“It appears that those citizens didn’t want to do for you on land,
they thought that here it wouldn’t be noticed so much. But it’s very
distressing for me; for it’s no use your being a good fellow, I cannot
get out of it; the sentence of death is there in due form, and the
warrant for execution signed, paraphed, and sealed; nothing is wanting.”
He bowed to me very politely, reddening.
“I ask nothing, captain,” he said in a voice as gentle as ever; “I
should be very sorry to make you fail in your duty. I should only like
to speak a little to Laura, and to beg you to protect her in the event
of her surviving me, which I don’t think likely.”
“Oh! as for that, it’s all right, my lad,” I said to him; “if you have
no objection, I will take her to her family on my return to France,
and will only leave her when she no longer wishes to see me. But, in
my opinion, you can flatter yourself that she won’t recover from that
blow; poor little woman!”
He took both my hands, and pressed them, saying to me:
“My good captain, you are suffering more than I from what remains for
you to do, I know very well; but what can we do? I can count on you
to keep for her the little that belongs to me, to protect her, to see
that she receives whatever her old mother may leave her, can I not? to
defend her life, her honour, can I not? and also to see that her health
is always cared for.--Stay,” he added in a lower tone, “I must tell you
that she is very delicate; often her chest is so much affected that
she faints several times in a day; she must always be well wrapped up.
In fact you will take the place of her father, her mother, and myself
as much as possible, is that not so? If she could keep the rings that
her mother gave her, I should be very glad. But, if it is needful to
sell them for her, it must certainly be done. My poor Laurette! see how
beautiful she is!”
As things were beginning to get too affecting, I was worried, and began
to frown; I had spoken to him cheerfully to prevent myself growing
weak; but I was no longer anxious about that: “Come, enough!” I said to
him, “honest folk understand each other well enough. Go and speak to
her, and let us make haste.”
I pressed his hand in a friendly way, and, as he did not let mine go
and kept looking at me in a peculiar manner: “Let me see!” I added, “if
I have any advice to give you, it is not to speak to her of this. We
will arrange the matter without her expecting it, or you either, so be
at ease; that’s my affair!”
“Ah! that makes a difference,” he said, “I didn’t know ... that will be
better certainly. Besides, the good-byes! the good-byes! they weaken
one.”
“Yes, yes,” I said, “don’t be a child, it’s better so. Don’t kiss her,
my friend, don’t kiss her, if you can manage it, or you are lost.”
I gave him my hand again, and let him go. Oh! it was very hard for me,
all that.
It seemed to me, upon my word, that he kept the secret well; for they
walked up and down, arm in arm, for a quarter of an hour, and they came
back to the ship’s side to get the string and the dress, which one of
my cabin-boys had fished up.
Night fell suddenly. It was the moment I had decided to seize. But that
moment has lasted for me up to this very day, and I shall drag it after
me all my life like a chain and ball.
* * * * *
Here the old major was obliged to stop. I took care not to speak, for
fear of diverting his thoughts; he continued, beating his breast:
* * * * *
That moment, I tell you, I cannot yet understand. I felt my rage
mounting to my very hair, and, at the same time, something or other
made me obey and urged me onward. I called the officers and said to
one of them:
“Come, launch a boat ... since we are now executioners! You will put
that woman in it, and will take her out into the ocean until you hear
guns going off. Then you will return.” To obey a scrap of paper! for
that was really all it was! There must have been something in the air
that urged me on. I caught a glimpse in the distance of the young man
... oh! it was terrible to see! ... kneeling before his Laurette and
kissing her knees and her feet. Do you not think I was very unhappy?
I called out like a madman! “Separate them ... we are all rascals!
Separate them.... The poor Republic is a dead body! The Directors, the
Directory, are its vermin! I shall leave the sea! I’m not afraid of
all your lawyers; let them be told what I say, what does it matter to
me?” Ah! much I cared for them, indeed! I should have liked to get hold
of them, I should have had all five of them shot, the rascals! Oh! I
would have done it; I cared as much for life as for the rain falling
yonder, there.... Much I cared for it! ... a life like mine.... Ah!
yes, indeed, a poor life ... truly!” ...
