Huriel crossed himself and sighed. I did as he did, and then turning
from the accursed tree we went our way.
I wished, as the friar did, to say a few comforting words to him, for
I saw that his mind was troubled; but, besides being a poor hand at
moralizing, I felt guilty myself after a fashion. I knew, for
instance, that if I had not related aloud the affair that happened in
the woods of La Roche, Huriel might not have remembered his promise
to Brulette to avenge her; and that if I had not been in such a hurry
to be the first to defend her in presence of the muleteers and the
foresters, Huriel would not have been so eager to get that honor
before me in her eyes.
Worried by these thoughts, I could not help telling them to Huriel
and blaming myself to him, just as Brulette had blamed herself to
Thérence.
"My dear friend Tiennet," replied the muleteer, "you are a good
fellow with a good heart. Don't trouble your conscience for a thing
which God, in the day of judgment, will not lay at your door, perhaps
not at mine. Brother Nicolas is right, God is the only judge who
renders just judgment, for he alone knows things as they are. He
needs no witnesses and makes no inquiry into the truth. He reads all
hearts; he knows that mine has never sworn nor sought the death of a
man, even at the moment when I took that stick to punish the
evil-doer. Those weapons are bad, but they are the only ones which
our customs allow us to use in such cases, and I am not responsible
for their use. Certainly a fight with fists alone would be far
better,--such as you and I had that night in your field, all about my
mules and your oats. But let me tell you that a muleteer is bound to
be as brave and jealous for his honor as any of the great lords who
bear the sword. If I had swallowed Malzac's insults without
demanding reparation I should deserve to be expelled from our
fraternity. It is true that I did not demand it coolly, as I ought
to have done. I had met Malzac alone that morning, in that same wood
of La Roche, where I was quietly at work without thinking of him. He
again annoyed me with foolish language, declaring that Brulette was
nothing better than a dried-wood picker, which means, with us, a
ghost that walks by night,--a superstition which often helps girls of
bad lives to escape recognition, for good people are afraid of these
ghosts. So, among muleteers, who are not as credulous, the term is
very insulting. Nevertheless, I bore with him as long as possible,
until at last, driven to extremities, I threatened him in order to
drive him away. He replied that I was a coward, capable of attacking
him in a lonely place, but that I dared not challenge him to open
fight with sticks before witnesses; that everybody knew I had never
had occasion to show my courage, for when I was in company of others
I always agreed with what they said so as not to be obliged to
measure swords with them. Then he left me, saying there was a dance
in the woods of Chambérat, and that Brulette gave a supper to the
company; for which she had ample means, as she was the mistress of a
rich tradesman in her own country; and, for his part, he should go
and amuse himself by courting the girl, in defiance of me if I had
courage to go and see him do it. You know, Tiennet, that I intended
never to see Brulette again, and that for reasons which I will tell
you later."
"I know them," said I; "and I see that your sister met you to-night;
for here, hanging to your ear below the bandage, is a token which
proves something I had strongly suspected."
"If it is that I love Brulette and value her token," replied Huriel,
"you know all that I know myself; but you cannot know more, for I am
not even sure of her friendship, and as for anything else--but that's
neither here nor there. I want to tell you the ill-luck that brought
me back here. I did not wish Brulette to see me, neither did I mean
to speak to her, because I saw the misery Joseph endured on my
account. But I knew Joseph had not the strength to protect her, and
that Malzac was shrewd and tricky enough to escape you. So I came at
the beginning of the dance, and kept out of sight under the trees,
meaning to depart without being seen, if Malzac did not make his
appearance. You know the rest until the moment when we took the
sticks. At that moment I was angry, I confess it, but it couldn't
have been otherwise unless I were a saint in Paradise. And yet my
only thought was to give a lesson to my enemy, and to stop him from
saying, especially while Brulette was here, that because I was gentle
and patient I was timid as a hare. You saw that my father, sick of
such talk, did not object to my proving myself a man; but there!
ill-luck surely pursues me, when in my first fight and almost at my
first blow--ah! Tiennet, there is no use saying I was driven into
it, or that I feel within me kind and humane; that is no consolation
for having a fatal hand. A man is a man, no matter how foul-mouthed
and ill-behaved he be. There was little or no good in that one, but
he might have mended, and I have sent him to his account before he
had come to repentance. Tiennet, I am sick of a muleteer's life; I
agree with Brulette that it is not easy for a God-fearing man to be
one of them and maintain his own conscience and the respect of
others. I am obliged to stay in the craft for some time longer,
owing to engagements which I have made; but you may rely upon it, I
shall give up the business as soon as possible, and find another that
is quiet and decent."
"That is what you want me to tell Brulette, isn't it?" I said.
