you to roam the streets on such a night as this. One would think twice
before sending even a parson out.”
He shook himself, and little rivulets fell from his huge boots onto the
floor. Then he looked round him.
“I particularly want to see Burle. Is the lazy beggar already in bed?”
“No, he is not in yet,” said the old woman in her harsh voice.
The major looked furious, and, raising his voice, he shouted: “What,
not at home? But in that case they hoaxed me at the cafe, Melanie’s
establishment, you know. I went there, and a maid grinned at me, saying
that the captain had gone home to bed. Curse the girl! I suspected as
much and felt like pulling her ears!”
After this outburst he became somewhat calmer, stamping about the room
in an undecided way, withal seeming greatly disturbed. Mme Burle looked
at him attentively.
“Is it the captain personally whom you want to see?” she said at last.
“Yes,” he answered.
“Can I not tell him what you have to say?”
“No.”
She did not insist but remained standing without taking her eyes off
the major, who did not seem able to make up his mind to leave. Finally
in a fresh burst of rage he exclaimed with an oath: “It can’t be
helped. As I am here you may as well know—after all, it is, perhaps,
best.”
He sat down before the chimney piece, stretching out his muddy boots as
if a bright fire had been burning. Mme Burle was about to resume her
own seat when she remarked that Charles, overcome by fatigue, had
dropped his head between the open pages of his dictionary. The arrival
of the major had at first interested him, but, seeing that he remained
unnoticed, he had been unable to struggle against his sleepiness. His
grandmother turned toward the table to slap his frail little hands,
whitening in the lamplight, when Laguitte stopped her.
“No—no!” he said. “Let the poor little man sleep. I haven’t got
anything funny to say. There’s no need for him to hear me.”
The old lady sat down in her armchair; deep silence reigned, and they
looked at one another.
“Well, yes,” said the major at last, punctuating his words with an
angry motion of his chin, “he has been and done it; that hound Burle
has been and done it!”
Not a muscle of Mme Burle’s face moved, but she became livid, and her
figure stiffened. Then the major continued: “I had my doubts. I had
intended mentioning the subject to you. Burle was spending too much
money, and he had an idiotic look which I did not fancy. Thunder and
lightning! What a fool a man must be to behave so filthily!”
Then he thumped his knee furiously with his clenched fist and seemed to
choke with indignation. The old woman put the straightforward question:
“He has stolen?”
“You can’t have an idea of it. You see, I never examined his accounts;
I approved and signed them. You know how those things are managed.
However, just before the inspection—as the colonel is a crotchety old
maniac—I said to Burle: ‘I say, old man, look to your accounts; I am
answerable, you know,’ and then I felt perfectly secure. Well, about a
month ago, as he seemed queer and some nasty stories were circulating,
I peered a little closer into the books and pottered over the entries.
I thought everything looked straight and very well kept—”
At this point he stopped, convulsed by such a fit of rage that he had
to relieve himself by a volley of appalling oaths. Finally he resumed:
“It isn’t the swindle that angers me; it is his disgusting behavior to
me. He has gammoned me, Madame Burle. By God! Does he take me for an
old fool?”
“So he stole?” the mother again questioned.
“This evening,” continued the major more quietly, “I had just finished
my dinner when Gagneux came in—you know Gagneux, the butcher at the
corner of the Place aux Herbes? Another dirty beast who got the meat
contract and makes our men eat all the diseased cow flesh in the
neighborhood! Well, I received him like a dog, and then he let it all
out—blurted out the whole thing, and a pretty mess it is! It appears
that Burle only paid him in driblets and had got himself into a
muddle—a confusion of figures which the devil himself couldn’t
disentangle. In short, Burle owes the butcher two thousand francs, and
Gagneux threatens that he’ll inform the colonel if he is not paid. To
make matters worse, Burle, just to blind me, handed me every week a
forged receipt which he had squarely signed with Gagneux’s name. To
think he did that to me, his old friend! Ah, curse him!”
With increasing profanity the major rose to his feet, shook his fist at
the ceiling and then fell back in his chair. Mme Burle again repeated:
“He has stolen. It was inevitable.”
Then without a word of judgment or condemnation she added simply: “Two
thousand francs—we have not got them. There are barely thirty francs in
the house.”
“I expected as much,” said Laguitte. “And do you know where all the
money goes? Why, Melanie gets it—yes, Melanie, a creature who has
turned Burle into a perfect fool. Ah, those women! Those fiendish
women! I always said they would do for him! I cannot conceive what he
is made of! He is only five years younger than I am, and yet he is as
mad as ever. What a woman hunter he is!”
Another long silence followed. Outside the rain was increasing in
violence, and throughout the sleepy little town one could hear the
crashing of slates and chimney pots as they were dashed by the blast
onto the pavements of the streets.
“Come,” suddenly said the major, rising, “my stopping here won’t mend
matters. I have warned you—and now I’m off.”
“What is to be done? To whom can we apply?” muttered the old woman
drearily.
“Don’t give way—we must consider. If I only had the two thousand
francs—but you know that I am not rich.”
The major stopped short in confusion. This old bachelor, wifeless and
childless, spent his pay in drink and gambled away at ecarte whatever
money his cognac and absinthe left in his pocket. Despite that,
however, he was scrupulously honest from a sense of discipline.
“Never mind,” he added as he reached the threshold. “I’ll begin by
stirring him up. I shall move heaven and earth! What! Burle, Colonel
Burle’s son, condemned for theft! That cannot be! I would sooner burn
down the town. Now, thunder and lightning, don’t worry; it is far more
annoying for me than for you.”
He shook the old lady’s hand roughly and vanished into the shadows of
the staircase, while she held the lamp aloft to light the way. When she
returned and replaced the lamp on the table she stood for a moment
motionless in front of Charles, who was still asleep with his face
lying on the dictionary. His pale cheeks and long fair hair made him
look like a girl, and she gazed at him dreamily, a shade of tenderness
passing over her harsh countenance. But it was only a passing emotion;
her features regained their look of cold, obstinate determination, and,
giving the youngster a sharp rap on his little hand, she said:
“Charles—your lessons.”
The boy awoke, dazed and shivering, and again rapidly turned over the
leaves. At the same moment Major Laguitte, slamming the house door
behind him, received on his head a quantity of water falling from the
gutters above, whereupon he began to swear in so loud a voice that he
could be heard above the storm. And after that no sound broke upon the
pelting downpour save the slight rustle of the boy’s pen traveling over
the paper. Mme Burle had resumed her seat near the chimney piece, still
rigid, with her eyes fixed on the dead embers, preserving, indeed, her
habitual attitude and absorbed in her one idea.
CHAPTER II
THE CAFE
The Café de Paris, kept by Melanie Cartier, a widow, was situated on
the Place du Palais, a large irregular square planted with meager,
dusty elm trees. The place was so well known in Vauchamp that it was
customary to say, “Are you coming to Melanie’s?” At the farther end of
the first room, which was a spacious one, there was another called “the
divan,” a narrow apartment having sham leather benches placed against
the walls, while at each corner there stood a marble-topped table. The
widow, deserting her seat in the front room, where she left her little
servant Phrosine, spent her evenings in the inner apartment,
ministering to a few customers, the usual frequenters of the place,
those who were currently styled “the gentlemen of the divan.” When a
man belonged to that set it was as if he had a label on his back; he
was spoken of with smiles of mingled contempt and envy.
Mme Cartier had become a widow when she was five and twenty. Her
husband, a wheelwright, who on the death of an uncle had amazed
Vauchamp by taking the Café de Paris, had one fine day brought her back
with him from Montpellier, where he was wont to repair twice a year to
purchase liqueurs. As he was stocking his establishment he selected,
together with divers beverages, a woman of the sort he wanted—of an
engaging aspect and apt to stimulate the trade of the house. It was
never known where he had picked her up, but he married her after trying
her in the cafe during six months or so. Opinions were divided in
Vauchamp as to her merits, some folks declaring that she was superb,
while others asserted that she looked like a drum-major. She was a tall
woman with large features and coarse hair falling low over her
forehead. However, everyone agreed that she knew very well how to fool
the sterner sex. She had fine eyes and was wont to fix them with a bold
stare on the gentlemen of the divan, who colored and became like wax in
her hands. She also had the reputation of possessing a wonderfully fine
figure, and southerners appreciate a statuesque style of beauty.
Cartier had died in a singular way. Rumor hinted at a conjugal quarrel,
a kick, producing some internal tumor. Whatever may have been the
truth, Melanie found herself encumbered with the cafe, which was far
from doing a prosperous business. Her husband had wasted his uncle’s
inheritance in drinking his own absinthe and wearing out the cloth of
his own billiard table. For a while it was believed that the widow
would have to sell out, but she liked the life and the establishment
just as it was. If she could secure a few customers the bigger room
might remain deserted. So she limited herself to repapering the divan
in white and gold and recovering the benches. She began by entertaining
a chemist. Then a vermicelli maker, a lawyer and a retired magistrate
put in an appearance; and thus it was that the cafe remained open,
although the waiter did not receive twenty orders a day. No objections
were raised by the authorities, as appearances were kept up; and,
indeed, it was not deemed advisable to interfere, for some respectable
folks might have been worried.
Of an evening five or six well-to-do citizens would enter the front
room and play at dominoes there. Although Cartier was dead and the Café
de Paris had got a queer name, they saw nothing and kept up their old
habits. In course of time, the waiter having nothing to do, Melanie
dismissed him and made Phrosine light the solitary gas burner in the
corner where the domino players congregated. Occasionally a party of
young men, attracted by the gossip that circulated through the town,
would come in, wildly excited and laughing loudly and awkwardly. But
they were received there with icy dignity. As a rule they did not even
see the widow, and even if she happened to be present she treated them
with withering disdain, so that they withdrew, stammering and confused.
Melanie was too astute to indulge in any compromising whims. While the
front room remained obscure, save in the corner where the few townsfolk
rattled their dominoes, she personally waited on the gentlemen of the
divan, showing herself amiable without being free, merely venturing in
moments of familiarity to lean on the shoulder of one or another of
them, the better to watch a skillfully played game of ecarte.
One evening the gentlemen of the divan, who had ended by tolerating
each other’s presence, experienced a disagreeable surprise on finding
Captain Burle at home there. He had casually entered the cafe that same
morning to get a glass of vermouth, so it seemed, and he had found
Melanie there. They had conversed, and in the evening when he returned
Phrosine immediately showed him to the inner room.
Two days later Burle reigned there supreme; still he had not frightened
the chemist, the vermicelli maker, the lawyer or the retired magistrate
away. The captain, who was short and dumpy, worshiped tall, plump
women. In his regiment he had been nicknamed “Petticoat Burle” on
account of his constant philandering. Whenever the officers, and even
the privates, met some monstrous-looking creature, some giantess puffed
out with fat, whether she were in velvet or in rags, they would
invariably exclaim, “There goes one to Petticoat Burle’s taste!” Thus
Melanie, with her opulent presence, quite conquered him. He was
lost—quite wrecked. In less than a fortnight he had fallen to vacuous
imbecility. With much the expression of a whipped hound in the tiny
sunken eyes which lighted up his bloated face, he was incessantly
watching the widow in mute adoration before her masculine features and
stubby hair. For fear that he might be dismissed, he put up with the
presence of the other gentlemen of the divan and spent his pay in the
place down to the last copper. A sergeant reviewed the situation in one
sentence: “Petticoat Burle is done for; he’s a buried man!”
It was nearly ten o’clock when Major Laguitte furiously flung the door
of the cafe open. For a moment those inside could see the deluged
square transformed into a dark sea of liquid mud, bubbling under the
terrible downpour. The major, now soaked to the skin and leaving a
stream behind him, strode up to the small counter where Phrosine was
reading a novel.
“You little wretch,” he yelled, “you have dared to gammon an officer;
you deserve—”
And then he lifted his hand as if to deal a blow such as would have
felled an ox. The little maid shrank back, terrified, while the amazed
domino players looked, openmouthed. However, the major did not linger
there—he pushed the divan door open and appeared before Melanie and
Burle just as the widow was playfully making the captain sip his grog
in small spoonfuls, as if she were feeding a pet canary. Only the
ex-magistrate and the chemist had come that evening, and they had
retired early in a melancholy frame of mind. Then Melanie, being in
want of three hundred francs for the morrow, had taken advantage of the
opportunity to cajole the captain.