* * * * *
And the major’s voice died away little by little and became as
uncertain as his words; and he walked on, biting his lips and frowning
in a wild and fierce abstraction. He gave little convulsive movements,
and struck his mule with his scabbard, as if he wanted to kill it. What
astonished me, was to see the yellow skin of his face turn a dark red.
He unfastened and violently tore open his coat at his chest, baring
it to the wind and rain. Thus we continued our march in deep silence.
I saw clearly that he would not speak any more of his own accord, and
that I must bring myself to question him.
“I quite understand,” I said, as if he had finished his story, “that,
after so cruel an experience, one conceives a horror for one’s calling.”
“Oh! calling; are you mad?” he said sharply, “it isn’t the calling!
Never will the captain of a vessel be forced to turn executioner,
unless when there come governments of murderers and thieves, who take
advantage of a poor man’s habit of obeying blindly, obeying always,
obeying like a wretched machine, in spite of his heart.”
At the same time he drew from his pocket a red handkerchief, into which
he began to cry like a child. I stopped a minute as if to arrange my
stirrup, and, staying behind the cart, I walked after it for some time,
feeling that he would be humiliated if I saw too plainly his copious
tears.
I had guessed rightly, for after about a quarter of an hour he also
came behind his poor conveyance, and asked me if I had any razors in my
portmanteau; to which I merely answered that, not yet having any beard,
they were of no use to me. But he did not mind, it was so that he could
speak of something else. I noticed with pleasure, however that he was
coming back to his story, for he said to me suddenly:
“You’ve never seen any ships in your life, have you?”
“I have only seen them,” I said, “at the Panorama in Paris, and I have
not much confidence in the naval knowledge I gathered there.”
“You don’t know, then, what the cat-head is?”
“I can’t imagine,” I said.
“It is a kind of terrace of beams projecting from the bows of the ship,
and from which they throw the anchor into the sea. When a man is shot,
he is generally placed there,” he added in a lower voice.
“Ah! I understand, because from there he falls into the sea.”
He did not answer, and began to describe all the kinds of boat that a
brig can carry, and their place in the vessel; and then, without any
order in his ideas, he continued his story with that affected air of
carelessness which always results from long service, because a man must
show his inferiors his contempt of danger, contempt of men, contempt of
life, contempt of death, and contempt of himself; and all this nearly
always hides, under a hard exterior, a profound sensibility.--The
hardness of the man of war is like an iron mask over a noble face, like
a stone dungeon that shuts in a royal prisoner.
* * * * *
“These craft hold six men,” he went on. “They jumped in and took Laura
with them, before she had time to cry out or speak. Oh! that’s a thing
for which no honest man can console himself when he is the cause of
it. It is no use saying so, such a thing cannot be forgotten!... Ah!
what weather it is!--What devil urged me to talk about this! When I’m
telling it, I never can stop, it has to be finished. It’s a story that
intoxicates me like Jurançon wine.--Ah! what weather it is!--My cloak
is wet through!
“I was still telling you, I think, about that little Laurette!--Poor
woman!--What clumsy people there are in the world! The officer was so
stupid as to take the boat ahead of the brig. After that, it is true
to say that one cannot foresee everything. I was counting on the night
to hide the deed, and didn’t think of the light from twelve guns being
fired at once. And, on my life! from the boat she saw her husband fall
into the sea, shot dead.
“If there is a God up yonder, he knows how that happened that I’m going
to tell you; _I_ don’t know, but it was seen and heard as I see and
hear you. At the instant when they fired, she put her hand to her head
as if a bullet had struck her brow, and sat still in the boat without
fainting, without crying out, without speaking, and came back to the
brig when and how they wished. I went to her and talked to her for a
long time as well as I could. She seemed to be listening to me and
looked me in the face, rubbing her brow. She did not understand, and
her brow was red and her face quite pale. She was trembling in every
limb as if she was afraid of everybody. That has remained with her. She
is still the same, poor little thing! an idiot, or as it were imbecile,
or mad, whatever you please. Never has any one got a word out of her,
except when she asks for some one to take away what is in her head.
