[18] “_Librar l’Italia de’ barbari_,” a saying of Petrarch’s in 1350,
afterwards repeated by Julius II., by Machiavelli, and by Count Alfieri.
[19] Near Rimini in Romagna. It was in this castle that the famous
Cagliostro perished; it is said in the district that he was suffocated
there.
[20] A Roman prelate would no doubt not be fit to command an army corps
bravely, as was more than once done by a general of division who was
minister of police at Paris at the time of Mallet’s attempt; but he
never would have let himself be held up in his own house so easily. He
would have been too much afraid of being quizzed by his colleagues. A
Roman who knows that he is hated does not go about without being well
armed.
The writer has not thought it necessary to justify some other little
differences between the ways of doing and speaking at Paris and those
at Rome. So far from toning down these differences, he has thought it
right to state them boldly. The Romans whom he describes have not the
honour of being Frenchmen.
THE CHILD WITH THE BREAD SHOES
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
Listen to this story which the grandmothers of Germany tell their
grandchildren,--Germany, a beautiful country of legends and dreams,
where the moonlight, playing on the mists of Old Rhine, creates a
thousand fantastic visions.
At the end of the village a poor woman lived alone in a humble cottage:
the house was very poor and contained but the barest necessities in the
way of furniture.
An old bed with twisted columns whence hung serge curtains yellow with
age; a bread-bin; a walnut chest, polished till it shone, but the
numerous worm-eaten holes of which were stopped with wax, indicated a
long period of service; an arm-chair, covered with tapestry from which
the colours had faded and which had been worn thin by the shaking head
of the old grandmother; a spinning-wheel polished with use: that was
all.
We were about to forget a child’s cradle, quite new, very cosily
padded and covered with a pretty flowered counterpane stitched by an
indefatigable needle, that of a mother ornamenting the crib of her
little Jesus.
All the wealth in the little house was centred there.
The child of a burgomaster or of an aulic councillor could not have
been more softly couched. Sacred prodigality, sweet folly of the mother
who deprives herself of everything to provide a little luxury, in the
midst of her poverty, for her dear nursling!
The cradle gave a festal air to the poor hovel; nature, which
is compassionate to the unfortunate, made the bareness of this
white-washed cottage gay with tufts of houseleek and velvet moss. Kind
plants, full of pity, although they looked like parasites, filled up
the holes in the roof and made it as dazzling as a bride’s jewels, and
prevented the rain from falling on the cradle; the pigeons alighted on
the window and cooed until the child fell asleep.
A little bird, to which young Hans had given a crumb of bread in the
winter, when the snow made the ground white, had, when spring came,
let a grain fall from his beak at the foot of the wall, and thence had
sprung a beautiful bindweed which, clinging to the stones with its
green claws, had entered the room by a broken window-pane, and crowned
the child’s cradle with its cluster, so that in the morning Hans’s blue
eyes and the blue bells of the bindweed woke up at the same time, and
looked at each other with an understanding air.
This home, then, was poor but not gloomy.
Hans’s mother, whose husband had died far away at the war, lived as
best she could on vegetables from the garden, and the product of her
spinning-wheel: very little, it is true, but Hans wanted for nothing
and that was enough.
Hans’s mother was a truly pious and believing woman. She prayed, worked
and practised virtue; but she had one fault: she looked upon herself
with too much complacence and prided herself too much on her son.
It sometimes happens that mothers, seeing these beautiful rosy
children, with dimpled hands, white skin and pink heels, think that
they belong to them for ever.
But God gives nothing; he only lends, and, like a forgotten creditor,
he sometimes comes to demand his own again all of a sudden.
Because this fresh bud had sprung from her stem, Hans’s mother believed
that she had made him to be born: and God, who, from within his
Paradise with its azure vaults starred with gold, watches everything
that happens on earth, and hears from the ends of the infinite the
sound that the blade of grass makes as it grows, was not pleased to see
this.
He also saw that Hans was greedy and that his mother was too indulgent
to this greediness; the naughty child often cried when he had,
after grapes or an apple, to eat bread, object of envy to so many
unfortunates, and his mother let him throw away the piece of bread he
had commenced, or else finished it herself.
Now it happened that Hans fell ill: fever burned him, his breath
whistled in his choking throat; he had croup, a terrible illness that
has made the eyes of many mothers and fathers red.
At the sight the poor woman was filled with horrible anguish.
You have doubtless seen in some church the image of Our Lady, clothed
in mourning and standing under the Cross, with her breast open and her
bleeding heart, where lie plunged seven swords of silver, three on
one side, four on the other. That means that there is no agony more
terrible than that of a mother who sees her child dying.
And yet the Holy Virgin believed in the divinity of Jesus and knew that
her son would come to life again.
Now Hans’s mother had not that hope.
During the last days of Hans’s illness his mother, even while watching
him, continued to spin mechanically and the whirring of the wheel
mingled with the rattle in the throat of the dying child.
If some rich people find it strange that a mother can spin by the
bed-side of a dying child, it is because they do not understand what
tortures poverty contains for the soul; alas! it does not only break
the body, it also breaks the heart.
What she was spinning thus, was the thread for her little Hans’s
shroud; she did not wish that any cloth that had been used should
cover that dear body, and, as she had no money, she made her
spinning-wheel hum with a mournful activity; but she did not pass the
thread through her lips as was her custom: enough tears fell from her
eyes to moisten it.
At the end of the sixth day, Hans expired. Whether from chance or from
sympathy, the cluster of bindweed that caressed his cradle faded, dried
up and let its last curled-up flower fall on the bed.
When the mother was quite convinced that the breath had for ever flown
from his lips, on which the violets of death had replaced the roses
of life, she covered the too dear head with the edge of the sheet,
took her bundle of thread under her arm, and made her way towards the
weaver’s house.
“Weaver,” she said to him, “here is some very fine thread, very regular
and without knots; the spider does not spin any finer between the
joists of the ceiling; let your shuttle come and go; from this thread I
must have an ell of cloth as soft as the cloth of Friesland or Holland.”
The weaver took the skein, set the warp, and the busy shuttle, drawing
the thread after it, began to run hither and thither.
