After he had escorted Marie to her carriage Doctor Dufour reentered the
house and found his friend still standing thoughtfully by the window.
On hearing the door open and close, David awoke from his reverie and
turned toward the doctor, who, thinking of the painful scene which they
had just witnessed, exclaimed, referring of course to Madame Bastien:
"Poor woman! poor woman!"
"The young woman does indeed seem greatly to be pitied," remarked David.
"Far more than you think, for she lives only for her son; so you can
judge how she must suffer."
"Her son? Why, I thought he was her brother. She doesn't look a day over
twenty. She must have married very young."
"At the age of fifteen."
"And how beautiful she is!" remarked Henri, after a moment's silence.
"Her loveliness, too, is of an unusual type,--the at once virginal and
maternal beauty that gives Raphael's virgin mothers such a divine
character."
"Virgin mothers! The words are peculiarly appropriate in this
connection. I will tell you Madame Bastien's story. I feel sure that it
will interest you."
"You are right, my friend. It will give me food for thought during my
travels."
"M. Fierval," began the doctor, "was the only son of a well-to-do banker
of Angers; but several unfortunate speculations involved him deeply,
financially. Among his business friends was a real estate agent named
Jacques Bastien, who was a native of this town and the son of a notary.
When M. Fierval became embarrassed, Bastien, who had considerable ready
money, gave him valuable pecuniary assistance. Marie was fifteen at the
time, beautiful, and, like nearly all the daughters of thrifty
provincials, brought up like a sort of upper servant in the house."
"What you say amazes me. Madame Bastien's manners are so refined. She
has such an air of distinction--"
"In short, you see nothing to indicate any lack of early education in
her."
"Quite the contrary."
"You are right; but you would not be so much surprised if you had
witnessed the numerous metamorphoses in Madame Bastien that I have.
Though she was so young she made a sufficiently deep impression upon our
real estate man for him to come to me one day, and say:
"'I want to do a very foolish thing, that is to marry a young girl, but
what makes the thing a little less idiotic, perhaps, is that the girl I
have in view, though extremely pretty, has very little education, though
she is a capital housewife. She goes to market with her father's cook,
makes delicious pickles and preserves, and hasn't her equal in mending
and darning.' Six weeks afterward, Marie, in spite of her aversion, and
in spite of her tears and entreaties, yielded to her father's inexorable
will, and became Madame Bastien."
"Was Bastien himself aware of the repugnance he inspired?"
"Perfectly; and this repugnance, by the way, was only too well
justified, for Bastien, who was then forty-two years old, was as ugly as
I am, to say the least, but had the constitution of a bull,--a sort of
Farnese Hercules he was, in short,--though much more inclined to
embonpoint, as he is an immense eater, and not at all cleanly in his
personal habits. So much for him physically. Mentally, he is coarse,
ignorant, arrogant, and bigoted, insufferably proud of the money he has
amassed. Strongly inclined to avarice, he thinks he is treating his wife
very liberally by allowing her one servant, a gardener, who acts as a
Jack-of-all-trades on the place, and an old work-horse to take her to
town now and then. The only good thing about Bastien is that his
business keeps him away about three-quarters of the time, for he buys
large tracts of land all over the country, and, after dividing them up,
sells these subdivisions to small farmers. When he does return to his
present home, a farm which proved a poor investment, and which he has
been unable to dispose of, he devotes his time to making as much money
out of it as he can, getting up at sunrise to watch his crops put in,
and returning only at night to sup voraciously, drink like a fish, and
fall into a drunken sleep."
"You are right, Pierre, this poor woman is much more unfortunate than I
supposed. What a husband for such a charming creature! But men like this
Bastien, who are endowed with the appetites of the brute combined with
the instinct of rapacity, are at least excessively fond of their wives
and their young. M. Bastien at least loves his wife and son, does he
not?"
"As for his wife, your comparison of a virgin mother was singularly
appropriate, as I remarked a few minutes ago. A day or two after his
marriage, Bastien, who has always persecuted me with his confidences,
said, sullenly: 'If I were to yield to that prudish wife of mine I
should remain a bachelor husband all the rest of my life.' And it would
seem that he has been obliged to, for, alluding to his son, he remarked
one day, 'It is a good thing for me I had a child when I did, but for
that I should never have had one.' In his anger at finding himself
rebuffed, he tried to punish poor Marie for the repugnance he had
inspired, but which he has been entirely unable to overcome, though he
has resorted to brutality, to violence, and even to blows; for when this
man is intoxicated he has not the slightest control over himself."
"Why, this is infamous!"