“From that time I became as sad as she, and I felt something within me
saying to me: ‛Stay with her to the end of your life, and take care
of her’; I have done it. When I returned to France, I asked to be
transferred with my rank into the land-troops, having taken a hatred
of the sea, because into it I had spilled innocent blood. I sought out
Laura’s family. Her mother was dead. Her sisters, to whom I took her
mad, didn’t want her, and offered to send her to Charenton. I turned my
back on them, and I kept her with me.
“Ah! merciful heavens! if you want to see her, comrade, it rests with
you.” “Can it be she inside?” I asked. “Certainly! here! wait. Whoa!
mule....”
III
_HOW I CONTINUED MY JOURNEY_
And he stopped his poor mule, which seemed delighted that I had
asked the question. At the same time he lifted the oilcloth from
his little cart, as if to arrange the straw which almost filled it,
and I saw something very sad. I saw two blue eyes, extraordinarily
large, admirably shaped, starting from a head pale, thin and long, and
overflowing with quite straight fair hair. I saw nothing, in truth, but
those two eyes, for the rest was dead. Her brow was red; her hollow
white cheeks were bluish at the cheek-bones; she was cowering in the
midst of the straw, so much so that you scarcely saw projecting from
it her knees, on which she was playing dominoes all by herself. She
looked at us for a minute, trembled a long time, smiled at me a little,
and went on playing. It seemed to me that she was labouring to perceive
how her right hand would beat her left. “You see, she has been playing
that game for a month,” the major said to me; “to-morrow, perhaps it
will be another game that will last a long time. It’s strange, eh?”
At the same time he began to replace on his shako the oilcloth, which
the rain had slightly disarranged.
“Poor Laurette!” I said, “you have lost, and for ever, truly!”
I brought my horse near the cart, and held out my hand to her; she
gave me hers mechanically, smiling with great sweetness. I noticed
with surprise that she wore on her long fingers two diamond rings;
I thought that here were her mother’s rings still, and wondered how
poverty had left them there. I would not have remarked as much to the
old commandant for all the world; but, as he followed me with his eyes,
and saw mine fixed on Laura’s fingers, he said to me with a certain air
of pride:
“They are pretty big diamonds, aren’t they? They might fetch a price on
occasion, but I did not want her to part from them, poor child. When
they are touched, she cries, she is never without them. Otherwise, she
never complains, and she can sew now and then. I have kept my word
to her poor little husband, and, in truth, I don’t regret it. I have
never left her, and I have said everywhere that she is my mad daughter.
People have respected that. In the army everything gets arranged
better than they would think at Paris, eh!--She has been through all
the Emperor’s wars with me, and I have always got her through safe and
sound. I have always kept her comfortable. With straw and a little
carriage, it’s never impossible. Her dress was pretty well cared for,
and I, being a major, with good pay, my Legion of Honour pension,
and the monthly napoleon, whose value was double, formerly, I was
quite able to keep things going, and she did not embarrass me. On the
contrary, the officers of the 7th Light Horse would sometimes laugh at
her child’s play.”
Then he went near, and tapped her on the shoulder, as he would have
done to his little mule.
“Well, my girl! come now, say something to the lieutenant there: come,
just a nod.”
She went on with her dominoes.
“Oh!” he said, “she is a little shy to-day, because it is raining. Yet
she never catches cold. These mad people are never ill, it’s convenient
in that way. At the Beresina and all through the retreat from Moscow,
she went bareheaded.--There, my girl, go on playing, come, don’t worry
about us; there, do as you please, Laurette.”
She took the hand that he rested on her shoulder, a great black and
wrinkled hand; she lifted it timidly to her lips and kissed it like a
poor slave. My heart was wrung by that kiss, and I turned my horse back
violently.
“Shall we continue our march, commandant?” I said; “it will be night
before we reach Béthune.”
The commandant carefully scraped off with the end of his sword the
yellow mud that covered his boots; then he got up on the footboard of
the cart, and pulled over Laura’s head the cloth hood of a little cloak
she was wearing. He took off his black silk scarf and put it round his
adopted daughter’s neck; after which he gave the mule a kick, jerked
his shoulder, and said: “Off you go, you’re a poor lot!” and we set off
again.
The rain was still falling dismally; the grey sky and the grey earth
stretched out endlessly; a kind of wan light, a pale wet sun, was
sinking behind great mills that were not turning. We relapsed into
profound silence.
