"Laissons les regrets et les pleurs
A la vieillesse;
Jeunes, il faut cueillir les fleurs
De la jeunesse!"--Baif.
Sometimes we spent the Sunday morning in Paris, Barty and I--in
picture-galleries and museums and wax-figure shows, churches and
cemeteries, and the Hotel Cluny and the Baths of Julian the
Apostate--or the Jardin des Plantes, or the Morgue, or the knackers'
yards at Montfaucon--or lovely slums. Then a swim at the Bains
Deligny. Then lunch at some restaurant on the Quai Voltaire, or in
the Quartier Latin. Then to some cafe on the Boulevards, drinking
our demi-tasse and our chasse-cafe, and smoking our cigarettes like
men, and picking our teeth like gentlemen of France.
Once after lunch at Vachette's with Berquin (who was seventeen) and
Bonneville (the marquis who had got an English mother), we were
sitting outside the Cafe des Varietes, in the midst of a crowd of
consommateurs, and tasting to the full the joy of being alive, when
a poor woman came up with a guitar, and tried to sing "Le petit
mousse noir," a song Barty knew quite well--but she couldn't sing a
bit, and nobody listened.
"Allons, Josselin, chante-nous ca!" said Berquin.
And Bonneville jumped up, and took the woman's guitar from her, and
forced it into Josselin's hands, while the crowd became much
interested and began to applaud.
Thus encouraged, Barty, who never in all his life knew what it is to
be shy, stood up and piped away like a bird; and when he had
finished the story of the little black cabin-boy who sings in the
maintop halliards, the applause was so tremendous that he had to
stand up on a chair and sing another, and yet another.
"Ecoute-moi bien, ma Fleurette!" and "Amis, la matinee est belle!"
(from _La Muette de Portici_), while the pavement outside the
Varietes was rendered quite impassable by the crowd that had
gathered round to look and listen--and who all joined in the chorus:
"Conduis ta barque avec prudence,
Pecheur! parle bas!
Jette tes filets en silence
Pecheur! parle bas!
Et le roi des mers ne nous echappera pas!" (_bis_).
and the applause was deafening.
Meanwhile Bonneville and Berquin went round with the hat and
gathered quite a considerable sum, in which there seemed to be
almost as much silver as copper--and actually _two five-franc pieces
and an English half-sovereign_! The poor woman wept with gratitude
at coming into such a fortune, and insisted on kissing Barty's hand.
Indeed it was a quite wonderful ovation, considering how
unmistakably British was Barty's appearance, and how unpopular we
were in France just then!
[Illustration: "AMIS, LA MATINEE EST BELLE"]
He had his new shiny black silk chimney-pot hat on, and his Eton
jacket, with the wide shirt collar. Berquin, in a tightly fitting
double-breasted brown cloth swallow-tailed coat with brass buttons,
yellow nankin bell-mouthed trousers strapped over varnished boots,
butter-colored gloves, a blue satin stock, and a very tall hairy hat
with a wide curly brim, looked such an out-and-out young gentleman of
France that we were all proud of being seen in his company--especially
young de Bonneville, who was still in mourning for his father and wore a
crape band round his arm, and a common cloth cap with a leather peak,
and thick blucher boots; though he was quite sixteen, and already had a
little black mustache like an eyebrow, and inhaled the smoke of his
cigarette without coughing and quite naturally, and ordered the waiters
about just as if he already wore the uniform of the Ecole St.-Cyr, for
which he destined himself (and was not disappointed. He should be a
marshal of France by now--perhaps he is).
Then we went to the Cafe Mulhouse on the Boulevard des Italiens (on
the "_Boul. des It._," as we called it, to be in the fashion)--that
we might gaze at Senor Joaquin Eliezegui, the Spanish giant, who was
eight feet high and a trifle over (or under--I forget which): he
told us himself. Barty had a passion for gazing at very tall men;
like Frederic the Great (or was it his Majesty's royal father?).
