SOME NORMAN LANDLADIES.
Quite a number of changes came about with our annexation of an artist
and his garden. Chief among these changes was the surprising discovery
of finding ourselves, at the end of a week, in possession of a villa.
"It's next door," Renard remarked, in the casual way peculiar to
artists. "You are to have the whole house to yourselves, all but the
top floor; the people who own it keep that to live in. There's a garden
of the right sort, with espaliers, also rose trees, and a tea house;
quite the right sort of thing altogether."
The unforeseen, in its way, is excellent and admirable. _De l'imprévu,_
surely this is the dash of seasoning--the caviare we all crave in
life's somewhat too monotonous repasts. But as men have been known to
admire the still life in wifely character, and then repented their
choice, marrying peace only to court dissension, so we, incontinently
deserting our humble inn chambers to take possession of a grander
state, in the end found the capital of experience drained to pay for
our little infidelity.
[Illustration: A DEPARTURE--VILLERVILLE]
The owners of the villa Belle Etoile, our friend announced, he had
found greatly depressed; of this, their passing mood, he had taken such
advantage as only comes to the knowing. "They speak of themselves
drearily as 'deux pauvres malheureux' with this villa still on their
hands, and here they are almost 'touching June,' as they put it. They
also gave me to understand that only the finest flowers of the
aristocracy had had the honor of dwelling in this villa. They have been
able, I should say, more or less successfully to deflower this 'fine
fleur' of some of their gold. But they are very meek just now--they
were willing to listen to reason."
The "two poor unhappies" were looking surprisingly contented an hour
later, when we went in to inspect our possessions. They received us
with such suave courtesy, that I was quite certain Renard's skill in
transactions had not played its full gamut of capacity.
Civility is the Frenchman's mask; he wears it as he does his skin--as a
matter of habit. But courtesy is his costume de bal; he can only afford
to don his bravest attire of smiles and graciousness when his pocket is
in holiday mood. Madame Fouchet we found in full ball-room toilet; she
was wreathed in smiles. Would _ces dames_ give themselves the trouble
of entering? would they see the house or the garden first? would they
permit their trunks to be sent for? Monsieur Fouchet, meanwhile, was
making a brave second to his wife's bustling welcome; he was rubbing
his hands vigorously, a somewhat suspicious action in a Frenchman, I
have had occasion to notice, after the completion of a bargain. Nature
had cast this mild-eyed individual for the part of accompanyist in the
comedy we call life; a _rôle_ he sometimes varied as now, with the
office of _claqueur_, when an uncommonly clever proof of madame's
talent for business drew from him this noiseless tribute of applause.
His weak, fat contralto called after us, as we followed madame's quick
steps up the waxed stairway; he would be in readiness, he said, to show
us the garden, "once the chambers were visited."
"It wasn't a real stroke, mesdames, it was only a warning!" was the
explanation conveyed to us in loud tones, with no reserve of whispered
delicacy, when we expressed regret at monsieur's detention below
stairs; a partially paralyzed leg, dragged painfully after the latter's
flabby figure, being the obvious cause of this detention.
The stairway had the line of beauty, describing a pretty curve before
its glassy steps led us to a narrow entry; it had also the brevity
which is said to be the very soul, _l'anima viva_, of all true wit; but
it was quite long and straight enough to serve Madame Fouchet as a
stage for a prolonged monologue, enlivened with much affluence of
gesture. Fouchet's seizure, his illness, his convalescence, and present
physical condition--a condition which appeared to be bristling with the
tragedy of danger, "un vrai drame d'anxiété"--was graphically conveyed
to us. The horrors of the long winter also, so sad for a Parisian--"si
triste pour la Parisienne, ces hivers de province"--together with the
miseries of her own home life, between this paralytic of a husband
below stairs, and above, her mother, an old lady of eighty, nailed to
her sofa with gout. "You may thus figure to yourselves, mesdames, what
a melancholy season is the winter! And now, with this villa still on
our hands, and the season already announcing itself, ruin stares us in
the face, mesdames--ruin!"
It was a moving picture. Yet we remained strangely unaffected by this
tale of woe. Madame Fouchet herself, the woman, not the actress, was to
blame, I think, for our unfeelingness. Somehow, to connect woe, ruin,
sadness, melancholy, or distress, in a word, of any kind with our
landlady's opulent figure, we found a difficult acrobatic mental feat.