I was looking at my old commandant; he was walking in great strides,
with energy still maintained, while his mule was exhausted, and even
my horse was beginning to hang his head. This worthy man from time
to time took on his shako to wipe his bald forehead and his few grey
hairs, or his thick eyebrows, or his white moustache, from which
the rain was dripping. He did not worry about the effect which his
narrative might have had on me. He had not made himself out either
better or worse than he was. He had not stooped to show himself to
advantage. He was not thinking of himself, and, after a quarter of an
hour, he began, in the same manner, a very much longer story about a
campaign of Marshal Massena’s, where he had formed his company into a
square against some cavalry or other. I did not listen to him, although
he grew warm in demonstrating to me the superiority of the foot-soldier
over the mounted man.
Night fell, we were not going fast. The mud was becoming thicker and
deeper. Nothing on the road and nothing at the end. We stopped at the
foot of a dead tree, the only tree in our path. He first attended to
his mule, as I did to my horse. Then he looked into the cart, as a
mother does into her child’s cradle. I heard him saying: “Come, my
girl, spread this coat over your feet, and try to sleep.--Come, that’s
right! She hasn’t got a drop of rain on her.--Oh! confound it! she
has broken my watch that I left round her neck!--Oh! my poor silver
watch!--There, it’s no matter; try to sleep, child. The fine weather
will come soon.--It’s strange! she is always feverish; mad people are
like that. Look, here’s some chocolate for you, child.”
He propped the cart against the tree, and we sat down under the wheels,
sheltered from the incessant shower, sharing a loaf he had and one I
had: a poor supper.
“I am sorry we have nothing but this,” he said; “but it’s better than
horseflesh cooked under the ashes with gunpowder on top, by way of
salt, as we used to eat it in Russia. As for the poor little woman, I
am bound to give her the best I have. You see that I always keep her
by herself. She cannot bear to be near a man since the affair of the
letter. I am old, and she seems to believe that I am her father; in
spite of that, she would strangle me if I tried merely to kiss her on
the forehead. Education always leaves them something, it seems, for I
have never seen her forget to hide herself like a nun.--That’s strange,
eh?”
As he was talking of her like this, we heard her sigh and say: “Take
away the lead! take away the lead!” I got up, he made me sit down again.
“Sit still, sit still,” he said to me, “it is nothing. She has always
said that, because she always thinks she can feel a bullet in her head.
That doesn’t prevent her doing whatever she is told, and that with
great amiability.”
I was silent and listened to him sadly. I began to calculate that from
1797 to 1815, which we had reached, eighteen years had passed thus
for this man.--For a long time I stayed beside him in silence, trying
to account to myself for such a character and such a fate. Then, for
no apparent reason, I gave him a very enthusiastic handshake. He was
astonished at it.
“You are a noble man!” I said to him. He answered:
“Eh! why that? Is it because of that poor woman?... You know well, my
lad, that it was a duty. I have long learnt to sacrifice self.”
And he talked to me about Massena again.
The next day, at dawn, we reached Béthune, an ugly little fortified
town, where you would say that the ramparts, contracting their circle,
had squeezed the houses one on top of another. Everything there was in
confusion; there had just been an alarm. The inhabitants were beginning
to draw in the white flags from the windows; and to sew the tricolours
together in their houses. The drums were beating the call to arms; the
trumpets were sounding “to horse,” by order of the Duke of Berry. The
long Picardy carts were carrying the Swiss Hundred and their baggage;
the cannon of the Body-guard hastening to the ramparts, the princes’
carriages, the squadrons of the Red Companies falling in, were blocking
up the town. The sight of the Royal Dragoons and the Musketeers made
me forget my old travelling companion. I joined my company, and in
the crowd I lost the little cart and its poor occupants. To my great
regret, it was for ever that I lost them.
It was the first time in my life that I read the inmost depths of
a real soldier’s heart. This meeting revealed to me a kind of human
nature unknown to me, and which the country knows little and does not
treat well; I placed it thenceforward very high in my esteem. I have
often since then sought around me some man like that one, capable of
that complete and unheeding self-sacrifice. Now, during the fourteen
years that I have lived in the army, it is in it alone, and above all
in the poor and despised ranks of the infantry, that I have met these
men of antique mould, carrying the sentiment of duty to its final
consequences, feeling neither remorse for having obeyed nor shame for
being poor, simple in customs and in speech, proud of their country’s
glory and heedless of their own, gladly shutting themselves up in their
obscurity, and sharing with the unfortunate the black bread which they
pay for with their blood.
