THE SPEECH AT CHAMBÉRY.
“_Non, non, je me fais hironde--e--elle
Et je m’envo--o--le à tire d’ai--le--_”
The little Bachellery girl, clad in a fantastic cloak with a blue silk
capuchon, to go with a little toque wound round with a great big veil,
sang before her glass while finishing the buttoning of her gloves; her
clear, sharp voice had risen that morning in full limpidity and in the
best of humors. Spick and span for the excursion, the gay little body
of her had a pleasant fragrance of fresh toilet and new gown, very
neat and trig in contrast with the sloppy state of the hotel bedroom,
where the remainder of a late supper was to be seen on the table,
higgledy-piggledy with poker chips, cards and candles--all this close
to the tumbled bed and a big bath-tub full of that gleaming “little
milk” of Arvillard, so fine for calming the nerves and making the
skin of the ladies bathing there as smooth as satin. Downstairs the
basket-wagon was waiting, the horses shaking their bells and a full
escort of youths caracoling in front of the porch.
Just as the toilet was finished a knock came at the door.
“Come in!”
Roumestan came in, much excited, and held out to her a large envelope:
“There, Mlle--O! read--read--”
It was her engagement at the opera for five years, with all the
appointments she had wished, with the right of having her name printed
big, and everything. When she had read it, article by article,
coldly and with perfect poise, down to the great coarse signature of
Cadaillac, then and only then she took one step towards the Minister,
and, raising her veil, which was drawn closely about her face to keep
out the dust on the trip, standing very close to him, her rosy beak in
the air:
“You are very good--I love you--”
Nothing more than that was needed to make the man of the public forget
all the embarrassments which this engagement was going to cause him. He
restrained himself, however, and remained stiff, cold and frowning like
a crag.
“Now, I have kept my promise and I withdraw--I do not care to
disarrange your picnic party--”
“My picnic? Oh, yes, that’s so--we’re going to Château Bayard.”
And then, casting both her arms around his neck, she said in a
wheedling voice:
“You’ve got to come with us; yes--O, yes, I tell you.”
She brushed her long pencilled eyelashes across his cheek and even
nibbled a little at his statuesque chin, but not very hard, with the
ends of her little teeth.
“What! with those young people? Why, it is impossible. You cannot dream
of it?”
“Those young people? Much do I care for those young people! I will just
let them rip--Mamma will let them know--oh, they are used to it!--You
hear, Mamma?”
“I’m going,” said Mme. Bachellery, whom one could see in the next
chamber with her foot on a chair, trying to force over her red
stockings a pair of cloth gaiters much too small for her. She made the
Minister one of her famous courtesies from the Folies Bordelaises and
hurried downstairs to send the young gentlemen flying.
“Keep a horse for Bompard; he will come with us,” cried the little girl
after her; and Numa, touched by this attention, enjoyed the delicious
pleasure of holding this pretty girl in his arms and hearing all that
impertinent gang of young people walk off at a funeral pace with their
ears drooping. Many a time had their jumpings and skippings caused his
heart a lively time. One kiss applied for a long moment on a smile
which promised everything--then she disengaged herself.
“Hurry up and dress yourself; I’m in haste to be on the way.”
What a buzz of curiosity through the hotel, what a movement behind the
green blinds, when it was known that the Minister had joined the picnic
at Château Bayard and that his big white waistcoat and the Panama
hat shading his Roman face were seen displayed in the basket-wagon in
front of the little singer! After all, just as Father Olivieri who
had learned a lot during his voyages remarked, what harm was there
in it, anyhow? Didn’t her mother accompany them, and Château Bayard,
a historical monument, did it or did it not belong to the public
buildings under Ministerial control? So let us not be so intolerant,
great Heavens! especially in regard to men who give up their entire
life to the defence of the right doctrines and our holy religion!
