first I propose to do to you what we do to dirty beasts so that they
sha'n't come back again."
And he began to rub him, to scrub his face mercilessly with his
newspaper, which he held like a _tampon_ and with which he choked and
blinded him and made great raw spots where the paint bled. They dragged
him from his hands, purple and breathless. If he had worked himself up a
little more, he would have killed him.
The scuffle at an end, the Nabob pulled down his sleeves, which had
risen to his elbows, smoothed his rumpled linen, picked up his satchel
from which the papers relating to the Sarigue election had scattered as
far as the gutter, and replied to the police officers, who asked him his
name in order to prepare their report: "Bernard Jansoulet, Deputy for
Corsica."
A public man!
Not until then did he remember that he was one. Who would have suspected
it, to see him thus, out of breath and bareheaded, like a porter after a
street fight, under the inquisitive, coldly contemptuous glances of the
slowly dispersing crowd?
XVII.
THE APPARITION.
If you wish for sincere, straightforward passion, if you wish for
effusive demonstrations of affection, laughter, the laughter of great
happiness, which differs from tears only in a very slight movement of
the mouth, if you wish for the fascinating folly of youth illumined by
bright eyes, so transparent that you can look to the very bottom of the
soul, there are all of those to be seen this Sunday morning in a house
that you know, a new house on the outskirts of the old faubourg. The
show-case on the ground-floor is more brilliant than usual. The signs
over the door dance about more airily than ever, and through the open
windows issue joyous cries, a soaring heavenward of happiness.
"Accepted, it's accepted! Oh! what luck! Henriette, Elise, come, come!
M. Maranne's play is accepted."
Andre has known the news since yesterday. Cardailhac, the manager of the
Nouveautes, sent for him to inform him that his play would be put in
rehearsal at once and produced next month. They passed the evening
discussing the stage setting, the distribution of parts; and, as it was
too late to knock at his neighbors' door when he returned from the
theatre, he waited for morning with feverish impatience, and as soon as
he heard signs of life below, the blinds thrown back against the
house-front, he hurried down to tell his friends the good news. And now
they are all together, the young ladies in modest _deshabille_, their
hair hastily braided, and M. Joyeuse, whom the announcement had
surprised in the act of shaving, presenting an astonishing bipartite
face beneath his embroidered night-cap, with one side shaved, the other
not. But the most excited of all is Andre Maranne, for you know what the
acceptance of _Revolte_ meant to him, what agreement Grandmamma had made
with him. The poor fellow looks at her as if seeking encouragement in
her eyes; and those eyes, kindly as always, and with a slight suggestion
of raillery, seem to say to him: "Try, at all events. What do you risk?"
He also glances, in order to give himself courage, at Mademoiselle
Elise, pretty as a flower, her long lashes lowered. At last, making a
bold effort, he says, in a choking voice:
"Monsieur Joyeuse, I have a very serious communication to make to you."
M. Joyeuse is surprised.
"A communication? _Mon Dieu!_ you terrify me."
And he too lowers his voice as he adds:
"Are these young ladies in the way?"
No. Grandmamma knows what is going on. Mademoiselle Elise, too, must
have a suspicion. That leaves only the children. Mademoiselle Henriette
and her sister are requested to retire, which they do at once, the
former with a majestic, annoyed air, like a worthy descendant of the
Saint-Amands, the other, the little monkey Yaia, with a wild desire to
laugh, dissembled with difficulty.
Profound silence ensues. Then the lover begins his little story.
I should say that Mademoiselle Elise does in very truth suspect
something, for as soon as their young neighbor spoke of a
"communication," she had taken her _Ansart et Rendu_ from her pocket and
plunged madly into the adventures of a certain Le Hutin, an exciting
passage which made the book tremble in her fingers. Surely there is
cause for trembling in the dismay, the indignant amazement with which M.
Joyeuse welcomes this request for his daughter's hand.
"Is it possible? How did this come about? What an extraordinary thing!
Whoever would have suspected anything of the sort!"
And suddenly the good man bursts into a roar of laughter. Well, no, that
is not true. He has known what was going on for a long while; some one
told him the whole story.
Father knows the whole story! Then Grandmamma must have betrayed them.
