when they had buried themselves behind the young underwood, when he no
longer heard the sound of steps, or fresh bursts of laughter, he rose and
sadly resumed his way to the village.
Evening had come. The twilight was stretching its dark veil over all. The
peasants dressed in their Sunday clothes were chatting on their door-steps
while they waited for supper. Near the inns there rose the confused sound
of gamblers' voices and drunkards' songs; but here and there through the
windows he saw the bright fire of vine-twigs blazing merrily on the hearth,
while the mother or the eldest daughter poured the steaming soup into the
large blue-flowered plates ranged on the white wood table.
He saw it all, and he walked with slow steps to his solitary abode.
He thought of his life wasted, of the years of his prime which were passing
away, without leaving any more traces than the skimming of the swallow's
wing leaves upon the verdant brook.
Oh! the fleeting time which carries all away, the hour which glides away
dull and empty, the barren youth which flies, and the white hairs which
come with disillusion, discouragement and despair. "Stay, stay, oh youth;
stay but another day!"
But what matters his youth to him? What joys has it brought him; what
pleasures has he tasted? has he breathed the burning breath of life, of
that fair life at twenty which unfolds like a ripe pomegranate, and casts
to the warm sun its treasures and its perfumes?
XIII.
THE RESOLUTION.
"My life was blighted, my universe
was changed; I had entangled myself
without knowing it in an inextricable
drama. I must get out of it at any
cost, and I had no way of unravelling
it. I resolved by all means to find one."
J. JANIN (_L'Ans morte_).
He sat by his desolate hearth and began to think with terror of the eternal
solitude of that hearth. Alone! always alone! Already he had said to
himself very often that he had chosen the wrong road, that this arid and
desolate path was not the one needful to his ardent soul, that the hopes
with which he had formerly been deluded, were falsehoods in reality, and
that the God whom they had made him believe that he loved with such ardour,
left his soul empty and barren.
To love God! The love of God! High-sounding, hollow words which enable
hypocrites to take advantage of the common people; fantastic passion
kindled in the heart of fools for the amazement of the simple!
Ah! how willingly would he have replaced the worn-out vision of this
chimerical phantom with the likeness of some young girl, with sweet look
and smile, full of promise.
And the burning memory of the wanton player came and blended with the fresh
and radiant memory of the charming pupil of Saint-Denis.
"But why, priest, dost thou permit thy fevered guilty imagination to wander
thus? Pursue thy course, pursue it without stopping, without looking back;
henceforth it is too late to retrace thy path; anyhow be chaste, be chaste
under pain of shame and infamy.
"Thou must not be chaste in view of recompense like a slave, thou must be
chaste without expectance."[1]
He took up a book, his sovereign remedy in hours of temptation. It was the
life of St. Antony, written by his companion, St. Athanasius.
"The demons presented to his mind thoughts of impurity, but Antony repulsed
them by prayer. The devil excited his senses, but Antony blushed with
shame, as though the fault were his own, and strengthened his body by
faith, by prayer and by vigil. The devil, seeing himself vanquished thus,
took the shape of a young and lovely woman and imitated the most lascivious
actions in order to beguile him, but Antony raising his thoughts towards
heaven and considering the loftiness and excellence of the soul which is
given to us, extinguished these burning coals by which the devil hoped to
inflame his heart through this deception, and drove away the devilish
creature."
Marcel shrugged his shoulders and closed the book. How many times already
he had tried all those means without success.
He leant his burning forehead on his hands and, in self-contemplation,
tried to see to the bottom of his soul.
Chaste! always chaste! What! Was the flower of his youth wasted away thus,
in incessant, barren struggles? If only peace of heart, and a quiet
conscience remained to him; if quietude sat by his hearth, as his masters
many a time had promised him! But no, alone with himself, he felt himself
to be with an enemy.
For many years, it had been so, and a lying voice had cried to him without
ceasing: "Wait for happiness, for sweet pure joys, wait for it till
to-morrow: to-morrow all this fury will have passed away, these raging
blasts which rise to thy brain will have vanished; thy vanquished senses
will leave thee in peace, and calm and strong, thou shalt rejoice over an
untroubled conscience and over the satisfaction of duty fulfilled."
