THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE
IN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
EDITED BY FREDERIC CHAPMAN
THE AMETHYST RING
[Illustration]
THE AMETHYST RING
BY ANATOLE FRANCE
A TRANSLATION BY
B. DRILLIEN
[Illustration]
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXIX
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND
THE AMETHYST RING
CHAPTER I
True to her word, Madame Bergeret quitted the conjugal roof and betook
herself to the house of her mother, the widow Pouilly.
As the time for her departure drew near, she had half a mind not to
go, and with a little coaxing would have consented to forget the past
and resume the old life with her husband, at the same time vaguely
despising M. Bergeret as the injured party.
She was quite ready to forgive and forget, but the unbending esteem
in which she was held by the circle in which she moved did not allow
of such a course. Madame Dellion had made it clear to her that any
such weakness on her part would be judged unfavourably; all the
drawing-rooms in the place were unanimous upon that score. There was
but one opinion among the tradespeople: Madame Bergeret _must_ return
to her mother. In this way did they uphold the proprieties and, at
the same time, rid themselves of a thoughtless, common, compromising
person, whose vulgarity was apparent even to the vulgar, and who was
a burden on everybody about her. They made her believe there was
something heroic in her conduct.
“I have the greatest admiration for you, my child,” said old Madame
Dutilleul from the depths of her easy chair, she who had survived four
husbands, and was a truly terrible woman. People suspected her of
everything, except of ever having loved, and in her old age she was
honoured and respected by all.
Madame Bergeret was delighted at having inspired sympathy in Madame
Dellion and admiration in Madame Dutilleul, and still she could not
finally make up her mind to go, for she was of a homely disposition and
accustomed to regular habits and quite content to live on in idleness
and deceit. Having grasped this fact, M. Bergeret redoubled his efforts
to ensure his deliverance. He stoutly upheld Marie, the servant, who
kept every one in the house in a state of wretchedness and trepidation,
was suspected of harbouring thieves and cut-throats in her kitchen, and
only brought herself into prominence by the catastrophes she caused.
Four days before the time appointed for Madame Bergeret’s departure,
this girl, who was drunk as usual, upset a lighted lamp in her
mistress’s room and set fire to the blue chintz bed-curtains. Madame
Bergeret was spending the day with her friend, Madame Lacarelle. She
returned and, amid the dreadful stillness of the house, beheld on
entering her room the evidences of the disaster. She called and called
in vain for her stony-hearted husband and her besotted maid, then
stood gazing at the smoke-blackened ceiling and the dismal ravages
of the fire. This commonplace accident assumed in her eyes a mystic
significance that frightened her. But presently as the candle began
to flicker she lay down, tired out and very cold, upon her bed under
the skeleton of the charred canopy whose black shreds fluttered like
the wings of a bat. The next morning, on waking, she wept for her
blue curtains, the souvenir and symbol of her youth; bare-footed,
with dishevelled hair, smothered with blacks and clad only in her
nightdress, she ran desperately about the rooms, crying and moaning. M.
Bergeret took no notice of her; for him she had ceased to exist.
That evening, with the help of the girl Marie, she drew her bed into
the middle of the dreary room. But now she realized that this room
could never again be a resting-place for her, and that she must leave
the home where for fifteen years she had fulfilled the duties of daily
life.
Moreover, the ingenious Bergeret, having taken rooms for his daughter
Pauline and himself in a little house in the Place Saint-Exupère, was
busy moving out and moving in.
He went backwards and forwards ceaselessly between the two houses,
keeping close to the walls, and trotting along with the agility of a
mouse suddenly unearthed in a heap of debris. His heart was glad within
him, but he concealed his joy, for he was a prudent man.
Having been told that, at an early date, she must hand over the keys
of the house to the landlord, Madame Bergeret in like manner set about
despatching her furniture to her mother, who lived in a maisonnette on
the ramparts of a little northern town. She made bundles of clothes and
of linen, pushed the furniture about, gave orders to the men, sneezed
in the dusty atmosphere, and wrote out labels addressed to “Madame
Veuve Pouilly.”
