PORTRAIT OF A FRENCH MOTHER
Madame Proquet lived in a little town in Brittany, which she had never
quitted in her life. She had been born there, she had married there,
and there it was that she had brought up her only son, Henri. When
friends said to her, 'Why not travel a little? You should at least go
and see Paris!' she would reply: 'Thank you, I am happy enough at
home.' She cared little for the outer world. Early left a widow, she
had resolved to live for her son. She had made herself his dearest
friend without effeminating him, his constant guide without
monopolizing him, and his preceptor without ceasing to be his comrade.
Before sending the boy to any school, she set to work herself and
learned enough Latin and Greek to enable her to hear his lessons; and
by the time he reached the upper forms, Madame Proquet would have been
able to cut a very fair figure beside him.
Thanks to the care and order with which she managed her small fortune,
she was well off--rich even--with her 5,000 or 6,000 francs a year, for
at the end of each year the budget showed an excess of receipts over
expenditure. Her house, her books and her garden occupied all the time
which was not devoted to Henri. She was fond of receiving visits, but
rarely paid calls herself; and in the winter evenings she loved to sit
with a book by the fireside in the room, half kitchen, half
dining-room, which, with its great open fireplace, is very often the
most attractive-looking apartment in a small Breton house. Sometimes it
was her needlework that she would bring out and busy her fingers upon,
while the faithful Fanchette, who had held Henri on her knee, and who
still 'thee'd' and 'thou'd' him, took her knitting, and to the steady
click of the needles would go over again the merry tricks that he was
wont to play when he was a little boy.
By-and-by Henri finished his studies and took his B.A. with honours.
Then it became necessary to choose a profession. For some time past he
had been longing to say to his mother: 'Mother, let me go to Paris and
study painting. Something tells me that I should be successful.' But he
knew that Madame Proquet had long been putting by 1,000 francs a year
to send him to Paris to study law or medicine, whichever he should
choose. She had made up her mind to make a lawyer or a doctor of him.
Is it not the ambition of every French provincial mother? Henri allowed
himself to be persuaded, although he felt not the least inclination for
the one profession or the other. However, when it came to the point he
chose the law.
What he did in Paris during six years we may see from the fact that, in
the month of May, 1877, he pleaded at the assizes in a case which
resulted in two years' imprisonment for his client; and that he
exhibited at the Salon a portrait which earned for the artist the
praise of all critical Paris. A very talented painter had arisen.
Madame Proquet learned the news without making a very wry face,
swallowed the pill without grimacing, and, Fanchette having declared
that she had always predicted that Henri's genius would soon manifest
itself, she wisely decided under the circumstances to be proud of her
boy.
'But who is going to keep the dear fellow while he is painting in
Paris? I cannot, that is certain,' said the good mother to herself.
'But, madam,' said Fanchette, 'do you not know that there are rich
folks who pay one hundred and even as much as two hundred francs to
have their portrait painted, and that Paris is full of people like
that?'
Madame Proquet remained incredulous and full of anxiety. She certainly
was not going to discourage her son, but she could not find it in her
to encourage him. She would let events follow their course, while she
remained calm at her post of observation. She had every confidence in
her son after all. Was he not an advocate, and could he not always
return to his profession if painting should fail him?
The following year Henri exhibited another portrait, which excited not
merely the admiration but the enthusiasm of the critics. People talked
of a future Bonnat, and the name of Henri Proquet was on everyone's
tongue. The young painter was striding into fame.
Orders began to flow in. This news reassured Madame Proquet, and made
her mother's heart swell with pride.
'Did I not tell you so?' repeated Fanchette.
But something that dropped like a bomb into the quiet household in the
little Breton town was the news that a rich financier of the Faubourg
Saint-Honore had just paid 10,000 francs for his portrait, which Henri
had taken hardly a month to paint.
'But the dear fellow will be making a fortune and losing his head,'
exclaimed Madame Proquet.
Fanchette herself was dumfounded. It seemed to them that their boy was
going to slip from them--that fame and fortune must needs raise an
inseparable barrier between the luxurious studio which Henri talked of,
and was embellishing day by day, and the humble maternal home which
never changed at all. They were both believers in the quiet and
unobtruding happiness that hides itself and goes unenvied, and they
could neither of them understand how happiness was possible in that
feverish Paris, where artists and men of letters are drawn body and
soul into the whirl of a great vortex; and the good souls bewailed
themselves, foreseeing terrible things and getting into their heads a
thousand ideas, which all had but one conclusion--'Our Henri is lost to
us!'
How mistaken they were!
The years followed one another, and Henri came regularly twice a year
to the dear little house where the ivy and jasmine, the clematis and
the honeysuckle protected our successful man against intruders: the
jealous, the gossips, the bores and all the jostling crowd that hovers
around celebrities, and often makes them its prey.
Better than that, he soon did something that should still strengthen
his position in the good books of Madame Proquet and Fanchette. He
married a girl as good as she was beautiful, an artist's ideal, whom he
had the greatest difficulty to get Fanchette to _tutoyer_.
