I never learned the adventure of the pavilion. But one day when we were

passing the colonel’s tottering château another memory, less direct no

doubt, awoke in his mind and without preparation he began:

“They called her the beautiful Alixe.”

“Who, grandfather?”

“She lived there. It was under the Empire.”

“You saw her, grandfather?”

“Oh, I; no! That’s too long ago. I am speaking of the first Emperor.

Those who had seen her were old when I was young. Those who had seen

her were bursting with pride merely at mentioning her name.”

These brief evocations of the past threw for me a lovely veil of

romance over our walks, which had “_happened_” like history.

He never said more about either, as I expected him to do. He never

supposed that I was watching his slightest words, and exaggerating

their importance. Save the white lady with the cherries in her hat,

who perhaps resembled, who doubtless resembled, some far-away picture

of his past, he greeted women the most frankly in the world and never

made any remark about them. When, several years later, one evening at

school, I read the famous passage of the Iliad about the old men of

Troy being disposed to forgive Helen because of her beauty, like that

of the immortal goddesses, while my comrades were dozing over their

Homer, I was seeing myself once more at my grandfather’s side on the

road by which the lady in white came to us. And ever since I have

called that unknown one Helen.

Grandfather, who began to enjoy our friendship, consented to receive

me in the tower chamber. He took no notice of my presence, however,

now enveloping me with the smoke of his pipe, and again playing upon

his violin, the notes of which mingled in my mind with the forest, the

lake and all our secret retreats. That room was to me a continuation of

my free out-of-door life. On stormy days, very rare in the course of

that bright summer predicted by Mathieu de la Drôme, I used to watch

the falling rain and the changing skies, lulled and softened by this

spectacle of the uselessness of things. When the west was clear I could

see the sun shooting into the waters of the lake a pillar of fire,

which by degrees was changed into a sword and finally was reduced to a

golden point, the reflection of the star resting upon the shoulder of

the mountain, which was what the sun became for one second before it

disappeared. In the evenings, after dinner, I used to obtain the favour

of looking at the constellations through the telescope. As his former

room had faced the south, grandfather, as I have said, was acquainted

with only half the heavens, and refused to puzzle out the other half.

Therefore I knew only Altair and Vega, Arcturus and the Virgin’s sheaf,

which may be seen in the south in July. I was obliged to lean out to

distinguish Antares on the edge of the roof. The other months all is

confused to my eyes, and the same if I look toward the north.

The household was pleased with my new regimen. More than once father

asked of grandfather:

“Truly, the boy doesn’t inconvenience you?”

“Oh, not at all,” grandfather would invariably reply.

And father would express his gratitude for my recovered health, Aunt

Deen would declare that I no longer had my papier-mâché face, and would

rub my cheeks to make them redder. My mother saw in grandfather’s

affection a guarantee of peace and reconciliation. As for me, life had

been insensibly changed. School, lessons, emulation, regular hours,

work--all that no longer existed. I had only to turn my back upon the

town and give myself up to lovely nature. I felt that, though I cannot

explain it, at once clearly and confusedly: confusedly in my mind and

clearly as a matter of practice.

And yet, on our return from our walks, grandfather would pretty often

simply bring me back as far as the gate, and slip away in the direction

of the accursed city.

IV

THE CAFÉ OF THE NAVIGATORS

WHERE did grandfather go after bringing me back to the house? To the

café, and one day he took me there.

I did not know precisely what a café was, and I was secretly afraid of

it. Father used to speak of cafés in a tone of contempt which admitted

no contradiction, no favourable reservation. When he said of any one,

“he spends his time at the café,” or “he is a pillar of the café,” that

some one was judged and condemned: he wasn’t worth the rope to hang

him. I could not have imagined my father entering one. Such audacity

on the part of grandfather surprised me the less, since I had already

noticed that in everything he took the opposite view from my father.

We went to the café instead of going to walk, one very warm morning;

this seemed to me a sort of outrage, as we were doubly failing in

the course marked out for us. Its name appeared in letters of gold,

_Café of the Navigators_; the inscription being framed in with

billiard cues. Pleasantly situated on the shore of the lake, it was

composed of a long arbour whence one could see the port, and a great

room whence one could see nothing. We chose the room; to me it seemed

most luxurious because of its mirrors and white marble tables. Two or

three groups were conversing, smoking, drinking, and I was at once

nearly choked by a pungent odour of tobacco mingled with the perfume of

anisette. Yet such was the attraction of the place that after having

coughed I found the combination pleasant. We joined the least noisy

group, who greeted grandfather with transports of delight, calling him

familiarly _Father Rambert_:

Father Rambert here!--Father Rambert there!

They installed him on the sofa, in the middle seat, and began by asking

news of Mathieu de la Drôme. Grandfather replied that he was at “set

fair” with a tendency to rise, and that favourable winds would probably

keep him so; at which every one rejoiced, on account of the vines; the

wine would be famous if Mathieu continued to behave well. Presently I

perceived that the barometer was in question, and that grandfather was

consulted as to the weather because of its prophecies. These gentlemen

used among themselves a conventional language to which it was important

to have the key, and which complicated the conversation so far as I was

concerned. No one paid any attention to me, and I was still standing,

vexed at this neglect, when I was suddenly addressed.

“Well, youngster, what will _you_ take?”

The appellative and the familiar tone completed my displeasure. I

drew myself up, and put on a stern expression, but I remained “the

youngster” to every one present. Grandfather with a detached air

replied with majesty:

“A green.”

“With white wine?” somebody asked.

“I am not a wine sack like you,” retorted grandfather.

The reply was received with enthusiasm. At The House every one was

particularly polite to a guest, but these gentlemen here laid aside

all ceremony in their mutual relations. Meanwhile, the maid set before

grandfather a number of things which she took one by one from a tray: a

tall, deep glass, a little iron spade pierced with holes; a sugar bowl,

a caraffe of water, and finally a bottle, the contents of which I could

not guess. There was a deep silence and I received an impression of

being present at a solemn rite, which no one might disturb. Decidedly

their ways were all topsy-turvy: they treated one another without

courtesy, but they venerated the drink.

Grandfather, his calm not in the least embarrassed by all the eyes

fixed upon him, poured a quarter of a glass of liquid from the

mysterious bottle, then placed the perforated spade across the glass

and upon it two pieces of sugar in perfect equilibrium, moistened them

drop by drop until they dissolved, after which he suddenly inclined the

caraffe. A pleasant odour of anise caressed my nostrils. The mixture

grew more clouded as the water fell, like those beautiful opaque clouds

that lie along the horizon before the rain, and finally took on a pale

green tint which I had never met in our walks. Immediately the talking

began again: the operation was completed.

At my new guardian’s order they brought “the youngster” a grenadine

with a bottle of seltzer water. The rite observed in this case was

shorter and not of sufficient importance to overcome the general

indifference. The rival “green” enjoyed a particular celebrity. One

discharge from the seltzer bottle into the syrup which was languishing

in the bottom of the glass and my mixture rose up, frothy, boiling,

tossing, first light rose colour, then, after the gases had been

dissipated, a golden rose. What touched me most wets the straw that was

given me for imbibing it from a distance: one had only to bend the head

over and breathe it in.

Merely by that breath I was initiated into a higher form of existence.

Perfectly happy, I felt a great desire to tell my neighbours so. They

were sucking up divers concoctions. Most of them had kindly, rubicund

faces, and eyes somewhat bleared. They too were all perfectly happy.

Why had grandfather taught me that people in towns were not happy? To

become so, all they had to do was to go to the café.

Among the heads which I was examining at leisure and with entire

sympathy was one which I thought I knew. It belonged to grandfather’s

left-hand neighbour, the very one whom he had qualified as a wine-sack.

The face was sprinkled with red spots, which, however, were hardly to

be distinguished from his blood-shot skin. Hair, beard and skin were

all of the same red colour which overspread his entire head, even

threatening the nose, which, the central point of the spectacle, shone

resplendent. In spite of myself I thought of the picture in my Bible

where the prophet Elijah is being carried by a chariot of fire into the

glory of the setting sun; but I repelled the comparison as unseemly.

Where could I have seen that incandescent head? By degrees my memories

cleared themselves up. It had happened at our house: a man had come out

from the consulting room, not proud and flaming like him of the café,

but abashed, pitiful, discomfited. Yet it must have been the same: that

hairy skin, those red blotches. I could not be mistaken. Father was

escorting him out, and trying to encourage him, saying, as he tapped

him on the shoulder:

“Keep your money, friend. You are in a sense a part of the house. Your

parents and mine said thou to one another. But you must quit drinking

at any cost. Promise me never again to set your foot in a café.”

“I swear to you I won’t, doctor.”

“Don’t swear, but hold out.”

“Yes, yes. I swear to you. Never in my life shall I be seen in a

wineshop.”

And yet here he was, drinking and laughing, and as healthy as possible.

Father was certainly too severe. Forgetting that he had cured me, I

inwardly blamed him for frightening people, finding in him a certain

hardness of heart. Why should he wish to deprive this good fellow of

his pleasure?

My rubicund friend answered to the name of Casenave, but he was

generally called by a symbolical nickname--nothing other than

“Pour-the-drink,” which might serve a double purpose. “Pour-the-drink”

at once won my heart by the surprising adventures through which he

had passed: stories of which he most unaffectedly poured forth. He

might have figured in the narratives of the “Three Old Mariners,” in

which case his weight would assuredly have assured Jeremy’s descent

into the jaws of the tiger. Having in his youth learned through the

newspapers of the idleness and good cheer which inhered in the monkish

estate, he resolved to adopt it, and presented himself at the door of

a Capuchin monastery, where he soon learned to moderate his hopes.

To be routed out in the night by a barbarous brother to take part in

singing the service, to be fed on vegetables half cooked by a brother

suffering from incurable catarrh, made him grow thin and waste away.

His ingenuity alone saved him from a still greater disaster. When the

monks, placed in a circle, were invited to inflict the discipline

upon one another, piously reciting the penitential psalms the while,

he managed to get his rope so entangled in that of his nearest

fellow-sufferer that while they were deliberately disentangling them

“the ‘_miserere_’ ran along.”

But the prior declined to keep him, and generously restored him to

civil life. He there formed the most brilliant relations, which he

proved to the admiring listeners by telling of the beautiful women who

came every evening to visit him in his modest abode. They used to come

down through the ceiling, in which, however, no aperture was afterward

visible. One moment he was alone, the next, there they were in silk

gowns and hoop skirts, for they still adhered to the fashions of the

Second Empire. Far from remaining inactive, they would put into his

hands a bowl of reasonable dimensions, into which, bending their arms,

they would empty--_fz-z-z-z_!--several bottles of champagne. This

_fz-z-z-z_, which expressed the flowing of the wine into the bowl,

took upon his lips a caressing, musical sound. One could almost hear

the pop of the cork and the bubbling out of the froth.

