THE COUNTRY DOCTOR
By Honoré De Balzac
Translated by Ellen Marriage and Clara Bell
“For a wounded heart--shadow and silence.”
To my Mother
INTRODUCTION
In hardly any of his books, with the possible exception of _Eugénie
Grandet_, does Balzac seem to have taken a greater interest than in _Le
Médecin de Campagne_; and the fact of this interest, together with the
merit and intensity of the book in each case, is, let it be repeated, a
valid argument against those who would have it that there was something
essentially sinister both in his genius and his character.
_Le Médecin de Campagne_ was an early book; it was published in 1833, a
date of which there is an interesting mark in the selection of the name
“Evelina,” the name of Madame Hanska, whom Balzac had just met, for the
lost Jansenist love of Benassis; and it had been on the stocks for
a considerable time. It is also noteworthy, as lying almost entirely
outside the general scheme of the _Comedie Humaine_ as far as
personages go. Its chief characters in the remarkable, if not absolutely
impeccable, _répertoire_ of MM. Cerfberr and Christophe (they have,
a rare thing with them, missed Agathe the forsaken mistress) have no
references appended to their articles, except to the book itself; and
I cannot remember that any of the more generally pervading _dramatis
personæ_ of the Comedy makes even an incidental appearance here. The
book is as isolated as its scene and subject--I might have added, as
its own beauty, which is singular and unique, nor wholly easy to give a
critical account of. The transformation of the _cretin_-haunted desert
into a happy valley is in itself a commonplace of the preceding century;
it may be found several times over in Marmontel’s _Contes Moraux_, as
well as in other places. The extreme minuteness of detail, effective
as it is in the picture of the house and elsewhere, becomes a little
tedious even for well-tried and well-affected readers, in reference to
the exact number of cartwrights and harness-makers, and so forth; while
the modern reader pure and simple, though schooled to endure detail,
is schooled to endure it only of the ugly. The minor characters and
episodes, with the exception of the wonderful story or legend of
Napoleon by Private Goguelat, and the private himself, are neither of
the first interest, nor always carefully worked out: La Fosseuse, for
instance, is a very tantalizingly unfinished study, of which it is
nearly certain that Balzac must at some time or other have meant to make
much more than he has made; Genestas, excellent as far as he goes, is
not much more than a type; and there is nobody else in the foreground at
all except the Doctor himself.
It is, however, beyond all doubt in the very subordination of these
other characters to Benassis, and in the skilful grouping of the whole
as background and adjunct to him, that the appeal of the book as art
consists. From that point of view there are grounds for regarding it as
the finest of the author’s work in the simple style, the least indebted
to super-added ornament or to mere variety. The dangerous expedient of
a _recit_, of which the eighteenth-century novelists were so fond, has
never been employed with more successful effect than in the confession
of Benassis, at once the climax and the centre of the story. And
one thing which strikes us immediately about this confession is the
universality of its humanity and its strange freedom from merely
national limitations. To very few French novelists--to few even of those
who are generally credited with a much softer mould and a much purer
morality than Balzac is popularly supposed to have been able to
boast--would inconstancy to a mistress have seemed a fault which could
be reasonably punished, which could be even reasonably represented as
having been punished in fact, by the refusal of an honest girl’s love in
the first place. Nor would many have conceived as possible, or have
been able to represent in lifelike colors, the lifelong penance which
Benassis imposes on himself. The tragic end, indeed, is more in their
general way, but they would seldom have known how to lead up to it.
In almost all ways Balzac has saved himself from the dangers incident
to his plan in this book after a rather miraculous fashion. The Goguelat
myth may seem disconnected, and he did as a matter of fact once publish
it separately; yet it sets off (in the same sort of felicitous manner of
which Shakespeare’s clown-scenes and others are the capital examples
in literature) both the slightly matter-of-fact details of the
beatification of the valley and the various minute sketches of places
and folk, and the almost superhuman goodness of Benassis, and his
intensely and piteously human suffering and remorse. It is like the red
cloak in a group; it lights, warms, inspirits the whole picture.
And perhaps the most remarkable thing of all is the way in which Balzac
in this story, so full of goodness of feeling, of true religion (for if
Benassis is not an ostensible practiser of religious rites, he avows his
orthodoxy in theory, and more than justifies it in practice), has almost
entirely escaped the sentimentality _plus_ unorthodoxy of similar work
in the eighteenth century, and the sentimentality _plus_ orthodoxy of
similar work in the nineteenth. Benassis no doubt plays Providence in
a manner and with a success which it is rarely given to mortal man to
achieve; but we do not feel either the approach to sham, or the more
than approach to gush, with which similar handling on the part of
Dickens too often affects some of us. The sin and the punishment of the
Doctor, the thoroughly human figures of Genestas and the rest, save the
situation from this and other drawbacks. We are not in the Cockaigne of
perfectibility, where Marmontel and Godwin disport themselves; we are in
a very practical place, where time-bargains in barley are made, and
you pay the respectable, if not lavish board of ten francs per day for
entertainment to man and beast.
And yet, explain as we will, there will always remain something
inexplicable in the appeal of such a book as the _Médecin de Campagne_.
This helps, and that, and the other; we can see what change might have
damaged the effect, and what have endangered it altogether. We must, of
course, acknowledge that as it is there are _longueurs_, intrusion of
Saint Simonian jargon, passages of _galimatias_, and of preaching.
But of what in strictness produces the good effect we can only say one
thing, and that is, it was the genius of Balzac working as it listed and
as it knew how to work.
The book was originally published by Mme. Delaunay in September 1833
in two volumes and thirty-six chapters with headings. Next year it was
republished in four volumes by Werdet, and the last fifteen chapters
were thrown together into four. In 1836 it reappeared with dedication
and date, but with the divisions further reduced to seven; being those
which here appear, with the addition of two, “La Fosseuse” and “Propos
de Braves Gens” between “A Travers Champs” and “Le Napoleon du Peuple.”
These two were removed in 1839, when it was published in a single volume
by Charpentier. In all these issues the book was independent. It became
a “Scene de la Vie de Campagne” in 1846, and was then admitted into the
_Comedie_. The separate issues of Goguelat’s story referred to above
made their appearances first in _L’Europe Litteraire_ for June 19,
1833 (_before_ the book form), and then with the imprint of a sort of
syndicate of publishers in 1842.
George Saintsbury
CHAPTER I. THE COUNTRYSIDE AND THE MAN
On a lovely spring morning in the year 1829, a man of fifty or
thereabouts was wending his way on horseback along the mountain road
that leads to a large village near the Grande Chartreuse. This village
is the market town of a populous canton that lies within the limits of a
valley of some considerable length. The melting of the snows had filled
the boulder-strewn bed of the torrent (often dry) that flows through
this valley, which is closely shut in between two parallel mountain
barriers, above which the peaks of Savoy and of Dauphine tower on every
side.
All the scenery of the country that lies between the chain of the two
Mauriennes is very much alike; yet here in the district through which
the stranger was traveling there are soft undulations of the land, and
varying effects of light which might be sought for elsewhere in
vain. Sometimes the valley, suddenly widening, spreads out a soft
irregularly-shaped carpet of grass before the eyes; a meadow constantly
watered by the mountain streams that keep it fresh and green at all
seasons of the year. Sometimes a roughly-built sawmill appears in a
picturesque position, with its stacks of long pine trunks with the bark
peeled off, and its mill stream, brought from the bed of the torrent in
great square wooden pipes, with masses of dripping filament issuing
from every crack. Little cottages, scattered here and there, with their
gardens full of blossoming fruit trees, call up the ideas that are
aroused by the sight of industrious poverty; while the thought of ease,
secured after long years of toil, is suggested by some larger houses
farther on, with their red roofs of flat round tiles, shaped like the
scales of a fish. There is no door, moreover, that does not duly exhibit
a basket in which the cheeses are hung up to dry. Every roadside and
every croft is adorned with vines; which here, as in Italy, they train
to grow about dwarf elm trees, whose leaves are stripped off to feed the
cattle.
