A DIVIDED HOUSEHOLD
The servants in the castle of Bergenheim formed a family whose members
were far from living in harmony. The Baron managed his household
himself, and employed a large number of day-laborers, farm servants, and
kitchen-girls, whom the liveried servants treated with great disdain.
The rustics, on their side, resisted these privileged lackeys and called
them "coxcombs" and "Parisians," sometimes accompanying these remarks
with the most expressive blows. Between these tribes of sworn enemies
a third class, much less numerous, found them selves in a critical
position; these were the two servants brought by Mademoiselle de
Corandeuil. It was fortunate for them that their mistress liked large,
vigorous men, and had chosen them for their broad, military shoulders;
but for that it would have been impossible for them to come out of their
daily quarrels safe and sound.
The question of superiority between the two households had been the first
apple of discord; a number of personal quarrels followed to inflame them.
They fought for their colors the whole time; the Bergenheim livery was
red, the Corandeuil green. There were two flags; each exalted his own
while throwing that of his adversaries in the mud. Greenhorn and crab
were jokes; cucumber and lobster were insults.
Such were the gracious terms exchanged every day between the two parties.
In the midst of this civil war, which was carefully concealed from their
masters' eyes, whose severity they feared, lived one rather singular
personage. Leonard Rousselet, Pere Rousselet, as he was generally
called, was an old peasant who, disheartened with life, had made various
efforts to get out of his sphere, but had never succeeded in doing so.
Having been successively hairdresser, sexton, school-teacher, nurse, and
gardener, he had ended, when sixty years old, by falling back to the very
point whence he started. He had no particular employment in M. de
Bergenheim's house; he went on errands, cared for the gardens, and
doctored the mules and horses; he was a tall man, about as much at ease
in his clothing as a dry almond in its shell. A long, dark, yellow coat
usually hung about the calves of his legs, which were covered with long,
blue woollen stockings, and looked more like vine-poles than human legs;
a conformation which furnished daily jokes for the other servants, to
which the old man deigned no response save a disdainful smile, grumbling
through his teeth, "Menials, peasants without education." This latter
speech expressed the late gardener's scorn, for it had been his greatest
grief to pass for an uneducated man; and he had gathered from his various
conditions a singularly dignified and pretentious way of speaking.
In spite of his self-confidence, it was not without some emotion that
Leonard Rousselet responded to this call to appear in the drawing-room
before the person he most feared in the chateau. His bearing showed this
feeling when he presented himself at the drawing-room door, where he
stood as grave and silent as Banquo's ghost. Constance arose at sight of
this fantastic figure, barked furiously and darted toward a pair of legs
for which she seemed to share the irreverence of the liveried servants;
but the texture of the blue stocking and the flesh which covered the
tibia were rather too hard morsels for the dowager's teeth; she was
obliged to give up the attack and content herself with impotent barks,
while the old man, who would gladly have given a month's wages to break
her jaw with the tip of his, boot, caressed her with his hand, saying,
"Softly, pretty dear! softly, pretty little creature!" in a
hypocritical tone.
This courtier-like conduct touched the old lady's heart and softened the
severe look upon her face.
"Stop your noise, Constance," said she, "lie down beside your mistress.
Rousselet, come nearer."
The old man obeyed, walking across the floor with reverential bows, and
taking a position like a soldier presenting arms.
"You were the one," said Mademoiselle de Corandeuil, "who was sent to
Remiremont yesterday? Did you perform all the commissions that were
given you?"
"It is not among the impossibilities, Mademoiselle, that I may have
neglected some of them," replied the old man, fearing to compromise
himself by a positive affirmative.
"Tell us, then, what you did."
Leonard wiped his nose behind his hat, like a well-bred orator, and,
balancing himself upon his legs in a way not at all Bourbonic, he said:
"I went to the city that morning myself because Monsieur le Baron had
said the night before that he should hunt to-day, and that the groom was
to help Monsieur le Baron drive a wild boar out of the Corne woods.
I reached Remiremont; I went to the butcher's; I purchased five
kilogrammes of dressed goods--"
"Of dressed goods at the butcher's!" exclaimed Madame de Bergenheim.
"I would say ten pounds of what uneducated people call pork," said
Rousselet, pronouncing this last word in a strangled voice.
"Pass over these details," said Mademoiselle de Corandeuil. "You went to
the post-office."
"I went to the post-office, where I put in letters for Mademoiselle,
Madame, Monsieur le Baron, and one from Mademoiselle Aline for Monsieur
d'Artigues."
