Produced by David Widger
ORIGINAL SHORT STORIES
By Guy De Maupassant
Translated by:
ALBERT M. C. McMASTER, B.A.
A. E. HENDERSON, B.A.
MME. QUESADA and Others
VOLUME IX.
TOINE
MADAME HUSSON'S ROSIER
THE ADOPTED SON
A COWARD
OLD MONGILET
MOONLIGHT
THE FIRST SNOWFALL
SUNDAYS OF A BOURGEOIS
A RECOLLECTION
OUR LETTERS
THE LOVE OF LONG AGO
FRIEND JOSEPH
THE EFFEMINATES
OLD AMABLE
TOINE
He was known for thirty miles round was father Toine--fat Toine,
Toine-my-extra, Antoine Macheble, nicknamed Burnt-Brandy--the innkeeper
of Tournevent.
It was he who had made famous this hamlet buried in a niche in the
valley that led down to the sea, a poor little peasants' hamlet
consisting of ten Norman cottages surrounded by ditches and trees.
The houses were hidden behind a curve which had given the place the name
of Tournevent. It seemed to have sought shelter in this ravine overgrown
with grass and rushes, from the keen, salt sea wind--the ocean wind that
devours and burns like fire, that drys up and withers like the sharpest
frost of winter, just as birds seek shelter in the furrows of the fields
in time of storm.
But the whole hamlet seemed to be the property of Antoine
Macheble, nicknamed Burnt-Brandy, who was called also Toine, or
Toine-My-Extra-Special, the latter in consequence of a phrase current in
his mouth:
“My Extra-Special is the best in France:”
His “Extra-Special” was, of course, his cognac.
For the last twenty years he had served the whole countryside with his
Extra-Special and his “Burnt-Brandy,” for whenever he was asked: “What
shall I drink, Toine?” he invariably answered: “A burnt-brandy, my
son-in-law; that warms the inside and clears the head--there's nothing
better for your body.”
He called everyone his son-in-law, though he had no daughter, either
married or to be married.
Well known indeed was Toine Burnt-Brandy, the stoutest man in all
Normandy. His little house seemed ridiculously small, far too small and
too low to hold him; and when people saw him standing at his door, as
he did all day long, they asked one another how he could possibly get
through the door. But he went in whenever a customer appeared, for it
was only right that Toine should be invited to take his thimbleful of
whatever was drunk in his wine shop.
His inn bore the sign: “The Friends' Meeting-Place”--and old Toine
was, indeed, the friend of all. His customers came from Fecamp and
Montvilliers, just for the fun of seeing him and hearing him talk; for
fat Toine would have made a tombstone laugh. He had a way of chaffing
people without offending them, or of winking to express what he didn't
say, of slapping his thighs when he was merry in such a way as to make
you hold your sides, laughing. And then, merely to see him drink was a
curiosity. He drank everything that was offered him, his roguish eyes
twinkling, both with the enjoyment of drinking and at the thought of
the money he was taking in. His was a double pleasure: first, that of
drinking; and second, that of piling up the cash.
You should have heard him quarrelling with his wife! It was worth paying
for to see them together. They had wrangled all the thirty years they
had been married; but Toine was good-humored, while his better-half grew
angry. She was a tall peasant woman, who walked with long steps like a
stork, and had a head resembling that of an angry screech-owl. She spent
her time rearing chickens in a little poultry-yard behind the inn, and
she was noted for her success in fattening them for the table.
Whenever the gentry of Fecamp gave a dinner they always had at least one
of Madame Toine's chickens to be in the fashion.
But she was born ill-tempered, and she went through life in a mood of
perpetual discontent. Annoyed at everyone, she seemed to be particularly
annoyed at her husband. She disliked his gaiety, his reputation, his
rude health, his embonpoint. She treated him as a good-for-nothing
creature because he earned his money without working, and as a glutton
because he ate and drank as much as ten ordinary men; and not a day went
by without her declaring spitefully:
“You'd be better in the stye along with the pigs! You're so fat it makes
me sick to look at you!”
And she would shout in his face:
“Wait! Wait a bit! We'll see! You'll burst one of these fine days like a
sack of corn-you old bloat, you!”
Toine would laugh heartily, patting his corpulent person, and replying:
“Well, well, old hen, why don't you fatten up your chickens like that?
just try!”
And, rolling his sleeves back from his enormous arm, he said:
“That would make a fine wing now, wouldn't it?”
And the customers, doubled up with laughter, would thump the table with
their fists and stamp their feet on the floor.
The old woman, mad with rage, would repeat:
“Wait a bit! Wait a bit! You'll see what'll happen. He'll burst like a
sack of grain!”
And off she would go, amid the jeers and laughter of the drinkers.
Toine was, in fact, an astonishing sight, he was so fat, so heavy, so
red. He was one of those enormous beings with whom Death seems to be
amusing himself--playing perfidious tricks and pranks, investing with
an irresistibly comic air his slow work of destruction. Instead of
manifesting his approach, as with others, in white hairs, in emaciation,
in wrinkles, in the gradual collapse which makes the onlookers say:
“Gad! how he has changed!” he took a malicious pleasure in fattening
Toine, in making him monstrous and absurd, in tingeing his face with a
deep crimson, in giving him the appearance of superhuman health, and the
changes he inflicts on all were in the case of Toine laughable, comic,
amusing, instead of being painful and distressing to witness.
“Wait a bit! Wait a bit!” said his wife. “You'll see.”
At last Toine had an apoplectic fit, and was paralyzed in consequence.
The giant was put to bed in the little room behind the partition of the
drinking-room that he might hear what was said and talk to his friends,
for his head was quite clear although his enormous body was helplessly
inert. It was hoped at first that his immense legs would regain some
degree of power; but this hope soon disappeared, and Toine spent his
days and nights in the bed, which was only made up once a week, with the
help of four neighbors who lifted the innkeeper, each holding a limb,
while his mattress was turned.
He kept his spirits, nevertheless; but his gaiety was of a different
kind--more timid, more humble; and he lived in a constant, childlike
fear of his wife, who grumbled from morning till night:
“Look at him there--the great glutton! the good-for-nothing creature,
the old boozer! Serve him right, serve him right!”
He no longer answered her. He contented himself with winking behind the
old woman's back, and turning over on his other side--the only movement
of which he was now capable. He called this exercise a “tack to the
north” or a “tack to the south.”
His great distraction nowadays was to listen to the conversations in the
bar, and to shout through the wall when he recognized a friend's voice:
“Hallo, my son-in-law! Is that you, Celestin?”
And Celestin Maloisel answered:
“Yes, it's me, Toine. Are you getting about again yet, old fellow?”
“Not exactly getting about,” answered Toine. “But I haven't grown thin;
my carcass is still good.”
Soon he got into the way of asking his intimates into his room to keep
him company, although it grieved him to see that they had to drink
without him. It pained him to the quick that his customers should be
drinking without him.
“That's what hurts worst of all,” he would say: “that I cannot drink
my Extra-Special any more. I can put up with everything else, but going
without drink is the very deuce.”
Then his wife's screech-owl face would appear at the window, and she
would break in with the words:
“Look at him! Look at him now, the good-for-nothing wretch! I've got to
feed him and wash him just as if he were a pig!”
And when the old woman had gone, a cock with red feathers would
sometimes fly up to the window sill and looking into the room with his
round inquisitive eye, would begin to crow loudly. Occasionally, too, a
few hens would flutter as far as the foot of the bed, seeking crumbs on
the floor. Toine's friends soon deserted the drinking room to come and
chat every afternoon beside the invalid's bed. Helpless though he was,
the jovial Toine still provided them with amusement. He would have made
the devil himself laugh. Three men were regular in their attendance at
the bedside: Celestin Maloisel, a tall, thin fellow, somewhat gnarled,
like the trunk of an apple-tree; Prosper Horslaville, a withered little
man with a ferret nose, cunning as a fox; and Cesaire Paumelle, who
never spoke, but who enjoyed Toine's society all the same.
They brought a plank from the yard, propped it upon the edge of the bed,
and played dominoes from two till six.
But Toine's wife soon became insufferable. She could not endure that her
fat, lazy husband should amuse himself at games while lying in his bed;
and whenever she caught him beginning a game she pounced furiously on
the dominoes, overturned the plank, and carried all away into the bar,
declaring that it was quite enough to have to feed that fat, lazy pig
without seeing him amusing himself, as if to annoy poor people who had
to work hard all day long.
Celestin Maloisel and Cesaire Paumelle bent their heads to the storm,
but Prosper Horslaville egged on the old woman, and was only amused at
her wrath.
One day, when she was more angry than usual, he said:
“Do you know what I'd do if I were you?”
She fixed her owl's eyes on him, and waited for his next words.
Prosper went on:
“Your man is as hot as an oven, and he never leaves his bed--well, I'd
make him hatch some eggs.”
She was struck dumb at the suggestion, thinking that Prosper could not
possibly be in earnest. But he continued:
“I'd put five under one arm, and five under the other, the same day that
I set a hen. They'd all come out at the same time; then I'd take your
husband's chickens to the hen to bring up with her own. You'd rear a
fine lot that way.”
“Could it be done?” asked the astonished old woman.
“Could it be done?” echoed the man. “Why not? Since eggs can be hatched
in a warm box why shouldn't they be hatched in a warm bed?”
She was struck by this reasoning, and went away soothed and reflective.
A week later she entered Toine's room with her apron full of eggs, and
said:
“I've just put the yellow hen on ten eggs. Here are ten for you; try not
to break them.”
“What do you want?” asked the amazed Toine.
“I want you to hatch them, you lazy creature!” she answered.
He laughed at first; then, finding she was serious, he got angry, and
refused absolutely to have the eggs put under his great arms, that the
warmth of his body might hatch them.
But the old woman declared wrathfully:
“You'll get no dinner as long as you won't have them. You'll see what'll
happen.”
Tome was uneasy, but answered nothing.
When twelve o'clock struck, he called out:
“Hullo, mother, is the soup ready?”
“There's no soup for you, lazy-bones,” cried the old woman from her
kitchen.
He thought she must be joking, and waited a while. Then he begged,
implored, swore, “tacked to the north” and “tacked to the south,” and
beat on the wall with his fists, but had to consent at last to five eggs
being placed against his left side; after which he had his soup.
When his friends arrived that afternoon they thought he must be ill, he
seemed so constrained and queer.
They started the daily game of dominoes. But Tome appeared to take no
pleasure in it, and reached forth his hand very slowly, and with great
precaution.
“What's wrong with your arm?” asked Horslaville.
“I have a sort of stiffness in the shoulder,” answered Toine.
Suddenly they heard people come into the inn. The players were silent.
It was the mayor with the deputy. They ordered two glasses of
Extra-Special, and began to discuss local affairs. As they were talking
in somewhat low tones Toine wanted to put his ear to the wall, and,
forgetting all about his eggs, he made a sudden “tack to the north,”
which had the effect of plunging him into the midst of an omelette.
At the loud oath he swore his wife came hurrying into the room, and,
guessing what had happened, stripped the bedclothes from him with
lightning rapidity. She stood at first without moving or uttering a
syllable, speechless with indignation at sight of the yellow poultice
sticking to her husband's side.
Then, trembling with fury, she threw herself on the paralytic, showering
on him blows such as those with which she cleaned her linen on the
seashore. Tome's three friends were choking with laughter, coughing,
spluttering and shouting, and the fat innkeeper himself warded his
wife's attacks with all the prudence of which he was capable, that he
might not also break the five eggs at his other side.
Tome was conquered. He had to hatch eggs, he had to give up his games
of dominoes and renounce movement of any sort, for the old woman angrily
deprived him of food whenever he broke an egg.
He lay on his back, with eyes fixed on the ceiling, motionless, his arms
raised like wings, warming against his body the rudimentary chickens
enclosed in their white shells.
He spoke now only in hushed tones; as if he feared a noise as much
as motion, and he took a feverish interest in the yellow hen who was
accomplishing in the poultry-yard the same task as he.
“Has the yellow hen eaten her food all right?” he would ask his wife.
And the old woman went from her fowls to her husband and from her
husband to her fowls, devoured by anxiety as to the welfare of the
little chickens who were maturing in the bed and in the nest.
The country people who knew the story came, agog with curiosity, to
ask news of Toine. They entered his room on tiptoe, as one enters a
sick-chamber, and asked:
“Well! how goes it?”
“All right,” said Toine; “only it keeps me fearfully hot.”
One morning his wife entered in a state of great excitement, and
declared:
“The yellow hen has seven chickens! Three of the eggs were addled.”
Toine's heart beat painfully. How many would he have?
“Will it soon be over?” he asked, with the anguish of a woman who is
about to become a mother.
“It's to be hoped so!” answered the old woman crossly, haunted by fear
of failure.
They waited. Friends of Toine who had got wind that his time was drawing
near arrived, and filled the little room.
Nothing else was talked about in the neighboring cottages. Inquirers
asked one another for news as they stood at their doors.
About three o'clock Toine fell asleep. He slumbered half his time
nowadays. He was suddenly awakened by an unaccustomed tickling under
his right arm. He put his left hand on the spot, and seized a little
creature covered with yellow down, which fluttered in his hand.
His emotion was so great that he cried out, and let go his hold of the
chicken, which ran over his chest. The bar was full of people at the
time. The customers rushed to Toine's room, and made a circle round him
as they would round a travelling showman; while Madame Toine picked up
the chicken, which had taken refuge under her husband's beard.
No one spoke, so great was the tension. It was a warm April day. Outside
the window the yellow hen could be heard calling to her newly-fledged
brood.
Toine, who was perspiring with emotion and anxiety, murmured:
“I have another now--under the left arm.”
His' wife plunged her great bony hand into the bed, and pulled out a
second chicken with all the care of a midwife.
The neighbors wanted to see it. It was passed from one to another, and
examined as if it were a phenomenon.
For twenty minutes no more hatched out, then four emerged at the same
moment from their shells.
There was a great commotion among the lookers-on. And Toine smiled with
satisfaction, beginning to take pride in this unusual sort of paternity.
There were not many like him! Truly, he was a remarkable specimen of
humanity!
“That makes six!” he declared. “Great heavens, what a christening we'll
have!”
And a loud laugh rose from all present. Newcomers filled the bar. They
asked one another:
“How many are there?”
“Six.”
Toine's wife took this new family to the hen, who clucked loudly,
bristled her feathers, and spread her wings wide to shelter her growing
brood of little ones.
“There's one more!” cried Toine.
He was mistaken. There were three! It was an unalloyed triumph! The last
chicken broke through its shell at seven o'clock in the evening. All the
eggs were good! And Toine, beside himself with joy, his brood hatched
out, exultant, kissed the tiny creature on the back, almost suffocating
it. He wanted to keep it in his bed until morning, moved by a mother's
tenderness toward the tiny being which he had brought to life, but the
old woman carried it away like the others, turning a deaf ear to her
husband's entreaties.
The delighted spectators went off to spread the news of the event, and
Horslaville, who was the last to go, asked:
“You'll invite me when the first is cooked, won't you, Toine?”
At this idea a smile overspread the fat man's face, and he answered:
“Certainly I'll invite you, my son-in-law.”
MADAME HUSSON'S “ROSIER”
We had just left Gisors, where I was awakened to hearing the name of
the town called out by the guards, and I was dozing off again when a
terrific shock threw me forward on top of a large lady who sat opposite
me.
One of the wheels of the engine had broken, and the engine itself lay
across the track. The tender and the baggage car were also derailed,
and lay beside this mutilated engine, which rattled, groaned, hissed,
puffed, sputtered, and resembled those horses that fall in the street
with their flanks heaving, their breast palpitating, their nostrils
steaming and their whole body trembling, but incapable of the slightest
effort to rise and start off again.
There were no dead or wounded; only a few with bruises, for the train
was not going at full speed. And we looked with sorrow at the great
crippled iron creature that could not draw us along any more, and that
blocked the track, perhaps for some time, for no doubt they would have
to send to Paris for a special train to come to our aid.
It was then ten o'clock in the morning, and I at once decided to go back
to Gisors for breakfast.
As I was walking along I said to myself:
“Gisors, Gisors--why, I know someone there!
“Who is it? Gisors? Let me see, I have a friend in this town.” A name
suddenly came to my mind, “Albert Marambot.” He was an old school friend
whom I had not seen for at least twelve years, and who was practicing
medicine in Gisors. He had often written, inviting me to come and see
him, and I had always promised to do so, without keeping my word. But at
last I would take advantage of this opportunity.
I asked the first passer-by:
“Do you know where Dr. Marambot lives?”
He replied, without hesitation, and with the drawling accent of the
Normans:
“Rue Dauphine.”
I presently saw, on the door of the house he pointed out, a large brass
plate on which was engraved the name of my old chum. I rang the bell,
but the servant, a yellow-haired girl who moved slowly, said with a
Stupid air:
“He isn't here, he isn't here.”
I heard a sound of forks and of glasses and I cried:
“Hallo, Marambot!”
A door opened and a large man, with whiskers and a cross look on his
face, appeared, carrying a dinner napkin in his hand.
I certainly should not have recognized him. One would have said he was
forty-five at least, and, in a second, all the provincial life which
makes one grow heavy, dull and old came before me. In a single flash of
thought, quicker than the act of extending my hand to him, I could see
his life, his manner of existence, his line of thought and his theories
of things in general. I guessed at the prolonged meals that had rounded
out his stomach, his after-dinner naps from the torpor of a slow
indigestion aided by cognac, and his vague glances cast on the patient
while he thought of the chicken that was roasting before the fire. His
conversations about cooking, about cider, brandy and wine, the way of
preparing certain dishes and of blending certain sauces were revealed to
me at sight of his puffy red cheeks, his heavy lips and his lustreless
eyes.
“You do not recognize me. I am Raoul Aubertin,” I said.
He opened his arms and gave me such a hug that I thought he would choke
me.
“You have not breakfasted, have you?”
“No.”
“How fortunate! I was just sitting down to table and I have an excellent
trout.”
Five minutes later I was sitting opposite him at breakfast. I said:
“Are you a bachelor?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“And do you like it here?”
“Time does not hang heavy; I am busy. I have patients and friends. I eat
well, have good health, enjoy laughing and shooting. I get along.”
“Is not life very monotonous in this little town?”
“No, my dear boy, not when one knows how to fill in the time. A little
town, in fact, is like a large one. The incidents and amusements are
less varied, but one makes more of them; one has fewer acquaintances,
but one meets them more frequently. When you know all the windows in a
street, each one of them interests you and puzzles you more than a whole
street in Paris.
“A little town is very amusing, you know, very amusing, very amusing.
Why, take Gisors. I know it at the tips of my fingers, from its
beginning up to the present time. You have no idea what queer history it
has.”
“Do you belong to Gisors?”
“I? No. I come from Gournay, its neighbor and rival. Gournay is to
Gisors what Lucullus was to Cicero. Here, everything is for glory; they
say 'the proud people of Gisors.' At Gournay, everything is for the
stomach; they say 'the chewers of Gournay.' Gisors despises Gournay, but
Gournay laughs at Gisors. It is a very comical country, this.”
I perceived that I was eating something very delicious, hard-boiled eggs
wrapped in a covering of meat jelly flavored with herbs and put on ice
for a few moments. I said as I smacked my lips to compliment Marambot:
“That is good.”
He smiled.
“Two things are necessary, good jelly, which is hard to get, and good
eggs. Oh, how rare good eggs are, with the yolks slightly reddish, and
with a good flavor! I have two poultry yards, one for eggs and the other
for chickens. I feed my laying hens in a special manner. I have my own
ideas on the subject. In an egg, as in the meat of a chicken, in beef,
or in mutton, in milk, in everything, one perceives, and ought to taste,
the juice, the quintessence of all the food on which the animal has fed.
How much better food we could have if more attention were paid to this!”
I laughed as I said:
“You are a gourmand?”
“Parbleu. It is only imbeciles who are not. One is a gourmand as one is
an artist, as one is learned, as one is a poet. The sense of taste, my
friend, is very delicate, capable of perfection, and quite as worthy
of respect as the eye and the ear. A person who lacks this sense is
deprived of an exquisite faculty, the faculty of discerning the quality
of food, just as one may lack the faculty of discerning the beauties
of a book or of a work of art; it means to be deprived of an essential
organ, of something that belongs to higher humanity; it means to belong
to one of those innumerable classes of the infirm, the unfortunate, and
the fools of which our race is composed; it means to have the mouth of
an animal, in a word, just like the mind of an animal. A man who cannot
distinguish one kind of lobster from another; a herring--that admirable
fish that has all the flavors, all the odors of the sea--from a mackerel
or a whiting; and a Cresane from a Duchess pear, may be compared to a
man who should mistake Balzac for Eugene Sue; a symphony of Beethoven
for a military march composed by the bandmaster of a regiment; and the
Apollo Belvidere for the statue of General de Blaumont.
“Who is General de Blaumont?”
“Oh, that's true, you do not know. It is easy to tell that you do not
belong to Gisors. I told you just now, my dear boy, that they called the
inhabitants of this town 'the proud people of Gisors,' and never was an
epithet better deserved. But let us finish breakfast first, and then I
will tell you about our town and take you to see it.”
He stopped talking every now and then while he slowly drank a glass of
wine which he gazed at affectionately as he replaced the glass on the
table.
It was amusing to see him, with a napkin tied around his neck, his
cheeks flushed, his eyes eager, and his whiskers spreading round his
mouth as it kept working.
He made me eat until I was almost choking. Then, as I was about to
return to the railway station, he seized me by the arm and took me
through the streets. The town, of a pretty, provincial type, commanded
by its citadel, the most curious monument of military architecture of
the seventh century to be found in France, overlooks, in its turn, a
long, green valley, where the large Norman cows graze and ruminate in
the pastures.
The doctor quoted:
“'Gisors, a town of 4,000 inhabitants in the department of Eure,
mentioned in Caesar's Commentaries: Caesaris ostium, then Caesartium,
Caesortium, Gisortium, Gisors.' I shall not take you to visit the old
Roman encampment, the remains of which are still in existence.”
I laughed and replied:
“My dear friend, it seems to me that you are affected with a special
malady that, as a doctor, you ought to study; it is called the spirit of
provincialism.”
He stopped abruptly.
“The spirit of provincialism, my friend, is nothing but natural
patriotism,” he said. “I love my house, my town and my province because
I discover in them the customs of my own village; but if I love my
country, if I become angry when a neighbor sets foot in it, it is
because I feel that my home is in danger, because the frontier that I do
not know is the high road to my province. For instance, I am a Norman, a
true Norman; well, in spite of my hatred of the German and my desire for
revenge, I do not detest them, I do not hate them by instinct as I hate
the English, the real, hereditary natural enemy of the Normans; for the
English traversed this soil inhabited by my ancestors, plundered and
ravaged it twenty times, and my aversion to this perfidious people was
transmitted to me at birth by my father. See, here is the statue of the
general.”
“What general?”
“General Blaumont! We had to have a statue. We are not 'the proud people
of Gisors' for nothing! So we discovered General de Blaumont. Look in
this bookseller's window.”
He drew me towards the bookstore, where about fifteen red, yellow and
blue volumes attracted the eye. As I read the titles, I began to laugh
idiotically. They read:
Gisors, its origin, its future, by M. X...., member of several learned
societies; History of Gisors, by the Abbe A...; Gasors from the time
of Caesar to the present day, by M. B...., Landowner; Gisors and its
environs, by Doctor C. D....; The Glories of Gisors, by a Discoverer.
“My friend,” resumed Marambot, “not a year, not a single year, you
understand, passes without a fresh history of Gisors being published
here; we now have twenty-three.”
“And the glories of Gisors?” I asked.
“Oh, I will not mention them all, only the principal ones. We had first
General de Blaumont, then Baron Davillier, the celebrated ceramist who
explored Spain and the Balearic Isles, and brought to the notice of
collectors the wonderful Hispano-Arabic china. In literature we have a
very clever journalist, now dead, Charles Brainne, and among those who
are living, the very eminent editor of the Nouvelliste de Rouen, Charles
Lapierre... and many others, many others.”
We were traversing along street with a gentle incline, with a June sun
beating down on it and driving the residents into their houses.
Suddenly there appeared at the farther end of the street a drunken man
who was staggering along, with his head forward his arms and legs limp.
He would walk forward rapidly three, six, or ten steps and then stop.
When these energetic movements landed him in the middle of the road he
stopped short and swayed on his feet, hesitating between falling and a
fresh start. Then he would dart off in any direction, sometimes falling
against the wall of a house, against which he seemed to be fastened, as
though he were trying to get in through the wall. Then he would suddenly
turn round and look ahead of him, his mouth open and his eyes blinking
in the sunlight, and getting away from the wall by a movement of the
hips, he started off once more.
A little yellow dog, a half-starved cur, followed him, barking; stopping
when he stopped, and starting off when he started.
“Hallo,” said Marambot, “there is Madame Husson's 'Rosier'.
“Madame Husson's 'Rosier',” I exclaimed in astonishment. “What do you
mean?”
The doctor began to laugh.
“Oh, that is what we call drunkards round here. The name comes from
an old story which has now become a legend, although it is true in all
respects.”
“Is it an amusing story?”
“Very amusing.”
“Well, then, tell it to me.”
“I will.”
