In the regions of the Midi, of bygone civilization, historical castles
still standing are rare. Only at long intervals on the hillsides some
old abbey lifts its tottering and dismembered front, perforated by holes
that once were windows, whose empty spaces look now only to the sky.
A monument of dust, burnt up by the sun, dating from the time of the
Crusades or of the Courts of Love, without a trace of man among its
stones, where even the ivy no longer clings nor the acanthus, but which
the dried lavenders and the ferns embalm. In the midst of all those
ruins the castle of Saint-Romans is an illustrious exception. If you
have travelled in the Midi you have seen it, and you are to see it again
now. It is between Valence and Montelimart, on a site just where the
railway runs alongside the Rhone, at the foot of the rich slopes
of Baume, Raucoule, and Mercurol, where the far-famed vineyards of
l’Ermitage, spreading out for five miles in close-planted rows of vines,
which seem to grow as one looks, roll down almost into the river, which
is there as green and full of islands as the Rhine at Basle, but under
a sun the Rhine has never known. Saint-Romans is opposite on the other
side of the river; and, in spite of the brevity of the vision, the
headlong rush of the train, which seems trying to throw itself madly
into the Rhone at each turning, the castle is so large, so well situated
on the neighbouring hill, that it seems to follow the crazy race of the
train, and stamps on your mind forever the memory of its terraces, its
balustrades, its Italian architecture; two low stories surmounted by a
colonnaded gallery and flanked by two slate-roofed pavilions dominating
the great slopes where the water of the cascades rebounds, the network
of gravel walks, the perspective of long hedges, terminated by some
white statue which stands out against the blue sky as on the luminous
ground of a stained-glass window. Quite at the top, in the middle of the
vast lawns whose green turf shines ironically under the scorching sun,
a gigantic cedar uplifts its crested foliage, enveloped in black and
floating shadows--an exotic silhouette, upright before this former
dwelling of some Louis XIV farmer of revenue, which makes one think of a
great negro carrying the sunshade of a gentleman of the court.
From Valence to Marseilles, throughout all the Valley of the Rhone,
Saint-Romans of Bellaignes is famous as an enchanted palace; and,
indeed, in that country burnt up by the fiery wind, this oasis of
greenness and beautiful rushing water is a true fairy-land.
“When I am rich, mamma,” Jansoulet used to say, as quite a small boy,
to his mother whom he adored, “I shall give you Saint-Romans of
Bellaignes.” And as the life of the man seemed the fulfilment of a story
from the Arabian Nights, as all his wishes came true, even the most
disproportionate, as his maddest chimeras came to lie down before him,
to lick his hands like familiar and obedient spaniels, he had bought
Saint-Romans to offer it, newly furnished and grandiosely restored, to
his mother. Although it was ten years since then, the dear old woman was
not yet used to her splendid establishment. “It is the palace of Queen
Jeanne that you have given me, my dear Bernard,” she wrote to her son.
“I shall never live there.” She never did live there, as a matter of
fact, having stayed at the steward’s house, an isolated building of
modern construction, situated quite at the other end of the grounds,
so as to overlook the outbuildings and the farm, the sheepfolds and the
oil-mills, with their rural horizon of stacks, olive-trees and vines,
extending over the plain as far as one could see. In the great castle
she would have imagined herself a prisoner in one of those enchanted
dwellings where sleep seizes you in the midst of your happiness and
does not let you go for a hundred years. Here, at least, the
peasant-woman--who had never been able to accustom herself to
this colossal fortune, come too late, from too far, and like a
thunder-clap--felt herself linked to reality by the coming and going of
the work-people, the letting-out and taking-in of the cattle, their slow
movement to the drinking pond, all that pastoral life which woke her by
the familiar call of the cocks and the sharp cries of the peacocks, and
brought her down the corkscrew staircase of the pavilion before dawn.
She looked upon herself only as the trustee of this magnificent estate,
which she was taking care of for her son, and wished to give back to him
in perfect condition on the day when, rich enough and tired of living
with the Turks, he would come, according to his promise, to live with
her beneath the shade of Saint-Romans.
Then, too, what universal and indefatigable supervision! Through the
mists of early morning the farm-servants heard her rough and husky
voice: “Olivier, Peyrol, Audibert. Come on! It is four o’clock.” Then
she would hasten to the immense kitchen, where the maids, heavy with
sleep, were heating the porridge over the crackling, new-lit fire.
