Early in the month of May, in the year 1836, the period when this scene
opens, the family of Guenic (we follow henceforth the modern spelling)
consisted of Monsieur and Madame du Guenic, Mademoiselle du Guenic the
baron’s elder sister, and an only son, aged twenty-one, named, after
an ancient family usage, Gaudebert-Calyste-Louis. The father’s name was
Gaudebert-Calyste-Charles. Only the last name was ever varied. Saint
Gaudebert and Saint Calyste were forever bound to protect the Guenics.
The Baron du Guenic had started from Guerande the moment that La Vendee
and Brittany took arms; he fought through the war with Charette, with
Cathelineau, La Rochejaquelein, d’Elbee, Bonchamps, and the Prince de
Loudon. Before starting he had, with a prudence unique in revolutionary
annals, sold his whole property of every kind to his elder and only
sister, Mademoiselle Zephirine du Guenic. After the death of all those
heroes of the West, the baron, preserved by a miracle from ending as
they did, refused to submit to Napoleon. He fought on till 1802, when
being at last defeated and almost captured, he returned to Guerande, and
from Guerande went to Croisic, whence he crossed to Ireland, faithful to
the ancient Breton hatred for England.
The people of Guerande feigned utter ignorance of the baron’s existence.
In the whole course of twenty years not a single indiscreet word was
ever uttered. Mademoiselle du Guenic received the rents and sent them
to her brother by fishermen. Monsieur du Guenic returned to Guerande
in 1813, as quietly and simply as if he had merely passed a season at
Nantes. During his stay in Dublin the old Breton, despite his fifty
years, had fallen in love with a charming Irish woman, daughter of
one of the noblest and poorest families of that unhappy kingdom. Fanny
O’Brien was then twenty-one years old. The Baron du Guenic came over to
France to obtain the documents necessary for his marriage, returned to
Ireland, and, after about ten months (at the beginning of 1814), brought
his wife to Guerande, where she gave him Calyste on the very day that
Louis XVIII. landed at Calais,--a circumstance which explains the young
man’s final name of Louis.
The old and loyal Breton was now a man of seventy-three; but his
long-continued guerilla warfare with the Republic, his exile, the perils
of his five crossings through a turbulent sea in open boats, had weighed
upon his head, and he looked a hundred; therefore, at no period had
the chief of the house of Guenic been more in keeping with the worn-out
grandeur of their dwelling, built in the days when a court reigned at
Guerande.
Monsieur du Guenic was a tall, straight, wiry, lean old man. His oval
face was lined with innumerable wrinkles, which formed a net-work over
his cheek-bones and above his eyebrows, giving to his face a resemblance
to those choice old men whom Van Ostade, Rembrandt, Mieris, and Gerard
Dow so loved to paint, in pictures which need a microscope to be fully
appreciated. His countenance might be said to be sunken out of sight
beneath those innumerable wrinkles, produced by a life in the open air
and by the habit of watching his country in the full light of the sun
from the rising of that luminary to the sinking of it. Nevertheless, to
an observer enough remained of the imperishable forms of the human face
which appealed to the soul, even though the eye could see no more than a
lifeless head. The firm outline of the face, the shape of the brow, the
solemnity of the lines, the rigidity of the nose, the form of the bony
structure which wounds alone had slightly altered,--all were signs
of intrepidity without calculation, faith without reserve, obedience
without discussion, fidelity without compromise, love without
inconstancy. In him, the Breton granite was made man.