The card strengthened the woof and the thread continued to grow evenly,
and without breaking, on the loom; it was as fine as the shift of an
archduchess or the linen with which the priest dries the communion-cup
at the altar.
When all the thread was used, the weaver gave the cloth to the poor
mother, and, as he had understood everything from the settled look of
despair on the unhappy woman’s face, he said to her:
“The emperor’s son, who died last year while still an infant, was not
wrapped in a finer or softer shroud in his little ebony coffin with
silver nails.”
Having folded the cloth, the mother drew from her wasted finger a thin
gold ring, all worn with use.
“Good weaver,” she said, “take this ring, my wedding-ring, the only
gold I ever possessed.”
The kind weaver-man did not wish to take it; but she said to him:
“Where I am going I shall have no need of a ring; for I feel my Hans’s
small arms pulling me into the ground.”
Then she went to the carpenter and said to him:
“Master, get me some oak from the heart of the tree, which will not rot
and which the worms will not be able to eat; cut from it five boards
and two little boards and make a coffin to these measurements.”
The carpenter took his saw and plane, trimmed the planks, and struck
the nails as lightly as possible with his hammer, so as not to let the
iron points enter farther into the poor woman’s heart than into the
wood.
When the work was finished, it was so carefully and so well done that
it might have been taken for a box to put jewels and laces in.
“Carpenter, as you have made so beautiful a coffin for my little Hans,
I give you my house at the end of the village, and the little garden
behind it, and the well with the vineyard.--You shall not wait long.”
With the shroud and the coffin, which she held under her arm, it was so
small, she went through the village streets, and the children, who do
not know what death is, said:
“Look at Hans’s mother taking him a beautiful box of toys from
Nuremberg; it must be a town with its painted and varnished wooden
houses, its steeple covered with tin-foil, its belfry and its tower
with battlements, and its trees in the promenades, all curly and green;
or else a beautiful violin with its sculptured pegs at the neck and its
horsehair bow.--Oh, why have we not a box like it!”
And the mothers, growing pale, kissed them and told them to be quiet:
“Silly children that you are, you must not say that; do not wish for
the box of toys, or the violin-case that one carries with tears under
one’s arm: you will have it soon enough, poor little ones!”
When Hans’s mother got home, she took the dainty, still pretty,
corpse of her son and began to make his last toilet--it must be made
carefully, for it has to last for eternity.
She clothed him in his Sunday clothes, his silk dress and fur pelisse,
so that he should not be cold in the damp place to which he was going.
Beside him she put the doll with the enamel eyes, the doll he loved so
much that he always took it to bed with him.
But, just as she was turning down the shroud on the body which she
had kissed for the last time a thousand times, she saw that she had
forgotten to place his pretty little red slippers on the child’s feet.
She looked for them in the room, for it hurt her to see the little feet
bare that used to be so warm and pink, and were now so cold and white;
but during her absence the rats had found the shoes under the bed, and
for want of better food had nibbled them, gnawed at them, and cut holes
in the leather.
It was a great grief to the poor mother that Hans should go away into
the other world with bare feet; when the heart is all one wound, it
only needs a touch to make it bleed.
She cried to see the slippers: from that inflamed, worn-out eye a tear
could still gush.
How could she get shoes for Hans, when she had already given her ring
and her house? That was the thought that troubled her. By dint of
thinking she had an idea.
In the bread-bin there was still a whole loaf of bread, as, for a long
time, the unhappy woman, kept alive by her sorrow, had been eating
nothing.
She broke the loaf, remembering that, in the past, she had often made
with the soft parts pigeons, geese, chickens, wooden shoes, boats, and
other boys’ things to amuse Hans.
Placing the bread in the hollow of her hand, and kneading it with her
thumb while she moistened it with her tears, she made a little pair of
bread shoes, with which she covered the cold, bluish feet of the dead
child, and, her heart consoled, she turned down the shroud and closed
the coffin.--While she was kneading the bread, a poor man had come to
the door and timidly asked for some bread; but she had signed to him
with her hand to go away.
The grave-digger came to take away the box, and buried it in a corner
of the cemetery under a clump of white rose-bushes: the air was warm,
it was not raining and the ground was not wet; this was a comfort to
the mother, who thought that her poor little Hans would not pass the
first night in his tomb too uncomfortably.
When she returned home to her solitary house, she placed Hans’s cradle
beside her bed, lay down and fell asleep.
Overtaxed nature succumbed.
As she slept, she had a dream or, at least, she believed it was a dream.
Hans appeared to her, clothed, as he was in his coffin, in his Sunday
dress and his pelisse lined with swans’-down, in his hand his doll with
the enamel eyes and on his feet his bread shoes.
He seemed to be sad.
He had not the halo that death ought to give to the little innocents;
for, if a child is placed in the ground, it comes out an angel.
The roses of Paradise were not flourishing on his pale cheeks, coloured
white by death; tears fell from his blond eyelashes, and great sighs
swelled his little breast.
The vision disappeared, and the mother awoke, bathed in perspiration,
delighted at having seen her child, terrified at having seen him so
sad; but she reassured herself by saying, “Poor Hans! even in Paradise
he cannot forget me.”
The following night, the apparition was repeated: Hans was still more
sad and more pale.
His mother, stretching her arms out to him, said:
“Dear child, take comfort, and do not weary in Heaven; I shall soon
rejoin you.”
The third night, Hans came again; he moaned and cried more than at the
other times, and he disappeared with his little hands joined; he no
longer had his doll, but he still had his bread shoes.
His mother, being uneasy, went to consult a venerable priest, who said
to her:
“I will watch beside you to-night, and I will question the little
ghost; he will answer me; I know what words to say to innocent or
guilty spirits.”
Hans appeared at the usual hour, and the priest summoned him, in the
consecrated words, to tell him what troubled him in the other world.
“It is the bread shoes which torment me, and hinder me from mounting
the diamond staircase of Paradise; they are heavier on my feet than
postilion’s boots and I cannot get past the first two or three steps,
and that troubles me greatly, for I see above a cloud of beautiful
cherubim with rosy wings who are calling to me to play with them and
are showing me toys of silver and gold.”
Having said these words, he disappeared.