Nature, in her caprice, has brought the sloping hills on either side
so near together in some places, that there is no room for fields, or
buildings, or peasants’ huts. Nothing lies between them but the torrent,
roaring over its waterfalls between two lofty walls of granite that rise
above it, their sides covered with the leafage of tall beeches and
dark fir trees to the height of a hundred feet. The trees, with their
different kinds of foliage, rise up straight and tall, fantastically
colored by patches of lichen, forming magnificent colonnades, with a
line of straggling hedgerow of guelder rose, briar rose, box and arbutus
above and below the roadway at their feet. The subtle perfume of this
undergrowth was mingled just then with scents from the wild mountain
region and with the aromatic fragrance of young larch shoots, budding
poplars, and resinous pines.
Here and there a wreath of mist about the heights sometimes hid and
sometimes gave glimpses of the gray crags, that seemed as dim and vague
as the soft flecks of cloud dispersed among them. The whole face of the
country changed every moment with the changing light in the sky; the
hues of the mountains, the soft shades of their lower slopes, the very
shape of the valleys seemed to vary continually. A ray of sunlight
through the tree-stems, a clear space made by nature in the woods, or a
landslip here and there, coming as a surprise to make a contrast in the
foreground, made up an endless series of pictures delightful to see amid
the silence, at the time of year when all things grow young, and when
the sun fills a cloudless heaven with a blaze of light. In short, it was
a fair land--it was the land of France!
The traveler was a tall man, dressed from head to foot in a suit of blue
cloth, which must have been brushed just as carefully every morning
as the glossy coat of his horse. He held himself firm and erect in the
saddle like an old cavalry officer. Even if his black cravat and doeskin
gloves, the pistols that filled his holsters, and the valise securely
fastened to the crupper behind him had not combined to mark him out as a
soldier, the air of unconcern that sat on his face, his regular features
(scarred though they were with the smallpox), his determined manner,
self-reliant expression, and the way he held his head, all revealed
the habits acquired through military discipline, of which a soldier can
never quite divest himself, even after he has retired from service into
private life.
Any other traveler would have been filled with wonder at the loveliness
of this Alpine region, which grows so bright and smiling as it becomes
merged in the great valley systems of southern France; but the officer,
who no doubt had previously traversed a country across which the French
armies had been drafted in the course of Napoleon’s wars, enjoyed the
view before him without appearing to be surprised by the many changes
that swept across it. It would seem that Napoleon has extinguished in
his soldiers the sensation of wonder; for an impassive face is a sure
token by which you may know the men who served erewhile under the
short-lived yet deathless Eagles of the great Emperor. The traveler was,
in fact, one of those soldiers (seldom met with nowadays) whom shot
and shell have respected, although they have borne their part on every
battlefield where Napoleon commanded.
There had been nothing unusual in his life. He had fought valiantly in
the ranks as a simple and loyal soldier, doing his duty as faithfully
by night as by day, and whether in or out of his officer’s sight. He had
never dealt a sabre stroke in vain, and was incapable of giving one
too many. If he wore at his buttonhole the rosette of an officer of the
Legion of Honor, it was because the unanimous voice of his regiment had
singled him out as the man who best deserved to receive it after the
battle of Borodino.
He belonged to that small minority of undemonstrative retiring natures,
who are always at peace with themselves, and who are conscious of a
feeling of humiliation at the mere thought of making a request, no
matter what its nature may be. So promotion had come to him tardily, and
by virtue of the slowly-working laws of seniority. He had been made
a sub-lieutenant in 1802, but it was not until 1829 that he became a
major, in spite of the grayness of his moustaches. His life had been so
blameless that no man in the army, not even the general himself, could
approach him without an involuntary feeling of respect. It is possible
that he was not forgiven for this indisputable superiority by those who
ranked above him; but, on the other hand, there was not one of his men
that did not feel for him something of the affection of children for a
good mother. For them he knew how to be at once indulgent and severe. He
himself had also once served in the ranks, and knew the sorry joys and
gaily-endured hardships of the soldier’s lot. He knew the errors that
may be passed over and the faults that must be punished in his men--“his
children,” as he always called them--and when on campaign he readily
gave them leave to forage for provision for man and horse among the
wealthier classes.
His own personal history lay buried beneath the deepest reserve. Like
almost every military man in Europe, he had only seen the world through
cannon smoke, or in the brief intervals of peace that occurred so seldom
during the Emperor’s continual wars with the rest of Europe. Had he
or had he not thought of marriage? The question remained unsettled.
Although no one doubted that Commandant Genestas had made conquests
during his sojourn in town after town and country after country where
he had taken part in the festivities given and received by the officers,
yet no one knew this for a certainty. There was no prudery about him;
he would not decline to join a pleasure party; he in no way offended
against military standards; but when questioned as to his affairs of
the heart, he either kept silence or answered with a jest. To the words,
“How are you, commandant?” addressed to him by an officer over the wine,
his reply was, “Pass the bottle, gentlemen.”
M. Pierre Joseph Genestas was an unostentatious kind of Bayard. There
was nothing romantic nor picturesque about him--he was too thoroughly
commonplace. His ways of living were those of a well-to-do man. Although
he had nothing beside his pay, and his pension was all that he had to
look to in the future, the major always kept two years’ pay untouched,
and never spent his allowances, like some shrewd old men of business
with whom cautious prudence has almost become a mania. He was so little
of a gambler that if, when in company, some one was wanted to cut in
or to take a bet at ecarte, he usually fixed his eyes on his boots; but
though he did not allow himself any extravagances, he conformed in every
way to custom.
His uniforms lasted longer than those of any other officer in his
regiment, as a consequence of the sedulously careful habits that
somewhat straitened means had so instilled into him, that they had come
to be like a second nature. Perhaps he might have been suspected
of meannesss if it had not been for the fact that with wonderful
disinterestedness and all a comrade’s readiness, his purse would be
opened for some harebrained boy who had ruined himself at cards or by
some other folly. He did a service of this kind with such thoughtful
tact, that it seemed as though he himself had at one time lost heavy
sums at play; he never considered that he had any right to control the
actions of his debtor; he never made mention of the loan. He was the
child of his company; he was alone in the world, so he had adopted the
army for his fatherland, and the regiment for his family. Very rarely,
therefore, did any one seek the motives underlying his praiseworthy turn
for thrift; for it pleased others, for the most part, to set it down to
a not unnatural wish to increase the amount of the savings that were
to render his old age comfortable. Till the eve of his promotion to the
rank of lieutenant-colonel of cavalry it was fair to suppose that it was
his ambition to retire in the course of some campaign with a colonel’s
epaulettes and pension.
If Genestas’ name came up when the officers gossiped after drill,
they were wont to classify him among the men who begin with taking the
good-conduct prize at school, and who, throughout the term of
their natural lives, continue to be punctilious, conscientious, and
passionless--as good as white bread, and just as insipid. Thoughtful
minds, however, regarded him very differently. Not seldom it would
happen that a glance, or an expression as full of significance as the
utterance of a savage, would drop from him and bear witness to past
storms in his soul; and a careful study of his placid brow revealed a
power of stifling down and repressing his passions into inner depths,
that had been dearly bought by a lengthy acquaintance with the perils
and disastrous hazards of war. An officer who had only just joined the
regiment, the son of a peer of France, had said one day of Genestas,
that he would have made one of the most conscientious of priests, or the
most upright of tradesmen.
“Add, the least of a courtier among marquises,” put in Genestas,
scanning the young puppy, who did not know that his commandant could
overhear him.
There was a burst of laughter at the words, for the lieutenant’s father
cringed to all the powers that be; he was a man of supple intellect,
accustomed to jump with every change of government, and his son took
after him.
Men like Genestas are met with now and again in the French army; natures
that show themselves to be wholly great at need, and relapse into their
ordinary simplicity when the action is over; men that are little mindful
of fame and reputation, and utterly forgetful of danger. Perhaps there
are many more of them than the shortcomings of our own characters
will allow us to imagine. Yet, for all that, any one who believed that
Genestas was perfect would be strangely deceiving himself. The major was
suspicious, given to violent outbursts of anger, and apt to be tiresome
in argument; he was full of national prejudices, and above all things,
would insist that he was in the right, when he was, as a matter of fact,
in the wrong. He retained the liking for good wine that he had acquired
in the ranks. If he rose from a banquet with all the gravity befitting
his position, he seemed serious and pensive, and had no mind at such
times to admit any one into his confidence.