He imparted to us still more astounding biographical details. One

night, mistaking the gas light in the street for his candle, he had

sprung out of the window to blow it out, and had been picked up in his

nightshirt somewhat bruised but safe and sound. And had he not a double

who walked out with him? Only the evening before he had had a long

and most interesting conversation with his double, who never left him

till they had returned to the outskirts of the town, when he bade him

good-bye till next time.

Every one listened without interrupting him, except by signs of

approval or requests to go on. Why should I not believe all those

marvellous things, when no one around me showed the slightest sign of

incredulity?

I did not know the nature of Casenave’s business, for he could converse

upon all subjects with great competence, and might be supposed to have

practised the most diverse industries. Whereas I very soon discovered

that two other members of the company--Gallus and Merinos--were

distinguished artists. Gallus, the musician, directed his remarks

especially to grandfather, as if only they two, in the midst of the

general imbecility, could understand one another and fraternise in

matters musical. The pair affected to hold themselves apart, though in

their asides they appeared to utter only a few brief cabalistic words:

understanding thus established, they would roll the whites of their

eyes when one or the other alluded to the allegro of the symphony in C

minor, the andante of the fourteenth sonata, or the scherzo in B flat

of the seventh trio, over which they would clasp one another’s hands as

if in mutual congratulation, calling it the Archduke Rodolpho’s divine

trio. No one interrupted them in the state of exultation to which a

mere numeral was enough to lift them; at such times indeed every one

gazed upon them with respect. From time to time some one would inquire

of Gallus, somewhat diffidently, as if fearful of being pitied for not

having used the proper terms:

“How about your lyrical drama on the Death of Olympus?”

“It’s getting on,” the composer would reply imperturbably.

“How far along are you?”

“Still in the prelude. There is no hurry. A lifetime is hardly long

enough for the completion of such a work and I have only been at it

some ten years.”

It must be a prodigious opera that demanded such efforts! For that

matter, one could see, merely by looking at Gallus, that he was

breaking down under the weight of so vast an undertaking. His frame

was puny, stunted, sickly, like a pear tree that my father had ordered

rooted up from the court. A lock of hair fell across his stormy brow,

and when he passed his hand through his disorderly locks a shower of

scurf would fall upon his shoulders. Though the season was warm he wore

a black velvet coat, and around his neck an enormous blue scarf such

as women wear, the spots upon which were innumerable. All my aunt’s

benzine would not have sufficed to clean them. But I told myself that

artists could not be expected to dress like other folk,--for if they

did they might not be known to be artists. This dirty little man,

who looked peaceable enough, would sometimes fall into a fury, and

figuratively drag through mud and dirt by the napes of their necks

certain abominable criminals such as Ambroise Thomas, and Gounod, who

were guilty of having fraudulently robbed him of public admiration,

and irremediably corrupted the public taste. He also brought

accusations against the _bourgeois_ of our town, whose plots and

treacheries he enumerated at length. I observed that the designation

_bourgeois_ was by itself alone a disgrace, and I trembled at the

thought that I was one, and my father also. Only grandfather, stout

against being classified, might perhaps be spared. I afterward learned

that Gallus was by profession an examiner of weights and measures. In

its turn society in general came in for severe condemnation; but that

it deserved this I had already learned in the course of my walks with

grandfather. And thus I came to know that my new friends of the café,

whom I had imagined to be even more fortunate than the peasants with

their white cheeses and their fresh cream, were in reality persecuted

martyrs.

How could I have the slightest doubt of this in face of the injustice

which had befallen the second artist, Merinos? Whether this was his

name or a nickname I never knew. If a nickname, it miraculously fitted

his mutton face, at once long and full, rosy as the cheeks of a nursing

baby, and crowned with curly hair. He vaguely resembled Mariette,

our cook, though without her martial aspect. But these somewhat

prepossessing features were liable to misconstruction. Merinos was a

ravaged soul, and I caught allusions to the extraordinary passions

which he had experienced. Up to this time I had supposed that passion

showed itself by a lugubrious face and tearful eyes, but he was shining

and jovial, with not a trace of tears in his protruding orbits, though

they were plain to see in those of Casenave, Gallus and nearly all the

others. Thus my childish imagination found itself nonplussed.

Both Merinos and Gallus had lived long in Paris, in the mysterious

Montmartre quarter, of which both spoke as of the promised land.

Merinos was a portrait painter, but he had given up painting, a fact

for which he gave convincing reasons.

“You understand: now-a-days people make such ridiculous demands. They

insist upon a likeness. As if the likeness ever mattered to an artist!”

“That’s sure enough,” the chorus assented.

My mind at once reverted to the collection of ancestors that covered

the walls of the drawing room and that were bad paintings. Assuredly

they must be likenesses.

Thus defrauded of glory by the stupidity of the bourgeois, Merinos

none the less continued to give evidence of genius. He always carried

about with him a piece of coloured paper and a stick of charcoal. While

talking and smoking he would carelessly rub his charcoal on the paper,

and draw a few lines below the spots thus obtained. It was curious, but

when one studied these masterpieces patiently and with good will, one

could get a notion of distorted faces, barely indicated, but which

the admiring group recognised as faces in torment, ill disposed folk,

disturbers of society. Certain art-lovers in the town--there were some

all the same, it seemed--would buy these at a high price, declaring

them to be wonderful; and there was an enthusiastic and slender witted

lady, who, as every one knew, used regularly to visit Merinos’s studio,

which, it appeared, was a perfect dog-hole, humbly to gather up his

slightest sketches, even going down upon her knees on the floor to hunt

them under the furniture. I too admired him, on trust.

One day when grandfather at our house was praising this underrated

genius, he brought upon himself this remark from my father:

“Yes, that’s the great fad--unfinished works! For my part, I care

neither for scaffoldings nor for ruins.”

What did he mean by that? I concluded simply that he was incapable of

appreciating, as we did, the art of the Café des Navigateurs.

It was the proper thing to maintain a certain distance between

these two misunderstood beings and Galurin, who was only a decayed

photographer. The latter was no more a stranger to me than Casenave

had been. People used to employ him in their houses for this and that

supplementary duty, and especially as an extra man at table. As he

was once deploring this sort of servitude in our presence grandfather

reminded him that Jean-Jacques had endured the same. The example of

Jean-Jacques appeared to soothe his recalcitrant pride. Who in the

world was this Jean-Jacques, I wondered.

At our house they had given up taking advantage of Galurin’s services

after a great dinner at which he was put in charge of the wines, with

instructions to name them as he served them. He triumphantly opened

the dining-room door, waving the bottle in the air and crying in

stentorian tones, “I announce the _Moulin-à-vent_”--an effort

which was received with a burst of laughter that wounded him, for he

was very sensitive. He abandoned the napkin and became process-server,

which coercive though somewhat obscure title seemed to be one of

honour. To add to his income he vouchsafed to carry around wedding or

funeral invitations when such occasions occurred. One evening, before

an important funeral, he forgot himself at the Café of the Navigators,

and left the entire parcel of mourning invitations upon the sofa. When

he found them it was too late to make his rounds. At once adopting the

radical measures which circumstances demanded, he hastened to plunge

the compromising parcel in the lake. As the result of this immersion

the defunct was obliged to take possession of his last abode in almost

complete solitude. Never had such forlorn obsequies been witnessed, and

many coolnesses arose among relatives and friends who had not received

invitations, and who were not slow to assume that they had been

purposely and maliciously neglected.

Galurin used to heap anathemas upon the social system which constrained

him to adopt such base industries, the duties of which he performed

but capriciously and intermittently. Furthermore, he advocated the

partition of all property, for he had nothing of his own.

But the one who cast all others into the shade when he took the floor,

who excelled in transposing the incoherent lamentations of Gallus and

Merinos and the scatter-brained diatribes of Galurin into the rounded

forms of oratorical periods, was Martinod. Martinod, the youngest of

all, had a marvellous gift of gravity. Solemn by nature, he wore a long

beard and never laughed. One could easily imagine him upon a mausoleum

proclaiming the last judgment through a conch-shell. The melancholy

that emanated from his entire person enveloped him in all the prestige

of a grand funeral, the serious character of which is not to be denied.

In the beginning I did not like Martinod. He never looked nice in the

face and I suspected him of dark designs. But like all the others I

fell under the spell of his utterances. He would begin in a melancholy

tone, which would move one to tears. One might suppose him to have

but just escaped from a terrible catastrophe. What a beggar he would

have made, and how many half-francs he would have extracted from the

most tightly closed fists! Then his voice would grow deeper, opening

hearts and minds, and from his inexhaustible lips would flow the most

resonant harmonies. He would discant upon the future, a golden age

when equality would be the rule in every sphere,--equality of fortune,

equality of happiness. Nothing would belong to any one, everything

would belong to all. I felt a degree of shame at not understanding very

well, because every one else in our group understood and approved. And

even at the other tables people would stop drinking and playing cards

to listen. The picture which he drew was admirably simple: men in their

best clothes praising nature and embracing one another like brothers.

Rapt in admiration, I would compare him to my music box, the notes of

which made a dancer pirouette upon the cover.

At other times Martinod would be gloomy, bitter and vindictive, heaping

threats and sarcasms upon the social fabric of the day, unless it were

immediately made over after his ideas. In the name of liberty he would

give all Europe over to fire and sword. I would listen in terror, but

on the way home grandfather would reassure me.

“He was out of humour to-day. To-morrow the world will go better.”

Thus the new and varied society with which I was mingling appeared

very different from that in which until then I had been living at home

or in school. When we reached the house my cheeks would be full of

colour--they thought it was the good country air. Grandfather had no

need to counsel me to say nothing about our visits to the Café of the

Navigators. An infallible instinct warned me to say nothing about them

at our house. It was a secret between him and me. We were accomplices.

V

THE RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY

“YOU are in luck,” my brothers would say to me as they prepared to face

the dreaded examinations for the baccalaureate, bending from morning

till night over their books through all the trying July heat; “no

school, no examinations, no possible failures for you.”

“And no piano,” Louise would add, for having given evidence of an

aptitude for music she had been set to work at never-ending five-finger

exercises.

Even little James, rebellious under his first lessons in reading and

writing, confided to his inseparable Nicola that when he was big he

would do like François.

“What does Francis do?” she would ask.

“Nothing.”

The month of August drew on without awaking that impatience which its

approach had never failed to arouse in me until this year; I even felt

a selfish regret as it came nearer. Vacation would rob me of that

superiority which convalescence had conferred upon me, and would put me

back into my place, the common life. Or rather, I supposed it would do

so, being incompetent to measure the chasm that had opened between the

little boy that I had been yesterday, and what I had now become. Some

one had measured it before me.

I had become much absorbed between my walks and my visits to the

Café of the Navigators, whither grandfather, who was no longer happy

without my companionship, was taking me regularly. Though I was rather

unobservant of the acts and doings of the family, I again became aware

of an atmosphere of anxiety at our house, and of secret conferences

that recalled to me the days when the destiny of our property had been

at stake.

Father’s voice was penetrating, even when he moderated it and believed

himself to be speaking softly.

“We shall have no fortune to leave them,” he was saying. “We must

neglect nothing in their education. They must be armed for life.”

