into a car; the train moves; I have left Evreux. The coach is half
full, but I occupy fortunately, one of the corners. I put my nose out
of the window; I see some pollarded trees, the tops of a few hills
that undulate away into the distance, a bridge astride of a great
pond that sparkles in the sun like burnished glass. All this is not
very pleasing. I sink back in my corner, looking now and then at the
telegraph wires that stripe the ultramarine sky with their black lines,
when the train stops, the travellers who are about me descend, the door
shuts, then opens again and makes way for a young woman. While she
seats herself and arranges her dress, I catch a glimpse of her face
under the displacing of her veil. She is charming; with her eyes full
of the blue of heaven, her lips stained with purple, her white teeth,
her hair the color of ripe corn. I engage her in conversation. She is
called Reine; embroiders flowers; we chat like old friends. Suddenly
she turns pale, and is about to faint. I open the windows, I offer her
a bottle of salts which I have carried with me ever since my departure
from Paris; she thanks me, it is nothing, she says, and she leans
on my knapsack and tries to sleep. Fortunately we are alone in the
compartment, but the wooden partition that divides into equal parts the
body of the carriage comes up only as far as the waist, and one can see
and above all hear the clamor and the coarse laughter of the country
men and women. I could have thrashed them with hearty good will,
these imbeciles who were troubling her sleep! I contented myself with
listening to the commonplace opinions which they exchanged on politics.
I soon have enough of it; I stop my ears. I, too, try to sleep; but
that phrase which was spoken by the station-master of the last station,
"You will not get to Paris, the rails are torn up at Mantes," returned
in all my dreams like an obstinate refrain. I open my eyes. My neighbor
wakes up, too; I do not wish to share my fears with her; we talk in a
low voice. She tells me that she is going to join her mother at Sèvres.
"But," I say to her, "the train will scarcely enter Paris before eleven
o'clock to-night. You will never have time to reach the landing on the
left bank."
"What shall I do?" she says, "if my brother is not down at my arrival?"
Oh, misery, I am as dirty as a comb and my stomach burns! I can not
dream of taking her to my bachelor lodgings, and then I wish before
all to see my mother. What to do? I look at Reine with distress. I
take her hand; at that moment the train takes a curve, the jerk throws
her forward; our lips approach, they touch, I press mine; she turns
red. Good heavens, her mouth moves imperceptibly; she returns my kiss;
a long thrill runs up my spine; at contact of those ardent embers my
senses fail. Oh! Sister Angèle, Sister Angèle! a man can not make
himself over! And the train roars and rolls onward, without slackening
speed; we are flying under full steam toward Mantes; my fears are vain;
the track is clear. Reine half shuts her eyes; her head falls on my
shoulder; her little waves of hair tangle with my beard and tickle my
lips. I put my arm about her waist, which yields, and I rock her. Paris
is not far; we pass the freight-depots, by the roundhouses where the
engines roar in red vapor, getting up steam; the train stops; they take
up the tickets. After reflection, I will take Reine to my bachelor
rooms, provided her brother is not waiting her arrival. We descend from
the carriage; her brother is there. "In five days," she says, with a
kiss, and the pretty bird has flown. Five days after I was in my bed,
atrociously sick, and the Prussians occupy Sèvres. Never since then
have I seen her.
My heart is heavy. I heave a deep sigh; this is not, however, the time
to be sad! I am jolting on in a fiacre. I recognize the neighborhood; I
arrive before my mother's house; I dash up the steps, four at a time.
I pull the bell violently; the maid opens the door. "It's Monsieur!"
and she runs to tell my mother, who darts out to meet me, turns pale,
embraces me, looks me over from head to foot, steps back a little,
looks at me once more, and hugs me again. Meanwhile the servant has
stripped the buffet. "You must be hungry, M. Eugène?" I should think I
was hungry! I devour everything they give me. I toss off great glasses
of wine; to tell the truth, I do not know what I am eating and what I
am drinking!
At length I go to my rooms to rest. I find my lodging just as I left
it. I run through it, radiant, then I sit down on the divan and I
rest there, ecstatic, beatific, feasting my eyes with the view of my
knickknacks and my books. I undress, however; I splash about in a great
tub, rejoicing that for the first time in many months I am going to get
into a clean bed with white feet and toenails trimmed. I spring onto
the mattress, which rebounds. I dive my head into the feather pillow,
my eyes close; I soar on full wings into the land of dreams.
