April 16.
Saint Drocoveus and the early abbots of Saint-Germain-des-Pres have been
occupying me for the past forty years; but I do not know if I shall
be able to write their history before I go to join them. It is already
quite a long time since I became an old man. One day last year, on the
Pont des Arts, one of my fellow members at the Institute was lamenting
before me over the ennui of becoming old.
“Still,” Saint-Beuve replied to him, “it is the only way that has yet
been found of living a long time.”
I have tried this way, and I know just what it is worth. The trouble of
it is not that one lasts too long, but that one sees all about him pass
away--mother, wife, friends, children. Nature makes and unmakes all
these divine treasures with gloomy indifference, and at last we find
that we have not loved, we have only been embracing shadows. But how
sweet some shadows are! If ever creature glided like a shadow through
the life of a man, it was certainly that young girl whom I fell in love
with when--incredible though it now seems--I was myself a youth.
A Christian sarcophagus from the catacombs of Rome bears a formula of
imprecation, the whole terrible meaning of which I only learned with
time. It says: “Whatsoever impious man violates this sepulchre, may he
die the last of his own people!” In my capacity of archaeologist, I
have opened tombs and disturbed ashes in order to collect the shreds of
apparel, metal ornaments, or gems that were mingled with those ashes.
But I did it only through that scientific curiosity which does not
exclude feelings of reverence and of piety. May that malediction graven
by some one of the first followers of the apostles upon a martyr’s tomb
never fall upon me! I ought not to fear to survive my own people so long
as there are men in the world; for there are always some whom one can
love.
But the power of love itself weakens and gradually becomes lost with
age, like all the other energies of man. Example proves it; and it
is this which terrifies me. Am I sure that I have not myself already
suffered this great loss? I should surely have felt it, but for the
happy meeting which has rejuvenated me. Poets speak of the Fountain of
Youth; it does exist; it gushes up from the earth at every step we take.
And one passes by without drinking of it!
The young girl I loved, married of her own choice to a rival, passed,
all grey-haired, into the eternal rest. I have found her daughter--so
that my life, which before seemed to me without utility, now once more
finds a purpose and a reason for being.
To-day I “take the sun,” as they say in Provence; I take it on the
terrace of the Luxembourg, at the foot of the statue of Marguerite
de Navarre. It is a spring sun, intoxicating as young wine. I sit and
dream. My thoughts escape from my head like the foam from a bottle
of beer. They are light, and their fizzing amuses me. I dream; such
a pastime is certainly permissible to an old fellow who has published
thirty volumes of texts, and contributed to the ‘Journal des Savants’
for twenty-six years. I have the satisfaction of feeling that I
performed my task as well as it was possible for me to do, and that I
utilised to their fullest extent those mediocre faculties with
which Nature endowed me. My efforts were not all in vain, and I have
contributed, in my own modest way, to that renaissance of historical
labours which will remain the honour of this restless century. I shall
certainly be counted among those ten or twelve who revealed to France
her own literary antiquities. My publication of the poetical works of
Gautier de Coincy inaugurated a judicious system and fixed a date. It
is in the austere calm of old age that I decree to myself this deserved
credit, and God, who sees my heart, knows whether pride or vanity have
aught to do with this self-award of justice.
But I am tired; my eyes are dim; my hand trembles, and I see an image of
myself in those old me of Homer, whose weakness excluded them from the
battle, and who, seated upon the ramparts, lifted up their voices like
crickets among the leaves.
So my thoughts were wandering when three young men seated themselves
near me. I do not know whether each one of them had come in three
boats, like the monkey of Lafontaine, but the three certainly displayed
themselves over the space of twelve chairs. I took pleasure in watching
them, not because they had anything very extraordinary about them, but
because I discerned in them that brave joyous manner which is natural to
youth. They were from the schools. I was less assured of it by the books
they were carrying than by the character of their physiognomy. For
all who busy themselves with the things of the mind can be at once
recognised by an indescribably something which is common to all of them.
I am very fond of young people; and these pleased me, in spite of a
certain provoking wild manner which recalled to me my own college days
with marvellous vividness. But they did not wear velvet doublets and
long hair, as we used to do; they did not walk about, as we used to do,
“Hell and malediction!” They were quite properly dressed, and neither
their costume nor their language had anything suggestive of the Middle
Ages. I must also add that they paid considerable attention to the women
passing on the terrace, and expressed their admiration of some of them
in very animated language. But their reflections, even on this subject,
were not of a character to oblige me to flee from my seat. Besides, so
long as youth is studious, I think it has a right to its gaieties.
One of them, having made some gallant pleasantry which I forget, the
smallest and darkest of the three exclaimed, with a slight Gascon
accent,
“What a thing to say! Only physiologists like us have any right to
occupy ourselves about living matter. As for you, Gelis, who only live
in the past--like all your fellow archivists and paleographers--you will
do better to confine yourself to those stone women over there, who are
your contemporaries.”
And he pointed to the statues of the Ladies of Ancient France which
towered up, all white, in a half-circle under the trees of the terrace.
This joke, though in itself trifling, enabled me to know that the
young man called Gelis was a student at the Ecole des Chartes. From the
conversation which followed I was able to learn that his neighbor, blond
and wan almost to diaphaneity, taciturn and sarcastic was Boulmier, a
fellow student. Gelis and the future doctor (I hope he will become one
some day) discoursed together with much fantasy and spirit. In the midst
of the loftiest speculations they would play upon words, and make jokes
after the peculiar fashion of really witty persons--that is to say, in
a style of enormous absurdity. I need hardly say, I suppose, that they
only deigned to maintain the most monstrous kind of paradoxes. They
employed all their powers of imagination to make themselves as ludicrous
as possible, and all their powers of reasoning to assert the contrary of
common sense. All the better for them! I do not like to see young folks
too rational.
The student of medicine, after glancing at the title of the book that
Boulmier held in his hand, exclaimed,
“What!--you read Michelet--you?”
“Yes,” replied Boulmier, very gravely. “I like novels.”
Gelis, who dominated both by his fine stature, imperious gestures, and
ready wit, took the book, turned over a few pages rapidly, and said,
“Michelet always had a great propensity to emotional tenderness. He
wept sweet tears over Maillard, that nice little man introduced la
paperasserie into the September massacres. But as emotional tenderness
leads to fury, he becomes all at once furious against the victims. There
was no help for it. It is the sentimentality of the age. The assassin
is pitied, but the victim is considered quite unpardonable. In his later
manner Michelet is more Michelet than ever before. There is no common
sense in it; it is simply wonderful! Neither art nor science, neither
criticism nor narrative; only furies and fainting-spells and
epileptic fits over matters which he never deigns to explain. Childish
outcries--envies de femme grosse!--and a style, my friends!--not a
single finished phrase! It is astounding!”
And he handed the book back to his comrade. “This is amusing madness,”
I thought to myself, “and not quite so devoid of common sense as it
appears. This young man, though only playing has sharply touched the
defect in the cuirass.”
But the Provencal student declared that history was a thoroughly
despicable exercise of rhetoric. According to him, the only true history
was the natural history of man. Michelet was in the right path when he
came in contact with the fistula of Louis XIV., but he fell back into
the old rut almost immediately afterwards.
After this judicious expression of opinion, the young physiologist
went to join a party of passing friends. The two archivists, less
well acquainted in the neighbourhood of a garden so far from the Rue
Paradis-au-Marais, remained together, and began to chat about their
studies. Gelis, who had completed his third class-year, was preparing a
thesis on the subject of which he expatiated with youthful enthusiasm.
Indeed, I thought the subject a very good one, particularly because I
had recently thought myself called upon to treat a notable part of it.
It was the Monasticon Gallicanum. The young erudite (I give him the name
as a presage) wanted to describe all the engravings made about 1690 for
the work which Dom Michel Germain would have had printed but for the one
irremediable hindrance which is rarely foreseen and never avoided.
Dom Michel Germain would have had printed but for the one irremediable
hindrance which is rarely foreseen and never avoided. Dom Michel Germain
left his manuscript complete, however, and in good order when he died.
Shall I be able to do as much with mine?--but that is not the present
question. So far as I am able to understand, Monsieur Gelis intends to
devote a brief archaeological notice to each of the abbeys pictured by
the humble engravers of Dom Michel Germain.
His friend asked him whether he was acquainted with all the manuscripts
and printed documents relating to the subject. It was then that I
pricked up my ears. They spoke at first of original sources; and I must
confess they did so in a satisfactory manner, despite their innumerable
and detestable puns. Then they began to speak about contemporary studies
on the subject.
“Have you read,” asked Boulmier, “the notice of Courajod?”
“Good!” I thought to myself.
“Yes,” replied Gelis; “it is accurate.”
“Have you read,” said Boulmier, “the article of Tamisey de Larroque in
the ‘Revue des Questions Historiques’?”
“Good!” I thought to myself, for the second time.
“Yes,” replied Gelis, “it is full of things.”...
“Have you read,” said Boulmier, “the ‘Tableau des Abbayes Benedictines
en 1600,’ by Sylvestre Bonnard?”
“Good!” I said to myself, for the third time.
“Mai foi! no!” replied Gelis. “Bonnard is an idiot!” Turning my head, I
perceived that the shadow had reached the place where I was sitting. It
was growing chilly, and I thought to myself what a fool I was to have
remained sitting there, at the risk of getting rheumatism, just to
listen to the impertinence of those two young fellows!
“Well! well!” I said to myself as I got up. “Let this prattling
fledgling write his thesis and sustain it! He will find my colleague,
Quicherat, or some other professor at the school, to show him what an
ignoramus he is. I consider him neither more nor less than a rascal;
and really, now that I come to think of it, what he said about Michelet
awhile ago was quite insufferable, outrageous! To talk in that way about
an old master replete with genius! It was simply abominable!”
April 17.
“Therese, give me my new hat, my best frock-coat, and my silver-headed
cane.”
But Therese is deaf as a sack of charcoal and slow as Justice. Years
have made her so. The worst is that she thinks she can hear well and
move about well; and, proud of her sixty years of upright domesticity,
she serves her old master with the most vigilant despotism.
“What did I tell you?”...And now she will not give me my silver-headed
cane, for fear that I might lose it! It is true that I often forget
umbrellas and walking-sticks in the omnibuses and booksellers’ shops.
But I have a special reason for wanting to take out with me to-day my
old cane with the engraved silver head representing Don Quixote charging
a windmill, lance in rest, while Sancho Panza, with uplifted arms,
vainly conjures him to a stop. That cane is all that came to me from the
heritage of my uncle, Captain Victor, who in his lifetime resembled Don
Quixote much more than Sancho Panza, and who loved blows quite as much
as most people fear them.
For thirty years I have been in the habit of carrying this cane upon all
memorable or solemn visits which I make; and those two figures of knight
and squire give me inspiration and counsel. I imagine I can hear them
speak. Don Quixote says,
“Think well about great things; and know that thought is the only
reality in this world. Lift up Nature to thine own stature; and let
the whole universe be for thee no more than the reflection of thine own
heroic soul. Combat for honour’s sake: that alone is worthy of a man!
and if it should fall thee to receive wounds, shed thy blood as a
beneficent dew, and smile.”
And Sancho Panza says to me in his turn,
“Remain just what heaven made thee, comrade! Prefer the bread-crust
which has become dry in thy wallet to all the partridges that roast in
the kitchen of lords. Obey thy master, whether he by a wise man or a
fool, and do not cumber thy brain with too many useless things. Fear
blows; ‘tis verily tempting God to seek after danger!”
But if the incomparable knight and his matchless squire are imagined
only upon this cane of mine, they are realities to my inner conscience.
Within every one of us there lives both a Don Quixote and a Sancho Panza
to whom we hearken by turns; and though Sancho most persuades us, it is
Don Quixote that we find ourselves obliged to admire.... But a truce to
this dotage!--and let us go to see Madame de Gabry about some matters
more important than the everyday details of life....
Same day.
I found Madame de Gabry dressed in black, just buttoning her gloves.
“I am ready,” she said.
Ready!--so I have always found her upon any occasion of doing a
kindness.
After some compliments about the good health of her husband, who was
taking a walk at the time, we descended the stairs and got into the
carriage.
I do not know what secret influence I feared to dissipate by breaking
silence, but we followed the great deserted drives without speaking,
looking at the crosses, the monumental columns, and the mortuary wreaths
awaiting sad purchasers.
The vehicle at last halted at the extreme verge of the land of the
living, before the gate upon which words of hope are graven.