I was long ignorant of what had become of this poor major, especially
as he had not told me his name and I had not asked it. One day,
however, at the coffee-house, in 1825, I think, an old infantry captain
of the line to whom I described him, whilst waiting for parade, said to
me:
“Oh! by heaven, my dear fellow, I knew him, poor devil! He was a fine
man; he was ‛put down’ by a bullet at Waterloo. He had, indeed, left
with the baggage a kind of mad girl whom we took to the hospital at
Amiens, as we were on our way to join the army of the Loire, and who
died there, raving, three days later.”
“I can well believe it,” I said to him; “she had lost her
foster-father!”
“Oh pooh! _father_! what is that you say?” he rejoined in a tone which
he meant to be sly and suggestive.
“I say that the call to arms is being sounded,” I replied, going out.
And I too exercised self-restraint.
THE VENUS OF ILLE
PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
“Ιλεως, ἦν δ’ ἐγὼ, ἔοτω ὁ ἀνδριὰς καὶ ἢπιος οὔτως ἀνδρεῖος ὤν.”
Lucian, _Philopseudes_.
I was descending the last declivity of the Canigou, and, although the
sun was already set, I could distinguish in the plain the houses of the
little town of Ille, towards which I was making.
“Of course,” I said to the Catalan who had served me as guide since the
previous evening, “of course you know where M. de Peyrehorade stays?”
“Know where he stays!” he exclaimed; “I know his house as well as my
own; and, if it were not so dark, I would show it you. It is the finest
in Ille. He has money, he has, M. de Peyrehorade, and he’s marrying his
son to richer than himself even.”
“And is this marriage to be soon?” I asked him.
“Soon! perhaps the fiddles are ordered for the wedding already.
To-night, perhaps, to-morrow, the day after to-morrow, for all that I
know! It’s to be at Puygarrig; for it’s Mademoiselle de Puygarrig whom
the young gentleman is marrying. It will be grand, that it will!”
I had an introduction from my friend, M. de P., to M. de Peyrehorade.
He, I had been informed, was a very learned antiquary, and most
exceedingly obliging. He would consider it a pleasure to show me all
the ruins for ten leagues around. Now, I was counting on his aid to
visit the environs of Ille, which I knew to be rich in monuments of
antiquity and of the Middle Ages. This marriage, of which I now heard
for the first time, upset all my plans.
“I am going to be a spoil-sport,” I said to myself. But I was expected;
seeing that M. de P. had said I was coming, I was bound to present
myself.
“I’ll bet you, sir,” my guide said to me, when we were now in the
plain, “I’ll bet you a cigar that I guess what you are going to do at
M. de Peyrehorade’s.”
“O!” I said to him, as I handed him a cigar, “that’s not very difficult
to guess! At this hour of night, after doing six leagues on the
Canigou, the great thing is supper.”
“Yes, but to-morrow?... Listen, I’ll wager you’ve come to Ille to see
the idol. I guessed as much from seeing you take the portraits of the
saints at Serrabona.”
“The idol! What idol?” The word excited my curiosity.
“What! Did they not tell you at Perpignan, how M. de Peyrehorade had
found an idol in the ground?”
“A statue in terra cotta or earthenware, do you mean?”
“No, no, in real copper, enough to make a lot of pennies with. It
weighs as much as a church-bell. It was away down in the ground, at the
foot of an olive-tree, that we got it.”
“Then you were present at the discovery?”
“Yes, sir. M. de Peyrehorade told us a fortnight ago, Jean Coll and me,
to root up an old olive-tree that was frosted last year, for it was a
very bad one, as you know. Well then, as we were busy, Jean Coll, who
was going at it with all his might, gave a blow with his pick, and I
hear Boom ..., as if he had struck on a bell. ‘What’s that?’ says I. We
pick, and we pick, and, look! there appears a black hand, which looked
like the hand of a corpse rising out of the ground. I did get a fright.
