September 15th, Eight O’clock
This morning, while I was arranging my books, Mother Genevieve came in,
and brought me the basket of fruit I buy of her every Sunday. For the
nearly twenty years that I have lived in this quarter, I have dealt in
her little fruit-shop. Perhaps I should be better served elsewhere, but
Mother Genevieve has but little custom; to leave her would do her harm,
and cause her unnecessary pain. It seems to me that the length of our
acquaintance has made me incur a sort of tacit obligation to her; my
patronage has become her property.
She has put the basket upon my table, and as I want her husband, who is
a joiner, to add some shelves to my bookcase, she has gone downstairs
again immediately to send him to me.
At first I did not notice either her looks or the sound of her voice:
but, now that I recall them, it seems to me that she was not as jovial
as usual. Can Mother Genevieve be in trouble about anything?
Poor woman! All her best years were subject to such bitter trials, that
she might think she had received her full share already. Were I to live
a hundred years, I should never forget the circumstances which made her
known to me, and which obtained for her my respect.
It was at the time of my first settling in the faubourg. I had noticed
her empty fruit-shop, which nobody came into, and, being attracted by
its forsaken appearance, I made my little purchases in it. I have always
instinctively preferred the poor shops; there is less choice in them,
but it seems to me that my purchase is a sign of sympathy with a brother
in poverty. These little dealings are almost always an anchor of hope
to those whose very existence is in peril--the only means by which some
orphan gains a livelihood. There the aim of the tradesman is not to
enrich himself, but to live! The purchase you make of him is more than
an exchange--it is a good action.
Mother Genevieve at that time was still young, but had already lost that
fresh bloom of youth which suffering causes to wither so soon among
the poor. Her husband, a clever joiner, gradually left off working to
become, according to the picturesque expression of the workshops, a
worshipper of Saint Monday. The wages of the week, which was always
reduced to two or three working days, were completely dedicated by him
to the worship of this god of the Barriers,--[The cheap wine shops are
outside the Barriers, to avoid the octroi, or municipal excise.]--and
Genevieve was obliged herself to provide for all the wants of the
household.
One evening, when I went to make some trifling purchases of her, I
heard a sound of quarrelling in the back shop. There were the voices of
several women, among which I distinguished that of Genevieve, broken by
sobs. On looking farther in, I perceived the fruit-woman holding a child
in her arms, and kissing it, while a country nurse seemed to be claiming
her wages from her. The poor woman, who without doubt had exhausted
every explanation and every excuse, was crying in silence, and one of
her neighbors was trying in vain to appease the countrywoman. Excited by
that love of money which the evils of a hard peasant life but too well
excuse, and disappointed by the refusal of her expected wages, the nurse
was launching forth in recriminations, threats, and abuse. In spite
of myself, I listened to the quarrel, not daring to interfere, and not
thinking of going away, when Michael Arout appeared at the shop-door.
The joiner had just come from the Barriers, where he had passed part of
the day at a public-house. His blouse, without a belt, and untied at the
throat, showed none of the noble stains of work: in his hand he held
his cap, which he had just picked up out of the mud; his hair was in
disorder, his eye fixed, and the pallor of drunkenness in his face. He
came reeling in, looked wildly around him, and called Genevieve.
She heard his voice, gave a start, and rushed into the shop; but at the
sight of the miserable man, who was trying in vain to steady himself,
she pressed the child in her arms, and bent over it with tears.
The countrywoman and the neighbor had followed her.
“Come! come!” cried the former in a rage, “do you intend to pay me,
after all?”
“Ask the master for the money,” ironically answered the woman from
the next door, pointing to the joiner, who had just fallen against the
counter.
The countrywoman looked at him.
“Ah! he is the father,” returned she. “Well, what idle beggars! not to
have a penny to pay honest people; and get tipsy with wine in that way.”
The drunkard raised his head.
“What! what!” stammered he; “who is it that talks of wine? I’ve had
nothing but brandy! But I am going back again to get some wine! Wife,
give me your money; there are some friends waiting for me at the ‘Pere
la Tuille’.”
Genevieve did not answer: he went round the counter, opened the till,
and began to rummage in it.
“You see where the money of the house goes!” observed the neighbor to
the countrywoman; “how can the poor unhappy woman pay you when he takes
all?”
“Is that my fault?” replied the nurse, angrily. “They owe to me, and
somehow or other they must pay me!”
And letting loose her tongue, as these women out of the country do, she
began relating at length all the care she had taken of the child, and
all the expense it had been to her. In proportion as she recalled all
she had done, her words seemed to convince her more than ever of her
rights, and to increase her anger. The poor mother, who no doubt feared
that her violence would frighten the child, returned into the back shop,
and put it into its cradle.
Whether it is that the countrywoman saw in this act a determination to
escape her claims, or that she was blinded by passion, I cannot say; but
she rushed into the next room, where I heard the sounds of quarrelling,
with which the cries of the child were soon mingled. The joiner, who was
still rummaging in the till, was startled, and raised his head.
At the same moment Genevieve appeared at the door, holding in her arms
the baby that the countrywoman was trying to tear from her. She ran
toward the counter, and throwing herself behind her husband, cried:
“Michael, defend your son!”
The drunken man quickly stood up erect, like one who awakes with a
start.
“My son!” stammered he; “what son?”
His looks fell upon the child; a vague ray of intelligence passed over
his features.
“Robert,” resumed he; “it is Robert!”
He tried to steady himself on his feet, that he might take the baby, but
he tottered. The nurse approached him in a rage.
“My money, or I shall take the child away!” cried she. “It is I who have
fed and brought it up: if you don’t pay me for what has made it live, it
ought to be the same to you as if it were dead. I shall not go until I
have my due, or the baby.”
“And what would you do with him?” murmured Genevieve, pressing Robert
against her bosom.
“Take it to the Foundling!” replied the countrywoman, harshly; “the
hospital is a better mother than you are, for it pays for the food of
its little ones.”
At the word “Foundling,” Genevieve had exclaimed aloud in horror. With
her arms wound round her son, whose head she hid in her bosom, and her
two hands spread over him, she had retreated to the wall, and remained
with her back against it, like a lioness defending her young. The
neighbor and I contemplated this scene, without knowing how we could
interfere. As for Michael, he looked at us by turns, making a visible
effort to comprehend it all. When his eye rested upon Genevieve and the
child, it lit up with a gleam of pleasure; but when he turned toward us,
he again became stupid and hesitating.
At last, apparently making a prodigious effort, he cried out, “Wait!”
And going to a tub filled with water, he plunged his face into it
several times.
Every eye was turned upon him; the countrywoman herself seemed
astonished. At length he raised his dripping head. This ablution had
partly dispelled his drunkenness; he looked at us for a moment, then he
turned to Genevieve, and his face brightened up.
“Robert!” cried he, going up to the child, and taking him in his arms.
“Ah! give him me, wife; I must look at him.”
The mother seemed to give up his son to him with reluctance, and stayed
before him with her arms extended, as if she feared the child would
have a fall. The nurse began again in her turn to speak, and renewed
her claims, this time threatening to appeal to law. At first Michael
listened to her attentively, and when he comprehended her meaning, he
gave the child back to its mother.
“How much do we owe you?” asked he.
The countrywoman began to reckon up the different expenses, which
amounted to nearly thirty francs. The joiner felt to the bottom of
his pockets, but could find nothing. His forehead became contracted by
frowns; low curses began to escape him. All of a sudden he rummaged in
his breast, drew forth a large watch, and holding it up above his head:
“Here it is--here’s your money!” cried he with a joyful laugh; “a watch,
a good one! I always said it would keep for a drink on a dry day; but it
is not I who will drink it, but the young one. Ah! ah! ah! go and sell
it for me, neighbor, and if that is not enough, I have my earrings.
Eh! Genevieve, take them off for me; the earrings will square all! They
shall not say you have been disgraced on account of the child--no, not
even if I must pledge a bit of my flesh! My watch, my earrings, and my
ring--get rid of all of them for me at the goldsmith’s; pay the woman,
and let the little fool go to sleep. Give him me, Genevieve; I will put
him to bed.”
And, taking the baby from the arms of his mother, he carried him with a
firm step to his cradle.
It was easy to perceive the change which took place in Michael from
this day. He cut all his old drinking acquaintances. He went early every
morning to his work, and returned regularly in the evening to finish the
day with Genevieve and Robert. Very soon he would not leave them at all,
and he hired a place near the fruit-shop, and worked in it on his own
account.
They would soon have been able to live in comfort, had it not been for
the expenses which the child required. Everything was given up to his
education. He had gone through the regular school training, had studied
mathematics, drawing, and the carpenter’s trade, and had only begun to
work a few months ago. Till now, they had been exhausting every resource
which their laborious industry could provide to push him forward in his
business; and, happily, all these exertions had not proved useless: the
seed had brought forth fruit, and the days of harvest were close by.
While I was thus recalling these remembrances to my mind, Michael had
come in, and was occupied in fixing shelves where they were wanted.
During the time I was writing the notes of my journal, I was also
scrutinizing the joiner.
The excesses of his youth and the labor of his manhood have deeply
marked his face; his hair is thin and gray, his shoulders stoop, his
legs are shrunken and slightly bent. There seems a sort of weight in
his whole being. His very features have an expression of sorrow and
despondency. He answers my questions by monosyllables, and like a man
who wishes to avoid conversation. Whence comes this dejection, when one
would think he had all he could wish for? I should like to know!
Ten o’clock.--Michael is just gone downstairs to look for a tool he has
forgotten. I have at last succeeded in drawing from him the secret of
his and Genevieve’s sorrow. Their son Robert is the cause of it!
Not that he has turned out ill after all their care--not that he is
idle or dissipated; but both were in hopes he would never leave them any
more. The presence of the young man was to have renewed and made glad
their lives once more; his mother counted the days, his father prepared
everything to receive their dear associate in their toils; and at the
moment when they were thus about to be repaid for all their sacrifices,
Robert had suddenly informed them that he had just engaged himself to a
contractor at Versailles.
Every remonstrance and every prayer were useless; he brought forward
the necessity of initiating himself into all the details of an important
contract, the facilities he should have in his new position of improving
himself in his trade, and the hopes he had of turning his knowledge
to advantage. At, last, when his mother, having come to the end of her
arguments, began to cry, he hastily kissed her, and went away that he
might avoid any further remonstrances.
He had been absent a year, and there was nothing to give them hopes of
his return. His parents hardly saw him once a month, and then he only
stayed a few moments with them.
