DEATH
After she had made a curtsey at the threshold, she would walk up
the aisle between the double lines of chairs, open Madame Aubain's
pew, sit down and look around.
Girls and boys, the former on the right, the latter on the
left-hand side of the church, filled the stalls of the choir; the
priest stood beside the reading-desk; on one stained window of the
side-aisle the Holy Ghost hovered over the Virgin; on another one,
Mary knelt before the Child Jesus, and behind the altar, a wooden
group represented Saint Michael felling the dragon.
The priest first read a condensed lesson of sacred history.
Félicité evoked Paradise, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the
blazing cities, the dying nations, the shattered idols; and out of
this she developed a great respect for the Almighty and a great
fear of His wrath. Then, when she listened to the Passion, she
wept. Why had they crucified Him who loved little children,
nourished the people, made the blind see, and who, out of
humility, had wished to be born among the poor, in a stable? The
sowings, the harvests, the wine-presses, all those familiar things
which the Scriptures mention, formed a part of her life; the word
of God sanctified them; and she loved the lambs with increased
tenderness for the sake of the Lamb, and the doves because of the
Holy Ghost.
She found it hard, however, to think of the latter as a person,
for was it not a bird, a flame, and sometimes only a breath?
Perhaps it is its light that at night hovers over swamps, its
breath that propels the clouds, its voice that renders church-bells
harmonious. And Félicité worshipped devoutly, while enjoying the
coolness and the stillness of the church.
As for the dogma, she could not understand it and did not even
try. The priest discoursed, the children recited, and she went to
sleep, only to awaken with a start when they were leaving the
church and their wooden shoes clattered on the stone pavement.
In this way, she learned her catechism, her religious education
having been neglected in her youth; and thenceforth she imitated
all Virginia's religious practises, fasted when she did, and went
to confession with her. At the Corpus-Christi Day they both
decorated an altar.
She worried in advance over Virginia's first communion. She fussed
about the shoes, the rosary, the book and the gloves. With what
nervousness she helped the mother dress the child!
During the entire ceremony, she felt anguished. Monsieur Bourais
hid part of the choir from view, but directly in front of her, the
flock of maidens, wearing white wreaths over their lowered veils,
formed a snow-white field, and she recognised her darling by the
slenderness of her neck and her devout attitude. The bell tinkled.
All the heads bent and there was a silence. Then, at the peals of
the organ the singers and the worshippers struck up the Agnus Dei;
the boys' procession began; behind them came the girls. With
clasped hands, they advanced step by step to the lighted altar,
knelt at the first step, received one by one the Host, and
returned to their seats in the same order. When Virginia's turn
came, Félicité leaned forward to watch her, and through that
imagination which springs from true affection, she at once became
the child, whose face and dress became hers, whose heart beat in
her bosom, and when Virginia opened her mouth and closed her lids,
she did likewise and came very near fainting.
The following day, she presented herself early at the church so as
to receive communion from the curé. She took it with the proper
feeling, but did not experience the same delight as on the
previous day.
Madame Aubain wished to make an accomplished girl of her daughter;
and as Guyot could not teach English nor music, she decided to
send her to the Ursulines at Honfleur.
The child made no objection, but Félicité sighed and thought
Madame was heartless. Then, she thought that perhaps her mistress
was right, as these things were beyond her sphere. Finally, one
day, an old _fiacre_ stopped in front of the door and a nun
stepped out. Félicité put Virginia's luggage on top of the
carriage, gave the coachman some instructions, and smuggled six
jars of jam, a dozen pears and a bunch of violets under the seat.
At the last minute, Virginia had a fit of sobbing; she embraced
her mother again and again, while the latter kissed her on her
forehead, and said: "Now, be brave, be brave!" The step was pulled
up and the _fiacre_ rumbled off.
Then Madame Aubain had a fainting spell, and that evening all her
friends, including the two Lormeaus, Madame Lechaptois, the ladies
Rochefeuille, Messieurs de Houppeville and Bourais, called on her
and tendered their sympathy.
At first the separation proved very painful to her. But her
daughter wrote her three times a week and the other days she,
herself, wrote to Virginia. Then she walked in the garden, read a
little, and in this way managed to fill out the emptiness of the
hours.
Each morning, out of habit, Félicité entered Virginia's room and
gazed at the walls. She missed combing her hair, lacing her shoes,
tucking her in her bed, and the bright face and little hand when
they used to go out for a walk. In order to occupy herself she
tried to make lace. But her clumsy fingers broke the threads; she
had no heart for anything, lost her sleep and "wasted away," as
she put it.