She presented to the eye outlines and features that could only be
likened, in point of prosperity, to a Dutch landscape. Like certain of
the mediaeval saints presented by the earlier delineators of the
martyrs as burning above a slow fire, while wearing smiles of purely
animal content, as if in full enjoyment of the temperature, this lady's
sufferings were doubtless an invisible discipline, the hair shirt which
her hardened cuticle felt only to be a pleasurable itching.
"_Voilà, mesdames!_" It was with a magnificent gesture that madame
opened doors and windows. The drama of her life was forgotten for the
moment in the conscious pride of presenting us with such a picture as
her gay little house offered.
Inside and out, summer and the sun were blooming and shining with
spendthrift luxuriance. The salon opened directly on the garden; it
would have been difficult to determine just where one began and the
domain of the other ended, with the pinks and geraniums that nodded in
response to the peach and pear blossoms in the garden. A bit of faded
Aubusson and a print representing Madame Geoffrin's salon in full
session, with a poet of the period transporting the half-moon grouped
listeners about him to the point of tears, were evidences of the
refined tastes of our landlady in the arts; only a sentimentalist would
have hung that picture in her salon. Other decorations further proved
her as belonging to both worlds. The chintzes gay with garlands of
roses, with which walls, beds, and chairs were covered, revealed the
mundane element, the woman of decorative tastes, possessed of a hidden
passion for effective backgrounds. Two or three wooden crucifixes, a
_prie-dieu_, and a couple of saints in plaster, went far to prove that
this excellent _bourgeoise_ had thriftily made her peace with Heaven.
It was a curious mixture of the sacred and the profane.
Down below, beneath the windows overlooking the sea, lay the garden.
All the houses fronting the cliff had similar little gardens, giving,
as the French idiom so prettily puts it, upon the sea. But compared to
these others, ours was as a rose of Sharon blooming in the midst of
little deserts. Renard had been entirely right about this particular
bit of earth attached to our villa. It was a gem of a garden. It was a
French garden, and therefore, entirely as a matter of course, it had
walls. It was as cut off from the rest of the world as if it had been a
prison or a fortification.
The Frenchman, above all others, appears to have the true sentiment of
seclusion, when the society of trees and flowers is to be enjoyed. Next
to woman, nature is his fetish. True to his national taste in dress, he
prefers that both should be costumed _à la Parisienne_; but as poet and
lover, it is his instinct to build a wall about his idol, that he may
enjoy his moments of expansion unseen and unmolested. This square of
earth, for instance, was not much larger than the space covered by the
chamber roof above us; and yet, with the high walls towering over the
rose-stalks, it was as secluded as a monk's cloister. We found it,
indeed, on later acquaintance, as poetic and delicately sensuous a
retreat as the romance-writers would wish us to believe did those
mediaeval connoisseurs of comfort, when, with sandalled feet, they
paced their own convent garden-walks. Fouchet was a broken-down
shopkeeper; but somewhere hidden within, there lurked the soul of a
Maecenas; he knew how to arrange a feast--of roses. The garden was a
bit of greensward, not much larger than a pocket handkerchief; but the
grass had the right emerald hue, and one's feet sank into the rich turf
as into the velvet of an oriental rug. Small as was the enclosure,
between the espaliers and the flower-beds serpentined minute paths of
glistening pebbles. Nothing which belonged to a garden had been
forgotten, not even a pine from the tropics, and a bench under the pine
that was just large enough for two. This latter was an ideal little
spot in which to bring a friend or a book. One could sit there and
gorge one's self with sweets; a dance was perpetually going on--the
gold-and-purple butterflies fluttering gayly from morning till night;
and the bees freighted the air with their buzzing. If one tired of
perfumes and dancing, there was always music to be enjoyed, from a full
orchestra. The sea, just the other side of the wall of osiers, was
always in voice, whether sighing or shouting. The larks and blackbirds
had a predilection for this nest of color, announcing their preference
loudly in a combat of trills. And once or twice, we were quite certain,
a nightingale with Patti notes had been trying its liquid scales in the
dark.
It was in this garden that our acquaintance with our landlord deepened
into something like friendship. Monsieur Fouchet was always to be found
there, tying up the rose-trees, or mending the paths, or shearing the
bit of turf.
_"Mon jardin, c'est un peu moi, vous savez_--it is my pride and my
consolation." At the latter word, Fouchet was certain to sigh.
