“That’s a trifle too rustic for a man who does not go outside of
Paris three times a year. And my daughter you drew in profile--a good
likeness, I believe.”
“It was as like as I could make it.”
“Then you confess that you drew both my daughter and myself?”
“Yes, I do, Monsieur.”
“It may not be so easy for you to explain by what right you did so; I
await your explanation, Monsieur.”
“I might very well give you no explanation whatever,” replied Lampron,
who was beginning to lose patience. “I might also reply that I no more
needed to ask your permission to sketch you than to ask that of the
beeches, oaks, elms, and willows. I might tell you that you formed part
of the landscape, that every artist who sketches a bit of underwood has
the right to stick a figure in--”
“A figure, Monsieur! do you call me a figure?”
“A gentleman, I mean. Artists call it figure. Well, I might give you
this reason, which is quite good enough for you, but it is not the real
one. I prefer to tell you frankly what passed. You have a very beautiful
daughter, Monsieur.”
M. Charnot made his customary bow.
“One of my friends is in love with her. He is shy, and dares not tell
his love. We met you by chance in the wood, and I was seized with the
idea of making a sketch of Mademoiselle Jeanne, so like that she could
not mistake it, and then exhibiting it with the certainty of her seeing
it and guessing its meaning. I trusted she would recall to her mind, not
myself, for my youth is past, but a young friend of mine who is of the
age and build of a lover. If this was a crime, Monsieur, I am ready to
take the blame for it upon myself, for I alone committed it.”
“It certainly was criminal, Monsieur; criminal in you, at any
rate--you who are a man of weight, respected for your talent and your
character--to aid and abet in a frivolous love-affair.”
“It was the deepest and most honorable sentiment, Monsieur.”
“A blaze of straw!”
“Nothing of the sort!”
“Don’t tell me! Your friend’s a mere boy.”
“So much the better for him, and for her, too! If you want a man of
middle age for your son-in-law, just try one and see what they are
worth. You may be sorry that you ever refused this boy, who, it is true,
is only twenty-four, has little money, no decided calling, nor yet that
gift of self-confidence which does instead of merit for so many people;
but who is a brave and noble soul, whom I can answer for as for myself.
Go, Monsieur, you will find your daughter great names, fat purses,
gold lace, long beards, swelling waistbands, reputations, pretensions,
justified or not, everything, in short, in which he is poor; but him you
will never find again! That is all I have to tell you.”
Lampron had become animated and spoke with heat. There was the slightest
flash of anger in his eyes.
I saw M. Charnot get up, approach him, and hold out his hand.
“I did not wish you to say anything else, Monsieur; that is enough for
me. Flamaran asked my daughter’s hand for your friend only this morning.
Flamaran loses no time when charged with a commission. He, too, told me
much that was good of your friend. I also questioned Counsellor Boule.
But however flattering characters they might give him, I still needed
another, that of a man who had lived in complete intimacy with Monsieur
Mouillard, and I could find no one but you.”
Lampron stared astonished at this little thin-lipped man who had just
changed his tone and manner so unexpectedly.
“Well, Monsieur,” he answered, “you might have got his character from me
with less trouble; there was no need to make a scene.”
“Excuse me. You say I should have got his character; that is exactly
what I did not want; characters are always good. What I wanted was a cry
from the heart of a friend outraged and brought to bay. That is what I
got, and it satisfies me. I am much obliged to you, Monsieur, and beg
you will excuse my conduct.”
“But, since we are talking sense at present, allow me to put you a
question in my turn. I am not in the habit of going around the point. Is
my friend’s proposal likely to be accepted or not?”
“Monsieur Lampron, in these delicate matters I have decided for the
future to leave my daughter entirely free. Although my happiness is at
stake almost as entirely as hers, I shall not say a word save to advise.
In accordance with this resolve I communicated Flamaran’s proposal to
her.”
“Well?”
“I expected she would refuse it.”
“But she said ‘Yes’?”
“She did not say ‘No;’ if she had, you can guess that I should not be
here.”
At this reply I quite lost my head, and was very near tearing aside the
curtain, and bursting forth into the studio with a shout of gratitude.
But M. Charnot added:
“Don’t be too sure, though. There are certain serious, and, perhaps,
insurmountable obstacles. I must speak to my daughter again. I will
let your friend know of our final decision as soon as I can. Good-by,
Monsieur.”
Lampron saw him to the street, and I heard their steps grow distant in
the passage. A moment later Sylvestre returned and held out both hands
to me, saying:
“Well, are you happy now?”
“Of course I am, to a certain extent.”
“‘To a certain extent’! Why, she loves you.”
“But the obstacles, Sylvestre!”
“Nonsense!”
“Perhaps insurmountable--those were his words.”
“Why, obstacles are the salt of all our joys. What a deal you young men
want before you can be called happy! You ask Life for certainties, as if
she had any to give you!”
And he began to discuss my fears, but could not quite disperse them, for
neither of us could guess what the obstacles could be.
August 2d.
After ten days of waiting, during which I have employed Lampron and M.
Flamaran to intercede for me, turn and turn about; ten days passed in
hovering between mortal anguish and extravagant hopes, during which I
have formed, destroyed, taken up again and abandoned more plans than
I ever made in all my life before, yesterday, at five o’clock, I got a
note from M. Charnot, begging me to call upon him the same evening.
I went there in a state of nervous collapse. He received me in his
study, as he had done seven months before, at our first interview, but
with a more solemn politeness; and I noticed that the paper-knife, which
he had taken up from the table as he resumed his seat, shook between his
fingers. I sat in the same chair in which I had felt so ill at ease.
To tell the truth, I felt very much the same, yesterday. M. Charnot
doubtless noticed it, and wished to reassure me.
“Monsieur,” said he, “I receive you as a friend. Whatever may be the
result of our interview, you may be assured of my esteem. Therefore do
not fear to answer me frankly.”
He put several questions to me concerning my family, my tastes, and my
acquaintance in Paris. Then he requested me to tell the simple story of
my boyhood and my youth, the recollections of my home, of the college at
La Chatre, of my holidays at Bourges, and of my student life.
He listened without interruption, playing with the ivory paperknife.
When I reached the date--it was only last December--when I saw Jeanne
for the first time--
“That’s enough,” said he, “I know or guess the rest. Young man, I
promised you an answer; this is it--”
For the moment, I ceased to breathe; my very heart seemed to stop
beating.
“My daughter,” went on M. Charnot, “has at this moment several proposals
of marriage to choose from. You see I hide nothing from you. I have
left her time to reflect; she has weighed and compared them all, and
communicated to me yesterday the result of her reflections. To richer
and more brilliant matches she prefers an honest man who loves her for
herself, and you, Monsieur, are that honest man.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you, Monsieur!” I cried.
“Wait a moment, there are two conditions.”
“Were there ten, I would accept them without question!”
“Don’t hurry. You will see; one is my daughter’s, the other comes from
both of us.”
“You wish me to have some profession, perhaps?”
“No, that’s not it. Clearly my son-in-law will never sit idle. Besides,
I have some views on that subject, which I will tell you later if I have
the chance. No, the first condition exacted by my daughter, and dictated
by a feeling which is very pleasant to me, is that you promise never to
leave Paris.”
“That I swear to, with all the pleasure in life!”
“Really? I feared you had some ties.”
“Not one.”
“Or dislike for Paris.”
“No, Monsieur; only a preference for Paris, with freedom to indulge it.
Your second condition?”
“The second, to which my daughter and I both attach importance, is that
you should make your peace with your uncle. Flamaran tells me you have
quarrelled.”
“That is true.”
“I hope it is not a serious difference. A mere cloud, isn’t it?”
“Unfortunately not. My uncle is very positive--”
“But at the same time his heart is in the right place, so far as I could
judge from what I saw of him--in June, I think it was.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t mind taking the first step?”