“Follow me,” said Madame de Gabry, whose tall stature I noticed then for
the first time. She first walked down an alley of cypresses, and then
took a very narrow path contrived between the tombs. Finally, halting
before a plain slab, she said to me,
“It is here.”
And she knelt down. I could not help noticing the beautiful and easy
manner in which this Christian woman fell upon her knees, leaving the
folds of her robe to spread themselves at random about her. I had
never before seen any lady kneel down with such frankness and such
forgetfulness of self, except two fair Polish exiles, one evening long
ago, in a deserted church in Paris.
This image passed like a flash; and I saw only the sloping stone on
which was graven the name of Clementine. What I then felt was something
so deep and vague that only the sound of some rich music could convey
the idea of it. I seemed to hear instruments of celestial sweetness
make harmony in my old heart. With the solemn accords of a funeral chant
there seemed to mingle the subdued melody of a song of love; for my
soul blended into one feeling the grave sadness of the present with the
familiar graces of the past.
I cannot tell whether we had remained a long time at the tomb of
Clementine before Madame de Gabry arose. We passed through the cemetery
again without speaking to each other. Only when we found ourselves among
the living once more did I feel able to speak.
“While following you there,” I said to Madame de Gabry, “I could not
help thinking of those angels with whom we are said to meet on the
mysterious confines of life and death. That tomb you led me to, of which
I knew nothing--as I know nothing, or scarcely anything, concerning
her whom it covers--brought back to me emotions which were unique in
my life, and which seem in the dullness of that life like some light
gleaming upon a dark road. The light recedes farther and farther away as
the journey lengthens; I have now almost reached the bottom of the last
slope; and, nevertheless, each time I turn to look back I see the glow
as bright as ever.
“You, Madame, who knew Clementine as a young wife and mother after her
hair had become grey, you cannot imagine her as I see her still; a young
fair girl, all pink and white. Since you have been so kind as to be my
guide, dear Madame, I ought to tell you what feelings were awakened in
me by the sight of that grave to which you led me. Memories throng back
upon me. I feel myself like some old gnarled and mossy oak which awakens
a nestling world of birds by shaking its branches. Unfortunately
the song my birds sing is old as the world, and can amuse no one but
myself.”
“Tell me your souvenirs,” said Madame de Gabry. “I cannot read your
books, because they are written only for scholars; but I like very much
to have you talk to me, because you know how to give interest to the
most ordinary things in life. And talk to me just as you would talk to
an old woman. This morning I found three grey threads in my hair.”
“Let them come without regret, Madame,” I replied. “Time deals gently
only with those who take it gently. And when in some years more you will
have a silvery fringe under your black fillet, you will be reclothed
with a new beauty, less vivid but more touching than the first; and you
will find your husband admiring your grey tresses as much as he did that
black curl which you gave him when about to be married, and which he
preserves in a locket as a thing sacred.... These boulevards are broad
and very quiet. We can talk at our ease as we walk along. I will tell
you, to begin with, how I first made the acquaintance of Clementine’s
father. But you must not expect anything extraordinary, or anything even
remarkable; you would be greatly deceived.
“Monsieur de Lessay used to live in the second storey of an old house in
the Avenue de l’Observatoire, having a stuccoed front, ornamented with
antique busts, and a large unkept garden attached to it. That facade and
that garden were the first images my child-eyes perceived; and they will
be the last, no doubt, which I still see through my closed eyelids when
the Inevitable Day comes. For it was in that house that I was born; it
was in that garden I first learned, while playing, to feel and know some
particles of this old universe. Magical hours!--sacred hours!--when the
soul, all fresh from the making, first discoveries the world, which
for its sake seems to assume such caressing brightness, such mysterious
charm! And that, Madame, is indeed because the universe itself is only
the reflection of our soul.
“My mother was being very happily constituted. She rose with the sun,
like the birds; and she herself resembled the birds by her domestic
industry, by her maternal instinct, by her perpetual desire to sing, and
by a sort of brusque grace, which I could feel the of very well even
as a child. She was the soul of the house, which she filled with her
systematic and joyous activity. My father was just as slow as she was
brisk. I can recall very well that placid face of his, over which at
times an ironical smile used to flit. He was fatigued with active life;
and he loved his fatigue. Seated beside the fire in his big arm-chair,
he used to read from morning till night; and it is from him that I
inherit my love of books. I have in my library a Mably and a Raynal,
which he annotated with his own hand from beginning to end. But it
was utterly useless attempting to interest him in anything practical
whatever. When my mother would try, by all kinds of gracious little
ruses, to lure him out of his retirement, he would simply shake his head
with that inexorable gentleness which is the force of weak characters.
He used in this way greatly to worry the poor woman, who could not enter
at all into his own sphere of meditative wisdom, and could understand
nothing of life except its daily duties and the merry labour of each
hour. She thought him sick, and feared he was going to become still more
so. But his apathy had a different cause.
“My father, entering the Naval office under Monsieur Decres, in 1801,
gave early proof of high administrative talent. There was a great deal
of activity in the marine department in those times; and in 1805 my
father was appointed chief of the Second Administrative Division. That
same year, the Emperor, whose attention had been called to him by the
Minister, ordered him to make a report upon the organisation of the
English navy. This work, which reflected a profoundly liberal and
philosophic spirit, of which the editor himself was unconscious, was
only finished in 1807--about eighteen months after the defeat of Admiral
Villeneuve at Trafalgar. Napoleon, who, from that disastrous day, never
wanted to hear the word ship mentioned in his presence, angrily
glanced over a few pages of the memoir, and then threw it in the
fire, vociferating, ‘Words!--words! I said once before that I hated
ideologists.’ My father was told afterwards that the Emperor’s anger was
so intense at the moment that he stamped the manuscript down into the
fire with his boot-heels. At all events, it was his habit, when very
much irritated, to poke down the fire with his boot-soles. My father
never fully recovered from this disgrace; and the fruitlessness of all
his efforts towards reform was certainly the cause of the apathy which
came upon him at a later day. Nevertheless, Napoleon, after his return
from Elba, sent for him, and ordered him to prepare some liberal and
patriotic bulletins and proclamations for the fleet. After Waterloo, my
father, whom the event had rather saddened than surprised, retired into
private life, and was not interfered with--except that it was generally
averred of him that he was a Jacobin, a buveur-de-sang--one of those
men with whom no one could afford to be on intimate terms. My mother’s
eldest brother, Victor Maldent, and infantry captain--retired on
half-pay in 1814, and disbanded in 1815--aggravated by his bad attitude
the situation in which the fall of the Empire had placed my father.
Captain Victor used to shout in the cafes and the public balls that the
Bourbons had sold France to the Cossacks. He used to show everybody a
tricoloured cockade hidden in the lining of his hat; and carried with
much ostentation a walking-stick, the handle of which had been so carved
that the shadow thrown by it made the silhouette of the Emperor.
“Unless you have seen certain lithographs by Charlet, Madame, you could
form no idea of the physiognomy of my Uncle Victor, when he used to
stride about the garden of the Tuileries with a fiercely elegant manner
of his own--buttoned up in his frogged coat, with his cross-of-honour
upon his breast, and a bouquet of violets in his button-hole.
“Idleness and intemperance greatly intensified the vulgar recklessness
of his political passions. He used to insult people whom he happened to
see reading the ‘Quotidienne,’ or the ‘Drapeau Blanc,’ and compel them
to fight with him. In this way he had the pain and the shame of wounding
a boy of sixteen in a duel. In short, my Uncle Victor was the very
reverse of a well-behaved person; and as he came to lunch and dine
at our house every blessed day in the year, his bad reputation became
attached to our family. My poor father suffered cruelly from some of his
guest’s pranks; but being very good-natured, he never made any remarks,
and continued to give the freedom of his house to the captain, who only
despised him for it.
“All this which I have told you, Madame, was explained to me afterwards.
But at the time in question, my uncle the captain filled me with the
very enthusiasm of admiration, and I promised myself to try to become
some day as like him as possible. So one fine morning, in order to
begin the likeness, I put my arms akimbo, and swore like a trooper. My
excellent mother at once gave me such a box on the ear that I remained
half stupefied for some little while before I could even burst out
crying. I can still see the old arm-chair, covered with yellow Utrecht
velvet, behind which I wept innumerable tears that day.
“I was a very little fellow then. One morning my father, lifting me
upon his knees, as he was in the habit of doing, smiled at me with that
slightly ironical smile which gave a certain piquancy to his perpetual
gentleness of manner. As I sat on his knee, playing with his long white
hair, he told me something which I did not understand very well,
but which interested me very much, for the simple reason that it was
mysterious to me. I think but am not quite sure, that he related to me
that morning the story of the little King of Yvetot, according to the
song. All of a sudden we heard a great report; and the windows rattled.
My father slipped me down gently on the floor at his feet; he threw up
his trembling arms, with a strange gesture; his face became all inert
and white, and his eyes seemed enormous. He tried to speak, but his
teeth were chattering. At last he murmured, ‘They have shot him!’ I did
not know what he meant, and felt only a vague terror. I knew afterwards,
however, that hew was speaking of Marshal Ney, who fell on the 7th of
December, 1815, under the wall enclosing some waste ground beside our
house.
“About that time I used often to meet on the stairway an old man (or,
perhaps, not exactly an old man) with little black eyes which flashed
with extraordinary vivacity, and an impassive, swarthy face. He did not
seem to me alive--or at least he did not seem to me alive in the same
way that other men are alive. I had once seen, at the residence of
Monsieur Denon, where my father had taken me with him on a visit, a
mummy brought from Egypt; and I believed in good faith that Monsieur
Denon’s mummy used to get up when no one was looking, leave its gilded
case, put on a brown coat and powdered wig, and become transformed into
Monsieur de Lessay. And even to-day, dear Madame, while I reject that
opinion as being without foundation, I must confess that Monsieur de
Lessay bore a very strong resemblance to Monsieur Denon’s mummy. The
fact is enough to explain why this person inspired me with fantastic
terror.
“In reality, Monsieur de Lessay was a small gentleman and a great
philosopher. As a disciple of Mably and Rousseau, he flattered himself
on being a man without any prejudices; and this pretension itself is a
very great prejudice.
“He professed to hate fanaticism, yet was himself a fanatic on the topic
of toleration. I am telling you, Madame, about a character belonging to
an age that is past. I fear I may not be able to make you understand,
and I am sure I shall not be able to interest you. It was so long ago!
But I will abridge as much as possible: besides, I did not promise
you anything interesting; and you could not have expected to hear of
remarkable adventures in the life of Sylvestre Bonnard.”
Madame de Gabry encouraged me to proceed, and I resumed:
“Monsieur de Lessay was brusque with men and courteous to ladies. He
used to kiss the hand of my mother, whom the customs of the Republic and
the Empire had not habituated to such gallantry. In him, I touched the
age of Louis XVI. Monsieur de Lessay was a geographer; and nobody, I
believe, ever showed more pride then he in occupying himself with the
face of the earth. Under the Old Regime he had attempted philosophical
agriculture, and thus squandered his estates to the very last acre. When
he had ceased to own one square foot of ground, he took possession of
the whole globe, and prepared an extraordinary number of maps, based
upon the narratives of travellers. But as he had been mentally nourished
with the very marrow of the “Encyclopedie,” he was not satisfied with
merely parking off human beings within so many degrees, minutes, and
seconds of latitude and longitude, he also occupied himself, alas! with
the question of their happiness. It is worthy of remark, Madame, that
those who have given themselves the most concern about the happiness of
peoples have made their neighbors very miserable. Monsieur de
Lessay, who was more of a geometrician than D’Alembert, and more of a
philosopher than Jean Jacques, was also more of a royalist than Louis
XVIII. But his love for the King was nothing to his hate for the
Emperor. He had joined the conspiracy of Georges against the First
Consul; but in the framing of the indictment he was not included among
the inculpated parties, having been either ignored or despised, and
this injury he never could forgive Bonaparte, whom he called the Ogre
of Corsica, and to whom he used to say he would never have confided even
the command of a regiment, so pitiful a soldier he judged him to be.
“In 1820, Monsieur de Lessay, who had then been a widower for many
years, married again, at the age of sixty, a very young woman, whom
he pitilessly kept at work preparing maps for him, and who gave him
a daughter some years after their marriage, and died in childbed. My
mother had nursed her during her brief illness, and had taken care of
the child. The name of that child was Clementine.
