When I was a child some one gave me a family of white mice. I don't
remember how old I was, I think about ten or eleven; but I remember
very clearly the day I received them. It must have been a Thursday, a
half-holiday, for I had come home from school rather early in the
afternoon. Alexandre, dear old ruddy round-faced Alexandre, who opened
the door for me, smiled in a way that seemed to announce, 'There's a
surprise in store for you, sir.' Then my mother smiled too, a smile, I
thought, of peculiar promise and interest. After I had kissed her she
said, 'Come into the dining-room. There's something you will like.'
Perhaps I concluded it would be something to eat. Anyhow, all agog
with curiosity, I followed her into the dining--room--and Alexandre
followed _me_, anxious to take part in the rejoicing. In the window
stood a big cage, enclosing the family of white mice.
I remember it as a very big cage indeed; no doubt I should find it
shrunken to quite moderate dimensions if I could see it again. There
were three generations of mice in it: a fat old couple, the founders
of the race, dozing phlegmatically on their laurels in a corner; then
a dozen medium-sized, slender mice, trim and youthful-looking, rushing
irrelevantly hither and thither, with funny inquisitive little faces;
and then a squirming mass of pink things, like caterpillars, that were
really infant mice, newborn. They didn't remain infants long, though.
In a few days they had put on virile togas of white fur, and were
scrambling about the cage and nibbling their food as independently as
their elders. The rapidity with which my mice multiplied and grew to
maturity was a constant source of astonishment to me. It seemed as if
every morning I found a new litter of young mice in the cage--though
how they had effected an entrance through the wire gauze that lined it
was a hopeless puzzle--and these would have become responsible,
self-supporting mice in no time.
My mother told me that somebody had sent me this soul-stirring
present from the country, and I dare say I was made to sit down and
write a letter of thanks. But I'm ashamed to own I can't remember who
the giver was. I have a vague notion that it was a lady, an elderly
maiden-lady--Mademoiselle ... something that began with P--who lived
near Tours, and who used to come to Paris once or twice a year, and
always brought me a box of prunes.
Alexandre carried the cage into my playroom, and set it up against the
wall. I stationed myself in front of it, and remained there all the
rest of the afternoon, gazing in, entranced. To watch their antics,
their comings and goings, their labours and amusements, to study their
shrewd, alert physiognomies, to wonder about their feelings, thoughts,
intentions, to try to divine the meaning of their busy twittering
language--it was such keen, deep delight. Of course I was an
anthropomorphist, and read a great deal of human nature into them;
otherwise it wouldn't have been such fun. I dragged myself reluctantly
away when I was called to dinner. It was hard that evening to apply
myself to my school-books. Before I went to bed I paid them a parting
visit; they were huddled together in their nest of cotton-wool,
sleeping soundly. And I was up at an unheard-of hour next morning, to
have a bout with them before going to school. I found Alexandre, in
his nightcap and long white apron, occupied with the _soins de
propreté_, as he said. He cleaned out the cage, put in fresh food and
water, and then, pointing to the fat old couple, the grandparents, who
stopped lazily a-bed, sitting up and rubbing their noses together,
whilst their juniors scampered merrily about their affairs, 'Tiens! On
dirait Monsieur et Madame Denis,' he cried. I felt the appositeness of
his allusion; and the old couple were forthwith officially denominated
Monsieur and Madame Denis, for their resemblance to the hero and
heroine of the song--though which was Monsieur, and which Madame, I'm
not sure that I ever clearly knew.
It was a little after this that I was taken for the first time in my
life to the play. I fancy the theatre must have been the Porte St.