The good priest, to whom Hans’s mother had made her confession, said to
her:
“You have committed a grave fault, you have profaned the daily bread,
the sacred bread, our good God’s bread, the bread that Jesus Christ, at
his last repast, chose to represent his body, and, after having refused
a slice of it to the poor man who came to your door, you kneaded from
it slippers for your Hans.
“You must open the coffin, take the bread shoes off the child’s feet,
and burn them in the all-purifying fire.”
Accompanied by the grave-digger and the mother, the priest proceeded to
the cemetery: with four blows of the spade the coffin was laid bare,
and was opened.
Hans was lying inside, just as his mother had laid him there, but his
face bore an expression of pain.
The holy priest gently removed the bread shoes from the dead child’s
feet and burned them himself at the flames of a candle, reciting a
prayer the while.
When night came, Hans appeared to his mother one last time, but he was
gay, rosy and happy, and had with him two little cherubim with whom
he had already made friends; he had wings of light and a fillet of
diamonds.
“Oh, mother, what joy, what happiness, and oh, how beautiful are the
gardens of Paradise! We play there all the time and our good God never
scolds.”
Next day, the mother saw her son again, not on earth, but in heaven;
for she died during the day, her brow pressed against the empty cradle.
THE REVEREND FATHER GAUCHER’S ELIXIR
ALPHONSE DAUDET
“Drink this, neighbour, and tell me what you think of it.”
And drop by drop, with the scrupulous care of a lapidary counting
pearls, the _curé_ of Graveson poured me out two fingers of a
golden-green liquor, warm, shimmering, exquisite.... It warmed my
stomach like sunshine.
“That is Father Gaucher’s elixir, the pride and the health of our
Provence,” the good man informed me triumphantly. “It is made at the
Premonstratensian convent, a couple of leagues from your mill.... Isn’t
it worth all their Chartreuses?... And if you only knew how amusing the
story of this elixir is! Just listen....”
Thereupon quite innocently, thinking no evil, in the Presbytery
dining-room so simple and quiet with its little pictures of the
Stations of the Cross and its pretty white starched curtains like
surplices, the abbé began to tell me a tale just a little sceptical and
irreverent, after the manner of a story from Erasmus or D’Assoucy.
* * * * *
“Twenty years ago the Premonstratensians, or rather the White Fathers,
as our Provençals call them, had fallen into great poverty. If you had
seen their house in those days, it would have made your heart ache.
“The great wall and St. Pachomius’ tower were falling into pieces.
Around the weed-grown cloisters the columns were splitting, the stone
saints were crumbling in their niches. Not a window was whole, not a
door held fast. In the garths and chapels the Rhone wind blew as it
does in the Camargue, extinguishing the candles, breaking the lead of
the windows, and driving the holy water out of the stoups. But saddest
of all was the convent steeple as silent as a deserted dove-cote, and
the fathers, for want of means to buy themselves a bell, forced to ring
to matins with clappers of almond-wood!...
“Poor White Fathers! I can see them yet, at a Corpus Christi
procession, filing sadly past in their patched mantles, pale, thin from
their diet of pumpkins and melons, and behind them his lordship the
abbot, who hung down his head as he went, ashamed at letting the sun
see his crosier with the gilding worn off and his white woollen mitre
all moth-eaten. The ladies of the confraternity wept in their ranks for
pity at the sight, and the big banner-carriers grinned and whispered to
each other, as they pointed at the poor monks:
“‛Starlings go thin when they go in a flock!’
“The fact is that the unfortunate White Fathers were themselves reduced
to debating whether they would not be better to take their flight
across the world and seek fresh pasture each one where he could.
“So then, one day when this grave question was being discussed in
the chapter, a message was brought to the prior that Brother Gaucher
asked to be heard before the council.... You must understand that this
Brother Gaucher was the convent cowherd; that is to say, he spent his
days in wandering from arch to arch of the cloisters, driving two
scraggy cows, which sought for grass in the crevices of the pavement.
Brought up until his twelfth year by an old half-witted woman in
Les Baux, called Auntie Bégon, and then taken in by the monks, the
unfortunate cowherd had never been able to learn anything except
to drive his beasts and to repeat his paternoster, and even that he
said in Provençal; for he had a thick skull, and his wits were about
as sharp as a leaden dagger. A fervent Christian, for all that,
though somewhat visionary, quite comfortable in his sackcloth, and
disciplining himself with strong conviction and such arms!...
“When they saw him enter the chapter-house, simple and clownish, and
salute the assembly with a scrape, prior, canons, treasurer, and every
one burst out laughing. That was always the effect produced everywhere
that his honest, grizzled face appeared, with its goatee and its
somewhat vacuous eyes; so Brother Gaucher was not put about.
“‛Your Reverences,’ he said in a good-natured tone, twisting at his
olive-stone beads, ‛it’s a true saying that empty barrels make the most
sound. What do you think? By putting my poor brains to steep, though
they’re soft enough already, I do believe I’ve found the way to get us
all out of our difficulties.
“‛It’s this way. You know Auntie Bégon, the good woman who took care
of me when I was little--God rest her soul, the old sinner! She used
to sing some queer songs when she had drink--Well, what I want to
tell you, my reverend fathers, is that when Auntie Bégon was alive
she knew the herbs that grow in the mountains as well and better than
any old hag in Corsica. And, by the same token, in her latter days
she compounded an incomparable elixir by blending five or six sorts
of simples, which we used to go and gather together in the Alpilles.
That’s many a year ago; but I think that with the aid of Saint
Augustine, and the permission of our father abbot, I might--if I search
carefully--recall the composition of that mysterious elixir. Then we
should only have to put it into bottles and sell it a little dear, and
the community would be able to get rich at its ease, like our brethren
at La Trappe and the Grande....’
“He had not time to finish. The prior got up and fell on his neck.
The canons took him by the hands. The treasurer, even more deeply
moved than any of the others, respectfully kissed the frayed hem of
his cowl.... Then each returned to his stall to deliberate; and in
solemn assembly the chapter decided to entrust the cows to Brother
Thrasybulus, in order that Brother Gaucher might devote himself
entirely to the preparation of his elixir.