“It was from the time of that birth and that death that the relations
between our family and Monsieur de Lessay began. In the meanwhile I had
been growing dull as I began to leave my true childhood behind me. I
had lost the charming power of being able to see and feel; and things no
longer caused me those delicious surprises which form the enchantment
of the more tender age. For the same reason, perhaps, I have no distinct
remembrance of the period following the birth of Clementine; I only know
that a few months afterwards I had a misfortune, the mere thought of
which still wrings my heart. I lost my mother. A great silence, a great
coldness, and a great darkness seemed all at once to fill the house.
“I fell into a sort of torpor. My father sent me to the lycee, but I
could only arouse myself from my lethargy with the greatest of effort.
“Still, I was not altogether a dullard, and my professors were able to
teach me almost everything they wanted, namely, a little Greek and a
great deal of Latin. My acquaintances were confined to the ancients.
I learned to esteem Miltiades, and to admire Themistocles. I became
familiar with Quintus Fabius, as far, at least, as it was possible
to become familiar with so great a Consul. Proud of these lofty
acquaintances, I scarcely ever condescended to notice little Clementine
and her old father, who, in any event, went away to Normandy one fine
morning without my having deigned to give a moment’s thought to their
possible return.
“They came back, however, Madame, they came back! Influences of Heaven,
forces of nature, all ye mysterious powers which vouchsafe to man the
ability to love, you know how I again beheld Clementine! They re-entered
our melancholy home. Monsieur de Lessay no longer wore a wig. Bald,
with a few grey locks about his ruddy temples, he had all the aspect of
robust old age. But that divine being whom I saw all resplendent, as
she leaned upon his arm--she whose presence illuminated the old faded
parlour--she was not an apparition! It was Clementine herself! I am
speaking the simple truth: her violet eyes seemed to me in that moment
supernatural, and even to-day I cannot imagine how those two living
jewels could have endured the fatigues of life, or become subjected to
the corruption of death.
“She betrayed a little shyness in greeting my father, whom she did
not remember. Her complexion was slightly pink, and her half-open lips
smiled with that smile which makes one think of the Infinite--perhaps
because it betrays no particular thought, and expresses only the joy
of living and the bliss of being beautiful. Under a pink hood her face
shone like a gem in an open casket; she wore a cashmere scarf over a
robe of white muslin plaited at the waist, from beneath which protruded
the tip of a little Morocco shoe.... Oh! you must not make fun of me,
dear Madame, that was the fashion of the time; and I do not know
whether our new fashions have nearly so much simplicity, brightness, and
decorous grace.
“Monsieur de Lessay informed us that, in consequence of having
undertaken the publication of a historical atlas, he had come back
to live in Paris, and that he would be pleased to occupy his former
apartment, if it was still vacant. My father asked Mademoiselle de
Lessay whether she was pleased to visit the capital. She appeared to
be, for her smile blossomed out in reply. She smiled at the windows that
looked out upon the green and luminous garden; she smiled at the bronze
Marius seated among the ruins of Carthage above the dial of the clock;
she smiled a the old yellow-velveted arm-chairs, and at the poor student
who was afraid to lift his eyes to look at her. From that day--how I
loved her!
“But here we are already a the Rue de Severs, and in a little while we
shall be in sight of your windows. I am a very bad story-teller; and if
I were--by some impossible chance--to take it into my head to compose
a novel, I know I should never succeed. I have been drawing out to
tiresome length a narrative which I must finish briefly; for there is
a certain delicacy, a certain grace of soul, which an old man could not
help offending by an complacent expatiation upon the sentiments of even
the purest love. Let us take a short turn on this boulevard, lined with
convents; and my recital will be easily finished within the distance
separating us from that little spire you see over there....
“Monsieur de Lessay, on finding that I had graduated at the Ecole des
Chartes, judged me worthy to assist him in preparing his historical
atlas. The plan was to illustrate, by a series of maps, what the old
philosopher termed the Vicissitudes of Empires from the time of Noah
down to that of Charlemagne. Monsieur de Lessay had stored up in his
head all the errors of the eighteenth century in regard to antiquity.
I belonged, so far as my historical studies were concerned, to the
new school; and I was just at that age when one does not know how to
dissemble. The manner in which the old man understood, or, rather,
misunderstood, the epoch of the Barbarians--his obstinate determination
to find in remote antiquity only ambitious princes, hypocritical and
avaricious prelates, virtuous citizens, poet-philosophers, and other
personages who never existed outside of the novels of Marmontel,--made
me dreadfully unhappy, and at first used to excite me into attempts
at argument,--rational enough, but perfectly useless and sometimes
dangerous, for Monsieur de Lessay was very irascible, and Clementine was
very beautiful. Between her and him I passed many hours of torment and
of delight. I was in love; I was a coward, and I granted to him all that
he demanded of me in regard to the political and historical aspect which
the Earth--that was at a later day to bear Clementine--presented in the
time of Abraham, of Menes, and of Deucalion.
“As fast as we drew our maps, Mademoiselle de Lessay tinted them in
water-colours. Bending over the table, she held the brush lightly
between two fingers; the shadow of her eyelashes descended upon her
cheeks, and bather her half-closed eyes in a delicious penumbra.
Sometimes she would lift her head, and I would see her lips pout. There
was so much expression in her beauty that she could not breathe without
seeming to sigh; and her most ordinary poses used to throw me into the
deepest ecstasies of admiration. Whenever I gazed at her I fully agreed
with Monsieur de Lessay that Jupiter had once reigned as a despot-king
over the mountainous regions of Thessaly, and that Orpheus had committed
the imprudence of leaving the teaching of philosophy to the clergy. I am
not now quite sure whether I was a coward or a hero when I accorded al
this to the obstinate old man.
“Mademoiselle de Lessay, I must acknowledge, paid very little attention
to me. But this indifference seemed to me so just and so natural that
I never even dreamed of thinking I had a right to complain about it; it
made me unhappy, but without my knowing that I was unhappy at the
time. I was hopeful;--we had then only got as far as the First Assyrian
Empire.
“Monsieur de Lessay came every evening to take coffee with my father.
I do not know how they became such friends; for it would have been
difficult to find two characters more oppositely constituted. My father
was a man who admired very few things, but was still capable of excusing
a great many. Still, as he grew older, he evinced more and more dislike
of everything in the shape of exaggeration. He clothed his ideas with a
thousand delicate shades of expression, and never pronounced an opinion
without all sorts of reservations. These conversational habits, natural
to a finely trained mind, used greatly to irritate the dry, terse old
aristocrat, who was never in the least disarmed by the moderation of an
adversary--quite the contrary! I always foresaw one danger. That
danger was Bonaparte. My father had not himself retained an particular
affection for his memory; but, having worked under his direction, he
did not like to hear him abused, especially in favour of the Bourbons,
against whom he had serious reason to feel resentment. Monsieur de
Lessay, more of a Voltairean and a Legitimist than ever, now traced back
to Bonaparte the origin of every social, political, and religious
evil. Such being the situation, the idea of Uncle Victor made me
feel particularly uneasy. This terrible uncle had become absolutely
unsufferable now that his sister was no longer there to calm him down.
The harp of David was broken, and Saul was wholly delivered over to the
spirit of madness. The fall of Charles X. had increased the audacity of
the old Napoleonic veteran, who uttered all imaginable bravadoes. He no
longer frequented our house, which had become too silent for him.
But sometimes, at the dinner-hour, we would see him suddenly make his
appearance, all covered with flowers, like a mausoleum. Ordinarily he
would sit down to table with an oath, growled out from the very bottom
of his chest, and brag, between every two mouthfuls, of his good fortune
with the ladies as a vieux brave. Then, when the dinner was over, he
would fold up his napkin in the shape of a bishop’s mitre, gulp down
half a decanter of brandy, and rush away with the hurried air of a man
terrified at the mere idea of remaining for any length of time, without
drinking, in conversation with an old philosopher and a young scholar. I
felt perfectly sure that, if ever he and Monsieur de Lessay should come
together, all would be lost. But that day came, Madame!
“The captain was almost hidden by flowers that day, and seemed so much
like a monument commemorating the glories of the Empire that one would
have liked to pass a garland of immortelles over each of his arms. He
was in an extraordinarily good humour; and the first person to profit by
that good humour was our cook--for he put his arm around her waist while
she was placing the roast on the table.
“After dinner he pushed away the decanter presented to him, observing
that he was going to burn some brandy in his coffee later on. I asked
him tremblingly whether he would not prefer to have his coffee at once.
He was very suspicious, and not at all dull of comprehension--my Uncle
Victor. My precipitation seemed to him in very bad taste; for he looked
at me in a peculiar way, and said,
“‘Patience! my nephew. It isn’t the business of the baby of the regiment
to sound the retreat! Devil take it! You must be in a great hurry,
Master Pedant, to see if I’ve got spurs on my boots!’
“It was evident the captain had divined that I wanted him to go. And I
knew him well enough to be sure that he was going to stay. He stayed.
The least circumstances of that evening remain impressed on my memory.
My uncle was extremely jovial. The mere idea of being in somebody’s way
was enough to keep him in good humour. He told us, in regular barrack
style, ma foi! a certain story about a monk, a trumpet, and five
bottles of Chambertin, which must have been much enjoyed in the garrison
society, but which I would not venture to repeat to you, Madame, even if
I could remember it. When we passed into the parlour, the captain called
attention to the bad condition of our andirons, and learnedly discoursed
on the merits of rotten-stone as a brass-polisher. Not a word on the
subject of politics. He was husbanding his forces. Eight o’clock sounded
from the ruins of Carthage on the mantlepiece. It was Monsieur de
Lessay’s hour. A few moments later he entered the parlour with his
daughter. The ordinary evening chat began. Clementine sat down and began
to work on some embroidery beside the lamp, whose shade left her pretty
head in a soft shadow, and threw down upon her fingers a radiance that
made them seem almost self-luminous. Monsieur de Lessay spoke of a comet
announced by the astronomers, and developed some theories in relation
to the subject, which, however audacious, betrayed at least a certain
degree of intellectual culture. My father, who knew a good deal about
astronomy, advanced some sound ideas of his own, which he ended up with
his eternal, ‘But what do we know about it, after all?’ In my turn I
cited the opinion of our neighbour of the Observatory--the great Arago.
My Uncle Victor declared that comets had a peculiar influence on
the quality of wines, and related in support of this view a jolly
tavern-story. I was so delighted with the turn the conversation had
taken that I did all in my power to maintain it in the same groove, with
the help of my most recent studies, by a long exposition of the chemical
composition of those nebulous bodies which, although extending over a
length of billions of leagues, could be contained in a small bottle. My
father, a little surprised at my unusual eloquence, watched me with
his peculiar, placid, ironical smile. But one cannot always remain
in heaven. I spoke, as I looked at Clementine, of a certain comete of
diamonds, which I had been admiring in a jeweller’s window the evening
before. It was a most unfortunate inspiration of mine.
“‘Ah! my nephew,’ cried Uncle Victor, that “comete” of yours was nothing
to the one which the Empress Josephine wore in her hair when she came to
Strasburg to distribute crosses to the army.’
“‘That little Josephine was very fond of finery and display,’ observed
Monsieur de Lessay, between two sips of coffee. ‘I do not blame her for
it; she had good qualities, though rather frivolous in character. She
was a Tascher, and she conferred a great honour on Bonaparte by marrying
him. To say a Tascher does not, of course, mean a great deal; but to say
a Bonaparte simply means nothing at all.’
“‘What do you mean by that, Monsieur the Marquis?’ demanded Captain
Victor.
“‘I am not a marquis,’ dryly responded Monsieur de Lessay; ‘and I mean
simply that Bonaparte would have been very well suited had he
married one of those cannibal women described by Captain Cook in his
voyages--naked, tattooed, with a ring in her nose--devouring with
delight putrefied human flesh.’
“I had foreseen it, and in my anguish (O pitiful human heart!) my first
idea was about the remarkable exactness of my anticipations. I must say
that the captain’s reply belonged to the sublime order. He put his arms
akimbo, eyed Monsieur de Lessay contemptuously from head to food, and
said,
“‘Napoleon, Monsieur the Vidame, had another spouse besides Josephine,
another spouse besides Marie-Louise, that companion you know nothing
of; but I have seen her, close to me. She wears a mantle of azure gemmed
with stars; she is crowned with laurels; the Cross-of-Honour flames upon
her breast. Her name is GLORY!’
“Monsieur de Lessay set his cup on the mantlepiece and quietly observed,
“‘Your Bonaparte was a blackguard!’
“My father rose up calmly, extended his arm, and said very softly to
Monsieur de Lessay,
“Whatever the man was who died at St. Helena, I worked for ten years in
his government, and my brother-in-law was three times wounded under his
eagles. I beg of you, dear sir and friend, never to forget these facts
in future.’
