yonder; I will go and tell her that you are here.”
Genestas followed Benassis across a wide open space with a hedge about
it. In one corner various heaps of clay had been piled up, destined for
tiles and pantiles, and a stack of brushwood and logs (fuel for the
kiln no doubt) lay in another part of the enclosure. Farther away some
workmen were pounding chalk stones and tempering the clay in a space
enclosed by hurdles. The tiles, both round and square, were made under
the great elms opposite the gateway, in a vast green arbor bounded by
the roofs of the drying-shed, and near this last the yawning mouth of
the kiln was visible. Some long-handled shovels lay about the worn cider
path. A second row of buildings had been erected parallel with these.
There was a sufficiently wretched dwelling which housed the family, and
some outbuildings--sheds and stables and a barn. The cleanliness that
predominated throughout, and the thorough repair in which everything was
kept, spoke well for the vigilance of the master’s eyes. Some poultry
and pigs wandered at large over the field.
“Vigneau’s predecessor,” said Benassis, “was a good-for-nothing, a lazy
rascal who cared about nothing by drink. He had been a workman himself;
he could keep a fire in his kiln and could put a price on his work, and
that was about all he knew; he had no energy, and no idea of business.
If no one came to buy his wares of him, they simply stayed on hand and
were spoiled, and so he lost the value of them. So he died of want at
last. He had ill-treated his wife till she was almost idiotic, and she
lived in a state of abject wretchedness. It was so painful to see this
laziness and incurable stupidity, and I so much disliked the sight of
the tile-works, that I never came this way if I could help it. Luckily,
both the man and his wife were old people. One fine day the tile-maker
had a paralytic stroke, and I had him removed to the hospital at
Grenoble at once. The owner of the tile-works agreed to take it over
without disputing about its condition, and I looked round for new
tenants who would take their part in improving the industries of the
canton.
“Mme. Gravier’s waiting-maid had married a poor workman, who was earning
so little with the potter who employed him that he could not support his
household. He listened to my advice, and actually had sufficient courage
to take a lease of our tile-works, when he had not so much as a penny.
He came and took up his abode here, taught his wife, her aged mother,
and his own mother how to make tiles, and made workmen of them. How they
managed, I do not know, upon my honor! Vigneau probably borrowed fuel to
heat his kiln, he certainly worked by day, and fetched in his materials
in basket-loads by night; in short, no one knew what boundless energy
he brought to bear upon his enterprise; and the two old mothers, clad in
rags, worked like negroes. In this way Vigneau contrived to fire several
batches, and lived for the first year on bread that was hardly won by
the toil of his household.
“Still, he made a living. His courage, patience, and sterling worth
interested many people in him, and he began to be known. He was
indefatigable. He would hurry over to Grenoble in the morning, and sell
his bricks and tiles there; then he would return home about the middle
of the day, and go back again to the town at night. He seemed to be in
several places at once. Towards the end of the first year he took two
little lads to help him. Seeing how things were, I lent him some
money, and since then from year to year the fortunes of the family have
steadily improved. After the second year was over the two old mothers no
longer moulded bricks nor pounded stones; they looked after the little
gardens, made the soup, mended the clothes, they did spinning in the
evenings, and gathered firewood in the daytime; while the young wife,
who can read and write, kept the accounts. Vigneau had a small horse,
and rode on his business errands about the neighborhood; next he
thoroughly studied the art of brick and tile making, discovering how to
make excellent square white paving-tiles, and sold them for less than
the usual prices. In the third year he had a cart and a pair of horses,
and at the same time his wife’s appearance became almost elegant.
Everything about his household improved with the improvement in his
business, and everywhere there was the same neatness, method, and thrift
that had been the making of his little fortune.
“At last he had work enough for six men, to whom he pays good wages; he
employs a wagoner, and everything about him wears an air of prosperity.
Little by little, in short, by dint of taking pains and extending his
business, his income has increased. He bought the tile-works last year,
and next year he will rebuild his house. To-day all the worthy folk
there are well clothed and in good health. His wife, who used to be so
thin and pale when the burden of her husband’s cares and anxieties used
to press so hardly upon her, has recovered her good looks, and has grown
quite young and pretty again. The two old mothers are thoroughly happy,
and take the deepest interest in every detail of the housekeeping or of
the business. Work has brought money, and the money that brought freedom
from care brought health and plenty and happiness. The story of this
household is a living history in miniature of the Commune since I have
known it, and of all young industrial states. The tile factory that
used to look so empty, melancholy, ill-kept, and useless, is now in full
work, astir with life, and well stocked with everything required. There
is a good stock of wood here, and all the raw material for the season’s
work: for, as you know, tiles can only be made during a few months in
the year, between June and September. Is it not a pleasure to see all
this activity? My tile-maker has done his share of the work in every
building going, always busy--‘the devourer,’ they call him in these
parts.”
Benassis had scarcely finished speaking when the wicket gate which
gave entrance to the garden opened, and a nicely-dressed young woman
appeared. She came forward as quickly as her condition allowed, though
the two horsemen hastened towards her. Her attire somewhat recalled her
former quality of ladies’ maid, for she wore a pretty cap, a pink
dress, a silk apron, and white stockings. Mme. Vigneau in short, was
a nice-looking woman, sufficiently plump, and if she was somewhat
sunburned, her natural complexion must have been very fair. There were
a few lines still left on her forehead, traced there by the troubles
of past days, but she had a bright and winsome face. She spoke in a
persuasive voice, as she saw that the doctor came no further, “Will
you not do me the honor of coming inside and resting for a moment, M.
Benassis?”
“Certainly we will. Come this way, captain.”
“The gentleman must be very hot! Will you take a little milk or some
wine? M. Benassis, please try a little of the wine that my husband has
been so kind as to buy for my confinement. You will tell me if it is
good.”
“You have a good man for your husband.”
“Yes, sir,” she turned and spoke in quiet tones, “I am very well off.”
“We will not take anything, Mme. Vigneau; I only came round this way to
see that nothing troublesome had happened.”
“Nothing,” she said. “I was busy out in the garden, as you saw, turning
the soil over for the sake of something to do.”
Then the two old mothers came out to speak to Benassis, and the young
wagoner planted himself in the middle of the yard, in a spot from whence
he could have a good view of the doctor.
“Let us see, let me have your hand,” said Benassis, addressing Mme.
Vigneau; and as he carefully felt her pulse, he stood in silence,
absorbed in thought. The three women, meanwhile, scrutinized the
commandant with the undisguised curiosity that country people do not
scruple to express.
“Nothing could be better!” cried the doctor cheerily.
“Will she be confined soon?” both the mothers asked together.
“This week beyond a doubt. Is Vigneau away from home?” he asked, after a
pause.
“Yes, sir,” the young wife answered; “he is hurrying about settling
his business affairs, so as to be able to stay at home during my
confinement, the dear man!”
“Well, my children, go on and prosper; continue to increase your wealth
and to add to your family.”
