democratic-socialist republicans whom he had discovered. I wanted to
take to all my friends many of those little souvenirs one finds at
seaside places, things utterly unknown at Chauny, and I had with me, in
order to gratify this wish, all the money given to me by grandparents
and Blondeau to spend on my journey. My purse, confided to Liénard’s
care, who bargained and paid for all my purchases, must, I thought,
after calculating the amount expended, be very nearly empty. So, when
my father promised me one morning a louis if I would eat an oyster, I
did my best to please him, and at the same time to earn four large
crowns. I swallowed one oyster, and afterwards others followed in great
numbers, for I grew to like them.
I picked up quantities of shells, and I would have liked to carry
many more away. I bought an immense covered basket, which I took with
me wherever I went, and never left it for a moment during my return
voyage, in spite of the supplication of my father, who tried every
persuasive means possible to rid himself of the trouble of looking
after it.
I went on the beach at Wimereux, where Prince Louis Napoleon landed in
such grotesque fashion. I saw the great Emperor’s column, and thought
of my grandfather and my godmother.
My father spoke to Liénard and to me of “the man of Strasburg and
Boulogne,” and of his ancestor, “the man of the Brumaire.” He was more
indulgent towards the nephew than towards the uncle, whom he thus
defined:
“The political juggler of the Revolution, whose final number of
conquests, after the sacrifice of millions of men, was inferior to the
conquests won by the fourteen armies of the Republic.”
Napoleon I. was my father’s special aversion. He spoke of him with
hatred, as of a criminal. I knew some scathing and virulent poems
written by my father on the “Modern Cæsar,” and when I recited them, I
ended by naming their author: Jean Louis Lambert.
My father had bought a tilbury as we passed through Amiens, the
carriage-makers of the capital of our province being “renowned,” as
they then expressed it.
What was his astonishment, as we left the railway station on our return
to Amiens, to see a very handsome horse harnessed to his tilbury,
instead of the hired one which was to take it to Chauny. Liénard had
accompanied us there.
“My dear friend,” he said to my father, accentuating these words with
feeling, “I beg of you to accept the little horse, as a small proof of
my eternal gratitude.”
My father, who delighted to give, but hated to accept things, refused
bluntly; but Liénard’s disappointment was so great, and I saw his eyes
so full of tears, that I sought for a way to make my father yield.
“Will you give _me_ your horse, Liénard?” I said. “I think it very
pretty and I will take it.”
Mutually embarrassed and grieved a moment before, my father and Liénard
were much amused at my intervention.
“Ah, yes! I will give it to you,” replied Liénard. “It is yours, and I
am not afraid now that your father will take it from you.”
I adored the feeling of being important. But to have overcome this
difficult situation did not suffice me.
“Now, since I have a horse and papa has a tilbury, I wish to return to
Chauny in it and not in the diligence,” I added.
“But it will take us three days instead of one,” said father.
“Oh! papa, shall you really find three days quite alone with your
daughter too long? You will tell me a lot of things, and I, also, will
tell you as many. It will be so amusing to travel in a carriage, like
gipsies.”
“Do as she wishes, dear Lambert,” said Liénard. “Come, get into your
carriage and start. I will send you your packages by the diligence.”
“Papa! papa! do, I beg of you, let us be off!”
“Has the horse eaten?” Liénard asked the groom.
“Yes, sir, he can go for five hours without needing anything more.”
“Be off! be off!” our friend cried gaily, as he lifted me into the
tilbury after kissing me.
My father and Liénard kissed each other, like the loving friends they
were, and father got into the carriage.
“Where is the state high-road?” he asked the groom.
Liénard replied:
“This boy will take one of the carriages at the station and accompany
you until nightfall, to see that Juliette’s horse behaves itself. I
will go to-morrow morning to his master’s, and will get news of you
there. Good-bye, good-bye; a pleasant journey!”
A small valise bought by my father at Boulogne, held our toilet
articles. My famous basket was at our feet, our luggage ticket given to
Liénard, and off we started.
XXV
OUR HOMEWARD JOURNEY
Every detail of that delightful journey is still present to me. It
seemed to me that I was undertaking something tremendous, which was
going to last for an indefinite time.