They gave her a little dish of red Marseilles-ware full of boiled
chestnuts--frugal breakfast of bygone times, which nothing would have
induced her to change. At once she was off, hurrying with great strides,
her large silver keyring at her belt, whence jingled all her keys, her
plate in her hand, balanced by the distaff which she held, in working
order, under her arm, for she spun all day long, and did not stop even
to eat her chestnuts. On the way, a glance at the stables, still dark,
where the animals were moving duly, at the stifling pens with their rows
of impatient and outstretched muzzles; and the first glimmers of light
creeping over the layers of stones that supported the embankment of the
park, lit up the figure of the old woman, running in the dew, with the
lightness of a girl, despite her seventy years--verifying exactly each
morning all the wealth of the domain, anxious to make sure that the
night had not taken away the statues and the vases, uprooted the
hundred-year-old quincunx, dried up the springs which filtered into
their resounding basins. Then the full sunlight of midday, humming and
vibrating, showed still, on the sand of an alley, against the white wall
of a terrace, the long figure of the old woman, elegant and straight
as her spindle, picking up bits of dead wood, breaking off some uneven
branch of a shrub, careless of the shock it caused her and the sweat
which broke out over her skin. Towards this hour another figure was to
be seen in the park also--less active, less noisy, dragging rather than
walking, leaning against the walls and railings--a poor round-shouldered
being, shaky and stiff, a figure from which life seemed to have gone
out, never speaking, when he was tired giving a little plaintive cry
towards the servant, who was always near, who helped him to sit down, to
crouch upon some step, where he would stay for hours, motionless, mute,
his mouth hanging, his eyes blinking, hushed by the strident monotony of
the grasshopper’s cry--a blotch of humanity in the splendid horizon.
This, this was the first-born, Bernard’s brother, the darling child of
his father and mother, the glorious hope of the nail-maker’s family.
Slaves, like so many others in the Midi, to the superstition of the
rights of primogeniture, they had made every possible sacrifice to send
to Paris their fine, ambitious lad, who set out assured of success, the
admiration of all the young women of the town; and Paris, after having
for six years, beaten, twisted, and squeezed in its great vat the
brilliant southern stripling, after having burnt him with all its
vitriol, rolled him in all its mud, finished by sending him back in
this state of wreckage, stupefied and paralyzed--killing his father with
sorrow, and forcing his mother to sell her all, and live as a sort of
char-woman in the better-class houses of her own country-side. Lucky it
was that just then, when this broken piece of humanity, discharged
from all the hospitals of Paris, was sent back by public charity to
Bourg-Saint-Andeol, Bernard--he whom they called Cadet, as in these
southern families, half Arab as they are, the eldest always takes the
family name, and the last-comer that of Cadet--Bernard was at Tunis
making his fortune, and sending home money regularly. But what pain it
was for the poor mother to owe everything, even the life, the comfort
of the sad invalid, to the robust and courageous boy whom his father and
she had loved without any tenderness; who, since he was five years old,
they had treated as a “hand,” because he was very strong, woolly-headed,
and ugly, and even then knew better than any one in the house how to
deal in old nails. Ah! how she longed to have him near her, her Cadet,
to make some return to him for all the good he did, to pay at last the
debt of love and motherly tenderness that she owed him!
But, you see, these princely fortunes have the burdens, the wearinesses
of royal lives. This poor mother, in her dazzling surroundings, was very
like a real queen: familiar with long exiles, cruel separations, and the
trials which detract from greatness; one of her sons forever stupefied,
the other far away, seldom writing, absorbed in his business, saying,
“I will come,” and never coming. She had only seen him once in twelve
years, and then in the whirl of a visit of the Bey to Saint-Romans--a
rush of horses and carriages, of fireworks, and of banquets. He had gone
in the suite of his monarch, having scarcely time to say good-bye to his
old mother, to whom there remained of this great joy only a few pictures
in the illustrated papers, showing Bernard Jansoulet arriving at the
castle with Ahmed, and presenting his mother. Is it not thus that kings
and queens have their family feelings exploited in the journals? There
was also a cedar of Lebanon, brought from the other end of the world, a
regular mountain of a tree, whose transport had been as difficult and as
costly as that of Cleopatra’s needle, and whose erection as a souvenir
of the royal visit by dint of men, money, and teams had shaken the very
foundations. But this time, at least, knowing him to be in France for
several months--perhaps for good--she hoped to have her Bernard to
herself. And now he returned to her, one fine evening, enveloped in the
same triumphant glory, in the same official display, surrounded by a
crowd of counts, of marquises, of fine gentlemen from Paris, filling,
they and their servants, the two large wagonettes she had sent to meet
them at the little station of Giffas on the other side of the Rhone.
“Come, give me a kiss, my dear mother. There is nothing to be ashamed
of in giving a good hug to the boy you haven’t seen all these years.
Besides, all these gentlemen are our friends. This is the Marquis
de Monpavon, the Marquis de Bois d’Hery. Ah! the time is past when
I brought you to eat vegetable soup with us, little Cabassu and
Jean-Batiste Bompain. You know M. de Gery? With my old friend
Cardailhac, whom I now present, that makes the first batch. There are
others to come. Prepare yourself for a fine upsetting. We entertain the
Bey in four days.”
“The Bey again!” said the old woman, astounded. “I thought he was dead.”
Jansoulet and his guests could not help laughing at this comical terror,
accentuated by her southern intonation.