“Come.” she said, “open your mouth; ain’t it nice, you greedy
piggy-wiggy?”
Burle, flushing scarlet, with glazed eyes and sunken figure, was
sucking the spoon with an air of intense enjoyment.
“Good heavens!” roared the major from the threshold. “You now play
tricks on me, do you? I’m sent to the roundabout and told that you
never came here, and yet all the while here you are, addling your silly
brains.”
Burle shuddered, pushing the grog away, while Melanie stepped angrily
in front of him as if to shield him with her portly figure, but
Laguitte looked at her with that quiet, resolute expression well known
to women who are familiar with bodily chastisement.
“Leave us,” he said curtly.
She hesitated for the space of a second. She almost felt the gust of
the expected blow, and then, white with rage, she joined Phrosine in
the outer room.
When the two men were alone Major Laguitte walked up to Burle, looked
at him and, slightly stooping, yelled into his face these two words:
“You pig!”
The captain, quite dazed, endeavored to retort, but he had not time to
do so.
“Silence!” resumed the major. “You have bamboozled a friend. You palmed
off on me a lot of forged receipts which might have sent both of us to
the gallows. Do you call that proper behavior? Is that the sort of
trick to play a friend of thirty years’ standing?”
Burle, who had fallen back in his chair, was livid; his limbs shook as
if with ague. Meanwhile the major, striding up and down and striking
the tables wildly with his fists, continued: “So you have become a
thief like the veriest scribbling cur of a clerk, and all for the sake
of that creature here! If at least you had stolen for your mother’s
sake it would have been honorable! But, curse it, to play tricks and
bring the money into this shanty is what I cannot understand! Tell
me—what are you made of at your age to go to the dogs as you are going
all for the sake of a creature like a grenadier!”
“YOU gamble—” stammered the captain.
“Yes, I do—curse it!” thundered the major, lashed into still greater
fury by this remark. “And I am a pitiful rogue to do so, because it
swallows up all my pay and doesn’t redound to the honor of the French
army. However, I don’t steal. Kill yourself, if it pleases you; starve
your mother and the boy, but respect the regimental cashbox and don’t
drag your friends down with you.”
He stopped. Burle was sitting there with fixed eyes and a stupid air.
Nothing was heard for a moment save the clatter of the major’s heels.
“And not a single copper,” he continued aggressively. “Can you picture
yourself between two gendarmes, eh?”
He then grew a little calmer, caught hold of Burle’s wrists and forced
him to rise.
“Come!” he said gruffly. “Something must be done at once, for I cannot
go to bed with this affair on my mind—I have an idea.”
In the front room Melanie and Phrosine were talking eagerly in low
voices. When the widow saw the two men leaving the divan she moved
toward Burle and said coaxingly: “What, are you going already,
Captain?”
“Yes, he’s going,” brutally answered Laguitte, “and I don’t intend to
let him set foot here again.”
The little maid felt frightened and pulled her mistress back by the
skirt of her dress; in doing so she imprudently murmured the word
“drunkard” and thereby brought down the slap which the major’s hand had
been itching to deal for some time past. Both women having stooped,
however, the blow only fell on Phrosine’s back hair, flattening her cap
and breaking her comb. The domino players were indignant.
“Let’s cut it,” shouted Laguitte, and he pushed Burle on the pavement.
“If I remained I should smash everyone in the place.”
To cross the square they had to wade up to their ankles in mud. The
rain, driven by the wind, poured off their faces. The captain walked on
in silence, while the major kept on reproaching him with his cowardice
and its disastrous consequences. Wasn’t it sweet weather for tramping
the streets? If he hadn’t been such an idiot they would both be warmly
tucked in bed instead of paddling about in the mud. Then he spoke of
Gagneux—a scoundrel whose diseased meat had on three separate occasions
made the whole regiment ill. In a week, however, the contract would
come to an end, and the fiend himself would not get it renewed.
“It rests with me,” the major grumbled. “I can select whomsoever I
choose, and I’d rather cut off my right arm than put that poisoner in
the way of earning another copper.”
Just then he slipped into a gutter and, half choked by a string of
oaths, he gasped:
“You understand—I am going to rout up Gagneux. You must stop outside
while I go in. I must know what the rascal is up to and if he’ll dare
to carry out his threat of informing the colonel tomorrow. A
butcher—curse him! The idea of compromising oneself with a butcher! Ah,
you aren’t over-proud, and I shall never forgive you for all this.”
They had now reached the Place aux Herbes. Gagneux’s house was quite
dark, but Laguitte knocked so loudly that he was eventually admitted.
Burle remained alone in the dense obscurity and did not even attempt to
seek any shelter. He stood at a corner of the market under the pelting
rain, his head filled with a loud buzzing noise which prevented him
from thinking. He did not feel impatient, for he was unconscious of the
flight of time. He stood there looking at the house, which, with its
closed door and windows, seemed quite lifeless. When at the end of an
hour the major came out again it appeared to the captain as if he had
only just gone in.
Laguitte was so grimly mute that Burle did not venture to question him.
For a moment they sought each other, groping about in the dark; then
they resumed their walk through the somber streets, where the water
rolled as in the bed of a torrent. They moved on in silence side by
side, the major being so abstracted that he even forgot to swear.
However, as they again crossed the Place du Palais, at the sight of the
Café de Paris, which was still lit up, he dropped his hand on Burle’s
shoulder and said, “If you ever re-enter that hole I—”
“No fear!” answered the captain without letting his friend finish his
sentence.
Then he stretched out his hand.
“No, no,” said Laguitte, “I’ll see you home; I’ll at least make sure
that you’ll sleep in your bed tonight.”
They went on, and as they ascended the Rue des Recollets they slackened
their pace. When the captain’s door was reached and Burle had taken out
his latchkey he ventured to ask:
“Well?”
“Well,” answered the major gruffly, “I am as dirty a rogue as you are.
Yes! I have done a scurrilous thing. The fiend take you! Our soldiers
will eat carrion for three months longer.”
Then he explained that Gagneux, the disgusting Gagneux, had a horribly
level head and that he had persuaded him—the major—to strike a bargain.
He would refrain from informing the colonel, and he would even make a
present of the two thousand francs and replace the forged receipts by
genuine ones, on condition that the major bound himself to renew the
meat contract. It was a settled thing.
“Ah,” continued Laguitte, “calculate what profits the brute must make
out of the meat to part with such a sum as two thousand francs.”
Burle, choking with emotion, grasped his old friend’s hands, stammering
confused words of thanks. The vileness of the action committed for his
sake brought tears into his eyes.
“I never did such a thing before,” growled Laguitte, “but I was driven
to it. Curse it, to think that I haven’t those two thousand francs in
my drawer! It is enough to make one hate cards. It is my own fault. I
am not worth much; only, mark my words, don’t begin again, for, curse
it—I shan’t.”
The captain embraced him, and when he had entered the house the major
stood a moment before the closed door to make certain that he had gone
upstairs to bed. Then as midnight was striking and the rain was still
belaboring the dark town, he slowly turned homeward. The thought of his
men almost broke his heart, and, stopping short, he said aloud in a
voice full of compassion:
“Poor devils! what a lot of cow beef they’ll have to swallow for those
two thousand francs!”
CHAPTER III
AGAIN?
The regiment was altogether nonplused: Petticoat Burle had quarreled
with Melanie. When a week had elapsed it became a proved and undeniable
fact; the captain no longer set foot inside the Café de Paris, where
the chemist, it was averred, once more reigned in his stead, to the
profound sorrow of the retired magistrate. An even more incredible
statement was that Captain Burle led the life of a recluse in the Rue
des Recollets. He was becoming a reformed character; he spent his
evenings at his own fireside, hearing little Charles repeat his
lessons. His mother, who had never breathed a word to him of his
manipulations with Gagneux, maintained her old severity of demeanor as
she sat opposite to him in her armchair, but her looks seemed to imply
that she believed him reclaimed.
A fortnight later Major Laguitte came one evening to invite himself to
dinner. He felt some awkwardness at the prospect of meeting Burle
again, not on his own account but because he dreaded awakening painful
memories. However, as the captain was mending his ways he wished to
shake hands and break a crust with him. He thought this would please
his old friend.
When Laguitte arrived Burle was in his room, so it was the old lady who
received the major. The latter, after announcing that he had come to
have a plate of soup with them, added, lowering his voice:
“Well, how goes it?”
“It is all right,” answered the old lady.
“Nothing queer?”
“Absolutely nothing. Never away—in bed at nine—and looking quite
happy.”
“Ah, confound it,” replied the major, “I knew very well he only wanted
a shaking. He has some heart left, the dog!”
When Burle appeared he almost crushed the major’s hands in his grasp,
and standing before the fire, waiting for the dinner, they conversed
peacefully, honestly, together, extolling the charms of home life. The
captain vowed he wouldn’t exchange his home for a kingdom and declared
that when he had removed his braces, put on his slippers and settled
himself in his armchair, no king was fit to hold a candle to him. The
major assented and examined him. At all events his virtuous conduct had
not made him any thinner; he still looked bloated; his eyes were
bleared, and his mouth was heavy. He seemed to be half asleep as he
repeated mechanically: “Home life! There’s nothing like home life,
nothing in the world!”
“No doubt,” said the major; “still, one mustn’t exaggerate—take a
little exercise and come to the cafe now and then.”
“To the cafe, why?” asked Burle. “Do I lack anything here? No, no, I
remain at home.”
When Charles had laid his books aside Laguitte was surprised to see a
maid come in to lay the cloth.
“So you keep a servant now,” he remarked to Mme Burle.
“I had to get one,” she answered with a sigh. “My legs are not what
they used to be, and the household was going to rack and ruin.
Fortunately Cabrol let me have his daughter. You know old Cabrol, who
sweeps the market? He did not know what to do with Rose—I am teaching
her how to work.”
Just then the girl left the room.
“How old is she?” asked the major.
“Barely seventeen. She is stupid and dirty, but I only give her ten
francs a month, and she eats nothing but soup.”
When Rose returned with an armful of plates Laguitte, though he did not
care about women, began to scrutinize her and was amazed at seeing so
ugly a creature. She was very short, very dark and slightly deformed,
with a face like an ape’s: a flat nose, a huge mouth and narrow
greenish eyes. Her broad back and long arms gave her an appearance of
great strength.
“What a snout!” said Laguitte, laughing, when the maid had again left
the room to fetch the cruets.
“Never mind,” said Burle carelessly, “she is very obliging and does all
one asks her. She suits us well enough as a scullion.”
The dinner was very pleasant. It consisted of boiled beef and mutton
hash. Charles was encouraged to relate some stories of his school, and
Mme Burle repeatedly asked him the same question: “Don’t you want to be
a soldier?” A faint smile hovered over the child’s wan lips as he
answered with the frightened obedience of a trained dog, “Oh yes,
Grandmother.” Captain Burle, with his elbows on the table, was
masticating slowly with an absent-minded expression. The big room was
getting warmer; the single lamp placed on the table left the corners in
vague gloom. There was a certain amount of heavy comfort, the familiar
intimacy of penurious people who do not change their plates at every
course but become joyously excited at the unexpected appearance of a
bowl of whipped egg cream at the close of the meal.
Rose, whose heavy tread shook the floor as she paced round the table,
had not yet opened her mouth. At last she stopped behind the captain’s
chair and asked in a gruff voice: “Cheese, sir?”
Burle started. “What, eh? Oh yes—cheese. Hold the plate tight.”
He cut a piece of Gruyere, the girl watching him the while with her
narrow eyes. Laguitte laughed; Rose’s unparalleled ugliness amused him
immensely. He whispered in the captain’s ear, “She is ripping! There
never was such a nose and such a mouth! You ought to send her to the
colonel’s someday as a curiosity. It would amuse him to see her.”
More and more struck by this phenomenal ugliness, the major felt a
paternal desire to examine the girl more closely.
“Come here,” he said, “I want some cheese too.”