The young, spirited horse delighted my father and me. He took up all
our attention at first. We looked at nothing else. Ah! what was his
name?
The groom told us it was Coq or Cock. He didn’t know whether it was
“Coq” or the English name.
“‘No! no, never in France, never shall England reign!’” I cried,
recalling the air I had heard in _Charles VI._ “It shall be Coq.”
Coq almost flew along the road. After a while the groom left us,
telling us the names of the villages and the post-relays where we were
to stop during the day, or were to sleep at night.
My father and I recalled our longest drives around Blérancourt, but
they were not like this one--a real journey. He laughed at all my
observations and reflections, and said often to me: “Ah! you are,
indeed, my daughter. You resemble me more than any one else.”
We had left Amiens at eleven o’clock in the morning, and had not yet,
at five o’clock in the afternoon, thought of making our first halt. We
had brought some fruit and cakes, and so long as our handsome Coq was
not tired we determined to continue our way.
“Juliette,” said father to me, at a time when Coq was going slower,
“have you never asked yourself whether I could indefinitely submit to
our separation, if I could always bear the pain of seeing your mind
fashioned by others than myself? My greatest ambition is to make your
mind the offspring of my own. It will come some day; it must be so.”
I answered nothing. I said over to myself my father’s phrase: “Make
your mind the offspring of my own,” and I thought to myself that as I
was his daughter, my whole self should be his also; but then, being
grandchild of my grandmother, whom I adored, how could I be at once
all my grandmother’s and all my father’s? The feeling I had of the
difficulty brought about by my double love for my grandmother and my
father, the thought of sharing myself between them, filled me with
sadness, and my heart ached as I thought I should feel in the future,
more and more deeply, the sorrow I might cause each when I left either
of them, because each would feel when I returned that I would come
back with my heart and mind filled with the one whom I had left. I was
still angry at my grandmother for having sold my garden. The large
house at Chauny, which formerly pleased me more than the small one at
Blérancourt, seemed like a prison now. The yard, full of flowers, had
been gay only because it preceded the garden; cut off from it, it would
look, under the shadow of the great wall they were building, like a
little plot resembling those in the graveyards.
My father thought also of many sad things; our gaiety now ran away from
us, and we could not regain it. All my childhood spent in that beloved
garden came back to me: the springtime, with the rows of violets along
the walls at its end; the summer, with the baskets of strawberries that
I would run to pick myself, as we were sitting down at table; fruits of
all kinds, whose growth I watched with such interest, and which I kept
tasting--apples, pears, plums, cherries, and apricots, enjoying the
greatest delight a child can have--that of eating to its fill all kinds
of fruit throughout the whole year.
“Papa, do you approve grandmother’s having sold her garden?” I asked
him suddenly, determined all at once to confide my sorrow to him,
without speaking of the _dot_.
“Why, yes, because she received a good price for it.”
“So, in your opinion she has done well?”
“Without doubt--she would never have found such a good chance again.
Perhaps, besides the question of money, she decided to do it a little
for your sake.”
“Oh! that is too much!”
“Why? You will have only a few steps to take to go to your school. She
will even be able to see you play from a wing she wishes to build.”
“Then grandmother is going to make the little yard still smaller? Well,
papa, I cannot tell you the pain all this gives me. They have taken
away the paths where I used to walk and play, my trees, all that I
loved in immaterial things; they have deprived me of the happiness of
looking at growing leaves, of studying how plants bud, how blossoms
become fruit; they have prevented me from listening to the stirring
and putting forth of all that has life in it, and from hearing the
sigh, followed by cold silence, of that which dies. To me, papa, the
sun is a divine being to whom I speak and who answers me in written
signs, which I see in the rays of its light. I will make you half
close your eyes at mid-day, and will show you the shining signs, the
golden writing. The moon follows me as I walk, and I feel that it is a
friend. I assure you, papa, I have heard the earth burst with a little
sound above the asparagus heads, or when the seeds that have been sown
sprout forth. I do not know how to express all this to you, or how to
explain these things, but if I love to read, if books instruct me so
greatly--above all, if travels make the world larger to me--I think,
papa, I have learned a great deal in my garden about all small things.”