"No," replied Huriel, with much decision, "not unless Joseph gets
over his love and his illness so entirely as to give her up. I love
Joseph as much as you all love him; besides, he told me his secret,
and asked my advice and support; I will not deceive him, nor
undermine him."
"But Brulette does not want him as a lover or a husband, and perhaps
he had better know it as soon as possible. I'll take upon myself to
reason with him, if the others dare not, for there is somebody in
your house who could make Joseph happy, and he never could be happy
with Brulette. The longer he waits and the more he flatters himself
she will love him, the harder the blow will seem; instead of which,
if he opens his eyes to the true attachment he might find elsewhere--"
"Never mind that," said Huriel, frowning slightly, which made him
look like a man who was suffering from a great hole in his head,
which in fact there was under the bloody handkerchief. "All things
are in God's hand, and in our family nobody is in a hurry to make his
own happiness at the expense of others. As for me, I must go, for I
could make no lying answer to those who might ask me where Malzac is
and why no one sees him any more. Listen, however, to another thing
about Joseph and Brulette. It is better not to tell them the evil I
have done. Except the muleteers, and my father and sister, the monk
and you, no one knows that when that man fell he never rose again. I
had only time to say to Thérence, 'He is dead, I must leave these
parts.' Maître Archignat said the same thing to my father; but the
other foresters know nothing, and wish not to know anything. The
monk himself would have seen only part of it if he had not followed
us with remedies for the wound. The muleteers were inclined to send
him back at once, but the chief answered for him, and I, though I
might be risking my neck, could not endure that the man should be
buried like a dog, without Christian prayer. The future is in God's
hands. You understand, of course, that a man involved as I am in a
bad business cannot, at least for a long time, think of courting a
girl as much sought after and respected as Brulette. But I do ask
you, for my sake, not to tell her the extent of the trouble I am in.
I am willing she should forget me, but not that she should hate or
fear me."
"She has no right to do either," I replied, "since it was for love of
her--"
"Ah!" exclaimed Huriel, sighing and passing his hand before his eyes,
"it is a love that costs me dear!"
"Come, come," I said, "courage! she shall know nothing; you may rely
upon my word; and all that I can do, if occasion offers to make her
see your merits, shall be done faithfully."
"Gently, gently, Tiennet," returned Huriel, "I don't ask you to take
my side as I take Joseph's. You don't know me as well, neither do
you owe me the same friendship; I know what it is to push another
into the place we would like to occupy. You care for Brulette
yourself; and among three lovers, as we are, two must be just and
reasonable when the third is preferred. But, whatever happens, I
hope we shall all three remain brothers and friends."
"Take me out of the list of suitors," I said, smiling without the
least vexation. "I have always been the least ardent of Brulette's
lovers, and now I am as calm as if I had never dreamed of loving her.
I know what is in the secret heart of the girl; she has made a good
choice, and I am satisfied. Adieu, my Huriel; may the good God help
you, and give you hope, and so enable you to forget the troubles of
this bad night."
We clasped each other for good-bye, and I inquired where he was going.
"To the mountains of the Forez," he replied. "Write to me at the
village of Huriel, which is my birth-place and where we have
relations. They will send me your letters."
"But can you travel so far with that wound in your head? Isn't it
dangerous?"
"Oh no!" he said, "it is nothing. I wish _the other's_ head had been
as hard as mine!"
When I was alone I began to think over with amazement all that must
have happened that night in the forest without my hearing or
detecting the slightest thing. I was still more surprised when,
passing once more, in broad daylight, the spot where the dance had
taken place, I saw that since midnight persons had returned to mow
the grass and dig over the ground to remove all trace of what had
happened. In short, from one direction persons had come twice to
make things safe at this particular point; from the other, Thérence
had contrived to communicate with her brother; and, besides all this,
a burial had been performed, without the faintest appearance or the
lightest sound having warned me of what was taking place, although
the night was clear and I had gone from end to end of the silent
woods looking and listening with the utmost attention. It turned my
mind to the difference between the habits, and indeed the characters,
of these woodland people and the laborers of the open country. On
the plains, good and evil are too clearly seen not to make the
inhabitants from their youth up submit to the laws and behave with
prudence. But in the forests, where the eyes of their fellows can be
escaped, men invoke no justice but that of God or the devil,
according as they are well or ill intentioned.
When I reached the lodges the sun was up; the Head-Woodsman had gone
to his work; Joseph was still asleep; Thérence and Brulette were
talking together under the shed. They asked me why I had got up so
early, and I noticed that Thérence was uneasy lest I had seen or
heard something. I behaved as if I knew nothing, and had not gone
further than the adjoining wood.
Joseph soon joined us, and I remarked that he looked much better than
when we arrived.
"Yet I have hardly slept all night," he replied; "I was restless till
nearly day-break; but I think the reason was that the fever which has
weakened me so much left me last evening, for I feel stronger and
more vigorous than I have been for a long time."