“I will take as many as may be needed.”
“I was sure you would. You can not remain on bad terms with your
father’s brother, the only relative you have left. In our eyes this
reconciliation is a duty, a necessity. You should desire it as much as,
and even more than, we.”
“I shall use every effort, Monsieur, I promise you.”
“And in that case you will succeed, I feel sure.”
M. Charnot, who had grown very pale, held out his hand to me, and tried
hard to smile.
“I think, Monsieur Fabien, that we are quite at one, and that the hour
has come--”
He did not finish the sentence, but rose and went to open a door between
two bookcases at the end of the room.
“Jeanne,” he said, “Monsieur Fabien accepts the two conditions, my
dear.”
And I saw Jeanne come smiling toward me.
And I, who had risen trembling, I, who until then had lost my head at
the mere thought of seeing her, I, who had many a time asked myself in
terror what I should say on meeting her, if ever she were mine, I felt
myself suddenly bold, and the words rushed to my lips to thank her, to
express my joy.
My happiness, however, was evident, and I might have spared my words.
For the first half-hour all three of us talked together.
Then M. Charnot pushed back his armchair, and we two were left to
ourselves.
He had taken up a newspaper, but I am pretty sure he held it upside
down. In any case he must have been reading between the lines, for he
did not turn the page the whole evening.
He often cast a glance over the top of the paper, folded in four, to the
corner where we were sitting, and from us his eyes travelled to a pretty
miniature of Jeanne as a child, which hung over the mantelpiece.
What comparisons, what memories, what regrets, what hopes were
struggling in his mind? I know not, but I know he sighed, and had not we
been there I believe he would have wept.
To me Jeanne showed herself simple as a child, wise and thoughtful as
a woman. A new feeling was growing every instant within me, of perfect
rest of heart; the certainty of happiness for all my life to come.
Yes, my happiness travelled beyond the present, as I looked into the
future and saw along series of days passed by her side; and while she
spoke to me, tranquil, confident, and happy too, I thought I saw the
great wings of my dream closing over and enfolding us.
We spoke in murmurs. The open window let in the warm evening air and the
confused roar of the city.
“I am to be your friend and counsellor?” said she.
“Always.”
“You promise that you will ask my advice in all things, and that we
shall act in concert?”
“I do.”
“If this very first evening I ask you for a proof of this, you won’t be
angry?”
“On the contrary.”
“Well, from what you have told me of your uncle, you seem to have
accepted the second condition, of making up your quarrel, rather
lightly.”
“I have only promised to do my best.”
“Yes, but my father counts upon your success. How do you intend to act?”
“I haven’t yet considered.”
“That’s just what I foresaw, and I thought it would perhaps be a good
thing if we considered it together.”
“Mademoiselle, I am listening; compose the plan of campaign, and I will
criticise it.”
Jeanne clasped her hands over her knees and assumed a thoughtful look.
“Suppose you wrote to him.”
“There is every chance that he would not answer.”
“Reply paid?”
“Mademoiselle, you are laughing; you are no counsellor any longer.”
“Yes, I am. Let us be serious. Suppose you go to see him.”
“That’s a better idea. He may perhaps receive me.”
“In that case you will capture him. If you can only get a man to
listen--”
“Not my uncle, Mademoiselle. He will listen, and do you know what his
answer will be?”
“What?”
“This, or something like it: ‘My worthy nephew, you have come to tell
me two things, have you not? First, that you are about to marry a
Parisienne; secondly, that you renounce forever the family practice.
You merely confirm and aggravate our difference. You have taken a step
further backward. It was not worth while your coming out of your way to
tell me this, and you may return as soon as you please.’”
“You surprise me. There must be some way of getting at him, if he is
really good-hearted, as you say. If I could see your uncle I should soon
find out a way.”
“If you could see him! Yes, that would be the best way of all; it
couldn’t help succeeding. He imagines you as a flighty Parisienne; he is
afraid of you; he is more angry with me for loving you than for refusing
to carry on his practice. If he could only see you, he would soon
forgive me.”
“You think so?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Do you think that if I were to look him in the face, as I now look at
you, and to say to him: ‘Monsieur Mouillard, will you not consent to my
becoming your niece?’ do you think that then he would give in?”
“Alas! Mademoiselle, why can not it be tried?”
“It certainly is difficult, but I won’t say it can not.”
We explained, or rather Jeanne explained, the case to M. Charnot, who is
assuredly her earliest and most complete conquest. At first he cried out
against the idea. He said it was entirely my business, a family matter
in which he had no right to interfere. She insisted. She carried his
scruples by storm. She boldly proposed a trip to Bourges, and a visit to
M. Mouillard. She overflowed with reasons, some of them rather weak, but
all so prettily urged! A trip to Bourges would be delightful--something
so novel and refreshing! Had M. Charnot complained on the previous
evening, or had he not, of having to stop in Paris in the heat of
August? Yes, he had complained, and quite right too, for his colleagues
did not hesitate to leave their work and rush off to the country. Then
she cited examples: one off to the Vosges, another at Arcachon, yet
another at Deauville. And she reminded him, too, that a certain old
lady, one of his old friends of the Faubourg St. Germain, lived only a
few miles out of Bourges, and had invited him to come and see her, she
didn’t know how many times, and that he had promised and promised and
never kept his word. Now he could take the opportunity of going on from
Bourges to her chateau. Finally, as M. Charnot continued to urge the
singularity of such behavior, she replied:
“My dear father! not at all; in visiting Monsieur Mouillard you will be
only fulfilling a social duty.”
“How so, I should like to know?”
“He paid you a visit, and you will be returning it!”
M. Charnot tossed his head, like a father who, though he may not be
convinced, yet admits that he is beaten.
As for me, Jeanne, I’m beginning to believe in the fairies again.
CHAPTER XVIII. A COOL RECEPTION
August 3d.
I have made another visit to the Rue de l’Universite. They have decided
to make the trip. I leave for Bourges tomorrow, a day in advance of M.
and Mademoiselle Charnot, who will arrive on the following morning.
I am sent on first to fulfil two duties: to engage comfortable rooms at
the hotel--first floor with southern aspect--and then to see my uncle
and prepare him for his visitors.
I am to prepare him without ruffling him. Jeanne has sketched my plan
of campaign. I am to be the most affectionate of nephews, though he show
himself the crustiest of uncles; to prevent him from recurring to the
past, to speak soberly of the present, to confess that Mademoiselle
Charnot is aware of my feelings for her, and shows herself not entirely
insensible to them; but I am to avoid giving details, and must put off a
full explanation until later, when we can study the situation together.
M. Mouillard can not fail to be appeased by such deference, and to
observe a truce while I hint at the possibility of a family council.
Then, if these first advances are well received, I am to tell him that
M. Charnot is actually travelling in the neighborhood, and, without
giving it as certain, I may add that if he stops at Bourges he may like
to return my uncle’s visit.
There my role ends. Jeanne and M. Charnot will do the rest. It is with
Jeanne, by the light of her eyes and her smile, that M. Mouillard is “to
study the situation;” he will have to struggle against the redoubtable
arguments of her youth and beauty. Poor man!
Jeanne is full of confidence. Her father, who has learned his lesson
from her, feels sure that my uncle will give in. Even I, who can not
entirely share this optimism, feel that I incline to the side of hope.
When I reached home, the porter handed me two cards from Larive. On the
first I read:
CH. LARIVE,
Managing Clerk.
P. P. C.
The second, on glazed cardboard, announced, likewise in initials,
another piece of news:
CH. LARIVE,
Formerly Managing Clerk.
P. F. P. M.
So the Parisian who swore he could not exist two days in the country
is leaving Paris. That was fated. He is about to be married; I’m sure
I don’t object. The only consequence to me is that we never shall meet
again, and I shall not weep over that.
