After this account of the philosophical life of Patience, set forth
by me now in manhood (continued Bernard, after a pause), it is not
altogether easy to return to the very different impressions I received
in boyhood on meeting the wizard of Gazeau Tower. I will make an effort,
however, to reproduce my recollections faithfully.
It was one summer evening, as I was returning from bird-snaring with
several peasant-boys, that I passed Gazeau Tower for the first time.
My age was about thirteen, and I was bigger and stronger than any of my
comrades; besides, I exercised over them, sternly enough, the authority
I drew from my noble birth. In fact, the mixture of familiarity and
etiquette in our intercourse was rather fantastic. Sometimes, when the
excitement of sport or the fatigue of the day had greater powers over
them than I, they used to have their own way; and I already knew how
to yield at the right moment, as tyrants do, so as always to avoid the
appearance of being compelled. However, I generally found a chance for
revenge, and soon saw them trembling before the hated name of my family.
Well, night was coming on, and we were walking along gaily, whistling,
knocking down crab-apples with stones, imitating the notes of birds,
when the boy who was ahead suddenly stopped, and, coming back to us,
declared that he was not going by the Gazeau Tower path, but would
rather cut across the wood. This idea was favoured by two others. A
third objected that we ran the risk of losing ourselves if we left the
path, that night was near, and that there were plenty of wolves about.
“Come on, you funks!” I cried in a princely tone, pushing forward the
guide; “follow the path, and have done with this nonsense.”
“Not me,” said the youngster. “I’ve just seen the sorcerer at his door
saying magic words, and I don’t want to have a fever all the year.”
“Bah!” said another; “he doesn’t do harm to everybody. He never hurts
children; and, besides, we have only to pass by very quietly without
saying anything to him. What do you suppose he’ll do to us?”
“Oh, it would be all right if we were alone,” answered the first; “but
M. Bernard is here; we’re sure to have a spell cast on us.”
“What do you say, you fool?” I cried, doubling my fist.
“It’s not my fault, my lord,” replied the boy. “That old wretch doesn’t
like the gentry, and he has said he would be glad to see M. Tristan and
all his sons hanging from the same bough.”
“He said that, did he? Good!” I answered. “Come on, and you shall see.
All who are my friends will follow; any one that leaves me is a coward.”
Two of my companions, out of vanity, let themselves be drawn on. The
others pretended to imitate them; but, after a few steps, they had all
taken flight and disappeared into the copse. However, I went on proudly,
escorted by my two acolytes. Little Sylvain, who was in front, took off
his hat as soon as he saw Patience in the distance; and when we arrived
opposite him, though the man was looking on the ground without appearing
to notice us, he was seized with terror, and said, in a trembling voice:
“Good evening, Master Patience; a good night’s rest to you.”
The sorcerer, roused out of his reverie, started like a man waked from
sleep; and I saw, not without a certain emotion, his weather-beaten face
half covered with a thick gray beard. His big head was quite bald, and
the bareness of his forehead only served to make his bushy eyebrows
more prominent. Behind these his round deepset eyes seemed to flash
like lightning at the end of summer behind the fading foliage. He was
of small stature, but very broad-shouldered; in fact, built like a
gladiator. The rags in which he was clad were defiantly filthy. His face
was short and of a vulgar type, like that of Socrates; and if the fire
of genius glowed in his strongly marked features, I certainly could not
perceive it. He appeared to me a wild beast, an unclean animal. Filled
with a sense of loathing, and determined to avenge the insult he had
offered to my name, I put a stone in my sling, and without further ado
hurled it at him with all my might.
At the moment the stone flew out, Patience was in the act of replying to
the boy’s greeting.
“Good evening, lads; God be with you!” he was saying when the stone
whistled past his ear and struck a tame owl of which Patience had made a
pet, and which at the approach of night was beginning to rouse itself in
the ivy above the door.
The owl gave a piercing cry and fell bleeding at the feet of its
master, who answered it with a roar of anger. For a few seconds he stood
motionless with surprise and fury. Then suddenly, taking the palpitating
victim by the feet, he lifted it up, and, coming towards us, cried in a
voice of thunder:
“Which of you wretches threw that stone?”