She brought the plate, and Laguitte, sticking the knife in the Gruyere,
stared at her, grinning the while because he discovered that she had
one nostril broader than the other. Rose gravely allowed herself to be
looked at, waiting till the gentleman had done laughing.
She removed the cloth and disappeared. Burle immediately went to sleep
in the chimney corner while the major and Mme Burle began to chat.
Charles had returned to his exercises. Quietude fell from the loft
ceiling; the quietude of a middle-class household gathered in concord
around their fireside. At nine o’clock Burle woke up, yawned and
announced that he was going off to bed; he apologized but declared that
he could not keep his eyes open. Half an hour later, when the major
took his leave, Mme Burle vainly called for Rose to light him
downstairs; the girl must have gone up to her room; she was, indeed, a
regular hen, snoring the round of the clock without waking.
“No need to disturb anybody,” said Laguitte on the landing; “my legs
are not much better than yours, but if I get hold of the banisters I
shan’t break any bones. Now, my dear lady, I leave you happy; your
troubles are ended at last. I watched Burle closely, and I’ll take my
oath that he’s guileless as a child. Dash it—after all, it was high
time for Petticoat Burle to reform; he was going downhill fast.”
The major went away fully satisfied with the house and its inmates; the
walls were of glass and could harbor no equivocal conduct. What
particularly delighted him in his friend’s return to virtue was that it
absolved him from the obligation of verifying the accounts. Nothing was
more distasteful to him than the inspection of a number of ledgers, and
as long as Burle kept steady, he—Laguitte—could smoke his pipe in peace
and sign the books in all confidence. However, he continued to keep one
eye open for a little while longer and found the receipts genuine, the
entries correct, the columns admirably balanced. A month later he
contented himself with glancing at the receipts and running his eye
over the totals. Then one morning, without the slightest suspicion of
there being anything wrong, simply because he had lit a second pipe and
had nothing to do, he carelessly added up a row of figures and fancied
that he detected an error of thirteen francs. The balance seemed
perfectly correct, and yet he was not mistaken; the total outlay was
thirteen francs more than the various sums for which receipts were
furnished. It looked queer, but he said nothing to Burle, just making
up his mind to examine the next accounts closely. On the following week
he detected a fresh error of nineteen francs, and then, suddenly
becoming alarmed, he shut himself up with the books and spent a
wretched morning poring over them, perspiring, swearing and feeling as
if his very skull were bursting with the figures. At every page he
discovered thefts of a few francs—the most miserable petty thefts—ten,
eight, eleven francs, latterly, three and four; and, indeed, there was
one column showing that Burle had pilfered just one franc and a half.
For two months, however, he had been steadily robbing the cashbox, and
by comparing dates the major found to his disgust that the famous
lesson respecting Gagneux had only kept him straight for one week! This
last discovery infuriated Laguitte, who struck the books with his
clenched fists, yelling through a shower of oaths:
“This is more abominable still! At least there was some pluck about
those forged receipts of Gagneux. But this time he is as contemptible
as a cook charging twopence extra for her cabbages. Powers of hell! To
pilfer a franc and a half and clap it in his pocket! Hasn’t the brute
got any pride then? Couldn’t he run away with the safe or play the fool
with actresses?”
The pitiful meanness of these pilferings revolted the major, and,
moreover, he was enraged at having been duped a second time, deceived
by the simple, stupid dodge of falsified additions. He rose at last and
paced his office for a whole hour, growling aloud.
“This gives me his measure. Even if I were to thresh him to a jelly
every morning he would still drop a couple of coins into his pocket
every afternoon. But where can he spend it all? He is never seen
abroad; he goes to bed at nine, and everything looks so clean and
proper over there. Can the brute have vices that nobody knows of?”
He returned to the desk, added up the subtracted money and found a
total of five hundred and forty-five francs. Where was this deficiency
to come from? The inspection was close at hand, and if the crotchety
colonel should take it into his head to examine a single page, the
murder would be out and Burle would be done for.
This idea froze the major, who left off cursing, picturing Mme Burle
erect and despairing, and at the same time he felt his heart swell with
personal grief and shame.
“Well,” he muttered, “I must first of all look into the rogue’s
business; I will act afterward.”
As he walked over to Burle’s office he caught sight of a skirt
vanishing through the doorway. Fancying that he had a clue to the
mystery, he slipped up quietly and listened and speedily recognized
Melanie’s shrill voice. She was complaining of the gentlemen of the
divan. She had signed a promissory note which she was unable to meet;
the bailiffs were in the house, and all her goods would be sold. The
captain, however, barely replied to her. He alleged that he had no
money, whereupon she burst into tears and began to coax him. But her
blandishments were apparently ineffectual, for Burle’s husky voice
could be heard repeating, “Impossible! Impossible!” And finally the
widow withdrew in a towering passion. The major, amazed at the turn
affairs were taking, waited a few moments longer before entering the
office, where Burle had remained alone. He found him very calm, and
despite his furious inclination to call him names he also remained
calm, determined to begin by finding out the exact truth.
The office certainly did not look like a swindler’s den. A cane-seated
chair, covered with an honest leather cushion, stood before the
captain’s desk, and in a corner there was the locked safe. Summer was
coming on, and the song of a canary sounded through the open window.
The apartment was very neat and tidy, redolent of old papers, and
altogether its appearance inspired one with confidence.
“Wasn’t it Melanie who was leaving here as I came along?” asked
Laguitte.
Burle shrugged his shoulders.
“Yes,” he mumbled. “She has been dunning me for two hundred francs, but
she can’t screw ten out of me—not even tenpence.”
“Indeed!” said the major, just to try him. “I heard that you had made
up with her.”
“I? Certainly not. I have done with the likes of her for good.”
Laguitte went away, feeling greatly perplexed. Where had the five
hundred and forty-five francs gone? Had the idiot taken to drinking or
gambling? He decided to pay Burle a surprise visit that very evening at
his own house, and maybe by questioning his mother he might learn
something. However, during the afternoon his leg became very painful;
latterly he had been feeling in ill-health, and he had to use a stick
so as not to limp too outrageously. This stick grieved him sorely, and
he declared with angry despair that he was now no better than a
pensioner. However, toward the evening, making a strong effort, he
pulled himself out of his armchair and, leaning heavily on his stick,
dragged himself through the darkness to the Rue des Recollets, which he
reached about nine o’clock. The street door was still unlocked, and on
going up he stood panting on the third landing, when he heard voices on
the upper floor. One of these voices was Burle’s, so he fancied, and
out of curiosity he ascended another flight of stairs. Then at the end
of a passage on the left he saw a ray of light coming from a door which
stood ajar. As the creaking of his boots resounded, this door was
sharply closed, and he found himself in the dark.
“Some cook going to bed!” he muttered angrily. “I’m a fool.”
All the same he groped his way as gently as possible to the door and
listened. Two people were talking in the room, and he stood aghast, for
it was Burle and that fright Rose! Then he listened, and the
conversation he heard left him no doubt of the awful truth. For a
moment he lifted his stick as if to beat down the door. Then he
shuddered and, staggering back, leaned against the wall. His legs were
trembling under him, while in the darkness of the staircase he
brandished his stick as if it had been a saber.
What was to be done? After his first moment of passion there had come
thoughts of the poor old lady below. And these made him hesitate. It
was all over with the captain now; when a man sank as low as that he
was hardly worth the few shovelfuls of earth that are thrown over
carrion to prevent them from polluting the atmosphere. Whatever might
be said of Burle, however much one might try to shame him, he would
assuredly begin the next day. Ah, heavens, to think of it! The money!
The honor of the army! The name of Burle, that respected name, dragged
through the mire! By all that was holy this could and should not be!
Presently the major softened. If he had only possessed five hundred and
forty-five francs! But he had not got such an amount. On the previous
day he had drunk too much cognac, just like a mere sub, and had lost
shockingly at cards. It served him right—he ought to have known better!
And if he was so lame he richly deserved it too; by rights, in fact,
his leg ought to be much worse.
At last he crept downstairs and rang at the bell of Mme Burle’s flat.
Five minutes elapsed, and then the old lady appeared.
“I beg your pardon for keeping you waiting,” she said; “I thought that
dormouse Rose was still about. I must go and shake her.”
But the major detained her.
“Where is Burle?” he asked.
“Oh, he has been snoring since nine o’clock. Would you like to knock at
his door?”
“No, no, I only wanted to have a chat with you.”
In the parlor Charles sat at his usual place, having just finished his
exercises. He looked terrified, and his poor little white hands were
tremulous. In point of fact, his grandmother, before sending him to
bed, was wont to read some martial stories aloud so as to develop the
latent family heroism in his bosom. That night she had selected the
episode of the Vengeur, the man-of-war freighted with dying heroes and
sinking into the sea. The child, while listening, had become almost
hysterical, and his head was racked as with some ghastly nightmare.
Mme Burle asked the major to let her finish the perusal. “Long live the
republic!” She solemnly closed the volume. Charles was as white as a
sheet.
“You see,” said the old lady, “the duty of every French soldier is to
die for his country.”
“Yes, Grandmother.”
Then the lad kissed her on the forehead and, shivering with fear, went
to bed in his big room, where the faintest creak of the paneling threw
him into a cold sweat.
The major had listened with a grave face. Yes, by heavens! Honor was
honor, and he would never permit that wretched Burle to disgrace the
old woman and the boy! As the lad was so devoted to the military
profession, it was necessary that he should be able to enter Saint-Cyr
with his head erect.
When Mme Burle took up the lamp to show the major out, she passed the
door of the captain’s room, and stopped short, surprised to see the key
outside, which was a most unusual occurrence.
“Do go in,” she said to Laguitte; “it is bad for him to sleep so much.”
And before he could interpose she had opened the door and stood
transfixed on finding the room empty. Laguitte turned crimson and
looked so foolish that she suddenly understood everything, enlightened
by the sudden recollection of several little incidents to which she had
previously attached no importance.
“You knew it—you knew it!” she stammered. “Why was I not told? Oh, my
God, to think of it! Ah, he has been stealing again—I feel it!”
She remained erect, white and rigid. Then she added in a harsh voice:
“Look you—I wish he were dead!”
Laguitte caught hold of both her hands, which for a moment he kept
tightly clasped in his own. Then he left her hurriedly, for he felt a
lump rising in his throat and tears coming to his eyes. Ah, by all the
powers, this time his mind was quite made up.
CHAPTER IV
INSPECTION
The regimental inspection was to take place at the end of the month.
The major had ten days before him. On the very next morning, however,
he crawled, limping, as far as the Café de Paris, where he ordered some
beer. Melanie grew pale when she saw him enter, and it was with a
lively recollection of a certain slap that Phrosine hastened to serve
him. The major seemed very calm, however; he called for a second chair
to rest his bad leg upon and drank his beer quietly like any other
thirsty man. He had sat there for about an hour when he saw two
officers crossing the Place du Palais—Morandot, who commanded one of
the battalions of the regiment, and Captain Doucet. Thereupon he
excitedly waved his cane and shouted: “Come in and have a glass of beer
with me!”
The officers dared not refuse, but when the maid had brought the beer
Morandot said to the major: “So you patronize this place now?”
“Yes—the beer is good.”
Captain Doucet winked and asked archly: “Do you belong to the divan,
Major?”
Laguitte chuckled but did not answer. Then the others began to chaff
him about Melanie, and he took their remarks good-naturedly, simply
shrugging his shoulders. The widow was undoubtedly a fine woman,
however much people might talk. Some of those who disparaged her would,
in reality, be only too pleased to win her good graces. Then turning to
the little counter and assuming an engaging air, he shouted:
“Three more glasses, madame.”
Melanie was so taken aback that she rose and brought the beer herself.
The major detained her at the table and forgot himself so far as to
softly pat the hand which she had carelessly placed on the back of a
chair. Used as she was to alternate brutality and flattery, she
immediately became confident, believing in a sudden whim of gallantry
on the part of the “old wreck,” as she was wont to style the major when
talking with Phrosine. Doucet and Morandot looked at each other in
surprise. Was the major actually stepping into Petticoat Burle’s shoes?
The regiment would be convulsed if that were the case.
Suddenly, however, Laguitte, who kept his eye on the square, gave a
start.
