André Theuriet was evidently in sympathy with the doctrine that those
lands and their dwellers are most happy which have the least history.
Singular as the statement may seem when made of a contemporary French
man of letters who had defeated Zola in a contest for election to the
Academy, it is nevertheless true that the tone of Theuriet’s work
is repose. “The short and simple annals of the poor” he penned with
simplicity and charm, and rarely did the hurly-burly tempt him to fare
among scenes either boisterous or sordid. Yet, he was never squeamish,
but wrote of a real life in a real world. What Alphonse Daudet became
when he occasionally left fevered Paris to lie on the turf at Montauban
and feel in fancy the gentle fanning of the old windmill, that André
Theuriet was by temperament. The bucolic, the gentle, the peaceful--all
met response in his nature and were mirrored in the placid pool of his
fiction.
Theuriet was born at Marly-le-Roi, September, 1833, and spent his
childhood in that lovely province. He got his education at Bar-le-duc,
and at Paris, where he took up the study of law, receiving the
degree of _Licencée en Droit_ at the age of twenty-four. Instead of
practising, however, he entered the Ministry of Finance the same year,
and began the routine of public life--as the intensely private career
of the bureaucrat is called.
At once he began to publish verse, winning a place, the very year
of his appointment to the Ministry of Finance, in the pages of that
distinguished exponent of letters, the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. _In
Memoriam_ was the title of his first success--a romance in verse,
quickly appraised by critics at a value which it still maintains,
and displaying the qualities for which the author’s writings are
appreciated to-day.
We never tire of debating as to whether distinguished men are more the
product of their times, than their era is moulded by its men. Doubtless
something of both views is the ultimate truth. Theuriet, however,
left no profound influence upon his age. During the ten years which
succeeded the publication of _In Memoriam_--1857 to 1867--his work
continued, unaffected by the French revolt, if that is not too strong a
term, against romanticism. This is shown in his first volume of poems,
_The Forest Path_ (_Le Chemin du Bois_), published in 1867, and awarded
the Vitel prize by the Academy. Another ten years, and he received the
coveted place among the Immortals, but the tone of his writings never
changed--his was always a quiet romanticism clothed upon with the
beauty of idealism.
Theuriet’s selection of themes is a happy index to his nature. The one
and the other are clean, uncomplicated by intrigue, and in the main
agreeable. Are there many to-day who will be attracted to this man when
his fiction is called restful and gentle? I do not know, since we are
all so busy and turbulent and--disillusioned. But we ought to be, if we
are not, drawn by thoughts of a melodious rhythm of words portraying
honest emotions, of country life that exhales the “perfume of new hay
and of ripe wheat,” of woodsy ways and forest folk--in a word, thoughts
of a world where, as in _La Bretonne_, the lowliest respond to human
need, and even crime cannot stamp out the image of the beautiful, a
world full of goodness rising out of the ooze of evil.
And so it was country-life--country-life in Lorraine, enriched and
made beautiful by the Loire--that inspired not only his early poems,
but also the numerous novels, plays, sketches, and short-stories which
stand to his credit--and I use the word designedly.
After a notable if not brilliant career as author and journalist,
Theuriet died in Paris, 1897.
Relatively little of Theuriet’s work is known to readers who know not
French, but of this little probably the long short-story, “The Abbé
Daniel,” is the most familiar. It is in the style of Ludovic Halévy’s
“Abbé Constantin,” and of about the same length--a little classic of
“polite rusticity,” of pastoral love, sorrow, loss, and happiness,
limpid in style and artistically balanced in structure.
The plot is simple: Young Daniel loves his beautiful cousin Denise,
but she marries Beauvais, the rough, hearty, typical bourgeois landed
proprietor. A daughter is born--a second Denise--but the mother does
not long survive. Young Daniel has entered the church and become “The
Abbé Daniel.” His simple goodness leads him to adopt an orphaned lad,
whom he cherishes as he would his own. One day the Abbé finds little
Daniel, as he is called, feeding a threshing machine. In terror for the
child’s danger, the Abbé shows his friends what the lad was doing, and
the loss of his own arm is the penalty. He now resigns his parish and
goes to live with the widowed father of the little Denise and assumes
charge of her education, lavishing upon the child the affection he was
forbidden to give to her mother. The children learn to love each other,
but young Daniel goes away to the Crimean War and seems to forget.