The boy who had been walking behind, flew with the swiftness of the
wind; but Sylvain, seized by the great hand of the sorcerer, fell
upon his knees, swearing by the Holy Virgin and by Saint Solange, the
patroness of Berry, that he was innocent of the death of the bird. I
felt, I confess, a strong inclination to let him get out of the scrape
as best he could, and make my escape into the thicket. I had expected
to see a decrepit old juggler, not to fall into the hands of a robust
enemy; but pride held me back.
“If you did this,” said Patience to my trembling comrade, “I pity you;
for you are a wicked child, and you will grow into a dishonest man. You
have done a bad deed; you have made it your pleasure to cause pain to
an old man who never did you any harm; and you have done this
treacherously, like a coward, while feigning politeness and bidding him
good-evening. You are a liar, a miscreant; you have robbed me of my only
society, my only riches; you have taken delight in evil. God preserve
you from living if you are going on in this way.”
“Oh, Monsieur Patience!” cried the boy, clasping his hands; “do not
curse me; do not bewitch me; do not give me any illness; it wasn’t I!
May God strike me dead if it was!”
“If it wasn’t you, it was this one, then!” said Patience, seizing me by
the coat-collar and shaking me like a young tree to be uprooted.
“Yes, I did it,” I replied, haughtily; “and if you wish to know my name,
learn that I am called Bernard Mauprat, and that a peasant who lays a
hand on a nobleman deserves death.”
“Death! You! You would put me to death, Mauprat!” cried the old man,
petrified with surprise and indignation. “And what would God be, then,
if a brat like you had a right to threaten a man of my age? Death! Ah,
you are a genuine Mauprat, and you bite like your breed, cursed whelp!
Such things as they talk of putting to death the very moment they are
born! Death, my wolf-cub! Do you know it is yourself who deserves death,
not for what you have just done, but for being the son of your father,
and the nephew of your uncles? Ah! I am glad to hold a Mauprat in the
hollow of my hand, and see whether a cur of a nobleman weighs as much as
a Christian.”
As he spoke he lifted me from the ground as he would have lifted a hare.
“Little one,” he said to my comrade, “you can run home; you needn’t
be afraid. Patience rarely gets angry with his equals; and he always
pardons his brothers, because his brothers are ignorant like himself,
and know not what they do; but a Mauprat, look you, is a thing that
knows how to read and write, and is only the viler for it all. Run
away, then. But no; stay; I should like you once in your life to see
a nobleman receive a thrashing from the hand of a peasant. And that is
what you are going to see; and I ask you not to forget it, little one,
and to tell your parents about it.”
Livid, and gnashing my teeth with rage, I made desperate efforts to
resist. Patience, with hideous calmness, bound me to a tree with an
osier shoot. At the touch of his great horny hand I bent like a reed;
and yet I was remarkably strong for my age. He fixed the owl to a branch
above my head, and the bird’s blood, as it fell on me drop by drop,
caused me unspeakable horror; for though this was only the correction
we administer to sporting dogs that worry game, my brain, bewildered by
rage, despair, and my comrades’ cries, began to imagine some
frightful witchcraft. However, I really think I would rather have
been metamorphosed into an owl at once than undergo the punishment he
inflicted on me. In vain did I fling threats at him; in vain did I take
terrible vows of vengeance; in vain did the peasant child throw himself
on his knees again and supplicate:
“Monsieur Patience, for God’s sake, for your own sake, don’t harm him;
the Mauprats will kill you.”
He laughed, and shrugged his shoulders. Then, taking a handful of holly
twigs, he flogged me in a manner, I must own, more humiliating than
cruel; for no sooner did he see a few drops of my blood appear, than he
stopped and threw down the rod. I even noticed a sudden softening of his
features and voice, as if he were sorry for his severity.
“Mauprat,” he said, crossing his arms on his breast and looking at me
fixedly, “you have now been punished; you have now been insulted,
my fine gentleman; that is enough for me. As you see, I might easily
prevent you from ever harming me by stopping your breath with a touch of
my finger, and burying you under the stone at my door. Who would think
of coming to Gaffer Patience to look for this fine child of noble blood?
But, as you may also see, I am not fond of vengeance; at the first
cry of pain that escaped you, I stopped. No; I don’t like to cause
suffering; I’m not a Mauprat. Still, it was well for you to learn by
experience what is to be a victim. May this disgust you of the hangman’s
trade, which had been handed down from father to son in your family.
Good-evening! You can go now; I no longer bear you malice; the justice
of God is satisfied. You can tell your uncles to put me on their
gridiron; they will have a tough morsel to eat; and they will swallow
flesh that will come to life again in their gullets and choke them.”