“It is another, mamma. There is always a Bey--thank goodness. But
don’t be afraid. You won’t have so much bother this time. Our friend
Cardailhac has undertaken everything. We are going to have magnificent
celebrations. In the meantime, quick--dinner and our rooms. Our
Parisians are worn out.”
“Everything is ready, my son,” said the old lady quietly, stiff and
straight under her Cambrai cap, the head-dress with its yellowing flaps,
which she never left off even for great occasions. Good fortune had not
changed her. She was a true peasant of the Rhone valley, independent and
proud, without any of the sly humilities of Balzac’s country folk, too
artless to be purse-proud. One pride alone she had--that of showing her
son with what scrupulous care she had discharged her duties as guardian.
Not an atom of dust, not a trace of damp on the walls. All the splendid
ground-floor, the reception-rooms with their hangings of iridescent silk
new out of the dust sheets, the long summer galleries cool and sonorous,
paved with mosaics and furnished with a flowery lightness in the
old-fashioned style, with Louis XIV sofas in cane and silk, the immense
dining-room decorated with palms and flowers, the billiard-room with its
rows of brilliant ivory balls, its crystal chandeliers and its suits
of armour--all the length of the castle, through its tall windows, wide
open to the stately terrace, lay displayed for the admiration of the
visitors. The marvellous beauty of the horizon and the setting sun, its
own serene and peaceful richness, were reflected in the panes of glass
and in the waxed and polished wood with the same clearness as in the
mirror-like ornamental lakes, the pictures of the poplars and the swans.
The setting was so lovely, the whole effect so grand, that the clamorous
and tasteless luxury melted away, disappeared, even to the most
hypercritical eyes.
“There is something to work on,” said Cardailhac, the manager, his glass
in his eye, his hat on one side, combining already his stage-effect.
And the haughty air of Monpavon, whom the head-dress of the old woman
receiving them on the terrace had shocked, gave way to a condescending
smile. Here was something to work on, certainly, and, guided by persons
of taste, their friend Jansoulet could really give his Moorish Highness
an exceedingly suitable reception. All the evening they talked of
nothing else. In the sumptuous dining-room, their elbows on the table,
full of meat and drink, they planned and discussed. Cardailhac, who had
great ideas, had already his plan complete.
“First of all, you give me _carte-blanche_, don’t you, Nabob?
_Carte-blanche_, old fellow, and make that fat Hemerlingue burst with
envy.”
Then the manager explained his scheme. The festivities were to be
divided into days, as at Vaux, when Fouquet entertained Louis XIV. One
day a play; another day Provencal games, dances, bull-fights,
local bands; the third day--And already the manager’s hand sketched
programmes, announcements; while Bois l’Hery slept, his hands in his
pockets, his chair tilted back, his cigar sunk in the corner of
his sneering mouth; and the Marquis de Monpavon, always on his best
behaviour, straightened his shirt-front to keep himself awake.
De Gery had left them early. He had sought refuge beside the old
mother--who had known him as a boy, him and his brothers--in the humble
parlour of the brightly decorated, white-curtained house, where the
Nabob’s mother tried to perpetuate her humble past with the help of a
few relics saved from its wreck.
Paul chatted quietly with the fine old woman, admiring her severe and
regular features, her white hair massed together like the hemp of her
distaff, as she sat holding herself straight in her seat--never in her
life having leaned back or sat in an arm-chair--a little green shawl
folded tightly across her flat breast. He called her Francoise, and she
called him M. Paul. They were old friends. And guess what they talked
about? Of her grandchildren, of Bernard’s three sons, whom she did not
know and so much longed to know.
“Ah, M. Paul, if you knew how I long to see them! I should have been
so happy if he had brought them, my three little ones, instead of these
fine gentlemen. Think, I have never seen them, only their portraits
which are over there. I am a little afraid of their mother, she is quite
a great lady, a Miss Afchin. But them, the children, I am sure they are
not proud, and they would love their old granny. It would be like having
their father a little boy again, and I would give to them what I did not
give to him. You see, M. Paul, parents are not always just. They have
their favourites. But God is just, he is. The ones that are most petted
and spoiled at the expense of the others, you should see what he does to
them for you! And the favour of the old often brings misfortune to the
young!”
She sighed, looking towards the large recess from behind the curtains of
which there came, at intervals, a long sobbing breath like the sleeping
wail of a beaten child who has cried bitterly.
A heavy step on the staircase, a loud, sweet voice saying, very softly,
“It is I; don’t move,” and Jansoulet appeared. He knew his mother’s
habits, how her lamp was the last to go out, so when every one in the
castle was in bed, he came to see her, to chat with her for a little, to
rejoice her heart with an affection he could not show before the others.
