A DISSERTATION ON THE NOSE.
HAVE you ever considered, dear reader, what an admirable organ is the nose?
The nose, yes, the nose!
And how useful is the nose to every creature that lifts, as Ovid says, his face to heaven?
Ah, well, strange to say, — ingratitude unparalleled! — not a poet has yet thought of addressing an ode to the nose!
It has remained for me, who am not a poet, or who, at least, claim only to rank after our great poets, to conceive such an idea.
Truly, the nose is unfortunate.
Men have invented so many things for the eyes!
They have made them songs, compliments, kaleidoscopes, pictures, scenery, spectacles.
And for the ears:
Earrings, first of all, Robert the Devil, William Tell, Fra Diavolo, Stradivarius violins, Erard pianos, Sax trumpets.
And for the mouth:
Carême, The Plain Cook, The Gastronomist’s Calendar, The Gourmand’s Dictionary. They have made it soups of every kind, from the Russian batwigne f to the French cabbage-soup; they have garnished its dishes with the reputations of the greatest men, from cutlets à la Souhise to puddings à la Richelieu; they have compared its lips to coral, its teeth to pearls, its breath to benzoin; they have set before it peacocks in their plumes, snipes undrawn; finally, for the future they promise it larks roasted whole.
What has been invented for the nose?
Attar of roses, and snuff.
Ah! that is not well, O philanthropists, my masters! O — poets, my confrères!
And yet with what fidelity this member —
“It is not a member!” cry the savants.
Pardon, messieurs, I take it back: this appendage — Ah! And yet, as I was saying, with what fidelity has this appendage served you!
The eyes go to sleep, the mouth closes, the ears are deaf.
The nose, alone, is always on duty.
It guards your repose, contributes to your health. All other parts of your body, the feet, the hands, are stupid. The hands let themselves be caught in the act, like the fools they are; the feet stumble and let the body fall, like the clumsy creatures that they are.
And, in the latter case, who suffers for it, generally. The feet commit the fault, and the nose takes the punishment.
How often do you hear it said, —
Monsieur So-and-so has broken his nose!
There have been a great many broken noses since the creation of the world.
Can any one cite a single nose whose fault it was?
No. Everything assaults the poor nose.
Well, it endures all with angelic patience. True, it sometimes has the hardihood to snore. But where and when did you ever hear it complain?
We forget that nature created it an admirable instrument for increasing or decreasing the volume of the voice. We say nothing of the service it renders us in acting as a medium between our souls and the souls of flowers. Let us repress its utility and regard it only from its aesthetic side, that of beauty.
A cedar of Lebanon, it tramples underfoot the hyssop of the moustache; a central column, it provides a support for the double arch of the eyebrows. On its capital perches the eagle of thought. It is enwreathed with smiles. With what intrepidity did the nose of Ajax confront the storm when he said, “I will escape in spite of the gods!” With what courage did the nose of the great Condé — who would never have been great except for his nose — with what courage did the nose of the great Condé enter before all others, before the great Condé himself, the entrenchments of the Spaniards at Lens and Rocroy, where their conqueror had been so bold, or, rather, so rash as to flourish his bâton of command? With what assurance was thrust before the public Dugazon’s nose, which knew forty-two ways of wriggling, and each funnier than the last!
No, I do not believe that the nose should be condemned to the obscurity into which man’s ingratitude has hitherto forced it.
Perhaps, also, it is because the noses of the Occident are so small, that they have submitted to this injustice.
But the deuce is to pay if there are none but Occidental noses!
There are the Oriental noses, which are very handsome noses.
Do you question the superiority of these noses over your own, gentlemen of Paris, of Vienna, of Saint Petersburg?
In that case, Viennese, take the Danube; Parisians, the steamer; Peterbourgeois, the perecladdoi, and say these simple words: —
“To Georgia!”
Ah! but I forewarn you of a deep humiliation; should you bring to Georgia one of the largest noses in Europe, —— Hyacinthe’s nose or Schiller’s, — at the gate of Tiflis they would gaze at you with astonishment and exclaim:
“This gentleman has lost his nose on the way, — what a pity!”
At the first street in the town, — what am I saying! at the first house in the faubourg, you would be convinced that all other noses, Greek, Roman, German, French, Spauish, Xeopolitan even, should bury themselves in the bowels of the earth with chagrin at sight of the Georgian noses.
Ah! blessed God! Those beautiful Georgian noses! robust noses! magnificent noses!
To begin with, there are all shapes.
Round, fat, long, large.
There is every kind.
White, pink, red, violet.
Some are set with rubies, others with pearls; I saw one that was set with turquoises.
