PAPA AND MAMMA GERARD
One, two, three years rolled by without anything very remarkable
happening to the inhabitants of the fifth story.
The quarter had not changed, and it still had the appearance of a
suburban faubourg. They had just erected, within gunshot of the house
where the Violettes and Gerards lived, a large five-story building,
upon whose roof still trembled in the wind the masons' withered bouquets.
But that was all. In front of them, on the lot "For Sale," enclosed by
rotten boards, where one could always see tufts of nettles and a goat
tied to a stake, and upon the high wall above which by the end of April
the lilacs hung in their perfumed clusters, the rains had not effaced
this brutal declaration of love, scraped with a knife in the plaster:
"When Melie wishes she can have me," and signed "Eugene."
Three years had passed, and little Amedee had grown a trifle. At that
time a child born in the centre of Paris--for example, in the labyrinth
of infected streets about the Halles--would have grown up without having
any idea of the change of seasons other than by the state of the
temperature and the narrow strip of sky which he could see by raising his
head. Even today certain poor children--the poor never budge from their
hiding-places--learn of the arrival of winter only by the odor of roasted
chestnuts; of spring, by the boxes of gilly-flowers in the fruiterer's
stall; of summer, by the water-carts passing, and of autumn, by the heaps
of oyster-shells at the doors of wine-shops. The broad sky, with its
confused shapes of cloud architecture, the burning gold of the setting
sun behind the masses of trees, the enchanting stillness of moonlight
upon the river, all these grand and magnificent spectacles are for the
delight of those who live in suburban quarters, or play there sometimes.
The sons of people who work in buttons and jet spend their infancy
playing on staircases that smell of lead, or in courts that resemble
wells, and do not suspect that nature exists. At the outside they
suspect that nature may exist when they see the horses on Palm Sunday
decorated with bits of boxwood behind each ear. What matters it, after
all, if the child has imagination? A star reflected in a gutter will
reveal to him an immense nocturnal poem; and he will breathe all the
intoxication of summer in the full-blown rose which the grisette from the
next house lets fall from her hair.
Amedee had had the good fortune of being born in that delicious and
melancholy suburb of Paris which had not yet become "Haussmannized,"
and was full of wild and charming nooks.
His father, the widower, could not be consoled, and tried to wear out his
grief in long promenades, going out on clear evenings, holding his little
boy by the hand, toward the more solitary places. They followed those
fine boulevards, formerly in the suburbs, where there were giant elms,
planted in the time of Louis XIV, ditches full of grass, ruined
palisades, showing through their opening market-gardens where melons
glistened in the rays of the setting sun. Both were silent; the father
lost in reveries, Amedee absorbed in the confused dreams of a child.
They went long distances, passing the Barriere d'Enfer, reaching unknown
parts, which produced the same effect upon an inhabitant of Rue
Montmartre as the places upon an old map of the world, marked with the
mysterious words 'Mare ignotum', would upon a savant of the Middle Ages.
There were many houses in this ancient suburb; curious old buildings,
nearly all of one story.
Sometimes they would pass a public-house painted in a sinister wine-
color; or else a garden hedged in by acacias, at the fork of two roads,
with arbors and a sign consisting of a very small windmill at the end of
a pole, turning in the fresh evening breeze. It was almost country; the
grass grew upon the sidewalks, springing up in the road between the
broken pavements. A poppy flashed here and there upon the tops of the
low walls. They met very few people; now and then some poor person, a
woman in a cap dragging along a crying child, a workman burdened with his
tools, a belated invalid, and sometimes in the middle. of the sidewalk,
in a cloud of dust, a flock of exhausted sheep, bleating desperately, and
nipped in the legs by dogs hurrying them toward the abattoir. The father
and son would walk straight ahead until it was dark under the trees;
then they would retrace their steps, the sharp air stinging their faces.
Those ancient hanging street-lamps, the tragic lanterns of the time of
the Terror, were suspended at long intervals in the avenue, mingling
their dismal twinkle with the pale gleams of the green twilight sky.
