Blown by the north wind over the hard, white ground along with a
whirl of dead leaves, M. Bergeret crossed the Mall between the
leafless elms and began to climb Duroc Hill. His footsteps echoed
on the uneven pavements as he walked towards the louring, smoky sky
which painted a barrier of violet across the horizon; to the right he
left the farrier’s forge and the front of a dairy decorated with a
picture of two red cows, to the left stretched the long, low walls of
market-gardens. He had that morning prepared his tenth and last lesson
on the eighth book of the _Æneid_, and now he was mechanically turning
over in his mind the points in metre and grammar which had particularly
caught his notice. Guiding the rhythm of his thoughts by the beat of
his footsteps, at regular intervals he repeated to himself the rhythmic
words: _Patrio vocat agmina sistro_.... But every now and then his
keen, versatile mind flitted away to critical appreciation of a wider
range. The martial rhetoric of this eighth book annoyed him, and it
seemed to him absurd that Venus should give Æneas a shield embossed
with pictures of the scenes of Roman history up to the battle of Actium
and the flight of Cleopatra. _Patrio vocat agmina sistro._ Having
reached the cross-roads at the Bergères, which give toward Duroc Hill,
he paused for a moment before the wine-coloured front of Maillard’s
tavern, now damp, deserted and shuttered. Here the thought occurred
to him that these Romans, although he had devoted his whole life to
the study of them, were, after all, but terrors of pomposity and
mediocrity. As he grew older and his taste became more mellowed, there
was scarcely one of them that he prized, save Catullus and Petronius.
But, after all, it was his business to make the best of the lot to
which fate had called him. _Patrio vocat agmina sistro._ Would Virgil
and Propertius try to make one believe, said he to himself, that the
timbrel, whose shrill sound accompanied the frenzied religious dances
of the priests, was also the instrument of the Egyptian soldiers and
sailors? It was really incredible.
As he descended the street of the Bergères, on the side opposite Duroc
Hill, he suddenly noticed the mildness of the air. Just here the road
winds downward between walls of limestone, where the roots of tiny
oak-trees find a difficult foothold. Here M. Bergeret was sheltered
from the wind, and in the eye of the December sun which filtered down
on him in a half-hearted, rayless fashion, he still murmured, but more
softly: _Patrio vocat agmina sistro_. Doubtless Cleopatra had fled from
Actium to Egypt, but still it was through the fleet of Octavius and
Agrippa which tried to stop her passage.
Allured by the sweetness of air and sun, M. Bergeret sat down by the
side of the road, on one of the blocks which had been quarried out of
the mountain years ago, and which were now covered with a coating of
black moss. Through the delicate tracery of the branches overhead he
noticed the lilac hue of the sky, streaked here and there with smoke
trails. Thus to plunge in lonely reverie filled his soul with peaceful
sadness.
In attacking Agrippa’s galleys which blocked their way, he reflected,
Antony and Cleopatra had but one object, and that was to clear a
passage. It was this precise feat that Cleopatra, who raised the
blockade of her sixty ships, succeeded in accomplishing. Seated in the
cutting, M. Bergeret enjoyed the harmless elation of settling the fate
of the world on the far-famed waves of Acarnania. Then, as he happened
to throw a glance three paces in front of him, he caught sight of an
old man who was sitting on a heap of dead leaves on the other side of
the road and leaning against the grey wall. It was scarcely possible
to distinguish between this wild figure and its surroundings, for his
face, his beard and his rags were exactly the colour of the stones
and the leaves. He was slowly scraping a piece of wood with an old
knife-blade ground thin on the millstone of the years.
“Good-day to you, sir,” said the old fellow. “The sun is pretty. And
I’ll tell you what’s more—it isn’t going to rain.”
M. Bergeret recognised the man: it was Pied d’Alouette, the tramp whom
M. Roquincourt, the magistrate, had wrongly implicated in the murder
that took place in Queen Marguerite’s house and whom he had imprisoned
for six months in the vague hope that unforeseen charges would be laid
at his door. This he did, either because he thought that the longer the
imprisonment continued the more justifiable it would seem, or merely
through spite against a simpleton who had misled the officers of the
law. M. Bergeret, who always had a fellow-feeling for the oppressed,
answered Pied d’Alouette in a kindly style that reflected the old
fellow’s good-will.
“Good-day, friend,” said he. “I see that you know all the pleasant
nooks. This hillside is warm and well sheltered.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then Pied d’Alouette answered:
“I know better spots than this. But they are far away from here. One
mustn’t be afraid of a walk. Feet are all right. Shoes aren’t. I can’t
wear good shoes because they’re strange to my feet. I only rip them up,
when they give me sound ones.”
And raising his foot from the cushion of dead leaves, he pointed to his
big toe sticking out, wrapped in wads of linen, through the slits in
the leather of his boot.
Relapsing into silence once more, he began to polish the piece of hard
wood.