CHAPTER XII

My love for my father--His love for me--I am taken away to my cousin

Marianne's--Plan of the house--The forge--The apparition--I learn the

death of my father--I wish to go to heaven to kill God--Our situation

at the death of my father--Hatred of Bonaparte.

The night my father died I had been carried out of the house by Maman

Zine and deposited with my other cousin, Marianne, who lived with her

father in the rue de Soissons.

They did not want me to be acquainted with death at my early age, and

foreseeing its near approach and dreading the disturbance I should

be sure to make, they took the precaution of taking me away at five

o'clock in the afternoon. Maman Zine returned to the house after

leaving me, as my poor mother needed help during the coming night.

I worshipped my father. Maybe, at so early an age, the feeling which

now I should call love was nothing but an innocent and wondering

admiration for the herculean stature and giant strength which I had

seen my father exercise on various occasions. Perhaps it was only a

childish pride in his braided coat, his tricoloured cockade, and his

big sword, which I could scarcely lift. But, whatever it may have been,

the recollection of my father, in every detail of his figure, in every

feature of his face, is as present with me as though I had but lost

him yesterday. No matter from what reasons, I love him still with as

tender and deep and true a love as though he had watched over my youth

and I had had the blessing of leaning on his strong arm throughout my

childhood and early manhood.

On his side, too, my father worshipped me. I have said it, and I

cannot repeat the fact too often, especially if the dead hear what is

said of them; and, although during the last period of his life his

great sufferings had got on his nerves to such an extent that he could

not bear any noise or movement in his room, he made an exception for me.

I do not remember whether they took me to kiss my father before I

was taken away; what happened during the night the events of which

I am about to relate, whether or not it be put down to my youthful

imagination, makes me think that they had forgotten that pious care.

As I have said, my only notions of death were taken from the death

of my big black dog and the fainting bather. It would, besides, have

been extremely difficult for me to realise the death of my father,

whom I had seen on his horse only three days previously. So I did not

approve of being taken from home, and, once away, I was ignorant as to

whether my father spoke of me or asked for me. A veil is drawn over

my eyes in connection with that last day of his life. I only remember

the following incident I am about to relate, the details of which are

perfectly clear to my mind.

They had taken me to my uncle's house.

This worthy individual was a locksmith, named Fortier; and he had a

brother who was a village priest. I shall speak of this brother later,

for he was a very curious type of person.

I remained, therefore, under the care of my cousin Marianne.

Allow me to give an exact plan of the house, in order to make the

situation clear. It is forty years or more since I entered the house

and yet I can see it as though I had just left it.

As can be seen, the house was in reality one long passage, composed of

the forge, which opened upon the rue de Soissons; an inner court just

behind the forge; the dwelling-house, consisting of a bedroom furnished

in the usual style, with a great walnut chest of drawers, a large

four-post bed with green serge hangings, a table and several chairs,

and, in addition, a little bed that had been improvised for me, on two

chairs, for that night, which they had put opposite the big bed. Next

after this bedroom came the kitchen, the accustomed home of a big cat

called the _Doctor,_ by whose claws I one day nearly lost the sight of

one of my eyes. Then after the kitchen was a little garden shaded by

some trees and littered with many stones, a garden which never grew

anything but nettles, as no one seemed ever to have thought of putting

anything else in it--this looked out on the place du Château. It will

be seen that the dwelling-house was shut off completely from the rest

of the world when the door of the forge, opening on the rue de Soissons

and the garden gate, leading into the place du Château were closed;

unless, indeed, the walls of the garden were scaled.

I stayed then with my cousin Marianne without raising any objection to

doing so. I loved going to the forge, where a lad named Picard was very

partial to me. I used to make fireworks there with iron filings, and

the workmen, Picard in particular, would tell me thrilling stories.

I stayed in the forge till quite late in the evening; the forge gave me

infinite delight that night, with its fantastic reflections and dancing

play of light and shadow. About eight o'clock my cousin Marianne

fetched me away and put me to bed in the little bed opposite the large

one; and I slept the sound sleep that God gives to little children as

He gives refreshing dew in spring-tide.

At midnight I was waked up, or rather we were waked up, my cousin and

I, by a loud knocking at our door. A night lamp glimmered on a table

near the bedside, and by the light of this lamp I could see my cousin

sitting up in bed, silent, terrified.

Nobody could knock at that inner door, as the two other doors were shut.

But I, who to-day almost shudder with fear as I write these lines, I,

on the contrary, felt no fear: I got out of my cot and approached the

door.

"Where are you going, Alexandre?" cried my cousin. "Where are you

going, child?"

"You will soon see," I calmly replied. "I am going to open the door for

papa, who has come to say good-bye to us."

[Illustration: PLAN OF HOUSE]

The poor girl leapt from her bed, terrified, seized hold of me just as

I was putting my hand on the lock, and forced me back into bed.

I struggled in her arms, crying out with all my might: "Good-bye, papa!

Good-bye, papa!"

Something like a dying breath passed over my face and quietened me. But

I fell asleep sobbing, with tears on my cheeks.

Next day they woke us at dawn, my father had died precisely at the

time we heard the knocking at the door! Then it was that I heard these

words, but without taking in their significance: "_My poor child, the

papa who loved you so much is dead!_"

I cannot tell what lips uttered those words over me, the little orphan

of three and a half years, nor who it was that announced the greatest

misfortune of my life.

"My father is dead?" said I. "What does that mean?"

"It means that you will never see him again."

"What! I shall never see my papa again?"

"No."

"Why shall I not see him?"

"Because the good God has taken him from you."

"For ever?"

"For ever."

"And you say I shall never see him any more?"

"Never again."

"Never, never at all?"

"Nevermore!"

"Where does the good God live?"

"He lives in heaven."

I remained in thought for a moment; unreasoning baby though I was, I

quite understood that something dreadful had happened in my life. Then

I took advantage of the first moment when attention was diverted from

me to escape from my uncle's house and run straight home to my mother.

All the doors were open, and everybody looked scared; one could tell

that death was in the house.

I got in without being noticed at all, and reached a little room where

arms were kept; I took up one of my father's single-barrelled guns,

which he had often promised to give me when I should be grown up.

Then, armed with this gun, I climbed the stairs.

I met my mother on the first landing; she was coming out of the

death-chamber, weeping bitterly.

"Where are you going?" she asked, surprised to see me there, when she

thought I was at my uncle's.

"I am going to heaven," I replied.

"What! you are going to heaven?"

"Yes, let me go."

"What are you going to do in heaven, my poor child?"

"I am going to kill the good God for killing papa."

My mother seized me in her arms and pressed me closely to her.

"Oh! my child," she cried, "do not say such things; we are quite

unhappy enough already."

Indeed, the death of my father, who had only received a retiring salary

of 4000 francs, left us with no other fortune than about 30 roods

of land in the village of Soucy, which had belonged to my maternal

grandfather, who was still living at that time. There were arrears of

salary due to my father, as I have said, arrears of 28,500 francs, for

the years VII and VIII, but since our journey to Paris a law had been

passed which declared that no arrears before the year IX should be paid.

As for the indemnity of 500,000 francs, due from the King of Naples for

the French prisoners, which Bonaparte had exacted, nothing was heard of

it, and it was for this reason, no doubt, that the French seized the

kingdom of Naples.

It is true that some day a house and a fine garden, situated in the

place de la Fontaine, would revert to us; but in the meantime the rent

of it went to a certain M. Harlay, who had already been in receipt of

it for twenty years. That good man, in fact, exemplified the truth of

the proverb that a life interest is a certificate of long life for the

payee: he died in 1817, at the age of ninety-two or ninety-three, and

by that time we had paid the value of the house and garden nearly four

times over. Thus, besides the irreparable loss of father and husband,

my mother and I were losing also, she her whole income and I that

future benefit which only the presence of a father can give to a son.

Murat and Brune then tried--Brune zealously, Murat half-heartedly--to

keep the promise they had made to my father on our behalf. But it

was quite useless. Napoleon never forgot the meeting held in my

father's tent during the third day of the march between Alexandria and

Cairo, and my mother, the innocent victim of my father's Republican

sentiments, could not obtain from the man who had offered to stand

godfather to me before my birth the very smallest pension, although she

was the widow of a general officer who had been chief-in-command of

three armies.

Nor was this all. Napoleon's hatred, not content with wreaking itself

on my father's fortune, aimed at his reputation too. A painting had

been ordered, representing my father's entry into the Grand Mosque,

the day of the insurrection at Cairo, during the revolt which he had

quelled "_in the absence of everyone else_," as Bonaparte had himself

expressed it. They substituted a tall fair hussar for my father, the

portrait of no one in particular, thus causing the picture to be devoid

of meaning alike to contemporaries and to posterity.

We shall see later how this hatred extended even to me, for in spite

of the applications which were made on my behalf by my father's old

comrades, I could never obtain entrance to any military school or civil

college.

Finally, my father died without even having been made a Chevalier of

the Légion d'Honneur--he who had been the hero of the day at Maulde,

at la Madeleine, at Mont Cenis, at the siege of Mantua, at the bridge

of Brixen, at the revolt of Cairo, the man whom Bonaparte had made

governor of the Trévisan, and whom he presented to the Directory as the

Horatius Codes of the Tyrol.

Small wonder then if the spirit of my father, on its way heavenwards,

hovered for a moment over his poor child, whom he was leaving so

destitute of all hope on earth.

What did I divine of it all in the midst of the storm of grief which

raged around me? What part I played at this time, my young life just

beginning, his ended, I have not the faintest remembrance; I recollect

nothing after my mother took me in her arms, as I have related, and

carried me away.

A letter from M. Deviolaine announcing my father's death to his friend,

General Pille, is my sole guide in this darkness: it informs me that we

took shelter at Antilly.

This is the letter:--

"VILLERS-COTTERETS,

"_27th February 1806._

"MY DEAR COUSIN,--I little thought I should so soon have to

inform you of the death of our brave and unfortunate General

Dumas. He finished his course at eleven o'clock last night,

at Villers-Cotterets, where he had returned to carry out his

doctor's orders. The malady of which he died was the result

of the shocking treatment he experienced at Naples, on his

return from Egypt. He had the consolation of learning, on

the very day of his death, that that country was conquered

by the French; but this satisfaction did not at all comfort

him for the privation of not being able to end his days on

the field of battle. Ever since his retirement from active

service--all through his illness--he never ceased offering

prayers for the success of the French arms. It was most

touching to hear him say, only a few hours before his death,

that, for his wife and children's sake, he would like to be

buried on the field of Austerlitz.

"As a matter of fact, my dear cousin, he has left them

without any means of existence; his illness consumed his

small remaining capital.

"My wife is going to take Madame Dumas--her relative--to

Antilly, where she will remain a few days, whilst we do all

we possibly can to give the general the funeral honours

to which his rank, his brave deeds, and the love of his

citizens entitle him.

"In charging myself with conveying to you this melancholy

and distressing news I told Madame Dumas that I would

invite you to join her husband's comrades-in-arms; their

share in this melancholy affair will soften in some small

degree the bitterness of her sorrows.

"I thank you, my dear cousin, for the certificate of death

in the case of Lasne, _maréchal des logis._ If it is not

quite in form, I will inform you.

"Believe me, my dear cousin, your attached friend,

"DEVIOLAINE."

M. Deviolaine had not at all exaggerated our state of distress. My

father's only income had been his half-pay pension of 4000 francs; my

sister's boarding-school expenses took about 1200 francs of this, so

there only remained 2800 francs to provide for the expenses of illness,

for the constant changes of place which the restlessness of a dying man

craved, and for our usual wants; it was very little, as the reader can

see for himself.

Accordingly, my poor mother asked all my father's old friends, Brune,

Murat, Augereau, Lannes, Jourdan, to endeavour to obtain a pension from

the emperor. It was all in vain. The most urgent entreaties were of no

avail against that extraordinary hatred, and, tired of hearing a name

repeated so often which was already merely a dim recollection in his

career, Napoleon angrily exclaimed to Brune, our warmest partisan:

"I forbid you ever to mention that fellow to me again."