“Bompard is not coming--what’s the matter with him?” murmured
Roumestan, impatient at having to wait there before the hotel
exposed to all those plunging glances which volleyed upon him
notwithstanding the canopy of the carriage. At a window in the first
story an extraordinary something appeared, a something white and
round and exotic, which spake in the voice of the former chieftain of
Circassians, “Go on ahead, I’ll _rejine_ you!”
Just as if they had only been waiting for the word, the two mules, low
in shoulder but solid in hoof, got away shaking their travelling-bells,
crossed the park in three jumps and whirled past the bathing
establishment.
“Ware! ware!”
The frightened bathers and sedan-chairs hurried to one side; the
bathing-maids, the big pockets of their aprons full of money and
colored tickets, appeared at the entrance of the galleries; the
massage men, as naked as Bedoweens under their woollen blankets, showed
themselves up to the waist on the stairway of the furnaces; the blue
shades of the inhalation halls were thrust aside; everybody wished to
see the Minister and the diva pass.
But already they are far away, whirled at railway speed through the
intersecting labyrinth of Arvillard’s little black streets, over the
sharp cobblestones, close together and veined with sulphur and fire,
out of which the carriage strikes sparks as it bounds along, shaking
the low walls of the leprous-colored houses and causing heads to
appear at the windows decked with placards. At the thresholds of the
shops where they sell iron-pointed canes, parasols, climbing-irons,
chalk stones, minerals, crystals and other catch-penny things for
bathers appear heads which bow and brows that uncover at the sight of
the Minister. The very people affected with goitre recognize him and
salute with their foolish and raucous cries the grand master of the
University of France, while the good ladies seated with him proudly
draw themselves up stiff and most worshipful opposite, feeling well the
honor which is being done them. They only lounge at their ease when
they are quite clear of the village lands, on the fine turnpike toward
Pontcharra, where the mules stop to blow at the foot of the tower of Le
Truil, which Bompard had fixed upon as a trysting-place.
The minutes pass, but no Bompard! They know he is a good horseman
because he has so often boasted of it; they are astonished and
irritated--particularly Numa--who is impatient to get on down that
even white road which seems absolutely without an end, and get farther
into that day which seems to open up like a life full of hopes and
adventures. Finally, from a cloud of dust out of which rises a
frightened voice that pants out _Ho! la! Ho! la!_ emerges the head of
Bompard, covered by one of those pith helmets spread with white cloth,
having a vague look of a life-boat, like those used by the British army
in India, which the Provençal had brought along with the intention of
dramatizing and making imposing his trip to the baths, having allowed
his hatter to believe that he was off for Bombay or Calcutta.
“Come on, my dear boy!”
Bompard tosses his head with a tragical air. Evidently at his departure
things had taken place; the Circassian must have been giving the people
of the hotel a very queer idea of his powers of equilibrium, because
his back and arms are soiled with large spots of dust.
“Wretched horse!” said he, bowing to the ladies, while the basket-wagon
started once more, “wretched horse! but I have forced him to a walk!”
He had forced him so well to a walk that now the strange beast would
not go ahead at all, prancing and turning about on one spot like a sick
cat, notwithstanding all the efforts made by his rider. The carriage
was already far away.
“Are you coming, Bompard?”
“Go on ahead, I’ll _rejine_ you!” cried he once more in his finest
Marseilles twang; then he made a despairing gesture and they saw him
rushing off in the direction of Arvillard in a furious whirl of hoofs.
Everybody thought: “He must have forgotten something,” and nobody
thought about him further.
The turnpike curved about the hills, a broad highroad of France set
with walnut-trees, having to the left forests of chestnut and pines
growing on terraces and on the right tremendous slopes rolling down as
far as one could see, down to the plain where villages appear crowded
together in the hollows of the landscape. There were the vineyards,
fields of wheat and corn, mulberries, almond-trees and dazzling carpets
of Spanish broom, the seeds of which, exploding in the heat, kept up a
constant popping as if the very soil were crackling and all on fire.
One could readily suppose it were so, considering the heavy air and
the furnace heat that did not seem to come from the sun--which was
almost invisible, having retired behind a sort of haze--but appeared to
emanate from burning vapors of the earth; it made the sight of Glayzin
and its top, surmounted with snows which one might touch, as it seemed,
with the end of one’s umbrella, look deliciously refreshing to the
sight.
