THE SPA
CHAPTER II.
THE DISCOVERY
CHAPTER III.
BARGAINING
CHAPTER IV.
A TEST AND AN AVOWAL
CHAPTER V.
DEVELOPMENTS
CHAPTER VI.
ON THE BRINK
CHAPTER VII.
ATTAINMENT
CHAPTER VIII.
ORGANIZATION
CHAPTER IX.
THE SPA AGAIN
CHAPTER X.
GONTRAN'S CHOICE
CHAPTER XI.
A MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING
CHAPTER XII.
A BETROTHAL
CHAPTER XIII.
PAUL CHANGES HIS MIND
CHAPTER XIV.
CHRISTIANE'S VIA CRUCIS
ILLUSTRATIONS
"HE HAD THOUGHT WITH DEEP ANXIETY OF THIS CHILD, OF WHICH HE WAS
THE FATHER"
"SHE SPRANG WILDLY TO HER FEET. IT WAS HE!"
MONT ORIOL
CHAPTER I.
THE SPA
The first bathers, the early risers, who had already been at the water,
were walking slowly, in pairs or alone, under the huge trees along the
stream which rushes down the gorges of Enval.
Others arrived from the village, and entered the establishment in
a hurried fashion. It was a spacious building, the ground floor
being reserved for thermal treatment, while the first story served
as a casino, _café_, and billiard-room. Since Doctor Bonnefille had
discovered in the heart of Enval the great spring, baptized by him the
Bonnefille Spring, some proprietors of the country and the surrounding
neighborhood, timid speculators, had decided to erect in the midst
of this superb glen of Auvergne, savage and gay withal, planted with
walnut and giant chestnut trees, a vast house for every kind of use,
serving equally for the purpose of cure and of pleasure, in which
mineral waters, douches, and baths were sold below, and beer, liqueurs,
and music above.
A portion of the ravine along the stream had been inclosed, to
constitute the park indispensable to every spa; and three walks had
been made, one nearly straight, and the other two zigzag. At the end
of the first gushed out an artificial spring detached from the parent
spring, and bubbling into a great basin of cement, sheltered by a
straw roof, under the care of an impassive woman, whom everyone called
"Marie" in a familiar sort of way. This calm Auvergnat, who wore a
little cap always as white as snow, and a big apron, perfectly clean at
all times, which concealed her working-dress, rose up slowly as soon as
she saw a bather coming along the road in her direction.
The bather would smile with a melancholy air, drink the water, and
return her the glass, saying, "Thanks, Marie." Then he would turn on
his heel and walk away. And Marie sat down again on her straw chair to
wait for the next comer.
They were not, however, very numerous. The Enval station had just been
six years open for invalids, and scarcely could count more patients
at the end of these six years than it had at the start. About fifty
had come there, attracted more than anything else by the beauty of
the district, by the charm of this little village lost under enormous
trees, whose twisted trunks seemed as big as the houses, and by the
reputation of the gorges at the end of this strange glen which opened
on the great plain of Auvergne and ended abruptly at the foot of the
high mountain bristling with craters of unknown age--a savage and
magnificent crevasse, full of rocks fallen or threatening, from which
rushed a stream that cascaded over giant stones, forming a little lake
in front of each.
This thermal station had been brought to birth as they all are, with
a pamphlet on the spring by Doctor Bonnefille. He opened with a
eulogistic description, in a majestic and sentimental style, of the
Alpine seductions of the neighborhood. He selected only adjectives
which convey a vague sense of delightfulness and enjoyment--those
which produce effect without committing the writer to any material
statement. All the surroundings were picturesque, filled with splendid
sites or landscapes whose graceful outlines aroused soft emotions. All
the promenades in the vicinity possessed a remarkable originality,
such as would strike the imagination of artists and tourists. Then
abruptly, without any transition, he plunged into the therapeutic
qualities of the Bonnefille Spring, bicarbonate, sodium, mixed,
lithineous, ferruginous, _et cetera, et cetera_, capable of curing
every disease. He had, moreover, enumerated them under this heading:
Chronic affections or acute specially associated with Enval. And the
list of affections associated with Enval was long--long and varied,
consoling for invalids of every kind. The pamphlet concluded with some
information of practical utility, the cost of lodgings, commodities,
and hotels--for three hotels had sprung up simultaneously with the
casino-medical establishment. These were the Hotel Splendid, quite new,
built on the slope of the glen looking down on the baths; the Thermal
Hotel, an old inn with a new coat of plaster; and the Hotel Vidaillet,
formed very simply by the purchase of three adjoining houses, which
had been altered so as to convert them into one.