My mother could not believe that the widow of a man who had been chief

commander of three armies, and had served under his country's flag for

twenty years, whose various campaigns were equivalent to forty-four

years of service, although he was only forty-one years of age, had not

the right to beg a pension from France, some little help, a morsel of

bread. A letter from Jourdan came to destroy her last hope and to teach

her that she must depend on God alone for help.

Here is the letter. No one would believe me if I simply related its

contents, no one would believe that, at this period of supreme triumph,

Napoleon, installed in the palace of the kings of France, handling

more millions than Louis XIV. ever touched, regarded as the conqueror,

victor, Cæsar, _Augustus,_ who had placed his foot on the neck of

Europe and had stretched out his hands over the whole world, would

knowingly refuse to save from starvation the wife and children of him

who had taken Mont Cenis, reduced Mantua to capitulation, forced the

passes of the Tyrol, and quelled the insurrection of Cairo.

But, sire, as it is right that people should believe these things,

I will quote Jourdan's letter, even though it cast a stain on your

Majesty's imperial robes.

"NAPLES, _28th April 1806._

"MADAME,--I have the honour to inform you that I have just

received from His Excellency the Minister of War an answer

to the letter I wrote him on your behalf. He regrets to

inform me that you cannot obtain any pension, as the law of

8 Floréal, year XI, only allows pensions to be granted to

the widows of soldiers killed on the field of battle, or

of those who die of their wounds within six months after

receiving them; and as General Dumas was not in active

service when he died, there remains, madame, but one other

means of hope, namely, for you to go personally to His

Majesty the Emperor, and throw yourself upon his generosity.

"I have the honour to remain, madame, your most obedient

servant, JOURDAN (Marshal)."

There was thus one hope still left. My mother went to Paris in order

to present herself to His Majesty the Emperor, to beg him for help.

But His Majesty the Emperor declined the audience she craved, and she

returned to Villers-Cotterets the poorer by the money she had spent on

her journey.

Sire, you may be a Hannibal, you may be a Cæsar, you may be an

Octavius, posterity may not yet have had time to decide this question,

or maybe the question is already settled; but I am very sure you are no

Augustus! Augustus pleaded in person for the old soldier who had served

under him at Actium; while you, you condemn to misery the widow of the

man who served not only under you, but with you!

I have said, sire, that if you failed us, there remained but God to

help us. We will see what God did for this poor forsaken family.

BOOK III

CHAPTER I

My mother and I take refuge with my grandfather--Madame Darcourt's

house--My first books and my first terrors--The park at

Villers-Cotterets--M. Deviolaine and his family--The swarm of bees--The

old cloister.

We all went to live with my grandfather and grandmother, who were still

alive. They enlarged their hearth for us, and took in my mother, my

sister, and me.

My grandfather reserved rooms at the hôtel de _l'Épée_, where my father

had died. We took possession of his chamber of death, and lived in it

surrounded by all his belongings.

Now, in the midst of the obscurity in which my earliest years float,

like half-forgotten dreams, the recollection of the three principal

houses in which all my childhood was spent stand sharply defined.

These three houses were those of Madame Darcourt, M. Deviolaine, and

M. Collard. It will be remembered that I have already had occasion to

speak of these three persons, and I may be permitted to say a little

about them, were it only to discharge the debt of gratitude we owe

them. Moreover, pictures of the kind I am about to draw are nothing

without their accessary details.

Madame Darcourt was our neighbour; she resided on the ground floor of

the house adjoining the one in which my father died. She was the widow

of a distinguished military surgeon. She had two children, a son and

a daughter. The son might have been twenty-eight, and his name was

Antoine. The daughter was perhaps twenty-four or twenty-five, and was

called Éléonore.

God granted the mother a long and happy life--she lived to eighty years

of age.

I hardly knew Antoine, but I was almost brought up by Éléonore.

The great attraction to me about this house, besides their kindness to

me, was a splendid edition of Buffon with coloured pictures.

Every evening, after my mother had made her visit to the cemetery,--a

religious office she never missed one single day,--whilst she sat

absorbed in her grief in a corner by the fireplace, whilst Madame

Darcourt and her daughter sewed, they would put a volume of Buffon in

my hands, and were then relieved of any further trouble on my account

throughout the evening.

In consequence I learnt to read--and though I do not know _how_, I

can say _why_: I wanted to read about the history, the habits, the

instincts of the animals whose portraits I looked at. The result of

this interest of mine in batrachians, and especially in ophidians, was

such that, at the age when children are still spelling, I had already

read all the books other which form a child's library.

While at Madame Darcourt's house I experienced the sensation of fear

for the first time--a feeling hitherto totally unknown to me.

My mania for reading extended in every direction, even to

newspapers--in later years so little read by me.

One day I came upon the _Journal de l'Empire_, and I read in it a short

article relating how a prisoner, entombed in the dungeons of Amiens,

had been devoured there by a snake.

I had hitherto looked upon snakes as monsters, if not altogether

mythical yet belonging to quite another part of the globe than ours.

In Buffon, or rather in Daudin's continuation of him, snakes had been

a constant source of curiosity to me; after reading the _Journal de

l'Empire_, they inspired me with the greatest terror.

The evening I read that fatal article I pretended to be absorbed in

reading _Robinson Crusoe_, and I asked to be allowed to sit up as late

as possible, meaning until my mother should herself go to bed.

The favour was readily granted me; but when the same excuse was renewed

the next day, the day after that and several nights running, I was

compelled to give an explanation.

I recounted the story of the prisoner of Amiens, and I confessed that

if I went to bed by myself I should be afraid of being eaten up by a

snake.

My mother was greatly surprised at this confession, for I had been so

brave hitherto. She did her utmost to reason away my fears, but reason

failed in the face of instinct, and time alone softened although it did

not altogether efface the recollection of that awful picture.

Next to Madame Darcourt's house--to which I shall again have occasion

to refer--were the other two households who were so hospitable to us in

our misfortunes, those of M. Deviolaine and M. Collard.

M. Deviolaine was our cousin by marriage; he had married a niece of

my grandfather, who, as she was an orphan, had been brought up with

my mother in our family circle; furthermore, he had been my father's

intimate friend.

M. Deviolaine was Inspector of Forests for the district of

Villers-Cotterets, which gave him a leading position in our little

town; and quite naturally, too, since there were only 2400 inhabitants

in the town, whereas the forest covered 50,000 acres.

M. Deviolaine was a great dignitary in my eyes, not so much because of

the above-mentioned reason, but because, in virtue of the position he

held, he could grant leave to shoot in the forest, and to go hunting

freely some day in that forest was one of the ambitions of my childhood.

This ambition, among several others, has since been realised;

and I should add that it has been one that has yielded the least

disappointment in the fulfilment.

In comparison with the small rooms to which we had been confined

since my father's death, M. Deviolaine's house seemed a palace; and

I, poor child, greatly appreciated the change, for, brought up as I

had been at the châteaux of Fossés and of Antilly, and running wild in

the walks and over the lawns, I seemed to live on air and sunshine.

M. Deviolaine's house contained first and foremost a suite of rooms

covering a considerable area, stables and coach-houses, yards and a

charming garden, partly English, partly French, partly picturesque,

partly kitchen garden. The English garden contained waterfalls, pools,

and weeping-willow trees; the fruit garden was full of pears, peaches,

greengages, artichokes, and melons, and then it opened upon a fine

park, which you could see through the railings, and which you could

walk into through a gateway.

This park, planted by François I., was cut down by Louis-Philippe.

Grand trees they were! Under their shade François I. had lain by the

side of Madame d'Étampes, Henri II. with his Diane de Poitiers, Henri

IV. with Gabrielle: it was natural to expect that a Bourbon would have

reverenced these trees, and permitted the long life of beeches and

oaks; that birds would have sung on their dead and leafless boughs as

they sang on them when green and in full leaf! Unluckily, there is a

material value attached to them, besides the inestimable one of poetry

and memories. You glorious beeches, with your polished, silvery trunks,

you fine oaks with your dark and rugged bark--you were worth 100,000

crowns! The King of France, who thought himself too poor to keep you

standing, and had his twelve millions from the civil list besides his

private fortune of six millions, must needs sell you! Had you been my

sole means of fortune, I would have kept you; for, being a poet, I love

the murmur of the wind through your leaves above all the gold earth can

give; the shadows that flicker under my tread; the delicious visions,

the lovely phantoms, which, at eventide, between day and night, in

the dubious hour of twilight, glide in and out between your venerable

trunks, as flit the shades of the ancient race of Abencérage between

the myriad columns of Cordova's royal mosque.

There was not the least idea of this in the mind of that other poet,

Demoustier, when he wrote on the bark of one of these trees the

following verse: with the trees has it also disappeared, and perhaps I

alone remember it:--

"Ce bois fut l'asile chéri

De l'amour autrefois fidèle;

Tout l'y rappelle encore, et le coeur attendri

Soupire en se disant: C'est ici que Henri

Soupirait près de Gabrielle."

And notwithstanding all this the king destroyed the forest, the man who

believed himself more firmly fixed to the throne than the trees were to

the earth. Nothing did he understand of the really great; everything

was stripped of the glamour of imagination, and only its material value

did he appraise. He said to himself, "Every man can be bought, just as

every tree can be sold. I possess vast forests, I will sell the trees,

and I will purchase men."

Sire, you were self-deceived. There are other things in life than

algebra and mathematics: there is faith, there is belief; you put no

faith in others, and others therefore put no faith in you; you breathed

scorn on the past, and now the past scorns you.

What a long way we have travelled, though, from the home of M.

Deviolaine--which to me seemed such a palace!

Glorious trees, you are more than a palace--you are like a temple! a

temple wherein the Lord reveals Himself to me, as I lie at your feet,

and try to study the stars, in utter ignorance of their names, through

the moving canopy of your foliage, on the fine nights of summer. How

many times, when the laughing, restless spirit of childhood begins to

yield to the dreams of early manhood; how many times, kissed by the

wind-bent grass under me, have I stretched two eager hands towards

some star more brilliant than others, and tried to seize a ray of

moonlight as it played upon my face! And I have prayed: "Saviour, who

art in heaven! Saviour, who art on earth! Saviour, who art everywhere!

O Saviour, take me in Thy mighty arms and make me an instrument to

glorify and bless Thy power; a harp to sing to Thee, a lyre to praise

Thee, a voice to pray to Thee! Make me grow great, O Lord, so that I

may be nearer to Thee! and the greater I am the more humbly will I

acknowledge Thy name, Thy splendour, Thy majesty!

"It is Thou, O God! who makest the forests to grow which kings sell;

Thou who createst the little birds that sing among their branches; Thou

who caressest them with the breeze which is Thy smile, and refreshest

them with sunshine, which is Thy face, and tearest them up in the

storm, which is Thy anger!

"Lord, Thou alone art great, Thou alone art eternal!"

But to return to M. Deviolaine and his house.

Although it was large, its accommodation was far from being

superfluous. M. Deviolaine had veritably the family of a patriarch. He

had one son and two daughters by his first marriage, and a son and two

more daughters by his second.

The latter were our relatives, our cousin being his second wife.

As the name of M. Deviolaine and those of his children are constantly

recurring in the relation of the first portion of my life, I must dwell

for a moment on this ample family.

The names of the three children by the first marriage were Victor,

Léontine, and Léonore; those of the three children of the second were,

Félix, Cécile, and Augustine.

Seven or eight years later, a third daughter arrived, but I shall speak

of her birth in the proper order of time.

Victor, Léontine, and Léonore were much older than I, and more

naturally became my sister's companions, who was nine years my senior.

Cécile, the oldest of the second set of children, whose age was nearer

my sister's than mine, joined their ranks.

This left me for my playfellows, Augustine, a year older than I, and

Félix, two years younger.