The cleanliness of the almost ruinous dwelling filled Genestas with
admiration.
Benassis saw the officer’s astonishment, and said, “There is no one like
Mme. Vigneau for keeping a house clean and tidy like this. I wish that
several people in the town would come here to take a lesson.”
The tile-maker’s wife blushed and turned her head away; but the faces of
the two old mothers beamed with pleasure at the doctor’s words, and the
three women walked with them to the spot where the horses were waiting.
“Well, now,” the doctor said to the two old women, “here is happiness
for you both! Were you not longing to be grandmothers?”
“Oh, do not talk about it,” said the young wife; “they will drive me
crazy among them. My two mothers wish for a boy, and my husband would
like to have a little girl. It will be very difficult to please them
all, I think.”
“But you yourself,” asked Benassis; “what is your wish?”
“Ah, sir, I wish for a child of my own.”
“There! She is a mother already, you see,” said the doctor to the
officer, as he laid his hand on the bridle of his horse.
“Good-bye, M. Benassis; my husband will be sadly disappointed to learn
that you have been here when he was not at home to see you.”
“He has not forgotten to send the thousand tiles to the
Grange-aux-Belles for me?”
“You know quite well, sir, that he would keep all the orders in the
canton waiting to serve you. Why, taking your money is the thing that
troubles him most; but I always tell him that your crowns bring luck
with them, and so they do.”
“Good-bye,” said Benassis.
A little group gathered about the bars across the entrance to the
tile-works. The three women, the young wagoner, and two workmen who had
left off work to greet the doctor, lingered there to have the pleasure
of being with him until the last moment, as we are wont to linger with
those we love. The promptings of men’s hearts must everywhere be the
same, and in every land friendship expresses itself in the same gracious
ways.
Benassis looked at the height of the sun and spoke to his companion:
“There are still two hours of daylight left; and if you are not too
hungry, we will go to see some one with whom I nearly always spend the
interval between the last of my visits and the hour for dinner. She is
a charming girl whom every one here calls my ‘good friend.’ That is
the name that they usually give to an affianced bride; but you must not
imagine that there is the slightest imputation of any kind implied or
intended by the use of the word in this case. Poor child, the care
that I have taken of her has, as may be imagined, made her an object
of jealousy, but the general opinion entertained as to my character
has prevented any spiteful gossip. If no one understands the apparent
caprice that has led me to make an allowance to La Fosseuse, so that she
can live without being compelled to work, nobody has any doubts as to
her character. I have watched over her with friendly care, and every one
knows that I should never hesitate to marry her if my affection for her
exceeded the limits of friendship. But no woman exists for me here in
the canton or anywhere else,” said the doctor, forcing a smile. “Some
natures feel a tyrannous need to attach themselves to some one thing
or being which they single out from among the beings and things around
them; this need is felt most keenly by a man of quick sympathies, and
all the more pressingly if his life has been made desolate. So, trust
me, it is a favorable sign if a man is strongly attached to his dog
or his horse! Among the suffering flock which chance has given into my
care, this poor little sufferer has come to be for me like the pet
lamb that the shepherd lasses deck with ribbons in my own sunny land of
Languedoc; they talk to it and allow it to find pasture by the side
of the cornfields, and its leisurely pace is never hurried by the
shepherd’s dog.”
Benassis stood with his hand on his horse’s mane as he spoke, ready to
spring into the saddle, but making no effort to do so, as though the
thoughts that stirred in him were but little in keeping with rapid
movements.
“Let us go,” he said at last; “come with me and pay her a visit. I am
taking you to see her; does not that tell you that I treat her as a
sister?”
As they rode on their way again, Genestas said to the doctor, “Will
you regard it as inquisitiveness on my part if I ask to hear more of La
Fosseuse? I have come to know the story of many lives through you, and
hers cannot be less interesting than some of these.”
Benassis stopped his horse as he answered. “Perhaps you will not share
in the feelings of interest awakened in me by La Fosseuse. Her fate
is like my own; we have both alike missed our vocation; it is the
similarity of our lots that occasions my sympathy for her and the
feelings that I experience at the sight of her. You either followed
your natural bent when you entered upon a military career, or you took
a liking for your calling after you had adopted it, otherwise you would
not have borne the heavy yoke of military discipline till now; you,
therefore, cannot understand the sorrows of a soul that must always feel
renewed within it the stir of longings that can never be realized; nor
the pining existence of a creature forced to live in an alien sphere.
Such sufferings as these are known only to these natures and to God who
sends their afflictions, for they alone can know how deeply the events
of life affect them. You yourself have seen the miseries produced by
long wars, till they have almost ceased to impress you, but have you
never detected a trace of sadness in your mind at the sight of a tree
bearing sere leaves in the midst of spring, some tree that is pining and
dying because it has been planted in soil in which it could not find the
sustenance required for its full development? Ever since my twentieth
year, there has been something painful and melancholy for me about the
drooping of a stunted plant, and now I cannot bear the sight and turn my
head away. My youthful sorrow was a vague presentiment of the sorrows of
my later life; it was a kind of sympathy between my present and a future
dimly foreshadowed by the life of the tree that before its time was
going the way of all trees and men.”
“I thought that you had suffered when I saw how kind you were.”
“You see, sir,” the doctor went on without any reply to the remark made
by Genestas, “that to speak of La Fosseuse is to speak of myself. La
Fosseuse is a plant in an alien soil; a human plant moreover, consumed
by sad thoughts that have their source in the depths of her nature, and
that never cease to multiply. The poor girl is never well and strong.
The soul within her kills the body. This fragile creature was suffering
from the sorest of all troubles, a trouble which receives the least
possible sympathy from our selfish world, and how could I look on with
indifferent eyes? for I, a man, strong to wrestle with pain, was nightly
tempted to refuse to bear the burden of a sorrow like hers. Perhaps I
might actually have refused to bear it but for a thought of religion
which soothes my impatience and fills my heart with sweet illusions.
Even if we were not children of the same Father in heaven, La Fosseuse
would still be my sister in suffering!”
Benassis pressed his knees against his horse’s sides, and swept ahead of
Commandant Genestas, as if he shrank from continuing this conversation
any further. When their horses were once more cantering abreast of each
other, he spoke again: “Nature has created this poor girl for sorrow,”
he said, “as she has created other women for joy. It is impossible to
do otherwise than believe in a future life at the sight of natures thus
predestined to suffer. La Fosseuse is sensitive and highly strung. If
the weather is dark and cloudy, she is depressed; she ‘weeps when the
sky is weeping,’ a phrase of her own; she sings with the birds; she
grows happy and serene under a cloudless sky; the loveliness of a bright
day passes into her face; a soft sweet perfume is an inexhaustible
pleasure to her; I have seen her take delight the whole day long in the
scent breathed forth by some mignonette; and, after one of those
rainy mornings that bring out all the soul of the flowers and give
indescribable freshness and brightness to the day, she seems to overflow
with gladness like the green world around her. If it is close and hot,
and there is thunder in the air, La Fosseuse feels a vague trouble
that nothing can soothe. She lies on her bed, complains of numberless
different ills, and does not know what ails her. In answer to my
questions, she tells me that her bones are melting, that she is
dissolving into water; her ‘heart has left her,’ to quote another of her
sayings.