There lived formerly in this town a very upright old lady who was a
great guardian of morals and was called Mme. Husson. You know, I am
telling you the real names and not imaginary ones. Mme. Husson took a
special interest in good works, in helping the poor and encouraging the
deserving. She was a little woman with a quick walk and wore a black
wig. She was ceremonious, polite, on very good terms with the Almighty
in the person of Abby Malon, and had a profound horror, an inborn
horror of vice, and, in particular, of the vice the Church calls
lasciviousness. Any irregularity before marriage made her furious,
exasperated her till she was beside herself.
Now, this was the period when they presented a prize as a reward of
virtue to any girl in the environs of Paris who was found to be chaste.
She was called a Rosiere, and Mme. Husson got the idea that she would
institute a similar ceremony at Gisors. She spoke about it to Abbe
Malon, who at once made out a list of candidates.
However, Mme. Husson had a servant, an old woman called Francoise, as
upright as her mistress. As soon as the priest had left, madame called
the servant and said:
“Here, Francoise, here are the girls whose names M. le cure has
submitted to me for the prize of virtue; try and find out what
reputation they bear in the district.”
And Francoise set out. She collected all the scandal, all the stories,
all the tattle, all the suspicions. That she might omit nothing, she
wrote it all down together with her memoranda in her housekeeping book,
and handed it each morning to Mme. Husson, who, after adjusting her
spectacles on her thin nose, read as follows:
Bread...........................four sous
Milk............................two sous
Butter.........................eight sous
Malvina Levesque got into trouble last year with Mathurin Poilu.
Leg of mutton...................twenty-five sous
Salt............................one sou
Rosalie Vatinel was seen in the Riboudet woods with Cesaire Pienoir, by
Mme. Onesime, the ironer, on July the 20th about dusk.
Radishes........................one sou
Vinegar.........................two sous
Oxalic acid.....................two sous
Josephine Durdent, who is not believed to have committed a fault,
although she corresponds with young Oportun, who is in service in Rouen,
and who sent her a present of a cap by diligence.
Not one came out unscathed in this rigorous inquisition. Francoise
inquired of everyone, neighbors, drapers, the principal, the teaching
sisters at school, and gathered the slightest details.
As there is not a girl in the world about whom gossips have not found
something to say, there was not found in all the countryside one young
girl whose name was free from some scandal.
But Mme. Husson desired that the “Rosiere” of Gisors, like Caesar's
wife, should be above suspicion, and she was horrified, saddened and in
despair at the record in her servant's housekeeping account-book.
They then extended their circle of inquiries to the neighboring
villages; but with no satisfaction.
They consulted the mayor. His candidates failed. Those of Dr. Barbesol
were equally unlucky, in spite of the exactness of his scientific
vouchers.
But one morning Francoise, on returning from one of her expeditions,
said to her mistress:
“You see, madame, that if you wish to give a prize to anyone, there is
only Isidore in all the country round.”
Mme. Husson remained thoughtful. She knew him well, this Isidore, the
son of Virginie the greengrocer. His proverbial virtue had been the
delight of Gisors for several years, and served as an entertaining theme
of conversation in the town, and of amusement to the young girls who
loved to tease him. He was past twenty-one, was tall, awkward, slow and
timid; helped his mother in the business, and spent his days picking
over fruit and vegetables, seated on a chair outside the door.
He had an abnormal dread of a petticoat and cast down his eyes whenever
a female customer looked at him smilingly, and this well-known timidity
made him the butt of all the wags in the country.
Bold words, coarse expressions, indecent allusions, brought the color
to his cheeks so quickly that Dr. Barbesol had nicknamed him “the
thermometer of modesty.” Was he as innocent as he looked? ill-natured
people asked themselves. Was it the mere presentiment of unknown and
shameful mysteries or else indignation at the relations ordained as the
concomitant of love that so strongly affected the son of Virginie the
greengrocer? The urchins of the neighborhood as they ran past the shop
would fling disgusting remarks at him just to see him cast down his
eyes. The girls amused themselves by walking up and down before him,
cracking jokes that made him go into the store. The boldest among them
teased him to his face just to have a laugh, to amuse themselves, made
appointments with him and proposed all sorts of things.
So Madame Husson had become thoughtful.
Certainly, Isidore was an exceptional case of notorious, unassailable
virtue. No one, among the most sceptical, most incredulous, would
have been able, would have dared, to suspect Isidore of the slightest
infraction of any law of morality. He had never been seen in a cafe,
never been seen at night on the street. He went to bed at eight o'clock
and rose at four. He was a perfection, a pearl.
But Mme. Husson still hesitated. The idea of substituting a boy for a
girl, a “rosier” for a “rosiere,” troubled her, worried her a little,
and she resolved to consult Abbe Malon.
The abbe responded:
“What do you desire to reward, madame? It is virtue, is it not, and
nothing but virtue? What does it matter to you, therefore, if it
is masculine or feminine? Virtue is eternal; it has neither sex nor
country; it is 'Virtue.'”
Thus encouraged, Mme. Husson went to see the mayor.
He approved heartily.
“We will have a fine ceremony,” he said. “And another year if we can
find a girl as worthy as Isidore we will give the reward to her. It
will even be a good example that we shall set to Nanterre. Let us not be
exclusive; let us welcome all merit.”
Isidore, who had been told about this, blushed deeply and seemed happy.
The ceremony was fixed for the 15th of August, the festival of the
Virgin Mary and of the Emperor Napoleon. The municipality had decided to
make an imposing ceremony and had built the platform on the couronneaux,
a delightful extension of the ramparts of the old citadel where I will
take you presently.
With the natural revulsion of public feeling, the virtue of Isidore,
ridiculed hitherto, had suddenly become respected and envied, as it
would bring him in five hundred francs besides a savings bank book, a
mountain of consideration, and glory enough and to spare. The girls
now regretted their frivolity, their ridicule, their bold manners; and
Isidore, although still modest and timid, had now a little contented air
that bespoke his internal satisfaction.
The evening before the 15th of August the entire Rue Dauphine was
decorated with flags. Oh, I forgot to tell you why this street had been
called Rue Dauphine.
It seems that the wife or mother of the dauphin, I do not remember which
one, while visiting Gisors had been feted so much by the authorities
that during a triumphal procession through the town she stopped before
one of the houses in this street, halting the procession, and exclaimed:
“Oh, the pretty house! How I should like to go through it! To whom does
it belong?”
They told her the name of the owner, who was sent for and brought, proud
and embarrassed, before the princess. She alighted from her carriage,
went into the house, wishing to go over it from top to bottom, and even
shut herself in one of the rooms alone for a few seconds.
When she came out, the people, flattered at this honor paid to a citizen
of Gisors, shouted “Long live the dauphine!” But a rhymester wrote
some words to a refrain, and the street retained the title of her royal
highness, for
“The princess, in a hurry,
Without bell, priest, or beadle,
But with some water only,
Had baptized it.”
But to come back to Isidore.
They had scattered flowers all along the road as they do for processions
at the Fete-Dieu, and the National Guard was present, acting on the
orders of their chief, Commandant Desbarres, an old soldier of the Grand
Army, who pointed with pride to the beard of a Cossack cut with a single
sword stroke from the chin of its owner by the commandant during the
retreat in Russia, and which hung beside the frame containing the cross
of the Legion of Honor presented to him by the emperor himself.
The regiment that he commanded was, besides, a picked regiment
celebrated all through the province, and the company of grenadiers of
Gisors was called on to attend all important ceremonies for a distance
of fifteen to twenty leagues. The story goes that Louis Philippe,
while reviewing the militia of Eure, stopped in astonishment before the
company from Gisors, exclaiming:
“Oh, who are those splendid grenadiers?”
“The grenadiers of Gisors,” replied the general.
“I might have known it,” murmured the king.
So Commandant Desbarres came at the head of his men, preceded by the
band, to get Isidore in his mother's store.
After a little air had been played by the band beneath the windows, the
“Rosier” himself appeared--on the threshold. He was dressed in white
duck from head to foot and wore a straw hat with a little bunch of
orange blossoms as a cockade.
The question of his clothes had bothered Mme. Husson a good deal, and
she hesitated some time between the black coat of those who make their
first communion and an entire white suit. But Francoise, her counsellor,
induced her to decide on the white suit, pointing out that the Rosier
would look like a swan.
Behind him came his guardian, his godmother, Mme. Husson, in triumph.
She took his arm to go out of the store, and the mayor placed himself on
the other side of the Rosier. The drums beat. Commandant Desbarres gave
the order “Present arms!” The procession resumed its march towards
the church amid an immense crowd of people who has gathered from the
neighboring districts.
After a short mass and an affecting discourse by Abbe Malon, they
continued on their way to the couronneaux, where the banquet was served
in a tent.
Before taking their seats at table, the mayor gave an address. This is
it, word for word. I learned it by heart:
“Young man, a woman of means, beloved by the poor and respected by the
rich, Mme. Husson, whom the whole country is thanking here, through me,
had the idea, the happy and benevolent idea, of founding in this town a
prize for, virtue, which should serve as a valuable encouragement to the
inhabitants of this beautiful country.
“You, young man, are the first to be rewarded in this dynasty of
goodness and chastity. Your name will remain at the head of this list of
the most deserving, and your life, understand me, your whole life, must
correspond to this happy commencement. To-day, in presence of this noble
woman, of these soldier-citizens who have taken up their arms in your
honor, in presence of this populace, affected, assembled to applaud
you, or, rather, to applaud virtue, in your person, you make a solemn
contract with the town, with all of us, to continue until your death the
excellent example of your youth.
“Do not forget, young man, that you are the first seed cast into this
field of hope; give us the fruits that we expect of you.”
The mayor advanced three steps, opened his arms and pressed Isidore to
his heart.
The “Rosier” was sobbing without knowing why, from a confused emotion,
from pride and a vague and happy feeling of tenderness.
Then the mayor placed in one hand a silk purse in which gold tingled
--five hundred francs in gold!--and in his other hand a savings bank
book. And he said in a solemn tone:
“Homage, glory and riches to virtue.”
Commandant Desbarres shouted “Bravo!” the grenadiers vociferated, and
the crowd applauded.
Mme. Husson wiped her eyes, in her turn. Then they all sat down at the
table where the banquet was served.
The repast was magnificent and seemed interminable. One course followed
another; yellow cider and red wine in fraternal contact blended in the
stomach of the guests. The rattle of plates, the sound of voices, and
of music softly played, made an incessant deep hum, and was dispersed
abroad in the clear sky where the swallows were flying. Mme. Husson
occasionally readjusted her black wig, which would slip over on one
side, and chatted with Abbe Malon. The mayor, who was excited, talked
politics with Commandant Desbarres, and Isidore ate, drank, as if he
had never eaten or drunk before. He helped himself repeatedly to all
the dishes, becoming aware for the first time of the pleasure of having
one's belly full of good things which tickle the palate in the first
place. He had let out a reef in his belt and, without speaking, and
although he was a little uneasy at a wine stain on his white waistcoat,
he ceased eating in order to take up his glass and hold it to his mouth
as long as possible, to enjoy the taste slowly.
It was time for the toasts. They were many and loudly applauded. Evening
was approaching and they had been at the table since noon. Fine,
milky vapors were already floating in the air in the valley, the light
night-robe of streams and meadows; the sun neared the horizon; the cows
were lowing in the distance amid the mists of the pasture. The feast was
over. They returned to Gisors. The procession, now disbanded, walked in
detachments. Mme. Husson had taken Isidore's arm and was giving him a
quantity of urgent, excellent advice.
They stopped at the door of the fruit store, and the “Rosier” was left
at his mother's house. She had not come home yet. Having been invited by
her family to celebrate her son's triumph, she had taken luncheon with
her sister after having followed the procession as far as the banqueting
tent.
So Isidore remained alone in the store, which was growing dark. He sat
down on a chair, excited by the wine and by pride, and looked about him.
Carrots, cabbages, and onions gave out their strong odor of vegetables
in the closed room, that coarse smell of the garden blended with the
sweet, penetrating odor of strawberries and the delicate, slight,
evanescent fragrance of a basket of peaches.
The “Rosier” took one of these and ate it, although he was as full as
an egg. Then, all at once, wild with joy, he began to dance about the
store, and something rattled in his waistcoat.
He was surprised, and put his hand in his pocket and brought out the
purse containing the five hundred francs, which he had forgotten in
his agitation. Five hundred francs! What a fortune! He poured the gold
pieces out on the counter and spread them out with his big hand with a
slow, caressing touch so as to see them all at the same time. There were
twenty-five, twenty-five round gold pieces, all gold! They glistened on
the wood in the dim light and he counted them over and over, one by one.
Then he put them back in the purse, which he replaced in his pocket.
Who will ever know or who can tell what a terrible conflict took place
in the soul of the “Rosier” between good and evil, the tumultuous attack
of Satan, his artifices, the temptations which he offered to this timid
virgin heart? What suggestions, what imaginations, what desires were
not invented by the evil one to excite and destroy this chosen one?
He seized his hat, Mme. Husson's saint, his hat, which still bore the
little bunch of orange blossoms, and going out through the alley at the
back of the house, he disappeared in the darkness.
Virginie, the fruiterer, on learning that her son had returned, went
home at once, and found the house empty. She waited, without thinking
anything about it at first; but at the end of a quarter of an hour she
made inquiries. The neighbors had seen Isidore come home and had not
seen him go out again. They began to look for him, but could not find
him. His mother, in alarm, went to the mayor. The mayor knew nothing,
except that he had left him at the door of his home. Mme. Husson had
just retired when they informed her that her protege had disappeared.
She immediately put on her wig, dressed herself and went to Virginie's
house. Virginie, whose plebeian soul was readily moved, was weeping
copiously amid her cabbages, carrots and onions.
They feared some accident had befallen him. What could it be? Commandant
Desbarres notified the police, who made a circuit of the town, and
on the high road to Pontoise they found the little bunch of orange
blossoms. It was placed on a table around which the authorities were
deliberating. The “Rosier” must have been the victim of some stratagem,
some trick, some jealousy; but in what way? What means had been employed
to kidnap this innocent creature, and with what object?
Weary of looking for him without any result, Virginie, alone, remained
watching and weeping.
The following evening, when the coach passed by on its return from
Paris, Gisors learned with astonishment that its “Rosier” had stopped
the vehicle at a distance of about two hundred metres from the town,
had climbed up on it and paid his fare, handing over a gold piece and
receiving the change, and that he had quietly alighted in the centre of
the great city.
There was great excitement all through the countryside. Letters passed
between the mayor and the chief of police in Paris, but brought no
result.
The days followed one another, a week passed.
Now, one morning, Dr. Barbesol, who had gone out early, perceived,
sitting on a doorstep, a man dressed in a grimy linen suit, who was
sleeping with his head leaning against the wall. He approached him and
recognized Isidore. He tried to rouse him, but did not succeed in doing
so. The ex-“Rosier” was in that profound, invincible sleep that is
alarming, and the doctor, in surprise, went to seek assistance to help
him in carrying the young man to Boncheval's drugstore. When they lifted
him up they found an empty bottle under him, and when the doctor sniffed
at it, he declared that it had contained brandy. That gave a suggestion
as to what treatment he would require. They succeeded in rousing him.
Isidore was drunk, drunk and degraded by a week of guzzling, drunk and
so disgusting that a ragman would not have touched him. His beautiful
white duck suit was a gray rag, greasy, muddy, torn, and destroyed, and
he smelt of the gutter and of vice.
He was washed, sermonized, shut up, and did not leave the house for four
days. He seemed ashamed and repentant. They could not find on him either
his purse, containing the five hundred francs, or the bankbook, or even
his silver watch, a sacred heirloom left by his father, the fruiterer.
On the fifth day he ventured into the Rue Dauphine, Curious glances
followed him and he walked along with a furtive expression in his eyes
and his head bent down. As he got outside the town towards the valley
they lost sight of him; but two hours later he returned laughing and
rolling against the walls. He was drunk, absolutely drunk.
Nothing could cure him.
Driven from home by his mother, he became a wagon driver, and drove the
charcoal wagons for the Pougrisel firm, which is still in existence.
His reputation as a drunkard became so well known and spread so far that
even at Evreux they talked of Mme. Husson's “Rosier,” and the sots of
the countryside have been given that nickname.
A good deed is never lost.
Dr. Marambot rubbed his hands as he finished his story. I asked:
“Did you know the 'Rosier'?”
“Yes. I had the honor of closing his eyes.”
“What did he die of?”
“An attack of delirium tremens, of course.”
We had arrived at the old citadel, a pile of ruined walls dominated by
the enormous tower of St. Thomas of Canterbury and the one called the
Prisoner's Tower.
Marambot told me the story of this prisoner, who, with the aid of a
nail, covered the walls of his dungeon with sculptures, tracing the
reflections of the sun as it glanced through the narrow slit of a
loophole.
I also learned that Clothaire II had given the patrimony of Gisors to
his cousin, Saint Romain, bishop of Rouen; that Gisors ceased to be the
capital of the whole of Vexin after the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte;
that the town is the chief strategic centre of all that portion of
France, and that in consequence of this advantage she was taken and
retaken over and over again. At the command of William the Red, the
eminent engineer, Robert de Bellesme, constructed there a powerful
fortress that was attacked later by Louis le Gros, then by the Norman
barons, was defended by Robert de Candos, was finally ceded to Louis le
Gros by Geoffry Plantagenet, was retaken by the English in
consequence of the treachery of the Knights-Templars, was contested by
Philippe-Augustus and Richard the Lionhearted, was set on fire by Edward
III of England, who could not take the castle, was again taken by the
English in 1419, restored later to Charles VIII by Richard de Marbury,
was taken by the Duke of Calabria occupied by the League, inhabited by
Henry IV, etc., etc.
And Marambot, eager and almost eloquent, continued:
“What beggars, those English! And what sots, my boy; they are all
'Rosiers,' those hypocrites!”
Then, after a silence, stretching out his arm towards the tiny river
that glistened in the meadows, he said:
“Did you know that Henry Monnier was one of the most untiring fishermen
on the banks of the Epte?”
“No, I did not know it.”
“And Bouffe, my boy, Bouffe was a painter on glass.”
“You are joking!”
“No, indeed. How is it you do not know these things?”
THE ADOPTED SON
The two cottages stood beside each other at the foot of a hill near
a little seashore resort. The two peasants labored hard on the
unproductive soil to rear their little ones, and each family had four.
Before the adjoining doors a whole troop of urchins played and tumbled
about from morning till night. The two eldest were six years old, and
the youngest were about fifteen months; the marriages, and afterward the
births, having taken place nearly simultaneously in both families.
The two mothers could hardly distinguish their own offspring among the
lot, and as for the fathers, they were altogether at sea. The eight
names danced in their heads; they were always getting them mixed up;
and when they wished to call one child, the men often called three names
before getting the right one.
The first of the two cottages, as you came up from the bathing beach,
Rolleport, was occupied by the Tuvaches, who had three girls and one
boy; the other house sheltered the Vallins, who had one girl and three
boys.
They all subsisted frugally on soup, potatoes and fresh air. At seven
o'clock in the morning, then at noon, then at six o'clock in the
evening, the housewives got their broods together to give them their
food, as the gooseherds collect their charges. The children were seated,
according to age, before the wooden table, varnished by fifty years of
use; the mouths of the youngest hardly reaching the level of the table.
Before them was placed a bowl filled with bread, soaked in the water in
which the potatoes had been boiled, half a cabbage and three onions; and
the whole line ate until their hunger was appeased. The mother herself
fed the smallest.
A small pot roast on Sunday was a feast for all; and the father on this
day sat longer over the meal, repeating: “I wish we could have this
every day.”
One afternoon, in the month of August, a phaeton stopped suddenly in
front of the cottages, and a young woman, who was driving the horses,
said to the gentleman sitting at her side:
“Oh, look at all those children, Henri! How pretty they are, tumbling
about in the dust, like that!”
The man did not answer, accustomed to these outbursts of admiration,
which were a pain and almost a reproach to him. The young woman
continued:
“I must hug them! Oh, how I should like to have one of them--that one
there--the little tiny one!”
Springing down from the carriage, she ran toward the children, took one
of the two youngest--a Tuvache child--and lifting it up in her arms, she
kissed him passionately on his dirty cheeks, on his tousled hair daubed
with earth, and on his little hands, with which he fought vigorously, to
get away from the caresses which displeased him.
Then she got into the carriage again, and drove off at a lively trot.
But she returned the following week, and seating herself on the ground,
took the youngster in her arms, stuffed him with cakes; gave candies
to all the others, and played with them like a young girl, while the
husband waited patiently in the carriage.
She returned again; made the acquaintance of the parents, and reappeared
every day with her pockets full of dainties and pennies.
Her name was Madame Henri d'Hubieres.
One morning, on arriving, her husband alighted with her, and without
stopping to talk to the children, who now knew her well, she entered the
farmer's cottage.
They were busy chopping wood for the fire. They rose to their feet in
surprise, brought forward chairs, and waited expectantly.
Then the woman, in a broken, trembling voice, began:
“My good people, I have come to see you, because I should like--I should
like to take--your little boy with me--”
The country people, too bewildered to think, did not answer.
She recovered her breath, and continued: “We are alone, my husband and
I. We would keep it. Are you willing?”
The peasant woman began to understand. She asked:
“You want to take Charlot from us? Oh, no, indeed!”
Then M. d'Hubieres intervened:
“My wife has not made her meaning clear. We wish to adopt him, but
he will come back to see you. If he turns out well, as there is every
reason to expect, he will be our heir. If we, perchance, should have
children, he will share equally with them; but if he should not reward
our care, we should give him, when he comes of age, a sum of twenty
thousand francs, which shall be deposited immediately in his name, with
a lawyer. As we have thought also of you, we should pay you, until your
death, a pension of one hundred francs a month. Do you understand me?”
The woman had arisen, furious.
“You want me to sell you Charlot? Oh, no, that's not the sort of thing
to ask of a mother! Oh, no! That would be an abomination!”
The man, grave and deliberate, said nothing; but approved of what his
wife said by a continued nodding of his head.
Madame d'Hubieres, in dismay, began to weep; turning to her husband,
with a voice full of tears, the voice of a child used to having all its
wishes gratified, she stammered:
“They will not do it, Henri, they will not do it.”
Then he made a last attempt: “But, my friends, think of the child's
future, of his happiness, of--”
The peasant woman, however, exasperated, cut him short:
“It's all considered! It's all understood! Get out of here, and don't
let me see you again--the idea of wanting to take away a child like
that!”
Madame d'Hubieres remembered that there were two children, quite little,
and she asked, through her tears, with the tenacity of a wilful and
spoiled woman:
“But is the other little one not yours?”
Father Tuvache answered: “No, it is our neighbors'. You can go to them
if you wish.” And he went back into his house, whence resounded the
indignant voice of his wife.
The Vallins were at table, slowly eating slices of bread which they
parsimoniously spread with a little rancid butter on a plate between the
two.
M. d'Hubieres recommenced his proposals, but with more insinuations,
more oratorical precautions, more shrewdness.
The two country people shook their heads, in sign of refusal, but when
they learned that they were to have a hundred francs a month, they
considered the matter, consulting one another by glances, much
disturbed. They kept silent for a long time, tortured, hesitating. At
last the woman asked: “What do you say to it, man?” In a weighty tone he
said: “I say that it's not to be despised.”
Madame d'Hubieres, trembling with anguish, spoke of the future of their
child, of his happiness, and of the money which he could give them
later.
The peasant asked: “This pension of twelve hundred francs, will it be
promised before a lawyer?”
M. d'Hubieres responded: “Why, certainly, beginning with to-morrow.”
The woman, who was thinking it over, continued:
“A hundred francs a month is not enough to pay for depriving us of
the child. That child would be working in a few years; we must have a
hundred and twenty francs.”
Tapping her foot with impatience, Madame d'Hubieres granted it at once,
and, as she wished to carry off the child with her, she gave a hundred
francs extra, as a present, while her husband drew up a paper. And the
young woman, radiant, carried off the howling brat, as one carries away
a wished-for knick-knack from a shop.
The Tuvaches, from their door, watched her departure, silent, serious,
perhaps regretting their refusal.
Nothing more was heard of little Jean Vallin. The parents went to the
lawyer every month to collect their hundred and twenty francs. They had
quarrelled with their neighbors, because Mother Tuvache grossly
insulted them, continually, repeating from door to door that one must
be unnatural to sell one's child; that it was horrible, disgusting,
bribery. Sometimes she would take her Charlot in her arms,
ostentatiously exclaiming, as if he understood:
“I didn't sell you, I didn't! I didn't sell you, my little one! I'm not
rich, but I don't sell my children!”
The Vallins lived comfortably, thanks to the pension. That was the cause
of the unappeasable fury of the Tuvaches, who had remained miserably
poor. Their eldest went away to serve his time in the army; Charlot
alone remained to labor with his old father, to support the mother and
two younger sisters.
He had reached twenty-one years when, one morning, a brilliant carriage
stopped before the two cottages. A young gentleman, with a gold
watch-chain, got out, giving his hand to an aged, white-haired lady. The
old lady said to him: “It is there, my child, at the second house.” And
he entered the house of the Vallins as though at home.
The old mother was washing her aprons; the infirm father slumbered at
the chimney-corner. Both raised their heads, and the young man said:
“Good-morning, papa; good-morning, mamma!”