M, Deviolaine, the head of the family, was an excellent man at

heart,--I say at heart, for on the surface nature had endowed him with

a tough skin, which for roughness might have vied with the most rugged

oak trees in his forest.

He was five feet seven inches in height, and had small black eyes,

shaded by enormous eyebrows; his lips were thick and protruding, his

frame was that of a Hercules, he was clothed with hair like a wild boar

and he was hardly as sociable as the animal with which we have taken

the liberty of comparing him. His paroxysms of rage--and every day was

an April day with him--were the terror of his family. When he came down

from his study, which was isolated from the rest of the house, with his

face portending storms to come, women, children, and servants fled from

his presence, terrified, with their heads down, as shepherd, dogs, and

flocks flee before a coming storm.

Never but once did I see him with a gracious countenance.

Never but once did I hear him speak without swearing.

This moral and physical change had been wrought in him by his attempt

to gather in a swarm of bees, which he feared would fly away out of his

reach.

It was summer, and he wore his shirt open. He had rashly shaken the

tree in which the swarm was grouped, and half the swarm--that is to

say, about ten thousand bees--tumbled on his open breast.

This accident took place at the bottom of the garden; we were all

gathered round the kitchen door, waiting to see the result of the

operation, when all at once we caught sight of him at the end of a

path, coming towards the house with measured steps, smiling, holding

out his shirt with both his hands and saying in the gentlest tones:

"There, my little ones--there--"

And we gazed at him from afar, marvelling to see him walk with such an

unaccustomed gait, smiling such an unusual smile, talking with that

incomprehensible urbanity. Everyone asked himself to whom M. Deviolaine

was talking and smiling thus.

M. Deviolaine was talking and smiling to the bees.

His mild tones succeeded, and they all flew off him, every single

bee, not one of them stinging him; but when the last had flown away,

and he raised his eyes, and discovered his wife, his children, and

his servants all perched on the kitchen steps looking at him, there

was such an outburst of "_mille tonnerres_" and other oaths that the

household did not recover for a week after!

As for us, we disappeared like magic; one would have thought the ground

had opened beneath our feet and swallowed us up.

The remarkable fact about all these tempests was, that they ended in

nothing worse than clouds and lightning, without any hailstones or

thunderbolts. No one ever remembered seeing M. Deviolaine even kick out

at his dog--unless the beast were well outside the reach of his foot.

M. Deviolaine possessed another house besides this one; it was called

St. Remy, and stood in the middle of a charming little plateau,

surrounded on all sides by the forest.

St. Remy specially deserves a few words; the days we went there were

fête days indeed!

St. Remy had once been a nunnery, but I do not know to what order it

had belonged. I only remember the portrait of the abbess, in a frame

above the chimney-piece in the large hall. She was a beautiful woman,

clothed entirely in black, with a blue cord round her to which was

attached a cross; she was round and plump, stout with the corpulence

only to be found among buxom saints. She bore some titled name known in

those parts, which I forget.

The convent had been in use until 1791 or 1792; then the laws came

into force which destroyed cloistered life, and all these doves of

the Lord had to flee: I believe M. Deviolaine bought the convent as

ecclesiastical property.

There was an immense cloister attached to this convent--though not so

large perhaps in reality as in my remembrance of it: children's eyes

see strange hallucinations in the region of memory--space, to their

minds, is infinite.

Outside this cloister were great staircases, with iron bannisters,

leading to the former apartments of the abbess. Only a portion of

these had been fitted up, the rest belonged to rats and cats, which

appeared to have settled a truce, for they lived together on a pretty

good understanding.

A dozen acres of meadow-land, little woods, and walled-in gardens

enclosed this old cloistered building, which was shaded with trees as

old as itself.

To-day, trees and cloister have fallen down: nothing really remains on

the earth's surface; everything springs up only to decay: the lives of

monuments, of trees, and of men, are all but a question of durability;

stone and wood decay just as do flesh and bones.

But at that time all was still standing, like the hopes of our

young lives; the cloister knew not of black bands or the trees of

speculators. It was all sold together, felled timber and ruins, and

from the débris of the immense building and the trunks of the oak trees

there was left sufficient material to build a pretty little house,

of the kind built nowadays, containing one sitting-room four mètres

square, and several rooms about twelve feet long by eight feet wide;

regular Socrates' houses, empty, small though they be, for want of

friends to fill them!

Oh! that great cloister, how full it was on Sundays with the sound

of joyous shouting and mad races! How happy were all children who

loved adventure beyond the borders of their native town, far from the

watchful eye of family and townsfolk, how grateful to the unknown

founder of that great nest, once melancholy, but to-day peopled by gay

singing birds! How this noise from the living world must have made the

nuns tremble in their graves--those black shades that had been women,

with bodies containing souls, those skeletons which had once possessed

hearts, and had come to bury the passions of their hearts, and the

hopes of their souls, and the beauty of their faces in the obscurity of

the cloister, in the night of penitence, and in the mysteries of the

ascetic life!

We laughed where, mayhap, many had wept bitter tears; we leaped and

bounded in our joyous childhood, where probably many had paced towards

death with slow, sad, hopeless steps.

But what cared we, children born but yesterday? Did a past exist in our

thoughts? Why, we could scarcely remember last autumn's yellow leaves,

scarcely recall last spring's emerald leaves: our memories only went

as far back as yesterday's sunshine; our hopes were centred only on

to-morrow's sunshine; our future was twenty-four hours; to us, a month

was eternity!

Oh! what recollections of my childhood, hitherto forgotten, are stored

in the pathways of that cloistered domain! When I retrace my steps

to-day, at every footfall they arise, as precious as those flowers

of diamonds, rubies, and sapphires, gathered in the gardens of the

_Thousand and one Nights_, which never faded!

CHAPTER II

The two snakes--M. de Valence and Madame de Montesson--Who little

Hermine was--Garnier the wheelwright and Madame de Valence--Madame

Lafarge--Fantastic apparition of Madame de Genlis.

I had a great fright one day in that beautiful garden. At one corner

stood a kind of ruined and roofless tower; in August, the sun's rays

concentrated inside this tower and made it as hot as a furnace. It

was a curious sight then to watch the flies buzzing there, and the

butterflies dancing, the beautiful grey and green lizards gliding along

its walls. One day when I was playing near the tower, I heard a sharp

hissing noise, and, on going to look what it was, I saw through the

opening which had once been a door, two long snakes sitting on their

tails, with their bodies coiled round in spirals, darting out their

long black tongues at one another, and hissing either with love or

rage. Such as these must have been the two serpents to whom Mercury

threw his wand, for they looked just like the two that have for ever

coiled round that rod.

But I was not Mercury, I had not the magic wand that pacified the

bitterest hatreds; I took to flight, as Laocoon would have done if he

had seen the two serpents of Tenedos rolling in with the tide of the

Dardanelles, had he known they had left their island on purpose to

strangle himself and his children.

As I fled I met M. Deviolaine, who, seeing me in such a fright, asked

me what was the matter: I told him, and to my great amazement he did

not in the least share my fears; he merely tore up from the ground

a pole which propped up a young tree and walked towards the tower,

whence, after five minutes' fight, he came out, having conquered the

two hydras.

From that moment I looked upon M. Deviolaine as a Hercules, the tamer

of monsters.

I shall often return to M. Deviolaine, for he had great influence over

my life; I was more afraid of him than of any man, but at the same time

I loved him next after my father.

We will now proceed to M. Collard.

M. Collard was as good-natured as M. Deviolaine, his most intimate

friend, was ill-tempered: his smiling face was as great a contrast to

his friend's forbidding aspect. M. Collard was the head of a family to

which the terrible and mysterious Glandier law-suit has since given

such a sinister notoriety.

M. Collard, who occupied the delightful little château of

Villers-Hellon, about three leagues from Villers-Cotterets, was of

aristocratic descent; but he had dropped the name of Montjouy and

simply kept that of Collard, to give less offence to democratic

ears. He had formerly been acquainted with M. de Talleyrand in the

Legislative Assembly, and, in 1795 or 1796, he had married a young girl

named Hermine, who lived with Madame de Valence.

One day the duc d'Orléans unexpectedly called on Madame de Montesson,

who was then his wife, and found M. de Valence at her feet, with

his head on her lap. The situation was embarrassing, but Madame de

Montesson was a great lady not easily put to confusion: she turned

laughingly to her husband, who stood petrified in the doorway, and she

said to him:

"Come and help me, my dear duke, to get rid of Valence: he has fallen

in love with Pulchérie, and insists on marrying her."

Pulchérie was Madame de Genlis's second daughter; the first was called

Caroline, and had married M. de Lawoestine.

After the fright he had just had, the duke was ready enough to give

Pulchérie to M. de Valence. He settled 600,000 francs on the bride, and

they were married. Now how came little Hermine to the house of Madame

de Valence, and who was she? I am going to explain.

Madame de Montesson was aunt to Madame de Genlis. Madame de Genlis had

been placed with the duchesse d'Orléans (Mademoiselle de Penthièvre) by

Madame de Montesson, in the position of maid of honour. While with the

duchess, Philippe-Joseph (since Philippe-Égalité) had met her, fallen

in love, made her his mistress, and had had a daughter by her.

That daughter was little Hermine.

She was brought up in England, and when Madame Adélaïde, sister to King

Louis-Philippe, was seven or eight years old, they wished to give her a

young English companion, with whom she could do her lessons and learn

to talk English. Here was an opportunity to bring Hermine near her

parents. She therefore left London and came to Paris.

After the emigration of the duc de Chartres, of MM. de Beaujolais, de

Montpensier, and the Princess Adélaïde, Hermine, then about fourteen or

fifteen years of age, took refuge with her sister, Madame de Valence;

but Madame de Valence herself was soon arrested and thrown into prison,

and Philippe-Égalité lost his head on the scaffold.

So Hermine then lived with the children of Madame de Valence; Félicie,

who married M. de Celles, and Rosamonde, wife of Marshal Gérard.

These poor children were only saved by a miracle from becoming orphans.

A wheelwright named Garnier living in the rue Neuve-des-Mathurins was

in love with her; he was a member of the Town Council, and at the peril

of his life he twice burnt the despatches sent by the governor of the

prison to the Revolutionary Tribunal, in which Madame de Valence was

denounced as the most aristocratic prisoner there. This devoted act

saved Madame de Valence, for it tided her over till the 9th Thermidor.

Every New Year's Day for years after the wheelwright Garnier paid a

visit to Madame de Valence. It should be borne in mind that she owed

her precious life to him, and the whole family welcomed him as he

deserved to be welcomed for his heroism.

On the death of my father, M. Collard had been appointed my guardian;

and I therefore saw Madame Collard when she was still young, not more

than thirty or thirty-two. It would have been difficult to find more

perfectly distinguished manners, with such dignity of movement and

actions, or more graceful hospitality, than were blended in Madame

Collard's character.

She had one son and three daughters: Maurice, who became a country

squire; Caroline, who married Baron Capelle, whose daughter Marie,

under the name of Madame Lafarge, was the heroine in one of the

most touching dramas that ever was played before a Court of Assize;

Hermine, who married the baron de Martens, the Prussian ambassador in

Portugal,--she inherited her mother's wit, aristocratic bearing, and

never-failing youthfulness of spirits; lastly, Louise, who married

Garat, whose commercial signature carries more weight than that of any

other man. Louise was, and is still, one of the prettiest women in

Paris.

I have spoken of M. Deviolaine's town and country gardens; but they

were nothing when compared with those near the park of Villers-Hellon,

with their grand trees, their fine groves, and the little stream of

green water winding through the gardens like a necklace of emeralds.

And therefore, with the selfishness of childhood, of the three houses I

preferred M. Collard's. The Darcourts' house contained a most beautiful

copy of Buffon, but it had nothing of a garden. The Deviolaine house

had a fine situation, and even two very beautiful gardens; but M.