“I have sometimes come upon the poor child suddenly and found her in
tears, as she gazed at the sunset effects we sometimes see here among
our mountains, when bright masses of cloud gather and crowd together
and pile themselves above the golden peaks of the hills. ‘Why are you
crying, little one?’ I have asked her. ‘I do not know, sir,’ has been
the answer; ‘I have grown so stupid with looking up there; I have looked
and looked, till I hardly know where I am.’ ‘But what do you see there?’
‘I cannot tell you, sir,’ and you might question her in this way all the
evening, yet you would never draw a word from her; but she would look at
you, and every glance would seem full of thoughts, or she would sit with
tears in her eyes, scarcely saying a word, apparently rapt in musing.
Those musings of hers are so profound that you fall under the spell of
them; on me, at least, she has the effect of a cloud overcharged with
electricity. One day I plied her with questions; I tried with all my
might to make her talk; at last I let fall a few rather hasty words;
and, well--she burst into tears.
“At other times La Fosseuse is bright and winning, active, merry, and
sprightly; she enjoys talking, and the ideas which she expresses
are fresh and original. She is however quite unable to apply herself
steadily to any kind of work. When she was out in the fields she used to
spend whole hours in looking at a flower, in watching the water flow, in
gazing at the wonders in the depths of the clear, still river pools, at
the picturesque mosaic made up of pebbles and earth and sand, of water
plants and green moss, and the brown soil washed down by the stream,
a deposit full of soft shades of color, and of hues that contrast
strangely with each other.
“When I first came to the district the poor girl was starving. It hurt
her pride to accept the bread of others; and it was only when driven to
the last extremity of want and suffering that she could bring herself to
ask for charity. The feeling that this was a disgrace would often give
her energy, and for several days she worked in the fields; but her
strength was soon exhausted, and illness obliged her to leave the work
that she had begun. She had scarcely recovered when she went to a farm
on the outskirts of the town and asked to be taken on to look after the
cattle; she did her work well and intelligently, but after a while she
left without giving any reason for so doing. The constant toil, day
after day, was no doubt too heavy a yoke for one who is all independence
and caprice. Then she set herself to look for mushrooms or for truffles,
going over to Grenoble to sell them. But the gaudy trifles in the town
were very tempting, the few small coins in her hand seemed to be great
riches; she would forget her poverty and buy ribbons and finery, without
a thought for tomorrow’s bread. But if some other girl here in the
town took a fancy to her brass crucifix, her agate heart or her velvet
ribbon, she would make them over to her at once, glad to give happiness,
for she lives by generous impulses. So La Fosseuse was loved and pitied
and despised by turns. Everything in her nature was a cause of suffering
to her--her indolence, her kindness of heart, her coquetry; for she is
coquettish, dainty, and inquisitive, in short, she is a woman; she is as
simple as a child, and, like a child, she is carried away by her
tastes and her impressions. If you tell her about some noble deed, she
trembles, her color rises, her heart throbs fast, and she sheds tears of
joy; if you begin a story about robbers, she turns pale with terror.
You could not find a more sincere, open-hearted, and scrupulously loyal
nature anywhere; if you were to give a hundred gold pieces into her
keeping, she would bury them in some out-of-the-way nook and beg her
bread as before.”
There was a change in Benassis’ tone as he uttered these last words.
“I once determined to put her to the proof,” he said, “and I repented
of it. It is like espionage to bring a test to bear upon another, is it
not? It means that we suspect them at any rate.”
Here the doctor paused, as though some inward reflection engrossed him;
he was quite unconscious of the embarrassment that his last remark had
caused to his companion, who busied himself with disentangling the reins
in order to hide his confusion. Benassis soon resumed his talk.
“I should like to find a husband for my Fosseuse. I should be glad to
make over one of my farms to some good fellow who would make her
happy. And she would be happy. The poor girl would love her children
to distraction; for motherhood, which develops the whole of a woman’s
nature, would give full scope to her overflowing sentiments. She has
never cared for any one, however. Yet her impressionable nature is
a danger to her. She knows this herself, and when she saw that I
recognized it, she admitted the excitability of her temperament to me.
She belongs to the small minority of women whom the slightest contact
with others causes to vibrate perilously; so that she must be made to
value herself on her discretion and her womanly pride. She is as wild
and shy as a swallow! Ah! what a wealth of kindness there is in her!
Nature meant her to be a rich woman; she would be so beneficent: for
a well-loved woman; she would be so faithful and true. She is only
twenty-two years old, and is sinking already beneath the weight of her
soul; a victim to highly-strung nerves, to an organization either too
delicate or too full of power. A passionate love for a faithless lover
would drive her mad, my poor Fosseuse! I have made a study of her
temperament, recognized the reality of her prolonged nervous attacks,
and of the swift mysterious recurrence of her uplifted moods. I found
that they were immediately dependent on atmospheric changes and on the
variations of the moon, a fact which I have carefully verified; and
since then I have cared for her, as a creature unlike all others, for
she is a being whose ailing existence I alone can understand. As I
have told you, she is the pet lamb. But you shall see her; this is her
cottage.”
They had come about one-third of the way up the mountain side. Low
bushes grew on either hand along the steep paths which they were
ascending at a foot pace. At last, at a turn in one of the paths,
Genestas saw La Fosseuse’s dwelling, which stood on one of the largest
knolls on the mountain. Around it was a green sloping space of lawn
about three acres in extent, planted with trees, and surrounded by a
wall high enough to serve as a fence, but not so high as to shut out the
view of the landscape. Several rivulets that had their source in this
garden formed little cascades among the trees. The brick-built cottage
with a low roof that projected several feet was a charming detail in the
landscape. It consisted of a ground floor and a single story, and stood
facing the south. All the windows were in the front of the house, for
its small size and lack of depth from back to front made other openings
unnecessary. The doors and shutters were painted green, and the
underside of the penthouses had been lined with deal boards in the
German fashion, and painted white. The rustic charm of the whole little
dwelling lay in its spotless cleanliness.
Climbing plants and briar roses grew about the house; a great walnut
tree had been allowed to remain among the flowering acacias and trees
that bore sweet-scented blossoms, and a few weeping willows had been
set by the little streams in the garden space. A thick belt of pines and
beeches grew behind the house, so that the picturesque little dwelling
was brought out into strong relief by the sombre width of background.