“Hallo, there’s Burle!” he exclaimed.
“Yes, it is his time,” explained Phrosine. “The captain passes every
afternoon on his way from the office.”
In spite of his lameness the major had risen to his feet, pushing aside
the chairs as he called out: “Burle! I say—come along and have a
glass.”
The captain, quite aghast and unable to understand why Laguitte was at
the widow’s, advanced mechanically. He was so perplexed that he again
hesitated at the door.
“Another glass of beer,” ordered the major, and then turning to Burle,
he added, “What’s the matter with you? Come in. Are you afraid of being
eaten alive?”
The captain took a seat, and an awkward pause followed. Melanie, who
brought the beer with trembling hands, dreaded some scene which might
result in the closing of her establishment. The major’s gallantry made
her uneasy, and she endeavored to slip away, but he invited her to
drink with them, and before she could refuse he had ordered Phrosine to
bring a liqueur glass of anisette, doing so with as much coolness as if
he had been master of the house. Melanie was thus compelled to sit down
between the captain and Laguitte, who exclaimed aggressively: “I WILL
have ladies respected. We are French officers! Let us drink Madame’s
health!”
Burle, with his eyes fixed on his glass, smiled in an embarrassed way.
The two officers, shocked at the proceedings, had already tried to get
off. Fortunately the cafe was deserted, save that the domino players
were having their afternoon game. At every fresh oath which came from
the major they glanced around, scandalized by such an unusual accession
of customers and ready to threaten Melanie that they would leave her
for the Café de la Gare if the soldiery was going to invade her place
like flies that buzzed about, attracted by the stickiness of the tables
which Phrosine scoured only on Saturdays. She was now reclining behind
the counter, already reading a novel again.
“How’s this—you are not drinking with Madame?” roughly said the major
to Burle. “Be civil at least!”
Then as Doucet and Morandot were again preparing to leave, he stopped
them.
“Why can’t you wait? We’ll go together. It is only this brute who never
knows how to behave himself.”
The two officers looked surprised at the major’s sudden bad temper.
Melanie attempted to restore peace and with a light laugh placed her
hands on the arms of both men. However, Laguitte disengaged himself.
“No,” he roared, “leave me alone. Why does he refuse to chink glasses
with you? I shall not allow you to be insulted—do you hear? I am quite
sick of him.”
Burle, paling under the insult, turned slightly and said to Morandot,
“What does this mean? He calls me in here to insult me. Is he drunk?”
With a wild oath the major rose on his trembling legs and struck the
captain’s cheek with his open hand. Melanie dived and thus escaped one
half of the smack. An appalling uproar ensued. Phrosine screamed behind
the counter as if she herself had received the blow; the domino players
also entrenched themselves behind their table in fear lest the soldiers
should draw their swords and massacre them. However, Doucet and
Morandot pinioned the captain to prevent him from springing at the
major’s throat and forcibly let him to the door. When they got him
outside they succeeded in quieting him a little by repeating that
Laguitte was quite in the wrong. They would lay the affair before the
colonel, having witnessed it, and the colonel would give his decision.
As soon as they had got Burle away they returned to the cafe where they
found Laguitte in reality greatly disturbed, with tears in his eyes but
affecting stolid indifference and slowly finishing his beer.
“Listen, Major,” began Morandot, “that was very wrong on your part. The
captain is your inferior in rank, and you know that he won’t be allowed
to fight you.”
“That remains to be seen,” answered the major.
“But how has he offended you? He never uttered a word. Two old comrades
too; it is absurd.”
The major made a vague gesture. “No matter. He annoyed me.”
He could never be made to say anything else. Nothing more as to his
motive was ever known. All the same, the scandal was a terrible one.
The regiment was inclined to believe that Melanie, incensed by the
captain’s defection, had contrived to entrap the major, telling him
some abominable stories and prevailing upon him to insult and strike
Burle publicly. Who would have thought it of that old fogy Laguitte,
who professed to be a woman hater? they said. So he, too, had been
caught at last. Despite the general indignation against Melanie, this
adventure made her very conspicuous, and her establishment soon drove a
flourishing business.
On the following day the colonel summoned the major and the captain
into his presence. He censured them sternly, accusing them of
disgracing their uniform by frequenting unseemly haunts. What
resolution had they come to, he asked, as he could not authorize them
to fight? This same question had occupied the whole regiment for the
last twenty-four hours. Apologies were unacceptable on account of the
blow, but as Laguitte was almost unable to stand, it was hoped that,
should the colonel insist upon it, some reconciliation might be patched
up.
“Come,” said the colonel, “will you accept me as arbitrator?”
“I beg your pardon, Colonel,” interrupted the major; “I have brought
you my resignation. Here it is. That settles everything. Please name
the day for the duel.”
Burle looked at Laguitte in amazement, and the colonel thought it his
duty to protest.
“This is a most serious step, Major,” he began. “Two years more and you
would be entitled to your full pension.”
But again did Laguitte cut him short, saying gruffly, “That is my own
affair.”
“Oh, certainly! Well, I will send in your resignation, and as soon as
it is accepted I will fix a day for the duel.”
The unexpected turn that events had taken startled the regiment. What
possessed that lunatic major to persist in cutting the throat of his
old comrade Burle? The officers again discussed Melanie; they even
began to dream of her. There must surely be something wonderful about
her since she had completely fascinated two such tough old veterans and
brought them to a deadly feud. Morandot, having met Laguitte, did not
disguise his concern. If he—the major—was not killed, what would he
live upon? He had no fortune, and the pension to which his cross of the
Legion of Honor entitled him, with the half of a full regimental
pension which he would obtain on resigning, would barely find him in
bread. While Morandot was thus speaking Laguitte simply stared before
him with his round eyes, persevering in the dumb obstinacy born of his
narrow mind; and when his companion tried to question him regarding his
hatred for Burle, he simply made the same vague gesture as before and
once again repeated:
“He annoyed me; so much the worse.”
Every morning at mess and at the canteen the first words were: “Has the
acceptance of the major’s resignation arrived?” The duel was
impatiently expected and ardently discussed. The majority believed that
Laguitte would be run through the body in three seconds, for it was
madness for a man to fight with a paralyzed leg which did not even
allow him to stand upright. A few, however, shook their heads. Laguitte
had never been a marvel of intellect, that was true; for the last
twenty years, indeed, he had been held up as an example of stupidity,
but there had been a time when he was known as the best fencer of the
regiment, and although he had begun as a drummer he had won his
epaulets as the commander of a battalion by the sanguine bravery of a
man who is quite unconscious of danger. On the other hand, Burle fenced
indifferently and passed for a poltroon. However, they would soon know
what to think.
Meanwhile the excitement became more and more intense as the acceptance
of Laguitte’s resignation was so long in coming. The major was
unmistakably the most anxious and upset of everybody. A week had passed
by, and the general inspection would commence two days later. Nothing,
however, had come as yet. He shuddered at the thought that he had,
perhaps, struck his old friend and sent in his resignation all in vain,
without delaying the exposure for a single minute. He had in reality
reasoned thus: If he himself were killed he would not have the worry of
witnessing the scandal, and if he killed Burle, as he expected to do,
the affair would undoubtedly be hushed up. Thus he would save the honor
of the army, and the little chap would be able to get in at Saint-Cyr.
Ah, why wouldn’t those wretched scribblers at the War Office hurry up a
bit? The major could not keep still but was forever wandering about
before the post office, stopping the estafettes and questioning the
colonel’s orderly to find out if the acceptance had arrived. He lost
his sleep and, careless as to people’s remarks, he leaned more and more
heavily on his stick, hobbling about with no attempt to steady his
gait.
On the day before that fixed for the inspection he was, as usual, on
his way to the colonel’s quarters when he paused, startled, to see Mme
Burle (who was taking Charles to school) a few paces ahead of him. He
had not met her since the scene at the Café de Paris, for she had
remained in seclusion at home. Unmanned at thus meeting her, he stepped
down to leave the whole sidewalk free. Neither he nor the old lady
bowed, and the little boy lifted his large inquisitive eyes in mute
surprise. Mme Burle, cold and erect, brushed past the major without the
least sign of emotion or recognition. When she had passed he looked
after her with an expression of stupefied compassion.
“Confound it, I am no longer a man,” he growled, dashing away a tear.
When he arrived at the colonel’s quarters a captain in attendance
greeted him with the words: “It’s all right at last. The papers have
come.”
“Ah!” murmured Laguitte, growing very pale.
And again he beheld the old lady walking on, relentlessly rigid and
holding the little boy’s hand. What! He had longed so eagerly for those
papers for eight days past, and now when the scraps had come he felt
his brain on fire and his heart lacerated.
The duel took place on the morrow, in the barrack yard behind a low
wall. The air was keen, the sun shining brightly. Laguitte had almost
to be carried to the ground; one of his seconds supported him on one
side, while on the other he leaned heavily, on his stick. Burle looked
half asleep; his face was puffy with unhealthy fat, as if he had spent
a night of debauchery. Not a word was spoken. They were all anxious to
have it over.
Captain Doucet crossed the swords of the two adversaries and then drew
back, saying: “Set to, gentlemen.”
Burle was the first to attack; he wanted to test Laguitte’s strength
and ascertain what he had to expect. For the last ten days the
encounter had seemed to him a ghastly nightmare which he could not
fathom. At times a hideous suspicion assailed him, but he put it aside
with terror, for it meant death, and he refused to believe that a
friend could play him such a trick, even to set things right. Besides,
Laguitte’s leg reasssured him; he would prick the major on the
shoulder, and then all would be over.
During well-nigh a couple of minutes the swords clashed, and then the
captain lunged, but the major, recovering his old suppleness of wrist,
parried in a masterly style, and if he had returned the attack Burle
would have been pierced through. The captain now fell back; he was
livid, for he felt that he was at the mercy of the man who had just
spared him. At last he understood that this was an execution.
Laguitte, squarely poised on his infirm legs and seemingly turned to
stone, stood waiting. The two men looked at each other fixedly. In
Burle’s blurred eyes there arose a supplication—a prayer for pardon. He
knew why he was going to die, and like a child he promised not to
transgress again. But the major’s eyes remained implacable; honor had
spoken, and he silenced his emotion and his pity.
“Let it end,” he muttered between his teeth.
Then it was he who attacked. Like a flash of lightning his sword
flamed, flying from right to left, and then with a resistless thrust it
pierced the breast of the captain, who fell like a log without even a
groan.
Laguitte had released his hold upon his sword and stood gazing at that
poor old rascal Burle, who was stretched upon his back with his fat
stomach bulging out.
“Oh, my God! My God!” repeated the major furiously and despairingly,
and then he began to swear.
They led him away, and, both his legs failing him, he had to be
supported on either side, for he could not even use his stick.
Two months later the ex-major was crawling slowly along in the sunlight
down a lonely street of Vauchamp, when he again found himself face to
face with Mme Burle and little Charles. They were both in deep
mourning. He tried to avoid them, but he now only walked with
difficulty, and they advanced straight upon him without hurrying or
slackening their steps. Charles still had the same gentle, girlish,
frightened face, and Mme Burle retained her stern, rigid demeanor,
looking even harsher than ever.
As Laguitte shrank into the corner of a doorway to leave the whole
street to them, she abruptly stopped in front of him and stretched out
her hand. He hesitated and then took it and pressed it, but he trembled
so violently that he made the old lady’s arm shake. They exchanged
glances in silence.
“Charles,” said the boy’s grandmother at last, “shake hands with the
major.” The boy obeyed without understanding. The major, who was very
pale, barely ventured to touch the child’s frail fingers; then, feeling
that he ought to speak, he stammered out: “You still intend to send him
to Saint-Cyr?”
“Of course, when he is old enough,” answered Mme Burle.
But during the following week Charles was carried off by typhoid fever.
One evening his grandmother had again read him the story of the Vengeur
to make him bold, and in the night he had become delirious. The poor
little fellow died of fright.
THE DEATH OF OLIVIER BECAILLE
CHAPTER I
MY PASSING
It was on a Saturday, at six in the morning, that I died after a three
days’ illness. My wife was searching a trunk for some linen, and when
she rose and turned she saw me rigid, with open eyes and silent pulses.