Then, all at once, two new doctors had installed themselves in the
locality one morning, without anyone well knowing how they came, for
at spas doctors seem to dart up out of the springs, like gas-jets.
These were Doctor Honorat, a native of Auvergne, and Doctor Latonne,
of Paris. A fierce antagonism soon burst out between Doctor Latonne
and Doctor Bonnefille, while Doctor Honorat, a big, clean-shaven man,
smiling and pliant, stretched forth his right hand to the first,
and his left hand to the second, and remained on good terms with
both. But Doctor Bonnefille was master of the situation, with his
title of Inspector of the Waters and of the thermal establishment of
Enval-les-Bains.
This title was his strength and the establishment his chattel. There
he spent his days, and even his nights, it was said. A hundred times,
in the morning, he would go from his house which was quite near in
the village to his consultation-study fixed at the right-hand side
facing the entrance to the thermal baths. Lying in wait there, like a
spider in his web, he watched the comings and goings of the invalids,
inspecting his own patients with a severe eye and those of the other
doctors with a look of fury. He questioned everybody almost in the
style of a ship's captain, and he struck terror into newcomers, unless
it happened that he made them smile.
This day, as he arrived with rapid steps, which made the big flaps of
his old frock coat fly up like a pair of wings, he was stopped suddenly
by a voice exclaiming: "Doctor!"
He turned round. His thin face, full of big ugly wrinkles, and looking
quite black at the end with a grizzled beard rarely cut, made an effort
to smile; and he took off the tall silk hat, shabby, stained, and
greasy, that covered his thick pepper-and-salt head of hair--"pepper
and soiled, as his rival, Doctor Latonne, put it. Then he advanced a
step, made a bow, and murmured:
"Good morning, Marquis--are you quite well this morning?"
The Marquis de Ravenel, a little man well preserved, stretched out his
hand to the doctor, as he replied:
"Very well, doctor, very well, or, at least, not ill. I am always
suffering from my kidneys; but indeed I am better, much better; and I
am as yet only at my tenth bath. Last year I did not obtain the effect
until the sixteenth, you recollect?"
"Yes, perfectly."
"But it is not about this I want to talk to you. My daughter has
arrived this morning, and I wish to have a chat with you about her case
first of all, because my son-in-law, William Andermatt, the banker----"
"Yes, I know."
"My son-in-law has a letter of recommendation addressed to Doctor
Latonne. As for me, I have no confidence except in you, and I beg
of you to have the kindness to come up to the hotel before--you
understand? I prefer to say things to you candidly. Are you free at the
present moment?"
Doctor Bonnefille had put on his hat again, and looked excited and
troubled. He answered at once:
"Yes, I shall be free immediately. Do you wish me to accompany you?"
"Why, certainly."
And, turning their backs on the establishment, they directed their
steps up a circular walk leading to the door of the Hotel Splendid,
built on the slope of the mountain so as to offer a view of it to
travelers.
They made their way to the drawing-room in the first story adjoining
the apartments occupied by the Ravenel and Andermatt families, and
the Marquis left the doctor by himself while he went to look for his
daughter.
He came back with her presently. She was a fair young woman, small,
pale, very pretty, whose features seemed like those of a child, while
her blue eyes, boldly fixed, cast on people a resolute look that gave
an alluring impression of firmness and a peculiar charm to this refined
and fascinating creature. There was not much the matter with her--vague
languors, sadnesses, bursts of tears without apparent cause, angry fits
for which there seemed no season, and lastly anæmia. She craved above
all for a child, which had been vainly looked forward to since her
marriage, more than two years before.