In order to have some distraction, she asked leave to receive the
visits of her nephew Victor.
He would come on Sunday, after church, with ruddy cheeks and bared
chest, bringing with him the scent of the country. She would set
the table and they would sit down opposite each other, and eat
their dinner; she ate as little as possible, herself, to avoid any
extra expense, but would stuff him so with food that he would
finally go to sleep. At the first stroke of vespers, she would
wake him up, brush his trousers, tie his cravat and walk to church
with him, leaning on his arm with maternal pride.
His parents always told him to get something out of her, either a
package of brown sugar, or soap, or brandy, and sometimes even
money. He brought her his clothes to mend, and she accepted the
task gladly, because it meant another visit from him.
In August, his father took him on a coasting-vessel.
It was vacation time and the arrival of the children consoled
Félicité. But Paul was capricious, and Virginia was growing too
old to be thee-and-thou'd, a fact which seemed to produce a sort
of embarrassment in their relations.
Victor went successively to Morlaix, to Dunkirk, and to Brighton;
whenever he returned from a trip he would bring her a present. The
first time it was a box of shells; the second, a coffee-cup; the
third, a big doll of ginger-bread. He was growing handsome, had a
good figure, a tiny moustache, kind eyes, and a little leather cap
that sat jauntily on the back of his head. He amused his aunt by
telling her stories mingled with nautical expressions.
One Monday, the 14th of July, 1819 (she never forgot the date),
Victor announced that he had been engaged on merchant-vessel and
that in two days he would take the steamer at Honfleur and join
his sailer, which was going to start from Havre very soon. Perhaps
he might be away two years.
The prospect of his departure filled Félicité with despair, and in
order to bid him farewell, on Wednesday night, after Madame's
dinner, she put on her pattens and trudged the four miles that
separated Pont-l'Evêque from Honfleur.
When she reached the Calvary, instead of turning to the right, she
turned to the left and lost herself in coal-yards; she had to
retrace her steps; some people she spoke to advised her to hasten.
She walked helplessly around the harbour filled with vessels, and
knocked against hawsers. Presently the ground sloped abruptly,
lights flittered to and fro, and she thought all at once that she
had gone mad when she saw some horses in the sky.
Others, on the edge of the dock, neighed at the sight of the
ocean. A derrick pulled them up in the air and dumped them into a
boat, where passengers were bustling about among barrels of cider,
baskets of cheese and bags of meal; chickens cackled, the captain
swore and a cabin-boy rested on the railing, apparently
indifferent to his surroundings. Félicité, who did not recognise
him, kept shouting: "Victor!" He suddenly raised his eyes, but
while she was preparing to rush up to him, they withdrew the
gangplank.
The packet, towed by singing women, glided out of the harbour. Her
hull squeaked and the heavy waves beat up against her sides. The
sail had turned and nobody was visible;--and on the ocean,
silvered by the light of the moon, the vessel formed a black spot
that grew dimmer and dimmer, and finally disappeared.
When Félicité passed the Calvary again, she felt as if she must
entrust that which was dearest to her to the Lord; and for a long
while she prayed, with uplifted eyes and a face wet with tears.
The city was sleeping; some customs officials were taking the air;
and the water kept pouring through the holes of the dam with a
deafening roar. The town clock struck two.
The parlour of the convent would not open until morning, and
surely a delay would annoy Madame; so, in spite of her desire to
see the other child, she went home. The maids of the inn were just
arising when she reached Pont-l'Evêque.
So the poor boy would be on the ocean for months! His previous
trips had not alarmed her. One can come back from England and
Brittany; but America, the colonies, the islands, were all lost in
an uncertain region at the very end of the world.
From that time on, Félicité thought solely of her nephew. On warm
days she feared he would suffer from thirst, and when it stormed,
she was afraid he would be struck by lightning. When she harkened
to the wind that rattled in the chimney and dislodged the tiles on
the roof, she imagined that he was being buffeted by the same
storm, perched on top of a shattered mast, with his whole body
bent backward and covered with sea-foam; or,--these were
recollections of the engraved geography--he was being devoured by
savages, or captured in a forest by apes, or dying on some lonely
coast. She never mentioned her anxieties, however.
Madame Aubain worried about her daughter.
The sisters thought that Virginia was affectionate but delicate.