Martin; at any rate, it was a theatre in the Boulevard, and towards
the East, for I remember the long drive we had to reach it And the
piece was _The Count of Monte Cristo_. In my memory the adventure
shines, of course, as a vague blur of light and joy; a child's first
visit to the play, and that play _The Count of Monte Cristo_! It was
all the breath-taking pleasantness of romance made visible, audible,
actual. A vague blur of light and joy, from which only two details
separate themselves. First, the prison scene, and an aged man, with a
long white beard, moving a great stone from the wall; then--the figure
of Mercedes. I went home terribly in love with Mercedes. Surely there
are no such _grandes passions_ in maturer life as those helpless,
inarticulate ones we burn in secret with, before our teens; surely we
never love again so violently, desperately, consumedly. Anyhow, I went
home terribly in love with Mercedes. And--do all children lack
humour?--I picked out the prettiest young ladyish-looking mouse in my
collection, cut off her moustaches, adopted her as my especial pet,
and called her by the name of my _dea certè_.
All of my mice by this time had become quite tame. They had plenty to
eat and drink, and a comfortable home, and not a care in the world;
and familiarity with their master had bred assurance; and so they had
become quite tame, and shamefully, abominably lazy. Luxury, we are
taught, was ever the mother of sloth. I could put my hand in amongst
them, and not one would bestir himself the littlest bit to escape me.
Mercedes and I were inseparable. I used to take her to school with me
every day; she could be more conveniently and privately transported
than a lamb. Each _lycéen_ had a desk in front of his form, and she
would spend the school-hours in mine, I leaving the lid raised a
little, that she might have light and air. One day, the usher having
left the room for a moment, I put her down on the floor, thereby
creating a great excitement amongst my fellow-pupils, who got up from
their places and formed an eager circle round her. Then suddenly the
usher came back, and we all hurried to our seats, while he, catching
sight of Mercedes, cried out, 'A mouse! A white mouse! Who dares to
bring a white mouse to the class?' And he made a dash for her. But she
was too quick, too 'cute, for 'the likes of' Monsieur le Pion. She
gave a jump, and in the twinkling of an eye had disappeared up my leg,
under my trousers. The usher searched high and low for her, but she
prudently remained in her hiding-place; and thus her life was saved,
for, when he had abandoned his ineffectual chase, he announced, 'I
should have wrung her neck.' I turned pale to imagine the doom she had
escaped as by a hair's-breadth. 'It is useless to ask which of you
brought her here,' he continued. 'But mark my words: if ever I find a
mouse again in the class _I will wring her neck_!' And yet, in private
life, this bloodthirsty _pion_ was a quite gentle, kindly, underfed,
underpaid, shabby, struggling fellow, with literary aspirations, who
would not have hurt a fly.
The secrets of a schoolboy's pocket! I once saw a boy surreptitiously
angling in Kensington Gardens, with a string and a bent pin. Presently
he landed a fish, a fish no bigger than your thumb perhaps, but still
a fish. Alive and wet and flopping as it was, he slipped it into his
pocket. I used to carry Mercedes about in mine. One evening, when I
put in my hand to take her out, I discovered to my bewilderment that
she was not alone. There were four little pink mites of infant mice
clinging to her.
I had enjoyed my visit to the theatre so much that at the _jour de
l'an_ my father included a toy-theatre among my presents. It had a
real curtain of green baize, that would roll up and down, and
beautiful coloured scenery that you could shift, and footlights, and a
trap-door in the middle of the stage; and indeed it would have been
altogether perfect, except for the Company. I have since learned that
this is not infrequently the case with theatres. My company consisted
of pasteboard men and women who, as artists, struck me as eminently
unsatisfactory. They couldn't move their arms or legs, and they had
such stolid, uninteresting faces. I don't know how it first occurred
to me to turn them all off, and fill their places with my mice.
