The cab which was carrying Madame Worms-Clavelin into Paris passed
through the Porte Maillot between the gratings crowned in civic style
with a hedge of pike-heads. Near these lay dusty custom-house officers
and sunburnt flower-girls asleep in the sun. As it passed, it left, on
the right, the Avenue de la Révolte, where low, mouldy, red-bedaubed
inns and stunted arbours face the Chapel of Saint-Ferdinand, which
crouches, lonely and dwarfish, on the edge of a gloomy military moat
covered with sickly patches of scorched grass. Thence it emerged into
the melancholy Rue de Chartres, with its everlasting pall of dust
from the stone-cutting yards, and passed down it into the beautiful
shady roads that open into the royal park, now cut up into small,
middle-class estates. As the cab rumbled heavily along the causeway
down an avenue of plane-trees, every second or so, through the silent
solitude, there passed lightly-clad bicyclists who skimmed by with
bent backs and heads cutting the air like quick-moving animals.
With their rapid flight and long, swift, bird-like movements, they
were almost graceful through sheer ease, almost beautiful by the
mere amplitude of the curves they described. Between the bordering
tree-trunks Madame Worms-Clavelin could see lawns, little ponds, steps,
and glass-door canopies in the most correct taste, cut off by rows of
palings. Then she lost herself in a vague dream of how, in her old age,
she would live in a house like those whose fresh plaster and slate she
could see through the leaves. She was a sensible woman and moderate in
her desires, so that now she felt a dawning love of fowls and rabbits
rising in her breast. Here and there, in the larger avenues, big
buildings stood out, chapels, schools, asylums, hospitals, an Anglican
church with its gables of stern Gothic, religious houses, severely
peaceful in appearance, with a cross on the gate and a very black bell
against the wall and, hanging down, the chain by which to ring it. Then
the cab plunged into the low-lying, deserted region of market-gardens,
where the glass roofs of hot-houses glittered at the end of narrow,
sandy paths, or where the eye was caught by the sudden appearance of
one of those ridiculous summer-houses that country builders delight to
construct, or by the trunks of dead trees imitated in stoneware by an
ingenious maker of garden ornaments. In this Bas-Neuilly district one
can feel the freshness of the river hard by. Vapours rise there from a
soil that is still damp with the waters which covered it, up to quite a
late period, according to the geologists—exhalations from marshes on
which the wind bent the reeds scarcely a thousand or fifteen hundred
years ago.
Madame Worms-Clavelin looked out of the carriage window: she had nearly
arrived. In front of her the pointed tops of the poplars which fringe
the river rose at the end of the avenue. Once more the surroundings
were varied and bustling. High walls and zigzag roof-ridges followed
one another uninterruptedly. The cab stopped in front of a large
modern house, evidently built with special regard to economy and even
stinginess, in defiance of all considerations of art or beauty. Yet the
effect was neat and pleasant on the whole. It was pierced with narrow
windows, among which one could distinguish those of the chapel by the
leaden tracery that bound the window-panes. On its dull, plain façade
one was discreetly reminded of the traditions of French religious art
by means of triangular dormer windows set in the woodwork of the roof
and capped with trefoils. On the pediment of the front door an ampulla
was carved, typifying the phial in which was contained the blood of the
Saviour that Joseph of Arimathæa had carried away in a glove. This was
the escutcheon of the Sisters of the Precious Blood, a confraternity
founded in 1829 by Madame Marie Latreille, which received state
recognition in 1868, thanks to the goodwill of the Empress Eugénie. The
Sisters of the Precious Blood devoted themselves to the training of
young girls.
Jumping from the carriage, Madame Worms-Clavelin rang at the door,
which was carefully and circumspectly half opened for her. Then she
went into the parlour, while the sister who attended to the turnstile
gave notice through the wicket that Mademoiselle de Clavelin was
wanted to come and see her mother. The parlour was only furnished with
horsehair chairs. In a niche on the whitewashed wall there stood a
figure of the Holy Virgin, painted in pale colours. There was a certain
air of archness about the figure, which stood erect, with the feet
hidden and the hands extended. This large, cold, white room carried
with it a suggestion of peace, order and rectitude. One could feel in
it a secret power, a social force that remained unseen.
Madame Worms-Clavelin sniffed the air of this parlour with a solemn
sense of satisfaction, though it was damp, and suffused with the stale
smell of cooking. Her own girlhood had been spent in the noisy little
schools of Montmartre, amidst daubs of ink and lumps of sweetmeats, and
in the perpetual interchange of offensive words and vulgar gestures.
She therefore appreciated very highly the austerity of an aristocratic
and religious education. In order that her daughter might be admitted
into a famous convent, she had had her baptized, for she thought to
herself, “Jeanne will then be better bred and she will have a chance of
making a better marriage.”
Jeanne had accordingly been baptized at the age of eleven and with the
utmost secrecy, because they were then under a radical administration.
Since then the Church and the Republic had become more reconciled
to each other, but in order to avoid displeasing the bigots of the
department, Madame Worms-Clavelin still concealed the fact that her
daughter was being educated in a nunnery. Somehow, however, the secret
leaked out, and now and then the clerical organ of the department
published a paragraph which M. Lacarelle, counsel to the prefecture,
blue-pencilled and sent to M. Worms-Clavelin. For instance, M.