The slightest emotion enervated her. She had to give up her piano
lessons. Her mother insisted upon regular letters from the
convent. One morning, when the postman failed to come, she grew
impatient and began to pace to and fro, from her chair to the
window. It was really extraordinary! No news since four days!
In order to console her mistress by her own example, Félicité
said:
"Why, Madame, I haven't had any news since six months!"--
"From whom?"--
The servant replied gently:
"Why--from my nephew."
"Oh, yes, your nephew!" And shrugging her shoulders, Madame Aubain
continued to pace the floor as if to say: "I did not think of
it.--Besides, I do not care, a cabin-boy, a pauper!--but my
daughter--what a difference! just think of it!--"
Félicité, although she had been reared roughly, was very
indignant. Then she forgot about it.
It appeared quite natural to her that one should lose one's head
about Virginia.
The two children were of equal importance; they were united in her
heart and their fate was to be the same.
The chemist informed her that Victor's vessel had reached Havana.
He had read the information in a newspaper.
Félicité imagined that Havana was a place where people did nothing
but smoke, and that Victor walked around among negroes in a cloud
of tobacco. Could a person, in case of need, return by land? How
far was it from Pont-l'Evêque? In order to learn these things she
questioned Monsieur Bourais. He reached for his map and began some
explanations concerning longitudes, and smiled with superiority at
Félicité's bewilderment. At last, he took his pencil and pointed
out an imperceptible black point in the scallops of an oval
blotch, adding: "There it is." She bent over the map; the maze of
coloured lines hurt her eyes without enlightening her; and when
Bourais asked her what puzzled her, she requested him to show her
the house Victor lived in. Bourais threw up his hands, sneezed,
and then laughed uproariously; such ignorance delighted his soul;
but Félicité failed to understand the cause of his mirth, she
whose intelligence was so limited that she perhaps expected to see
even the picture of her nephew!
It was two weeks later that Liébard came into the kitchen at
market-time, and handed her a letter from her brother-in-law. As
neither of them could read, she called upon her mistress.
Madame Aubain, who was counting the stitches of her knitting, laid
her work down beside her, opened the letter, started, and in a low
tone and with a searching look said: "They tell you of a--misfortune.
Your nephew--."
He had died. The letter told nothing more.
Félicité dropped on a chair, leaned her head against the back and
closed her lids; presently they grew pink. Then, with drooping
head, inert hands and staring eyes she repeated at intervals:
"Poor little chap! poor little chap!"
Liébard watched her and sighed. Madame Aubain was trembling.
She proposed to the girl to go see her sister in Trouville.
With a single motion, Félicité replied that it was not necessary.
There was a silence. Old Liébard thought it about time for him to
take leave.
Then Félicité uttered:
"They have no sympathy, they do not care!"
Her head fell forward again, and from time to time, mechanically,
she toyed with the long knitting-needles on the work-table.
Some women passed through the yard with a basket of wet clothes.
When she saw them through the window, she suddenly remembered her
own wash; as she had soaked it the day before, she must go and
rinse it now. So she arose and left the room.
Her tub and her board were on the bank of the Toucques. She threw
a heap of clothes on the ground, rolled up her sleeves and grasped
her bat; and her loud pounding could be heard in the neighbouring
gardens. The meadows were empty, the breeze wrinkled the stream,
at the bottom of which were long grasses that looked like the hair
of corpses floating in the water. She restrained her sorrow and
was very brave until night; but, when she had gone to her own
room, she gave way to it, burying her face in the pillow and
pressing her two fists against her temples.
A long while afterward, she learned through Victor's captain, the
circumstances which surrounded his death. At the hospital they had
bled him too much, treating him for yellow fever. Four doctors
held him at one time. He died almost instantly, and the chief
surgeon had said:
"Here goes another one!"
His parents had always treated him barbarously; she preferred not
to see them again, and they made no advances, either from
forgetfulness or out of innate hardness.
Virginia was growing weaker.
A cough, continual fever, oppressive breathing and spots on her
cheeks indicated some serious trouble. Monsieur Poupart had
advised a sojourn in Provence. Madame Aubain decided that they
would go, and she would have had her daughter come home at once,
had it not been for the climate of Pont-l'Evêque.
She made an arrangement with a livery-stable man who drove her
over to the convent every Tuesday. In the garden there was a
terrace, from which the view extends to the Seine. Virginia walked
in it, leaning on her mother's arm and treading the dead vine
leaves. Sometimes the sun, shining through the clouds, made her
blink her lids, when she gazed at the sails in the distance, and
let her eyes roam over the horizon from the chateau of Tancarville
to the lighthouses of Havre. Then they rested in the arbour. Her
mother had bought a little cask of fine Malaga wine, and Virginia,
laughing at the idea of becoming intoxicated, would drink a few
drops of it, but never more.
