“It is to let,” said Mademoiselle Zoe, as they stopped before the gate.
“It is to let, but we will not take it. It is too big. Besides——”
“No, we will not take it, but will you look over it? I should be
interested to see it again,” said Monsieur Bergeret timidly.
They hesitated a moment. It seemed to them that in entering the deep
dark vaulted way they were entering the region of the shades.
Scouring the streets in search of a flat, they had chanced to cross
the narrow Rue des Grands-Augustins, which has preserved its old-world
aspect, and whose greasy pavements are never dry. They remembered that
they had passed six years of their childhood in one of the houses
in this street. Their father, a professor at the University, had
settled there in 1856, after having led for four years a wandering
and precarious existence, ceaselessly hunted from town to town by an
inimical Minister of Instruction. And, as witnessed the battered
notice-board, the very flat in which Lucien and Zoe had first seen the
light of day, and tasted the savour of life, was now to let.
As they passed down the path which led under the massive forefront of
the building, they experienced an inexplicable feeling of melancholy
and reverence. The damp courtyard was hemmed in by walls which since
the minority of Louis XIV had slowly been crumbling in the rains and
the fogs rising from the Seine. On the right as they entered was
a small building, which served as a porter’s lodge. There, on the
window-sill, a magpie hopped about in a cage, and in the lodge, behind
a flowering plant, a woman sat sewing.
“Is the second floor on the courtyard to let?”
“Yes, do you wish to see it?”
“Yes, we should like to see it.”
Key in hand, the concierge led the way. They followed her in silence.
The gloomy antiquity of the house caused the memories which the
blackened stones evoked for the brother and sister to recede into
an unfathomable past. They climbed the stone stairs in a state of
sorrowful eagerness, and when the concierge opened the door of the flat
they remained motionless upon the landing, afraid to enter the rooms
that seemed to be haunted by the host of their childish memories, like
so many little ghosts.
“You can go in; the flat is empty.”
At first they could find nothing of the past in the wide empty rooms,
freshly papered. They were amazed to find that they had become
strangers to things which had formerly been so familiar.
“Here is the kitchen,” said the concierge, “and here are the
dining-room and the drawing-room.”
A voice cried from the courtyard:
“M’ame Falempin!”
The concierge looked out of the window, apologized, and grumbling to
herself went down the stairs with feeble steps, groaning. Then the
brother and sister began to remember. Memories of inimitable hours, of
the long days of childhood, began to return to them.
“Here is the dining-room,” said Zoe. “The sideboard used to be there,
against the wall.”
“The mahogany sideboard, ‘battered by its long wanderings,’ as our
father used to say, when he and his family and his furniture were
ceaselessly hunted from north to south and from east to west by the
Minister of the 2nd of December. It remained here a few years, however,
maimed and crippled.”
“There is the porcelain stove in its old corner.”
“The flue is different.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yes, Zoe. Ours had a head of Jupiter Trophonius upon it. In those
far-off days it was the custom of the stove-makers in the Cour du
Dragon to decorate porcelain flues with a head of Jupiter Trophonius.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure. Don’t you remember a crowned head with a pointed beard?”
“No.”
“Oh, well that is not surprising; you were always indifferent to the
shapes of things. You don’t look at anything.”
“I am more observant than you, my poor Lucien; it is you who never
notice things. The other day, when Pauline had waved her hair, you
didn’t notice it. If it were not for me——”
She did not finish her sentence, but peered about the empty room with
her green eyes and sharp nose.
“Over there in that corner near the window, Mademoiselle Verpie used to
sit with her feet on her foot-warmer. Saturday was the sewing-woman’s
day, and Mademoiselle Verpie never missed a Saturday.”