At that hour of the day, the air was fragrant with the scents from the
hillsides and the perfume from La Fosseuse’s garden. The sky overhead
was clear and serene, but low clouds hung on the horizon, and the
far-off peaks had begun to take the deep rose hues that the sunset often
brings. At the height which they had reached the whole valley lay before
their eyes, from distant Grenoble to the little lake at the foot of the
circle of crags by which Genestas had passed on the previous day. Some
little distance above the house a line of poplars on the hill indicated
the highway that led to Grenoble. Rays of sunlight fell slantwise across
the little town which glittered like a diamond, for the soft red light
which poured over it like a flood was reflected by all its window-panes.
Genestas reined in his horse at the sight, and pointed to the dwellings
in the valley, to the new town, and to La Fosseuse’s house.
“Since the victory of Wagram, and Napoleon’s return to the Tuileries in
1815,” he said, with a sigh, “nothing has so stirred me as the sight of
all this. I owe this pleasure to you, sir, for you have taught me to see
beauty in a landscape.”
“Yes,” said the doctor, smiling as he spoke, “It is better to build
towns than to storm them.”
“Oh! sir, how about the taking of Moscow and the surrender of Mantua!
Why, you do not really know what that means! Is it not a glory for all
of us? You are a good man, but Napoleon also was a good man. If it had
not been for England, you both would have understood each other, and
our Emperor would never have fallen. There are no spies here,” said the
officer, looking around him, “and I can say openly that I love him, now
that he is dead! What a ruler! He knew every man when he saw him!
He would have made you a Councillor of State, for he was a great
administrator himself; even to the point of knowing how many cartridges
were left in the men’s boxes after an action. Poor man! While you were
talking about La Fosseuse, I thought of him, and how he was lying dead
in St. Helena! Was that the kind of climate and country to suit _him_,
whose seat had been a throne, and who had lived with his feet in the
stirrups; hein? They say that he used to work in the garden. The
deuce! He was not made to plant cabbages.... And now we must serve the
Bourbons, and loyally, sir; for, after all, France is France, as you
were saying yesterday.”
Genestas dismounted as he uttered these last words, and mechanically
followed the example set by Benassis, who fastened his horse’s bridle to
a tree.
“Can she be away?” said the doctor, when he did not see La Fosseuse on
the threshold. They went into the house, but there was no one in the
sitting room on the ground floor.
“She must have heard the sound of a second horse,” said Benassis, with
a smile, “and has gone upstairs to put on her cap, or her sash, or some
piece of finery.”
He left Genestas alone, and went upstairs in search of La Fosseuse.
The commandant made a survey of the room. He noticed the pattern of the
paper that covered the walls--roses scattered over a gray background,
and the straw matting that did duty for a carpet on the floor. The
armchair, the table, and the smaller chairs were made of wood from which
the bark had not been removed. The room was not without ornament; some
flower-stands, as they might be called, made of osiers and wooden hoops,
had been filled with moss and flowers, and the windows were draped by
white dimity curtains bordered with a scarlet fringe. There was a mirror
above the chimney-piece, where a plain china jar stood between two
candlesticks. Some calico lay on the table; shirts, apparently, had
been cut out and begun, several pairs of gussets were finished, and
a work-basket, scissors, needles and thread, and all a needle-woman’s
requirements lay beside them. Everything was as fresh and clean as
a shell that the sea had tossed up on the beach. Genestas saw that a
kitchen lay on the other side of the passage, and that the staircase
was at the further end of it. The upper story, like the ground floor,
evidently consisted of two rooms only. “Come, do not be frightened,”
Benassis was saying to La Fosseuse; “come down-stairs!”
Genestas promptly retreated into the sitting-room when he heard these
words, and in another moment a slender girl, well and gracefully made,
appeared in the doorway. She wore a gown of cambric, covered with narrow
pink stripes, and cut low at the throat, so as to display a muslin
chemisette. Shyness and timidity had brought the color to a face which
had nothing very remarkable about it save a certain flatness of feature
which called to mind the Cossack and Russian countenances that since
the disasters of 1814 have unfortunately come to be so widely known in
France. La Fosseuse was, in fact, very like these men of the North. Her
nose turned up at the end, and was sunk in her face, her mouth was wide
and her chin small, her hands and arms were red and, like her feet, were
of the peasant type, large and strong. Although she had been used to an
outdoor life, to exposure to the sun and the scorching summer winds, her
complexion had the bleached look of withered grass; but after the first
glance this made her face more interesting, and there was such a sweet
expression in her blue eyes, so much grace about her movements, and such
music in her voice, that little as her features seemed to harmonize
with the disposition which Benassis had praised to the commandant, the
officer recognized in her the capricious and ailing creature, condemned
to suffering by a nature that had been thwarted in its growth.
La Fosseuse deftly stirred the fire of dry branches and turfs of peat,
then sat down in an armchair and took up one of the shirts that she had
begun. She sat there under the officer’s eyes, half bashful, afraid to
look up, and calm to all appearance; but her bodice rose and fell
with the rapid breathing that betrayed her nervousness, and it struck
Genestas that her figure was very graceful.
“Well, my poor child, is your work going on nicely?” said Benassis,
taking up the material intended for the shirts, and passing it through
his fingers.
La Fosseuse gave the doctor a timid and beseeching glance.
“Do not scold me, sir,” she entreated; “I have not touched them to-day,
although they were ordered by you, and for people who need them very
badly. But the weather has been so fine! I wandered out and picked
a quantity of mushrooms and white truffles, and took them over to
Jacquotte; she was very pleased, for some people are coming to dinner.
I was so glad that I thought of it; something seemed to tell me to go to
look for them.”
She began to ply her needle again.
“You have a very pretty house here, mademoiselle,” said Genestas,
addressing her.
“It is not mine at all, sir,” she said, looking at the stranger, and her
eyes seemed to grow red and tearful; “it belongs to M. Benassis,” and
she turned towards the doctor with a gentle expression on her face.
“You know quite well, my child, that you will never have to leave it,”
he said, as he took her hand in his.
La Fosseuse suddenly rose and left the room.
“Well,” said the doctor, addressing the officer, “what do you think of
her?”
“There is something strangely touching about her,” Genestas answered.
“How very nicely you have fitted up this little nest of hers!”
“Bah! a wall-paper at fifteen or twenty sous; it was carefully chosen,
but that was all. The furniture is nothing very much either, my
basket-maker made it for me; he wanted to show his gratitude; and La
Fosseuse made the curtains herself out of a few yards of calico. This
little house of hers, and her simple furniture, seem pretty to you,
because you come upon them up here on a hillside in a forlorn part of
the world where you did not expect to find things clean and tidy. The
reason of the prettiness is a kind of harmony between the little house
and its surroundings. Nature has set picturesque groups of trees and
running streams about it, and has scattered her fairest flowers among
the grass, her sweet-scented wild strawberry blossoms, and her lovely
violets.... Well, what is the matter?” asked Benassis, as La Fosseuse
came back to them.
“Oh! nothing, nothing,” she answered. “I fancied that one of my chickens
was missing, and had not been shut up.”