And he had waited in vain. Now he had reached ripe age, and the future is
visible ever more gloomy; to-morrow has come, as sad, as empty, and as
desolate as yesterday.
He was tired at last of waiting, patiently, humbly, resigned like the beast
of burden which awaits the slaughterhouse. Beasts of burden! Are we not
that, all we who with brow bent under humiliation, injustice, thankless
toil; with the heart embittered by tedious deception and tedious despair,
miseries of heart and miseries of body, wait, wait ever, wait vainly for a
more brilliant sun to shine at last, until at the end of the day there
rises before us the only guest we have never expected, on whom we counted
not,--the solution of the great problem, the radical cure for all our
ills--DEATH.
Death, which with its brutal hand, seizes us at the moment when perhaps at
last we are going to rest ourselves and rejoice.
No, that shall not be. He will not continue to vegetate without happiness
in these dull, common-place surroundings; to walk at random in this road
bristling with thorns; to pursue his disheartening career, enclosed by
miserable vices.
Nothing around him but stupid, vulgar prosiness, foolish moral
annihilation. No poetry, no golden ray, no rainbow! Everything most low,
unsightly, pitiful. Such was his lot as priest.
Complaints of the soul, wandering flashes of the imagination, criminal
aspirations of the heart, sinful desires ... these ... that was all.
Was this then life?
Was it for this that God had created him, that his mother had drawn him
painfully forth from her entrails, that nature had one day counted one
intelligent being the more?
Ah! he felt full well it was not so. He felt full well it was not so by his
thirst for emotions and enjoyment, by his altered lips, by his aspirations
for an unknown world. He was in haste to strip off for once at least this
old man's shell which enveloped him, this black, hideous, hardened covering
of the bad priest, beneath which he felt his vitality, his youth, his
strength, his heart of thirty, bounding, boiling, roaring, like burning
lava.
The next day be remembered that though it was nearly six months since he
had taken possession of his cure, his pastoral visits were not yet
completed.
In fact, he had gone everywhere, even to Captain Durand's. Only, he had
found the door closed and, after the information he received, he had fully
resolved not to go there again.
[Footnote 1: The Antigone of Soto.]
XIV.
THE CAPTAIN.
"The disposition of a man of sixty
is nearly always the happy or sad
reflection of his life. Young people
are such as Nature has made them;
old men have been fashioned by the
often awkward hands of society."
ED. ABOUT (_Trente et Quarante_).
The old Captain was in fact a bad parishioner, as his servant had told him,
and had only one good quality in the eyes of that careful housekeeper,
"that he was always shining like a new halfpenny."
Durand, in fact, was what is called in a regiment "a smart soldier," which
means to say "a clean soldier." And still, one of his most important
occupations was to brush his things. The son of peasants, without
patronage, fortune or backstairs influence, he had raised himself, a rare
and difficult thing nowadays; therefore he was proud of himself, and would
say to anyone who would listen to him: "I am the son of my own deeds."
He had been one of those serious-minded officers of whom Jules Noriac
speaks, who instead of dividing their many spare hours between the goddess
of play and the goddess of the bar, employ themselves in regimental
reforms.
The dimensions of a spur-rowel, the length and thickness of a
trouser-strap, the improvement of a whitening for belts which does not
fall off, were questions which had more importance and interest for him
than a question of State.
The slave of his duties, he was excessively severe in the service, and this
stiffness and severity he had brought, it was said, into his household.
With these military qualities; passive obedience, scrupulous cleanliness
and the vulgar courage necessary for a son of Mars, Durand, with a good
reputation and full of zeal, had had when very young, a rapid advance. At
one moment he had foreseen a brilliant future, but his ambitious hopes had
been quickly deceived. He saw the Baron de Chipotier, the Comte de
Boisflottant, and the son of Pillardin, the lucky millionaire, successively
come into the regiment, and these sprigs of lofty lineage, full of
brilliancy and loquacity, naturally eclipsed the modest qualities of the
obscure upstart soldier. Spending their life in cafés, overwhelmed with
debt, loved by the women, they laughed among themselves at all the
_minutiae_ of the service, which they treated as beneath their notice,
ridiculed their superiors, and especially the serious-minded officers.