Finally, although he was sufficiently acquainted with the customs
of society and with the laws of politeness, to which he conformed as
rigidly as if they had been military regulations; though he had real
mental power, both natural and acquired; and although he had mastered
the art of handling men, the science of tactics, the theory of sabre
play, and the mysteries of the farrier’s craft, his learning had been
prodigiously neglected. He knew in a hazy kind of way that Caesar was a
Roman Consul, or an Emperor, and that Alexander was either a Greek or
a Macedonian; he would have conceded either quality or origin in both
cases without discussion. If the conversation turned on science or
history, he was wont to become thoughtful, and to confine his share in
it to little approving nods, like a man who by dint of profound thought
has arrived at scepticism.
When, at Schonbrunn, on May 13, 1809, Napoleon wrote the bulletin
addressed to the Grand Army, then the masters of Vienna, in which he
said that _like Medea, the Austrian princes had slain their children
with their own hands_; Genestas, who had been recently made a captain,
did not wish to compromise his newly conferred dignity by asking who
Medea was; he relied upon Napoleon’s character, and felt quite sure that
the Emperor was incapable of making any announcement not in proper form
to the Grand Army and the House of Austria. So he thought that Medea
was some archduchess whose conduct was open to criticism. Still, as the
matter might have some bearing on the art of war, he felt uneasy about
the Medea of the bulletin until a day arrived when Mlle. Raucourt
revived the tragedy of Medea. The captain saw the placard, and did
not fail to repair to the Theatre Francais that evening, to see the
celebrated actress in her mythological role, concerning which he gained
some information from his neighbors.
A man, however, who as a private soldier had possessed sufficient
force of character to learn to read, write, and cipher, could clearly
understand that as a captain he ought to continue his education. So from
this time forth he read new books and romances with avidity, in this way
gaining a half-knowledge, of which he made a very fair use. He went
so far in his gratitude to his teachers as to undertake the defence of
Pigault-Lebrun, remarking that in his opinion he was instructive and not
seldom profound.
This officer, whose acquired practical wisdom did not allow him to make
any journey in vain, had just come from Grenoble, and was on his way to
the Grande Chartreuse, after obtaining on the previous evening a week’s
leave of absence from his colonel. He had not expected that the journey
would be a long one; but when, league after league, he had been misled
as to the distance by the lying statements of the peasants, he thought
it would be prudent not to venture any farther without fortifying the
inner man. Small as were his chances of finding any housewife in her
dwelling at a time when every one was hard at work in the fields, he
stopped before a little cluster of cottages that stood about a piece of
land common to all of them, more or less describing a square, which was
open to all comers.
The surface of the soil thus held in conjoint ownership was hard and
carefully swept, but intersected by open drains. Roses, ivy, and tall
grasses grew over the cracked and disjointed walls. Some rags were
drying on a miserable currant bush that stood at the entrance of the
square. A pig wallowing in a heap of straw was the first inhabitant
encountered by Genestas. At the sound of horse hoofs the creature
grunted, raised its head, and put a great black cat to flight. A young
peasant girl, who was carrying a bundle of grass on her head, suddenly
appeared, followed at a distance by four little brats, clad in rags, it
is true, but vigorous, sunburned, picturesque, bold-eyed, and riotous;
thorough little imps, looking like angels. The sun shone down with an
indescribable purifying influence upon the air, the wretched cottages,
the heaps of refuse, and the unkempt little crew.
The soldier asked whether it was possible to obtain a cup of milk. All
the answer the girl made him was a hoarse cry. An old woman suddenly
appeared on the threshold of one of the cabins, and the young peasant
girl passed on into a cowshed, with a gesture that pointed out the
aforesaid old woman, towards whom Genestas went; taking care at the
same time to keep a tight hold on his horse, lest the children who were
already running about under his hoofs should be hurt. He repeated his
request, with which the housewife flatly refused to comply. She would
not, she said, disturb the cream on the pans full of milk from
which butter was to be made. The officer overcame this objection by
undertaking to repay her amply for the wasted cream, and then tied up
his horse at the door, and went inside the cottage.
The four children belonging to the woman all appeared to be of the same
age--an odd circumstance which struck the commandant. A fifth clung
about her skirts; a weak, pale, sickly-looking child, who doubtless
needed more care than the others, and who on that account was the best
beloved, the Benjamin of the family.
Genestas seated himself in a corner by the fireless hearth. A sublime
symbol met his eyes on the high mantel-shelf above him--a colored
plaster cast of the Virgin with the Child Jesus in her arms. Bare earth
made the flooring of the cottage. It had been beaten level in the first
instance, but in course of time it had grown rough and uneven, so that
though it was clean, its ruggedness was not unlike that of the magnified
rind of an orange. A sabot filled with salt, a frying-pan, and a
large kettle hung inside the chimney. The farther end of the room was
completely filled by a four-post bedstead, with a scalloped valance
for decoration. The walls were black; there was an opening to admit the
light above the worm-eaten door; and here and there were a few stools
consisting of rough blocks of beech-wood, each set upon three wooden
legs; a hutch for bread, a large wooden dipper, a bucket and some
earthen milk-pans, a spinning-wheel on the top of the bread-hutch, and
a few wicker mats for draining cheeses. Such were the ornaments and
household furniture of the wretched dwelling.
The officer, who had been absorbed in flicking his riding-whip against
the floor, presently became a witness to a piece of by-play, all
unsuspicious though he was that any drama was about to unfold itself.
No sooner had the old woman, followed by her scald-headed Benjamin,
disappeared through a door that led into her dairy, than the four
children, after having stared at the soldier as long as they wished,
drove away the pig by way of a beginning. This animal, their accustomed
playmate, having come as far as the threshold, the little brats made
such an energetic attack upon him, that he was forced to beat a hasty
retreat. When the enemy had been driven without, the children besieged
the latch of a door that gave way before their united efforts, and
slipped out of the worn staple that held it; and finally they bolted
into a kind of fruit-loft, where they very soon fell to munching the
dried plums, to the amusement of the commandant, who watched this
spectacle. The old woman, with the face like parchment and the dirty
ragged clothing, came back at this moment, with a jug of milk for her
visitor in her hand.
“Oh! you good-for-nothings!” cried she.
She ran to the children, clutched an arm of each child, bundled them
into the room, and carefully closed the door of her storeroom of plenty.
But she did not take their prunes away from them.
“Now, then, be good, my pets! If one did not look after them,” she went
on, looking at Genestas, “they would eat up the whole lot of prunes, the
madcaps!”
Then she seated herself on a three-legged stool, drew the little
weakling between her knees, and began to comb and wash his head with a
woman’s skill and with motherly assiduity. The four small thieves
hung about. Some of them stood, others leant against the bed or the
bread-hutch. They gnawed their prunes without saying a word, but they
kept their sly and mischievous eyes fixed upon the stranger. In spite
of grimy countenances and noses that stood in need of wiping, they all
looked strong and healthy.
“Are they your children?” the soldier asked the old woman.
“Asking your pardon, sir, they are charity children. They give me three
francs a month and a pound’s weight of soap for each of them.”
“But it must cost you twice as much as that to keep them, good woman?”
“That is just what M. Benassis tells me, sir; but if other folk will
board the children for the same money, one has to make it do. Nobody
wants the children, but for all that there is a good deal of performance
to go through before they will let us have them. When the milk we give
them comes to nothing, they cost us scarcely anything. Besides that,
three francs is a great deal, sir; there are fifteen francs coming in,
to say nothing of the five pounds’ weight of soap. In our part of the
world you would simply have to wear your life out before you would make
ten sous a day.”
“Then you have some land of your own?” asked the commandant.
“No, sir. I had some land once when my husband was alive; since he died
I have done so badly that I had to sell it.”
“Why, how do you reach the year’s end without debts?” Genestas went on,
“when you bring up children for a livelihood and wash and feed them on
two sous a day?”