Her strength returned. Autumn passed. Félicité began to reassure
Madame Aubain. But, one evening, when she returned home after an
errand, she met M. Boupart's coach in front of the door; M.
Boupart himself was standing in the vestibule and Madame Aubain
was tying the strings of her bonnet. "Give me my foot-warmer, my
purse and my gloves; and be quick about it," she said.
Virginia had congestion of the lungs; perhaps it was desperate.
"Not yet," said the physician, and both got into the carriage,
while the snow fell in thick flakes. It was almost night and very
cold.
Félicité rushed to the church to light a candle. Then she ran
after the coach which she overtook after an hour's chase, sprang
up behind and held on to the straps. But suddenly a thought
crossed her mind: "The yard had been left open; supposing that
burglars got in!" And down she jumped.
The next morning, at daybreak, she called at the doctor's. He had
been home, but had left again. Then she waited at the inn,
thinking that strangers might bring her a letter. At last, at
daylight she took the diligence for Lisieux.
The convent was at the end of a steep and narrow street. When she
arrived about at the middle of it, she heard strange noises, a
funeral knell. "It must be for some one else," thought she; and
she pulled the knocker violently.
After several minutes had elapsed, she heard footsteps, the door
was half opened and a nun appeared. The good sister, with an air
of compunction, told her that "she had just passed away." And at
the same time the tolling of Saint-Léonard's increased.
Félicité reached the second floor. Already at the threshold, she
caught sight of Virginia lying on her back, with clasped hands,
her mouth open and her head thrown back, beneath a black crucifix
inclined toward her, and stiff curtains which were less white than
her face. Madame Aubain lay at the foot of the couch, clasping it
with her arms and uttering groans of agony. The Mother Superior
was standing on the right side of the bed. The three candles on
the bureau made red blurs, and the windows were dimmed by the fog
outside. The nuns carried Madame Aubain from the room.
For two nights, Félicité never left the corpse. She would repeat
the same prayers, sprinkle holy water over the sheets, get up,
come back to the bed and contemplate the body. At the end of the
first vigil, she noticed that the face had taken on a yellow
tinge, the lips grew blue, the nose grew pinched, the eyes were
sunken. She kissed them several times and would not have been
greatly astonished had Virginia opened them; to souls like these
the supernatural is always quite simple. She washed her, wrapped
her in a shroud, put her into the casket, laid a wreath of flowers
on her head and arranged her curls. They were blond and of an
extraordinary length for her age. Félicité cut off a big lock and
put half of it into her bosom, resolving never to part with it.
The body was taken to Pont-l'Evêque, according to Madame Aubain's
wishes; she followed the hearse in a closed carriage.
After the ceremony it took three quarters of an hour to reach the
cemetery. Paul, sobbing, headed the procession; Monsieur Bourais
followed, and then came the principal inhabitants of the town, the
women covered with black capes, and Félicité. The memory of her
nephew, and the thought that she had not been able to render him
these honours, made her doubly unhappy, and she felt as if he were
being buried with Virginia.
Madame Aubain's grief was uncontrollable. At first she rebelled
against God, thinking that he was unjust to have taken away her
child--she who had never done anything wrong, and whose conscience
was so pure! But no! she ought to have taken her South. Other
doctors would have saved her. She accused herself, prayed to be
able to join her child, and cried in the midst of her dreams. Of
the latter, one more especially haunted her. Her husband, dressed
like a sailor, had come back from a long voyage, and with tears in
his eyes told her that he had received the order to take Virginia
away. Then they both consulted about a hiding-place.
Once she came in from the garden, all upset. A moment before (and
she showed the place), the father and daughter had appeared to
her, one after the other; they did nothing but look at her.
During several months she remained inert in her room. Félicité
scolded her gently; she must keep up for her son and also for the
other one, for "her memory."
"Her memory!" replied Madame Aubain, as if she were just
awakening, "Oh! yes, yes, you do not forget her!" This was an
allusion to the cemetery where she had been expressly forbidden to
go.
But Félicité went there every day. At four o'clock exactly, she
would go through the town, climb the hill, open the gate and
arrive at Virginia's tomb. It was a small column of pink marble
with a flat stone at its base, and it was surrounded by a little
plot enclosed by chains. The flower-beds were bright with
blossoms. Félicité watered their leaves, renewed the gravel, and
knelt on the ground in order to till the earth properly. When
Madame Aubain was able to visit the cemetery she felt very much
relieved and consoled.