Worms-Clavelin read:
“Is it a fact that the Jewish persecutor whom the freemasons
have placed at the head of our departmental administration, in
order that he may oppose the cause of God among the faithful,
has actually sent his daughter to be educated in a convent?”
M. Worms-Clavelin shrugged his shoulders and threw the paper into the
waste-paper basket. Two days later the Catholic editor inserted another
paragraph, as, after reading the first, one would have prophesied his
doing.
“I asked whether our Jewish _préfet_, Worms-Clavelin, was
really having his daughter educated in a convent. And now that
this freemason has, for good reasons of his own, avoided giving
me any answer, I will myself reply to my own question. After
having had his daughter baptized, this dishonourable Jew sent
his daughter to a Catholic place of education.
“_Mademoiselle Worms-Clavelin is at Neuilly-sur-Seine, being
educated by the Sisters of the Precious Blood._
“What a pleasure it is to witness the sincerity of jesters like
these!
“A lay, atheistic, homicidal education is good enough for the
people who maintain them! Would that our people’s eyes were
opened to discern on which side are the Tartuffes!”
M. Lacarelle, the counsel to the prefecture, first blue-pencilled the
paragraph and then placed the open sheet on the _préfet’s_ desk. M.
Worms-Clavelin threw it into his waste-paper basket and warned the
meddlesome papers not to engage in discussions of that sort. Hence this
little episode was soon forgotten and fell into the bottomless pit of
oblivion, into that black darkness of night which, after one outburst
of excitement, swallows up the shame and the honour, the scandals and
the glories of an administration. In view of the wealth and power of
the Church, Madame Worms-Clavelin had stuck energetically to her point
that Jeanne should be left to these nuns who would train the young girl
in good principles and good manners.
She modestly sat down, hiding her feet under her dress, like the red,
white and blue Virgin of the niche, and holding in her finger-tips by
the string the box of chocolates she had brought for Jeanne.
A tall girl, looking very lanky in her black dress with the red girdle
of the Middle School, burst into the room.
“Good morning, mamma!”
Madame Worms-Clavelin looked her up and down with a curious mixture of
motherly solicitude and horse-dealer’s curiosity. Drawing her close,
she glanced at her teeth, made her stand upright; looked at her figure,
her shoulders and her back, and seemed pleased.
“Heavens! how tall you are!” she exclaimed. “You have such long
arms!...”
“Don’t worry me about them, mamma! As it is, I never know what to do
with them.”
She sat down and clasped her red hands across her knees. She replied
with a graceful air of boredom to the questions which her mother asked
about her health, and listened wearily to her instructions about
healthy habits and to her advice in the matter of cod-liver oil. Then
she asked:
“And how is papa?”
Madame Worms-Clavelin was almost astonished whenever anyone asked her
about her husband, not because she was herself indifferent to him, but
because she felt it was impossible to say anything new about this firm,
unchangeable, stolid man, who was never ill and who never said or did
anything original.
“Your father? What could happen to him? We have a very good position
and no wish to change it.”
All the same, she thought it would soon be advisable to look out for
a suitable sinecure, either in the treasury, or, perhaps rather, in
the Council of State. At the thought her beautiful eyes grew dim with
reverie.
Her daughter asked what she was thinking about.
“I was thinking that one day we might return to Paris. I like Paris for
my part, but there we should hardly count.”
“Yet papa has great abilities. Sister Sainte-Marie-des-Anges said so
once in class. She said: ‘Mademoiselle de Clavelin, your father has
shown great administrative talents.’”
Madame Worms-Clavelin shook her head. “One wants so much money to live
in style in Paris.”
“You like Paris, mamma, but for my part I like the country best.”
“You know nothing about it, pet.”
“But, mamma, one doesn’t care only for what one knows.”
“There is, perhaps, some truth in what you say.”
“You haven’t heard, mamma?... I have won the prize for history
composition. Madame de Saint-Joseph said I was the only one who had
treated the subject thoroughly.”
Madame Worms-Clavelin asked gently:
“What subject?”
“The Pragmatic Sanction.”
Madame Worms-Clavelin asked, this time with an accent of real surprise:
“What is that?”
“It was one of Charles VII’s mistakes. It was, indeed, the greatest
mistake he ever made.”
Madame Worms-Clavelin found this answer by no means enlightening. But
since she took no interest in the history of the Middle Ages, she
was willing to let the matter drop. But Jeanne, who was full of her
subject, went on in all seriousness:
“Yes, mamma. It was the greatest crime of that reign, a flagrant
violation of the rights of the Holy See, a criminal robbery of the
inheritance of St. Peter. But happily the error was set right by
Francis I. And whilst we are on this subject, mamma, do you know we
have found out that Alice’s governess was an old wanton?...”
Madame Worms-Clavelin begged her daughter anxiously and earnestly not
to join her young friends in research work of this kind. Then she flew
into a rage:
“You are perfectly absurd, Jeanne, for you use words without paying any
heed...”
Jeanne looked at her in mysterious silence. Then she said suddenly:
“Mamma, I must tell you that my drawers are in such a state that they
are a positive sight. You know you have never been overwhelmingly
interested in the question of linen. I don’t say this as a reproach,
for one person goes in for linen, another for dresses, another for
jewels. You, mamma, have always gone in for jewels. For my part it’s
linen that I’m mad about.... And besides, we’ve just had a nine days’
prayer. I prayed hard both for you and for papa, I can tell you! And,
then, I’ve earned four thousand nine hundred and thirty-seven days of
indulgence.”