We, armed? Why should we be armed? Nothing was easier than life. I

had outgrown wooden swords, heroic biographies, epic stories. All I

should need would be a few tools for working in the ground, which

furnishes men abundantly with all they need. One would harvest so much

as was necessary, one would live on white cheese, sweet cream and wild

strawberries, and listen to Martinod, preaching universal peace and

proclaiming the arrival of the golden age. How simple the programme!

What need was there of arms?

Mother was answering father.

“You are right. We must neglect nothing. Their faith and their union

will be their only fortune.”

Far from being touched by this declaration of principles, I was

imagining the little laugh with which grandfather would meet it, and

one morning while combing my hair I practised my face in assuming a

satirical expression.

In conversations which I accidentally overheard, the names of Parisian

schools or lycées would recur, those especially that prepared boys for

the great schools, Stanislas on Post-office Street, Louis-le-grand or

Saint-Louis. My parents would have preferred a religious institution,

and in this Aunt Deen emphatically acquiesced.

“No godless school,” she would exclaim. “All the rascals come out of

the lycées.”

“Oho!” grandfather would protest, greatly amused at her vehemence. “I

was educated in a lycée.”

He received his bouquet without a moment’s delay.

“And you are not worth so very much!”

It is true that to soften the severity of her retort, she went on,

“I must confess that you have become good for something, now that you

take the boy out walking.”

Father, who seemed always to be glad of anything which might bring

him and grandfather together, heightened the reluctant admission into

praise.

“Yes, François owes his health to you. And all these lovely walks that

you are giving him will attach him the more firmly to the region in

which he is to live, and which he will know the better because of them.”

As a matter of fact I felt myself entirely aloof from the region and

even from our house. What I loved was the earth, the vast unnamed

earth, and not this place or that; most of all I loved the uncultivated

places, the wild places in the woods, the copses, the secret nooks,

and in less degree the pasture lands, any untilled, unsowed: bit of

earth. In the matter of people, I had accepted grandfather’s new gospel

which catalogued them as peasants and towns people. The nice people

were in the country, whereas towns were inhabited by wicked individuals

and notably by _bourgeois_, who persecute men of genius like my

friends of the café. And in the towns were the schools where you were

reduced to a state of slavery.

While I was giving myself up to these reflections my mother’s gaze had

fallen upon me; it seemed to me that she was reading my thoughts, and I

blushed--a proof that I was not unaware of my inward insubordination.

“He has grown quite robust,” she said. “Could he not begin gradually to

take up his lessons? We could arrange him a place in the garden, where

he would be in the out-door air, and yet not be entirely idle. Idleness

is never good.”

I was astounded to hear my mother uttering so direful a proposition--my

mother, so careful to spare me all fatigue, so expert in nursing me, so

minute in her watchfulness! Decidedly, they had changed parts; father

had appeared suspicious of my walks with grandfather, and now he was

not only authorising, he was encouraging them.

“No, no,” he exclaimed, “pleurisy is too grave a matter. He would still

risk losing strength and colour. See how well he looks now!” adding

aside to mother, “Father is so happy in his little companion! Since he

has had charge of him he has quite changed and grown younger. Haven’t

you noticed it?”

Mother, who always agreed with him, did not express her opinion. I

divined that she was uneasy about me, but why? Had she not rejoiced in

my good spirits and my round, rosy cheeks? Grandfather never attempted

to monopolise me; he took me on his walks, and helped in that way, and

in addition, he taught me a thousand things about trees, mushrooms,

botany: the things he knew were much more interesting than the history,

geography and catechism that my teachers used to teach me.

Now that my attention had been attracted to mother’s uneasiness I

continually noticed that she was always following me like a shadow. At

the bottom of my heart I was pleased. Even a child loves to inspire

fear in those who love him; it puts him at a sort of vantage point,

gives him a feeling as of being a man, and understanding life better

than a weak woman can do.

One day mother was talking in her room with Aunt Deen. I heard only the

reply of the latter, who never could conceal anything.

“Come, come! my poor Valentine; don’t you go to troubling your head

about that good-for-nothing boy. In the first place, I know perfectly

what those two talk to one another about--country things, the pleasures

of the fields, the peace of the earth, the goodness of the animals; all

humbug, to be sure, but what of that? It’s just like poultices,--it

can’t do any harm.”

I had not the slightest doubt that they were talking of me, and I was

not at all displeased at having my share in the family interest, for

in these days there was a great deal of discussion about my brothers,

who, having graduated from school, would start for Paris in the autumn,

Bernard for the military school at Saint-Cyr, and Stephen, who was not

yet sixteen, to complete his studies in mathematics, unless indeed

he persisted in wishing to enter the Seminary. Aunt Deen was greatly

distressed over the exorbitant cost of board and outfit, and was

continually discanting with emotion upon the merits of our parents, who

shrank from no financial sacrifice to complete our education.

“Aha!” sneered grandfather. “These great religious institutions don’t

take in a pupil for nothing. They bleed their patrons at all four veins

for the love of God.”

Furthermore, it was arranged that Louise was to go for two or three

years to the convent school of the Ladies of the Retreat at Lyons.

She would sober down there, and when she came home she would be an

accomplished young lady, like Mélanie, who at that time was in the

very flower of her youth--Mélanie, who long ago had invited me to sing

vespers before a wardrobe, or to run after Yes-Yes, the drunkard, with

a glass of water, and whose persistent piety foreshadowed a vocation

which she had professed as a child, but concerning which she was now

silent, unless, perhaps, to our mother.

Altogether the future of the family now demanded much reflection and

many decisions. Grandfather and I remained quite apart from it all.

Once beyond the gate we never looked back, except when my companion,

laughing derisively, would say:

“And as to you, boy; what is being cooked up for you? Are you still

inclined to enter the school of adversity?”

There had been much pleasantry over that incident, and I found it by

no means amusing. I had given up all my fine plans, and had no thought

of commanding some brilliant situation like my brothers. I was content

with the sort of property which one enjoys without ever taking trouble,

after grandfather’s fashion,--the lake, the forest, the mountain; not

to speak of the stars and those fine July nights. I am not even sure

that I did not prefer to them all the red benches of the Café of the

Navigators, when I had the feeling of being a man, admitted to hear

utterances concerning painting, music and politics.

Yet I never ceased to feel my mother’s gaze resting upon me. By way

of not acknowledging it I began to put on airs of independence. Like

the “Scenes in Animal Life,” I would work up offensive resemblances

for all the people with whom we were familiar; turning men and things

to ridicule and even affecting when with my brothers and sisters an

incurious air, as if I had formed my views of life and had nothing

more to learn. By a singular phenomenon, as I now see clearly, the

more deeply I was initiated into the simplicity of rural life and

the benevolence of nature the more complicated I became. And always,

through all my newly assumed ways, that gaze followed me, as if it were

seeking my heart.

Grandfather and I had a fright one day when we came upon my mother

in the street. She was going to church for benediction and we to the

café for our pleasure. She so rarely left the house that we had never

thought of meeting her. Noses in air, already inhaling the special

odour of tobacco and anise which awaited us, we paid no attention to

the woman who was approaching, so modest, so grave that no one thought

of looking at her, and we were much surprised when she accosted us,

asking,

“Where are you going?”

What would grandfather say? I wondered. We had so loudly proclaimed

our disdain of the town which we were now lightheartedly crossing.

Would he betray the secret which I had kept so well? Without the least

embarrassment in the world he replied:

“To buy a paper, daughter.”

Then he would not own up about our visits to the Café of the

Navigators, either. Mother let us go on our way. When she had turned to

the left, in the direction of the church, grandfather chuckled over the

fine trick he had played her, but she had not wished to appear to doubt

the truth of his reply: it had not deceived her. I knew it, for I had

seen her blush at our falsehood.

Another circumstance directly revealed her penetration and her anxiety.

One Sunday morning as I was going out of the door of the house with

grandfather, she admonished us to come back in time for Mass. She

would go with me herself, she said, although she had already heard

mass at daybreak, as was her habit. All would have been well if

grandfather and I, on our way home, had not met Gallus and Merinos,

amiable and thirsty pair, who urged us, in spite of ourselves, to take

a morning draught. We need only stay two or three minutes, at most,

and we were really early. But at the Café was Martinod, perorating in

full vein. All the tables were listening to him, drinking to him,

applauding him, surrounding him with an atmosphere of admiration, the

smoke of the pipes rising like incense around him. He was describing

with picturesque and highly coloured details the approaching era of

Nature and Reason, so that every one seemed to be already living, by

anticipation, in that glorious time. What festival it would be!--a

generous humanity renouncing all divisions of caste, class or race,

all frontiers and wars, fraternally sharing all riches of earth! The

transfigured orator tore away the evil from the future, and showed the

sun of that day like the golden monstrance in a religious procession.

It was all so beautiful that we quite forgot about Mass, and when,

sated with eloquence, we turned our steps homeward, the hour was long

past.

At the gate, grandfather, descending from his exalted mood, began to

show some anxiety. As for me, I felt not the slightest remorse, being

under the shelter of an older responsibility. Still, when I saw, behind

the half-closed blind, that shadow that was so easily disquieted about

the absent one, I too felt my pride droop, and became conscious that

I had done wrong. Mother came down to meet us. We found her on the

doorstep, so pale that we could no longer mistake the importance of our

defection. Her voice betrayed her anxiety as she asked:

“What can have happened?”

“Why, nothing at all,” replied grandfather.

“Then why did you let the child miss Mass?”

“Oh, we forgot how time was passing.”

This time grandfather rubbed his nose and excused himself as if he had

done wrong. A shadow passed over mother’s eyes. A moment before they

had been limpid, and now the light that shone through their humidity

pierced my heart. Softened as it was by the mist of tears it can not

have been very formidable, there was nothing in it by itself so to

affect me, but I have never forgotten its power. It must have been

with eyes like these that Confessors of the faith looked upon their

torturers. I know that I, too, have seen that divine flame.

Young as I was I understood that my mother was shaken by filial

respect: yet a more imperious obligation constrained her to speak, and

she spoke:

“We did not entrust this child to you, father, to withdraw him from his

religious duties. You should not have forgotten this, for the sake both

of his soul and of us.”

She spoke with mingled firmness and gentleness, and her face, already

pale when we arrived, became so white from the effort she was making,

as to seem absolutely bloodless.

... Long, very long after this, when I was a young man, I was getting

ready to go out to meet a woman. The woman whom I loved--for how

long?--had promised to betray her husband for my pleasure, but I was

thinking only of her beauty. My mother came into my room. She had not

the courage to say a word; as so long ago she was trembling, this time

with that other sort of respect which is respect for oneself. I did not

know why she had come, and I felt uneasy at being detained. She laid

her hand on my shoulder:

“Francis,” she said, “listen; one must never take what belongs to

another.”

I protested my innocent intentions, and as I went my way I shook off

the importunate words, which however met me again on the road and went

with me. By what clairvoyance of love had my mother divined where I

was going? She had looked at me with those same eyes, faintly shadowed

by mist. Grief, rather than years, had already made her almost an old

woman. And I distinctly saw the evil of the light love to which I was

hastening with a song upon my lips....