BOURGES, August 4th.
If you have ever been in Bourges, you may have seen the little Rue
Sous-les-Ceps, the Cours du Bat d’Argent and de la Fleur-de-lys, the
Rues de la Merede-Dieu, des Verts-Galants, Mausecret, du Moulin-le-Roi,
the Quai Messire-Jacques, and other streets whose ancient names,
preserved by a praiseworthy sentiment or instinctive conservatism,
betoken an ancient city still inhabited by old-fashioned people, by
which I mean people attached to the soil, strongly marked with the stamp
of the provincial in manners as in language; people who understand all
that a name is to a street--its honor, its spouse if you will, from
which it must not be divorced.
My Uncle Mouillard, most devoted and faithful citizen of Bourges,
naturally lives in one of these old streets, the Rue du Four, within the
shadow of the cathedral, beneath the swing of its chimes.
Within fifteen minutes after my arrival at Bourges I was pulling the
deer’s foot which hangs, depilated with long use, beside his door. It
was five o’clock, and I knew for certain that he would not be at home.
When the courts rise, one of the clerks carries back his papers to
the office, while he moves slowly off, his coat-tails flapping in the
breeze, either to visit a few friends and clients, respectable dames who
were his partners in the dance in the year 1840, or more often to take
a “constitutional” along the banks of the Berry Canal, where, in the
poplar shade, files of little gray donkeys are towing string after
string of big barges.
So I was sure not to meet him.
Madeleine opened the door to me, and started as if shot.
“Monsieur Fabien!”
“Myself, Madeleine. My uncle is not at home?”
“No, Monsieur. Do you really mean to come in, Monsieur?”
“Why not?”
“The master’s so changed since his visit to Paris, Monsieur Fabien!”
Madeleine stood still, with one hand holding up her apron, the other
hanging, and gazed at me with reproachful anxiety.
“I must come in, Madeleine. I have a secret to tell you.”
She made no answer, but turned and walked before me into the house.
It was not thus that I used to be welcomed in days gone by! Then
Madeleine used to meet me at the station. She used to kiss me, and tell
me how well I looked, promising the while a myriad sweet dishes which
she had invented for me. Hardly did I set foot in the hall before my
uncle, who had given up his evening walk for my sake, would run out of
his study, heart and cravat alike out of their usual order at seeing
me--me, a poor, awkward, gaping schoolboy: Today that is ancient
history. To-day I am afraid to meet my uncle, and Madeleine is afraid to
let me in.
She told me not a word of it, but I easily guessed that floods of tears
had streamed from her black eyes down her thin cheeks, now pale as wax.
Her face is quite transparent, and looks as if a tiny lamp were lighting
it from within. There are strong feelings, too, beneath that impassive
mask. Madeleine comes from Bayonne, and has Spanish blood in her. I have
heard that she was lovely as a girl of twenty. With age her features
have grown austere. She looks like a widow who is a widow indeed, and
her heart is that of a grandmother.
She glided before me in her slippers to that realm of peace and silence,
her kitchen. I followed her in. Two things that never found entrance
there are dust and noise. A lonely goldfinch hangs in a wicker cage from
the rafters, and utters from time to time a little shrill call. His note
and the metallic tick-tick of Madeleine’s clock alone enliven the silent
flight of time. She sat down in the low chair where she knits after
dinner.
“Madeleine, I am about to be married; did you know it?”
She slowly shook her head.
“Yes, in Paris, Monsieur Fabien; that’s what makes the master so
unhappy.”
“You will soon see her whom I have chosen, Madeleine.”
“I do not think so, Monsieur Fabien.”
“Yes, yes, you will; and you will see that it is my uncle who is in the
wrong.”
“I have not often known him in the wrong.”
“That has nothing to do with it. My marriage is fully decided upon, and
all I want is to get my uncle’s consent to it. Do you understand? I want
to make friends with him.”
Madeleine shook her head again.
“You won’t succeed.”
“My dear Madeleine!”
“No, Monsieur Fabien, you won’t succeed.”
“He must be very much changed, then!”
“So much that you could hardly believe it; so much that I can hardly
keep myself from changing too. He, who had such a good appetite, now has
nothing but fads. It’s no good my cooking him dainties, or buying him
early vegetables; he never notices them, but looks out of the window as
I come in at the door with a surprise for him. In the evening he often
forgets to go out in the garden, and sits at table, his elbows on his
rumpled napkin, his head between his hands, and what he thinks of he
keeps to himself. If I try to talk of you--and I have tried, Monsieur
Fabien--he gets up in a rage, and forbids me to open my mouth on the
subject. The house is not cheerful, Monsieur Fabien. Every one notices
how he has changed; Monsieur Lorinet and his lady never enter the doors;
Monsieur Hublette and Monsieur Horlet come and play dummy, looking all
the time as if they had come for a funeral, thinking it will please the
master. Even the clients say that the master treats them like dogs, and
that he ought to sell his practice.”
“Then it isn’t sold?”
“Not yet, but I think it will be before long.”
“Listen to me, Madeleine; you have always been good and devoted to me;
I am sure you still are fond of me; do me one last service. You must
manage to put me up here without my uncle knowing it.”
“Without his knowing it, Monsieur Fabien!”
“Yes, say in the library; he never goes in there. From there I can study
him, and watch him, without his seeing me, since he is so irritable and
so easily upset, and as soon as you see an opportunity I shall make use
of it. A sign from you, and down I come.”
“Really, Monsieur Fabien--”
“It must be done, Madeleine; I must manage to speak to him before ten
o’clock to-morrow morning, for my bride is coming.”
“The Parisienne? She coming here!”
“Yes, with her father, by the train which gets in at six minutes past
nine to-morrow.”
“Good God! is it possible?”
“To see you, Madeleine; to see my uncle, to make my peace with him.
Isn’t it kind of her?”
“Kind? Monsieur Fabien! I tremble to think of what will happen. All the
same, I shall be glad to have a sight of your young lady, of course.”
And so we settled that Madeleine was not to say a word to my uncle about
my being in Bourges, within a few feet of him. If she perceived any
break in the gloom which enveloped M. Mouillard, she was to let me know;
if I were obliged to put off my interview to the morrow, and to pass the
night on the sofa-bed in the library, she was to bring me something to
eat, a rug, and “the pillow you used in your holidays when you were a
boy.”
I was installed then in the big library on the first-floor, adjoining
the drawing-room, its other door opening on the passage opposite M.
Mouillard’s door, and its two large windows on the garden. What a look
of good antique middle-class comfort there was about it, from the
floor of bees’-waxed oak, with its inequalities of level, to the
four bookcases with glass doors, surmounted by four bronzed busts of
Herodotus, Homer, Socrates, and Marmontel! Nothing had been moved; the
books were still in the places where I had known them for twenty years;
Voltaire beside Rousseau, the Dictionary of Useful Knowledge,
and Rollin’s Ancient History, the slim, well bound octavos of the
Meditations of St. Ignatius, side by side with an enormous quarto on
veterinary surgery.
The savage arrows, said to be poisoned, which always used to frighten
me so much, were still arranged like a peacock’s tail over the
mantel-shelf, each end of which was adorned by the same familiar lumps
of white coral. The musical-box, which I was not allowed to touch till
I was eighteen, still stood in the left-hand corner, and on the
writing-table, near the little blotting-book that held the note-paper,
rose, still majestic, still turning obedient to the touch within its
graduated belts, the terrestrial globe “on which are marked the three
voyages of Captain Cook, both outward and homeward.” Ah, captain, how
often have we sailed those voyages together! What grand headway we
made as we scoured the tropics in the heel of the trade-wind, our ship
threading archipelagoes whose virgin forests stared at us in wonder, all
their strange flowers opening toward us, seeking to allure us and put us
to sleep with their dangerous perfumes. But we always guessed the snare,
we saw the points of the assegais gleaming amid the tall grasses; you
gave the word in your full, deep voice, and our way lay infinite before
us; we followed it, always on the track of new lands, new discoveries,
until we reached the fatal isle of Owhyhee, the spot where this
terrestrial globe is spotted with a tear--for I wept over you, my
captain, at the age when tears unlock themselves and flow easily from a
heart filled with enchantment!