The baron had no longer any teeth. His lips, once red, now violet, and
backed by hard gums only (with which he ate the bread his wife took
care to soften by folding it daily in a damp napkin), drew inward to the
mouth with a sort of grin, which gave him an expression both threatening
and proud. His chin seemed to seek his nose; but in that nose, humped in
the middle, lay the signs of his energy and his Breton resistance. His
skin, marbled with red blotches appearing through his wrinkles, showed
a powerfully sanguine temperament, fitted to resist fatigue and to
preserve him, as no doubt it did, from apoplexy. The head was crowned
with abundant hair, as white as silver, which fell in curls upon his
shoulders. The face, extinguished, as we have said, in part, lived
through the glitter of the black eyes in their brown orbits, casting
thence the last flames of a generous and loyal soul. The eyebrows and
lashes had disappeared; the skin, grown hard, could not unwrinkle. The
difficulty of shaving had obliged the old man to let his beard grow, and
the cut of it was fan-shaped. An artist would have admired beyond
all else in this old lion of Brittany with his powerful shoulders and
vigorous chest, the splendid hands of the soldier,--hands like those du
Guesclin must have had, large, broad, hairy; hands that once had clasped
the sword never, like Joan of Arc, to relinquish it until the royal
standard floated in the cathedral of Rheims; hands that were often
bloody from the thorns and furze of the Bocage; hands which had pulled
an oar in the Marais to surprise the Blues, or in the offing to signal
Georges; the hands of a guerilla, a cannoneer, a common solder, a
leader; hands still white though the Bourbons of the Elder branch were
again in exile. Looking at those hands attentively, one might have seen
some recent marks attesting the fact that the Baron had recently joined
MADAME in La Vendee. To-day that fact may be admitted. These hands were
a living commentary on the noble motto to which no Guenic had proved
recreant: _Fac!_
His forehead attracted attention by the golden tones of the temples,
contrasting with the brown tints of the hard and narrow brow, which
the falling off of the hair had somewhat broadened, giving still more
majesty to that noble ruin. The countenance--a little material, perhaps,
but how could it be otherwise?--presented, like all the Breton faces
grouped about the baron, a certain savagery, a stolid calm which
resembled the impassibility of the Huguenots; something, one might say,
stupid, due perhaps to the utter repose which follows extreme fatigue,
in which the animal nature alone is visible. Thought was rare. It seemed
to be an effort; its seat was in the heart more than in the head; it
led to acts rather than ideas. But, examining that grand old man with
sustained observation, one could penetrate the mystery of this strange
contradiction to the spirit of the century. He had faiths, sentiments,
inborn so to speak, which allowed him to dispense with thought. His
duty, life had taught him. Institutions and religion thought for him.
He reserved his mind, he and his kind, for action, not dissipating it
on useless things which occupied the minds of other persons. He drew
his thought from his heart like his sword from its scabbard, holding it
aloft in his ermined hand, as on his scutcheon, shining with sincerity.
That secret once penetrated, all is clear. We can comprehend the depth
of convictions that are not thoughts, but living principles,--clear,
distinct, downright, and as immaculate as the ermine itself. We
understand that sale made to his sister before the war; which provided
for all, and faced all, death, confiscation, exile. The beauty of the
character of these two old people (for the sister lived only for and by
the brother) cannot be understood to its full extent by the right of
the selfish morals, the uncertain aims, and the inconstancy of this our
epoch. An archangel, charged with the duty of penetrating to the inmost
recesses of their hearts could not have found one thought of personal
interest. In 1814, when the rector of Guerande suggested to the baron
that he should go to Paris and claim his recompense from the triumphant
Bourbons, the old sister, so saving and miserly for the household, cried
out:--
“Oh, fy! does my brother need to hold out his hand like a beggar?”
“It would be thought I served a king from interest,” said the old man.
“Besides, it is for him to remember. Poor king! he must be weary indeed
of those who harass him. If he gave them all France in bits, they still
would ask.”
This loyal servant, who had spent his life and means on Louis XVIII.,
received the rank of colonel, the cross of Saint-Louis, and a stipend of
two thousand francs a year.
“The king did remember!” he said when the news reached him.
No one undeceived him. The gift was really made by the Duc de Feltre.
But, as an act of gratitude to the king, the baron sustained a siege at
Guerande against the forces of General Travot. He refused to surrender
the fortress, and when it was absolutely necessary to evacuate it he
escaped into the woods with a band of Chouans, who continued armed until
the second restoration of the Bourbons. Guerande still treasures the
memory of that siege.