“Well, we never go to St. Sylvester’s Day without debt, sir,” she went
on without ceasing to comb the child’s hair. “But so it is--Providence
helps us out. I have a couple of cows. Then my daughter and I do some
gleaning at harvest-time, and in winter we pick up firewood. Then at
night we spin. Ah! we never want to see another winter like this last
one, that is certain! I owe the miller seventy-five francs for flour.
Luckily he is M. Benassis’ miller. M. Benassis, ah! he is a friend to
poor people. He has never asked for his due from anybody, and he will
not begin with us. Besides, our cow has a calf, and that will set us a
bit straighter.”
The four orphans for whom the old woman’s affection represented
all human guardianship had come to an end of their prunes. As their
foster-mother’s attention was taken up by the officer with whom she was
chatting, they seized the opportunity, and banded themselves together in
a compact file, so as to make yet another assault upon the latch of the
door that stood between them and the tempting heap of dried plums. They
advanced to the attack, not like French soldiers, but as stealthily as
Germans, impelled by frank animal greediness.
“Oh! you little rogues! Do you want to finish them up?”
The old woman rose, caught the strongest of the four, administered a
gentle slap on the back, and flung him out of the house. Not a tear did
he shed, but the others remained breathless with astonishment.
“They give you a lot of trouble----”
“Oh! no, sir, but they can smell the prunes, the little dears. If I were
to leave them alone here for a moment, they would stuff themselves with
them.”
“You are very fond of them?”
The old woman raised her head at this, and looked at him with gentle
malice in her eyes.
“Fond of them!” she said. “I have had to part with three of them
already. I only have the care of them until they are six years old,” she
went on with a sigh.
“But where are your own children?”
“I have lost them.”
“How old are you?” Genestas asked, to efface the impression left by his
last question.
“I am thirty-eight years old, sir. It will be two years come next St.
John’s Day since my husband died.”
She finished dressing the poor sickly mite, who seemed to thank her by a
loving look in his faded eyes.
“What a life of toil and self-denial!” thought the cavalry officer.
Beneath a roof worthy of the stable wherein Jesus Christ was born,
the hardest duties of motherhood were fulfilled cheerfully and without
consciousness of merit. What hearts were these that lay so deeply buried
in neglect and obscurity! What wealth, and what poverty! Soldiers,
better than other men, can appreciate the element of grandeur to be
found in heroism in sabots, in the Evangel clad in rags. The Book may be
found elsewhere, adorned, embellished, tricked out in silk and satin
and brocade, but here, of a surety, dwelt the spirit of the Book. It was
impossible to doubt that Heaven had some holy purpose underlying it all,
at the sight of the woman who had taken a mother’s lot upon herself, as
Jesus Christ had taken the form of a man, who gleaned and suffered and
ran into debt for her little waifs; a woman who defrauded herself in
her reckonings, and would not own that she was ruining herself that she
might be a Mother. One was constrained to admit, at the sight of her,
that the good upon earth have something in common with the angels in
heaven; Commandant Genestas shook his head as he looked at her.
“Is M. Benassis a clever doctor?” he asked at last.
“I do not know, sir, but he cures poor people for nothing.”
“It seems to me that this is a man and no mistake!” he went on, speaking
to himself.
“Oh! yes, sir, and a good man too! There is scarcely any one hereabouts
that does not put his name in their prayers, morning and night!”
“That is for you, mother,” said the soldier, as he gave her several
coins, “and that is for the children,” he went on, as he added another
crown. “Is M. Benassis’ house still a long way off?” he asked, when he
had mounted his horse.
“Oh! no, sir, a bare league at most.”
The commandant set out, fully persuaded that two leagues remained ahead
of him. Yet after all he soon caught a glimpse through the trees of the
little town’s first cluster of houses, and then of all the roofs that
crowded about a conical steeple, whose slates were secured to the angles
of the wooden framework by sheets of tin that glittered in the sun. This
sort of roof, which has a peculiar appearance, denotes the nearness of
the borders of Savoy, where it is very common. The valley is wide at
this particular point, and a fair number of houses pleasantly situated,
either in the little plain or along the side of the mountain stream,
lend human interest to the well-tilled spot, a stronghold with no
apparent outlet among the mountains that surround it.
It was noon when Genestas reined in his horse beneath an avenue of
elm-trees half-way up the hillside, and only a few paces from the town,
to ask the group of children who stood before him for M. Benassis’
house. At first the children looked at each other, then they scrutinized
the stranger with the expression that they usually wear when they set
eyes upon anything for the first time; a different curiosity and
a different thought in every little face. Then the boldest and the
merriest of the band, a little bright-eyed urchin, with bare, muddy
feet, repeated his words over again, in child fashion.
“M. Benassis’ house, sir?” adding, “I will show you the way there.”
He walked along in front of the horse, prompted quite as much by a wish
to gain a kind of importance by being in the stranger’s company, as by
a child’s love of being useful, or the imperative craving to be doing
something, that possesses mind and body at his age. The officer followed
him for the entire length of the principal street of the country town.
The way was paved with cobblestones, and wound in and out among the
houses, which their owners had erected along its course in the most
arbitrary fashion. In one place a bake-house had been built out into
the middle of the roadway; in another a gable protruded, partially
obstructing the passage, and yet farther on a mountain stream flowed
across it in a runnel. Genestas noticed a fair number of roofs of tarred
shingle, but yet more of them were thatched; a few were tiled, and
some seven or eight (belonging no doubt to the cure, the justice of the
peace, and some of the wealthier townsmen) were covered with slates.
There was a total absence of regard for appearances befitting a village
at the end of the world, which had nothing beyond it, and no connection
with any other place. The people who lived in it seemed to belong to one
family that dwelt beyond the limits of the bustling world, with which
the collector of taxes and a few ties of the very slenderest alone
served to connect them.
When Genestas had gone a step or two farther, he saw on the mountain
side a broad road that rose above the village. Clearly there must be an
old town and a new town; and, indeed, when the commandant reached a
spot where he could slacken the pace of his horse, he could easily see
between the houses some well-built dwellings whose new roofs brightened
the old-fashioned village. An avenue of trees rose above these new
houses, and from among them came the confused sounds of several
industries. He heard the songs peculiar to busy toilers, a murmur of
many workshops, the rasping of files, and the sound of falling hammers.
He saw the thin lines of smoke from the chimneys of each household, and
the more copious outpourings from the forges of the van-builder, the
blacksmith, and the farrier. At length, at the very end of the village
towards which his guide was taking him, Genestas beheld scattered farms
and well-tilled fields and plantations of trees in thorough order. It
might have been a little corner of Brie, so hidden away in a great fold
of the land, that at first sight its existence would not be suspected
between the little town and the mountains that closed the country round.
Presently the child stopped.
“There is the door of _his_ house,” he remarked.
The officer dismounted and passed his arm through the bridle. Then,
thinking that the laborer is worthy of his hire, he drew a few sous
from his waistcoat pocket, and held them out to the child, who looked
astonished at this, opened his eyes very wide, and stayed on, without
thanking him, to watch what the stranger would do next.
“Civilization has not made much headway hereabouts,” thought Genestas;
“the religion of work is in full force, and begging has not yet come
thus far.”
His guide, more from curiosity than from any interested motive, propped
himself against the wall that rose to the height of a man’s elbow. Upon
this wall, which enclosed the yard belonging to the house, there ran a
black wooden railing on either side of the square pillars of the gates.
The lower part of the gates themselves was of solid wood that had been
painted gray at some period in the past; the upper part consisted of
a grating of yellowish spear-shaped bars. These decorations, which had
lost all their color, gradually rose on either half of the gates till
they reached the centre where they met; their spikes forming, when
both leaves were shut, an outline similar to that of a pine-cone. The
worm-eaten gates themselves, with their patches of velvet lichen, were
almost destroyed by the alternate action of sun and rain. A few aloe
plants and some chance-sown pellitory grew on the tops of the square
pillars of the gates, which all but concealed the stems of a couple of
thornless acacias that raised their tufted spikes, like a pair of green
powder-puffs, in the yard.