“Oh, stay, my dear Paul; we don’t mind you,” and once more a child in
his mother’s presence, with loving gestures and words that were really
touching, the huge man threw himself on the ground at her feet. She was
very happy to have him there, so dearly near, but she was just a little
shy. She looked upon him as an all-powerful being, extraordinary,
raising him, in her simplicity, to the greatness of an Olympian
commanding the thunder and lightning. She spoke to him, asking about his
friends, his business, but not daring to put the question she had asked
de Gery: “Why haven’t my grandchildren come?” But he spoke of them
himself. “They are at school, mother. Whenever the holidays begin they
shall be sent with Bompain. You remember Jean-Baptiste Bompain? And you
shall keep them for two long months. They will come to you and make you
tell them stories, and they will go to sleep with their heads on your
lap--there, like that.”
And he himself, putting his heavy, woolly head on her knee, remembered
the happy evenings of his childhood when he would go to sleep so, if she
would let him, and his brother had not taken up all the room. He tasted
for the first time since his return to France a few minutes of delicious
peace away from his restless and artificial life, as he lay pressed to
his old mother’s heart, in the deep silence of night and of the country
which one feels hovering over him in limitless space; the only sounds
the beating of that old faithful heart and the swing of the pendulum of
the ancient clock in the corner. Suddenly came the same long sigh, as of
a child fallen asleep sobbing. Jansoulet lifted his head and looked at
his mother, and softly asked: “Is it--?” “Yes,” she said, “I make him
sleep there. He might need me in the night.”
“I would like to see him, to embrace him.”
“Come, then.” She rose very gravely, took the lamp and went to the
alcove, of which she softly drew the large curtain, making a sign to her
son to draw near quietly.
He was sleeping. And no doubt something lived in him while he slept that
was not there when he waked, for instead of the flaccid immobility in
which he was congealed all day, he was now shaken by sudden starts, and
on the inexpressive and death-like face there were lines of pain and the
contractions of suffering life. Jansoulet, much affected, looked long
at those wasted features, faded and sickly, where the beard grew with a
surprising vigour. Then he bent down, put his lips to the damp brow, and
feeling him move, said very gravely and respectfully, as one speaks to
the head of the family, “Good-night, my brother.” Perhaps the captive
soul had heard it from the depths of its dark and abject limbo. For the
lips moved and a long moan answered him, a far-away wail, a despairing
cry, which filled with helpless tears the glance exchanged between
Francoise and her son, and tore from them both the same cry in which
their sorrow met, “Pecaire,” the local word which expressed all pity and
all tenderness.
The next day, from early morning, the commotion began with the arrival
of the actors, an avalanche of hats and wigs and big boots, of short
skirts and affected cries, of floating veils and fresh make-ups. The
women were in a great majority, as Cardailhac thought that for a Bey
the play was of little consequence, and that all that was needful was to
have catchy tunes in pretty mouths, to show fine arms and shapely legs
in the easy costume of light opera. All the well-made celebrities of his
theatre were there, Amy Ferat at the head of them, a bold young woman
who had already had her teeth in the gold of several crowns. There
were two or three well-known men whose pale faces made the same kind of
chalky and spectral spots amid the green of the trees as the plaster of
the statues. All these people, enlivened by the journey, the surprise of
the country, the overflowing hospitality, as well as the hope of making
something out of this sojourn of Beys and Nabobs and other gilded fools,
wanted only to play, to jest and sing with the vulgar boisterousness
of a crew of freshly discharged Seine boatmen. But Cardailhac meant
otherwise. No sooner were they unpacked, freshened up, and luncheon over
than, quick, the parts, the rehearsals! There was no time to lose. They
worked in the small drawing-room next the summer gallery, where the
theatre was already being fitted up; and the noise of hammers, the songs
from the burlesque, the shrill voices, the conductor’s fiddle, mingled
with the loud trumpet-like calls of the peacocks, and rose upon the hot
southern wind, which, not recognising it as only the mad rattle of its
own grasshoppers, shook it all disdainfully on the trailing tip of its
wings.
Seated in the centre of the terrace, as in the stage-box of his theatre,
Cardailhac watched the rehearsals, gave orders to a crowd of workmen
and gardeners, had trees cut down as spoiling the view, designed the
triumphal arches, sent off telegrams, express messengers to mayors, to
sub-prefects, to Arles--to arrange for a deputation of girls in national
costume; to Barbantane, where the best dancers are; to Faraman, famous
for its wild bulls and Camargue horses. And as the name of Jansoulet,
joined to that of the Bey of Tunis, flared at the end of all these
messages, on all sides they hastened to obey; the telegraph wires were
never still, messengers wore out horses on the roads. And this little
Sardanapalus of the stage called Cardailhac repeated ever, “There’s
something to work on here,” happy to scatter gold at random like
handfuls of seed, to have a stage of forty leagues to stir about--the
whole of Provence, of which this rabid Parisian was a native and whose
picturesque resources he knew to the core.