“What the sublime and burlesque insolence of the captain could not do,
the courteous remonstrance of my father effected immediately, throwing
Monsieur de Lessay into a furious passion.
“‘I did forget,’ he exclaimed, between his set teeth, livid in his rage,
and fairly foaming at the mouth; ‘the herring-cask always smells of
herring and when one has been in the service of rascals---’
“As he uttered the word, the Captain sprang at his throat; I am sure he
would have strangled him upon the spot but for his daughter and me.
“My father, a little paler than his wont, stood there with his arms
folded, and watched the scene with a look of inexpressible pity. What
followed was still more lamentable--but why dwell further upon the folly
of two old men. Finally I succeeded in separating them. Monsieur
de Lessay made a sign to his daughter and left the room. As she was
following him, I ran out into the stairway after her.
“‘Mademoiselle,’ I said to her, wildly, taking her hand as I spoke, ‘I
love you! I love you!’
“For a moment she pressed my hand; her lips opened. What was it that
she was going to say to me? But suddenly, lifting her eyes towards
her father ascending the stairs, she drew her hand away, and made me a
gesture of farewell.
“I never saw her again. Her father went to live in the neighbourhood of
the Pantheon, in an apartment which he had rented for the sale of his
historical atlas. He died in a few months afterward of an apoplectic
stroke. His daughter, I was told, retired to Caen to live with some aged
relative. It was there that, later on, she married a bank-clerk, the
same Noel Alexandre who became so rich and died so poor.
“As for me, Madame, I have lived alone, at peace with myself; my
existence, equally exempt from great pains and great joys, has been
tolerably happy. But for many years I could never see an empty chair
beside my own of a winter’s evening without feeling a sudden painful
sinking at my heart. Last year I learned from you, who had known her,
the story of her old age and death. I saw her daughter at your house. I
have seen her; but I cannot yet say like the aged mad of Scripture, ‘And
now, O Lord, let thy servant depart in peace!’ For if an old fellow like
me can be of any use to anybody, I would wish, with your help, to devote
my last energies and abilities to the care of this orphan.”
I had uttered these last words in Madame de Gabry’s own vestibule; and I
was about to take leave of my kind guide when she said to me,
“My dear Monsieur, I cannot help you in this matter as much as I would
like to do. Jeanne is an orphan and a minor. You cannot do anything for
her without the authorisation of her guardian.”
“Ah!” I exclaimed, “I had not the least idea in the wold that Jeanne had
a guardian!”
Madame de Gabry looked at me with visible surprise. She had not expected
to find the old man quite so simple.
She resumed:
“The guardian of Jeanne Alexandre is Maitre Mouche, notary at
Levallois-Perret. I am afraid you will not be able to come to any
understanding with him; for he is a very serious person.”
“Why! good God!” I cried, “with what kind of people can you expect me to
have any sort of understanding at my age, except serious persons.”
She smiled with a sweet mischievousness--just as my father used to
smile--and answered:
“With those who are like you--the innocent folks who wear their hearts
on their sleeves. Monsieur Mouche is not exactly that kind. He is
cunning and light-fingered. But although I have very little liking
for him, we will go together and see him, if you wish, and ask his
permission to visit Jeanne, whom he has sent to a boarding-school at Les
Ternes, where she is very unhappy.”
We agreed at once upon a day; I kissed Madame de Gabry’s hands, and we
bade each other good-bye.
From May 2 to May 5.
I have seen him in his office, Maitre Mouche, the guardian of Jeanne.
Small, thin, and dry; his complexion looks as if it was made out of the
dust of his pigeon-holes. He is a spectacled animal; for to imagine him
without his spectacles would be impossible. I have heard him speak,
this Maitre Mouche; he has a voice like a tin rattle, and he uses choice
phrases; but I should have been better pleased if he had not chosen his
phrases so carefully. I have observed him, this Maitre Mouche; he is
very ceremonious, and watches his visitors slyly out of the corner of
his eye.
Maitre Mouche is quite pleased, he informs us; he is delighted to find
we have taken such an interest in his ward. But he does not think we are
placed in this world just to amuse ourselves. No: he does not believe
it; and I am free to acknowledge that anybody in his company is likely
to reach the same conclusion, so little is he capable of inspiring
joyfulness. He fears that it would be giving his dear ward a false and
pernicious idea of life to allow her too much enjoyment. It is for this
reason that he requests Madame de Gabry not to invite the young girl to
her house except at very long intervals.
We left the dusty notary and his dusty study with a permit in due form
(everything which issues from the office of Maitre Mouche is in due
form) to visit Mademoiselle Jeanne Alexandre on the first Thursday of
each month at Mademoiselle Prefere’s private school, Rue Demours, Aux
Ternes.
The first Thursday in May I set out to pay a visit to Mademoiselle
Prefere, whose establishment I discerned from afar off by a big sign,
painted with blue letters. That blue tint was the first indication I
received of Mademoiselle Prefere’s character, which I was able to see
more of later on. A scared-looking servant took my card, and abandoned
me without one word of hope at the door of a chilly parlour full of that
stale odour peculiar to the dining-rooms of educational establishments.
The floor of this parlour had been waxed with such pitiless energy,
that I remained for awhile in distress upon the threshold. But happily
observing that little strips of woollen carpet had been scattered over
the floor in front of each horse-hair chair, I succeeded, by cautiously
stepping from one carpet-island to another in reaching the angle of the
mantlepiece, where I sat down quite out of breath.
Over the mantelpiece, in a large gilded frame, was a written document,
entitled in flamboyant Gothic lettering, Tableau d’Honneur, with a long
array of names underneath, among which I did not have the pleasure of
finding that of Jeanne Alexandre. After having read over several times
the names of those girl-pupils who had thus made themselves honoured in
the eyes of Mademoiselle Prefere, I began to feel uneasy at not hearing
any one coming. Mademoiselle Prefere would certainly have succeeded in
establishing the absolute silence of interstellar spaces throughout her
pedagogical domains, had it not been that the sparrows had chosen her
yard to assemble in by legions, and chirp at the top of their voices.
It was a pleasure to hear them. But there was no way of seeing
them--through the ground-glass windows. I had to content myself with the
sights of the parlour, decorated from floor to ceiling, on all of its
four walls, with drawings executed by the pupils of the institution.
There were Vestals, flowers, thatched cottages, column-capitals, and
an enormous head of Tatius, King of the Sabines, bearing the signature
Estelle Mouton.
I had already passed some time in admiring the energy with which
Mademoiselle Mouton had delineated the bushy eyebrows and the fierce
gaze of the antique warrior, when a sound, faint like the rustling of
a dead leaf moved by the wind, caused me to turn my head. It was not a
dead leaf at all--it was Mademoiselle Prefere. With hands jointed before
her, she came gliding over the mirror-polish of that wonderful floor
as the Saints of the Golden Legend were wont to glide over the
crystal surface of the waters. But upon any other occasion, I am sure,
Mademoiselle Prefere would not have made me think in the least about
those virgins dear to mystical fancy. Her face rather gave me the
idea of a russet-apple preserved or a whole winter in an attic by
some economical housekeeper. Her shoulders were covered with a fringed
pelerine, which had nothing at all remarkable about it, but which she
wore as if it were a sacerdotal vestment, or the symbol of some high
civic function.
I explained to her the purpose of my visit, and gave her my letter of
introduction.
“Ah!--so you are Monsieur Mouche!” she exclaimed. “Is his health VERY
good? He is the most upright of men, the most---”
She did not finish the phrase, but raised her eyes to the ceiling. My
own followed the direction of their gaze, and observed a little spiral
of paper lace, suspended from the place of the chandelier, which was
apparently destined, so far as I could discover, to attract the flies
away from the gilded mirror-frames and the Tableau d’Honneur.
“I have met Mademoiselle Jeanne Alexandre,” I observed, “at the
residence of Madame de Gabry and had reason to appreciate the excellent
character and quick intelligence of the young girl. As I used to know
her parents very well, the friendship which I felt for them naturally
inclines me to take an interest in her.”
Mademoiselle Prefere, in lieu of making any reply, sighed profoundly,
pressed her mysterious pelerine to her heart, and again contemplated the
paper spiral.
At last she observed,
“Since you were once the friend of Monsieur and Madame Alexandre, I hope
and trust that, like Monsieur Mouche and myself, you deplore those
crazy speculations which led them to ruin, and reduced their daughter to
absolute poverty!”
I thought to myself, on hearing these words, how very wrong it is to
be unlucky, and how unpardonable such an error on the part of those
previously in a position worthy of envy. Their fall at once avenges and
flatters us; and we are wholly pitiless.
After having answered, very frankly, that I knew nothing whatever about
the history of the bank, I asked the schoolmistress if she was satisfied
with Mademoiselle Alexandre.
“That child is indomitable!” cried Mademoiselle Prefere.
And she assumed an attitude of lofty resignation, to symbolise the
difficult situation she was placed in by a pupil so hard to train. Then,
with more calmness of manner, she added:
“The young person is not unintelligent. But she cannot resign herself to
learn things by rule.”
What a strange old maid was this Mademoiselle Prefere! She walked
without lifting her legs, and spoke without moving her lips! Without,
however, considering her peculiarities for more than a reasonable
instant, I replied that principles were, no doubt, very excellent
things, and that I could trust myself to her judgement in regard to
their value; but that, after all, when one had learned something, it
very little difference what method had been followed in the learning of
it.
Mademoiselle made a slow gesture of dissent. Then with a sigh, she
declared,
“Ah, Monsieur! those who do not understand educational methods are apt
to have very false ideas on these subjects. I am certain they express
their opinions with the best intentions in the world; but they would do
better, a great deal better, to leave all such questions to competent
people.”
I did not attempt to argue further; and simply asked her whether I could
see Mademoiselle Alexandre at once.
She looked at her pelerine, as if trying to read in the entanglements
of its fringes, as in a conjuring book, what sort of answer she ought to
make; then said,
“Mademoiselle Alexandre has a penance to perform, and a class-lesson to
give; but I should be very sorry to let you put yourself to the trouble
of coming here all to no purpose. I am going to send for her. Only first
allow me, Monsieur--as is our custom--to put your name on the visitors’
register.”
She sat down at the table, opened a large copybook, and, taking out
Maitre Mouche’s letter again from under her pelerine, where she had
placed it, looked at it, and began to write.
“‘Bonnard’--with a ‘d,’ is it not?” she asked. “Excuse me for being so
particular; but my opinion is that proper names have an orthography.
We have dictation-lessons in proper names, Monsieur, at this
school--historical proper names, of course!”
After I had written down my name in a running hand, she inquired whether
she should not put down after it my profession, title, quality--such
as “retired merchant,” “employe,” “independent gentleman,” or something
else. There was a column in her register expressly for that purpose.
“My goodness, Madame!” I said, “if you must absolutely fill that column
of yours, put down ‘Member of the Institute.’”
It was still Mademoiselle Prefere’s pelerine I saw before me; but it was
not Mademoiselle Prefere who wore it; it was a totally different person,
obliging, gracious, caressing, radiant, happy. Her eyes, smiled; the
little wrinkles of her face (there were a vast number of them!) also
smiled; her mouth smiled likewise, but only on one side. I discovered
afterwards that was her best side. She spoke: her voice had also changed
with her manner; it was now sweet as honey.
“You said, Monsieur, that our dear Jeanne was very intelligent. I
discovered the same thing myself, and I am proud of being able to
agree with you. This young girl has really made me feel a great deal of
interest in her. She has what I call a happy disposition.... But excuse
me for thus drawing upon your valuable time.”
She summoned the servant-girl, who looked much more hurried and scared
than before, and who vanished with the order to go and tell Mademoiselle
Alexandre that Monsieur Sylvestre Bonnard, Member of the Institute, was
waiting to see her in the parlour.
Mademoiselle Prefere had barely time to confide in me that she had the
most profound respect for all decisions of the Institute--whatever they
might be--when Jeanne appeared, out of breath, red as a poppy, with
her eyes very wide open, and her arms dangling helplessly at her
sides--charming in her artless awkwardness.
“What a state you are in, my dear child!” murmured Mademoiselle Prefere,
with maternal sweetness, as she arranged the girl’s collar.
Jeanne certainly did present an odd aspect. Her hair combed back, and
imperfectly held by a net from which loose curls were escaping; her
slender arms, sheathed down to the elbows in lustring sleeves; her
hands, which she did not seem to know what to do with, all red with
chillblains; her dress, much too short, revealing that she had on
stockings much too large for her, and shoes worn down at the heel; and
a skipping-rope tied round her waist in lieu of a belt,--all combined to
lend Mademoiselle Jeanne an appearance the reverse of presentable.