Deviolaine had a scowling face, whilst M. Collard had a fine garden, a

kind face, and, furthermore, a splendid Bible.

From that Bible I learnt my sacred history so thoroughly that I have

never needed to study it since.

I have spoken of two great alarms I had already experienced in my

life--the third happened at Villers-Hellon.

One evening, when I was as usual busy turning over the pictures in my

fine Bible (I was between four and five years old at the time), we

heard a carriage draw up in front of the porch, then loud shrieks in

the dining-room. Everyone rushed towards the door, and when it opened

it gave entrance to the strangest Meg Merrilies that the imagination

of any Walter Scott could ever conceive. This witch--and at first

sight her appearance was such as to justify one in calling her so--was

dressed in black, and, as she had lost her bonnet, her mass of false

hair had taken advantage of its freedom from restraint to fly in all

directions, so that her own grey hairs fell down on each side of her

face and floated over her shoulders.

The vision was entirely different from the famous snake of Amiens and

the two serpents at St. Remy; moreover, the Amiens snake I had only

seen in imagination, and the two serpents of St. Remy I had had time to

escape from; but this sorceress I beheld with my very eyes, and we met

in the same room.

I threw down my Bible, and, under cover of the tumult occasioned by

this apparition, I fled to my room, hid in my bed, dressed as I was,

and drew the bed-clothes well over my head.

Next day I learnt that the cause of my fright was the illustrious

Madame de Genlis, who, coming to visit her daughter, Madame Collard,

had lost her way in the forest of Villers-Cotterets through the fault

of her coachman, and had given way to panic, being in profound dread of

ghosts: she had not even then recovered from her fright, although she

had communicated the greater part of it to me.

It was in these three houses that the first portion of my childhood was

passed,--those early years studded with sunny memories as soft and as

fresh as the dawn; for, indeed, with the exception of M. Deviolaine's

surly countenance, and the grotesque apparition of Madame de Genlis,

everything connected with those two houses was sunny. The gardens were

full of green trees and brilliantly-coloured flowers; the walks were

peopled by fair and dark young girls, with rosy, smiling faces--nearly

all rosy and sweet, even when they were not pretty.

Then, from time to time, some woman noted for her beauty in the days of

the century about to close would appear in the midst of this laughing,

younger generation; some woman who, having retained somewhat of the

fashions of the days of the Directory, looked like a glorious statue of

Summer amidst that budding Spring.

These ladies were Madame de Valence, Madame Menin, or Madame Dusauloy.

I have already spoken of the Princess Pauline Borghèse and the

impression she left on my mind. And now we must return to my own story.

CHAPTER III

Mademoiselle Pivert--I make her read the _Thousand and One Nights_, or,

rather, one story in that collection--Old Hiraux, my music-master--The

little worries of his life--He takes his revenge on his persecutors

after the fashion of the Maréchal de Montluc--He is condemned to be

flogged, and nearly loses the sight of his eyes--What happened on

Easter Day in the organ-loft at the monastery--He becomes a grocer's

lad--His vocation leads him to the study of music--I have little

aptitude for the violin.

I had learnt to read at a very early age, as I have said, thanks to

Madame Darcourt's Buffon, M. Collard's Bible and, above all, to my

mother's kindly pains. My sister too, who was at a boarding-school

in Paris, during her six weeks' vacations, which were spent with us,

completed my early education by teaching me to write.

So at five or six years of age I was very well up in these two

accomplishments, and extraordinarily conceited about them. I can

still see myself, about the height of a jack-boot, in a little cotton

jacket (for, like the Romans, I did not leave off the _toga praetexta_

till I was fifteen),--I can still see myself, pedantically joining

in the conversation of grown-up people, contributing items of sacred

or profane learning which I had derived from the Bible or mythology,

theories of natural history cribbed from M. de Buffon and M. Daudin,

geographical information borrowed from _Robinson Crusoe_, and social

and political ideas culled from the sage Idomeneus, founder of Salentum.

But mythology was my strong point. Besides the _Lettres à Emilie sur

la Mythologie_ of my compatriot Demoustier, which I knew by heart, I

possessed a _Mythologie de la Jeunesse_, illustrated with pictures

and interspersed with verses from Racine and Saint-Ange, which I

was everlastingly devouring. Not a god or goddess or demi-god, not

a single faun or dryad, not a hero was there whose attributes I did

not know. Hercules and his twelve labours, Jupiter and his twenty

transformations, Vulcan and his thirty-six misfortunes, I knew them all

at my fingers' ends, and, what is still more extraordinary, I know them

still.

One day (it was at M. Deviolaine's house, in 1809, at a time when each

morning's paper contained bulletins of deeds which, for ten years, made

our history seem like one of the heroic fables of old) I remember some

of the guests asked, just after luncheon, what the news of the day was;

but as it was still early no one had read the papers, and consequently

no one could satisfy the general curiosity.

M. Deviolaine rang the bell, and the servant appeared.

"Mas," he said (the name of the servant), "get a _Gazette_ and bring it

us."

"Oh! there is no need for that, cousin," I said, crossing my hands

behind my back; "I have read the paper and there is nothing of

importance in it--only a sitting of the _Corps Législatif._"

I have said that M. Deviolaine often shot out his foot when angry, but

never kicked anything; I was wrong; he did kick something that time!

I left the room furious, and for three months after I would not enter

the house where I had received such a humiliation.

How came it about that I knew anything concerning the _Corps

Législatif?_

It was in this wise.

One day I had seen M. Collard in a blue coat braided with gold.

"You are a general, then, like my papa?" I asked him roguishly.

"No, my little friend," he answered, "I am a member of the _Corps

Législatif._"

And from that time I used to read the proceedings of the _Corps

Législatif_ to find out what M. Collard said there.

But my curiosity was never gratified.

However, everybody was not so contemptuous about my learning as M.

Deviolaine had shown himself to be. Among others, there were three or

four elderly devotees--one of them a certain damsel of sixty-five or

sixty-six called Pivert--who appreciated and praised my knowledge.

There was no kind of story, whether sacred or profane, that they

did not make me relate; and Mademoiselle Pivert in particular, not

contented with my recitals, had recourse to my library, in order to get

at the source of my information.

Well, I gave her an imperfect copy of the _Thousand and One Nights_,

which I possessed; it contained only the _Wonderful Lamp_, nothing

else. She would be absorbed in the reading of this for a whole week,

then she would return me the volume and ask for the next, which I would

promise to give her on the morrow; I lent her the same again, which she

always conscientiously re-read, and, I must add, with renewed delight.

This lasted quite a year, during which time she re-read the same volume

fifty-two times.

"Well, Mademoiselle Pivert," I asked her at the end of the year, "does

the _Thousand and One Nights_ still entertain you?"

"Immensely, my little friend," she replied; "but one thing puzzles me;

you may be able to explain it, as you are so learned."

"What is it, Mademoiselle Pivert?"

"Why are they all called Aladdin?"

Now, clever though I was, I could not answer Mademoiselle Pivert

without confessing the truth, therefore I declared my ignorance, while

she regarded it as an unpardonable fault in the unknown poet-author

of the _Thousand and One Nights_ to have labelled all his characters

_Aladdin._

Notwithstanding all this, the prodigious stock of learning, which was

my pride and Mademoiselle Pivert's admiration, was still considered

incomplete by my dear mother.

My sister was quite a good musician, and sang prettily; and my mother

reproached herself, in spite of our poverty, for not giving equal

advantages to both her children; so she decided that I also should

learn music. But as it had already been discovered that good Mother

Nature, so bountiful towards me in other respects, had endowed me with

the most discordant of voices imaginable; and as it had been noticed

that I had very nimble fingers and was clever with my hands; they

elected to make me an instrumentalist only, and chose the violin,--the

instrument which a musician does not use to accompany his voice, unless

he is afflicted with blindness.

As the town of Villers-Cotterets only possessed one teacher there was

no difficulty in choosing a professor.

This professor's name was Hiraux.

Hiraux really deserves a chapter to himself--or rather two.

Hiraux--or Old Hiraux, as he was familiarly called by the town--was

for all the world a second Hoffmann; with his long, slender figure,

his maroon-coloured coat, and his wig, which had a way of always

accompanying his hat with each salutation he made. Because of this, in

order to avoid such an inconvenience, Hiraux decided not to wear his

wig save on Sundays and on great fête days. On ordinary days, the wig

was replaced by a black silk cap, which he would pull down violently

over his ears whenever his pupils played a wrong note.

Now, after considerable reflection upon the matter, and in view of all

I saw and heard, I came to the conclusion that Hiraux gave up wearing

his wig daily because of the difficulty of applying it to the same

purpose as the cap.

Consequently, except on fête days and Sundays, he only half saluted

anyone; if by salutation it is understood that I mean he uncovered his

head, because, when he took off his hat, he still kept on his black

silk cap.

Moreover, his black silk cap had become an integral part of his person.

A score of times did I touch it, as the inhabitants of Lilliput

fingered Gulliver's clothes,--to make sure that this adornment was not

his own skin,--Hiraux was so good-natured that he permitted me to make

this investigation.

Under that cap, Hiraux had one of the most emaciated and parchment-like

faces I have ever seen--the cleverest and the most mobile, owing to

the play of every muscle on it, which seemed to vibrate in unison with

his thoughts, even as the strings of his violin or the keys of his

pianoforte vibrated under his long, thin, flexible fingers, fingers

like those of Paganini.

Hiraux had had an adventurous youth; he had been a choir-boy, an

organ-blower in a monastery of Piedmontese monks, then a grocer's lad,

then a fiddler, then a music-teacher, and finally an organist.

It would puzzle me to tell you how his steps were first directed to

the precincts of the Church of Bourg-Fontaine (the convent where

Hiraux was brought up); but at times he would relate, among his early

recollections, as I am doing in these Memoirs, some good stories of the

monks similar to those of Rabelais and la Fontaine.

Hiraux was a living chronicle of those old claustral traditions,

already so remote from the ideas of men of to-day, forty years later,

that they are lost like phantasms of another world, behind the early

recollections of our youth, and lost so effectually that in the

generation to come after ours there will be no trace left of them at

all.

The monks were driven from France, then from Spain, then from Italy,

till they ended by existing only in the paintings of Dominiquin,

Zurbaran, and Lesueur.

I do not know whether society has been the gainer, but, very certainly,

art and romance have lost considerably by their disappearance. I have

seen the Escurial without its monks, and it looked like a tomb.

When I go to see Rome I cannot tell what effect it will produce upon me.

I have stated that I could not say in what way Hiraux entered the

monastery of Bourg-Fontaine, but I know well enough how he left it.

Hiraux was a coward; he cannot he blamed for this; it was

characteristic of him. As a matter of fact, he had the quick

wittedness to boast about it, just as another man might have bragged

about his courage.

Now, he still lived in the happy days when _farces_ were all the rage,

and all his life he had been the object of more or less comic practical

jokes, several of which were nearly the death of him.

As we have said before, or as we say now if we forgot to mention

it previously, Hiraux combined the two offices of choir-boy and

organ-blower in the monastery of Bourg-Fontaine. In virtue of this

double qualification he slept in the sacristy of the monastery, and

every night he had to go through the church to get to his bedroom.

It was a nightly terror to him to have to walk down that vast arched

nave (I have only seen the ruins of it, wherein Hiraux's son and I used

to rob crows' nests): the great windows with their carved traceries

through which the pallid and flickering moonlight shone upon the

tombstones in the floor; the mysterious vistas where darkness reigned

even in daytime; all these together, especially on a winter's night

when the north wind whistled through the great gaunt trees whose dry

branches rubbed against one another like the bones of a skeleton, and

the wind made long-drawn moanings down the abbey corridors; all these,

I say, combined to make such a funereal and gloomy effect that poor

Hiraux's blood ran cold in his veins, accustomed as he was to witness

the malice of men so constantly intermingle with the awe-inspiring

majesty of the place.

