kind of success? And with whom? Apart from you, who are able to judge, even though in this case I do not share your taste. What did I see? An auditorium three-quarters full of old would-be gallants and young fops, the kind who spend their time making paper cut-outs in fashionable salons. This pack goes wild every time something new appears, provided it stands out more or less from the ruck. As for what I heard, it was nothing but a stew of very diverse ingredients. A disastrous mixture of sounds and impressions that bombards and paralyses the understanding to cover the lack of fecundity of an author who ought to prostrate himself before Saint Greluchon.5 Oh yes, I’d prefer to go and hear the Tenebrae sung by the nuns of Sainte Claire at Longchamp. In my opinion, gentlemen, Gluck is beyond the pale.’
Taking advantage of the astonishment into which his energetic outburst had plunged his audience, he grabbed a slice of lamb with one hand while nimbly emptying his glass with the other.
‘My dear Noblecourt,’ said La Borde, ‘please allow me to contradict you. For my part, I consider that even the finest brush would not have been able to render the details of that unforgettable performance. Yes, Monsieur, at last we have something new. Enough of Italian-style vocalising! Enough of the traditional machinery of the genre and all that monotonous recitative!’
‘To be replaced by what? Wrong notes and high-pitched twittering? That’s all I heard from the haute-contre who sang the role of Orpheus.’
‘Monsieur,’ said Louis timidly, ‘may I be so bold as to ask what an haute-contre is?’
‘I commend you for asking the question. One should never conceal gaps in one’s knowledge. It does you honour, and we will always be happy to instruct you, dear boy. It is knowledge rather than brilliant but empty wit that makes the honest man. Whoever is master of his subject will be attended to and esteemed everywhere. Monsieur de La Borde, who himself writes operas, will answer you: it will permit me to catch my breath.’
‘Your breath, yes, but no more lamb or Saint-Nicolas,’ said Semacgus. ‘The Faculty is strongly opposed to such things.’
Noblecourt assumed a contrite expression, while Nicolas’s cat, Mouchette, put her little head above the table and sniffed the tempting aromas.
‘An haute-contre,’ explained La Borde, ‘is a French tenor, the highest of all male voices, producing high notes from the chest, a powerful, resonant sound. To get back to our discussion, I am surprised to hear you criticise this choice for the role of Orpheus. It was a bow to the French habits which you love. To be replaced by what? you asked.’
‘Yes, by what? I stand my ground.’
‘Even with your gout,’ sighed Semacgus.
‘By a natural way of singing,’ resumed La Borde, ‘always guided by the truest, most sensitive expression, with the most gratifying melodies, an unparalleled variety in the turns and the greatest effects of harmony, employed equally for drama, pathos and grace. In a word, true tragedy in music, in the tradition of Euripides and Racine. In Gluck, I recognise a man of genius and taste, in whom nothing is weak or slapdash.’
‘Listening to both of you,’ remarked Semacgus, ‘I seem to recognise the same kind of discussion that so often arouses our host on the subject of new habits in cooking.’
‘How right you are,’ said La Borde. ‘Except that our friend supports the natural and the true in cooking, while defending the artificial and the shallow in music.’
‘I’m not admitting defeat,’ said Noblecourt. ‘I don’t need to justify my contradictions. I certainly maintain that meat should be meat and taste like meat, but in art I’m delighted by fantasy. A well-organised fantasy that makes us dream.’
‘But the depth of the new style,’ said La Borde, ‘stimulates our imagination by combining the emotion of tragedy with the pleasure and delight of melody.’
‘I see nothing in it but faults and pretence. A kind of deceptive mishmash of meat and fish.’
‘You are talking just like the directors of our Royal Academy of Music, who ignore foreign art for fear it will bring down theirs.’
‘Peace, gentlemen,’ growled Semacgus. ‘I’m sure you’re both right, but you seem to take a perverse pleasure in forcing your arguments, with even more bad faith than the Président de Saujac.’
‘Oh,’ said Noblecourt, laughing, ‘that’s the whole pleasure of the thing. To maintain the unmaintainable, push your reasoning beyond the reasonable and put forward exaggerated arguments – all that is part of the joy of the debate.’
‘You admit it, then?’
‘I admit nothing. All I’m saying is that we should increase the controversy and put some bite into our presentation. The alternative would be like defending a dull thesis to the academics of the Sorbonne.’
Marion approached Louis, who was starting to doze off, and gave him a bag of fresh hazelnuts from a tree in the garden. Nicolas noticed his son’s tiredness.
‘My friends,’ he said, consulting his repeater watch, which sounded softly, ‘I think it’s time to bring this memorable evening to an end. Our host needs to rest after this royal feast and his excesses.’
‘So early?’ said Noblecourt. ‘Do you really want to interrupt this delightful interlude?’
‘Tomorrow has already sounded, and Louis’s mother is waiting for him. He is leaving for Juilly at dawn on the first mail coach.’
‘Before he leaves us, I want to give him a gift,’ said the procurator.
Monsieur de Noblecourt undid the second package, took out two small leather-bound volumes bearing his arms, and opened one with infinite care. Everyone present smiled, knowing his fanatical devotion to his books.
‘Here,’ he said with blissful solemnity, ‘are Ovid’sMetamorphoses, translated by Abbé Banier, of the Royal Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres. These fine works are decorated with frontispieces and illustrations. My dear Louis, I offer them to you with all my heart …’ He added in a lower voice, as if to himself, ‘The only gifts that matter are those from which one parts with sorrow and regret.’ Then, raising his voice again, ‘May these fables, with their gods made flesh, stimulate your imagination and instil in you a love of literature.
All is enchantment, each thing has its place,
With a body, a soul, a mind and a face. 6
May reading them persuade you that what is elegant in Latin is not necessarily so in French, that each language has a tone, an order and a genius peculiar to it. Whenever you need to translate, remember to be simple, clear and correct, in order to render the author’s ideas precisely, omitting nothing of the delicacy and elegance of his style. Everything should hold together, in fact. Just as, in life, one becomes hard and heartless by being too attached to the letter of a principle, so in translation, the tone can become dry and arid as soon as one tries to impose one’s own ideas in place of the author’s.’
‘Monsieur,’ said Louis, now completely awake again, ‘I don’t know what to say. I certainly wouldn’t like to deprive