“I have been punished where I had hoped to be rewarded,” Michael said to
me just now. “I had wished for a saving and industrious son, and God has
given me an ambitious and avaricious one! I had always said to myself
that when once he was grown up we should have him always with us,
to recall our youth and to enliven our hearts. His mother was always
thinking of getting him married, and having children again to care for.
You know women always will busy themselves about others. As for me, I
thought of him working near my bench, and singing his new songs; for he
has learnt music, and is one of the best singers at the Orpheon.
“A dream, sir, truly! Directly the bird was fledged, he took to flight,
and remembers neither father nor mother. Yesterday, for instance, was
the day we expected him; he should have come to supper with us. No
Robert to-day, either! He has had some plan to finish, or some bargain
to arrange, and his old parents are put down last in the accounts, after
the customers and the joiner’s work. Ah! if I could have guessed how it
would have turned out! Fool! to have sacrificed my likings and my money,
for nearly twenty years, to the education of a thankless son! Was it
for this I took the trouble to cure myself of drinking, to break with
my friends, to become an example to the neighborhood? The jovial good
fellow has made a goose of himself. Oh! if I had to begin again! No, no!
you see women and children are our bane. They soften our hearts; they
lead us a life of hope and affection; we pass a quarter of our lives in
fostering the growth of a grain of corn which is to be everything to us
in our old age, and when the harvest-time comes--good-night, the ear is
empty!”
While he was speaking, Michael’s voice became hoarse, his eyes fierce,
and his lips quivered. I wished to answer him, but I could only think of
commonplace consolations, and I remained silent. The joiner pretended he
needed a tool, and left me.
Poor father! Ah! I know those moments of temptation when virtue has
failed to reward us, and we regret having obeyed her! Who has not felt
this weakness in hours of trial, and who has not uttered, at least once,
the mournful exclamation of Brutus?
But if virtue is only a word, what is there then in life that is true
and real? No, I will not believe that goodness is in vain! It does not
always give the happiness we had hoped for, but it brings some other. In
the world everything is ruled by order, and has its proper and necessary
consequences, and virtue cannot be the sole exception to the general
law. If it had been prejudicial to those who practised it, experience
would have avenged them; but experience has, on the contrary, made it
more universal and more holy. We only accuse it of being a faithless
debtor because we demand an immediate payment, and one apparent to our
senses. We always consider life as a fairytale, in which every good
action must be rewarded by a visible wonder. We do not accept as payment
a peaceful conscience, self-content, or a good name among men--treasures
that are more precious than any other, but the value of which we do not
feel till after we have lost them!
Michael is come back, and has returned to his work. His son has not yet
arrived.
By telling me of his hopes and his grievous disappointments, he became
excited; he unceasingly went over again the same subject, always adding
something to his griefs. He had just wound up his confidential discourse
by speaking to me of a joiner’s business which he had hoped to buy, and
work to good account with Robert’s help. The present owner had made a
fortune by it, and, after thirty years of business, he was thinking of
retiring to one of the ornamental cottages in the outskirts of the city,
a usual retreat for the frugal and successful workingman. Michael had
not indeed the two thousand francs which must be paid down; but perhaps
he could have persuaded Master Benoit to wait. Robert’s presence would
have been a security for him, for the young man could not fail to insure
the prosperity of a workshop; besides science and skill, he had the
power of invention and bringing to perfection. His father had discovered
among his drawings a new plan for a staircase, which had occupied his
thoughts for a long time; and he even suspected him of having engaged
himself to the Versailles contractor for the very purpose of executing
it. The youth was tormented by this spirit of invention, which took
possession of all his thoughts, and, while devoting his mind to study,
he had no time to listen to his feelings.
Michael told me all this with a mixed feeling of pride and vexation. I
saw he was proud of the son he was abusing, and that his very pride made
him more sensitive to that son’s neglect.
Six o’clock P.M.--I have just finished a happy day. How many events
have happened within a few hours, and what a change for Genevieve and
Michael!
He had just finished fixing the shelves, and telling me of his son,
while I laid the cloth for my breakfast.
Suddenly we heard hurried steps in the passage, the door opened, and
Genevieve entered with Robert.
The joiner gave a start of joyful surprise, but he repressed it
immediately, as if he wished to keep up the appearance of displeasure.
The young man did not appear to notice it, but threw himself into his
arms in an open-hearted manner, which surprised me. Genevieve, whose
face shone with happiness, seemed to wish to speak, and to restrain
herself with difficulty.
I told Robert I was glad to see him, and he answered me with ease and
civility.
“I expected you yesterday,” said Michael Arout, rather dryly.
“Forgive me, father,” replied the young workman, “but I had business at
St. Germain’s. I was not able to come back till it was very late, and
then the master kept me.”
The joiner looked at his son sidewise, and then took up his hammer
again.
“All right,” muttered he, in a grumbling tone; “when we are with other
people we must do as they wish; but there are some who would like better
to eat brown bread with their own knife than partridges with the silver
fork of a master.”
“And I am one of those, father,” replied Robert, merrily, “but, as the
proverb says, ‘you must shell the peas before you can eat them.’ It was
necessary that I should first work in a great workshop--”
“To go on with your plan of the staircase,” interrupted Michael,
ironically.
“You must now say Monsieur Raymond’s plan, father,” replied Robert,
smiling.
“Why?”
“Because I have sold it to him.”
The joiner, who was planing a board, turned round quickly.
“Sold it!” cried he, with sparkling eyes.
“For the reason that I was not rich enough to give it him.”
Michael threw down the board and tool.
“There he is again!” resumed he, angrily; “his good genius puts an idea
into his head which would have made him known, and he goes and sells it
to a rich man, who will take the honor of it himself.”
“Well, what harm is there done?” asked Genevieve.
“What harm!” cried the joiner, in a passion. “You understand nothing
about it--you are a woman; but he--he knows well that a true workman
never gives up his own inventions for money, no more than a soldier
would give up his cross. That is his glory; he is bound to keep it for
the honor it does him! Ah, thunder! if I had ever made a discovery,
rather than put it up at auction I would have sold one of my eyes! Don’t
you see that a new invention is like a child to a workman? He takes care
of it, he brings it up, he makes a way for it in the world, and it is
only a poor creature who sells it.”
Robert colored a little.
“You will think differently, father,” said he, “when you know why I sold
my plan.”
“Yes, and you will thank him for it,” added Genevieve, who could no
longer keep silence.
“Never!” replied Michael.
“But, wretched man!” cried she, “he sold it only for our sakes!”
The joiner looked at his wife and son with astonishment. It was
necessary to come to an explanation. The latter related how he had
entered into a negotiation with Master Benoit, who had positively
refused to sell his business unless one half of the two thousand francs
were first paid down. It was in the hopes of obtaining this sum that
he had gone to work with the contractor at Versailles; he had had an
opportunity of trying his invention, and of finding a purchaser. Thanks
to the money he received for it, he had just concluded the bargain with
Benoit, and had brought his father the key of the new work-yard.
This explanation was given by the young workman with so much modesty
and simplicity that I was quite affected by it. Genevieve cried; Michael
pressed his son to his heart, and in a long embrace he seemed to ask his
pardon for having unjustly accused him.
All was now explained with honor to Robert. The conduct which his
parents had ascribed to indifference really sprang from affection; he
had neither obeyed the voice of ambition nor of avarice, nor even the
nobler inspiration of inventive genius: his whole motive and single aim
had been the happiness of Genevieve and Michael. The day for proving his
gratitude had come, and he had returned them sacrifice for sacrifice!
After the explanations and exclamations of joy were over, all three were
about to leave me; but, the cloth being laid, I added three more places,
and kept them to breakfast.
The meal was prolonged: the fare was only tolerable; but the
over-flowings of affection made it delicious. Never had I better
understood the unspeakable charm of family love. What calm enjoyment in
that happiness which is always shared with others; in that community
of interests which unites such various feelings; in that association of
existences which forms one single being of so many! What is man without
those home affections, which, like so many roots, fix him firmly in
the earth, and permit him to imbibe all the juices of life? Energy,
happiness--do not all these come from them? Without family life where
would man learn to love, to associate, to deny himself? A community in
little, is it not this which teaches us how to live in the great one?
Such is the holiness of home, that, to express our relation with God, we
have been obliged to borrow the words invented for our family life. Men
have named themselves the sons of a heavenly Father!
Ah! let us carefully preserve these chains of domestic union. Do not let
us unbind the human sheaf, and scatter its ears to all the caprices of
chance and of the winds; but let us rather enlarge this holy law; let us
carry the principles and the habits of home beyond set bounds; and, if
it may be, let us realize the prayer of the Apostle of the Gentiles
when he exclaimed to the newborn children of Christ: “Be ye like-minded,
having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.”
BOOK 3.
CHAPTER X. OUR COUNTRY
October 12th, Seven O’clock A.M.
The nights are already become cold and long; the sun, shining through my
curtains, no more wakens me long before the hour for work; and even when
my eyes are open, the pleasant warmth of the bed keeps me fast under
my counterpane. Every morning there begins a long argument between my
activity and my indolence; and, snugly wrapped up to the eyes, I wait
like the Gascon, until they have succeeded in coming to an agreement.
This morning, however, a light, which shone from my door upon my
pillow, awoke me earlier than usual. In vain I turned on my side;
the persevering light, like a victorious enemy, pursued me into every
position. At last, quite out of patience, I sat up and hurled my
nightcap to the foot of the bed!
(I will observe, by way of parenthesis, that the various evolutions of
this pacific headgear seem to have been, from the remotest time, symbols
of the vehement emotions of the mind; for our language has borrowed its
most common images from them.)
But be this as it may, I got up in a very bad humor, grumbling at my
new neighbor, who took it into his head to be wakeful when I wished to
sleep. We are all made thus; we do not understand that others may live
on their own account. Each one of us is like the earth, according to the
old system of Ptolemy, and thinks he can have the whole universe revolve
around himself. On this point, to make use of the metaphor alluded to:
‘Tous les hommes ont la tete dans le meme bonnet’.
I had for the time being, as I have already said, thrown mine to the
other end of my bed; and I slowly disengaged my legs from the
warm bedclothes, while making a host of evil reflections upon the
inconvenience of having neighbors.
For more than a month I had not had to complain of those whom chance
had given me; most of them only came in to sleep, and went away again
on rising. I was almost always alone on this top story--alone with the
clouds and the sparrows!