"Aline writing to her cousin! Did you know that?" said the old aunt,
turning quickly toward her niece.
"Certainly; they correspond regularly," replied Clemence with a smile
which seemed to say that she saw no harm in it.
The old maid shook her head and protruded her under lip, as much as to
say: We will attend to this another time.
Madame de Bergenheim, who was out of patience at this questioning, began
to speak in a quick tone which was a contrast to her aunt's solemn
slowness.
"Rousselet," said she, "when you took the newspapers out of the office,
did you notice whether the wrappers were intact, or whether they had been
opened?"
The good man half concealed his face in his cravat at this precise
questioning, and it was with embarrassment that he replied, after a
moment's hesitation:
"Certainly, Madame--as to the wrappers--I do not accuse the postmaster--"
"If the journals were sealed when you received them, you are the only one
who could have opened them."
Rousselet straightened himself up to his full height, and, giving to his
nut-cracker face the most dignified look possible, he said in a solemn
tone:
"With due deference to you, Madame, Leonard Rousselet is well known.
Fifty-seven years old on Saint-Hubert's day, I am incapable of opening
newspapers. When they have been read at the chateau and they send me
with them to the cure, I do not say--perhaps on my way--it is a
recreation--and then the cure is Jean Bartou, son of Joseph Bartou, the
tilemaker. But to read the newspaper before my masters have done so!
Never! Leonard Rousselet is an old man incapable of such baseness.
Baptized when a child; fifty-seven years on Saint-Hubert's day."
"When you speak of your pastor, do so in a more becoming manner,"
interrupted Mademoiselle de Colrandeuil, although she herself in private
did not speak of the plebeian priest in very respectful terms. But if
Joseph Bartou's son was always the son of Joseph Bartou to her, she meant
that he should be Monsieur le Cure to the peasants.
Madame de Bergenheim had not been much affected by Pere Rousselet's
harangue, and shook her head impatiently, saying in an imperative tone:
"I am certain that the newspapers have been opened by you, or by some
person to whom you have given them, and I wish to know at once by whom."
Rousselet dropped his pose of a Roman senator; passing his hand behind
his ears, a familiar gesture with people when in embarrassing positions,
he continued less emphatically:
"I stopped on my way back at La Fauconnerie, at the 'Femme-sans-Tete
Inn'."
"And what were you doing in a tavern?" interrupted Mademoiselle de
Corandeuil severely. "You know it is not intended that the servants in
this house should frequent taverns and such low places, which are not
respectable and corrupt the morals of the lower classes."
"Servants! lower classes! Old aristocrat!" growled Rousselet secretly;
but, not daring to show his ill humor, he replied in a bland voice:
"If Mademoiselle had gone the same road that I did, with the same
conveyance, she would know that it is a rather thirsty stretch. I
stopped at the 'Femme-sans-Tete' to wash the dust down my parched throat.
Whereupon Mademoiselle Reine--the daughter of Madame Gobillot, the
landlady of the inn--Mademoiselle Reine asked me to allow her to look at
the yellow-journal in which there are fashions for ladies; I asked her
why; she said it was so that she might see how they made their bonnets,
gowns, and other finery in Paris. The frivolity of women!"
Mademoiselle de Corandeuil threw herself back in her chair and gave way
to an access of hilarity in which she rarely indulged.
"Mademoiselle Gobillot reading La Mode! Mademoiselle Gobillot talking of
gowns, shawls, and cashmeres! Clemence, what do you say to that? You
will see, she will be ordering her bonnets from Herbault! Ha! ha! This
is what is called the progress of civilization, the age of light!"
"Mademoiselle Gobillot," said Clemence, fixing a penetrating glance upon
the old man, "was not the only one who looked at La Mode. Was there no
other person in the tavern who saw it?"
"Madame," replied Rousselet, forced from his last refuge, "there were two
young men taking their refection, and one of them wore a beard no longer
than a goat's. Madame will pardon me if I allow myself to use this
vulgar expression, but Madame wished to know all."
"And the other young man?"
"The other had his facial epidermis shaved as close as a lady's or mine.
He was the one who held the journal while his comrade was smoking outside
the door."
