fond; what! my immense apricot tree, which I had had measured and which
was the largest one in Chauny, and which people came to see, with its
five yards of breadth and ten yards of height; what! my box, which I
had cut myself into balls and borders; was all this to be pulled up,
cut, destroyed?
“Blondeau, why has grandmother caused me this great grief, for which I
shall never be consoled?”
“Because she could never find such a chance again, and it is for your
_dot_.”
Then I burst forth.
“Oh! yes, again for money--that money which makes the misery of my
life. It is like the inheritance for which mamma would have let me die!
Grandmother is going to kill me that I may have a _dot_!”
This time it was I who provoked the “family drama,” and what a drama
it was! I showed myself on this occasion the passionate child of
my violent-tempered father. My anger and my hardness towards my
grandmother made her suffer terribly.
I shut myself up in my room for more than a fortnight. Arthémise
brought me my meals. I would open my door only to her. Neither
Blondeau, grandfather, nor my friend Charles were allowed to enter. My
grandmother did not even dare to come upstairs. I wrote her every day a
letter filled with cruel reproaches, to which she had not the courage
to reply.
Her great fear was that my father would arrive and that I would wish
to leave her forever. However, to tranquillize her on that score,
there was a serious quarrel pending between herself and my father at
that time, the latter having wished to borrow money from her to pay
the debts of his soldier-brother, who led a wild life; and as she had
refused, they had not seen each other for two months.
I thought of Blérancourt, where the garden was small, to be sure, but
was separated from other gardens only by hedges, where I should have my
father, who I certainly loved as much as grandmother; but my mother’s
coldness, compared with grandfather’s exuberance and gaiety, frightened
me. And then at Blérancourt there was no Blondeau nor friend Charles.
Besides, I knew very well that, although my mother was jealous of
grandfather’s affection for me, she would blame me for abandoning
her, would say I was ungrateful, and, moreover, I could not think of
explaining to her grandmother’s reason for selling the garden and her
anxiety regarding my _dot_.
These reflections following one another in my mind, at times made
me indulgent toward grandmother, but, as soon as I thought of the
destruction of my garden, I suffered so acutely that I listened no
longer to justice.
I thought also of asking my aunts to take me, of writing to Marguerite
to come with Roussot some night, when I would give her _rendezvous_ in
the little street _des Juifs_ on which our garden opened, so that she
could steal me away; but I had the secret instinct that if my aunts
were very happy to have me two months in the year, at the time when
they lived out of doors, my turbulence, my superabundance of gaiety,
of life, my passion for movement, would tire them during a whole year
through.
After all, there were only my grandparents, Blondeau, my friend
Charles, and Arthémise to love and really understand me, and--I added
to myself--to put up with me.
I had missed going to school for two weeks.
Grandmother said I was ill and it was believed, because no one saw me
about.
However, grandmother finally invoked the aid of the dean, whom I liked
very much, because he wished me to make my first communion when I was
ten and a half years old, and not to wait another year. He feared my
father’s influence over me, which fact, of course, they did not tell
me, so I was very flattered to be the youngest and the most remarked in
the catechism class. I was as tall as the tallest girls in it.
Grandmother told the dean the truth about my passionate love of my
garden, of my extreme delight in nature, and of her sudden resolve to
sell the garden on account of the exceptional price she received, and
for the benefit of my _dot_, etc., etc.
The dean came and knocked at my door, but I did not open it, in spite
of the touching appeal he made to me. I heard grandmother sobbing
outside. From that moment my heart was softened and my rancour fled,
but a bad feeling of pride prevented me from calling them back. I
repented, however, and when Arthémise came to bring me some ink for
which I had asked, I opened my door and found myself face to face with
the dean.
The moment for an amiable solution had come, but in order to save my
dignity I pretended to let myself be overcome by the dean’s arguments,
and to be influenced by his threats not to receive me any longer at the
catechism class and to delay my first communion until the following
year, in 1848.
“Come,” he said to me, “and ask your grandmother’s pardon.”
“No, your reverence, do not exact that I should ask pardon. I cannot do
it. I am too unhappy to think that my grandmother has sold my garden,
and that I have lost it forever. Besides, it is not necessary. You will
see that my grandmother will be only too glad to kiss me.”