But at Paris nothing lasts; the current of life carries us along, like
the seaweed torn from the rock; the houses are vessels which take mere
passengers. How many different faces have I already seen pass along the
landing-place belonging to our attics! How many companions of a few days
have disappeared forever! Some are lost in that medley of the living
which whirls continually under the scourge of necessity, and others in
that resting-place of the dead, who sleep under the hand of God!
Peter the bookbinder is one of these last. Wrapped up in selfishness,
he lived alone and friendless, and he died as he had lived. His loss was
neither mourned by any one, nor disarranged anything in the world; there
was merely a ditch filled up in the graveyard, and an attic emptied in
our house.
It is the same which my new neighbor has inhabited for the last few
days.
To say truly (now that I am quite awake, and my ill humor is gone with
my nightcap)--to say truly, this new neighbor, although rising earlier
than suits my idleness, is not the less a very good man: he carries
his misfortunes, as few know how to carry their good fortunes, with
cheerfulness and moderation.
But fate has cruelly tried him. Father Chaufour is but the wreck of a
man. In the place of one of his arms hangs an empty sleeve; his left leg
is made by the turner, and he drags the right along with difficulty; but
above these ruins rises a calm and happy face. While looking upon his
countenance, radiant with a serene energy, while listening to his voice,
the tone of which has, so to speak, the accent of goodness, we see
that the soul has remained entire in the half-destroyed covering. The
fortress is a little damaged, as Father Chaufour says, but the garrison
is quite hearty.
Decidedly, the more I think of this excellent man, the more I reproach
myself for the sort of malediction I bestowed on him when I awoke.
We are generally too indulgent in our secret wrongs toward our neighbor.
All ill-will which does not pass the region of thought seems innocent to
us, and, with our clumsy justice, we excuse without examination the sin
which does not betray itself by action!
But are we then bound to others only by the enforcement of laws? Besides
these external relations, is there not a real relation of feeling
between men? Do we not owe to all those who live under the same heaven
as ourselves the aid not only of our acts but of our purposes? Ought not
every human life to be to us like a vessel that we accompany with our
prayers for a happy voyage? It is not enough that men do not harm
one another; they must also help and love one another! The papal
benediction, ‘Urbi et orbi’! should be the constant cry from all hearts.
To condemn him who does not deserve it, even in the mind, even by a
passing thought, is to break the great law, that which has established
the union of souls here below, and to which Christ has given the sweet
name of charity.
These thoughts came into my mind as I finished dressing, and I said to
myself that Father Chaufour had a right to reparation from me. To make
amends for the feeling of ill-will I had against him just now, I owed
him some explicit proof of sympathy. I heard him humming a tune in
his room; he was at work, and I determined that I would make the first
neighborly call.
Eight o’clock P.M.--I found Father Chaufour at a table lighted by a
little smoky lamp, without a fire, although it is already cold, and
making large pasteboard boxes; he was humming a popular song in a low
tone. I had hardly entered the room when he uttered an exclamation of
surprise and pleasure.
“Eh! is it you, neighbor? Come in, then! I did not think you got up so
early, so I put a damper on my music; I was afraid of waking you.”
Excellent man! while I was sending him to the devil he was putting
himself out of his way for me!
This thought touched me, and I paid my compliments on his having become
my neighbor with a warmth which opened his heart.
“Faith! you seem to me to have the look of a good Christian,” said he in
a voice of soldierlike cordiality, and shaking me by the hand. “I do not
like those people who look on a landing-place as a frontier line, and
treat their neighbors as if they were Cossacks. When men snuff the same
air, and speak the same lingo, they are not meant to turn their backs
to each other. Sit down there, neighbor; I don’t mean to order you; only
take care of the stool; it has but three legs, and we must put good-will
in place of the fourth.”
“It seems that that is a treasure which there is no want of here,” I
observed.
“Good-will!” repeated Chaufour; “that is all my mother left me, and I
take it no son has received a better inheritance. Therefore they used to
call me Monsieur Content in the batteries.”
“You are a soldier, then?”
“I served in the Third Artillery under the Republic, and afterward
in the Guard, through all the commotions. I was at Jemappes and at
Waterloo; so I was at the christening and at the burial of our glory, as
one may say!”
I looked at him with astonishment.
“And how old were you then, at Jemappes?” asked I.
“Somewhere about fifteen,” said he.
“How came you to think of being a soldier so early?”
“I did not really think about it. I then worked at toy-making, and never
dreamed that France would ask me for anything else than to make her
draught-boards, shuttlecocks, and cups and balls. But I had an old uncle
at Vincennes whom I went to see from time to time--a Fontenoy veteran in
the same rank of life as myself, but with ability enough to have risen
to that of a marshal. Unluckily, in those days there was no way for
common people to get on. My uncle, whose services would have got him
made a prince under the other, had then retired with the mere rank of
sub-lieutenant. But you should have seen him in his uniform, his cross
of St. Louis, his wooden leg, his white moustaches, and his noble
countenance. You would have said he was a portrait of one of those old
heroes in powdered hair which are at Versailles!
“Every time I visited him, he said something which remained fixed in my
memory. But one day I found him quite grave.
“‘Jerome,’ said he, ‘do you know what is going on on the frontier?’
“‘No, lieutenant,’ replied I.
“‘Well,’ resumed he, ‘our country is in danger!’
“I did not well understand him, and yet it seemed something to me.
“‘Perhaps you have never thought what your country means,’ continued he,
placing his hand on my shoulder; `it is all that surrounds you, all that
has brought you up and fed you, all that you have loved! This ground
that you see, these houses, these trees, those girls who go along there
laughing--this is your country! The laws which protect you, the bread
which pays for your work, the words you interchange with others, the
joy and grief which come to you from the men and things among which you
live--this is your country! The little room where you used to see
your mother, the remembrances she has left you, the earth where she
rests--this is your country! You see it, you breathe it, everywhere!
Think to yourself, my son, of your rights and your duties, your
affections and your wants, your past and your present blessings; write
them all under a single name--and that name will be your country!’
“I was trembling with emotion, and great tears were in my eyes.
“‘Ah! I understand,’ cried I; ‘it is our home in large; it is that part
of the world where God has placed our body and our soul.’
“‘You are right, Jerome,’ continued the old soldier; ‘so you comprehend
also what we owe it.’
“‘Truly,’ resumed I, ‘we owe it all that we are; it is a question of
love.’
“‘And of honesty, my son,’ concluded he. ‘The member of a family who
does not contribute his share of work and of happiness fails in his
duty, and is a bad kinsman; the member of a partnership who does not
enrich it with all his might, with all his courage, and with all his
heart, defrauds it of what belongs to it, and is a dishonest man. It
is the same with him who enjoys the advantages of having a country, and
does not accept the burdens of it; he forfeits his honor, and is a bad
citizen!’
“‘And what must one do, lieutenant, to be a good citizen?’ asked I.
“‘Do for your country what you would do for your father and mother,’
said he.
“I did not answer at the moment; my heart was swelling, and the blood
boiling in my veins; but on returning along the road, my uncle’s words
were, so to speak, written up before my eyes. I repeated, ‘Do for your
country what you would do for your father and mother.’ And my country is
in danger; an enemy attacks it, while I--I turn cups and balls!
“This thought tormented me so much all night that the next day I
returned to Vincennes to announce to the lieutenant that I had just
enlisted, and was going off to the frontier. The brave man pressed upon
me his cross of St. Louis, and I went away as proud as an ambassador.
“That is how, neighbor, I became a volunteer under the Republic before I
had cut my wisdom teeth.”
All this was told quietly, and in the cheerful spirit of him who looks
upon an accomplished duty neither as a merit nor a grievance.
While he spoke, Father Chaufour grew animated, not on account of
himself, but of the general subject. Evidently that which occupied him
in the drama of life was not his own part, but the drama itself.
This sort of disinterestedness touched me. I prolonged my visit, and
showed myself as frank as possible, in order to win his confidence in
return. In an hour’s time he knew my position and my habits; I was on
the footing of an old acquaintance.
I even confessed the ill-humor the light of his lamp put me into a short
time before. He took what I said with the touching cheerfulness which
comes from a heart in the right place, and which looks upon everything
on the good side. He neither spoke to me of the necessity which obliged
him to work while I could sleep, nor of the deprivations of the old
soldier compared to the luxury of the young clerk; he only struck his
forehead, accused himself of thoughtlessness, and promised to put list
round his door!
O great and beautiful soul! with whom nothing turns to bitterness, and
who art peremptory only in duty and benevolence!
October 15th.--This morning I was looking at a little engraving I
had framed myself, and hung over my writing-table; it is a design of
Gavarni’s; in which, in a grave mood, he has represented a veteran and a
conscript.
By often contemplating these two figures, so different in expression,
and so true to life, both have become living in my eyes; I have seen
them move, I have heard them speak; the picture has become a real scene,
at which I am present as spectator.
The veteran advances slowly, his hand leaning on the shoulder of the
young soldier. His eyes, closed for ever, no longer perceive the sun
shining through the flowering chestnut-trees. In the place of his right
arm hangs an empty sleeve, and he walks with a wooden leg, the sound of
which on the pavement makes those who pass turn to look.
At the sight of this ancient wreck from our patriotic wars, the greater
number shake their heads in pity, and I seem to hear a sigh or an
imprecation.
“See the worth of glory!” says a portly merchant, turning away his eyes
in horror.
“What a deplorable use of human life!” rejoins a young man who carries a
volume of philosophy under his arm.
“The trooper would better not have left his plow,” adds a countryman,
with a cunning air.
“Poor old man!” murmurs a woman, almost crying.
The veteran has heard, and he knits his brow; for it seems to him that
his guide has grown thoughtful. The latter, attracted by what he hears
around him, hardly answers the old man’s questions, and his eyes,
vaguely lost in space, seem to be seeking there for the solution of some
problem.
I seem to see a twitching in the gray moustaches of the veteran; he
stops abruptly, and, holding back his guide with his remaining arm:
“They all pity me,” says he, “because they do not understand it; but if
I were to answer them--”
“What would you say to them, father?” asks the young man, with
curiosity.
“I should say first to the woman who weeps when she looks at me, to keep
her tears for other misfortunes; for each of my wounds calls to mind
some struggle for my colors. There is room for doubting how some men
have done their duty; with me it is visible. I carry the account of my
services, written with the enemy’s steel and lead, on myself; to pity me
for having done my duty is to suppose I would better have been false to
it.”
“And what would you say to the countryman, father?”