The monks were not the people who plagued him; nor the prior, who loved

Hiraux like a son; but it was that semi-religious, semi-secular race

which forms a connecting link between the men of heaven and the men of

this world, and which swarms in every monastery.

Hiraux's most relentless persecutors were the brothers who served as

scullions.

One November day--All Souls Day it was--when the customary empty

coffin had been exposed all day covered with a black-and-silver cloth

surrounded by a forest of candles, which remained lighted all the

night, Hiraux entered the church, still more afraid of the light on

this night than he was ordinarily of the darkness.

After closing the door of the church as gently as possible behind him,

walking on tiptoe, brushing against the wall so as to keep as far away

as possible from the centre of the church, so funereally lighted up as

we have explained, he reached the sacristy.

Suddenly Hiraux stood still, glued to the wall, with his limbs rigid,

his mouth open, his hair on end, the perspiration coming out on his

forehead, as motionless as the stone statues of the priors in their

tombs in the Abbey.

The catafalque had moved.

At first Hiraux thought he must have been mistaken, and tried to reason

away his fears; but what good was reason against the actual fact?

For the catafalque had not only moved, but it began to come straight

towards him! Hiraux tried to shriek out, but, like the voices of

Virgil's heroes, the sound stuck in his throat; and, seeing that the

catafalque continued to make straight for him, his legs failed him, he

leant helpless against the wall, and fell in a faint.

At three o'clock in the morning, the church opened for matins; Hiraux

was still in the same place, as still as though he were dead. He had

come to his senses; but, although he found the catafalque in its place,

he dared not stir for fear it would move again.

The sacristan brother hearing himself called in a stifled voice, turned

to see where it came from, and found Hiraux with his face to the

ground, icily cold and bathed in perspiration at the same time.

But he found something else on the floor, too, as he went to Hiraux.

He found a cotton cap.

Now, while Hiraux was telling the sacristan of the horrible apparition

he had seen in the night, his eyes fixed on the cotton cap, which the

sacristan held in his hand, and, thanks to that tell-tale cap, light

rapidly dawned on his mind and dissipated the panic terror that had

overwhelmed him.

So, as Hiraux continued his narrative, the supernatural phenomenon

gave place to natural causes, and, while going over his nocturnal

experiences with his friend, the sacristan, guided by the clue of the

cotton cap, he became convinced that, if the catafalque had moved,

and had walked towards him, it was the brother who cooked for the

monks, with perhaps two or three of his scullion knaves, who had got

underneath and carried it along.

People are not brought up in convents without acquiring a certain

amount of the spirit of revenge. Hiraux kept his own counsel, and did

not speak of his suspicions to a soul; he let them laugh at his fright,

he let them circulate the story all through the monastery, and even

outside, internally vowing vengeance.

The reader may recall the story of Marshal Montluc, and the famous

hanging of Huguenots he ordered as he passed through some town whose

name I do not remember. I am going to repeat it in case it has been

forgotten.

Marshal de Montluc, then, was passing through a certain town, and

thought he had a grievance against some judges who, in virtue of the

axiom _Cedant arma togo_, had neglected to pay him the respect he

thought was his due.

He set to work to make these judges repent their impertinent conduct.

He found out what they were busy over, and learnt that they were

looking forward with great pleasure to judging a dozen Huguenots on the

morrow, who had been taken captive for carrying arms, and were awaiting

their sentence in the town prisons.

So the marshal de Montluc went to the prisons, under a strong escort,

had them opened, had a dozen nails driven into the beams, attached a

dozen ropes thereto, and, from these twelve ropes, hung the twelve

Huguenots. "And the judges were well taken in the next day," says the

marshal in his Memoirs, "when they found nobody left to try."

Hiraux punished the scullions in pretty much the same way as the

marshal de Montluc punished the judges. He stole into the monastic

dispensary, seized upon a copious dose of jalap and mixed it with the

kitchen sauces.

Had Hiraux written his Memoirs he would, no doubt, have written, after

the fashion of the marshal de Montluc: "Next day, the scullions were

well taken aback at seeing their monks purged inside out; just as

though they had swallowed a triple dose of Doctor Leroy's physic."

This happened at Epiphany.

There was a great commotion in the Abbey, as may well be imagined. A

whole monastery--from prior to sacristan--is not purged at Epiphany

without religious duties suffering considerably.

Hiraux, the choir-boy, was the only one who kept his post. And it was

that very attitude, the calmness of one who stands steadfast while the

heavens are falling round him, that ruined Hiraux. Proserpina found

an Æsculapius who declared that he had seen her eat seven pomegranate

seeds. Hiraux had his Æsculapius who declared that he had seen him

stealing at nightfall on tiptoe from the dispensary.

The monastery organist was his accuser.

The denunciation was credited, and when the evidence was put together

everybody held Hiraux to be the true culprit. One is not brought up

in a monastery, moreover, without learning to lie on occasion. Hiraux

denied, protested, swore; but this only made things worse, whereas an

honest confession might perhaps have smoothed matters.

Hiraux was therefore given over by the prior to the cook, that is to

say, religious justice handed him over to the secular arm.

The cook condemned him to twenty-four hours' solitary confinement,

accompanied by bread and water, and, to make sure that the punishment

should not be mitigated by any friend of the criminal, he shut him up

in the monastery cellar.

But the cook had forgotten that the cellar was well filled with wines,

cider, oil, vinegar, brandy, rum, etc., etc.

All these liquids were arranged symmetrically in barrels, as

becometh honest barrels, in a well-regulated cellar belonging to a

Premonstratensian Monastery.

Hiraux went to all the casks and turned on all the taps, one after the

other, saying at each turn of the keys: That's the wine running out,

that's the cider running out, that's the oil running out, that's the

vinegar running out, that's the brandy running out, that's the rum

running out, etc., etc.

The operation took some time, and as Hiraux pronounced his remarks in

a loud voice those in the kitchens heard sounds like distant chanting,

but could catch no words. But, as the murmur continued, the cook became

uneasy and went to listen at the door. He heard Hiraux's litany; he

fearfully comprehended what it meant. In a second he had lit a lamp,

the cellar door was opened, and the anticipated spectacle was revealed

in all its heinousness.

Every cask had its tap at full cock, and was emptying itself of its

contents; the mixture of all the liquids had already created a flood

six inches deep, which was increasing fast.

Hiraux was seated astride a big barrel, as composed as an Indian

Bacchus, philosophically waiting till the lake reached him.

The crime was so patent this time that, instead of the culprit denying

it, he boasted of it so impudently that the cook did not stop to refer

the matter to the prior, but decided to take the law into his own hands.

But the first and most urgent thing to do was to shut off the taps.

Then they seized upon Hiraux, who made no attempt to escape. Next they

called a court of justice, comprised of the cook and his scullions.

It was decided unanimously that Hiraux should be birched.

The sentence admitted of no appeal, and it was instantly put into

execution. Furthermore, it was carried out vigorously, lasting for ten

minutes, in spite of the victim's cries. At the conclusion, the brother

cook took a handful of pepper and rubbed it on the injured part to

soothe his pains and to efface the bleeding traces the infliction had

left.

Hiraux nearly lost the sight of his eyes in consequence.

This may seem odd at first, and it may be thought I have used the wrong

phrase: but not at all.

Hiraux wept, Hiraux bled; his eyes and his flanks were almost equally

sore. He alternately rubbed his eyes and his flanks, carrying, by this

double exercise, the pepper from behind to his eyes. Consequently

inflammation gained rapidly, and the more Hiraux rubbed, the worse

it became, until his eyes had swollen to the size of eggs, when a

sympathetic person advised him to go and allay his pain in the lavatory

of the monastery. He comprehended the sense of that advice, immediately

rushed off there, and, thanks to a prolonged bath, the burning

sensations which tortured him were in a measure allayed.

But he could not extinguish a burning fever which kept him to his bed

for a week.

When the prior heard of his illness he inquired into its causes, and

punished the cook and his scullions.

Hiraux was revenged upon them, but the real culprit, in the sufferer's

eyes, had escaped the prior's sentence of justice; the true culprit

was the organist who had given him away--thus betraying the sacred

brotherhood of musicians; for Hiraux, in his capacity of organ-blower,

looked upon himself as already a musician.

He therefore made up his mind to pay the organist out.

Hiraux could be as deep and unfathomable as the corridors of his

cloisters; he locked up his revengeful determination in his breast and

decided to wait until Easter Day should come.

Easter Day is a high festival throughout all Christendom. All the

peasantry from the outlying districts came to hear Mass at the

monastery of Bourg-Fontaine on that day. It was a day of rejoicing for

everybody--from the prior, who said Mass, the monks who chanted it, the

choir-boys who served it, to the organist who accompanied it, and even

to Hiraux who blew the organ.

The day before Easter, Hiraux ascended to the organ-loft, feather-broom

in hand, and spent the day cleaning the organ with the most

praiseworthy carefulness.

But next morning, contrary to all expectation, and in spite of the

efforts of the blower, in spite of the dexterity of the player, the

organ would produce nothing but muffled and doleful sounds, which

confused the choir instead of aiding their chants. No matter how hard

the organist tried or pulled out the various stops, the oboe was mute,

the trumpet was hoarse and the vox humana had lost its voice.

Whilst the unlucky musician, wondering what to be at, was groaning and

swearing and striking the keyboard, with fingers, fists, and elbows,

Hiraux went on blowing as solemn as Oculi.

Oculi, of course, was the son of St. Éloi, and blew the bellows whilst

St. Éloi forged. There is a song about it somewhere.

Mass was not over before Hiraux was suspected of being the cause of

this novel entertainment, in spite of the pains he had taken and in

spite of his grave demeanour.

So whilst he was applying himself with greater vigour than ever to the

bellows handle, now quite useless, the organist left his place, and

going to the door of the organ-loft, he dosed it, double-locked it and

put the key in his pocket.

Hiraux instantly perceived what was going to happen, and exclaimed: "I

didn't do it, sir!" leaving hold of his handle for the first time; "it

wasn't me!"

"We shall see about that," replied the enraged organist, as he began

to take the organ to pieces. "Ho, ho!" the said, "the vox humana has

something wrong with its throat to-day!"

The organist did not need to go further afield, for he had discovered

the mystery of the crime. Hiraux, out of revenge, had disabled the

three vox humana, the trumpet and hautbois, and there is good reason to

believe that if he had only directed his energies towards those three

pipes, it was because he had not been able to do worse damage.

Hiraux had counted upon flying from the monastery directly after Mass,

only he had not reckoned on being found out so soon. Now, the discovery

was made, and as he could not escape because the door was locked, he

flung himself on his knees and begged for mercy.

The organist could dissimulate as well as Hiraux. He made a pretence of

forgiving him on condition that Hiraux should put things to rights as

he had found them, as they say in leases.

Hiraux was only too glad to get off so easily, and he accepted the

terms.

When Mass was finished, the organist left, promising Hiraux not to tell

the prior of his latest prank. Hiraux knew that this one surpassed all

his others, and bordered on sacrilege; so when left to himself, he did

his very best to fulfil the task allotted to him; a task that Fourier,

in his distribution of the passions, reserved for children who, in his

opinion, should do their work ardently.

We shall see whether Fourier is right or wrong when Considérant has

erected his phalanstery.

Whether Hiraux did his task heartily or indifferently, it was done when

the organist returned--he might really have been on the watch for that

moment--followed by the brother cook and his scullions.

He had been to fetch his own allies,--Hiraux's born foes.

Hostilities began immediately the door of the organ-loft was shut.

Hiraux expected he would be flogged again as before. But they could not

repeat that punishment for want of rods. Still, a presentiment warned

him to be more alarmed on account of the absence of rods than he would

have been by their presence.

For as a matter of fact they did not intend to birch him, but to

inflate him, and the operation was accomplished with the aid of the

organ bellows.

This time Hiraux was not-blinded, but they very nearly killed him. They

let him go when the operation was over, and he fled as far as he could

from the accursed monastery, feeling more like an inflated balloon than

a human being, till finally he fell, or rather he rolled, down at the

foot of a tree.