We must admit that the Baron du Guenic was illiterate as a peasant. He
could read, write, and do some little ciphering; he knew the military
art and heraldry, but, excepting always his prayer-book, he had not read
three volumes in the course of his life. His clothing, which is not
an insignificant point, was invariably the same; it consisted of
stout shoes, ribbed stockings, breeches of greenish velveteen, a cloth
waistcoat, and a loose coat with a collar, from which hung the cross of
Saint-Louis. A noble serenity now reigned upon that face where, for the
last year or so, sleep, the forerunner of death, seemed to be preparing
him for rest eternal. This constant somnolence, becoming daily more and
more frequent, did not alarm either his wife, his blind sister, or his
friends, whose medical knowledge was of the slightest. To them these
solemn pauses of a life without reproach, but very weary, were naturally
explained: the baron had done his duty, that was all.
In this ancient mansion the absorbing interests were the fortunes of the
dispossessed Elder branch. The future of the exiled Bourbons, that
of the Catholic religion, the influence of political innovations on
Brittany were the exclusive topics of conversation in the baron’s
family. There was but one personal interest mingled with these most
absorbing ones: the attachment of all for the only son, for Calyste, the
heir, the sole hope of the great name of the du Guenics.
The old Vendean, the old Chouan, had, some years previously, a return of
his own youth in order to train his son to those manly exercises which
were proper for a gentleman liable to be summoned at any moment to
take arms. No sooner was Calyste sixteen years of age than his father
accompanied him to the marshes and the forest, teaching him through
the pleasures of the chase the rudiments of war, preaching by example,
indifferent to fatigue, firm in his saddle, sure of his shot whatever
the game might be,--deer, hare, or a bird on the wing,--intrepid in face
of obstacles, bidding his son follow him into danger as though he had
ten other sons to take Calyste’s place.
So, when the Duchesse de Berry landed in France to conquer back the
kingdom for her son, the father judged it right to take his boy to join
her, and put in practice the motto of their ancestors. The baron started
in the dead of night, saying no word to his wife, who might perhaps have
weakened him; taking his son under fire as if to a fete, and Gasselin,
his only vassal, who followed him joyfully. The three men of the family
were absent for three months without sending news of their whereabouts
to the baroness, who never read the “Quotidienne” without trembling from
line to line, nor to his old blind sister, heroically erect, whose nerve
never faltered for an instance as she heard that paper read. The three
guns hanging to the walls had therefore seen service recently. The
baron, who considered the enterprise useless, left the region before
the affair of La Penissiere, or the house of Guenic would probably have
ended in that hecatomb.
When, on a stormy night after parting from MADAME, the father, son, and
servant returned to the house in Guerande, they took their friends and
the baroness and old Mademoiselle du Guenic by surprise, although the
latter, by the exercise of senses with which the blind are gifted,
recognized the steps of the three men in the little lane leading to the
house. The baron looked round upon the circle of his anxious friends,
who were seated beside the little table lighted by the antique lamp, and
said in a tremulous voice, while Gasselin replaced the three guns and
the sabres in their places, these words of feudal simplicity:--
“The barons did not all do their duty.”
Then, having kissed his wife and sister, he sat down in his old
arm-chair and ordered supper to be brought for his son, for Gasselin,
and for himself. Gasselin had thrown himself before Calyste on one
occasion, to protect him, and received the cut of a sabre on his
shoulder; but so simple a matter did it seem that even the women
scarcely thanked him. The baron and his guests uttered neither curses
nor complaints of their conquerors. Such silence is a trait of Breton
character. In forty years no one ever heard a word of contumely from the
baron’s lips about his adversaries. It was for them to do their duty
as he did his. This utter silence is the surest indication of an
unalterable will.
This last effort, the flash of an energy now waning, had caused the
present weakness and somnolence of the old man. The fresh defeat and
exile of the Bourbons, as miraculously driven out as miraculously
re-established, were to him a source of bitter sadness.