“I should tell him that, to drive the plow in peace, we must first
secure the country itself; and that, as long as there are foreigners
ready to eat our harvest, there must be arms to defend it.”
“But the young student, too, shook his head when he lamented such a use
of life.”
“Because he does not know what self-sacrifice and suffering can teach.
The books that he studies we have put in practice, though we never
read them: the principles he applauds we have defended with powder and
bayonet.”
“And at the price of your limbs and your blood. The merchant said, when
he saw your maimed body, ‘See the worth of glory!”’
“Do not believe him, my son: the true glory is the bread of the soul;
it is this which nourishes self-sacrifice, patience, and courage. The
Master of all has bestowed it as a tie the more between men. When we
desire to be distinguished by our brethren, do we not thus prove our
esteem and our sympathy for them? The longing for admiration is but one
side of love. No, no; the true glory can never be too dearly paid for!
That which we should deplore, child, is not the infirmities which prove
a generous self-sacrifice, but those which our vices or our imprudence
have called forth. Ah! if I could speak aloud to those who, when
passing, cast looks of pity upon me, I should say to the young man whose
excesses have dimmed his sight before he is old, ‘What have you done
with your eyes?’ To the slothful man, who with difficulty drags along
his enervated mass of flesh, ‘What have you done with your feet?’ To the
old man, who is punished for his intemperance by the gout, ‘What have
you done with your hands?’ To all, ‘What have you done with the days God
granted you, with the faculties you should have employed for the good of
your brethren?’ If you cannot answer, bestow no more of your pity upon
the old soldier maimed in his country’s cause; for he--he at least--can
show his scars without shame.”
October 16th.--The little engraving has made me comprehend better the
merits of Father Chaufour, and I therefore esteem him all the more.
He has just now left my attic. There no longer passes a single day
without his coming to work by my fire, or my going to sit and talk by
his board.
The old artilleryman has seen much, and likes to tell of it. For twenty
years he was an armed traveller throughout Europe, and he fought without
hatred, for he was possessed by a single thought--the honor of the
national flag! It might have been his superstition, if you will; but it
was, at the same time, his safeguard.
The word FRANCE, which was then resounding so gloriously through the
world, served as a talisman to him against all sorts of temptation. To
have to support a great name may seem a burden to vulgar minds, but it
is an encouragement to vigorous ones.
“I, too, have had many moments,” said he to me the other day, “when I
have been tempted to make friends with the devil. War is not precisely
the school for rural virtues. By dint of burning, destroying, and
killing, you grow a little tough as regards your feelings; ‘and, when
the bayonet has made you king, the notions of an autocrat come into
your head a little strongly. But at these moments I called to mind that
country which the lieutenant spoke of to me, and I whispered to myself
the well-known phrase, ‘Toujours Francais! It has been laughed at since.
People who would make a joke of the death of their mother have turned it
into ridicule, as if the name of our country was not also a noble and a
binding thing. For my part, I shall never forget from how many follies
the title of Frenchman has kept me. When, overcome with fatigue, I
have found myself in the rear of the colors, and when the musketry
was rattling in the front ranks, many a time I heard a voice, which
whispered in my ear, ‘Leave the others to fight, and for today take care
of your own hide!’ But then, that word Francais! murmured within me, and
I pressed forward to help my comrades. At other times, when, irritated
by hunger, cold, and wounds, I have arrived at the hovel of some
Meinherr, I have been seized by an itching to break the master’s back,
and to burn his hut; but I whispered to myself, Francais! and this name
would not rhyme with either incendiary or murderer. I have, in this
way, passed through kingdoms from east to west, and from north to south,
always determined not to bring disgrace upon my country’s flag. The
lieutenant, you see, had taught me a magic word--My country! Not only
must we defend it, but we must also make it great and loved.”
October 17th.--To-day I have paid my neighbor a long visit. A chance
expression led the way to his telling me more of himself than he had yet
done.
I asked him whether both his limbs had been lost in the same battle.
“No, no!” replied he; “the cannon only took my leg; it was the Clamart
quarries that my arm went to feed.”
And when I asked him for the particulars--
“That’s as easy as to say good-morning,” continued he. “After the great
break-up at Waterloo, I stayed three months in the camp hospital to give
my wooden leg time to grow. As soon as I was able to hobble a little, I
took leave of headquarters, and took the road to Paris, where I hoped to
find some relative or friend; but no--all were gone, or underground. I
should have found myself less strange at Vienna, Madrid, or Berlin. And
although I had a leg the less to provide for, I was none the better off;
my appetite had come back, and my last sous were taking flight.
“I had indeed met my old colonel, who recollected that I had helped
him out of the skirmish at Montereau by giving him my horse, and he had
offered me bed and board at his house. I knew that the year before he
had married a castle and no few farms, so that I might become permanent
coat-brusher to a millionaire, which was not without its temptations.
It remained to see if I had not anything better to do. One evening I set
myself to reflect upon it.
“‘Let us see, Chaufour,’ said I to myself; ‘the question is to act like
a man. The colonel’s place suits you, but cannot you do anything better?
Your body is still in good condition, and your arms strong; do you not
owe all your strength to your country, as your Vincennes uncle said?
Why not leave some old soldier, more cut up than you are, to get his
hospital at the colonel’s? Come, trooper, you are still fit for another
stout charge or two! You must not lay up before your time.’
“Whereupon I went to thank the colonel, and to offer my services to an
old artilleryman, who had gone back to his home at Clamart, and who had
taken up the quarryman’s pick again.
“For the first few months I played the conscript’s part--that is to say,
there was more stir than work; but with a good will one gets the better
of stones, as of everything else. I did not become, so to speak, the
leader of a column, but I brought up the rank among the good workmen,
and I ate my bread with a good appetite, seeing I had earned it with
a good will. For even underground, you see, I still kept my pride. The
thought that I was working to do my part in changing rocks into houses
pleased my heart. I said to myself, ‘Courage, Chaufour, my old boy; you
are helping to beautify your country.’ And that kept up my spirit.
“Unfortunately, some of my companions were rather too sensible to the
charms of the brandy-bottle; so much so, that one day one of them, who
could hardly distinguish his right hand from his left, thought proper to
strike a light close to a charged mine. The mine exploded suddenly,
and sent a shower of stone grape among us, which killed three men, and
carried away the arm of which I have now only the sleeve.”
“So you were again without means of living?” said I to the old soldier.
“That is to say, I had to change them,” replied he, quietly. “The
difficulty was to find one which would do with five fingers instead of
ten; I found it, however.”
“How was that?”
“Among the Paris street-sweepers.”
“What! you have been one--”
“Of the pioneers of the health force for a while, neighbor, and that was
not my worst time either. The corps of sweepers is not so low as it is
dirty, I can tell you! There are old actresses in it who could never
learn to save their money, and ruined merchants from the exchange; we
even had a professor of classics, who for a little drink would recite
Latin to you, or Greek tragedies, as you chose. They could not have
competed for the Monthyon prize; but we excused faults on account of
poverty, and cheered our poverty by our good-humor and jokes. I was as
ragged and as cheerful as the rest, while trying to be something better.
Even in the mire of the gutter I preserved my faith that nothing is
dishonorable which is useful to our country.
“‘Chaufour,’ said I to myself with a smile, ‘after the sword, the
hammer; after the hammer, the broom; you are going downstairs, my old
boy, but you are still serving your country.’”
“‘However, you ended by leaving your new profession?’ said I.”
“A reform was required, neighbor. The street-sweepers seldom have their
feet dry, and the damp at last made the wounds in my good leg open
again. I could no longer follow the regiment, and it was necessary to
lay down my arms. It is now two months since I left off working in the
sanitary department of Paris.
“At the first moment I was daunted. Of my four limbs, I had now only my
right hand, and even that had lost its strength; so it was necessary
to find some gentlemanly occupation for it. After trying a little of
everything, I fell upon card-box making, and here I am at cases for the
lace and buttons of the national guard; it is work of little profit, but
it is within the capacity of all. By getting up at four and working
till eight, I earn sixty-five centimes; my lodging and bowl of soup
take fifty of them, and there are three sous over for luxuries. So I am
richer than France herself, for I have no deficit in my budget; and I
continue to serve her, as I save her lace and buttons.”
At these words Father Chaufour looked at me with a smile, and with his
great scissors began cutting the green paper again for his cardboard
cases. My heart was touched, and I remained lost in thought.
Here is still another member of that sacred phalanx who, in the battle
of life, always march in front for the example and the salvation of the
world! Each of these brave soldiers has his war-cry; for this one it is
“Country,” for that “Home,” for a third “Mankind;” but they all
follow the same standard--that of duty; for all the same divine law
reigns--that of self-sacrifice. To love something more than one’s
self--that is the secret of all that is great; to know how to live for
others--that is the aim of all noble souls.
CHAPTER XI. MORAL USE OF INVENTORIES
November 13th, Nine O’clock P.M.
I had well stopped up the chinks of my window; my little carpet was
nailed down in its place; my lamp, provided with its shade, cast a
subdued light around, and my stove made a low, murmuring sound, as if
some live creature was sharing my hearth with me.
All was silent around me. But, out of doors the snow and rain swept the
roofs, and with a low, rushing sound ran along the gurgling gutters;
sometimes a gust of wind forced itself beneath the tiles, which
rattled together like castanets, and afterward it was lost in the empty
corridor. Then a slight and pleasurable shiver thrilled through my
veins: I drew the flaps of my old wadded dressing-gown around me, I
pulled my threadbare velvet cap over my eyes, and, letting myself sink
deeper into my easy-chair, while my feet basked in the heat and light
which shone through the door of the stove, I gave myself up to a
sensation of enjoyment, made more lively by the consciousness of the
storm which raged without. My eyes, swimming in a sort of mist, wandered
over all the details of my peaceful abode; they passed from my prints to
my bookcase, resting upon the little chintz sofa, the white curtains of
the iron bedstead, and the portfolio of loose papers--those archives
of the attics; and then, returning to the book I held in my hand, they
attempted to seize once more the thread of the reading which had been
thus interrupted.
In fact, this book, the subject of which had at first interested me, had
become painful to me. I had come to the conclusion that the pictures of
the writer were too sombre. His description of the miseries of the
world appeared exaggerated to me; I could not believe in such excess of
poverty and of suffering; neither God nor man could show themselves so
harsh toward the sons of Adam. The author had yielded to an artistic
temptation: he was making a show of the sufferings of humanity, as Nero
burned Rome for the sake of the picturesque.