“Mademoiselle Verpie,” said Lucien with a sigh: “how old would she be
to-day? She was getting on in life when we were children. She used
to tell a story about a box of matches. I have always remembered
that story and can repeat it now word for word just as she used to
tell it. ‘It was when they were placing the statues on the Pont des
Saints-Pères. It was so cold that my fingers were quite numb. Coming
back from doing my marketing, I was watching the workmen. There was
a whole crowd of people waiting to see how they would lift such
heavy statues. I had my basket on my arm. A well-dressed gentleman
said to me, “Mademoiselle, you are on fire.” Then I smelt a smell of
sulphur and saw smoke pouring out of my basket. My threepenny box of
matches had caught fire.’ That was how Mademoiselle Verpie related the
adventure,” added Monsieur Bergeret. “She often used to tell us of it.
Probably it was the greatest adventure of her life.”
“You’ve forgotten an important part of the story, Lucien. These were
Mademoiselle Verpie’s exact words: ‘A well-dressed gentleman said to
me, “Mademoiselle, you are on fire.” I answered “Go away and leave
me alone.” “Just as you like, Mademoiselle.” Then I smelt a smell of
sulphur.’”
“You are quite right, Zoe. I was mutilating the text and omitted
an important passage. By her reply, Mademoiselle Verpie, who was
hump-backed, showed that she was a virtuous woman. It is a point that
one should bear in mind. I seem to recollect, too, that she was very
easily shocked.”
“Our poor mother,” said Zoe, “had a mania for mending. What an amount
of darning used to be done!”
“Yes, she was fond of her needle. But what I thought so charming was
that before she sat down to her sewing she always placed a pot of
wallflowers or daisies or a dish of fruit and green leaves on the table
before her just where the light caught it. She used to say that rosy
apples were as pretty as roses. I never met anyone who appreciated
as she did the beauty of a peach or a bunch of grapes. When she went
to see the Chardins at the Louvre, she knew by instinct that they
were good pictures, but she could not help feeling that she preferred
her own groups. With what conviction she would say to me: ‘Look,
Lucien, have you ever seen anything so beautiful as this feather from
a pigeon’s wing?’ I think no one ever loved nature more simply and
frankly than she.”
“Poor Mother,” sighed Zoe, “and in spite of that her taste in
dress was dreadful. One day she chose a blue dress for me at the
Petit-Saint-Thomas. It was called electric blue, and it was terrible.
That frock was the burden of my childish days.”
“You were never fond of dress, you.”
“You think so, do you? Well, you are mistaken. I should have loved to
have pretty dresses, but the elder sister had to go short because
little Lucien needed tunics. It couldn’t be helped.”
They passed into a narrow room, more like a passage.
“This was Father’s study,” said Zoe.
“Hasn’t it been cut in two by a partition? I thought it was much larger
than this.”
“No, it was always the same as it is now. His writing-desk was there,
and above it hung the portrait of Monsieur Victor Leclerc. Why haven’t
you kept that engraving, Lucien?”
“What! do you mean to say that this narrow room held his motley crowd
of books and contained whole nations of poets, orators and historians?
When I was a child I used to listen to the silent eloquence that filled
my ears with a buzz of glory. No doubt the presence of such an assembly
pressed back the walls. I certainly remember it as a spacious room.”
“It was very overcrowded. He would never let us tidy anything in his
study.”
“So it was here that our father used to work, seated in his old red
arm-chair with his cat Zobeide on a cushion at his feet. Here it was
that he used to look at us with the same slow smile that he never lost
all through his illness, even up to the very last. I saw him smile
gently at death itself, as he had smiled at life.”
“You are mistaken in that, Lucien. Father did not know he was going to
die.”
Monsieur Bergeret did not speak for a moment, then he said:
“It is strange. I can see him now, in memory, not worn out and white
with age, but still young as he was when I was quite a little child.
I can see his slight, supple figure and his long black wind-tossed
hair. Such mops of hair, that seemed as though whipped up by a gust of
wind, crowned many of the enthusiastic heads of the men of 1830 and
’48. I know it was only a trick of the brush that arranged their hair
like that, but it made them look as though they lived upon the heights
and in the storm. Their thoughts were loftier and more generous than
ours. Our father believed in the advent of social justice and universal
peace. He announced the triumph of the Republic and the harmonious
formation of the United States of Europe. He would be cruelly
disappointed were he to come back among us.”
