May 10th.
It is an awful fate to be the nephew of M. Mouillard! I always knew he
was obstinate, capable alike of guile and daring, but I little imagined
what his intentions were when he left me!
My refusal to start, and my prayer for a respite before embarking in his
practice, drove him wild. He lost his head, and swore to drag me off,
‘per fas et nefas’. He has mentally begun a new action--Mouillard v.
Mouillard, and is already tackling the brief; which is as much as to say
that he is fierce, unbridled, heartless, and without remorse.
Some might have bent. I preferred to break.
We are strangers for life. I have just seen him to the landing of my
staircase.
He came here about a quarter of an hour ago, proud, and, I may say,
swaggering, as he does over his learned friends when he has found a flaw
in one of their pleadings.
“Well, nephew?”
“Well, uncle?”
“I’ve got some news for you.”
“Indeed?”
M. Mouillard banged his hat down furiously upon my table.
“Yes, you know my maxim: when anything does not seem quite clear to
me--”
“You ferret it out.”
“Quite so; I have always found it answer. Your business did not seem
clear to me. Was Mademoiselle Charnot betrothed, or was she not? To what
extent had she encouraged your attentions? You never would have told me
the story correctly, and I never should have known. That being so, I put
my maxim into practice, and went to see her father.”
“You did that?”
“Certainly I did.”
“You have been to see Monsieur Charnot?”
“In the Rue de l’Universite. Wasn’t it the simplest thing to do?
Besides, I was not sorry to make the acquaintance of a member of the
Institute. And I must admit that he behaved very nicely to me--not a bit
stuck up.”
“And you told him?”
“My name to begin with: Brutus Mouillard. He reflected a bit, just a
moment, and recalled your appearance: a shy youth, a bachelor of arts,
wearing an eyeglass.”
“Was that all his description?”
“Yes, he remembered seeing you at the National Library, and once at his
house. I said to him, ‘That is my nephew, Monsieur Charnot.’ He replied,
‘I congratulate you, sir; he seems a youth of parts.’--‘That he is, but
his heart is very inflammable.’--‘At his age, sir, who is not liable to
take fire?’ That was how we began. Your friend Monsieur Charnot has a
pretty wit. I did not want to be behindhand with him, so I answered,
‘Well, sir, it caught fire in your house.’ He started with fright
and looked all round the room. I was vastly amused. Then we came to
explanations. I put the case before him, that you were in love with his
daughter, without my consent, but with perfectly honorable intentions;
that I had guessed it from your letters, from your unpardonable neglect
of your duties to your family, and that I hurried hither from Bourges
to take in the situation. With that I concluded, and waited for him to
develop. There are occasions when you must let people develop. I could
not jump down his throat with, ‘Sir, would you kindly tell me whether
your daughter is betrothed or not?’ You follow me? He thought, no doubt,
I had come to ask for his daughter’s hand, and passing one hand over his
forehead, he replied, ‘Sir, I feel greatly flattered by your proposal,
and I should certainly give it my serious attention, were it not that my
daughter’s hand is already sought by the son of an old schoolfellow
of mine, which circumstance, as you will readily understand, does not
permit of my entertaining an offer which otherwise should have received
the most mature consideration.’ I had learned what I came for without
risking anything. Well, I didn’t conceal from him that, so far as I was
concerned, I would rather you took your wife from the country than that
you brought home the most charming Parisienne; and that the Mouillards
from father to son had always taken their wives from Bourges. He entered
perfectly into my sentiments, and we parted the best of friends. Now, my
boy, the facts are ascertained: Mademoiselle Charnot is another’s;
you must get your mourning over and start with me to-night. To-morrow
morning we shall be in Bourges, and you’ll soon be laughing over your
Parisian delusions, I warrant you!”
I had heard my uncle out without interrupting him, though wrath,
astonishment, and my habitual respect for M. Mouillard were struggling
for the mastery within me. I needed all my strength of mind to answer,
with apparent calm.
“Yesterday, uncle, I had not made up my mind; today I have.”
“You are coming?”
“I am not. Your action in this matter, uncle--I do not know if you are
aware of it--has been perfectly unheard-of. I can not acknowledge your
right to act thus. It puts between you and me two hundred miles of rail,
and that forever. Do you understand me? You have taken the liberty of
disclosing a secret which was not yours to tell; you have revealed
a passion which, as it was hopeless, should not have been further
mentioned, and certainly not exposed to such humiliation. You went to
see Monsieur Charnot without reflecting whether you were not bringing
trouble into his household; without reflecting, further, whether
such conduct as yours, which may perhaps be usual among your business
acquaintances, was likely to succeed with me. Perhaps you thought it
would. You have merely completed an experiment, begun long ago, which
proves that we do not understand life in the same way, and that it
will be better for both of us if I continue to live in Paris, and you
continue to live at Bourges.”