These sorrowful promenades with his melancholy companion would commonly
end a tiresome day at Batifol's school. Amedee was now in the "seventh,"
and knew already that the phrase, "the will of God," could not be turned
into Latin by 'bonitas divina', and that the word 'cornu' was not
declinable. These long, silent hours spent at his school-desk, or beside
a person absorbed in grief, might have become fatal to the child's
disposition, had it not been for his good friends, the Gerards. He went
to see them as often as he was able, a spare hour now and then, and most
of the day on Thursdays. The engraver's house was always full of good-
nature and gayety, and Amedee felt comfortable and really happy there.
The good Gerards, besides their Louise and Maria, to say nothing of
Amedee, whom they looked upon as one of the family, had now taken charge
of a fourth child, a little girl, named Rosine, who was precisely the
same age as their youngest.
This was the way it happened. Above the Gerards, in one of the mansards
upon the sixth floor, lived a printer named Combarieu, with his wife or
mistress--the concierge did not know which, nor did it matter much. The
woman had just deserted him, leaving a child of eight years. One could
expect nothing better of a creature who, according to the concierge,
fed her husband upon pork-butcher's meat, to spare herself the trouble
of getting dinner, and passed the entire day with uncombed hair, in a
dressing-sacque, reading novels, and telling her fortune with cards.
The grocer's daughter declared she had met her one evening, at a dancing-
hall, seated with a fireman before a salad-bowl full of wine, prepared in
the French fashion.
During the day Combarieu, although a red-hot Republican, sent his little
girl to the Sisters; but he went out every evening with a mysterious air
and left the child alone. The concierge even uttered in a low voice,
with the romantic admiration which that class of people have for
conspirators, the terrible word "secret society," and asserted that the
printer had a musket concealed under his straw bed.
These revelations were of a nature to excite M. Gerard's sympathy in
favor of his neighbor, for the coup d'etat and the proclamation of the
Empire had irritated him very much. Had it not been his melancholy duty
to engrave, the day after the second of December--he must feed his family
first of all--a Bonapartist allegory entitled, "The Uncle and the
Nephew," where one saw France extending its hand to Napoleon I and Prince
Louis, while soaring above the group was an eagle with spreading wings,
holding in one of his claws the cross of the Legion of Honor?
One day the engraver asked his wife, as he lighted his pipe--he had given
up Abd-el-Kader and smoked now a Barbes--if they ought not to interest
themselves a little in the abandoned child. It needed nothing more to
arouse the good woman, who had already said more than once: "What a
pity!" as she saw little Rosine waiting for her father in the lodge of
the concierge, asleep in a chair before the stove. She coaxed the child
to play with her children. Rosine was very pretty, with bright eyes,
a droll little Parisian nose, and a mass of straw-colored curly hair
escaping from her cap. The little rogue let fly quite often some gutter
expression, such as "Hang it!" or "Tol-derol-dol!" at which Madame
Gerard would exclaim, "What do I hear, Mademoiselle?" but she was
intelligent and soon corrected herself.
One Sunday morning, Combarieu, having learned of their kindness to his
child, made a visit to thank them.
Very dark, with a livid complexion, all hair and beard, and trying to
look like the head of Jesus Christ, in his long black blouse he embodied
the type of a club conspirator, a representative of the workingmen.
A Freemason, probably; a solemn drunkard, who became intoxicated oftener
on big words than on native wine, and spoke in a loud, pretentious voice,
gazing before him with large, stupid eyes swimming in a sort of ecstasy;
his whole person made one think of a boozy preacher. He immediately
inspired the engraver with respect, and dazzled him by the fascination
which the audacious exert over the timid. M. Gerard thought he discerned
in Combarieu one of those superior men whom a cruel fate had caused to be
born among the lower class and in whom poverty had stifled genius.
Enlightened as to the artist's political preferences by the bowl of his
pipe, Combarieu complacently eulogized himself. Upon his own admission
he had at first been foolish enough to dream of a universal brotherhood,
a holy alliance of the people. He had even written poems which he had
published himself, notably an "Ode to Poland," and an "Epistle to
Beranger," which latter had evoked an autograph letter from the
illustrious song-writer. But he was no longer such a simpleton.