From her labours Madame Bergeret derived moral assistance, for it
is good for mankind to work. It takes a man’s mind off his own life
and turns him away from dreadful self-examination; it keeps him from
that which makes solitude unbearable, the contemplation of that other
being, his real self. It is the sovereign remedy for moral and æsthetic
obsessions. Work is also excellent, in that it panders to our vanity,
hides from us our impotence, and flatters us with the hope of something
good to come. We imagine that it enables us to steal a march on Fate.
Failing to realize the necessary relation between individual endeavour
and the mechanism of the universe, we fondly imagine that our efforts
are directed to our own advantage against the rest of the machine. Work
gives us illusory determination, strength and independence, and makes
us as gods in our own eyes. We appear to ourselves as so many heroes,
genii, demons, demiurges, gods--yes, as God Himself. And, in fact, man
has always conceived of God as a worker. Thus it was that the removal
restored Madame Bergeret’s natural gaiety and the joyous energy of her
physical strength. She sang songs as she tied up parcels; the rapid
flow of blood in her veins made her content, and she looked forward to
a happy future.
She painted in glowing colours her life in the little Flemish town
where she would live with her mother and her two younger daughters.
There she hoped to grow young again, to be brilliant and admired,
to have attention offered her, and to find sympathy. Who could say
whether, once the decree _nisi_ was granted in her favour, a second and
wealthy marriage were not awaiting her in her native town? Was it not
quite possible that she might marry a good-tempered, sensible man, a
country gentleman, an agriculturist or a Government official, somebody
quite different from M. Bergeret?
The packing-up also afforded her peculiar satisfaction, for from it
she derived some solid advantages in the way of gain. Not satisfied
with the appropriation of what she had brought as her marriage portion,
and a large share of the common property, she heaped into her trunks
things which she ought in ordinary fairness to have left to others.
In this way she packed among her underclothes a silver cup which had
belonged to M. Bergeret’s maternal grandmother. Again, she added to
her own jewels which, be it said, were of no great value, the watch
and chain of M. Bergeret’s father, a professor at the University, who,
having refused in 1852 to swear fidelity to the Empire, had died in
1873, poor and forgotten.
Madame Bergeret interrupted her packing only to go and pay her farewell
calls, visits both sad and triumphant. Public opinion was in her
favour. Men’s judgments are diverse, and there is no place in the world
where there is undivided and unanimous opinion on any single subject.
_Tradidit mundum disputationibus eorum._ Madame Bergeret herself was
the subject of polite discussion and of secret dissent. The greater
number of the ladies of her acquaintance considered her irreproachable,
otherwise they would not have received her at their houses. There were
a few, however, who suspected that her adventure with M. Roux had not
been quite blameless; some of them even went so far as to say so. One
blamed her, another excused her, a third approved of her, casting all
the blame upon M. Bergeret, as being a spiteful man.
That point, too, was open to doubt. Some people declared M. Bergeret to
be a nice, quiet man, the only thing to dislike in him being his too
subtle mind, which was at variance with public opinion.
M. de Terremondre said that M. Bergeret was a very nice sort of man; to
which Madame Dellion replied that if he were really a good man he would
have stood by his wife, however wicked she was.
“There would be some merit in that,” she said. “There is nothing noble
in putting-up with a charming woman.”
Another opinion of Madame Dellion’s was: “M. Bergeret is doing his
utmost to keep his wife, but she is leaving him, and quite right too!
It serves M. Bergeret right.”
Thus did Madame Dellion express opinions which were inconsistent,
for human thought has ever depended not upon force of reason but on
violence of feeling.