About six o’clock on the evening of the day on which this history
begins, the baron, who, according to ancient custom, had finished dining
by four o’clock, fell asleep as usual while his wife was reading to him
the “Quotidienne.” His head rested against the back of the arm-chair
which stood beside the fireplace on the garden side.
Near this gnarled trunk of an ancient tree, and in front of the
fireplace, the baroness, seated on one of the antique chairs, presented
the type of those adorable women who exist in England, Scotland, or
Ireland only. There alone are born those milk-white creatures with
golden hair the curls of which are wound by the hands of angels, for the
light of heaven seems to ripple in their silken spirals swaying to the
breeze. Fanny O’Brien was one of those sylphs,--strong in tenderness,
invincible under misfortune, soft as the music of her voice, pure as the
azure of her eyes, of a delicate, refined beauty, blessed with a skin
that was silken to the touch and caressing to the eye, which neither
painter’s brush nor written word can picture. Beautiful still at
forty-two years of age, many a man would have thought it happiness
to marry her as she looked at the splendors of that autumn coloring,
redundant in flowers and fruit, refreshed and refreshing with the dews
of heaven.
The baroness held the paper in the dimpled hand, the fingers of which
curved slightly backward, their nails cut square like those of an
antique statue. Half lying, without ill-grace or affectation, in her
chair, her feet stretched out to warm them, she was dressed in a gown
of black velvet, for the weather was now becoming chilly. The corsage,
rising to the throat, moulded the splendid contour of the shoulders and
the rich bosom which the suckling of her son had not deformed. Her hair
was worn in _ringlets_, after the English fashion, down her cheeks; the
rest was simply twisted to the crown of her head and held there with
a tortoise-shell comb. The color, not undecided in tone as other blond
hair, sparkled to the light like a filagree of burnished gold. The
baroness always braided the short locks curling on the nape of her
neck--which are a sign of race. This tiny braid, concealed in the mass
of hair always carefully put up, allowed the eye to follow with delight
the undulating line by which her neck was set upon her shoulders. This
little detail will show the care which she gave to her person; it
was her pride to rejoice the eyes of the old baron. What a charming,
delicate attention! When you see a woman displaying in her own home the
coquetry which most women spend on a single sentiment, believe me, that
woman is as noble a mother as she is a wife; she is the joy and the
flower of the home; she knows her obligations as a woman; in her soul,
in her tenderness, you will find her outward graces; she is doing good
in secret; she worships, she adores without a calculation of return; she
loves her fellows, as she loves God,--for their own sakes. And so one
might fancy that the Virgin of paradise, under whose care she lived, had
rewarded the chaste girlhood and the sacred life of the old man’s wife
by surrounding her with a sort of halo which preserved her beauty from
the wrongs of time. The alterations of that beauty Plato would have
glorified as the coming of new graces. Her skin, so milk-white once,
had taken the warm and pearly tones which painters adore. Her broad
and finely modelled brow caught lovingly the light which played on its
polished surface. Her eyes, of a turquoise blue, shone with unequalled
sweetness; the soft lashes, and the slightly sunken temples inspired
the spectator with I know now what mute melancholy. The nose, which was
aquiline and thin, recalled the royal origin of the high-born woman.
The pure lips, finely cut, wore happy smiles, brought there by
loving-kindness inexhaustible. Her teeth were small and white; she had
gained of late a slight embonpoint, but her delicate hips and slender
waist were none the worse for it. The autumn of her beauty presented
a few perennial flowers of her springtide among the richer blooms of
summer. Her arms became more nobly rounded, her lustrous skin took a
finer grain; the outlines of her form gained plenitude. Lastly and best
of all, her open countenance, serene and slightly rosy, the purity
of her blue eyes, that a look too eager might have wounded, expressed
illimitable sympathy, the tenderness of angels.
At the other chimney-corner, in an arm-chair, the octogenarian sister,
like in all points save clothes to her brother, sat listening to the
reading of the newspaper and knitting stockings, a work for which sight
is needless. Both eyes had cataracts; but she obstinately refused to
submit to an operation, in spite of the entreaties of her sister-in-law.