Thérence, who understood fevers, felt his pulse, and then her face,
which looked very tired and depressed, brightened suddenly.
"See!" she cried; "the good God sends us at least one happiness; here
is our patient on the road to recovery! The fever has gone, and his
blood is already recovering strength."
"If you want to know what I have felt this night," said Joseph, "you
must promise not to call it a dream; but here it is--In the first
place, however, tell me if Huriel got off without a wound, and if the
other did not get more than he wanted. Have you had any news from
the forest of Chambérat?"
"Yes, yes," replied Thérence, hastily. "They have both gone to the
upper country. Say what you were going to say."
"I don't know if you will comprehend it, you two," resumed Joseph,
addressing the girls, "but Tiennet will. When I saw Huriel fight so
resolutely my knees gave way under me, and, feeling weaker than any
woman, I came near losing consciousness; but at the very moment when
my body was giving way my heart grew hot within me, and my eyes never
ceased to look at the fight. When Huriel struck the fellow down and
remained standing himself, I could have shouted 'Victory!' like a
drunken man, if I had not restrained myself; I would have rushed if I
could to embrace him. But the impulse was soon gone, and when I got
back here I felt as though I had received and given every blow, and
as if all the bones in my body were broken."
"Don't think any more about it," said Thérence; "it was a horrid
thing to see and recollect. I dare say it gave you bad dreams last
night."
"I did not dream at all," said Joseph; "I lay thinking, and little by
little I felt my mind awakened and my body healed, as if the time had
come to take up my bed and walk, like the paralytic of the Gospels.
I saw Huriel before me, shining with light; he blamed my illness, and
declared it was a cowardice of the mind. He seemed to say: 'I am a
man, you are a child; you shake with fever while my blood is fire.
You are good for nothing, but I am good in all ways, for others and
for myself. Come, listen to this music.' And I heard an air
muttering like a storm, which raised me in my bed as the wind lifts
the fallen leaves. Ah, Brulette, I think I have done with being ill
and cowardly; I can go now to my own country and kiss my mother, and
make my plans to start,--for start I must, upon a journey; I must see
and learn, and make myself what I should be."
"You wish to travel?" said Thérence, her face, so lately lighted like
a star with pleasure, growing white and cloudy as an autumn moon.
"You think to find a better teacher than my father, and better
friends than people here? Go and see your mother; that is right, if
you are strong enough to go,--unless, indeed, you are deceiving us
and longing to die in distant parts--"
Grief and displeasure choked her voice. Joseph, who watched her,
suddenly changed both his language and his manner.
"Never mind what I have been dreaming this morning, Thérence," he
said; "I shall never find a better master or better friends. You
asked me to tell my dreams, and I did tell them, that is all. When I
am cured I shall ask advice of all three of you, and of your father
also. Till then pay no attention to what comes into my head; let us
be happy for the time that we are together."
Thérence was pacified; but Brulette and I, who knew how dogged and
obstinate Joseph could be under his gentle manner, and remembered how
he had left us without allowing us a chance to remonstrate or
persuade him, felt sure that his mind was already fully made up, and
that no one could change it.
During the next two days I once more felt dreadfully dull; and so did
Brulette, though she amused herself by finishing the embroidery she
wanted to give Thérence, and spent some hours in the woods with Père
Bastien, partly to leave Joseph to the care of Thérence, and partly
to talk of Huriel and comfort the worthy man for the danger and
distress the fight had caused him. The Head-Woodsman, touched by the
friendship which she showed him, told her the truth about Malzac,
and, far from her blaming Huriel, as the latter had feared, it only
drew her closer to him through the gratitude which she now felt she
owed him.
On the sixth day we began to talk of separating. Joseph was getting
better hourly; he worked a little, and did his best in every way to
recover his strength. He had decided to go with us and spend a few
days at home, saying that he should return almost immediately to the
woods of Alleu,--which Brulette and I doubted, and so did Thérence,
who was almost as uneasy about his health as she had been about his
illness. I don't know if it was she who persuaded her father to
accompany us half-way, or whether the notion came into Père Bastien's
own mind; at any rate, he made us the offer, which Brulette instantly
accepted. Joseph was only half pleased at this, though he tried not
to show it.
The little trip naturally diverted the Head-Woodsman's thoughts from
his anxieties, and while making his preparations the evening before
our departure he recovered much of his natural fine spirits. The
muleteers had left the neighborhood without hindrance, and nothing
had been said about Malzac, who had neither relations nor friends to
inquire for him. A year or two might go by before the authorities
troubled themselves to know what had become of him, and indeed, they
might never do so; for in those days there was no great policing in
France, and a man might disappear without any notice being taken of
it. Moreover, the Head-Woodsman and his family would leave those
parts at the end of the chopping season, and as father and son never
stayed six months in the same place, the law would be very clever
indeed to know where to catch them.