And the culprit comes forward smiling to meet the reproachful glances
that are turned in her direction.
"Yes, my dears, I did. The secret was too heavy. I could not keep it all
by myself. And then father is so dear, one cannot conceal anything from
him."
As she says this, she leaps on the little man's neck, but it is large
enough for two, and when Mademoiselle Elise takes refuge there in her
turn, there is an affectionate, fatherly hand extended to him whom M.
Joyeuse looks upon thenceforth as his son.
Silent embraces, long searching glances, melting or passionate, blissful
moments which one would like to detain forever by the tips of their
fragile wings! They talk, they laugh softly as they recall certain
incidents. M. Joyeuse tells how the secret was revealed to him at first
by rapping spirits, one day when he was alone in Andre's room. "How is
business, Monsieur Maranne?" the spirits inquired, and he answered in
Maranne's absence: "Not so bad for the season, Messieurs Spirits." You
should see the mischievous air with which the little man repeats: "Not
so bad for the season," while Mademoiselle Elise, sadly confused at the
thought that it was her father with whom she was corresponding that day,
disappears beneath her flaxen curls.
After the first excitement has passed and their voices are steady once
more, they talk more seriously. It is certain that Madame Joyeuse, _nee_
de Saint-Amand, would never have consented to the marriage. Andre
Maranne is not rich, far less of noble blood; but luckily the old
book-keeper has not the same ideas of grandeur that his wife had. They
love each other, they are young, healthy and virtuous, qualities which
constitute a handsome dowry and one which the notary will not make a
heavy charge for recording. The new household will take up its abode on
the floor above. They will continue the photographing business unless
the receipts from _Revolte_ are enormous. (The _Imaginaire_ can be
trusted to attend to that.) In any event, the father will be always at
hand, he has a good place with his broker and some expert work at the
Palais de Justice; if the small vessel sails always in the wake of the
larger one, all will go well, with the help of the waves, the wind and
the stars.
A single question disturbs M. Joyeuse: "Will Andre's parents consent to
this marriage? How can Dr. Jenkins, rich and famous as he is--"
"Let us not speak of that man," exclaims Andre, turning pale; "he's a
miserable villain to whom I owe nothing, who is nothing to me."
He pauses, a little embarrassed by this explosion of wrath, which he
could not hold back and cannot explain, and continues in a milder tone:
"My mother, who comes to see me sometimes, although she has been
forbidden to do so, was the first to be informed of our plans. She
already loves Mademoiselle Elise like her own daughter. You will see,
Mademoiselle, how good she is, and how lovely and charming. What a
misfortune that she belongs to such a vile man, who tyrannizes over her
and tortures her so far as to forbid her mentioning her son's name!"
Poor Maranne heaves a sigh which tells the whole story of the great
sorrow he conceals in the depths of his heart. But what melancholy can
endure before the dear face illumined by fair curls and the radiant
outlook for the future? The serious questions decided, they can open the
door and recall the banished children. In order not to fill those little
heads with thoughts beyond their years, they have agreed to say nothing
of the prodigious event, to tell them nothing except that they must
dress in haste and eat their breakfast even more hurriedly, so that they
can pass the afternoon at the Bois, where Maranne will read his play to
them, awaiting the hour to go to Suresnes for a fish-dinner at
Kontzen's; a long programme of delights in honor of the acceptance of
_Revolte_ and of another piece of good news which they shall know later.
"Ah! indeed. What can it be?" query the two children with an innocent
air.
But if you fancy that they do not know what is in the wind, if you think
that, when Mademoiselle Elise struck three blows on the ceiling, they
believed that she did it for the special purpose of inquiring about the
photographing business, you are even more ingenuous than Pere Joyeuse.
"Never mind, never mind, mesdemoiselles. Go and dress."
Thereupon another refrain begins:
"What dress must I wear, Grandmamma? The gray?"
"Grandmamma, there's a ribbon gone from my hat."
"Grandmamma, my child, I haven't any starched cravat."
For ten minutes there is a constant going and coming around the charming
Grandmamma, constant appeals to her. Every one needs her, she keeps the
keys to everything, distributes the pretty, finely fluted white linen,
the embroidered handkerchiefs, the best gloves, all the treasures which,
when produced from bandboxes and cupboards and laid out upon the beds,
spread throughout a house the sunshiny cheerfulness of Sunday.