Doctor Bonnefille declared that the waters of Enval would be effectual,
and proceeded forthwith to write a prescription. The doctor's
prescriptions had always the formidable aspect of an indictment. On
a big white sheet of paper such as schoolboys use, his directions
exhibited themselves in numerous paragraphs of two or three lines
each, in an irregular handwriting, bristling with letters resembling
spikes. And the potions, the pills, the powders, which were to be
taken fasting in the morning, at midday, and in the evening, followed
in ferocious-looking characters. One of these prescriptions might read:
"Inasmuch as M. X. is affected with a chronic malady,
incurable and mortal, he will take, first, sulphate of
quinine, which will render him deaf, and will make him lose
his memory; secondly, bromide of potassium, which will
destroy his stomach, weaken all his faculties, cover him
with pimples, and make his breath foul; thirdly, salicylate
of soda, whose curative effects have not yet been proved,
but which seems to lead to a terrible and speedy death the
patient treated by this remedy. And concurrently, chloral,
which causes insanity, and belladonna, which attacks the
eyes; all vegetable solutions and all mineral compositions
which corrupt the blood, corrode the organs, consume the
bones, and destroy by medicine those whom disease has
spared."
For a long time he went on writing on the front page and on the back,
then signed it just as a judge might have signed a death-sentence.
The young woman, seated opposite to him, stared at him with an
inclination to laugh that made the corners of her lips rise up.
When, with a low bow, he had taken himself off, she snatched up the
paper blackened with ink, rolled it up into a ball, and flung it into
the fire. Then, breaking into a hearty laugh, said:
"Oh! father, where did you discover this fossil? Why, he looks for all
the world like an old-clothesman. Oh! how clever of you to dig up a
physician that might have lived before the Revolution! Oh! how funny he
is, aye, and dirty--ah, yes! dirty--I believe really he has stained my
penholder."
The door opened, and M. Andermatt's voice was heard saying, "Come in,
doctor."
And Doctor Latonne appeared. Erect, slender, circumspect, comparatively
young, attired in a fashionable morning-coat, and holding in his hand
the high silk hat which distinguishes the practicing doctor in the
greater part of the thermal stations of Auvergne, the physician from
Paris, without beard or mustache, resembled an actor who had retired
into the country.
The Marquis, confounded, did not know what to say or do, while his
daughter put her handkerchief to her mouth to keep herself from
bursting out laughing in the newcomer's face. He bowed with an air of
self-confidence, and at a sign from the young woman took a seat.
M. Andermatt, who followed him, minutely detailed for him his wife's
condition, her illnesses, together with their accompanying symptoms,
the opinions of the physicians consulted in Paris, and then his own
opinion based on special grounds which he explained in technical
language.
He was a man still quite youthful, a Jew, who devoted himself to
financial transactions. He entered into all sorts of speculations,
and displayed in all matters of business a subtlety of intellect,
a rapidity of penetration, and a soundness of judgment that were
perfectly marvelous. A little too stout already for his figure, which
was not tall, chubby, bald, with an infantile expression, fat hands,
and short thighs, he looked much too greasy to be quite healthy, and
spoke with amazing facility.
By means of tact he had been able to form an alliance with the daughter
of the Marquis de Ravenel with a view to extending his speculations
into a sphere to which he did not belong. The Marquis, besides,
possessed an income of about thirty thousand francs, and had only two
children; but, when M. Andermatt married, though scarcely thirty years
of age, he owned already five or six millions, and had sown enough
to bring him in a harvest of ten or twelve. M. de Ravenel, a man of
weak, irresolute, shifting, and undecided character, at first angrily
repulsed the overtures made to him with respect to this union, and was
indignant at the thought of seeing his daughter allied to an Israelite.
Then, after six months' resistance, he gave way, under the pressure
of accumulated wealth, on the condition that the children should be
brought up in the Catholic religion.
But they waited for a long time and no offspring was yet announced. It
was then that the Marquis, enchanted for the past two years with the
waters of Enval, recalled to mind the fact that Doctor Bonnefille's
pamphlet also promised the cure for sterility.
Accordingly, he sent for his daughter, whom his son-in-law accompanied,
in order to install her and to intrust her, acting on the advice of his
Paris physician, to the care of Doctor Latonne. Therefore, Andermatt,
since his arrival, had gone to look for this practitioner, and went on
enumerating the symptoms which presented themselves in his wife's case.
He finished by mentioning how much he had been pained at finding his
hopes of paternity unrealized.
