MY DEAR CHILD,--As you like to hear me relate the tales told by the
peasants at our _veillées_,--I mean the watch-nights of my youth,
when I had time to listen to them,--I shall try to recall the story
of Étienne Depardieu, and piece together the scattered fragments of
it still remaining in my memory. It was told to me by the man
himself during several of the _breyage_ evenings,--a name given, as
you know, to the late hours of the night spent in grinding hemp, when
those present relate their village chronicles. It is long since Père
Depardieu slept the sleep of the just, and he was quite old when he
told me this story of the naïve adventures of his youth. For this
reason I shall try to let him speak for himself, imitating his manner
as closely as I can. You will not blame me for insisting on so
doing, because you know from experience that the thoughts and
emotions of a peasant cannot be rendered in our own style of language
without making them unnatural and giving them a tone of even shocking
affectation.
You also know by experience, that the peasantry guess or comprehend
much more than we believe them capable of understanding; and you have
often been struck with their sudden insight, which, even in matters
of art, has an appearance of revelation. If I were to tell you in my
language and yours certain things which you have heard and understood
in theirs, you would find those very things so unlike what is natural
to these people that you would accuse me of unconsciously putting
something of my own into the relation, and of attributing to the
peasantry reflections and feelings which they could not have. It
suffices to introduce into the expression of their ideas a single
word that is not in their vocabulary to raise a doubt as to whether
the idea itself emanated from them. But when we listen to their
speech, we at once observe that although they may not have, like us,
a choice of words suited to every shade of thought, yet they
assuredly have words enough to formulate what they think and to
describe what strikes their senses.
Therefore it is not, as some have reproachfully declared, for the
petty pleasure of producing a style hitherto unused in literature,
and still less to revive ancient forms of speech and old expressions
which all the world knows and is familiar with, that I have bound
myself to the humble task of preserving to Étienne Depardieu's tale
the local color that belongs to it. It is, rather, because I find it
impossible to make him speak as we do without distorting the methods
by which his mind worked when he expressed himself on points with
which he was not familiar, and as to which he evidently had a strong
desire both to understand and to make himself understood.
If, in spite of the care and conscientiousness which I shall put into
this task, you find that my narrator sometimes sees too clearly or
too deeply into the subjects he takes up, you must blame the weakness
of my presentation. Forced as I am to choose among our familiar
terms of speech such only as all classes can understand, I
voluntarily deprive myself of those that are most original and most
expressive; but, at any rate, I shall endeavor to employ none which
would be unknown to the peasant who tells the tale, and who (far
superior in this to the peasant of to-day) did not pride himself on
using words that were unintelligible to both his hearers and himself.
I dedicate this novel to you, my dear Eugène, not to give you a proof
of motherly affection, which you do not need to make you feel at home
in my family, but to leave with you, after I am gone, a point of
contact for your recollections of Berry, which has now become, in a
way, the land of your adoption. You will hereafter recall that you
said, at the time I was writing it: "By the bye, it will soon be ten
years since I came here, intending to spend a month. I must be
thinking of leaving." And as I did not see the why and the
wherefore, you explained to me that, being a painter, you had worked
ten years among us to observe and feel nature, and that it was now
necessary you should go to Paris and seek discipline of thought and
the experience of others. I let you go; but on condition that you
would return to us every summer. Do not forget your promise. I send
this book, a distant echo of our bagpipes, to remind you that the
trees are budding, the nightingales have come, and the great
spring-tide festival of nature is beginning in the fields.