The Confidences Of An Academic Coat

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Title:     The Confidences Of An Academic Coat
Author: Alphonse Daudet [More Titles by Daudet]

That morning was the dawn of a glorious day for the sculptor Guillardin.

Elected on the previous day a member of the _Institut_, he was about to inaugurate before the five Academies gathered together in solemn concourse, his academic coat, a magnificent garment ornamented with green palm-leaves, resplendent in its new cloth and silken embroidery, colour of hope. The blessed coat, opened ready to slip on, lay spread on an arm-chair, and Guillardin contemplated it tenderly as he arranged the bow of his white tie.

"Above all no hurry," thought the good fellow. "I have plenty of time."

The fact is that in his feverish impatience he had dressed a couple of hours too soon; and the beautiful Madame Guillardin--always very slow over her dressing--had positively declared that on this day she would only be ready at the precise moment--not a minute earlier, do you hear!

Unfortunate Guillardin! What could he do to kill the time?

"Well, all the same, I will try on my coat," he said, and gently as though he were handling tulle and lace, he lifted the precious frippery, and having donned it with infinite precaution, he placed himself in front of his looking-glass. Oh! what a charming picture the mirror disclosed to him! What an amiable little Academician, freshly hatched, happy, smiling, grizzled, and protuberant, with arms too short in proportion to his figure, which in the new sleeves acquired a stiff and automatic dignity!

Thoroughly satisfied with his appearance, Guillardin marched up and down, bowed as though entering the Academy, smiled to his colleagues of the fine arts, and assumed academical attitudes. Nevertheless, whatever pride one may feel at one's personal appearance, it is impossible to remain two hours in full dress, before a looking-glass. At last our Academician felt somewhat fatigued, and fearful lest he should rumple his coat, made up his mind to take it off and lay it back very carefully on the arm-chair. Then seating himself opposite on the other side of the fireplace, with his legs stretched out and his two hands crossed over his dress waistcoat, he began to indulge in sweet dreams as he gazed at the green coat.

Like the traveller who, arrived at the end of his journey, likes to remember the dangers and difficulties that have beset his path, Guillardin retraced his life, year by year, from the day when he began to learn modelling in Jouffroy's studio. Ah! the outset is hard in that confounded profession. He remembered the fireless winters, the sleepless nights, the endless walks in search of work, the desperate rage experienced at feeling so small, so lost, and unknown in the immense crowd that pushes, hustles, upsets, and crushes. And yet all alone, without patronage or money, he had managed to rise. By sheer talent, sir! And his head thrown back, and eyes half-shut, the worthy man kept repeating out loud to himself: "By sheer talent. Nothing but talent."

A long burst of laughter, dry and creaky like an old man's laugh, suddenly interrupted him. Slightly startled, Guillardin glanced around the room. He was alone, quite alone, _tete-a-tete_ with his green coat, the ghost of an Academician solemnly spread out opposite him, on the other side of the fire. And still the insolent laugh rang on. Then as he looked at it more intently, the sculptor almost fancied that his coat was no longer in the place where he had put it, but really seated in the arm-chair, with tails turned up, and sleeves resting on the arms of the chair, the fronts puffed out with an appearance of life. Incredible as it may seem, it was this thing that was laughing. Yes, it was from this singular green coat that arose the uncontrollable fits of laughter by which it was agitated, shaken and convulsed, causing it to jerk its tails, throw itself back in the chair, and at moments place its two sleeves against its sides, as though to check this supernatural and inextinguishable excess of mirth. At the same time, a feeble voice, sly and mischievous, could be heard saying between two hiccups: "Oh dear, oh dear, how it hurts one to laugh like this! How it hurts one to laugh like this!" "Who the devil is there, for mercy's sake?" asked the poor Academician with wide staring eyes.

The voice continued still more slyly and mischievously:

"But it's I, Monsieur Guillardin, I, your palm-embroidered coat, waiting for you to start for the reception. I must crave pardon for having so unseasonably interrupted your musing; but really it is too funny to hear you talk of your talent! I could not restrain myself. Come, you can't be serious? Can you conscientiously believe that your talent has sufficed to raise you so rapidly to the point you have attained in life; that it has given you all you possess: honours, position, fame, fortune? Do you really think that possible, Guillardin? Examine yourself, my dear friend, before answering; go down, far, far down, into your inmost conscience. Now, answer me? Don't you see you dare not?"

"And yet," stammered Guillardin, with comical hesitation, "I've.... I've worked a great deal."