Mercedes, of course, was leading lady; Monsieur and Madame Denis were
the heavy parents; and a gentlemanlike young mouse named Leander was
_jeune premier_. Then, in my leisure, they used to act the most
tremendous plays. I was stage-manager, prompter, playwright, chorus,
and audience, placing the theatre before a looking-glass, so that,
though my duties kept me behind, I could peer round the edge, and
watch the spectacle as from the front. I would invent the lines and
deliver them, but, that my illusion might be the more complete, I
would change my voice for each personage. The lines tried hard to be
verses; no doubt they were _vers libres_. At any rate, they were
mouth-filling and sonorous. The first play we attempted, I need hardly
say, was _Le Comte de Monte Cristo_, such version of it as I could
reconstruct from memory. That had rather a long run. Then I dramatised
_Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp_, _Paul et Virginie_, _Quentin
Durward_, and _La Dame de Monsoreau_. Mercedes made a charming Diane,
Leander a brilliant and dashing Bussy; Monsieur Denis was cast for the
rôle of Frère Gorenflot; and a long, thin, cadaverous-looking mouse,
Don Quichotte by name, somewhat inadequately represented Chicot. We
began, as you see, with melodrama; presently we descended to light
comedy, playing _Les Mémoires d'un Ane_, _Jean qui rit_, and other
works of the immortal Madame de Ségur. And then at last we turned a
new leaf, and became naturalistic. We had never heard of the
naturalist school, though Monsieur Zola had already published some
volumes of the _Rougon-Macquart_; but ideas are in the air; and we,
for ourselves, discovered the possibilities of naturalism
simultaneously, as it were, with the acknowledged apostle of that form
of art. We would impersonate the characters of our own world--our
schoolfellows and masters, our parents, servants, friends--and carry
them through experiences and situations derived from our impressions
of real life. Perhaps we rather led them a dance; and I daresay those
we didn't like came in for a good deal of retributive justice. It was
a little universe, of which we were the arch-arbiters, our will the
final law.
I don't know whether all children lack humour; but I'm sure no
grown-up author-manager can take his business more seriously than I
took mine. Oh, I enjoyed it hugely; the hours I spent at it were
enraptured hours; but it was grim, grim earnest. After a while I began
to long for a less subjective public, a more various audience. I would
summon the servants, range them in chairs at one end of the room,
conceal myself behind the theatre, and spout the play with fervid
solemnity. And they would giggle, and make flippant commentaries, and
at my most impassioned climaxes burst into guffaws. My mice, as has
been said, were overfed and lazy, and I used to have to poke them
through their parts with sticks from the wings; but this was a detail
which a superior imagination should have accepted as one of the
conventions of the art. It made the servants laugh, however; and when
I would step to the front in person, and, with tears in my eyes,
beseech them to be sober, they would but laugh the louder. 'Bless you,
sir, they're only mice--_ce ne sont que des souris_,' the cook called
out on one such occasion. She meant it as an apology and a
consolation, but it was the unkindest cut of all. Only mice, indeed!
To me they had been a young gentleman and lady lost in the Desert of
Sahara, near to die for the want of water, and about to be attacked,
captured, and sold into slavery by a band of Bedouin Arabs. Ah, well,
the artist must steel himself to meet with indifference or derision
from the public, to be ignored, misunderstood, or jeered at; and to
rely for his real, his legitimate, reward on the pleasure he finds in
his work.
And now there befell a great change in my life. Our home in Paris was
broken up, and we moved to St. Petersburg. It was impossible to take
my mice with us; their cage would have hopelessly complicated our
impedimenta. So we gave them to the children of our concierge.
Mercedes, however, I was resolved I would not part with, and I carried
her all the way to the Russian capital by hand. In my heart I was
looking to her to found another family--she had so frequently become a
mother in the past. But month succeeded month, and she for ever
disappointed me, and at last I abandoned hope. In solitude and exile
Mercedes degenerated sadly; got monstrously fat; too indolent to gnaw,
let her teeth grow to a preposterous length; and in the end died of a
surfeit of _smetana_.
When I returned to Paris, at the age of twenty, to _faire mon droit_
in the Latin Quarter, I paid a visit to our old house, and discovered
the same old concierge in the _loge_. I asked her about the mice, and
she told me her children had found the care of them such a bother that
at first they had neglected them, and at last allowed them to escape.
'They took to the walls, and for a long time afterwards, Monsieur,
the mice of this neighbourhood were pied. To this day they are of a
paler hue than elsewhere.'