Then he picked up the dead owl, and looking at it sadly:
“A peasant’s child would not have done this,” he said. “This is sport
for gentle blood.”
As he retired to his door he gave utterance to an exclamation which
escaped him only on solemn occasions, and from which he derived his
curious surname:
“Patience, patience!” he cried.
This, according to the gossips, was a cabalistic formula of his; and
whenever he had been heard to pronounce it, some misfortune had happened
to the individual who had offended him. Sylvain crossed himself to ward
off the evil spirit. The terrible words resounded through the tower into
which Patience had just withdrawn, then the door closed behind him with
a bang.
My comrade was so eager to be off that he was within an ace of leaving
me there bound to the tree. As soon as he had released me, he exclaimed:
“A sign of the cross! For God’s sake, a sign of the cross! If you don’t
cross yourself you are bewitched; we shall be devoured by wolves as we
go, or else we shall meet the great monster.”
“Idiot!” I said; “I have something else to think about. Listen; if you
are ever unlucky enough to tell a single soul of what has happened, I
will strangle you.”
“Alas! sir, what am I to do?” he replied with a mixture of innocence and
malice. “The sorcerer said I was to tell my parents.”
I raised my fist to strike him, but my strength failed. Choking with
rage at the treatment I had just undergone, I fell down almost in a
faint, and Sylvain seized the opportunity for flight.
When I came to I found myself alone. I did not know this part of
Varenne; I had never been here before, and it was horribly wild. All
through the day I had seen tracks of wolves and wild boars in the sand.
And now night had come and I was still two leagues from Roche-Mauprat.
The gate would be shut, the drawbridge up; and I should get a bullet
through me if I tried to enter after nine o’clock. As I did not know
the way, it was a hundred to one against my doing the two leagues in an
hour. However, I would have preferred to die a thousand deaths rather
than ask shelter of the man in Gazeau Tower, even had he granted it
gracefully. My pride was bleeding more than my flesh.
I started off at a run, heedless of all risks. The path made a thousand
turns; a thousand other paths kept crossing it. When I reached the plain
I found myself in a pasture surrounded by hedges. There every trace of
the path disappeared. I jumped the hedge at a venture, and fell into a
field. The night was pitch-dark; even had it been day it would have been
impossible to ascertain my way in the midst of little properties buried
between high banks bristling with thorns. Finally I reached a heath,
then some woods; and my fears, which had been somewhat subdued, now grew
intense. Yes, I own I was a prey to mortal terrors. Trained to bravery,
as a dog is to sport, I bore myself well enough before others. Spurred
by vanity, indeed, I was foolishly bold when I had spectators; but left
to myself, in the middle of the night, exhausted by toil and hunger,
though with no longing for food, unhinged by the emotions I had just
experienced, certain that my uncles would beat me when I returned, yet
as anxious to return as if I were going to find paradise on earth at
Roche-Mauprat, I wandered about until daybreak, suffering indescribable
agonies. The howls of wolves, happily far off, more than once reached
my ears and froze the blood in my veins; and, as if my position had not
been perilous enough in reality, my overwrought imagination must needs
add to it a thousand extravagant fantasies. Patience had the reputation
of being a wolf-rearer. This, as you know, is a cabalistic speciality
accredited in all countries. I kept on fancying, therefore, that I saw
this devilish little gray-beard, escorted by his ravening pack, and
himself in the form of a demi-wolf, pursing me through the woods.
Several times when rabbits got up at my feet I almost fell backwards
from the shock. And now, as I was certain that nobody could see, I made
many a sign of the cross; for, while affecting incredulity, I was, of
course, at heart filled with all the superstitions born of fear.
At last, at daybreak, I reached Roche-Mauprat. I waited in a moat until
the gates were opened, and then slipped up to my room without being
seen by anybody. As it was not altogether an unfailing tenderness that
watched over me at Roche-Mauprat, my absence had not been noticed during
the night. Meeting my Uncle John on the stairs, I led him to believe
that I had just got up; and, as the artifice proved successful, I went
off to the hayloft and slept for the rest of the day.