* * * * *
“How did the good brother manage to recall Auntie Bégon’s recipe? What
efforts, what vigils did it cost him? History does not relate. But this
much is certain, at the end of six months the White Fathers’ elixir was
very popular already. In all the Comtat, in all the Arles district not
a _mas_, not a farm-house but had at the backdoor of its spence, among
the bottles of wine syrup and jars of _olives picholines_, a little
brown stone flagon sealed with the arms of Provence, with a monk in
ecstasy on a silver label. Thanks to the vogue of its elixir the house
of the Premonstratensians got rich very rapidly. St Pachomius’ tower
was rebuilt. The prior got a new mitre, the church grand new painted
windows; and in the fine tracery of the steeple a whole flight of
bells, big and little, alighted one fine Easter morning, chiming and
pealing in full swing.
“As for Brother Gaucher, the poor lay brother whose rusticities used to
amuse the chapter so, he was never mentioned now in the convent. They
only knew the Reverend Father Gaucher, a man of brains and ability,
who lived quite isolated from the petty, multifarious occupations of
the cloister, and shut himself up all day in his distillery, while
thirty monks scoured the mountains in search of his fragrant herbs....
This distillery, to which no one, not even the prior, had the right of
entry, was an old abandoned chapel at the bottom of the canons’ garden.
The good fathers’ simplicity had made it into a very mysterious and
formidable place; and any bold and inquisitive monk who managed to
reach the rose-window above the door by scrambling up the climbing
vines promptly tumbled down, terrified at his peep of Father Gaucher
with his necromancer’s beard, stooping over his furnaces, hydrometer in
hand; and all around him red stone retorts, gigantic alembics, glass
worms, a regular weird litter that glowed as if enchanted in the red
gleam of the windows....
“At close of day, when the last stroke of the Angelus sounded, the
door of this place of mystery was opened discreetly, and his Reverence
betook himself to the church for the evening office. You should have
seen the reception that he got as he traversed the monastery! The
brethren lined up as he passed. They said:
“‛Hush!... He has the secret!...’
“The treasurer walked behind him and spoke to him, bowing
deferentially.... Amid these adulations the Father went his way, wiping
his brow, his three-cornered hat with its broad brim on the back of his
head like an aureole, looking complacently about him at the wide courts
planted with orange-trees, the blue roofs where new vanes were turning,
and in the dazzling white cloister, amid the neat flower columns, the
canons all newly rigged out, walking two and two with contented faces.
“‛They owe all that to me!’ his Reverence said inwardly; and, as often
as he did so, the thought made his pride rise in gusts.
“The poor man was heavily punished for it. You’ll hear how that
happened....
* * * * *
“You must understand that one evening, whilst the office was being
sung, he arrived at the church in an extraordinary state of agitation:
red, breathless, his cowl awry, and so upset that in taking holy water
he dipped his sleeves into it up to the elbows. At first they thought
that it was excitement at being late; but when they saw him make
profound reverences to the organ and the galleries instead of saluting
the high altar, rush across the church like a whirlwind, wander about
in the choir for five minutes in search of his stall, then, once he was
seated, sway right and left, smiling benignly, a murmur of astonishment
ran through the nave and aisles. They chuckled to one another behind
their breviaries:
“‛Whatever is the matter with our Father Gaucher?... Whatever is the
matter with our Father Gaucher?’
“Twice the prior impatiently let his crosier fall on the pavement to
command silence.... Down at the end of the choir the psalms still went
on; but the responses lacked animation....
“Suddenly, in the middle of the _Ave verum_, lo and behold, Father
Gaucher flung himself back in his stall, and sang out at the top of his
voice:
“‛In Paris there dwells a White Father,
Patatin, patatan, tarabin, taraban....’
“General consternation. Every one rose. There were cries of:
“‛Take him away!... He’s possessed!’
“The canons crossed themselves. His Lordship flourished his crosier....
But Father Gaucher saw nothing, heard nothing; and two sturdy monks
had to drag him out by the side-door of the choir, struggling like
a demoniac and going on worse than ever with his ‛patatins’ and
‛tarabans.’
* * * * *
“Next morning, at daybreak, the unfortunate man was on his knees in the
prior’s oratory, owning his fault with a torrent of tears.
“‛It was the elixir, my lord; it was the elixir that overcame me,’ he
said, beating on his breast.
“And seeing him so conscience-smitten, so penitent, the good prior
himself was moved.
“‛Come, come, Father Gaucher, set your mind at rest; it will all pass
away like dew in the sun.... After all, the scandal has not been so
great as you think. To be sure, there was a song that was a little ...
hem! hem!... Yet let us hope that the novices would not pick it up....
But now, let us see; tell me frankly how it all happened.... It was
when you were trying the elixir, was it not? Perhaps your hand was too
heavy?... Yes, yes, I understand.... It is like brother Schwartz, the
inventor of gunpowder: you have been the victim of your invention. But
tell me, my good friend, is it absolutely necessary for you to try this
terrible elixir on yourself?’
“‛Unfortunately it is, my lord! The gauge gives me the strength and the
degree of alcohol, it is true; but for the fineness, the velvetiness, I
can’t very well trust anything but my tongue!...’
“‛Ah, to be sure!... But listen for another moment to what I am going
to say to you.... When you are compelled to taste the elixir thus, does
it seem good? Do you derive any pleasure from it?’
“‛Alas, yes, my lord!’ said the unfortunate father, blushing to the
roots of his hair. ‛These last two evenings I have found such a bouquet
in it, such an aroma!... Surely it must be the Devil that has played me
this sorry trick.... And so I have quite decided to use nothing but the
gauge in future. If the liquor is not fine enough, if it does not pearl
enough, so much the worse....’
“‛For any sake don’t do that,’ the prior interrupted excitedly. ‛We
must not run the risk of making our customers dissatisfied.... All you
have to do, now that you are forewarned, is to be on your guard....
Let us see, how much do you require to ascertain?... Fifteen or twenty
drops, eh?... Let’s say twenty drops.... The Devil will be smart
indeed if he catches you with twenty drops.... In any case, to prevent
accidents, I’ll dispense you from coming to church in future. You
will say the evening office in the distillery.... And, meanwhile, go
in peace, reverend father, and, above all things, count your drops
carefully.’
“Alas, his poor reverence had much need to count his drops!... The
Devil had hold of him, and never afterwards let him go.