The laboring men, the people who work with their hands, alone know the
joy that comes with the end of each week, consecrated by the custom of a
nation. For those people, prisoners throughout the week, the crowded
lines of the almanac open at equal intervals in luminous spaces, in
refreshing whiffs of air. Sunday, the day that seems so long to worldly
people, to the Parisians of the boulevard, whose fixed habits it
deranges, and so melancholy to exiles without a family, is the day which
constitutes to a multitude of people the only recompense, the only goal
of six days of toil. Neither rain nor hail makes any difference to them;
nothing will prevent them from going out, from closing the door of the
deserted workshop or the stuffy little lodging behind them. But when the
springtime takes a hand, when a May sun is shining as it is shining this
morning and Sunday can array itself in joyous colors, then indeed it is
the holiday of holidays.
If you would appreciate it to the full, you must see it in the laboring
quarters, in those dismal streets which it illumines, which it makes
broader by closing the shops, housing the great vans, leaving the space
free for the romping of children with clean faces and in their best
clothes, and games of battledore mingled with circling flocks of
swallows under some porch in old Paris. You must see it in the swarming,
fever-stricken faubourgs where from early morning you feel it hovering,
soothing and grateful, over the silent factories, passing with the clang
of bells and the shrill whistle of the locomotives, which give the
impression of a mighty hymn of departure and deliverance arising from
all the suburbs. Then you appreciate it and love it.
O thou Parisian Sunday, Sunday of the working man and the humble, I have
often cursed thee without reason, I have poured out floods of abusive
ink upon thy noisy, effervescent joy, the dusty railway stations filled
with thy uproar, and the lumbering omnibuses which thou takest by
assault, upon thy wine-shop ballads roared forth in spring-carts
bedecked with green and pink dresses, thy barrel-organs wheezing under
balconies in deserted court-yards; but to-day, renouncing my errors, I
exalt thee and bless thee for all the joy and relief thou bringest to
courageous, honorable toil, for the laughter of the children who acclaim
thee, for the pride of happy mothers dressing their little ones in thy
honor, for the dignity which thou dost keep alive in the dwellings of
the lowliest, for the gorgeous apparel put aside for thee in the depths
of the old crippled wardrobe; above all I bless thee for all the
happiness which thou didst bring in full measure that morning to the
great new house on the outskirts of the old faubourg.
The toilets completed, the breakfast hastily swallowed,[3] they are
putting on their hats in front of the mirror in the salon. Grandmamma is
casting her eye around for the last time, sticking in a pin here,
retying a ribbon there, adjusting the paternal cravat; but, while all
the little party are pawing the floor impatiently, beckoned out of doors
by the beauty of the day, suddenly their gayety is clouded by a ring at
the door-bell.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] There is in the text at this point a play upon words which it is
impossible to render in English. "Les toilettes terminees, le dejeuner
fini, pris sur le pouce--et sur le pouce de ces demoiselles vous pensez
ce qu'il peut tenir," etc., that is to say: "the breakfast at an end,
taken upon the thumb--and you can imagine how much the thumbs of those
young ladies would hold." To eat _sur le pouce_ (eat upon the thumb)
means to eat hastily, without taking time to sit down.
"Suppose we don't go to the door?" the children suggest.
And what relief, what a shout of joy when friend Paul appears!
"Come quick, quick; let us tell you the good news!"
He knew before anybody else that the play was accepted. He had had
difficulty enough in making Cardailhac read it, for at the first sight
of the "little lines," as he called the verses, he wanted to send the
manuscript to the Levantine and her _masseur_, as he did with all the
rubbish that was sent to him. But Paul was careful not to speak of his
intervention. As for the other great event, which was not mentioned
because of the children, he guessed it without difficulty from the
tremulous happiness of Maranne, whose fair hair stood straight on end
over his forehead,--because the poet constantly thrust both hands
through it, as he always did in his moments of joy,--from the slightly
embarrassed demeanor of Elise, and from the triumphant airs of M.
Joyeuse, who stood proudly erect in his spotless linen, with all the
happiness of his dear ones written on his face.