You have only to squeeze them between two fingers, and a pint, at the very least, of Kakhetia wine will flow.
In Georgia, Vakhtang IV. abolished the fathom, the metre, the archine; he retained but the nose.
Goods are measured off by the nose.
They say: “I bought seventeen noses of termalama for a dressing-gown, seven noses of kanaos for a pair of trousers, a nose and a half of satin for a cravat.”
And, let us add, the Georgian dames find this measure more convenient than the European measures.
But, in the matter of noses, Daghestan is not to be sneezed at.
Thus, for instance, in the centre of the face of a Derbend beg, Hadji Yussef, — God give strength to his shoulders! arose a certain protuberance for which his compatriots are still hunting a suitable name, although some call it a trumpet, some a rudder, others a handle!
In its shade three men could sleep.
One can understand how such a nose would be greatly respected at Derbend during a hot spell of fifty-two degrees in the sun, since on the other side of this nose, that is to say in the shade, it was but forty degrees.
We need not be greatly surprised, then, that Yussef had been assigned to Iskander as a guide.
But let us confess the whole truth: it was not entirely on account of his nose that he had been appointed.
As indicated by the title Hadji, prefixed to Yussefs name, Yussef had made the pilgrimage to Mecca.
In order to get there, he had traversed Persia, Asia Minor, Palestine, the Desert, a part of Arabia Petræa, and a portion of the Red Sea.
And, on his return, wonderful tales did Yussef tell of his travels, of dangers encountered, of bandits slain, of wild beasts whose jaws he had broken like a Samson!
Whenever he appeared at the bazaar of Derbend, people stepped aside, saying, —
“Make way for the lion of the steppe!”
“He is a remarkable man!” assented the most pointed moustaches and the longest beards, as Yussef Beg turned their heads with the current of his plausible speech. It was said that in going over the summit of a mountain in Persia, his papak had caught on the horn of the moon, the mountain was so high; that for a long time, his sole nourishment had been derived from omelettes of eagles’ eggs; and that he had passed nights in caverns where, when he sneezed, the eclio itself had responded, “God bless you!”
It is true that he spoke without reflection for the greater part of the time; but when he did speak, his words supplied food for reflection to others. What beasts had he not seen! What men had he not met! He had seen animals having two heads and a single foot, he had met men who had no heads and who thought with their stomachs.
All these tales were really a little old; doubtless that was why no one had thought of sending him for the ball of snow; but when by common consent this commission had fallen to Iskander, Yussef mounted his Persian steed, put his Andrev poniard, his Kouba pistol and Vladikafkaz schaska in his girdle, and rode proudly through the streets of Derbend, proclaiming, —
“If you like, I will accompany poor Iskander; for how do you imagine poor Iskander can get along without me?” The people answered, —
“Ah, very well; accompany Iskander.”
Then he went home to reinforce his defensive armor with a breastplate of copper links, his offensive armor with a Nouka gun. Yellow boots with high heels completed his costume; last of all, he suspended whip and sabre from his saddle.
He could hardly stir in the midst of his arsenal.
He was ready long before Iskander, and awaited him at the city gates, declaiming: —
“Well! will he never come? If they had selected me I should have been off two hours ago.”
About six o’clock in the afternoon, Iskander issued from his court on his Karabach horse, wearing the cos tume and arms with which all were familiar.
Iskander traversed the city slowly, — not that he had the least intention in the world of exhibiting himself, but because the streets leading from his house to the gates of Derbend were thronged with people.
At last, he succeeded in joining Yussef Beg, gave him his hand, saluted for a last time the inhabitants of Derbend and set off at a gallop.
Yussef followed on a Khorassan charger. For some time horses and riders could be distinguished, then only the dust, then nothing at all.
Horses and riders had disappeared.
Arrived at a vast cemetery, Iskander Beg slackened his Karabach’s pace.
Night began to fall.
But Iskander heeded neither night nor cemetery; he was dreaming of his darling Kassime.
Yussef kept glancing to right and left with a certain degree of uneasiness, and he profited by Iskander’s slackening speed to approach him.
Iskander was plunged in thought.
Ah! if you have ever been youthful in soul, if you have ever loved with all your heart, and if, youthful and loving, you have been going far away from the place where lives your dear one, you will then understand what feelings were uppermost in the breast of Iskander Beg. It is folly, doubtless, to imagine that in breathing the same atmosphere we have the same dreams; that in gazing ten times at a window, although it be shut, we bring away ten memories; but this folly is solacing. Fancy is always more picturesque than fact: fancy is poetry; it flies, light as bird or angel, and never are its white wings sullied with either mud or dust from the highway.