Taken altogether, this poor human house, so often repaired, so much
criticised, is still a pretty good abode; we may find enough in it to
satisfy our wants, if we know how to set bounds to them; the happiness
of the wise man costs but little, and asks but little space.
These consoling reflections became more and more confused. At last my
book fell on the ground without my having the resolution to stoop and
take it up again; and insensibly overcome by the luxury of the silence,
the subdued light, and the warmth, I fell asleep.
I remained for some time lost in the sort of insensibility belonging to
a first sleep; at last some vague and broken sensations came over me.
It seemed to me that the day grew darker, that the air became colder.
I half perceived bushes covered with the scarlet berries which foretell
the coming of winter. I walked on a dreary road, bordered here and there
with juniper-trees white with frost. Then the scene suddenly changed.
I was in the diligence; the cold wind shook the doors and windows; the
trees, loaded with snow, passed by like ghosts; in vain I thrust my
benumbed feet into the crushed straw. At last the carriage stopped, and,
by one of those stage effects so common in sleep, I found myself alone
in a barn, without a fireplace, and open to the winds on all sides.
I saw again my mother’s gentle face, known only to me in my early
childhood, the noble and stern countenance of my father, the little fair
head of my sister, who was taken from us at ten years old; all my dead
family lived again around me; they were there, exposed to the bitings
of the cold and to the pangs of hunger. My mother prayed by the resigned
old man, and my sister, rolled up on some rags of which they had made
her a bed, wept in silence, and held her naked feet in her little blue
hands.
It was a page from the book I had just read transferred into my own
existence.
My heart was oppressed with inexpressible anguish. Crouched in a corner,
with my eyes fixed upon this dismal picture, I felt the cold slowly
creeping upon me, and I said to myself with bitterness:
“Let us die, since poverty is a dungeon guarded by suspicion, apathy,
and contempt, and from which it is vain to try to escape; let us die,
since there is no place for us at the banquet of the living!”
And I tried to rise to join my mother again, and to wait at her feet for
the hour of release.
This effort dispelled my dream, and I awoke with a start.
I looked around me; my lamp was expiring, the fire in my stove
extinguished, and my half-opened door was letting in an icy wind. I
got up, with a shiver, to shut and double-lock it; then I made for the
alcove, and went to bed in haste.
But the cold kept me awake a long time, and my thoughts continued the
interrupted dream.
The pictures I had lately accused of exaggeration now seemed but a too
faithful representation of reality; and I went to sleep without being
able to recover my optimism--or my warmth.
Thus did a cold stove and a badly closed door alter my point of view.
All went well when my blood circulated properly; all looked gloomy when
the cold laid hold on me.
This reminds me of the story of the duchess who was obliged to pay a
visit to the neighboring convent on a winter’s day. The convent was
poor, there was no wood, and the monks had nothing but their discipline
and the ardor of their prayers to keep out the cold. The duchess, who
was shivering with cold, returned home, greatly pitying the poor monks.
While the servants were taking off her cloak and adding two more logs to
her fire, she called her steward, whom she ordered to send some wood
to the convent immediately. She then had her couch moved close to the
fireside, the warmth of which soon revived her. The recollection of what
she had just suffered was speedily lost in her present comfort, when the
steward came in again to ask how many loads of wood he was to send.
“Oh! you may wait,” said the great lady carelessly; “the weather is very
much milder.”
Thus, man’s judgments are formed less from reason than from sensation;
and as sensation comes to him from the outward world, so he finds
himself more or less under its influence; by little and little he
imbibes a portion of his habits and feelings from it.
It is not, then, without cause that, when we wish to judge of a
stranger beforehand, we look for indications of his character in the
circumstances which surround him. The things among which we live are
necessarily made to take our image, and we unconsciously leave in them
a thousand impressions of our minds. As we can judge by an empty bed
of the height and attitude of him who has slept in it, so the abode of
every man discovers to a close observer the extent of his intelligence
and the feelings of his heart. Bernardin de St.-Pierre has related the
story of a young girl who refused a suitor because he would never have
flowers or domestic animals in his house. Perhaps the sentence was
severe, but not without reason. We may presume that a man insensible
to beauty and to humble affection must be ill prepared to feel the
enjoyments of a happy marriage.
14th, seven o’clock P.M.--This morning, as I was opening my journal to
write, I had a visit from our old cashier.
His sight is not so good as it was, his hand begins to shake, and the
work he was able to do formerly is now becoming somewhat laborious to
him. I had undertaken to write out some of his papers, and he came for
those I had finished.
We conversed a long time by the stove, while he was drinking a cup of
coffee which I made him take.
M. Rateau is a sensible man, who has observed much and speaks little; so
that he has always something to say.
While looking over the accounts I had prepared for him, his look fell
upon my journal, and I was obliged to acknowledge that in this way I
wrote a diary of my actions and thoughts every evening for private use.
From one thing to another, I began speaking to him of my dream the day
before, and my reflections about the influence of outward objects upon
our ordinary sentiments. He smiled.
“Ah! you, too, have my superstitions,” he said, quietly. “I have always
believed, like you, that you may know the game by the lair: it is
only necessary to have tact and experience; but without them we commit
ourselves to many rash judgments. For my part. I have been guilty of
this more than once, but sometimes I have also drawn a right conclusion.
I recollect especially an adventure which goes as far back as the first
years of my youth--”
He stopped. I looked at him as if I waited for his story, and he told it
me at once.
At this time he was still but third clerk to an attorney at Orleans. His
master had sent him to Montargis on different affairs, and he intended
to return in the diligence the same evening, after having received
the amount of a bill at a neighboring town; but they kept him at the
debtor’s house, and when he was able to set out the day had already
closed.
Fearing not to be able to reach Montargis in good time, he took a
crossroad they pointed out to him. Unfortunately the fog increased, no
star was visible in the heavens, and the darkness became so great
that he lost his road. He tried to retrace his steps, passed twenty
footpaths, and at last was completely astray.
After the vexation of losing his place in the diligence, came the
feeling of uneasiness as to his situation. He was alone, on foot, lost
in a forest, without any means of finding his right road again, and with
a considerable sum of money about him, for which he was responsible.
His anxiety was increased by his inexperience. The idea of a forest was
connected in his mind with so many adventures of robbery and murder,
that he expected some fatal encounter every instant.
To say the truth, his situation was not encouraging. The place was not
considered safe, and for some time past there had been rumors of the
sudden disappearance of several horse-dealers, though there was no trace
of any crime having been committed.
Our young traveller, with his eyes staring forward, and his ears
listening, followed a footpath which he supposed might take him to some
house or road; but woods always succeeded to woods. At last he perceived
a light at a distance, and in a quarter of an hour he reached the
highroad.
A single house, the light from which had attracted him, appeared at a
little distance. He was going toward the entrance gate of the courtyard,
when the trot of a horse made him turn his head. A man on horseback had
just appeared at the turning of the road, and in an instant was close to
him.
The first words he addressed to the young man showed him to be the
farmer himself. He related how he had lost himself, and learned from the
countryman that he was on the road to Pithiviers. Montargis was three
leagues behind him.
The fog had insensibly changed into a drizzling rain, which was
beginning to wet the young clerk through; he seemed afraid of the
distance he had still to go, and the horseman, who saw his hesitation,
invited him to come into the farmhouse.
It had something of the look of a fortress. Surrounded by a pretty high
wall, it could not be seen except through the bars of the great gate,
which was carefully closed. The farmer, who had got off his horse, did
not go near it, but, turning to the right, reached another entrance
closed in the same way, but of which he had the key.
Hardly had he passed the threshold when a terrible barking resounded
from each end of the yard. The farmer told his guest to fear nothing,
and showed him the dogs chained up to their kennels; both were of an
extraordinary size, and so savage that the sight of their master himself
could not quiet them.
A boy, attracted by their barking, came out of the house and took the
farmer’s horse. The latter began questioning him about some orders he
had given before he left the house, and went toward the stable to see
that they had been executed.
Thus left alone, our clerk looked about him.
A lantern which the boy had placed on the ground cast a dim light over
the courtyard. All around seemed empty and deserted. Not a trace was
visible of the disorder often seen in a country farmyard, and which
shows a temporary cessation of the work which is soon to be resumed
again. Neither a cart forgotten where the horses had been unharnessed,
nor sheaves of corn heaped up ready for threshing, nor a plow overturned
in a corner and half hidden under the freshly-cut clover. The yard was
swept, the barns shut up and padlocked. Not a single vine creeping up
the walls; everywhere stone, wood, and iron!
He took up the lantern and went up to the corner of the house. Behind
was a second yard, where he heard the barking of a third dog, and a
covered wall was built in the middle of it.
Our traveller looked in vain for the little farm garden, where pumpkins
of different sorts creep along the ground, or where the bees from the
hives hum under the hedges of honeysuckle and elder. Verdure and
flowers were nowhere to be seen. He did not even perceive the sight of a
poultry-yard or pigeon-house. The habitation of his host was everywhere
wanting in that which makes the grace and the life of the country.
The young man thought that his host must be of a very careless or a very
calculating disposition, to concede so little to domestic enjoyments and
the pleasures of the eye; and judging, in spite of himself, by what he
saw, he could not help feeling a distrust of his character.
In the mean time the farmer returned from the stables, and made him
enter the house.
The inside of the farmhouse corresponded to its outside. The whitewashed
walls had no other ornament than a row of guns of all sizes; the massive
furniture hardly redeemed its clumsy appearance by its great solidity.
The cleanliness was doubtful, and the absence of all minor conveniences
proved that a woman’s care was wanting in the household concerns. The
young clerk learned that the farmer, in fact, lived here with no one but
his two sons.
Of this, indeed, the signs were plain enough. A table with the cloth
laid, that no one had taken the trouble to clear away, was left near the
window. The plates and dishes were scattered upon it without any order,
and loaded with potato-parings and half-picked bones. Several empty
bottles emitted an odor of brandy, mixed with the pungent smell of
tobacco-smoke.
After seating his guest, the farmer lighted his pipe, and his two sons
resumed their work by the fireside. Now and then the silence was just
broken by a short remark, answered by a word or an exclamation; and then
all became as mute as before.
“From my childhood,” said the old cashier, “I had been very sensible to
the impression of outward objects; later in life, reflection had taught
me to study the causes of these impressions rather than to drive them
away. I set myself, then, to examine everything around me with great
attention.