Madame de Bergenheim made no further inquiries, but fell into a profound
revery. With eyes fixed upon the last number of La Mode, she seemed to
study the slightest lines of the sketch that had been made thereon, as if
she hoped to find a solution to the mystery. Her irregular breathing,
and the bright flush which tinged her usually pale cheeks, would have
denoted to an eye-witness one of those tempests of the heart, the
physical manifestations of which are like those of a fever. The pale
winter flower dying under the snow had suddenly raised its drooping head
and recovered its color; the melancholy against which the young woman had
so vainly struggled had disappeared as if by enchantment. A little bird
surmounted by a coronet, the whole rather badly sketched, was the strange
talisman that had produced this change.
"They were commercial travellers," said the old aunt; "they always
pretend to know everything. One of them, doubtless, when reading the
well-known name of Monsieur de Bergenheim upon the wrapper, sketched the
animal in question. These gentlemen of industry usually have a rather
good education! But this is giving the affair more importance than it
merits. Leonard Rousselet," said she, raising her voice as a judge does
in court when pronouncing his charge, "you were wrong to let anything
addressed to your master leave your hands. We will excuse you this time,
but I warn you to be more careful in future; when you go to Madame
Gobillot's, you may say to Mademoiselle Reine, from me, that if she
wishes to read La Mode I shall be delighted to procure a subscriber to
one of our journals. You may retire now."
Without waiting for this invitation to be repeated, Rousselet backed out
of the room like an ambassador leaving the royal presence, escorted by
Constance acting as master of ceremonies. Not having calculated the
distance, he had just bumped against the door, when it suddenly opened
and a person of extreme vivacity bounded into the middle of the room.
It was a very young and petite lady, whose perfectly developed form
predicted an inclination to stoutness in the future. She belonged to
the Bergenheim family, if one could credit the resemblance between her
characteristic features and several of the old portraits in the room;
she wore a dark-brown riding-habit, a gray hat perched on one side,
showing on the left a mass of very curly, bright blond hair. This
coiffure and the long green veil, floating at each movement like the
plume in a helmet, gave a singularly easy air to the fresh face of this
pretty amazon, who brandished, in guise of a lance, a billiard cue.
"Clemence," she exclaimed, "I have just beaten Christian; I made the red
ball, I made the white, and then the double stroke; I made all!
Mademoiselle, I have just beaten Christian two games; is it not glorious?
He made only eighteen points in a single game. Pere Rousselet, I have
just beaten Christian! Do you know how to play billiards?"
"Mademoiselle Aline, I am absolutely ignorant of the game," replied the
old man, with as gracious a smile as was possible, while he tried to
recover his equilibrium.
"You are needed no longer, Rousselet," said Mademoiselle de Corandeuil;
"close the door as you go out."
When she had been obeyed, the old maid turned gravely toward Aline, who
was still dancing about the room, having seized her sister-in-law's hands
in order to force her to share her childish joy.
"Mademoiselle," said she in a severe tone, "is it the custom at the
'Sacred Heart' to enter a room without greeting the persons who are in
it, and to jump about like a crazy person? a thing that is never
permitted even in a peasant's house."
Aline stopped short in the midst of her dance and blushed a trifle; she
caressed the pug dog, instead of replying, for she knew as well as
Rousselet that it was the surest way of softening the old maid's heart.
The cajolery was lost this time.
"Do not touch Constance, I beg of you," exclaimed the aunt, as if a
dagger had been raised against the object of her love, "do not soil this
poor beast with your hands. What dreadful thing have you on your
fingers? Have you just come out of an indigo bag?"
The young girl blushed still deeper and gazed at her pretty hands, which
were really a little daubed, and began to wipe them with an embroidered
handkerchief which she took from her pocket.
"It was the billiards," she said, in a low voice, "it is the blue chalk
they rub the cue with in order to make good shots and caroms."
"Make good shots! Caroms! Will you be so good as to spare us your slang
speeches," continued Mademoiselle de Corandeuil, who seemed to become
more crabbed as the young girl's confusion increased. "What a fine
education for a young lady! and one who has just come from the 'Sacred
Heart'! One that has taken five prizes not fifteen days ago! I really
do not know what to think of those ladies, your teachers! And now I
suppose you are going to ride. Billiards and horses, horses and
billiards! It is fine! It is admirable!"
"But, Mademoiselle," said Aline, raising her large blue eyes, which were
on the verge of tears, "it is vacation now, and there is no wrong in my
playing a game of billiards with my brother; we have no billiards at the
'Sacred Heart,' and it is such fun! It is like riding; the doctor said
that it would be very healthful for me, and Christian hoped that it might
make me grow a little."