"Yes; and when I indignantly reproached him, he said: 'Nonsense. She is
my wife, and the law is on my side. I didn't marry to remain a bachelor,
and no slip of a girl like that is going to get the better of me.' And
yet he has had to yield, for brute force cannot overcome a woman's
aversion and loathing, particularly when the woman is endowed with
remarkable strength of will like Marie Bastien. At first he intended to
live in Blois, but his wife's resistance changed his plans. 'If this is
the way she is going to act,' he said to me one day, 'she shall pay
dearly for it. I have a farm near Pont Brillant. She shall live there
alone on one hundred francs a month.' And he was as good as his word.
Marie accepted the pinched and lonely life Bastien imposed upon her with
courage and resignation, though Bastien did his best to make her
existence as miserable as possible, until he learned that she was
enceinte. After that he became a little more lenient, for though he
still left Marie at the farm, he allowed her to make a few inexpensive
changes, which, thanks to Madame Bastien's good taste, have quite
transformed the abode. The amiability and many virtues of his charming
wife seem to have wrought some slight improvement in Bastien, for though
he is still coarse, he seems to be rather less of a brute, and to have
decided to make the best of his life of a bachelor husband. 'Well,
doctor, I was born lucky after all,' he remarked to me, not very long
ago. 'My wife is living, and I am not sorry for it on the whole. She is
sweet-tempered and patient and economical, and I never give her a penny
except for household expenses, yet she seems perfectly contented. She
never sets foot off the farm, and seems to think only of her son. On the
other hand, if my wife should die I should not be inconsolable, for, as
you must understand yourself, to be a married man and yet have to lead a
bachelor life has its objections as well as being very expensive; so
whether my wife lives or dies I have no cause to complain. That was what
I meant when I told you just now that I was really born lucky, after
all.'"
"And his son, does he seem to really care anything about him?" inquired
Henri, more and more interested.
"Bastien is one of those fathers who consider that a parent should
always be crabbed and angry and fault-finding, so, during his rare
sojourns at the farm, where he evinces more interest in his cattle than
in his son, he always finds a means of incensing his child against him.
The natural result of all this is that Bastien has no place in the lives
of his wife and son. And, speaking of Frederick's education, I must tell
you another of those admirable metamorphoses that maternal love has
effected in Madame Bastien."
"Pray do, Pierre," said Henri, earnestly. "You have no idea how much
this interests me."
"Reared as I have described, and married at the age of fifteen,"
continued the doctor, "Marie Bastien had received a very imperfect
education, though she was really endowed with an unusual amount of
intellectual ability. But when she became a mother, realising the
importance of the duties devolving upon her, Marie, inconsolable at her
ignorance, resolved to acquire in four or five years all the knowledge
necessary to enable her to undertake her child's education, which she
was determined to entrust to no one else."
"And this resolve?" inquired David.
"Was faithfully carried out. When she first broached the subject to
Bastien he scoffed at the idea, but when Marie told him that she was
determined not to be separated from her son, and reminded him how
expensive it would be to have teachers come out to the farm from Pont
Brillant and later from Blois, Bastien concluded that his wife might be
right, after all, and consented to the arrangement. Fortunately Marie
found in a young Englishwoman a treasure of knowledge, intelligence, and
kindheartedness. Miss Harriet, for that was her name, appreciating and
admiring this rare example of maternal devotion, devoted herself body
and soul to her mission, and, ably assisted by the natural talent and
untiring industry of her pupil, in four years she had imparted to the
young mother a thorough acquaintance with history, geography, and
literature. Madame Bastien had also become a sufficiently good musician
to teach her son music. She had also acquired a fair knowledge of the
English language, a sufficient knowledge of drawing to be able to teach
Frederick to draw from nature. He profited wonderfully well by these
lessons, for few boys of his age are equally far advanced or so
thoroughly grounded, and his mother certainly had good cause to feel
proud of the effects both of her training and teaching, when she
suddenly perceived a strange change in him."
The doctor was here interrupted by the entrance of the old servant, who,
addressing her master, said:
"Monsieur, I came to warn you that the diligence for Nantes will pass at
six o'clock, and they have come for M. David's baggage."
"Very well, they can take it, and will you ask them to be good enough to
inform me when the diligence arrives?"
"Yes, M. David." Then, with an expression of artless regret, she added:
"Is it really true that you are going to leave us, M. David? Is it
possible that you are going to let your friend go?" she added, turning
to the doctor.
"Do you hear that?" asked M. Dufour, smiling sadly. "I am not the only
person who regrets your departure, you see."