I seem to see Francis, who is lighting his enormous wooden pipe, and
Sister Angèle, who is contemplating me with her little moue; then Reine
advances toward me, I awake with a start, I behave like an idiot, I
sink back again up to my ears, but the pains in my bowels, calmed for
a moment, awake, now that the nerves become less tense, and I rub my
stomach gently, thinking that the horrors of dysentery are at last
over! I am at home. I have my rooms to myself, and I say to myself that
one must have lived in the promiscuosity of hospitals and camps to
appreciate the value of a basin of water, to appreciate the solitude
where modesty may rest at ease.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] Military hats.
[7] Badinguet, nickname given to Napoleon III; Henri Rochefort,
anti-Napoleon journalist and agitator.
[8] A suburb of Chalons.
[9] Canrobert, a brave and distinguished veteran, head of the Sixth
Corps of the Army of the Rhine.
[10] Panier seats used in the French army to transport the wounded.
[11] Tringlots are the soldiers detailed for this duty.
[12] Brandy of thirty-six degrees.
[13] Armed police.
"BONJOUR, MONSIEUR"
BY JEAN RICHEPIN
[Illustration]
_This poet and teller of tales was born at Médéa, Algeria, in
1849. His tremendous exuberance of spirits at first found an
outlet in military service during the war of 1870, and later in
a collection of vagabond songs called "La Chanson des Gueux,"
for which shock to the conventions he was sent to prison for a
month. Between 1877 and 1879 he published a variety of ballads
while pursuing in picturesque flashes the careers of sailor and
lighterman._
_Richepin has written many stories, more or less with a
penchant for extraordinary sensations and psychological
anomalies. "Nana Sahib" is a play he wrote in 1883, in which,
for a short time, he acted the principal rôle with Sarah
Bernhardt._
_Richepin is distinguished by his truly subtle use of words, by
an unbridled, almost truculent, eloquence, clothed in rich and
savory language._
[Illustration]
"BONJOUR, MONSIEUR"
BY JEAN RICHEPIN
"Modernity, the essence of inquietude!"
--_Adrien Juvigny._
Translated by Mason Carnes.
Copyright, 1894, by The Current Literature Publishing Company.
Ferdinand Octave Bruat awoke one morning with an idea. Ferdinand Octave
Bruat was what one commonly calls a man of letters. He had written
verses that no one would publish, novels that all the publishers had
returned unread, theatrical effusions that even the director of the
Funambules had refused. However, he had, in default of talent, a
theory, an ideal. He thought himself called to be a leader, and firmly
believed that he had invented a modern school. He meant by that, all
that constitutes our daily life, so bizarre on this side, so practical
on that, so foolish on others. He maintained that the time had come to
attack boldly all imitations, classic as well as romantic, and that
he should ransack contemporaneous society to derive therefrom ideas,
forms, a language absolutely new and original. He said that as each
epoch had had its own expression so ours should have its own also.
He was not wrong. Unfortunately he had not the strength to carry to
battle the standard he had raised, and all his valiance merely ended
in debating much and haranguing in the cafés. He overthrew more fools
than bigots and made more debts than masterpieces. But one morning, on
rising, he found the masterpiece which he had sought. When I say he had
found it, I am mistaken. _He had given birth to a title!_
What to do with it? As yet he did not know. But the title seemed to
him eloquent, sonorous, easy to remember, rich in variations, full of
modernity, epitomizing the whole century in a manner at once simple and
complex. The title was the more wonderful that it was so common. It
was a phrase of two words, spoken thousands of times each morning; a
phrase without affectation, without pretense, without pedantry, neither
classic nor romantic. It was simply, "_Bonjour, Monsieur!_"
Under this title he wrote first a sonnet. This sonnet was read to
his friends, naturally accompanied by prefaces and commentaries
philological as well as philosophical, destined not only to make
them the better enjoy its essence, but also to make them thoroughly
comprehend its import. With one voice it was pronounced admirable.
"It must be published at once," cried the most enthusiastic; "it will
give the keynote to the poetry of the future."
One crabbed old fellow, who did not dare to give his opinion frankly,
but who was irritated by this success, turned his criticism into a
compliment.
"As for me," he said, "I believe the subject demands greater
development. Certainly the sonnet is beautiful; but does it not strike
you that it is not sufficient for a subject of such importance. Think
of it! A thing so profound, so varied, so complicated can not be
confined in fourteen lines. A thought so powerful breaks its mold. Were
I Bruat, I would turn my sonnet into a drama."