Grandfather made no attempt to defend himself. He did not call to his

aid the little dry laugh which usually served him so conveniently in

shaking off his opponent without argument. He only murmured, somewhat

weakly, “Oh! goodness, what a fuss about nothing,” and hastened toward

the staircase, to go up to his tower where, at least, he would be

sheltered from reproach. But my father, who was coming down, seemed to

close the way. A conflict appeared to be imminent. And by the natural

inclination of my childish logic I suddenly recalled that return from

the procession which had first revealed to me this same antagonism:--my

parents all a-thrill from the ceremony which grandfather compared to

the festival of the sun, and my suddenly chilled enthusiasm. But I was

in a mood to take this recollection lightly; without knowing it, I had

changed sides.

Grandfather appeared to me all the more embarrassed on hearing steps

upon the stairs. He could not avoid the meeting. But as a matter

of fact it passed off the most quietly in the world. A few words

were exchanged about the weather, the crops, our walk. Generosity,

deference, the desire to avoid a domestic dispute, or to spare my

father an anxiety, kept my mother silent as to our late return.

But after this she never saw me going out with grandfather without

fixing upon me that look, the anxiety of which I still feel. By some

ingenious artifice she used to add Louise to our party, or even little

Nicola, who would trot behind us, her seven year old legs finding some

difficulty in keeping up with us. The whole troop would set forth,

grandfather clearly showing his displeasure over the new recruits.

“I don’t propose to drag the whole camp after me,” he would mutter. “I

am not a child’s nurse.”

“Come, come!” Aunt Deen would reply, “such pretty children! You are

only too proud to show yourself in their company.”

None the less I agreed with him that the presence of my sisters spoiled

our walks. One can never talk about anything with women along. They

don’t understand out-of-door things, and they get cross as soon as

one touches upon religion. I was not very far--I who had shown such

fervour at my first communion--from thinking that mother exaggerated

the importance of our having missed that service. I thought myself

free, because I had closed my mind against all teaching except what

came to me from grandfather. Being free, one could do as he pleased.

We were not hindering the others from going to church, and even to the

communion, and vespers into the bargain.

Vacation came and completely interrupted our walks by ourselves. After

vacation school would begin, and I should resume my place among the

little school boys of my own age, without so much as knowing that the

previous three months had quite changed my heart.

BOOK III

I

POLITICS

AFTER my long convalescence I did indeed return to school. It was

an ancient institution in which kindly monks imparted antiquated

instruction. It was possible to work there, when one’s schoolfellows

did not positively put obstacles in the way, but it was easier to

devote oneself to clandestine industries, such as training flies and

cockchafers, drawing caricatures, reading forbidden books, and even

carrying on explorations through the passages. The discipline was no

better than the teaching. Up to this time the idea had never occurred

to me to view as a prison this great building with its numerous doors

and windows where one came and went as one pleased under the paternal

eye of a new porter, entirely absorbed in the care of his flowers and

of a tortoise whose manners he was studying. But I was now new-born to

the sentiment of liberty, and consequently to that of slavery. I made

every effort therefore to discover that I was unhappy.

On holidays I resumed my walks with grandfather. An involuntary

complicity established itself between us. If one or another of my

brothers or sisters joined us we spoke only of indifferent things.

When we were alone we went into rhapsodies over the joys of the fields

and the brotherhood of men, only hindered by property with all its

enclosures. I learned that money was the cause of all ills, that one

should despise and do away with it, and that the only necessary good

things cost nothing, namely, health, the sunlight, pure air, the songs

of birds and all the pleasures of the eye. My teachers, who were much

more interested in Latin than in philanthropy, neglected to teach me

the latter except by their example, to which I paid no attention.

No more towns, no more armies (and Bernard, who was preparing at

Saint-Cyr, and who had never been informed of these truths!), no more

judges, no more lost lawsuits, no more houses. But here I thought that

grandfather was going rather too far. No more houses! What about ours,

then? Ours which had been repaired and all done over! It mattered

little about the others, so long as ours was spared.

“Why no, little dunce; pastoral peoples used to sleep out of doors.

It’s more hygienic.”

When Abraham journeyed to the land of Canaan he must have slept out of

doors, and so must the shepherds whom we had met leading their flock to

the mountains.

We made another pilgrimage to the pavilion which I had come to call

Helen’s pavilion, and from time to time we put in an appearance

together at the Café of the Navigators, so that I did not entirely lose

contact with my friends.

I was entering my fourteenth year, I think, or it may have been a

little later, when our town became the scene of great events. The

mayor’s office was contested in an election, and the Marinetti Circus

set up its tent and waggon-houses in the market-place. I do not know

which of these two dissimilar facts seemed the more important to me.

At our house, in view of the new preoccupations as to our future, the

tone of conversation became more serious. More than once I came upon

our father and mother mysteriously discussing Mélanie’s approaching

majority.

“The time is coming,” father would say. “I have promised and I shall

keep my promise. But it will be hard.”

And mother would answer,

“God wills it. He will give us the needful strength.”

Nevertheless, she seemed less sad than father, when she spoke about my

sister. What promise were they talking about, and what was it that God

willed? I used often to think of the picture in the Bible representing

the sacrifice of Isaac, but since the time of our missing church I was

less inclined to believe that God was so very strict.

Mélanie went often to church, visited the poor, and dipped her brush

in water every morning to smooth down her blond hair which curled

naturally and refused to lie in straight bands. I knew these details

through Aunt Deen, who was always saying:

“That child is an angel.”

It had become impossible to quarrel with Mélanie. Our parents no longer

gave her orders; they spoke to her gently, as if they were consulting

her. Even I, without knowing why, dared not speak roughly to her, and

growing less and less inclined to be respectful, I kept aloof from her,

and no longer sought her company.

The others were not to return until the long vacation. Louise, from her

boarding school in Lyons, wrote loving letters which I found somewhat

silly, because they often alluded to religious ceremonies and visits

of the Superior, or of some passing missionary. Bernard’s letters

briefly described the life at Saint-Cyr which he had just entered, and

Stephen’s contained numerous obscure allusions to his plans, which

seemed to harmonise with those of Mélanie. I could not condescend so

far as to play with the younger children, the delicate Nicola who was

always disturbing mother while she was writing to the absent ones, and

the tumultuous Jamie, in whose behalf I would cheerfully have seen

the establishment of the severe discipline which I did not care about

for myself. I treated them as from a higher level--they could not

understand me. So that my real comrade was grandfather.

Two or three times my father, displeased by my silences or my superior

airs, observed in those family councils of which somehow children

generally manage to catch scraps,

“That child is growing secretive.”

Mother, still somewhat uneasy about me, did not protest, but Aunt Deen,

fertile in excuses, would authoritatively affirm that I would blossom

out before long. Far from being grateful to this steadfast ally, I

laughed in my sleeve at her fanatical loyalty, by way of proving my

superior intelligence.

The circus and the elections stirred up the town at the same time.

Every day as I crossed the market-place I would stop to watch the slow

erection of the tent and the placing of the raised seats, necessary

preliminaries of the show. At our house the conversation was more

likely to turn upon the future of the country. I was not so ignorant of

politics as they might have supposed, though my opinions vacillated. I

knew that certain days, like the Fourth of September and the Sixteenth

of May, were anniversaries variously celebrated, that all the monks

except ours had been expelled, and that there was an expedition to

China,--which as it happened, aroused only criticism at our house.

“Why can’t they let those folks alone!” grandfather would exclaim.

Father would shake his head:

“They are forgetting the past. A conquered people should never scatter

its forces.”

I was not ignorant of his having taken part in the war--we used to

speak of it simply as “the war”--and I could easily imagine him at the

head of an army, whereas grandfather must always have preferred his

violin and his telescope to swords, guns, pistols and other murderous

engines. In vain had the Café des Navigateurs poured contempt upon

all military glory: it still kept its prestige for me. Yet I could

not easily understand how the French Guard and the grenadier in the

drawing-room could have died, one for the King and the other for the

Emperor, and yet both deserve the same praise, while the partisans of

the Emperor were always exchanging opprobrious remarks with those of

the King.

Father explained: “For the soldier, there is only France. There is no

nobler death.”

Grandfather, being present, declared that in his opinion the

noblest thing was to die for liberty. But he did not insist, and

notwithstanding the silence which followed I saw that he had displeased

my father.

The idea seemed to haunt him, for he returned to it on our next walk,

and described, with more enthusiasm than usual, a splendid epoch which

he had known, compared with which our own period was but darkness.

Our own period seemed to me quite endurable, between our walks and

the Café. It appeared that at that time, as under the Revolution,

liberty had a second time been set free, and when liberty is set free

an era of universal peace and concord begins. Citizens moved by a

fraternal impulse were working together in vast national workshops,

a modest remuneration, the same for all, weak and strong, robust and

malingerers, giving to each that contentment which arises from being

sure of one’s daily bread.

“That is what M. Martinod demands,” I said.

“Martinod is right,” replied my companion, “but will he succeed where

we came to grief?”

“You came to grief, grandfather!”

“We failed in the blood of the days of June.”

_We failed in the blood of the days of June_. The meaning of the

words might escape me, but they made music in my ears like the rolling

of a drum. Long ago--three or four years perhaps--I had been excited

over other mysterious words, such as the lament of the White Blackbird,

_I was arranging trifles while you were in the woods_, and also

that of the Nightingale, _All night long I strain my throat for her,

but she sleeps and hears me not_. Now I found their melancholy

somewhat insipid, and preferred this new rhythm, so war-like and full

of pain. Touched to the heart I at once asked, as with Aunt Deen’s

stories when I was little,

“And what happened after that?”

“A tyrant came.”

Ah, this time it was all clear! A tyrant, a hospodar, to be sure! Aunt

Deen’s hospodar, the famous man all dressed in red, who gave commands

with loud shouts.

“What tyrant?” I asked, by way of knowing it all.

“Badinguet. Napoleon III. For that matter all emperors and all kings

are tyrants.”

No; certainly I could not understand. The glimmer of truth which I had

half seen died out. Our father, at table or in other conversations with

us, had never failed to instil into our minds respect and love for

the long line of kings who had ruled France, and whom nearly all the

bad paintings in the drawing-room, save the grenadier and the latest

portraits, had served. He used to talk as often of the power of nations

as grandfather of their happiness. Napoleon the Great, whose epic story

all school boys know by heart, had ruined the country, but all the same

he was the greatest genius of modern times. As for Napoleon the Little,

it was to him we owed defeat and the loss of territory. Curiously

enough these events, when they were spoken of at our house, never

seemed to me to have the slightest connection with those that figured

in my history book. One never recognises in the plants of a herbarium

those that are growing in the fields. And when father spoke in praise

of the kings grandfather had never made any objection. He had neither

approved nor disapproved. And here he was declaring in peremptory tones

that all kings were tyrants! Why did he keep silence at table when he

was so sure of his opinion? No doubt he did not wish to oppose any one.