“Below the guns, I had remarked on entering, some wolftraps were
suspended, and to one of them still hung the mangled remains of a wolf’s
paw, which they had not yet taken off from the iron teeth. The blackened
chimneypiece was ornamented by an owl and a raven nailed on the wall,
their wings extended, and their throats with a huge nail through each;
a fox’s skin, freshly flayed, was spread before the window; and a larder
hook, fixed into the principal beam, held a headless goose, whose body
swayed about over our heads.
“My eyes were offended by all these details, and I turned them again
upon my hosts. The father, who sat opposite to me, only interrupted his
smoking to pour out his drink, or address some reprimand to his
sons. The eldest of these was scraping a deep bucket, and the bloody
scrapings, which he threw into the fire every instant, filled the room
with a disagreeable fetid smell; the second son was sharpening some
butcher’s knives. I learned from a word dropped from the father that
they were preparing to kill a pig the next day.
“These occupations and the whole aspect of things inside the house told
of such habitual coarseness in their way of living as seemed to explain,
while it formed the fitting counterpart of, the forbidding gloominess
of the outside. My astonishment by degrees changed into disgust, and my
disgust into uneasiness. I cannot detail the whole chain of ideas which
succeeded one another in my imagination; but, yielding to an impulse I
could not overcome, I got up, declaring I would go on my road again.
“The farmer made some effort to keep me; he spoke of the rain, of the
darkness, and of the length of the way. I replied to all by the absolute
necessity there was for my being at Montargis that very night; and
thanking him for his brief hospitality, I set off again in a haste which
might well have confirmed the truth of my words to him.
“However, the freshness of the night and the exercise of walking did not
fail to change the directions of my thoughts. When away from the objects
which had awakened such lively disgust in me, I felt it gradually
diminishing. I began to smile at the susceptibility of my feelings,
and then, in proportion as the rain became heavier and colder, these
strictures on myself assumed a tone of ill-temper. I silently accused
myself of the absurdity of mistaking sensation for admonitions of my
reason. After all, were not the farmer and his sons free to live alone,
to hunt, to keep dogs, and to kill a pig? Where was the crime of it?
With less nervous susceptibility, I should have accepted the shelter
they offered me, and I should now be sleeping snugly on a truss of
straw, instead of walking with difficulty through the cold and drizzling
rain. I thus continued to reproach myself, until, toward morning, I
arrived at Montargis, jaded and benumbed with cold.
“When, however, I got up refreshed, toward the middle of the next day,
I instinctively returned to my first opinion. The appearance of the
farmhouse presented itself to me under the same repulsive colors which
the evening before had determined me to make my escape from it. Reason
itself remained silent when reviewing all those coarse details, and was
forced to recognize in them the indications of a low nature, or else the
presence of some baleful influence.
“I went away the next day without being able to learn anything
concerning the farmer or his sons; but the recollection of my adventure
remained deeply fixed in my memory.
“Ten years afterward I was travelling in the diligence through the
department of the Loiret; I was leaning from the window, and looking at
some coppice ground now for the first time brought under cultivation,
and the mode of clearing which one of my travelling companions was
explaining to me, when my eyes fell upon a walled inclosure, with an
iron-barred gate. Inside it I perceived a house with all the blinds
closed, and which I immediately recollected; it was the farmhouse where
I had been sheltered. I eagerly pointed it out to my companion, and
asked who lived in it.
“‘Nobody just now,’ replied he.
“‘But was it not kept, some years ago, by a farmer and his two sons?’
“‘The Turreaus;’ said my travelling companion, looking at me; ‘did you
know them?’
“‘I saw them once.’
“He shook his head.
“‘Yes, yes!’ resumed he; ‘for many years they lived there like wolves in
their den; they merely knew how to till land, kill game, and drink. The
father managed the house, but men living alone, without women to love
them, without children to soften them, and without God to make them
think of heaven, always turn into wild beasts, you see; so one morning
the eldest son, who had been drinking too much brandy, would not harness
the plow-horses; his father struck him with his whip, and the son, who
was mad drunk, shot him dead with his gun.’”
16th, P.M.--I have been thinking of the story of the old cashier these
two days; it came so opportunely upon the reflections my dream had
suggested to me.
Have I not an important lesson to learn from all this?
If our sensations have an incontestable influence upon our judgments,
how comes it that we are so little careful of those things which awaken
or modify these sensations? The external world is always reflected in us
as in a mirror, and fills our minds with pictures which, unconsciously
to ourselves, become the germs of our opinions and of our rules of
conduct. All the objects which surround us are then, in reality, so many
talismans whence good and evil influences are emitted, and it is for
us to choose them wisely, so as to create a healthy atmosphere for our
minds.
Feeling convinced of this truth, I set about making a survey of my
attic.
The first object on which my eyes rest is an old map of the history of
the principal monastery in my native province. I had unrolled it with
much satisfaction, and placed it on the most conspicuous part of the
wall. Why had I given it this place? Ought this sheet of old worm-eaten
parchment to be of so much value to me, who am neither an antiquary nor
a scholar? Is not its real importance in my sight that one of the abbots
who founded it bore my name, and that I shall, perchance, be able
to make myself a genealogical tree of it for the edification of my
visitors? While writing this, I feel my own blushes. Come, down with the
map! let us banish it into my deepest drawer.
As I passed my glass, I perceived several visiting cards complacently
displayed in the frame. By what chance is it that there are only
names that make a show among them? Here is a Polish count--a retired
colonel--the deputy of my department. Quick, quick, into the fire with
these proofs of vanity! and let us put this card in the handwriting of
our office-boy, this direction for cheap dinners, and the receipt of
the broker where I bought my last armchair, in their place. These
indications of my poverty will serve, as Montaigne says, ‘mater ma
superbe’, and will always make me recollect the modesty in which the
dignity of the lowly consists.
I have stopped before the prints hanging upon the wall. This large
and smiling Pomona, seated on sheaves of corn, and whose basket is
overflowing with fruit, only produces thoughts of joy and plenty; I was
looking at her the other day, when I fell asleep denying such a thing
as misery. Let us give her as companion this picture of Winter, in which
everything tells of sorrow and suffering: one picture will modify the
other.
And this Happy Family of Greuze’s! What joy in the children’s eyes! What
sweet repose in the young woman’s face! What religious feeling in the
grandfather’s countenance! May God preserve their happiness to them! but
let us hang by its side the picture of this mother, who weeps over an
empty cradle. Human life has two faces, both of which we must dare to
contemplate in their turn.
Let me hide, too, these ridiculous monsters which ornament my
chimneypiece. Plato has said that “the beautiful is nothing else than
the visible form of the good.” If it is so, the ugly should be the
visible form of the evil, and, by constantly beholding it, the mind
insensibly deteriorates.
But above all, in order to cherish the feelings of kindness and pity,
let me hang at the foot of my bed this affecting picture of the Last
Sleep! Never have I been able to look at it without feeling my heart
touched.
An old woman, clothed in rags, is lying by a roadside; her stick is at
her feet, and her head rests upon a stone; she has fallen asleep; her
hands are clasped; murmuring a prayer of her childhood, she sleeps her
last sleep, she dreams her last dream!
She sees herself, again a strong and happy child, keeping the sheep on
the common, gathering the berries from the hedges, singing, curtsying to
passers-by, and making the sign of the cross when the first star appears
in the heavens! Happy time, filled with fragrance and sunshine! She
wants nothing yet, for she is ignorant of what there is to wish for.
But see her grown up; the time is come for working bravely: she must
cut the corn, thresh the wheat, carry the bundles of flowering clover
or branches of withered leaves to the farm. If her toil is hard, hope
shines like a sun over everything and it wipes the drops of sweat away.
The growing girl already sees that life is a task, but she still sings
as she fulfills it.
By-and-bye the burden becomes heavier; she is a wife, she is a mother!
She must economize the bread of to-day, have her eye upon the morrow,
take care of the sick, and sustain the feeble; she must act, in short,
that part of an earthly Providence, so easy when God gives us his aid,
so hard when he forsakes us. She is still strong, but she is anxious;
she sings no longer!
Yet a few years, and all is overcast. The husband’s health is broken;
his wife sees him pine away by the now fireless hearth; cold and hunger
finish what sickness had begun; he dies, and his widow sits on the
ground by the coffin provided by the charity of others, pressing her two
half-naked little ones in her arms. She dreads the future, she weeps,
and she droops her head.
At last the future has come; the children are grown up, but they are no
longer with her. Her son is fighting under his country’s flag, and his
sister is gone. Both have been lost to her for a long time--perhaps
forever; and the strong girl, the brave wife, the courageous mother, is
henceforth only a poor old beggar-woman, without a family, and without
a home! She weeps no more, sorrow has subdued her; she surrenders, and
waits for death.
Death, that faithful friend of the wretched, is come: not hideous and
with mockery, as superstition represents, but beautiful, smiling, and
crowned with stars! The gentle phantom stoops to the beggar; its pale
lips murmur a few airy words, which announce to her the end of her
labors; a peaceful joy comes over the aged beggarwoman, and, leaning on
the shoulder of the great Deliverer, she has passed unconsciously from
her last earthly sleep to her eternal rest.
Lie there, thou poor way-wearied woman! The leaves will serve thee for a
winding-sheet. Night will shed her tears of dew over thee, and the birds
will sing sweetly by thy remains. Thy visit here below will not have
left more trace than their flight through the air; thy name is already
forgotten, and the only legacy thou hast to leave is the hawthorn stick
lying forgotten at thy feet!
Well! some one will take it up--some soldier of that great human host
which is scattered abroad by misery or by vice; for thou art not an
exception, thou art an instance; and under the same sun which shines
so pleasantly upon all, in the midst of these flowering vineyards, this
ripe corn, and these wealthy cities, entire generations suffer, succeed
each other, and still bequeath to each the beggar’s stick!
The sight of this sad picture shall make me more grateful for what God
has given me, and more compassionate for those whom he has treated with
less indulgence; it shall be a lesson and a subject for reflection for
me.
Ah! if we would watch for everything that might improve and instruct
us; if the arrangements of our daily life were so disposed as to be a
constant school for our minds! but oftenest we take no heed of them. Man
is an eternal mystery to himself; his own person is a house into which
he never enters, and of which he studies the outside alone. Each of
us need have continually before him the famous inscription which once
instructed Socrates, and which was engraved on the walls of Delphi by an
unknown hand:
KNOW THYSELF.
CHAPTER XII. THE END OF THE YEAR
December 30th, P.M.