"Oh yes, a great deal, you have fagged tremendously. You are a toiler, a drudge, you knock off a great deal of work. You count your task by the hour, like a cabdriver. But the spark, my dear boy, which, like a golden bee flits through the brain of the true artist, and emits from its wings both light and music, when has it ever visited you? Not once, and you are well aware of it. It has always frightened you, that divine little bee! And yet it is this only that gives real talent. Ah! I know many who also work, but very differently from you, with all the anxiety and fever of sincere research, and yet who will never reach the point you have attained. Look here, acknowledge this much, now we are alone. Your one talent has been marrying a pretty woman."

"Monsieur!" interrupted Guillardin, turning purple. The voice proceeded unchanged: "Ah well! This burst of indignation is a good sign. It proves to me what all the world knows indeed; that you are certainly more fool than knave. Come, come, you need not roll such furious eyes at me. In the first place, if you touch me, if you make the least crease or tear in me, it will be impossible to go to the reception to-day, and then, what will Madame Guillardin say? For after all, it is to her that all the glory of this great day is due.

It is she whom the five Academies are about to receive, and I can assure you that if I appeared at the _Institut_ on her pretty person, still so elegant and slender notwithstanding her age, I should cut a very different figure than with you. Confound it, Monsieur Guillardin, we must look facts in the face! You owe everything to that woman; everything, your house, your forty thousand francs (sixteen hundred pounds) a year, your cross of the Legion of Honour, your laurels, your medals."

And with the gesture of a one-armed man, the green coat, with its empty embroidered sleeve, pointed out to the unfortunate sculptor the glorious insignia hung up on the walls of his alcove. Then, as though wishing the better to torment his victim, to assume every aspect, and every attitude, the cruel coat drew nearer the fire, and leaning forward on his arm-chair with a little old-fashioned and confidential air, he spoke familiarly, in the tone of a long-established intimacy:

"Come, old boy, what I've said seems to upset you. Yet it is better you should know what everybody is aware of. And who could tell you better than your own coat? Let us reason a little. What had you when you married? Nothing. What did your wife bring you? Nothing. Then how do you explain your present fortune? You are going to repeat again that you have, worked very hard. But my poor friend, working day and night, with all the patronage and the orders from government which have certainly not been wanting to you since your marriage, you have never made more than fifteen thousand francs (six hundred pounds) a year. Can you for one moment suppose that was sufficient to keep up an establishment like yours? Remember that the beautiful Madame Guillardin has always been cited as a model of elegance, frequenting the richest society. Of course I am well aware that shut up as you were from morning till night in your studio, you never gave a thought to all this. You were satisfied with saying to your friends: 'I have a wife who is a surprisingly skilful manager. With what I gain, she not only pays our expenses, but manages also to put by money.' It was you who were surprising, poor man! The truth was that you had married one of those pretty little unscrupulous creatures of which Paris is full, an ambitious flirt, serious in what concerned your interests and unprejudiced in regard of her own, knowing how to reconcile your affairs and her pleasures. The life of these women, my dear fellow, resembles a dance programme in which sums would be placed side by side with the dancers' names. Yours reasoned in the following manner: 'My husband has no talent, no fortune, no good looks either; but he is an excellent man, good-natured, credulous, as little in the way as possible. Provided he leaves me free to amuse myself as I choose, I can undertake to give him all he lacks!' And from that day forth, money, orders, decorations from all countries kept pouring in upon your studio, with their pretty metallic sound and their many-coloured ribbons. Look at the row on my lapel. Then one fine morning, Madame was seized with the fancy--a fancy of beauty on the wane--to be the wife of an Academician, and it is her delicately gloved hand that has opened before you one by one all the doors of the sanctuary. Ah! my poor old fellow, your colleagues alone can tell you what all these green palms have cost you!"

"You lie, you lie!" screamed Guillardin, half choked by indignation.

"Ah no! my old friend, indeed I do not lie. You need only to look around you presently, when you enter the reception hall. You will see a malicious gleam in every eye, a smile at the corner of every lip, while they will whisper as you pass by: 'Here is the beautiful Madame Guillardin's husband.' For you will never be anything else in life, my dear fellow, but the husband of a pretty woman."

This time, Guillardin could bear it no longer. Pale with rage, he bounded forward, to seize and dash into the fire, after first tearing from it the pretty green palm wreath, this insolent and raving coat; but a door opens and a well-known voice, tinged with a mixture of contempt and mild condescension, opportunely awakes him from his horrible nightmare:

"Oh! that is just like you, asleep at the corner of the fire on such an important day!"

And Madame Guillardin stands before him, tall and still handsome, although rather too imposing with her almost natural pink complexion, her powdered hair, and the exaggerated brilliancy of her painted eyes. With the gesture of the superior woman, she takes up the green-palmed coat, and briskly, with a little smile, helps her husband to don it; while he, poor man, still trembling with the horrors of his nightmare, draws a deep sigh of relief and thinks to himself: "Thank goodness! It was a dream!"

[The end]
Alphonse Daudet's short story: The Confidences Of An Academic Coat

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