I go off to the master, and I says to him, ‛Corpses, master, under the
olive-tree! Must call the parson,’ ‛What corpses?’ says he to me. He
comes, and has no sooner seen the hand than he cries out, ‛An antique!
An antique!’ You would have thought he had found a treasure. And there
he was, with the pick, with his hands, fussing away and doing as much
work as the two of us, with his way of it.”
“And after all, what did you find?”
“A great black woman, more than half naked, saving your Honour’s
presence, all in copper, and M. de Peyrehorade told us that it was an
idol of the time of the heathens ... of the time of Charlemagne, no
less!”
“I see what it is.... Just a Virgin in bronze from some convent that
has been destroyed.”
“Just a Virgin! Very much so!... I’d easily have recognized it, if it
had been just a Virgin. It’s an idol, I tell you; that’s well seen from
her look. She fixes you with her great, white eyes.... You’d think she
was staring at you. You have to cast down your eyes, you have, if you
look at her.”
“White eyes, do you say? No doubt they are inlaid on the bronze.
Perhaps it will be some Roman statue.”
“Roman! that’s it. M. de Peyrehorade said that she’s a Roman. Ah! I can
see you’re a scholar like himself.”
“Is she complete, in good preservation?”
“Yes, sir. She wants nothing. She’s even finer and better finished than
the bust of Louis-Philippe at the Town-house in painted plaster. But,
for all that, I don’t like the idol’s face. She looks wicked ... and
she is wicked.”
“Wicked! What wickedness has she done to you?”
“Not to me exactly; but you’ll see. We were breaking our backs to make
her stand upright, even M. de Peyrehorade, who was also pulling at the
rope, though he has not much more strength than a chicken, honest man!
After a good deal of trouble we get her straight. I was picking up a
piece of tile to prop her, when, crash! there she falls in a heap on
her back. I shouted, ‛Look out below, there!’ But not quick enough,
though, for Jean Coll had not time to pull away his leg.”
“And was he hurt?”
“Broken as clean as a pipe-shank, his poor leg! Zounds, when I saw
that, my, I was furious! I wanted to put my pick through the idol, but
M. de Peyrehorade prevented me. He gave money to Jean Coll, but for
all that he has been in bed a fortnight since it happened to him, and
the doctor says that he’ll never walk as well with that leg as with
the other. It’s a pity for him, for he was our best runner and, next
to the young gentleman, our trickiest tennis-player. M. Alphonse de
Peyrehorade was sorry about it, for it was Coll he used to play with.
My word, it was good to see how they returned the balls. Paf! Paf! They
never once touched the ground.”
Talking thus, we entered Ille, and soon I found myself in presence of
M. de Peyrehorade. He was a little old man, still fresh and lively,
powdered, red-nosed, with a jovial and roguish air. Before opening
M. de P.’s letter, he had installed me in front of a well-spread
table, and had presented me to his wife and son as an illustrious
archæologist, who was to rescue Roussillon from the oblivion in which
it had been left by the indifference of savants.
All the time that I was eating with a good appetite--for nothing makes
one so sharp-set as the keen air of the mountains--I was examining
my hosts. I have said something about M. de Peyrehorade; I ought to
add that he was vivacity itself. He talked, ate, got up, ran to his
library, brought me books, showed me prints, filled my glass; he was
never two minutes at rest. His wife, a little too stout, like most
Catalan women when they are over forty, struck me as a double-dyed
provincial, occupied solely with the cares of her household. Although
the supper was enough for six persons at least, she ran to the kitchen,
made them kill pigeons and fry _miliasses_, and opened I don’t know how
many pots of preserves. In an instant the table was crowded with dishes
and bottles, and I should assuredly have died of indigestion, if I had
even tasted everything that they offered me. Nevertheless, at each dish
that I refused, there were fresh excuses. They were afraid I should
find myself very uncomfortable at Ille. In the country there are so few
resources, and Parisians are so hard to please!