I was in bed, and hardly recovered from the delirious fever which had
kept me for so long between life and death. My weakened brain was
making efforts to recover its activity; my thoughts, like rays of light
struggling through the clouds, were still confused and imperfect; at
times I felt a return of the dizziness which made a chaos of all my
ideas, and I floated, so to speak, between alternate fits of mental
wandering and consciousness.
Sometimes everything seemed plain to me, like the prospect which, from
the top of some high mountain, opens before us in clear weather. We
distinguish water, woods, villages, cattle, even the cottage perched on
the edge of the ravine; then suddenly there comes a gust of wind laden
with mist, and all is confused and indistinct.
Thus, yielding to the oscillations of a half-recovered reason, I allowed
my mind to follow its various impulses without troubling myself to
separate the real from the imaginary; I glided softly from one to the
other, and my dreams and waking thoughts succeeded closely upon one
another.
Now, while my mind is wandering in this unsettled state, see, underneath
the clock which measures the hours with its loud ticking, a female
figure appears before me!
At first sight I saw enough to satisfy me that she was not a daughter of
Eve. In her eye was the last flash of an expiring star, and her face had
the pallor of an heroic death-struggle. She was dressed in a drapery of
a thousand changing colors of the brightest and the most sombre hues,
and held a withered garland in her hand.
After having contemplated her for some moments, I asked her name, and
what brought her into my attic. Her eyes, which were following the
movements of the clock, turned toward me, and she replied:
“You see in me the year which is just drawing to its end; I come to
receive your thanks and your farewell.”
I raised myself on my elbow in surprise, which soon gave place to bitter
resentment.
“Ah! you want thanks,” cried I; “but first let me know what for?
“When I welcomed your coming, I was still young and vigorous: you have
taken from me each day some little of my strength, and you have ended by
inflicting an illness upon me; already, thanks to you, my blood is less
warm, my muscles less firm, and my feet less agile than before! You
have planted the germs of infirmity in my bosom; there, where the summer
flowers of life were growing, you have wickedly sown the nettles of old
age!
“And, as if it were not enough to weaken my body, you have also
diminished the powers of my soul; you have extinguished her enthusiasm;
she is become more sluggish and more timid. Formerly her eyes took in
the whole of mankind in their generous survey; but you have made her
nearsighted, and now she hardly sees beyond herself! That is what you
have done for my spiritual being: then as to my outward existence, see
to what grief, neglect, and misery you have reduced it! For the many
days that the fever has kept me chained to this bed, who has taken care
of this home in which I placed all my joy? Shall I not find my closets
empty, my bookcase, stripped, all my poor treasures lost through
negligence or dishonesty? Where are the plants I cultivated, the birds I
fed? All are gone! my attic is despoiled, silent and solitary! As it is
only for the last few moments that I have returned to a consciousness of
what surrounds me, I am even ignorant who has nursed me during my long
illness! Doubtless some hireling, who will leave when all my means of
recompense are exhausted! And what will my masters, for whom I am
bound to work, have said to my absence? At this time of the year, when
business is most pressing, can they have done without me, will they
even have tried to do so? Perhaps I am already superseded in the humble
situation by which I earned my daily bread! And it is thou-thou alone,
wicked daughter of Time--who hast brought all these misfortunes upon
me: strength, health, comfort, work--thou hast taken all from me. I have
only received outrage and loss from thee, and yet thou darest to claim
my gratitude!”
“Ah! die then, since thy day is come; but die despised and cursed; and
may I write on thy tomb the epitaph the Arabian poet inscribed upon that
of a king:
“‘Rejoice, thou passer-by: he whom we have buried here
cannot live again.’”
.......................
I was wakened by a hand taking mine; and opening my eyes, I recognized
the doctor.
After having felt my pulse, he nodded his head, sat down at the foot of
the bed, and looked at me, rubbing his nose with his snuffbox. I have
since learned that this was a sign of satisfaction with the doctor.
“Well! so we wanted old snub-nose to carry us off?” said M. Lambert, in
his half-joking, half-scolding way. “What the deuce of a hurry we were
in! It was necessary to hold you back with both arms at least!”
“Then you had given me up, doctor?” asked I, rather alarmed.
“Not at all,” replied the old physician. “We can’t give up what we
have not got; and I make it a rule never to have any hope. We are but
instruments in the hands of Providence, and each of us should say, with
Ambroise Pare: ‘I tend him, God cures him!”’
“May He be blessed then, as well as you,” cried I; “and may my health
come back with the new year!”
M. Lambert shrugged his shoulders.
“Begin by asking yourself for it,” resumed he, bluntly. “God has given
it you, and it is your own sense, and not chance, that must keep it for
you. One would think, to hear people talk, that sickness comes upon us
like the rain or the sunshine, without one having a word to say in the
matter. Before we complain of being ill we should prove that we deserve
to be well.”
I was about to smile, but the doctor looked angry.
“Ah! you think that I am joking,” resumed he, raising his voice; “but
tell me, then, which of us gives his health the same attention that he
gives to his business? Do you economize your strength as you economize
your money? Do you avoid excess and imprudence in the one case with the
same care as extravagance or foolish speculations in the other? Do
you keep as regular accounts of your mode of living as you do of
your income? Do you consider every evening what has been wholesome
or unwholesome for you, with the same care that you bring to the
examination of your expenditure? You may smile; but have you not brought
this illness on yourself by a thousand indiscretions?”
I began to protest against this, and asked him to point out these
indiscretions. The old doctor spread out his fingers, and began to
reckon upon them one by one.
“Primo,” cried he, “want of exercise. You live here like a mouse in
a cheese, without air, motion, or change. Consequently, the blood
circulates badly, the fluids thicken, the muscles, being inactive, do
not claim their share of nutrition, the stomach flags, and the brain
grows weary.
“Secundo. Irregular food. Caprice is your cook; your stomach a slave who
must accept what you give it, but who presently takes a sullen revenge,
like all slaves.
“Tertio. Sitting up late. Instead of using the night for sleep, you
spend it in reading; your bedstead is a bookcase, your pillows a desk!
At the time when the wearied brain asks for rest, you lead it through
these nocturnal orgies, and you are surprised to find it the worse for
them the next day.
“Quarto. Luxurious habits. Shut up in your attic, you insensibly
surround yourself with a thousand effeminate indulgences. You must have
list for your door, a blind for your window, a carpet for your feet, an
easy-chair stuffed with wool for your back, your fire lit at the
first sign of cold, and a shade to your lamp; and thanks to all these
precautions, the least draught makes you catch cold, common chairs give
you no rest, and you must wear spectacles to support the light of
day. You have thought you were acquiring comforts, and you have only
contracted infirmities.
“Quinto”
“Ah! enough, enough, doctor!” cried I. “Pray, do not carry your
examination farther; do not attach a sense of remorse to each of my
pleasures.”
The old doctor rubbed his nose with his snuffbox.
“You see,” said he, more gently, and rising at the same time, “you would
escape from the truth. You shrink from inquiry--a proof that you are
guilty. ‘Habemus confitentem reum’! But at least, my friend, do not go
on laying the blame on Time, like an old woman.”
Thereupon he again felt my pulse, and took his leave, declaring that his
function was at an end, and that the rest depended upon myself.
When the doctor was gone, I set about reflecting upon what he had said.
Although his words were too sweeping, they were not the less true in the
main. How often we accuse chance of an illness, the origin of which we
should seek in ourselves! Perhaps it would have been wiser to let him
finish the examination he had begun.
But is there not another of more importance--that which concerns
the health of the soul? Am I so sure of having neglected no means of
preserving that during the year which is now ending? Have I, as one of
God’s soldiers upon earth, kept my courage and my arms efficient? Shall
I be ready for the great review of souls which must pass before Him WHO
IS in the dark valley of Jehoshaphat?
Darest thou examine thyself, O my soul! and see how often thou hast
erred?
First, thou hast erred through pride! for I have not duly valued the
lowly. I have drunk too deeply of the intoxicating wines of genius, and
have found no relish in pure water. I have disdained those words which
had no other beauty than their sincerity; I have ceased to love men
solely because they are men--I have loved them for their endowments; I
have contracted the world within the narrow compass of a pantheon, and
my sympathy has been awakened by admiration only. The vulgar crowd,
which I ought to have followed with a friendly eye because it is
composed of my brothers in hope or grief, I have let pass by with as
much indifference as if it were a flock of sheep. I am indignant with
him who rolls in riches and despises the man poor in worldly wealth; and
yet, vain of my trifling knowledge, I despise him who is poor in mind--I
scorn the poverty of intellect as others do that of dress; I take credit
for a gift which I did not bestow on myself, and turn the favor of
fortune into a weapon with which to attack others.
Ah! if, in the worst days of revolutions, ignorance has revolted and
raised a cry of hatred against genius, the fault is not alone in
the envious malice of ignorance, but comes in part, too, from the
contemptuous pride of knowledge.
Alas! I have too completely forgotten the fable of the two sons of the
magician of Bagdad.
One of them, struck by an irrevocable decree of destiny, was born blind,
while the other enjoyed all the delights of sight. The latter, proud of
his own advantages, laughed at his brother’s blindness, and disdained
him as a companion. One morning the blind boy wished to go out with him.
“To what purpose,” said he, “since the gods have put nothing in common
between us? For me creation is a stage, where a thousand charming scenes
and wonderful actors appear in succession; for you it is only an
obscure abyss, at the bottom of which you hear the confused murmur of
an invisible world. Continue then alone in your darkness, and leave the
pleasures of light to those upon whom the day-star shines.”
With these words he went away, and his brother, left alone, began to cry
bitterly. His father, who heard him, immediately ran to him, and tried
to console him by promising to give him whatever he desired.
“Can you give me sight?” asked the child.
“Fate does not permit it,” said the magician.
“Then,” cried the blind boy, eagerly, “I ask you to put out the sun!”
Who knows whether my pride has not provoked the same wish on the part of
some one of my brothers who does not see?
But how much oftener have I erred through levity and want of thought!
How many resolutions have I taken at random! how many judgments have I
pronounced for the sake of a witticism! how many mischiefs have I not
done without any sense of my responsibility! The greater part of men
harm one another for the sake of doing something. We laugh at the honor
of one, and compromise the reputation of another, like an idle man who
saunters along a hedgerow, breaking the young branches and destroying
the most beautiful flowers.
And, nevertheless, it is by this very thoughtlessness that the fame of
some men is created. It rises gradually, like one of those mysterious
mounds in barbarous countries, to which a stone is added by every
passerby; each one brings something at random, and adds it as he passes,
without being able himself to see whether he is raising a pedestal or a
gibbet. Who will dare look behind him, to see his rash judgments held up
there to view?