Then we went to the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, where, in a painted wooden
shed, a most beautiful Circassian slave, miraculously rescued from some
abominable seraglio in Constantinople, sold pen'orths of "galette du
gymnase." On her raven hair she wore a silk turban all over sequins,
silver and gold, with a yashmak that fell down behind, leaving her
adorable face exposed: she had an amber vest of silk, embroidered with
pearls as big as walnuts, and Turkish pantalettes--what her slippers
were we couldn't see, but they must have been lovely, like all the rest
of her. Barty had a passion for gazing at very beautiful female
faces--like his father before him.
There was a regular queue of postulants to see this heavenly Eastern
houri and buy her confection, which is very like Scotch butter-cake,
but not so digestible; and even more filling at the price. And three
of us sat on a bench, while three times running Barty took his place
in that procession--soldiers, sailors, workmen, chiffonniers, people
of all sorts, women as many as men--all of them hungry for galette,
but hungrier still for a good humanizing stare at a beautiful female
face; and he made the slow and toilsome journey to the little wooden
booth three times--and brought us each a pen'orth on each return
journey; and the third time, Katidjah (such was her sweet Oriental
name) leaned forward over her counter and kissed him on both cheeks,
and whispered in his ear (in English--and with the accent of
Stratford-atte-Bowe):
"You little _duck_! _your_ name is _Brown_, _I_ know!"
And he came away, his face pale with conflicting emotions, and told
us!
How excited we were! Bonneville (who spoke English quite well) went
for a pen'orth on his own account, and said: "My name's Brown too,
Miss Katidjah!" But he didn't get a kiss.
(She soon after married a Mr. ----, of ----, the well-known ----
Of ----shire, in ----land. She may be alive now.)
Then to the Palais Royal, to dine at the "Diner Europeen" with M.
Berquin pere, a famous engineer; and finally to stalls at the
"Francais" to see the two first acts of _Le Cid_; and this was
rather an anticlimax--for we had too much "Cid" at the Institution
F. Brossard already!
And then, at last, to the omnibus station in the Rue de Rivoli,
whence the "Accelerees" (en correspondence avec les Constantines)
started for Passy every ten minutes; and thus, up the gas-lighted
Champs-Elysees, and by the Arc de Triomphe, to the Rond-point de
l'Avenue de St.-Cloud; tired out, but happy--happy--happy _comme on
ne l'est plus_!
Before the school broke up for the holidays there were very severe
examinations--but no "distribution de prix"; we were above that kind
of thing at Brossard's, just as we were above wearing a uniform or
taking in day boarders.
Barty didn't come off very well in this competition; but he came off
anyhow much better than I, who had failed to be "diligent and
attentive"--too much _Monte Cristo_, I'm afraid.
At all events Barty got five marks for English History, because he
remembered a good deal about Richard Coeur de Lion, and John, and
Friar Tuck, and Robin Hood, and especially one Cedric the Saxon, a
historical personage of whom the examiner (a decorated gentleman
from the College de France) had never even heard!
* * * * *
And then (to the tune of "Au clair de la lune"):
"Vivent les vacances--
_Denique tandem_;
Et les penitences--
_Habebunt finem_!
Les pions intraitables,
_Vultu Barbaro_,
S'en iront aux diables,
_Gaudio nostro_."
N.B.--The accent is always on the last syllable in French Latin--and
_pion_ means an usher.
[Illustration: "TOO MUCH 'MONTE CRISTO,' I'M AFRAID"]
Barty went to Yorkshire with the Rohans, and I spent most of my holidays
with my mother and sister (and the beautiful Miss ----) at Mademoiselle
Jalabert's, next door--coming back to school for most of my meals, and
at night to sleep, with a whole dormitory to myself, and no dreadful
bell at five in the morning; and so much time to spare that I never
found any leisure for my holiday task, that skeleton at the feast; no
more did Jules, the sergeant's son; no more did Caillard, who spent his
vacation at Brossard's because his parents lived in Russia, and his
"correspondant" in Paris was ill.