Meanwhile, Beauvais plans to marry his daughter Denise to a worthy
young nobody of means, but the loving Abbé sends for his protégé, who
promptly returns on leave, and the end is not difficult to surmise.
All this brief narration is but sketching the frame and omitting the
picture, for who can feel the charm of the simple but never insipid
story when it is bereft of the witchery of Theuriet’s style! It
is worth while knowing at first hand a real French home, with the
farmer-father, the daughter, the young soldier, and the Abbé Daniel.
That there are not many “intense thrills for jaded readers” in
Theuriet’s straightforward work will be further illustrated by a
reading of his novels--_Mademoiselle Guignon_, _Aunt Aurelia_,
_Claudette_, _The Maugars_, _Angela’s Fortune_, and others--with which
we have not here to deal; but it will also be quite evident in the
simplicity of his shorter fiction, which must now be considered.
“An Easter Story” tells of Juanito, an orphan boy of fifteen. Like a
weed on the pavement of Triana, he had grown up. Gipsy blood flowed in
his veins and, like the gipsies, he loved his independence, vagrancy,
and bull-fights. He earned a poor enough living by selling programmes
at the doors of the theatres, but during Holy Week the theatres were
closed, and now Good Friday finds him unhappy--for he has no money
to go to the bull-fight on Easter Sunday! However, he follows the
crowd until, tired and hungry, he lies down in a corner and sleeps.
Two lovers pass. They put into the hand of the pretty youth a piece of
silver, and so when he awakes his problem is solved. But as he starts
down the street he sees a girl crying. He goes to her. It is Chata,
whom he has known since childhood. Her mother is sick, she says, and
the apothecary will not give her medicine because she has no money.
Juanito looks into the girl’s eyes, hesitates a moment, then quickly
puts into her hand the piece of silver. So Juanito did not see the
bull-fight.
On Sunday Chata goes out to find her friend, and they go for a walk.
Coming to a secluded corner, the girl looks into the young man’s eyes
to thank him. But suddenly, moved by the sweetness of his deed, she
throws her arms about his neck and cries, “I love you!”
Human interest--tenderness rather than strength--marks all Theuriet’s
short fictions. “Little Gab” is quite without plot, which means that
its delicacy defies condensed narration. It is a sympathetic sketch of
a small hunchback whose parents are too hard-pressed in their struggle
with poverty to look after the boy. The physician tells Little Gab’s
sister that only the sea air and the baths at Berck can save her
brother’s life. Through the unceasing labors and savings of the sister,
this is at last accomplished, and both are on the heights of joy. The
change is magical, and the lad returns with some prospect of recovery;
but the dense air of the city is too much for Little Gab, and he dies
still thinking of the beautiful sea.
Less tragic, but quite as simple in scheme, is “The Peaches,” which
narrates how Herbelot is teased out of the service of the Ministry
of Finance by being detected carrying home for his wife two peaches
concealed in his hat.
Though its tone is not entirely typical of Theuriet, _La
Bretonne_--which follows, in translation--is probably his most dramatic
story, revealing, as it does, the good that lives in the worst of us.
LA BRETONNE
By André Theuriet
_Done into English by the Editor_
One evening in November, the Eve of Saint Catherine, the iron gate of
the Central Prison of Auberive turned on its hinges and allowed a woman
of about thirty years to pass out. She was clad in a faded woollen
gown, and her head was surmounted by a bonnet of linen that in an odd
fashion framed her face--pallid and puffed by that grayish fat which is
born of prison fare.
She was a prisoner whom they had just liberated. Her fellow-convicts
called her _La Bretonne_. Condemned for infanticide, it was just six
years since the prison van had brought her to _la Centrale_. At length,
after having donned again her street clothes, and drawing from the
registry the stock of money which had been saved for her, she found
herself once more free, with her road-pass viséed for Langres.
