What do you think?
Rate this book
不朽者
"L’éditeur du Dictionnaire des « Célébrités » laissant à chaque intéressé le soin de se raconter lui-même, l’authenticité de ces notes biographiques ne saurait être mise en doute. Mais pourquoi dire que Léonard Astier-Réhu avait donné sa démission d’archiviste, quand personne n’ignore qu’il fut destitué, mis à pied comme un simple cocher de fiacre, pour une phrase imprudente échappée à l’historien de la Maison d’Orléans, tome V, page 327 : « Alors comme aujourd’hui, la France, submergée sous le flot démagogique... »
Où peut conduire une métaphore ! Les douze mille francs de sa place, un logement au quai d’Orsay, chauffage, éclairage, en plus ce merveilleux trésor de pièces historiques où ses livres avaient pris vie ; voilà ce que lui emporta ce « flot démagogique », son flot ! Le pauvre homme ne s’en consolait pas. Même après deux ans écoulés, le regret du bien-être et des honneurs de son emploi lui mordait le cœur, plus vif à certains jours, à certaines dates du mois ou de la semaine, et principalement le jour de Teyssèdre.
C’était le frotteur, ce Teyssèdre. Il venait de fondation chez les Astier, le mercredi ; et l’après-midi du même jour, Mme Astier recevait dans le cabinet de travail de son mari, seule pièce présentable de ce troisième étage de la rue de Beaune, débris d’un beau logis, majestueux de plafond, mais terriblement incommode. On se figure le désarroi où ce mercredi, revenant chaque semaine, jetait l’illustre historien interrompu dans sa production laborieuse et méthodique ; il en avait pris en haine le frotteur, son « pays », à la face jaune, fermée et dure comme son pain de cire, ce Teyssèdre qui, sous prétexte qu’il était de Riom, « tandis que meuchieu Achtier n’était que de Chauvagnat », bousculait sans respect la lourde table encombrée de cahiers, de notes, de rapports, chassait de pièce en pièce le pauvre grand homme, réduit à se réfugier dans une soupente prise sur la hauteur de son cabinet, où, bien que de taille médiocre, il ne tenait qu’assis."
Nous voici dans les coulisses de l'Académie française... Parce que les Immortels ne sont pas immortels, il faut parfois les remplacer...
Où peut conduire une métaphore ! Les douze mille francs de sa place, un logement au quai d’Orsay, chauffage, éclairage, en plus ce merveilleux trésor de pièces historiques où ses livres avaient pris vie ; voilà ce que lui emporta ce « flot démagogique », son flot ! Le pauvre homme ne s’en consolait pas. Même après deux ans écoulés, le regret du bien-être et des honneurs de son emploi lui mordait le cœur, plus vif à certains jours, à certaines dates du mois ou de la semaine, et principalement le jour de Teyssèdre.
C’était le frotteur, ce Teyssèdre. Il venait de fondation chez les Astier, le mercredi ; et l’après-midi du même jour, Mme Astier recevait dans le cabinet de travail de son mari, seule pièce présentable de ce troisième étage de la rue de Beaune, débris d’un beau logis, majestueux de plafond, mais terriblement incommode. On se figure le désarroi où ce mercredi, revenant chaque semaine, jetait l’illustre historien interrompu dans sa production laborieuse et méthodique ; il en avait pris en haine le frotteur, son « pays », à la face jaune, fermée et dure comme son pain de cire, ce Teyssèdre qui, sous prétexte qu’il était de Riom, « tandis que meuchieu Achtier n’était que de Chauvagnat », bousculait sans respect la lourde table encombrée de cahiers, de notes, de rapports, chassait de pièce en pièce le pauvre grand homme, réduit à se réfugier dans une soupente prise sur la hauteur de son cabinet, où, bien que de taille médiocre, il ne tenait qu’assis."
Nous voici dans les coulisses de l'Académie française... Parce que les Immortels ne sont pas immortels, il faut parfois les remplacer...
232 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1888
2 people are currently reading
67 people want to read
About the author
Alphonse Daudet
1,808 books197 followersStories of life of French writer Alphonse Daudet of the naturalist school in his native Provence include
Lettres de mon moulin
(1869).
Louis Marie Alphonse Daudet authored novels. He was the younger brother of Ernest Daudet. He was married to Julia Daudet and the father of Léon Daudet, Lucien Daudet and Edmée Daudet, all writers.
Family on both sides belonged to the bourgeoisie. Vincent Daudet, the father, manufactured silk, but misfortune and failure dogged the man through life. A boyhood depressed Alphonse amid much truancy had. He spent his days mainly at Lyon, left in 1856, and began life as a schoolteacher at Alès, Gard, in the south. The position proved intolerable. As Charles Dickens declared that all through his prosperous career, the miseries of his apprenticeship to the blacking business haunted him in dreams, so after Daudet left Alès, he woke with horror, thinking for months that he still dwelt among his unruly pupils.
On 1 November 1857, he abandoned teaching and took refuge with Ernest Daudet, his brother only some three years his senior, who tried "soberly" to make a living as a journalist in Paris. Alphonse took to writing, and a small volume, Les Amoureuses (1858), collected his poems and met with a fair reception. He obtained employment on Le Figaro, then under energetic editorship of Cartier de Villemessant, and wrote two or three plays; those interested in literature began to recognize him as possessing individuality and promise. Morny, all-powerful minister of Napoleon III, appointed Daudet, who held a post of his secretaries till death of Morny in 1865, and Morny showed Daudet no small kindness. Daudet put his foot on the road to fortune.
From Wikipedia
Louis Marie Alphonse Daudet authored novels. He was the younger brother of Ernest Daudet. He was married to Julia Daudet and the father of Léon Daudet, Lucien Daudet and Edmée Daudet, all writers.