Then we fell to wondering just what grief had befallen this amiable
person which required Horatian consolation. Horace had need of
rose-leaves to embalm his disappointments, for had he not cooled his
passions by plunging into the bath of literature? Besides, Horace was
bitten by the modern rabies: he was as restless as an American. When at
Rome was he not always sighing for his Sabine farm, and when at the
farm always regretting Rome? But this harmless, innocent-eyed,
benevolent-browed old man, with his passive brains tied up in a
foulard, o' morning's, and his _bourgeois_ feet adorned with carpet
slippers, what grief in the past had bitten his poor soul and left its
mark still sore?
"It isn't monsieur--it is madame who has made the past dark," was
Renard's comment, when we discussed our landlord's probable
acquaintance with regret--or remorse.
Whatever secret of the past may have hovered over the Fouchet
household, the evil bird had not made its nest in madame's breast, that
was clear; her smooth, white brow was the sign of a rose-leaf
conscience; that dark curtain of hair, looped madonna-wise over each
ear, framed a face as unruffled as her conscience.
She was entirely at peace with her world, and with heaven as well, that
was certain. Whatever her sins, the confessional had purged her. Like
others, doubtless, she had found a husband and the provinces excellent
remedies for a damaged reputation. She lived now in the very odor of
sanctity; the cure had a pipe in her kitchen, with something more
sustaining, on certain bright afternoons. Although she was daily
announcing to us her approaching dissolution--"I die, mesdames--I die
of ennui"--it seemed to me there were still signs, at times, of a
vigorous resuscitation. The cure's visits were wont to produce a deeper
red in the deep bloom of her cheek; the mayor and his wife, who drank
their Sunday coffee in the arbor, brought, as did Beatrix's advent to
Dante, _vita nuova_ to this homesick Parisian.
There were other pleasures in her small world, also, which made life
endurable. Bargaining, when one teems with talent, may be as exciting
as any other form of conquest. Madame's days were chiefly passed in
imitation of the occupation so dear to an earlier, hardier race, that
race kings have knighted for their powers in dealing mightily with
their weaker neighbors. Madame, it is true, was only a woman, and
Villerville was somewhat slimly populated. But in imitation of her
remote feudal lords, she also fell upon the passing stranger, demanding
tribute. When the stranger did not pass, she kept her arm in practice,
so to speak, by extracting the last _sou_ in a transaction from a
neighbor, or by indulging in a drama in which the comedy of insult was
matched by the tragedy of contempt.
One of these mortal combats it was my privilege to witness. The war
arose on our announcement to Mère Mouchard, the lady of the inn by the
sea, of our decision to move next door. To us Mère Mouchard presented
the unruffled plumage of a dove; her voice also was as the voice of the
same, mellowed by sucking. Ten minutes later the town was assembled to
lend its assistance at the encounter between our two landladies. Each
stood on their respective doorsteps with arms akimbo and head thrust
forward, as geese protrude head and tongue in moments of combat. And it
was thus, the mere hissed, that her boarders were stolen from
her--under her very nose--while her back was turned, with no more
thought of honesty or shame than a----. The word was never uttered. The
mère's insult was drowned in a storm of voices? for there came a loud
protest from the group of neighbors. Madame Fouchet, meanwhile, was
sustaining her own role with great dignity. Her attitude of
self-control could only have been learned in a school where insult was
an habitual weapon. She smiled, an infuriating, exasperating,
successful smile. She showed a set of defiant white teeth, and to her
proud white throat she gave a boastful curve. Was it her fault if _ces
dames_ knew what comfort and cleanliness were? if they preferred "_des
chambres garnies avec goût, vraiment artistiques_"--to rooms fit only
for peasants? _Ces dames_ had just come from Paris; doubtless, they
were not yet accustomed to provincial customs--_aux moeurs
provinciales_. Then there were exchanged certain melodious acerbities,
which proved that these ladies had entered the lists on previous
occasions, and that each was well practised in the other's methods of
warfare. Opportunely, Renard appeared on the scene; his announcement
that we proposed still to continue taking our repasts with the mere,
was as oil on the sea of trouble. A reconciliation was immediately
effected, and the street as immediately lost all interest in the play,
the audience melting away as speedily as did the wrath of the
disputants.
"_Le bon Dieu soit loué_," cried Madame Fouchet, puffing, as she
mounted the stairs a few moments later--"God be praised"--she hadn't
come here to the provinces to learn her rights--to be taught her
alphabet. Mère Mouchard, forsooth, who wanted a week's board as
indemnity for her loss of us! A week's board--for lodgings scorned by
peasants!