Grandmother was waiting for me in the drawing-room, knowing that the
dean had gone into my room and having learned from Arthémise that I had
listened to him and had yielded.
That night, at dinner, they had a festival in my honour without saying
anything to me about my misbehaviour. It was not the time to scold me.
I was not at all consoled for the loss of my garden, for my flowers and
fruit, for all its greenery, or even for its snow.
I did not see the first flowers blossom, I did not gather them for
grandmother’s table, nor for the little white vase in which I was wont
to arrange artistically the first Bengal roses.
As soon as the fine weather came, and during all that spring, the
workmen were pulling down the rampart behind the high garden-wall, and
everything fell in together. They cut a new street, on which the large
principal door of the school was to open. The buildings were to be
raised only twenty yards from our courtyard; the green wooden lattice
was at once replaced by an ugly wall.
All the noise of the demolition of the garden broke my heart. During
the night, the moaning of the wind made me think that I heard the
death-sighs of my trees.
One Thursday afternoon, when I was playing sadly in the courtyard, I
heard a sharp cry, a whistling, and a sort of tearing apart. Something
was certainly being torn up and was resisting and groaning with all
its power. I felt it must be the death-torture of my apricot tree.
Formerly, at this time of the year the sap would rise to the smallest
twigs on its branches, and I could see its first buds. Now they were
torturing it.
This uprooting of my apricot tree revived all my sorrow. Behind that
odious wall its agony was taking place.
I imagined that I could see devastation ending its cruel work. They
were digging up the last vestiges of the life of my trees--their
roots--and they were levelling the ground. I suffered from it all so
much that I was nearly ill.
XXII
MY FIRST RAILWAY JOURNEY
The reconciliation between my father and my grandmother was brought
about by a friend of my uncle Amédée (an uncle whom none of us at
Chauny knew, because he never left Africa). This friend had paid my
uncle’s debts in time to prevent his being obliged to resign his
commission as an officer.
It was my grandfather’s opinion that uncle Amédée was much too fond
of amusement, although very brave and intelligent. In saying this,
however, he hastened to add:
“Campaign life impairs the most rigid private virtue.”
“As it impaired yours,” said grandmother.
And Blondeau ended the conversation by saying:
“Peace be with those who are no more!”
One day when we were not expecting him, my father arrived, looking very
happy, and said to grandmother before me:
“Will you give me Juliette? I wish to take her on a long journey.”
“From Chauny to Blérancourt?”
“No, no, much farther.”
“Where, dear Jean Louis?”
“To Amiens, Abbeville, and Verton. I will show her the sea, which I
wish to behold myself, for I have never seen it. And better still, we
shall travel to it on the railway.”
“Ah, no! Not in the railway coaches!” cried my grandmother. “I am
afraid of those monstrosities, for they say that every day, every time
people get into them, there are accidents--persons killed and wounded.
Juliette is not yet old enough to guarantee herself from danger by
making her will. But how has this great plan come about?”
“You remember, dear mother, that young workman, Liénard, who was so
wonderfully intelligent, in whom I was so interested, and whom I had
educated to be an engineer?”
“Yes, yes, and that was one of your good works. To elevate a poor man
from a low position, is meritorious and useful, in a different manner
from that of torturing one’s mind to discover a way to ruin the middle
classes, and to make poverty universal.”
“Do you hear that, Jean Louis?” said my father, laughing.
“Well,” he continued, “Liénard has made his way brilliantly. He is now
the head of a division of the Boulogne-sur-Mer railway. He has six
hundred employés and workmen under him to-day, and he wishes me to
see him in the exercise of a function of which he is proud, and which
he owes to me. He has invited me to pass a fortnight, together with
Juliette, at Verton. Madame Liénard is devoted to our daughter, whom
she always comes to see when she knows she is at Blérancourt, doesn’t
she, Juliette?”
“Grandmother,” I replied, “if you will permit it, I should be delighted
to take a long journey with papa. It is my dream to travel. I am very
fond of Madame Liénard.” And stooping down to her ear, I added: “And
besides, grandmother, it will distract me from my great sorrow.”