The only master who remained behind was Bonzig, who passed his time
painting ships and sailors, in oil-colors; it was a passion with
him: corvettes, brigantines, British whalers, fishing-smacks,
revenue-cutters, feluccas, caiques, even Chinese junks--all was fish
that came to his net. He got them all from _La France Maritime_, an
illustrated periodical much in vogue at Brossard's; and also his
storms and his calms, his rocks and piers and light-houses--for he
had never seen the sea he was so fond of. He took us every morning
to the Passy swimming-baths, and in the afternoon for long walks in
Paris, and all about and around, and especially to the Musee de
Marine at the Louvre, that we might gaze with him at the beautiful
models of three-deckers.
He evidently pitied our forlorn condition, and told us delightful
stories about seafaring life, like Mr. Clark Russell's; and how he,
some day, hoped to see the ocean for himself before he died--and
with his own eyes.
I really don't know how Jules and Caillard would have got through
the hideous _ennui_ of that idle September without him. Even I, with
my mother and sister and the beautiful Miss ---- within such easy
reach, found time hang heavily at times. One can't be always
reading, even Alexandre Dumas; nor always loafing about, even in
Paris, by one's self (Jules and Caillard were not allowed outside
the gates without Bonzig); and beautiful English girls of eighteen,
like Miss ----s, don't always want a small boy dangling after them,
and show it sometimes; which I thought very hard.
It was almost a relief when school began again in October, and the
boys came back with their wonderful stories of the good time they
had all had (especially some of the big boys, who were "en
rhetorique et en philosophie")--and all the game that had fallen to
their guns--wild-boars, roebucks, cerfs-dix-cors, and what not; of
perilous swims in stormy seas--tremendous adventures in
fishing-smacks on moonlight nights (it seemed that the moon had been
at the full all through those wonderful six weeks); rides _ventre a
terre_ on mettlesome Arab steeds through gloomy wolf-haunted forests
with charming female cousins; flirtations and "good fortunes" with
beautiful but not happily married women in old mediaeval castle
keeps. Toujours au clair de la lune! They didn't believe each other
in the least, these gay young romancers--nor expect to be believed
themselves; but it was very exciting all the same; and they
listened, and were listened to in turn, without a gesture of
incredulity--nor even a smile! And we small boys held our tongues in
reverence and awe.
When Josselin came back he had wondrous things to tell too--but so
preposterous that they disbelieved him quite openly, and told him
so. How in London he had seen a poor woman so tipsy in the street
that she had to be carried away by two policemen on a stretcher. How
he had seen brewers' dray-horses nearly six feet high at the
shoulder--and one or two of them with a heavy cavalry mustache
drooping from its upper lip.
How he had been presented to the Lord Mayor of London, and even
shaken hands with him, in Leadenhall Market, and that his Lordship
was quite plainly dressed; and how English Lord Mayors were not
necessarily "hommes du monde," nor always hand in glove with Queen
Victoria!
Splendide mendax!
But they forgave him all his mendacity for the sake of a new
accomplishment he had brought back with him, and which beat all his
others. He could actually turn a somersault backwards with all the
ease and finish of a professional acrobat. How he got to do this I
don't know. It must have been natural to him and he never found it
out before; he was always good at gymnastics--and all things that
required grace and agility more than absolute strength.
Also he brought back with him (from Leadenhall Market, no doubt) a
gigantic horned owl, fairly tame--and with eyes that reminded us of
le grand Bonzig's.
School began, and with it the long evenings with an hour's play by
lamp-light in the warm salle d'etudes; and the cold lamp-lit ninety
minutes' preparation on an empty stomach, after the short
perfunctory morning prayer--which didn't differ much from the
evening one.
Barty was still _en cinquieme_, at the top! and I at the tail of the
class immediately above--so near and yet so far! so I did not have
many chances of improving my acquaintance with him that term; for he
still stuck to Laferte and Bussy-Rabutin--they were inseparable,
those three.
At mid-day play-time the weather was too cold for anything but
games, which were endless in their variety and excitement; it would
take a chapter to describe them.
It is a mistake to think that French school-boys are (or were) worse
off than ours in this. I will not say that any one French game is
quite so good as cricket or football for a permanency. But I
remember a great many that are very nearly so.
