I was not born yesterday, said Père Étienne in 1828. I came into the
world, as near as I can make out, in the year 54 or 55 of the last
century. But not remembering much of my earlier years, I shall only
tell you about myself from the time of my first communion, which took
place in '70 in the parish church of Saint-Chartier, then in charge
of the Abbé Montpéron, who is now very deaf and broken down.
This was not because our own parish of Nohant was suppressed in those
days; but our curate having died, the two churches were united for a
time under the ministry of the priest of Saint-Chartier, and we went
every day to be catechised,--that is, I and my little cousin and a
lad named Joseph, who lived in the same house with my uncle, with a
dozen other children of the neighborhood.
I say "my uncle" for short, but he was really my great-uncle, the
brother of my grandmother, and was named Brulet; hence his little
granddaughter and only heir was called Brulette, without any mention
whatever of her Christian name, which was Catherine.
Now, to tell you at once about things as they were, I soon felt that
I loved Brulette better than I was obliged to do as a cousin; and I
was jealous because Joseph lived in the same house, which stood about
a stone's throw distant from the last houses in the village and
rather more than three quarters of a mile from mine,--so that he
could see her at all times, while I saw her only now and then, till
the time when we met to be catechised.
I will tell you how it happened that Brulette's grandfather and
Joseph's mother lived under the same roof. The house belonged to the
old man, and he let a small part of it to the woman, who was a widow
with only one child. Her name was Marie Picot, and she was still
marriageable, being little over thirty, and bearing traces in her
face and figure of having been in her day a very pretty woman. She
was still called by some people "handsome Mariton,"--which pleased
her very much, for she would have liked to marry again. But
possessing nothing except her bright eyes and her honest tongue, she
thought herself lucky to pay a low price for her lodging and get a
worthy and helpful old man for a landlord and neighbor,--one too who
wouldn't worry her, but might sometimes help her.
Père Brulet and the widow Picot, called Mariton, had thus lived in
each other's good graces for about a dozen years; that is, ever since
the day when Brulette's mother died in giving birth to her, and
Mariton had taken charge of the infant with as much love and care as
if it had been her own.
Joseph, who was three years older than Brulette, remembered being
rocked in the same cradle; and the baby was the first burden ever
trusted to his little arms. Later, Père Brulet, noticing that his
neighbor had her hands full with the care of the two as they grew
stronger, took Joseph into his part of the house; and so it came to
pass that the little girl slept with the widow, and the little boy
with the old man.
All four, however, ate together. Mariton cooked the meals, kept the
house, made over and darned the clothes, while the old man, who was
still sturdy enough to work, went out by the day and paid the greater
part of the household expenses. He did not do this because he was
well-off and his living was bound to be good accordingly, but because
the widow was kind and amiable, and excellent company; and Brulette
considered her so much like a mother that my uncle grew to treat her
as a daughter, or at any rate as a daughter-in-law.
Nothing in the world was ever prettier or sweeter than the little
girl under Mariton's bringing up. The woman loved cleanliness, and
kept herself as spick and span as her means allowed; and she had
early taught Brulette to do the same. At the age, therefore, when
children usually roll in the dirt like little animals, the darling
was so clean and dainty in all her ways that everybody wanted to kiss
her; but she was already very chary of her favors, and would never be
familiar unless quite sure of her company.
When she was twelve years old she was really, at times, like a little
woman; and if, carried away by the liveliness of her years, she did
forget herself so far as to play while being catechised, she soon
caught herself up, even more, it seemed to me, out of self-respect
than for the sake of religion.
I don't know if any of us could have told why, but all of us lads,
unlike enough when it came to catechising, felt the difference that
there was between Brulette and the other little girls.
I must own that some in the class were rather big boys. Joseph was
fifteen and I was sixteen, which our parents and the curate declared
was a disgrace to us. Such backwardness certainly did prove that
Joseph was too lazy to study, and I too lively to give my mind to it.
In fact, for three years he and I had been rejected from the class;
and if it had not been for the Abbé Montpéron, who was less
particular than our old curate, I suppose we might have continued so
to this day.
However, it is only fair to confess that boys are always younger in
mind than girls; and you will find in every Confirmation class just
this difference between the two species,--the males being already
strong, grown lads, and the females still small, hardly old enough to
wear the coif.
As for knowledge, we were all about alike; none of us knew how to
read, still less to write, and we only learned what we did just as
the little birds learn to sing, without knowing either notes or
Latin, by dint only of using their ears. But all the same, Monsieur
le curé knew very well which of the flock had the quickest minds, and
which of them remembered what he said. The cleverest head among the
girls was little Brulette's, and the stupidest of all the stupid boys
was Joseph.
Not that he was really duller than the rest, but he was quite unable
to listen and so get a smattering of things he did not understand;
and he showed so little liking for instruction that I was surprised
at him,--I who could take hold of my lessons fast enough when I
managed to keep still, and quiet down my lively spirits.
Though Brulette scolded him for it sometimes, she never got anything
out of him but tears of vexation.
"I am not worse than others," he would say; "I don't want to offend
God; but words don't come right in my memory, and I can't help it."