He was still speaking although Mademoiselle Bergeret was no longer in
the study. He followed her into the empty drawing-room. There they both
recalled the arm-chairs and sofa of green velvet, which as children, in
their games, they used to turn into walls and citadels.
“Oh, the taking of Damietta!” cried Monsieur Bergeret. “Do you
remember it, Zoe? Mother, who allowed nothing to be wasted, used to
collect all the silver paper round the bars of chocolate, and one
day she gave me a pile which pleased me as much as if it had been a
magnificent present. I gummed it to the leaves of an old atlas and
made it into helmets and cuirasses. One day when Cousin Paul came to
dinner I gave him one of these sets of armour, a Saracen’s, and put the
other on myself: it was the armour of St. Louis. If one goes into the
matter, neither Saracens nor Christian knights wore such armour in the
thirteenth century, but such a consideration did not trouble us, and I
took Damietta.
“That recollection reminds me of the cruellest humiliation of my life.
As soon as I had made myself master of Damietta, I took Cousin Paul
prisoner and tied him up with skipping-ropes; then I pushed him with
such enthusiasm that he fell on his nose, uttering piercing shrieks
in spite of his courage. Mother came running in when she heard the
noise, and when she saw Cousin Paul bound and prostrate on the floor
she picked him up, kissed him and said: ‘You ought to be ashamed of
yourself, Lucien, to hit a child so much smaller than yourself.’ And as
a matter of fact Cousin Paul, who never grew very big, was then very
small. I did not say that it had happened in the wars. I said nothing
at all, and remained covered with confusion. My shame was increased by
the magnanimity of Cousin Paul who said, between his sobs, ‘I haven’t
hurt myself.’
“Ah, our beautiful drawing-room,” sighed Monsieur Bergeret. “I hardly
know it with this new paper. How I loved the ugly old paper with its
green boughs! What a gentle shade, what a delicious warmth dwelt in
the folds of the hideous claret-coloured rep curtains! Spartacus with
folded arms used to look at us indignantly from the top of the clock on
the mantelpiece. His chains, which I used idly to play with, came off
one day in my hand. Our beautiful drawing-room! Mother would sometimes
call us in there when she was entertaining old friends. We used to come
here to kiss Mademoiselle Lalouette. She was over eighty years of age;
her cheeks were covered with a mossy growth and her chin was bearded.
One long yellow tooth protruded from her lips. They were spotted with
black. What magic makes the memory of that horrible little old woman
full of an attractive charm for me now? What force compels me to recall
details of her queer far-away personality? Mademoiselle Lalouette and
her four cats lived on an annuity of fifteen hundred francs, one half
of which she spent in printing pamphlets on Louis XVII. She always
had about a dozen of them in her hand-bag. The good lady’s mania was
to prove that the Dauphin escaped from the Temple in a wooden horse.
Do you remember the day she gave us lunch in her room in the Rue de
Verneuil, Zoe? There, under layers of ancient filth, lay mysterious
riches, boxes full of gold and embroideries.”
“Yes,” said Zoe, “she showed us some lace that had belonged to Marie
Antoinette.”
“Mademoiselle Lalouette’s manners were excellent,” continued Monsieur
Bergeret. “She spoke the purest French and adhered to the old
pronunciation. She used to say ‘un _segret_, un _fil_, une _do_’; she
made me feel as though I were living in the reign of Louis XVI. Mother
used to send for us also to speak to Monsieur Mathalène who was not
so old as Mademoiselle Lalouette; but he had a hideous face. Never
did a gentler soul reveal itself in a more frightful shape. He was
an inhibited priest whom my father had met in the clubs in 1848 and
whom he esteemed for his Republican opinions. Poorer than Mademoiselle
Lalouette, Monsieur Mathalène would go without food in order, like her,
to print his pamphlets; but his went to prove that the sun and the
moon move round the earth and are in reality no bigger than cheeses.