"When one has seen what we have seen during June, and on the second of
December, there is no longer any question of sentiment." Here the
engraver, as a hospitable host, brought a bottle of wine and two glasses.
"No, Monsieur Gerard, I thank you, I take nothing between my meals. The
workingmen have been deceived too often, and at the next election we
shall not let the bourgeoisie strangle the Republic." (M. Gerard had now
uncorked the bottle.) "Only a finger! Enough! Enough! simply so as not
to refuse you. While waiting, let us prepare ourselves. Just now the
Eastern question muddles us, and behold 'Badinguet,'--[A nickname given
to Napoleon III.]--with a big affair upon his hands. You have some wine
here that is worth drinking. If he loses one battle he is done for. One
glass more? Ah! you make me depart from my usual custom--absolutely
done for. But this time we shall keep our eyes open. No half measures!
We will return to the great methods of 'ninety-three--the Committee of
Public Safety, the Law of Suspects, the Revolutionary Tribunal, every
damned one of them! and, if it is necessary, a permanent guillotine! To
your good health!"
So much energy frightened Father Gerard a little; for in spite of his
Barbes pipe-bowl he was not a genuine red-hot Republican. He dared not
protest, however, and blushed a little as he thought that the night
before an editor had proposed to him to engrave a portrait of the new
Empress, very decollete, and showing her famous shoulders, and that he
had not said No; for his daughters needed new shoes, and his wife had
declared the day before that she had not a gown to put on.
So for several months he had four children--Amedee, Louise, Maria, and
little Rose Combarieu--to make a racket in his apartment. Certainly they
were no longer babies; they did not play at making calls nor chase the
old fur hat around the room; they were more sensible, and the old
furniture had a little rest. And it was time, for all the chairs were
lame, two of the larger ones had lost an arm each, and the Empire sofa
had lost the greater part of its hair through the rents in its dark-green
velvet covering. The unfortunate square piano had had no pity shown it;
more out of tune and asthmatic than ever, it was now always open, and one
could read above the yellow and worn-out keyboard a once famous name-
"Sebastian Erard, Manufacturer of Pianos and Harps for S.A.R. Madame la
Duchesse de Berri." Not only Louise, the eldest of the Gerards--a large
girl now, having been to her first communion, dressing her hair in bands,
and wearing white waists--not only Louise, who had become a good
musician, had made the piano submit to long tortures, but her sister
Maria, and Amedee also, already played the 'Bouquet de Bal' or 'Papa,
les p'tits bateaux'. Rosine, too, in her character of street urchin,
knew all the popular songs, and spent entire hours in picking out the
airs with one finger upon the old instrument.
Ah! the songs of those days, the last of romanticism, the make-believe
'Orientales'; 'Odes' and 'Ballads', by the dozen; 'Comes d'Espagne et
d'Italie', with their pages, turrets, chatelaines; bull-fighters, Spanish
ladies; vivandieres, beguiled away from their homes under the pale of the
church, "near a stream of running water, by a gay and handsome
chevalier," and many other such silly things--Amedee will remember them
always! They bring back to him, clearly and strongly, certain happy
hours in his childhood! They make him smell again at times even the odor
that pervaded the Gerards' house. A mule-driver's song will bring up
before his vision the engraver working at his plate before the
curtainless window on a winter's day. It snows in the streets, and large
white flakes are slowly falling behind the glass; but the room,
ornamented with pictures and busts, is lighted and heated by a bright
coke fire. Amedee can see himself seated in a corner by the fire,
learning by heart a page of the "Epitome" which he must recite the next
morning at M. Batifol's. Maria and Rosine are crouched at his feet, with
a box of glass beads, which they are stringing into a necklace. It was
comfortable; the whole apartment smelled of the engraver's pipe, and in
the dining-room, whose door is half opened, Louise is at the piano,
singing, in a fresh voice, some lines where "Castilla" rhymes with
"mantilla," and "Andalousie" with "jealousy," while her agile fingers
played on the old instrument an accompaniment supposed to imitate bells
and castanets.