The condition of the gateway revealed a certain carelessness of its
owner which did not seem to suit the officer’s turn of mind. He knitted
his brows like a man who is obliged to relinquish some illusion. We
usually judge others by our own standard; and although we indulgently
forgive our own shortcomings in them, we condemn them harshly for the
lack of our special virtues. If the commandant had expected M. Benassis
to be a methodical or practical man, there were unmistakable indications
of absolute indifference as to his material concerns in the state of
the gates of his house. A soldier possessed by Genestas’ passion for
domestic economy could not help at once drawing inferences as to the
life and character of its owner from the gateway before him; and this,
in spite of his habits of circumspection, he in nowise failed to do. The
gates were left ajar, moreover--another piece of carelessness!
Encouraged by this countrified trust in all comers, the officer entered
the yard without ceremony, and tethered his horse to the bars of the
gate. While he was knotting the bridle, a neighing sound from the stable
caused both horse and rider to turn their eyes involuntarily in that
direction. The door opened, and an old servant put out his head. He wore
a red woolen bonnet, exactly like the Phrygian cap in which Liberty is
tricked out, a piece of head-gear in common use in this country.
As there was room for several horses, this worthy individual, after
inquiring whether Genestas had come to see M. Benassis, offered the
hospitality of the stable to the newly-arrived steed, a very fine
animal, at which he looked with an expression of admiring affection. The
commandant followed his horse to see how things were to go with it. The
stable was clean, there was plenty of litter, and there was the same
peculiar air of sleek content about M. Benassis’ pair of horses that
distinguished the cure’s horse from all the rest of his tribe. A
maid-servant from within the house came out upon the flight of steps and
waited. She appeared to be the proper authority to whom the stranger’s
inquiries were to be addressed, although the stableman had already told
him that M. Benassis was not at home.
“The master has gone to the flour-mill,” said he. “If you like to
overtake him, you have only to go along the path that leads to the
meadow; and the mill is at the end of it.”
Genestas preferred seeing the country to waiting about indefinitely
for Benassis’ return, so he set out along the way that led to the
flour-mill. When he had gone beyond the irregular line traced by the
town upon the hillside, he came in sight of the mill and the valley, and
of one of the loveliest landscapes that he had ever seen.
The mountains bar the course of the river, which forms a little lake at
their feet, and raise their crests above it, tier on tier. Their many
valleys are revealed by the changing hues of the light, or by the more
or less clear outlines of the mountain ridges fledged with their dark
forests of pines. The mill had not long been built. It stood just where
the mountain stream fell into the little lake. There was all the charm
about it peculiar to a lonely house surrounded by water and hidden away
behind the heads of a few trees that love to grow by the water-side. On
the farther bank of the river, at the foot of a mountain, with a faint
red glow of sunset upon its highest crest, Genestas caught a glimpse
of a dozen deserted cottages. All the windows and doors had been taken
away, and sufficiently large holes were conspicuous in the dilapidated
roofs, but the surrounding land was laid out in fields that were highly
cultivated, and the old garden spaces had been turned into meadows,
watered by a system of irrigation as artfully contrived as that in use
in Limousin. Unconsciously the commandant paused to look at the ruins of
the village before him.
How is it that men can never behold any ruins, even of the humblest
kind, without feeling deeply stirred? Doubtless it is because they seem
to be a typical representation of evil fortune whose weight is felt so
differently by different natures. The thought of death is called up by
a churchyard, but a deserted village puts us in mind of the sorrows of
life; death is but one misfortune always foreseen, but the sorrows of
life are infinite. Does not the thought of the infinite underlie all
great melancholy?
The officer reached the stony path by the mill-pond before he could
hit upon an explanation of this deserted village. The miller’s lad was
sitting on some sacks of corn near the door of the house. Genestas asked
for M. Benassis.
“M. Benassis went over there,” said the miller, pointing out one of the
ruined cottages.
“Has the village been burned down?” asked the commandant.
“No, sir.”
“Then how did it come to be in this state?” inquired Genestas.
“Ah! how?” the miller answered, as he shrugged his shoulders and went
indoors; “M. Benassis will tell you that.”
The officer went over a rough sort of bridge built up of boulders taken
from the torrent bed, and soon reached the house that had been pointed
out to him. The thatched roof of the dwelling was still entire; it was
covered with moss indeed, but there were no holes in it, and the door
and its fastenings seemed to be in good repair. Genestas saw a fire on
the hearth as he entered, an old woman kneeling in the chimney-corner
before a sick man seated in a chair, and another man, who was standing
with his face turned toward the fireplace. The house consisted of a
single room, which was lighted by a wretched window covered with
linen cloth. The floor was of beaten earth; the chair, a table, and a
truckle-bed comprised the whole of the furniture. The commandant had
never seen anything so poor and bare, not even in Russia, where the
moujik’s huts are like the dens of wild beasts. Nothing within it
spoke of ordinary life; there were not even the simplest appliances
for cooking food of the commonest description. It might have been
a dog-kennel without a drinking-pan. But for the truckle-bed, a
smock-frock hanging from a nail, and some sabots filled with straw,
which composed the invalid’s entire wardrobe, this cottage would have
looked as empty as the others. The aged peasant woman upon her knees
was devoting all her attention to keeping the sufferer’s feet in a tub
filled with a brown liquid. Hearing a footstep and the clank of spurs,
which sounded strangely in ears accustomed to the plodding pace of
country folk, the man turned to Genestas. A sort of surprise, in which
the old woman shared was visible in his face.
“There is no need to ask if you are M. Benassis,” said the soldier. “You
will pardon me, sir, if, as a stranger impatient to see you, I have come
to seek you on your field of battle, instead of awaiting you at your
house. Pray do not disturb yourself; go on with what you are doing. When
it is over, I will tell you the purpose of my visit.”
Genestas half seated himself upon the edge of the table, and remained
silent. The firelight shone more brightly in the room than the faint
rays of the sun, for the mountain crests intercepted them, so that they
seldom reached this corner of the valley. A few branches of resinous
pinewood made a bright blaze, and it was by the light of this fire
that the soldier saw the face of the man towards whom he was drawn by
a secret motive, by a wish to seek him out, to study and to know him
thoroughly well. M. Benassis, the local doctor, heard Genestas with
indifference, and with folded arms he returned his bow, and went back to
his patient, quite unaware that he was being subjected to a scrutiny as
earnest as that which the soldier turned upon him.
Benassis was a man of ordinary height, broad-shouldered and
deep-chested. A capacious green overcoat, buttoned up to the chin,
prevented the officer from observing any characteristic details of his
personal appearance; but his dark and motionless figure served as a
strong relief to his face, which caught the bright light of the blazing
fire. The face was not unlike that of a satyr; there was the same
slightly protruding forehead, full, in this case, of prominences,
all more or less denoting character; the same turned-up nose, with a
sprightly cleavage at the tip; the same high cheek-bones. The lines of
the mouth were crooked; the lips, thick and red. The chin turned sharply
upwards. There was an alert, animated look in the brown eyes, to which
their pearly whites gave great brightness, and which expressed passions
now subdued. His iron-gray hair, the deep wrinkles in his face,
the bushy eyebrows that had grown white already, the veins on his
protuberant nose, the tanned face covered with red blotches, everything
about him, in short, indicated a man of fifty and the hard work of his
profession. The officer could come to no conclusion as to the capacity
of the head, which was covered by a close cap; but hidden though it was,
it seemed to him to be one of the square-shaped kind that gave rise
to the expression “square-headed.” Genestas was accustomed to read the
indications that mark the features of men destined to do great things,
since he had been brought into close relations with the energetic
natures sought out by Napoleon; so he suspected that there must be some
mystery in this life of obscurity, and said to himself as he looked at
the remarkable face before him:
“How comes it that he is still a country doctor?”
When he had made a careful study of this countenance, that, in spite of
its resemblance to other human faces, revealed an inner life nowise
in harmony with a commonplace exterior, he could not help sharing
the doctor’s interest in his patient; and the sight of that patient
completely changed the current of his thoughts.
Much as the old cavalry officer had seen in the course of his soldier’s
career, he felt a thrill of surprise and horror at the sight of a human
face which could never have been lighted up with thought--a livid face
in which a look of dumb suffering showed so plainly--the same look that
is sometimes worn by a child too young to speak, and too weak to cry any
longer; in short, it was the wholly animal face of an old dying cretin.