Some time ago I was walking along the edge of the green mound on which
the Montmartre telegraph stands. Below me, along one of the zigzag paths
which wind up the hill, a man and a girl were coming up, and arrested my
attention. The man wore a shaggy coat, which gave him some resemblance
to a wild beast; and he held a thick stick in his hand, with which he
described various strange figures in the air. He spoke very loud, and
in a voice which seemed to me convulsed with passion. He raised his
eyes every now and then with an expression of savage harshness, and it
appeared to me that he was reproaching and threatening the girl, and
that she was listening to him with a submissiveness which touched my
heart. Two or three times she ventured a few words, doubtless in the
attempt to justify herself; but the man in the greatcoat began again
immediately with his loud and angry voice, his savage looks, and his
threatening evolutions in the air. I followed him with my eyes, vainly
endeavoring to catch a word as he passed, until he disappeared behind
the hill.
I had evidently just seen one of those domestic tyrants whose sullen
tempers are excited by the patience of their victims, and who, though
they have the power to become the beneficent gods of a family, choose
rather to be their tormentors.
I cursed the unknown savage in my heart, and I felt indignant that these
crimes against the sacred peace of home could not be punished as they
deserve, when I heard his voice approaching nearer. He had turned the
path, and soon appeared before me at the top of the slope.
The first glance, and his first words, explained everything to me: in
place of what I had taken for the furious tones and terrible looks of an
angry man, and the attitude of a frightened victim, I had before me only
an honest citizen, who squinted and stuttered, but who was explaining
the management of silkworms to his attentive daughter.
I turned homeward, smiling at my mistake; but before I reached my
faubourg I saw a crowd running, I heard calls for help, and every
finger pointed in the same direction to a distant column of flame. A
manufactory had taken fire, and everybody was rushing forward to assist
in extinguishing it.
I hesitated. Night was coming on; I felt tired; a favorite book was
awaiting me; I thought there would be no want of help, and I went on my
way.
Just before I had erred from want of consideration; now it was from
selfishness and cowardice.
But what! have I not on a thousand other occasions forgotten the duties
which bind us to our fellowmen? Is this the first time I have avoided
paying society what I owe it? Have I not always behaved to my companions
with injustice, and like the lion? Have I not claimed successively every
share? If any one is so ill-advised as to ask me to return some little
portion, I get provoked, I am angry, I try to escape from it by every
means. How many times, when I have perceived a beggar sitting huddled up
at the end of the street, have I not gone out of my way, for fear that
compassion would impoverish me by forcing me to be charitable! How often
have I doubted the misfortunes of others, that I might with justice
harden my heart against them.
With what satisfaction have I sometimes verified the vices of the poor
man, in order to show that his misery is the punishment he deserves!
Oh! let us not go farther--let us not go farther! I interrupted the
doctor’s examination, but how much sadder is this one! We pity the
diseases of the body; we shudder at those of the soul.
I was happily disturbed in my reverie by my neighbor, the old soldier.
Now I think of it, I seem always to have seen, during my fever, the
figure of this good old man, sometimes leaning against my bed, and
sometimes sitting at his table, surrounded by his sheets of pasteboard.
He has just come in with his glue-pot, his quire of green paper, and
his great scissors. I called him by his name; he uttered a joyful
exclamation, and came near me.
“Well! so the bullet is found again!” cried he, taking my two hands into
the maimed one which was left him; “it has not been without trouble, I
can tell you; the campaign has been long enough to win two clasps in.
I have seen no few fellows with the fever batter windmills during my
hospital days: at Leipsic, I had a neighbor who fancied a chimney was
on fire in his stomach, and who was always calling for the fire-engines;
but the third day it all went out of itself. But with you it has lasted
twenty-eight days--as long as one of the Little Corporal’s campaigns.”
“I am not mistaken then; you were near me?”
“Well! I had only to cross the passage. This left hand has not made you
a bad nurse for want of the right; but, bah! you did not know what hand
gave you drink, and it did not prevent that beggar of a fever from being
drowned--for all the world like Poniatowski in the Elster.”
The old soldier began to laugh, and I, feeling too much affected to
speak, pressed his hand against my breast. He saw my emotion, and
hastened to put an end to it.
“By-the-bye, you know that from to-day you have a right to draw
your rations again,” resumed he gayly; “four meals, like the German
meinherrs--nothing more! The doctor is your house steward.”
“We must find the cook, too,” replied I, with a smile.
“She is found,” said the veteran.
“Who is she?”
“Genevieve.”
“The fruit-woman?”
“While I am talking she is cooking for you, neighbor; and do not fear
her sparing either butter or trouble. As long as life and death were
fighting for you, the honest woman passed her time in going up and down
stairs to learn which way the battle went. And, stay, I am sure this is
she.”
In fact we heard steps in the passage, and he went to open the door.
“Oh, well!” continued he, “it is Mother Millot, our portress, another
of your good friends, neighbor, and whose poultices I recommend to you.
Come in, Mother Millot--come in; we are quite bonny boys this morning,
and ready to step a minuet if we had our dancing-shoes.”
The portress came in, quite delighted. She brought my linen, washed and
mended by herself, with a little bottle of Spanish wine, the gift of her
sailor son, and kept for great occasions. I would have thanked her,
but the good woman imposed silence upon me, under the pretext that the
doctor had forbidden me to speak. I saw her arrange everything in my
drawers, the neat appearance of which struck me; an attentive hand
had evidently been there, and day by day put straight the unavoidable
disorder consequent on sickness.
As she finished, Genevieve arrived with my dinner; she was followed by
Mother Denis, the milk-woman over the way, who had learned, at the
same time, the danger I had been in, and that I was now beginning to
be convalescent. The good Savoyard brought me a new-laid egg, which she
herself wished to see me eat.
It was necessary to relate minutely all my illness to her. At every
detail she uttered loud exclamations; then, when the portress warned her
to be less noisy, she excused herself in a whisper. They made a circle
around me to see me eat my dinner; each mouthful I took was accompanied
by their expressions of satisfaction and thankfulness. Never had the
King of France, when he dined in public, excited such admiration among
the spectators.
As they were taking the dinner away, my colleague, the old cashier,
entered in his turn.
I could not prevent my heart beating as I recognized him. How would the
heads of the firm look upon my absence, and what did he come to tell me?
I waited with inexpressible anxiety for him to speak; but he sat down by
me, took my hand, and began rejoicing over my recovery, without saying a
word about our masters. I could not endure this uncertainty any longer.
“And the Messieurs Durmer,” asked I, hesitatingly, “how have they
taken--the interruption to my work?”
“There has been no interruption,” replied the old clerk, quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“Each one in the office took a share of your duty; all has gone on as
usual, and the Messieurs Durmer have perceived no difference.”
This was too much. After so many instances of affection, this filled up
the measure. I could not restrain my tears.
Thus the few services I had been able to do for others had been
acknowledged by them a hundredfold! I had sown a little seed, and every
grain had fallen on good ground, and brought forth a whole sheaf. Ah!
this completes the lesson the doctor gave me. If it is true that the
diseases, whether of the mind or body, are the fruit of our follies and
our vices, sympathy and affection are also the rewards of our having
done our duty. Every one of us, with God’s help, and within the
narrow limits of human capability, himself makes his own disposition,
character, and permanent condition.
Everybody is gone; the old soldier has brought me back my flowers and
my birds, and they are my only companions. The setting sun reddens my
half-closed curtains with its last rays. My brain is clear, and my heart
lighter. A thin mist floats before my eyes, and I feel myself in that
happy state which precedes a refreshing sleep.
Yonder, opposite the bed, the pale goddess in her drapery of a thousand
changing colors, and with her withered garland, again appears before me;
but this time I hold out my hand to her with a grateful smile.
“Adieu, beloved year! whom I but now unjustly accused. That which I have
suffered must not be laid to thee; for thou wast but a tract through
which God had marked out my road--a ground where I had reaped the
harvest I had sown. I will love thee, thou wayside shelter, for those
hours of happiness thou hast seen me enjoy; I will love thee even for
the suffering thou hast seen me endure. Neither happiness nor suffering
came from thee; but thou hast been the scene for them. Descend again
then, in peace, into eternity, and be blest, thou who hast left me
experience in the place of youth, sweet memories instead of past time,
and gratitude as payment for good offices.”
ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:
Always to mistake feeling for evidence
Ambroise Pare: ‘I tend him, God cures him!’
Are we then bound to others only by the enforcement of laws
Attach a sense of remorse to each of my pleasures
Brought them up to poverty
But above these ruins rises a calm and happy face
Carn-ival means, literally, “farewell to flesh!”
Coffee is the grand work of a bachelor’s housekeeping
Contemptuous pride of knowledge
Death, that faithful friend of the wretched
Defeat and victory only displace each other by turns
Did not think the world was so great
Do they understand what makes them so gay?
Each of us regards himself as the mirror of the community
Ease with which the poor forget their wretchedness
Every one keeps his holidays in his own way
Fame and power are gifts that are dearly bought
Favorite and conclusive answer of his class--“I know”
Fear of losing a moment from business
Finishes his sin thoroughly before he begins to repent
Fortune sells what we believe she gives
Her kindness, which never sleeps
Houses are vessels which take mere passengers
Hubbub of questions which waited for no reply
I make it a rule never to have any hope
Ignorant of what there is to wish for
Looks on an accomplished duty neither as a merit nor a grievance
Make himself a name: he becomes public property
Moderation is the great social virtue
More stir than work
My patronage has become her property
No one is so unhappy as to have nothing to give
Not desirous to teach goodness
Nothing is dishonorable which is useful
Our tempers are like an opera-glass
Poverty, you see, is a famous schoolmistress
Power of necessity
Prisoners of work
Progress can never be forced on without danger
Question is not to discover what will suit us
Richer than France herself, for I have no deficit in my budget
Ruining myself, but we must all have our Carnival
Satisfy our wants, if we know how to set bounds to them
Sensible man, who has observed much and speaks little
So much confidence at first, so much doubt at las
Sullen tempers are excited by the patience of their victims
The happiness of the wise man costs but little
The man in power gives up his peace
Two thirds of human existence are wasted in hesitation
Virtue made friends, but she did not take pupils
We do not understand that others may live on their own account
We are not bound to live, while we are bound to do our duty
What have you done with the days God granted you
What a small dwelling joy can live
You may know the game by the lair