That, by the way, was the opinion of Pierrot, but Monsieur Mathalène
arrived at his conclusion only after thirty years of meditation and
calculation. One still comes upon one of his pamphlets occasionally
on the old bookstalls. Monsieur Mathalène was full of zeal for the
happiness of mankind, whom he terrified by his dreadful ugliness. The
only exceptions to his universal love were the astronomers, whom he
suspected of the blackest designs on himself. He imagined that they
wanted to poison him, and insisted on preparing his own food as much
out of prudence as on account of his poverty.”
Thus in the empty rooms, like Ulysses in the land of the Cimmerii, did
Monsieur Bergeret evoke the shades. For a moment he remained sunk in
thought; then he said:
“Zoe, it must be one of two things; either in the days of our childhood
there were more maniacs about than there are now, or our father
befriended more than his fair share. I think he must have liked them.
Pity probably drew him to them, or maybe he found them less tedious
than other people; anyhow, he had a great following of them.”
Mademoiselle Bergeret shook her head.
“Our parents used to receive very sensible and deserving people. I
should say rather that the harmless peculiarities of some old people
impressed you, and that you have retained a vivid memory of them.”
“Zoe, make no mistake; we were both brought up among people who did
not think in a common or usual fashion. Mademoiselle Lalouette, Abbé
Mathalène and Monsieur Grille were wanting in ordinary common sense,
that is certain. Do you remember Monsieur Grille? He was tall and
stout, with a red face and a close-clipped white beard. He had lost
both his sons in an Alpine accident in Switzerland, and ever since,
summer and winter alike, he had worn garments made of bed-ticking. Our
father considered him an exquisite Hellenist. He had a delicate feeling
for the poetry of the Greek lyrics. He touched with a light and sure
hand the hackneyed text of Theocritus. It was his happy mania never
to believe in the certain death of his two sons, and while with crazy
confidence he awaited their return he lived, clad in the raiment of a
carnival clown, in loving intimacy with Alcæus and Sappho.”
“He used to give us caramels,” said Mademoiselle Bergeret.
“His remarks were always wise, well-expressed and beautiful,” went on
Monsieur Bergeret, “and that used to frighten us. Logic is what alarms
us most in a madman.”
“On Sunday nights the drawing room was ours,” said Mademoiselle
Bergeret.
“Yes,” said Monsieur Bergeret. “It was there we used to play games
after dinner. We used to write verses and draw pictures, and mother
would play forfeits with us. Oh, the candour and simplicity of those
bygone days! The simple pleasures, the charm of the old-world manners!
We used to play charades; we ransacked your wardrobes, Zoe, in search
of things to dress up in.”
“One day you pulled the white curtains off my bed.”
“That was to make robes for the Druids in the mistletoe scene, Zoe.
The word we chose was _guimauve_. We were very good at charades, and
Father was such a splendid audience. He did not listen to a word, but
he smiled at us. I think I should have been quite a good actor, but
the grown-ups never gave me a chance; they always wanted to do all the
talking.”
“Don’t labour under any delusions, Lucien; you were incapable of
playing your part in a charade. You are too absent-minded. I am the
first to recognize your intellect and your talents, but you never had
the gift of improvisation. You must not try to go outside your books
and manuscripts.”
“I am just to myself, Zoe, and I know I am not eloquent; but when Jules
Guinaut and Uncle Maurice played with us one could not get a word in.”
“Jules Guinaut had a real talent for comedy,” said Mademoiselle
Bergeret, “and an unquenchable spirit.”
“He was studying medicine,” said Monsieur Bergeret. “A good-looking
fellow!”
“So people used to say.”
“I think he was in love with you.”
“I don’t think so.”
“He paid you a great deal of attention.”
“That’s quite a different matter.”
“Then, quite suddenly, he disappeared.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you know what became of him?”
“No. Come, Lucien, let us go.”
“Yes, let us go, Zoe; here we are the prey of the shades.”
And, without turning their heads, the brother and sister stepped over
the threshold of their childhood’s old home and went silently down
the stone staircase. When they found themselves again in the Rue des
Grands-Augustins, amid the cabs and drays, the housewives and the
artisans, the noise and movement of the outer world bewildered them as
though they had just emerged from a long period of solitude.