“The distillery heard some strange offices!
* * * * *
“So long as it was day, all went well. The father was tolerably
calm: he prepared his chafing-dishes and alembics, sorted his herbs
carefully, all Provence herbs, fine, grey, serrated, hot with perfume
and sunshine.... But in the evening, when the simples were infused and
the elixir was cooling in great copper basins, the poor man’s martyrdom
began.
“‛Seventeen ... eighteen ... nineteen ... twenty!...’
“The drops fell from the stirring-rod into the silver-gilt goblet. The
father swallowed the twenty at a gulp, almost without pleasure. What he
longed for was the twenty-first. Oh, that twenty-first drop!... Then,
to escape temptation, he went and knelt down at the farthest end of
the laboratory, and buried himself in his paternosters. But from the
still-warm liquor there rose a faint steam charged with aromas, which
came stealing about him and sent him back willy-nilly to his basins....
The liquor was a lovely golden green.... Leaning over it with open
nostrils, the father stirred it gently with his stirring-rod, and in
the little sparkling bubbles that the emerald wave carried round he
seemed to see Auntie Bégon’s eyes laughing and twinkling as they looked
at him....
“‛Here goes! Another drop!’
“And with one drop and another the unfortunate at last had his goblet
full to the brim. Then, completely vanquished, he sank down in a great
arm-chair, and lolling at ease, his eyes half shut, tasted his sin sip
by sip, saying softly to himself with a delicious remorse:
“‘Ah! I’m damning myself ... damning myself....’
“The most terrible thing was that at the bottom of this diabolical
elixir he rediscovered by some black art or other all Auntie Bégon’s
naughty songs: ‛There are three little gossips, who talk of making a
banquet’ ... or: ‛Master Andrew’s little shepherdess goes off to the
wood by her little self,’ and always the famous one about the White
Fathers: ‛Patatin, patatan.’
“Imagine his confusion next day when his cell-mates said to him slyly:
“‛Eh, eh, Father Gaucher, you had a bee in your bonnet last night, when
you went to bed!’
“Then it was tears, despair and fasting, sackcloth and discipline. But
nothing could avail against the demon of the elixir, and every evening
at the same hour his possession began anew.
* * * * *
“All this time orders were pouring into the abbey in excess of
expectation. They came from Nîmes, from Aix, from Avignon, from
Marseilles.... Every day the convent became more like a factory. There
were packing brothers, labelling brothers, others for the accounts,
others for the carting; the service of God may have lost a few tolls of
the bells now and again by it; but I can assure you that the poor folk
of the district lost nothing....
“Well, then, one fine Sunday morning, whilst the treasurer was reading
in full chapter his stock-sheet at the end of the year, and the good
canons were listening to him with sparkling eyes and smiles on their
lips, who should burst into the middle of the meeting but Father
Gaucher, shouting out:
“‛That’s an end of it!... I can’t stand it any longer!... Give me my
cows again!’
“‛But what is it, Father Gaucher?’ asked the prior, who had his own
suspicions of what it was.
“‛What is it, my lord?... I’m on a fair way of preparing myself a fine
eternity of flames and pitch-forks.... I drink, and drink, like a lost
soul; that’s what it is!...’
‛But I told you to count your drops.’
‛Ah, so you did! To count my drops! But I would need to count by
goblets now.... Yes, your Reverences, that’s what I’ve come to. Three
bottles an evening!... You know quite well that can’t go on for
ever.... So, get whom you like to make the elixir.... God’s fire burn
me, if I take anything more to do with it!’
“There was no more laughing for the chapter.
“‛But, wretched man, you’ll ruin us!’ cried the treasurer, brandishing
his ledger.
“‛Would you rather I damned myself?’
“Thereupon the prior stood up.
“‛Reverend sirs,’ he said, stretching out his fine white hand, on which
the pastoral ring glistened, ‛it can all be arranged.... It’s at night,
is it not, my dear son, that the demon assails you?...’
‛Yes, Sir Prior, regularly every evening.... When I see the night
coming on, I get all in a sweat, saving your Reverence’s presence, like
Capitou’s ass, when he saw them come with the pack-saddle.’
“‛Well, then, keep your mind easy.... In future, every evening, during
the office, we’ll recite on your behalf the Prayer of Saint Augustine,
to which plenary indulgence is attached.... With that, you are safe,
whatever happens.... It is absolution at the very moment of sin.’
“‘O that is good, thank you, Sir Prior.’
“And, without asking anything more, Father Gaucher returned to his
alembics as light as a lark.
“And in fact, from that moment, every evening, at the end of compline,
the officiant never failed to say:
“‘Let us pray for our poor Father Gaucher, who is sacrificing his soul
in the interests of the community. _Oremus, Domine_....’
“And, while the prayer ran along all those white cowls prostrated in
the shadow of the naves, like a little breeze over snow, away at the
other end of the convent, behind the lighted windows of the distillery,
Father Gaucher might be heard chanting open-throated:
“‘In Paris there dwells a White Father,
Patatin, patatan, tarabin, taraban;
In Paris there dwells a White Father
Who sets all the little nuns dancing,
Trip, trip, trip, trip in a garden;
Who sets all the....’”
* * * * *
At this point the good _curé_ stopped short in horror. “Mercy on us! If
my parishioners heard me!”
THE LEGEND OF SAINT JULIAN HOSPITATOR
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
I
Julian’s father and mother lived in a castle in the midst of woods on
the slope of a hill.
Its four corner-towers had pointed roofs covered with scales of lead,
and the base of the walls rested on masses of rock which went down
abruptly right to the bottom of the moat.
The pavements of the court were as clean as the flagged floor of a
church. Long gutters, shaped like dragons with down-drooped jaws,
vomited the rain-water into the cistern; and on the window-ledges at
every storey, in a pot of painted earthenware, a plant of basil or
heliotrope opened to the sun.
A second line of defence, formed of stakes, enclosed first an orchard
of fruit-trees, then a parterre, where the combinations of the flowers
formed patterns, and next a trellis with bowers in which to take the
air, and a mall which served to amuse the pages. On the other side were
the kennel, the stables, the bakery, the wine-press and the barns. A
meadow of green grass extended all around, itself enclosed by a strong
hedge of thorns.