She ran to me, fancying that I had fainted, touched my hands and bent
over me. Then she suddenly grew alarmed, burst into tears and
stammered:
“My God, my God! He is dead!”
I heard everything, but the sounds seemed to come from a great
distance. My left eye still detected a faint glimmer, a whitish light
in which all objects melted, but my right eye was quite bereft of
sight. It was the coma of my whole being, as if a thunderbolt had
struck me. My will was annihilated; not a fiber of flesh obeyed my
bidding. And yet amid the impotency of my inert limbs my thoughts
subsisted, sluggish and lazy, still perfectly clear.
My poor Marguerite was crying; she had dropped on her knees beside the
bed, repeating in heart-rending tones:
“He is dead! My God, he is dead!”
Was this strange state of torpor, this immobility of the flesh, really
death, although the functions of the intellect were not arrested? Was
my soul only lingering for a brief space before it soared away forever?
From my childhood upward I had been subject to hysterical attacks, and
twice in early youth I had nearly succumbed to nervous fevers. By
degrees all those who surrounded me had got accustomed to consider me
an invalid and to see me sickly. So much so that I myself had forbidden
my wife to call in a doctor when I had taken to my bed on the day of
our arrival at the cheap lodginghouse of the Rue Dauphine in Paris. A
little rest would soon set me right again; it was only the fatigue of
the journey which had caused my intolerable weariness. And yet I was
conscious of having felt singularly uneasy. We had left our province
somewhat abruptly; we were very poor and had barely enough money to
support ourselves till I drew my first month’s salary in the office
where I had obtained a situation. And now a sudden seizure was carrying
me off!
Was it really death? I had pictured to myself a darker night, a deeper
silence. As a little child I had already felt afraid to die. Being weak
and compassionately petted by everyone, I had concluded that I had not
long to live, that I should soon be buried, and the thought of the cold
earth filled me with a dread I could not master—a dread which haunted
me day and night. As I grew older the same terror pursued me.
Sometimes, after long hours spent in reasoning with myself, I thought
that I had conquered my fear. I reflected, “After all, what does it
matter? One dies and all is over. It is the common fate; nothing could
be better or easier.”
I then prided myself on being able to look death boldly in the face,
but suddenly a shiver froze my blood, and my dizzy anguish returned, as
if a giant hand had swung me over a dark abyss. It was some vision of
the earth returning and setting reason at naught. How often at night
did I start up in bed, not knowing what cold breath had swept over my
slumbers but clasping my despairing hands and moaning, “Must I die?” In
those moments an icy horror would stop my pulses while an appalling
vision of dissolution rose before me. It was with difficulty that I
could get to sleep again. Indeed, sleep alarmed me; it so closely
resembled death. If I closed my eyes they might never open again—I
might slumber on forever.
I cannot tell if others have endured the same torture; I only know that
my own life was made a torment by it. Death ever rose between me and
all I loved; I can remember how the thought of it poisoned the happiest
moments I spent with Marguerite. During the first months of our married
life, when she lay sleeping by my side and I dreamed of a fair future
for her and with her, the foreboding of some fatal separation dashed my
hopes aside and embittered my delights. Perhaps we should be parted on
the morrow—nay, perhaps in an hour’s time. Then utter discouragement
assailed me; I wondered what the bliss of being united availed me if it
were to end in so cruel a disruption.
My morbid imagination reveled in scenes of mourning. I speculated as to
who would be the first to depart, Marguerite or I. Either alternative
caused me harrowing grief, and tears rose to my eyes at the thought of
our shattered lives. At the happiest periods of my existence I often
became a prey to grim dejection such as nobody could understand but
which was caused by the thought of impending nihility. When I was most
successful I was to general wonder most depressed. The fatal question,
“What avails it?” rang like a knell in my ears. But the sharpest sting
of this torment was that it came with a secret sense of shame, which
rendered me unable to confide my thoughts to another. Husband and wife
lying side by side in the darkened room may quiver with the same
shudder and yet remain mute, for people do not mention death any more
than they pronounce certain obscene words. Fear makes it nameless.
I was musing thus while my dear Marguerite knelt sobbing at my feet. It
grieved me sorely to be unable to comfort her by telling her that I
suffered no pain. If death were merely the annihilation of the flesh it
had been foolish of me to harbor so much dread. I experienced a selfish
kind of restfulness in which all my cares were forgotten. My memory had
become extraordinarily vivid. My whole life passed before me rapidly
like a play in which I no longer acted a part; it was a curious and
enjoyable sensation—I seemed to hear a far-off voice relating my own
history.
I saw in particular a certain spot in the country near Guerande, on the
way to Piriac. The road turns sharply, and some scattered pine trees
carelessly dot a rocky slope. When I was seven years old I used to pass
through those pines with my father as far as a crumbling old house,
where Marguerite’s parents gave me pancakes. They were salt gatherers
and earned a scanty livelihood by working the adjacent salt marshes.
Then I remembered the school at Nantes, where I had grown up, leading a
monotonous life within its ancient walls and yearning for the broad
horizon of Guerande and the salt marshes stretching to the limitless
sea widening under the sky.
Next came a blank—my father was dead. I entered the hospital as clerk
to the managing board and led a dreary life with one solitary
diversion: my Sunday visits to the old house on Piriac road. The
saltworks were doing badly; poverty reigned in the land, and
Marguerite’s parents were nearly penniless. Marguerite, when merely a
child, had been fond of me because I trundled her about in a
wheelbarrow, but on the morning when I asked her in marriage she shrank
from me with a frightened gesture, and I realized that she thought me
hideous. Her parents, however, consented at once; they looked upon my
offer as a godsend, and the daughter submissively acquiesced. When she
became accustomed to the idea of marrying me she did not seem to
dislike it so much. On our wedding day at Guerande the rain fell in
torrents, and when we got home my bride had to take off her dress,
which was soaked through, and sit in her petticoats.
That was all the youth I ever had. We did not remain long in our
province. One day I found my wife in tears. She was miserable; life was
so dull; she wanted to get away. Six months later I had saved a little
money by taking in extra work after office hours, and through the
influence of a friend of my father’s I obtained a petty appointment in
Paris. I started off to settle there with the dear little woman so that
she might cry no more. During the night, which we spent in the
third-class railway carriage, the seats being very hard, I took her in
my arms in order that she might sleep.
That was the past, and now I had just died on the narrow couch of a
Paris lodginghouse, and my wife was crouching on the floor, crying
bitterly. The white light before my left eye was growing dim, but I
remembered the room perfectly. On the left there was a chest of
drawers, on the right a mantelpiece surmounted by a damaged clock
without a pendulum, the hands of which marked ten minutes past ten. The
window overlooked the Rue Dauphine, a long, dark street. All Paris
seemed to pass below, and the noise was so great that the window shook.
We knew nobody in the city; we had hurried our departure, but I was not
expected at the office till the following Monday. Since I had taken to
my bed I had wondered at my imprisonment in this narrow room into which
we had tumbled after a railway journey of fifteen hours, followed by a
hurried, confusing transit through the noisy streets. My wife had
nursed me with smiling tenderness, but I knew that she was anxious. She
would walk to the window, glance out and return to the bedside, looking
very pale and startled by the sight of the busy thoroughfare, the
aspect of the vast city of which she did not know a single stone and
which deafened her with its continuous roar. What would happen to her
if I never woke up again—alone, friendless and unknowing as she was?
Marguerite had caught hold of one of my hands which lay passive on the
coverlet, and, covering it with kisses, she repeated wildly: “Olivier,
answer me. Oh, my God, he is dead, dead!”
So death was not complete annihilation. I could hear and think. I had
been uselessly alarmed all those years. I had not dropped into utter
vacancy as I had anticipated. I could not picture the disappearance of
my being, the suppression of all that I had been, without the
possibility of renewed existence. I had been wont to shudder whenever
in any book or newspaper I came across a date of a hundred years hence.
A date at which I should no longer be alive, a future which I should
never see, filled me with unspeakable uneasiness. Was I not the whole
world, and would not the universe crumble away when I was no more?
To dream of life had been a cherished vision, but this could not
possibly be death. I should assuredly awake presently. Yes, in a few
moments I would lean over, take Marguerite in my arms and dry her
tears. I would rest a little while longer before going to my office,
and then a new life would begin, brighter than the last. However, I did
not feel impatient; the commotion had been too strong. It was wrong of
Marguerite to give way like that when I had not even the strength to
turn my head on the pillow and smile at her. The next time that she
moaned out, “He is dead! Dead!” I would embrace her and murmur softly
so as not to startle her: “No, my darling, I was only asleep. You see,
I am alive, and I love you.”
CHAPTER II
FUNERAL PREPARATIONS
Marguerite’s cries had attracted attention, for all at once the door
was opened and a voice exclaimed: “What is the matter, neighbor? Is he
worse?”
I recognized the voice; it was that of an elderly woman, Mme Gabin, who
occupied a room on the same floor. She had been most obliging since our
arrival and had evidently become interested in our concerns. On her own
side she had lost no time in telling us her history. A stern landlord
had sold her furniture during the previous winter to pay himself his
rent, and since then she had resided at the lodginghouse in the Rue
Dauphine with her daughter Dede, a child of ten. They both cut and
pinked lamp shades, and between them they earned at the utmost only two
francs a day.
“Heavens! Is it all over?” cried Mme Gabin, looking at me.
I realized that she was drawing nearer. She examined me, touched me
and, turning to Marguerite, murmured compassionately: “Poor girl! Poor
girl!”
My wife, wearied out, was sobbing like a child. Mme Gabin lifted her,
placed her in a dilapidated armchair near the fireplace and proceeded
to comfort her.
“Indeed, you’ll do yourself harm if you go on like this, my dear. It’s
no reason because your husband is gone that you should kill yourself
with weeping. Sure enough, when I lost Gabin I was just like you. I
remained three days without swallowing a morsel of food. But that
didn’t help me—on the contrary, it pulled me down. Come, for the Lord’s
sake, be sensible!”
By degrees Marguerite grew calmer; she was exhausted, and it was only
at intervals that she gave way to a fresh flow of tears. Meanwhile the
old woman had taken possession of the room with a sort of rough
authority.
“Don’t worry yourself,” she said as she bustled about. “Neighbors must
help each other. Luckily Dede has just gone to take the work home. Ah,
I see your trunks are not yet all unpacked, but I suppose there is some
linen in the chest of drawers, isn’t there?”
I heard her pull a drawer open; she must have taken out a napkin which
she spread on the little table at the bedside. She then struck a match,
which made me think that she was lighting one of the candles on the
mantelpiece and placing it near me as a religious rite. I could follow
her movements in the room and divine all her actions.
“Poor gentleman,” she muttered. “Luckily I heard you sobbing, poor
dear!” Suddenly the vague light which my left eye had detected
vanished. Mme Gabin had just closed my eyelids, but I had not felt her
finger on my face. When I understood this I felt chilled.
The door had opened again, and Dede, the child of ten, now rushed in,
calling out in her shrill voice: “Mother, Mother! Ah, I knew you would
be here! Look here, there’s the money—three francs and four sous. I
took back three dozen lamp shades.”
“Hush, hush! Hold your tongue,” vainly repeated the mother, who, as the
little girl chattered on, must have pointed to the bed, for I guessed
that the child felt perplexed and was backing toward the door.
“Is the gentleman asleep?” she whispered.
“Yes, yes—go and play,” said Mme Gabin.
But the child did not go. She was, no doubt, staring at me with widely
opened eyes, startled and vaguely comprehending. Suddenly she seemed
convulsed with terror and ran out, upsetting a chair.
“He is dead, Mother; he is dead!” she gasped.
Profound silence followed. Marguerite, lying back in the armchair, had
left off crying. Mme Gabin was still rummaging about the room and
talking under her breath.
“Children know everything nowadays. Look at that girl. Heaven knows how
carefully she’s brought up! When I send her on an errand or take the
shades back I calculate the time to a minute so that she can’t loiter
about, but for all that she learns everything. She saw at a glance what
had happened here—and yet I never showed her but one corpse, that of
her uncle Francois, and she was then only four years old. Ah well,
there are no children left—it can’t be helped.”