Thenceforth I accounted to myself for his self-effacement by delicacy,

and was moved to consider him right.

Once again he spoke to me of those mysterious days of June when people

fought to break the chains that bound the proletariat. I had no

distinct notion of what the proletariat was. Tem Bossette, Mimi Pachoux

and The Hanged, for instance, were they proletaires? I pictured them to

myself loaded with chains and shut up in a cellar full of empty wine

casks--because if the casks had been full they would never have come

out of their own accord. Grandfather had rushed to their aid. I learned

from his own lips that he had taken part in the insurrection in Paris,

and had carried a gun.

“Did you fire it off, grandfather?” I asked in surprise and perhaps in

admiration, for I should never have thought him capable of so vigorous

an act.

He modestly explained that he had never had an opportunity.

Aunt Deen had shown me, in a cupboard, the sabre which my father had

worn during the war. Why had no one ever showed me that gun? Was not

it too a family trophy? Grandfather concluded his somewhat vague story

with the familiar reflection:

“Papa wasn’t pleased.”

He seemed so old that I should never have had an idea of thinking

of his parents, who were nothing but paintings in the drawing-room.

And here he was saying _papa_, like little Jamie, not even

_father_ like my elder brothers and me. Greatly amused I exclaimed,

“Your papa, grandfather?”

“To be sure, the man of roses and laws, the magistrate, the nurseryman.”

He spoke of him without the slightest respect, and this to me

unimaginable audacity seemed a thing so prodigious that by itself it

was enough to obliterate all distinctions of rank. By it he at once

placed himself above all other men, of whom he could make light with

impunity. I promised myself to be disrespectful, too, to show my spirit.

Grandfather proceeded to enlighten me with certain particulars

concerning the displeasure of his “papa.”

“Yes, indeed! he insisted that a king is as necessary to a nation as

a gardener to a garden. And all the bad paintings in the drawing-room

thought the same.”

What! all the family! Grandfather was deliberately taking his stand

apart from all the ancestors! He proposed to flock by himself, to walk

alone, far from the road, as in our walks. What’s the use of being a

grown-up person if one must still consider others, may not do as he

chooses, must heed counsels and remonstrances? He had done mighty well

to carry a gun, seeing it was for liberty.

His impertinent little laugh seemed to break with paternal opinion and

invoke nature:

“It’s absurd! As if it was necessary to trim trees and cut plants into

shape! See how they grow without any help, and if these don’t knock out

all the gardens in the world!”

We had reached a grove of beeches, aspens and other trees. The

tender little spring leaves were not large enough yet to hide the

ramifications of the branches. Before my convalescence I should have

disagreed with grandfather. The transformation of our garden since

our father took the reins of government, the arrangement of the

grass-plots, the form of the groves, the harmonious order of the whole,

had given me great satisfaction. But our wanderings in the country

had by degrees opened my eyes to the beauty of wilder things. A clump

of ferns and reeds, a tangle of vines and bushes, rocks crowned with

ruddy bracken, and hidden nooks had won my preference, so that I

unhesitatingly accepted his view. But I was in a measure stunned by the

discovery that one might be of a different mind from one’s parents and

even sit in judgment upon them, like this, in all quietness of mind.

Grandfather had not been afraid to condemn his father in my presence.

It was the most effective lesson in independence that I had yet

received, and this discovery, far from gratifying me, inspired me with

fear, and aroused again the feeling of sacrilege which I had felt with

respect to the dead man. Irreverence was not liberty. One might scorn

and at the same time obey, still, one really had a right to be free,

not to accept his father’s ideas, not obey his orders.

I dared not give form to the thoughts which were assailing me and

therefore returned to politics.

“Then,” I asked, “there won’t be kings any more?”

“As fast as people become civilised, kings will disappear.”

“How about the Count de Chambord?”

“Oh, as for him, he may as well cut up his white flag into a

nightshirt.”

To speak of the Count de Chambord like that! The pleasantry shocked,

rather than amused me. The Count de Chambord had always seemed to me a

legendary personage, as far away and illusory as the chevaliers in the

ballads which had thrilled me during my convalescence. To be sure he

had not filched the cup of happiness from Titania, the fair queen of

the elves, he had not come on a red roan steed to see the young girl

of the romance of the Swan’s Nest; but I knew that he was living in

exile, endued with the martyr’s aureola, and that he was expected. Aunt

Deen never spoke of him except as “our prince,” and raised her head

proudly whenever he was mentioned, as if he belonged to her. From time

to time conferences were held in our drawing-room for the discussion

of his approaching return. And he would not come back alone; God would

come with him, and he would bring back the white flag. My imagination

found no difficulty in picturing him at the head of a multitude waving

banners, though I could not quite determine whether it was an army or a

religious procession.

Of all these conferences one of the members was Mlle Tapinois, she

who resembled the old dove in my picture book; there were also M.

de Hurtin, an old gentleman who looked like the falcon who had been

ruined by Revolutions, and divers other personages also drawn from my

“Scenes from Animal Life,” and who are now somewhat mixed in my memory.

There was also a certain impetuous priest, Abbé Heurtevant, who was

always scenting the battle from afar, and whose prominent round eyes

could see only things at a distance, so that he was always bumping

into the furniture, and always restless, carrying on war against vases

and Chinese curiosities. When he upset a knickknack he never excused

himself but simply remarked:

“That’s one less.”

Small frivolous objects of that sort interfered with his actions and

he detested them. Aunt Deen forgave even his destructiveness for the

sake of his eloquence. When he was standing his head was perched so

high that I would look for it as for a mountain top. On the other

hand, when he sat down he would almost disappear in an easy chair,

his knees on a level with his chin, as if he had been folded in three

parts of equal length. He was as emaciated as an ascetic, which was not

surprising since his only food was roots. It was he, indeed, who during

the mushroom season, lived upon Satan bolets. They did him no harm, but

neither did they fatten him. Grandfather was greatly interested in his

diet, considering him a phenomenon, and upholding his opinions because

of his eccentricities. He never called him anything but Nostradamus. On

the contrary, father thought comparatively little of such an ally, and

indeed did not greatly care for these quasi secret meetings.

“Our good abbé,” he would say, “is always up in the air. He studies the

heavens, but knows nothing of what is going on down here.”

What need had he of knowing, since he could foresee the future?

In fact, he was making a collection of predictions concerning the

restoration of the monarchy, and could cite from memory all the

important ones. I can remember a good many of them, having heard them

so often. The most celebrated of them all was that from the Abbey

of Orval, which had predicted the downfall of Napoleon, the return

of the Bourbons and even the reign of Louis-Philippe and the war.

How then, could it have been mistaken in the apostrophe which Abbé

Heurtevant would whisper in a moving tone, bringing tears from the eyes

of the ladies. _Come, young prince, leave the island of captivity

... unite the lion with the white flower_. He had found a subtle

interpretation of the island of captivity and the lion, which on the

first investigation had been obscure. I was however in no haste to have

the young prince obey this injunction, because of the events which were

bound to follow, namely, the conversion of England and of the Jews, and

to finish up with, Antichrist. Antichrist terrified me: he also, like

Death in my Bible, was to ride, on a pale horse.

“The young prince, indeed,” grandfather would sneer when I related all

these marvels to him, for he refused to be present at the assemblies

over which Abbé Nostradamus presided, “young prince of sixty springs!”

There were also the visions of a certain Rose-Colombe, a Dominican nun,

deceased upon the Italian coast. A great revolution was to burst out

in Europe, the Russians and Prussians would turn their churches into

stables, and peace would hot appear again until the lilies, descendants

of Saint Louis, were again blossoming upon the throne of France, which

would happen. _Which would happen_ closed the paragraph, proving

that it was not a mere hypothesis, as learned men might construe it,

but an incontestable truth, proved by ecstatic visions.

“Yes, the lilies will bloom again,” Aunt Deen loved to repeat, for she

attached especial credit to the sayings of Sister Rose Colombe.

This conviction caused her to rush up and downstairs all the more

proudly, since she might suppose that her services would be needed. She

had a habit of accompanying the innumerable labours to which, without

respite, she gave herself, with interjections and exclamations. We

could hear her psalmodies as she swept or scoured, for she turned her

hand to everything.

“They will bloom again, to the salvation of religion and of France.”

The Abbé did not stop at predictions which re-established monarchs

among ourselves. His solicitude extended even over unhappy Poland, and

one evening he triumphantly brought in a Roman newspaper, in which was

recorded the apparition of the Blessed Andrew Bobola, who informed

a monk of the restoration of that kingdom, after a war which would

involve all nations.

“At last Poland is saved,” he concluded in a tone of satisfaction.

“Poor Poland, it is high time!” chimed in Aunt Deen, who had compassion

upon all unfortunates.

Nevertheless, in order to attain to these miraculous renascences many

catastrophes must be endured. Our abbé heroically put the torch to all

Europe, and consented to drench it in blood if only the lilies would

bloom again at the end.

The ladies enjoyed his vaticinations. His nostrils would expand like

sails under a favourable breeze, and his round eyes would bulge with so

much ardour that it almost seemed as if they might fall out, all in a

flame. He used also to break a lance with the party that admitted the

escape of Louis XVII from the prison of the Temple and the authenticity

of Naundorff. Mlle Tapinois, especially, preached Naundorffism, which

won her many a stinging retort. She almost drew Aunt Deen after her,

but one glance from Abbé Heurtevant sufficed to keep her firm in

the good cause. Mlle Tapinois invoked Providence, of whom every one

knew that she was the right arm, declaring him--it was impossible to

say why--hostile to the return of the Count de Chambord. By way of

eclipsing her adversary she would state that Jules Favre, the advocate

of her Naundorff, had received from him as a token of gratitude the

seal of the Bourbons, and happening to have no other one with him on

that historic day, he had set the royal seal to the Treaty of Paris

after the signature of Count Bismarck, as if he were acting simply as

the delegate of his prince. This anecdote having obtained the success

of curiosity, in spite of father’s remark, “No Bourbon would have

signed such a treaty,” Abbé Heurtevant, broken-hearted at having been

interrupted in his predictions by such fiddle-faddles, shrugged his

shoulders in token of his incredulity, and from the corner where I was

playing with a pack of cards, I heard him murmur,

“When Balaam’s ass spoke, the prophet kept silence.”

I knew the adventure of Balaam from a picture in my Bible. But our abbé

came in also for his own, and was recompensed for his brief overthrow.

Old M. Hurtin, whose bird of prey profile deceived people as to the

obstinacy of his temper, shaken by the stories and asseverations of

Mlle Tapinois, began on his part to bring up objections to Monseigneur,

for no one failed to give him his title if only to dispute it. He went

so far as to reproach him for having no children.

“One will be made for him,” M. Heurtevant declared in a moment of

sudden illumination.