Roumestan could not remember ever to have seen a landscape to be
compared with that one; no, not even in his dear Provence; and he
could not imagine happiness more complete than his own. No anxiety,
no remorse. His wife faithful and believing, the hope of a child, the
prediction Bouchereau had uttered concerning Hortense, the ruinous
effect which the appearance in the _Journal Officiel_ of the decree as
to Cadaillac would produce--none of these had any existence so far as
he was concerned. His entire destiny was wrapt up in that beautiful
girl whose eyes reflected his own, whose knees touched his, and who,
beneath her blue veil turned to a rose-color by her blond flesh, sang
to him while pressing his hand:
“_Maintenant je me sens aimée,
Fuyons tous deux sous la ramée._”
(Now I trust my lover’s vows,
Let us fly beneath the boughs.)
While they were rapidly whirling away in the breeze made by their
motion, the turnpike, gradually becoming lonelier, widened out their
horizons little by little, permitting them to see an immense plain in a
semicircle with its lakes and villages and then mountains differing in
shade according to their distance; it was Savoy beginning.
“O! how beautiful! O! how beautiful!” said the little singer; and he
answered in a low voice: “How I do love you!”
At the last halt Bompard came up to them once more, but very piteously,
on foot, dragging his horse after him by the bridle.
“This brute is most extraordinary,” said he without further
explanation, and when the ladies asked him if he had fallen: “No--it’s
my old wound which has opened again.”
Wounded! where and when? He had never spoken of it before. But with
Bompard one had to expect any surprise. They made him get into the
carriage; and with his very mild-mannered horse quietly fastened behind
they set off toward Château Bayard, whose two pepper-box towers,
wretchedly restored, could be seen on a high piece of ground.
A maid servant came to meet them, a quick-witted mountaineer’s woman
in the service of an old priest formerly in charge of parishes in
the neighborhood, who dwells in Château Bayard with the proviso that
tourists may enter freely. When a visitor is announced the priest goes
up to his bed-chamber in a very dignified way, unless indeed it is a
question of personages of note; but the Minister, sly fellow, took good
care not to give his title, so that it was in the guise of ordinary
visitors that they were shown by the servant--with her phrases learned
by heart and the canting tone of people of this sort--all that is left
of the old manor of the _chevalier sans peur et sans reproche_, whilst
the driver laid out breakfast under an arbor in the little garden.
“Here you have the antique chapel where our good chevalier morning and
evening.... Ladies and gentlemen will kindly notice the thickness of
the walls.”
But they didn’t notice anything at all. It was very dark and they
stumbled against the broken bits of wall which were dimly lit from a
loophole, the light of which fell through a hay-loft established above
the beams of the ceiling. Numa, his little girl’s arm under his own,
made some fun of the Chevalier Bayard and of “his worthy mother,” dame
Hélène des Allemans. The odor of ancient things bored them to death,
and actually, at one time, in order to try the echo of the vaulted
ceiling in the kitchen, Mme. Bachellery started to sing the last ballad
composed by her husband, but really a very naughty one--
_J’tiens ça a’papa ... j’tiens ça d’maman...._
(That’s me legacy from Popper ... that’s me legacy from Mommer....)
and yet nobody was scandalized; quite the contrary.
But outside, when breakfast was served on a massive stone table,
and after their first hunger had been appeased, the valley of
the Graisivaudan, Les Bauges, the severe buttresses of the
Grande-Chartreuse and the contrast made by that landscape full of
tremendous lines with the little terrace grass-plot where this solitary
old man dwelt--given up entirely to prayer, to his tulip-trees and
to his bees--affected little by little their spirits with something
sweet and grave which was akin to reflection. At dessert the Minister,
opening his guide-book to refresh his memory, spoke about Bayard “and
of his poor dame mother who did tenderly weep” on that day when the
child, setting out for Chambéry to be page at the Court of the Duke of
Savoy, caused his little bay nag to prance in front of the north gate,
on that very place where the shadow of the great tower was lengthening
itself, slender but majestic, like the phantom of the old vanished
castle.