She paused and without any transition passed to another subject.
“I say, dearie, we must think of the formalities—there’s the
declaration at the municipal offices to be made and the seeing about
the funeral. You are not in a fit state to attend to business. What do
you say if I look in at Monsieur Simoneau’s to find out if he’s at
home?”
Marguerite did not reply. It seemed to me that I watched her from afar
and at times changed into a subtle flame hovering above the room, while
a stranger lay heavy and unconscious on my bed. I wished that
Marguerite had declined the assistance of Simoneau. I had seen him
three or four times during my brief illness, for he occupied a room
close to ours and had been civil and neighborly. Mme Gabin had told us
that he was merely making a short stay in Paris, having come to collect
some old debts due to his father, who had settled in the country and
recently died. He was a tall, strong, handsome young man, and I hated
him, perhaps on account of his healthy appearance. On the previous
evening he had come in to make inquiries, and I had much disliked
seeing him at Marguerite’s side; she had looked so fair and pretty, and
he had gazed so intently into her face when she smilingly thanked him
for his kindness.
“Ah, here is Monsieur Simoneau,” said Mme Gabin, introducing him.
He gently pushed the door ajar, and as soon as Marguerite saw him enter
she burst into a flood of tears. The presence of a friend, of the only
person she knew in Paris besides the old woman, recalled her
bereavement. I could not see the young man, but in the darkness that
encompassed me I conjured up his appearance. I pictured him distinctly,
grave and sad at finding poor Marguerite in such distress. How lovely
she must have looked with her golden hair unbound, her pale face and
her dear little baby hands burning with fever!
“I am at your disposal, madame,” he said softly. “Pray allow me to
manage everything.”
She only answered him with broken words, but as the young man was
leaving, accompanied by Mme Gabin, I heard the latter mention money.
These things were always expensive, she said, and she feared that the
poor little body hadn’t a farthing—anyhow, he might ask her. But
Simoneau silenced the old woman; he did not want to have the widow
worried; he was going to the municipal office and to the undertaker’s.
When silence reigned once more I wondered if my nightmare would last
much longer. I was certainly alive, for I was conscious of passing
incidents, and I began to realize my condition. I must have fallen into
one of those cataleptic states that I had read of. As a child I had
suffered from syncopes which had lasted several hours, but surely my
heart would beat anew, my blood circulate and my muscles relax. Yes, I
should wake up and comfort Marguerite, and, reasoning thus, I tried to
be patient.
Time passed. Mme Gabin had brought in some breakfast, but Marguerite
refused to taste any food. Later on the afternoon waned. Through the
open window I heard the rising clamor of the Rue Dauphine. By and by a
slight ringing of the brass candlestick on the marble-topped table made
me think that a fresh candle had been lighted. At last Simoneau
returned.
“Well?” whispered the old woman.
“It is all settled,” he answered; “the funeral is ordered for tomorrow
at eleven. There is nothing for you to do, and you needn’t talk of
these things before the poor lady.”
Nevertheless, Mme Gabin remarked: “The doctor of the dead hasn’t come
yet.”
Simoneau took a seat beside Marguerite and after a few words of
encouragement remained silent. The funeral was to take place at eleven!
Those words rang in my brain like a passing bell. And the doctor
coming—the doctor of the dead, as Mme Gabin had called him. HE could
not possibly fail to find out that I was only in a state of lethargy;
he would do whatever might be necessary to rouse me, so I longed for
his arrival with feverish anxiety.
The day was drawing to a close. Mme Gabin, anxious to waste no time,
had brought in her lamp shades and summoned Dede without asking
Marguerite’s permission. “To tell the truth,” she observed, “I do not
like to leave children too long alone.”
“Come in, I say,” she whispered to the little girl; “come in, and don’t
be frightened. Only don’t look toward the bed or you’ll catch it.”
She thought it decorous to forbid Dede to look at me, but I was
convinced that the child was furtively glancing at the corner where I
lay, for every now and then I heard her mother rap her knuckles and
repeat angrily: “Get on with your work or you shall leave the room, and
the gentleman will come during the night and pull you by the feet.”
The mother and daughter had sat down at our table. I could plainly hear
the click of their scissors as they clipped the lamp shades, which no
doubt required very delicate manipulation, for they did not work
rapidly. I counted the shades one by one as they were laid aside, while
my anxiety grew more and more intense.
The clicking of the scissors was the only noise in the room, so I
concluded that Marguerite had been overcome by fatigue and was dozing.
Twice Simoneau rose, and the torturing thought flashed through me that
he might be taking advantage of her slumbers to touch her hair with his
lips. I hardly knew the man and yet felt sure that he loved my wife. At
last little Dede began to giggle, and her laugh exasperated me.
“Why are you sniggering, you idiot?” asked her mother. “Do you want to
be turned out on the landing? Come, out with it; what makes you laugh
so?”
The child stammered: she had not laughed; she had only coughed, but I
felt certain she had seen Simoneau bending over Marguerite and had felt
amused.
The lamp had been lit when a knock was heard at the door.
“It must be the doctor at last,” said the old woman.
It was the doctor; he did not apologize for coming so late, for he had
no doubt ascended many flights of stairs during the day. The room being
but imperfectly lighted by the lamp, he inquired: “Is the body here?”
“Yes, it is,” answered Simoneau.
Marguerite had risen, trembling violently. Mme Gabin dismissed Dede,
saying it was useless that a child should be present, and then she
tried to lead my wife to the window, to spare her the sight of what was
about to take place.
The doctor quickly approached the bed. I guessed that he was bored,
tired and impatient. Had he touched my wrist? Had he placed his hand on
my heart? I could not tell, but I fancied that he had only carelessly
bent over me.
“Shall I bring the lamp so that you may see better?” asked Simoneau
obligingly.
“No it is not necessary,” quietly answered the doctor.
Not necessary! That man held my life in his hands, and he did not think
it worth while to proceed to a careful examination! I was not dead! I
wanted to cry out that I was not dead!
“At what o’clock did he die?” asked the doctor.
“At six this morning,” volunteered Simoneau.
A feeling of frenzy and rebellion rose within me, bound as I was in
seemingly iron chains. Oh, for the power of uttering one word, of
moving a single limb!
“This close weather is unhealthy,” resumed the doctor; “nothing is more
trying than these early spring days.”
And then he moved away. It was like my life departing. Screams, sobs
and insults were choking me, struggling in my convulsed throat, in
which even my breath was arrested. The wretch! Turned into a mere
machine by professional habits, he only came to a deathbed to
accomplish a perfunctory formality; he knew nothing; his science was a
lie, since he could not at a glance distinguish life from death—and now
he was going—going!
“Good night, sir,” said Simoneau.
There came a moment’s silence; the doctor was probably bowing to
Marguerite, who had turned while Mme Gabin was fastening the window. He
left the room, and I heard his footsteps descending the stairs.
It was all over; I was condemned. My last hope had vanished with that
man. If I did not wake before eleven on the morrow I should be buried
alive. The horror of that thought was so great that I lost all
consciousness of my surroundings—’twas something like a fainting fit in
death. The last sound I heard was the clicking of the scissors handled
by Mme Gabin and Dede. The funeral vigil had begun; nobody spoke.
Marguerite had refused to retire to rest in the neighbor’s room. She
remained reclining in her armchair, with her beautiful face pale, her
eyes closed and her long lashes wet with tears, while before her in the
gloom Simoneau sat silently watching her.
CHAPTER III
THE PROCESSION
I cannot describe my agony during the morning of the following day. I
remember it as a hideous dream in which my impressions were so ghastly
and so confused that I could not formulate them. The persistent
yearning for a sudden awakening increased my torture, and as the hour
for the funeral drew nearer my anguish became more poignant still.
It was only at daybreak that I had recovered a fuller consciousness of
what was going on around me. The creaking of hinges startled me out of
my stupor. Mme Gabin had just opened the window. It must have been
about seven o’clock, for I heard the cries of hawkers in the street,
the shrill voice of a girl offering groundsel and the hoarse voice of a
man shouting “Carrots!” The clamorous awakening of Paris pacified me at
first. I could not believe that I should be laid under the sod in the
midst of so much life; and, besides, a sudden thought helped to calm
me. It had just occurred to me that I had witnessed a case similar to
my own when I was employed at the hospital of Guerande. A man had been
sleeping twenty-eight hours, the doctors hesitating in presence of his
apparent lifelessness, when suddenly he had sat up in bed and was
almost at once able to rise. I myself had already been asleep for some
twenty-five hours; if I awoke at ten I should still be in time.
I endeavored to ascertain who was in the room and what was going on
there. Dede must have been playing on the landing, for once when the
door opened I heard her shrill childish laughter outside. Simoneau must
have retired, for nothing indicated his presence. Mme Gabin’s slipshod
tread was still audible over the floor. At last she spoke.
“Come, my dear,” she said. “It is wrong of you not to take it while it
is hot. It would cheer you up.”
She was addressing Marguerite, and a slow trickling sound as of
something filtering indicated that she had been making some coffee.
“I don’t mind owning,” she continued, “that I needed it. At my age
sitting up IS trying. The night seems so dreary when there is a
misfortune in the house. DO have a cup of coffee, my dear—just a drop.”
She persuaded Marguerite to taste it.
“Isn’t it nice and hot?” she continued, “and doesn’t it set one up? Ah,
you’ll be wanting all your strength presently for what you’ve got to go
through today. Now if you were sensible you’d step into my room and
just wait there.”
“No, I want to stay here,” said Marguerite resolutely.
Her voice, which I had not heard since the previous evening, touched me
strangely. It was changed, broken as by tears. To feel my dear wife
near me was a last consolation. I knew that her eyes were fastened on
me and that she was weeping with all the anguish of her heart.
The minutes flew by. An inexplicable noise sounded from beyond the
door. It seemed as if some people were bringing a bulky piece of
furniture upstairs and knocking against the walls as they did so.
Suddenly I understood, as I heard Marguerite begin to sob; it was the
coffin.
“You are too early,” said Mme Gabin crossly. “Put it behind the bed.”
What o’clock was it? Nine, perhaps. So the coffin had come. Amid the
opaque night around me I could see it plainly, quite new, with roughly
planed boards. Heavens! Was this the end then? Was I to be borne off in
that box which I realized was lying at my feet?
However, I had one supreme joy. Marguerite, in spite of her weakness,
insisted upon discharging all the last offices. Assisted by the old
woman, she dressed me with all the tenderness of a wife and a sister.
Once more I felt myself in her arms as she clothed me in various
garments. She paused at times, overcome by grief; she clasped me
convulsively, and her tears rained on my face. Oh, how I longed to
return her embrace and cry, “I live!” And yet I was lying there
powerless, motionless, inert!
“You are foolish,” suddenly said Mme Gabin; “it is all wasted.”
“Never mind,” answered Marguerite, sobbing. “I want him to wear his
very best things.”
I understood that she was dressing me in the clothes I had worn on my
wedding day. I had kept them carefully for great occasions. When she
had finished she fell back exhausted in the armchair.
Simoneau now spoke; he had probably just entered the room.
“They are below,” he whispered.
“Well, it ain’t any too soon,” answered Mme Gabin, also lowering her
voice. “Tell them to come up and get it over.”
“But I dread the despair of the poor little wife.”
The old woman seemed to reflect and presently resumed: “Listen to me,
Monsieur Simoneau. You must take her off to my room. I wouldn’t have
her stop here. It is for her own good. When she is out of the way we’ll
get it done in a jiffy.”
These words pierced my heart, and my anguish was intense when I
realized that a struggle was actually taking place. Simoneau had walked
up to Marguerite, imploring her to leave the room.
“Do, for pity’s sake, come with me!” he pleaded. “Spare yourself
useless pain.”
“No, no!” she cried. “I will remain till the last minute. Remember that
I have only him in the world, and when he is gone I shall be all
alone!”
From the bedside Mme Gabin was prompting the young man.
“Don’t parley—take hold of her, carry her off in your arms.”
Was Simoneau about to lay his hands on Marguerite and bear her away?
