[1] Clochette.
How strange are those old recollections which haunt us, without our
being able to get rid of them!
This one is so very old that I cannot understand how it has clung so
vividly and tenaciously to my memory. Since then I have seen so many
sinister things, either affecting or terrible, that I am astonished at
not being able to pass a single day without the face of Mother
Bellflower recurring to my mind's eye, just as I knew her formerly,
long, long ago, when I was ten or twelve years old.
She was an old seamstress who came to my parents' house once a week,
every Thursday, to mend the linen. My parents lived in one of those
country houses called chateaux, which are merely old houses with
pointed roofs, to which are attached three or four adjacent farms.
The village, a large village, almost a small market town, was a few
hundred yards off, and nestled round the church, a red brick church,
which had become black with age.
Well, every Thursday Mother Bellflower came between half past six and
seven in the morning, and went immediately into the linen-room and
began to work. She was a tall, thin, bearded or rather hairy woman, for
she had a beard all over her face, a surprising, an unexpected beard,
growing in improbable tufts, in curly bunches which looked as if they
had been sown by a madman over that great face, the face of a gendarme
in petticoats. She had them on her nose, under her nose, round her
nose, on her chin, on her cheeks; and her eyebrows, which were
extraordinarily thick and long, and quite gray, bushy and bristling,
looked exactly like a pair of mustaches stuck on there by mistake.
She limped, but not like lame people generally do, but like a ship
pitching. When she planted her great, bony, vibrant body on her sound
leg, she seemed to be preparing to mount some enormous wave, and then
suddenly she dipped as if to disappear in an abyss, and buried herself
in the ground. Her walk reminded one of a ship in a storm, and her
head, which was always covered with an enormous white cap, whose
ribbons fluttered down her back, seemed to traverse the horizon from
North to South and from South to North, at each limp.
I adored Mother Bellflower. As soon as I was up I used to go into the
linen-room, where I found her installed at work, with a foot-warmer
under her feet. As soon as I arrived, she made me take the foot-warmer
and sit upon it, so that I might not catch cold in that large, chilly
room under the roof.
"That draws the blood from your head," she would say to me.
She told me stories, while mending the linen with her long, crooked,
nimble fingers; behind her magnifying spectacles, for age had impaired
her sight, her eyes appeared enormous to me, strangely profound, double.
As far as I can remember from the things which she told me and by which
my childish heart was moved, she had the large heart of a poor woman.
She told me what had happened in the village, how a cow had escaped
from the cowhouse and had been found the next morning in front of
Prosper Malet's mill, looking at the sails turning, or about a hen's
egg which had been found in the church belfry without anyone being able
to understand what creature had been there to lay it, or the queer
story of Jean Pila's dog, who had gone ten leagues to bring back his
master's breeches which a tramp had stolen while they were hanging up
to dry out of doors, after he had been caught in the rain. She told me
these simple adventures in such a manner that in my mind they assumed
the proportions of never-to-be-forgotten dramas, of grand and
mysterious poems; and the ingenious stories invented by the poets,
which my mother told me in the evening, had none of the flavor, none of
the fullness or of the vigor of the peasant woman's narratives.
Well, one Thursday when I had spent all the morning in listening to
Mother Clochette, I wanted to go upstairs to her again during the day,
after picking hazelnuts with the manservant in the wood behind the
farm. I remember it all as clearly as what happened only yesterday.
On opening the door of the linen-room, I saw the old seamstress lying
on the floor by the side of her chair, her face turned down and her
arms stretched out, but still holding her needle in one hand and one of
my shirts in the other. One of her legs in a blue stocking, the longer
one no doubt, was extended under her chair, and her spectacles
glistened by the wall, where they had rolled away from her.
I ran away uttering shrill cries. They all came running, and in a few
minutes I was told that Mother Clochette was dead.
I cannot describe the profound, poignant, terrible emotion which
stirred my childish heart. I went slowly down into the drawing-room and
hid myself in a dark corner, in the depths of a great, old arm-chair,
where I knelt and wept. I remained there for a long time no doubt, for
night came on. Suddenly some one came in with a lamp--without seeing
me, however--and I heard my father and mother talking with the medical
man, whose voice I recognized.