Seven o’clock sounded from the cathedral; the garden door slammed to; my
uncle was returning.
I saw him coming down the winding path, hat in hand, with bowed head.
He did not stop before his graftings; he passed the clump of petunias
without giving them that all-embracing glance I know so well, the
glance of the rewarded gardener. He gave no word of encouragement to the
Chinese duck which waddled down the path in front of him.
Madeleine was right. The time was not ripe for reconciliation; and more,
it would need a great deal of sun to ripen it. O Jeanne, if only you
were here!
“Any one called while I’ve been out?”
This, by the way, is the old formula to which my uncle has always been
faithful. I heard Madeleine answer, with a quaver in her voice:
“No, nobody for you, sir.”
“Someone for you, then? A lover, perhaps, my faithful Madeleine? The
world is so foolish nowadays that even you might take it into your
head to marry and leave me. Come, serve my dinner quickly, and if the
gentleman with the decoration calls--you know whom I mean?”
“The tall, thin gentleman?”
“Yes. Show him into the drawing-room.”
“A gentleman by himself into the drawing-room?
“No, sir, no. The floor was waxed only yesterday, and the furniture’s
not yet in order.”
“Very well! I’ll see him in here.”
My uncle went into the dining-room underneath me, and for twenty minutes
I heard nothing more of him, save the ring of his wineglass as he struck
on it to summon Madeleine.
He had hardly finished dinner when there came a ring at the street door.
Some one asked for M. Mouillard, the gentleman with the decoration, I
suppose, for Madeleine showed him in, and I could tell by the noise of
his chair that my uncle had risen to receive his visitor.
They sat down and entered into conversation. An indistinct murmur
reached me through the ceiling. Occasionally a clearer sound struck my
ear, and I thought I knew that high, resonant voice. It was no doubt
delusion, still it beset me there in the silence of the library,
haunting my thoughts as they wandered restlessly in search of
occupation. I tried to recollect all the men with fluty voices that I
had ever met in Bourges: a corn-factor from the Place St. Jean; Rollet,
the sacristan; a fat manufacturer, who used to get my uncle to draw up
petitions for him claiming relief from taxation. I hunted feverishly in
my memory as the light died away from the windows, and the towers of St.
Stephen’s gradually lost the glowing aureole conferred on them by the
setting sun.
After about an hour the conversation grew heated.
My uncle coughed, the flute became shrill. I caught these fragments of
their dialogue.
“No, Monsieur!”
“Yes, Monsieur!”
“But the law?”
“Is as I tell you.”
“But this is tyranny!”
“Then our business is at an end.”
Apparently it was not, though; for the conversation gradually sank down
the scale to a monotonous murmur. A second hour passed, and yet a third.
What could this interminable visit portend?
It was near eleven o’clock. A ray from the rising moon shone between the
trees in the garden. A big black cat crept across the lawn, shaking its
wet paws. In the darkness it looked like a tiger. In my mind’s eye I saw
Madeleine sitting with her eyes fixed on her dead hearth, telling her
beads, her thoughts running with mine: “It is years since Monsieur
Mouillard was up at such an hour.” Still she waited, for never had any
hand but hers shot the bolt of the street door; the house would not be
shut if shut by any other than herself.
At last the dining-room door opened. “Let me show you a light; take care
of the stairs.”
Then followed the “Good-nights” of two weary voices, the squeaking of
the big key turning in the lock, a light footstep dying away in the
distance, and my uncle’s heavy tread as he went up to his bedroom. The
business was over.
How slowly my uncle went upstairs! The burden of sorrow was no
metaphor in his case. He, who used to be as active as a boy, could now
hardly-support his own weight.
He crossed the landing and went into his room. I thought of following,
him; only a few feet lay between us. No doubt it was late, but his
excited state might have predisposed him in my favor. Suddenly I heard
a sigh--then a sob. He was weeping; I determined to risk all and rush to
his assistance.
But just as I was about to leave the library a skirt rustled against the
wall, though I had heard no sound of footsteps preceding it. At the same
instant a little bit of paper was slipped in under the door--a letter
from the silent Madeleine. I unfolded the paper and saw the following
words written across from one corner to the other, with a contempt for
French spelling, which was thoroughly Spanish:
“Ni allais pat ceux soire.”
Very well, Madeleine, since that’s your advice, I’ll refrain.
I lay down to sleep on the sofa. Yet I was very sorry for the delay. I
hated to let the night go by without being reconciled to the poor old
man, or without having attempted it at least. He was evidently very
wretched to be affected to tears, for I had never known him to weep,
even on occasions when my own tears had flowed freely. Yet I followed my
old and faithful friend’s advice, for I knew that she had the peace of
the household as much at heart as I; but I felt that I should seek long
and vainly before I could discover what this latest trouble was, and
what part I had in it.
CHAPTER XIX. JEANNE THE ENCHANTRESS
BOURGES, August 5th.
I woke up at seven; my first thought was for M. Mouillard. Where could
he be? I listened, but could hear no sound. I went to the window; the
office-boy was lying flat on the lawn, feeding the goldfish in the
fountain. This proved beyond a doubt that my uncle was not in.
I went downstairs to the kitchen.
“Well, Madeleine, has he gone out?”
“He went at six o’clock, Monsieur Fabien.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“How could I guess? Never, never does he go out before breakfast. I
never have seen him like this before, not even when his wife died.”
“What can be the matter with him?”
“I think it’s the sale of the practice. He said to me last night, at
the fool of the staircase: ‘I am a brokenhearted man, Madeleine, a
broken-hearted man. I might have got over it, but that monster
of ingratitude, that cannibal’--saving your presence, Monsieur
Fabien--‘would not have it so. If I had him here I don’t know what I
should do to him.’”
“Didn’t he tell you what he would do to the cannibal?”
“No. So I slipped a little note under your door when I went upstairs.”
“Yes. I am much obliged to you for it. Is he any calmer this morning?”
“He doesn’t look angry any longer, only I noticed that he had been
weeping.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know at all. Besides, you might as well try to catch up with a
deer as with him.”
“That’s true. I’d better wait for him. When will he be in?”
“Not before ten. I can tell you that it’s not once a year that he goes
out like this in the morning.”
“But, Madeleine, Jeanne will be here by ten!”
“Oh, is Jeanne her name?”
“Yes. Monsieur Charnot will be here, too. And my uncle, whom I was to
have prepared for their visit, will know nothing about it, nor even that
I slept last night beneath his roof.”
“To tell the truth, Monsieur Fabien, I don’t think you’ve managed well.
Still, there is Dame Fortune, who often doesn’t put in her word till the
last moment.”
“Entreat her for me, Madeleine, my dear.”
But Dame Fortune was deaf to prayers. My uncle did not return, and I
could find no fresh expedient. As I made my way, vexed and unhappy, to
the station, I kept asking myself the question that I had been turning
over in vain for the last hour:
“I have said nothing to Monsieur Mouillard. Had I better say anything
now to Monsieur Charnot?”
My fears redoubled when I saw Jeanne and M. Charnot at the windows of
the train, as it swept past me into the station.
A minute later she stepped on to the platform, dressed all in gray, with
roses in her cheeks, and a pair of gull’s wings in her hat.
M. Charnot shook me by the hand, thoroughly delighted at having escaped
from the train and being able to shake himself and tread once more the
solid earth. He asked after my uncle, and when I replied that he was in
excellent health, he went to get his luggage.