The assemblage adopted his opinion, enchanted at heart to see the
famous sonnet thus criticized. Bruat did not perceive the irony of the
grumbler. "You are right," said he with an air of superiority. "I have
compressed my idea into this narrow mold. Thanks for your criticism,
which proves how much you esteem me. Truly my idea deserves more than
fourteen lines. I will write a drama in five acts and nine tableaux."
And, in spite of the hypocritical protestations of his friends, he tore
into pieces his masterpiece of a sonnet.
He lived for five years on the memory of his sonnet. He was always
promising the astonishing drama--"Bonjour, Monsieur!" He was becoming
almost celebrated by this piece in embryo. They knew that he had
but a few scenes to finish; they said that the work was advancing.
The simple-minded and the prejudiced who had never seen the author
were convinced of his genius and spread his renown. To believe them,
there was a great future, a marvelous hope; one must wait for the
thunderclap. No doubt he was taking his time; but do not aloes take a
hundred years to flower?
At last the drama was finished. This was a great event for the daily
papers. What theatre would be the battlefield of the new school?
Without doubt the directors would dispute for the honor of presenting
to the public the principal work of the nineteenth century? Would there
be artists capable of interpreting it?
First of all, Bruat assembled his little court, wishing to give them
the first-fruits of his victory. The drama did not meet with the
success of the sonnet. Perhaps the wits had conceived in advance too
high an idea of it? Perhaps Bruat had not been as brilliant as they
had expected? Perhaps there was a little envy mingled with their
judgment? Perhaps, also, the auditors were less young and therefore
less enthusiastic? In short, the reading was a failure. The grumbler
alone protested against the general coldness, and made a parade of an
unlimited admiration.
"Well and good," said he; "here is something that expresses the idea
in quest, here is movement, life, research, keenness. Away with the
sonnet! My friend, you have found the new drama, the modern drama, the
drama of the future."
But Bruat was disheartened. At least he mistrusted the grumbler, who
had counseled him to substitute the drama for the sonnet. He owed him a
grudge because the drama had produced no effect in comparison with the
sonnet. "Well," said he to the others, "where am I at fault?"
"Oh, in nothing, nothing at all," replied the chorus of friends.
"However, my drama does not meet with your approval; I see it clearly."
"Do you wish me to tell you the truth?" interrupted one, emboldened by
Bruat's failure.
"Say it, my friend, for you know it is my principle to seek truth
everywhere."
"Well, I think that modern life is too complicated for the drama. There
are casualties, phenomena of the heart, complications of sentiment,
descriptions material and spiritual, inquiries physiological and
psychological, which can not be expressed in action. You have striven
against the difficulty. Sometimes you have avoided it, which has caused
a lack of unity. Sometimes you have been overwhelmed by it, which has
caused a lack of polish. In spite of all your talents you have not been
able to control this monster. Your plot is obscure, your characters
badly drawn, your conclusion unnatural. But, on the other hand, what
observation! what brilliant analysis! what force of penetration! what
language! Oh! to be inspired in spite of the obstacles, you must be a
man of genius. What would you? The impossible can not be achieved. In
your case I would recast everything; I would expand, I would clarify,
I would develop, I would take my time, I would enlarge my frame to the
size of my idea. I would turn my drama into a novel."
"He is right," said the chorus, "he is right. That is the point. You
must make a novel of 'Bonjour, Monsieur!'"
The opinion was unanimous. Bruat was too sincere not to be guided by
it. Heroically he burned his drama, and set to work on his novel. In
this work he spent ten years. To him it was the time of apotheosis.
He had more prophets than God. Some exalted him from real admiration;
others, because they thought he would accomplish nothing, and that,
therefore, he would not be a dangerous adversary, spread his praises.
Critics used his name to crush budding authors. Journalists filled up
spaces with notices of his novel, with anecdotes of the labor in the
thousand and one alterations in his work. The ignorant, the foolish,
the gossips chattered about him without knowing why. He became as
famous as the obelisk.
Nevertheless, they finished by waiting. The echo of his glory became
fainter as it passed from one generation to another. At sixty he was
about forgotten. He was only spoken of from time to time, and then
merely as an eccentric, almost a lunatic. They remembered vaguely that
he was working at a great novel, but they doubted whether he would ever
finish it, or, rather, they were sure that he would never reach the
end. They never spoke but with a smile of his gigantic undertaking, of
the twenty volumes which would epitomize the nineteenth century, of
this creation which would be the babel and pandemonium of modern life.