Years passed, all alike and marked by no other events than the
return of the great church holidays: Easter, Assumption, All
Saints' Day. Household happenings constituted the only data to
which in later years they often referred. Thus, in 1825, workmen
painted the vestibule; in 1827, a portion of the roof almost
killed a man by falling into the yard. In the summer of 1828, it
was Madame's turn to offer the hallowed bread; at that time,
Bourais disappeared mysteriously; and the old acquaintances,
Guyot, Liébard, Madame Lechaptois, Robelin, old Grémanville,
paralysed since a long time, passed away one by one. One night,
the driver of the mail in Pont-l'Evêque announced the Revolution
of July. A few days afterward a new sub-prefect was nominated, the
Baron de Larsonnière, ex-consul in America, who, besides his wife,
had his sister-in-law and her three grown daughters with him. They
were often seen on their lawn, dressed in loose blouses, and they
had a parrot and a negro servant. Madame Aubain received a call,
which she returned promptly. As soon as she caught sight of them,
Félicité would run and notify her mistress. But only one thing was
capable of arousing her: a letter from her son.
He could not follow any profession as he was absorbed in drinking.
His mother paid his debts and he made fresh ones; and the sighs
that she heaved while she knitted at the window reached the ears
of Félicité who was spinning in the kitchen.
They walked in the garden together, always speaking of Virginia,
and asking each other if such and such a thing would have pleased
her, and what she would probably have said on this or that
occasion.
All her little belongings were put away in a closet of the room
which held the two little beds. But Madame Aubain looked them over
as little as possible. One summer day, however, she resigned
herself to the task and when she opened the closet the moths flew
out.
Virginia's frocks were hung under a shelf where there were three
dolls, some hoops, a doll-house, and a basin which she had used.
Félicité and Madame Aubain also took out the skirts, the
handkerchiefs, and the stockings and spread them on the beds,
before putting them away again. The sun fell on the piteous
things, disclosing their spots and the creases formed by the
motions of the body. The atmosphere was warm and blue, and a
blackbird trilled in the garden; everything seemed to live in
happiness. They found a little hat of soft brown plush, but it was
entirely moth-eaten. Félicité asked for it. Their eyes met and
filled with tears; at last the mistress opened her arms and the
servant threw herself against her breast and they hugged each
other and giving vent to their grief in a kiss which equalized
them for a moment.
It was the first time that this had ever happened, for Madame
Aubain was not of an expansive nature. Félicité was as grateful
for it as if it had been some favour, and thenceforth loved her
with animal-like devotion and a religious veneration.
Her kind-heartedness developed. When she heard the drums of a
marching regiment passing through the street, she would stand in
the doorway with a jug of cider and give the soldiers a drink. She
nursed cholera victims. She protected Polish refugees, and one of
them even declared that he wished to marry her. But they
quarrelled, for one morning when she returned from the Angelus she
found him in the kitchen coolly eating a dish which he had
prepared for himself during her absence.
After the Polish refugees, came Colmiche, an old man who was
credited with having committed frightful misdeeds in '93. He lived
near the river in the ruins of a pig-sty. The urchins peeped at
him through the cracks in the walls and threw stones that fell on
his miserable bed, where he lay gasping with catarrh, with long
hair, inflamed eyelids, and a tumour as big as his head on one
arm.
She got him some linen, tried to clean his hovel and dreamed of
installing him in the bake-house without his being in Madame's
way. When the cancer broke, she dressed it every day; sometimes
she brought him some cake and placed him in the sun on a bundle of
hay; and the poor old creature, trembling and drooling, would
thank her in his broken voice, and put out his hands whenever she
left him. Finally he died; and she had a mass said for the repose
of his soul.
That day a great joy came to her: at dinner-time, Madame de
Larsonnière's servant called with the parrot, the cage, and the
perch and chain and lock. A note from the baroness told Madame
Aubain that as her husband had been promoted to a prefecture, they
were leaving that night, and she begged her to accept the bird as
a remembrance and a token of her esteem.
Since a long time the parrot had been on Félicité's mind, because
he came from America, which reminded her of Victor, and she had
approached the negro on the subject.
Once even, she had said:
"How glad Madame would be to have him!"
The man had repeated this remark to his mistress who, not being
able to keep the bird, took this means of getting rid of it.