“Yes, Juliette, I think so, too,” she answered. “Your father must leave
you with me for two weeks to prepare your wardrobe, for I wish you to
have everything you may need, and then you shall go to see the sea.”
When my father had left, grandmother said to me: “I must obtain a
dispensation from the curé so that you may leave the catechism class
without having your first communion delayed in consequence. But I think
there will be no difficulty about it.”
The entire town of Chauny was interested in this journey. My
grandfather told how it had come about to all who wished to hear it.
At school I was much questioned, and in the same degree that I had
been humiliated at having the girls say to me: “It seems that your
grandmother has sold your famous garden which you thought as fine as a
kingdom,” just so proud was I in thinking of all the interesting things
that I should have to relate to my little friends on my return.
The journey from Paris to Amiens was, of course, by diligence.
We stopped an entire day at Saint-Quentin to see my relatives, the
Raincourts, to whom I talked of my dear aunts and my grandmother, and
who were happy to know that their cousins were reconciled.
At Amiens we stopped again to see other Raincourts. I visited the
cathedral, and the impression I received of its power and grandeur
remains with me still. My cousins took us to the opera. They played
_Charles VI_. I was somewhat bewildered at the immensity of the
amphitheatre, but I remember the scenes represented, the ballet, and,
above all, the extraordinary noise of the mad applause of the entire
audience when they sang the air, “No, no, never in France, never shall
England reign!”
Like all good Picardines, I detested the English, and I clapped my
hands with as much enthusiasm as the other spectators, at the three
repetitions of “No, no, never in France!”
I had a headache for three days from the effects of that evening. The
sound of the orchestra had bruised my temples.
I saw a railway for the first time at Amiens. Young people of eleven
of the present day cannot imagine what it was then to a girl ten and a
half years old, to hear the ear-splitting whistle, the groaning of the
machine, to get into high, fragile-looking boxes, to see the smoke,
the blackness of the machinist and his aid, looking, I thought, like
devils. I was very much frightened.
Liénard came to meet us at Amiens, and, thanks to him, we had a coach
to ourselves. My father was obliged to scold me, for I became very pale
as the train started. Contrary to my usual habit, I was silent for a
long time, not curious and asking no questions.
I held on with both hands to the seat, so little did I feel secure
with the odd movement. But after a time I grew bolder, and kneeling on
the seat I tried to look out of the window to see the houses and trees
flying behind us so quickly.
“Juliette!” Liénard cried to me, “don’t lean out in that way. This
morning, under the tunnel which we are going to enter, a lady did what
you were doing and she had her head cut off by a cross train.”
I threw myself back in the seat, and when we entered the tunnel a great
chill shook me. I thought I saw the body of the headless lady thrown
into the coach!
Decidedly, I preferred diligences to railways.
XXIII
MY FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE SEA
At Abbeville we found another relative, the daughter of our cousin at
Amiens. In ten minutes I was the best of friends with her two children,
and I would have liked to continue playing with them there, or to take
them with me to Verton, to the house of Madame Liénard, who had no
children.
The railway between Abbeville and Verton was not yet completed. At
Verton was the branch that our friend Liénard was finishing. I said
good-bye to my cousins, very sadly, as I got into the carriage, but I
forgot them immediately, as my mind was distracted by the route over
which we were travelling. I breathed for the first time the tonic air
of the sea, and it intoxicated me. My father was in ecstasies over
everything, and I took a noisy share in his delight.
Verton, the object of our great journey, had been described to us by
our friend Liénard.
“Verton is situated,” he said, “between Montreuil, built on an
eminence, and the hamlet of Berck, which is on the downs quite near
the seashore, and it is the prettiest village in Pas-de-Calais. Along
its straight, well-laid-out, sloping streets, which the rain cannot
soak into, are dainty houses, rivalling one another in cleanliness
and brightness. Berck is a miserable place, inhabited solely by poor
fisher folk, but I am sure the railway will make it eventually a
popular seaside resort, and I have bought land there which certainly
will become very valuable. You should buy some, Lambert, for Juliette’s
_dot_.”
“Good Heavens! With what could I buy land?” said father, laughing.
“Why, your mother-in-law has just sold----”
“Be quiet, Liénard,” I cried, “don’t speak of my _dot_, you make me
unhappy. Let me forget it.”