And Numa, exciting himself, read to them the fine sentiments of Madame
Hélène to her son at the moment of his departure:
“Pierre, my friend, I recommend to thee that before everything else
thou shalt love, fear and serve God without in any wise doing Him
offence, if that be possible.”
Standing there on the terrace, sweeping off a gesture which carried as
far as Chambéry:
“That is what should be said to children, that is what all parents,
that is what all schoolmasters--”
He stopped short and struck his brow with his hand:
“My speech!--why, that is my speech!--I have it! splendid! the Château
Bayard, a local legend--for fifteen days have I been looking for
it--and here it is!”
“Why, it is pure Providence,” cried Mme. Bachellery, full of
admiration, but thinking all the same that the breakfast was ending
rather solemnly. “What a man! What a man!”
The little girl seemed also very much excited, but of this impression
Roumestan took no heed; the orator was boiling in him, behind his brow
and in his breast; so, completely absorbed with his idea:
“The fine thing,” said he, casting his eyes about him, “the fine thing
would be to date the speech from Château Bayard--”
“O, if Mr. Lawyer should want a little corner in which to write--”
“Why, yes, only to jot down a few notes. You’ll excuse me, ladies, just
for the time that will do to drink your coffee, and I will be back.
It’s merely to be able to put the date to my speech without telling a
lie.”
The servant placed him in a little room on the ground floor, most
ancient in appearance, whose domelike, vaulted ceiling still carries
traces of gilding; an ancient room which they pretend was Bayard’s
oratory, just as they present to you as his bedroom the big hall to one
side in which an enormous peasant’s bed, with a canopy and dark blue
curtains, is set up.
It was very nice to write between those thick walls into which the
heavy atmosphere of the day could not penetrate, behind that half-open
shutter which threw a pencil of light across the page and allowed the
perfumes from the little garden to enter. At first the orator’s pen was
not quick enough to keep pace with the flow of his ideas; he poured
out his phrases headlong, in a mass--well worn but eloquent phrases of
a Provençal lawyer, filled with a hidden heat and the sputtering of
sparks here and there, like the outflow of molten metal. Suddenly he
stopped, his head emptied of words or rendered heavy by the fatigue
of the journey and the weight of the breakfast. Then he marched up
and down from the oratory to the bedroom, talking in a high voice,
lashing himself, listening to his footsteps under the sonorous vaults
as if they were those of some illustrious revenant, and then he set
himself down again without the thoughts to put down a line. Everything
swam about him, the walls brilliantly white-washed and that pencil of
sunlight which seemed to hypnotize him. He heard the noise of plates
and laughter in the garden, far, far away, and presently, with his nose
on the paper, he had fallen fast asleep.
A tremendous thunder-clap made him start to his feet. How long had
he been there? His head a little confused, he stepped out into the
deserted and motionless garden. The fragrance of the tulip-trees made
the air heavy. Under the vacant arbor wasps were heavily flying about
the heeltaps in the champagne glasses and the bits of sugar left in the
cups, which the mountaineer’s woman was hurriedly clearing off, seized
by the nervous fear of an animal at the approach of a thunder-storm
and making the sign of the cross each time the lightning flashed. She
informed Numa that the young lady had found herself with a bad headache
after breakfast and so she had taken her to Bayard’s chamber to sleep
a little, closing the door “_vary_ gently” in order not to bother the
gentleman at his work. The two others, the fat lady and the man with
the white hat, had gone down toward the valley and without any doubt
they would catch it, because there was going to be a terrible ... “just
look!”