This remark, most forcibly uttered, raised a great outcry. The ladies

manifested their indignation by various little ejaculations, and Mlle

Tapinois, covering her face, protested against a man of God daring to

scandalise a respectable and well-meaning company, and with children

present. The abbé, blushing and quite out of countenance, being much

more accustomed to reprimand others than to be reprimanded, lifted up

his hands while Mlle Tapinois was haranguing, as a sign that he desired

to explain. The opportunity was not immediately given, and he was

forced to have patience until the excitement was calmed. He had simply

meant to say that the continuity of the dynasty would be provided

for, and that the royal race was not threatened with extinction.

A legitimate successor would do as well as a child of a king. His

explanations were received with ill grace, and Mlle Tapinois, who was

seated near me, turned to M. de Hurtin, and put him through a course of

questions, to certify that the prophet had found a very bad mouthpiece;

thus taking her revenge on Balaam’s ass, which had not escaped her

acute ear.

This incident which fastened itself on my memory though I did not

very well understand it, as sometimes happens with memories, had cast

a damper on these royalist meetings, when the approaching elections

reanimated them.

“I do not believe in salvation by election,” father remarked, “still we

must neglect nothing for the welfare of the country.”

A rumour was going round that the mayor’s chair would be contested,

the actual occupant being unworthy. But who would lead the conflict?

It must be a man of mettle, able and firm. Thenceforth I never passed

the municipal building on my way to school without imagining it endowed

with machicolations and cannons and bearing its part in a great

confusion of historic sieges.

The bell at our gate was incessantly ringing, and it was not always

some one for the doctor. Well dressed gentlemen who seemed to prefer

to slip in at nightfall with the shadows, peasants, working men, were

invading the house, and the same words were constantly repeated:

“Won’t you come forward, doctor?”

“Doctor, you must come forward.”

The old men of the suburbs would say more familiarly, “Get a move on,

Monsieur Michel.”

I observed that the peasants and working men put more earnestness and

conviction into their entreaties. The well-dressed gentlemen, better

mannered, and more discreet, did not insist, and one of them, stout and

dignified, carried his devotion so far as to propose himself.

“To be sure, we understand your scruples, your hesitations. It’s a

weighty undertaking and very expensive. If it must be, I will consent

to be candidate in your place--just to please you.”

“Not you,” spoke up with authority a bearded individual in a blue

blouse. “You wouldn’t get four votes. Monsieur Michel is another story.”

The gentleman, thus turned down, majestically buttoned up his frock

coat.

When the intruders had retired, a discussion arose between father and

mother, peaceful, grave and confidential. So absorbed were they that

they did not notice that we were present.

“You can not,” said mother gently, almost quoting the stout gentleman.

“Think of the expenses that we are bearing. You were obliged to buy

the property in order to spare your father, and I encouraged your

doing so, remember. In a family, all stand or fall together. The great

schools are very expensive, for we do not get scholarships, though we

have seven children. You are known to be hostile to the institutions

under which we are governed. Within a few years we shall need to settle

Louise, even though Mélanie will need but a small dowry. And besides,

think of yourself. You are already working too hard, your patients

absorb all your strength. I am afraid you will overdo. We are no longer

in our first youth, my dear. The family is enough for us. The family is

our first duty.”

Father was silent for a moment, as if weighing the pros and cons. Then

he said:

“I do not forget the family. Don’t distress yourself about my health,

Valentine. I have never felt myself more robust nor better able to

endure fatigue. And I can not help thinking of the useful part which

is offered me,--for to be mayor to-day is to be deputy to-morrow: to

denounce to the country the gang that is cheating it and fattening upon

it, to prepare the public mind for the return of the king--so necessary

if we are to recover from defeat. All these plain folk who rely upon

me touch my heart, and shake my resolution to hold myself aloof from

public life. I have no personal ambition. But even here, surely here,

there is a duty to fulfil.”

They were like alternating strophes in which the family and the country

by turns made their pressing appeals.

My father’s picture of a restored France did not closely resemble that

of Abbé Heurtevant, who trusted to miracles. He added circumstantial

details which I could not follow, but in the end, without knowing

exactly how, we got the impression that the aroused provinces would

march promptly and joyfully under the authority of the prince who would

address himself directly to them, and who at the same time would refer

all religious matters to the Pope of Rome.

Father was so well able to command that I found it quite natural that

the government should be entrusted to him, since the realm of the house

was not enough for him, and he desired another. And besides, in that

case he would be too busy to watch over my studies and my thoughts,

which I well knew he talked over anxiously with mother, in the evenings.

Things were even more changed at the Café des Navigateurs than at our

house, where only a faint note of coming events reached my ear. I went

thither with grandfather, one holiday, when we were not expected.

Casenave, prematurely aged, apart from the others, was still drinking

for pleasure, in the midst of the general inattention, the other

members of the group being occupied with loftier things. They were

not talking of the king, but of liberty. I learned that the hydra of

reaction which had been supposed to be crushed after the Sixteenth of

May, was beginning to lift up its head. Galurin was openly demanding

the partition of goods, which was his hobby, Gallus and Merinos were

repudiating a bourgeois Republic, desiring it to be at once Athenian

and popular, one which would assure to each person a minimum wage for

an indeterminate amount of work, and at the same time would be open

to beauty, and a protector of the arts. They were both sketching, in

the intervals of their labours, one a symphony, the other a charcoal

drawing in which the new era was symbolised. But I hardly recognised

Martinod. Instead of presenting to our dazzled eyes, as in former

days, the marriage of the People and Reason, he left all phrase-making

to the two artists. With unexpected coherence he was enumerating

urgent reforms, the diminution of military service with a view to its

complete suppression, the independence of syndicates, State monopoly

of education, not to mention the revision of the Constitution, a

matter upon which every one was agreed. The independence of syndicates

especially struck me because no matter how much my neighbour explained

to me in what it consisted, I could not in the least understand it,

and therefore set a particularly high value upon it. Leaving his

reforms, notwithstanding their urgency, Martinod, who was continually

bringing in recruits and treating them, worked himself up into a great

excitement upon a subject of more immediate importance, which was the

next mayor.

Decidedly, I understood one thing, the battle would be carried on there

and not elsewhere.

Soon the entire conversation began to turn upon proper names. Forgotten

was the Athenian and popular Republic, forgotten were reforms, only

individuals were spoken of, and very few of these found grace in the

eyes of the company. Most of them were considered suspicious; they

were not deemed pure enough,--and all sorts of fatal defects were

brought up against them, notably consorting with priests, and sending

their children to clerical schools. Then there were discussions in an

undertone (and I clearly saw Martinod directing furtive glances, now in

grandfather’s direction and now in mine, which flattered me, for in

general I did not exist for so great a man), of a redoubtable leader

who would be the worst adversary and not easily to be overcome.

“There is only he,” Martinod concluded. “The others are all knaves or

thieves.”

“He is the only one,” repeated the chorus in approval.

Yet nobody mentioned his name. I found no difficulty, however, in

picturing him to myself formidable and mysterious, leading his forces

to certain victory. Grandfather was negligently listening to Casenave’s

dialogue with his double. Martinod, who had been observing him for a

moment or two, now secretly and again full in the face, suddenly leaned

toward him, and said abruptly:

“Do you know one thing, Father Rambert? You are the one to lead us in

this fight.”

“I!” exclaimed grandfather, quite taken aback. “Oho!”

And he gurgled out his little laugh. They let him laugh at his ease,

after which Martinod repeated his offer.

“To be sure, you. Who deserves it better? In ’48 you came near dying

for liberty.”

“Not at all. I did not come near dying.”

This proposition was not further pressed. But as we were going back to

the house at the dinner hour he stood still, saying:

“That was a good thing, Martinod! I their candidate? Insane!”

He laughed again with all his heart. A little further on he repeated,

“I, their candidate!”

This time he did not laugh. I understood that all the same he was not

displeased with Martinod’s suggestion.

II

THE CIRCUS

MY attention was distracted from these election concerns by the

circus which had been set up in the Market Place. Its immense white

tent, at last secured in place by solid pegs, bore above the entrance

curtain, in letters of gold against a blue background, the inscription

_Marinetti’s Circus_. A drummer plied his drumsticks at short

intervals to attract the attention of the public, and from time to

time the portière was raised and a princess in a spangled robe and

rose-coloured stockings emerged like an apparition. I used to pass that

way on my return from school, merely to hear that unceasing drum and to

see that lady, who was sometimes old and sometimes very young. How I

longed to get inside the tent! I indulged my desire for this forbidden

paradise by lingering as long as possible and then speeding away at my

best pace, so as not to be late at home.

Once I made the circuit of the tent and got “behind the scenes.” The

waggon-houses were drawn up side by side at the back. Thick smoke was

pouring from their slender chimneys--as if from green wood, and from

the odour some witch’s broth must have been in course of preparation.

Several raw-boned horses were wandering at liberty, as if they had

not the strength to go far, under the indulgent watch of dogs whose

indolence reassured me. A parroquet was fluttering from roof to roof.

On the steps of one waggon a woman was sitting clothed in rags which

unblushingly revealed her amber skin, combing her hair in the sun; the

black mass which she drew forward cast a shadow over all her face,

hiding it from me, though it alone interested me. A bronzed old fellow

was smoking his pipe with a majesty like that of the old shepherd in

his russet mantle, walking before his sheep with even pace toward the

mountain. Some half-naked children, brown and curly-headed, crawling

among the waggons, were hustling one another, exchanging thumps, when

suddenly a door opened and out bounced a termagant, holding a stewpan

in her left hand and with her right restoring peace by means of a few

sound slaps.

This spectacle in no way cooled my curiosity. Has the wrong side of a

theatre ever cooled the interest of amateurs or the zeal of actors?

What was not my delight then when grandfather, returning from a walk,

proposed to take me inside. I imagine he was going in on his own

account and was far from suspecting my longings.

We entered. The orchestra, composed of a cornopean, two small flutes

and a clavier which some one struck with two rulers--I was unfamiliar

with the dulcimer--were making such a clatter as quite to drown out the

faithful and monotonous drum outside. Little by little we grew used

to it and through all the noise I soon became aware of a sort of call,

at once indescribably sad, sweet and authoritative, and so insistent

that no one could resist it. In later years the Hungarian dances gave

me a better understanding of the longing which I then felt. The sound

brought before me unknown, far distant lands, and all the pleasures of

vague pain. I longed to extend my arms to hasten the future. It was,

as it were, a new apprehension of the still more vague sensation which

Aunt Deen’s cradle song had awakened in me:

Si Dieu favorise

Ma noble entreprise

J’irai-z-à Venise

Couler d’heureux jours.

And I dimly realised that The House would never fulfil my dream. We

didn’t hear such music there.

Powdered clowns in parti-coloured red and yellow costumes and little

pointed caps played tricks upon one another which excited the laughter

of the crowd and disgusted me. I had not come to witness buffoonery,

but had expected, without quite knowing what, a noble and moving

spectacle. Happily a tight-rope dancer restored my serenity, for it was

with difficulty that she preserved her equilibrium, seeming likely at

any moment to fall to the ground.