The secret reason of that obstinacy was known to herself only; she
declared it was want of courage; but the truth was that she would not
let her brother spend twenty-five louis for her benefit. That sum would
have been so much the less for the good of the household.
These two old persons brought out in fine relief the beauty of the
baroness. Mademoiselle Zephirine, being deprived of sight, was not aware
of the changes which eighty years had wrought in her features. Her pale,
hollow face, to which the fixedness of the white and sightless eyes
gave almost the appearance of death, and three or four solitary and
projecting teeth made menacing, was framed by a little hood of brown
printed cotton, quilted like a petticoat, trimmed with a cotton ruche,
and tied beneath the chin by strings which were always a little rusty.
She wore a _cotillon_, or short skirt of coarse cloth, over a
quilted petticoat (a positive mattress, in which were secreted double
louis-d’ors), and pockets sewn to a belt which she unfastened every
night and put on every morning like a garment. Her body was encased in
the _casaquin_ of Brittany, a species of spencer made of the same cloth
as the _cotillon_, adorned with a collarette of many pleats, the
washing of which caused the only dispute she ever had with her
sister-in-law,--her habit being to change it only once a week. From the
large wadded sleeves of the _casaquin_ issued two withered but still
vigorous arms, at the ends of which flourished her hands, their
brownish-red color making the white arms look like poplar-wood. These
hands, hooked or contracted from the habit of knitting, might be called
a stocking-machine incessantly at work; the phenomenon would have been
had they stopped. From time to time Mademoiselle du Guenic took a long
knitting needle which she kept in the bosom of her gown, and passed
it between her hood and her hair to poke or scratch her white locks.
A stranger would have laughed to see the careless manner in which she
thrust back the needle without the slightest fear of wounding herself.
She was straight as a steeple. Her erect and imposing carriage might
pass for one of those coquetries of old age which prove that pride is
a necessary passion of life. Her smile was gay. She, too, had done her
duty.
As soon as the baroness saw that her husband was asleep she stopped
reading. A ray of sunshine, stretching from one window to the other,
divided by a golden band the atmosphere of that old room and burnished
the now black furniture. The light touched the carvings of the ceiling,
danced on the time-worn chests, spread its shining cloth on the old oak
table, enlivening the still, brown room, as Fanny’s voice cast into
the heart of her octogenarian blind sister a music as luminous and as
cheerful as that ray of sunlight. Soon the ray took on the ruddy colors
which, by insensible gradations, sank into the melancholy tones of
twilight. The baroness also sank into a deep meditation, one of those
total silences which her sister-in-law had noticed for the last two
weeks, trying to explain them to herself, but making no inquiry. The
old woman studied the causes of this unusual pre-occupation, as blind
persons, on whose soul sound lingers like a divining echo, read books in
which the pages are black and the letters white. Mademoiselle Zephirine,
to whom the dark hour now meant nothing, continued to knit, and the
silence at last became so deep that the clicking of her knitting-needles
was plainly heard.
“You have dropped the paper, sister, but you are not asleep,” said the
old woman, slyly.
At this moment Mariotte came in to light the lamp, which she placed on
a square table in front of the fire; then she fetched her distaff, her
ball of thread, and a small stool, on which she seated herself in the
recess of a window and began as usual to spin. Gasselin was still busy
about the offices; he looked to the horses of the baron and Calyste,
saw that the stable was in order for the night, and gave the two fine
hunting-dogs their daily meal. The joyful barking of the animals was the
last noise that awakened the echoes slumbering among the darksome walls
of the ancient house. The two dogs and the two horses were the only
remaining vestiges of the splendors of its chivalry. An imaginative man
seated on the steps of the portico and letting himself fall into the
poesy of the still living images of that dwelling, might have quivered
as he heard the baying of the hounds and the trampling of the neighing
horses.