The post-cart for Langres had left; so, cowed and awkward, she directed
her way stumblingly toward the principal inn of the place, and in
scarcely a confident voice asked a lodging for the night. The inn was
full, and the landlady, who did not care to harbor “one of those
jail-birds,” advised her to push on as far as the little public-house
situated at the other end of the village.
_La Bretonne_, more awkward and frightened than ever, went on her
way, and knocked at the door of the public-house, which, to speak
precisely, was only a drinking place for laborers. This proprietress
also cast over her a distrustful eye, doubtless scenting a woman from
_la Centrale_, and finally turned her away on the pretense that she did
not keep lodgers. _La Bretonne_ dared not insist, she merely moved away
with her head down, while from the depths of her soul arose a sullen
hate against this world which so repulsed her.
She had no other recourse than to travel to Langres on foot.
In late November night comes quickly. Soon she found herself enveloped
in darkness, on the gray road which stretched between the edges of the
woods, and where the north wind whistled rudely as it drove the heaps
of dead leaves hither and yon.
After six years of sedentary life as a recluse, she no longer knew how
to walk; and the joints of her knees were rickety; her feet, accustomed
to sabots, were tortured in her new shoes. After about a league they
were blistered, and she herself was exhausted. She sat down on a
milestone, shivering and asking herself if she must die of cold and
hunger in this black night, under that icy wind which so chilled her.
Suddenly, in the solitude of the road, over the squalls of wind she
seemed to hear the trailing sounds of a voice in song. She strained
her ears and distinguished the cadence of one of those caressing and
monotonous chants with which one lulls children to sleep. Thereupon,
rising again to her feet, she pressed on in the direction of the voice,
and at the turn of a cross-road she saw a light which reddened through
the branches.
Five minutes later she reached a mud hovel, whose roof, covered with
clods of earth, leaned against the rock, and whose single window had
sent forth that luminous ray. With anxious heart she decided to knock.
The song ceased and a peasant opened the door--a woman of the same
age as _la Bretonne_, but already faded and aged by work. Her bodice,
torn in places, showed a rough and swarthy skin; her red hair escaped
dishevelled from under a little cloth cap; her gray eyes regarded with
amazement this stranger whose figure revealed something of loneliness.
“Well, good evening,” said she, raising higher the lamp which she held
in her hand. “What do you want?”
“I can go no further,” murmured _la Bretonne_ in a voice broken by a
sob. “The town is far, and if you will lodge me for this night, you’ll
render me a service. I have some money, and will pay you for your
trouble.”
“Come in!” replied the other, after a moment of hesitation; then she
continued in a tone more of curiosity than of suspicion, “Why didn’t
you sleep at Auberive?”
“They were not willing to lodge me”--and, lowering her blue eyes, _la
Bretonne_, seized with a scruple, added--“because, you see, I come from
the Central Prison, and that does not give folks confidence.”
“Ah! Come in all the same. I, who never knew anything but poverty--I
fear nothing! I have a conscience against turning a Christian from the
door on a night like this. I’ll go make you a bed by strewing some
heather.”
She proceeded to take from under a shed several bundles of dry
sweet-heather and spread them in a corner before the chimney.
“You live here alone?” timidly asked _la Bretonne_.
“Yes, with my youngster, who is nearly seven years old. I earn our
living by working in the woods.”
“Your man is dead?”
“I never had one,” said _la Fleuriotte_ bruskly. “The poor child hasn’t
any father. As the saying is, ‘to each his sorrow.’ There, your bed
is made, and here are two or three potatoes which are left over from
supper--it’s all I have to offer you.”
She was interrupted by a childish voice coming from a dark closet,
separated from the main room by a board partition.
“Good night!” she repeated. “I must go look up the little one--she’s
crying. Have a good night’s sleep!”
She took the lamp and went to the adjacent closet, leaving _la
Bretonne_ in darkness.
Soon she was stretched upon her bed of heather. After having eaten,
she tried to close her eyes, but sleep would not come. Through the
partition she heard _la Fleuriotte_ talking softly with her baby,
whom the arrival of the stranger had awakened, and who did not wish
to go to sleep again. _La Fleuriotte_ petted her, she embraced her
with caressing words--naïve expressions which strangely stirred _la
Bretonne_.