The cretin was the one variety of the human species with which the
commandant had not yet come in contact. At the sight of the deep,
circular folds of skin on the forehead, the sodden, fish-like eyes, and
the head, with its short, coarse, scantily-growing hair--a head
utterly divested of all the faculties of the senses--who would not have
experienced, as Genestas did, an instinctive feeling of repulsion for a
being that had neither the physical beauty of an animal nor the mental
endowments of man, who was possessed of neither instinct nor reason, and
who had never heard nor spoken any kind of articulate speech? It seemed
difficult to expend any regrets over the poor wretch now visibly drawing
towards the very end of an existence which had not been life in any
sense of the word; yet the old woman watched him with touching anxiety,
and was rubbing his legs where the hot water did not reach them with as
much tenderness as if he had been her husband. Benassis himself, after
a close scrutiny of the dull eyes and corpse-like face, gently took the
cretin’s hand and felt his pulse.
“The bath is doing no good,” he said, shaking his head; “let us put him
to bed again.”
He lifted the inert mass himself, and carried him across to the
truckle-bed, from whence, no doubt, he had just taken him. Carefully he
laid him at full length, and straightened the limbs that were growing
cold already, putting the head and hand in position, with all the heed
that a mother could bestow upon her child.
“It is all over, death is very near,” added Benassis, who remained
standing by the bedside.
The old woman gazed at the dying form, with her hands on her hips. A few
tears stole down her cheeks. Genestas remained silent. He was unable to
explain to himself how it was that the death of a being that concerned
him so little should affect him so much. Unconsciously he shared the
feeling of boundless pity that these hapless creatures excite among the
dwellers in the sunless valleys wherein Nature has placed them. This
sentiment has degenerated into a kind of religious superstition in
families to which cretins belong; but does it not spring from the most
beautiful of Christian virtues--from charity, and from a belief in a
reward hereafter, that most effectual support of our social system,
and the one thought that enables us to endure our miseries? The hope of
inheriting eternal bliss helps the relations of these unhappy creatures
and all others round about them to exert on a large scale, and with
sublime devotion, a mother’s ceaseless protecting care over an apathetic
creature who does not understand it in the first instance, and who in
a little while forgets it all. Wonderful power of religion! that has
brought a blind beneficence to the aid of an equally blind misery.
Wherever cretins exist, there is a popular belief that the presence
of one of these creatures brings luck to a family--a superstition that
serves to sweeten lives which, in the midst of a town population,
would be condemned by a mistaken philanthropy to submit to the harsh
discipline of an asylum. In the higher end of the valley of Isere, where
cretins are very numerous, they lead an out-of-door life with the cattle
which they are taught to herd. There, at any rate, they are at large,
and receive the reverence due to misfortune.
A moment later the village bell clinked at slow regular intervals, to
acquaint the flock with the death of one of their number. In the sound
that reached the cottage but faintly across the intervening space, there
was a thought of religion which seemed to fill it with a melancholy
peace. The tread of many feet echoed up the road, giving notice of
an approaching crowd of people--a crowd that uttered not a word. Then
suddenly the chanting of the Church broke the stillness, calling up the
confused thoughts that take possession of the most sceptical minds, and
compel them to yield to the influence of the touching harmonies of the
human voice. The Church was coming to the aid of a creature that knew
her not. The cure appeared, preceded by a choir-boy, who bore the
crucifix, and followed by the sacristan carrying the vase of holy water,
and by some fifty women, old men, and children, who had all come to add
their prayers to those of the Church. The doctor and the soldier looked
at each other, and silently withdrew to a corner to make room for the
kneeling crowd within and without the cottage. During the consoling
ceremony of the Viaticum, celebrated for one who had never sinned, but
to whom the Church on earth was bidding a last farewell, there were
signs of real sorrow on most of the rough faces of the gathering, and
tears flowed over the rugged cheeks that sun and wind and labor in the
fields had tanned and wrinkled. The sentiment of voluntary kinship was
easy to explain. There was not one in the place who had not pitied the
unhappy creature, not one who would not have given him his daily bread.
Had he not met with a father’s care from every child, and found a mother
in the merriest little girl?
“He is dead!” said the cure.
The words struck his hearers with the most unfeigned dismay. The tall
candles were lighted, and several people undertook to watch with the
dead that night. Benassis and the soldier went out. A group of peasants
in the doorway stopped the doctor to say:
“Ah! if you have not saved his life, sir, it was doubtless because God
wished to take him to Himself.”
“I did my best, children,” the doctor answered.
When they had come a few paces from the deserted village, whose last
inhabitant had just died, the doctor spoke to Genestas.
“You would not believe, sir, what real solace is contained for me in
what those peasants have just said. Ten years ago I was very nearly
stoned to death in this village. It is empty to-day, but thirty families
lived in it then.”
Genestas’ face and gesture so plainly expressed an inquiry, that,
as they went along, the doctor told him the story promised by this
beginning.
“When I first settled here, sir, I found a dozen cretins in this part
of the canton,” and the doctor turned round to point out the ruined
cottages for the officer’s benefit. “All the favorable conditions for
spreading the hideous disease are there; the air is stagnant, the hamlet
lies in the valley bottom, close beside a torrent supplied with water
by the melted snows, and the sunlight only falls on the mountain-top,
so that the valley itself gets no good of the sun. Marriages among these
unfortunate creatures are not forbidden by law, and in this district
they are protected by superstitious notions, of whose power I had no
conception--superstitions which I blamed at first, and afterwards came
to admire. So cretinism was in a fair way to spread all over the valley
from this spot. Was it not doing the country a great service to put
a stop to this mental and physical contagion? But imperatively as the
salutary changes were required, they might cost the life of any man who
endeavored to bring them about. Here, as in other social spheres, if
any good is to be done, we come into collision not merely with
vested interests, but with something far more dangerous to meddle
with--religious ideas crystallized into superstitions, the most
permanent form taken by human thought. I feared nothing.
“In the first place, I sought for the position of mayor in the canton,
and in this I succeeded. Then, after obtaining a verbal sanction from
the prefect, and by paying down the money, I had several of these
unfortunate creatures transported over to Aiguebelle, in Savoy, by
night. There are a great many of them there, and they were certain to
be very kindly treated. When this act of humanity came to be known, the
whole countryside looked upon me as a monster. The cure preached against
me. In spite of all the pains I took to explain to all the shrewder
heads of the little place the immense importance of being rid of the
idiots, and in spite of the fact that I gave my services gratuitously to
the sick people of the district, a shot was fired at me from the corner
of a wood.
“I went to the Bishop of Grenoble and asked him to change the cure.
Monseigneur was good enough to allow me to choose a priest who would
share in my labors, and it was my happy fortune to meet with one of
those rare natures that seemed to have dropped down from heaven. Then
I went on with my enterprise. After preparing people’s minds, I made
another transportation by night, and six more cretins were taken away.
In this second attempt I had the support of several people to whom I had
rendered some service, and I was backed by the members of the Communal
Council, for I had appealed to their parsimonious instincts, showing
them how much it cost to support the poor wretches, and pointing out how
largely they might gain by converting their plots of ground (to which
the idiots had no proper title) into allotments which were needed in the
township.
“All the rich were on my side; but the poor, the old women, the
children, and a few pig-headed people were violently opposed to me.
Unluckily it so fell out that my last removal had not been completely
carried out. The cretin whom you have just seen, not having returned to
his house, had not been taken away, so that the next morning he was the
sole remaining example of his species in the village. There were several
families still living there; but though they were little better than
idiots, they were, at any rate, free from the taint of cretinism. I
determined to go through with my work, and came officially in open day
to take the luckless creature from his dwelling. I had no sooner left
my house than my intention got abroad. The cretin’s friends were there
before me, and in front of his hovel I found a crowd of women and
children and old people, who hailed my arrival with insults accompanied
by a shower of stones.