They both stood up, frightened! In a flutter, the peasant woman dropped
her soap into the water, and stammered:
“Is it you, my child? Is it you, my child?”
He took her in his arms and hugged her, repeating: “Good-morning,
mamma,” while the old man, all a-tremble, said, in his calm tone which
he never lost: “Here you are, back again, Jean,” as if he had just seen
him a month ago.
When they had got to know one another again, the parents wished to take
their boy out in the neighborhood, and show him. They took him to the
mayor, to the deputy, to the cure, and to the schoolmaster.
Charlot, standing on the threshold of his cottage, watched him pass. In
the evening, at supper, he said to the old people: “You must have been
stupid to let the Vallins' boy be taken.”
The mother answered, obstinately: “I wouldn't sell my child.”
The father remained silent. The son continued:
“It is unfortunate to be sacrificed like that.”
Then Father Tuvache, in an angry tone, said:
“Are you going to reproach us for having kept you?” And the young man
said, brutally:
“Yes, I reproach you for having been such fools. Parents like you make
the misfortune of their children. You deserve that I should leave you.”
The old woman wept over her plate. She moaned, as she swallowed the
spoonfuls of soup, half of which she spilled: “One may kill one's self
to bring up children!”
Then the boy said, roughly: “I'd rather not have been born than be what
I am. When I saw the other, my heart stood still. I said to myself: 'See
what I should have been now!'” He got up: “See here, I feel that I would
do better not to stay here, because I would throw it up to you from
morning till night, and I would make your life miserable. I'll never
forgive you for that!”
The two old people were silent, downcast, in tears.
He continued: “No, the thought of that would be too much. I'd rather
look for a living somewhere else.”
He opened the door. A sound of voices came in at the door. The Vallins
were celebrating the return of their child.
COWARD
In society he was called “Handsome Signoles.” His name was Vicomte
Gontran-Joseph de Signoles.
An orphan, and possessed of an ample fortune, he cut quite a dash, as it
is called. He had an attractive appearance and manner, could talk well,
had a certain inborn elegance, an air of pride and nobility, a good
mustache, and a tender eye, that always finds favor with women.
He was in great request at receptions, waltzed to perfection, and was
regarded by his own sex with that smiling hostility accorded to the
popular society man. He had been suspected of more than one love affair,
calculated to enhance the reputation of a bachelor. He lived a happy,
peaceful life--a life of physical and mental well-being. He had won
considerable fame as a swordsman, and still more as a marksman.
“When the time comes for me to fight a duel,” he said, “I shall choose
pistols. With such a weapon I am sure to kill my man.”
One evening, having accompanied two women friends of his with their
husbands to the theatre, he invited them to take some ice cream at
Tortoni's after the performance. They had been seated a few minutes in
the restaurant when Signoles noticed that a man was staring persistently
at one of the ladies. She seemed annoyed, and lowered her eyes. At last
she said to her husband:
“There's a man over there looking at me. I don't know him; do you?”
The husband, who had noticed nothing, glanced across at the offender,
and said:
“No; not in the least.”
His wife continued, half smiling, half angry:
“It's very tiresome! He quite spoils my ice cream.”
The husband shrugged his shoulders.
“Nonsense! Don't take any notice of him. If we were to bother our heads
about all the ill-mannered people we should have no time for anything
else.”
But the vicomte abruptly left his seat. He could not allow this insolent
fellow to spoil an ice for a guest of his. It was for him to take
cognizance of the offence, since it was through him that his friends had
come to the restaurant. He went across to the man and said:
“Sir, you are staring at those ladies in a manner I cannot permit. I
must ask you to desist from your rudeness.”
The other replied:
“Let me alone, will you!”
“Take care, sir,” said the vicomte between his teeth, “or you will force
me to extreme measures.”
The man replied with a single word--a foul word, which could be heard
from one end of the restaurant to the other, and which startled every
one there. All those whose backs were toward the two disputants turned
round; all the others raised their heads; three waiters spun round on
their heels like tops; the two lady cashiers jumped, as if shot, then
turned their bodies simultaneously, like two automata worked by the same
spring.
There was dead silence. Then suddenly a sharp, crisp sound. The vicomte
had slapped his adversary's face. Every one rose to interfere. Cards
were exchanged.
When the vicomte reached home he walked rapidly up and down his room
for some minutes. He was in a state of too great agitation to think
connectedly. One idea alone possessed him: a duel. But this idea aroused
in him as yet no emotion of any kind. He had done what he was bound to
do; he had proved himself to be what he ought to be. He would be talked
about, approved, congratulated. He repeated aloud, speaking as one does
when under the stress of great mental disturbance:
“What a brute of a man!” Then he sat down, and began to reflect. He
would have to find seconds as soon as morning came. Whom should he
choose? He bethought himself of the most influential and best-known
men of his acquaintance. His choice fell at last on the Marquis de la
Tour-Noire and Colonel Bourdin-a nobleman and a soldier. That would be
just the thing. Their names would carry weight in the newspapers. He was
thirsty, and drank three glasses of water, one after another; then
he walked up and down again. If he showed himself brave, determined,
prepared to face a duel in deadly earnest, his adversary would probably
draw back and proffer excuses. He picked up the card he had taken from
his pocket and thrown on a table. He read it again, as he had already
read it, first at a glance in the restaurant, and afterward on the way
home in the light of each gas lamp: “Georges Lamil, 51 Rue Moncey.” That
was all.
He examined closely this collection of letters, which seemed to him
mysterious, fraught with many meanings. Georges Lamil! Who was the man?
What was his profession? Why had he stared so at the woman? Was it not
monstrous that a stranger, an unknown, should thus all at once upset
one's whole life, simply because it had pleased him to stare rudely at a
woman? And the vicomte once more repeated aloud:
“What a brute!”
Then he stood motionless, thinking, his eyes still fixed on the card.
Anger rose in his heart against this scrap of paper--a resentful anger,
mingled with a strange sense of uneasiness. It was a stupid business
altogether! He took up a penknife which lay open within reach, and
deliberately stuck it into the middle of the printed name, as if he were
stabbing some one.
So he would have to fight! Should he choose swords or pistols?--for he
considered himself as the insulted party. With the sword he would risk
less, but with the pistol there was some chance of his adversary backing
out. A duel with swords is rarely fatal, since mutual prudence prevents
the combatants from fighting close enough to each other for a point to
enter very deep. With pistols he would seriously risk his life; but, on
the other hand, he might come out of the affair with flying colors, and
without a duel, after all.
“I must be firm,” he said. “The fellow will be afraid.”
The sound of his own voice startled him, and he looked nervously round
the room. He felt unstrung. He drank another glass of water, and then
began undressing, preparatory to going to bed.
As soon as he was in bed he blew out the light and shut his eyes.
“I have all day to-morrow,” he reflected, “for setting my affairs in
order. I must sleep now, in order to be calm when the time comes.”
He was very warm in bed, but he could not succeed in losing
consciousness. He tossed and turned, remained for five minutes lying on
his back, then changed to his left side, then rolled over to his right.
He was thirsty again, and rose to drink. Then a qualm seized him:
“Can it be possible that I am afraid?”
Why did his heart beat so uncontrollably at every well-known sound in
his room? When the clock was about to strike, the prefatory grating of
its spring made him start, and for several seconds he panted for breath,
so unnerved was he.
He began to reason with himself on the possibility of such a thing:
“Could I by any chance be afraid?”
No, indeed; he could not be afraid, since he was resolved to proceed to
the last extremity, since he was irrevocably determined to fight without
flinching. And yet he was so perturbed in mind and body that he asked
himself:
“Is it possible to be afraid in spite of one's self?”
And this doubt, this fearful question, took possession of him. If
an irresistible power, stronger than his own will, were to quell
his courage, what would happen? He would certainly go to the place
appointed; his will would force him that far. But supposing, when there,
he were to tremble or faint? And he thought of his social standing, his
reputation, his name.
And he suddenly determined to get up and look at himself in the glass.
He lighted his candle. When he saw his face reflected in the mirror he
scarcely recognized it. He seemed to see before him a man whom he did
not know. His eyes looked disproportionately large, and he was very
pale.
He remained standing before the mirror. He put out his tongue, as if
to examine the state of his health, and all at once the thought flashed
into his mind:
“At this time the day after to-morrow I may be dead.”
And his heart throbbed painfully.
“At this time the day after to-morrow I may be dead. This person in
front of me, this 'I' whom I see in the glass, will perhaps be no more.
What! Here I am, I look at myself, I feel myself to be alive--and yet
in twenty-four hours I may be lying on that bed, with closed eyes, dead,
cold, inanimate.”
He turned round, and could see himself distinctly lying on his back on
the couch he had just quitted. He had the hollow face and the limp hands
of death.
Then he became afraid of his bed, and to avoid seeing it went to his
smoking-room. He mechanically took a cigar, lighted it, and began
walking back and forth. He was cold; he took a step toward the bell, to
wake his valet, but stopped with hand raised toward the bell rope.
“He would see that I am afraid!”
And, instead of ringing, he made a fire himself. His hands quivered
nervously as they touched various objects. His head grew dizzy, his
thoughts confused, disjointed, painful; a numbness seized his spirit, as
if he had been drinking.
And all the time he kept on saying:
“What shall I do? What will become of me?”
His whole body trembled spasmodically; he rose, and, going to the
window, drew back the curtains.
The day--a summer day-was breaking. The pink sky cast a glow on the
city, its roofs, and its walls. A flush of light enveloped the awakened
world, like a caress from the rising sun, and the glimmer of dawn
kindled new hope in the breast of the vicomte. What a fool he was to let
himself succumb to fear before anything was decided--before his seconds
had interviewed those of Georges Lamil, before he even knew whether he
would have to fight or not!
He bathed, dressed, and left the house with a firm step.
He repeated as he went:
“I must be firm--very firm. I must show that I am not afraid.”
His seconds, the marquis and the colonel, placed themselves at his
disposal, and, having shaken him warmly by the hand, began to discuss
details.
“You want a serious duel?” asked the colonel.
“Yes--quite serious,” replied the vicomte.
“You insist on pistols?” put in the marquis.
“Yes.”
“Do you leave all the other arrangements in our hands?”
With a dry, jerky voice the vicomte answered:
“Twenty paces--at a given signal--the arm to be raised, not
lowered--shots to be exchanged until one or other is seriously wounded.”
“Excellent conditions,” declared the colonel in a satisfied tone. “You
are a good shot; all the chances are in your favor.”
And they parted. The vicomte returned home to, wait for them. His
agitation, only temporarily allayed, now increased momentarily. He felt,
in arms, legs and chest, a sort of trembling--a continuous vibration; he
could not stay still, either sitting or standing. His mouth was parched,
and he made every now and then a clicking movement of the tongue, as if
to detach it from his palate.
He attempted, to take luncheon, but could not eat. Then it occurred
to him to seek courage in drink, and he sent for a decanter of rum, of
which he swallowed, one after another, six small glasses.
A burning warmth, followed by a deadening of the mental faculties,
ensued. He said to himself:
“I know how to manage. Now it will be all right!”
But at the end of an hour he had emptied the decanter, and his agitation
was worse than ever. A mad longing possessed him to throw himself on the
ground, to bite, to scream. Night fell.
A ring at the bell so unnerved him that he had not the strength to rise
to receive his seconds.
He dared not even to speak to them, wish them good-day, utter a single
word, lest his changed voice should betray him.
“All is arranged as you wished,” said the colonel. “Your adversary
claimed at first the privilege of the offended part; but he yielded
almost at once, and accepted your conditions. His seconds are two
military men.”
“Thank you,” said the vicomte.
The marquis added:
“Please excuse us if we do not stay now, for we have a good deal to see
to yet. We shall want a reliable doctor, since the duel is not to end
until a serious wound has been inflicted; and you know that bullets are
not to be trifled with. We must select a spot near some house to which
the wounded party can be carried if necessary. In fact, the arrangements
will take us another two or three hours at least.”
The vicomte articulated for the second time:
“Thank you.”
“You're all right?” asked the colonel. “Quite calm?”
“Perfectly calm, thank you.”
The two men withdrew.
When he was once more alone he felt as though he should go mad. His
servant having lighted the lamps, he sat down at his table to write some
letters. When he had traced at the top of a sheet of paper the words:
“This is my last will and testament,” he started from his seat, feeling
himself incapable of connected thought, of decision in regard to
anything.
So he was going to fight! He could no longer avoid it. What, then,
possessed him? He wished to fight, he was fully determined to fight, and
yet, in spite of all his mental effort, in spite of the exertion of all
his will power, he felt that he could not even preserve the strength
necessary to carry him through the ordeal. He tried to conjure up a
picture of the duel, his own attitude, and that of his enemy.
Every now and then his teeth chattered audibly. He thought he would
read, and took down Chateauvillard's Rules of Dueling. Then he said:
“Is the other man practiced in the use of the pistol? Is he well known?
How can I find out?”
He remembered Baron de Vaux's book on marksmen, and searched it from
end to end. Georges Lamil was not mentioned. And yet, if he were not an
adept, would he have accepted without demur such a dangerous weapon and
such deadly conditions?
He opened a case of Gastinne Renettes which stood on a small table, and
took from it a pistol. Next he stood in the correct attitude for firing,
and raised his arm. But he was trembling from head to foot, and the
weapon shook in his grasp.
Then he said to himself:
“It is impossible. I cannot fight like this.”
He looked at the little black, death-spitting hole at the end of the
pistol; he thought of dishonor, of the whispers at the clubs, the smiles
in his friends' drawing-rooms, the contempt of women, the veiled sneers
of the newspapers, the insults that would be hurled at him by cowards.
He still looked at the weapon, and raising the hammer, saw the glitter
of the priming below it. The pistol had been left loaded by some chance,
some oversight. And the discovery rejoiced him, he knew not why.
If he did not maintain, in presence of his opponent, the steadfast
bearing which was so necessary to his honor, he would be ruined forever.
He would be branded, stigmatized as a coward, hounded out of society!
And he felt, he knew, that he could not maintain that calm, unmoved
demeanor. And yet he was brave, since the thought that followed was not
even rounded to a finish in his mind; but, opening his mouth wide, he
suddenly plunged the barrel of the pistol as far back as his throat, and
pressed the trigger.
When the valet, alarmed at the report, rushed into the room he found his
master lying dead upon his back. A spurt of blood had splashed the
white paper on the table, and had made a great crimson stain beneath the
words:
“This is my last will and testament.”
OLD MONGILET
In the office old Mongilet was considered a type. He was a good old
employee, who had never been outside Paris but once in his life.
It was the end of July, and each of us, every Sunday, went to roll
in the grass, or soak in the water in the country near by. Asnieres,
Argenteuil, Chatou, Borgival, Maisons, Poissy, had their habitues and
their ardent admirers. We argued about the merits and advantages of all
these places, celebrated and delightful to all Parsian employees.
Daddy Mongilet declared:
“You are like a lot of sheep! It must be pretty, this country you talk
of!”
“Well, how about you, Mongilet? Don't you ever go on an excursion?”
“Yes, indeed. I go in an omnibus. When I have had a good luncheon,
without any hurry, at the wine shop down there, I look up my route with
a plan of Paris, and the time table of the lines and connections. And
then I climb up on the box, open my umbrella and off we go. Oh, I see
lots of things, more than you, I bet! I change my surroundings. It is
as though I were taking a journey across the world, the people are so
different in one street and another. I know my Paris better than anyone.
And then, there is nothing more amusing than the entresols. You would
not believe what one sees in there at a glance. One guesses at domestic
scenes simply at sight of the face of a man who is roaring; one is
amused on passing by a barber's shop, to see the barber leave his
customer whose face is covered with lather to look out in the street.
One exchanges heartfelt glances with the milliners just for fun, as one
has no time to alight. Ah, how many things one sees!
“It is the drama, the real, the true, the drama of nature, seen as the
horses trot by. Heavens! I would not give my excursions in the omnibus
for all your stupid excursions in the woods.”
“Come and try it, Mongilet, come to the country once just to see.”
“I was there once,” he replied, “twenty years ago, and you will never
catch me there again.”
“Tell us about it, Mongilet.”
“If you wish to hear it. This is how it was:
“You knew Boivin, the old editorial clerk, whom we called Boileau?”
“Yes, perfectly.”
“He was my office chum. The rascal had a house at Colombes and always
invited me to spend Sunday with him. He would say:
“'Come along, Maculotte [he called me Maculotte for fun]. You will see
what a nice excursion we will take.'
“I let myself be entrapped like an animal, and set out, one morning by
the 8 o'clock train. I arrived at a kind of town, a country town where
there is nothing to see, and I at length found my way to an old wooden
door with an iron bell, at the end of an alley between two walls.
“I rang, and waited a long time, and at last the door was opened. What
was it that opened it? I could not tell at the first glance. A woman or
an ape? The creature was old, ugly, covered with old clothes that looked
dirty and wicked. It had chicken's feathers in its hair and looked as
though it would devour me.
“'What do you want?' she said.
“'Mr. Boivin.'
“'What do you want of him, of Mr. Boivin?'
“I felt ill at ease on being questioned by this fury. I stammered:
'Why-he expects me.'
“'Ah, it is you who have come to luncheon?'
“'Yes,' I stammered, trembling.
“Then, turning toward the house, she cried in an angry tone:
“'Boivin, here is your man!'
“It was my friend's wife. Little Boivin appeared immediately on the
threshold of a sort of barrack of plaster covered with zinc, that looked
like a foot stove. He wore white duck trousers covered with stains and a
dirty Panama hat.
“After shaking my hands warmly, he took me into what he called his
garden. It was at the end of another alleyway enclosed by high walls
and was a little square the size of a pocket handkerchief, surrounded by
houses that were so high that the sun, could reach it only two or three
hours in the day. Pansies, pinks, wallflowers and a few rose bushes
were languishing in this well without air, and hot as an oven from the
refraction of heat from the roofs.
“'I have no trees,' said Boivin, 'but the neighbors' walls take their
place. I have as much shade as in a wood.'
“Then he took hold of a button of my coat and said in a low tone:
“'You can do me a service. You saw the wife. She is not agreeable, eh?
To-day, as I had invited you, she gave me clean clothes; but if I spot
them all is lost. I counted on you to water my plants.'
“I agreed. I took off my coat, rolled up my sleeves, and began to work
the handle of a kind of pump that wheezed, puffed and rattled like a
consumptive as it emitted a thread of water like a Wallace drinking
fountain. It took me ten minutes to water it and I was in a bath of
perspiration. Boivin directed me:
“'Here--this plant--a little more; enough--now this one.'
“The watering pot leaked and my feet got more water than the flowers.
The bottoms of my trousers were soaking and covered with mud. And
twenty times running I kept it up, soaking my feet afresh each time, and
perspiring anew as I worked the handle of the pump. And when I was tired
out and wanted to stop, Boivin, in a tone of entreaty, said as he put
his hand on my arm:
“Just one more watering pot full--just one, and that will be all.'
“To thank me he gave me a rose, a big rose, but hardly had it touched
my button-hole than it fell to pieces, leaving only a hard little green
knot as a decoration. I was surprised, but said nothing.
“Mme. Boivin's voice was heard in the distance:
“'Are you ever coming? When you know that luncheon is ready!'
“We went toward the foot stove. If the garden was in the shade, the
house, on the other hand, was in the blazing sun, and the sweating room
in the Turkish bath is not as hot as was my friend's dining room.
“Three plates at the side of which were some half-washed forks, were
placed on a table of yellow wood in the middle of which stood an
earthenware dish containing boiled beef and potatoes. We began to eat.
“A large water bottle full of water lightly colored with wine attracted
my attention. Boivin, embarrassed, said to his wife:
“'See here, my dear, just on a special occasion, are you not going to
give us some plain wine?'
“She looked at him furiously.
“'So that you may both get tipsy, is that it, and stay here gabbing all
day? A fig for your special occasion!'
“He said no more. After the stew she brought in another dish of potatoes
cooked with bacon. When this dish was finished, still in silence, she
announced:
“'That is all! Now get out!'
“Boivin looked at her in astonishment.
“'But the pigeon--the pigeon you plucked this morning?'
“She put her hands on her hips:
“'Perhaps you have not had enough? Because you bring people here is
no reason why we should devour all that there is in the house. What is
there for me to eat this evening?'
“We rose. Solvin whispered
“'Wait for me a second, and we will skip.'
“He went into the kitchen where his wife had gone, and I overheard him
say:
“'Give me twenty sous, my dear.'
“'What do you want with twenty sons?'
“'Why, one does not know what may happen. It is always better to have
some money.'
“She yelled so that I should hear:
“'No, I will not give it to you! As the man has had luncheon here, the
least he can do is to pay your expenses for the day.'
“Boivin came back to fetch me. As I wished to be polite I bowed to the
mistress of the house, stammering:
“'Madame--many thanks--kind welcome.'
“'That's all right,' she replied. 'But do not bring him back drunk, for
you will have to answer to me, you know!'
“We set out. We had to cross a perfectly bare plain under the burning
sun. I attempted to gather a flower along the road and gave a cry of
pain. It had hurt my hand frightfully. They call these plants nettles.
And, everywhere, there was a smell of manure, enough to turn your
stomach.
“Boivin said, 'Have a little patience and we will reach the river bank.'
“We reached the river. Here there was an odor of mud and dirty water,
and the sun blazed down on the water so that it burned my eyes. I begged
Boivin to go under cover somewhere. He took me into a kind of shanty
filled with men, a river boatmen's tavern.
“He said:
“'This does not look very grand, but it is very comfortable.'
“I was hungry. I ordered an omelet. But to and behold, at the second
glass of wine, that beggar, Boivin, lost his head, and I understand why
his wife gave him water diluted.
“He got up, declaimed, wanted to show his strength, interfered in a
quarrel between two drunken men who were fighting, and, but for the
landlord, who came to the rescue, we should both have been killed.
“I dragged him away, holding him up until we reached the first bush
where I deposited him. I lay down beside him and, it seems, I fell
asleep. We must certainly have slept a long time, for it was dark when
I awoke. Boivin was snoring at my side. I shook him; he rose but he was
still drunk, though a little less so.
“We set out through the darkness across the plain. Boivin said he knew
the way. He made me turn to the left, then to the right, then to the
left. We could see neither sky nor earth, and found ourselves lost in
the midst of a kind of forest of wooden stakes, that came as high as our
noses. It was a vineyard and these were the supports. There was not
a single light on the horizon. We wandered about in this vineyard for
about an hour or two, hesitating, reaching out our arms without finding
any limit, for we kept retracing our steps.
“At length Boivin fell against a stake that tore his cheek and he
remained in a sitting posture on the ground, uttering with all his might
long and resounding hallos, while I screamed 'Help! Help!' as loud as I
could, lighting candle-matches to show the way to our rescuers, and also
to keep up my courage.
“At last a belated peasant heard us and put us on our right road. I took
Boivin to his home, but as I was leaving him on the threshold of his
garden, the door opened suddenly and his wife appeared, a candle in her
hand. She frightened me horribly.
“As soon as she saw her husband, whom she must have been waiting for
since dark, she screamed, as she darted toward me:
“'Ah, scoundrel, I knew you would bring him back drunk!'
“My, how I made my escape, running all the way to the station, and as I
thought the fury was pursuing me I shut myself in an inner room as the
train was not due for half an hour.
“That is why I never married, and why I never go out of Paris.”
MOONLIGHT
Madame Julie Roubere was expecting her elder sister, Madame Henriette
Letore, who had just returned from a trip to Switzerland.
The Letore household had left nearly five weeks before. Madame Henriette
had allowed her husband to return alone to their estate in Calvados,
where some business required his attention, and had come to spend a few
days in Paris with her sister. Night came on. In the quiet parlor Madame
Roubere was reading in the twilight in an absent-minded way, raising
her, eyes whenever she heard a sound.
At last, she heard a ring at the door, and her sister appeared, wrapped
in a travelling cloak. And without any formal greeting, they clasped
each other in an affectionate embrace, only desisting for a moment to
give each other another hug. Then they talked about their health, about
their respective families, and a thousand other things, gossiping,
jerking out hurried, broken sentences as they followed each other about,
while Madame Henriette was removing her hat and veil.
It was now quite dark. Madame Roubere rang for a lamp, and as soon as it
was brought in, she scanned her sister's face, and was on the point of
embracing her once more. But she held back, scared and astonished at the
other's appearance.
On her temples Madame Letore had two large locks of white hair. All the
rest of her hair was of a glossy, raven-black hue; but there alone, at
each side of her head, ran, as it were, two silvery streams which
were immediately lost in the black mass surrounding them. She was,
nevertheless, only twenty-four years old, and this change had come on
suddenly since her departure for Switzerland.
Without moving, Madame Roubere gazed at her in amazement, tears rising
to her eyes, as she thought that some mysterious and terrible calamity
must have befallen her sister. She asked:
“What is the matter with you, Henriette?”
Smiling with a sad face, the smile of one who is heartsick, the other
replied:
“Why, nothing, I assure you. Were you noticing my white hair?”
But Madame Roubere impetuously seized her by the shoulders, and with a
searching glance at her, repeated:
“What is the matter with you? Tell me what is the matter with you. And
if you tell me a falsehood, I'll soon find it out.”
