so sad, so bad, in the whole of my life.

The very sight of ink sickened me, my pen horrified me, I wanted todistance myself from it all, to run away, to see trees, to feelsomething good, real…. Good God! The hatred, the venom, theunquenchable need to belittle it all, to befoul everything! Oh! Thatwretched man….

Then I furiously paced up and down in my room still hearing thegiggling disgust he had shown for his daughter. Right then, I feltsomething under my feet, near where the blind man had been sitting.Bending down, I recognised his wallet, a thick, worn wallet, with splitcorners, which he always carried with him and laughingly called hispocket of venom.

This wallet, in our world, was as famous as