Or perhaps it is a radiant morning in June, and they are in the dining-
room; the balcony door is open wide, and a large hornet buzzes loudly in
the vine. Louise is still at the piano; she is singing this time, and
trying to reach the low tones of a dramatic romance where a Corsican
child is urged on to vengeance by his father:
Tiens, prends ma carabiue!
Sur toi veillera Dieu--
This is a great day, the day when Mamma Gerard makes her gooseberry
preserves. There is a large basin already full of it on the table. What
a delicious odor! A perfume of roses mingled with that of warm sugar.
Maria and Rosine have just slipped into the kitchen, the gourmands! But
Louise is a serious person, and will not interrupt her singing for such a
trifle. She continues to sing in a low voice: and at the moment when
Amedee stands speechless with admiration before her, as she is scolding
in a terrible tone and playing dreadful chords, to and behold! here come
the children, both with pink moustaches, and licking their lips
voluptuously.
Ah! these were happy hours to Amedee. They consoled him for the
interminable days at M. Batifol's.
Having passed the ninth preparatory grade, under the direction of the
indolent M. Tavernier, always busy polishing his nails, like a Chinese
mandarin, the child had for a professor in the eighth grade Pere
Montandeuil, a poor fellow stupefied by thirty years of teaching, who
secretly employed all his spare hours in composing five-act tragedies,
and who, by dint of carrying to and going for his manuscripts at the
Odeon, ended by marrying the stagedoor-keeper's daughter. In the seventh
grade Amedee groaned under the tyranny of M. Prudhommod, a man from the
country, with a smattering of Latin and a terribly violent temper,
throwing at the pupils the insults of a plowboy. Now he had entered the
sixth grade, under M. Bance, an unfortunate fellow about twenty years
old, ugly, lame, and foolishly timid, whom M. Batifol reproached severely
with not having made himself respected, and whose eyes filled with tears
every morning when, upon entering the schoolroom, he was obliged to
efface with a cloth a caricature of himself made by some of his pupils.
Everything in M. Batifol's school--the grotesque and miserable teachers,
the ferocious and cynical pupils, the dingy, dusty, and ink-stained
rooms--saddened and displeased Amedee. Although very intelligent, he was
disgusted with the sort of instruction there, which was served out in
portions, like soldier's rations, and would have lost courage but for his
little friend, Louise Gerard, who out of sheer kindness constituted
herself his school-mistress, guiding and inspiriting him, and working
hard at the rudiments of L'homond's Grammar and Alexandre's Dictionary,
to help the child struggle with his 'De Viris'. Unfortunate indeed is he
who has not had, during his infancy, a petticoat near him--the sweet
influence of a woman. He will always have something coarse in his mind
and hard in his heart. Without this excellent and kind Louise, Amedee
would have been exposed to this danger. His mother was dead, and M.
Violette, alas! was always overwhelmed with his grief, and, it must be
admitted, somewhat neglected his little son.
The widower could not be consoled. Since his wife's death he had grown
ten years older, and his refractory lock of hair had become perfectly
white. His Lucie had been the sole joy in his commonplace and obscure
life. She was so pretty, so sweet! such a good manager, dressing upon
nothing, and making things seem luxurious with only one flower!
M. Violette existed only on this dear and cruel souvenir, living his
humble idyll over again in his mind.
He had had six years of this happiness. One of his comrades took him to
pass an evening with an old friend who was captain in the Invalides. The
worthy man had lost an arm at Waterloo; he was a relative of Lucie, a
good-natured old fellow, amiable and lively, delighting in arranging his
apartments into a sort of Bonapartist chapel and giving little
entertainments with cake and punch, while Lucie's mother, a cousin of the
captain, did the honors. M. Violette immediately observed the young
girl, seated under a "Bataille des Pyramides" with two swords crossed
above it, a carnation in her hair. It was in midsummer, and through the
open window one could see the magnificent moonlight, which shone upon the
esplanade and made the huge cannon shine. They were playing charades,
and when it came Lucie's turn to be questioned among all the guests, M.