My father listened to me, his eyes fixed on mine; he held the reins
so loosely in his hands that suddenly, feeling gay, or perhaps made
nervous by fatigue, Coq began to behave badly for the first time. A
stroke of the whip calmed him.
“This Coq,” said my father, “is unworthy of too much confidence.” Then
he added:
“Go on talking, Juliette, dear, go on. You do not know the pleasure
you give me. You love nature as I love it; you feel it, you poetise it
as I do. Ah! old Homer is giving back to me to-day what I gave to him
in teaching you to love him. It is he who has given you the love of
immaterial things. You will be a heathen some day, I am certain of it.”
“Oh, papa! what an abominable thing to say! Don’t repeat it, especially
before grandmother--it would give her too much pain, and, besides, it
isn’t true; it was not the dryads, the nymphs, the homodryads, that I
saw and listened to in my garden; it was really the trees, the plants,
and the fruits.”
“Well, well,” said father, “I have promised your grandmother and your
mother to let you make your first communion as they desire. They have
taken your childhood from me, let them keep it; but your youth shall
belong to me, and we will talk again about all this. I have now, to
calm me and to make me wait patiently, the anticipation of the happy
days that I foresee, and the result of all that you, my dear Juliette,
have just been saying to me.”
“Having my garden no longer, I must forget all that I loved and learned
in it, so as not to suffer too much in having lost it,” I replied. “I
have so many dead things to weep over,” I continued, “I have heard so
many trees sigh and utter their last cry when they were cut down, that
in thinking of it, I seem to hear them again and my heart aches, for
it is dreadful to have destroyed so many of those old companions that
gave us such delicious fruit to make us love them, and it is a crime to
have covered with gravel the good earth which would always have brought
forth the seeds planted in it and borne harvests.”
On the evening of that day my father stopped at a post-relay at a
large, clean, and bright-looking inn, where I went to see a dozen
chickens roasted on a spit in the kitchen. The travellers by diligence
dined there.
When my father put me to sleep in one of the huge beds in our room, I
was feverish, and talked all night of my garden. He prevented me from
speaking of it the next day, and told me some lovely stories of Greece
which he had not yet related to me.
Our journey ended without further incident, and I found grandmother
wildly happy at seeing me again; but as we had arrived late at night,
and as I was tired, they put me to bed at once. Grandmother wished
that I should sleep near her that night, as my father had spoken of
my fever, and the door having been left open, I heard him say to my
grandparents:
“I don’t think she can ever be consoled for having lost her garden.”
“As it is clear that she will marry a country gentleman,” said
grandfather, laughing, “and, as the education she is receiving from her
aunts will probably incline her to marry some perfect Roussot, she will
be able after her honeymoon to treat herself to some trees and grounds,
so we need not pity her present unhappiness in an exaggerated manner.”
My grandparents had quarrelled, as usual, during my absence. I had the
proof of it in grandmother’s answer. The “they” and “one” which I had
nearly banished, had returned to their conversation.
“_One_ is always joking,” she said, “even about what touches me the
most--Juliette’s sorrow. Since I have seen how much she suffers from
being deprived of her garden, I reproach myself bitterly for having
taken it from her. _One_ should understand that, and not laugh,
when _one_ knows that I would not have run the risk of giving pain
to Juliette without having been moved by a feeling which was in her
interest, but which I cannot express to everybody.”
“Well, well,” grandfather replied, “_one_ has no need of a lesson;
_one_ loves _one’s_ grandchild as much as mother and father and
grandmother. _One_ only jokes about Juliette’s sorrow, and _one_ will
continue to do so for the simple reason that _one_ thinks it will be
the best way to console her.”
My grandmother’s regrets calmed my grief, but my poor grandfather was
snubbed many times for his way of “consoling” me.
XXVI
MY FIRST COMMUNION
It is impossible to imagine to-day the importance of a railway journey
in the time of my childhood. All Chauny talked of it when I started;
all Chauny questioned me concerning it on my return. When I went out
with grandfather, people stopped me in the street to ask me if a
railway journey was very frightful.
Truth to tell, the horrible whistles, the deafening threatening noise
of the locomotives, the tunnels (oh, those tunnels!), the frightful
black smoke that made one look like a coal-man in a few hours, had
filled me with apprehension, and everything connected with it seemed to
me like something coming straight from hell.