They had lived in peace so long that the portcullis was never let
down; the moats were full of water; the swallows made their nests in
the openings of the battlements; and the archer who walked up and down
upon the walls all day long retired into his turret as soon as the sun
shone too strongly, and slept there like a monk.
Indoors, the ironwork shone everywhere; tapestries in the rooms gave
protection from the cold; and the presses were crammed with linen; the
wine-tuns were piled up in the cellars, the oaken coffers groaned with
the weight of bags of silver.
In the great hall arms of every age and every nation were to be
seen among banners and heads of wild beasts, from the slings of the
Amalekites and the javelins of the Garamantes to the scimitars of the
Saracens and the chain-coats of the Normans.
The great spit in the kitchen could turn an ox; the chapel was as
sumptuous as the oratory of a king. There was even, in a retired
corner, a vapour-bath in the Roman fashion; but the good lord of the
castle abstained from it, deeming that it was an idolatrous custom.
Always wrapped in a fox pelisse, he walked about his house, did justice
among his vassals, and appeased the quarrels of his neighbours. In
winter he watched the snow-flakes fall, or had histories read to him.
As soon as the good weather came, he went out on his mule along the
lanes, amongst the green cornfields, and talked with the rustics, to
whom he gave advice. After many adventures, he had taken to wife a
damsel of high degree.
She was very fair, somewhat proud and serious. The horns of her
head-dress brushed against the lintel of the doors; the train of her
cloth gown trailed three paces behind her. Her household was ruled like
the interior of a monastery; every morning she gave out their work to
her servants, saw to the comfits and unguents, span on her distaff, or
embroidered altar-cloths. In answer to her prayers God granted her a
son.
Then there were great rejoicings, and a feast which lasted three days
and four nights, amid the illumination of torches, to the sound of
harps, on floors strawed with leafage. At it they ate the rarest
spices, with fowls as big as sheep; as a diversion, a dwarf came
out of a pasty; and when the bowls gave out, for the crowd was ever
increasing, they were obliged to drink from the horns and helmets.
The young mother was not present at those festivities. She stayed in
her bed and kept quiet. One evening she woke and saw, by a moonbeam
that shone in at the window, something like a shadow that moved. It was
an ancient in a frock of coarse stuff, with a chaplet at his side, a
wallet on his shoulder, with all the appearance of a hermit. He came up
to her pillow and said without opening his lips:
“Rejoice, O mother! Thy son will be a saint!”
She was about to cry out; but gliding upon the moon-ray he rose gently
into the air, then disappeared. The songs of the banquet sounded more
loudly than ever. She heard the voices of angels; and her head sank
back upon the pillow, which was surmounted by the bone of a martyr in a
frame of carbuncles.
Next day all the servants, when questioned, declared that they had not
seen any hermit. Dream or reality, this must have been a communication
from Heaven; but she was careful to say nothing about it, lest she
should be charged with pride.
The revellers departed at break of day; and Julian’s father was outside
the postern, where he had been seeing the last of them off, when all at
once a mendicant rose up before him in the mist. He was a gipsy with
plaited beard, silver rings on both his arms, and sparkling eyeballs.
With an inspired air he stammered these inconsequent words:
“Ah! ah! your son!... much blood!... much glory!... always fortunate!
An Emperor’s family.”
And, stooping to pick up his alms, he disappeared in the grass and
vanished.
The good castellan looked right and left and called his loudest. Not a
soul! The wind blew, the morning mists cleared away.
He attributed this vision to lightheadedness from want of sleep. “If I
talk about it,” he said to himself, “they will laugh at me.” However,
the splendours destined for his son dazzled him, although the promise
of them was by no means clear, and he even doubted whether he had heard
it.
The spouses kept their secrets from each other. But both cherished
the child with equal love; and, respecting him as one marked out by
God, they bestowed an infinity of care upon his person. His cradle was
stuffed with the finest down; a lamp in the shape of a dove burned over
it continually; three nurses lulled him to rest; and, well wrapped in
his swaddling-bands, his face rosy, and his eyes blue, with his brocade
cloak and his cap trimmed with pearls, he looked like a little Jesus.
His teeth came without his uttering a single moan.
When he was seven, his mother taught him to sing. To make him brave,
his father hoisted him on to a great horse. The child smiled with
satisfaction, and was not long in learning everything about chargers.
A very learned old monk instructed him in the Holy Scriptures, Arabic
cyphering, Latin letters, and the art of drawing dainty pictures on
vellum. They worked together away up at the top of a tower, out of the
noise.
The lesson finished, they went down to the garden, where, walking about
side by side, they studied the flowers.
Sometimes they would see a string of pack-animals making their way
along the bottom of the vale conducted by a man on foot in Oriental
garb. The castellan, who had recognized him for a merchant, would send
a servant to him. The stranger, taking confidence, turned out of his
way, and, taken into the parlour, he brought out of his coffers pieces
of velvet and silk, jewellery, aromatics, strange things of which
the use was unknown; in the end the honest man went away with great
gain, without having suffered any violence. At other times a group of
pilgrims would knock at the door. Their wet garments smoked before the
fire; and when they were fed they told their travels: the wanderings of
barks on the foaming sea, marches on foot through the burning sands,
the ferocity of the Paynims, the caverns of Syria, the Cradle and the
Sepulchre. Then they gave the young lord cockle-shells from their
mantles.
Often the castellan feasted his old companions-in-arms. As they drank,
they recalled their wars, the assaults on fortresses with battering
of engines and prodigious wounds. Julian, who was listening, uttered
shouts at what he heard; thereupon his father had no doubt that he
would some day be a conqueror. But in the evening, when the angelus
sounded, as he passed between the bowing poor, he put his hand in
his purse with such modesty and such a noble air that his mother was
certain he would be an archbishop in course of time.
His place in chapel was beside his parents; and however long the
offices might be he remained on his knees at his faldstool, his bonnet
on the ground and his hands clasped.
One day during Mass, on raising his head, he noticed a little white
mouse which came out of a hole in the wall. It ran on to the first
step of the altar, and, after two or three turns to right and left,
made off the same way. Next Sunday the thought that he might see it
again troubled him. It came back; and each Sunday he waited for it, was
annoyed by it, and was seized by hatred of it, and resolved to make
away with it.