It was more than a fortnight before he was completely disinflated.

In consequence of this little episode Hiraux became a grocer's lad; but

no one can avoid his fate.

Hiraux was heart and soul a musician. He got hold of an old violin, and

perseveringly scraped away in his odd moments.

The grocer's wife was young, and she was unappreciated by her

husband--in all times there have been unappreciated wives;--she

played the spinet, and at night she and Hiraux gave concerts which so

enchanted the grocer that Hiraux, exalted by his domestic achievements,

determined to abandon the grocery trade, and to devote himself entirely

to instrumental music.

His talents were genuine enough, and almost entirely self-taught; he

attained to such skill on the spinet and on the violin that the town of

Villers-Cotterets appointed him organist at a salary of 800 livres per

annum.

Hiraux made a little more by giving violin and pianoforte lessons. But

all his pupils did not pay him in money; he received some of his fees

in kind. The timber merchant would pay him in wood and shavings; the

grocer in sugar, in prunes and in jam; the tailor in coats, in trousers

and in waistcoats. So, what with his 1600 francs in money, and his

income in goods, Hiraux had not only enough to live on but sufficient

to enjoy a certain independence, which enabled him to send away pupils

who did not satisfy him or who had no taste for music.

My mother, therefore, asked Hiraux to undertake my musical

education--and he accepted the office with alacrity, while I, on my

side, viewed the arrangement not wholly with repugnance. Hiraux was at

that time already sixty years old, but so gay and jolly, so witty, so

full of funny stories, possessing such an inexhaustible flow of spirits

that he was beloved both by young and old alike. I had known Hiraux as

long as I could remember anyone; he had been my sister's first music

teacher, before she went to Paris, and he remained her private teacher

during her vacations.

During the latter days of my father's illness, who, as I have said,

suffered a great deal, and knew he was dying in the heyday of his life,

Hiraux used to be invited to come and see us at the château des Fossés;

and, as Villers-Cotterets was only a league from Fossés, Hiraux would

come and return on foot, sleeping at Villers-Cotterets.

That is to say, to make ourselves quite understood, Hiraux, being

always a coward, began by sleeping at Fossés: but it was decreed that

persecution should follow this poor man all his life long. The stories

of his youth were known by everybody: I have only related a twentieth

part of these anecdotes in order to enable everyone else to add another

fresh story about his most eventful life.

Now, to our house came secretaries and aides-de-camp,--people as lively

and as ingenious at practical jokes as any monks of forty or fifty

years back.

The invariable result was that, on going to his room at night, a pot

of water placed above the door would fall on Hiraux, or he would find

a needle in his bed, or a cock in his wardrobe, until at last he gave

up sleeping at Fossés, and would return to Villers-Cotterets no matter

what the hour or the weather.

This resolution taken, Hiraux usually came to our house armed with a

long sword-stick, enclosed in a leather sheath, to give him courage

during his nocturnal walk back.

In spite of this stick--or rather because of it--two young men, who

had been dining at the house with Hiraux, invented a fresh trick for

him. It needed some imagination to do this, for poor Hiraux, ever

since the year of grace 1750, had been the victim of so many different

pleasantries, that he believed himself proof, not against any prank,

but at any rate against any fresh prank.

They took the sword-blade out of the scabbard, relieving Hiraux of that

which constituted his protection, and fastened a long peacock's-feather

in the handle in its place.

That night Hiraux, ever cautious, wished to leave early; but the young

men held him back and would not let him go, promising to accompany him

home. This promise put Hiraux's mind at rest. Sure of an escort home,

he gave free vent to his merry wit, made more talkative perhaps than

usual that evening by generous libations of champagne.

When ten o'clock struck, he began to say it was time they made a

move for the town; but the young men protested that they were too

comfortable to leave the castle, and that as the general had kindly

offered to put them up for the night they would accept, suggesting that

Hiraux should do the same.

But he took care not to accept; he suspected the visitors of being

capable of any amount of tricks.

He declared that his intention of beating a retreat was immovable, and,

taking up his stick and his hat, he said his adieus and departed.

The young men impatiently awaited his departure, and the great door of

the château was scarcely shut behind the nocturnal traveller when they

left the house by the smaller door, outran him by means of a cross-cut,

and hid themselves in a corner of the forest.

The moon was shining brilliantly. Hiraux sang as people do who are

frightened; but, to reassure anyone who heard him of his peaceful

habits, he sang Gregorian chants, instead of singing a merry song or a

lusty battle-hymn.

Suddenly, two masked men rushed out of the wood, sprang on him and

demanded his money or his life.

They say no one is more dangerous than a terrified coward; Hiraux, it

seemed, had something in his purse and valued his life, for he replied

merely by stepping back and drawing his sword.

The sword, as we have said, had been transformed into a peacock's

feather.

There was that in the scabbard which would have baffled Roland and

the eleven peers of Charlemagne. Hiraux found therein what certainly

neither the one nor the other of those valiant chevaliers did.

"You can see for yourselves, my friends," he said, as he showed the

peacock's feather to his assailants, "you can see for yourselves I do

not want to harm you."

No one could have resisted such artlessness. Threats gave way to shouts

of laughter, masks fell off, and, when they had given Hiraux's legs

time to recover their stability, all three returned amicably to the

town.

Hiraux added one more adventure to his record.

Hiraux made me laugh so much in my childhood, and I loved him so

dearly, that my sympathy for the musician overcame my antipathy to

music and I agreed to take violin lessons.

But I insisted that they should buy me a violin in Paris, and not one

of those for sale in the old curiosity shops of Villers-Cotterets,

which did not satisfy my pride as good enough.

My mother always let me go my own way; so it was decided that Hiraux

should buy me a violin the next time he went to Paris, and that my

musical education should begin on his return.

Only, when would that journey be likely to take place? It looked at

first as though I had counted on a postponement to the Greek Kalends.

But such was not to be: chance, or rather a new joke, of which Hiraux

was the victim, decreed otherwise.

The journey to Paris was arranged at the close of a dinner, at which

Hiraux and some friends of his were present--among others were his two

intimate friends, Mussart and Duez, whose names we mention now as we

shall hear of them again presently.

It was settled under the drollest of conditions.

They were dining at the house of a man named Hutin, where all the

diligences stop on their way between Laon and Paris. They made Hiraux

so tipsy that he neither knew what he was doing, nor what was done

to him. They undressed him and, with only his drawers and shirt on,

they bundled him under the box of the diligence, among the trunks,

portmanteaus and hat-boxes.

Of course they did not leave a single farthing on him--where would the

fun have been if Hiraux had had money?

Hiraux came to his senses in Paris. The conductor was completely

ignorant of the joke, and was therefore quite as astonished to find

Hiraux there as Hiraux was himself. Hiraux was greatly embarrassed at

first at finding himself dressed only in his shirt and pants, in the

courtyard among all the diligences; but, being a man of resource, he

bethought him of a nephew, named Camusat,--a good, excellent fellow,

who has since been and still is my friend. He called a cab, got in, and

cried out through the top:--

"To M. Camusat at the Rapée!" Hiraux remembered his nephew's address,

so he was able to drive straight there: I am sure I should have been

too much embarrassed to have remembered it, in like circumstances.

Camusat was long and thin like his uncle; he provided him with coat,

trousers and waistcoat; then he lent him twenty francs to buy me a

violin and fifteen francs for the return journey.

With the fifteen francs Hiraux brought me back a violin rather worn at

the neck, but quite sound in all its essential organs.

I could make a book out of Hiraux's adventures, if I liked, and quite

as entertaining as many books I know. But I will restrict myself to one

last instance, the saddest of them all.

At the end of three years' lessons under Hiraux, I could not even tune

my violin!

He was obliged to recognise my phenomenal dislike to music, and to tell

my poor disappointed mother that it was simply stealing her money to

attempt any longer to make a musician of me.

So I gave up the violin.

Poor Hiraux! After his stirring life he now sleeps the peaceful sleep

of death in the pretty cemetery of Villers-Cotterets, surrounded by

green weeping willows and flowers in full bloom; and, in thinking of

that excellent man, gay, sharp-witted, quaint, I am inevitably reminded

of Shakespeare's lines wherein Hamlet apostrophises the skull of his

father's former fool:--

"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of

most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times;

and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it.

Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be

your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,

that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your

own grinning; quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and

tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come;

make her laugh at that."

CHAPTER IV

The dog lantern-bearer--Demoustier's epitaph--My first

fencing-master--"The king drinks"--The fourth tenor of my life--The tub

of honey.

While all these things that we have related were happening, my mother

experienced two fresh sorrows, quite as great as her first: she lost

both her father and her mother.

I can scarcely recall my grandmother Labouret; neither do I remember

any particulars relative to her life or her death. She was a worthy

soul, who lived and died blamelessly.

But I remember my grandfather quite distinctly, with a pipe in his

mouth and his solemn walk, which he had acquired when he was _maître

d'hôtel._ He died of a liver complaint, in 1808.

He was a great domino-player, and was renowned for his very great

skill at that game. Every evening he went to play in a café where a

good portion of my infancy was spent. This café was kept, I remember,

by two people of opposite sex, who were both devoted to me; one was

Mademoiselle Wafflart and the other M. Camberlin.

As my grandfather spent all his evenings there I often joined him.

I used to watch billiards being played, a game I was passionately

attracted to, and one for which I possessed the greatest possible

aptitude. Unluckily, billiards, no matter whether played by day or by

night, was quite beyond my means; so I was compelled to look on at the

play of others and to count the points;--but nothing further.

Every night at ten o'clock a scratch was heard at the door; it was my

grandfather's dog come to fetch him home,--her jaws empty on moonlit

nights, but filled by a stick bearing a lantern at each end when there

was no moon. Her name was _Charmante_, and she was indeed charmingly

intelligent. For eight or ten years, until her death, she performed

this trick, and she was never known to have scratched at the door

either ten minutes too soon or ten minutes too late, or to have taken

the longest way instead of the shortest, or to have broken a single

lantern.

One day my grandfather complained of violent pains in his side, took to

his room and then to his bed. Finally, one evening, they sent me away

from the house as they had done when my father died. They took me to

the house of one of our neighbours, named Lepage, who was a glazier.

There I spent the night, and on the morrow my grandfather died.

My mother inherited the famous thirty acres of land I have already

spoken of, and the house for which we paid the life-annuity. But it was

the obligation to pay the annuity, that she inherited really, and not

the house.

Had my mother only given up all hope of obtaining a pension, and of

being paid the arrears of 28,500 francs due to my father, she would

have sold the thirty acres of ground for the 30,000 or 35,000 francs

which it was worth, she would have waived her rights to M. Harlay's

house for 5000 or 6000 francs, and, with these 40,000 francs she would

have had 2000 livres income, on which with care we could have lived

perfectly well.

On the contrary, however, she began borrowing on the land by mortgaging

it, ever hoping to repay herself by the unlucky arrears.

It was quite out of the question to live out of the revenue from the

land; it scarcely paid two per cent.

I do not know whether we had moved before or after my grandfather's

death: I think, however, it must have been before.

We lived then in the rue de Lormet, quite close to the house where I

was born.

Shortly after this time we lost in this house the cousin whom I used to

call Mamma Zine.

So death had fallen heavily on our family circle; in four years four

relatives had gone to eternity, one after the other, and were laid in

the little cemetery of which I have already spoken.

But, with the exception of my father's, none of the other deaths made

any lasting impression on my mind. They only meant a daily walk to the

cemetery, and one more mound added to the rest, which my mother called

her garden; a fresh cypress was planted near the old cypresses; new

roses blossomed by the old rose; my mother shed more tears; and that

was all.