Grandmamma alone preserved her usual tranquil bearing; but one detected
in her, in the zeal with which she waited upon her sister, a more
affectionate warmth than usual, a wish to make her attractive. And it
was delightful to see that girl of twenty intent upon beautifying
another, without envy or regret, with something of the sweet
renunciation of a mother celebrating her daughter's young love in memory
of her own bygone happiness. Paul saw it, indeed he was the only one who
saw it; but, while he gazed in admiration at Aline, he asked himself
sadly if there would ever be room in that motherly heart for other than
family attachments, for interests outside of the tranquil circle of
light in which Grandmamma presided so prettily over the work-table in
the evening.
Love, as we know, is a poor blind boy, bereft of speech and hearing as
well, and with no other guide than prescience, divination, the nervous
faculties of the invalid. Really, it is pitiful to see him wander about,
feeling his way, faltering at every step, tapping with his fingers the
projections upon which he depends for guidance, with the distrustful
awkwardness of an infirm old man. At the very moment when he was
mentally casting a doubt upon Aline's susceptibility, Paul, having
informed his friends that he was about to leave Paris for a journey of
several days, of several weeks perhaps, did not notice the girl's sudden
pallor, did not hear the sorrowful exclamation from her discreet lips:
"You are going away?"
He was going away, he was going to Tunis, very uneasy at the idea of
leaving his poor Nabob in the midst of his bloodthirsty pack of
pursuers; however, Mora's friendship reassured him somewhat, and,
moreover, the journey was absolutely necessary.
"And what about the _Territoriale_?" asked the old book-keeper, always
recurring to his fixed idea. "How does that stand? I see that
Jansoulet's name is still at the head of the administrative council.
Can't you get him out of that Ali Baba's cave? Beware, beware!"
"Ah! I know it, Monsieur Joyeuse. But in order to get out of it with
honor, we must have money, much money, must sacrifice two or three
millions more; and we haven't them. That is why I am going to Tunis, to
try and extort from the bey's rapacity a small portion of the great
fortune which he so unjustly withholds. At this moment I have some
chance of success, whereas a little later perhaps--"
"Go at once then, my dear boy, and if you return with a bag full of
money as I trust you will, attend first of all to the Paganetti gang.
Remember that one shareholder less patient than the rest will be enough
to blow the whole thing into the air, to demand an inquiry; and you know
as well as I what an inquiry would disclose. On reflection," added M.
Joyeuse, wrinkling his brow, "I am surprised that Hemerlingue in his
hatred of you has not secretly procured a few shares--"
He was interrupted by the concert of maledictions, of imprecations which
the name of Hemerlingue always called forth from all those young people,
who hated the corpulent banker for the injury he had done their father
and for the injury he wished to do the worthy Nabob, who was adored in
that household for Paul de Gery's sake.
"Hemerlingue, the heartless creature! Villain! Wicked man!"
But, amid that chorus of outcries, the _Imaginaire_ worked out his
theory of the stout baron becoming a shareholder in the _Territoriale_
in order to drag his enemy before the courts. And we can imagine Andre
Maranne's stupefaction, knowing absolutely nothing of the affair, when
he saw M. Joyeuse turn toward him, his face purple and swollen with
rage, and point his finger at him with these terrible words:
"The greatest rascal here is yourself, monsieur!"
"O papa, papa! what are you saying?"
"Eh? What's that?--Oh! I beg your pardon, my dear Andre. I imagined
that I was in the examining magistrate's office, confronting that
villain. It's my infernal brain that is forever rushing off to the
devil."
A roar of laughter rang out through all the open windows, mingling with
the rumbling of innumerable carriages and the chatter of gayly-dressed
crowds on Avenue des Ternes; and the author of _Revolte_ took advantage
of the diversion to inquire if they did not propose to start soon. It
was late--the good places in the Bois would all be taken.
"The Bois de Boulogne, on Sunday!" exclaimed Paul de Gery.
"Oh! our Bois is not the same as yours," replied Aline with a smile.
"Come with us, and you will see."