So, having shut the door and scattered some crumbs of cake on the
steps, he stationed himself before the hole with a switch in his hand.
After a very long time a pink muzzle appeared, then all the mouse. He
struck a light blow and remained stupefied before the tiny body that no
longer moved. A drop of blood stained the pavement. He wiped it off
hastily with his sleeve, threw the mouse outside, and said nothing
about it to any one.
All sorts of small birds picked at the seeds in the garden. He took
it into his head to put peas into a hollow reed. When he heard a
twittering in the garden, he approached softly, then raised his tube,
puffed his cheeks, and the little creatures rained upon his shoulders
so abundantly that he could not keep from laughing, overjoyed at his
mischief.
One morning, as he was returning along the wall, he caught sight of a
big pigeon on top of the rampart, pouting in the sun. Julian stopped to
look at it; there was a gap in the wall just there, a splinter of stone
came to his hand. He bent his arm, and the stone knocked down the bird,
which fell in a heap into the moat.
He hurried down, tearing himself on the bushes, searching everywhere,
more active than a young dog.
The pigeon was quivering with broken wings, hanging in the branches of
a privet-bush.
Its persistence in life irritated the child. He set about wringing its
neck, and the bird’s convulsions made his heart beat, and filled it
with a savage and tumultuous pleasure. When it at last stiffened, he
felt himself fainting.
That evening, at supper, his father declared that a boy of his age
ought to learn venery; and he went to look for an old manuscript
containing all the pastime of the chase in question and answer. In it
a master showed his pupil the art of entering dogs and manning hawks,
of setting snares, how to recognize the stag by his fumets, the fox by
his footprints, the wolf by his pads; the best way to discover their
tracks, how they are started, and where their refuges usually are; what
are the most favourable winds, with an enumeration of the calls and
rules of the quarry.
When Julian could repeat all those things by heart, his father made up
a pack of hounds for him.
First were to be seen four and twenty Barbary greyhounds, faster
than gazelles, but apt to get out of hand; then seventeen couples
of Breton dogs, spotted with white on a red ground, unfaltering in
their obedience to command, strong-chested and deep-throated. For the
attack of the wild boar and perilous lairs, there were forty griffons,
hairy as bears. Mastiffs from Tartary, almost as tall as asses,
flame-coloured, broad-backed and straight-legged, were meant to pursue
the aurochs. The black coat of the spaniels gleamed like satin; the
yelping of the talbots rivalled the music of the beagles. In a separate
yard, rattling their chains and rolling their eyes, growled eight Alan
bulldogs, formidable brutes, which would spring at a horseman’s belly
and were not afraid of lions.
They all were fed on wheaten bread, drank from stone troughs, and bore
sonorous names.
The falconry, perhaps, even excelled the kennel. The good lord, by dint
of money, had procured tercels from the Caucasus, sakers from Babylon,
gerfalcons from Germany, and peregrine falcons captured on the cliffs
by the shores of frozen seas in distant lands. They were lodged in a
shed covered with thatch, and, fastened in order of their size on the
perch, had a sod of turf before them, on which they were set from time
to time to keep them limber.
Purse-nets, hooks, spring-traps, all sorts of gins, were constructed.
Often they took out to the fields spaniels, which very soon stood. Then
the huntsmen, advancing step by step, cautiously spread an immense net
over their motionless bodies. A word made them bark; quails started up;
and the ladies of the neighbourhood, who had been invited with their
husbands, the children and the waiting-women, all threw themselves upon
them and caught them easily.
At other times, a drum was beaten to start the hares; foxes fell into
trenches, or else a spring opened and caught a wolf by the foot.
But Julian despised those easy artifices; he preferred to hunt far
away from other people, with his horse and his hawk. It was almost
always a great tartaret from Scythia, white as snow. Its leather hood
was surmounted by a plume, golden bells trembled on its blue feet; and
it sat fast on its master’s wrist while his horse galloped and the
plains unrolled beneath them. Julian, unfastening its leashes, loosed
it all at once; the brave bird mounted straight into the air like an
arrow; and two unequal specks could be seen twisting, meeting, then
disappearing in the heights of the azure. The falcon was not long in
descending, tearing some bird in pieces, and came to resume its place
on its master’s gauntlet, its two wings trembling.
In this fashion Julian flew the heron, the kite, the crow, and the
vulture.
He loved, sounding his horn, to follow his dogs as they ran along the
hill-sides, leapt the brooks, climbed up to the woods; and when the
stag began to sigh under their bites he struck it down swiftly, then
took pleasure in the fury of the mastiffs as they devoured it, cut in
pieces upon its reeking hide.
On misty days, he hid himself in a marsh to watch for geese, otters and
wild duck.
Three squires waited for him at break of day at the foot of the porch,
and the old monk, leaning out of his attic window, made signs to him in
vain. Julian did not turn back, he went his way in the heat of the sun,
in the rain, in storm, drank water from the springs in his hand, ate
wild apples as he trotted; if he was tired, he rested beneath an oak;
and he came home at midnight covered with blood and mire, with thorns
in his hair and smelling of wild beasts. He became like them. When his
mother embraced him, he submitted coldly to her clasp, and appeared to
be dreaming of something deep.
He slew bears with blows of his hunting-knife, bulls with the axe, wild
boars with the spear; and once, even, without so much as a stick, he
defended himself against wolves which were gnawing some corpses beneath
a gallows.
* * * * *
One winter morning, he set out before daylight, well equipped, a
cross-bow on his shoulder and a quiverful of bolts at his saddle-bow.
His Danish jennet, followed by two basset-hounds, made the ground ring
as it walked with even pace. Drops of sleet clung to his mantle, a
strong breeze was blowing. One side of the horizon cleared; and in the
paleness of the twilight he saw some rabbits running about at the mouth
of their burrows. The two basset-hounds suddenly dashed upon them, and
with a quick shake to this side and that broke their necks.
Soon he entered a wood. On the end of a branch a capercaillie benumbed
with cold was sleeping with its head under its wing. Julian sliced off
both its feet with a backhanded stroke of his sword, and went on his
way without picking it up.