Amid all his parents’ comings and goings, M. Alphonse de Peyrehorade
budged no more than a gate-post. He was a tall young man of
six-and-twenty, with a countenance handsome and regular, but lacking
in expression. His build and his athletic proportions quite justified
the reputation of an indefatigable tennis-player which he had acquired
in the district. He was dressed that evening with elegance, exactly
after the plate in the latest number of the _Journal des Modes_. But he
seemed to me to be ill at ease in his habiliments; he was as stiff as
a poker in his velvet stock, and could only turn all in a piece. His
large, sunburnt hands and short nails contrasted singularly with his
costume. They were the hands of a labourer sticking out of the cuffs of
a dandy. Moreover, though he looked me up and down from head to foot
most inquisitively in my quality of a Parisian, he never addressed
me the whole evening, except once, to ask me where I had bought my
watch-chain.
“Ah, well, my dear guest,” M. de Peyrehorade said to me as the supper
was drawing to an end, “you belong to me, you are under my roof. I
will not let you go, at least not until you have seen everything of
interest that we have in our mountains. You must get acquainted with
our Roussillon, and do justice to it. You have no idea of all that
we are going to show you. Phœnician, Celtic, Roman, Arab, Byzantine
antiquities, I’ll show you them all, from the cedar to the hyssop. I’ll
take you everywhere, and won’t spare you a single brick.”
A fit of coughing forced him to stop. I took advantage of it to tell
him that I should be most sorry to inconvenience him on an occasion so
interesting to his family.
If he would have the kindness to give me his valuable advice as to the
excursions which I ought to make, I should be able, without his taking
the trouble of accompanying me, to....
“Ah, you mean the marriage of that boy there!” he shouted, and
interrupted me. “Fiddlesticks! that will be over by the day after
to-morrow. You’ll celebrate the wedding along with us, a family affair,
for the bride is in mourning for an aunt, whose heiress she is. So no
party, no dance.... It’s a pity ... you would have seen our Catalan
girls dancing.... They are pretty, and perhaps you’d have taken
the fancy to imitate my Alphonse. One marriage, they say, leads to
another.... By Saturday, after the young couple are married, I’ll be
free, and we’ll set out. I must apologize to you for boring you with a
country wedding. For a Parisian who is sated with gaieties ... and a
wedding without a dance into the bargain! However, you’ll see a bride
... a bride ... you’ll tell me what you think about her.... But you’re
a sober-sides and don’t look at women now. I’ve better than that to
show you. I’ll let you see something!... I am keeping a fine surprise
for you to-morrow.”
“Faith,” I said, “it is not easy to have a treasure in the house
without the public knowing all about it. I think I can guess the
surprise that you have in store for me. Yes, if it is your statue you
mean, the description of it which my guide gave me has served only to
excite my curiosity and to dispose me to admiration.”
“Ah! He has told you of the idol, for so they call my beautiful Venus
Tur.... But I won’t tell you anything. To-morrow in daylight you
shall see her, and you shall tell me if I am right in thinking her a
masterpiece. Upon my word! you could not have arrived more opportunely!
There are some inscriptions, which I, poor ignoramus, explain in my
own way ... but a savant from Paris!... You will perhaps laugh at my
interpretation ... for I have written a paper.... I who am speaking to
you ... an old provincial antiquary, I have come out.... I mean to make
the press groan.... If you will be so kind as read and correct me, I
flatter myself.... For example, I am very curious to know how you will
translate that inscription on the base: _CAVE_.... But I won’t ask you
anything just now! To-morrow, to-morrow! Not a word about the Venus
to-day!”
“You are just as well, Peyrehorade,” said his wife, “to let your idol
alone. Can’t you see that you are preventing the gentleman from eating?
Go away with you! The gentleman has seen plenty of finer statues than
yours at Paris. At the Tuileries there are dozens of them, and in
bronze, too.”
“There’s ignorance for you, the blessed ignorance of the provinces!”
broke in M. de Peyrehorade. “To compare an admirable antique to
Coustou’s vapid faces!
‛With great lack of reverence, truly,
Speaks my wife of gods divine!’
“Do you know, my wife wanted me to melt down my statue to make into
a bell for our church? Because she would have been the donor. A
masterpiece of Myron’s, my dear sir!”
“Masterpiece! Masterpiece! A pretty masterpiece she’s made, breaking a
man’s leg!”
“Look here, wife,” said M. de Peyrehorade, in a firm tone, stretching
out to her his right leg in a stocking of clouded silk, “if my Venus
had broken that leg for me, I should not have regretted it.”