Although the world is known to be uncertain in its judgment, Madame
Bergeret would have gone from the town in possession of a good
reputation, if on the very eve of her departure, when paying her
farewell visit to Madame Lacarelle, she had not met M. Lacarelle alone
in the drawing-room.
M. Gustave Lacarelle, chief clerk at the _préfecture_, had a long,
thick, fair moustache, which, while the chief characteristic of his
countenance, was also destined to determine his character. In his
student days at the Law Schools, his comrades had discovered in him
a resemblance to the ancient Gauls, as depicted in the sculpture and
paintings of the later romanticists. Other more careful observers,
remarking that the long strands of hair were situated under a snub nose
and placid eyes, gave Lacarelle the name of “The Seal.” The latter,
however, did not prevail against that of “The Gaul.” Lacarelle became
“The Gaul” to his companions, who consequently made up their minds
that he ought to be a great drinker, a great fighter, and a devil with
the women, in order that he might conform in reality to the Frenchman
of immemorial tradition. At the Corps dinners he was forced to drink
far more than he wanted, and he could never go into a _brasserie_
with his friends without being pushed up against some tray-laden
waitress. When he married and returned to his native town, and, by what
was a great stroke of fortune in those days, obtained a post in the
Central Administration of the department from which he hailed, Gustave
Lacarelle continued to be called “The Gaul” by the most important of
the magistrates, lawyers, and Government officials who frequented
his house. The ignorant mob, however, did not bestow this name upon
him until 1895, in which year a statue to Eporedorix was erected and
unveiled on the Pont National.
Twenty-two years previously, under the presidency of M. Thiers, it had
been decided that subscriptions should be invited for the erection
of a statue to the Gaulish chief Eporedorix, who, in the year 52
B.C., led the river tribes against Cæsar, and imperilled the
small Roman garrison by cutting down the wooden bridge built by them to
ensure communication with the rest of the Army. The archæologists of
the little county town firmly believed that this feat of arms had been
accomplished in their town, founding their belief on a passage in the
_Commentaries_ which all the learned societies of the district quoted
as a proof of the fact that the wooden bridge cut down by Eporedorix
was situated in _their_ particular town. There is a great deal of
uncertainty with regard to Cæsar’s geography, and local patriotism
is both fierce and jealous. The chief town of the department, three
_sous-préfectures_, and four smaller towns quarrelled for the glory of
having slaughtered the Romans by the hand of Eporedorix.
Competent authority decided the question in favour of the capital
town of the department. It was an unfortified town, which much to its
sorrow and anger had been forced in 1870 after one hour’s bombardment
to allow the enemy to enter its walls, walls which in the time of Louis
XI had been crumbling to pieces, and now lay concealed beneath the ivy
that had overgrown them.
The town had undergone the hardships and privations of military
occupation. It had suffered and atoned. The project of erecting
a monument to the memory of the Gaulish chief was received with
enthusiasm by the townspeople, who were experiencing the humiliation of
defeat, and were all the more grateful to their long-dead compatriot
for providing them with something of which they could be proud.
Resuscitated after fifteen hundred years of oblivion, Eporedorix united
all the citizens in a bond of filial devotion. The name of the hero
roused no distrust in any of the different political parties which
were then dividing France. Opportunists, Radicals, Constitutionalists,
Royalists, Orleanists, Bonapartists, they all gave to the scheme; half
the cost was subscribed within the year, and deputies of the department
obtained from the Government what was wanting to make up the required
sum.
The order for the statue of Eporedorix was given to Mathieu Michel,
David d’Angers’ youngest pupil, he whom the Master had called his
Benjamin. Mathieu Michel, who was then in his fiftieth year, at
once set to work, and attacked the clay with a generous, if somewhat
cramped, hand, for the republican sculptor had done but little work
during the Empire. In less than two years, however, he finished the
figure, a plaster model of which was exhibited in the Salon of 1873,
among many other Gaulish chiefs gathered together among the palms and
begonias under the huge glass dome. Owing to the endless formalities
insisted upon by the authorities, the statue was not finally completed
in marble for another five years. After this, so many administrative
difficulties, so many disputes arose, between the town and the
Government, that it looked as though the statue of Eporedorix would
never be erected upon the Pont National.