“Oh, you crazy girl!” sighed Mademoiselle Prefere, who now seemed no
longer like a mother, but rather like an elder sister.
Then she suddenly left the room, gliding like a shadow over the polished
floor.
I said to Jeanne,
“Sit down, Jeanne, and talk to me as you would to a friend. Are you not
better satisfied here now than you were last year?”
She hesitated; then answered with a good-natured smile of resignation,
“Not much better.”
I asked her to tell me about her school life. She began at once to
enumerate all her different studies--piano, style, chronology of the
Kings of France, sewing, drawing, catechism, deportment... I could never
remember them all! She still held in her hands, all unconsciously, the
two ends of her skipping-rope, and she raised and lowered them regularly
while making her enumeration. Then all at once she became conscious of
what she was doing, blushed, stammered, and became so confused that I
had to renounce my desire to know the full programme of study adopted in
the Prefere Institution.
After having questioned Jeanne on various matters, and obtained only the
vaguest of answers, I perceived that her young mind was totally absorbed
by the skipping-rope, and I entered bravely into that grave subject.
“So you have been skipping?” I said. “It is a very nice amusement, but
one that you must not exert yourself too much at; for any excessive
exercise of that kind might seriously injure your health, and I should
be very much grieved about it Jeanne--I should be very much grieved,
indeed!”
“You are very kind, Monsieur,” the young girl said, “to have come to see
me and talk to me like this. I did not think about thanking you when
I came in, because I was too much surprised. Have you seen Madame de
Gabry? Please tell me something about her, Monsieur.”
“Madame de Gabry,” I answered, “is very well. I can only tell you about
her, Jeanne, what an old gardener once said of the lady of the castle,
his mistress, when somebody anxiously inquired about her: ‘Madame is
in her road.’ Yes, Madame de Gabry is in her own road; and you know,
Jeanne, what a good road it is, and how steadily she can walk upon it. I
went out with her the other day, very, very far away from the house;
and we talked about you. We talked about you, my child, at your mother’s
grave.”
“I am very glad,” said Jeanne.
And then, all at once, she began to cry.
I felt too much reverence for those generous tears to attempt in any way
to check the emotion that had evoked them. But in a little while, as the
girl wiped her eyes, I asked her,
“Will you not tell me, Jeanne, why you were thinking so much about that
skipping-rope a little while ago?”
“Why, indeed I will, Monsieur. It was only because I had no right to
come into the parlour with a skipping-rope. You know, of course, that I
am past the age for playing at skipping. But when the servant said there
was an old gentleman... oh!... I mean... that a gentleman was waiting for
me in the parlour, I was making the little girls jump. Then I tied the
rope round my waist in a hurry, so that it might not get lost. It was
wrong. But I have not been in the habit of having many people come to
see me. And Mademoiselle Prefere never lets us off if we commit any
breach of deportment: so I know she is going to punish me, and I am very
sorry about it.”...
“That is too bad, Jeanne!”
She became very grave, and said,
“Yes, Monsieur, it is too bad; because when I am punished myself, I have
no more authority over the little girls.”
I did not at once fully understand the nature of this unpleasantness;
but Jeanne explained to me that, as she was charged by Mademoiselle
Prefere with the duties of taking care of the youngest class, of washing
and dressing the children, of teaching them how to behave, how to sew,
how to say the alphabet, of showing them how to play, and, finally, of
putting them to bed at the close of the day, she could not make herself
obeyed by those turbulent little folks on the days she was condemned
to wear a night-cap in the class-room, or to eat her meals standing up,
from a plate turned upside down.
Having secretly admired the punishments devised by the Lady of the
Enchanted Pelerine, I responded:
“Then, if I understand you rightly, Jeanne, you are at once a pupil here
and a mistress? It is a condition of existence very common in the world.
You are punished, and you punish?”
“Oh, Monsieur!” she exclaimed. “No! I never punish!”
“Then, I suspect,” said I, “that your indulgence gets you many scoldings
from Mademoiselle Prefere?”
She smiled, and blinked.
Then I said to her that the troubles in which we often involve
ourselves, by trying to act according to our conscience and to do the
best we can, are never of the sort that totally dishearten and weary
us, but are, on the contrary, wholesome trials. This sort of philosophy
touched her very little. She even appeared totally unmoved by my moral
exhortations. But was not this quite natural on her part?--and ought I
not to have remembered that it is only those no longer innocent who can
find pleasure in the systems of moralists?... I had at least good sense
enough to cut short my sermonising.
“Jeanne,” I said, “you were asking a moment ago about Madame de Gabry.
Let us talk about that Fairy of yours She was very prettily made. Do you
do any modelling in wax now?”
“I have not a bit of wax,” she exclaimed, wringing her hands--“no wax at
all!”
“No wax!” I cried--“in a republic of busy bees?”
She laughed.
“And, then, you see, Monsieur, my FIGURINES, as you call them, are not
in Mademoiselle Prefere’s programme. But I had begun to make a very
small Saint-George for Madame de Gabry--a tiny little Saint-George,
with a golden cuirass. Is not that right, Monsieur Bonnard--to give
Saint-George a gold cuirass?”
“Quite right, Jeanne; but what became of it?”
“I am going to tell you, I kept it in my pocket because I had no other
place to put it, and--and I sat down on it by mistake.”
She drew out of her pocket a little wax figure, which had been squeezed
out of all resemblance to human form, and of which the dislocated limbs
were only attached to the body by their wire framework. At the sight of
her hero thus marred, she was seized at once with compassion and gaiety.
The latter feeling obtained the mastery, and she burst into a clear
laugh, which, however, stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
Mademoiselle Prefere stood at the parlour door, smiling.
“That dear child!” sighed the schoolmistress in her tenderest tone. “I
am afraid she will tire you. And, then, your time is so precious!”
I begged Mademoiselle Prefere to dismiss that illusion, and, rising to
take my leave, I took from my pocket some chocolate-cakes and sweets
which I had brought with me.
“That is so nice!” said Jeanne; “there will be enough to go round the
whole school.”
The lady of the pelerine intervened.
“Mademoiselle Alexandre,” she said, “thank Monsieur for his generosity.”
Jeanne looked at her for an instant in a sullen way; then, turning to
me, said with remarkable firmness,
“Monsieur, I thank you for your kindness in coming to see me.”
“Jeanne,” I said, pressing both her hands, “remain always a good,
truthful, brave girl. Good-bye.”
As she left the room with her packages of chocolate and confectionery,
she happened to strike the handles of her skipping-rope against the
back of a chair. Mademoiselle Prefere, full of indignation, pressed both
hands over her heart, under her pelerine; and I almost expected to see
her give up her scholastic ghost.
When we found ourselves alone, she recovered her composure; and I must
say, without considering myself thereby flattered, that she smiled upon
me with one whole side of her face.
“Mademoiselle,” I said, taking advantage of her good humour, “I noticed
that Jeanne Alexandre looks a little pale. You know better than I how
much consideration and care a young girl requires at her age. It would
only be doing you an injustice by implication to recommend her still
more earnestly to your vigilance.”
These words seemed to ravish her with delight. She lifted her eyes, as
in ecstasy, to the paper spirals of the ceiling, and, clasping her hands
exclaimed,
“How well these eminent men know the art of considering the most
trifling details!”
I called her attention to the fact that the health of a young girl was
not a trifling detail, and made my farewell bow. But she stopped me on
the threshold to say to me, very confidentially,
“You must excuse me, Monsieur. I am a woman, and I love glory. I cannot
conceal from you the fact that I feel myself greatly honoured by the
presence of a Member of the Institute in my humble institution.”
I duly excused the weakness of Mademoiselle Prefere; and, thinking only
of Jeanne, with the blindness of egotism, kept asking myself all along
the road, “What are we going to do with this child?”
June 3.
I had escorted to the Cimetiere de Marnes that day a very aged colleague
of mine who, to use the words of Goethe, had consented to die. The great
Goethe, whose own vital force was something extraordinary, actually
believed that one never dies until one really wants to die--that is to
say, when all those energies which resist dissolution, and teh sum of
which make up life itself, have been totally destroyed. In other words,
he believed that people only die when it is no longer possible for them
to live. Good! it is merely a question of properly understanding one
another; and when fully comprehended, the magnificent idea of Goethe
only brings us quietly back to the song of La Palisse.
Well, my excellent colleague had consented to die--thanks to several
successive attacks of extremely persuasive apoplexy--the last of which
proved unanswerable. I had been very little acquainted with him during
his lifetime; but it seems that I became his friend the moment he was
dead, for our colleagues assured me in a most serious manner, with
deeply sympathetic countenances, that I should act as one of the
pall-bearers, and deliver an address over the tomb.
After having read very badly a short address I had written as well as I
could--which is not saying much for it--I started out for a walk in the
woods of Ville-d’Avray, and followed, without leaning too much on
the Captain’s cane, a shaded path on which the sunlight fell, through
foliage, in little discs of gold. Never had the scent of grass and fresh
leaves,--never had the beauty of the sky over the trees, and the serene
might of noble tree contours, so deeply affected my senses and all my
being; and the pleasure I felt in that silence, broken only by faintest
tinkling sounds, was at once of the senses and of the soul.
I sat down in the shade of the roadside under a clump of young oaks. And
there I made a promise to myself not to die, or at least not to consent
to die, before I should be again able to sit down under and oak,
where--in the great peace of the open country--I could meditate on the
nature of the soul and the ultimate destiny of man. A bee, whose brown
breast-plate gleamed in the sun like armour of old gold, came to light
upon a mallow-flower close by me--darkly rich in colour, and fully
opened upon its tufted stalk. It was certainly not the first time I had
witnessed so common an incident; but it was the first time that I had
watched it with such comprehensive and friendly curiosity. I could
discern that there were all sorts of sympathies between the insect and
the flower--a thousand singular little relationships which I had never
before even suspected.
Satiated with nectar, the insect rose and buzzed away in a straight
line, while I lifted myself up as best I could, and readjusted myself
upon my legs.
“Adieu!” I said to the flower and to the bee. “Adieu! Heaven grant I
may live long enough to discover the secret of your harmonies. I am very
tired. But man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind
of labour by taking up another. The flowers and insects will give me
that relaxation, with God’s will, after my long researches in philology
and diplomatics. How full of meaning is that old myth of Antaeus! I have
touched the Earth and I am a new man; and now at seventy years of age,
new feelings of curiosity take birth in my mind, even as young shoots
sometimes spring up from the hollow trunk of an aged oak!”
June 4.
I like to look out of my window at the Seine and its quays on those
soft grey mornings which give such an infinite tenderness of tint to
everything. I have seen that azure sky which flings so luminous a calm
over the Bay of Naples. But our Parisian sky is more animated, more
kindly, more spiritual. It smiles, threatens, caresses--takes an aspect
of melancholy or a look of merriment like a human gaze. At this moment
it is pouring down a very gentle light on the men and beasts of the city
as they accomplish their daily tasks. Over there, on the opposite bank,
the stevedores of the Port Saint-Nicholas are unloading a cargo of cow’s
horns; while two men standing on a gangway are tossing sugar-loaves from
one to the other, and thence to somebody in the hold of a steamer. On
the north quay, the cab-horses, standing in a line under the shade of
the plane-trees each with its head in a nose-bag, are quietly munching
their oats, while the rubicund drivers are drinking at the counter of
the wine-seller opposite, but all the while keeping a sharp lookout for
early customers.
The dealers in second-hand books put their boxes on the parapet. These
good retailers of Mind, who are always in the open air, with blouses
loose to the breeze, have become so weatherbeaten by the wind, the
rain, the frost, the snow, the fog, and the great sun, that they end
by looking very much like the old statues of cathedrals. They are all
friends of mine, and I scarcely ever pass by their boxes without picking
out of one of them some old book which I had always been in need of up
to that very moment, without any suspicion of the fact on my part.
Then on my return home I have to endure the outcries of my housekeeper,
who accuses me of bursting all my pockets and filling the house with
waste paper to attract the rats. Therese is wise about that, and it
is because she is wise that I do not listen to her; for in spite of my
tranquil mien, I have always preferred the folly of the passions to the
wisdom of indifference. But just because my own passions are not of that
sort which burst out with violence to devastate and kill, the common
mind is not aware of their existence. Nevertheless, I am greatly moved
by them at times, and it has more than once been my fate to lose my
sleep for the sake of a few pages written by some forgotten monk or
printed by some humble apprentice of Peter Schaeffer. And if these
fierce enthusiasms are slowly being quenched in me, it is only because
I am being slowly quenched myself. Our passions are ourselves. My old
books are Me. I am just as old and thumb-worn as they are.