“In the midst of the uproar I should perhaps have fallen a victim to the
frenzy that possesses a crowd excited by its own outcries and stirred up
by one common feeling, but the cretin saved my life! The poor creature
came out of his hut, and raised the clucking sound of his voice. He
seemed to be an absolute ruler over the fanatical mob, for the sight
of him put a sudden stop to the clamor. It occurred to me that I might
arrange a compromise, and thanks to the quiet so opportunely restored, I
was able to propose and explain it. Of course, those who approved of my
schemes would not dare to second me in this emergency, their support
was sure to be of a purely passive kind, while these superstitious folk
would exert the most active vigilance to keep their last idol among
them; it was impossible, it seemed to me, to take him away from them.
So I promised to leave the cretin in peace in his dwelling, with
the understanding that he should live quite by himself, and that the
remaining families in the village should cross the stream and come to
live in the town, in some new houses which I myself undertook to build,
adding to each house a piece of ground for which the Commune was to
repay me later on.
“Well, my dear sir, it took me fully six months to overcome their
objection to this bargain, however much it may have been to the
advantage of the village families. The affection which they have
for their wretched hovels in country districts is something quite
unexplainable. No matter how unwholesome his hovel may be, a peasant
clings far more to it than a banker does to his mansion. The reason of
it? That I do not know. Perhaps thoughts and feelings are strongest
in those who have but few of them, simply because they have but few.
Perhaps material things count for much in the lives of those who live
so little in thought; certain it is that the less they have, the dearer
their possessions are to them. Perhaps, too, it is with the peasant
as with the prisoner--he does not squander the powers of his soul, he
centres them all upon a single idea, and this is how his feelings come
to be so exceedingly strong. Pardon these reflections on the part of a
man who seldom exchanges ideas with any one. But, indeed, you must
not suppose, sir, that I am much taken up with these far-fetched
considerations. We all have to be active and practical here.
“Alas! the fewer ideas these poor folk have in their heads, the harder
it is to make them see where their real interests lie. There was nothing
for it but to give my whole attention to every trifling detail of my
enterprise. One and all made me the same answer, one of those sayings,
filled with homely sense, to which there is no possible reply, ‘But your
houses are not yet built, sir!’ they used to say. ‘Very good,’ said I,
‘promise me that as soon as they are finished you will come and live in
them.’
“Luckily, sir, I obtained a decision to the effect that the whole of
the mountain side above the now deserted village was the property of the
township. The sum of money brought in by the woods on the higher slopes
paid for the building of the new houses and for the land on which they
stood. They were built forthwith; and when once one of my refractory
families was fairly settled in, the rest of them were not slow to
follow. The benefits of the change were so evident that even the most
bigoted believer in the village, which you might call soulless as well
as sunless, could not but appreciate them. The final decision in this
matter, which gave some property to the Commune, in the possession of
which we were confirmed by the Council of State, made me a person of
great importance in the canton. But what a lot of worry there was over
it!” the doctor remarked, stopping short, and raising a hand which he
let fall again--a gesture that spoke volumes. “No one knows, as I do,
the distance between the town and the Prefecture--whence nothing comes
out--and from the Prefecture to the Council of State--where nothing can
be got in.
“Well, after all,” he resumed, “peace be to the powers of this world!
They yielded to my importunities, and that is saying a great deal. If
you only knew the good that came of a carelessly scrawled signature!
Why, sir, two years after I had taken these momentous trifles in hand,
and had carried the matter through to the end, every poor family in the
Commune had two cows at least, which they pastured on the mountain side,
where (without waiting this time for an authorization from the Council
of State) I had established a system of irrigation by means of cross
trenches, like those in Switzerland, Auvergne, and Limousin. Much to
their astonishment, the townspeople saw some capital meadows springing
up under their eyes, and thanks to the improvement in the pasturage,
the yield of milk was very much larger. The results of this triumph
were great indeed. Every one followed the example set by my system of
irrigation; cattle were multiplied; the area of meadow land and every
kind of out-turn increased. I had nothing to fear after that. I could
continue my efforts to improve this, as yet, untilled corner of the
earth; and to civilize those who dwelt in it, whose minds had hitherto
lain dormant.
“Well, sir, folk like us, who live out of the world, are very talkative.
If you ask us a question, there is no knowing where the answer will come
to an end; but to cut it short--there were about seven hundred souls in
the valley when I came to it, and now the population numbers some two
thousand. I had gained the good opinion of every one in that matter of
the last cretin; and when I had constantly shown that I could rule both
mildly and firmly, I became a local oracle. I did everything that I
could to win their confidence; I did not ask for it, nor did I appear to
seek it; but I tried to inspire every one with the deepest respect
for my character, by the scrupulous way in which I always fulfilled my
engagements, even when they were of the most trifling kind. When I had
pledged myself to care for the poor creature whose death you have just
witnessed, I looked after him much more effectually than any of his
previous guardians had done. He has been fed and cared for as the
adopted child of the Commune. After a time the dwellers in the valley
ended by understanding the service which I had done them in spite of
themselves, but for all that, they still cherish some traces of that old
superstition of theirs. Far be it from me to blame them for it; has not
their cult of the cretin often furnished me with an argument when I have
tried to induce those who had possession of their faculties to help
the unfortunate? But here we are,” said Benassis, when after a moment’s
pause he saw the roof of his own house.
Far from expecting the slightest expression of praise or of thanks from
his listener, it appeared from his way of telling the story of this
episode in his administrative career, that he had been moved by an
unconscious desire to pour out the thoughts that filled his mind, after
the manner of folk that live very retired lives.
“I have taken the liberty of putting my horse in your stable, sir,” said
the commandant, “for which in your goodness you will perhaps pardon me
when you learn the object of my journey hither.”
“Ah! yes, what is it?” asked Benassis, appearing to shake off his
preoccupied mood, and to recollect that his companion was a stranger
to him. The frankness and unreserve of his nature had led him to accept
Genestas as an acquaintance.
“I have heard of the almost miraculous recovery of M. Gravier of
Grenoble, whom you received into your house,” was the soldier’s answer.
“I have come to you, hoping that you will give a like attention to my
case, although I have not a similar claim to your benevolence; and yet,
I am possibly not undeserving of it. I am an old soldier, and wounds
of long standing give me no peace. It will take you at least a week to
study my condition, for the pain only comes back at intervals, and----”
“Very good, sir,” Benassis broke in; “M. Gravier’s room is in readiness.
Come in.”
They went into the house, the doctor flinging open the door with an
eagerness that Genestas attributed to his pleasure at receiving a
boarder.
“Jacquotte!” Benassis called out. “This gentleman will dine with us.”
“But would it not be as well for us to settle about the payment?”
“Payment for what?” inquired the doctor.
“For my board. You cannot keep me and my horse as well, without----”
“If you are wealthy, you will repay me amply,” Benassis replied; “and if
you are not, I will take nothing whatever.”
“Nothing whatever seems to me to be too dear,” said Genestas. “But,
rich or poor, will ten francs a day (not including your professional
services) be acceptable to you?”
“Nothing could be less acceptable to me than payment for the pleasure of
entertaining a visitor,” the doctor answered, knitting his brows; “and
as to my advice, you shall have it if I like you, and not unless. Rich
people shall not have my time by paying for it; it belongs exclusively
to the folk here in the valley. I do not care about fame or fortune, and
I look for neither praise or gratitude from my patients. Any money which
you may pay me will go to the druggists in Grenoble, to pay for the
medicine required by the poor of the neighborhood.”
Any one who had heard the words flung out, abruptly, it is true, but
without a trace of bitterness in them, would have said to himself with
Genestas, “Here is a man made of good human clay.”
“Well, then, I will pay you ten francs a day, sir,” the soldier
answered, returning to the charge with wonted pertinacity, “and you will
do as you choose after that. We shall understand each other better, now
that the question is settled,” he added, grasping the doctor’s hand with
eager cordiality. “In spite of my ten francs, you shall see that I am by
no means a Tartar.”
After this passage of arms, in which Benassis showed not the slightest
sign of a wish to appear generous or to pose as a philanthropist, the
supposed invalid entered his doctor’s house. Everything within it was
in keeping with the ruinous state of the gateway, and with the clothing
worn by its owner. There was an utter disregard for everything not
essentially useful, which was visible even in the smallest trifles.
Benassis took Genestas through the kitchen, that being the shortest way
to the dining-room.