Indeed, French rounders (la balle au camp) seems to me the best game
that ever was--on account of the quick rush and struggle of the
fielders to get home when an inside boy is hit between the bases,
lest he should pick the ball up in time to hit one of them with it
before the camp is reached; in which case there is a most exciting
scrimmage for the ball, etc., etc.
Barty was good at all games, especially la balle au camp. I used to
envy the graceful, easy way he threw the ball--so quick and straight
it seemed to have no curve at all in its trajectory: and how it
bounded off the boy it nearly always hit between the shoulders!
At evening, play in the school-room, besides draughts and chess and
backgammon; M. Bonzig, when _de service_, would tell us thrilling
stories, with "la suite au prochain numero" when the bell rang at 7.30;
a long series that lasted through the winter of '47-'48. _Le Tueur de
Daims_, _Le Lac Ontario_, _Le Dernier des Mohicans_, _Les Pionniers_,
_La Prairie_--by one Fenimore Coupere; all of which he had read in M.
Defauconpret's admirable translations. I have read some of them in their
native American since then, myself. I loved them always--but they seemed
to lack some of the terror, the freshness, and the charm his fluent
utterance and solemn nasal voice put into them as he sat and smoked his
endless cigarettes with his back against the big stone stove, and his
eyes dancing sideways through his glasses. Never did that
"ding-dang-dong" sound more hateful than when le grand Bonzig was
telling the tale of Bas-de-cuir's doings, from his innocent youth to his
noble and Pathetic death by sunset, with his ever-faithful and
still-serviceable but no longer deadly rifle (the friend of sixty years)
lying across his knees. I quote from memory; what a gun that was!
Then on Thursdays, long walks, two by two, in Paris, with Bonzig or
Dumollard; or else in the Bois to play rounders or prisoners' base
in a clearing, or skate on the Mare aux Biches, which was always so
hard to find in the dense thicket ... poor Lord Runswick! _He_ found
it once too often!
La Mare d'Auteuil was too deep, and too popular with "la flotte de
Passy," as we called the Passy voyous, big and small, who came there
in their hundreds--to slide and pick up quarrels with well-dressed
and respectable school-boys. Liberte--egalite--fraternite! ou la
mort! Vive la republique! (This, by-the-way, applies to the winter
that came _next_.)
So time wore on with us gently; through the short vacation at
New-year's day till the 23d or 24th of February, when the Revolution
broke out, and Louis Philippe premier had to fly for his life. It
was a very troublous time, and the school for a whole week was in a
state of quite heavenly demoralization! Ten times a day, or in the
dead of night, the drum would beat _le rappel_ or _la generale_. A
warm wet wind was blowing--the most violent wind I can remember that
was not an absolute gale. It didn't rain, but the clouds hurried
across the sky all day long, and the tops of the trees tried to bend
themselves in two; and their leafless boughs and black broken twigs
littered the deserted playground--for we all sat on the parapet of
the terrace by the lingerie; boys and servants, le pere et la mere
Jaurion, Mlle. Marceline and the rest, looking towards Paris--all
feeling bound to each other by a common danger, like wild beasts in
a flood. Dear me! I'm out of breath from sheer pleasure in the
remembrance.
One night we had to sleep on the floor for fear of stray bullets;
and that was a fearful joy never to be forgotten--it almost kept us
awake! Peering out of the school-room windows at dusk, we saw great
fires, three or four at a time. Suburban retreats of the
over-wealthy, in full conflagration; and all day the rattle of
distant musketry and the boom of cannon a long way off, near
Montmartre and Montfaucon, kept us alive.
Most of the boys went home, and some of them never came back--and
from that day the school began to slowly decline. Pere Brossard--an
ancient "Brigand de la Loire," as the republicans of his youth were
called--was elected a representative of his native town at the
Chamber of Deputies; and possibly that did the school more harm than
good--ne sutor ultra crepidam! as he was so fond of impressing on
_us_!
However, we went on pretty much as usual through spring and
summer--with occasional alarms (which we loved), and beatings of _le
rappel_--till the July insurrection broke out.