“It splits your ears, it blinds you if you put your nose out of the
window, it shakes you so that you tremble, it is ugly and makes you
ugly,” I replied to everyone who questioned me.
At school I had a great success. All the big girls asked me about it,
to satisfy their own curiosity and that of their families. All the
little girls wished to know the entire history of the railway journey,
and all about the sea and the ships.
My large basket of shells was emptied in a few days. The numberless
presents I had brought disappeared quickly. A week after my return I
had nothing left. “Those,” I said, speaking of my shells, “were not
bought. I picked them up myself by the sea, the real sea!”
These words produced an immense sensation. At recreations I held forth,
surrounded by numerous listeners with eager eyes and open mouths.
Questions came from all sides. They never tired of hearing my stories
told over and over again. The history of the woman beheaded in the
tunnel made them all tremble.
“Why did she look out of the window?” asked the big girls. “One should
take great care in travelling, for there is always great risk. One has
only to read about it to know it.”
The little girls asked especially whether the beheaded woman had
children and whether they were with her. When I answered, “yes,” there
was a general panic, and the whole brood scattered, with frightened
“ohs!”
If a schoolgirl of to-day had passed the winter at the North Pole, and
should relate to her schoolmates that she had seen a mother crushed
to death by an iceberg before her children’s eyes, she would not
produce a greater sensation than I did with my story of the railway
and the unfortunate woman in the tunnel. They were beginning to build
the railway from Paris to Saint-Quentin, which was to pass through
Chauny, and everyone was wildly excited over the matter. I had, with
great art, planned a course of entertainment to be given at home. Every
evening, after dinner, I related to my grandparents, to Blondeau, and
to my friend Charles--who would not have missed it for anything in the
world--the history of one of my days of travel--never more and never
less than one; and the number of my stories just covered the number of
days of the journey.
I had missed a whole month of the catechism class, but the vicar was
indulgent. He was, himself, much interested in my excursion, and asked
me, like everyone else, to give him my impressions about the railroad
and the sea.
My reflections pleased him, and he spoke of them to the dean, who
also questioned me. I told him that the railroad was an abominable,
whistling invention--it seemed like hell, with its fire and its
diabolical blackness.
This journey gave me a decided pre-eminence. On account of it, I was
considered at Chauny superior to the other young girls of my age. As
the time for first communion approached, the dean interested himself
especially in me. He selected me to pronounce the baptismal vows, and
to head one of the files of communicants to the Holy Table. The Bishop
of Soissons came that year, as he did every two years, to administer
confirmation, and I was selected to make him the complimentary speech
of welcome at the parsonage.
I was the youngest and the tallest of the communicants. My
grandparents, Blondeau, and my friend Charles, when the history of my
journey was finished, busied themselves exclusively about my first
communion. Grandmother had ordered the finest muslin for my gown and
veil. They said white was very becoming to me, and that I should be
the prettiest girl of all. My friend Charles taught me how to say my
baptismal vows and my complimentary speech to the Bishop, in a manner
rather more theatrical than pious.
I had then as an intimate friend a strange girl of my own age, as small
as I was tall, witty, sharp-tongued, and mischievous, whose influence
over me was anything but good. Whenever she saw me enthusiastic or
admiring anything, she did her best to spoil what I admired. Her name
was Maribert.[C] We had been friends for four years, but we had had
very serious quarrels and reconciliations, which interested the whole
school.
Maribert was to make her first communion at the same time as myself.
She was a boarder at the school and was very strictly watched because
she criticised the catechism in a way which shocked the least devout.
She often argued with the vicar, contending with him in discussing the
articles of faith he was explaining to us.
“You will be cast out of the church if you do not submit,” the vicar
said to her one day. “You have a renegade’s mind.”
And she dared to reply:
“I am a philosopher, I am strong-minded!”