Her remark was disingenuous, but this was only noticed by the doctor,
who said in her ear, “You have been crying!”
“Why do you say things like that to me before some one else?” she asked
in reply.
“Mademoiselle,” said Genestas, “it is a great pity that you live here
all by yourself; you ought to have a mate in such a charming cage as
this.”
“That is true,” she said, “but what would you have? I am poor, and I
am hard to please. I feel that it would not suit me at all to carry the
soup out into the fields, nor to push a hand-cart; to feel the misery
of those whom I should love, and have no power to put an end to it; to
carry my children in my arms all day, and patch and re-patch a man’s
rags. The cure tells me that such thoughts as these are not very
Christian; I know that myself, but how can I help it? There are days
when I would rather eat a morsel of dry bread than cook anything for
my dinner. Why would you have me worry some man’s life out with my
failings? He would perhaps work himself to death to satisfy my whims,
and that would not be right. Pshaw! an unlucky lot has fallen to me, and
I ought to bear it by myself.”
“And besides, she is a born do-nothing,” said Benassis. “We must take
my poor Fosseuse as we find her. But all that she has been saying to you
simply means that she has never loved as yet,” he added, smiling. Then
he rose and went out on to the lawn for a moment.
“You must be very fond of M. Benassis?” asked Genestas.
“Oh! yes, sir; and there are plenty of people hereabouts who feel as I
do--that they would be glad to do anything in the world for him. And yet
he who cures other people has some trouble of his own that nothing can
cure. You are his friend, perhaps you know what it is? Who could have
given pain to such a man, who is the very image of God on earth? I know
a great many who think that the corn grows faster if he has passed by
their field in the morning.”
“And what do you think yourself?”
“I, sir? When I have seen him,” she seemed to hesitate, then she went
on, “I am happy all the rest of the day.”
She bent her head over her work, and plied her needle with unwonted
swiftness.
“Well, has the captain been telling you something about Napoleon?” said
the doctor, as he came in again.
“Have you seen the Emperor, sir?” cried La Fosseuse, gazing at the
officer’s face with eager curiosity.
“_Parbleu!_” said Genestas, “hundreds of times!”
“Oh! how I should like to know something about the army!”
“Perhaps we will come to take a cup of coffee with you to-morrow, and
you shall hear ‘something about the army,’ dear child,” said Benassis,
who laid his hand on her shoulder and kissed her brow. “She is my
daughter, you see!” he added, turning to the commandant; “there is
something wanting in the day, somehow, when I have not kissed her
forehead.”
La Fosseuse held Benassis’ hand in a tight clasp as she murmured, “Oh!
you are very kind!”
They left the house; but she came after them to see them mount. She
waited till Genestas was in the saddle, and then whispered in Benassis’
ear, “Tell me who that gentleman is?”
“Aha!” said the doctor, putting a foot in the stirrup, “a husband for
you, perhaps.”
She stood on the spot where they left her, absorbed in watching their
progress down the steep path; and when they came past the end of the
garden, they saw her already perched on a little heap of stones, so that
she might still keep them in view and give them a last nod of farewell.
“There is something very unusual about that girl, sir,” Genestas said to
the doctor when they had left the house far behind.
“There is, is there not?” he answered. “Many a time I have said to
myself that she will make a charming wife, but I can only love her as a
sister or a daughter, and in no other way; my heart is dead.”
“Has she any relations?” asked Genestas. “What did her father and mother
do?”
“Oh, it is quite a long story,” answered Benassis. “Neither her father
nor mother nor any of her relations are living. Everything about her
down to her name interested me. La Fosseuse was born here in the town.
Her father, a laborer from Saint Laurent du Pont, was nicknamed _Le
Fosseur_, which is no doubt a contraction of _fossoyeur_, for the
office of sexton had been in his family time out of mind. All the sad
associations of the graveyard hang about the name. Here as in some other
parts of France, there is an old custom, dating from the times of the
Latin civilization, in virtue of which a woman takes her husband’s name,
with the addition of a feminine termination, and this girl has been
called La Fosseuse, after her father.
“The laborer had married the waiting-woman of some countess or other
who owns an estate at a distance of a few leagues. It was a love-match.
Here, as in all country districts, love is a very small element in
a marriage. The peasant, as a rule, wants a wife who will bear him
children, a housewife who will make good soup and take it out to him in
the fields, who will spin and make his shirts and mend his clothes. Such
a thing had not happened for a long while in a district where a young
man not unfrequently leaves his betrothed for another girl who is richer
by three or four acres of land. The fate of Le Fosseur and his wife
was scarcely happy enough to induce our Dauphinois to forsake their
calculating habits and practical way of regarding things. La Fosseuse,
who was a very pretty woman, died when her daughter was born, and her
husband’s grief for his loss was so great that he followed her within
the year, leaving nothing in the world to this little one except an
existence whose continuance was very doubtful--a mere feeble flicker of
a life. A charitable neighbor took the care of the baby upon herself,
and brought her up till she was nine years old. Then the burden of
supporting La Fosseuse became too heavy for the good woman; so at the
time of year when travelers are passing along the roads, she sent her
charge to beg for her living upon the highways.
“One day the little orphan asked for bread at the countess’ chateau, and
they kept the child for her mother’s sake. She was to be waiting-maid
some day to the daughter of the house, and was brought up to this end.
Her young mistress was married five years later; but meanwhile the poor
little thing was the victim of all the caprices of wealthy people, whose
beneficence for the most part is not to be depended upon even while
it lasts. They are generous by fits and starts--sometimes patrons,
sometimes friends, sometimes masters, in this way they falsify the
already false position of the poor children in whom they interest
themselves, and trifle with the hearts, the lives, and futures of their
protegees, whom they regard very lightly. From the first La Fosseuse
became almost a companion to the young heiress; she was taught to read
and write, and her future mistress sometimes amused herself by giving
her music lessons. She was treated sometimes as a lady’s companion,
sometimes as a waiting-maid, and in this way they made an incomplete
being of her. She acquired a taste for luxury and for dress, together
with manners ill-suited to her real position. She has been roughly
schooled by misfortune since then, but the vague feeling that she is
destined for a higher lot has not been effaced in her.
“A day came at last, however, a fateful day for the poor girl, when the
young countess (who was married by this time) discovered La Fosseuse
arrayed in one of her ball dresses, and dancing before a mirror. La
Fosseuse was no longer anything but a waiting-maid, and the orphan girl,
then sixteen years of age, was dismissed without pity. Her idle ways
plunged her once more into poverty; she wandered about begging by the
roadside, and working at times as I have told you. Sometimes she thought
of drowning herself, sometimes also of giving herself to the first
comer; she spent most of her time thinking dark thoughts, lying by
the side of a wall in the sun, with her face buried in the grass, and
passers-by would sometimes throw a few halfpence to her, simply because
she asked them for nothing. One whole year she spent in a hospital at
Annecy after heavy toil in the harvest field; she had only undertaken
the work in the hope that it would kill her, and that so she might die.