In the direction she indicated, on the choppy crest of Les Bauges
and the chalky peaks of the Grande-Chartreuse, which were enveloped
in lightning flashes like some mysterious Mount Sinai, the sky was
darkened by an enormous blot of ink that grew larger every instant,
under which the whole valley took on an extraordinary luminous value,
like the light from a white and oblique reflector, according as this
sombre and growling threat continued to advance. All the valley shared
in the change, the reflux of wind in the tops of the green trees, the
golden masses of grain, the highways indicated by feathery clouds of
white dust raised by the wind and the silver surface of the river
Isère. In the far distance Roumestan perceived the canvas pith helmet
of Bompard, which shone like a lighthouse reflector.
He went in again but could not take hold of his work. For the moment
sleep no longer paralyzed his pen; on the contrary he felt himself
strangely excited by the presence of Alice Bachellery in the next
chamber. By the way, was she still there? He opened the door a little
and did not dare to shut it again for fear of disturbing the charming
slumber of the singer, who had thrown herself with loosened clothes on
the bed in a troubling disorder of tumbled hair, open corset and white,
half-seen curves.
“Come, come, Numa, beware! it is the bedroom of Bayard; what the deuce!”
Positively he seized himself by the collar like a malefactor, dragged
himself back and forcibly seated himself at the table. He put his head
between his hands, closing his eyes and his ears in order to absorb
himself completely in the last phrase, which he repeated in a low voice:
“Yes, gentlemen, the sublime advice of the mother of Bayard, which has
come down to us in that mellifluous tongue of the middle ages--would
that the University of France....”
The storm was so heavy and depleting, like the shade of certain
trees in the tropics, it took away his nerve. His head was swimming,
intoxicated by the exquisite perfumes given forth by the bitter flowers
of the tulip-trees or else by that armful of blond hair scattered
over the bed not far off. Wretched Minister! It was all very well to
cling to his speech and to invoke the aid of the _chevalier sans peur
et sans reproche_, public instruction, religious culture, the rector
of Chambéry--nothing was of any use. He had to return into Bayard’s
bedchamber, and this time so close to the sleeping girl that he could
hear her gentle breathing and touch with his hand the tassel stuff of
the curtains which framed this provoking slumber, this mother-of-pearl
flesh with the shadows and the rosy undercolor of a naughty drawing in
red chalk by Fragonard.
But even there, on the brink of temptation, the Minister still fought
with himself and in a mechanical murmur his lips continued to mumble
that sublime advice which the University of France--when a sudden roll
of thunder, whose claps came nearer and nearer, woke the singer all of
a jump.
“Oh, what a fear I was in--hello! is it you?” She recognized him with
a smile, with those clear eyes of a child which wakes up without the
slightest embarrassment at its own disorder; and there they remained
motionless and affected by the silence and growing flame of their
desire. But the bedroom was suddenly plunged in a big dark shadow by
the clapping-to of the tall shutters, which the wind banged shut one
after the other. They heard the doors slam, a key fall, the whirling
of leaves and flowers over the sand as far as the lintel of the door
through which the hurricane plaintively moaned.
“What a storm!” said she in a very low voice, taking hold of his
burning hand and almost dragging him beneath the curtains--
* * * * *
“Yes, gentlemen, this sublime advice of Bayard’s mother, which has come
down to us in that mellifluous tongue of the middle ages--”
It was at Chambéry this time, in sight of the old Château of Savoy
and of that marvellous amphitheatre formed of green hills and snowy
mountains which Châteaubriand remembered when he saw Mount Taygetus,
that the grand master of the University was speaking, thickly
surrounded by embroidered coats, by palm decorations, by orders with
ermine, by epaulettes decked with big tassels; there he was, dominating
an enormous crowd excited by the power of his will and the gesture of
his strong hand that still grasped a little ivory-handled trowel with
which he had just spread the mortar for the first stone of the new
Lyceum.
“Would that the University of France might speak those words to
every one of its boys: ‘Pierre, my friend, I recommend to thee before
everything else that....’”
And whilst he quoted those touching words emotion caused his hand,
his voice and his broad cheeks to tremble at the memory of that great
perfumed room in which, during the agitation caused by a most memorable
thunder-storm, the Chambéry speech had been composed.