A light breeze sweeps away, along with the dust of the pavements, the
winged seeds of the plane trees, and the fragments of hay dropped from
the mouths of the horses. The dust is nothing remarkable in itself; but
as I watch it flying, I remember a moment in my childhood when I watched
just such a swirl of dust; and my old Parisian soul is much affected by
that sudden recollection. All that I see from my window--that horizon
which extends to the left as far as the hills of Chaillot, and enables
me to distinguish the Arc de Triomphe like a die of stone, the Seine,
river of glory, and its bridges, the ash-trees of the terrace of
the Tuileries, the Louvre of the Renaissance, cut and graven like
goldsmith-work; and on my right, towards the Pont-Neuf (pons Lutetiae
Novus dictus, as it is named on old engravings), all the old and
venerable part of Paris, with its towers and spires:--all that is my
life, it is myself; and I should be nothing but for all those things
which are thus reflected in me through my thousand varying shades of
thought, inspiring me and animating me. That is why I love Paris with an
immense love.
And nevertheless I am weary, and I know that there can be no rest for me
in the heart of this great city which thinks so much, which has taught
me to think, and which for ever urges me to think more. And how avoid
being exited among all these books which incessantly tempt my curiosity
without ever satisfying it? At one moment it is a date I have to look
for; at another it is the name of a place I have to make sure of,
or some quaint term of which it is important to determine the exact
meaning. Words?--why, yes! words. As a philologist, I am their
sovereign; they are my subjects, and, like a good king, I devote my
whole life to them. But shall I not be able to abdicate some day? I have
an idea that there is somewhere or other, quite far from here, a certain
little cottage where I could enjoy the quiet I so much need, while
awaiting that day in which a greater quiet--that which can be never
broken--shall come to wrap me all about. I dream of a bench before the
threshold, and of fields spreading away out of sight. But I must have a
fresh smiling young face beside me, to reflect and concentrate all that
freshness of nature. I could then imagine myself a grandfather, and all
the long void of my life would be filled....
I am not a violent man, and yet I become easily vexed, and all my works
have caused me quite as much pain as pleasure. And I do not know how
it is that I still keep thinking about that very conceited and very
inconsiderated impertinence which my young friend of the Luxembourg took
the liberty to utter about me some three months ago. I do not call him
“friend” in irony, for I love studious youth with all it temerities and
imaginative eccentricities. Still, my young friend certainly went beyond
all bounds. Master Ambroise Pare, who was the first to attempt the
ligature of arteries, and who, having commenced his profession at a time
when surgery was only performed by quack barbers, nevertheless succeeded
in lifting the science to the high place it now occupies, was assailed
in his old age by all the young sawbones’ apprentices. Being grossly
abused during a discussion by some young addlehead who might have
been the best son in the world, but who certainly lacked all sense of
respect, the old master answered him in his treatise De la Mumie, de la
Licorne, des Venins et de la Peste. “I pray him,” said the great man--“I
pray him, that if he desire to make any contradictions to my reply, he
abandon all animosities, and treat the good old man with gentleness.”
This answer seems admirable from the pen of Ambroise Pare; but even had
it been written by a village bonesetter, grown grey in his calling, and
mocked by some young stripling, it would still be worthy of all praise.
It might perhaps seem that my memory of the incident had been kept alive
only by a base feeling of resentment. I thought so myself at first, and
reproached myself for thus dwelling on the saying of a boy who could
not yet know the meaning of his own words. But my reflections on this
subject subsequently took a better course: that is why I now note them
down in my diary. I remembered that one day when I was twenty years old
(that was more than half a century ago) I was walking about in that very
same garden of the Luxembourg with some comrades. We were talking about
our old professors; and one of us happened to name Monsieur Petit-Radel,
an estimable and learned man, who was the first to throw some light upon
the origins of early Etruscan civilisation, but who had been unfortunate
enough to prepare a chronological table of the lovers of Helen. We all
laughed a great deal about that chronological table; and I cried out,
“Petit-Radel is an ass, not in three letters, but in twelve whole
volumes!”
This foolish speech of my adolescence was uttered too lightly to be a
weight on my conscience as an old man. May God kindly prove to me some
day that I never used an less innocent shaft of speech in the battle of
life! But I now ask myself whether I really never wrote, at any time in
my life, something quite as unconsciously absurd as the chronological
table of the lovers of Helen. The progress of science renders useless
the very books which have been the greatest aids to that progress. As
those works are no longer useful, modern youth is naturally inclined to
believe they never had any value; it despises them, and ridicules them
if they happen to contain any superannuated opinion whatever. That is
why, in my twentieth year, I amused myself at the expense of Monsieur
Petit-Radel and his chronological table; and that was why, the other
day, at the Luxembourg, my young and irreverent friend...
“Rentre en toi-meme, Octave, et cesse de te plaindre. Quoi! tu veux
qu’on t’epargne et n’as rien epargne!” [ “Look into thyself, Octavius,
and cease complaining. What! thou wouldst be spared, and thou thyself
hast spared none!”]
June 6.
It was the first Thursday in June. I shut up my books and took my
leave of the holy abbot Droctoveus, who, being now in the enjoyment of
celestial bliss, cannot feel very impatient to behold his name and works
glorified on earth through the humble compilation being prepared by my
hands. Must I confess it? That mallow-plant I saw visited by a bee the
other day has been occupying my thoughts much more than all the ancient
abbots who ever bore croisers or wore mitres. There is in one of
Sprengel’s books which I read in my youth, at that time when I used
to read in my youth, at that time when I used to read anything and
everything, some ideas about “the loves of flowers” which now return to
memory after having been forgotten for half a century, and which
to-day interest me so much that I regret not to have devoted the humble
capacities of my mind to the study of insects and of plants.
And only awhile ago my housekeeper surprised me at the kitchen window,
in the act of examining some wallflowers through a magnifying-glass....
It was while looking for my cravat that I made these reflections. But
after searching to no purpose in a great number of drawers, I found
myself obliged, after all, to have recourse to my housekeeper. Therese
came limping in.
“Monsieur,” she said, “you ought to have told me you were going out, and
I would have given you your cravat!”
“But Therese,” I replied, “would it not be a great deal better to put in
some place where I could find it without your help?”
Therese did not deign to answer me.
Therese no longer allows me to arrange anything. I cannot even have a
handkerchief without asking her for it; and as she is deaf, crippled,
and, what is worse, beginning to lose her memory, I languish in
perpetual destitution. But she exercises her domestic authority with
such quiet pride that I do not feel the courage to attempt a coup d’etat
against her government.
“My cravat! Therese!--do you hear?--my cravat! if you drive me wild like
this with your slow ways, it will not be a cravat I shall need, but a
rope to hang myself!”
“You must be in a very great hurry, Monsieur,” replied Therese. “Your
cravat is not lost. Nothing is ever lost in this house, because I have
charge of everything. But please allow me the time at least to find it.”
“Yet here,” I thought to myself--“here is the result of half a century
of devotedness and self-sacrifice!... Ah! if by any happy chance this
inexorable Therese had once in her whole life, only once, failed in her
duty as a servant--if she had ever been at fault for one single instant,
she could never have assumed this inflexible authority over me, and I
should at least have the courage to resist her. But how can one resist
virtue? The people who have no weaknesses are terrible; there is no way
of taking advantage of them. Just look at Therese, for example; she
has not a single fault for which you can blame her! She has no doubt
of herself; nor of God, nor of the world. She is the valiant woman, the
wise virgin of Scripture; others may know nothing about her, but I
know her worth. In my fancy I always see her carrying a lamp, a humble
kitchen lamp, illuminating the beams of some rustic roof--a lamp which
will never go out while suspended from that meagre arm of hers, scraggy
and strong as a vine-branch.
“Therese, my cravat! Don’t you know, wretched woman, that to-day is the
first Thursday in June, and that Mademoiselle Jeanne will be waiting for
me? The schoolmistress has certainly had the parlour floor vigorously
waxed: I am sure one can look at oneself in it now; and it will be quite
a consolation for me when I slip and break my old bones upon it--which
is sure to happen sooner or later--to see my rueful countenance
reflected in it as in a looking-glass. Then taking for my model that
amiable and admirable hero whose image is carved upon the handle of
Uncle Victor’s walking-stick, I will control myself so as not to make
too ugly a grimace.... See what a splendid sun! The quays are all gilded
by it, and the Seine smiles in countless little flashing wrinkles. The
city is gold: a dust-haze, blonde and gold-toned as a woman’s hair,
floats above its beautiful contours.... Therese, my cravat!... Ah! I
can now comprehend the wisdom of that old Chrysal who used to keep his
neckbands in a big Plutarch. Hereafter I shall follow his example by
laying all my neckties away between the leaves of the Acta Sanctorum.”
Therese let me talk on, and keeps looking for the necktie in silence. I
hear a gentle ringing at our door-bell.
“Therese,” I exclaim; “there is somebody ringing the bell! Give me my
cravat, and go to the door; or, rather, go to the door first, and then,
with the help of Heaven, you will give me my cravat. But please do
not stand there between the clothes-press and the door like an old
hack-horse between two saddles.”
Therese marched to the door as if advancing upon the enemy. My excellent
housekeeper becomes more inhospitable the older she grows. Every
stranger is an object of suspicion to her. According to her own
assertion, this disposition is the result of a long experience with
human nature. I had not the time to consider whether the same experience
on the part of another experimenter would produce the same results.
Maitre Mouche was waiting to see me in the ante-room.
Maitre Mouche is still more yellow than I had believed him to be. He
wears blue glasses, and his eyes keep moving uneasily behind them, like
mice running about behind a screen.
Maitre Mouche excuses himself for having intruded upon me at a moment
when.... He does not characterise the moment; but I think he means to
say a moment in which I happen to be without my cravat. It is not my
fault, as you very well know. Maitre Mouche, who does not know, does not
appear to be at all shocked, however. He is only afraid that he might
have dropped in at the wrong moment. I succeeded in partially reassuring
him at once upon that point. He then tells me it is as guardian of
Mademoiselle Alexandre that he has come to talk with me. First of all,
he desires that I shall not hereafter pay any heed to those restrictions
he had at first deemed necessary to put upon the permit given to visit
Mademoiselle Jeanne at the boarding-school. Henceforth the establishment
of Mademoiselle Prefere will be open to me any day that I might choose
to call--between the hours of midday and four o’clock. Knowing the
interest I have taken in the young girl, he considers it his duty to
give me some information about the person to whom he has confided his
ward. Mademoiselle Prefere, whom he has known for many years, is in
possession of his utmost confidence. Mademoiselle Prefere is, in his
estimation, an enlightened person, of excellent morals, and capable of
giving excellent counsel.
“Mademoiselle Prefer,” he said to me, “has principles; and principles
are rare these days, Monsieur. Everything has been totally changed; and
this epoch of ours cannot compare with the preceding ones.”
“My stairway is a good example, Monsieur,” I replied; “twenty-five years
ago it used to allow me to climb it without any trouble, and now it
takes my breath away, and wears my legs out before I have climbed half
a dozen steps. It has had its character spoiled. Then there are
those journals and books I used once to devour without difficulty
by moonlight: to-day, even in the brightest sunlight, they mock my
curiosity, and exhibit nothing but a blur of white and black when I have
not got my spectacles on. Then the gout has got into my limbs. That is
another malicious trick of the times!”
“Not only that, Monsieur,” gravely replied Maitre Mouche, “but what is
really unfortunate in our epoch is that no one is satisfied with his
position. From the top of society to the bottom, in every class, there
prevails a discontent, a restlessness, a love of comfort....”
“Mon Dieu, Monsieur!” I exclaimed. “You think this love of comfort is a
sign of the times? Men have never had at any epoch a love of discomfort.
They have always tried to better their condition. This constant effort
produces constant changes, and the effort is always going on--that is
all there is about it!”
“Ah! Monsieur,” replied Maitre Mouche, “it is easy to see that you live
in your books--out of the business world altogether. You do not see, as
I see them, the conflicts of interest, the struggle for money. It is
the same effervescence in all minds, great or small. The wildest
speculations are being everywhere indulged in. What I see around me
simply terrifies me!”