Doctor Latonne allowed him to go on to the end; then, turning toward
the young woman: "Have you anything to add, Madame?"
She replied gravely: "No, Monsieur, nothing at all."
He went on: "In that case, I will trouble you to take off your
traveling-dress and your corset, and to put on a simple white
dressing-gown, all white."
She was astonished; he rapidly explained his system: "Good heavens,
Madame, it is very simple. Formerly, the belief was that all diseases
came from a poison in the blood or from an organic cause; to-day, we
simply assume that, in many cases, and, above all, in your particular
case, the uncertain ailments from which you suffer, and even certain
serious troubles, very serious, mortal, may proceed only from the
fact that some organ or other, having taken, under influences easy to
determine, an abnormal development, to the detriment of the neighboring
organs, destroys all the harmony, all the equilibrium of the human
body, modifies or arrests its functions, and obstructs the play of all
the other organs. A swelling of the stomach may be sufficient to make
us believe in a disease of the heart, which, impeded in its movements,
becomes violent, irregular, sometimes even intermittent. The dilatation
of the liver or of certain glands may cause ravages which unobservant
physicians attribute to a thousand different causes. Therefore, the
first thing that we should do is to ascertain whether all the organs
of a patient have their true compass and their normal position, for a
very little thing is enough to upset a person's health. I am going,
then, Madame, if you will allow me, to examine you with great care, and
to mark out on your dressing-gown the limits, the dimensions, and the
positions of your organs."
He had put down his hat on a chair, and he spoke in a facile manner.
His large mouth, in opening and closing, made two deep hollows in his
shaven cheeks, which gave him a certain ecclesiastical air.
Andermatt, delighted, exclaimed: "Capital, capital! That is very
clever, very ingenious, very new, very modern."
"Very modern" in his mouth was the height of admiration.
The young woman, highly amused, rose and passed into her own
apartment. She came back, after the lapse of a few minutes, in a white
dressing-gown.
The physician made her lie down on a sofa, then, drawing from his
pocket a pencil with three points, a black, a red, and a blue, he
commenced to auscultate and to tap his new patient, riddling the
dressing-gown all over with little dots of color by way of noting each
observation.
She resembled, after a quarter of an hour of this work, a map
indicating continents, seas, capes, rivers, kingdoms, and cities,
and bearing the names of all these terrestrial divisions, for the
doctor wrote on every line of demarcation two or three Latin words
intelligible to himself alone.
Now, when he had listened to all the internal sounds in Madame
Andermatt's body, and tapped on all the parts of her person that were
irritated or hollow-sounding, he drew forth from his pocket a notebook
of red leather with gold threads to fasten it, divided in alphabetical
order, consulted the index, opened it, and wrote: "Observation
6347.--Madame A----, 21 years."
Then, collecting from her head to her feet the colored notes on
her dressing-gown, and reading them as an Egyptologist deciphers
hieroglyphics, he entered them in the notebook.
He observed, when he had finished: "Nothing disquieting, nothing
abnormal, save a slight, a very slight deviation, which some
thirty acidulated baths will cure. You will take furthermore three
half-glasses of water each morning before noon. Nothing else. I will
come back to see you in four or five days." Then he rose, bowed, and
went out with such promptitude that everyone remained stupefied at it.
This abrupt style of departure was a part of his mannerism, his tact,
his special stamp. He considered it very good form, and thought it made
a great impression on the patient.
Madame Andermatt ran to look at herself in the glass, and, shaking all
over with a joyous burst of childlike laughter, said:
"Oh! how amusing they are, how droll they are! Tell me, is there not
one more left of them? I want to see him immediately! Will, go and find
him for me! We must have the third one here--I want to see him."
Her husband, surprised, asked:
"How, a third, a third what?"
The Marquis deemed it advisable to explain, while offering excuses, for
he was a little afraid of his son-in-law. He related, therefore, how
Doctor Bonnefille had come to see himself, and how he had introduced
him to Christiane, in order to ascertain his opinion, as he had great
confidence in the experience of the old physician, who was a native of
the district, and who had discovered the spring.
Andermatt shrugged his shoulders, and declared that Doctor Latonne
alone would take care of his wife, so that the Marquis, very uneasy,
began to reflect on the best course to take in order to arrange matters
without offending his irascible physician.