My mother and sister had left Mlle. Jalabert's, and now lived with
my father near the Boulevard Montmartre. And when the fighting was
at its height they came to fetch me home, and invited Barty, for the
Rohans were away from Paris. So home we walked, quite leisurely, on
a lovely peaceful summer evening, while the muskets rattled and the
cannons roared round us, but at a proper distance; women picking
linen for lint and chatting genially the while at shop doors and
porter's lodge-gates; and a piquet of soldiers at the corner of
every street, who felt us all over for hidden cartridges before they
let us through; it was all entrancing! The subtle scent of gunpowder
was in the air--the most suggestive smell there can be. Even now,
here in England, the night of the fifth of November never comes
round but I am pleasantly reminded of the days when I was "en pleine
revolution" in the streets of Paris with my father and mother, and
Barty and my little sister--and genial _piou-pious_ made such a
Conscientious examination of our garments. Nothing brings back the
past like a sound or a smell--even those of a penny squib!
Every now and then a litter borne by soldiers came by, on which lay
a dead or wounded officer. And then one's laugh died suddenly out,
and one felt one's self face to face with the horrors that were
going on.
Barty shared my bed, and we lay awake talking half the night;
dreadful as it all was, one couldn't help being jolly! Every ten
minutes the sentinel on duty in the court-yard below would
sententiously intone:
"Sentinelles, prenez-garde a vous!" And other sentinels would repeat
the cry till it died away in the distance, like an echo.
And all next day, or the day after--or else the day after that, when
the long rattle of the musketry had left off--we heard at intervals
the "feu de peloton" in a field behind the church of St.-Vincent de
Paul, and knew that at every discharge a dozen poor devils of
insurgents, caught red-handed, fell dead in a pool of blood!
I need hardly say that before three days were over the irrepressible
Barty had made a complete conquest of my small family. My sister (I
hasten to say this) has loved him as a brother ever since; and as
long as my parents lived, and wherever they made their home, that
home has ever been his--and he has been their son--almost their
eldest born, though he was younger than I by seven months.
Things have been reversed, however, for now thirty years and more;
and his has ever been the home for me, and his people have been my
people, and ever will be--and the God of his worship mine!
What children and grandchildren of my own could ever be to me as
these of Barty Josselin's?
"Ce sacre Josselin--il avait tous les talents!"
And the happiest of these gifts, and not the least important, was
the gift he had of imparting to his offspring all that was most
brilliant and amiable and attractive in himself, and leaving in them
unimpaired all that was strongest and best in the woman I loved as
well as he did, and have loved as long--and have grown to look upon
as belonging to the highest female type that can be; for doubtless
the Creator, in His infinite wisdom, might have created a better and
a nicer woman than Mrs. Barty Josselin that was to be, had He
thought fit to do so; but doubtless also He never did.
Alas! the worst of us is that the best of us are those that want the
longest knowing to find it out.
My kind-hearted but cold-mannered and undemonstrative Scotch father,
evangelical, a total abstainer, with a horror of tobacco--surely the
austerest dealer in French wines that ever was--a puritanical hater
of bar sinisters, and profligacy, and Rome, and rank, and the army,
and especially the stage--he always lumped them together more or
less--a despiser of all things French, except their wines, which he
never drank himself--remained devoted to Barty till the day of his
death; and so with my dear genial mother, whose heart yet always
yearned towards serious boys who worked hard at school and college,
and passed brilliant examinations, and got scholarships and
fellowships in England, and state sinecures in France, and married
early, and let their mothers choose their wives for them, and train
up their children in the way they should go. She had lived so long
in France that she was Frencher than the French themselves.
And they both loved good music--Mozart, Bach, Beethoven--and were
almost priggish in their contempt for anything of a lighter kind;
especially with a lightness English or French! It was only the
musical lightness of Germany they could endure at all! But whether
in Paris or London, enter Barty Josselin, idle school-boy, or dandy
dissipated guardsman, and fashionable man about town, or bohemian
art student; and Bach, lebewohl! good-bye, Beethoven! bonsoir le bon
Mozart! all was changed: and welcome, instead, the last comic song
from the Chateau des Fleurs, or Evans's in Covent Garden; the latest
patriotic or sentimental ditty by Loisa Puget, or Frederic Berat, or
Eliza Cook, or Mr. Henry Russell.