You should hear her herself when she speaks of her feelings and ideas
during this time of her life; her simple confidences are often very
curious.
“She came back to the little town at last, just about the time when I
decided to take up my abode in it. I wanted to understand the minds of
the people beneath my rule; her character struck me, and I made a
study of it; then when I became aware of her physical infirmities, I
determined to watch over her. Perhaps in time she may grow accustomed to
work with her needle, but, whatever happens, I have secured her future.”
“She is quite alone up there!” said Genestas.
“No. One of my herdswomen sleeps in the house,” the doctor answered.
“You did not see my farm buildings which lie behind the house. They are
hidden by the pine-trees. Oh! she is quite safe. Moreover, there are no
mauvais sujets here in the valley; if any come among us by any chance, I
send them into the army, where they make excellent solders.”
“Poor girl!” said Genestas.
“Oh! the folk round about do not pity her at all,” said Benassis; “on
the other hand, they think her very lucky; but there is this difference
between her and the other women: God has given strength to them and
weakness to her, and they do not see that.”
The moment that the two horsemen came out upon the road to Grenoble,
Benassis stopped with an air of satisfaction; a different view had
suddenly opened out before them; he foresaw its effect upon Genestas,
and wished to enjoy his surprise. As far as the eye could see, two green
walls sixty feet high rose above a road which was rounded like a garden
path. The trees had not been cut or trimmed, each one preserved the
magnificent palm-branch shape that makes the Lombard poplar one of the
grandest of trees; there they stood, a natural monument which a man
might well be proud of having reared. The shadow had already reached one
side of the road, transforming it into a vast wall of black leaves,
but the setting sun shone full upon the other side, which stood out in
contrast, for the young leaves at the tips of every branch had been
dyed a bright golden hue, and, as the breeze stirred through the waving
curtain, it gleamed in the light.
“You must be very happy here!” cried Genestas. “The sight of this must
be all pleasure to you.”
“The love of Nature is the only love that does not deceive human hopes.
There is no disappointment here,” said the doctor. “Those poplars are
ten years old; have you ever seen any that are better grown than these
of mine?”
“God is great!” said the soldier, coming to a stand in the middle of the
road, of which he saw neither beginning nor end.
“You do me good,” cried Benassis. “It was a pleasure to hear you say
over again what I have so often said in the midst of this avenue. There
is something holy about this place. Here, we are like two mere specks;
and the feeling of our own littleness always brings us into the presence
of God.”
They rode on slowly and in silence, listening to their horses’
hoof-beats; the sound echoed along the green corridor as it might have
done beneath the vaulted roof of a cathedral.
“How many things have a power to stir us which town-dwellers do not
suspect,” said the doctor. “Do you not notice the sweet scent given
off by the gum of the poplar buds, and the resin of the larches? How
delightful it is!”
“Listen!” exclaimed Genestas. “Let us wait a moment.”
A distant sound of singing came to their ears.
“Is it a woman or a man, or is it a bird?” asked the commandant in a low
voice. “Is it the voice of this wonderful landscape?”
“It is something of all these things,” the doctor answered, as he
dismounted and fastened his horse to a branch of a poplar tree.
He made a sign to the officer to follow his example and to come with
him. They went slowly along a footpath between two hedges of blossoming
hawthorn which filled the damp evening air with its delicate fragrance.
The sun shone full into the pathway; the light and warmth were very
perceptible after the shade thrown by the long wall of poplar trees; the
still powerful rays poured a flood of red light over a cottage at the
end of the stony track. The ridge of the cottage roof was usually a
bright green with its overgrowth of mosses and house-leeks, and the
thatch was brown as a chestnut shell, but just now it seemed to be
powdered with a golden dust. The cottage itself was scarcely visible
through the haze of light; the ruinous wall, the doorway and everything
about it was radiant with a fleeting glory and a beauty due to chance,
such as is sometimes seen for an instant in a human face, beneath the
influence of a strong emotion that brings warmth and color into it. In
a life under the open sky and among the fields, the transient and tender
grace of such moments as these draws from us the wish of the apostle who
said to Jesus Christ upon the mountain, “Let us build a tabernacle and
dwell here.”
The wide landscape seemed at that moment to have found a voice whose
purity, and sweetness equaled its own sweetness and purity, a voice as
mournful as the dying light in the west--for a vague reminder of Death
is divinely set in the heavens, and the sun above gives the same warning
that is given here on earth by the flowers and the bright insects of the
day. There is a tinge of sadness about the radiance of sunset, and the
melody was sad. It was a song widely known in the days of yore, a ballad
of love and sorrow that once had served to stir a national hatred of
France for England. Beaumarchais, in a later day, had given it back its
true poetry by adapting it for the French theatre and putting it into
the mouth of a page, who pours out his heart to his stepmother. Just
now it was simply the air that rose and fell. There were no words; the
plaintive voice of the singer touched and thrilled the soul.
“It is the swan’s song,” said Benassis. “That voice does not sound twice
in a century for human ears. Let us hurry; we must put a stop to the
singing! The child is killing himself; it would be cruel to listen to
him any longer. Be quiet, Jacques! Come, come, be quiet!” cried the
doctor.
The music ceased. Genestas stood motionless and overcome with
astonishment. A cloud had drifted across the sun, the landscape and the
voice were both mute. Shadow, chillness, and silence had taken the place
of the soft glory of the light, the warm breath of the breeze, and the
child’s singing.
“What makes you disobey me?” asked Benassis. “I shall not bring you any
more rice pudding nor snail broth! No more fresh dates and white bread
for you! So you want to die and break your poor mother’s heart, do you?”
Genestas came into a little yard, which was sufficiently clean and
tidily kept, and saw before him a lad of fifteen, who looked as delicate
as a woman. His hair was fair but scanty, and the color in his face
was so bright that it seemed hardly natural. He rose up slowly from the
bench where he was sitting, beneath a thick bush of jessamine and some
blossoming lilacs that were running riot, so that he was almost hidden
among the leaves.
“You know very well,” said the doctor, “that I told you not to talk, not
to expose yourself to the chilly evening air, and to go to bed as soon
as the sun was set. What put it into your head to sing?”
“_Dame!_ M. Benassis, it was so very warm out here, and it is so nice
to feel warm! I am always cold. I felt so happy that without thinking I
began to try over _Malbrouk s’en va-t-en guerre_, just for fun, and
then I began to listen to myself because my voice was something like the
sound of the flute your shepherd plays.”
“Well, my poor Jacques, this must not happen again; do you hear? Let me
have your hand,” and the doctor felt his pulse.
The boy’s eyes had their usual sweet expression, but just now they shone
with a feverish light.
“It is just as I thought, you are covered with perspiration,” said
Benassis. “Your mother has not come in yet?”
“No, sir.”
“Come! go in-doors and get into bed.”
The young invalid went back into the cottage, followed by Benassis and
the officer.