“Ha! that’s how you take it, young man, is it? You refuse to come? you
try to bully me?”
“Yes.”
“Consider carefully before you let me leave here alone. You know the
amount of your fortune--fourteen hundred francs a year, which means
poverty in Paris.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, then, attend to what I am about to say. For years past I have
been saving my practice for you--that is, an honorable and lucrative
position all ready for you to step into. But I am tired at length of
your fads and your fancies. If you do not take up your quarters at
Bourges within a fortnight from now, the Mouillard practice will change
its name within three weeks!” My uncle sniffed with emotion as he looked
at me, expecting to see me totter beneath his threats. I made no
answer for a moment; but a thought which had been harassing me from the
beginning of our interview compelled me to say:
“I have only one thing to ask you, Monsieur Mouillard.”
“Further respite, I suppose? Time to reflect and fool me again? No, a
hundred times no! I’ve had enough of you; a fortnight, not a day more!”
“No, sir; I do not ask for respite.”
“So much the better, for I should refuse it. What do you want?”
“Monsieur Mouillard, I trust that Jeanne was not present at the
interview, that she heard none of it, that she was not forced to
blush--”
My uncle sprang to his feet, seized his gloves, which lay spread out
on the table, bundled them up, flung them passionately into his hat,
clapped the whole on his head, and made for the door with angry strides.
I followed him; he never looked back, never made answer to my “Good-by,
uncle.” But, at the sixth step, just before turning the corner, he
raised his stick, gave the banisters a blow fit to break them, and went
on his way downstairs exclaiming:
“Damnation!”
May 20th.
And so we have parted with an oath, my uncle and I! That is how I have
broken with the only relative I possess. It is now ten days since then.
I now have five left in which to mend the broken thread of the family
tradition, and become a lawyer. But nothing points to such conversion.
On the contrary, I feel relieved of a heavy weight, pleased to be free,
to have no profession. I feel the thrill of pleasure that a fugitive
from justice feels on clearing the frontier. Perhaps I was meant for a
different course of life than the one I was forced to follow. As a child
I was brought up to worship the Mouillard practice, with the fixed idea
that this profession alone could suit me; heir apparent to a lawyer’s
stool--born to it, brought up to it, without any idea, at any rate for a
long time, that I could possibly free myself from the traditions of the
law’s sacred jargon.
I have quite got over that now. The courts, where I have been a frequent
spectator, seem to me full of talented men who fine down and belittle
their talents in the practice of law. Nothing uses up the nobler
virtues more quickly than a practice at the bar. Generosity, enthusiasm,
sensibility, true and ready sympathy--all are taken, leaving the man,
in many instances nothing but a skilful actor, who apes all the emotions
while feeling none. And the comedy is none the less repugnant to me
because it is played through with a solemn face, and the actors are
richly recompensed.
Lampron is not like this. He has given play to all the noble qualities
of his nature. I envy him. I admire his disinterestedness, his broad
views of life, his faith in good in spite of evil, his belief in poetry
in spite of prose, his unspoiled capacity for receiving new impressions
and illusions--a capacity which, amid the crowds that grow old in mind
before they are old in body, keeps him still young and boyish. I think
I might have been devoted to his profession, or to literature, or to
anything but law.
We shall see. For the present I have taken a plunge into the unknown. My
time is all my own, my freedom is absolute, and I am enjoying it.
I have hidden nothing from Lampron. As my friend he is pleased, I can
see, at a resolve which keeps me in Paris; but his prudence cries out
upon it.
“It is easy enough to refuse a profession,” he said; “harder to find
another in its place. What do you intend to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“My dear fellow, you seem to be trusting to luck. At sixteen that might
be permissible, at twenty-four it’s a mistake.”
“So much the worse, for I shall make the mistake. If I have to live on
little--well, you’ve tried that before now; I shall only be following
you.”
“That’s true; I have known want, and even now it attacks me sometimes;
it’s like influenza, which does not leave its victims all at once; but
it is hard, I can tell you, to do without the necessaries of life; as
for its luxuries--”
“Oh, of course, no one can do without its luxuries.”
“You are incorrigible,” he answered, with a laugh. Then he said no more.
Lampron’s silence is the only argument which struggles in my heart in
favor of the Mouillard practice. Who can guess from what quarter the
wind will blow?