Christiane asked: "Is Gontran here?" This was her brother.
Her father replied: "Yes, for the past four days, with a friend of his
of whom he has often spoken, M. Paul Bretigny. They are making a tour
together in Auvergne. They have come from Mont Doré and from Bourboule,
and will be setting out for Cantal at the end of next week."
Then he asked the young woman whether she desired to rest till luncheon
after the night in the train; but she had slept perfectly in the
sleeping car, and only required an hour for her toilette, after which
she wished to visit the village and the establishment.
Her father and her husband went back to their rooms to wait till she
was ready. She soon came out to call them, and they descended together.
She grew enthusiastic at first sight over the aspect of the village,
built in the middle of a wood in a deep valley, which seemed hemmed in
on every side by chestnut-trees lofty as mountains. These could be seen
everywhere, springing up just as they chanced to have shot forth here
and there in a century, in front of doorways, in the courtyards, in the
streets. Then, again, there were fountains everywhere made of a great
black stone standing upright pierced with a small aperture, through
which dashed a streamlet of clear water that whirled about in a circle
before it fell into the trough. A fresh odor of grass and of stables
floated over those masses of verdure; and they saw the peasant women
of Auvergne standing in front of their dwellings, spinning at their
distaffs with lively movements of their fingers the black wool attached
to their girdles. Their short petticoats showed their thin ankles
covered with blue stockings, and the bodies of their dresses fastened
over their shoulders with straps left exposed the linen sleeves of
their chemises, out of which stretched their hard, dry arms and bony
hands.
But, suddenly, a queer lilting kind of music burst on the promenaders'
ears. It was like a barrel-organ with piping sounds, a barrel-organ
used up, broken-winded, invalided.
Christiane exclaimed: "What is that?"
Her father began to laugh: "It is the orchestra of the Casino. It takes
four of them to make that noise."
And he led her up to a red bill affixed to a corner of a farmhouse, on
which appeared in black letters:
CASINO OF ENVAL
UNDER THE DIRECTION OF M. PETRUS MARTEL,
OF THE ODÉON.
Saturday, 6th of July.
GRAND CONCERT
organized by the _Maestro_, Saint Landri, second grand prize winner
at the Conservatoire
The piano will be presided over by M. Javel, grand laureate of the
Conservatoire.
Flute, M. Noirot, laureate of the Conservatoire.
Double-bass, M. Nicordi, laureate of the Royal Academy of Brussels.
After the Concert, grand representation of
_Lost in the Forest_,
a Comedy in one act, by M. Pointellet.
Characters:
Pierre de Lapointe M. Petrus Martel, of the Odéon.
Oscar Léveillé M. Petitnivelle, of the Vaudeville.
Jean M. Lapalme, of the Grand Theater of Bordeaux.
Philippine Mademoiselle Odelin, of the Odéon.
During the representation, the Orchestra will be likewise conducted
by the _Maestro,_ Saint Landri.
Christiane read this aloud, laughed, and was astonished.
Her father went on: "Oh! they will amuse you. Come and look at them."
They turned to the right, and entered the park. The bathers promenaded
gravely, slowly, along the three walks. They drank their glasses of
water, and then went away. Some of them, seated on benches, traced
lines in the sand with the ends of their walking-sticks or their
umbrellas. They did not talk, seemed not to think, scarcely to live,
enervated, paralyzed by the _ennui_ of the thermal station. Only the
odd music of the orchestra broke the sweet silence as it leaped into
the air, coming one knew not whence, produced one knew not how, passing
under the foliage and appearing to stir up these melancholy walkers.
A voice cried: "Christiane!"
She turned round. It was her brother. He rushed toward her, embraced
her, and, having pressed Andermatt's hand, took his sister by the arm,
and drew her along with him, leaving his father and his brother-in-law
in the rear.
They chatted. He was a tall, well-made young fellow, prone to laughter
like her, light-hearted as the Marquis, indifferent to events, but
always on the lookout for a thousand francs.
"I thought you were asleep," said he. "But for that I would have come
to embrace you. And then Paul carried me off this morning to the
château of Tournoel."
"Who is Paul? Oh, yes, your friend!"