They would have laughed much more could they have known on what Bruat
was engaged in his old age.
The unhappy man had finished his formidable novel. He had written
twenty-seven volumes under the wonderful title, "Bonjour, Monsieur!"
But at the end of his labor, frightened at having spoken at such
length, he did not dare the trial of the reading. Then he set to work
to abridge, to cut, to condense. By this means he had, little by
little, reduced the book first to ten volumes, then to two, then to
one. Finally, he had epitomized everything into a story of one hundred
pages.
Ferdinand Octave Bruat was then eighty years old. One friend alone
remained to him, the confidant of his undying ambition.
"Publish your story," said his friend: "I assure you it will make a
sensation in the world. It is the paragon of modernity."
"No, no," cried Bruat, "I have not yet condensed it sufficiently. You
see, I know myself; I know the public. To hold it, to leave something
to posterity, to create a lasting work, one must be intense. To be
intense--that is everything. A hundred pages! That is too prolix. In my
first inspiration I found the true form for my thought--a form short,
precise, chiseled, straight, fitting the idea like a cuirass; I mean
the sonnet. Oh! if I could recall the marvelous sonnet of my youth!
But it has been abandoned too long. To-day I will do better. I will
put into it my experience, my life. Could I but live ten years longer,
men would see what fourteen lines could express, and posterity would
know our modern life, so vast, in this poem so small, as one inhales a
subtle essence prisoned in a diamond."
He lived those ten years, and the story was abandoned like the novel
and the drama; and slowly, letter by letter, word by word, line by
line, was written the colossal sonnet which was to contain everything.
At ninety-two Ferdinand Octave Bruat lay on his deathbed.
His faithful friend was at his side, weeping, sobbing, in despair at
seeing so high an intelligence laid so low.
"Weep not, my friend," said Bruat, "weep not. I die, but my idea dies
not with me. I have destroyed my first sonnet, I have burnt my drama, I
have burnt, one by one, the twenty-seven volumes of my novel: the ten,
then the five, then the two, then the one and only, then the story.
But, at last, I have created my masterpiece."
"The sonnet! the immortal sonnet! Give it me! You have not read it to
me, but I know that it is a masterpiece. Give it me; I will publish
it. If necessary, I will ruin myself that it may be written on gold in
letters of diamonds. It merits it, it will dazzle the world. Give it
me!"
"The sonnet! What sonnet?" stammered Bruat, gasping for breath.
"Your great sonnet!" sighed the friend, who saw the delirium of death
approaching.
"Ah! yes, yes, the sonnet, the great sonnet. Too great, my friend, too
long! It must be made more intense."
"What! have you burnt your last sonnet also?"
"I have found something better. I have found everything. Modern life,
modernity, I hold it, I have it, I express it. It is not in a sonnet,
nor in a quatrain, nor even in a line, it is--"
His voice grew weaker, became hoarse, wheezy, lost.
His friend, with bloodshot eyes, gaping mouth, leaned over the bed
to drink in his last word, the word that would give the key to the
mystery, the Open Sesame to art in the future.
"Speak, speak!" he cried.
"Everything in one phrase, everything in one phrase!" murmured Bruat.
And the old man raised himself up in a paroxysm of agony. His look was
ecstatic. One felt that over the threshold of death he saw his ideal.
He made a terrible effort to express it, and the wondrous phrase fell
from his lips with his last sigh.
It was, "Bonjour, Monsieur!"
THE BIT OF STRING AND THE NECKLACE
BY HENRI RENÉ ALBERT GUY DE MAUPASSANT
[Illustration]
_Guy de Maupassant, writer of the short story par excellence,
was born at the Château of Miromesnil in 1850, and died
insane at Paris in 1893. His godfather Flaubert said of
his first story, the "Boule de Suif," which appeared in a
miscellany called "Les Soirées de Médan": "I consider it a
chef-d'oeuvre--that little story will stay, you may be sure."
De Maupassant was for a few years connected with the Ministry
of Marine and Public Instruction. Besides his almost perfect
short stories, he has written plays and novels._
_De Maupassant describes himself admirably in one of his
heroes, "armed with an eye that gathers images, attitudes,
manners with the precision of a camera." His style is calm,
robust, sober, clean-cut, impersonal. "The Bit of String" and
"The Necklace" are two famous examples of De Maupassant at his
best._
[Illustration]
THE BIT OF STRING
BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT
Translated by Emar Soule.