'But, my dear, I cannot say "thee" and "thou" to that beautiful lady,'
pleaded poor Fanchette.
'Nonsense, Fanchette! and why not? She is your daughter as much as I am
your boy.'
And the good Fanchette, with her eyes full of tears of joy, kissed
everybody and exclaimed:
'He has not changed a bit, you see. I told you so; I knew it.'
Then the young couple came twice a year to Brittany to live and love
with more freedom. Soon, instead of two, it was a trio that came, and
Fanchette declared that the loveliest baby in the world was the one
that she called hers.
'And,' she added, 'no one can accuse me of partiality, for everyone
knows how I laugh at the people who think their babies the finest in
the world.'
And the others would reply in chorus:
'Certainly not, Fanchette.'
Madame Proquet was overwhelmed with joy, the proudest and happiest of
mothers.
She went so far as to say to her neighbours, as well as to herself:
'Did I not do well after all to encourage Henri to be an artist!' I say
advisedly 'as well as to herself,' for by dint of innocently and
honestly deceiving others, one ends by innocently and honestly
deceiving one's self.
Madame Proquet had no more fear for her son's future. His fame was well
established, and he remained to her the same devoted son, perfectly
unaffected, his head turned neither by celebrity nor riches.
The good lady unhappily reckoned without that very absorbing mistress
called Art, who was to supplant her a little, if not in Henri's
affection, yet in his rule of conduct. The name of Henri Proquet was
not celebrated in Paris alone, but in all the capitals of the civilized
world. He one day wrote to his mother that he had just received from
England a most flattering invitation to go and paint the portrait of
the Queen and the principal members of the Royal Family, and that he
had resolved to settle in London with his family for several years; for
no doubt, after the Royal Family, his brush would be in demand by lords
and ladies, and he would return from the land of fogs laden with
guineas and glory.
'And,' he added, 'I embrace the opportunity with all the more alacrity,
having just lost 100,000 francs in a gold mine in the United States, a
loss which makes an ugly hole in my savings. Thank Heaven I am young,
full of life and energy, and in less than two years I shall have
forgotten the thing altogether and replaced the money.'
Madame Proquet was aghast at the news.
'So, then,' she ejaculated, 'Henri speculates! He has lost everything,
and that in a gold mine, a hole in the earth, which, instead of
yielding money, swallows up what fools fling into it. After that, how
is it possible to feel any security about him? With all his talent, his
genius, he will end in the poor-house. He talks of expatriating himself
now. He is out of his mind.'
She believed in none but sure investments, and saw no difference
between speculation and gambling. Land, house-property and Government
securities, no other stock had any value in her eyes. She would not for
the world have had anything to do with shares in even the great
railways of her own country. However, in the end she calmed herself.
'He will be prudent in the future,' she said to herself, 'and the
lesson will be a wholesome one. After all, England is not far from
Brittany. I shall see the dear children almost as often as before.'
And seeing Fanchette looking at her, she smiled, but the smile did not
deceive the good woman, who saw clearly that something was being hidden
from her, and that that something concerned Henri. Her eyes filled.
'It is nothing, my dear Fanchette!' said Madame Proquet, making her
faithful servant sit down by her side while she read to her Henri's
letter, and discussed with her its contents.
The painter remained three years in England, and returned to Paris
after having made the conquest of the English public and the Royal
Academy, just as he had made the conquest of the French public and the
Salon.
Mayfair and Belgravia had been painted by Henri Proquet; Fifth Avenue,
New York, now claimed him, and offered him fabulous prices. He set out
for America, and passed two years there. Madame Proquet and Fanchette
both begged him earnestly, in all their letters, to give up these
voyages, and to return to Paris and settle there definitely. 'Have a
little patience, mother dear,' he wrote; 'I shall soon have 1,000,000
francs put by, and then I shall think of nothing but your wishes.' A
few months later he wrote: 'I shall soon have finished my work in
America, and we shall set out from New York to make our longest and
last voyage. We shall cross America to the Californian side: from there
we shall visit Japan, the Pacific Islands, New Zealand, and Australia.
On the way home we shall stop at the Cape of Good Hope to sketch a few
Zulus, who are said to be such fine people. We count on being back in
Paris by the end of the year, and we will be with you on New Year's
Day. What souvenirs of our travels you will have to listen to! What
endless chats we will have, won't we?'
'Decidedly he is mad,' said Madame Proquet to herself. 'As if our
French women were not far prettier than all those horrid black African
creatures, or those hideous little dods of Japan!' Even Fanchette began
to ask herself seriously whether, after all, her boy was the same, and
not a changed person. Henri had no longer any one to take his part
under his mother's roof.
Madame Proquet fell ill meanwhile. The heart had been attacked for some
time past; a herpetic affection threatened to complicate the state of
affairs.
No sooner arrived in Paris than Henri and his wife sped into Brittany.
They found their mother very changed. The doctor did not attempt to
conceal from them the danger of the disease, which, at Madame Proquet's
age, must needs be incurable.