“Gracious! Peyrehorade, how can you say that? Fortunately the man’s
getting better. But still I can’t bring myself to look at a statue
which causes misfortunes like that. Poor Jean Coll!”
“Wounded by Venus, sir,” said M. de Peyrehorade with a great laugh,
“wounded by Venus, the rascal complains:
‛_Veneris nec præmia nôris._’
Who hasn’t been wounded by Venus?”
M. Alphonse, who understood French better than Latin, winked an
eye with a knowing air, and looked at me, as much as to ask, “D’ye
understand, Mr. Parisian?”
The supper came to an end. For the last hour I had eaten nothing. I was
tired, and I could not manage to hide the frequent yawns which escaped
me. Madame de Peyrehorade was the first to notice them, and remarked
that it was time to go to bed. Thereupon began fresh apologies for
the poor couch I was about to find. I should not be so comfortable as
in Paris. Things are so uncomfortable in the provinces. I must excuse
Roussillon people. It was in vain that I protested that after a journey
in the mountains a truss of straw would be a delicious couch for me;
they persisted in entreating me to pardon poor country folk, if they
did not treat me so well as they could have desired. At last I went
upstairs to the room which was meant for me, accompanied by M. de
Peyrehorade. The stair, the upper steps of which were of wood, led to
the middle of a corridor, on which several rooms opened.
“To the right,” said my host, “are the apartments which I intend for
the future Madame Alphonse. Your room is at the end of the opposite
corridor. You quite understand,” he added with an air which was
meant to be sly, “you quite understand that newly married folk must
be isolated. You are at one end of the house, they at the other.”
We entered a well furnished room, where the first object on which
I set eyes was a bed seven feet long, six wide, and so high that
one required a stool to hoist oneself into it. My host, having
shown me where the bell was, and having satisfied himself that the
sugar-bowl was filled and the eau-de-Cologne bottles duly set on the
dressing-table, after having asked me several times if I had everything
I wanted, wished me good-night and left me to myself.
The windows were shut. Before undressing, I opened one to breathe the
fresh night air, so delightful after a long supper. Before me lay the
Canigou, which is wonderful to behold at any time, but which, that
night, seemed to me the finest mountain in the world, lit up as it
was by a resplendent moon. I remained some minutes contemplating the
marvellous sky-line, and I was about to close my window when, looking
down, I observed the statue on a pedestal some two-score yards from the
house. It was placed at the corner of a quick-set hedge, which divided
a little garden from a spacious square perfectly smooth, which, as I
learned later, was the town tennis-court. This space, the property of
M. de Peyrehorade, had been made over by him to the commune, at the
pressing solicitations of his son.
At the distance where I was, it was difficult to make out the attitude
of the statue; I could only judge of its height, which seemed to be
about six feet. At that moment, two rascals from the town were passing
by the tennis-court, pretty close to the hedge, whistling the pretty
Roussillon air _Montagnes régalades_. They stopped to look at the
statue; one of them even apostrophized it aloud. He spoke Catalan; but
I had been in Roussillon long enough to be able to understand pretty
well what he was saying.
“So you’re there, you hussy!” (The Catalan word was more forcible).
“You’re there!” he said. “So it’s you who broke Jean Coll’s leg for
him! If you belonged to me, I’d break your neck.”
“Bah! What would you break it with?” said the other. “She’s made of
copper, so hard that Stephen broke his file on it trying to cut into
it. It’s copper of heathen times; it’s harder than I don’t know what.”
“If I had my cold chisel,” (it seems that he was an apprentice
locksmith), “I’d soon knock out her big white eyes, as easy as I’d take
an almond out of its shell. There’s more than two half-crowns’ worth of
silver in them.”
They went a step or two on their way.
“I must wish the idol good-night,” said the taller of the apprentices,
stopping short.
He stooped down, and no doubt picked up a stone. I saw him straighten
out his arm and throw something, and immediately a sonorous blow rang
on the bronze. That same instant, the apprentice put his hand to his
head and uttered a cry of pain.
“She’s thrown it back at me!” he exclaimed.
And my two rascals took to their heels. Evidently the stone had
rebounded from the metal and had punished the joker for his outrage on
the goddess.