“Well!” said Jeanne. “Is all arranged?”
“On the contrary, nothing is.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Not even that. I have been watching for a favorable opportunity without
finding one. Yesterday evening he was busy with a visitor; this morning
he went out at six. He doesn’t even know that I am in Bourges.”
“And yet you were in his house?”
“I slept on a sofa in his library.”
She gave me a look which was as much as to say, “My poor boy, how very
unpractical you are!”
“Go on doing nothing,” she said; “that’s the best you can do. If my
father didn’t think he was expected he would beat a retreat at once.”
At this instant, M. Charnot came back to us, having seen his two trunks
and a hatbox placed on top of the omnibus of the Hotel de France.
“That is where you have found rooms for us?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It is now twelve minutes past nine; tell Monsieur Mouillard that we
shall call upon him at ten o’clock precisely.”
I went a few steps with them, and saw them into the omnibus, which was
whirled off at a fast trot by its two steeds.
When I had lost them from my sight I cast a look around me, and noticed
three people standing in line beneath the awning, and gazing upon me
with interest. I recognized Monsieur, Madame, and Mademoiselle Lorinet.
They were all smiling with the same look of contemptuous mockery.
I bowed. The man alone returned my salute, raising his hat. By some
strange freak of fate, Berthe was again wearing a blue dress.
I went back in the direction of the Rue du Four, happy, though at
my wits’ end, forming projects that were mutually destructive; now
expatiating in the seventh heaven, now loading myself with the most
appalling curses. I slipped along the streets, concealed beneath my
umbrella, for the rain was falling; a great storm-cloud had burst over
Bourges, and I blessed the rain which gave me a chance to hide my face.
From the banks of the Voizelle to the old quarter around the cathedral
is a rather long walk. When I turned from the Rue Moyenne, the Boulevard
des Italiens of Bourges, into the Rue du Four, a blazing sun was
drying the rain on the roofs, and the cuckoo clock at M. Festuquet’s--a
neighbor of my uncle--was striking the hour of meeting.
I had not been three minutes at the garden door, a key to which had been
given me by Madeleine, when M. Charnot appeared with Jeanne on his arm.
“To think that I’ve forgotten my overshoes, which I never fail to take
with me to the country!”
“The country, father?” said Jeanne, “why, Bourges is a city!--”
“To be sure--to be sure,” answered M. Charnot, who feared he had hurt my
feelings.
He put on his spectacles and began to study the old houses around him.
“Yes, a city; really quite a city.”
I do not remember what commonplace I stammered.
Little did I care for M. Charnot’s overshoes or the honor of Bourges at
that moment! On the other side of the wall, a few feet off, I felt the
presence of M. Mouillard. I reflected that I should have to open the
door and launch the Academician, without preface, into the presence
of the lawyer, stake my life’s happiness, perhaps, on my uncle’s first
impressions, play at any rate the decisive move in the game which had
been so disastrously opened.
Jeanne, though she did her best to hide it, was extremely nervous. I
felt her hand tremble in mine as I took it.
“Trust in God!” she whispered, and aloud: “Open the door.”
I turned the key in the lock. I had arranged that Madeleine should go at
once to M. Mouillard and tell him that there were some strangers waiting
in the garden. But either she was not on the lookout, or she did not at
once perceive us, and we had to wait a few minutes at the bottom of the
lawn before any one came.
I hid myself behind the trees whose leafage concealed the wall.
M. Charnot was evidently pleased with the view before him, and turned
from side to side, gently smacking his lips like an epicure. And, in
truth, my uncle’s garden was perfection; the leaves, washed by the
rain, were glistening in the fulness of their verdure, great drops were
falling from the trees with a silvery tinkle, the petunias in the beds
were opening all their petals and wrapping us in their scent; the
birds, who had been mute while the shower lasted, were now fluttering,
twittering, and singing beneath the branches. I was like one bewitched,
and thought these very birds were discussing us. The greenfinch said:
“Old Mouillard, look! Here’s Princess Goldenlocks at your garden gate.”
The tomtit said:
“Look out, old man, or she’ll outwit you.”
The blackbird said:
“I have heard of her from my grandfather, who lived in the Champs
Elysees. She was much admired there.”
The swallow said:
“Jeanne will have your heart in the time it takes me to fly round the
lawn.”
The rook, who was a bit of a lawyer, came swooping down from the
cathedral tower, crying:
“Caw, caw, caw! Let her show cause--cause!”
And all took up the chorus:
“If you had our eyes, Monsieur Mouillard, you would see her looking at
your study; if you had our ears, you would hear her sigh; if you had our
wings, you would fly to Jeanne.”
No doubt it was this unwonted concert which attracted Madeleine’s
attention. We saw her making her way, stiffly and slowly, toward the
study, which stood in the corner of the garden.
M. Mouillard’s tall figure appeared on the threshold, filling up the
entire doorway.
“In the garden, did you say? Whatever is your idea in showing clients
into the garden? Why did you let them in?”
“I didn’t let them in; they came in of themselves.”
“Then the door can’t have been shut. Nothing is shut here. I’ll have
them coming in next by the drawing-room chimney. What sort of people are
they?”
“There’s a gentleman and a young lady whom I don’t know.”
“A young lady whom you don’t know--a judicial separation, I’ll
warrant--it’s indecent, upon my word it is. To think that there are
people who come to me about judicial separations and bring their young
ladies with them!”
As Madeleine fled before the storm and found shelter in her kitchen,
my uncle smoothed back his white hair with both his hands--a surviving
touch of personal vanity--and started down the walk around the
grass-plot.
I effaced myself behind the trees. M. Charnot, thinking I was just
behind him, stepped forward with airy freedom.
My uncle came down the path with a distracted air, like a man
overwhelmed with business, only too pleased to snatch a moment’s leisure
between the parting and the coming client. He always loved to pass for
being overwhelmed with work.
On his way he flipped a rosebud covered with blight, kicked off a snail
which was crawling on the path; then, halfway down the path, he suddenly
raised his head and gave a look at his disturber.
His bent brows grew smooth, his eyes round with the stress of surprise.
“Is it possible? Monsieur Charnot of the Institute!”
“The same, Monsieur Mouillard.”
“And this is Mademoiselle Jeanne?”
“Just so; she has come with me to repay your kind visit.”
“Really, that’s too good of you, much too good, to come such a way to
see me!”
“On the contrary, the most natural thing in the world, considering what
the young people are about.”
“Oh! is your daughter about to be married?”
“Certainly, that’s the idea,” said M. Charnot, with a laugh.
“I congratulate you, Mademoiselle!”
“I have brought her here to introduce her to you, Monsieur Mouillard, as
is only right.”
“Right! Excuse me, no.”
“Indeed it is.”
“Excuse me, sir. Politeness is all very well in its way, but frankness
is better. I went to Paris chiefly to get certain information which you
were good enough to give me. But, really, it was not worth your while to
come from Paris to Bourges to thank me, and to bring your daughter too.”
“Excuse me in my turn! There are limits to modesty, Monsieur Mouillard,
and as my daughter is to marry your nephew, and as my daughter was in
Bourges, it was only natural that I should introduce her to you.”
“Monsieur, I have no longer a nephew.”
“He is here.”
“And I never asked for your daughter.”
“No, but you have received your nephew beneath your roof, and
consequently--”
“Never!”
“Monsieur Fabien has been in your house since yesterday; he told you we
were coming.”
“No, I have not seen him; I never should have received him! I tell you I
no longer have a nephew! I am a broken man, a--a--a--”
His speech failed him, his face became purple, he staggered and
fell heavily, first in a sitting posture, then on his back, and lay
motionless on the sanded path.
I rushed to the rescue.