I wondered within myself whether Maitre Mouche had called upon me only
for the purpose of expressing his virtuous misanthropy; but all at once
I heard words of a more consoling character issue from his lips. Maitre
Mouche began to speak to me of Virginie Prefere as a person worthy of
respect, of esteem, and of sympathy,--highly honourable, capable of
great devotedness, cultivated, discreet,--able to read aloud remarkably
well, extremely modest, and skillful in the art of applying blisters.
Then I began to understand that he had only been painting that dismal
picture of universal corruption in order the better to bring out, by
contrast, the virtues of the schoolmistress. I was further informed that
the institution in the Rue Demours was well patronised, prosperous, and
enjoyed a high reputation with the public. Maitre Mouche lifted up his
hand--with a black woollen glove on it--as if making oath to the truth
of these statements. Then he added:
“I am enabled, by the very character of my profession, to know a great
deal about people. A notary is, to a certain extent, a father-confessor.
“I deemed it my duty, Monsieur, to give you this agreeable information
at the moment when a lucky chance enabled you to meet Mademoiselle
Prefere. There is only one thing more which I would like to say. This
lady--who is, of course, quite unaware of my action in the matter--spoke
to me of you the other day in terms of deepest sympathy. I could only
weaken their expression by repeating them to you; and furthermore,
I could not repeat them without betraying, to a certain extent, the
confidence of Mademoiselle Prefere.”
“Do not betray it, Monsieur; do not betray it!” I responded. “To tell
you the truth, I had no idea that Mademoiselle Prefere knew anything
whatever about me. But since you have the influence of an old friend
with her, I will take advantage of your good will, Monsieur, to ask you
to exercise that influence in behalf of Mademoiselle Jeanne Alexandre.
The child--for she is still a child--is overloaded with work. She is at
once a pupil and a mistress--she is overtasked. Besides, she is punished
in petty disgusting ways; and hers is one of those generous natures
which will be forced into revolt by such continual humiliation.”
“Alas!” replied Maitre Mouche, “she must be trained to take her part in
the struggle of life. One does not come into this world simply to amuse
oneself, and to do just what one pleases.”
“One comes into this world,” I responded, rather warmly, “to enjoy what
is beautiful and what is good, and to do as one pleases, when the things
one wants to do are noble, intelligent, and generous. An education which
does not cultivate the will, is an education that depraves the mind. It
is a teacher’s duty to teach the pupil HOW to will.”
I perceived that Maitre Mouche began to think me a rather silly man.
With a great deal of quiet self-assurance, he proceeded:
“You must remember, Monsieur, that the education of the poor has to be
conducted with a great deal of circumspection, and with a view to that
future state of dependence they must occupy in society. Perhaps you are
not aware that the late Noel Alexandre died a bankrupt, and that his
daughter is being educated almost by charity?”
“Oh! Monsieur!” I exclaimed, “do not say it! To say it is to pay oneself
back, and then the statement ceases to be true.”
“The liabilities of the estate,” continued the notary, “exceeded the
assets. But I was able to effect a settlement with the creditors in
favour of the minor.”
He undertook to explain matters in detail. I declined to listen to
these explanations, being incapable of understanding business methods in
general, and those of Maitre Mouche in particular. The notary then took
it upon himself to justify Mademoiselle Prefere’s educational system,
and observed by way of conclusion,
“It is not by amusing oneself that one can learn.”
“It is only by amusing oneself that one can learn,” I replied. “The
whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity
of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards; and
curiosity itself can be vivid and wholesome only in proportion as the
mind is contented and happy. Those acquirements crammed by force into
the minds of children simply clog and stifle intelligence. In order that
knowledge be properly digested, it must have been swallowed with a good
appetite. I know Jeanne! If that child were intrusted to my care, I
should make of her--not a learned woman, for I would look to her future
happiness only--but a child full of bright intelligence and full of
life, in whom everything beautiful in art or nature would awaken some
gentle responsive thrill. I would teach her to live in sympathy with
all that is beautiful--comely landscapes, the ideal scenes of poetry and
history, the emotional charm of noble music. I would make lovable to her
everything I would wish her to love. Even her needlework I would
make pleasurable to her, by a proper choice of fabrics, the style of
embroideries, the designs of lace. I would give her a beautiful dog,
and a pony to teach her how to manage animals; I would give her birds to
take care of, so that she could learn the value of even a drop of water
and a crumb of bread. And in order that she should have a still higher
pleasure, I would train her to find delight in exercising charity.
And inasmuch as none of us may escape pain, I should teach her that
Christian wisdom which elevates us above all suffering, and gives a
beauty even to grief itself. That is my idea of the right way to educate
a young girl.”
“I yield, Monsieur,” replied Maitre Mouche, joining his black-gloved
hands together.
And he rose.
“Of course you understand,” I remarked, as I went to the door with him,
“that I do not pretend for a moment to impose my educational system
upon Mademoiselle Prefere; it is necessarily a private one, and quite
incompatible with the organisation of even the best-managed boarding
schools. I only ask you to persuade her to give Jeanne less work and
more play, and not to punish her except in case of absolute necessity,
and to let her have as much freedom of mind and body as the regulations
of the institution permit.”
It was with a pale and mysterious smile that Maitre Mouche informed me
that my observations would be taken in good part, and should receive all
possible consideration.
Therewith he made me a little bow, and took his departure, leaving me
with a peculiar feeling of discomfort and uneasiness. I have met a great
many strange characters in my time, but never any at all resembling
either this notary or this schoolmistress.
July 6.
Maitre Mouche has so much delayed me by his visit that I gave up going
to see Jeanne that day. Professional duties kept me very busy for the
rest of the week. Although at the age when most men retire altogether
from active life, I am still attached by a thousand ties to the society
in which I have lived. I have to reside at meetings of academies,
scientific congresses, assemblies of various learned bodies. I am
overburdened with honorary functions; I have seven of these in one
governmental department alone. The bureaux would be very glad to get rid
of them. But habit is stronger than both of us together, and I continue
to hobble up the stairs of various government buildings. Old clerks
point me out to each other as I go by like a ghost wandering through the
corridors. When one has become very old one finds it extremely difficult
to disappear. Nevertheless, it is time, as the old song says, “de
prendre ma retraite et de songer a faire un fin”--to retire on my
pension and prepare myself to die a good death.
An old marchioness, who used to be a friend of Hevetius in her youth,
and whom I once met at my father’s house when a very old woman, was
visited during her last sickness by the priest of her parish, who wanted
to prepare her to die.
“Is that really necessary?” she asked. “I see everybody else manage it
perfectly well the first time.”
My father went to see her very soon afterwards and found her extremely
ill.
“Good-evening, my friend!” she said, pressing his hand. “I am going to
see whether God improves upon acquaintance.”
So were wont to die the belles amies of the philosophers. Such an end is
certainly not vulgar nor impertinent, and such levities are not of the
sort that emanate from dull minds. Nevertheless, they shock me. Neither
my fears nor my hopes could accommodate themselves to such a mode of
departure. I would like to make mine with a perfectly collected mind;
and that is why I must begin to think, in a year or two, about some
way of belonging to myself; otherwise, I should certainly risk.... But,
hush! let Him not hear His name and turn to look as He passes by! I can
still lift my fagot without His aid.
... I found Jeanne very happy indeed. She told me that, on the Thursday
previous, after the visit of her guardian, Mademoiselle Prefere had
set her free from the ordinary regulations and lightened her tasks
in several ways. Since that lucky Thursday she could walk in the
garden--which only lacked leaves and flowers--as much as she liked; and
she had been given facilities to work at her unfortunate little figure
of Saint-George.
She said to me, with a smile,
“I know very well that I owe all of this to you.”
I tried to talk with her about other matters, but I remarked that she
could not attend to what I was saying, in spite of her effort to do so.
“I see you are thinking about something else,” I said. “Well, tell me
what it is; for, if you do not, we shall not be able to talk to each
other at all, which would be very unworthy of both of us.”
She answered,
“Oh! I was really listening to you, Monsieur; but it is true that I was
thinking about something else. You will excuse me, won’t you? I could
not help thinking that Mademoiselle Prefere must like you very, very
much indeed, to have become so good to me all of a sudden.”
Then she looked at me in an odd, smiling, frightened way, which made me
laugh.
“Does that surprise you?” I asked.
“Very much,” she replied.
“Please tell me why?”
“Because I can see no reason, no reason at all... but there!... no reason
at all why you should please Mademoiselle Prefere so much.”
“So, then, you think I am very displeasing, Jeanne?”
She bit her lips, as if to punish them for having made a mistake; and
then, in a coaxing way, looking at me with great soft eyes, gentle and
beautiful as a spaniel’s, she said,
“I know I said a foolish think; but, still, I do not see any reason why
you should be so pleasing to Mademoiselle Prefere. And, nevertheless,
you seem to please her a great deal--a very great deal. She called me
one day, and asked me all sorts of questions about you.”
“Really?”
“Yes; she wanted to find out all about your house. Just think! she even
asked me how old your servant was!”
And Jeanne burst out laughing.
“Well, what do you think about it?” I asked.
She remained a long while with her eyes fixed on the worn-out cloth of
her shoes, and seemed to be thinking very deeply. Finally, looking up
again, she answered,
“I am distrustful. Isn’t it very natural to feel uneasy about what one
cannot understand; I know I am foolish; but you won’t be offended with
me, will you?”
“Why, certainly not, Jeanne. I am not a bit offended with you.”
I must acknowledge that I was beginning to share her surprise; and I
began to turn over in my old head the singular thought of this young
girl--“One is uneasy about what one cannot understand.”
But, with a fresh burst of merriment, she cried out,
“She asked me...guess! I will give you a hundred guesses--a thousand
guesses. You give it up?... She asked me if you liked good eating.”
“And how did you receive this shower of interrogations, Jeanne?”
“I replied, ‘I don’t know, Mademoiselle.’ And Mademoiselle then said to
me, ‘You are a little fool. The least details of the life of an eminent
man ought to be observed. Please to know, Mademoiselle, that Monsieur
Sylvestre Bonnard is one of the glories of France!’”
“Stuff!” I exclaimed. “And what did YOU think about it, Mademoiselle?”
“I thought that Mademoiselle Prefere was right. But I don’t care at
all...(I know it is naughty what I am going to say)...I don’t care a
bit, not a bit, whether Mademoiselle Prefere is or is not right about
anything.”
“Well, then, content yourself, Jeanne, Mademoiselle Prefere was not
right.”
“Yes, yes, she was quite right that time; but I wanted to love everybody
who loved you--everybody without exception--and I cannot do it, because
it would never be possible for me to love Mademoiselle Prefere.”
“Listen, Jeanne,” I answered, very seriously, “Mademoiselle Prefere has
become good to you; try now to be good to her.”
She answered sharply,
“It is very easy for Mademoiselle Prefere to be good to me, and it would
be very difficult indeed for me to be good to her.”
I then said, in a still more serious tone:
“My child, the authority of a teacher is sacred. You must consider your
schoolmistress as occupying the place to you of the mother whom you
lost.”
I had scarcely uttered this solemn stupidity when I bitterly regretted
it. The child turned pale, and the tears sprang to her eyes.
“Oh, Monsieur!” she cried, “how could you say such a thing--YOU? You
never knew mamma!”
Ay, just Heaven! I did know her mamma. And how indeed could I have been
foolish enough to have said what I did?
She repeated, as if to herself:
“Mamma! my dear mamma! my poor mamma!”
A lucky chance prevented me from playing the fool any further. I do not
know how it happened at that moment I looked as if I was going to cry.
At my age one does not cry. It must have been a bad cough which brought
the tears into my eyes. But, anyhow, appearances were in my favour.
Jeanne was deceived by them. Oh! what a pure and radiant smile suddenly
shone out under her beautiful wet eyelashes--like sunshine among
branches after a summer shower! We took each other by the hand and sat
a long while without saying a word--absolutely happy. Those celestial
harmonies which I once thought I heard thrilling through my soul while I
knelt before that tomb to which a saintly woman had guided me, suddenly
awoke again in my heart, slow-swelling through the blissful moments with
infinite softness. Doubtless the child whose hand pressed my own also
heard them; and then, elevated by their enchantment above the material
world, the poor old man and the artless young girl both knew that a
tender ghostly Presence was making sweetness all about them.
“My child,” I said at last, “I am very old, and many secrets of life,
which you will only learn little by little, have been revealed to me.
Believe me, the future is shaped out of the past. Whatever you can do
to live contentedly here, without impatience and without fretting, will
help you live some future day in peace and joy in your own home. Be
gentle, and learn how to suffer. When one suffers patiently one suffers
less. If you should be badly treated, Madame de Gabry and I would both
consider ourselves badly treated in your person.”...
