The coming of Marie was like the entrance of death into the house. At
the very first sight of her, Madame Bergeret knew that her day was over.
Euphémie sat for a long while on her caneless chair, silent and
motionless, but with flushed cheeks. Her deep-rooted attachment to her
employers and her employers’ house was instinctive, but sure, and, like
a dog’s love, not dependent on reason. She shed no tears, but fever
spots came out on her lips. Her good-bye to Madame Bergeret was said
with all the solemnity of a pious, countrified heart. During the five
years of her service in the house she had endured at Madame Bergeret’s
hands, not only abusive violence, but hard avarice, for she was fed
but meagrely; on her side, she had given way to fits of insolence
and disobedience, and she had slandered her mistress among the other
servants. But she was a Christian, and at the bottom of her heart
she revered her pastors and masters as she did her father and mother.
Snivelling with grief, she said:
“Good-bye, Madame. I will pray to the good God for you, that He may
make you happy. I wish I could have said good-bye to the young ladies.”
Madame Bergeret knew that she was being hunted out of the house, like
this young girl, but she would not show how moved she was, for fear of
seeming undignified.
“Go, child,” said she, “and settle your wages with Monsieur.”
When M. Bergeret handed her her wages, she slowly counted out the
amount and moving her lips as though in prayer, made her calculations
three times over. She examined the coins anxiously, not being sure
of her bearings among so many different varieties. Then she put this
little property, her sole wealth in all the world, into the pocket of
her skirt, under her handkerchief. Next she dug her hand deep into her
pocket, and having taken all these precautions, said:
“You have always been good to me, Monsieur, and I wish you every
happiness. But, all the same, you have driven me away.”
“You think I am a wicked man,” answered M. Bergeret. “But if I send
you away, my good girl, I do it regretfully and only because it is
absolutely necessary. If I can help you in any way, I shall be very
glad to do so.”
Euphémie passed the back of her hand over her eyes, sniffed aloud and
said softly, with big tears flowing down her cheeks:
“There’s nobody wicked here.”
She went out, closing the door behind her as noiselessly as possible,
and M. Bergeret began to picture her standing at the bottom of the
waiting-room in Deniseau’s office, with anxious looks fixed on the
door, among the melancholy crowd of girls waiting to be hired, in her
white head-dress with her blue cotton umbrella stuck between her knees.
Meanwhile Marie, the stable-girl, who had never in her life waited on
anything but beasts, was filled with amazement and stupefaction at
the ways of these townsfolk, till the terror that she communicated to
others began to overwhelm her own mind. She squatted in her kitchen and
gazed at the saucepans. Bacon soup was the only thing she could make
and dialect the only language she understood. She was not even well
recommended, for it turned out that she had not only lived loosely, but
was in the habit of drinking brandy and even spirits of wine.
The first visitor to whom she opened the door was Captain Aspertini,
who, in passing through the town, had called to see M. Bergeret. She
evidently made a deep impression on the Italian savant’s mind, for no
sooner had he greeted his host than he began to speak of the maid with
that interest which ugliness always inspires when it is overwhelmingly
terrible.
“Your maid, Monsieur Bergeret,” said he, “reminds me of that expressive
face which Giotto has painted on an arch of the church at Assisi. It
represents that Being to whom no one ever opens the door with a smile,
and was suggested by a verse in Dante.
“That reminds me,” continued the Italian; “have you seen the portrait
of Virgil in mosaic that your compatriots have just discovered at
Sousse in Algeria? It is a picture of a Roman with a wide, low
forehead, a square head and a strong jaw, and is not in the least like
the beautiful youth whom they used to tell us was Virgil. The bust
which for a long time was taken for a portrait of the poet is really a
Roman copy of a Greek original of the fourth century and represents a
young god worshipped in the mysteries of Eleusis. I think I may claim
the honour of being the first to give the true explanation of this
figure in my pamphlet on the child Triptolemus. But do you know this
Virgil in mosaic, Monsieur Bergeret?”
“As well as I can judge from the photograph I have seen,” answered
M. Bergeret, “this African mosaic seems the copy of an original full
of character. This portrait might quite stand for Virgil, and it
is by no means impossible that it is an authentic portrait of him.
Your Renaissance scholars, Monsieur Aspertini, always depicted the
author of the _Æneid_ with the features of a sage. The old Venetian
editions of Dante that I have turned over in our library are full of
wood engravings in which Virgil wears the beard of a philosopher.
The next age made him as beautiful as a young god. Now we have him
with a square jaw and wearing a fringe of hair across his forehead in
the Roman style. The mental effect produced by his work has varied
just as much. Every literary age creates pictures from it which are
entirely different according to the period. And without recalling the
legends of the Middle Ages about Virgil the necromancer, it is a fact
that the Mantuan is admired for reasons that change according to the
period. In him Macrobius hailed the Sibyl of the Empire. It was his
philosophy that Dante and Petrarch seized upon, while Chateaubriand
and Victor Hugo discovered in him the forerunner of Christianity. For
my part, being but a juggler with words, I only use his works as a
philological pastime. You, Monsieur Aspertini, see him in the guise
of a great storehouse of Roman antiquities, and that is perhaps the
most solidly valuable part of the _Æneid_. The truth is that we are
in the habit of hanging our ideas upon the letter of these ancient
texts. Each generation forms a new conception of these masterpieces of
antiquity and thus endows them with a kind of progressive immortality.
My colleague Paul Stapfer has said many good things on this head.”
“Very noteworthy things indeed,” answered Captain Aspertini. “But he
does not entertain such hopeless views as yours as to the ebb and flow
of human opinions.”
Thus did these two good fellows toss from one to the other those
glorious and beautiful ideas by which life is embellished.
“Do tell me what has become,” asked Captain Aspertini, “of that
soldierly Latinist whom I met here, that charming M. Roux, who seemed
to value military glory at its true worth, for he disdained to be a
corporal.”