When I got up to him Jeanne had already returned from the little
fountain with her handkerchief dripping, and was bathing his temples
with fresh water. She was the only one who kept her wits about her.
Madeleine had raised her master’s head and was wailing aloud.
“Alas!” she said, “it’s that dreadful colic he had ten years ago which
has got him again. Dear heart! how ill he was! I remember how it came
on, just like this, in the garden.”
I interrupted her lamentations by saying:
“Monsieur Charnot, I think we had better take Monsieur Mouillard up to
bed.”
“Then why don’t you do it?” shouted the numismatist, who had completely
lost his temper. “I didn’t come here to act at an ambulance; but, since
I must, do you take his head.”
I took his head, Madeleine walked in front, Jeanne behind. My uncle’s
vast proportions swayed between M. Charnot and myself. M. Charnot, who
had skilfully gathered up the legs, looked like a hired pallbearer.
As we met with some difficulty in getting upstairs, M. Charnot said,
with clenched teeth:
“You’ve managed this trip nicely, Monsieur Fabien; I congratulate you
sincerely!”
I saw that he intended to treat me to several variations on this theme.
But there was no time for talk. A moment later my uncle was laid, still
unconscious, upon his bed, and Jeanne and Madeleine were preparing a
mustard-plaster together, in perfect harmony. M. Charnot and I waited
in silence for the doctor whom we had sent the office-boy to fetch.
M. Charnot studied alternately my deceased aunt’s wreath of
orange-blossoms, preserved under a glass in the centre of the
chimney-piece, and a painting of fruit and flowers for which it would
have been hard to find a buyer at an auction. Our wait for the doctor
lasted ten long minutes. We were very anxious, for M. Mouillard showed
no sign of returning consciousness. Gradually, however, the remedies
began to act upon him. The eyelids fluttered feebly; and just as the
doctor opened the door, my uncle opened his eyes.
We rushed to his bedside.
“My old friend,” said the doctor, “you have had plenty of people to look
after you. Let me feel your pulse--rather weak; your tongue? Say a word
or two.”
“A shock--rather sudden--” said my uncle.
The doctor, following the direction of the invalid’s eyes, which were
fixed on Jeanne, upright at the foot of the bed, bowed to the young
girl, whom he had not at first noticed; turned to me, who blushed like
an idiot; then looked again at my uncle, only to see two big tears
running down his cheeks.
“Yes, I understand; a pretty stiff shock, eh? At our age we should only
be stirred by our recollections, emotions of bygone days, something
we’re used to; but our children take care to provide us with fresh ones,
eh?”
M. Mouillard’s breast heaved.
“Come, my dear fellow,” proceeded the doctor; “I give you leave to give
your future niece one kiss, and that in my presence, that I may be quite
sure you don’t abuse the license. After that you must be left quite
alone; no more excitement, perfect rest.”
Jeanne came forward and raised the invalid’s head.
“Will you give me a kiss, uncle?”
She offered him her rosy cheek.
“With all my heart,” said my uncle as he kissed her; “good girl--dear
girl.”
Then he melted into tears, and hid his face in his pillow.
“And now we must be left alone,” said the doctor.
He came down himself in a moment, and gave us an encouraging account of
the patient.
Hardly had the street door closed behind him when we heard the lawyer’s
powerful voice thundering down the stairs.
“Charnot!”
The old numismatist flew up the flight of stairs.
“Did you call me, Monsieur?”
“Yes, to invite you to dinner. I couldn’t say the words just now, but it
was in my mind.”
“It is very kind of you, but we leave at nine o’clock.”
“I dine at seven; that’s plenty of time.”
“It will tire you too much.”
“Tire me? Why, don’t you think I dine everyday?”
“I promise to come and inquire after you before leaving.”
“I can tell you at once that I am all right again. No, no, it shall
never be said that you came all the way from Paris to Bourges only to
see me faint. I count upon you and Mademoiselle Jeanne.”
“On all three of us?”
“That makes three, with me; yes, sir.”
“Excuse me, four.”
“I hope the fourth will have the sense to go and dine elsewhere.”
“Come, come, Monsieur Mouillard; your nephew, your ward--”
“I ceased to be his guardian four years ago, and his uncle three weeks
ago.”
“He longs to put an end to this ill feeling--”
“Allow me to rest a little,” said M. Mouillard, “in order that I may be
in a better condition to receive my guests.”
He lay down again, and showed clearly his intention of saying not
another word on the subject.
During the conversation between M. Charnot and my uncle, to which we had
listened from the foot of the staircase, Jeanne, who had a moment before
been rejoicing over the completeness of the victory which she thought
she had achieved, grew quite downhearted.
“I thought he had forgiven you when he kissed me,” she said. “What can
we do now? Can’t you help us, Madeleine?”
Madeleine, whose heart was beginning to warm to Jeanne, sought vainly
for an expedient, and shook her head.
“Ought he to go and see his uncle?” asked Jeanne.
“No,” said Madeleine.
“Well, suppose you write to him, Fabien?”
Madeleine nodded approval, and drew from the depths of her cupboard a
little glass inkstand, a rusty penholder, and a sheet of paper, at the
top of which was a dove with a twig in its beak.
“My cousin at Romorantin died just before last New Year’s Day,” she
explained; “so I had one sheet more than I needed.”
I sat down at the kitchen table with Jeanne leaning over me, reading
as I wrote. Madeleine stood upright and attentive beside the clock,
forgetting all about her kitchen fire as she watched us with her black
eyes.
This is what I wrote beneath the dove:
“MY DEAR UNCLE:
“I left Paris with the intention of putting an end to the
misunderstanding between us, which has lasted only too long, and
which has given me more pain than you can guess. I had no possible
opportunity of speaking to you between five o’clock yesterday
afternoon, when I arrived here, and ten o’clock this morning. If I
had been able to speak with you, you would not have refused to
restore me to your affection, which, I confess, I ought to have
respected more than I have. You would have given your consent to
my, union, on which depends your own happiness, my dear uncle, and
that of your nephew,
“FABIEN.”
“Rather too formal,” said Jeanne. “Now, let me try.”
And the enchantress added, with ready pen:
“It is I, Monsieur Mouillard, who am chiefly in need of forgiveness.
Mine is the greater fault by far. You forbade Monsieur Fabien to love
me, and I took no steps to prevent his doing so. Even yesterday, when
he came to your house, it was my doing. I had assured him that your kind
heart would not be proof against his loving confession.
“Was I really wrong in that?
“The words that you spoke just now have led me to hope that I was not.
“But if I was wrong, visit your anger on me alone. Forgive your nephew,
invite him to dinner instead of us, and let me depart, regretting only
that I was not judged worthy of calling you uncle, which would have been
so pleasant and easy a name to speak.
“JEANNE.”
I read the two letters over aloud. Madeleine broke into sobs as she
listened.
A smile flickered about the corners of Jeanne’s mouth.
We left the house, committing to Madeleine the task of choosing a
favorable moment to hand M. Mouillard our joint entreaty.
And here I may as well confess that from the instant we got out of the
house, all through breakfast at the hotel, and for a quarter of an hour
after it, M. Charnot treated me, in his best style, to the very hottest
“talking-to” that I had experienced since my earliest youth. He ended
with these words: “If you have not made your peace with your uncle by
nine o’clock this evening, Monsieur, I withdraw my consent, and we shall
return to Paris.”
I strove in vain to shake his decision. Jeanne made a little face at me,
which warned me I was on the wrong track.
“Very well,” I said to her, “I leave the matter in your hands.”
“And I leave it in the hands of God,” she answered. “Be a man. If
trouble awaits us, hope will at any rate steal us a happy hour or two.”