Had the kitchen belonged to an inn, it could not have been more
smoke-begrimed; and if there was a sufficiency of cooking pots within
its precincts, this lavish supply was Jacquotte’s doing--Jacquotte who
had formerly been the cure’s housekeeper--Jacquotte who always said
“we,” and who ruled supreme over the doctor’s household. If, for
instance, there was a brightly polished warming-pan above the
mantelshelf, it probably hung there because Jacquotte liked to sleep
warm of a winter night, which led her incidentally to warm her master’s
sheets. He never took a thought about anything; so she was wont to say.
It was on account of a defect, which any one else would have found
intolerable, that Benassis had taken her into his service. Jacquotte had
a mind to rule the house, and a woman who would rule his house was the
very person that the doctor wanted. So Jacquotte bought and sold,
made alterations about the place, set up and took down, arranged and
disarranged everything at her own sweet will; her master had never
raised a murmur. Over the yard, the stable, the man-servant and the
kitchen, in fact, over the whole house and garden and its master,
Jacquotte’s sway was absolute. She looked out fresh linen, saw to the
washing, and laid in provisions without consulting anybody. She decided
everything that went on in the house, and the date when the pigs were to
be killed. She scolded the gardener, decreed the menu at breakfast
and dinner, and went from cellar to garret, and from garret to cellar,
setting everything to rights according to her notions, without a word
of opposition of any sort or description. Benassis had made but two
stipulations--he wished to dine at six o’clock, and that the household
expenses should not exceed a certain fixed sum every month.
A woman whom every one obeys in this way is always singing, so Jacquotte
laughed and warbled on the staircase; she was always humming something
when she was not singing, and singing when she was not humming.
Jacquotte had a natural liking for cleanliness, so she kept the house
neat and clean. If her tastes had been different, it would have been a
sad thing for M. Benassis (so she was wont to say), for the poor man was
so little particular that you might feed him on cabbage for partridges,
and he would not find it out; and if it were not for her, he would very
often wear the same shirt for a week on end. Jacquotte, however, was an
indefatigable folder of linen, a born rubber and polisher of furniture,
and a passionate lover of a perfectly religious and ceremonial
cleanliness of the most scrupulous, the most radiant, and most fragrant
kind. A sworn foe to dust, she swept and scoured and washed without
ceasing.
The condition of the gateway caused her acute distress. On the first day
of every month for the past ten years, she had extorted from her master
a promise that he would replace the gate with a new one, that the walls
of the house should be lime-washed, and that everything should be made
quite straight and proper about the place; but so far, the master had
not kept his word. So it happened that whenever she fell to lamenting
over Benassis’ deeply-rooted carelessness about things, she nearly
always ended solemnly in these words with which all her praises of her
master usually terminated:
“You cannot say that he is a fool, because he works such miracles, as
you may say, in the place; but, all the same, he is a fool at times,
such a fool that you have to do everything for him as if he were a
child.”
Jacquotte loved the house as if it had belonged to her; and when she had
lived in it for twenty-two years, had she not some grounds for deluding
herself on that head? After the cure’s death the house had been for
sale; and Benassis, who had only just come into the country, had bought
it as it stood, with the walls about it and the ground belonging to
it, together with the plate, wine, and furniture, the old sundial,
the poultry, the horse, and the woman-servant. Jacquotte was the very
pattern of a working housekeeper, with her clumsy figure, and her
bodice, always of the same dark brown print with large red spots on it,
which fitted her so tightly that it looked as if the material must
give way if she moved at all. Her colorless face, with its double chin,
looked out from under a round plaited cap, which made her look paler
than she really was. She talked incessantly, and always in a loud
voice--this short, active woman, with the plump, busy hands. Indeed, if
Jacquotte was silent for a moment, and took a corner of her apron so as
to turn it up in a triangle, it meant that a lengthy expostulation was
about to be delivered for the benefit of master or man. Jacquotte was
beyond all doubt the happiest cook in the kingdom; for, that nothing
might be lacking in a measure of felicity as great as may be known in
this world below, her vanity was continually gratified--the townspeople
regarded her as an authority of an indefinite kind, and ranked her
somewhere between the mayor and the park-keeper.
The master of the house found nobody in the kitchen when he entered it.
“Where the devil are they all gone?” he asked. “Pardon me for bringing
you in this way,” he went on, turning to Genestas. “The front entrance
opens into the garden, but I am so little accustomed to receive visitors
that--Jacquotte!” he called in rather peremptory tones.
A woman’s voice answered to the name from the interior of the house. A
moment later Jacquotte, assuming the offensive, called in her turn to
Benassis, who forthwith went into the dining-room.
“Just like you, sir!” she exclaimed; “you never do like anybody else.
You always ask people to dinner without telling me beforehand, and
you think that everything is settled as soon as you have called for
Jacquotte! You are not going to have the gentleman sit in the kitchen,
are you? Is not the salon to be unlocked and a fire to be lighted?
Nicolle is there, and will see after everything. Now take the gentleman
into the garden for a minute; that will amuse him; if he likes to look
at pretty things, show him the arbor of hornbeam trees that the poor
dear old gentleman made. I shall have time then to lay the cloth, and to
get everything ready, the dinner and the salon too.”
“Yes. But, Jacquotte,” Benassis went on, “the gentleman is going to stay
with us. Do not forget to give a look round M. Gravier’s room, and see
about the sheets and things, and----”
“Now you are not going to interfere about the sheets, are you?” asked
Jacquotte. “If he is to sleep here, I know what must be done for him
perfectly well. You have not so much as set foot in M. Gravier’s room
these ten months past. There is nothing to see there, the place is as
clean as a new pin. Then will the gentleman make some stay here?” she
continued in a milder tone.
“Yes.”
“How long will he stay?”
“Faith, I do not know: What does it matter to you?”
“What does it matter to me, sir? Oh! very well, what does it matter
to me? Did any one ever hear the like! And the provisions and all that
and----”
At any other time she would have overwhelmed her master with reproaches
for his breach of trust, but now she followed him into the kitchen
before the torrent of words had come to an end. She had guessed that
there was a prospect of a boarder, and was eager to see Genestas, to
whom she made a very deferential courtesy, while she scanned him from
head to foot. A thoughtful and dejected expression gave a harsh look
to the soldier’s face. In the dialogue between master and servant the
latter had appeared to him in the light of a nonentity; and although he
regretted the fact, this revelation had lessened the high opinion that
he had formed of the man whose persistent efforts to save the district
from the horrors of cretinism had won his admiration.
“I do not like the looks of that fellow at all!” said Jacquotte to
herself.
“If you are not tired, sir,” said the doctor to his supposed patient,
“we will take a turn round the garden before dinner.”
“Willingly,” answered the commandant.
They went through the dining-room, and reached the garden by way of a
sort of vestibule at the foot of the staircase between the salon and
the dining-room. Beyond a great glass door at the farther end of the
vestibule lay a flight of stone steps which adorned the garden side
of the house. The garden itself was divided into four large squares of
equal size by two paths that intersected each other in the form of a
cross, a box edging along their sides. At the farther end there was a
thick, green alley of hornbeam trees, which had been the joy and pride
of the late owner. The soldier seated himself on a worm-eaten bench, and
saw neither the trellis-work nor the espaliers, nor the vegetables of
which Jacquotte took such great care. She followed the traditions of the
epicurean churchman to whom this valuable garden owed its origin; but
Benassis himself regarded it with sufficient indifference.
The commandant turned their talk from the trivial matters which had
occupied them by saying to the doctor:
“How comes it, sir, that the population of the valley has been trebled
in ten years? There were seven hundred souls in it when you came, and
to-day you say that they number more than two thousand.”
“You are the first person who has put that question to me,” the doctor
answered. “Though it has been my aim to develop the capabilities of this
little corner of the earth to the utmost, the constant pressure of a
busy life has not left me time to think over the way in which (like the
mendicant brother) I have made ‘broth from a flint’ on a large scale.
M. Gravier himself, who is one of several who have done a great deal for
us, and to whom I was able to render a service by re-establishing his
health, has never given a thought to the theory, though he has been
everywhere over our mountain sides with me, to see its practical
results.”
There was a moment’s silence, during which Benassis followed his own
thoughts, careless of the keen glance by which his guest friend tried to
fathom him.