Fact, on the contrary, is prose: it plunges into details; while clinging round the bride’s fair neck it fails to note the delicacy of her skin, but asks itself if the pearls of her necklace are real or false, if she makes love to her husband, pets her dog, or gives money to the servants.
Ma foi! long live poetry!
Iskander was making very nearly the same reflections as ourselves, — but he at least was making them at twenty-live, which necessarily imparted to them both the colors of the rose and the perfume of May-bloom, — when he felt himself touched on the elbow by Yussef Beg.
“Well,” he asked, emerging from his revery, “what is it, Yussef?”
“Merely that, as we have not seen fit to stay in the city with the living, I see no reason why we should remain in a cemetery with the dead. How I would bum their graves, did not every stone appear to be rising, and were not that she-devil of a gallows stretching out her lean black hand toward us!”
“She is longing for you, Hadji Yussef; she fears that you may escape her,” laughed Iskander.
“I spit on the beard of him that put her there,” said Hadji Yussef. “Allah protect me! but whenever I pass this place, good Mussulman as I believe myself to be, pure of heart as I think I am, it always seems to me as if she were about to clutch me by the throat; and avow the truth, Iskander, confess that if we were not under Russian rule we should not remain very long in the city, foot in the stirrup and gun on the shoulder. Down with the troops! Ah! but I should like to settle those troops, — I would hack them into bits no larger than millet-seed!”
“Really, my dear Yussef, I did not know you were so brave at night. At the time of Kasi Mullah’s attack, I saw how you fought in the day-time, or rather I did not see you; were you not in Derbend?”
“Ah, now! my dear Iskander, you are always making fun of me! Did I not indeed in your own presence cut off the head of that Lesghian, who was so enraged against me that his head, after it had fallen to the earth, bit my foot so cruelly that I suffer from it to this very day every time the weather changes? What! seriously, did you not see that?”
“Allah denied me that pleasure.”
“Besides, are those Lesghians men? Is it worth while to pit one’s head against their balls? If I kill a Lesghian, it matters little; but, if a Lesghian kills me, Allah will find it difficult to fill my place. So, after I had killed that one, I thought it quite enough of hand-to-hand combat. I went into the citadel every day: I appropriated a cannon; yes, I constituted myself its artillery-man, I aimed it and I gave the gunner the order, ‘Fire!’ and then I saw some dancing in the group at which I had pointed my gun. Ah! Allah! I had great sport. I have never boasted of it, but I can say this to you as a friend; I am sure that I was the principal cause, in view of the damage that I did, of Kasi Mullah’s raising the siege; and when you reflect that I have never received a single cross, not even that of Saint George — Eh! do you not hear something?” added the valiant Beg, shrinking against Iskander.
“What the devil could you hear in this place, except the whistling wind and howling jackals?”
“Cursed brutes! I could kill their fathers, mothers, and grandparents. What wake are they keeping now, I want to know.”
“Perhaps they expect to feast to-morrow night on our carcasses. You know, really, Yussef, that the one that captures your nose will be in luck.”
“Come, come, no sinful jesting, Iskander! Ill word brings ill work. This is the very hour for brigands. When night comes, the devils walk the highways. Iskander, what if we should meet Mullah Nour?”
“Who is Mullah Nour?” said Iskander, as if he had never heard the name that his fellow-traveller had just pronounced.
“Not so loud, Iskander! not so loud, I beg of you in the names of Hussein and Ali, or I swear I will not stay with you. This cursed Mullah Nour has ears in every tree; just when you are not thinking of him — crash! befalls on your head like a thunderbolt.”
“And then?”
“How ‘and then’?”
“I ask, what happens afterwards?”
“Afterwards you are caught. He likes to laugh and joke, but, you understand, with a brigand’s pleasantry. If he knows you to be miserly ho will first take all that you have in your pockets, without counting the ransom that he will put on your head. From another, if he is poor, he will take nothing; he will even give.”
“What! he will give?”
“Yes, there have been such instances. Fine fellows who are in love and who have not twenty-five roubles to buy them a wife, — well, he gives them the money. From some he will take in gold the weight of the shot in his cartridges; of others still, he will demand as many roubles as he can hold on the blade of his sword. ‘What would you have?’ says he; ‘I am myself a poor merchant, and every trade has its risks, especially mine.’”
“But,” laughed Iskander, “those whom he stops must carry pipes instead of guns. Or is Mullah Nour made of iron?”
“Of iron? Say rather of steel, my friend. Balls flatten against him as against granite. Allah is great!”
“After what you tell me, Yussef, I am inclined to think that Mullah Nour is the devil in person. He must be the devil instead of a man, to be able to stop whole caravans.”