"Paul Bretigny. It is true you don't know him. He is taking a bath at
the present moment."
"He is a patient, then?"
"No, but he is curing himself, all the same. He is trying to get over a
love episode."
"And so he's taking acidulated baths--they're called acidulated, are
they not?--in order to restore himself."
"Yes. He's doing all I told him to do. Oh! he has been hit hard. He's
a violent youth, terrible, and has been at death's door. He wanted to
kill himself, too. It was an actress--a well-known actress. He was
madly in love with her. And then she was not faithful to him, do you
see? The result was a frightful drama. So I brought him away. He's
going on better now, but he's still thinking about it."
She smiled for a moment, then, becoming grave, she returned:
"It will amuse me to see him."
For her, however, this thing, "Love," did not mean very much. She
sometimes bestowed a thought on it, just as you think, when you are
poor, now and then of a pearl necklace, of a diadem of brilliants, with
a desire awakened in you for this thing--possible though far away. This
fancy would come to her after reading some novel to kill time, without
attaching to it, beyond that, any special importance. She had never
dreamed about it much, having been born with a happy soul, tranquil and
contented, and, although now two years and a half married, she had not
yet awakened out of that sleep in which innocent young girls live, that
sleep of the heart, of the mind, and of the senses, which, with some
women, lasts until death. For her life was simple and good, without
complications. She had never looked for the causes or the hidden
meaning of things. She had lived on from day to day, slept soundly,
dressed with taste, laughed, and felt satisfied. What more could she
have asked for?
When Andermatt had been introduced to her as her future husband, she
refused to wed him at first with a childish indignation at the idea of
becoming the wife of a Jew. Her father and her brother, sharing her
repugnance, replied with her and like her by formally declining the
offer. Andermatt disappeared, acted as if he were dead, but, at the end
of three months, had lent Gontran more than twenty thousand francs; and
the Marquis, for other reasons, was beginning to change his opinion.
In the first place, he always on principle yielded when one persisted,
through sheer egotistical desire not to be disturbed. His daughter used
to say of him: "All papa's ideas are jumbled up together"; and this
was true. Without opinions, without beliefs, he had only enthusiasms,
which varied every moment. At one time, he would attach himself, with
a transitory and poetic exaltation, to the old traditions of his
race, and would long for a king, but an intellectual king, liberal,
enlightened, marching along with the age. At another time, after he
had read a book by Michelet or some democratic thinker, he would
become a passionate advocate of human equality, of modern ideas, of
the claims of the poor, the oppressed, and the suffering. He believed
in everything, just as each thing harmonized with his passing moods;
and, when his old friend, Madame Icardon, who, connected as she was
with many Israelites, desired the marriage of Christiane and Andermatt,
and began to preach in favor of it, she knew full well the kind of
arguments with which she should attack him.
She pointed out to him that the Jewish race had arrived at the hour
of vengeance. It had been a race crushed down as the French people
had been before the Revolution, and was now going to oppress others
by the power of gold. The Marquis, devoid of religious faith, but
convinced that the idea of God was rather a legislative idea, which
had more effect in keeping the foolish, the ignorant, and the timid
in the right path than the simple notion of Justice, regarded dogmas
with a respectful indifference, and held in equal and sincere esteem
Confucius, Mohammed, and Jesus Christ. Accordingly, the fact that the
latter was crucified did not at all present itself as an original
wrongdoing but as a gross, political blunder. In consequence it only
required a few weeks to make him admire the toil, hidden, incessant,
and all-powerful, of the persecuted Jews everywhere. And, viewing
with different eyes their brilliant triumph, he looked upon it as
a just reparation for the indignities that so long had been heaped
upon them. He saw them masters of kings, who are the masters of the
people--sustaining thrones or allowing them to collapse, able to make
a nation bankrupt as one might a wine-merchant, proud in the presence
of princes who had grown humble, and casting their impure gold into
the half-open purses of the most Catholic sovereigns, who thanked them
by conferring on them titles of nobility and lines of railway. So he
consented to the marriage of William Andermatt with Christiane de
Ravenel.