“Just light a candle, Captain Bluteau,” said the doctor, who was helping
Jacques to take off his rough, tattered clothing.
When Genestas had struck a light, and the interior of the room was
visible, he was surprised by the extreme thinness of the child, who
seemed to be little more than skin and bone. When the little peasant had
been put to bed, Benassis tapped the lad’s chest, and listened to
the ominous sounds made in this way by his fingers; then, after some
deliberation, he drew back the coverlet over Jacques, stepped back a
few paces, folded his arms across his chest, and closely scrutinized his
patient.
“How do you feel, my little man?”
“Quite comfortable, sir.”
A table, with four spindle legs, stood in the room; the doctor drew
it up to the bed, found a tumbler and a phial on the mantel-shelf, and
composed a draught, by carefully measuring a few drops of brown liquid
from the phial into some water, Genestas holding the light the while.
“Your mother is very late.”
“She is coming, sir,” said the child; “I can hear her footsteps on the
path.”
The doctor and the officer looked around them while they waited. At the
foot of the bed there was a sort of mattress made of moss, on which,
doubtless, the mother was wont to sleep in her clothes, for there were
neither sheets nor coverlet. Genestas pointed out this bed to Benassis,
who nodded slightly to show that he likewise had already admired this
motherly devotion. There was a clatter of sabots in the yard, and the
doctor went out.
“You will have to sit up with Jacques to-night, Mother Colas. If he
tells you that his breathing is bad, you must let him drink some of the
draught that I have poured into the tumbler on the table. Take care not
to let him have more than two or three sips at a time; there ought to
be enough in the tumbler to last him all through the night. Above all
things, do not touch the phial, and change the child’s clothing at once.
He is perspiring heavily.”
“I could not manage to wash his shirts to-day, sir; I had to take the
hemp over to Grenoble, as we wanted the money.”
“Very well, then, I will send you some shirts.”
“Then is he worse, my poor lad?” asked the woman.
“He has been so imprudent as to sing, Mother Colas; and it is not to be
expected that any good can come of it; but do not be hard upon him, nor
scold him. Do not be down-hearted about it; and if Jacques complains
overmuch, send a neighbor to fetch me. Good-bye.”
The doctor called to his friend, and they went back along the foot-path.
“Is that little peasant consumptive?” asked Genestas.
“_Mon Dieu_! yes,” answered Benassis. “Science cannot save him, unless
Nature works a miracle. Our professors at the Ecole de Médecine in
Paris often used to speak to us of the phenomenon which you have
just witnessed. Some maladies of this kind bring about changes in the
voice-producing organs that give the sufferer a short-lived power
of song that no trained voice can surpass. I have made you spend a
melancholy day, sir,” said the doctor when he was once more in
the saddle. “Suffering and death everywhere, but everywhere also
resignation. All these peasant folk take death philosophically; they
fall ill, say nothing about it, and take to their beds like dumb
animals. But let us say no more about death, and let us quicken our
horses’ paces a little; we ought to reach the town before nightfall, so
that you may see the new quarter.”
“Eh! some place is on fire over there,” said Genestas, pointing to a
spot on the mountain, where a sheaf of flames was rising.
“It is not a dangerous fire. Our lime-burner is heating his kiln,
no doubt. It is a newly-started industry, which turns our heather to
account.”
There was the sudden report of a gun, followed by an involuntary
exclamation from Benassis, who said, with an impatient gesture, “If that
is Butifer, we shall see which of us two is the stronger.”
“The shot came from that quarter,” said Genestas, indicating a
beech-wood up above them on the mountain side. “Yes, up there; you may
trust an old soldier’s ear.”
“Let us go there at once!” cried Benassis, and he made straight for the
little wood, urging his horse at a furious speed across the ditches and
fields, as if he were riding a steeplechase, in his anxiety to catch the
sportsman red-handed.
“The man you are after has made off,” shouted Genestas, who could
scarcely keep up with him.
Benassis wheeled his horse round sharply, and came back again. The man
of whom he was in search soon appeared on the top of a perpendicular
crag, a hundred feet above the level of the two horsemen.
“Butifer!” shouted Benassis when he saw that this figure carried a
fowling-piece; “come down!”
Butifer recognized the doctor, and replied by a respectful and friendly
sign which showed that he had every intention of obeying.
“I can imagine that if a man were driven to it by fear or by some
overmastering impulse that he might possibly contrive to scramble up to
that point among the rocks,” said Genestas; “but how will he manage to
come down again?”
“I have no anxiety on that score,” answered Benassis; “the wild goats
must feel envious of that fellow yonder! You will see.”
The emergencies of warfare had accustomed the commandant to gauge the
real worth of men; he admired the wonderful quickness of Butifer’s
movements, the sure-footed grace with which the hunter swung himself
down the rugged sides of the crag, to the top of which he had so boldly
climbed. The strong, slender form of the mountaineer was gracefully
poised in every attitude which the precipitous nature of the path
compelled him to assume; and so certain did he seem of his power to hold
on at need, that if the pinnacle of rock on which he took his stand had
been a level floor, he could not have set his foot down upon it
more calmly. He carried his fowling-piece as if it had been a light
walking-cane. Butifer was a young man of middle height, thin, muscular,
and in good training; his beauty was of a masculine order, which
impressed Genestas on a closer view.
Evidently he belonged to the class of smugglers who ply their trade
without resorting to violent courses, and who only exert patience and
craft to defraud the government. His face was manly and sunburned. His
eyes, which were bright as an eagle’s, were of a clear yellow color, and
his sharply-cut nose with its slight curve at the tip was very much like
an eagle’s beak. His cheeks were covered with down, his red lips were
half open, giving a glimpse of a set of teeth of dazzling whiteness. His
beard, moustache, and the reddish whiskers, which he allowed to grow,
and which curled naturally, still further heightened the masculine
and forbidding expression of his face. Everything about him spoke of
strength. He was broad-chested; constant activity had made the
muscles of his hands curiously firm and prominent. There was the
quick intelligence of a savage about his glances; he looked resolute,
fearless, and imperturbable, like a man accustomed to put his life in
peril, and whose physical and mental strength had been so often tried by
dangers of every kind, that he no longer felt any doubts about himself.
He wore a blouse that had suffered a good deal from thorns and briars,
and he had a pair of leather soles bound to his feet by eel-skin thongs,
and a pair of torn and tattered blue linen breeches through which his
legs were visible, red, wiry, hard, and muscular as those of a stag.
“There you see the man who once fired a shot at me,” Benassis remarked
to the commandant in a low voice. “If at this moment I were to signify
to him my desire to be rid of any one, he would kill them without
scruple.--Butifer!” he went on, addressing the poacher, “I fully
believed you to be a man of your word; I pledged mine for you because I
had your promise. My promise to the _procureur du roi_ at Grenoble was
based upon your vow never to go poaching again, and to turn over a new
leaf and become a steady, industrious worker. You fired that shot just
now, and here you are, on the Comte de Labranchoir’s estate! Eh! you
miscreant? Suppose his keeper had happened to hear you? It is a lucky
thing for you that I shall take no formal cognizance of this offence; if
I did, you would come up as an old offender, and of course you have no
gun license! I let you keep that gun of yours out of tenderness for your
attachment to the weapon.”