Dispossessed of her office, the old mother never appeared. She occupied
herself with the farm, and her invalid. She was terrified by this crowd
of visitors, these insolent servants whom it was difficult to know from
the masters, these women with their impudent and elegant airs, these
clean-shaven men who looked like bad priests--all these mad-caps who
chased each other at night in the corridors with pillows, with wet
sponges, with curtain tassels they had torn down, for weapons. Even
after dinner she no longer had her son; he was obliged to stay with his
guests, whose number grew each day as the _fetes_ approached; not even
the resource of talking to M. Paul about her grandchildren was left, for
Jansoulet, a little embarrassed by the seriousness of his friend,
had sent him to spend a few days with his brothers. And the careful
housekeeper, to whom they came every minute asking the keys for linen,
for a room, for extra silver, thought of her piles of beautiful dishes,
of the sacking of her cupboards and larders, remembered the state
in which the old Bey’s visit had left the castle, devastated as by a
cyclone, and said in her _patois_ as she feverishly wet the linen on her
distaff: “May lightning strike them, this Bey and all the Beys!”
At last the day came, the great day which is still spoken of in all the
country-side. Towards three o’clock in the afternoon, after a sumptuous
luncheon at which the old mother presided, this time in a new cap, over
a company composed of Parisian celebrities, prefects, deputies, all in
full uniform, mayors with their sashes, priests newshaven, Jansoulet in
full dress stepped out on to the terrace surrounded by his guests. He
saw before him in that splendid frame of magnificent natural scenery, in
the midst of flags and arches and coats of arms, a vast swarm of people,
a flare of brilliant costumes in rows on the slopes, at corners of the
walks; here, grouped in beds, like flowers on a lawn, the prettiest
girls of Arles, whose little dark heads showed delicately from beneath
their lace fichus; farther down were the dancers from Barbantane--eight
tambourine players in a line, ready to begin, their hands joined,
ribbons flying, hats cocked, and the red scarves round their hips;
beyond them, on the succeeding terraces were the choral societies in
rows, dressed in black with red caps, their standard-bearer in front,
grave, important, his teeth clinched, holding high his carved staff;
farther down still, on a vast circular space now arranged as an
amphitheatre, were the black bulls, and the herdsmen from Camargue
seated on their long-haired white horses, their high boots over their
knees, at their wrists an uplifted spear; then more flags, helmets,
bayonets, and decorations right down to the triumphal arch at the gates;
as far as the eye could see, on the other side of the Rhone (across
which the two railways had made a pontoon bridge that they might
come straight from the station to Saint-Romans), whole villages were
assembling from every side, crowding to the Giffas road in a cloud of
dust and a confusion of cries, sitting at the hedge-sides, clinging to
the elms, squeezed in carts--a living wall for the procession. Above all
a great white sun which scintillated in every direction--on the copper
of a tambourine, on the point of a trident, on the fringe of a banner;
and in the midst the great proud Rhone carrying to the sea the moving
picture of this royal feast. Before these marvels, where shone all the
gold of his coffers, the Nabob had a sudden feeling of admiration and of
pride.
“This is beautiful,” he said, paling; and behind him his mother
murmured, “It is too beautiful for man. It is as if God were coming.”
She was pale, too, but with an unutterable fear.
The sentiment of the old Catholic peasant was indeed that which was
vaguely felt by all those people massed upon the roads as though for the
passing of a gigantic Corpus Christi procession, and whom this visit
of an Eastern prince to a child of their own country reminded of the
legends of the Magi, or the advent of Gaspard the Moor, bringing to the
carpenter’s son myrrh and the triple crown.
As Jansoulet was being warmly congratulated by every one, Cardailhac,
who had not been seen since morning, suddenly appeared, triumphant and
perspiring. “Didn’t I tell you there was something to work on! Eh? Isn’t
it fine? What a scene! I bet our Parisians would pay dear to be at such
a first performance as this!” And lowering his voice, on account of the
mother who was quite near, “Have you seen our country girls? No? Examine
them more closely--the first, the one in front, who is to present the
bouquet.”
“Why, it is Amy Ferat!”
“Just so. You see, old fellow, if the Bey should throw his handkerchief
amid that group of loveliness there must be some one to pick it up. They
wouldn’t understand, these innocents. Oh, I have thought of everything,
you will see. Everything is prepared and regulated just as on the stage.
Garden side--farm side.”
Here, to give an idea of the perfect organization, the manager raised
his stick. Immediately his gesture was repeated from the top to the
bottom of the park, and from the choral societies, from the brass bands,
from the tambourines, there burst forth the majestic strains of the
popular southern song, _Grand Soleil de la Provence_. Voices and
instruments rose in the sunlight, the banners filled, the dancers swayed
to their first movement, while on the other side of the river a report
flew like a breeze that the Bey had arrived unexpectedly by another
route. The manager made another gesture, and the immense orchestra was
hushed. The response was slower this time, there were little delays, a
hail of words lost in the leaves; but one could not expect more from a
concourse of three thousand people. Just then the carriages appeared,
the state coaches which had been used on the occasion of the last Bey’s
visit--two large chariots, pink and gold as at Tunis. Mme. Jansoulet
had tended them almost as holy relics, and they had come out of their
coverings, with their panels, their hangings and their gold fringes,
as shining and new as the day they were made. Here again Cardailhac’s
ingenuity had been freely exercised. He had thought horses looked too
heavy for those unreal fragilities, so he had harnessed instead eight
mules, with white reins, decorated with bows and pompons and bells, and
caparisoned from head to foot in that marvellous Esparto work--an art
Provence has borrowed from the Moors and perfected. How could the Bey
not be pleased!