They remained face to face, and Madame Henriette, who looked as if she
were about to faint, had two pearly tears in the corners of her drooping
eyes.
Her sister continued:
“What has happened to you? What is the matter with you? Answer me!”
Then, in a subdued voice, the other murmured:
“I have--I have a lover.”
And, hiding her forehead on the shoulder of her younger sister, she
sobbed.
Then, when she had grown a little calmer, when the heaving of her breast
had subsided, she commenced to unbosom herself, as if to cast forth this
secret from herself, to empty this sorrow of hers into a sympathetic
heart.
Thereupon, holding each other's hands tightly clasped, the two women
went over to a sofa in a dark corner of the room, into which they sank,
and the younger sister, passing her arm over the elder one's neck, and
drawing her close to her heart, listened.
“Oh! I know that there was no excuse for me; I do not understand myself,
and since that day I feel as if I were mad. Be careful, my child, about
yourself--be careful! If you only knew how weak we are, how quickly we
yield, and fall. It takes so little, so little, so little, a moment of
tenderness, one of those sudden fits of melancholy which come over you,
one of those longings to open, your arms, to love, to cherish something,
which we all have at certain moments.
“You know my husband, and you know how fond I am of him; but he is
mature and sensible, and cannot even comprehend the tender vibrations
of a woman's heart. He is always the same, always good, always smiling,
always kind, always perfect. Oh! how I sometimes have wished that he
would clasp me roughly in his arms, that he would embrace me with those
slow, sweet kisses which make two beings intermingle, which are like
mute confidences! How I have wished that he were foolish, even weak, so
that he should have need of me, of my caresses, of my tears!
“This all seems very silly; but we women are made like that. How can we
help it?
“And yet the thought of deceiving him never entered my mind. Now it has
happened, without love, without reason, without anything, simply because
the moon shone one night on the Lake of Lucerne.
“During the month when we were travelling together, my husband, with
his calm indifference, paralyzed my enthusiasm, extinguished my poetic
ardor. When we were descending the mountain paths at sunrise, when
as the four horses galloped along with the diligence, we saw, in the
transparent morning haze, valleys, woods, streams, and villages, I
clasped my hands with delight, and said to him: 'How beautiful it is,
dear! Give me a kiss! Kiss me now!' He only answered, with a smile of
chilling kindliness: 'There is no reason why we should kiss each other
because you like the landscape.'
“And his words froze me to the heart. It seems to me that when people
love each other, they ought to feel more moved by love than ever, in the
presence of beautiful scenes.
“In fact, I was brimming over with poetry which he kept me from
expressing. I was almost like a boiler filled with steam and
hermetically sealed.
“One evening (we had for four days been staying in a hotel at Fluelen)
Robert, having one of his sick headaches, went to bed immediately after
dinner, and I went to take a walk all alone along the edge of the lake.
“It was a night such as one reads of in fairy tales. The full moon
showed itself in the middle of the sky; the tall mountains, with their
snowy crests, seemed to wear silver crowns; the waters of the lake
glittered with tiny shining ripples. The air was mild, with that kind of
penetrating warmth which enervates us till we are ready to faint, to
be deeply affected without any apparent cause. But how sensitive, how
vibrating the heart is at such moments! how quickly it beats, and how
intense is its emotion!
“I sat down on the grass, and gazed at that vast, melancholy, and
fascinating lake, and a strange feeling arose in me; I was seized with
an insatiable need of love, a revolt against the gloomy dullness of my
life. What! would it never be my fate to wander, arm in arm, with a man
I loved, along a moon-kissed bank like this? Was I never to feel on
my lips those kisses so deep, delicious, and intoxicating which lovers
exchange on nights that seem to have been made by God for tenderness?
Was I never to know ardent, feverish love in the moonlit shadows of a
summer's night?
“And I burst out weeping like a crazy woman. I heard something stirring
behind me. A man stood there, gazing at me. When I turned my head round,
he recognized me, and, advancing, said:
“'You are weeping, madame?'
“It was a young barrister who was travelling with his mother, and whom
we had often met. His eyes had frequently followed me.
“I was so confused that I did not know what answer to give or what to
think of the situation. I told him I felt ill.
“He walked on by my side in a natural and respectful manner, and began
talking to me about what we had seen during our trip. All that I
had felt he translated into words; everything that made me thrill he
understood perfectly, better than I did myself. And all of a sudden he
repeated some verses of Alfred de Musset. I felt myself choking,
seized with indescribable emotion. It seemed to me that the mountains
themselves, the lake, the moonlight, were singing to me about things
ineffably sweet.
“And it happened, I don't know how, I don't know why, in a sort of
hallucination.
“As for him, I did not see him again till the morning of his departure.
“He gave me his card!”
And, sinking into her sister's arms, Madame Letore broke into groans
--almost into shrieks.
Then, Madame Roubere, with a self-contained and serious air, said very
gently:
“You see, sister, very often it is not a man that we love, but love
itself. And your real lover that night was the moonlight.”
THE FIRST SNOWFALL
The long promenade of La Croisette winds in a curve along the edge of
the blue water. Yonder, to the right, Esterel juts out into the sea in
the distance, obstructing the view and shutting out the horizon with its
pretty southern outline of pointed summits, numerous and fantastic.
To the left, the isles of Sainte Marguerite and Saint Honorat, almost
level with the water, display their surface, covered with pine trees.
And all along the great gulf, all along the tall mountains that encircle
Cannes, the white villa residences seem to be sleeping in the sunlight.
You can see them from a distance, the white houses, scattered from
the top to the bottom of the mountains, dotting the dark greenery with
specks like snow.
Those near the water have gates opening on the wide promenade which is
washed by the quiet waves. The air is soft and balmy. It is one of those
warm winter days when there is scarcely a breath of cool air. Above the
walls of the gardens may be seen orange trees and lemon trees full of
golden fruit. Ladies are walking slowly across the sand of the avenue,
followed by children rolling hoops, or chatting with gentlemen.
A young woman has just passed out through the door of her coquettish
little house facing La Croisette. She stops for a moment to gaze at the
promenaders, smiles, and with an exhausted air makes her way toward an
empty bench facing the sea. Fatigued after having gone twenty paces, she
sits down out of breath. Her pale face seems that of a dead woman. She
coughs, and raises to her lips her transparent fingers as if to stop
those paroxysms that exhaust her.
She gazes at the sky full of sunshine and swallows, at the zigzag
summits of the Esterel over yonder, and at the sea, the blue, calm,
beautiful sea, close beside her.
She smiles again, and murmurs:
“Oh! how happy I am!”
She knows, however, that she is going to die, that she will never see
the springtime, that in a year, along the same promenade, these same
people who pass before her now will come again to breathe the warm air
of this charming spot, with their children a little bigger, with their
hearts all filled with hopes, with tenderness, with happiness, while at
the bottom of an oak coffin, the poor flesh which is still left to her
to-day will have decomposed, leaving only her bones lying in the silk
robe which she has selected for a shroud.
She will be no more. Everything in life will go on as before for others.
For her, life will be over, over forever. She will be no more. She
smiles, and inhales as well as she can, with her diseased lungs, the
perfumed air of the gardens.
And she sinks into a reverie.
She recalls the past. She had been married, four years ago, to a Norman
gentleman. He was a strong young man, bearded, healthy-looking, with
wide shoulders, narrow mind, and joyous disposition.
They had been united through financial motives which she knew nothing
about. She would willingly have said No. She said Yes, with a movement
of the head, in order not to thwart her father and mother. She was a
Parisian, gay, and full of the joy of living.
Her husband brought her home to his Norman chateau. It was a huge stone
building surrounded by tall trees of great age. A high clump of pine
trees shut out the view in front. On the right, an opening in the trees
presented a view of the plain, which stretched out in an unbroken level
as far as the distant, farmsteads. A cross-road passed before the gate
and led to the high road three kilometres away.
Oh! she recalls everything, her arrival, her first day in her new abode,
and her isolated life afterward.
When she stepped out of the carriage, she glanced at the old building,
and laughingly exclaimed:
“It does not look cheerful!”
Her husband began to laugh in his turn, and replied:
“Pooh! we get used to it! You'll see. I never feel bored in it, for my
part.”
That day they passed their time in embracing each other, and she did not
find it too long. This lasted fully a month. The days passed one after
the other in insignificant yet absorbing occupations. She learned the
value and the importance of the little things of life. She knew that
people can interest themselves in the price of eggs, which cost a few
centimes more or less according to the seasons.
It was summer. She went to the fields to see the men harvesting. The
brightness of the sunshine found an echo in her heart.
The autumn came. Her husband went out shooting. He started in the
morning with his two dogs Medor and Mirza. She remained alone, without
grieving, moreover, at Henry's absence. She was very fond of him,
but she did not miss him. When he returned home, her affection was
especially bestowed on the dogs. She took care of them every evening
with a mother's tenderness, caressed them incessantly, gave them a
thousand charming little names which she had no idea of applying to her
husband.
He invariably told her all about his sport. He described the places
where he found partridges, expressed his astonishment at not having
caught any hares in Joseph Ledentu's clover, or else appeared indignant
at the conduct of M. Lechapelier, of Havre, who always went along the
edge of his property to shoot the game that he, Henry de Parville, had
started.
She replied: “Yes, indeed! it is not right,” thinking of something else
all the while.
The winter came, the Norman winter, cold and rainy. The endless floods
of rain came down tin the slates of the great gabled roof, rising like
a knife blade toward the sky. The roads seemed like rivers of mud, the
country a plain of mud, and no sound could be heard save that of water
falling; no movement could be seen save the whirling flight of crows
that settled down like a cloud on a field and then hurried off again.
About four o'clock, the army of dark, flying creatures came and perched
in the tall beeches at the left of the chateau, emitting deafening
cries. During nearly an hour, they flew from tree top to tree top,
seemed to be fighting, croaked, and made a black disturbance in the gray
branches. She gazed at them each evening with a weight at her heart, so
deeply was she impressed by the lugubrious melancholy of the darkness
falling on the deserted country.
Then she rang for the lamp, and drew near the fire. She burned heaps of
wood without succeeding in warming the spacious apartments reeking with
humidity. She was cold all day long, everywhere, in the drawing-room, at
meals, in her own apartment. It seemed to her she was cold to the marrow
of her bones. Her husband only came in to dinner; he was always out
shooting, or else he was superintending sowing the seed, tilling the
soil, and all the work of the country.
He would come back jovial, and covered with mud, rubbing his hands as he
exclaimed:
“What wretched weather!”
Or else:
“A fire looks comfortable!”
Or sometimes:
“Well, how are you to-day? Are you in good spirits?”
He was happy, in good health, without desires, thinking of nothing save
this simple, healthy, and quiet life.
About December, when the snow had come, she suffered so much from the
icy-cold air of the chateau which seemed to have become chilled in
passing through the centuries just as human beings become chilled with
years, that she asked her husband one evening:
“Look here, Henry! You ought to have a furnace put into the house; it
would dry the walls. I assure you that I cannot keep warm from morning
till night.”
At first he was stunned at this extravagant idea of introducing a
furnace into his manor-house. It would have seemed more natural to him
to have his dogs fed out of silver dishes. He gave a tremendous laugh
from the bottom of his chest as he exclaimed:
“A furnace here! A furnace here! Ha! ha! ha! what a good joke!”
She persisted:
“I assure you, dear, I feel frozen; you don't feel it because you are
always moving about; but all the same, I feel frozen.”
He replied, still laughing:
“Pooh! you'll get used to it, and besides it is excellent for the
health. You will only be all the better for it. We are not Parisians,
damn it! to live in hot-houses. And, besides, the spring is quite near.”
About the beginning of January, a great misfortune befell her. Her
father and mother died in a carriage accident. She came to Paris for the
funeral. And her sorrow took entire possession of her mind for about six
months.
The mildness of the beautiful summer days finally roused her, and she
lived along in a state of sad languor until autumn.
When the cold weather returned, she was brought face to face, for the
first time, with the gloomy future. What was she to do? Nothing. What
was going to happen to her henceforth? Nothing. What expectation, what
hope, could revive her heart? None. A doctor who was consulted declared
that she would never have children.
Sharper, more penetrating still than the year before, the cold made her
suffer continually.
She stretched out her shivering hands to the big flames. The glaring
fire burned her face; but icy whiffs seemed to glide down her back and
to penetrate between her skin and her underclothing. And she shivered
from head to foot. Innumerable draughts of air appeared to have taken up
their abode in the apartment, living, crafty currents of air as cruel
as enemies. She encountered them at every moment; they blew on her
incessantly their perfidious and frozen hatred, now on her face, now on
her hands, and now on her back.
Once more she spoke of a furnace; but her husband listened to her
request as if she were asking for the moon. The introduction of such an
apparatus at Parville appeared to him as impossible as the discovery of
the Philosopher's Stone.
Having been at Rouen on business one day, he brought back to his wife
a dainty foot warmer made of copper, which he laughingly called a
“portable furnace”; and he considered that this would prevent her
henceforth from ever being cold.
Toward the end of December she understood that she could not always live
like this, and she said timidly one evening at dinner:
“Listen, dear! Are we, not going to spend a week or two in Paris before
spring:”
He was stupefied.
“In Paris? In Paris? But what are we to do there? Ah! no by Jove! We are
better off here. What odd ideas come into your head sometimes.”
She faltered:
“It might distract us a little.”
He did not understand.
“What is it you want to distract you? Theatres, evening parties, dinners
in town? You knew, however, when you came here, that you ought not to
expect any distractions of this kind!”
She saw a reproach in these words, and in the tone in which they were
uttered. She relapsed into silence. She was timid and gentle, without
resisting power and without strength of will.
In January the cold weather returned with violence. Then the snow
covered the earth.
One evening, as she watched the great black cloud of crows dispersing
among the trees, she began to weep, in spite of herself.
Her husband came in. He asked in great surprise:
“What is the matter with you?”
He was happy, quite happy, never having dreamed of another life or
other pleasures. He had been born and had grown up in this melancholy
district. He felt contented in his own house, at ease in body and mind.
He did not understand that one might desire incidents, have a longing
for changing pleasures; he did not understand that it does not seem
natural to certain beings to remain in the same place during the four
seasons; he seemed not to know that spring, summer, autumn, and winter
have, for multitudes of persons, fresh amusements in new places.
She could say nothing in reply, and she quickly dried her eyes. At last
she murmured in a despairing tone:
“I am--I--I am a little sad--I am a little bored.”
But she was terrified at having even said so much, and added very
quickly:
“And, besides--I am--I am a little cold.”
This last plea made him angry.
“Ah! yes, still your idea of the furnace. But look here, deuce take it!
you have not had one cold since you came here.”
Night came on. She went up to her room, for she had insisted on having
a separate apartment. She went to bed. Even in bed she felt cold. She
thought:
“It will be always like this, always, until I die.”
And she thought of her husband. How could he have said:
“You--have not had one cold since you came here”?
She would have to be ill, to cough before he could understand what she
suffered!
And she was filled with indignation, the angry indignation of a weak,
timid being.
She must cough. Then, perhaps, he would take pity on her. Well, she
would cough; he should hear her coughing; the doctor should be called
in; he should see, her husband, he should see.
She got out of bed, her legs and her feet bare, and a childish idea made
her smile:
“I want a furnace, and I must have it. I shall cough so much that he'll
have to put one in the house.”
And she sat down in a chair in her nightdress. She waited an hour, two
hours. She shivered, but she did not catch cold. Then she resolved on a
bold expedient.
She noiselessly left her room, descended the stairs, and opened the gate
into the garden.
The earth, covered with snows seemed dead. She abruptly thrust forward
her bare foot, and plunged it into the icy, fleecy snow. A sensation of
cold, painful as a wound, mounted to her heart. However, she stretched
out the other leg, and began to descend the steps slowly.
Then she advanced through the grass saying to herself:
“I'll go as far as the pine trees.”
She walked with quick steps, out of breath, gasping every time she
plunged her foot into the snow.
She touched the first pine tree with her hand, as if to assure herself
that she had carried out her plan to the end; then she went back into
the house. She thought two or three times that she was going to fall, so
numbed and weak did she feel. Before going in, however, she sat down in
that icy fleece, and even took up several handfuls to rub on her chest.
Then she went in and got into bed. It seemed to her at the end of an
hour that she had a swarm of ants in her throat, and that other ants
were running all over her limbs. She slept, however.
Next day she was coughing and could not get up.
She had inflammation of the lungs. She became delirious, and in her
delirium she asked for a furnace. The doctor insisted on having one put
in. Henry yielded, but with visible annoyance.
She was incurable. Her lungs were seriously affected, and those about
her feared for her life.
“If she remains here, she will not last until the winter,” said the
doctor.
She was sent south. She came to Cannes, made the acquaintance of the
sun, loved the sea, and breathed the perfume of orange blossoms.
Then, in the spring, she returned north.
But she now lived with the fear of being cured, with the fear of the
long winters of Normandy; and as soon as she was better she opened her
window by night and recalled the sweet shores of the Mediterranean.
And now she is going to die. She knows it and she is happy.
She unfolds a newspaper which she has not already opened, and reads this
heading:
“The first snow in Paris.”
She shivers and then smiles. She looks across at the Esterel, which is
becoming rosy in the rays of the setting sun. She looks at the vast blue
sky, so blue, so very blue, and the vast blue sea, so very blue also,
and she rises from her seat.
And then she returned to the house with slow steps, only stopping to
cough, for she had remained out too long and she was cold, a little
cold.
She finds a letter from her husband. She opens it, still smiling, and
she reads:
“MY DEAR LOVE: I hope you are well, and that you do not regret too
much our beautiful country. For some days last we have had a good
frost, which presages snow. For my part, I adore this weather, and
you my believe that I do not light your damned furnace.”
She ceases reading, quite happy at the thought that she had her furnace
put in. Her right hand, which holds the letter, falls slowly on her lap,
while she raises her left hand to her mouth, as if to calm the obstinate
cough which is racking her chest.
SUNDAYS OF A BOURGEOIS
PREPARATIONS FOR THE EXCURSION
M. Patissot, born in Paris, after having failed in his examinations
at the College Henri IV., like many others, had entered the government
service through the influence of one of his aunts, who kept a tobacco
store where the head of one of the departments bought his provisions.
He advanced very slowly, and would, perhaps, have died a fourth-class
clerk without the aid of a kindly Providence, which sometimes watches
over our destiny. He is today fifty-two years old, and it is only at
this age that he is beginning to explore, as a tourist, all that part of
France which lies between the fortifications and the provinces.
The story of his advance might be useful to many employees, just as the
tale of his excursions may be of value to many Parisians who will
take them as a model for their own outings, and will thus, through his
example, avoid certain mishaps which occurred to him.
In 1854 he only enjoyed a salary of 1,800 francs. Through a peculiar
trait of his character he was unpopular with all his superiors, who
let him languish in the eternal and hopeless expectation of the clerk's
ideal, an increase of salary. Nevertheless he worked; but he did not
know how to make himself appreciated. He had too much self-respect, he
claimed. His self-respect consisted in never bowing to his superiors
in a low and servile manner, as did, according to him, certain of his
colleagues, whom he would not mention. He added that his frankness
embarrassed many people, for, like all the rest, he protested against
injustice and the favoritism shown to persons entirely foreign to the
bureaucracy. But his indignant voice never passed beyond the little cage
where he worked.
First as a government clerk, then as a Frenchman and finally as a
man who believed in order he would adhere to whatever government was
established, having an unbounded reverence for authority, except for
that of his chiefs.
Each time that he got the chance he would place himself where he could
see the emperor pass, in order to have the honor of taking his hat off
to him; and he would go away puffed up with pride at having bowed to the
head of the state.
From his habit of observing the sovereign he did as many others do; he
imitated the way he trimmed his beard or arranged his hair, the cut
of his clothes, his walk, his mannerisms. Indeed, how many men in each
country seemed to be the living images of the head of the government!
Perhaps he vaguely resembled Napoleon III., but his hair was black;
therefore he dyed it, and then the likeness was complete; and when
he met another gentleman in the street also imitating the imperial
countenance he was jealous and looked at him disdainfully. This need
of imitation soon became his hobby, and, having heard an usher at the
Tuilleries imitate the voice of the emperor, he also acquired the same
intonations and studied slowness.
He thus became so much like his model that they might easily have been
mistaken for each other, and certain high dignitaries were heard to
remark that they found it unseemly and even vulgar; the matter was
mentioned to the prime minister, who ordered that the employee should
appear before him. But at the sight of him he began to laugh and
repeated two or three times: “That's funny, really funny!” This
was repeated, and the following day Patissot's immediate superior
recommended that his subordinate receive an increase of salary of three
hundred francs. He received it immediately.
From that time on his promotions came regularly, thanks to his ape-like
faculty of imitation. The presentiment that some high honor might come
to him some day caused his chiefs to speak to him with deference.
When the Republic was proclaimed it was a disaster for him. He felt
lost, done for, and, losing his head, he stopped dyeing his hair, shaved
his face clean and had his hair cut short, thus acquiring a paternal and
benevolent expression which could not compromise him in any way.
Then his chiefs took revenge for the long time during which he had
imposed upon them, and, having all turned Republican through an
instinct of self preservation, they cut down his salary and delayed his
promotion. He, too, changed his opinions. But the Republic not being
a palpable and living person whom one can resemble, and the presidents
succeeding each other with rapidity, he found himself plunged in the
greatest embarrassment, in terrible distress, and, after an unsuccessful
imitation of his last ideal, M. Thiers, he felt a check put on all his
attempts at imitation. He needed a new manifestation of his personality.
He searched for a long time; then, one morning, he arrived at the office
wearing a new hat which had on the side a small red, white and blue
rosette. His colleagues were astounded; they laughed all that day,
the next day, all the week, all the month. But the seriousness of his
demeanor at last disconcerted them, and once more his superiors became
anxious. What mystery could be hidden under this sign? Was it a simple
manifestation of patriotism, or an affirmation of his allegiance to the
Republic, or perhaps the badge of some powerful association? But to
wear it so persistently he must surely have some powerful and hidden
protection. It would be well to be on one's guard, especially as he
received all pleasantries with unruffled calmness. After that he was
treated with respect, and his sham courage saved him; he was appointed
head clerk on the first of January, 1880. His whole life had been spent
indoors. He hated noise and bustle, and because of this love of rest and
quiet he had remained a bachelor. He spent his Sundays reading tales
of adventure and ruling guide lines which he afterward offered to his
colleagues. In his whole existence he had only taken three vacations
of a week each, when he was changing his quarters. But sometimes, on
a holiday, he would leave by an excursion train for Dieppe or Havre in
order to elevate his mind by the inspiring sight of the sea.
He was full of that common sense which borders on stupidity. For a
long time he had been living quietly, with economy, temperate through
prudence, chaste by temperament, when suddenly he was assailed by a
terrible apprehension. One evening in the street he suddenly felt
an attack of dizziness which made him fear a stroke of apoplexy. He
hastened to a physician and for five francs obtained the following
prescription:
M. X-, fifty-five years old, bachelor, clerk. Full-blooded,
danger of apoplexy. Cold-water applications, moderate nourishment,
plenty of exercise. MONTELLIER, M.D.
Patissot was greatly distressed, and for a whole month, in his office,
he kept a wet towel wrapped around his head like a turban while the
water continually dripped on his work, which he would have to do over
again. Every once in a while he would read the prescription over,
probably in the hope of finding some hidden meaning, of penetrating into
the secret thought of the physician, and also of discovering some forms
of exercise which, might perhaps make him immune from apoplexy.
Then he consulted his friends, showing them the fateful paper. One
advised boxing. He immediately hunted up an instructor, and, on the
first day, he received a punch in the nose which immediately took away
all his ambition in this direction. Single-stick made him gasp for
breath, and he grew so stiff from fencing that for two days and two
nights he could not get sleep. Then a bright idea struck him. It was to
walk, every Sunday, to some suburb of Paris and even to certain places
in the capital which he did not know.
For a whole week his mind was occupied with thoughts of the equipment
which you need for these excursions; and on Sunday, the 30th of May,
he began his preparations. After reading all the extraordinary
advertisements which poor, blind and halt beggars distribute on the
street corners, he began to visit the stores with the intention of
looking about him only and of buying later on. First of all, he visited
a so-called American shoe store, where heavy travelling shoes were shown
him. The clerk brought out a kind of ironclad contrivance, studded with
spikes like a harrow, which he claimed to be made from Rocky Mountain
bison skin. He was so carried away with them that he would willingly
have bought two pair, but one was sufficient. He carried them away under
his arm, which soon became numb from the weight. He next invested in a
pair of corduroy trousers, such as carpenters wear, and a pair of
oiled canvas leggings. Then he needed a knapsack for his provisions, a
telescope so as to recognize villages perched on the slope of distant
hills, and finally, a government survey map to enable him to find his
way about without asking the peasants toiling in the fields. Lastly, in
order more comfortably to stand the heat, he decided to purchase a light
alpaca jacket offered by the famous firm of Raminau, according to their
advertisement, for the modest sum of six francs and fifty centimes. He
went to this store and was welcomed by a distinguished-looking young man
with a marvellous head of hair, nails as pink as those of a lady and a
pleasant smile. He showed him the garment. It did not correspond with
the glowing style of the advertisement. Then Patissot hesitatingly
asked, “Well, monsieur, will it wear well?” The young man turned his
eyes away in well-feigned embarrassment, like an honest man who does
not wish to deceive a customer, and, lowering his eyes, he said in
a hesitating manner: “Dear me, monsieur, you understand that for six
francs fifty we cannot turn out an article like this for instance.” And
he showed him a much finer jacket than the first one. Patissot examined
it and asked the price. “Twelve francs fifty.” It was very tempting,
but before deciding, he once more questioned the big young man, who was
observing him attentively. “And--is that good? Do you guarantee it?”
“Oh! certainly, monsieur, it is quite goad! But, of course, you must not
get it wet! Yes, it's really quite good, but you understand that there
are goods and goods. It's excellent for the price. Twelve francs fifty,
just think. Why, that's nothing at all. Naturally a twenty-five-franc
coat is much better. For twenty-five francs you get a superior quality,
as strong as linen, and which wears even better. If it gets wet a little
ironing will fix it right up. The color never fades, and it does not
turn red in the sunlight. It is the warmest and lightest material out.”
He unfolded his wares, holding them up, shaking them, crumpling and
stretching them in order to show the excellent quality of the cloth. He
talked on convincingly, dispelling all hesitation by words and gesture.
Patissot was convinced; he bought the coat. The pleasant salesman, still
talking, tied up the bundle and continued praising the value of the
purchase. When it was paid for he was suddenly silent. He bowed with
a superior air, and, holding the door open, he watched his customer
disappear, both arms filled with bundles and vainly trying to reach his
hat to bow.
M. Patissot returned home and carefully studied the map. He wished to
try on his shoes, which were more like skates than shoes, owing to the
spikes. He slipped and fell, promising himself to be more careful in the
future. Then he spread out all his purchases on a chair and looked at
them for a long time. He went to sleep with this thought: “Isn't
it strange that I didn't think before of taking an excursion to the
country?”
During the whole week Patissot worked without ambition. He was dreaming
of the outing which he had planned for the following Sunday, and he was
seized by a sudden longing for the country, a desire of growing
tender over nature, this thirst for rustic scenes which overwhelms the
Parisians in spring time.
Only one person gave him any attention; it was a silent old copying
clerk named Boivin, nicknamed Boileau. He himself lived in the country
and had a little garden which he cultivated carefully; his needs were
small, and he was perfectly happy, so they said. Patissot was now able
to understand his tastes and the similarity of their ideals made them
immediately fast friends. Old man Boivin said to him:
“Do I like fishing, monsieur? Why, it's the delight of my life!”
Then Patissot questioned him with deep interest. Boivin named all the
fish who frolicked under this dirty water--and Patissot thought he could
see them. Boivin told about the different hooks, baits, spots and times
suitable for each kind. And Patissot felt himself more like a fisherman
than Boivin himself. They decided that the following Sunday they would
meet for the opening of the season for the edification of Patissot, who
was delighted to have found such an experienced instructor.
FISHING EXCURSION
The day before the one when he was, for the first time in his life,
to throw a hook into a river, Monsieur Patissot bought, for eighty
centimes, “How to Become a Perfect Fisherman.” In this work he learned
many useful things, but he was especially impressed by the style, and he
retained the following passage:
“In a word, if you wish, without books, without rules, to fish
successfully, to the left or to the right, up or down stream, in the
masterly manner that halts at no difficulty, then fish before, during
and after a storm, when the clouds break and the sky is streaked with
lightning, when the earth shakes with the grumbling thunder; it is then
that, either through hunger or terror, all the fish forget their habits
in a turbulent flight.
“In this confusion follow or neglect all favorable signs, and just go on
fishing; you will march to victory!”
In order to catch fish of all sizes, he bought three well-perfected
poles, made to be used as a cane in the city, which, on the river,
could be transformed into a fishing rod by a simple jerk. He bought some
number fifteen hooks for gudgeon, number twelve for bream, and with
his number seven he expected to fill his basket with carp. He bought no
earth worms because he was sure of finding them everywhere; but he laid
in a provision of sand worms. He had a jar full of them, and in the
evening he watched them with interest. The hideous creatures swarmed
in their bath of bran as they do in putrid meat. Patissot wished to
practice baiting his hook. He took up one with disgust, but he had
hardly placed the curved steel point against it when it split open.
Twenty times he repeated this without success, and he might have
continued all night had he not feared to exhaust his supply of vermin.
He left by the first train. The station was full of people equipped with
fishing lines. Some, like Patissot's, looked like simple bamboo canes;
others, in one piece, pointed their slender ends to the skies. They
looked like a forest of slender sticks, which mingled and clashed like
swords or swayed like masts over an ocean of broad-brimmed straw hats.
When the train started fishing rods could be seen sticking out of all
the windows and doors, giving to the train the appearance of a huge,
bristly caterpillar winding through the fields.
Everybody got off at Courbevoie and rushed for the stage for Bezons. A
crowd of fishermen crowded on top of the coach, holding their rods in
their hands, giving the vehicle the appearance of a porcupine.
All along the road men were travelling in the same direction as though
on a pilgrimage to an unknown Jerusalem. They were carrying those long,
slender sticks resembling those carried by the faithful returning from
Palestine. A tin box on a strap was fastened to their backs. They were
in a hurry.
At Bezons the river appeared. People were lined along bath banks, men
in frock coats, others in duck suits, others in blouses, women, children
and even young girls of marriageable age; all were fishing.
Patissot started for the dam where his friend Boivin was waiting
for him. The latter greeted him rather coolly. He had just made the
acquaintance of a big, fat man of about fifty, who seemed very strong
and whose skin was tanned. All three hired a big boat and lay off almost
under the fall of the dam, where the fish are most plentiful.
Boivin was immediately ready. He baited his line and threw it out,
and then sat motionless, watching the little float with extraordinary
concentration. From time to time he would jerk his line out of the water
and cast it farther out. The fat gentleman threw out his well-baited
hooks, put his line down beside him, filled his pipe, lit it, crossed
his arms, and, without another glance at the cork, he watched the water
flow by. Patissot once more began trying to stick sand worms on his
hooks. After about five minutes of this occupation he called to Boivin;
“Monsieur Boivin, would you be so kind as to help me put these creatures
on my hook? Try as I will, I can't seem to succeed.” Boivin raised his
head: “Please don't disturb me, Monsieur Patissot; we are not here for
pleasure!” However, he baited the line, which Patissot then threw out,
carefully imitating all the motions of his friend.
The boat was tossing wildly, shaken by the waves, and spun round like a
top by the current, although anchored at both ends. Patissot, absorbed
in the sport, felt a vague kind of uneasiness; he was uncomfortably
heavy and somewhat dizzy.
They caught nothing. Little Boivin, very nervous, was gesticulating and
shaking his head in despair. Patissot was as sad as though some disaster
had overtaken him. The fat gentleman alone, still motionless, was
quietly smoking without paying any attention to his line. At last
Patissot, disgusted, turned toward him and said in a mournful voice:
“They are not biting, are they?”
He quietly replied:
“Of course not!”
Patissot surprised, looked at him.
“Do you ever catch many?”
“Never!”
“What! Never?”
The fat man, still smoking like a factory chimney, let out the following
words, which completely upset his neighbor:
“It would bother me a lot if they did bite. I don't come here to fish; I
come because I'm very comfortable here; I get shaken up as though I were
at sea. If I take a line along, it's only to do as others do.”
Monsieur Patissot, on the other hand, did not feel at all well. His
discomfort, at first vague, kept increasing, and finally took on a
definite form. He felt, indeed, as though he were being tossed by the
sea, and he was suffering from seasickness. After the first attack had
calmed down, he proposed leaving, but Boivin grew so furious that they
almost came to blows. The fat man, moved by pity, rowed the boat back,
and, as soon as Patissot had recovered from his seasickness, they
bethought themselves of luncheon.
Two restaurants presented themselves. One of them, very small, looked
like a beer garden, and was patronized by the poorer fishermen. The
other one, which bore the imposing name of “Linden Cottage,” looked like
a middle-class residence and was frequented by the aristocracy of the
rod. The two owners, born enemies, watched each other with hatred across
a large field, which separated them, and where the white house of the
dam keeper and of the inspector of the life-saving department stood out
against the green grass. Moreover, these two officials disagreed, one of
them upholding the beer garden and the other one defending the Elms,
and the internal feuds which arose in these three houses reproduced the
whole history of mankind.
Boivin, who knew the beer garden, wished to go there, exclaiming: “The
food is very good, and it isn't expensive; you'll see. Anyhow, Monsieur
Patissot, you needn't expect to get me tipsy the way you did last
Sunday. My wife was furious, you know; and she has sworn never to
forgive you!”
The fat gentleman declared that he would only eat at the Elms, because
it was an excellent place and the cooking was as good as in the best
restaurants in Paris.
“Do as you wish,” declared Boivin; “I am going where I am accustomed to
go.” He left. Patissot, displeased at his friend's actions, followed the
fat gentleman.
They ate together, exchanged ideas, discussed opinions and found that
they were made for each other.
After the meal everyone started to fish again, but the two new friends
left together. Following along the banks, they stopped near the railroad
bridge and, still talking, they threw their lines in the water. The fish
still refused to bite, but Patissot was now making the best of it.
A family was approaching. The father, whose whiskers stamped him as a
judge, was holding an extraordinarily long rod; three boys of different
sizes were carrying poles of different lengths, according to age; and
the mother, who was very stout, gracefully manoeuvred a charming rod
with a ribbon tied to the handle. The father bowed and asked:
“Is this spot good, gentlemen?” Patissot was going to speak, when his
friend answered: “Fine!” The whole family smiled and settled down beside
the fishermen. The Patissot was seized with a wild desire to catch a
fish, just one, any kind, any size, in order to win the consideration of
these people; so he began to handle his rod as he had seen Boivin do in
the morning. He would let the cork follow the current to the end of the
line, jerk the hooks out of the water, make them describe a large circle
in the air and throw them out again a little higher up. He had even, as
he thought, caught the knack of doing this movement gracefully. He had
just jerked his line out rapidly when he felt it caught in something
behind him. He tugged, and a scream burst from behind him. He perceived,
caught on one of his hooks, and describing in the air a curve like a
meteor, a magnificent hat which he placed right in the middle of the
river.
He turned around, bewildered, dropping his pole, which followed the hat
down the stream, while the fat gentleman, his new friend, lay on his
back and roared with laughter. The lady, hatless and astounded, choked
with anger; her husband was outraged and demanded the price of the hat,
and Patissot paid about three times its value.
Then the family departed in a very dignified manner.
Patissot took another rod, and, until nightfall, he gave baths to sand
worms. His neighbor was sleeping peacefully on the grass. Toward seven
in the evening he awoke.
“Let's go away from here!” he said.
Then Patissot withdrew his line, gave a cry and sat down hard from
astonishment. At the end of the string was a tiny little fish. When they
looked at him more closely they found that he had been hooked through
the stomach; the hook had caught him as it was being drawn out of the
water.
Patissot was filled with a boundless, triumphant joy; he wished to have
the fish fried for himself alone.
During the dinner the friends grew still more intimate. He learned that
the fat gentleman lived at Argenteuil and had been sailing boats for
thirty years without losing interest in the sport. He accepted to
take luncheon with him the following Sunday and to take a sail in his
friend's clipper, Plongeon. He became so interested in the conversation
that he forgot all about his catch. He did not remember it until after
the coffee, and he demanded that it be brought him. It was alone in the
middle of a platter, and looked like a yellow, twisted match, But he
ate it with pride and relish, and at night, on the omnibus, he told his
neighbors that he had caught fourteen pounds of fish during the day.
TWO CELEBRITIES
Monsieur Patissot had promised his friend, the boating man, that he
would spend the following Sunday with him. An unforeseen occurrence
changed his plan. One evening, on the boulevard, he met one of his
cousins whom he saw but very seldom. He was a pleasant journalist, well
received in all classes of society, who offered to show Patissot many
interesting things.
“What are you going to do next Sunday?”
“I'm going boating at Argenteuil.”
“Come on! Boating is an awful bore; there is no variety to it. Listen
--I'll take you along with me. I'll introduce you to two celebrities. We
will visit the homes of two artists.”
“But I have been ordered to go to the country!”
“That's just where we'll go. On the way we'll call on Meissonier, at his
place in Poissy; then we'll walk over to Medan, where Zola lives. I have
been commissioned to obtain his next novel for our newspaper.”
Patissot, wild with joy, accepted the invitation. He even bought a new
frock coat, as his own was too much worn to make a good appearance. He
was terribly afraid of saying something foolish either to the artist or
to the man of letters, as do people who speak of an art which they have
never professed.
He mentioned his fears to his cousin, who laughed and answered: “Pshaw!
Just pay them compliments, nothing but compliments, always compliments;
in that way, if you say anything foolish it will be overlooked. Do you
know Meissonier's paintings?”
“I should say I do.”
“Have you read the Rougon-Macquart series?”
“From first to last.”
“That's enough. Mention a painting from time to time, speak of a novel
here and there and add:
“'Superb! Extraordinary! Delightful technique! Wonderfully powerful!' In
that way you can always get along. I know that those two are very blase
about everything, but admiration always pleases an artist.”
Sunday morning they left for Poissy.
Just a few steps from the station, at the end of the church square, they
found Meissonier's property. After passing through a low door, painted
red, which led into a beautiful alley of vines, the journalist stopped
and, turning toward his companion, asked:
“What is your idea of Meissonier?”
Patissot hesitated. At last he decided: “A little man, well groomed,
clean shaven, a soldierly appearance.” The other smiled: “All right,
come along.” A quaint building in the form of a chalet appeared to the
left; and to the right side, almost opposite, was the main house. It was
a strange-looking building, where there was a mixture of everything, a
mingling of Gothic fortress, manor, villa, hut, residence, cathedral,
mosque, pyramid, a weird combination of Eastern and Western
architecture. The style was complicated enough to set a classical
architect crazy, and yet there was something whimsical and pretty about
it. It had been invented and built under the direction of the artist.
They went in; a collection of trunks encumbered a little parlor. A
little man appeared, dressed in a jumper. The striking thing about him
was his beard. He bowed to the journalist, and said: “My dear sir, I
hope that you will excuse me; I only returned yesterday, and everything
is all upset here. Please be seated.” The other refused, excusing
himself: “My dear master, I only dropped in to pay my respects while
passing by.” Patissot, very much embarrassed, was bowing at every
word of his friend's, as though moving automatically, and he murmured,
stammering: “What a su--su--superb property!” The artist, flattered,
smiled, and suggested visiting it.
He led them first to a little pavilion of feudal aspect, where his
former studio was. Then they crossed a parlor, a dining-room, a
vestibule full of beautiful works of art, of beautiful Beauvais,
Gobelin and Flanders tapestries. But the strange external luxury
of ornamentation became, inside, a revel of immense stairways. A
magnificent grand stairway, a secret stairway in one tower, a servants'
stairway in another, stairways everywhere! Patissot, by chance, opened a
door and stepped back astonished. It was a veritable temple, this
place of which respectable people only mention the name in English, an
original and charming sanctuary in exquisite taste, fitted up like a
pagoda, and the decoration of which must certainly have caused a great
effort.
They next visited the park, which was complex, varied, with winding
paths and full of old trees. But the journalist insisted on leaving;
and, with many thanks, he took leave of the master: As they left they
met a gardener; Patissot asked him: “Has Monsieur Meissonier owned this
place for a long time?” The man answered: “Oh, monsieur! that needs
explaining. I guess he bought the grounds in 1846. But, as for the
house! he has already torn down and rebuilt that five or six times.
It must have cost him at least two millions!” As Patissot left he was
seized with an immense respect for this man, not on account of his
success, glory or talent, but for putting so much money into a whim,
because the bourgeois deprive themselves of all pleasure in order to
hoard money.
After crossing Poissy, they struck out on foot along the road to Medan.
The road first followed the Seine, which is dotted with charming islands
at this place. Then they went up a hill and crossed the pretty village
of Villaines, went down a little; and finally reached the neighborhood
inhabited by the author of the Rougon-Macquart series.
A pretty old church with two towers appeared on the left. They walked
along a short distance, and a passing farmer directed them to the
writer's dwelling.
Before entering, they examined the house. A large building, square and
new, very high, seemed, as in the fable of the mountain and the mouse,
to have given birth to a tiny little white house, which nestled near it.
This little house was the original dwelling, and had been built by the
former owner. The tower had been erected by Zola.
They rang the bell. An enormous dog, a cross between a Saint Bernard
and a Newfoundland, began to howl so terribly that Patissot felt a
vague desire to retrace his steps. But a servant ran forward, calmed
“Bertrand,” opened the door, and took the journalist's card in order to
carry it to his master.
“I hope that he will receive us!” murmured Patissot. “It would be too
bad if we had come all this distance not to see him.”
His companion smiled and answered: “Never fear, I have a plan for
getting in.”
But the servant, who had returned, simply asked them to follow him.
They entered the new building, and Patissot, who was quite enthusiastic,
was panting as he climbed a stairway of ancient style which led to the
second story.
At the same time he was trying to picture to himself this man whose
glorious name echoes at present in all corners of the earth, amid the
exasperated hatred of some, the real or feigned indignation of society,
the envious scorn of several of his colleagues, the respect of a mass of
readers, and the frenzied admiration of a great number. He expected to
see a kind of bearded giant, of awe-inspiring aspect, with a thundering
voice and an appearance little prepossessing at first.
The door opened on a room of uncommonly large dimensions, broad and
high, lighted by an enormous window looking out over the valley. Old
tapestries covered the walls; on the left, a monumental fireplace,
flanked by two stone men, could have burned a century-old oak in one
day. An immense table littered with books, papers and magazines stood in
the middle of this apartment so vast and grand that it first engrossed
the eye, and the attention was only afterward drawn to the man,
stretched out when they entered on an Oriental divan where twenty
persons could have slept. He took a few steps toward them, bowed,
motioned to two seats, and turned back to his divan, where he sat with
one leg drawn under him. A book lay open beside him, and in his right
hand he held an ivory paper-cutter, the end of which he observed from
time to time with one eye, closing the other with the persistency of a
near-sighted person.
While the journalist explained the purpose of the visit, and the writer
listened to him without yet answering, at times staring at him fixedly,
Patissot, more and more embarrassed, was observing this celebrity.
Hardly forty, he was of medium height, fairly stout, and with a
good-natured look. His head (very similar to those found in many Italian
paintings of the sixteenth century), without being beautiful in the
plastic sense of the word, gave an impression of great strength of
character, power and intelligence. Short hair stood up straight on the
high, well-developed forehead. A straight nose stopped short, as if
cut off suddenly above the upper lip which was covered with a black
mustache; over the whole chin was a closely-cropped beard. The dark,
often ironical look was piercing, one felt that behind it there was
a mind always actively at work observing people, interpreting words,
analyzing gestures, uncovering the heart. This strong, round head was
appropriate to his name, quick and short, with the bounding resonance of
the two vowels.
When the journalist had fully explained his proposition, the writer
answered him that he did not wish to make any definite arrangement, that
he would, however, think the matter over, that his plans were not yet
sufficiently defined. Then he stopped. It was a dismissal, and the two
men, a little confused, arose. A desire seized Patissot; he wished this
well-known person to say something to him, anything, some word which he
could repeat to his colleagues; and, growing bold, he stammered: “Oh,
monsieur! If you knew how I appreciate your works!” The other bowed,
but answered nothing. Patissot became very bold and continued: “It is a
great honor for me to speak to you to-day.” The writer once more
bowed, but with a stiff and impatient look. Patissot noticed it, and,
completely losing his head, he added as he retreated: “What a su--su
--superb property!”
Then, in the heart of the man of letters, the landowner awoke, and,
smiling, he opened the window to show them the immense stretch of view.
An endless horizon broadened out on all sides, giving a view of Triel,
Pisse-Fontaine, Chanteloup, all the heights of Hautrie, and the Seine
as far as the eye could see. The two visitors, delighted, congratulated
him, and the house was opened to them. They saw everything, down to
the dainty kitchen, whose walls and even ceilings were covered with
porcelain tiles ornamented with blue designs, which excited the wonder
of the farmers.
“How did you happen to buy this place?” asked the journalist.
The novelist explained that, while looking for a cottage to hire for the
summer, he had found the little house, which was for sale for several
thousand francs, a song, almost nothing. He immediately bought it.
“But everything that you have added must have cost you a good deal!”
The writer smiled, and answered: “Yes, quite a little.”
The two men left. The journalist, taking Patissot by the arm, was
philosophizing in a low voice:
“Every general has his Waterloo,” he said; “every Balzac has his
Jardies, and every artist living in the country feels like a landed
proprietor.”
They took the train at the station of Villaines, and, on the way home,
Patissot loudly mentioned the names of the famous painter and of the
great novelist as though they were his friends. He even allowed people
to think that he had taken luncheon with one and dinner with the other.
BEFORE THE CELEBRATION
The celebration is approaching and preliminary quivers are already
running through the streets, just as the ripples disturb the water
preparatory to a storm. The shops, draped with flags, display a variety
of gay-colored bunting materials, and the dry-goods people deceive one
about the three colors as grocers do about the weight of candles. Little
by little, hearts warm up to the matter; people speak about it in the
street after dinner; ideas are exchanged:
“What a celebration it will be, my friend; what a celebration!”
“Have you heard the news? All the rulers are coming incognito, as
bourgeois, in order to see it.”
“I hear that the Emperor of Russia has arrived; he expects to go about
everywhere with the Prince of Wales.”
“It certainly will be a fine celebration!”
It is going to a celebration; what Monsieur Patissot, Parisian
bourgeois, calls a celebration; one of these nameless tumults which, for
fifteen hours, roll from one end of the city to the other, every ugly
specimen togged out in its finest, a mob of perspiring bodies, where
side by side are tossed about the stout gossip bedecked in red, white
and blue ribbons, grown fat behind her counter and panting from lack
of breath, the rickety clerk with his wife and brat in tow, the laborer
carrying his youngster astride his neck, the bewildered provincial
with his foolish, dazed expression, the groom, barely shaved and still
spreading the perfume of the stable. And the foreigners dressed like
monkeys, English women like giraffes, the water-carrier, cleaned up
for the occasion, and the innumerable phalanx of little bourgeois,
inoffensive little people, amused at everything. All this crowding and
pressing, the sweat and dust, and the turmoil, all these eddies of human
flesh, trampling of corns beneath the feet of your neighbors, this city
all topsy-turvy, these vile odors, these frantic efforts toward nothing,
the breath of millions of people, all redolent of garlic, give to
Monsieur Patissot all the joy which it is possible for his heart to
hold.
After reading the proclamation of the mayor on the walls of his district
he had made his preparations.
This bit of prose said:
I wish to call your attention particularly to the part of
individuals in this celebration. Decorate your homes, illuminate
your windows. Get together, open up a subscription in order to give
to your houses and to your street a more brilliant and more artistic
appearance than the neighboring houses and streets.
Then Monsieur Patissot tried to imagine how he could give to his home an
artistic appearance.
One serious obstacle stood in the way. His only window looked out on a
courtyard, a narrow, dark shaft, where only the rats could have seen his
three Japanese lanterns.
He needed a public opening. He found it. On the first floor of his house
lived a rich man, a nobleman and a royalist, whose coachman, also a
reactionary, occupied a garret-room on the sixth floor, facing the
street. Monsieur Patissot supposed that by paying (every conscience can
be bought) he could obtain the use of the room for the day. He proposed
five francs to this citizen of the whip for the use of his room from
noon till midnight. The offer was immediately accepted.
Then he began to busy himself with the decorations. Three flags, four
lanterns, was that enough to give to this box an artistic appearance--to
express all the noble feelings of his soul? No; assuredly not! But,
notwithstanding diligent search and nightly meditation, Monsieur
Patissot could think of nothing else. He consulted his neighbors, who
were surprised at the question; he questioned his colleagues--every one
had bought lanterns and flags, some adding, for the occasion, red, white
and blue bunting.
Then he began to rack his brains for some original idea. He frequented
the cafes, questioning the patrons; they lacked imagination. Then
one morning he went out on top of an omnibus. A respectable-looking
gentleman was smoking a cigar beside him, a little farther away a
laborer was smoking his pipe upside down, near the driver two rough
fellows were joking, and clerks of every description were going to
business for three cents.
Before the stores stacks of flags were resplendent under the rising sun.
Patissot turned to his neighbor.
“It is going to be a fine celebration,” he said. The gentleman looked at
him sideways and answered in a haughty manner:
“That makes no difference to me!”
“You are not going to take part in it?” asked the surprised clerk. The
other shook his head disdainfully and declared:
“They make me tired with their celebrations! Whose celebration is it?
The government's? I do not recognize this government, monsieur!”
But Patissot, as government employee, took on his superior manner, and
answered in a stern voice:
“Monsieur, the Republic is the government.”
His neighbor was not in the least disturbed, and, pushing his hands down
in his pockets, he exclaimed:
“Well, and what then? It makes no difference to me. Whether it's for the
Republic or something else, I don't care! What I want, monsieur, is to
know my government. I saw Charles X. and adhered to him, monsieur; I saw
Louis-Philippe and adhered to him, monsieur; I saw Napoleon and adhered
to him; but I have never seen the Republic.”
Patissot, still serious, answered:
“The Republic, monsieur, is represented by its president!”
The other grumbled:
“Well, them, show him to me!”
Patissot shrugged his shoulders.
“Every one can see him; he's not shut up in a closet!”
Suddenly the fat man grew angry.
“Excuse me, monsieur, he cannot be seen. I have personally tried more
than a hundred times, monsieur. I have posted myself near the Elysee; he
did not come out. A passer-by informed me that he was playing billiards
in the cafe opposite; I went to the cafe opposite; he was not there. I
had been promised that he would go to Melun for the convention; I went
to Melun, I did not see him. At last I became weary. I did not even see
Monsieur Gambetta, and I do not know a single deputy.”
He was, growing excited:
“A government, monsieur, is made to be seen; that's what it's there for,
and for nothing else. One must be able to know that on such and such
a day at such an hour the government will pass through such and such a
street. Then one goes there and is satisfied.”
Patissot, now calm, was enjoying his arguments.
“It is true,” he said, “that it is agreeable to know the people by whom
one is governed.”
The gentleman continued more gently:
“Do you know how I would manage the celebration? Well, monsieur, I would
have a procession of gilded cars, like the chariots used at the crowning
of kings; in them I would parade all the members of the government, from
the president to the deputies, throughout Paris all day long. In that
manner, at least, every one would know by sight the personnel of the
state.”
But one of the toughs near the coachman turned around, exclaiming:
“And the fatted ox, where would you put him?”
A laugh ran round the two benches. Patissot understood the objection,
and murmured:
“It might not perhaps be very dignified.”
The gentleman thought the matter over and admitted it.
“Then,” he said, “I would place them in view some place, so that every
one could see them without going out of his way; on the Triumphal Arch
at the Place de l'Etoile, for instance; and I would have the whole
population pass before them. That would be very imposing.”
Once more the tough turned round and said:
“You'd have to take telescopes to see their faces.”
The gentleman did not answer; he continued:
“It's just like the presentation of the flags! There ought, to be some
pretext, a mimic war ought to be organized, and the banners would be
awarded to the troops as a reward. I had an idea about which I wrote to
the minister; but he has not deigned to answer me. As the taking of the
Bastille has been chosen for the date of the national celebration, a
reproduction of this event might be made; there would be a pasteboard
Bastille, fixed up by a scene-painter and concealing within its walls
the whole Column of July. Then, monsieur, the troop would attack. That
would be a magnificent spectacle as well as a lesson, to see the army
itself overthrow the ramparts of tyranny. Then this Bastille would be
set fire to and from the midst of the flames would appear the Column
with the genius of Liberty, symbol of a new order and of the freedom of
the people.”
This time every one was listening to him and finding his idea excellent.
An old gentleman exclaimed:
“That is a great idea, monsieur, which does you honor. It is to be
regretted that the government did not adopt it.”
A young man declared that actors ought to recite the “Iambes” of
Barbier through the streets in order to teach the people art and liberty
simultaneously.
These propositions excited general enthusiasm. Each one wished to have
his word; all were wrought up. From a passing hand-organ a few strains
of the Marseillaise were heard; the laborer started the song, and
everybody joined in, roaring the chorus. The exalted nature of the song
and its wild rhythm fired the driver, who lashed his horses to a
gallop. Monsieur Patissot was bawling at the top of his lungs, and the
passengers inside, frightened, were wondering what hurricane had struck
them.
At last they stopped, and Monsieur Patissot, judging his neighbor to
be a man of initiative, consulted him about the preparations which he
expected to make:
“Lanterns and flags are all right,”' said Patissot; “but I prefer
something better.”
The other thought for a long time, but found nothing. Then, in despair,
the clerk bought three flags and four lanterns.
AN EXPERIMENT IN LOVE
Many poets think that nature is incomplete without women, and hence,
doubtless, come all the flowery comparisons which, in their songs, make
our natural companion in turn a rose, a violet, a tulip, or something
of that order. The need of tenderness which seizes us at dusk, when the
evening mist begins to roll in from the hills, and when all the perfumes
of the earth intoxicate us, is but imperfectly satisfied by lyric
invocations. Monsieur Patissot, like all others, was seized with a wild
desire for tenderness, for sweet kisses exchanged along a path where
sunshine steals in at times, for the pressure of a pair of small hands,
for a supple waist bending under his embrace.
He began to look at love as an unbounded pleasure, and, in his hours of
reverie, he thanked the Great Unknown for having put so much charm into
the caresses of human beings. But he needed a companion, and he did
not know where to find one. On the advice of a friend, he went to the
Folies-Bergere. There he saw a complete assortment. He was greatly
perplexed to choose between them, for the desires of his heart were
chiefly composed of poetic impulses, and poetry did not seem to be the
strong point of these young ladies with penciled eyebrows who smiled
at him in such a disturbing manner, showing the enamel of their false
teeth. At last his choice fell on a young beginner who seemed poor
and timid and whose sad look seemed to announce a nature easily
influenced-by poetry.
He made an appointment with her for the following day at nine o'clock at
the Saint-Lazare station. She did not come, but she was kind enough to
send a friend in her stead.
She was a tall, red-haired girl, patriotically dressed in three colors,
and covered by an immense tunnel hat, of which her head occupied the
centre. Monsieur Patissot, a little disappointed, nevertheless accepted
this substitute. They left for Maisons-Laffite, where regattas and a
grand Venetian festival had been announced.
As soon as they were in the car, which was already occupied by two
gentlemen who wore the red ribbon and three ladies who must at least
have been duchesses, they were so dignified, the big red-haired girl,
who answered the name of Octavie, announced to Patissot, in a screeching
voice, that she was a fine girl fond of a good time and loving the
country because there she could pick flowers and eat fried fish. She
laughed with a shrillness which almost shattered the windows, familiarly
calling her companion “My big darling.”
Shame overwhelmed Patissot, who as a government employee, had to observe
a certain amount of decorum. But Octavie stopped talking, glancing at
her neighbors, seized with the overpowering desire which haunts all
women of a certain class to make the acquaintance of respectable women.
After about five minutes she thought she had found an opening, and,
drawing from her pocket a Gil-Blas, she politely offered it to one
of the amazed ladies, who declined, shaking her head. Then the big,
red-haired girl began saying things with a double meaning, speaking
of women who are stuck up without being any better than the others;
sometimes she would let out a vulgar word which acted like a bomb
exploding amid the icy dignity of the passengers.
At last they arrived. Patissot immediately wished to gain the shady
nooks of the park, hoping that the melancholy of the forest would quiet
the ruffled temper of his companion. But an entirely different effect
resulted. As soon as she was amid the leaves and grass she began to
sing at the top of her lungs snatches from operas which had stuck in her
frivolous mind, warbling and trilling, passing from “Robert le Diable”
to the “Muette,” lingering especially on a sentimental love-song, whose
last verses she sang in a voice as piercing as a gimlet.
Then suddenly she grew hungry. Patissot, who was still awaiting the
hoped-for tenderness, tried in vain to retain her. Then she grew angry,
exclaiming:
“I am not here for a dull time, am I?”
He had to take her to the Petit-Havre restaurant, which was near the
place where the regatta was to be held.
She ordered an endless luncheon, a succession of dishes substantial
enough to feed a regiment. Then, unable to wait, she called for
relishes. A box of sardines was brought; she started in on it as though
she intended to swallow the box itself. But when she had eaten two or
three of the little oily fish she declared that she was no longer hungry
and that she wished to see the preparations for the race.
Patissot, in despair and in his turn seized with hunger, absolutely
refused to move. She started off alone, promising to return in time for
the dessert. He began to eat in lonely silence, not knowing how to lead
this rebellious nature to the realization of his dreams.
As she did not return he set out in search of her. She had found some
friends, a troop of boatmen, in scanty garb, sunburned to the tips of
their ears, and gesticulating, who were loudly arranging the details of
the race in front of the house of Fourmaise, the builder.
Two respectable-looking gentlemen, probably the judges, were listening
attentively. As soon as she saw Patissot, Octavie, who was leaning on
the tanned arm of a strapping fellow who probably had more muscle than
brains, whispered a few words in his ears. He answered:
“That's an agreement.”
She returned to the clerk full of joy, her eyes sparkling, almost
caressing.
“Let's go for a row,” said she.
Pleased to see her so charming, he gave in to this new whim and procured
a boat. But she obstinately refused to go to the races, notwithstanding
Patissot's wishes.
“I had rather be alone with you, darling.”
His heart thrilled. At last!
He took off his coat and began to row madly.
An old dilapidated mill, whose worm-eaten wheels hung over the water,
stood with its two arches across a little arm of the river. Slowly they
passed beneath it, and, when they were on the other side, they noticed
before them a delightful little stretch of river, shaded by great trees
which formed an arch over their heads. The little stream flowed along,
winding first to the right and then to the left, continually revealing
new scenes, broad fields on one side and on the other side a hill
covered with cottages. They passed before a bathing establishment almost
entirely hidden by the foliage, a charming country spot where gentlemen
in clean gloves and beribboned ladies displayed all the ridiculous
awkwardness of elegant people in the country. She cried joyously:
“Later on we will take a dip there.”
Farther on, in a kind of bay, she wished to stop, coaxing:
“Come here, honey, right close to me.”
She put her arm around his neck and, leaning her head on his shoulder,
she murmured:
“How nice it is! How delightful it is on the water!”
Patissot was reveling in happiness. He was thinking of those foolish
boatmen who, without ever feeling the penetrating charm of the river
banks and the delicate grace of the reeds, row along out of breath,
perspiring and tired out, from the tavern where they take luncheon to
the tavern where they take dinner.
He was so comfortable that he fell asleep. When he awoke, he was alone.
He called, but no one answered. Anxious, he climbed up on the side of
the river, fearing that some accident might have happened.
Then, in the distance, coming in his direction, he saw a long, slender
gig which four oarsmen as black as negroes were driving through the
water like an arrow. It came nearer, skimming over the water; a woman
was holding the tiller. Heavens! It looked--it was she! In order to
regulate the rhythm of the stroke, she was singing in her shrill voice a
boating song, which she interrupted for a minute as she got in front of
Patissot. Then, throwing him a kiss, she cried:
“You big goose!”
A DINNER AND SOME OPINIONS
On the occasion of the national celebration Monsieur Antoine Perdrix,
chief of Monsieur Patissot's department, was made a knight of the
Legion of Honor. He had been in service for thirty years under preceding
governments, and for ten years under the present one. His employees,
although grumbling a little at being thus rewarded in the person of
their chief, thought it wise, nevertheless, to offer him a cross studded
with paste diamonds. The new knight, in turn, not wishing to be outdone,
invited them all to dinner for the following Sunday, at his place at
Asnieres.
The house, decorated with Moorish ornaments, looked like a cafe concert,
but its location gave it value, as the railroad cut through the whole
garden, passing within a hundred and fifty feet of the porch. On the
regulation plot of grass stood a basin of Roman cement, containing
goldfish and a stream of water the size of that which comes from a
syringe, which occasionally made microscopic rainbows at which the
guests marvelled.
The feeding of this irrigator was the constant preoccupation of Monsieur
Perdrix, who would sometimes get up at five o'clock in the morning in
order to fill the tank. Then, in his shirt sleeves, his big stomach
almost bursting from his trousers, he would pump wildly, so that on
returning from the office he could have the satisfaction of letting the
fountain play and of imagining that it was cooling off the garden.
On the night of the official dinner all the guests, one after the other,
went into ecstasies over the surroundings, and each time they heard
a train in the distance, Monsieur Perdrix would announce to them its
destination: Saint-Germain, Le Havre, Cherbourg, or Dieppe, and they
would playfully wave to the passengers leaning from the windows.
The whole office force was there. First came Monsieur Capitaine, the
assistant chief; Monsieur Patissot, chief clerk; then Messieurs de
Sombreterre and Vallin, elegant young employees who only came to the
office when they had to; lastly Monsieur Rade, known throughout the
ministry for the absurd doctrines which he upheld, and the copying
clerk, Monsieur Boivin.
Monsieur Rade passed for a character. Some called him a dreamer or an
idealist, others a revolutionary; every one agreed that he was very
clumsy. Old, thin and small, with bright eyes and long, white hair, he
had all his life professed a profound contempt for administrative work.
A book rummager and a great reader, with a nature continually in
revolt against everything, a seeker of truth and a despiser of popular
prejudices, he had a clear and paradoxical manner of expressing his
opinions which closed the mouths of self-satisfied fools and of those
that were discontented without knowing why. People said: “That old fool
of a Rade,” or else: “That harebrained Rade”; and the slowness, of his
promotion seemed to indicate the reason, according to commonplace minds.
His freedom of speech often made--his colleagues tremble; they asked
themselves with terror how he had been able to keep his place as long as
he had. As soon as they had seated themselves, Monsieur Perdrix
thanked his “collaborators” in a neat little speech, promising them his
protection, the more valuable as his power grew, and he ended with a
stirring peroration in which he thanked and glorified a government so
liberal and just that it knows how to seek out the worthy from among the
humble.
Monsieur Capitaine, the assistant chief, answered in the name of the
office, congratulated, greeted, exalted, sang the praises of all;
frantic applause greeted these two bits of eloquence. After that they
settled down seriously to the business of eating.
Everything went well up to the dessert; lack of conversation went
unnoticed. But after the coffee a discussion arose, and Monsieur Rade
let himself loose and soon began to overstep the bounds of discretion.
They naturally discussed love, and a breath of chivalry intoxicated this
room full of bureaucrats; they praised and exalted the superior beauty
of woman, the delicacy of hex soul, her aptitude for exquisite things,
the correctness of her judgment, and the refinement of her sentiments.
Monsieur Rade began to protest, energetically refusing to credit the
so-called “fair” sex with all the qualities they ascribed to it; then,
amidst the general indignation, he quoted some authors:
“Schopenhauer, gentlemen, Schopenhauer, the great philosopher, revered
by all Germany, says: 'Man's intelligence must have been terribly
deadened by love in order to call this sex with the small waist, narrow
shoulders, large hips and crooked legs, the fair sex. All its beauty
lies in the instinct of love. Instead of calling it the fair, it would
have been better to call it the unaesthetic sex. Women have neither
the appreciation nor the knowledge of music, any more than they have
of poetry or of the plastic arts; with them it is merely an apelike
imitation, pure pretence, affectation cultivated from their desire to
please.'”
“The man who said that is an idiot,” exclaimed Monsieur de Sombreterre.
Monsieur Rade smilingly continued:
“And how about Rousseau, gentlemen? Here is his opinion: 'Women, as a
rule, love no art, are skilled in none, and have no talent.'”
Monsieur de Sombreterre disdainfully shrugged his shoulders:
“Then Rousseau is as much of a fool as the other, that's all.”
Monsieur Rade, still smiling, went on:
“And this is what Lord Byron said, who, nevertheless, loved women: 'They
should be well fed and well dressed, but not allowed to mingle with
society. They should also be taught religion, but they should ignore
poetry and politics, only being allowed to read religious works or
cook-books.'”
Monsieur Rade continued:
“You see, gentlemen, all of them study painting and music. But not a
single one of them has ever painted a remarkable picture or composed a
great opera! Why, gentlemen? Because they are the 'sexes sequior', the
secondary sex in every sense of the word, made to be kept apart, in the
background.”
Monsieur Patissot was growing angry, and exclaimed:
“And how about Madame Sand, monsieur?”
“She is the one exception, monsieur, the one exception. I will quote
to you another passage from another great philosopher, this one an
Englishman, Herbert Spencer. Here is what he says: 'Each sex is capable,
under the influence of abnormal stimulation, of manifesting faculties
ordinarily reserved for the other one. Thus, for instance, in extreme
cases a special excitement may cause the breasts of men to give milk;
children deprived of their mothers have often thus been saved in time of
famine. Nevertheless, we do not place this faculty of giving milk among
the male attributes. It is the same with female intelligence, which,
in certain cases, will give superior products, but which is not to be
considered in an estimate of the feminine nature as a social factor.'”
All Monsieur Patissot's chivalric instincts were wounded and he
declared:
“You are not a Frenchman, monsieur. French gallantry is a form of
patriotism.”
Monsieur Rade retorted:
“I have very little patriotism, monsieur, as little as I can get along
with.”
A coolness settled over the company, but he continued quietly:
“Do you admit with me that war is a barbarous thing; that this custom
of killing off people constitutes a condition of savagery; that it is
odious, when life is the only real good, to see governments, whose duty
is to protect the lives of their subjects, persistently looking for
means of destruction? Am I not right? Well, if war is a terrible thing,
what about patriotism, which is the idea at the base of it? When a
murderer kills he has a fixed idea; it is to steal. When a good man
sticks his bayonet through another good man, father of a family, or,
perhaps, a great artist, what idea is he following out?”
Everybody was shocked.
“When one has such thoughts, one should not express them in public.”
M. Patissot continued:
“There are, however, monsieur, principles which all good people
recognize.”
M. Rade asked: “Which ones?”
Then very solemnly, M. Patissot pronounced: “Morality, monsieur.”
M. Rade was beaming; he exclaimed:
“Just let me give you one example, gentlemen, one little example. What
is your opinion of the gentlemen with the silk caps who thrive along
the boulevard's on the delightful traffic which you know, and who make a
living out of it?”
A look of disgust ran round the table:
“Well, gentlemen! only a century ago, when an elegant gentleman, very
ticklish about his honor, had for--friend--a beautiful and rich lady,
it was considered perfectly proper to live at her expense and even to
squander her whole fortune. This game was considered delightful. This
only goes to show that the principles of morality are by no means
settled--and that--”
M. Perdrix, visibly embarrassed, stopped him:
“M. Rade, you are sapping the very foundations of society. One must
always have principles. Thus, in politics, here is M. de Sombreterre,
who is a Legitimist; M. Vallin, an Orleanist; M. Patissot and myself,
Republicans; we all have very different principles, and yet we agree
very well because we have them.”
But M. Rade exclaimed:
“I also have principles, gentlemen, very distinct ones.”
M. Patissot raised his head and coldly asked:
“It would please me greatly to know them, monsieur.”
M. Rade did not need to be coaxed.
“Here they are, monsieur:
“First principle--Government by one person is a monstrosity.
“Second principle--Restricted suffrage is an injustice.
“Third principle--Universal suffrage is idiotic.
“To deliver up millions of men, superior minds, scientists, even
geniuses, to the caprice and will of a being who, in an instant of
gaiety, madness, intoxication or love, would not hesitate to sacrifice
everything for his exalted fancy, would spend the wealth of the
country amassed by others with difficulty, would have thousands of
men slaughtered on the battle-fields, all this appears to me--a simple
logician--a monstrous aberration.
“But, admitting that a country must govern itself, to exclude, on some
always debatable pretext, a part of the citizens from the administration
of affairs is such an injustice that it seems to me unworthy of a
further discussion.
“There remains universal suffrage. I suppose that you will agree with me
that geniuses are a rarity. Let us be liberal and say that there are at
present five in France. Now, let us add, perhaps, two hundred men with a
decided talent, one thousand others possessing various talents, and ten
thousand superior intellects. This is a staff of eleven thousand two
hundred and five minds. After that you have the army of mediocrities
followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools
always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an
intelligent government.
“In order to be fair I admit that logically universal suffrage seems to
me the only admissible principle, but it is impracticable. Here are the
reasons why:
“To make all the living forces of the country cooperate in the
government, to represent all the interests, to take into account all
the rights, is an ideal dream, but hardly practicable, because the only
force which can be measured is that very one which should be neglected,
the stupid strength of numbers, According to your method, unintelligent
numbers equal genius, knowledge, learning, wealth and industry. When you
are able to give to a member of the Institute ten thousand votes to a
ragman's one, one hundred votes for a great land-owner as against his
farmer's ten, then you will have approached an equilibrium of forces
and obtained a national representation which will really represent the
strength of the nation. But I challenge you to do it.
“Here are my conclusions:
“Formerly, when a man was a failure at every other profession he turned
photographer; now he has himself elected a deputy. A government thus
composed will always be sadly lacking, incapable of evil as well as
of good. On the other hand, a despot, if he be stupid, can do a lot of
harm, and, if he be intelligent (a thing which is very scarce), he may
do good.
“I cannot decide between these two forms of government; I declare myself
to be an anarchist, that is to say, a partisan of that power which is
the most unassuming, the least felt, the most liberal, in the broadest
sense of the word, and revolutionary at the same time; by that I
mean the everlasting enemy of this same power, which can in no way be
anything but defective. That's all!”
Cries of indignation rose about the table, and all, whether Legitimist,
Orleanist or Republican through force of circumstances, grew red with
anger. M. Patissot especially was choking with rage, and, turning toward
M. Rade, he cried:
“Then, monsieur, you believe in nothing?”
The other answered quietly:
“You're absolutely correct, monsieur.”
The anger felt by all the guests prevented M. Rade from continuing, and
M. Perdrix, as chief, closed the discussion.
“Enough, gentlemen! We each have our opinion, and we have no intention
of changing it.”
All agreed with the wise words. But M. Rade, never satisfied, wished to
have the last word.
“I have, however, one moral,” said he. “It is simple and always
applicable. One sentence embraces the whole thought; here it is: 'Never
do unto another that which you would not have him do unto you.' I defy
you to pick any flaw in it, while I will undertake to demolish your most
sacred principles with three arguments.”
This time there was no answer. But as they were going home at night,
by couples, each one was saying to his companion: “Really, M. Rade
goes much too far. His mind must surely be unbalanced. He ought to be
appointed assistant chief at the Charenton Asylum.”
A RECOLLECTION
How many recollections of youth come to me in the soft sunlight of
early spring! It was an age when all was pleasant, cheerful, charming,
intoxicating. How exquisite are the remembrances of those old
springtimes!
Do you recall, old friends and brothers, those happy years when life was
nothing but a triumph and an occasion for mirth? Do you recall the days
of wanderings around Paris, our jolly poverty, our walks in the fresh,
green woods, our drinks in the wine-shops on the banks of the Seine and
our commonplace and delightful little flirtations?
I will tell you about one of these. It was twelve years ago and already
appears to me so old, so old that it seems now as if it belonged to
the other end of life, before middle age, this dreadful middle age from
which I suddenly perceived the end of the journey.
I was then twenty-five. I had just come to Paris. I was in a government
office, and Sundays were to me like unusual festivals, full of exuberant
happiness, although nothing remarkable occurred.
Now it is Sunday every day, but I regret the time when I had only one
Sunday in the week. How enjoyable it was! I had six francs to spend!
On this particular morning I awoke with that sense of freedom that all
clerks know so well--the sense of emancipation, of rest, of quiet and of
independence.
I opened my window. The weather was charming. A blue sky full of
sunlight and swallows spread above the town.
I dressed quickly and set out, intending to spend the day in the woods
breathing the air of the green trees, for I am originally a rustic,
having been brought up amid the grass and the trees.
Paris was astir and happy in the warmth and the light. The front of the
houses was bathed in sunlight, the janitress' canaries were singing in
their cages and there was an air of gaiety in the streets, in the faces
of the inhabitants, lighting them up with a smile as if all beings
and all things experienced a secret satisfaction at the rising of the
brilliant sun.
I walked towards the Seine to take the Swallow, which would land me at
Saint-Cloud.
How I loved waiting for the boat on the wharf:
It seemed to me that I was about to set out for the ends of the world,
for new and wonderful lands. I saw the boat approaching yonder, yonder
under the second bridge, looking quite small with its plume of smoke,
then growing larger and ever larger, as it drew near, until it looked to
me like a mail steamer.
It came up to the wharf and I went on board. People were there already
in their Sunday clothes, startling toilettes, gaudy ribbons and bright
scarlet designs. I took up a position in the bows, standing up and
looking at the quays, the trees, the houses and the bridges disappearing
behind us. And suddenly I perceived the great viaduct of Point du Jour
which blocked the river. It was the end of Paris, the beginning of
the country, and behind the double row of arches the Seine, suddenly
spreading out as though it had regained space and liberty, became all
at once the peaceful river which flows through the plains, alongside the
wooded hills, amid the meadows, along the edge of the forests.
After passing between two islands the Swallow went round a curved
verdant slope dotted with white houses. A voice called out: “Bas Meudon”
and a little further on, “Sevres,” and still further, “Saint-Cloud.”
I went on shore and walked hurriedly through the little town to the road
leading to the wood.
I had brought with me a map of the environs of Paris, so that I might
not lose my way amid the paths which cross in every direction these
little forests where Parisians take their outings.
As soon as I was unperceived I began to study my guide, which seemed to
be perfectly clear. I was to turn to the right, then to the left, then
again to the left and I should reach Versailles by evening in time for
dinner.
I walked slowly beneath the young leaves, drinking in the air, fragrant
with the odor of young buds and sap. I sauntered along, forgetful of
musty papers, of the offices, of my chief, my colleagues, my documents,
and thinking of the good things that were sure to come to me, of all
the veiled unknown contained in the future. A thousand recollections of
childhood came over me, awakened by these country odors, and I walked
along, permeated with the fragrant, living enchantment, the emotional
enchantment of the woods warmed by the sun of June.
At times I sat down to look at all sorts of little flowers growing on a
bank, with the names of which I was familiar. I recognized them all just
as if they were the ones I had seen long ago in the country. They were
yellow, red, violet, delicate, dainty, perched on long stems or close to
the ground. Insects of all colors and shapes, short, long, of peculiar
form, frightful, and microscopic monsters, climbed quietly up the stalks
of grass which bent beneath their weight.
Then I went to sleep for some hours in a hollow and started off again,
refreshed by my doze.
In front of me lay an enchanting pathway and through its somewhat scanty
foliage the sun poured down drops of light on the marguerites which grew
there. It stretched out interminably, quiet and deserted, save for an
occasional big wasp, who would stop buzzing now and then to sip from a
flower, and then continue his way.
All at once I perceived at the end of the path two persons, a man and a
woman, coming towards me. Annoyed at being disturbed in my quiet walk,
I was about to dive into the thicket, when I thought I heard someone
calling me. The woman was, in fact, shaking her parasol, and the man,
in his shirt sleeves, his coat over one arm, was waving the other as a
signal of distress.
I went towards them. They were walking hurriedly, their faces very red,
she with short, quick steps and he with long strides. They both looked
annoyed and fatigued.
The woman asked:
“Can you tell me, monsieur, where we are? My fool of a husband made us
lose our way, although he pretended he knew the country perfectly.”
I replied confidently:
“Madame, you are going towards Saint-Cloud and turning your back on
Versailles.”
With a look of annoyed pity for her husband, she exclaimed:
“What, we are turning our back on Versailles? Why, that is just where we
want to dine!”
“I am going there also, madame.”
“Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!” she repeated, shrugging her shoulders,
and in that tone of sovereign contempt assumed by women to express their
exasperation.
She was quite young, pretty, a brunette with a slight shadow on her
upper lip.
As for him, he was perspiring and wiping his forehead. It was assuredly
a little Parisian bourgeois couple. The man seemed cast down, exhausted
and distressed.
“But, my dear friend, it was you--” he murmured.
She did not allow him to finish his sentence.
“It was I! Ah, it is my fault now! Was it I who wanted to go out without
getting any information, pretending that I knew how to find my way?
Was it I who wanted to take the road to the right on top of the hill,
insisting that I recognized the road? Was it I who undertook to take
charge of Cachou--”
She had not finished speaking when her husband, as if he had suddenly
gone crazy, gave a piercing scream, a long, wild cry that could not be
described in any language, but which sounded like 'tuituit'.
The young woman did not appear to be surprised or moved and resumed:
“No, really, some people are so stupid and they pretend they know
everything. Was it I who took the train to Dieppe last year instead
of the train to Havre--tell me, was it I? Was it I who bet that M.
Letourneur lived in Rue des Martyres? Was it I who would not believe
that Celeste was a thief?”
She went on, furious, with a surprising flow of language, accumulating
the most varied, the most unexpected and the most overwhelming
accusations drawn from the intimate relations of their daily life,
reproaching her husband for all his actions, all his ideas, all his
habits, all his enterprises, all his efforts, for his life from the time
of their marriage up to the present time.
He strove to check her, to calm her and stammered:
“But, my dear, it is useless--before monsieur. We are making ourselves
ridiculous. This does not interest monsieur.”
And he cast mournful glances into the thicket as though he sought to
sound its peaceful and mysterious depths, in order to flee thither, to
escape and hide from all eyes, and from time to time he uttered a fresh
scream, a prolonged and shrill “tuituit.” I took this to be a nervous
affection.
The young woman, suddenly turning towards me: and changing her tone with
singular rapidity, said:
“If monsieur will kindly allow us, we will accompany him on the road, so
as not to lose our way again, and be obliged, possibly, to sleep in the
wood.”
I bowed. She took my arm and began to talk about a thousand things
--about herself, her life, her family, her business. They were glovers
in the Rue, Saint-Lazare.
Her husband walked beside her, casting wild glances into the thick wood
and screaming “tuituit” every few moments.
At last I inquired:
“Why do you scream like that?”
“I have lost my poor dog,” he replied in a tone of discouragement and
despair.
“How is that--you have lost your dog?”
“Yes. He was just a year old. He had never been outside the shop. I
wanted to take him to have a run in the woods. He had never seen the
grass nor the leaves and he was almost wild. He began to run about and
bark and he disappeared in the wood. I must also add that he was greatly
afraid of the train. That may have driven him mad. I kept on calling
him, but he has not come back. He will die of hunger in there.”
Without turning towards her husband, the young woman said:
“If you had left his chain on, it would not have happened. When people
are as stupid as you are they do not keep a dog.”
“But, my dear, it was you--” he murmured timidly.
She stopped short, and looking into his eyes as if she were going
to tear them out, she began again to cast in his face innumerable
reproaches.
It was growing dark. The cloud of vapor that covers the country at dusk
was slowly rising and there was a poetry in the air, induced by the
peculiar and enchanting freshness of the atmosphere that one feels in
the woods at nightfall.
Suddenly the young man stopped, and feeling his body feverishly,
exclaimed:
“Oh, I think that I--”
She looked at him.
“Well, what?”
“I did not notice that I had my coat on my arm.”
“Well--?”
“I have lost my pocketbook--my money was in it.”
She shook with anger and choked with indignation.
“That was all that was lacking. How stupid you are! how stupid you are!
Is it possible that I could have married such an idiot! Well, go and
look for it, and see that you find it. I am going on to Versailles with
monsieur. I do not want to sleep in the wood.”
“Yes, my dear,” he replied gently. “Where shall I find you?”
A restaurant had been recommended to me. I gave him the address.
He turned back and, stooping down as he searched the ground with anxious
eyes, he moved away, screaming “tuituit” every few moments.
We could see him for some time until the growing darkness concealed
all but his outline, but we heard his mournful “tuituit,” shriller and
shriller as the night grew darker.
As for me, I stepped along quickly and happily in the soft twilight,
with this little unknown woman leaning on my arm. I tried to say pretty
things to her, but could think of nothing. I remained silent, disturbed,
enchanted.
Our path was suddenly crossed by a high road. To the right I perceived a
town lying in a valley.
What was this place? A man was passing. I asked him. He replied:
“Bougival.”
I was dumfounded.
“What, Bougival? Are you sure?”
“Parbleu, I belong there!”
The little woman burst into an idiotic laugh.
I proposed that we should take a carriage and drive to Versailles. She
replied:
“No, indeed. This is very funny and I am very hungry. I am really quite
calm. My husband will find his way all right. It is a treat to me to be
rid of him for a few hours.”
We went into a restaurant beside the water and I ventured to ask for
a private compartment. We had some supper. She sang, drank champagne,
committed all sorts of follies.
That was my first serious flirtation.
OUR LETTERS
Eight hours of railway travel induce sleep for some persons and insomnia
for others with me, any journey prevents my sleeping on the following
night.
At about five o'clock I arrived at the estate of Abelle, which belongs
to my friends, the Murets d'Artus, to spend three weeks there. It is
a pretty house, built by one of their grandfathers in the style of
the latter half of the last century. Therefore it has that intimate
character of dwellings that have always been inhabited, furnished and
enlivened by the same people. Nothing changes; nothing alters the soul
of the dwelling, from which the furniture has never been taken out, the
tapestries never unnailed, thus becoming worn out, faded, discolored,
on the same walls. None of the old furniture leaves the place; only from
time to time it is moved a little to make room for a new piece, which
enters there like a new-born infant in the midst of brothers and
sisters.
The house is on a hill in the center of a park which slopes down to the
river, where there is a little stone bridge. Beyond the water the fields
stretch out in the distance, and here one can see the cows wandering
around, pasturing on the moist grass; their eyes seem full of the dew,
mist and freshness of the pasture. I love this dwelling, just as one
loves a thing which one ardently desires to possess. I return here every
autumn with infinite delight; I leave with regret.
After I had dined with this friendly family, by whom I was received like
a relative, I asked my friend, Paul Muret: “Which room did you give me
this year?”
“Aunt Rose's room.”
An hour later, followed by her three children, two little girls and a
boy, Madame Muret d'Artus installed me in Aunt Rose's room, where I had
not yet slept.
When I was alone I examined the walls, the furniture, the general aspect
of the room, in order to attune my mind to it. I knew it but little,
as I had entered it only once or twice, and I looked indifferently at a
pastel portrait of Aunt Rose, who gave her name to the room.
This old Aunt Rose, with her curls, looking at me from behind the glass,
made very little impression on my mind. She looked to me like a woman
of former days, with principles and precepts as strong on the maxims
of morality as on cooking recipes, one of these old aunts who are
the bugbear of gaiety and the stern and wrinkled angel of provincial
families.
I never had heard her spoken of; I knew nothing of her life or of her
death. Did she belong to this century or to the preceding one? Had she
left this earth after a calm or a stormy existence? Had she given up
to heaven the pure soul of an old maid, the calm soul of a spouse, the
tender one of a mother, or one moved by love? What difference did it
make? The name alone, “Aunt Rose,” seemed ridiculous, common, ugly.
I picked up a candle and looked at her severe face, hanging far up in
an old gilt frame. Then, as I found it insignificant, disagreeable,
even unsympathetic, I began to examine the furniture. It dated from the
period of Louis XVI, the Revolution and the Directorate. Not a chair,
not a curtain had entered this room since then, and it gave out the
subtle odor of memories, which is the combined odor of wood, cloth,
chairs, hangings, peculiar to places wherein have lived hearts that have
loved and suffered.
I retired but did not sleep. After I had tossed about for an hour or
two, I decided to get up and write some letters.
I opened a little mahogany desk with brass trimmings, which was placed
between the two windows, in hope of finding some ink and paper; but all
I found was a quill-pen, very much worn, and chewed at the end. I was
about to close this piece of furniture, when a shining spot attracted my
attention it looked like the yellow head of a nail. I scratched it with
my finger, and it seemed to move. I seized it between two finger-nails,
and pulled as hard as I could. It came toward me gently. It was a long
gold pin which had been slipped into a hole in the wood and remained
hidden there.
Why? I immediately thought that it must have served to work some spring
which hid a secret, and I looked. It took a long time. After about two
hours of investigation, I discovered another hole opposite the first
one, but at the bottom of a groove. Into this I stuck my pin: a little
shelf sprang toward my face, and I saw two packages of yellow letters,
tied with a blue ribbon.
I read them. Here are two of them:
So you wish me to return to you your letters, my dearest friend.
Here they are, but it pains me to obey. Of what are you afraid?
That I might lose them? But they are under lock and key. Do you
fear that they might be stolen? I guard against that, for they are
my dearest treasure.
Yes, it pains me deeply. I wondered whether, perhaps you might not
be feeling some regret! Not regret at having loved me, for I know
that you still do, but the regret of having expressed on white paper
this living love in hours when your heart did not confide in me, but
in the pen that you held in your hand. When we love, we have need
of confession, need of talking or writing, and we either talk or
write. Words fly away, those sweet words made of music, air and
tenderness, warm and light, which escape as soon as they are
uttered, which remain in the memory alone, but which one can neither
see, touch nor kiss, as one can with the words written by your hand.
Your letters? Yes, I am returning them to you! But with what
sorrow!
Undoubtedly, you must have had an after thought of delicate shame at
expressions that are ineffaceable. In your sensitive and timid soul
you must have regretted having written to a man that you loved him.
You remembered sentences that called up recollections, and you said
to yourself: “I will make ashes of those words.”
Be satisfied, be calm. Here are your letters. I love you.
MY FRIEND:
No, you have not understood me, you have not guessed. I do not
regret, and I never shall, that I told you of my affection.
I will always write to you, but you must return my letters to me as
soon as you have read them.
I shall shock you, my friend, when I tell you the reason for this
demand. It is not poetic, as you imagined, but practical. I am
afraid, not of you, but of some mischance. I am guilty. I do not
wish my fault to affect others than myself.
Understand me well. You and I may both die. You might fall off
your horse, since you ride every day; you might die from a sudden
attack, from a duel, from heart disease, from a carriage accident,
in a thousand ways. For, if there is only one death, there are more
ways of its reaching us than there are days or us to live.
Then your sisters, your brother, or your sister-in-law might find my
letters! Do you think that they love me? I doubt it. And then,
even if they adored me, is it possible for two women and one man to
know a secret--such a secret!--and not to tell of it?
I seem to be saying very disagreeable things, speaking first of your
death, and then suspecting the discreetness of your relatives.
But don't all of us die sooner or later? And it is almost certain
that one of us will precede the other under the ground. We must
therefore foresee all dangers, even that one.
As for me, I will keep your letters beside mine, in the secret of my
little desk. I will show them to you there, sleeping side by side
in their silken hiding place, full of our love, like lovers in a
tomb.
You will say to me: “But if you should die first, my dear, your
husband will find these letters.”
Oh! I fear nothing. First of all, he does not know the secret of my
desk, and then he will not look for it. And even if he finds it
after my death, I fear nothing.
Did you ever stop to think of all the love letters that have been
found after death? I have been thinking of this for a long time,
and that is the reason I decided to ask you for my letters.
Think that never, do you understand, never, does a woman burn, tear
or destroy the letters in which it is told her that she is loved.
That is our whole life, our whole hope, expectation and dream.
These little papers which bear our name in caressing terms are
relics which we adore; they are chapels in which we are the saints.
Our love letters are our titles to beauty, grace, seduction, the
intimate vanity of our womanhood; they are the treasures of our
heart. No, a woman does not destroy these secret and delicious
archives of her life.
But, like everybody else, we die, and then--then these letters
are found! Who finds them? The husband. Then what does he do?
Nothing. He burns them.
Oh, I have thought a great deal about that! Just think that every
day women are dying who have been loved; every day the traces and
proofs of their fault fall into the hands of their husbands, and
that there is never a scandal, never a duel.
Think, my dear, of what a man's heart is. He avenges himself on a
living woman; he fights with the man who has dishonored her, kills
him while she lives, because, well, why? I do not know exactly why.
But, if, after her death, he finds similar proofs, he burns them and
no one is the wiser, and he continues to shake hands with the friend
of the dead woman, and feels quite at ease that these letters should
not have fallen into strange hands, and that they are destroyed.
Oh, how many men I know among my friends who must have burned such
proofs, and who pretend to know nothing, and yet who would have
fought madly had they found them when she was still alive! But she
is dead. Honor has changed. The tomb is the boundary of conjugal
sinning.
Therefore, I can safely keep our letters, which, in your hands,
would be a menace to both of us. Do you dare to say that I am not
right?
I love you and kiss you.
I raised my eyes to the portrait of Aunt Rose, and as I looked at her
severe, wrinkled face, I thought of all those women's souls which we do
not know, and which we suppose to be so different from what they really
are, whose inborn and ingenuous craftiness we never can penetrate, their
quiet duplicity; and a verse of De Vigny returned to my memory:
“Always this comrade whose heart is uncertain.”
THE LOVE OF LONG AGO
The old-fashioned chateau was built on a wooded knoll in the midst
of tall trees with dark-green foliage; the park extended to a great
distance, in one direction to the edge of the forest, in another to
the distant country. A few yards from the front of the house was a huge
stone basin with marble ladies taking a bath; other, basins were seen at
intervals down to the foot of the slope, and a stream of water fell in
cascades from one basin to another.
From the manor house, which preserved the grace of a superannuated
coquette, down to the grottos incrusted with shell-work, where slumbered
the loves of a bygone age, everything in this antique demesne had
retained the physiognomy of former days. Everything seemed to speak
still of ancient customs, of the manners of long ago, of former
gallantries, and of the elegant trivialities so dear to our
grandmothers.
In a parlor in the style of Louis XV, whose walls were covered
with shepherds paying court to shepherdesses, beautiful ladies in
hoop-skirts, and gallant gentlemen in wigs, a very old woman, who seemed
dead as soon as she ceased to move, was almost lying down in a large
easy-chair, at each side of which hung a thin, mummy-like hand.
Her dim eyes were gazing dreamily toward the distant horizon as if they
sought to follow through the park the visions of her youth. Through the
open window every now and then came a breath of air laden with the odor
of grass and the perfume of flowers. It made her white locks flutter
around her wrinkled forehead and old memories float through her brain.
Beside her, on a tapestried stool, a young girl, with long fair hair
hanging in braids down her back, was embroidering an altar-cloth. There
was a pensive expression in her eyes, and it was easy to see that she
was dreaming, while her agile fingers flew over her work.
But the old lady turned round her head, and said:
“Berthe, read me something out of the newspapers, that I may still know
sometimes what is going on in the world.”
The young girl took up a newspaper, and cast a rapid glance over it.
“There is a great deal about politics, grandmamma; shall I pass that
over?”
“Yes, yes, darling. Are there no love stories? Is gallantry, then, dead
in France, that they no longer talk about abductions or adventures as
they did formerly?”
The girl made a long search through the columns of the newspaper.
“Here is one,” she said. “It is entitled 'A Love Drama!'”
The old woman smiled through her wrinkles. “Read that for me,” she said.
And Berthe commenced. It was a case of vitriol throwing. A wife, in
order to avenge herself on her husband's mistress, had burned her face
and eyes. She had left the Court of Assizes acquitted, declared to be
innocent, amid the applause of the crowd.
The grandmother moved about excitedly in her chair, and exclaimed:
“This is horrible--why, it is perfectly horrible!
“See whether you can find anything else to read to me, darling.”
Berthe again made a search; and farther down among the reports of
criminal cases, she read:
“'Gloomy Drama. A shop girl, no longer young, allowed herself to be led
astray by a young man. Then, to avenge herself on her lover, whose heart
proved fickle, she shot him with a revolver. The unhappy man is maimed
for life. The jury, all men of moral character, condoning the illicit
love of the murderess, honorably acquitted her.'”
This time the old grandmother appeared quite shocked, and, in a
trembling voice, she said:
“Why, you people are mad nowadays. You are mad! The good God has given
you love, the only enchantment in life. Man has added to this gallantry
the only distraction of our dull hours, and here you are mixing up with
it vitriol and revolvers, as if one were to put mud into a flagon of
Spanish wine.”
Berthe did not seem to understand her grandmother's indignation.
“But, grandmamma, this woman avenged herself. Remember she was married,
and her husband deceived her.”
The grandmother gave a start.
“What ideas have they been filling your head with, you young girls of
today?”
Berthe replied:
“But marriage is sacred, grandmamma.”
The grandmother's heart, which had its birth in the great age of
gallantry, gave a sudden leap.
“It is love that is sacred,” she said. “Listen, child, to an old woman
who has seen three generations, and who has had a long, long experience
of men and women. Marriage and love have nothing in common. We marry
to found a family, and we form families in order to constitute society.
Society cannot dispense with marriage. If society is a chain, each
family is a link in that chain. In order to weld those links, we always
seek metals of the same order. When we marry, we must bring together
suitable conditions; we must combine fortunes, unite similar races and
aim at the common interest, which is riches and children. We marry only
once my child, because the world requires us to do so, but we may love
twenty times in one lifetime because nature has made us like this.
Marriage, you see, is law, and love is an instinct which impels us,
sometimes along a straight, and sometimes along a devious path. The
world has made laws to combat our instincts--it was necessary to make
them; but our instincts are always stronger, and we ought not to resist
them too much, because they come from God; while the laws only come from
men. If we did not perfume life with love, as much love as possible,
darling, as we put sugar into drugs for children, nobody would care to
take it just as it is.”
Berthe opened her eyes wide in astonishment. She murmured:
“Oh! grandmamma, we can only love once.”
The grandmother raised her trembling hands toward Heaven, as if again to
invoke the defunct god of gallantries. She exclaimed indignantly:
“You have become a race of serfs, a race of common people. Since the
Revolution, it is impossible any longer to recognize society. You have
attached big words to every action, and wearisome duties to every corner
of existence; you believe in equality and eternal passion. People have
written poetry telling you that people have died of love. In my time
poetry was written to teach men to love every woman. And we! when
we liked a gentleman, my child, we sent him a page. And when a fresh
caprice came into our hearts, we were not slow in getting rid of the
last Lover--unless we kept both of them.”
The old woman smiled a keen smile, and a gleam of roguery twinkled in
her gray eye, the intellectual, skeptical roguery of those people who
did not believe that they were made of the same clay as the rest, and
who lived as masters for whom common beliefs were not intended.
The young girl, turning very pale, faltered out:
“So, then, women have no honor?”
The grandmother ceased to smile. If she had kept in her soul some
of Voltaire's irony, she had also a little of Jean Jacques's glowing
philosophy: “No honor! because we loved, and dared to say so, and even
boasted of it? But, my child, if one of us, among the greatest ladies in
France, had lived without a lover, she would have had the entire court
laughing at her. Those who wished to live differently had only to enter
a convent. And you imagine, perhaps, that your husbands will love but
you alone, all their lives. As if, indeed, this could be the case. I
tell you that marriage is a thing necessary in order that society should
exist, but it is not in the nature of our race, do you understand?
There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how you
misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as something solemn
like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a dress.”
The young girl caught the old woman's trembling hands in her own.
“Hold your tongue, I beg of you, grandmamma!”
And, on her knees, with tears in her eyes, she prayed to Heaven to
bestow on her a great passion, one sole, eternal passion in accordance
with the dream of modern poets, while the grandmother, kissing her on
the forehead, quite imbued still with that charming, healthy reason
with which gallant philosophers tinctured the thought of the eighteenth
century, murmured:
“Take care, my poor darling! If you believe in such folly as that, you
will be very unhappy.”
FRIEND JOSEPH
They had been great friends all winter in Paris. As is always the case,
they had lost sight of each other after leaving school, and had met
again when they were old and gray-haired. One of them had married, but
the other had remained in single blessedness.
M. de Meroul lived for six months in Paris and for six months in
his little chateau at Tourbeville. Having married the daughter of
a neighboring, squire, he had lived a good and peaceful life in
the indolence of a man who has nothing to do. Of a calm and quiet
disposition, and not over-intelligent he used to spend his time quietly
regretting the past, grieving over the customs and institutions of the
day and continually repeating to his wife, who would lift her eyes, and
sometimes her hands, to heaven, as a sign of energetic assent: “Good
gracious! What a government!”
Madame de Meroul resembled her husband intellectually as though she
had been his sister. She knew, by tradition, that one should above all
respect the Pope and the King!
And she loved and respected them from the bottom of her heart, without
knowing them, with a poetic fervor, with an hereditary devotion, with
the tenderness of a wellborn woman. She was good to, the marrow of her
bones. She had had no children, and never ceased mourning the fact.
On meeting his old friend, Joseph Mouradour, at a ball, M. de Meroul
was filled with a deep and simple joy, for in their youth they had been
intimate friends.
After the first exclamations of surprise at the changes which time had
wrought in their bodies and countenances, they told each other about
their lives since they had last met.
Joseph Mouradour, who was from the south of France, had become a
government official. His manner was frank; he spoke rapidly and without
restraint, giving his opinions without any tact. He was a Republican,
one of those good fellows who do not believe in standing on ceremony,
and who exercise an almost brutal freedom of speech.
He came to his friend's house and was immediately liked for his easy
cordiality, in spite of his radical ideas. Madame de Meroul would
exclaim:
“What a shame! Such a charming man!”
Monsieur de Meroul would say to his friend in a serious and confidential
tone of voice; “You have no idea the harm that you are doing your
country.” He loved him all the same, for nothing is stronger than
the ties of childhood taken up again at a riper age. Joseph Mouradour
bantered the wife and the husband, calling them “my amiable snails,” and
sometimes he would solemnly declaim against people who were behind the
times, against old prejudices and traditions.
When he was once started on his democratic eloquence, the couple,
somewhat ill at ease, would keep silent from politeness and
good-breeding; then the husband would try to turn the conversation into
some other channel in order to avoid a clash. Joseph Mouradour was only
seen in the intimacy of the family.
Summer came. The Merouls had no greater pleasure than to receive their
friends at their country home at Tourbeville. It was a good, healthy
pleasure, the enjoyments of good people and of country proprietors. They
would meet their friends at the neighboring railroad station and would
bring them back in their carriage, always on the lookout for compliments
on the country, on its natural features, on the condition of the roads,
on the cleanliness of the farm-houses, on the size of the cattle grazing
in the fields, on everything within sight.
They would call attention to the remarkable speed with which their horse
trotted, surprising for an animal that did heavy work part of the
year behind a plow; and they would anxiously await the opinion of
the newcomer on their family domain, sensitive to the least word, and
thankful for the slightest good intention.
Joseph Mouradour was invited, and he accepted the invitation.
Husband and wife had come to the train, delighted to welcome him to
their home. As soon as he saw them, Joseph Mouradour jumped from the
train with a briskness which increased their satisfaction. He shook
their hands, congratulated them, overwhelmed them with compliments.
All the way home he was charming, remarking on the height of the trees,
the goodness of the crops and the speed of the horse.
When he stepped on the porch of the house, Monsieur de Meroul said, with
a certain friendly solemnity:
“Consider yourself at home now.”
Joseph Mouradour answered:
“Thanks, my friend; I expected as much. Anyhow, I never stand on
ceremony with my friends. That's how I understand hospitality.”
Then he went upstairs to dress as a farmer, he said, and he came back
all togged out in blue linen, with a little straw hat and yellow shoes,
a regular Parisian dressed for an outing. He also seemed to become
more vulgar, more jovial, more familiar; having put on with his
country clothes a free and easy manner which he judged suitable to the
surroundings. His new manners shocked Monsieur and Madame de Meroul
a little, for they always remained serious and dignified, even in the
country, as though compelled by the two letters preceding their name to
keep up a certain formality even in the closest intimacy.
After lunch they all went out to visit the farms, and the Parisian
astounded the respectful peasants by his tone of comradeship.
In the evening the priest came to dinner, an old, fat priest, accustomed
to dining there on Sundays, but who had been especially invited this day
in honor of the new guest.
Joseph, on seeing him, made a wry face. Then he observed him with
surprise, as though he were a creature of some peculiar race, which he
had never been able to observe at close quarters. During the meal he
told some rather free stories, allowable in the intimacy of the family,
but which seemed to the Merouls a little out of place in the presence of
a minister of the Church. He did not say, “Monsieur l'abbe,” but
simply, “Monsieur.” He embarrassed the priest greatly by philosophical
discussions about diverse superstitions current all over the world. He
said: “Your God, monsieur, is of those who should be respected, but
also one of those who should be discussed. Mine is called Reason; he has
always been the enemy of yours.”
The Merouls, distressed, tried to turn the trend of the conversation.
The priest left very early.
Then the husband said, very quietly:
“Perhaps you went a little bit too far with the priest.”
But Joseph immediately exclaimed:
“Well, that's pretty good! As if I would be on my guard with a
shaveling! And say, do me the pleasure of not imposing him on me any
more at meals. You can both make use of him as much as you wish, but
don't serve him up to your friends, hang it!”
“But, my friends, think of his holy--”
Joseph Mouradour interrupted him:
“Yes, I know; they have to be treated like 'rosieres.' But let them
respect my convictions, and I will respect theirs!”
That was all for that day.
As soon as Madame de Meroul entered the parlor, the next morning, she
noticed in the middle of the table three newspapers which made her start
the Voltaire, the Republique-Francaise and the Justice. Immediately
Joseph Mouradour, still in blue, appeared on the threshold, attentively
reading the Intransigeant. He cried:
“There's a great article in this by Rochefort. That fellow is a wonder!”
He read it aloud, emphasizing the parts which especially pleased him, so
carried away by enthusiasm that he did not notice his friend's entrance.
Monsieur de Meroul was holding in his hand the Gaulois for himself, the
Clarion for his wife.
The fiery prose of the master writer who overthrew the empire, spouted
with violence, sung in the southern accent, rang throughout the peaceful
parsons seemed to spatter the walls and century-old furniture with a
hail of bold, ironical and destructive words.
The man and the woman, one standing, the other sitting, were listening
with astonishment, so shocked that they could not move.
In a burst of eloquence Mouradour finished the last paragraph, then
exclaimed triumphantly:
“Well! that's pretty strong!”
Then, suddenly, he noticed the two sheets which his friend was carrying,
and he, in turn, stood speechless from surprise. Quickly walking toward
him he demanded angrily:
“What are you doing with those papers?”
Monsieur de Meroul answered hesitatingly:
“Why--those--those are my papers!”
“Your papers! What are you doing--making fun of me? You will do me the
pleasure of reading mine; they will limber up your ideas, and as for
yours--there! that's what I do with them.”
And before his astonished host could stop him, he had seized the two
newspapers and thrown them out of the window. Then he solemnly handed
the Justice to Madame de Meroul, the Voltaire to her husband, while he
sank down into an arm-chair to finish reading the Intransigeant.
The couple, through delicacy, made a pretense of reading a little, they
then handed him back the Republican sheets, which they handled gingerly,
as though they might be poisoned.
He laughed and declared:
“One week of this regime and I will have you converted to my ideas.”
In truth, at the end of a week he ruled the house. He had closed the
door against the priest, whom Madame de Meroul had to visit secretly; he
had forbidden the Gaulois and the Clarion to be brought into the house,
so that a servant had to go mysteriously to the post-office to get them,
and as soon as he entered they would be hidden under sofa cushions;
he arranged everything to suit himself--always charming, always
good-natured, a jovial and all-powerful tyrant.
Other friends were expected, pious and conservative friends. The unhappy
couple saw the impossibility of having them there then, and, not knowing
what to do, one evening they announced to Joseph Mouradour that they
would be obliged to absent themselves for a few days, on business,
and they begged him to stay on alone. He did not appear disturbed, and
answered:
“Very well, I don't mind! I will wait here as long as you wish. I have
already said that there should be no formality between friends. You are
perfectly right-go ahead and attend to your business. It will not offend
me in the least; quite the contrary, it will make me feel much more
completely one of the family. Go ahead, my friends, I will wait for
you!”
Monsieur and Madame de Meroul left the following day.
He is still waiting for them.
THE EFFEMINATES
How often we hear people say, “He is charming, that man, but he is a
girl, a regular girl.” They are alluding to the effeminates, the bane of
our land.
For we are all girl-like men in France--that is, fickle, fanciful,
innocently treacherous, without consistency in our convictions or our
will, violent and weak as women are.
But the most irritating of girl--men is assuredly the Parisian and the
boulevardier, in whom the appearance of intelligence is more marked and
who combines in himself all the attractions and all the faults of those
charming creatures in an exaggerated degree in virtue of his masculine
temperament.
Our Chamber of Deputies is full of girl-men. They form the greater
number of the amiable opportunists whom one might call “The Charmers.”
These are they who control by soft words and deceitful promises, who
know how to shake hands in such a manner as to win hearts, how to say
“My dear friend” in a certain tactful way to people he knows the least,
to change his mind without suspecting it, to be carried away by each new
idea, to be sincere in their weathercock convictions, to let themselves
be deceived as they deceive others, to forget the next morning what he
affirmed the day before.
The newspapers are full of these effeminate men. That is probably where
one finds the most, but it is also where they are most needed. The
Journal des Debats and the Gazette de France are exceptions.
Assuredly, every good journalist must be somewhat effeminate--that is,
at the command of the public, supple in following unconsciously the
shades of public opinion, wavering and varying, sceptical and credulous,
wicked and devout, a braggart and a true man, enthusiastic and ironical,
and always convinced while believing in nothing.
Foreigners, our anti-types, as Mme. Abel called them, the stubborn
English and the heavy Germans, regard us with a certain amazement
mingled with contempt, and will continue to so regard us till the end
of time. They consider us frivolous. It is not that, it is that we are
girls. And that is why people love us in spite of our faults, why
they come back to us despite the evil spoken of us; these are lovers'
quarrels! The effeminate man, as one meets him in this world, is so
charming that he captivates you after five minutes' chat. His smile
seems made for you; one cannot believe that his voice does not assume
specially tender intonations on their account. When he leaves you it
seems as if one had known him for twenty years. One is quite ready to
lend him money if he asks for it. He has enchanted you, like a woman.
If he commits any breach of manners towards you, you cannot bear any
malice, he is so pleasant when you next meet him. If he asks your pardon
you long to ask pardon of him. Does he tell lies? You cannot believe it.
Does he put you off indefinitely with promises that he does not keep?
One lays as much store by his promises as though he had moved heaven and
earth to render them a service.
When he admires anything he goes into such raptures that he convinces
you. He once adored Victor Hugo, whom he now treats as a back number.
He would have fought for Zola, whom he has abandoned for Barbey and
d'Aurevilly. And when he admires, he permits no limitation, he would
slap your face for a word. But when he becomes scornful, his contempt is
unbounded and allows of no protest.
In fact, he understands nothing.
Listen to two girls talking.
“Then you are angry with Julia?” “I slapped her face.” “What had she
done?” “She told Pauline that I had no money thirteen months out of
twelve, and Pauline told Gontran--you understand.” “You were living
together in the Rue Clanzel?” “We lived together four years in the Rue
Breda; we quarrelled about a pair of stockings that she said I had worn
--it wasn't true--silk stockings that she had bought at Mother Martin's.
Then I gave her a pounding and she left me at once. I met her six months
ago and she asked me to come and live with her, as she has rented a flat
that is twice too large.”
One goes on one's way and hears no more. But on the following Sunday
as one is on the way to Saint Germain two young women get into the same
railway carriage. One recognizes one of them at once; it is Julia's
enemy. The other is Julia!
And there are endearments, caresses, plans. “Say, Julia--listen, Julia,”
etc.
The girl-man has his friendships of this kind. For three months he
cannot bear to leave his old Jack, his dear Jack. There is no one but
Jack in the world. He is the only one who has any intelligence, any
sense, any talent. He alone amounts to anything in Paris. One meets
them everywhere together, they dine together, walk about in company,
and every evening walk home with each other back and forth without being
able to part with one another.
Three months later, if Jack is mentioned:
“There is a drinker, a sorry fellow, a scoundrel for you. I know him
well, you may be sure. And he is not even honest, and ill-bred,” etc.,
etc.
Three months later, and they are living together.
But one morning one hears that they have fought a duel, then embraced
each other, amid tears, on the duelling ground.
Just now they are the dearest friends in the world, furious with each
other half the year, abusing and loving each other by turns, squeezing
each other's hands till they almost crush the bones, and ready to run
each other through the body for a misunderstanding.
For the relations of these effeminate men are uncertain. Their temper
is by fits and starts, their delight unexpected, their affection
turn-about-face, their enthusiasm subject to eclipse. One day they love
you, the next day they will hardly look at you, for they have in fact
a girl's nature, a girl's charm, a girl's temperament, and all their
sentiments are like the affections of girls.
They treat their friends as women treat their pet dogs.
It is the dear little Toutou whom they hug, feed with sugar, allow to
sleep on the pillow, but whom they would be just as likely to throw
out of a window in a moment of impatience, whom they turn round like a
sling, holding it by the tail, squeeze in their arms till they almost
strangle it, and plunge, without any reason, in a pail of cold water.
Then, what a strange thing it is when one of these beings falls in love
with a real girl! He beats her, she scratches him, they execrate each
other, cannot bear the sight of each other and yet cannot part, linked
together by no one knows what mysterious psychic bonds. She deceives
him, he knows it, sobs and forgives her. He despises and adores her
without seeing that she would be justified in despising him. They are
both atrociously unhappy and yet cannot separate. They cast invectives,
reproaches and abominable accusations at each other from morning till
night, and when they have reached the climax and are vibrating with
rage and hatred, they fall into each other's arms and kiss each other
ardently.
The girl-man is brave and a coward at the same time. He has, more than
another, the exalted sentiment of honor, but is lacking in the sense
of simple honesty, and, circumstances favoring him, would defalcate
and commit infamies which do not trouble his conscience, for he obeys
without questioning the oscillations of his ideas, which are always
impulsive.
To him it seems permissible and almost right to cheat a haberdasher. He
considers it honorable not to pay his debts, unless they are gambling
debts--that is, somewhat shady. He dupes people whenever the laws of
society admit of his doing so. When he is short of money he borrows in
all ways, not always being scrupulous as to tricking the lenders, but he
would, with sincere indignation, run his sword through anyone who should
suspect him of only lacking in politeness.
OLD AMABLE
PART I
The humid gray sky seemed to weigh down on the vast brown plain. The
odor of autumn, the sad odor of bare, moist lands, of fallen leaves,
of dead grass made the stagnant evening air more thick and heavy. The
peasants were still at work, scattered through the fields, waiting for
the stroke of the Angelus to call them back to the farmhouses, whose
thatched roofs were visible here and there through the branches of the
leafless trees which protected the apple-gardens against the wind.
At the side of the road, on a heap of clothes, a very small boy seated
with his legs apart was playing with a potato, which he now and then let
fall on his dress, whilst five women were bending down planting slips
of colza in the adjoining plain. With a slow, continuous movement, all
along the mounds of earth which the plough had just turned up, they
drove in sharp wooden stakes and in the hole thus formed placed the
plant, already a little withered, which sank on one side; then they
patted down the earth and went on with their work.
A man who was passing, with a whip in his hand, and wearing wooden
shoes, stopped near the child, took it up and kissed it. Then one of the
women rose up and came across to him. She was a big, red haired girl,
with large hips, waist and shoulders, a tall Norman woman, with yellow
hair in which there was a blood-red tint.
She said in a resolute voice:
“Why, here you are, Cesaire--well?”
The man, a thin young fellow with a melancholy air, murmured:
“Well, nothing at all--always the same thing.”
“He won't have it?”
“He won't have it.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What do you say I ought to do?”
“Go see the cure.”
“I will.”
“Go at once!”
“I will.”
And they stared at each other. He held the child in his arms all the
time. He kissed it once more and then put it down again on the woman's
clothes.
In the distance, between two farm-houses, could be seen a plough drawn
by a horse and driven by a man. They moved on very gently, the horse,
the plough and the laborer, in the dim evening twilight.
The woman went on:
“What did your father say?”
“He said he would not have it.”
“Why wouldn't he have it?”
The young man pointed toward the child whom he had just put back on the
ground, then with a glance he drew her attention to the man drawing the
plough yonder there.
And he said emphatically:
“Because 'tis his--this child of yours.”
The girl shrugged her shoulders and in an angry tone said:
“Faith, every one knows it well--that it is Victor's. And what about it
after all? I made a slip. Am I the only woman that did? My mother also
made a slip before me, and then yours did the same before she married
your dad! Who is it that hasn't made a slip in the country? I made a
slip with Victor because he took advantage of me while I was asleep in
the barn, it's true, and afterward it happened between us when I wasn't
asleep. I certainly would have married him if he weren't a servant man.
Am I a worse woman for that?”
The man said simply:
“As for me, I like you just as you are, with or without the child. It's
only my father that opposes me. All the same, I'll see about settling
the business.”
She answered:
“Go to the cure at once.”
“I'm going to him.”
And he set forth with his heavy peasant's tread, while the girl, with
her hands on her hips, turned round to plant her colza.
In fact, the man who thus went off, Cesaire Houlbreque, the son of deaf
old Amable Houlbreque, wanted to marry, in spite of his father, Celeste
Levesque, who had a child by Victor Lecoq, a mere laborer on her
parents' farm, who had been turned out of doors for this act.
The hierarchy of caste, however, does not exist in the country, and if
the laborer is thrifty, he becomes, by taking a farm in his turn, the
equal of his former master.
So Cesaire Houlbieque went off, his whip under his arm, brooding over
his own thoughts and lifting up one after the other his heavy wooden
shoes daubed with clay. Certainly he desired to marry Celeste Levesque.
He wanted her with her child because she was the wife he wanted. He
could not say why, but he knew it, he was sure of it. He had only to
look at her to be convinced of it, to feel quite queer, quite stirred
up, simply stupid with happiness. He even found a pleasure in kissing
the little boy, Victor's little boy, because he belonged to her.
And he gazed, without hate, at the distant outline of the man who was
driving his plough along the horizon.
But old Amable did not want this marriage. He opposed it with the
obstinacy of a deaf man, with a violent obstinacy.
Cesaire in vain shouted in his ear, in that ear which still heard a few
sounds:
“I'll take good care of you, daddy. I tell you she's a good girl and
strong, too, and also thrifty.”
The old man repeated:
“As long as I live I won't see her your wife.”
And nothing could get the better of him, nothing could make him waver.
One hope only was left to Cesaire. Old Amable was afraid of the cure
through the apprehension of death which he felt drawing nigh; he had not
much fear of God, nor of the Devil, nor of Hell, nor of Purgatory, of
which he had no conception, but he dreaded the priest, who represented
to him burial, as one might fear the doctors through horror of diseases.
For the last tight days Celeste, who knew this weakness of the old man,
had been urging Cesaire to go and find the cure, but Cesaire always
hesitated, because he had not much liking for the black robe, which
represented to him hands always stretched out for collections or for
blessed bread.
However, he had made up his mind, and he proceeded toward the
presbytery, thinking in what manner he would speak about his case.
The Abbe Raffin, a lively little priest, thin and never shaved, was
awaiting his dinner-hour while warming his feet at his kitchen fire.
As soon as he saw the peasant entering he asked, merely turning his
head:
“Well, Cesaire, what do you want?”
“I'd like to have a talk with you, M. le Cure.”
The man remained standing, intimidated, holding his cap in one hand and
his whip in the other.
“Well, talk.”
Cesaire looked at the housekeeper, an old woman who dragged her feet
while putting on the cover for her master's dinner at the corner of the
table in front of the window.
He stammered:
“'Tis--'tis a sort of confession.”
Thereupon the Abbe Raffin carefully surveyed his peasant. He saw his
confused countenance, his air of constraint, his wandering eyes, and he
gave orders to the housekeeper in these words:
“Marie, go away for five minutes to your room, while I talk to Cesaire.”
The servant cast on the man an angry glance and went away grumbling.
The clergyman went on:
“Come, now, tell your story.”
The young fellow still hesitated, looked down at his wooden shoes, moved
about his cap, then, all of a sudden, he made up his mind:
“Here it is: I want to marry Celeste Levesque.”
“Well, my boy, what's there to prevent you?”
“The father won't have it.”
“Your father?”
“Yes, my father.”
“What does your father say?”
“He says she has a child.”
“She's not the first to whom that happened, since our Mother Eve.”
“A child by Victor Lecoq, Anthime Loisel's servant man.”
“Ha! ha! So he won't have it?”
“He won't have it.”
“What! not at all?”
“No, no more than an ass that won't budge an inch, saving your
presence.”
“What do you say to him yourself in order to make him decide?”
“I say to him that she's a good girl, and strong, too, and thrifty
also.”
“And this does not make him agree to it. So you want me to speak to
him?”
“Exactly. You speak to him.”
“And what am I to tell your father?”
“Why, what you tell people in your sermons to make them give you sous.”
In the peasant's mind every effort of religion consisted in loosening
the purse strings, in emptying the pockets of men in order to fill the
heavenly coffer. It was a kind of huge commercial establishment, of
which the cures were the clerks; sly, crafty clerks, sharp as any one
must be who does business for the good God at the expense of the country
people.
He knew full well that the priests rendered services, great services
to the poorest, to the sick and dying, that they assisted, consoled,
counselled, sustained, but all this by means of money, in exchange for
white pieces, for beautiful glittering coins, with which they paid
for sacraments and masses, advice and protection, pardon of sins and
indulgences, purgatory and paradise according to the yearly income and
the generosity of the sinner.
The Abbe Raffin, who knew his man and who never lost his temper, burst
out laughing.
“Well, yes, I'll tell your father my little story; but you, my lad,
you'll come to church.”
Houlbreque extended his hand in order to give a solemn assurance:
“On the word of a poor man, if you do this for me, I promise that I
will.”
“Come, that's all right. When do you wish me to go and find your
father?”
“Why, the sooner the better-to-night, if you can.”
“In half an hour, then, after supper.”
“In half an hour.”
“That's understood. So long, my lad.”
“Good-by till we meet again, Monsieur le Cure; many thanks.”
“Not at all, my lad.”
And Cesaire Houlbreque returned home, his heart relieved of a great
weight.
He held on lease a little farm, quite small, for they were not rich, his
father and he. Alone with a female servant, a little girl of fifteen,
who made the soup, looked after the fowls, milked the cows and churned
the butter, they lived frugally, though Cesaire was a good cultivator.
But they did not possess either sufficient lands or sufficient cattle to
earn more than the indispensable.
The old man no longer worked. Sad, like all deaf people, crippled with
pains, bent double, twisted, he went through the fields leaning on his
stick, watching the animals and the men with a hard, distrustful eye.
Sometimes he sat down on the side of the road and remained there without
moving for hours, vaguely pondering over the things that had engrossed
his whole life, the price of eggs, and corn, the sun and the rain which
spoil the crops or make them grow. And, worn out with rheumatism, his
old limbs still drank in the humidity of the soul, as they had drunk
in for the past sixty years, the moisture of the walls of his low house
thatched with damp straw.
He came back at the close of the day, took his place at the end of the
table in the kitchen and when the earthen bowl containing the soup had
been placed before him he placed round it his crooked fingers, which
seemed to have kept the round form of the bowl and, winter and summer,
he warmed his hands, before commencing to eat, so as to lose nothing,
not even a particle of the heat that came from the fire, which costs a
great deal, neither one drop of soup into which fat and salt have to be
put, nor one morsel of bread, which comes from the wheat.
Then he climbed up a ladder into a loft, where he had his straw-bed,
while his son slept below stairs at the end of a kind of niche near
the chimneypiece and the servant shut herself up in a kind of cellar, a
black hole which was formerly used to store the potatoes.
Cesaire and his father scarcely ever talked to each other. From time to
time only, when there was a question of selling a crop or buying a
calf, the young man would ask his father's advice, and, making a
speaking-trumpet of his two hands, he would bawl out his views into his
ear, and old Amable either approved of them or opposed them in a slow,
hollow voice that came from the depths of his stomach.
So one evening Cesaire, approaching him as if about to discuss the
purchase of a horse or a heifer, communicated to him at the top of his
voice his intention to marry Celeste Levesque.
Then the father got angry. Why? On the score of morality? No, certainly.
The virtue of a girl is of slight importance in the country. But his
avarice, his deep, fierce instinct for saving, revolted at the idea that
his son should bring up a child which he had not begotten himself. He
had thought suddenly, in one second, of the soup the little fellow would
swallow before becoming useful on the farm. He had calculated all the
pounds of bread, all the pints of cider that this brat would consume
up to his fourteenth year, and a mad anger broke loose from him against
Cesaire, who had not bestowed a thought on all this.
He replied in an unusually strong voice:
“Have you lost your senses?”
Thereupon Cesaire began to enumerate his reasons, to speak about
Celeste's good qualities, to prove that she would be worth a thousand
times what the child would cost. But the old man doubted these
advantages, while he could have no doubts as to the child's existence;
and he replied with emphatic repetition, without giving any further
explanation:
“I will not have it! I will not have it! As long as I live, this won't
be done!” And at this point they had remained for the last three months
without one or the other giving in, resuming at least once a week the
same discussion, with the same arguments, the same words, the same
gestures and the same fruitlessness.
It was then that Celeste had advised Cesaire to go and ask for the
cure's assistance.
On arriving home the peasant found his father already seated at table,
for he came late through his visit to the presbytery.
They dined in silence, face to face, ate a little bread and butter after
the soup and drank a glass of cider. Then they remained motionless in
their chairs, with scarcely a glimmer of light, the little servant girl
having carried off the candle in order to wash the spoons, wipe the
glasses and cut the crusts of bread to be ready for next morning's
breakfast.
There was a knock, at the door, which was immediately opened, and the
priest appeared. The old man raised toward him an anxious eye full of
suspicion, and, foreseeing danger, he was getting ready to climb up his
ladder when the Abbe Raffin laid his hand on his shoulder and shouted
close to his temple:
“I want to have a talk with you, Father Amable.”
Cesaire had disappeared, taking advantage of the door being open. He
did not want to listen, for he was afraid and did not want his hopes to
crumble slowly with each obstinate refusal of his father. He preferred
to learn the truth at once, good or bad, later on; and he went out into
the night. It was a moonless, starless night, one of those misty nights
when the air seems thick with humidity. A vague odor of apples floated
through the farmyard, for it was the season when the earliest applies
were gathered, the “early ripe,” as they are called in the cider
country. As Cesaire passed along by the cattlesheds the warm smell of
living beasts asleep on manure was exhaled through the narrow windows,
and he heard the stamping of the horses, who were standing at the end of
the stable, and the sound of their jaws tearing and munching the hay on
the racks.
He went straight ahead, thinking about Celeste. In this simple nature,
whose ideas were scarcely more than images generated directly by
objects, thoughts of love only formulated themselves by calling up
before the mind the picture of a big red-haired girl standing in a
hollow road and laughing, with her hands on her hips.
It was thus he saw her on the day when he first took a fancy for her. He
had, however, known her from infancy, but never had he been so struck by
her as on that morning. They had stopped to talk for a few minutes and
then he went away, and as he walked along he kept repeating:
“Faith, she's a fine girl, all the same. 'Tis a pity she made a slip
with Victor.”
Till evening he kept thinking of her and also on the following morning.
When he saw her again he felt something tickling the end of his throat,
as if a cock's feather had been driven through his mouth into his chest,
and since then, every time he found himself near her, he was astonished
at this nervous tickling which always commenced again.
In three months he made up his mind to marry her, so much did she please
him. He could not have said whence came this power over him, but he
explained it in these words:
“I am possessed by her,” as if the desire for this girl within him were
as dominating as one of the powers of hell. He scarcely bothered himself
about her transgression. It was a pity, but, after all, it did her no
harm, and he bore no grudge against Victor Lecoq.
But if the cure should not succeed, what was he to do? He did not dare
to think of it, the anxiety was such a torture to him.
He reached the presbytery and seated himself near the little gateway to
wait for the priest's return.
He was there perhaps half an hour when he heard steps on the road, and
although the night was very dark, he presently distinguished the still
darker shadow of the cassock.
He rose up, his legs giving way under him, not even venturing to speak,
not daring to ask a question.
The clergyman perceived him and said gaily:
“Well, my lad, it's all right.”
Cesaire stammered:
“All right, 'tisn't possible.”
“Yes, my lad, but not without trouble. What an old ass your father is!”
The peasant repeated:
“'Tisn't possible!”
“Why, yes. Come and look me up to-morrow at midday in order to settle
about the publication of the banns.”
The young man seized the cure's hand. He pressed it, shook it, bruised
it as he stammered:
“True-true-true, Monsieur le Cure, on the word of an honest man, you'll
see me to-morrow-at your sermon.”