V
As I had nothing further to fear for myself, it would have been easy to
take vengeance on my enemy. Everything was favourable. The words he had
uttered against my family would have been sufficient without any mention
of the outrage done to my own person, which, in truth, I hardly cared to
make known. I had only to say a word, and in a quarter of an hour seven
Mauprats would have been in the saddle, delighted at the opportunity of
making an example of a man who paid them no dues. Such a man would have
seemed to them good for nothing but hanging as a warning to others.
But even if things had not been likely to reach this pitch, I somehow
felt an unconquerable aversion to asking eight men to avenge me on a
single one. Just as I was about to ask them (for, in my anger, I had
firmly resolved to do so), I was held back by some instinct for fair
dealing to which I had hitherto been a stranger, and whose presence in
myself I could hardly explain. Perhaps, too, the words of Patience had,
unknown to myself, aroused in me a healthy sense of shame. Perhaps his
righteous maledictions on the nobles had given me glimpses of the idea
of justice. Perhaps, in short, what I had hitherto despised in myself
as impulses of weakness and compassion, henceforth began dimly to take a
more solemn and less contemptible shape.
Be that as it may, I kept silent. I contented myself with thrashing
Sylvain as a punishment for having deserted me, and to impress upon him
that he was not to breathe a word about my unfortunate adventure. The
bitterness of the recollection was intensified by an incident which
happened toward the end of autumn when I was out with him beating the
woods for game. The poor boy was genuinely attached to me; for, my
brutality notwithstanding, he always used to be at my heels the instant
I was outside the castle. When any of his companions spoke ill of me, he
would take up my cause, and declare that I was merely somewhat hasty
and not really bad at heart. Ah, it is the gentle, resigned souls of the
humble that keep up the pride and roughness of the great. Well, we were
trying to trap larks when my sabot-shot page, who always hunted about
ahead of me, came back, saying in his rude dialect:
“I can see the wolf-driver with the mole-catcher.”
This announcement sent a shudder through all my limbs. However, the
longing for revenge produced a reaction, and I marched straight on
to meet the sorcerer. Perhaps, too, I felt somewhat reassured by the
presence of his companion, who was a frequenter of Roche-Mauprat, and
would be likely to show me respect and afford me assistance.
Marcasse, the mole-catcher, as he was called, professed to rid the
dwellings and fields of the district of polecats, weasels, rats and
other vermin. Nor did he confine his good offices to Berry; every year
he went the round of La Marche, Nivernais, Limousin, and Saintonge,
visiting, alone and on foot, all the places that had the good sense to
appreciate his talents. He was well received everywhere, in the castle
no less than in the cottage; for his was a trade that had been carried
on successfully and honestly in his family for generations (indeed, his
descendants still carry it on). Thus he had work and a home awaiting him
for every day in the year. As regular in his round as the earth in her
rotation, he would reappear on a given day at the very place where he
had appeared the year before, and always with the same dog and with the
same long sword.
This personage was as curious as the sorcerer Patience; perhaps more
comic in his way than the sorcerer. He was a bilious, melancholy man,
tall, lean, angular, full of languor, dignity, and deliberation in
speech and action. So little did he like talking that he answered all
questions in monosyllables; and yet he never failed to obey the laws of
the most scrupulous politeness, and rarely said a word without raising
his hand to the corner of his hat as a sign of respect and civility.
Was he thus by nature, or, in his itinerant trade, had this wise
reserve arisen from a fear of alienating some of his numerous clients
by incautious chatter? No one knew. In all houses he was allowed a free
hand; during the day he had the key of every granary; in the evening,
a place at the fireside of every kitchen. He knew everything that
happened; for his dreamy, absorbed air led people to talk freely in his
presence; yet he had never been known to inform any household of the
doings of another.
If you wish to know how I had become struck by this strange character,
I may tell you that I had been a witness of my uncle’s and grandfather’s
efforts to make him talk. They hoped to draw from him some information
about the chateau of Saint-Severe, the home of a man they hated and
envied, M. Hubert de Mauprat. Although Don Marcasse (they called him Don
because he seemed to have the bearing and pride of a ruined hidalgo),
although Don Marcasse, I say, had shown himself as incompressible here
as elsewhere, the Coupe-Jarret Mauprats never failed to squeeze him a
little more in the hope of extracting some details about the Casse-Tete
Mauprats.