She screamed. I wildly endeavored to rise, but the springs of my limbs
were broken. I remained rigid, unable to lift my eyelids to see what
was going on. The struggle continued, and my wife clung to the
furniture, repeating, “Oh, don’t, don’t! Have mercy! Let me go! I will
not—”
He must have lifted her in his stalwart arms, for I heard her moaning
like a child. He bore her away; her sobs were lost in the distance, and
I fancied I saw them both—he, tall and strong, pressing her to his
breast; she, fainting, powerless and conquered, following him wherever
he listed.
“Drat it all! What a to-do!” muttered Mme Gabin. “Now for the tug of
war, as the coast is clear at last.”
In my jealous madness I looked upon this incident as a monstrous
outrage. I had not been able to see Marguerite for twenty-four hours,
but at least I had still heard her voice. Now even this was denied me;
she had been torn away; a man had eloped with her even before I was
laid under the sod. He was alone with her on the other side of the
wall, comforting her—embracing her, perhaps!
But the door opened once more, and heavy footsteps shook the floor.
“Quick, make haste,” repeated Mme Gabin. “Get it done before the lady
comes back.”
She was speaking to some strangers, who merely answered her with
uncouth grunts.
“You understand,” she went on, “I am not a relation; I’m only a
neighbor. I have no interest in the matter. It is out of pure good
nature that I have mixed myself up in their affairs. And I ain’t
overcheerful, I can tell you. Yes, yes, I sat up the whole blessed
night—it was pretty cold, too, about four o’clock. That’s a fact. Well,
I have always been a fool—I’m too soft-hearted.”
The coffin had been dragged into the center of the room. As I had not
awakened I was condemned. All clearness departed from my ideas;
everything seemed to revolve in a black haze, and I experienced such
utter lassitude that it seemed almost a relief to leave off hoping.
“They haven’t spared the material,” said one of the undertaker’s men in
a gruff voice. “The box is too long.”
“He’ll have all the more room,” said the other, laughing.
I was not heavy, and they chuckled over it since they had three flights
of stairs to descend. As they were seizing me by the shoulders and feet
I heard Mme Gabin fly into a violent passion.
“You cursed little brat,” she screamed, “what do you mean by poking
your nose where you’re not wanted? Look here, I’ll teach you to spy and
pry.”
Dede had slipped her tousled head through the doorway to see how the
gentleman was being put into the box. Two ringing slaps resounded,
however, by an explosion of sobs. And as soon as the mother returned
she began to gossip about her daughter for the benefit of the two men
who were settling me in the coffin.
“She is only ten, you know. She is not a bad girl, but she is
frightfully inquisitive. I do not beat her often; only I WILL be
obeyed.”
“Oh,” said one of the men, “all kids are alike. Whenever there is a
corpse lying about they always want to see it.”
I was commodiously stretched out, and I might have thought myself still
in bed, had it not been that my left arm felt a trifle cramped from
being squeezed against a board. The men had been right. I was pretty
comfortable inside on account of my diminutive stature.
“Stop!” suddenly exclaimed Mme Gabin. “I promised his wife to put a
pillow under his head.”
The men, who were in a hurry, stuffed in the pillow roughly. One of
them, who had mislaid his hammer, began to swear. He had left the tool
below and went to fetch it, dropping the lid, and when two sharp blows
of the hammer drove in the first nail, a shock ran through my being—I
had ceased to live. The nails then entered in rapid succession with a
rhythmical cadence. It was as if some packers had been closing a case
of dried fruit with easy dexterity. After that such sounds as reached
me were deadened and strangely prolonged, as if the deal coffin had
been changed into a huge musical box. The last words spoken in the room
of the Rue Dauphine—at least the last ones that I heard distinctly—were
uttered by Mme Gabin.
“Mind the staircase,” she said; “the banister of the second flight
isn’t safe, so be careful.”
While I was being carried down I experienced a sensation similar to
that of pitching as when one is on board a ship in a rough sea.
However, from that moment my impressions became more and more vague. I
remember that the only distinct thought that still possessed me was an
imbecile, impulsive curiosity as to the road by which I should be taken
to the cemetery. I was not acquainted with a single street of Paris,
and I was ignorant of the position of the large burial grounds (though
of course I had occasionally heard their names), and yet every effort
of my mind was directed toward ascertaining whether we were turning to
the right or to the left. Meanwhile the jolting of the hearse over the
paving stones, the rumbling of passing vehicles, the steps of the foot
passengers, all created a confused clamor, intensified by the
acoustical properties of the coffin.
At first I followed our course pretty closely; then came a halt. I was
again lifted and carried about, and I concluded that we were in church,
but when the funeral procession once more moved onward I lost all
consciousness of the road we took. A ringing of bells informed me that
we were passing another church, and then the softer and easier progress
of the wheels indicated that we were skirting a garden or park. I was
like a victim being taken to the gallows, awaiting in stupor a
deathblow that never came.
At last they stopped and pulled me out of the hearse. The business
proceeded rapidly. The noises had ceased; I knew that I was in a
deserted space amid avenues of trees and with the broad sky over my
head. No doubt a few persons followed the bier, some of the inhabitants
of the lodginghouse, perhaps—Simoneau and others, for instance—for
faint whisperings reached my ear. Then I heard a psalm chanted and some
Latin words mumbled by a priest, and afterward I suddenly felt myself
sinking, while the ropes rubbing against the edges of the coffin
elicited lugubrious sounds, as if a bow were being drawn across the
strings of a cracked violoncello. It was the end. On the left side of
my head I felt a violent shock like that produced by the bursting of a
bomb, with another under my feet and a third more violent still on my
chest. So forcible, indeed, was this last one that I thought the lid
was cleft atwain. I fainted from it.
CHAPTER IV
THE NAIL
It is impossible for me to say how long my swoon lasted. Eternity is
not of longer duration than one second spent in nihility. I was no
more. It was slowly and confusedly that I regained some degree of
consciousness. I was still asleep, but I began to dream; a nightmare
started into shape amid the blackness of my horizon, a nightmare
compounded of a strange fancy which in other days had haunted my morbid
imagination whenever with my propensity for dwelling upon hideous
thoughts I had conjured up catastrophes.
Thus I dreamed that my wife was expecting me somewhere—at Guerande, I
believe—and that I was going to join her by rail. As we passed through
a tunnel a deafening roll thundered over our head, and a sudden
subsidence blocked up both issues of the tunnel, leaving our train
intact in the center. We were walled up by blocks of rock in the heart
of a mountain. Then a long and fearful agony commenced. No assistance
could possibly reach us; even with powerful engines and incessant labor
it would take a month to clear the tunnel. We were prisoners there with
no outlet, and so our death was only a question of time.
My fancy had often dwelt on that hideous drama and had constantly
varied the details and touches. My actors were men, women and children;
their number increased to hundreds, and they were ever furnishing me
with new incidents. There were some provisions in the train, but these
were soon exhausted, and the hungry passengers, if they did not
actually devour human flesh, at least fought furiously over the last
piece of bread. Sometimes an aged man was driven back with blows and
slowly perished; a mother struggled like a she-wolf to keep three or
four mouthfuls for her child. In my own compartment a bride and
bridegroom were dying, clasped in each other’s arms in mute despair.
The line was free along the whole length of the train, and people came
and went, prowling round the carriages like beasts of prey in search of
carrion. All classes were mingled together. A millionaire, a high
functionary, it was said, wept on a workman’s shoulder. The lamps had
been extinguished from the first, and the engine fire was nearly out.
To pass from one carriage to another it was necessary to grope about,
and thus, too, one slowly reached the engine, recognizable by its
enormous barrel, its cold, motionless flanks, its useless strength, its
grim silence, in the overwhelming night. Nothing could be more
appalling than this train entombed alive with its passengers perishing
one by one.
I gloated over the ghastliness of each detail; howls resounded through
the vault; somebody whom one could not see, whose vicinity was not even
suspected, would suddenly drop upon another’s shoulder. But what
affected me most of all was the cold and the want of air. I have never
felt so chilled; a mantle of snow seemed to enwrap me; heavy moisture
rained upon my skull; I was gasping; the rocky vault seemed to crush my
chest; the whole mountain was seemingly weighing upon me.
Suddenly a cry of deliverance sounded. For some time past we fancied
that we could hear a dull sound, and we tried to hope that men were at
work and that help was coming, but it came not thus. One of the
passengers, however, had discovered an air shaft in the tunnel, and,
crowding round, we all saw this shaft, above which we could discern a
blue patch about the size of a wafer. That blue patch filled us with
rapture, for it was the sky. We stretched ourselves and stood on
tiptoes to breathe more freely. Then we distinguished some black specks
moving about, specks that must surely be workmen about to deliver us. A
furious clamor arose. The cry “Saved! Saved!” burst from every mouth,
while trembling arms were uplifted toward the tiny azure patch above.
That roar of voices aroused me. Where was I? In the tunnel, of course.
I was lying at full length; hard walls were pressing against my ribs.
Then I attempted to rise and struck my head roughly. Was it the rock
closing in on all sides? The blue speck had vanished—aye, the sky had
disappeared and I was still suffocating, shivering, with chattering
teeth.
All at once I remembered. Intense horror raised my hair on end. I felt
the hideous truth freeze me from head to foot like ice. I had shaken
off the long coma which for many hours had stricken me with corpselike
rigidity. Yes, I could move; my hands could feel the boards of my
coffin; my lips parted; words came to me, and instinctively I called
out Marguerite’s name. It was a scream I raised. In that deal box my
voice took so hoarse and weird a sound that it terrified me. Oh, my
God, was this thing true? I was able to walk, speak, cry out that I was
living, and yet my voice could not be heard; I was entombed under the
earth.
I made a desperate effort to remain calm and reflect. Was there no
means of getting out? Then my dream began afresh in my troubled brain.
The fanciful air shaft with the blue bit of sky overhead was mingled
with the real grave in which I was lying. I stared at the darkness with
widely opened eyes; perhaps I might discover a hole, a slit, a glimmer
of light, but only sparks of fire flitted through that night, with rays
that broadened and then faded away. I was in a somber abyss again. With
returning lucidity I struggled against these fatal visions. Indeed, I
should need all my reason if I meant to try to save myself.
The most immediate peril lay in an increasing sense of suffocation. If
I had been able to live so long without air it was owing to suspended
animation, which had changed all the normal conditions of my existence,
but now that my heart beat and my lungs breathed I should die,
asphyxiated, if I did not promptly liberate myself. I also suffered
from cold and dreaded lest I should succumb to the mortal numbness of
those who fall asleep in the snow, never to wake again. Still, while
unceasingly realizing the necessity of remaining calm, I felt maddening
blasts sweep through my brain, and to quiet my senses I exhorted myself
to patience, trying to remember the circumstances of my burial.
Probably the ground had been bought for five years, and this would be
against my chances of self-deliverance, for I remembered having noticed
at Nantes that in the trenches of the common graves one end of the last
lowered coffins protruded into the next open cavity, in which case I
should only have had to break through one plank. But if I were in a
separate hole, filled up above me with earth, the obstacles would prove
too great. Had I not been told that the dead were buried six feet deep
in Paris? How was I to get through the enormous mass of soil above me?
Even if I succeeded in slitting the lid of my bier open the mold would
drift in like fine sand and fill my mouth and eyes. That would be death
again, a ghastly death, like drowning in mud.
However, I began to feel the planks carefully. The coffin was roomy,
and I found that I was able to move my arms with tolerable ease. On
both sides the roughly planed boards were stout and resistive. I
slipped my arm onto my chest to raise it over my head. There I
discovered in the top plank a knot in the wood which yielded slightly
at my pressure. Working laboriously, I finally succeeded in driving out
this knot, and on passing my finger through the hole I found that the
earth was wet and clayey. But that availed me little. I even regretted
having removed the knot, vaguely dreading the irruption of the mold. A
second experiment occupied me for a while. I tapped all over the coffin
to ascertain if perhaps there were any vacuum outside. But the sound
was everywhere the same. At last, as I was slightly kicking the foot of
the coffin, I fancied that it gave out a clearer echoing noise, but
that might merely be produced by the sonority of the wood.
At any rate, I began to press against the boards with my arms and my
closed fists. In the same way, too, I used my knees, my back and my
feet without eliciting even a creak from the wood. I strained with all
my strength, indeed, with so desperate an effort of my whole frame,
that my bruised bones seemed breaking. But nothing moved, and I became
insane.