“Ah! one can see, poor boy, that you have never heard anything but the crowing of your own cock! And who, pray, says that Mullah Nour has no comrades? Why, on the contrary, he is surrounded by a parcel of knaves who think it better to eat bread raised by others than to be at the pains of raising their own. Comrades! By Allah! he is not wanting for comrades. Why, I myself, for instance, have often thought of it. If I had no relatives, no inheritance to expect, brave and adventurous — But what is the matter now, Iskander] Where are you going at that gait? They say that night is the devil’s day, and I am beginning to believe it, for this night is as black as hell. But answer me, Iskander; what are you thinking about?”
“I am thinking that you are a bad soldier, Hadji Yussef.”
“I, a bad soldier? Aren’t you ashamed to say such a thing to me? It is to be regretted that you were not present when I settled a band of brigands near Damascus. I can say without boasting that after I had saved them the whole caravan of pilgrims was at my feet, and with good reason, too. I killed so many that my gun waxed red-hot and went off of itself. As for my sword, it was in pretty shape’; it had teeth like a comb. I left seven dead on the field of battle and took two alive.”
“What did you do with them?”
“I burned them the next morning; they were in the way.”
“That was savage, Yussef.”
“What can you expect? I am as I am.”
“And you can tell me sucli tales without blushing? Your musket had more conscience than you; it turned red, at any rate.”
“You do not believe me? Ask Sapharkouli; he was there.”
“How unfortunate that Sapharkouli died eight days ago!”
“True. As if ho could not have waited, the fool! Well, well! but, according to you, I must be a poltroon. By Allah!. Set me face to face with a dozen brigands, and you shall see how I will settle them. Come, where are they? Point your finger at them, — but not at night. Oh! I don’t like to fight at night. I want the sun to shine on my valor; and then, I have a habit of taking aim with my right eye.”
“I cannot recover from my surprise, Yussef. A dozen brigands, and you will consider them your affair?”
“I will make a breakfast of them.”
“Let day come, then, and may we meet a dozen brigands, — a round dozen. I promise to leave them to you, Yussef. I will not touch one, not even with the liilt of my dagger.”
“My dear, never wish to see the devil, lest he immediately appear. Now, as brigands are devils, and as we are here on their ground, it is best not to invoke them. For that matter, it gets darker and darker. Satan must have made off with the moon. Cursed night! how it drags! Ah! help! help!”
“What ails you?”
“A brigand has caught me, Iskander! Let me go, demon!”
“Stand aside, and I will fire.”
“Stand aside, stand aside! that is very easily said. I believe he has daws. He has got me as a hawk holds its prey. Who are you? What do you want? Come, friend, let us make terms.”
Iskander approached Yussef.
“I suspected as much,” said he. “Fear has big eyes; your brigand is a thorn bush. Oh, my dear Yussef, you ought to have ridden an ass to the fountain for water, instead of coming with me to get snow on the top of Schach Dagh.”
“A bush? I swear that it was certainly a Lesghian or Tchetchen; but he saw me put my hand on my poniard, and he loosed his grip.”
“He saw you put your hand on your poniard in such darkness as this, when you yourself say the devil has run away with the moon?”
“Those knaves are like cats; it is well known that they can see in the dark. Oh! my dear Iskander, what is that in front of us?”
“It is the river. What! with a nose like yours, can you not scent water? See, my horse knows more than you.”
“Do you mean to cross the river to-night!”
“Certainly.”
“Iskander, you are undertaking a very imprudent thing. Better wait till to-morrow, Iskander. It is no trifling matter to cross the river at this hour, and the Karatcha too!”
Iskander was already in the middle of the stream.
Yet Yussef preferred to follow his companion rather than to stay behind; he plunged into the black river, and, after exclaiming at the coldness of the water, after shrieking that he was being dragged down by the feet, after calling Allah to witness that he was a lost man, Yussef finally reached the opposite bank.
The comrades resumed their journey and crossed successively the Alcha and the Velvet.
At daybreak they had reached the banks of the Samour.
The Samour flowed swiftly; they saw enormous boulders roll with the waves, and uprooted trees were following its current, floating on the surface like so many wisps of straw on a brooklet.
This time Iskander yielded to Yussef’s advice, and halted.
The riders dismounted to give their horses time to rest, they themselves lying down upon their bourkas.
But Yussef was not the man to go to sleep without relating some of his daring deeds.
Iskander listened this time, neither interrupting him nor laughing at him. He was falling asleep.
The one told of what had never taken place.
The other dreamed of what was to come.
At last, finding himself without support in the conversation, Yussef decided to go to sleep.
Iskander had been asleep a long time.