"Yes, you can," replied the little one, who already took a tone of
ordering him about; "you can if you choose. You can do whatever you
like; but you let your mind run after all sorts of things,--it is no
wonder Monsieur l'abbé calls you 'Joseph the absent-minded.'
"He can call me so if he likes," answered Joseph. "I don't
understand what it means."
But the rest of us understood very well, and turned it into our own
childish language by calling him José l'ébervigé [literally, the
bewildered, the staring-eyed]; a name which stuck to him, to his
great disgust.
Joseph was a melancholy child, with a puny body and a mind turned
inward. He never left Brulette, and was very submissive to her;
nevertheless, she said he was as obstinate as a mule, and found fault
with him all the time. Though she did not say much to me about my
lawless, do-nothing ways, I often wished she would take as much
notice of me as she did of him. However, in spite of the jealousy he
caused me, I cared more for José than for my other comrades, because
he was one of the weakest, and I one of the strongest. Besides, if I
had not stood up for him, Brulette would have blamed me. When I told
her that she loved him more than she did me, who was her cousin, she
would say,--
"It is not on his account; it is because of his mother, whom I love
better than I do either of you. If anything happened to him, I
should not dare go home; for as he never thinks of what he is about,
she charged me to think for both, and I try not to forget it."
I often hear our betters say: "I went to school with such a one; he
was my college companion." We peasants, who never went to school in
my young days, we say, "I was catechised with such a one; that's my
communion comrade." Then is the time we make our youthful
friendships, and sometimes, too, the hatreds that last a lifetime.
In the fields, at work, or at the festivals, we talk and laugh
together, and meet and part; but at the catechism classes, which last
a year, and often two, we must put up with each other's company, and
even help each other five or six hours a day. We always started off
together in a body every morning across the fields and meadows,
beside the coverts and fences, and along the foot-paths; and we came
back in the evening anyhow, as it pleased the good God, for we took
advantage of our liberty to run where we chose, like frolicking
birds. Those who liked each other's company stayed together; the
disagreeable ones went alone, or banded in twos and threes to tease
and frighten the rest.
Joseph had his ways; they were neither horrid nor sulky, and yet they
were not amiable. I never remember seeing him really enjoying
himself, nor really frightened, nor really contented, nor really
annoyed with anything that ever happened to us. In our fights he
never got out of the way, and he usually received blows which he did
not know how to return; but he made no complaint. You might have
supposed he did not feel them.
When we loitered to play some game, he would sit or lie down at a
little distance and say nothing, answering wide of the mark if we
spoke to him. He seemed to be listening or looking at something
which the others could not perceive; that's why he was thought to be
one of those who "see the wind." Sometimes, when Brulette, who knew
his crotchets, but would not explain them, called him, he did not
answer. Then she would begin to sing,--that was sure to wake him up,
as a whistle is sure to stop people from snoring.
To tell you why I attached myself to a fellow who was such poor
company is more than I am able to do; for I was just the opposite
myself. I could not do without companions, and I was always
listening and observing others; I liked to talk and question, felt
dull when I was alone, and went about looking for fun and friendship.
Perhaps that was the reason why, pitying the serious, reserved boy, I
imitated Brulette, who would shake him up sometimes,--which did him
more good than it did her, for in fact she indulged his whims much
more than she controlled them. As far as words went she ordered him
about finely, but as he never obeyed her it was she (and I through
her) who followed in his wake and had patience with him.
The day of our first communion came at last; and, returning from
church, I made such strong resolutions not to give way to my
lawlessness any more that I followed Brulette home to her
grandfather's house, as the best example I could lay hold of to guide
me.
While she went, at Mariton's bidding, to milk the goat, Joseph and I
stayed talking with his mother in my uncle's room.
We were looking at the devotional images which the curate had given
us in remembrance of the sacrament,--or rather I was, for Joseph was
thinking of something else, and fingered them without seeing what
they were. So the others paid no attention to us; and presently
Mariton said to her old neighbor, alluding to our first communion,--
"Well, it is a good thing done, and now I can hire my lad out to
work. I have decided to do what I told you I should."
My uncle shook his head sadly, and she continued:
"Just listen to one thing, neighbor. My José has got no mind. I
know that, worse luck! He takes after his poor deceased father, who
hadn't two ideas a week, but who was a well-to-do and well-behaved
man, for all that. Still, it is an infirmity to have so little
faculty in your head, because if ill-luck has it that a man marries a
silly wife, everything goes to the bad in a hurry. That's why I said
to myself, when I saw my boy growing so long in the legs, that his
brain would never feed him; and that if I could only leave him a
little sum of money I should die happy. You know the good a few
savings can do. In our poor homes it is everything. Now, I have
never been able to lay by a penny, and I do suppose I'm not young
enough to please a man, for I have not remarried. Well, if that's
so, God's will be done! I am still young enough to work; and so I
may as well tell you, neighbor, that the innkeeper at Chartier wants
a servant. He pays good wages,--thirty crowns a year! besides
perquisites, which come to half as much again. With all that, strong
and lively as I know I am, I shall have made my fortune in ten years.
I can take my ease in my old days, and leave a little something to my
poor boy. What do you say to that?"