* * * * *
Has it ever happened to you, when you were walking alone and in
contemplative mood, to lie flat on your face in the grassy underbrush of
a forest, amid the peculiar vegetation, of many and varying species,
that grows between the fallen autumn leaves, and to let your eyes stray
along the level of the earth before you? Gradually the idea of height
vanishes, the interlaced branches of the oaks above your head form an
inaccessible sky, and you see a new forest stretching out beneath the
other, opening its long avenues pierced by a mysterious green light and
lined by slender or tufted shrubs ending in round tops of exotic or wild
aspect, stalks of sugar-cane, the graceful rigidity of palms, slender
cups holding a drop of water, girandoles bearing little yellow lights
which flicker in the passing breeze. And the miraculous feature of it
all is that beneath those slender stalks live miniature plants and
myriads of insects whose existence, seen at such close quarters, reveals
all its mysteries to you. An ant, staggering like a woodcutter under his
burden, drags a piece of bark larger than himself; a beetle crawls along
a blade of grass stretched like a bridge from trunk to trunk; while,
beneath a tall fern standing by itself in a clearing carpeted with
velvety moss, some little blue or red creature waits, its antennae on the
alert, until some other beast, on its way thither by some deserted path,
arrives at the rendezvous under the gigantic tree. It is a small forest
beneath the large one, too near the ground for the latter to perceive
it, too humble, too securely hidden to be reached by its grand orchestra
of songs and tempests.
A similar phenomenon takes place in the Bois de Boulogne. Behind those
neat, well-watered gravelled paths, where long lines of wheels moving
slowly around the lake draw a furrow by constant wear throughout the
day, with the precision of a machine, behind that wonderful
stage-setting of verdure-covered walls, of captive streams, of
flower-girt rocks, the real forest, the wild forest, with its luxuriant
underbrush, advances and recedes, forming impenetrable shadows traversed
by narrow paths and rippling brooks. That is the forest of the lowly,
the forest of the humble, the little forest under the great. And Paul,
who knew nothing of the aristocratic resort save the long avenues, the
gleaming lake as seen from the back seat of a carriage or from the top
of a break in the dust of a return from Longchamps, was amazed to see
the deliciously secluded nook to which his friends escorted him.
It was on the edge of a pond that lay mirrorlike beneath the willows,
covered with lilies and lentils, with great patches of white here and
there, where the sun's rays fell upon the gleaming surface, and streaked
with great tendrils of _argyronetes_ as with lines drawn by diamond
points.
They had seated themselves, to listen to the reading of the play, on the
sloping bank, covered with verdure already dense, although made up of
slender plants, and the pretty attentive faces, the skirts spread out
upon the grass made one think of a more innocent and chaste Decameron in
a reposeful atmosphere. To complete the picture of nature at its
loveliest, the distant rustic landscape, two windmills could be seen
through an opening between the branches, turning in the direction of
Suresnes, while, of the dazzling gorgeous vision to be seen at every
cross-road in the Bois, naught reached them save a confused endless
rumbling, to which they finally became so accustomed that they did not
hear it at all. The poet's voice alone, fresh and eloquent, rose in the
silence, the lines came quivering forth, repeated in undertones by other
deeply-moved lips, and there were murmured words of approval, and
thrills of emotion at the tragic passages. Grandmamma, indeed, was seen
to wipe away a great tear. But that was because she had no embroidery in
her hand.
The first work! That is what _Revolte_ was to Andre--the first work,
always too copious and diffuse, into which the author tosses first of
all a whole lifetime of ideas and opinions, pressing for utterance like
water against the edge of a dam, and which is often the richest, if not
the best, of an author's productions. As for the fate that awaited it,
no one could say what it might be; and the uncertainty that hovered
about the reading of the drama added to his emotion the emotion of each
of his auditors, the white-robed hopes of Mademoiselle Elise, M.
Joyeuse's fanciful hallucinations and the more positive desires of
Aline, who was already in anticipation installing her sister in the
nest, rocked by the winds but envied by the multitude, of an artist's
household!
Ah! if one of those pleasure-seekers circling the lake for the hundredth
time, overwhelmed by the monotony of his habit, had chanced to put aside
the branches, how surprised he would have been at that picture! But
would he have suspected all the passion and dreams and poetry and hope
that were contained in that little nook of verdure hardly larger than
the denticulated shadow of a fern on the moss?
"You were right, I did not know the Bois," said Paul in an undertone to
Aline, as she leaned on his arm.