But the sensational number was the flying trapeze of the two Marinetti

brothers. More than one celebrated acrobat has doubtless begun his

career in a travelling circus. The two Marinetti brothers later became

celebrated; one was killed in London by a fall; the other is to-day one

of the first mimics of the world. At that time they were very young

fellows, hardly older than I. One might have thought that they were

simply amusing themselves, with no thought of the spectators. They

played into each other’s hands with touching solicitude and arranged by

a slight signal for the execution of their joint turns--I had almost

said their duet, for there was so much rhythm in the supple movements

of their two bodies that they really seemed to sing. During their whole

glorious or tragic career, did they ever do anything more daring than

those flights from one trapeze to another, without the security of the

net, always laid in wait for by death, for which they seemed to care no

more than a sparrowhawk for a knife?

The stifled cry of a woman in the audience awoke me to the danger to

which I had been as indifferent as they, but of which I became suddenly

aware. I was full of admiration and envy of them, soaring thus through

the air. I could conceive of nothing more heroic, and my notion of

courage underwent a change. Until now, through the epic stories father

had told me, I had imagined it as always serving a cause. Hector was

defending his city against the Greeks and Roland his faith against the

Saracens. But was it not finer to juggle thus with oneself, for no

reason, for one’s own pleasure?--for the public had ceased to count.

In that ill-lighted circus, to the sound of that strange, exciting

orchestra, I came to feel the charm of the danger that serves no

purpose.

But clowns, rope dancer and even the Marinetti brothers were eclipsed

in my imagination as by enchantment, when into the ring there dashed

a little horsewoman standing erect upon a black horse whose saddle

was large and flat like a table. I had been looking down during the

interval, that is why I noticed the horse, for otherwise I should

surely have seen only the rider. She wore a robe of gold. If the lamps

had emitted less smoke and more light it is probable that that frayed

dress would not have given me such a vision of luxury. The girl’s arms

were bare and her hair unbound. Alone among all those tawny performers

she was fair like the heroines of all my ballads. Merely by her leap

into the ring she gave me what no woman had ever given me before, not

even she whom I had met with grandfather and whom I had called the lady

of the pavilion before I named her Helen;--not the sense of beauty--to

that I had already attained; but the fear of approaching her and not

keeping her. Yet I search my memory in vain for her features--I can

not find them. I must have seen her often, and now I wonder if I

ever looked at her, if I ever really dared to look at her. I think

she had golden eyes--the golden tint of a virgin in a stained glass

window through which the sun is shining. How old was she? Sixteen

or seventeen--not older, and perhaps not so old. The fruits of her

country do not need many months for ripening. She appeared taller than

she was, by reason of her slenderness. It would be unjust to call her

thin; slight, yes, but her slight form was full and muscular, and I

wondered at the nascent roundness of her bosom. She was leaping through

hoops that were held before her, and at each spring I trembled lest

the horse should get away or she should miss the large saddle. It made

me happy to tremble for her. Reassured by her skill I began to watch

the movement of her hair, which each time she bounded rose and fell

in cadence upon her shoulders. If a lock fell over her face she would

throw it back with a gesture of annoyance.

The gravity of her countenance showed that she was wholly absorbed in

her work. From time to time her lips would part with the little words

hop, hop, designed to warm up her horse, who was apathetically rounding

the circle. Then she would seat herself on the saddle for a moment’s

rest, her legs hanging, while she indifferently bowed her head in

answer to the applause, her bosom, unconfined by her clinging gown,

rising and falling with her quickened breath. She seemed completely

isolated from all around by her gravity, her indifference. The young

girls whom I knew, my sisters’ friends, used to talk, chatter, laugh,

play, put their arms around each others’ waists. This one was passive

as an idol.

The show ended with a pantomime, every scene of which I remember.

When we went back to the house I repeated it as well as I could by

mobilising my sister Nicola, and even little Jamie for a minor part,

pressing two little schoolfellows into the service, and with this

improvised troop I proposed to treat our parents on the festival of

one or the other. Our performance was ruthlessly stopped in the very

middle without the slightest respect for dramatic art. Grandfather

alone was clamorously delighted with it, for which Aunt Deen reproved

him. Reflecting upon the incident, I at last recognised that the plot

turned upon a hoodwinked husband. The innocent Nicola had been charged

with this part, and under my instructions performed it with wonderful

success. But I was forbidden to return to the circus.

The little circus queen who had made a single spring from her horse’s

back into my imagination was doubtless destined to remain a magnificent

and remote memory for me. But grandfather loved the company of artists

and unconventional folk. I can see him now at the Café des Navigateurs,

taking sides with all the Martinod group against the bourgeois. One day

as we were crossing the Market Place he went round the tent to where

the waggons were drawn up.

“Where are we going, grandfather?” I murmured, with throbbing heart.

“I want to get a nearer view of these people.”

In fact, he stopped and talked with the men who were smoking their

pipes, while the women were preparing the soup or mending clothes.

He spoke to them in an unknown tongue, which must have been Italian.

This language upon his lips seemed to me simply incomprehensible. He

pronounced it almost like the words that we use, only dwelling upon

certain syllables and gliding over those that followed. But when those

bronzed men spoke their words took on a strange accent, sometimes low

and sometimes sharp, like gay music.

Were these clowns or acrobats? The Marinetti brothers were absent. To

see them there would have filled me with pride. The only important

personage whom I seemed to recognise was the rope dancer, and she

was somewhat disconcertingly crowned with grey hair, and was sadly

repairing a dirty skirt of puffed gauze. I was not aware that its

proper name is _tulle_.

Timidly my eyes sought the little horsewoman, though I should have

preferred not to find her. I had looked too far away; she was at my

side, peeling potatoes with a broken knife. Instead of her golden

tunic, she was in an ugly striped gown. Her bare feet--that had been

shod with gold--were covered with dust. But in this humiliation she

seemed to me as beautiful as in her glory, on the pedestal of her

large saddle, springing through hoops amid multitudinous applause. My

eyes still enlightened by illusion, I found her just as beautiful, and

yet my first impulse was to move away, of course from timidity--but

also, I confess, because I had got from Aunt Deen, in the matter of

gipsies and beggars, her fear of vermin, which she always said, are

easily caught.

Let him who can explain these inconsistencies. I found a new and

obscure feeling awaking within me, merely from the shame I felt at that

recoil, and in my eagerness to be able to forgive myself, I could at

once have shared with her even her insects.

I admired the nobility and also the dexterity with which she peeled

her potatoes, never making two beginnings, but removing an entire skin

with a single operation. She was condescending without impatience to

this mean occupation, and I was grateful to her for her humility. As

the other day in the ring, during her hippie exercises, she was serious

and impassive, absorbed in her work. Yet did she not observe my fixed

observation? She deigned to be the first to speak.

“Peeling is slow work,” she observed.

“Yes, indeed,” I replied, at the very summit of happiness; “peeling is

slow work.”

I should have liked to help her. I ought to have helped her, but I

dared not. A pharisaic scruple withheld me. Though my zeal might carry

me even to the vermin which you catch without knowing it, I had not

the courage to endure the obloquy of peeling potatoes in the public

square, before all those _roulottes_.

Our mutual confidences went no further. Suddenly a guttural voice

called,

“Nazzarena!”

She left her vegetables and went away without saying good-bye. I was

greatly moved; at least I knew her name. I rushed back to the house at

a gallop, leaving behind me grandfather, waving his arms and crying,

“Halloa! Wait!”

It was impossible for me not to run. Wings had sprouted from my

shoulders, and during my wild race my whole being was surging, like

our music box when the spring was released. I rushed into the garden,

bumping against Tem Bossette, who had not stepped aside quickly enough,

and who shouted,

“What’s the matter with you, Master Francis?”

I replied laughing, but without checking my speed:

“Why, nothing at all. Nothing is the matter with me.”

I leaped over the cannas, flew to the orchard like a run-away chicken,

and threw myself, breathless, against a young apple tree. The trees

were in blossom--it was springtime. The branches trembled at the shock,

and a shower of rosy petals rained down upon me.

I was far from suspecting that I was also gathering the blossom of

love, the love that does not ripen.

At school the Marinetti circus had become the object of all our

interest and conversation. In the playground, between two games of

prison-bars, the big boys discussed sometimes the flying trapeze, which

had dazzled the lovers of sport, and sometimes the little horsewoman,

preferred by the clan of philosophers. I would catch fragments of their

remarks as I passed, and I was burning to arouse the envy of my elders

with the superiority which I had achieved over them. Thus torn between

my secret and my vanity, it was the latter which won out, and one day,

with feigned modesty, I admitted that I had spoken to her. My object

was at once attained and even exceeded: they all crowded around me,

congratulating me, plying me with questions. I was forced to embroider

the truth a little, in order to satisfy their curiosity.

“You are a lucky fellow,” said Fernand de Montraut, whose jealousy I

divined.

Fernand de Montraut was the ornament of the rhetoric division and at

the same time the lowest in the class. He passed for the most elegant

fellow in school because of his cravats, and every one bowed to his

superior experience in all matters of sentiment, for he boasted the

friendship of several girls. Unfortunately, he added,

“Then you are in love?”

Not knowing until that moment what it was to be in love, I at once

learned its meaning from his question, and gave myself up to the

melancholy which I deemed the proper thing.

Grandfather having struck up an acquaintance with the circus folk, whom

he supplied with tobacco, I found myself again in Nazzarena’s presence.

The desire to give her something tortured me, the more so because

Fernand de Montraut, an acknowledged judge, had assured me that one

always gave presents to ladies. The only embarrassment was the choice

of gift. Now I had in a drawer a collection of cornelian marbles which

I treasured as if they had been jewels. There were spotted red ones,

and black ones with white circles. Nothing that I possessed was more

precious to me. For a moment I hesitated at so great a sacrifice, and

thought of at least keeping back that flame-coloured agate that the

light shone through and which was my favourite. But it was clear to

me that if I kept back that one my offering would be worthless. In a

moment of resignation rather than of enthusiasm I gathered up the whole

lot and ran to my new friend, awkwardly presenting them to her without

a word of explanation. She seemed somewhat surprised, but accepted them

without hesitation.

“Zat’s pretty,” she said, “you ’z cute.”

She used familiar words, which I had always heard without noticing

their sound, and it seemed as if she had transformed them into another

language, all flowers and music. I was emboldened to speak to her in

reply, urged on perhaps by a notion of justice: having sacrificed my

marbles I had a right to some compensation.

“I know your name,” I said with some emphasis. “Your name is Nazzarena.”

She was greatly delighted at the extent of my knowledge.

“Aha! he knows my name. But it isn’t Nazzarena, it’s Nazzaré-na. Say

it!”

I must needs learn her accent. After which she asked,

“What’s your name?”

“Francis.”

“Like the saint of Assisi. And where are you from?”

“Why, from here, of course.”

How should I be from anywhere else? One lives in his own town and his

own house. Perhaps she perceived her blunder, for she asked no more

questions and it was I who bashfully resumed the conversation, not

without timidity.

“Where are you from?”

“I don’t know.”