In 1895, however, the work was accomplished, and the statue, arriving
from Paris, was received by the _préfet_, who solemnly handed it over
to the mayor of the town. Mathieu Michel accompanied his work. He was
then over seventy, and the whole town turned out to look at the old man
with his lion-like head and long, flowing, white hair.
The inauguration took place on the 7th of June, when M. Dupont was
Minister of Public Instruction, M. Worms-Clavelin _préfet_ of the
department, and M. Trumelle mayor of the town. Doubtless the enthusiasm
was not what it would have been on the morrow of the invasion,
when indignation was at its height, but at any rate everybody was
satisfied. The speeches and also the uniforms of the officers met with
applause, and when the green veil which hid Eporedorix from view was
withdrawn the whole town cried as with one voice, “Lacarelle! it is
Lacarelle! it is the image of Lacarelle!”
This, to tell the truth, was by no means correct. Mathieu Michel, the
pupil and emulator of David d’Angers, he whom the venerable master
called the child of his old age, the republican sculptor and patriot,
insurgent in ’48, volunteer in ’70, had not portrayed M. Gustave
Lacarelle in this marble hero. No, indeed! This chief, with his shy and
gentle look, clasping his lance, and seeming, under his wide-winged
helmet, to be meditating upon the poetry of Chateaubriand and the
historic philosophy of Henri Martin, this warrior, steeped in romantic
melancholy, was not, in spite of what the people cried, the true
portrait of M. Lacarelle.
The _préfet’s_ secretary had big, prominent eyes, a short, snub nose,
flabby cheeks, and a double chin. Mathieu Michel’s Eporedorix gazed
with deep-set orbs into the distance. His nose was Grecian, and the
contour of his face pure and classical. But, like M. Lacarelle, he
had a tremendous moustache, the long, curving branches of which were
visible from every point of view.
Struck by this resemblance, the crowd unanimously bestowed upon M.
Lacarelle the glorious name of Eporedorix, and from that time the
secretary of the _préfet_ found himself compelled to personate in
public the popular idea of the Gaul, and to conform to it by word and
deed under all circumstances. Lacarelle was fairly successful, for he
had had plenty of practice since his student days, and all that was
required of him was to be hail-fellow-well-met with everybody, keen
on the Army, and a teller of broad stories when necessary. He was
considered to be an adept at kissing women, and so he became a great
embracer. He kissed them all and he kissed them always. It did not
matter who they were: women, young girls, and little girls, pretty ones
and plain, old and young, he embraced them out of pure Gaulishness, and
with no evil intentions, for he was a moral man.
And that is why, coming unexpectedly upon Madame Bergeret waiting in
the drawing-room for his wife, he immediately embraced her. Madame
Bergeret was not ignorant of M. Lacarelle’s little habit, but her
vanity, which was great, confounded her judgment, which was scanty. She
thought he kissed her because he loved her, and straightway fell into
so great an emotion that her bosom heaved stormily, her legs gave way
beneath her, and she sank panting into the arms of M. Lacarelle. The
latter was both surprised and embarrassed, but his amour-propre was
flattered. He placed Madame Bergeret as comfortably as he could upon
the couch, and, bending over her, said in a voice filled with sympathy:
“Poor lady! So charming and so unhappy! And so you are leaving us? You
are going to-morrow?”
And he imprinted upon her brow a chaste kiss. But Madame Bergeret,
whose nerves were all unstrung, burst into a fit of sobs and tears;
then slowly, solemnly, and sorrowfully she returned his kiss at the
very moment that Madame Lacarelle entered the room.
* * * * *
The next day the whole town sat in judgment upon Madame Bergeret, who
had remained among them just one day too long.