And then, what would Barty like for breakfast, dinner, supper after
the play, and which of all those burgundies would do Barty good
without giving him a headache next morning? and where was Barty to
have his smoke?--in the library, of course. "Light the fire in the
library, Mary; and Mr. Bob [that was me] can smoke there, too,
instead of going outside," etc., etc., etc. It is small wonder that
he grew a bit selfish at times.
Though I was a little joyous now and then, it is quite without a
shadow of bitterness or envy that I write all this. I have lived for
fifty years under the charm of that genial, unconscious,
irresistible tyranny; and, unlike my dear parents, I have lived to
read and know Barty Josselin, nor merely to see and hear and love
him for himself alone.
Indeed, it was quite impossible to know Barty at all intimately and
not do whatever he wanted you to do. Whatever he wanted, he wanted
so intensely, and at once; and he had such a droll and engaging way
of expressing that hurry and intensity, and especially of expressing
his gratitude and delight when what he wanted was what he got--that
you could not for the life of you hold your own! Tout vient a qui ne
sait pas attendre!
Besides which, every now and then, if things didn't go quite as he
wished, he would fly into comic rages, and become quite violent and
intractable for at least five minutes, and for quite five minutes
more he would silently sulk. And then, just as suddenly, he would
forget all about it, and become once more the genial, affectionate,
and caressing creature he always was.
But this is going ahead too fast! revenons. At the examinations this
year Barty was almost brilliant, and I was hopeless as usual; my
only consolation being that after the holidays we should at last be
in the same class together, _en quatrieme_, and all through this
hopelessness of mine!
Laferte was told by his father that he might invite two of his
school-fellows to their country-house for the vacation, so he asked
Josselin and Bussy-Rabutin. But Bussy couldn't go--and, to my
delight, I went instead.
That ride all through the sweet August night, the three of us on the
imperiale of the five-horsed diligence, just behind the conductor
and the driver--and freedom, and a full moon, or nearly so--and a
tremendous saucisson de Lyon (a l'ail, bound in silver paper)--and
petits pains--and six bottles of biere de Mars--and cigarettes ad
libitum, which of course we made ourselves!
The Lafertes lived in the Department of La Sarthe, in a delightful
country-house, with a large garden sloping down to a transparent
stream, which had willows and alders and poplars all along its both
banks, and a beautiful country beyond.
Outside the grounds (where there were the old brick walls, all
overgrown with peaches and pears and apricots, of some forgotten
mediaeval convent) was a large farm; and close by, a water-mill that
never stopped.
A road, with thick hedge-rows on either side, led to a small and
very pretty town called La Tremblaye, three miles off. And hard by
the garden gates began the big forest of that name: one heard the
stags calling, and the owls hooting, and the fox giving tongue as it
hunted the hares at night. There might have been wolves and
wild-boars. I like to think so very much.
M. Laferte was a man of about fifty--entre les deux ages; a retired
maitre de forges, or iron-master, or else the son of one: I forget
which. He had a charming wife and two pretty little daughters,
Jeanne et Marie, aged fourteen and twelve.
He seldom moved from his country home, which was called "Le Gue des
Aulnes," except to go shooting in the forest; for he was a great
sportsman and cared for little else. He was of gigantic stature--six
foot six or seven, and looked taller still, as he had a very small
head and high shoulders. He was not an Adonis, and could only see
out of one eye--the other (the left one, fortunately) was fixed as
if it were made of glass--perhaps it was--and this gave him a stern
and rather forbidding expression of face.
He had just been elected Mayor of La Tremblaye, beating the Comte de
la Tremblaye by many votes. The Comte was a royalist and not
popular. The republican M. Laferte (who was immensely charitable and
very just) was very popular indeed, in spite of a morose and gloomy
manner. He could even be violent at times, and then he was terrible
to see and hear. Of course his wife and daughters were gentleness
itself, and so was his son, and everybody who came into contact with
him. _Si vis pacem, para bellum_, as Pere Brossard used to impress
upon us.