For these reasons the Head-Woodsman, who had feared only the first
results of the affair, finding that no one got wind of the secret,
grew easy in mind and so restored our courage.
On the morning of the eighth day he put us all into a little cart he
had borrowed, together with a horse, from a friend of his in the
forest, and taking the reins he drove us by the longest but safest
road to Saint-Sevère, where we were to part from him and his daughter.
Brulette inwardly regretted returning by a new way, where she could
not revisit any of the scenes she had passed through with Huriel. As
for me, I was glad to travel and to see Saint-Pallais in Bourbonnais
and Préveranges, two little villages on the heights, also
Saint-Prejet and Pérassay, other villages lower down along the banks
of the Indre; moreover, as we followed that river from its source and
I remembered that it ran through our village I no longer felt myself
a stranger in a strange land. When we reached Saint-Sevère, I felt
at home, for it is only six leagues from our place, and I had already
been there two or three times. While the rest were bidding each
other farewell, I went to hire a conveyance to take us to Nohant, but
I could only find one for the next day as early as I wanted it.
When I returned and reported the fact, Joseph seemed annoyed. "What
do we want with a conveyance?" he said. "Can't we start in the fresh
of the morning on foot and get home in the cool of the evening?
Brulette has walked that distance often enough to dance at some
assembly, and I feel able to do as much as she."
Thérence remarked that so long a walk might bring back his fever, and
that only made him more obstinate; but Brulette, seeing Thérence's
vexation, cut the matter short by saying she was too tired, and she
would prefer to pass the night at the inn and start in a carriage the
next morning.
"Well, then," said the Head-Woodsman, "Thérence and I will do the
same. Our horse shall rest here for the night, and we will part from
you at daybreak to-morrow morning. But instead of eating our meal in
this inn which is full of flies, I propose that we take the dinner
into some shady place or to the bank of the river, and sit there and
talk till it is time to go to bed."
So said, so done. I engaged two bedrooms, one for the girls, the
other for us men, and wishing to entertain Père Bastien (who I had
noticed was a good eater) according to my own ideas, I filled a big
basket with the best the inn could afford in patés, white bread,
wine, and wine-brandy, and carried it outside the village. It was
lucky that the present fashion of drinking coffee and beer did not
exist in those days, for I shouldn't have spared the cost, and my
pockets would have been emptied.
Saint-Sevère is a fine neighborhood, cut into by ravines that are
well watered and refreshing to the eye. We chose a spot of rising
ground, where the air was so exhilarating that not a crust nor a drop
remained after the feast. Presently Père Bastien, feeling lively,
picked up his bagpipe, which never left him, and said to Joseph:--
"My lad, we never know who is to live or who to die; we are parting,
you say, for three or four days; in my opinion, you are thinking of a
much longer absence; and it may be in God's mind that we shall never
meet again. This is what all persons who part at the crossways ought
to say and feel to each other. I hope that you leave us satisfied
with me and with my children; I am satisfied with you and with your
friends here; but I do not forget that the prime object of all was to
teach you music, and I regret that your two months' illness put a
stop to it. I don't say that I could have made you a learned
musician; I know there are such in the cities, both ladies and
gentlemen, who play instruments that we know nothing about, and read
off written airs just as others read words in a book. Except
chanting, which I learned in my youth, I know very little of such
music, and I have taught you all I know, namely, the keys, notes, and
time measures. If you desire to know more you must go to the great
cities, where the violinists will teach you both minuet and quadrille
music; but I don't know what good that would be to you unless you
want to leave your own parts and renounce the position of peasant."
"God forbid!" replied Joseph, looking at Brulette.
"Therefore," continued the Head-Woodsman, "you will have to look
elsewhere for instruction on the bagpipe or the hurdy-gurdy. If you
choose to come back to me, I will help you; but if you think you can
do better in the Upper country, you must go there. What I should
wish to do would be to guide you slowly till your lungs grew so
strong that you could use them without effort, and your fingers no
longer failed you. As for the idea within us, that can't be taught;
you have your own, and I know it to be of good quality. I gave you,
however, what was in my own head, and whatever you can remember of it
you may use as you like. But as your wish seems to be to compose,
you can't do better than travel about, and so compare your ideas and
stock of knowledge with that of others. You had better go as far up
as Auvergne and the Forez, and see how grand and beautiful the world
is beyond our valleys, and how the heart swells when we stand on the
heights of a real mountain, and behold the waters, whose voice is
louder than the voice of man, rolling downward to nourish the trees
the verdure of which never dies. Don't go into the lowlands of those
other regions. You will find there what you have left in your own
country, and that isn't what you want. Now is the time to give you a
bit of information which you should never forget; listen carefully to
what I say to you."