"Ah, these Normans! what a people, what a people! They would peel the
skin off your back! They would sell their children! They would cheat
the devil himself!"
"You, madame, I presume, are from Paris." Madame smiled as she
answered, a thin fine smile, richly seasoned with scorn. "Ah, mesdames!
All the world can't boast of Paris as a birthplace, unfortunately. I
also, I am a Norman, _mais je ne m'en fiche pas!_ Most of my life,
however, I've lived in Paris, thank God!" She lifted her head as she
spoke, and swept her hands about her waist to adjust the broad belt, an
action pregnant with suggestions. For it was thus conveyed to us,
delicately, that such a figure as hers was not bred on rustic diet;
also, that the Parisian glaze had not failed of its effect on the
coarser provincial clay.
Meanwhile, below in the garden, her husband was meekly tying up his
rose-trees.
Neither of the landladies' husbands had figured in the street-battle.
It had been a purely Amazonian encounter, bloodless but bitter. Both
the husbands of these two belligerent landladies appeared singularly
well trained. Mouchard, indeed, occupied a comparatively humble sphere
in his wife's _ménage_. He was perpetually to be seen in the
court-yard, at the back of the house, washing dogs, or dishes, in a
costume in which the greatest economy of cloth compatible with decency
had been triumphantly solved. His wife ran the house, and he ran the
errands, an arrangement which, apparently, worked greatly to the
satisfaction of both. But Mouchard was not the first or the second
French husband who, on the threshold of his connubial experience, had
doubtless had his role in life appointed to him, filling the same with
patient acquiescence to the very last of the lines.
There is something very touching in the subjection of French husbands.
In point of meekness they may well serve, I think, as models to their
kind. It is a meekness, however, which does not hint of humiliation;
for, after all, what humiliation can there be in being thoroughly
understood? The Frenchwoman, by virtue of centuries of activity, in the
world and in the field, has become an expert in the art of knowing her
man; she has not worked by his side, under the burn of the noon sun, or
in the cimmerian darkness of the shop-rear, counting the pennies, for
nothing. In exchanging her illusions for the bald front of fact, man
himself has had to pay the penalty of this mixed gain. She tests him by
purely professional standards, as man tests man, or as he has tested
her, when in the ante-matrimonial days he weighed her _dot_ in the
scale of his need. The Frenchwoman and Shakespeare are entirely of one
mind; they perceive the great truth of unity in the scheme of things:
"Woman's test is man's taste."
This is the first among the great truths in the feminine grammar of
assent. French masculine taste, as its criterion, has established the
excellent doctrine of utilitarianism. With quick apprehension the
Frenchwoman has mastered this fact; she has cleverly taken a lesson
from ophidian habits--she can change her skin, quickly shedding the
sentimentalist, when it comes to serious action, to don the duller
raiment of utility. She has accepted her world, in other words, as she
finds it, with a philosopher's shrug. But the philosopher is lined with
the logician; for this system of life has accomplished the miracle of
making its women logical; they have grasped the subtleties of inductive
reasoning. Marriage, for example, they know is entered into solely on
the principle of mutual benefit; it is therefore a partnership, _bon_;
now, in partnerships sentiments and the emotions are out of place, they
only serve to dim the eye; those commodities, therefore, are best
conveyed to other markets than the matrimonial one; for in purely
commercial transactions one has need of perfect clearness of vision, if
only to keep one well practised in that simple game called looking out
for one's own interest. In Frenchwomen, the ratiocinationist is
extraordinarily developed; her logic penetrates to the core of things.
Hence it is that Mouchard washes dishes.
Monsieur Jourdain, in Molière's comedy, who expressed such surprise at
finding that he had been talking prose for forty years without knowing
it, was no more amazed than would Mère Mouchard have been had you
announced to her that she was a logician; or that her husband's daily
occupations in the bright little court-yard were the result of a
system. Yet both facts were true.
In that process we now know as the survival of the fittest, the mère's
capacity had snuffed out her weaker spouse's incompetency; she had
taken her place at the helm, because she belonged there by virtue of
natural fitness. There were no tender illusions which would suffer, in
seeing the husband allotted to her, probably by her parents and the
_dot_ system, relegated to the ignominy of passing his days washing
dishes--dishes which she cooked and served--dishes, it should be added,
which she was entirely conscious were cooked by the hand of genius, and
which she garnished with a sauce and served with a smile, such as only
issue from French kitchens.