As she said these words, the young girl glanced into the mirror in order
to see whether her brother's hopes had been realized; for her small
stature was her sole anxiety. But this glance was as quick as a flash,
for she feared that the severe old maid would make this act of coquetry
serve as the text for another sermon.
"You are not my niece, and I am thankful for it," continued the old lady.
"I am too old to begin another education; thank goodness, one is quite
enough! I have no authority over you, and your conduct is your brother's
concern. The advice which I give you is entirely disinterested; your
amusements are not such as seem to me proper for a young girl of good
birth. It may be possible that it is the fashion today, so I will say no
more about it; but there is one thing more serious, upon which I should
advise you to reflect. In my youth, a young lady never was allowed to
write letters except to her father and mother. Your letters to your
cousin d'Artigues are inconsiderate--do not interrupt me--they are
inconsiderate, and I should advise you to mend your ways."
Mademoiselle de Corandeuil arose, and, as she had found an opportunity to
read three sermons in one forenoon, she could not say, like Titus, "I
have wasted my morning." She left the room with a majestic step,
escorted by her dog and satisfied with herself, bestowing an ironical
curtsey on the young girl, which the latter did not think it necessary to
return.
"How hateful your aunt is!" exclaimed Mademoiselle de Bergenheim to her
sister-in-law, when they were alone. "Christian says that I must pay no
attention to her, because all women become like her if they never marry.
As for myself, I know very well that if I am an old maid I shall try not
to hurt others' feelings--I, inconsiderate! When she can think of
nothing more to say, she scolds me about my cousin. It is hardly worth
while, for what we write about! Alphonse wrote of nothing, in his last
letter, but of the partridge he had shot and his hunting costume; he is
such a boy! But why do you not say something? You sit there speechless;
are you angry with me, too?"
She approached Clemence and was about to seat herself in her lap, when
the latter arose to avoid this loving familiarity.
"So you really have beaten Christian," said she, in a listless tone;
"are you going for a ride now? Your habit is very becoming."
"Truly? oh! I am so glad!" replied the young girl, planting herself
before the glass to look at her pretty figure. She pulled down her
waist, adjusted the folds of the skirt of her dress and arranged her
veil, placed her hat on her head with a little more jaunty air, turned
three quarters around to get a better view of her costume; in one word,
she went through the coquettish movements that all pretty women learn
upon entering society. On the whole, she seemed very well pleased with
her examination, for she smiled and showed a row of small teeth which
were as white as milk.
"I am sorry now," said she, "that I did not send for a black hat; my hair
is so light that gray makes me look ugly. Do you not think so? Why do
you not reply, Clemence? One can not get a word out of you to-day; is it
because you have your neuralgia?"
"I have a trifle of it," said Madame de Bergenheim, in order to give some
pretext for her preoccupation.
"Now, then, you ought to come with us for a ride; the fresh air will do
you good. Look how fine the weather is now; we will have a good gallop.
Will you? I will help you put on your habit, and in five minutes you
will be ready. Listen, I hear them in the yard now. I am going to tell
Christian to have your horse saddled; come."
Aline took her sister-in-law by the hand, led her into the next room and
opened the window to see what was going on outside, where the cracking of
whips and several voices were to be heard. A servant was walking up and
down the yard leading a large horse which he had just brought from the
stable; the Baron was holding a smaller one, which bore a lady's saddle,
while he carefully examined all the buckles. As he heard the window open
above his head, he turned and bowed to Clemence with much chivalrous
gallantry.
"You still refuse to go with us?" he asked.
"Is Aline going to ride Titania," replied Madame de Bergenheim, making an
effort to speak; "I am sure the mare will end by playing her some trick."
The young girl, who had a fancy for Titania because the skittish creature
had the attraction of forbidden fruit, nudged her sister with her elbow,
and made a little grimace.
"Aline is afraid of nothing," said the Baron; "we will enlist her with
the hussars as soon as she leaves the 'Sacred Heart.' Come, Aline."
The young girl kissed the Baroness, gathered up her skirt, and in a few
moments was in the yard patting the neck of her dear brown mare.
"Up with you!" said Christian, taking his sister's foot in one hand
while he raised her with the other, placing her in the saddle as easily
as he would a six-year-old child. Then he mounted his large horse,
saluted his wife, and the couple, starting at a trot, soon disappeared
down the avenue, which began at the gate of the courtyard.
As soon as they were out of sight, Clemence went to her room, took a
shawl from her bed, and went rapidly down a secret stairway which led
into the gardens.