For this study, I will be responding to the French, but with frequent assistance from the English translation in order to explain the original meaning of each text.
(English Translation)
-- Translation by Cat Nilan
28. La Fausse Monnaie
Comme nous nous éloignions du bureau de tabac, mon ami fit un soigneux triage de sa monnaie ; dans la poche gauche de son gilet il glissa de petites pièces d�or; dans la droite, de petites pièces d�argent; dans la poche gauche de sa culotte, une masse de gros sols, et enfin, dans la droite, une pièce d�argent de deux francs qu�il avait particulièrement examinée.
«Singulière et minutieuse répartition!» me dis-je en moi-même.
Nous fîmes la rencontre d�un pauvre qui nous tendit sa casquette en tremblant. -- Je ne connais rien de plus inquiétant que l�éloquence muette de ces yeux suppliants, qui contiennent à la fois, pour l�homme sensible qui sait y lire, tant d�humilité, tant de reproches. Il y trouve quelque chose approchant cette profondeur de sentiment compliqué, dans les yeux larmoyants des chiens qu�on fouette.
L�offrande de mon ami fut beaucoup plus considérable que la mienne, et je lui dis: «Vous avez raison; après le plaisir d�être étonné, il n�en est pas de plus grand que celui de causer une surprise. -- C�était la pièce fausse», me répondit-il tranquillement, comme pour se justifier de sa prodigalité.
Mais dans mon misérable cerveau, toujours occupé à chercher midi à quatorze heures (de quelle fatigante faculté la nature m�a fait cadeau!) entra soudainement cette idée qu�une pareille conduite, de la part de mon ami, n�était excusable que par le désir de créer un événement dans la vie de ce pauvre diable, peut-être même de connaître les conséquences diverses, funestes ou autres, que peut engendrer une pièce fausse dans la main d�un mendiant. Ne pouvait-elle pas se multiplier en pièces vraies? ne pouvait-elle pas aussi le conduire en prison? Un cabaretier, un boulanger, par exemple, allait peut-être le faire arrêter comme faux monnayeur ou comme propagateur de fausse monnaie. Tout aussi bien la pièce fausse serait peut-être, pour un pauvre petit spéculateur, le germe d�une richesse de quelques jours. Et ainsi ma fantaisie allait son train, prêtant des ailes à l�esprit de mon ami et tirant toutes les déductions possibles de toutes les hypothèses possibles.
Mais celui-ci rompit brusquement ma rêverie en reprenant mes propres paroles: «Oui, vous avez raison; il n�est pas de plaisir plus doux que de surprendre un homme en lui donnant plus qu�il n�espère.»
Je le regardai dans le blanc des yeux, et je fus épouvanté de voir que ses yeux brillaient d�une incontestable candeur. Je vis alors clairement qu'il avait voulu faire à la fois la charité et une bonne affaire; gagner quarante sols et le c�ur de Dieu; emporter le paradis économiquement; enfin attraper gratis un brevet d�homme charitable. Je lui aurais presque pardonné le désir de la criminelle jouissance dont je le supposais tout à l�heure capable; j'aurais trouvé curieux, singulier, qu�il s�amusât à compromettre les pauvres; mais je ne lui pardonnerai jamais l�ineptie de son calcul. On n�est jamais excusable d�être méchant, mais il y a quelque mérite à savoir qu�on l�est; et le plus irréparable des vices est de faire le mal par bêtise.
As we were walking away from a tobacconist's, my friend carefully sorted out his change: into his left vest pocket he slipped the small gold coins, into his right vest pocket the small silver coins; into the left pocket of his pants, a handful of large copper coins, and finally into his right pant's pocket, a two franc silver piece he had examined with particular attention.
"A singular and meticulous division!," I said to myself.
We encountered a poor man who tremblingly held out his hat to us. -- I know nothing more disquieting than the mute eloquence of those supplicating eyes, which contain at one and the same time so much humility and so many reproaches, at least for the sensitive man who knows how to read them. He finds something approaching these depths of complicated emotion in the tearful eyes of dogs being beaten.
My friend's offering was much larger than my own, and I said to him: "You are right: next to the pleasure of being astonished, there is none greater than causing surprise." "It was the counterfeit coin," he replied tranquilly, as if to justify his prodigality.
But into my miserable brain, always missing the obvious (what a tiresome faculty nature made me a gift of!), entered suddenly the idea that such conduct on the part of my friend was only excusable on the grounds of a desire to create an event in the life of that poor devil, perhaps even to learn the diverse consequences, whether deadly or otherwise, that a counterfeit coin might produce in the hands of a beggar. Might it not be converted into real coins? Might it not also lead him into prison? A publican or a baker might, for example, have him arrested as a counterfeiter or as a passer of counterfeit coins. But the counterfeit coin might also just as well serve as the seed for several day's wealth, in the hands of a poor, small-scale speculator. And so my fancy played itself out, lending wings to the spirit of my friend and drawing all possible deductions from all possible hypotheses.
But he brusquely broke my reverie by repeating my very words: "Yes, you are right: there is no pleasure sweeter than surprising a man by giving him more than he had hoped for."
I gazed into the whites of his eyes, and I was appalled to see that his eyes were shining with an incontestable candor. I then saw clearly that he had wanted to both perform a charitable act and make a good deal at the same time -- to gain forty sous and the heart of God; to get into paradise economically; finally, to earn for free the badge of a charitable man. I might almost have pardoned him for the desire for criminal enjoyment of which I had just recently supposed him capable. I would have found it curious and singular that he amused himself by compromising the poor, but I could never pardon him for the ineptness of this calculation. One is never excused for being evil, but there is some merit in knowing that one is -- and the most irreparable of vices is to do evil through stupidity.
What is the devious stupidity which the fraudulently charitable man has ignored? In giving a man a false piece, he has detracted from his very capacity to purchase. Baudelaire's on-looking protagonist has apparently no real knowledge of economics.
When more money is pushed into circulation, it depreciates, whether a man is aware that he is spending false money or not. When the government publishes fiat currency, it actually unmakes the very value of the money in the first place.
In giving the man more money to spend, he in fact diminished his purchasing power. This subtle irony defines man's every attempt to "gain the heart of God."
All our works are filthy rags (Isaiah 64: 6). The more that we try in our own efforts, forcing or faking our way to garner God's favor, we actually bring ourselves into great bondage. The fact that man in his flesh is dead in his trespasses, and that to be carnally minded is death, it follows subsequent that attempting to buy something that cannot be bought merely depreciates what is already of no value!
This irony, which touches on the nature of God's grace and the currency, is certainly an irony which the poet was unaware of.
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