He had been sent for immediately, and he was explaining the cause of
the accident, of which I understood nothing, however. Then he sat down
and had a glass of liqueur and a biscuit.
He went on talking, and what he then said will remain engraved on my
mind until I die! I think that I can give the exact words which he used.
"Ah!" said he, "the poor woman! she broke her leg the day of my arrival
here. I had not even had time to wash my hands after getting off the
diligence before I was sent for in all haste, for it was a bad case,
very bad.
"She was seventeen, and a pretty girl, very pretty! Would anyone
believe it? I have never told her story before, in fact no one but
myself and one other person, who is no longer living in this part of
the country, ever knew it. Now that she is dead, I may be less discreet.
"A young assistant teacher had just come to live in the village; he was
good-looking and had the bearing of a soldier. All the girls ran after
him, but he was disdainful. Besides that, he was very much afraid of
his superior, the schoolmaster, old Grabu, who occasionally got out of
bed the wrong foot first.
"Old Grabu already employed pretty Hortense, who has just died here,
and who was afterward nicknamed Clochette. The assistant master singled
out the pretty young girl, who was no doubt flattered at being chosen
by this disdainful conqueror; at any rate, she fell in love with him,
and he succeeded in persuading her to give him a first meeting in the
hayloft behind the school, at night, after she had done her day's
sewing.
"She pretended to go home, but instead of going downstairs when she
left the Grabus', she went upstairs and hid among the hay, to wait for
her lover. He soon joined her, and he was beginning to say pretty
things to her, when the door of the hayloft opened and the schoolmaster
appeared, and asked: 'What are you doing up there, Sigisbert?' Feeling
sure that he would be caught, the young school-master lost his presence
of mind and replied stupidly: 'I came up here to rest a little among
the bundles of hay, Monsieur Grabu.'
"The loft was very large and absolutely dark. Sigisbert pushed the
frightened girl to the further end and said: 'Go there and hide
yourself. I shall lose my situation, so get away and hide yourself.'
"When the schoolmaster heard the whispering, he continued: 'Why, you
are not by yourself?'
"'Yes I am, Monsieur Grabu!'
"'But you are not, for you are talking.'
"'I swear I am, Monsieur Grabu.'
"'I will soon find out,' the old man replied, and double-locking the
door, he went down to get a light.
"Then the young man, who was a coward such as one sometimes meets, lost
his head, and he repeated, having grown furious all of a sudden: 'Hide
yourself, so that he may not find you. You will deprive me of my bread
for my whole life; you will ruin my whole career! Do hide yourself!'
"They could hear the key turning in the lock again, and Hortense ran to
the window which looked out on to the street, opened it quickly, and
then in a low and determined voice said: 'You will come and pick me up
when he is gone,' and she jumped out.
"Old Grabu found nobody, and went down again in great surprise. A
quarter of an hour later, Monsieur Sigisbert came to me and related his
adventure. The girl had remained at the foot of the wall unable to get
up, as she had fallen from the second story, and I went with him to
fetch her. It was raining in torrents, and I brought the unfortunate
girl home with me, for the right leg was broken in three places, and
the bones had come out through the flesh. She did not complain, and
merely said, with admirable resignation: 'I am punished, well punished!'
"I sent for assistance and for the workgirl's friends and told them a
made-up story of a runaway carriage which had knocked her down and
lamed her, outside my door. They believed me, and the gendarmes for a
whole month tried in vain to find the author of this accident.
"That is all! Now I say that this woman was a heroine, and had the
fiber of those who accomplish the grandest deeds in history.
"That was her only love affair, and she died a virgin. She was a
martyr, a noble soul, a sublimely devoted woman! And if I did not
absolutely admire her, I should not have told you this story, which I
would never tell anyone during her life: you understand why."
The doctor ceased; mamma cried and papa said some words which I did not
catch; then they left the room, and I remained on my knees in the
armchair and sobbed, while I heard a strange noise of heavy footsteps
and something knocking against the side of the staircase.
They were carrying away Clochette's body.