My father and Liénard, puzzled at my words, wished to know what they
meant. They obtained only this answer:
“I don’t want any _dot_! I don’t want any!”
“You have commendable principles,” said father. “A girl should not be
forced to give money in order to be married.”
Suddenly Liénard exclaimed:
“There is the sea!”
Papa and I looked, holding each other’s hands. It was a superb day, but
a high wind came from the sea, which seemed borne in by the rising
tide.
The seemingly endless, swelling flood we gazed upon advanced towards
us, the waves looking like swaying monsters, ever growing larger. The
foam alone reached us; the sea was held back by the immovable shore.
“I made you take this great journey so that you should see this as
soon as possible,” said Liénard, delighted at our wonderment. “Well,
Juliette, you, who are astonished at nothing, what do you say of it?”
I had no desire to speak. Enormous waves, with movements like serpents,
broke into snowy foam on the beach, at first with a colossal crash,
striking the pebbles, then with a soft roaring of the water as it
rushed over the round stones.
The sea was so immense, it extended so far beneath the sky, that I
asked myself how it was that all that mass of heavy water did not
capsize the earth; but I realised that it was infantile to think this,
and that I must not say it aloud, because then I should probably
receive a very simple answer which would prove my stupidity or my
ignorance. I had never thought of the sea as a phenomenal thing. I
had not imagined it very large, but now it appeared to me immense and
limitless. I was lost in contemplating it, dominated by it to such a
degree that I could not express the astonishment I felt.
“Papa,” I said, as we were leaving the sea, “I seem to see the shaggy
manes of Neptune’s horses on the crests of the waves.”
“And I am thinking of Homer all the while,” father answered me.
We left the seashore, talking of it on our way, and at last we saw
Verton, with the old castle overlooking it. We entered the village,
where the people, curious at our coming, were on their doorsteps.
Liénard was the most important person of the place, excepting the owner
of the castle, who lived on the second story.
“The Comte de Lafontaine, my landlord,” Liénard said to my father, “is
a former cavalry officer. I do not know a more charming man. To be
sure, he is not a republican, like you and myself, my dear Lambert, but
with that exception, he is perfect.”
Liénard was my father’s devoted pupil, and followed his teaching in
everything.
The castle was reached by the principal street of Verton, as one came
from Abbeville--a street which ended directly at the park gates, the
largest one of which was surmounted with the heraldic escutcheon of
the Lafontaine family. The inscription on the escutcheon interested my
father so much, and was the subject of such a long discussion between
himself and Liénard that I found it in my notes of travel which I kept
for grandmother.
Oh! they were very succinct notes, of which I can give an example:
“Verton, on a hill--gay little houses--old castle overlooking it--two
stories--written above principal door in a circle--_Tel fiert qui ne
tue pas_. Very, very large park and a farm, where I amuse myself all
the time.”
With my memory to aid me, and the long, oft-repeated recitals of the
events of my journey, the impressions of that time were deeply engraved
in my mind, enabling me now to recall the details of this experience
with all the more facility because one of Liénard’s employés, placed
with him by my father, still lives, and, through him I have been able
to verify the accuracy of my recollections.
The park belonging to the castle seemed to me very large, and I amused
myself, with my different friends in the household, by walking and
playing in it for hours.
The castle of Verton is situated on the highest point of the park, and
fronts the sea. The view from the second story is admirable. At night
one can see the lighthouse of Berck. I never went to bed without
looking at the great lantern lighting up the sea.
Madame Liénard did everything to please me, and spoiled me as if I
belonged to her. The Comte de Lafontaine inspired me with sudden
affection, for he took me seriously and wished to be my friend. I made
several morning rendezvous with him in the park, and confided to him
the great secret of my life--my inconsolable sorrow at the loss of
my large garden. I talked to him of my trees with tears in my eyes;
he seemed touched, and I remember how grateful I was to him when he
answered:
“Love _my_ trees a little during your stay here, as if they were your
own.”
I had loved Monsieur Lafontaine’s trees before he said this. They were
the brothers of my own trees. When I shut my eyes in certain paths, I
seemed to see my lost ones. They grew warm and shone in the sun like
mine; they made the same noise in the wind. How very unhappy I was, to
be sure, to have my great garden no longer!