“Is your health very good indeed, dear Monsieur?”
It was Mademoiselle Prefere, approaching stealthily behind us, who had
asked the question with a peculiar smile. My first idea was to tell her
to go to the devil; my second, that her mouth was as little suited for
smiling as a frying-pan for musical purposes; my third was to answer her
politely and assure her that I hoped she was very well.
She sent the young girl out to take a walk in the garden; then, pressing
one hand upon her pelerine and extending the other towards the Tableau
d’Honneur, she showed me the name of Jeanne Alexandre written at the
head of the list in large text.
“I am very much pleased,” I said to her, “to find that you are satisfied
with the behaviour of that child. Nothing could delight me more; and
I am inclined to attribute this happy result to your affectionate
vigilance. I have taken the liberty to send you a few books which I
think may serve both to instruct and to amuse young girls. You will
be able to judge by glancing over them whether they are adapted to the
perusal of Mademoiselle Alexandre and her companions.”
The gratitude of the schoolmistress not only overflowed in words, but
seemed about to take the form of tearful sensibility. In order to change
the subject I observed,
“What a beautiful day this is!”
“Yes,” she replied; “and if this weather continues, those dear children
will have a nice time for their enjoyment.”
“I suppose you are referring to the holidays. But Mademoiselle
Alexandre, who has no relatives, cannot go away. What in the world is
she going to do all alone in this great big house?”
“Oh, we will do everything we can to amuse her.... I will take her to
the museums and---”
She hesitated, blushed, and continued,
“--and to your house, if you will permit me.”
“Why of course!” I exclaimed. “That is a first-rate idea.”
We separated very good friends with one another. I with her, because I
had been able to obtain what I desired; she with me, for no appreciable
motive--which fact, according to Plato, elevated her into the highest
rank of the Hierarchy of Souls.
... And nevertheless it is not without a presentiment of evil that I
find myself on the point of introducing this person into my house. And I
would be very glad indeed to see Jeanne in charge of anybody else rather
than of her. Maitre Mouche and Mademoiselle Prefere are characters whom
I cannot at all understand. I never can imagine why they say what they
do say, nor why they do what they do; they have a mysterious something
in common which makes me feel uneasy. As Jeanne said to me a little
while ago: “One is uneasy about what one cannot understand.”
Alas! at my age one has learned only too well how little sincerity there
is in life; one has learned only too well how much one loses by living a
long time in this world; and one feels that one can no longer trust any
except the young.
August 12.
I waited for them. In fact, I waited for them very impatiently. I
exerted all my powers of insinuation and of coaxing to induce Therese to
receive them kindly; but my powers in this direction are very limited.
They came. Jeanne was neater and prettier than I had ever expected to
see her. She has not, it is true, anything approaching the charm of
her mother. But to-day, for the first time, I observed that she has a
pleasing face; and a pleasing face is of great advantage to a woman
in this world. I think that her hat was a little on one side; but she
smiled, and the City of Books was all illuminated by that smile.
I watched Therese to see whether the rigid manners of the old
housekeeper would soften a little at the sight of the young girl. I saw
her turning her lustreless eyes upon Jeanne; I saw her long wrinkled
face, her toothless mouth, and that pointed chin of hers--like the chin
of some puissant old fairy. And that was all I could see.
Mademoiselle Prefere made her appearance all in blue--advanced,
retreated, skipped, tripped, cried out, sighed, cast her eyes down,
rolled her eyes up, bewildered herself with excuses--said she dared
not, and nevertheless dared--said she would never dare again, and
nevertheless dared again--made courtesies innumerable--made, in short,
all the fuss she could.
“What a lot of books!” she screamed. “And have you really read them all,
Monsieur Bonnard?”
“Alas! I have,” I replied, “and that is just the reason that I do not
know anything; for there is not a single one of those books which does
not contradict some other book; so that by the time one has read them
all one does not know what to think about anything. That is just my
condition, Madame.”
Thereupon she called Jeanne for the purpose of communicating her
impressions. But Jeanne was looking out of the window.
“How beautiful it is!” she said to us. “How I love to see the river
flowing! It makes you think about all kinds of things.”
Mademoiselle Prefere having removed her hat and exhibited a forehead
tricked out with blonde curls, my housekeeper sturdily snatched up the
hat at once, with the observation that she did not like to see people’s
clothes scattered over the furniture. Then she approached Jeanne and
asked her for her “things,” calling her “my little lady!” Where-upon
the little lady, giving up her cloak and hat, exposed to view a very
graceful neck and a lithe figure, whose outlines were beautifully
relieved against the great glow of the open window; and I could have
wished that some one else might have seen her at that moment--some one
very different from an aged housekeeper, a schoolmistress frizzled like
a sheep, and this old humbug of an archivist and paleographer.
“So you are looking at the Seine,” I said to her. “See how it sparkles
in the sun!”
“Yes,” she replied, leaning over the windowbar, “it looks like a flowing
of fire. But see how nice and cool it looks on the other side over
there under the shadow of the willows! That little spot there pleases me
better than all the rest.”
“Good!” I answered. “I see that the river has a charm for you. How would
you like, with Mademoiselle Prefere’s permission, to make a trip to
Saint-Cloud? We should certainly be in time to catch the steamboat just
below the Pont-Royal.”
Jeanne was delighted with my suggestion, and Mademoiselle Prefere
willing to make any sacrifice. But my housekeeper was not at all willing
to let us go off so unconcernedly. She summoned me into the dining-room,
whither I followed her in fear and trembling.
“Monsieur,” she said to me as soon as we found ourselves alone, “you
never think about anything, and it is always I who have to think about
everything. Luckily for you I have a good memory.”
I did not think that it was a favourable moment for any attempt to
dispel this wild illusion. She continued:
“So you were going off without saying a word to me about what this
little lady likes to eat? At her age one does not know anything, one
does not care about anything in particular, one eats like a bird. You
yourself, Monsieur, are very difficult to please; but at least you know
what is good: it is very different with these young people--they do not
know anything about cooking. It is often the very best thing which
they think the worst, and what is bad seems to them good, because their
stomachs are not quite formed yet--so that one never knows just what to
do for them. Tell me if the little lady would like a pigeon cooked with
green peas, and whether she is fond of vanilla ice-cream.”
“My good Therese,” I answered, “just do whatever you think best, and
whatever that may be I am sure it will be very nice. Those ladies will
be quite contented with our humble ordinary fare.”
Therese replied, very dryly,
“Monsieur, I am asking you about the little lady: she must not leave
this house without having enjoyed herself a little. As for that old
frizzle-headed thing, if she doesn’t like my dinner she can suck her
thumbs. I don’t care what she likes!”
My mind being thus set at rest, I returned to the City of Books, where
Mademoiselle Prefere was crocheting as calmly as if she were at home. I
almost felt inclined myself to think she was. She did not take up much
room, it is true, in the angle of the window. But she had chosen her
chair and her footstool so well that those articles of furniture seemed
to have been made expressly for her.
Jeanne, on the other hand, devoted her attention to the books and
pictures--gazing at them in a kindly, expressive, half-sad way, as if
she were bidding them an affectionate farewell.
“Here,” I said to her, “amuse yourself with this book, which I am sure
you cannot help liking, because it is full of beautiful engravings.” And
I threw open before her Vecellio’s collection of costume-designs--not
the commonplace edition, by your leave, so meagrely reproduced by modern
artists, but in truth a magnificent and venerable copy of that editio
princeps which is noble as those noble dames who figure upon its
yellowed leaves, made beautiful by time.
While turning over the engravings with artless curiosity, Jeanne said
to me,
“We were talking about taking a walk; but this is a great journey you
are making me take. And I would like to travel very, very far away!”
“In that case, Mademoiselle,” I said to her, “you must arrange yourself
as comfortably as possible for travelling. But you are now sitting on
one corner of your chair, so that the chair is standing upon only one
leg, and that Vecellio must tire your knees. Sit down comfortably; put
your chair on its four feet, and put your book on the table.”
She obeyed me with a laugh.
I watched her. She cried out suddenly,
“Oh, come look at this beautiful costume!” (It was that of the wife of
a Doge of Venice.) “How noble it is! What magnificent ideas it gives one
of that life! Oh, I must tell you--I adore luxury!”
“You must not express such thoughts as those, Mademoiselle,” said the
schoolmistress, lifting up her little shapeless nose from her work.
“Nevertheless, it was a very innocent utterance,” I replied. “There
are splendid souls in whom the love of splendid things is natural and
inborn.”
The little shapeless nose went down again.
“Mademoiselle Prefere likes luxury too,” said Jeanne; “she cuts out
paper trimmings and shades for the lamps. It is economical luxury; but
it is luxury all the same.”
Having returned to the subject of Venice, we were just about to make
the acquaintance of a certain patrician lady attired in an embroidered
dalmatic, when I heard the bell ring. I thought it was some peddler with
his basket; but the gate of the City of Books opened, and... Well, Master
Sylvestre Bonnard, you were wishing awhile ago that the grace of your
protegee might be observed by some other eyes than old withered ones
behind spectacles. Your wishes have been fulfilled in a most unexpected
manner, and a voice cries out to you as to the imprudent Theseus,
“Craignez, Seigneur, craignez que le
Ciel rigoureux Ne vous Haisse assez pour exaucer vos voeux!
Souvent dans sa colere il recoit nos victimes,
Ses presents sont souvent la peine de nos crimes.”
[“Beware my lord! Beware lest stern
Heaven hate you enough to hear your prayers!
Often ‘tis in wrath that Heaven receives our sacrifices:
its gifts are often the punishment of our crimes.”]
The gate of the City of Books had opened, and a handsome young man made
his appearance, ushered in by Therese. That good old soul only knows how
to open the door for people and to shut it behind them; she has no idea
whatever of the tact requisite for the waiting-room and for the parlour.
It is not in her nature either to make any announcements or to make
anybody wait. She either throws people out on the lobby, or simply
pitches them at your head.
And here is this handsome young man already inside; and I cannot really
take the girl at once and hide her like a secret treasure in the next
room. I wait for him to explain himself; he does it without the least
embarrassment; but it seems to me that he has already observed the
young girl who is still bending over the table looking at Vecellio. As
I observe the young man it occurs to me that I have seen him somewhere
before, or else I must be very much mistaken. His name is Gelis. That
is a name which I have heard somewhere,--I can’t remember where. At all
events, Monsieur Gelis (since there is a Gelis) is a fine-looking young
fellow. He tells me that this is his third class-year at the Ecole des
Chartes, and that he has been working for the past fifteen or eighteen
months upon his graduation thesis, the subject of which is the Condition
of the Benedictine Abbeys in 1700. He has just read my works upon the
“Monasticon”; and he is convinced that he cannot terminate this thesis
successfully without my advice, to begin with, and in the second place
without a certain manuscript which I possess, and which is nothing less
than the “Register of the Accounts of the Abbey of Citeaux from 1683 to
1704.”
Having thus explained himself, he hands me a letter of introduction
bearing the signature of one of the most illustrious of my colleagues.
Good! Now I know who he is! Monsieur Gelis is the very same young man
who last year under the chestnut-trees called me an idiot! And while
unfolding his letter of introduction I think to myself:
“Aha! my unlucky youth, you are very far from suspecting that I
overheard what you said, and that I know what you think of me--or, at
least, what you did think of me that day, for these young minds are so
fickle? I have got you now, my friend! You have fallen into the lion’s
den, and so unexpectedly, in good sooth, that the astonished old lion
does not know what to do with his prey. But come now, old lion! do not
act like an idiot! Is it not possible that you were an idiot? If you
are not one now, you certainly were one! You were a fool to have been
listening to Monsieur Gelis at the foot of the statue of Marguerite de
Valois; you were doubly a fool to have heard what he said; and you were
trebly a fool not to have forgotten what it would have been much better
never to have heard.”
Having thus scolded the old lion, I exhorted him to show clemency.
He did not appear to require much coaxing, and gradually became so
good-natured that he had some difficulty in restraining himself from
bursting out into joyous roarings. From the way in which I had read my
colleague’s letter one might have supposed me a man who did not know his
alphabet. I took a long while to read it; and Monsieur Gelis might have
become very tired under different circumstances; but he was watching
Jeanne, and endured the trial with exemplary patience. Jeanne
occasionally turned her face in our direction. Well you could not expect
a person to remain perfectly motionless, could you? Mademoiselle Prefere
was arranging her curls, and her bosom occasionally swelled with little
sighs. It may be observed that I have myself often been honoured with
those little sighs.