Our graves were near that of Demoustier; and his epitaph was the first

memorial inscription I had deciphered; it had been composed by Legouvé,

and ran thus:--

"Beneath this stone rests, in the sleep of the just,

"CHARLES-ALBERT DEMOUSTIER,

"Associated Member of the National Institute, who was born

at Villers-Cotterets, March 31st 1760, and whose peaceful

spirit entered upon its immortal rest, on the 11th Ventôse,

year IX of the Republic.

(2 March 1801)

"En ces mots l'amitié consacra son histoire;

Il montra les talents, aux vertus réunis;

Son esprit lui donna la gloire,

Et sa belle âme des amis.

"Rest in peace, beloved one!"

And indeed if any soul should rest in peace it ought indeed to be

that of the good and religious-minded Demoustier, whose memory was

venerated by all Villers-Cotterets. My mother often used to tell me

that a gentler, more sympathetic, more delightful man never breathed.

He died at the same age as my father--forty-one--and faced his end with

the gentle and pious resignation of all good souls. The day before his

death, my mother sat beside his bedside and, though hopeless herself,

she tried to instil hope into him. He smiled sweetly at her, and

looked out upon a gleam of beautiful spring sunshine, the sunshine that

comes more like nature's first smile than the sun of summer.

Demoustier laid his hand on hers and, looking at her, he said:--

"Dear Madame Dumas, we must not delude ourselves: I can no longer take

broth or milk or water, so I must die."

And he died next day with a smile upon his lips.

Alas! it was my mother's ambition to erect just such a stone as was put

over Demoustier's resting-place; but she could not afford to consecrate

the dead at the cost of the living.

I fancy I must have acquired my partiality for cemeteries, that is

to say village cemeteries, from my frequent walks with my mother to

the Villers-Cotterets cemetery: nothing impresses me so much even

now--their churches, their tall weeping willows, their broken-off

columns, and their crosses painted black, with a simple white

inscription stating the name and the age of the deceased.

Alas! if I were now to return to our cemetery how many graves of

friends I should find there, besides my mother's! Nearly all whom I

knew in my childhood lie there, and, with Christ in the early days of

Christian Rome, I could exclaim: "I have more friends under the earth

than on it."

Let those who take the trouble of studying small details study the

different localties where my childhood was passed: les Fossés, Antilly,

the confined room at the hôtel de _l'Epée_, the ruined castle of

Villers-Cotterets, the house and the town garden of M. Deviolaine, the

cloister at Saint-Remy, the château of Villers-Hellon, the grand park

of François I., of Henri II. and of Henri IV., and the little cemetery

of Pieux,--the name of the place where the Villers-Cotterets cemetery

was situated,--and they may find the origins of many qualities in my

books, of many traits in my character.

To all these my early impressions I owe my deep respect for all holy

things, my deep faith in Providence and my great love of God. Never,

throughout my long life, have I had one moment of despair, one minute

of doubt, not even in the darkest hours of life; I dare not say I am

certain of the immortality of my soul, but I can go as far as to say I

hope in it. I believe that death is a forgetting of the past without

being a renunciation of the future. If science succeeds in endowing

spirits with memory it will have solved the great mystery, of which God

has hitherto kept the key; souls will then remember, and immortality be

laid bare to us.

But to conclude. In the midst of these walks and games and early

schooling, I was growing up, I could play the _Marche des Samnites_ and

the Overture to _Lodoïska_, upon my violin, and Hiraux, with his black

cap pulled down over his ears, was confessing to my mother that he was

too honest to steal from her any longer the ten francs per month which

she gave him to make a musician of me.

I was very ready to give up these lessons, and I should have done so

long before, had my attraction for Hiraux not surmounted my dislike of

the solfeggio. I renounced them, too, the more eagerly as I had now

begun taking lessons far more seductive to my mind--namely, lessons in

fencing.

The Republic had turned the fine castle and ancient pleasure-house of

the dukes of Orléans into barracks, and the Empire into a workhouse.

Here I had discovered an old fencing master. He had been injured once

when giving a lesson without a mask: the foil of one of his pupils had

pierced his mouth and destroyed his uvula. This accident, by making

him almost dumb, or rather by reducing him to an almost unintelligible

gibberer, had made teaching almost an impossibility--this accident, I

say, together with a great love for the bottle, had brought our old St.

Georges to the royal dwelling-place of François I., then an auxiliary

to the Workhouse of the Seine.

This man was called old Mounier, and, though I must ask pardon of my

later master Grisier, I beg to state I received my first lessons in

fencing from Mounier when I was ten years old.

For I was about ten years old when I began to show such disinclination

towards music and such intense enthusiasm for physical exercises.

While all this was going on, and while I was dreaming of nothing but

swords and sabres, pistols and guns, I remained very cowardly on one

single point. Like nature, I abhorred a vacuum. So soon as I felt

myself suspended a certain distance above the earth, like Antæus, my

head began to whirl, and I lost all my wits. I dared not even go down

steps if they were somewhat steep, and I had never ventured to climb

trees after birds' nests with my young playfellows.

This cowardliness brought all kinds of tricks down upon me from my

cousins Deviolaine, their brother Félix and my oldest sister. They

delighted to lead me up into hay-lofts, under the pretext of playing

hide-and-seek, or some other game: then, when the door was shut, the

only way to descend was by a ladder. I used to beg and implore the

other children, to their great amusement, to open the door for me;

then, when they took no notice of my entreaties, I would at last make

up my mind to come down by the ladder, and my descent was most clumsily

performed before the eyes of my jeering play-fellows.

I was very nearly killed one day by stopping below while the other

children had gone aloft. They had all climbed up a rick of straw at the

foot of which I was sitting. My cousin Cécile was a real tomboy in her

ways, and seemed to think, with the Princess Palatine, that she could

change her sex if she went on leaping and jumping. She had reached the

top first, and was bending over to look down at and tease me, when her

foot slipped, and she rolled down the steep side of the rick alighting

astride on my shoulders, nearly breaking my neck.

I displayed one proof of coolness in great danger which reinstated

me in my young friends' good opinion. It was Twelfth-Day, and we had

been dining with M. Deviolaine. The Twelfth-Day Bean, constituting me

King of the Day, had fallen to my share, so after dinner I hastened

to transfer the seat of my empire to the garden. While thrusting a

paper-boat out into the pond in the middle of the lawn, I apparently

leant a little too far over; I lost my balance, and head foremost

I went into the icy cold water, which was four feet deep, with a

tremendous plunge, to the great alarm of the spectators, who threw up

their arms and began shouting at the top of their voices, "Help, help,

Dumas is drowning!" ... Luckily, I did not lose my head, I caught hold

of the plants which hung over the edge of the pool, and, thanks to that

support, I reappeared on the surface of the water, streaming like the

river Scamander. Then it only needed Victor's hand to haul me back to

my own element on mother-earth.

This done, I turned towards the terrified company with a judicial and

serious air, and I said to them:--

"Idiots, you should not have said, 'Dumas is drowning,' you should have

said, 'The king drinks!'"

This charmed everybody; and, as I was then only seven years of age, and

it was my first clever saying, I crave the indulgence of the public for

mentioning it.

It did not, however, prevent my cousin Cécile from declaring, when she

was performing some of her common tomboy tricks, that I neither was nor

ever would be fit to be anything but a Seminarist.

We shall soon see how very nearly her prediction came to being

fulfilled.

I believe I had five great frights in my life, and, happily, all came

in my early childhood. I have mentioned the first three; the Amiens

snake, the two adders at Saint Remy and Madame de Genlis.

We will now proceed to the fourth.

I was playing at marbles at the door of a grocer called Lebègue, who

was scraping and spreading out chocolate on a marble slab with a long,

flexible knife that I believe they call a spatula. I began a dispute

with my companion, and we fell to pummelling one another. Please take

note that when it was a question of fists I was never a coward. He was

stronger than I, he pushed me roughly back and I fell over backwards

into a tub of honey.

I at once saw the consequences of my accident, I uttered a cry which

made the grocer look up, and he soon saw what had happened, namely,

that, as I have said, I was seated in a tub of honey. I sprang up as

though springs were attached to my legs, in spite of the resistance of

the substance to which I was glued: and I fled incontinently.

My prudent and rapid flight was due to a view of the grocer dashing out

knife in hand at the same time.

I naturally ran in the direction of my home, but it was in the centre

of the rue de Lormet, and a good way off the scene of the accident. I

ran with all my might, but the grocer's legs were double the length of

mine; I was driven by terror, but he was moved by greed. I turned to

look behind me as I ran, and saw that awful tradesman, with fiery eyes

and open lips and frowning brow, knife in hand, gaining upon me every

minute. At last, weltering with heat, panting, speechless, and on the

point of a collapse, I flung myself on the pavement ten paces from our

door, convinced that it was all over with me, and that Lebègue was

pursuing me for no other purpose than to cut my throat.

Nothing of the kind happened. After a struggle, in which I resisted

him tooth and nail, he laid me face down on his knees, and scraped the

seat of my trousers with his spatula, set me on my feet, and returned

perfectly content to his shop.

But in spite of this forbearance on the part of M. Lebègue it was more

than a year before I ventured to pass by on the same side of the street

as his grocer's shop.

CHAPTER V

My horror of great heights--The Abbé Conseil--My opening at the

Seminary--My mother, much pressed, decides to enter me there--The horn

inkstand--Cécile at the grocer's--My flight.

But I was now ten years old, and it was time to take my mental

education seriously in hand. My physical training was proceeding fast

enough. I could throw stones like David, I could draw a bow like a

Balearic archer, I could ride like a Numidian; but I could not climb

trees or steeples.

I have travelled much, and, whether in the Alps or in Sicily, in

Calabria, or in Spain or in Africa, I have gone over difficult enough

places; but I only crossed them because I was obliged to; and no one

but myself will ever now know what I endured in the process. My terror

is purely nervous, and therefore incurable; it is so great that, if I

were given the choice, I would rather fight a duel than climb to the

top of the column in the place Vendôme.

I went up to the top of the towers of Nôtre Dame once with Hugo, and I

do not like to think what it cost me in perspirations and cold shivers.

But we must return to the question of my mental training, for it was

high time it was begun in earnest. They had tried to get me entered

free at all the colleges endowed for the education of sons of superior

officers. But, in spite of the most urgent representations, they could

neither obtain for me admission to the Prytanée nor a bursary in any

Imperial lycée.

Had I been of sufficient age to be of any importance at that time I

should have flattered myself that Bonaparte's hatred for my father was

being continued towards me.

None of the applications on my behalf, then, had been successful,

when one of my cousins died, of whom I have already spoken,--the Abbé

Conseil.

He had been tutor to the royal pages, he had received all sorts of

benefices from Louis XV. and Louis XVI., and he was accordingly

wealthy. He owned a charming house in the village of Largny, within a

league of Villers-Cotterets, and a most picturesque garden, both in the

centre of a valley; I have not referred to all this before because our

cousin Conseil showed us but scant hospitality.

He also had a house at Villers-Cotterets--number 3 or 5, I think, in

the rue de Lormet, just opposite the house where Demoustier died.

I paid two visits a year to this cousin Conseil, one on New Year's Day,

the other on his birthday. He would give me a kiss on one cheek and a

slap on the other, and there ended his generosity.

Once he gave me half a crown. But my mother and I never went again,

and he died the same year. He left an income of something like 12,000

livres behind him, to a certain Miss Ryan, before mentioned.

My mother received a legacy of 1500 francs, and to one of his relatives

he bequeathed a bursary at the Seminary of Soissons.

My destiny was clear, and Cécile's prophecy was to be realised: I was

to be the future Seminarist.

But the question remained how to get me there,--not an easy matter. I

had an unreasoning aversion to priests, and Cécile's prediction had

sown in my heart the seeds of revolt against its coming true.

My mother's mind was not made up. She, poor woman, was incapable of

insisting on anything that she saw was the least distasteful to me; but

she desired to give me as good an education as possible. The thought of

making a priest of me had, however, never entered her head. I believe,

indeed, if she had thought such a thing were likely to come of it she

would have been the first to oppose the plan, which she now put before

me in the most glowing colours.