“It is a beauty,” said the commandant, who recognized a duck gun from
Sainte Etienne.
The smuggler raised his head and looked at Genestas by way of
acknowledging the compliment.
“Butifer,” continued Benassis, “if your conscience does not reproach
you, it ought to do so. If you are going to begin your old tricks again,
you will find yourself once more in a park enclosed by four stone walls,
and no power on earth will save you from the hulks; you will be a marked
man, and your character will be ruined. Bring your gun to me to-night, I
will take care of it for you.”
Butifer gripped the barrel of his weapon in a convulsive clutch.
“You are right, sir,” he said; “I have done wrong, I have broken bounds,
I am a cur. My gun ought to go to you, but when you take it away from
me, you take all that I have in the world. The last shot which my
mother’s son will fire shall be through my own head.... What would you
have? I did as you wanted me. I kept quiet all winter; but the spring
came, and the sap rose. I am not used to day labor. It is not in my
nature to spend my life in fattening fowls; I cannot stoop about turning
over the soil for vegetables, nor flourish a whip and drive a cart, nor
scrub down a horse in a stable all my life, so I must die of starvation,
I suppose? I am only happy when I am up there,” he went on after a
pause, pointing to the mountains. “And I have been about among the hills
for the past week; I got a sight of a chamois, and I have the chamois
there,” he said, pointing to the top of the crag; “it is at your
service! Dear M. Benassis, leave me my gun. Listen! I will leave the
Commune, _foi de Butifer_! I will go to the Alps; the chamois-hunters
will not say a word; on the contrary, they will receive me with open
arms. I shall come to grief at the bottom of some glacier; but, if I am
to speak my mind, I would rather live for a couple of years among the
heights, where there are no governments, nor excisemen, nor gamekeepers,
nor procureurs du roi, than grovel in a marsh for a century. You are
the only one that I shall be sorry to leave behind; all the rest of them
bore me! When you are in the right, at any rate you don’t worry one’s
life out----”
“And how about Louise?” asked Benassis. Butifer paused and turned
thoughtful.
“Eh! learn to read and write, my lad,” said Genestas; “come and enlist
in my regiment, have a horse to ride, and turn carabineer. If they
once sound ‘to horse’ for something like a war, you will find out
that Providence made you to live in the midst of cannon, bullets, and
battalions, and they will make a general of you.”
“Ye-es, if Napoleon was back again,” answered Butifer.
“You know our agreement,” said the doctor. “At the second infraction of
it, you undertook to go for a soldier. I give you six months in which to
learn to read and write, and then I will find some young gentleman who
wants a substitute.”
Butifer looked at the mountains.
“Oh! you shall not go to the Alps,” cried Benassis. “A man like you, a
man of his word, with plenty of good stuff in him, ought to serve his
country and command a brigade, and not come to his end trailing after
a chamois. The life that you are leading will take you straight to the
convict’s prison. After over-fatiguing yourself, you are obliged to take
a long rest; and, in the end, you will fall into idle ways that will be
the ruin of any notions of orderly existence that you have; you will get
into the habit of putting your strength to bad uses, and you will take
the law into your own hands. I want to put you, in spite of yourself,
into the right path.”
“So I am to pine and fret myself to death? I feel suffocated whenever I
am in a town. I cannot hold out for more than a day, in Grenoble, when I
take Louise there----”
“We all have our whims, which we must manage to control, or turn them to
account for our neighbor’s benefit. But it is late, and I am in a hurry.
Come to see me to-morrow, and bring your gun along with you. We will
talk this over, my boy. Good-bye. Go and sell your chamois in Grenoble.”
The two horsemen went on their way.
“That is what I call a man,” said Genestas.
“A man in a bad way,” answered Benassis. “But what help is there for it?
You heard what he said. Is it not lamentable to see such fine qualities
running to waste? If France were invaded by a foreign foe, Butifer at
the head of a hundred young fellows would keep a whole division busy in
Maurienne for a month; but in a time of peace the only outlets for his
energy are those which set the law at defiance. He must wrestle with
something; whenever he is not risking his neck he is at odds with
society, he lends a helping hand to smugglers. The rogue will cross the
Rhone, all by himself, in a little boat, to take shoes over into Savoy;
he makes good his retreat, heavy laden as he is, to some inaccessible
place high up among the hills, where he stays for two days at a time,
living on dry crusts. In short, danger is as welcome to him as sleep
would be to anybody else, and by dint of experience he has acquired a
relish for extreme sensations that has totally unfitted him for ordinary
life. It vexes me that a man like that should take a wrong turn and
gradually go to the bad, become a bandit, and die on the gallows. But,
see, captain, how our village looks from here!”
Genestas obtained a distant view of a wide circular space, planted with
trees, a fountain surrounded by poplars stood in the middle of it.
Round the enclosure were high banks on which a triple line of trees of
different kinds were growing; the first row consisted of acacias,
the second of Japanese varnish trees, and some young elms grew on the
highest row of all.
“That is where we hold our fair,” said Benassis. “That is the beginning
of the High Street, by those two handsome houses that I told you about;
one belongs to the notary, and the other to the justice of the peace.”
They came at that moment into a broad road, fairly evenly paved with
large cobble-stones. There were altogether about a hundred new houses on
either side of it, and almost every house stood in a garden.
The view of the church with its doorway made a pretty termination to
this road. Two more roads had been recently planned out half-way down
the course of the first, and many new houses had already been built
along them. The town-hall stood opposite the parsonage, in the square by
the church. As Benassis went down the road, women and children stood in
their doorways to wish him good-evening, the men took off their caps,
and the little children danced and shouted about his horse, as if the
animal’s good-nature were as well known as the kindness of its master.
The gladness was undemonstrative; there was the instinctive delicacy of
all deep feeling about it, and it had the same pervasive power. At the
sight of this welcome it seemed to Genestas that the doctor had been too
modest in his description of the affection with which he was regarded by
the people of the district. His truly was a sovereignty of the sweetest
kind; a right royal sovereignty moreover, for its title was engraven
in the hearts of its subjects. However dazzling the rays of glory that
surround a man, however great the power that he enjoys, in his inmost
soul he soon comes to a just estimate of the sentiments that all
external action causes for him. He very soon sees that no change has
been wrought in him, that there is nothing new and nothing greater
in the exercise of his physical faculties, and discovers his own real
nothingness. Kings, even should they rule over the whole world, are
condemned to live in a narrow circle like other men. They must even
submit to the conditions of their lot, and their happiness depends
upon the personal impressions that they receive. But Benassis met with
nothing but goodwill and loyalty throughout the district.