The Nabob, Monpavon, the prefect, and one of the generals got into the
first coach; the others filled the succeeding carriages. The priests and
the mayors, swelling with importance, rushed to the head of the choral
societies of their villages which were to go in front, and all moved off
along the road to Giffas.
The weather was magnificent, but hot and heavy, three months in advance
of the season, as often happens in this impetuous country, where
everything is in a hurry and comes too soon. Although there was not a
cloud to be seen, the stillness of the atmosphere--the wind had
fallen suddenly like a loose sail--dazzling and heated white, a silent
solemnity hanging over all, foretold a storm brewing in some corner
of the horizon. The immense torpor of things gradually influenced the
living beings. One heard too distinctly the tinkling mule-bells, the
heavy steps in the dust of the band of singers whom Cardailhac was
placing at regular distances in the seething human hedge which bordered
the road and was lost in the distance; a sudden call, children’s voices,
and the cry of the water-seller, that necessary accompaniment of all
open-air festivals in the Midi.
“Open your window, general, it is stifling,” said Monpavon, crimson,
fearing for his paint, and the lowered windows exposed to the populace
these high functionaries mopping their august faces, strained, agonized,
by the same expression of waiting--waiting for the Bey, for the storm,
waiting for something, in short.
Still another trimphal arch. It was at Giffas, its long, stony street
strewn with green palms, and its sordid houses gay with flowers and
bright hangings. The station was outside the village, white and square,
stuck like a thimble on the roadside--true type of a little country
station, lost in the midst of vineyards, never having any one in it
except perhaps sometimes an old woman and her parcels waiting in a
corner, come three hours before the time.
In honour of the Bey this slight building had been rigged out with
flags, adorned with rugs and divans; a splendid buffet had been fitted
up with sherbets, all ready for his Highness. Once there and out of the
carriage the Nabob tried to dispel the feeling of uneasiness which he,
too, had begun to suffer from. Prefects, generals, deputies, people
in dress-coats and uniforms, were standing about on the platform in
imposing groups, their faces solemn, their mouths pursed, their bodies
swaying and jerking in the knowing way of public functionaries who feel
people are looking at them. And you can imagine how noses were flattened
against the windows to see all this hierarchical swelldom. There
was Monpavon, his shirt-front bulging like a whipped egg. Cardailhac
breathlessly giving his last orders, and the honest face of Jansoulet,
whose sparkling eyes, set over his fat, sunburnt cheeks, looked like two
gold nails in a goffering of Spanish leather. Suddenly an electric
bell rang. The station-master, in a new uniform, ran down the line:
“Gentlemen, the train is signalled. It will be here in eight minutes.”
Every one started, and with the same instinctive movement pulled out
their watches. Only six minutes more. Then in the great silence some one
said: “Look over there!” To the right, on the side from which the train
was to come, two great slopes, covered with vines, made a sort of funnel
into which the track disappeared as though swallowed up. Just then all
this hollow was as black as ink, darkened by an enormous cloud, a bar of
gloom, cutting the blue of the sky perpendicularly, throwing out banks
that resembled cliffs of basalt on which the light broke all white like
moonshine. In the solemnity of the deserted track, over the lines of
silent rails where one felt that everything was ready for the coming
of the prince, it was terrifying to see this aerial crag approaching,
throwing its shadow before it, to watch the play of the perspective
which gave the cloud a slow, majestic movement, and the shadow the
rapidity of a galloping horse. “What a storm we shall have directly!”
was the thought which came to every one, but none had voice to express
it, for a strident whistle sounded and the train appeared at the end of
the dark funnel. A real royal train, rapid and short, and decorated with
flags. The smoking, roaring engine carried a large bouquet of roses on
its breastplate, like a bridesmaid at some leviathan wedding.
It came out of the funnel at full speed, but slowed down as it
approached. The functionaries grouped themselves, straightened their
backs, hitched their swords and eased their collars, while Jansoulet
went down the track to meet the train, an obsequious smile on his lips,
his back curved ready for the “Salam Alek.” The train proceeded very
slowly. Jansoulet thought it had stopped, and put his hand on the door
of the royal carriage, glittering with gold under the black sky. But,
doubtless, the impetus had been too strong, and the train continued to
advance, the Nabob walking beside it, trying to open the accursed door
which was stuck fast, and making signs to the engine-driver. The
engine was not answering. “Stop, stop, there!” It did not stop. Losing
patience, he jumped on to the velvet-covered step, and in that fiery,
impulsive manner of his which had so delighted the old Bey, he cried,
his woolly head at the door, “Saint-Romans station, your Highness.”