We were just then in front of the gardens of the Archbishop’s palace, so
M. Charnot walked in. The current of his reflections was soon changed
by the freshness of the air, the groups of children playing around their
mothers--whom he studied ethnologically and with reference to the
racial divisions of ancient Gaul--by the beauty of the landscape--its
foreground of flowers, the Place St. Michel beyond, and further yet,
above the barrack-roofs, the line of poplars lining the Auron. He ceased
to be a father-in-law, and became a tourist again.
Jeanne stepped with airy grace among the groups of strollers, and the
murmurs which followed her path, though often envious, sounded none the
less sweetly in my ears for that. I hoped to meet Mademoiselle Lorinet.
After we had seen the gardens, we had to visit the Place Seraucourt, the
Cours Chanzy, the cathedral, Saint-Pierrele-Guillard, and the house of
Jacques-Coeur. It was six o’clock by the time we got back to the Hotel
de France.
A letter was waiting for us in the small and badly furnished
entrance--hall. It was addressed to Mademoiselle Jeanne Charnot.
I recognized at once the ornate hand of M. Mouillard, and grew as white
as the envelope.
M. Charnot cried, excitedly:
“Read it, Jeanne. Read it, can’t you!”
Jeanne alone of us three kept a brave face.
She read:
“MY DEAR CHILD:
“I treated you perhaps with undue familiarity this morning, at a
moment when I was not quite myself. Nevertheless, now that I have
regained my senses, I do not withdraw the expressions of which I
made use--I love you with all my heart; you are a dear girl.
“You will not get an old stager like me to give up his prejudices
against the capital. Let it suffice that I have surrendered to a
Parisienne. My niece, I forgive him for your sake.
“Come this evening, all three of you.
“I have several things to tell you, and several questions to ask
you. My news is not all good. But I trust that all regrets will be
overwhelmed in the gladness you will bring to my old heart.
“BRUTUS MOUILLARD.”
When we rang at M. Mouillard’s door, it was opened to us by Baptiste,
the office-boy, who waits at table on grand occasions.
My uncle received us in the large drawing-room, in full dress, with his
whitest cravat and his most camphorous frock-coat: “not a moth in ten
years,” is Madeleine’s boast concerning this garment.
He saluted us all solemnly, without his usual effusiveness; bearing
himself with simple and touching dignity. Strong emotion, which excites
most natures, only served to restrain his. He said not a word of the
past, nor of our marriage. This, the decisive engagement, opened with
polite formalities.
I have often noticed this phenomenon; people meeting to “have it out”
usually begin by saying nothing at all.
M. Mouillard offered his arm to Jeanne, to escort her to the
dining-room. Jeanne was in high spirits. She asked him question after
question about Bourges, its dances, fashions, manufactures, even about
the procedure of its courts.
“I am sure you know that well, uncle,” she said.
“Uncle” smiled at each question, his face illumined with a glow like
that upon a chimney-piece when someone is blowing the fire. He answered
her questions, but presently fell into a state of dejection, which even
his desire to do honor to his guests could not entirely conceal. His
thoughts betrayed themselves in the looks he kept casting upon me, no
longer of anger, but of suffering, almost pleading, affection.
M. Charnot, who was rather tired, and also absorbed in Madeleine’s feats
of cookery, cast disjointed remarks and ejaculations into the gaps in
the conversation.
I knew my uncle well enough to feel sure that the end of the dinner
would be quite unlike the beginning.
I was right. During dessert, just as the Academician was singing the
praises of a native delicacy, ‘la forestine’, my uncle, who had been
revolving a few drops of some notable growth of Medoc in his glass for
the last minute or two, stopped suddenly, and put down his glass on the
table.
“My dear Monsieur Charnot,” said he, “I have a painful confession to
make to you.”
“Eh? What? My dear friend, if it’s painful to you, don’t make it.”
“Fabien,” my uncle went on, “has behaved badly to me on certain
occasions. But I say no more of it. His faults are forgotten. But I have
not behaved to him altogether as I should.”
“You, uncle?”
“Alas! It is so, my dear child. My practice, the family practice, which
I faithfully promised your father to keep for you--”
“You have sold it?”
My uncle buried his face in his hands.
“Last night, my poor child, only last night!”
“I thought so.”
“I was weak I listened to the prompting of anger; I have compromised
your future. Fabien, forgive me in your turn.”
He rose from the table, and came and put a trembling hand on my
shoulder.
“No, uncle, you’ve not compromised anything, and I’ve nothing to forgive
you.”
“You wouldn’t take the practice if I could still offer it to you?”
“No, uncle.”
“Upon your word?”
“Upon my word!”
M. Mouillard drew himself up, beaming:
“Ah! Thank you for that speech, Fabien; you have relieved me of a great
weight.”
With one corner of his napkin he wiped away two tears, which, having
arisen in time of war, continued to flow in time of peace.
“If Mademoiselle Jeanne, in addition to all her other perfections,
brings you fortune, Fabien, if your future is assured--”
“My dear Monsieur Mouillard,” broke in the Academician with
ill-concealed satisfaction. “My colleagues call me rich. They slander
me. Works on numismatics do not make a man rich. Monsieur Fabien, who
made some investigations into the subject, can prove it to you. No; I
possess no more than an honorable competence, which does not give me
everything, but lets me lack nothing.”
“Aurea mediocritas,” exclaimed my uncle, delighted with his quotation.
“Oh, that Horace! What a fellow he was!”
“He was indeed. Well, as I was saying, our daily bread is assured; but
that’s no reason why my son-in-law should vegetate in idleness which I
do not consider my due, even at my age.”
“Quite right.”
“So he must work.”
“But what is he to work at?”
“There are other professions besides the law, Monsieur Mouillard. I
have studied Fabien. His temperament is somewhat wayward. With special
training he might have become an artist. Lacking that early moulding
into shape, he never will be anything more than a dreamer.”
“I should not have expressed it so well, but I have often thought the
same.”
“With a temperament like your nephew’s,” continued M. Charnot, “the best
he can do is to enter upon a career in which the ideal has some part;
not a predominant, but a sufficient part, something between prose and
poetry.”
“Let him be a notary, then.”
“No, that’s wholly prose; he shall be a librarian.”
“A librarian?”
“Yes, Monsieur Mouillard; there are a few little libraries in Paris,
which are as quiet as groves, and in which places are to be got that are
as snug as nests. I have some influence in official circles, and that
can do no harm, you know.”
“Quite so.”
“We will put our Fabien into one of those nests, where he will be
protected against idleness by the little he will do, and against
revolutions by the little he will be. It’s a charming profession; the
very smell of books is improving; merely by breathing it you live an
intellectual life.”
“An intellectual life!” exclaimed my uncle with enthusiasm. “Yes, an
intellectual life!”
“And cataloguing books, Monsieur Mouillard, looking through them,
preserving them as far as possible from worms and readers. Don’t you
think that’s an enviable lot?”
“Yes, more so than mine has been, or my successor’s will be.”
“By the way, uncle, you haven’t told us who your successor is to be.”
“Haven’t I, really? Why, you know him; it’s your friend Larive.”
“Oh! That explains a great deal.”
“He is a young man who takes life seriously.”
“Very seriously, uncle. Isn’t he about to be married?”
“Why, yes; to a rich wife.”
“To whom?”
“My dear boy, he is picking up all your leavings; he is going to marry
Mademoiselle Lorinet.”
“He was always enterprising! But, uncle, it wasn’t with him you were
engaged yesterday evening?”
“Why not, pray?”
“You told Madeleine to admit a gentleman with a decoration.”
“He has one.”
“Good heavens! What is it?”
“The Nicham Iftikar, if it please you.”
[A Tunisian order, which can be obtained for a very moderate sum.]
“It doesn’t displease me, uncle, and surprises me still less. Larive
will die with his breast more thickly plastered with decorations than
an Odd Fellow’s; he will be a member of all the learned societies in the
department, respected and respectable, the more thoroughly provincial
for having been outrageously Parisian. Mothers will confide their
anxieties to him, and fathers their interests; but when his old
acquaintances pass this way they will take the liberty of smiling in his
face.”