Gasselin was one of those short, thick, squat little Bretons, with black
hair and sun-browned faces, silent, slow, and obstinate as mules, but
always following steadily the path marked out for them. He was forty-two
years old, and had been twenty-five years in the household. Mademoiselle
had hired him when he was fifteen, on hearing of the marriage and
probable return of the baron. This retainer considered himself as part
of the family; he had played with Calyste, he loved the horses and dogs
of the house, and talked to them and petted them as though they were his
own. He wore a blue linen jacket with little pockets flapping about his
hips, waistcoat and trousers of the same material at all seasons, blue
stockings, and stout hob-nailed shoes. When it was cold or rainy he put
on a goat’s-skin, after the fashion of his country.
Mariotte, who was also over forty, was as a woman what Gasselin was as
a man. No team could be better matched,--same complexion, same figure,
same little eyes that were lively and black. It is difficult to
understand why Gasselin and Mariotte had never married; possibly
it might have seemed immoral, they were so like brother and sister.
Mariotte’s wages were ninety francs a year; Gasselin’s, three hundred.
But thousands of francs offered to them elsewhere would not have induced
either to leave the Guenic household. Both were under the orders of
Mademoiselle, who, from the time of the war in La Vendee to the period
of her brother’s return, had ruled the house. When she learned that the
baron was about to bring home a mistress, she had been moved to great
emotion, believing that she must yield the sceptre of the household and
abdicate in favor of the Baronne du Guenic, whose subject she was now
compelled to be.
Mademoiselle Zephirine was therefore agreeably surprised to find in
Fanny O’Brien a young woman born to the highest rank, to whom the petty
cares of a poor household were extremely distasteful,--one who, like
other fine souls, would far have preferred to eat plain bread rather
than the choicest food if she had to prepare it for herself; a woman
capable of accomplishing all the duties, even the most painful, of
humanity, strong under necessary privations, but without courage for
commonplace avocations. When the baron begged his sister in his wife’s
name to continue in charge of the household, the old maid kissed the
baroness like a sister; she made a daughter of her, she adored her,
overjoyed to be left in control of the household, which she managed
rigorously on a system of almost inconceivable economy, which was never
relaxed except for some great occasion, such as the lying-in of her
sister, and her nourishment, and all that concerned Calyste, the
worshipped son of the whole household.
Though the two servants were accustomed to this stern regime, and no
orders need ever have been given to them, for the interests of their
masters were greater in their minds than their own,--_were_ their own in
fact,--Mademoiselle Zephirine insisted on looking after everything. Her
attention being never distracted, she knew, without going up to verify
her knowledge, how large was the heap of nuts in the barn; and how many
oats remained in the bin without plunging her sinewy arm into the depths
of it. She carried at the end of a string fastened to the belt of her
_casaquin_, a boatswain’s whistle, with which she was wont to summon
Mariotte by one, and Gasselin by two notes.
Gasselin’s greatest happiness was to cultivate the garden and produce
fine fruits and vegetables. He had so little work to do that without
this occupation he would certainly have felt lost. After he had groomed
his horses in the morning, he polished the floors and cleaned the rooms
on the ground-floor, then he went to his garden, where weed or damaging
insect was never seen. Sometimes Gasselin was observed motionless,
bare-headed, under a burning sun, watching for a field-mouse or the
terrible grub of the cockchafer; then, as soon as it was caught, he
would rush with the joy of a child to show his masters the noxious beast
that had occupied his mind for a week. He took pleasure in going to
Croisic on fast-days, to purchase a fish to be had for less money there
than at Guerande.
Thus no household was ever more truly one, more united in interests,
more bound together than this noble family sacredly devoted to its duty.
Masters and servants seemed made for one another. For twenty-five years
there had been neither trouble nor discord. The only griefs were the
petty ailments of the little boy, the only terrors were caused by the
events of 1814 and those of 1830. If the same things were invariably
done at the same hours, if the food was subjected to the regularity of
times and seasons, this monotony, like that of Nature varied only
by alterations of cloud and rain and sunshine, was sustained by the
affection existing in the hearts of all,--the more fruitful, the more
beneficent because it emanated from natural causes.