Everything was forgiven them, they were rich. Durand was filled with
indignation; he saw everything he had respected become an object of sarcasm
to these young men, and his most cherished convictions turned into
ridicule. He was like those devout persons who, when they hear an unseemly
oath or an impious word, tremble and pray heaven not to cast its avenging
lightning; he asked himself if social order was not overthrown, if the army
was not marching to its ruin. He began to talk of his apprehensions, of
this pitiable state of things, and they laughed in his face. But when these
frivolous, turbulent, incapable officers became his chiefs, chiefs over
him, the studious, model officer, the upright man, the slave to the
regulations, he began to mistrust everything, society, France, the empire,
the justice of God, and himself. It was from this period that the crabbed
character dated, by which he was known.
He passed a long season thus, full of anger and jealousy: then the time for
his retirement arrived, that time to which all the forgotten, the obscure,
the pariahs of the army look forward during long years, and which casts
them forth into the social world, ignorant and strangers.
Then he had retired to his own village, dividing his time between the
tending of his garden, and the cares which were occasioned him by his
daughter Suzanne.
XV.
MEMORIES.
"Often risen from humble origin, he
has gained the respect of all and the
public esteem; but this cannot prevent
his having a restless spirit; he misses
the duty which has called him for
so long at the appointed hour. Around
him are scattered the memorials of
his regiment, his eye catches them
and a mist comes over it."
ERNEST BILLAUDEL (_Les Hommes d'épée_).
He was up by dawn, and the villagers on their way to their fields sometimes
stopped to cast an inquisitive look over his garden palings. They saw
him dressed in a linen jacket, with the glorious ribbon adorning his
button-hole, weeding his flower-garden, turning up his walks, pruning his
trees, clearing his flowers of caterpillars, watering his borders, with
great drops of sweat pouring down, bending over his labour like a negro
under the lash.
"What a pity!" they said, "for a rich man to give himself so much trouble!
If it only repaid him!" And they shouted to him: "Good-morning, Captain
Durand, how are you to-day?"--"Pretty well, thank you," replied Durand, in
a peevish tone.--"Still warm to-day, Captain; but you had it warmer in
Africa, didn't you?" At the word Africa, the old soldier's eyes brightened,
his forehead lost its wrinkles, and a smile came to his lips. All his past
rose before him. Africa, the Bedouins, the gunshots, the razzias, the bare
desert, the fresh oases, the life in camp, the glasses of absinthe, the
days of rain and sun, the ostrich chases, the watch for the jackal and the
races over the plain. All this, helter-skelter, in crowds, crossing,
following, multiplying, like the sheaves of sparks which burst forth from a
rocket.
Ah! Ah! that was the happy time. And then he would stop and forget his
work, his flowers, his grafts, and his espaliers; he would forget the
peasants who were there, laughing quietly and nudging one another, and
saying: "The old man is gone in the head."
For they understood nothing of the tear, which all at once trickled from
the corner of his eye-lid, a bitter drop which overflowed from the too full
cup of his heart.
Ah! youth has but one time, and they do well, who when the sun gilds their
brow, cast their sap to its warm caresses. The winter, gloomy shadow, will
come but too soon to freeze their slowly opened buds, leaving only a trunk,
dry and bare.
Then, when nothing more than a few warm cinders remain at the bottom of the
human engine, we try to warm ourselves again at this cold hearth, and to
search among those dying sparks which we call memories.
And these memories of a time for ever fled, these lights which gladden or
stir again your old heart sad and cold, these are the simple and fruitful
beliefs, the transports of the soul, the insane devotions, the ardent
passions, and all those orgies of heart and sense, all those frenzies of
imagination, and all those follies of youth, which cause the wise to cry
out so loudly, and which are the only feast-days of life.
Hasten then, young man, hasten; take the good which comes to thee, and be
not decoyed by idle fancies; wait not till to-morrow to be glad. To-morrow
is the age of ripeness, of the falling fruit, the wrinkled brow, the faded
flower; it is the vanished locks; it is the blood which grows cold, the
smile which comes not back; it is in fine the worm of deceptions, which is
ever growing larger and gnawing what may be left of thy heart.
XVI.
THE EPAULET.
"Really, yes! I love my calling. This
active adventurous life is amusing,
do you see? there is something as
regards discipline itself which has its
charm; it is wholesome and relieves
the spirit to have one's life ordered in
advance with no possible dispute, and
consequently with no irresolution or
regret. Thence comes lightness of
heart and gaiety. We know what we
must do, we do it, and we are content."