It was the strangest country household I have ever seen, in France
or anywhere else. They were evidently very well off, yet they
preferred to eat their mid-day meal in the kitchen, which was
immense; and so was the mid-day meal--and of a succulency!...
An old wolf-hound always lay by the huge log fire; often with two or
three fidgety cats fighting for the soft places on him and making
him growl; five or six other dogs, non-sporting, were always about
at meal-time.
The servants--three or four peasant women who waited on us--talked
all the time; and were _tutoyees_ by the family. Farm-laborers came
in and discussed agricultural matters, manures, etc., quite
informally, squeezing their bonnets de coton in their hands. The
postman sat by the fire and drank a glass of cider and smoked his
pipe up the chimney while the letters were read--most of them out
loud--and were commented upon by everybody in the most friendly
spirit. All this made the meal last a long time.
M. Laferte always wore his blouse--except in the evening, and then
he wore a brown woollen vareuse, or jersey; unless there were
guests, when he wore his Sunday morning best. He nearly always spoke
like a peasant, although he was really a decently educated man--or
should have been.
His old mother, who was of good family and eighty years of age
lived in a quite humble cottage in a small street in La Tremblaye,
with two little peasant girls to wait on her; and the La Tremblayes,
with whom M. Laferte was not on speaking terms, were always coming
into the village to see her and bring her fruit and flowers and
game. She was a most accomplished old lady, and an excellent
musician, and had known Monsieur de Lafayette.
We breakfasted with her when we alighted from the diligence at six
in the morning; and she took such a fancy to Barty that her own
grandson was almost forgotten. He sang to her, and she sang to him,
and showed him autograph letters of Lafayette, and a lock of her
hair when she was seventeen, and old-fashioned miniatures of her
father and mother, Monsieur and Madame de something I've quite
forgotten.
M. Laferte kept a pack of bassets (a kind of bow-legged beagle), and
went shooting with them every day in the forest, wet or dry;
sometimes we three boys with him. He lent us guns--an old
single-barrelled flint-lock cavalry musket or carbine fell to my
share; and I knew happiness such as I had never known yet.
Barty was evidently not meant for a sportsman. On a very warm August
morning, as he and I squatted "a l'affut" at the end of a long
straight ditch outside a thicket which the bassets were hunting, we
saw a hare running full tilt at us along the ditch, and we both
fired together. The hare shrieked, and turned a big somersault and
fell on its back and kicked convulsively--its legs still
galloping--and its face and neck were covered with blood; and, to my
astonishment, Barty became quite hysterical with grief at what we
had done. It's the only time I ever saw him cry.
"_Cain! Cain! qu'as-tu fait de ton frere?_" he shrieked again and
again, in a high voice, like a small child's--like the hare's.
I calmed him down and promised I wouldn't tell, and he recovered
himself and bagged the game--but he never came out shooting with us
again! So I inherited his gun, which was double-barrelled.
Barty's accomplishments soon became the principal recreation of the
Laferte ladies; and even M. Laferte himself would start for the
forest an hour or two later or come back an hour sooner to make
Barty go through his bag of tricks. He would have an arm-chair
brought out on the lawn after breakfast and light his short black
pipe and settle the programme himself.
First, "_le saut perilleux_"--the somersault backwards--over and
over again, at intervals of two or three minutes, so as to give
himself time for thought and chuckles, while he smoked his pipe in
silent stodgy jubilation.
Then, two or three songs--they would be stopped, if M. Laferte
didn't like them, after the first verse, and another one started
instead; and if it pleased him, it was encored two or three times.
Then, pen and ink and paper were brought, and a small table and a
kitchen chair, and Barty had to draw caricatures, of which M.
Laferte chose the subject.
"Maintenant, fais-moi le profil de mon vieil ami M. Bonzig, que j'
n' connais pas, que j' n'ai jamais vu, mais q' j'aime beaucoup."
(Now do me the side face of my old friend M. Bonzig, whom I don't
know, but am very fond of.)
And so on for twenty minutes.
Then Barty had to be blindfolded and twisted round and round, and
point out the north--when he felt up to it.
Then a pause for reflection.