You know the sort of vague light there is in dreams, the colourless
empty atmosphere where everything has the look of a phantom. Jansoulet
was suddenly enveloped in this, stricken, paralyzed. He wanted to speak,
words would not come, his nerveless hand held the door so feebly that
he almost fell backward. What had he seen? On a divan at the back of
the saloon, reposing on his elbow, his beautiful dark head with its
long silky beard leaning on his hand, was the Bey, close wrapped in
his Oriental coat, without other ornaments than the large ribbon of the
Legion of Honour across his breast and the diamond in the aigrette
of his fez. He was fanning himself impassively with a little fan of
gold-embroidered strawwork. Two aides-de-camp and an engineer of the
railway company were standing beside him. Opposite, on another divan,
in a respectful attitude, but favoured evidently, as they were the only
ones seated in the Bey’s presence, were two owl-like men, their long
whiskers falling on their white ties, one fat and the other thin. They
were the Hemerlingues, father and son, who had won over his Highness
and were bearing him off in triumph to Paris. What a horrible dream! All
three men, who knew Jansoulet well, looked at him coldly as though his
face recalled nothing. Piteously white, his forehead covered with sweat,
he stammered, “But, your Highness, are you not going to--” A vivid flash
of lightning, followed by a terrible peal of thunder, stopped the
words. But the lightning in the eyes of his sovereign seemed to him as
terrible. Sitting up, his arm outstretched, in guttural voice as of one
accustomed to roll the hard Arab syllables, but in pure French, the
Bey struck him down with the slow, carefully prepared words: “Go home,
swindler. The feet go where the heart guides. Mine will never enter the
house of the man who has cheated my country.”
Jansoulet tried to say something. The Bey made a sign: “Go on.” The
engineer pressed a button, a whistle replied, the train, which had never
really stopped, seemed to stretch itself, making all its iron muscles
crack, to take a bound and start off at full speed, the flags fluttering
in the storm-wind, and the black smoke meeting the lightning flashes.
Jansoulet, left standing on the track, staggering, stunned, ruined,
watched his fortune fly away and disappear, oblivious of the large
drops of rain which were falling on his bare head. Then, when the others
rushed upon him, surrounded him, rained questions upon him, he stuttered
some disconnected words: “Court intrigues--infamous plot.” And suddenly,
shaking his fist after the train, with eyes that were bloodshot, and a
foam of rage upon his lips, he roared like a wild beast, “Blackguards!”
“You forget yourself, Jansoulet, you forget yourself.” You guess who it
was that uttered those words, and, taking the Nabob’s arm, tried to pull
him together, to make him hold his head as high as his own, conducted
him to the carriage through the rows of stupefied people in uniform,
and made him get in, exhausted and broken, like a near relation of the
deceased that one hoists into a mourning-coach after the funeral. The
rain began to fall, peals of thunder followed one another. Every one now
hurried into the carriages, which quickly took the homeward road. Then
there occurred a heart-rending yet comical thing, one of the cruel
farces played by that cowardly destiny which kicks its victims after
they are down. In the falling day and the growing darkness of the
cyclone, the crowd, squeezed round the approaches of the station,
thought they saw his Highness somewhere amid the gorgeous trappings, and
as soon as the wheels started an immense clamour, a frightful bawling,
which had been hatching for an hour in all those breasts, burst out,
rose, rolled, rebounded from side to side and prolonged itself in the
valley. “Hurrah, hurrah for the Bey!” This was the signal for the first
bands to begin, the choral societies started in their turn, and the
noise growing step by step, the road from Giffas to Saint-Romans was
nothing but an uninterrupted bellow. Cardailhac and all the gentlemen,
Jansoulet himself, leant in vain out of the windows making desperate
signs, “That will do! That’s enough!” Their gestures were lost in the
tumult and the darkness; what the crowd did see seemed to act only as
an excitant. And I promise you there was no need of that. All these
meridionals, whose enthusiasm had been carefully led since early
morning, excited the more by the long wait and the storm, shouted with
all the force of their voices and the strength of their lungs, mingling
with the song of Provence the cry of “Hurrah for the Bey!” till it
seemed a perpetual chorus. Most of them had no idea what a Bey was,
did not even think about it. They accentuated the appellation in an
extraordinary manner as though it had three b’s and ten y’s. But it made
no difference, they excited themselves with the cry, holding up their
hands, waving their hats, becoming agitated as a result of their own
activity. Women wept and rubbed their eyes. Suddenly, from the top of an
elm, the shrill voice of a child made itself heard: “Mamma, mamma--I see
him!” He saw him! They all saw him, for that matter! Now even, they will
all swear to you they saw him!