I went to board at school during the month preceding my first
communion, the dean, finding I was not preparing myself well for the
ceremony at my grandparents’, induced them to let me absent myself
from home until the great day. Maribert had succeeded in having me for
neighbour in the dormitory, and she kept by me at recreations. During
class hours, by the means of little notes, which she would slip into my
hands, she tried to influence my mind to unbelief. She endeavoured to
prove to me that the dean was in no wise evangelical; that the vicar,
who instructed us, preferred a good dinner to a good mass; that the
Mlles. André, our mistresses, were much more interested in not losing
their pupils than in teaching and improving them.
“Now, as to myself,” she said, “they should send me away; they know
very well that I change all the ideas I wish to change; that I am a
disturber; that I shall not make my first communion seriously; that
I will prevent others--you, first of all--from making it with the
necessary unction and devotion; and yet they keep me here--me, the
black sheep of the flock!”
I was badly influenced by Maribert, and they would have done better to
have me with grandmother, who, although at this time too occupied with
the things of this world to give me great spiritual help, would have
done all she could to increase my faith.
The morning of the day of my first communion I was sad, discontented, I
did not feel as I should have felt, and I envied the happiness of those
who, having had the strength to resist Maribert’s diabolical influence,
wore on their faces an expression of beatitude. As we were leaving for
the church, Maribert slipped a piece of chocolate into my hand, saying,
with her shining, demoniacal eyes looking at me: “Eat it!”
And, at the same time, I heard her crunching the half of the piece she
had given to me.
I threw the chocolate in her face. Ah, no! that was too much! I, too,
wanted to be strong-minded, but I did not wish to commit a sacrilege,
to lie, to receive communion after having eaten.
I suddenly realised my friend’s evil-doing, and I struggled instantly
to wrench out from my mind the ideas she had implanted in it; they
were not numerous, however, for we possessed but few tastes in common.
However, a great sadness took possession of me; had I not broken with
a confidante, a friend of four years’ standing? (Years are so long in
childhood!)
Maribert, alas! had made me lose enthusiasm for prayer, and that
enthusiasm alone, on such a day as this, could have consoled me for the
heartache I suffered. I was overcome to such a degree that my tears
fell without my knowing it.
“You are sillier than the silliest,” Maribert said to me. “I will never
speak to you again as long as I live.”
“You are more wicked than the wickedest,” I replied, “and I shall
reproach myself as long as I exist for having loved one so accursed as
you.”
The hour came for leaving for the church. Our mothers were waiting for
us in the drawing-room. My mother and my grandmother were there. I
threw myself in their arms and kissed them fervently. They were much
edified in seeing my pallor and my red eyes. My grandmother wore a
white woollen gown, a black bonnet, and a black silk scarf trimmed
with fringe. I thought her very well dressed. My mother looked very
handsome, although her toilette was extremely simple. She wore a large
Leghorn straw bonnet, tied with black velvet ribbons, a puce-coloured
silk gown with a train, and on her shoulders a scarf beautifully
embroidered by herself, fastened with turquoise pins. I could not cease
from admiring her.
“How beautiful mamma is,” I said in a low tone to grandmother. “Just
look at her.”
“Yes,” grandmother replied aloud, “and it would be well if she would
take pleasure in her beauty, if she would be grateful to God for it;
but, alas! I am sure she imagines people look at her maliciously.”
My mother shrugged her shoulders.
“Juliette,” added grandmother, “this is a happy day for you, my little
girl; may it govern your whole life; may you understand its religious
significance. I shall pray to God with my whole soul that it may be
so.”
We left the school, I at the head of the procession, my schoolmates
following me one by one. We formed a file and walked through the
streets to the church. The organ ushered us in with a peal of gladness.
My heart beat so hard it hurt me. But by degrees a great calmness came
over me. I abjured evil; I banished Maribert from my heart. I saw her
farther down in the file, her face made ugly by a wicked smile. I
looked at her coldly and proudly, and I raised my eyes to Heaven to
prove to her that I was no longer under the influence of her wicked
teaching. I felt as it was proper I should feel in the holy place and
in view of the ceremony in which I was to take part.
I recited my baptismal vows simply, in a loud voice, feeling sincerely
what I said. I thought of grandmother, who was listening to me and
to whom I would that very night confess all that I had hidden from
her about Maribert. I made my communion in peace, I returned to
grandmother’s house happy in being at home again, freed from Maribert,
whom I felt I would never miss again when absent from her.