“What, jealous? Are you jealous of his bit of ribbon?”
“No, uncle, I regret nothing; not even Larive’s good fortune.”
M. Mouillard fixed his eyes on the cloth, and began again, after a
moment’s silence:
“I, Fabien, do regret some things. It will be mournful at times, growing
old alone here. Yet, after all, it will be some consolation to me to
think that you others are satisfied with life, to welcome you here for
your holidays.”
“You can do better than that,” said M. Charnot. “Come and grow old
among us. Your years will be the lighter to bear, Monsieur Mouillard.
Doubtless we must always bear them, and they weigh upon us and bend our
backs. But youth, which carries its own burden so lightly, can always
give us a little help in bearing ours.”
I looked to hear my uncle break out with loud objections.
“It is a fine night,” he said, simply; “let us go into the garden, and
do you decide whether I can leave roses like mine.”
M. Mouillard took us into the garden, pleased with himself, with me,
with Jeanne, with everybody, and with the weather.
It was too dark to see the roses, but we could smell them as we passed.
I had taken Jeanne’s arm in mine, and we went on in front, in the cool
dusk, choosing all the little winding paths.
The birds were all asleep. But the grasshoppers, crickets, and all
manner of creeping things hidden in the grass, or in the moss on the
trees, were singing and chattering in their stead.
Behind us, at some distance--in fact, as far off as we could manage--the
gravel crackled beneath the equal tread of the two elders, and in a
murmur we could catch occasional scraps of sentences:
“A granddaughter like Jeanne, Monsieur Charnot....”
“A grandson like Fabien, Monsieur Mouillard....”
CHAPTER XX. A HAPPY FAMILY
PARIS, September 18th.
We are married. We are just back from the church. We have said good-by
to all our friends, not without a quick touch or two of sadness, as
quickly swallowed up in the joy which for the first time in the history
of my heart is surging there at full tide, and widening to a limitless
horizon. In the two hours I have to spare before starting for Italy, I
am writing the last words in this brown diary, which I do not intend to
take with me.
Jeanne, my own Jeanne, is leaning upon me and reading over my shoulder,
which distracts the flow of my recollections.
There were crowds at the church. The papers had put us down among the
fashionable marriages of the week. The Institute, the army, men of
letters, public officials, had come out of respect for M. Charnot;
lawyers of Bourges and Paris had come out of respect for my uncle. But
the happiest, the most radiant, next to ourselves, were the people
who came only for Jeanne’s sake and mine; Sylvestre Lampron,
painter-in-ordinary to Mademoiselle Charnot, bringing his pretty sketch
as a wedding-present; M. Flamaran and Sidonie; Jupille, who wept as he
used to “thirty years ago;” and M. and Madame Plumet, who took it in
turns to carry their white-robed infant.
Jeanne and I certainly shook hands with a good many persons, but not
with nearly as many as M. Mouillard. Clean-shaven, his cravat tied with
exquisite care, he spun round in the crowd like a top, always dragging
with him some one who was to introduce him to some one else. “One should
make acquaintances immediately on arrival,” he kept saying.
Yes, Uncle Mouillard has just arrived in Paris; he has settled down near
us on the Quai Malaquais, in a pretty set of rooms which Jeanne chose
for him. He thinks them perfect because she thought they would do. The
tastes and interests of old student days have suddenly reawakened within
him, and will not be put to sleep again. He already knows the omnibus
and tramway lines better than I; he talks of Bourges as if it were
twenty years since he left it: “When I used to live in the country,
Fabien--”
My father-in-law has found in him a whole-hearted admirer, perhaps even
a future pupil in numismatics. Their friendship makes me think of that--
[“You don’t mind, Jeanne?”
“Of course not, my dear; the brown diary is for our two selves
alone.” J.]
--of that of the town mouse and the country mouse. Just now, on their
way back to the house, they had a conversation, by turns pathetic and
jovial, in which their different temperaments met in the same feeling,
but at opposite ends of the scale of its shades.
I caught this fragment of their talk:
“My dear Charnot, can you guess what I’m thinking about?”
“No, I haven’t the least idea.”
“I think it is very queer.”
“What is queer?”
“To see a librarian begin his career with a blot of ink. For you can not
deny that Fabien’s marriage and situation, and my return to the capital,
are all due to that. It must have been sympathetic ink--eh?”
“‘Felix culpa’, as you say, Monsieur Mouillard. There are some blunders
that are lucky; but you can’t tell which they are, and that’s never any
excuse for committing them.”
I could hardly get hold of Lampron for a moment in the crowd he so
dislikes. He was more uncouth and more devoted than ever.
“Well, are you happy?” he said.
“Quite.”
“When you’re less happy, come and see me.”
“We shall always be just as happy as we are now,” said Jeanne.
And I think she is right.
Lampron smiled.
“Yes, I am quite happy, Sylvestre, and I owe my happiness to you, to
her, and to others. I have done nothing myself to deserve happiness
beyond letting myself drift on the current of life. Whenever I tried to
row a stroke the boat nearly upset. Everything that others tried to do
for me succeeded. I can’t get over it. Just think of it yourself. I owed
my introduction to Jeanne to Monsieur Flamaran, who drove me to call on
her father; his friend; you courted her for me by painting her portrait;
Madame Plumet told her you had done so, and also removed the obstacle
in my path. I met her in Italy, thanks entirely to you; and you clinched
the proposal which had been begun by Flamaran. To crown all, the very
situation I desired has been obtained for me by my father-in-law. What
have I had to do? I have loved, sorrowed, and suffered, nothing more;
and now I tremble at the thought that I owe my happiness to every one I
know except myself.”
“Cease to tremble, my friend; don’t be surprised at it, and don’t alter
your system in the least. Your happiness is your due; what matter how
God chooses to grant it? Suppose it is an income for life paid to you
by your relatives, your friends, the world in general, and the natural
order of things? Well, draw your dividends, and don’t bother about where
they come from.”
Since Lampron said so, and he is a philosopher, I think I had better
follow his advice. If you don’t mind, Jeanne, I will cherish no ambition
beyond your love, and refrain from running after any increase in wealth
or reputation which might prove a decrease in happiness. If you agree,
Jeanne, we shall see little of society, and much of our friends; we
shall not open our windows wide enough for Love, who is winged, to fly
out of them. If such is your pleasure, Jeanne, you shall direct the
household of your own sweet will--I should say, of your sweet wisdom;
you shall be queen in all matters of domestic economy, you shall rule
our goings-out and our comings-in, our visits, our travels. I shall
leave you to guide me, as a child, along the joyous path in which I
follow your footsteps. I am looking up at Jeanne. She has not said “No.”
ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:
All that a name is to a street--its honor, its spouse
Came not in single spies, but in battalions
Distrust first impulse
Felix culpa
Happy men don’t need company
Hard that one can not live one’s life over twice
He always loved to pass for being overwhelmed with work
I don’t call that fishing
If trouble awaits us, hope will steal us a happy hour or two
Lends--I should say gives
Men forget sooner
Natural only when alone, and talk well only to themselves
Obstacles are the salt of all our joys
One doesn’t offer apologies to a man in his wrath
People meeting to “have it out” usually say nothing at first
Silence, alas! is not the reproof of kings alone
Skilful actor, who apes all the emotions while feeling none
Sorrows shrink into insignificance as the horizon broadens
Surprise goes for so much in what we admire
The very smell of books is improving
The looks of the young are always full of the future
There are some blunders that are lucky; but you can’t tell
To be your own guide doubles your pleasure
You a law student, while our farmers are in want of hands
You must always first get the tobacco to burn evenly
You ask Life for certainties, as if she had any to give you