THE TALES OF "EXCELSIOR"
THE ERASED IMAGES by LEO LARGUIER

Behind a grassy embankment that hid the road, we could hear the coaches passing by at the same time, carrying groups of tourists to the Col des Aravis, the Mer de Glace, and Chamonix. The old man who had rented me a tiny chalet near the one where he lived all year round was glad not to see them, and he said to me:

"I love this round grassy shoulder that limits my view in this direction, like a cold man loves a good coat. His influence has been prodigious. I owe almost all my moral certainties to him..."
A strange character, this old solitary man, whom they called Monsieur Jean in the village, and who was surrounded by a sort of fearful respect. I'd been vaguely informed that he spent almost every night reading... He had retired there over twenty years ago, after some misfortunes... He was very comfortable and owned valuable books and expensive paintings.
We had bonded upon my arrival, thanks to his books and the canvases that adorned the walls of the immense room where he had received me. I had admired two Corots from Italy and confided to him that I preferred them to the works the old master executed, later, without much renewal, to the sumptuous, more commercial pieces that wealthy amateurs pay for without haggling.
He had been delighted to learn that I, like him, owned a few Bonings—elegant tones like Van Dycks—and that I had discovered, among some junk, a sketch by Boilly, depicting six amateurs playing chamber music. That day, he glanced furtively at the newspaper the postman had handed me.
"If I came back to Paris," he said, "I don't think I'd recognize anything there anymore... Besides, could we still find something in the places where we've lived?... The old face of the world is shattered, and I'd like to leaf through one of those little atlases they give to schoolchildren. We lived on a stock of fading images."
"Asia was for us a mysterious princess on the carpet adorning the monstrous brow of an elephant; America wore the goatee, the top hat with the star-spangled ribbon, and the boots of Uncle Sam; Australia was a great green paradise past which Bougainville's brig cruised; Africa resembled a wild animal sketched by Delacroix. There was a giant cactus, sand, Bedouins on horseback, a lion, and a mosque. Europe resembled an old gentleman in a frock coat, a gourmet, a lover of old books, fine wines, and law...
The Chinese have cut their braids and taken off their splendid dresses: the beautiful Turkish women have graduated, and romantic eunuchs escort them to the Faculty of Letters; their husbands go to discuss in Parliament, where the Grand Vizier, who was only spoken to while lying flat on his stomach, is forced to listen to unkind remarks and speeches stripped of their few oriental metaphors on interpellation days.
The fabulous rajahs live eight months out of twelve in Paris. Their sons marry young patricians who have themselves dressed on the Rue de la Paix, and our most elegant waltzers lead the cotillion into the centuries-old palaces where elephants, harnessed in silver, muslin, and pearls, can enter.
Here, the upheaval is even more tragic, but I only want to think of the old images. A rose on the right breast, a child on the left, Germany was a bourgeois blonde, robust and plump, who knitted under the linden trees while listening to military music. In the dining room of his comfortable gabled house, the pastor, after having praised the Eternal, shared the cherry tart for afternoon tea, and his daughters and his wife were seated at the table under the busts of Goethe and Schiller. Miss Bertha Krupp, who was only ten years old, was going over her music theory lesson... England?... A my lord commander-in-chief at sea was carrying, to his mess hall, the health of the queen, the old widow of Windsor, like all the old ladies of the kingdom, with her black lace headdress and her flat headbands. I can still see a sailor on the quays where a mountain of coal is being loaded; a judge with a fiery complexion, a gentleman with a monocle who reads, in the leather armchairs of his club, a fifteen-page newspaper...

Those who believe only in factories and who don't know that beautiful sun-drenched coves, the scent of orange trees, the song of a fisherman on the sea, the wings of seagulls and lateen sails, a ruined triumphal arch and a collapsed temple are prodigious things, said that Italy was poor. She was for me a museum keeper; bloody roses and pomegranate blossoms faded in her black hair, on her amber throat shone a cross of papal treasure, and Rome was the magnetic point to which all roads led and to which pilgrims of fortunate lovers, believers, and artists.
Belgium was a forge and a béguinage; Spain an arena, a day for bullfighting; and Russia, the Russia from which the Asiatic virus came to us, was still a mysterious land. Yet I see Tolstoy, bearded like a biblical prophet, pondering his social gospels while resoling his own moujik boots, and I smell the lemon tea Anna Karenina drank...
All that fades. We no longer know. I only believe in the old gods and I'm afraid of the new ones... Those who succeed you are always a bit like Barbarians. The world moves too fast, and since you are, deep down, of my opinion, let me tell you that you remind me, with your literary works, of old Ausonius who sensed, on the banks of the Moselle, the approaching twilight of Rome... Good night, sir, go and dine at your hotel, with your Parisians disguised as mountaineers... >>

Léo LARGUIER