Two or three months passed, I resisting and my mother begging and

praying me to go.

Finally, one fine day when she had used every inducement she could

think of to make me go, promising solemnly, on her word of honour, that

I should always be free to come home if I did not like the rules of the

Seminary, I let fall the fatal _yes_, and I consented to all her wishes.

There was a week granted me to make my preparations for departure. It

was a great separation, and it cost my mother as much as it did me; but

she tried to hide her tears, till I unjustly imagined she was quite

pleased to get rid of me.

The day before that on which I was to travel in the coach which

plied twice a week between Villers-Cotterets and Soissons, as I was

collecting all my little wants for my school life, I discovered I

hadn't an inkstand. I told my mother of this, and she, recognising the

justice of my request, asked me what sort I would like.

I had luxurious ideas concerning that inkstand. I wished a horn

inkstand with a place for pens. But, as my mother did not clearly

understand my explanations, she gave me twelve sous, and told me to go

and buy the inkstand myself.

Please pay great attention to this little matter; for, puerile though

it may seem, it changed the whole course of my life.

I hurried off to a grocer named Devaux. I took good care not to go to

Lebègue's: the reader knows why.

The grocer had not the kind of inkpot I wanted; but he promised to get

me one by evening.

When evening came, I returned, and he had the inkpot ready for me; but

as luck would have it I found my cousin Cécile in the shop.

She was very glad to see me, she took the opportunity to wish me all

possible success in the career I had chosen and she promised that,

as soon as I was ordained, she would ask me to become her spiritual

director.

I cannot say whether it was that her sarcasm galled me past bearing, or

whether the responsibility of the suggested office seemed too heavy,

but I flung the inkpot in the grocer's face. I pocketed my twelve

sous, and I rushed out of the shop crying--"Very well; I don't care. I

will not go to the Seminary!"

Like Cæsar I had crossed my Rubicon: but the next step was to try and

escape my mother's urgent entreaties, which I might not perhaps have

been able to withstand.

I ventured on my first wilful act. I bought a loaf and a sausage with

my twelve sous, food to last me two or three days, in fact, and then I

went to find Boudoux.

I must explain who he was.

Boudoux was a character. Had not the disease termed _bulimia_ already

received its name at that epoch it would certainly have been christened

after him.

I have never seen such a voracious eater as was Boudoux.

One day he came to our house, and a calf had just been killed; he gazed

at it with longing eyes, and my father said to him--

"Do you want to eat the whole of it? You can have it."

"Oh! general, you are joking!" was Boudoux's reply.

"Upon my word I am not."

"Indeed I should love it, general."

They put the whole calf in the oven, and when it was cooked Boudoux ate

it all.

When he had picked the last bone, my father complimented him on his

performance.

"I hope your hunger is satisfied now, Boudoux?" he said.

"Put the mother on the spit, general," replied Boudoux, "and you will

see."

My father drew back, for he was fond of his cow, and Boudoux was likely

to leave nothing of her but her horns.

I could cite other instances than this; but they would pale before the

one I have just given.

One day at the opening of the hunting season M. Danré, of Vouty, had

two dozen chickens on the spit. Boudoux looked at them as he had looked

at my father's veal; and M. Danré was unwise enough to make a proposal

to him similar to the one which had been made at our house.

Boudoux made twenty-four mouthfuls of the twenty-four chickens.

Later (I must not stop much longer over Boudoux's appetite),

after the Restoration, when the prince de Condé came to hunt at

Villers-Cotterets, he brought a pack of a hundred and twenty hounds.

Boudoux obtained the post of kennelman to the huntsmen, and it was

therefore his business to distribute food to the princely Roquadors and

Barbaros.

It was soon discovered that although the purchase of bread and meat was

the same as always, the poor beasts grew thin and languid and unsteady

on their legs.

Suspicions were aroused, and Boudoux was watched.

It was found out that he himself had eaten the portions of forty

dogs--one-third, that was, of the whole food supply.

The prince ordered that Boudoux's portion of food should be served

separately to him each day, and that this portion should be as much as

for forty dogs.

So much, then, for Boudoux's appetite. We will next speak of his

physical attainments, and lastly of his moral qualities.

Physically, Boudoux seemed as though he were of the refuse of creation;

Quasimodo would have appeared almost beautiful beside him. Boudoux's

face was not merely pitted, it was scarred, furrowed and almost

eaten away by smallpox; his eyes, drawn out of their sockets by the

hollowness of his eyelids, seemed to hang over his cheeks, watery

and bloodshot; his nose was depressed instead of being raised, and

flattened down on his upper lip; from his lips flowed a constant

trickle of saliva blackened by the quids of tobacco he chewed; the

upper lip curved like a serpent's, almost round to his ears, and gave

his mouth the appearance of being able to accommodate a whole leg of

mutton at once; the picture was completed by hair that Polyphemus

himself might have envied; his beard was scanty, red and coarse, and

only grew out of the rare spaces not covered with pox marks.

His head was supported by a body five feet nine inches in height, but

that height was never realised on account of a defect in one leg, which

doubled and yielded under him to such an extent; with every step he

took, that the lower part of his leg and the top of his thigh looked

like the two pointers of a compass opened triangle-fashion.

For all that, Boudoux had almost superhuman strength. During a

house-move he was worth his weight in gold: he would carry trunks,

sideboards, bedsteads, tables, on his head, and, as his limping stride

measured over a yard and a half at each step he took, he could move the

entire furniture of one house to another in a trice.

Furthermore, Boudoux, who could have taken up a horse by its hind hoofs

and torn off its shoes like Alcidamas; or, like Samson, have taken

the gates of Gaza from their hinges and carried them on his back; or

like Milo of Crotona, have gone round the circus with an ox on his

shoulders, and then felled it and eaten it; Boudoux, I say, with the

strength of an elephant, was as gentle as a lamb.

And now as to his character.

Although ugly, repulsive, hideous to look at, everybody liked Boudoux.

He lodged with his aunt, Mademoiselle Chapuis, the postmistress, but

he had his meals everywhere. Three times a day he went the round of

the town and, like the begging Friars of the ancient monasteries, he

collected enough to feed a convent; only, as he had no monks to feed,

he ate the whole supply himself.

It was not enough to satisfy him, but it just kept him going.

Boudoux had a calling, or rather two callings, for he worked _à la

marette_ and _à la pipée._

We must explain to Parisians; who will probably not know what are

the two trades we have referred to under the names of _marette_ and

_pipée._ We will take _marette_ first.

There are very few forests, woods, or covers that do not contain some

pools of water, commonly called _mares_; for instance, the _mare_

d'Auteuil, which has been noted as long as I can remember. At these

pools in the woods, forests, and covers, birds are accustomed to drink

at certain times of day. Here the bird-catcher drives small birch twigs

coated with bird-lime into the soft, muddy soil along the edges of the

pools, and when the birds come to drink they are caught on these limed

twigs.

This is called snaring a _mare_, and in the clever setting of these

traps consists the whole success and art of the hunter.

And as, to explain everything fully, there are more small _mares_ than

large ones, and as the smaller _mares_ are better than the large,

because they need less bird-lime, and consequently are less expensive,

these small _mares_ are called "_marelles_," and in the language of the

snarers of small birds, the phrase to work _à la marette_ indicates the

nature of their calling.

_La pipée_ is worked in the same way, but with differences of detail.

A tree high enough to out-top the rest of the coppice is chosen; it is

stripped of its smaller branches, and these are replaced by lime-twigs

fitted into notches made by a bill-hook; the bird-catchers then take

their place inside a hut made of foliage constructed round the trunk

of the tree, and they attract all the birds in the district by three

methods.

The first is to attach an owl to the centre of the tree.

The owl, with his buff plumage and great round eyes, plays in the

forest the part that Jean Jacques Rousseau played in the streets of

Paris when he went forth dressed as an Armenian.

All the street arabs ran after the Genevan philosopher.

All the birds chase the owl.

But a fate awaits these poor creatures that did not overtake the

hooligans: when they fly against the tree, in attacking the owl which

is fastened to the tree, each bird that settles on a lime-twig is lost;

he falls from bough to bough, and passes from freedom to a cage, lucky

if he does not go from his cage to the spit.

The second method of attraction is to take a jay.

Out of a hare one can only make jugged hare, but in the case of a jay

something else can be constructed.

It must, however, be a living jay, that is a condition _sine quâ non._

The jay has a shocking reputation in the bird world.

It is accused by la Fontaine of stealing peacock's feathers; and, like

all reputations made by man, this one, perhaps, is least deserved;

another accusation brought against it--and a far more serious charge

in the eyes of the birds--is that it eats the eggs of its smaller and

weaker brethren. So the hatred in which birds hold this glutton is in

proportion to the number of eggs they lay; the titmouse, for instance,

which sometimes lays as many as twenty to twenty-five tiny eggs, is the

most relentless against this robber; next come _fourgons_, which lay

fifteen; chaffinches, which lay five or six; and last, redbreasts and

warblers, which lay three or four. So they take a live jay, stretch out

his wings and pull the feathers from it.

It is not a very humane process, but it is very efficacious.

The cry of the jay is a frightful noise: as each feather is pulled

out, the jay utters that cry, and at each cry flocks of chaffinches,

titmice, _fourgons_, warblers, and robins come flying down to enjoy

their enemy's discomfort; for they are not deceived, they recognise his

cry as one of pain.

But this time they are punished for their want of forgiveness towards

their enemy, and the lime-twigs execute justice on their hard hearts.

The success of the third means depends entirely on the degree of

skill with which the bird-catcher has been naturally endowed, in

producing sounds to imitate the songs of birds, by the aid of blades

of couch-grass or a piece of glossy silk. The musician who can imitate

birds' notes requires no jay or owl to help him; he retires into his

hut, counterfeits cries of distress of the different birds he wants to

catch, and all the birds of the same species that are in the district

flock to the call.

I must say, however, that I have met few _pipurs_ (and I have known a

great number) who have reached such a pitch of perfection.

But Boudoux, who spoke no dead language, and could only talk his own

among living ones, and that very imperfectly, took, in the matter of

birds, the first rank as a philologist, and not merely in the forest

of Villers-Cotterets, but, I dare venture to assert, in any forest of

the world.

There was not an ornithological language or jargon or patois that he

could not talk, from the language of the crow to that of the wren.

He held those of his confrères in contempt who made use of grass and

silk, for he could imitate the cry of an owl so perfectly that I have

seen one come and perch on his hat as on the helmet of Minerva.

I went to find Boudoux. I unburdened my heart to him, and I asked him

to hide me for two or three days in one of his huts.

Of course he granted my request.

His only condition was that, as it was autumn, I ought to take a

blanket with me, as the nights were not so warm as they had been.

I returned home, slipped into my room, took a blanket off my bed, and

wrote on a bit of paper:--

"Do not be anxious about me, mother dear; I have run away, because I do

not want to be a priest."

Then I rejoined Boudoux, who had collected his evening food and was

waiting for me at the entrance to the park.

Boudoux had two snaring pools, one on the road to Vivières, and the

other on the road to Compiègne. Near the pool on the road to Compiègne

he had a hut, and it was in this hut that I asked shelter from the

Seminary of Soissons.

I spent three days and three nights in the forest. At night, I rolled

myself in my blanket, and I must own that I slept without any feeling

of remorse; by day I wandered from one _mare_ to another, collecting

the snared birds. We took an incalculable number of birds during those

three days; by the third day, the two _mares_ were completely _ruined_

until the next breeding season. I emphasise the word _ruined_, because

that is the technical term for it.

Those three days increased my antipathy towards the Seminary, but at

the same time it gave me a keen taste for _la marette._

At the end of these three days I returned, but I did not dare to go

straight to the house. I went to find my good friend Madame Darcourt,

and I begged her to announce to my mother the return of her prodigal

son, and to smooth the way for my re-entry under the maternal roof.