The Linguist and the Emperor Read Online Free PDF Page A

are not doing right. This day is a day of good tidings. Come, let us go and tell the king’s household . . .”
    And along with such stories as these, Jacques, who teaches his brother with opposing texts, also gives Jean François Roman “miracles” that mock all virtue, all belief:

    . . . the governor of Ephesus sentenced a thief to be crucified . . . Night came and a soldier remained to prevent his relatives from taking down the body. Now as the soldier stood guard, he noticed a light shining in the caves nearby. Curious, he made his way there, stopping short at the sight of a beautiful woman so faithful, so pure that she had followed her husband’s corpse to its tomb, determined to die by his side.
    The soldier began to talk and the woman listened . . . and soon the doors of the tomb were closed upon them while he enjoyed her beauty . . . But the next morning when he emerged, he beheld a terrible sight: The cross was empty—someone had taken down the thief’s body in the night and buried it. Now he himself had the death penalty before him and, trembling, he ran to tell the woman. “The gods forbid,” she cried out. “I would rather hang my dead husband on the cross than lose you . . .” Thus that day the townspeople were left to wonder at a miracle: how a dead man had climbed up onto the cross . . .

    And the boy takes in everything, assimilates everything, making it his own; the gossip of the ancient world—
    To the eunuch Bagoas, begging him to give him access to the fair one committed to his charge: “Thou, Bagoas, who art entrusted with the task of guarding thy mistress—I have but a couple of words to say to you, but they are weighty ones. Yesterday I saw a lady walking in the portico beneath the temple of Apollo . . .
    Its precepts—

    Learn the pleasure of despising pleasure.

    A man keeps and feeds a lion. The lion owns a man.

    If, as they say, I am only an ignorant man trying to be a philosopher, then that may be what a philosopher is.

    Its virtue and its vice—its grandeur forms him.
    Walk with swift feet, mortal, as you fulfill your uncertain destiny.
    Intellectually, Jean François has begun to fall in love.
    Bring water, bring wine, slave! Bring us crowns of flowers; bring them so I may box with Eros.
    The simplest question by Jean François is answered with an outpouring of ardor from Jacques for whom the lessons are a relief and a distraction. For a long time now Jacques has been leading a severe existence. Every sou he has earned has gone to support his parents in Figeac; and every moment he can snatch from his drudgery has been used for his studies.
    With an iron discipline, he has taught himself Hebrew and Latin and Greek, studying an enormous range of ancient works; poring over them until finally his knowledge surpasses those with years of formal training.
    Perhaps it is because his struggle has been so solitary, his achievement so hidden, that Jacques takes his rejection so much to heart. For without telling any one, he had applied to join the scholars General Bonaparte is recruiting for an extraordinary expedition. Going where?
Far from France.
Lasting how long?
Six months or six years.
Everything about it is shrouded in mystery, except the fact that Napoleon has gathered the best minds in his service.
    There have been months of preparation, months of hope for Jacques, but now word has spread throughout the land: Bonaparte has suddenly slipped away in the middle of the night with his chosen scholars and his soldiers. Without a word of warning, he leaves Jacques Champollion, self-taught classicist and shipping clerk, at home.
    And so Jacques throws himself into teaching his brother. He sets him riddles—
    Why is the Chorus made up of old men in the first part of the
Oresteia,
why of slave women in the second, why of the Furies in the third? What is the secret?
    He explains the subtle nature of language to him, how the dry rules of grammar can create a deep puzzle, choosing lines from