As for Christiane, under the unconscious pressure of Madame Icardon,
her mother's old companion, who had become her intimate adviser since
the Marquise's death, a pressure to which was added that of her father
and the interested indifference of her brother, she consented to marry
this big, overrich youth, who was not ugly but scarcely pleased her,
just as she would have consented to spend a summer in a disagreeable
country.
She found him a good fellow, kind, not stupid, nice in intimate
relations; but she frequently laughed at him along with Gontran, whose
gratitude was of the perfidious order.
He would say to her: "Your husband is rosier and balder than ever. He
looks like a sickly flower, or a sucking pig with its hair shaved off.
Where does he get these colors?"
She would reply: "I assure you I have nothing to do with it. There are
days when I feel inclined to paste him on a box of sugar-plums."
But they had arrived in front of the baths. Two men were seated on
straw chairs with their backs to the wall, smoking their pipes, one at
each side of the door.
Said Gontran: "Look, here are two good types. Watch the fellow at the
right, the hunchback with the Greek cap! That's Père Printemps, an
ex-jailer from Riom, who has become the guardian, almost the manager,
of the Enval establishment. For him nothing is changed, and he governs
the invalids just as he did his prisoners in former days. The bathers
are always prisoners, their bathing-boxes are cells, the douche-room
a black-hole, and the place where Doctor Bonnefille practices his
stomach-washings with the aid of the Baraduc sounding-line a chamber
of mysterious torture. He does not salute any of the men on the
strength of the principle that all convicts are contemptible beings.
He treats women with much more consideration, upon my honor--a
consideration mingled with astonishment, for he had none of them under
his control in the prison of Riom. That retreat being destined for
males only, he has not yet got accustomed to talking to members of the
fair sex. The other fellow is the cashier. I defy you to make him write
your name. You are just going to see."
And Gontran, addressing the man at the left, slowly said:
"Monsieur Seminois, this is my sister, Madame Andermatt, who wants to
subscribe for a dozen baths."
The cashier, very tall, very thin, with a poor appearance, rose up,
went into his office, which exactly faced the study of the medical
inspector, opened his book, and asked:
"What name?"
"Andermatt."
"What did you say?"
"Andermatt."
"How do you spell it?"
"A-n-d-e-r-m-a-t-t."
"All right."
And he slowly wrote it down. When he had finished, Gontran asked:
"Would you kindly read over my sister's name?"
"Yes, Monsieur! Madame Anterpat."
Christiane laughed till the tears came into her eyes, paid for her
tickets, and then asked:
"What is it that one hears up there?"
Gontran took her arm in his. Two angry voices reached their ears on
the stairs. They went up, opened a door, and saw a large coffee-room
with a billiard table in the center. Two men in their shirt-sleeves at
opposite sides of the billiard-table, each with a cue in his hand, were
furiously abusing one another.
"Eighteen!"
"Seventeen!"
"I tell you I'm eighteen."
"That's not true--you're only seventeen!"
It was the director of the Casino, M. Petrus Martel of the Odéon, who
was playing his ordinary game with the comedian of his company, M.
Lapalme of the Grand Theater of Bordeaux.
Petrus Martel, whose stomach, stout and inactive, swayed underneath his
shirt above a pair of pantaloons fastened anyhow, after having been a
strolling player in various places, had undertaken the directorship
of the Casino of Enval, and spent his days in drinking the allowances
intended for the bathers. He wore an immense mustache like a dragoon,
which was steeped from morning till night in the froth of bocks and the
sticky syrup of liqueurs, and he had aroused in the old comedian whom
he had enlisted in his service an immoderate passion for billiards.
As soon as they got up in the morning, they proceeded to play a game,
insulted and threatened one another, expunged the record, began over
again, scarcely gave themselves time for breakfast, and could not
tolerate two clients coming to drive them away from their green cloth.
They soon put everyone to flight, and did not find this sort of
existence unpleasant, though Petrus Martel always found himself at the
end of the season in a bankrupt condition.
The female attendant, overwhelmed, would have to look on all day at
this endless game, listen to the interminable discussion, and carry
from morning till night glasses of beer or half-glasses of brandy to
the two indefatigable players.
But Gontran carried off his sister: "Come into the park. 'Tis fresher."