Violette, to relieve her of her embarrassment, replied so awkwardly that
they all exclaimed, "Now, then, that is cheating!" With what naive grace
and bashful coquetry she served the tea, going from one table to another,
cup in hand, followed by the one-armed captain with silver epaulets,
carrying the plum-cake! In order to see her again, M. Violette paid the
captain visit after visit. But the greater part of the time he saw only
the old soldier, who told him of his victories and conquests, of the
attack of the redoubt at Borodino, and the frightful swearing of the
dashing Murat, King of Naples, as he urged the squadrons on to the
rescue. At last, one beautiful Sunday in autumn, he found himself alone
with the young girl in the private garden of the veteran of the Old
Guard. He seated himself beside Lucie on a stone bench: he told her his
love, with the profound gaze of the Little Corporal, in bronzed plaster,
resting upon them; and, full of delicious confusion, she replied, "Speak
to mamma," dropping her bewildered eyes and gazing at the bed of china-
asters, whose boxwood border traced the form of a cross of the Legion of
Honor.
And all this was effaced, lost forever! The captain was dead; Lucie's
mother was dead, and Lucie herself, his beloved Lucie, was dead, after
giving him six years of cloudless happiness.
Certainly, he would never marry again. Oh, never!
No woman had ever existed or ever would exist for him but his poor
darling, sleeping in the Montparnasse Cemetery, whose grave he visited
every Sunday with a little watering-pot concealed under his coat.
He recalled, with a shiver of disgust, how, a few months after Lucie's
death, one stifling evening in July, he was seated upon a bench in the
Luxembourg, listening to the drums beating a retreat under the trees,
when a woman came and took a seat beside him and looked at him steadily.
Surprised by her significant look, he replied, to the question that she
addressed to him, timidly and at the same time boldly: "So this is the
way that you take the air?" And when she ended by asking him, "Come to
my house," he had followed her. But he had hardly entered when the past
all came back to him, and he felt a stifled feeling of distress. Falling
into a chair, he sobbed, burying his face in his hands. His grief was so
violent that, by a feminine instinct of pity, the wretched creature took
his head in her arms, saying, in a consoling tone, "There, cry, cry, it
will do you good!" and rocked him like an infant. At last he disengaged
himself from this caress, which made him ashamed of himself, and throwing
what little money he had about him upon the top of the bureau, he went
away and returned to his home, where he went hastily to bed and wept to
his heart's content, as he gnawed his pillow. Oh, horrible memories!
No! never a wife, no mistress, nothing! Now his grief was his wife, and
lived with him.
The widower's morning awakening was frightful above all things else-his
awakening in the large bed that now had but one pillow. It was there
that he had once had the exquisite pleasure of watching his dear Lucie
every morning when asleep; for she did not like to get up early, and
sometimes he had jokingly scolded her for it. What serenity upon this
delicate, sweet face, with its closed eyes, nestling among her beautiful,
disordered hair! How chaste this lovely young wife was in her
unconstraint! She had thrown one of her arms outside of the covering,
and the neck of her nightrobe, having slipped down, showed such a pure
white shoulder and delicate neck. He leaned over the half-opened mouth,
which exhaled a warm and living odor, something like the perfume of a
flower, to inhale it, and a tender pride swept over him when he thought
that she was his, his wife, this delicious creature who was almost a
child yet, and that her heart was given to him forever. He could not
resist it; he touched his young wife's lips with his own. She trembled
under the kiss and opened her eyes, when the astonishment of the
awakening was at once transformed into a happy smile as she met her
husband's glance. Oh, blissful moment! But in spite of all, one must be
sensible. He recalled that the milk-maid had left at daybreak her pot of
milk at the door of their apartment; that the fire was not lighted, and
that he must be at the office early, as the time for promotions was
drawing near. Giving another kiss to the half-asleep Lucie, he said to
her, in a coaxing tone, "Now then, Lucie, my child, it is half-past
eight. Up, up with you, lazy little one!"
How could he console himself for such lost happiness? He had his son,
yes--and he loved him very much--but the sight of Amedee increased
M. Violette's grief; for the child grew to look more like his mother
every day.