Confronted by such a delirium, in the impossibility of imposing silence
and calm on such a crowd, there was only one thing for the people in the
carriages to do: to leave them alone, pull up the windows and dash along
at full speed. It would at least shorten a bitter martyrdom. But this
was even worse. Seeing the procession hurrying, all the road began to
gallop with it. To the dull booming of their tambourines the dancers
from Barbantane, hand in hand, sprang--a living garland--round the
carriage doors. The choral societies, breathless with singing as they
ran, but singing all the same, dragged on their standard-bearers, the
banners now hanging over their shoulders; and the good, fat priests, red
and panting, shoving their vast overworked bellies before them, still
found strength to shout into the very ear of the mules, in an unctuous,
effusive voice, “Long live our noble Bey!” The rain on all this, the
rain falling in buckets, discolouring the pink coaches, precipitating
the disorder, giving the appearance of a rout to this triumphal return,
but a comic rout, mingled with songs and laughs, mad embraces, and
infernal oaths. It was something like the return of a religious
procession flying before a storm, cassocks turned up, surplices over
heads, and the Blessed Sacrament put back in all haste, under a porch.
The dull roll of the wheels over the wooden bridge told the poor Nabob,
motionless and silent in a corner of his carriage, that they were almost
there. “At last!” he said, looking through the clouded windows at the
foaming waters of the Rhone, whose tempestuous rush seemed calm after
what he had just suffered. But at the end of the bridge, when the first
carriage reached the great triumphal arch, rockets went off, drums beat,
saluting the monarch as he entered the estates of his faithful subject.
To crown the irony, in the gathering darkness a gigantic flare of gas
suddenly illuminated the roof of the castle, and in spite of the wind
and the rain, these fiery letters could still be seen very plainly,
“Long liv’ th’ B’Y ‘HMED!”
“That--that is the wind-up,” said the poor Nabob, who could not help
laughing, though it was a very piteous and bitter laugh. But no, he was
mistaken. The end was the bouquet waiting at the castle door. Amy Ferat
came to present it, leaving the group of country maidens under the
veranda, where they were trying to shelter the shining silks of their
skirts and the embroidered velvets of their caps as they waited for
the first carriage. Her bunch of flowers in her hand, modest, her eyes
downcast, but showing a roguish leg, the pretty actress sprang forward
to the door in a low courtesy, almost on her knees, a pose she had
worked at for a week. Instead of the Bey, Jansoulet got out, stiff and
troubled, and passed without even seeing her. And as she stayed there,
bouquet in hand, with the silly look of a stage fairy who has missed her
cue, Cardailhac said to her with the ready chaff of the Parisian who
is never at a loss: “Take away your flowers, my dear. The Bey is not
coming. He had forgotten his handkerchief, and as it is only with that
he speaks to ladies, you understand--”
Now it is night. Everything is asleep at Saint-Romans after the
tremendous uproar of the day. Torrents of rain continue to fall; and in
the park, where the triumphal arches and the Venetian masts still lift
vaguely their soaking carcasses, one can hear streams rushing down the
slopes transformed into waterfalls. Everything streams or drips. A noise
of water, an immense noise of water. Alone in his sumptuous room, with
its lordly bed all hung with purple silks, the Nabob is still awake,
turning over his own black thoughts as he strides to and fro. It is not
the affront, that public outrage before all these people, that occupies
him, it is not even the gross insult the Bey had flung at him in the
presence of his mortal enemies. No, this southerner, whose sensations
were all physical and as rapid as the firing of new guns, had already
thrown off the venom of his rancour. And then, court favourites, by
famous examples, are always prepared for these sudden falls. What
terrifies him is that which he guesses to lie behind this affront.
He reflects that all his possessions are over there, firms,
counting-houses, ships, all at the mercy of the Bey, in that lawless
East, that country of the ruler’s good-pleasure. Pressing his burning
brow to the streaming windows, his body in a cold sweat, his hands icy,
he remains looking vaguely out into the night, as dark, as obscure as
his own future.
Suddenly a noise of footsteps, of precipitate knocks at the door.
“Who is there?”
“Sir,” said Noel, coming in half dressed, “it is a very urgent telegram
that has been sent from the post-office by special messenger.”
“A telegram! What can there be now?”
He takes the envelope and opens it with shaking fingers. The god, struck
twice already, begins to feel himself vulnerable, to know the fears,
the nervous weakness of other men. Quick--to the signature. MORA! Is
it possible? The duke--the duke to him! Yes, it is indeed--M-O-R-A.
And above it: “Popolasca is dead. Election coming in Corsica. You are
official candidate.”
Deputy! It was salvation. With that, nothing to fear. No one dares treat
a representative of the great French nation as a mere swindler. The
Hemerlingues were finely defeated.
“Oh, my duke, my noble duke!”
He was so full of emotion that he could not sign his name. Suddenly:
“Where is the man who brought this telegram?”
“Here, M. Jansoulet,” replied a jolly south-country voice from the
corridor.
He was lucky, that postman.
“Come in,” said the Nabob. And giving him the receipt, he took in a
heap from his pockets--ever full--as many gold pieces as his hands could
hold, and threw them into the cap of the poor fellow, who stuttered,
distracted and dazzled by the fortune showered upon him, in the night of
this fairy palace.