EMILE AUGIER et JULES SANDEAU (_Le Gendre de M. Poirier_).
And Durand threw down his rake or his spade.
--Well! here you are already, cried the old housekeeper; breakfast is not
ready.
--My paper? he said shortly.
Sometimes the paper had not yet arrived; then he sat down near the window
and watched impatiently for the carrier. There he is, coming out of the
next street. He goes down with all haste to open the door himself, and take
the precious _Moniteur_.
For it is the _Moniteur de l'Armée_! and he unfolds it with the respect
which we owe to holy things, and he reads it all religiously from the first
article to the everlasting advertisement of _Rob Boyreau Laffecteur_. He
reads it all, not because he is studying tactics or has need of Rob, but
because he has set himself the task of reading it all. His servant brings
him his morning coffee and brandy, and he believes himself still at father
Etienne's or mother Gaspard's, at the garrison café; this makes him quite
sprightly.
"Come, mother Gaspard,
It is not late,
Another glass!
Come, mother Gaspard,
It is not late,
To midnight it wants a quarter!"
But it is not the long, tedious military articles which first attract his
eye, nor the ministerial decrees, nor the studies on the sabretache, nor
the biographies of celebrated skin breeches, nor the improvement of gaiter
buttons, nor the changes of police caps; PROMOTIONS AND CHANGES, that is
what he wants.
PROMOTIONS AND CHANGES! divine rubrics which have caused so many hearts to
beat.
You all recollect it, my old brothers in arms, who have waited long, like
me. Years and years have passed. At length the hour is come and the
newspaper which is going to transform your life. That folded paper gleams
with all the fires of hope, it glitters like a sun, for it contains the
magic word which out of nothing is going to make you everything, to draw
you out of the obscure ranks to place you in the brilliant phalanx, which,
from a passive despised instrument, is going to create you an active and
respected head.
How you are dazzled as you open it; with what palpitations and haste you
look for the blessed page, skipping the regiments, glancing over the ranks,
flying over the names in order to arrive at your own. Ah! you know well
where it ought to be; it is among the last; but what does it matter, it is
here above all that the last can arrive first.
Here it is! here it is at last! What intoxication! young and old, we all
were twenty once.
And meanwhile....
And meanwhile, the best days of your youth are lost in barren, vulgar,
common-place, at times repulsive occupations. Your spirit is extinguished,
your responsibility as an intelligent man is destroyed at settled hours by
the sound of the bugle or of the trumpet, those flourishes of gilded
servitude; and beneath the heavy hammer of passive obedience your temples
are already growing grey; you have wrinkles on your forehead and on your
heart, for you have reached that part of the cup of life, at which one
drinks little else than bitterness ... But you forget all that; a new life
full of enchantment is beginning. You are an officer! an officer! Ah! those
who have never borne the harness, do not know what fairy-land that magic
word contains. But you--you know it, and you took at your name, you spell
each letter of it and you say: "At last! It is I, it is really I!
Sub-lieutenant! I am sub-lieutenant!"
Thus, ten to fifteen years of struggles, tribulation, obstacles,
humiliations, devotion, dangers, in order to reach the salary of a grocer's
clerk!
But the old Captain, what was he looking for in the columns of the Service
newspaper?
He had nothing to expect. No new promotion could swell his aged breast. He
had completed his career. Like a rejected charger whose ear has been slit,
or whose right flank has been branded, he had been laid aside for ever.
Henceforth he had nothing else to do but to plant his cabbages, until his
legs were seized by anchylosis, absolutely forgotten.
And so with all those who go away.
Amidst the thousand incidents of military life, so filled in its leisure
and so empty in its employments, has anyone the time to give a thought to
the absent one who must return no more? His place is taken; a new face is
seated there where we used to see him, and his is no longer familiar to us.
A few years hence and his name will be known no more. The army is for the
young!
But does he forget? Does a man forget his youth, his glory, his dearest
memories, his whole life? Retired into some country nook, completely buried
in an obscure market-town, or become the modest citizen of some provincial
city, the old officer follows afar off with solicitude and envy the
different fortunes of his brothers in arms, living ever in thought amidst
that forgetful and ungrateful family which he loves as much as his own--the
Regiment.