At the end of the establishment they suddenly perceived the orchestra
under a Chinese _kiosque_. A fair-haired young man, frantically playing
the violin, was conducting with movements of his head. His hair was
shaking from one side to the other in the effort to keep time, and
his entire torso bent forward and rose up again, swaying from left to
right, like the stick of the leader of an orchestra. Facing him sat
three strange-looking musicians. This was the _maestro_, Saint Landri.
He and his assistants--a pianist, whose instrument, mounted on
rollers, was wheeled each morning from the vestibule of the baths to
the _kiosque_; an enormous flautist, who presented the appearance
of sucking a match while tickling it with his big swollen fingers,
and a double-bass of consumptive aspect--produced with much fatigue
this perfect imitation of a bad barrel-organ, which had astonished
Christiane in the village street.
As she stopped to look at them, a gentleman saluted her brother.
"Good day, my dear Count."
"Good day, doctor."
And Gontran introduced them: "My sister--Doctor Honorat."
She could scarcely restrain her merriment at the sight of this third
physician. The latter bowed and made some complimentary remark.
"I hope that Madame is not an invalid?"
"Yes--slightly."
He did not go farther with the matter, and changed the subject.
"You are aware, my dear Count, that you will shortly have one of the
most interesting spectacles that could await you on your arrival in
this district."
"What is it, pray, doctor?"
"Père Oriol is going to blast his hill. This is of no consequence to
you, but for us it is a big event."
And he proceeded to explain. "Père Oriol--the richest peasant in this
part of the country--he is known to be worth over fifty thousand francs
a year--owns all the vineyards along the plain up to the outlet of
Enval. Now, just as you go out from the village at the division of the
valley, rises a little mountain, or rather a high knoll, and on this
knoll are the best vineyards of Père Oriol. In the midst of two of
them, facing the road, at two paces from the stream, stands a gigantic
stone, an elevation which has impeded the cultivation and put into the
shade one entire side of the field, on which it looks down. For six
years, Père Oriol has every week been announcing that he was going to
blast his hill; but he has never made up his mind about it.
"Every time a country boy went to be a soldier, the old man would say
to him: 'When you're coming home on furlough, bring me some powder
for this rock of mine.' And all the young soldiers would bring back in
their knapsacks some powder that they stole for Père Oriol's rock. He
has a chest full of this powder, and yet the hill has not been blasted.
At last, for a week past, he has been noticed scooping out the stone,
with his son, big Jacques, surnamed Colosse, which in Auvergne is
pronounced 'Coloche.' This very morning they filled with powder the
empty belly of the enormous rock; then they stopped up the mouth of it,
only letting in the fuse bought at the tobacconist's. In two hours'
time they will set fire to it. Then, five or ten minutes afterward, it
will go off, for the end of the fuse is pretty long."
Christiane was interested in this narrative, amused already at the idea
of this explosion, finding here again a childish sport that pleased her
simple heart. They had now reached the end of the park.
"Where do you go now?" she said.
Doctor Honorat replied: "To the End of the World, Madame; that is
to say, into a gorge that has no outlet and which is celebrated in
Auvergne. It is one of the loveliest natural curiosities in the
district."
But a bell rang behind them. Gontran cried:
"Look here! breakfast-time already!"
They turned back. A tall, young man came up to meet them.
Gontran said: "My dear Christiane, let me introduce to you M. Paul
Bretigny." Then, to his friend: "This is my sister, my dear boy."
She thought him ugly. He had black hair, close-cropped and straight,
big, round eyes, with an expression that was almost hard, a head also
quite round, very strong, one of those heads that make you think
of cannon-balls, herculean shoulders; a rather savage expression,
heavy and brutish. But from his jacket, from his linen, from his skin
perhaps, came a very subtle perfume, with which the young woman was not
familiar, and she asked herself:
"I wonder what odor that is?"
He said to her: "You arrived this morning, Madame?" His voice was a
little hollow.
She replied: "Yes, Monsieur."
But Gontran saw the Marquis and Andermatt making signals to them to
come in quickly to breakfast.
Doctor Honorat took leave of them, asking as he left whether they
really meant to go and see the hill blasted. Christiane declared that
she would go; and, leaning on her brother's arm, she murmured as she
dragged him along toward the hotel:
"I am as hungry as a wolf. I shall be very much ashamed to eat as much
as I feel inclined before your friend."