Until that moment I had held delirium at bay. I had mastered the
intoxicating rage which was mounting to my head like the fumes of
alcohol; I had silenced my screams, for I feared that if I again cried
out aloud I should be undone. But now I yelled; I shouted; unearthly
howls which I could not repress came from my relaxed throat. I called
for help in a voice that I did not recognize, growing wilder with each
fresh appeal and crying out that I would not die. I also tore at the
wood with my nails; I writhed with the contortions of a caged wolf. I
do not know how long this fit of madness lasted, but I can still feel
the relentless hardness of the box that imprisoned me; I can still hear
the storm of shrieks and sobs with which I filled it; a remaining
glimmer of reason made me try to stop, but I could not do so.
Great exhaustion followed. I lay waiting for death in a state of
somnolent pain. The coffin was like stone, which no effort could break,
and the conviction that I was powerless left me unnerved, without
courage to make any fresh attempts. Another suffering—hunger—was
presently added to cold and want of air. The torture soon became
intolerable. With my finger I tried to pull small pinches of earth
through the hole of the dislodged knot, and I swallowed them eagerly,
only increasing my torment. Tempted by my flesh, I bit my arms and
sucked my skin with a fiendish desire to drive my teeth in, but I was
afraid of drawing blood.
Then I ardently longed for death. All my life long I had trembled at
the thought of dissolution, but I had come to yearn for it, to crave
for an everlasting night that could never be dark enough. How childish
it had been of me to dread the long, dreamless sleep, the eternity of
silence and gloom! Death was kind, for in suppressing life it put an
end to suffering. Oh, to sleep like the stones, to be no more!
With groping hands I still continued feeling the wood, and suddenly I
pricked my left thumb. That slight pain roused me from my growing
numbness. I felt again and found a nail—a nail which the undertaker’s
men had driven in crookedly and which had not caught in the lower wood.
It was long and very sharp; the head was secured to the lid, but it
moved. Henceforth I had but one idea—to possess myself of that nail—and
I slipped my right hand across my body and began to shake it. I made
but little progress, however; it was a difficult job, for my hands soon
tired, and I had to use them alternately. The left one, too, was of
little use on account of the nail’s awkward position.
While I was obstinately persevering a plan dawned on my mind. That nail
meant salvation, and I must have it. But should I get it in time?
Hunger was torturing me; my brain was swimming; my limbs were losing
their strength; my mind was becoming confused. I had sucked the drops
that trickled from my punctured finger, and suddenly I bit my arm and
drank my own blood! Thereupon, spurred on by pain, revived by the
tepid, acrid liquor that moistened my lips, I tore desperately at the
nail and at last I wrenched it off!
I then believed in success. My plan was a simple one; I pushed the
point of the nail into the lid, dragging it along as far as I could in
a straight line and working it so as to make a slit in the wood. My
fingers stiffened, but I doggedly persevered, and when I fancied that I
had sufficiently cut into the board I turned on my stomach and, lifting
myself on my knees and elbows thrust the whole strength of my back
against the lid. But although it creaked it did not yield; the notched
line was not deep enough. I had to resume my old position—which I only
managed to do with infinite trouble—and work afresh. At last after
another supreme effort the lid was cleft from end to end.
I was not saved as yet, but my heart beat with renewed hope. I had
ceased pushing and remained motionless, lest a sudden fall of earth
should bury me. I intended to use the lid as a screen and, thus
protected, to open a sort of shaft in the clayey soil. Unfortunately I
was assailed by unexpected difficulties. Some heavy clods of earth
weighed upon the boards and made them unmanageable; I foresaw that I
should never reach the surface in that way, for the mass of soil was
already bending my spine and crushing my face.
Once more I stopped, affrighted; then suddenly, while I was stretching
my legs, trying to find something firm against which I might rest my
feet, I felt the end board of the coffin yielding. I at once gave a
desperate kick with my heels in the faint hope that there might be a
freshly dug grave in that direction.
It was so. My feet abruptly forced their way into space. An open grave
was there; I had only a slight partition of earth to displace, and soon
I rolled into the cavity. I was saved!
I remained for a time lying on my back in the open grave, with my eyes
raised to heaven. It was dark; the stars were shining in a sky of
velvety blueness. Now and then the rising breeze wafted a springlike
freshness, a perfume of foliage, upon me. I was saved! I could breathe;
I felt warm, and I wept and I stammered, with my arms prayerfully
extended toward the starry sky. O God, how sweet seemed life!
CHAPTER V
MY RESURRECTION
My first impulse was to find the custodian of the cemetery and ask him
to have me conducted home, but various thoughts that came to me
restrained me from following that course. My return would create
general alarm; why should I hurry now that I was master of the
situation? I felt my limbs; I had only an insignificant wound on my
left arm, where I had bitten myself, and a slight feverishness lent me
unhoped-for strength. I should no doubt be able to walk unaided.
Still I lingered; all sorts of dim visions confused my mind. I had felt
beside me in the open grave some sextons’ tools which had been left
there, and I conceived a sudden desire to repair the damage I had done,
to close up the hole through which I had crept, so as to conceal all
traces of my resurrection. I do not believe that I had any positive
motive in doing so. I only deemed it useless to proclaim my adventure
aloud, feeling ashamed to find myself alive when the whole world
thought me dead. In half an hour every trace of my escape was
obliterated, and then I climbed out of the hole.
The night was splendid, and deep silence reigned in the cemetery; the
black trees threw motionless shadows over the white tombs. When I
endeavored to ascertain my bearings I noticed that one half of the sky
was ruddy, as if lit by a huge conflagration; Paris lay in that
direction, and I moved toward it, following a long avenue amid the
darkness of the branches.
However, after I had gone some fifty yards I was compelled to stop,
feeling faint and weary. I then sat down on a stone bench and for the
first time looked at myself. I was fully attired with the exception
that I had no hat. I blessed my beloved Marguerite for the pious
thought which had prompted her to dress me in my best clothes—those
which I had worn at our wedding. That remembrance of my wife brought me
to my feet again. I longed to see her without delay.
At the farther end of the avenue I had taken a wall arrested my
progress. However, I climbed to the top of a monument, reached the
summit of the wall and then dropped over the other side. Although
roughly shaken by the fall, I managed to walk for a few minutes along a
broad deserted street skirting the cemetery. I had no notion as to
where I might be, but with the reiteration of monomania I kept saying
to myself that I was going toward Paris and that I should find the Rue
Dauphine somehow or other. Several people passed me but, seized with
sudden distrust, I would not stop them and ask my way. I have since
realized that I was then in a burning fever and already nearly
delirious. Finally, just as I reached a large thoroughfare, I became
giddy and fell heavily upon the pavement.
Here there is a blank in my life. For three whole weeks I remained
unconscious. When I awoke at last I found myself in a strange room. A
man who was nursing me told me quietly that he had picked me up one
morning on the Boulevard Montparnasse and had brought me to his house.
He was an old doctor who had given up practicing.
When I attempted to thank him he sharply answered that my case had
seemed a curious one and that he had wished to study it. Moreover,
during the first days of my convalescence he would not allow me to ask
a single question, and later on he never put one to me. For eight days
longer I remained in bed, feeling very weak and not even trying to
remember, for memory was a weariness and a pain. I felt half ashamed
and half afraid. As soon as I could leave the house I would go and find
out whatever I wanted to know. Possibly in the delirium of fever a name
had escaped me; however, the doctor never alluded to anything I may
have said. His charity was not only generous; it was discreet.
The summer had come at last, and one warm June morning I was permitted
to take a short walk. The sun was shining with that joyous brightness
which imparts renewed youth to the streets of old Paris. I went along
slowly, questioning the passers-by at every crossing I came to and
asking the way to Rue Dauphine. When I reached the street I had some
difficulty in recognizing the lodginghouse where we had alighted on our
arrival in the capital. A childish terror made me hesitate. If I
appeared suddenly before Marguerite the shock might kill her. It might
be wiser to begin by revealing myself to our neighbor Mme Gabin; still
I shrank from taking a third party into confidence. I seemed unable to
arrive at a resolution, and yet in my innermost heart I felt a great
void, like that left by some sacrifice long since consummated.
The building looked quite yellow in the sunshine. I had just recognized
it by a shabby eating house on the ground floor, where we had ordered
our meals, having them sent up to us. Then I raised my eyes to the last
window of the third floor on the left-hand side, and as I looked at it
a young woman with tumbled hair, wearing a loose dressing gown,
appeared and leaned her elbows on the sill. A young man followed and
printed a kiss upon her neck. It was not Marguerite. Still I felt no
surprise. It seemed to me that I had dreamed all this with other
things, too, which I was to learn presently.
For a moment I remained in the street, uncertain whether I had better
go upstairs and question the lovers, who were still laughing in the
sunshine. However, I decided to enter the little restaurant below. When
I started on my walk the old doctor had placed a five-franc piece in my
hand. No doubt I was changed beyond recognition, for my beard had grown
during the brain fever, and my face was wrinkled and haggard. As I took
a seat at a small table I saw Mme Gabin come in carrying a cup; she
wished to buy a penny-worth of coffee. Standing in front of the
counter, she began to gossip with the landlady of the establishment.
“Well,” asked the latter, “so the poor little woman of the third floor
has made up her mind at last, eh?”
“How could she help herself?” answered Mme Gabin. “It was the very best
thing for her to do. Monsieur Simoneau showed her so much kindness. You
see, he had finished his business in Paris to his satisfaction, for he
has inherited a pot of money. Well, he offered to take her away with
him to his own part of the country and place her with an aunt of his,
who wants a housekeeper and companion.”
The landlady laughed archly. I buried my face in a newspaper which I
picked off the table. My lips were white and my hands shook.
“It will end in a marriage, of course,” resumed Mme Gabin. “The little
widow mourned for her husband very properly, and the young man was
extremely well behaved. Well, they left last night—and, after all, they
were free to please themselves.”
Just then the side door of the restaurant, communicating with the
passage of the house, opened, and Dede appeared.
“Mother, ain’t you coming?” she cried. “I’m waiting, you know; do be
quick.”
“Presently,” said the mother testily. “Don’t bother.”
The girl stood listening to the two women with the precocious
shrewdness of a child born and reared amid the streets of Paris.
“When all is said and done,” explained Mme Gabin, “the dear departed
did not come up to Monsieur Simoneau. I didn’t fancy him overmuch; he
was a puny sort of a man, a poor, fretful fellow, and he hadn’t a penny
to bless himself with. No, candidly, he wasn’t the kind of husband for
a young and healthy wife, whereas Monsieur Simoneau is rich, you know,
and as strong as a Turk.”
“Oh yes!” interrupted Dede. “I saw him once when he was washing—his
door was open. His arms are so hairy!”
“Get along with you,” screamed the old woman, shoving the girl out of
the restaurant. “You are always poking your nose where it has no
business to be.”
Then she concluded with these words: “Look here, to my mind the other
one did quite right to take himself off. It was fine luck for the
little woman!”
When I found myself in the street again I walked along slowly with
trembling limbs. And yet I was not suffering much; I think I smiled
once at my shadow in the sun. It was quite true. I WAS very puny. It
had been a queer notion of mine to marry Marguerite. I recalled her
weariness at Guerande, her impatience, her dull, monotonous life. The
dear creature had been very good to me, but I had never been a real
lover; she had mourned for me as a sister for her brother, not
otherwise. Why should I again disturb her life? A dead man is not
jealous.
When I lifted my eyelids I saw the garden of the Luxembourg before me.
I entered it and took a seat in the sun, dreaming with a sense of
infinite restfulness. The thought of Marguerite stirred me softly. I
pictured her in the provinces, beloved, petted and very happy. She had
grown handsomer, and she was the mother of three boys and two girls. It
was all right. I had behaved like an honest man in dying, and I would
not commit the cruel folly of coming to life again.
Since then I have traveled a good deal. I have been a little
everywhere. I am an ordinary man who has toiled and eaten like anybody
else. Death no longer frightens me, but it does not seem to care for me
now that I have no motive in living, and I sometimes fear that I have
been forgotten upon earth.