Nobody, then, could discover Marcasse’s opinions about anything; it
would have been simplest to suppose that he did not take the trouble
to have any. Yet the attraction which Patience seemed to feel towards
him--so great that he would accompany him on his travels for several
weeks altogether--led one to believe that there was some witchery in the
man’s mysterious air, and that it was not solely the length of his sword
and the skill of his dog which played such wonderful havoc with the
moles and weasels. There were whispered rumours of the enchanted herbs
that he employed to lure these suspicious animals from their holes into
his nets. However, as people found themselves better off for his magic,
no one dreamt of denouncing it as criminal.
I do not know if you have ever seen one of the rat-hunts. It is a
curious sight, especially in a fodder-loft. The man and dog climbing up
ladders and running along beams with marvellous assurance and agility,
the dog sniffing every hole in the wall, playing the cat, crouching down
and lying in wait until the game comes out for his master’s rapier;
the man thrusting through bundles of straw and putting the enemy to the
sword--all this, when arranged and carried out with gravity and dignity
by Don Marcasse, was, I assure you, a most singular and interesting
performance.
When I saw this trusty fellow I felt equal to braving the sorcerer, and
advanced boldly. Sylvain stared at me in admiration, and I noticed that
Patience himself was not prepared for such audacity. I pretended to go
up to Marcasse and speak to him, as though quite unconcerned about
the presence of my enemy. Seeing this he gently thrust aside the
mole-catcher, and, laying his heavy hand on my head, said very quietly:
“You have grown of late, my fine gentleman!”
The blood rushed to my face, and, drawing back scornfully, I answered:
“Take care what you are doing, clodhopper; you should remember that if
you still have your two ears, it is to my kindness that you owe them.”
“My two ears!” said Patience, with a bitter laugh.
Then making an allusion to the nickname of my family, he added:
“Perhaps you mean my two hamstrings? Patience, patience! The time,
maybe, is not far distant when clodhoppers will rid the nobles of
neither ears nor hamstrings, but of their heads and their purses.”
“Silence, Master Patience!” said the mole-catcher solemnly; “these are
not the words of a philosopher.”
“You are quite right, quite right,” replied the sorcerer; “and in truth,
I don’t know why I allow myself to argue with this lad. He might have
had me made into pap by his uncles. I whipped him in the summer for
playing me a stupid trick; and I don’t know what happened to the family,
but the Mauprats lost a fine chance of injuring a neighbour.”
“Learn, peasant,” I said, “that a nobleman always takes vengeance nobly.
I did not want my wrongs avenged by people more powerful than yourself;
but wait a couple of years; I promise I will hang you with my own hand
on a certain tree that I shall easily recognise, not very far from the
door of Gazeau Tower. If I don’t I will renounce my birthright; if I
spare you I will take the title of wolf-driver.”
Patience smiled; then, suddenly becoming serious, he fixed on me that
searching look which rendered his physiognomy so striking. Then turning
to the weasel-hunter:
“It is strange,” he said; “there must be something in blood. Take the
vilest noble, and you will find that in certain things he has more
spirit than the bravest of us. Ah! it is simple enough,” he added,
speaking to himself; “they are brought up like that, whilst we--we, they
tell us, are born to obey. Patience!”
He was silent for an instant; then, rousing himself from his reverie, he
said to me in a kindly though somewhat mocking tone:
“And so you want to hang me, Monseigneur Straw-Stalk? You will have to
eat a lot of beef, then, for you are not yet tall enough to reach the
branch which is to bear me; and before then . . . perhaps many things
will happen that are not dreamt of in your little philosophy.”
“Nonsense! Why talk nonsense?” said the mole-catcher, with a serious
air; “come, make peace. Monseigneur Bernard, I ask pardon for Patience;
he is an old man, a fool.”
“No, no,” said Patience; “I want him to hang me; he is right; this is
merely my due; and, in fact, it may come more quickly than all the rest.
You must not make too much haste to grow, monsieur; for I--well, I am
making more haste to grow old than I would wish; and you who are so
brave, you would not attack a man no longer able to defend himself.”
“You didn’t hesitate to use your strength against me!” I cried.
“Confess, now; didn’t you treat me brutally? Wasn’t it a coward’s work,
that?”
“Oh, children, children!” he said. “See how the thing reasons! Out of
the mouths of children cometh truth.”
And he moved away dreamily, and muttering to himself as was his wont.
Marcasse took off his hat to me and said in an impassive tone:
“He is wrong . . . live at peace . . . pardon . . . peace . . .
farewell!”
They disappeared; and there ended my relations with Patience. I did not
come in contact with him again until long afterward.