And that is why you, brave veterans, understand it well, that is why
Captain Durand used to read the _Moniteur_.
XVII.
THE VOLTAIRIAN.
"For them religion is the most skillful
of juggling, the most favourable veil,
the most respectable disguise under
which man can conceal himself to lie
and deceive."
BARNUM (_Les Blagues de l'Univers_).
But, as I have said, he was a bad parishioner, a bunch of tare in the field
of God, a scabby sheep in the flock of the Lord.
Taking no heed of his religious duties, reading the _Siècle_, speaking evil
of priests and refusing the blessed bread, he was the scandal of the godly
and not one of them in the village augured any good of him.
Never did a publican from Belleville or a novice of freemasonry proclaim
with so much boldness his contempt for the things which everybody
venerates. He did not uncover himself in presence of funerals, saying he
did not want to bow to the dead; he called the church the priests' bank,
the altar a parade of mountebanks, the confessional the antechamber to the
brothel.
"That man will perish on the scaffold!" the former Curé of the village
cried out one day in righteous indignation.
How had he come by this hatred, vigorous as that which Alcestis demands
from virtuous souls against hypocrites and evil-doers? What had the
_black-coats_ done to him? He did not say, and perhaps he would have been
embarrassed to say. There are certain natures which will love at any price,
there are others on the contrary which need to hate. He was doubtless one
of the latter, and he discharged all his excess of gall on the servants of
Jesus.
"They are criminals," he cried, "all without exception, from the first to
the last. Hypocrisy engenders wickedness. It is a sore which spreads and
becomes leprosy. Everything which touches it catches it. Those who
associate with hypocrites become hypocrites, and then scoundrels, slowly
but surely by infection. That is the logic of the scab. It is not necessary
to dress up in a black gown and to swallow God in public to make a perfect
priestling, it is enough to rub against the priest's cap. Look at the
sacristans, the beadles, the lackeys of the Bishop's palace, the hirers of
chairs, the choir-men, the sellers of tapers, the tradesmen by appointment
to the religious houses, the beggar who stretches out his hand to you at
the door, and the man who hands you the holy-water sprinkler, have they not
all the same hypocritical face, the same cunning, devoutly sanctimonious
look? Well! scratch the skins of the godly and you will find the hide of
the scoundrel."
An honourable man and brutally frank like many old soldiers he had kept in
private life the tone and ways of barracks and camps. As he said himself,
he did not mince the truth to anybody, and he repeated readily, without
understanding it, the saying of Gonsalvo of Cordova, the great captain,
"_The cloth of honour should be coarsely woven_."
When one evening, on returning home, he found the card of the Curé, he
nearly fell backwards.
--What, he has had the audacity to come to my house, this holy water
merchant. They have not told him then what I am!
--Good heavens, I cried, my dear Captain, what has this poor man done to
you?
--To me! nothing at all. I don't know him. He is part of the holy
priesthood; that is enough for me. He is a scoundrel like the rest.
--But it is not enough to call a man scoundrel, you must prove that he is.
--Don't trouble me about your proofs. Do you suppose I am going to rummage
into this gentleman's private life and see what passes in his alcove? No,
indeed, I have no desire to do so, and I leave that care to my cook.
--Come, Captain, you admit that this is to vilify a man on rather slender
grounds. There are fagots and fagots, and so there are Curés and Curés.
This one, I assure you, is an excellent fellow.
--It may be so, but as I have no desire to make his acquaintance, I laugh
at his good qualities.
--Everybody is not of your opinion, and it appears that all the women are
distracted about him.
--Another reason why I detest him; women usually place their affections
very badly.
--And he turns the heads of all the girls.
--That is good! Oh, the good Curé. He reminds me of the one at Djidjelly
when I was a non-commissioned officer, the greatest girl-hunter that I have
ever known. The Kabyles used to call him _Bou-Zeb_, which means capable of
the thirteenth labour of Hercules, and they held him in high esteem, but
when he went near their tents they used to make all the women go inside.
Ah! that was a famous Curé! I wish that ours resembled him, and that he
would get a child out of all the girls, and that he would make cuckolds of
all the husbands.
--Why so?