Copyright, 1899, by The Current Literature Publishing Company.
Along all the roads leading to Goderville the peasants and their wives
were going toward the town, for it was market-day. The men walked at an
easy pace, the whole body thrown ahead at each movement of the long,
crooked legs, men deformed by rude labor, by guiding the plow, which at
once forces the right shoulder upward and twists the waist; by reaping,
which spreads the knees, for solid footing; by all the patient and
painful toil of the country. Their blue blouses, glossy with starch, as
though varnished, ornamented at the neck and wrists by a simple pattern
in white, swelled out round their bony chests, like captive balloons
from which heads, arms, and legs were protruding.
Some were leading by a cord a cow or calf, and their wives behind the
animals were hastening their pace by the strokes of branches stripped
of their leaves. The women carried on their arms great baskets, out of
which hung, here and there, heads of chickens or ducks. They walked
with shorter steps than their husbands, and at a more rapid pace,
spare, erect and wrapped in scant shawls pinned across their flat
chests, their heads enveloped in white linen drawn closely over the
hair and surmounted by a bonnet.
Now a pleasure wagon passed at a jerky pony trot, shaking fantastically
two men seated side by side, and a woman at the back of the vehicle,
holding on to its sides to soften the hard jolts.
In the square of Goderville was a crowd--a jam of mingled human
beings and beasts. The horns of cattle, the high hats of the rich
farmers and the head-dresses of the women, emerged from the surface
of the assembly; and discordant voices, clamorous, bawling, kept up a
continuous and savage babel, overtopped now and then by a shout from
the robust lungs of a merry countryman, or the lowing of a cow attached
to the wall of a house. All this mass was redolent of the stable and
soilure, of milk, of hay, of sweat, and diffused that rank, penetrating
odor, human and bestial, peculiar to people of the fields.
Master Hauchecorne of Bréauté had just arrived at Goderville, and was
going toward the square when he saw on the ground a bit of string.
Master Hauchecorne, economist, like every true Norman, thought anything
that might be of use worth picking up, and he bent down painfully, for
he suffered from rheumatism. He took up the piece of string, and was
winding it carefully, when he noticed Malandin, the harness-maker,
watching him from his doorway. The two men had long ago had a quarrel
about a halter, and both being vindictive, had remained unfriendly.
Hauchecorne was seized with a kind of shame, at thus being seen by his
enemy picking a bit of twine out of the mud. He quickly hid his prize
under his blouse, then in his breeches pocket; then he pretended to
search the ground again for something which he did not find, and he
went off toward the market, his head in advance, bent double by his
infirmities.
He was forthwith lost in the noisy, shuffling crowd everywhere in
motion from innumerable buyings and sellings. The peasants examined
the cows, went away, came back, hesitated, always fearful of being
outwitted, never daring to decide, peering into the face of the vender,
endlessly searching to discover the ruse in the man and the fault in
the beast.
The women, putting their great baskets down at their feet, had drawn
out their fowls, which were lying on the ground, legs bound, eyes wild,
combs scarlet. They listened to offers, held to their prices unmoved,
their faces inscrutable; or suddenly deciding to accept an offer, cried
out to the would-be purchaser slowly moving away:
"Agreed, Master Hutine; I will give it at your price."
Then little by little the square emptied, and the Angelus sounding
noon, those who lived too far to go home dispersed in the various
public houses.
At Jourdain's the great dining-room was full of feasters, as the vast
court was full of vehicles of every pedigree--carts, gigs, tilburies,
pleasure vans, carioles innumerable, yellow with mud, mended, out of
order, lifting to heaven their shafts, like two arms, or nosing the
ground, rear in the air.
Opposite the tables of diners the great chimney-piece, full of bright
flame, threw a lively warmth on the backs of the row at the right.
Three spits were turning, weighted with chickens, pigeons, and legs
of mutton, and a delectable odor of roast flesh and of juice streaming
over its golden brown skin, escaped from the hearth, put every one
in gay humor, and made mouths water. All the aristocracy of the plow
dined there with Master Jourdain, innkeeper and horse-dealer, a shrewd
fellow, who had his dollars.
The platters were passed and emptied as were the tankards of yellow
cider. Each one talked of his affairs, his purchases, his sales. The
harvest was discussed. The weather was good for grass, but a little
sharp for grain.