Three hours later he found himself on the peak of a mountain so high
that the sky seemed almost black. Before him a rock like a long wall
sloped down and overhung a precipice; and at its end two wild goats
looked down into the abyss. As he had not his bolts, for he had left
his horse behind, he determined to climb down to them; crouching,
bare-footed, he at last reached the first of the goats and plunged
a poniard between its ribs. The second, seized with terror, leapt
into space. Julian darted forward to strike it, and, his right foot
slipping, he fell across the carcase of the other, his face over the
abyss and his arms out-stretched.
Having got down to the plain again, he followed the willows that
fringed a stream. Cranes, flying very low, passed over his head from
time to time. Julian felled them with his whip and never missed one.
Meanwhile the warmer air had melted the rime, great mists floated about
and the sun appeared. He saw shining far away a frozen lake, which
looked like lead. In the middle of the lake was a beast which Julian
did not know, a beaver with its black muzzle. In spite of the distance,
a bolt brought it down; and he was vexed not to be able to carry away
its skin.
Then he went on through an avenue of great trees which formed a sort of
triumphal arch with their crowns at the edge of a forest. A roe-deer
sprang out of a thicket, a fallow-deer appeared in a cross-way, a
badger came out of a hole, a peacock on the grass displayed its
tail;--and, when he had killed them all, more roe-deer presented
themselves, more fallow-deer, more badgers, more peacocks, and
blackbirds, jays, polecats, foxes, hedgehogs, lynxes, an infinity of
beasts, more numerous at every step. They played about him, trembling,
with sweet and supplicating looks. But Julian never grew tired of
killing them, now winding his cross-bow, now unsheathing his sword,
now thrusting with his cutlass, without a thought in his mind, without
recollection of anything whatsoever. He was hunting in some country
somewhere, from a time unknown, simply because he was there, everything
done with the ease experienced in dreams. An extraordinary spectacle
arrested him. Stags filled a valley shaped like a circus; and huddled
one against the other they warmed themselves with their breaths, which
could be seen reeking in the mist.
The prospect of such carnage choked him with delight for some minutes.
Then he dismounted, turned up his sleeves, and began to shoot.
At the whistling of the first bolt, all the stags turned round their
heads at once. Gaps showed in their mass; plaintive voices sounded, and
a great commotion agitated the herd.
The sides of the valley were too high for them to clear. They sprang
about in the enclosure, seeking to escape. Julian aimed, let go, and
his arrows fell like the rainstreaks in a storm-shower. The maddened
stags fought, reared, climbed upon one another; and their bodies locked
by their antlers made a great hillock which crumbled away as it moved.
At last they were dead, lying on the sand, the foam at their nostrils,
their entrails protruding, the heaving of their flanks subsiding by
degrees. Then all was still.
Night was about to fall; and behind the wood, between the branches, the
sky was like a lake of blood.
Julian leant his back against a tree. With listless eye he contemplated
the enormity of the massacre, not understanding how he had been able to
do it.
On the other side of the valley, at the edge of the forest, he saw a
stag, a hind and her fawn.
The stag, which was black and of monstrous size, had sixteen points
and a white beard. The hind, light as withered leaves in colour, was
browsing on the grass; and the dappled fawn sucked at her dug without
hindering her progress.
The cross-bow snored once again. The fawn, that same instant, was
killed. Then its dam, looking to the sky, brayed in a voice deep,
heart-rending, human. With a shot full in the breast the exasperated
Julian stretched her on the earth.
The great stag had seen him, and gave a spring. Julian discharged his
last bolt at him. It struck his forehead and remained fixed there.
The great stag did not seem to feel it; striding over the dead he kept
advancing, was about to charge down upon him and disembowel him; and
Julian drew back in unspeakable terror. The prodigious animal halted;
and with flaming eyes, solemn as a patriarch or a justiciary, while a
bell tolled in the distance, it thrice repeated:
“Accursed! Accursed! Accursed! Some day, ferocious heart, thou wilt
murder thy father and mother!”
It bent its knees, closed its eyelids gently, and died.
Julian was stupefied, then overcome by sudden fatigue; and an immense
disgust, an immense sadness, took possession of him. With his head in
both his hands, he wept a long time.
His horse was lost; his dogs had left him; the solitude which enfolded
him seemed all menacing with vague perils. Then, seized with fright, he
took a way across country, chose a path at hazard, and found himself
almost immediately at the castle-gate.
That night he did not sleep. Under the swaying of the hanging lamp he
continually saw the great black stag. Its prediction obsessed him; he
fought against it. “No, no, no! I cannot kill them!” Then he thought,
“But what if I wished it?” And he was in dread lest the Devil should
inspire him with the desire.
For three long months, his mother prayed in anguish at his pillow, and
his father walked continually up and down the corridors in anguish,
groaning. He summoned the most famous master-leeches, who ordered
quantities of drugs. Julian’s malady, they said, was caused by some
noxious wind or some amorous desire. But to all questions the young man
shook his head.
* * * * *
His strength came back to him; and they walked him out in the
courtyard, the old monk and the good lord each supporting him by an arm.
When he was completely restored, he refrained obstinately from the
chase.
His father, wishing to cheer him, made him a present of a great Saracen
sword.
It was at the top of a pillar, in a trophy. To reach it a ladder was
required. Julian climbed it. The heavy sword slipped through his
fingers, and grazed the good lord so closely, as it fell, that his
gown was cut by it; Julian thought he had killed his father, and
fainted.
Thenceforth he had a dread of weapons. The sight of a naked blade made
him blench. This weakness caused great distress to his family.
At length the old monk commanded him in the name of God and for the
honour of his ancestors to resume the exercises of a gentleman.
The squires amused themselves every day with throwing the javelin. In
this Julian very soon excelled. He sent his into bottle-mouths, broke
the teeth of the weather-vanes, hit the nails-studs of the doors at a
hundred paces.
One summer evening, at the hour when the mist renders things
indistinct, he was under the trellis in the garden and saw down at the
end two white wings that fluttered at the height of the fence. He never
doubted but it was a stork; and he darted his javelin.
A piercing cry resounded.
It was his mother, whose head-dress with its long lappets remained
pinned to the wall.
Julian fled from the castle, and was never seen there again.