What a curious answer! One always knows where one is from. Well!

“Then you have no house of your own?”

“That’s our house.”

She pointed to one of the waggons, the front of which was painted

green. I could not mistake her expression of scorn. She suddenly

turned away and gazed at the great buildings of cut stone which

surrounded the market place on all four sides; my town is ancient and

rugged, and its houses were built to last for centuries. Perhaps she

was estimating the security of a stationary life, but I was picturing

to myself the joys of a nomad existence when I went on:

“It must be very amusing.”

“What must?”

“To keep changing your locality.”

I used the word _locality_ purposely, to give her a high idea of

me.

“That depends,” she said. “There are places where the receipts are bad.

One time we made only seven francs and a half.”

Details of that sort were of no interest, but I went on to confess to

an unbounded admiration for this mode of life. At this declaration she

opened her eyes wide, doubtless amazed that one could envy her when one

lived in one of those great buildings, capable of enduring all sorts of

bad weather.

“All the same you wouldn’t come with us.” The mere suggestion seemed to

please her, but she at once put it away as an absurdity.

“Besides you can’t know much. But you’z cute.”

Again that expression which seemed offensive to my self-love. I could

not remain silent under so unworthy an estimate, and I retorted proudly,

“I can ride horse-back.”

I had sometimes been hoisted upon our farmer’s blind mare, and had even

experienced a disquietude akin to fear when long shivers ran through

her body. My friend appeared enchanted and promised to lend me her

black steed.

How does the grown-up heart differ from that of childhood? I had not

the least idea of going with her. She did not suppose I was going. I

had not the slightest equestrian ability. She had no authority over her

horse; without mutual agreement each was conniving at luring the other

on. It was a delicious foretaste of the falsehoods which lurk beneath

all lovers’ conversations.

Just then, as we both sat silent, a fearful and torturing memory came

to me. One phrase--just a short phrase from the book of ballads which I

had read and reread during my convalescence, until they seemed to form

part of the very atmosphere of my existence, suddenly detached itself

from the rest--I heard it within myself as if another than myself had

uttered it. It was a line in the legend of The Lord of Burleigh. The

Lord of Burleigh is speaking to a peasant girl, who is the prettiest

and most modest girl in the village, and what he says is,

_There is no one in the world whom I love like thee._

To be sure, I should never in the world have spoken those words aloud;

I should even have closed my lips tight to make sure of not uttering

them. But I felt them as living things, and they thrilled through me.

Now I discovered their prodigious meaning. How could one say such words

to some one who was not of one’s family, and whom one hardly knew?

_No one in the world_! What about father--and mother? I dimly

perceived the sacrilegious power of love, and while I was leaning over

that abyss, Nazzarena, usually so grave, was laughing and showing her

teeth.

One of the bronzed men of the troop passed, and stopped before us,

scrutinising us. Then suddenly he knocked our two heads together,

uttering in his jargon a word or two that I did not understand.

The touch of her cheek burned me, and violently pulling myself free I

felt myself reddening to the very roots of my hair. She only laughed

the more.

“What did he say?” I stammered, tossed between anger and a totally new

emotion.

“Oh, nothing,” said she. “That you were my little lover.”

“I!” I protested. “What an idea!”

I could not consent that it should be possible. The love that one

expressed must lose all importance. And what next? That way everything

would be over. Surely, for love to be love one must keep it to oneself

and it must hurt....

III

THE PLOT

HOW was it that no one noticed, when I returned to the house, that

I had suddenly changed and grown? I was almost scandalised at their

blindness.

“Well, here you are!” observed my father, who was beginning to be

uneasy about my absences.

Aunt Deen ran after me to make me put on another coat, more obviously

worn. I had hastily slipped on my best, for my visit to Nazzarena. It

may have been the memorable olive-green of my convalescence, at last

become better adapted to my size after three or four years of growth,

unless it had already been retired to a clothes press, in camphor and

naphtha, until such time as James should grow to it. I commanded not

the slightest respect, although the entire household ought to have been

struck with my changed countenance. Instead of thinking only of my

adventure, which indeed I could not quite understand, I was vexed with

the familiarity with which I was treated.

We were all gathered in mother’s room because of little Nicola, who was

somewhat grippy, and who, being a delicate child, needed watchful care.

Notwithstanding my absorbing secret I felt that some important event

was impending. The too turbulent Jamie was admonished to keep quiet in

a corner. Mélanie, always somewhat in the moon--Aunt Deen insisted that

she was listening to her voices, like Jeanne d’Arc--quietly undertook

to amuse her sick sister, so that father was finally able to show

mother the letter which he had in his hand.

“It is from Monsignor’s secretary,” he said as he opened it.

I thought he was speaking of the bishop, who always dined with us once

a year. But the name of the Count de Chambord occurred in it. When he

had finished reading it--I had not heard it distinctly--father added

simply:

“Very well; I will present myself, since the prince desires that

nothing be neglected for the welfare of the country.”

“Oh, the prince!” murmured grandfather, smothering his little laugh.

Father looked at him with that straightforward, penetrating gaze which

was always hard to bear. But grandfather at once put on his most

innocent air, such as I remembered him to have assumed the time we met

mamma in the street — when he said, “We are going to buy a paper.”

I at once divined that father was the mysterious and terrible leader

whose intervention in the assault upon the mayor’s office Martinod had

so feared. It could be no one but he, and how was it possible that he

should not win the battle? A look at him was enough. He bore victory

about with him. My childish eyes, still loyal and clear-sighted, could

see the signs of superiority radiating from his brow. How should I have

guessed that superiority is a small factor in success, since all sorts

of dubious weapons against it are being forged in dark places? I might

indeed endeavour to escape from my father’s influence, but at least I

never dreamed of underrating it.

The watchful care usually extended to me was diminished by the illness

of Nicola, who was always asking for her mother. I had remarked that

father was making the most of his infrequent moments of leisure to talk

with Mélanie, go out with Mélanie, take walks with Mélanie. More than

ever he treated her with an affection at once tender and reserved,

almost respectful, and seemed to extend his strength over her, as if

some one was endangering his daughter or seeking to take her from

him. As for Aunt Deen, who almost worshipped her nephews and nieces,

individually and collectively, she remarked between going up and down

stairs that I was a model child and an exemplary son, and even placed

to her brother’s credit a large part in this happy state of things.

I made the most of this relaxed vigilance, which in fact was merely

comparative, to continue my visits to the circus in spite of the

prohibition which had been put upon them. With a hypocrisy which had

already become perspicacious, I had persuaded myself that I was not

disobeying when I walked around the tent to where the waggons were

stationed. The side scenes are not the theatre. Thus from argument to

argument I went on until at last I actually entered the tent. Had not

grandfather taken me there the first time? He was the oldest, he ought

to know better than any one else what was good for me. Besides, no one

would know; there was no risk of any member of the family meeting me

there, unless, indeed, grandfather. And Nazzarena rode her horse for me

alone, and when she bowed courteously in response to the applause it

was still for me alone. With all the ease in the world I suppressed the

existence of the surrounding public.

Nevertheless, as my conscience was not perfectly easy, I clung to

grandfather, who in case of need could ward off suspicions or bear

the burden of responsibility. I even went with him to the Café des

Navigateurs, though I had exhausted its pleasures and should have

preferred another society. Martinod was unusually glad to see us.

“Father Rambert! What a pleasure to see you again! Father Rambert, sit

here beside me in the place of honour.”

I observed that if he had formerly excelled in passing over the bills

to others, he now kept open purse not only for his own drinks but for

those of others. Gallus and Merinos perceived it sooner than I did

and refused themselves no indulgence. As for Casenave and Galurin,

they had never troubled themselves about the score. I had already

before this remarked a complete change in Martinod; he was less and

less concerned with oratorical effect, and no longer sought to dazzle

us with descriptions of festivals where fraternal embraces were the

general order. He produced lists and figures, enumerated proper names

and with a bit of pencil which he moistened at his lips industriously

addressed himself to checking them up.

A newspaper man having laid the local gazette upon a table, he called

the servant to bring it to him in so imperious a voice that the girl

was startled and came near upsetting a dish of food which she was

carrying. Hardly had he unfolded the sheet when he cried:

“There it is! I was sure of it! _He_ presents himself.”

_He_ had no need of being more definitely designated. Every

one in the café unhesitatingly recognised him, and I as well as the

others. Our group, which up to that moment had probably not felt sure

that he would be a candidate, appeared to be deeply impressed and

indeed quite demoralised. All wore long faces as they bent over their

tumblers. Secretly scanning them one by one, as an impartial outsider,

I considered their party, however numerous, quite incapable of carrying

on a contest against my father.

Martinod permitted the others, and especially the neophytes who formed

a sort of court around him, and for whose drinks he paid, to start

up, exclaim, though without naming the enemy, while he, inattentive or

meditative, fixed grandfather with his eyes. As he continued for some

time in this attitude, a passage from my natural history recurred to

my mind, concerning a serpent that fascinated birds, and I laughed to

myself at this absurd idea. For a long time he maintained his fixed

gaze; then, after ordering drinks all around, except for me, whom he

had forgotten, he leaned forward and in a fawning voice spoke in his

neighbour’s ear, but not so softly but that I heard.

“So, Father Rambert, you are no longer in your own house?”

“How so?” replied grandfather indifferently.

“Why, no; that fine château that you live in isn’t yours now.”

He pronounced the word _château_ like the farmer, only omitting

a few circumflex accents. Grandfather observed it, and it amused him.

“Oho! the château,” he said; “why not the palace?”

“Call it what you like, for all me,” replied Martinod; “the fact

remains that it is the finest residence in the country. And well

situated--town and country at once. All the same, ha! ha! They have

played you a trick, and you are no longer master of the house.”

Grandfather scratched his eyebrow, then pulled his beard. He never

spoke to any one of his abdication, not even to me in our walks, and I

had perceived that allusions to this old story, several years old now,

did not interest him. I knew that he despised property and deemed it

detrimental to the general good. But wasn’t that a sacred dogma at the

Café of the Navigators, too?

“Well, yes,” he replied with a forced laugh. “I am no longer in my own

house; there’s a discovery for you! My poor Martinod, you are behind

the times! It’s many a long day since I’ve been in my own house and

glad I am, as you see. No more bother, no more care. I am no longer the

master, but I am my own master.”

Upon this the dialogue proceeded, more and more gaily.

“Ta, ta, ta! At your age it’s not easy to get used to camping in other

folks’ houses.”

“At my age one likes peace and quiet.”

“Yes, I know. They have relegated you to the end of the table.”

“I put myself there of my own accord, and food tastes just as good

there as in the middle.”

“But here, Father Rambert, you have the place of honour.”

“There is no place of honour in a café.”

“And your room?--every one knows that you have been hoisted to the

garret.”

“Every one knows that I love heights.”

All of which was said banteringly. They were playing at tossing

questions and answers to and fro, as we tossed balls at school.

Listening to them, my mind was for a moment distracted from its

absorbing sentiment, and I inwardly condemned myself for this as for a

fault.