The outburst of tenderness awakened a confused instinct of motherhood
buried deep in the soul of that girl who had once been condemned for
having stifled her new-born babe. _La Bretonne_ reflected that “if
things had not gone badly” with her, her own child would have been just
as old as this little girl. At that thought, and at the sound of the
childish voice, she shuddered in her inmost soul; something tender and
loving was born in that embittered heart, and she felt an overwhelming
need for tears.
“Come, my pet,” said _la Fleuriotte_, “hurry off to sleep. If you are
good, I’ll take you to-morrow to the fête of Saint Catherine.”
“Saint Catherine’s--that’s the fête for little girls, isn’t it, Mamma?”
“Yes, my own.”
“Is it true, then, that on this day Saint Catherine gives playthings to
the children?”
“Yes--sometimes.”
“Why doesn’t she ever bring anything to our house?”
“We live too far away; and, besides, we are too poor.”
“Then, she brings them only to rich children! Why? I--I’d love to have
some playthings.”
“Ah, well! Some day--if you are quite good--if you go to sleep
nicely--perhaps she will bring you some.”
“All right--I’m going to sleep--so that she’ll bring me some to-morrow.”
Silence. Then regular and gentle breathing. The child had fallen
asleep, and the mother too. Only _la Bretonne_ did not sleep. An
emotion both poignant and tender wrung her heart, and she thought more
fixedly than ever of that little one whom long ago she had stifled.
This lasted until the first gleams of dawn.
At early daylight _la Fleuriotte_ and her child still slept. _La
Bretonne_ furtively glided out of the house, and, walking hastily in
the direction of Auberive, did not pause until she reached the first
houses. Once there, she again passed slowly up the single street,
scanning the signs of the shops. At last one of these seemed to
fix her attention. She rapped upon the window-shutter, and by and
by it was opened. It was a dry-goods shop, but they also had some
children’s playthings--poor shopworn toys--paper dolls, a Noah’s ark,
a sheep-fold. To the great amazement of the shopkeeper, _la Bretonne_
bought them all, paid, and went out.
She was again on the road to _la Fleuriotte’s_ hovel when a hand was
laid heavily on her shoulder. Tremblingly she turned and found herself
facing a corporal of _gensdarmes_. The unhappy woman had forgotten
that convicts were not permitted after their release to remain in the
neighborhood of the prison!
“Instead of loafing here, you should be already at Langres,” said the
corporal severely. “Go along--on your way!”
She sought to explain--her pains were lost! In the twinkling of an
eye a cart was requisitioned, she was put in under the escort of a
_gendarme_, and the driver whipped up his horse.
The cart rumbled joltingly over the frozen road. Poor _la Bretonne_
heart-brokenly clutched the package of playthings in her chilled
fingers.
At a turn of the highway she recognized the cross-path through the
woods. Her heart leaped, and she pleaded with the _gendarme_ to
stop--she had an errand for _la Fleuriotte_, a woman who lived there,
only a couple of steps away. She pleaded with so much earnestness
that the _gendarme_, a good fellow at heart, allowed himself to be
persuaded. They tied the horse to the tree and went up the path.
In front of her door _la Fleuriotte_ was chopping up wood into faggots.
Upon seeing her visitor back again, accompanied by a _gendarme_, she
stood open-mouthed, her arms hanging.
“Chut!” said _la Bretonne_, “is the little one still asleep?”
“Yes, but----”
“Lay these playthings gently on her bed, and tell her that Saint
Catherine sent them. I went back to Auberive to hunt for them, but it
seems that I hadn’t the right to do so, and they are sending me to
Langres.”
“Holy Mother of God!” cried _la Fleuriotte_.
“Pshaw!”
She drew near the bed. Followed always by her guard, _la Bretonne_
spread over the coverlet the dolls, the ark, and the flock of sheep.
Then she kissed the bare arm of the sleeping child, and, turning toward
the _gendarme_, who stood staring:
“Now,” said she, “we can go on.”