This illness, which was likely to be a long and painful one,
necessitated the most constant and delicate attentions, continual
doctor's visits, and expensive medicines. Fanchette and the _femme de
chambre_, two brave devoted women such as provincial France alone still
possesses, but such as the future scarcely holds in store for us,
lavished their care upon their dear mistress. They were taxed to the
utmost of their strength, Fanchette especially, who had just passed her
sixtieth year. To ease them, Madame Proquet engaged two nursing sisters
from the convent, who came alternately to watch by her at night.
Henri, fearing that his mother's income might not be equal to the
strain put upon it by these extra expenses, begged her to accept from
him a little annuity of 2,000 francs. 'Every New Year's Day, dear
mother,' he said to her, 'I shall send you that for my New Year's gift;
you must be good and accept it. For too long a time you were my banker;
now I am going to be yours.' Madame Proquet had such strong ideas of
independence that he expected a refusal. Great was his joy to find his
mother accept with alacrity. The disease followed its course for more
than four years. Each New Year's Day Henri sent the sum he had
promised. A few days before her death, in the month of December, 1890,
Madame Proquet even wrote to Henri to remind him that New Year's Day
was approaching, and that she would be looking out for her 2,000 francs
by the next post. This made her son smile. 'Poor mother! She is perhaps
hard up. What a good thing I induced her to accept help! Without it she
would not have had enough for her nursing expenses. Thanks to me, we
shall be able to keep her alive for years. And there are fools who say
that money will not buy happiness!' Then, on the spot, he wrote out a
cheque for the sum he sent every year. At the very moment that he was
about to ring for a servant a telegram was handed to him.
The telegram announced the sudden death of Madame Proquet.
Henri's good mother had passed away peacefully and without pain; she
had fallen asleep thinking of her children and had never wakened again.
Henri and his family took the first train to Brittany. Fanchette was at
the door watching for the arrival of the carriage that should convey
them from the station. In dumb grief the good creature led Henri and
his wife and children to their dear dead one. They knelt and silently
all kissed one another with tender effusion beside the mortal remains
of that beloved and devoted mother, to whom they thus said a supreme
adieu while showing her the depth of their mutual love.
Deprived of the mournful privilege of closing the eyes of his mother,
Henri had at least the consolation of being present to piously render
her the last sad duty. The day after the funeral, he opened the drawers
which contained Madame Proquet's family documents and the property
which now belonged to him. In a corner of one of the drawers he found a
little packet, carefully tied, sealed, and addressed:
'To my son, only to be opened after my death.'
This packet contained eight rolls of 1,000 francs, each placed in a red
morocco sheath. By the side of this money lay a letter without any
date, but evidently written quite recently. It ran as follows:
'MY BELOVED HENRI,
'The life that you lead makes me very anxious. You speak of
returning once more to America, to Australia, even going round the
world again. Really, I ask myself sometimes whether you are in your
right senses, and whether those English people have not completely
demoralized you. You buy shares, you run after large dividends,
instead of placing your money in State securities at three per
cent. It is pure madness, my dear son. I hate speculations! If an
individual attempted to come and offer me ten per cent. for my
money I would order my faithful Fanchette to show him the door.
There will come a time, perhaps, when the law, grown wiser, will
condemn to six months' imprisonment, not only every man who takes
more than five per cent., but also him who offers it. You have a
million, you tell me. Well, then, my son, keep it carefully, and do
not try to get others with it. You may possess a million, but if
you get more the millions will possess you. There is no real
happiness except in security and in obscurity. The kind that has to
be sought far afield is ephemeral. Long voyages may make life
interesting, but happy, no. Happiness is only to be found at home
with our dear ones. Life is so short that each time you leave your
good home to seek adventures you are robbing yourself. That is
Fanchette's opinion, too, mind you. Of course, all this does not
prevent us from loving you and following you with our thoughts
wherever you are, nor from praying the great God to bring you
safely to port, but at the same time to rid your head of these
ideas of adventure which torment me so. In a corner of the drawer
where you will find this letter you will find also, carefully
rolled and wrapped, and all in good gold coin (you may say what you
please, but I do not like paper), the 8,000 francs that you have
sent me on New Year's Day for the past four years. You will find
them intact. God be praised! I have not needed to use them. I have
taken care of them for you, and--who knows?--you may be very glad
one day to have them. My regret is that you did not offer years
back to send me twenty thousand instead of two. I should have
accepted every franc of it, and it would have been as much money
saved from that miserable American gold mine or some other
speculations, which, believe me, are bound to be just as mad.
'Thank you, my darling son, for the kind impulse that prompted you
to send the money. In the future buy three per cents., give up your
travels, and stay at home with your dear ones who adore you. My
dear, generous son, when you read these lines I shall be no more of
this world. Do not forget your old mother, who has lived only for
you, who has been proud of her son, and now thanks him for all the
happiness that his love and devotion have brought her.'
* * * * *
Fanchette is installed in the fine house that Henri occupies in the
Champs Elysees. He pretends to follow her advice in everything.