Family on both sides belonged to the bourgeoisie. Vincent Daudet, the father, manufactured silk, but misfortune and failure dogged the man through life. A boyhood depressed Alphonse amid much truancy had. He spent his days mainly at Lyon, left in 1856, and began life as a schoolteacher at Alès, Gard, in the south. The position proved intolerable. As Charles Dickens declared that all through his prosperous career, the miseries of his apprenticeship to the blacking business haunted him in dreams, so after Daudet left Alès, he woke with horror, thinking for months that he still dwelt among his unruly pupils.
On 1 November 1857, he abandoned teaching and took refuge with Ernest Daudet, his brother only some three years his senior, who tried "soberly" to make a living as a journalist in Paris. Alphonse took to writing, and a small volume, Les Amoureuses (1858), collected his poems and met with a fair reception. He obtained employment on Le Figaro, then under energetic editorship of Cartier de Villemessant, and wrote two or three plays; those interested in literature began to recognize him as possessing individuality and promise. Morny, all-powerful minister of Napoleon III, appointed Daudet, who held a post of his secretaries till death of Morny in 1865, and Morny showed Daudet no small kindness. Daudet put his foot on the road to fortune.
From Wikipedia
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 13, 2012
Alphonse Daudet's One of the Forty (a.k.a. The Immortal) is a brilliant satire on the Académie Francaise and its forty members. It is a strangely Balzacian novel, to the extent that I almost feel as if the Good Dr. Bianchon or that rapscallion Vautrin were hanging about the sidelines.
It is the tale of a family of Académie members, beginning with the aged Réhu, most famous with recalling past events with a cynical, "That's another of the things that I have seen." His son, Leonard Astier-Réhu, who has gotten into the august organization by his wife's skirts, is a historian with a huge collection of manuscripts written by such figures as Galileo, Richelieu, and others -- upon which he bases his august (but largely unread) historical works. He has purchased all his manuscripts from a little hunchback named Albin Fage. (Doesn't that already make you suspicious?)
His son Paul, an architect, desperately wants to marry a title. Thrown over by one widow, the Princesse Colette de Rosen, he winds up with another widow twenty-five years his senior, the Duchess Maria Antonia Padovani, a Corsican.
The Astier-Réhu clan is surrounded by a coterie of wannabe academicians, most notably the Vicomte de Freydet, whose letters to his family provide an interesting viewpoint on the Académie and its strange ways.
Eventually, the word gets out that the immortal Leonard Astier-Réhu has been duped by the forger Fage. He insists on taking Fage to court, but it is he whose reputation suffers the more (even though Fage is convicted):
It is the tale of a family of Académie members, beginning with the aged Réhu, most famous with recalling past events with a cynical, "That's another of the things that I have seen." His son, Leonard Astier-Réhu, who has gotten into the august organization by his wife's skirts, is a historian with a huge collection of manuscripts written by such figures as Galileo, Richelieu, and others -- upon which he bases his august (but largely unread) historical works. He has purchased all his manuscripts from a little hunchback named Albin Fage. (Doesn't that already make you suspicious?)
His son Paul, an architect, desperately wants to marry a title. Thrown over by one widow, the Princesse Colette de Rosen, he winds up with another widow twenty-five years his senior, the Duchess Maria Antonia Padovani, a Corsican.
The Astier-Réhu clan is surrounded by a coterie of wannabe academicians, most notably the Vicomte de Freydet, whose letters to his family provide an interesting viewpoint on the Académie and its strange ways.
Eventually, the word gets out that the immortal Leonard Astier-Réhu has been duped by the forger Fage. He insists on taking Fage to court, but it is he whose reputation suffers the more (even though Fage is convicted):
The general result of reading the production was utter amazement that the Permanent Secretary of the Académie Française and the official representatives of science and literature could have been taken in for two or three years by an ignorant dwarf with a brain crammed full of the refuse of libraries and the ill-digested parings of books. This constituted the extraordinary joke of the whole business, and was the explanation of the crowded court. People came to see the Académie pilloried in the person of Astier-Réhu, who sat among the witnesses, the mark of every eye.After the trial, the historian realizes that, although he was Permanent Secretary of the 40 immortals of the Académie, it was all a bad business:
The Académie is a snare and a delusion. Go your way and do your work. Sacrifice nothing to the Académie, for it has nothing to offer you, neither gift, nor glory, nor the best thing of all, self-contentment. It is neither a retreat nor a refuge; it is a hollow idol, a religion that offers no consolations. The great troubles of life come upon you there as elsewhere; under that dome men have killed themselves, men have gone mad there! Those who in their agony have turned to the Académie, and weary of loving, or weary of cursing, have stretched forth their arms to her, have clasped but a shadow.I have read several of Daudet's books and think that it is time to begin republishing them with more recent translations. So far, this is the best of the lot -- at least among the works I have read.
September 13, 2012
Being my first Daudet work, I was hesitant to read this novel at first. It was a good decision that I did, however, because it turned out to be a great read. The Immortal is the story of a family that does what it must to survive in a society that thrives on hypocrisy, deceit, and empty promises. Daudet wrote with an engaging, but sharp, wit. Through his sense of irony and dark humor, he weaves a story of a plotting wife, an obsessed husband, and a scheming son who have no real affection for one another save for what each can do and give the others to be among the best in the world of letters and fashionable society. The undoing of this family shows Daudet to have a keen knowledge of the society of his time. The story is sad and tragic, completely ironic. It will make any reader pause and think about what really matters in life.
January 21, 2019
this is the first book I read by Daudet. I love it. Everything is so vivid and alive in this book.
Want to read
January 2, 2014Free download available at Project Gutenberg.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews