who was coming behind her with a basket and a little jar of pitch. "We
have made more than fifty grafts, and there are some slips there that
Sylvain picked up in the upper part of your garden. They were in what
the gardener threw away after pruning his rose-bushes, and they will
give us some lovely flowers, if our grafting isn't too badly done. You
will look at it, won't you, father? for I am not very skilful yet."
"Nonsense! you can graft better than I, with your little hands," said
Monsieur Antoine, putting his daughter's pretty fingers to his lips.
"That's woman's work, and requires more deftness than we men can manage.
But you ought to put on your gloves, little one! Those wretched thorns
have no respect for you."
"What harm do they do, father?" said the girl with a smile. "I am no
princess, and I am glad of it. I am freer and happier."
Emile did not lose a word of this last sentiment, although it was
uttered in an undertone for her father's ear only; and although he had
stepped forward to meet little Sylvain and bid him a friendly
good-morning.
"Oh! I am doing very well," replied the page; "I was only afraid of one
thing and that was that the mare might take cold after such a bath. But
by good luck she seems all the better for it, and I was very glad of the
chance to go into your little château and see the beautiful rooms and
your papa's servants, who wear red waistcoats and have gold lace on
their hats!"
"Ah! that is what turned his head more than anything," said Gilberte,
laughing heartily and disclosing two rows of little teeth as white and
close together as a necklace of pearls. "Monsieur Sylvain here is
overflowing with ambition: he has looked with profound scorn upon his
new jacket and his gray hat since he saw your gold-laced lackeys. If he
ever sees a _chasseur_ with his cock's feather and epaulets, he'll go
mad over him."
"Poor child!" said Emile, "if he knew how much freer, happier and
honorable his lot is than that of the bedizened lackeys in the large
cities!"
"He has no suspicion that a livery is degrading," said the girl, "and he
is not aware that he is the luckiest servant that ever lived."
"I don't complain," rejoined Sylvain; "everybody is kind to me here,
even Mademoiselle Janille, although she is a little watchful, and I
wouldn't like to leave these parts, because my father and mother are at
Cuzion, right near the house! But a bit of a costume, you know, makes a
man over!"
"So you would like to be dressed better than your master, would you?"
said Mademoiselle de Châteaubrun. "Look at my father, how simple his
dress is. He would be very unhappy if he had to put on a black coat and
white gloves every day."
"It is quite true that it would be hard for me to take up the habit
again," said Monsieur Antoine. "But do you hear, Janille, my children?
there she is shrieking to us to come to breakfast."
_My children_ was a general term by which Monsieur Antoine, when he was
in an amiable mood, often addressed Janille and Sylvain when they were
together, or the peasants in his vicinity.
Gilberte therefore was amazed at the involuntary rapid glance which
young Cardonnet bestowed upon her. He had started, and a confused thrill
of longing, of dread and of pleasure had made his heart beat fast when
he heard himself joined with the lovely Gilberte in the châtelain's
paternal appellation.
IX
MONSIEUR ANTOINE
The breakfast on this occasion was a little more luxurious than was
customary at Châteaubrun. Janille had had time to make some
preparations. She had procured milk, honey and eggs, and had bravely
sacrificed two pullets which were still cackling when Emile appeared at
the gate, but which had been placed on the gridiron while they were
warm, and were very tender.
The young man had found an appetite in the orchard, and the meal was
most enjoyable. The praise that he bestowed upon it delighted Janille,
who sat as usual opposite her master and did the honors of the table
with much distinction.
She was especially touched by her guest's approbation of the wild
blackberries preserved by herself.
"Little mother," said Gilberte, "you must send a specimen of your skill
with your receipt to Madame Cardonnet, and perhaps she will send us in
exchange some strawberry plants."
"Those great garden strawberries aren't good for anything," replied
Janille; "they smell of nothing but water. I prefer our little mountain
strawberries, so red and so fragrant. But that won't hinder my giving
Monsieur Emile a big jar of my preserves for his mamma, if she will
accept them."
"My mother wouldn't want to deprive you of them, my dear Mademoiselle
Janille," Emile replied, especially touched by Gilberte's frank
generosity, and mentally comparing the sincere kindly impulses of that
poor family with the disdainful manners of his own.
"Oh," said Gilberte with a smile, "that won't be any deprivation to us.
We have plenty of the fruit and we can begin again. Blackberries are not
scarce with us, and if we don't look out, the bramble-bushes that bear
them will pierce our walls and grow in our rooms."
"And whose fault is it," said Janille, "if we are overrun by brambles?
Didn't I want to cut them all down? I certainly could have done it all
without help from anybody if I had been let."
"But I protected the poor brambles against you, dear little mother! They
make such pretty garlands around our ruins, that it would be a great
pity to destroy them."
"I agree that they make a pretty effect," said Janille, "and that you
can't find such fine bushes or such big berries within ten leagues!"
"You hear her, Monsieur Emile," said Monsieur Antoine. "That's Janille
all over! There's nothing beautiful, good, useful or salutary that is
not found at Châteaubrun. It's a saving grace."
"_Pardine_! complain, monsieur," retorted Janille; "yes, I advise you to
complain of something!"
"I complain of nothing," replied the honest nobleman; "God forbid! with
my daughter and you, what more could I ask for my happiness?"
"Oh! yes; you talk like that when any one is listening to you, but if
our backs are turned, and a little fly stings you, you put on a look of
resignation altogether out of place in your position."
"My position is what God has made it," rejoined Monsieur Antoine, with
melancholy gentleness. "If my daughter accepts it without regret, it is
not for you or me to reproach Providence."
"I!" cried Gilberte; "what regret can I have, pray? Tell me, dear
father; for, so far as I am concerned, I should look in vain to find
anything on earth that I lack or that I can ask to have improved."
"And I am of mademoiselle's opinion," said Emile, deeply touched by the
sincere and nobly affectionate expression on that lovely face; "I am
sure that she is happy, because----"
"Because what? Tell us, Monsieur Cardonnet!" said Gilberte playfully;
"you were going to say why, and you stopped short."
"I should be very sorry to seem to say anything insipid," replied Emile,
blushing almost as red as the girl; "but I was thinking that when one
had these three treasures, beauty, youth and amiability, one should be
happy, because one could be sure of being loved."
"I am happier than you think, then," said Gilberte, putting one hand in
her father's and the other in Janille's; "for I am loved dearly without
reference to those other things. Whether I am beautiful and amiable, I
don't know; but I am sure that if I were ugly and cross, my father and
mother would love me just the same. My happiness therefore comes from
their goodness to me and not from any merit of my own."
"We will permit you to believe, however," said Monsieur Antoine to
Emile, pressing his daughter to his heart, "that it comes partly from
one and partly from the other."
"Oh! Monsieur Antoine, see what you've done!" cried Janille; "more of
your absent-mindedness! You've made a mark with your egg on Gilberte's
sleeve."
"That's nothing," said Monsieur Antoine; "I'll wash it out myself."
"No! no! that would make it worse; you'd pour the whole carafe on it and
drown my girl. Come here, my child, and let me take out the stain. I
have a horror of stains! Wouldn't it be a pity to spoil this pretty new
dress?"
Emile looked for the first time at Gilberte's costume. He had hitherto
paid no attention to aught save her graceful figure and the beauty of
her face. She wore a dress of grey drilling, quite new, but coarse, with
a little neckerchief, white as snow, about her neck. Gilberte noticed
his scrutiny, and, instead of being humiliated by it, seemed to take
some pride in saying that she liked her dress, that it was of good
material, that she could defy thorns and briers, and that, as Janille
chose it herself, nothing could be more agreeable to her to wear.
"The dress is charming, in truth," said Emile; "my mother has one just
like it."
That was not true; Emile, although naturally truthful, told this little
lie involuntarily. Gilberte was not deceived by it; but she was grateful
to him for the delicacy of his purpose.
As for Janille, she was visibly flattered by this testimony to her good
taste, for she was almost as proud of that quality as of Gilberte's
beauty.
"My daughter is no coquette," said she, "but I am for her. And what
would you say, Monsieur Antoine, if your child was not dressed genteelly
and becomingly as befits her rank in society?"
"We have nothing to do with society, my dear Janille," said Monsieur
Antoine, "and I don't complain. Don't indulge in any useless illusions."
"You have a disappointed air when you say that, Monsieur Antoine; for my
part, I tell you that rank can't be lost: but that's just like you; you
always throw the blade after the helve!"
"I throw nothing at all," retorted the châtelain; "on the contrary, I
accept everything as it comes."
"Oh! you do!" said Janille, who always longed to quarrel with some one,
to keep her tongue and her lively pantomime in practice. "You are very
good, on my word, to accept such a fate as yours! Wouldn't any one say,
to hear you, that you had to have a deal of sense and philosophy for
that? Bah! you're no better than an ingrate!"
"What's the matter with you, you cross-grained creature?" said Monsieur
Antoine. "I say again that everything is all right and that I am
consoled for everything."
"Consoled! there you go again; consoled for what, if you please? Haven't
you always been the happiest of men?"
"No, not always. My life has had its mixture of bitterness like every
man's; but why should I have been treated any better than so many others
who are as good as I am?"
"No, other men are not so good as you are--I insist upon that, as I also
insist that you have always been treated better than any one. Yes,
monsieur, I'll prove to you, whenever you choose, that you were born
under a lucky star."
"Ah! you would please me exceedingly if you could really prove that,"
said Monsieur Antoine with a smile.
"Very well, I take you at your word, and I will begin. Monsieur
Cardonnet shall be judge and witness."
"We will let her have her say, Monsieur Emile," said Monsieur Antoine.
"We have reached the dessert and there's nothing that will keep Janille
from chattering at this stage of the meal. She will say innumerable
foolish things, I warn you! But she is bright and enthusiastic. You
won't be bored listening to her."
"In the first place," said Janille, bridling up in her determination to
justify this eulogium, "Monsieur was born Comte de Châteaubrun, which
is neither a bad name nor a trifling honor!"
"The honor has no great significance to-day," said Monsieur de
Châteaubrun; "and as for the name my ancestors handed down to me, as I
have been able to do nothing to add to its splendor, I do not much
deserve to bear it."
"Nonsense, monsieur, nonsense!" interposed Janille. "I know what you're
coming at, and I'll come at it myself. Let me talk. Monsieur comes into
the world here--in the loveliest country in the world--and he is nursed
by the prettiest and freshest village girl in the neighborhood, an old
friend of mine, although I was several years younger, honest Jean
Jappeloup's mother; he has always been as devoted to monsieur as the
foot is to the leg. He is in trouble now, but his troubles will soon
come to an end, I've no doubt!"
"Thanks to you!" said Gilberte, looking at Emile; and with that
innocent, kindly glance she paid him for his compliment to her beauty
and her dress.
"If you start on your usual parentheses," said Monsieur Antoine to
Janille, "we shall never finish."
"Yes, we will, monsieur," she replied. "I resume, as monsieur le curé
at Cuzion says at the beginning of his sermons. Monsieur was blessed
with an excellent constitution, and, moreover, he was the handsomest
child that ever was seen. In proof of that is the fact he became one of
the handsomest cavaliers in the province, as the ladies of all ranks
lost no time in discovering."
"Go on, go on, Janille," interposed the châtelain, with a touch of
sadness in his gayety; "there's not much to be said on that subject."
"Never fear," was her reply, "I'll say nothing that it isn't all right
to say. Monsieur was brought up in the country, in this old château,
which was great and fine in those days--and which is very comfortable to
live in to-day! Playing with the youngsters of his age and with little
Jean Jappeloup, his foster-brother, kept him in excellent health. Come,
monsieur, now complain of your health, and tell us if you know a man of
fifty more active and better preserved than you?"
"That's all very well; but you don't say that, as I was born in a period
of civil commotion and revolution my early education was neglected."
"_Pardieu_! monsieur, would you have liked to be born twenty years
earlier and be seventy to-day? That's a strange idea! You were born just
in time, since you still have a long while to live, thank God! As for
education, you lacked nothing; you were sent to school at Bourges, and
you worked very well there."
"On the contrary, very ill. I had not been accustomed to working with my
mind. I fell asleep during the lessons; my memory had never had any
practice; I had more difficulty in learning the elements of things than
other lads in completing a full course of study."
"Very well, then you deserved more credit because you had more trouble.
At all events you knew enough to be a gentleman. You weren't intended
for a curé or a school-master. Did you need so much Greek and Latin?
When you came here in vacation you were an accomplished young man. No
one was more skilful than you in bodily exercises; you could bat your
ball over the high tower, and when you called your dogs your voice was
so loud that you could be heard at Cuzion."
"All that doesn't show hard study," said Monsieur Antoine, laughing at
this panegyric.
"When you were old enough to leave school, it was the time of the war
with the Austrians and Prussians and Russians. You fought well, for you
received several wounds."
"Trifling ones," said Monsieur Antoine.
"Thank God!" rejoined Janille. "Would you have liked to be crippled and
go on crutches! You gathered the laurel, and you returned covered with
glory and with not too many bruises."
"No, no, Janille, very little glory, I assure you. I did my best; but
say what you will, I was born several years too late; my parents fought
too long against my desire to serve my country under the usurper, as
they called him. I had hardly made a start in the army when I had to
return home, _trailing my wing and dragging my foot_, in utter
consternation and despair at the disaster of Waterloo."
"I agree, monsieur, that the fall of the Emperor was not a good thing
for you, and that you were generous enough to regret it, although that
man never behaved very well toward you. With the name you bore, he ought
to have made you a general at once, instead of paying no attention
whatever to you."
"I presume," laughed Monsieur de Châteaubrun, "that his mind was
directed from that duty by other and more pressing affairs. However, you
agree, Janille, that my military career was nipped in the bud, and that,
thanks to my fine education, I was not very well fitted to start on any
other?"
"You might very well have served under the Bourbons, but you wouldn't do
it."
"I had the ideas of my generation. Perhaps I should still have them, if
it were all to be done again."
"Well, monsieur, who could blame you for it? It was very honorable,
according to what people said in the province then, and no one but your
relations condemned you."
"My relations were proud and inflexible in their legitimist opinions.
You cannot deny that they abandoned me to the disaster that threatened
me, and that they worried very little over the loss of my fortune."
"You were even prouder than they, for you would never go on your knees
to them."
"No, whether from recklessness or dignity, I never asked them for
assistance."
"And you lost your fortune in a great lawsuit against your father's
estate; everybody knows that. But you only lost the case because you
chose to."
"And it was the noblest and most honorable thing my father ever did in
his life," interposed Gilberte, with much warmth.
"My children," said Monsieur Antoine, "you mustn't say that I lost the
case; I didn't allow it to come to trial."
"To be sure, to be sure," said Janille; "for if you had, you would have
won it. There was only one opinion on that point."
"But my father, recognizing that possession in fact is not possession of
right," said Gilberte, addressing Emile with animation, "refused to take
advantage of his position. You must know this story, Monsieur Cardonnet,
for my father would never dream of telling it to you, and you have so
recently arrived in the province that you cannot have heard it yet. My
grandfather had contracted debts of honor during my father's minority.
He died before circumstances enabled him or made it an urgent duty to
pay them. The claims of the creditors were of no value in law; but my
father, when he investigated his affairs, found a minute of one of these
claims among my grandfather's papers. He might have destroyed it and no
one would have known of its existence. On the contrary, he produced it
and sold all of the family property to pay a sacred debt. My father has
brought me up upon principles which do not permit me to think that he
did any more than his duty; but many wealthy people thought differently.
Some called him a fool and madman. I am very glad that, when you hear
certain upstarts say that Monsieur Antoine de Châteaubrun was ruined by
his own folly, which in their eyes is the greatest possible dishonor,
you will know what to think about my father's dissipation and
wrong-headedness."
"Ah! mademoiselle," cried Emile, overpowered by his emotion, "how
fortunate you are to be his daughter, and how I envy you this noble
poverty!"
"Don't make me out a hero, my dear child," said Monsieur Antoine,
pressing Emile's hand. "There is always some truth at the bottom of the
judgments pronounced by men, even when they are harsh and unjust for the
most part. It is very certain that I was always a little extravagant,
that I understood nothing about domestic economy, or business, and that
I deserve less credit than another for sacrificing my fortune, because I
regretted it less."
This modest apology inspired in Emile such a warm regard for Monsieur
Antoine, that he stooped over the hand which held his and put his lips
to it with a feeling of veneration with which Gilberte was not wholly
unconnected. Gilberte was more moved than she was prepared to be by this
sudden impulse on their young guest's part. She felt a tear trembling on
her eyelid, and lowered her eyes to hide it; she tried to assume a
serious bearing, and, suddenly carried away by an irresistible impulse
of the heart, she almost held out her own hand to the young man; but she
did not yield to this outburst of feeling and artlessly turned it aside
by rising to take Emile's plate and give him another, with the grace and
simplicity of a patriarch's daughter holding the pitcher to the
wayfarer's lips.
Emile was surprised at first by this act of humble sympathy, so out of
harmony with the conventionalities of the society in which he had lived.
Then he understood it, and his breast was so agitated that he could find
no words to thank the fair hostess of Châteaubrun, his charming
servant.
"After all this," continued Monsieur Antoine, who saw nothing but the
simplest courtesy in his daughter's action, "Janille must surely agree
that there has been a little misfortune in my life; for that lawsuit had
been going on for some time when I discovered the acknowledgment of his
debt that my father had left behind him, in the drawer of an old
abandoned desk. Until then I had not believed in the good faith of his
creditors. It seemed improbable that they could have been unfortunate
enough to lose their proofs, so I slept on both ears. My Gilberte was
born and I had no suspicion that she was doomed to share with me a
hand-to-mouth existence. The dear child's birth made the blow a little
more severe than it would otherwise have been to my natural
improvidence. Seeing that I was absolutely without resource, I resolved
to work for my living, and I had some hard moments at first."
"Yes, monsieur, that is true," said Janille, "but you succeeded in
buckling down to work, and you soon recovered your good humor and your
open-hearted gayety, didn't you?"
"Thanks to you, good Janille, for you did not desert me. We went to
Gargilesse to live with Jean Jappeloup, and the honest fellow found me
something to do."
"What!" said Emile, "you have been a mechanic, monsieur le comte?"
"To be sure, my young friend. I was carpenter's apprentice, journeyman
carpenter, and in a few years carpenter's assistant, and not more than
two years ago you could have seen me with a blouse on my back and a
hatchet over my shoulder, going out for my day's work with Jappeloup."
"That is the reason, then," said Emile, sorely embarrassed, "that----"
He paused, not daring to finish.
"That is the reason, yes, I understand," rejoined Monsieur Antoine;
"that is the reason that you have heard some one say: 'Old Antoine
degenerated terribly during his poverty; he lived with workingmen; he
was seen laughing and drinking with them in wineshops.' Well, that
requires a little explanation, and I will not make myself out any
stronger or purer than I am. According to the ideas of the nobles and
the rich bourgeois of the province, I should have done better doubtless
to remain melancholy and solemn, proudly crushed by my disgrace, working
in silence, sighing in secret, blushing to receive wages,--I who had had
wage-earners under my orders--and taking no part on Sundays in the
merrymaking of the mechanics who permitted me to work beside them during
the week. Well, I do not know if it would have been better so, but, I
confess, that it would have been entirely foreign to my character. I am
so constituted that it is impossible for me to be affected and horrified
for long by anything under heaven. I had been brought up with Jappeloup
and other peasant children of my own age. I had treated them as my
equals in our childish games. Since then I had never played the master
or the nobleman with them. They received me with open arms in my
distress, and offered me their houses, their bread, their advice, their
tools and their custom. How could I have helped being fond of them? How
could their society seem to me to be unworthy of me? How could I help
sharing my week's wages with them on Sunday? Bah! on the contrary, I
suddenly found joy and pleasure in doing it, as a compensation for my
hard work. Their songs, their meetings, under the trellised arbor where
the holly-branch of the wineshop waved in the wind, their frank
familiarity with me, and my indissoluble friendship with dear Jean, my
foster-brother, my master in carpentry, my comforter, made a new life
for me, which I could not but find very pleasant, especially when I had
succeeded in acquiring enough skill at my trade not to be a burden to
them."