The cows, the sheep, the horses and dogs of the farm interested me
greatly. I wanted them all to grow fond of me, to know and love me. I
was, as a child, as desirous to please animals as people. There were
several donkeys, but they did not bray like Roussot, and they disdained
my advances, devoted as they were to the farm children.
Our first long excursion was to Berck. After having left the Abbeville
road and entered that of Berck, we saw scarcely any more cultivated
fields. It looked to me like the desert, as I imagined it. There
were hillocks of shifting sand, amid which were very small hamlets.
Berck came last, and was the most lamentable of all. The village was
composed of miserable huts, inhabited by poor sailor-fishermen, whom
Liénard called “primitive men,” and who lived solely by the product of
their fishing. These huts, spread out at distances, were in a forlorn
condition and falling to pieces.
One thing struck me at Berck: the market, like that at Blérancourt,
where the weavers of the neighbourhood brought for sale the rolls of
linen they had woven.
My father thought the beach of Berck magnificent, and he said that
hospital refuges could certainly be built there, for the gentle and
regular slope of the sands down to the sea would be an excellent place
for children to play.
“The people of the place, although very rude and ignorant, are good
and are hard workers,” Liénard said. “They are excellent workmen.
We are blessed and loved as benefactors in all the region--except
at Montreuil, because we bring more wealth here. They curse us,” he
continued, “at Montreuil, the principal town of the country, for the
making of the railway will deprive it of its animation. Crossed by
the Calais route, as it is now, all the traffic passes through it;
but before six months have passed, nothing will go that way, neither
travellers nor merchandise. Its triple line of fortifications alone
will remain, isolating it more than ever.”
XXIV
I RECEIVE A HANDSOME GIFT
“The end of your journey must not be Verton, my dear Lambert,” said
Liénard one morning to my father. “I wish you to inspect the whole
line. We will go to Boulogne-sur-Mer, and travel over a certain
portion of the route in trucks. Then you will have shown to Juliette,
Amiens--the most beautiful town of our Picardy--and Boulogne, one of
its finest sea-ports.”
My father made no objection. The thought of seeing big ships delighted
me. We were to return to Verton after visiting Boulogne and leave from
there for Chauny. The railway train, with its little coaches open
overhead, pleased me marvellously, but the large, locked-up coaches
from which one could not get out except at the employés’ will, seemed
like prisons to me, and I was honestly afraid of the tunnels, in which
heads were sometimes cut off.
All the great cities I have seen later in my numerous travels over
Europe have interested me in a different manner, and I have admired
them for a thousand complex reasons, but none has left in my memory a
more deeply engraved impression than Boulogne-sur-Mer.
We were Liénard’s guests, and he treated us like lords, in one of the
best hotels of the place. I saw the sea all day long, and I, who was so
fond of sleeping, would get up to look at it under the star-light. I
saw it one night by full moonlight.
“Drops of gold shrank and expanded, crackled, leapt in playful sparkles
on the water’s surface, as if to encircle, in a frame of moving gold,
Phœbe’s beautiful face as she looked at herself in the sea.”
I found these metaphors in one of my poems written at that time, and,
incredible as it may seem, I still remember these unformed verses,
which I did not dare to repeat to my father, and which I kept for the
enraptured admiration of my grandparents, Blondeau, and my friend
Charles.
The movement of the boats around the pier delighted me so much I
wished never to leave the place, and my father was obliged to scold me
sometimes and to drag me after him to the house.
I ate my first oyster at Boulogne. All my family were extremely fond
of the fat oysters that came from the North. In winter, when my mother
and father came to Chauny, they usually selected the day on which the
fish-wagon arrived. This wagon, driven at full speed, and which had
relays like the post-wagon, brought to Chauny, on Friday mornings, the
fish caught on the night of Wednesday to Thursday.
Every Friday during the oyster season, a basket containing twelve dozen
oysters was brought to my grandmother’s. My grandfather and father each
ate four dozen. My grandmother and mother would eat two dozen, and
Blondeau, when he was present, would take his dozen, here and there,
from the portions of the others. Was it because I saw them eat such
quantities that I could never swallow one? My reluctance absolutely
grieved my family.