“Then Rousseau is as much of a fool as the other, that's all.”

Monsieur Rade, still smiling, went on:

“And this is what Lord Byron said, who, nevertheless, loved women: 'They

should be well fed and well dressed, but not allowed to mingle with

society. They should also be taught religion, but they should ignore

poetry and politics, only being allowed to read religious works or cook-

books.'”

Monsieur Rade continued:

“You see, gentlemen, all of them study painting and music. But not a

single one of them has ever painted a remarkable picture or composed a

great opera! Why, gentlemen? Because they are the 'sexes sequior', the

secondary sex in every sense of the word, made to be kept apart, in the

background.”

Monsieur Patissot was growing angry, and exclaimed:

“And how about Madame Sand, monsieur?”

“She is the one exception, monsieur, the one exception. I will quote to

you another passage from another great philosopher, this one an

Englishman, Herbert Spencer. Here is what he says: 'Each sex is capable,

under the influence of abnormal stimulation, of manifesting faculties

ordinarily reserved for the other one. Thus, for instance, in extreme

cases a special excitement may cause the breasts of men to give milk;

children deprived of their mothers have often thus been saved in time of

famine. Nevertheless, we do not place this faculty of giving milk among

the male attributes. It is the same with female intelligence, which, in

certain cases, will give superior products, but which is not to be

considered in an estimate of the feminine nature as a social factor.'”

All Monsieur Patissot's chivalric instincts were wounded and he

declared:

“You are not a Frenchman, monsieur. French gallantry is a form of

patriotism.”

Monsieur Rade retorted:

“I have very little patriotism, monsieur, as little as I can get along

with.”

A coolness settled over the company, but he continued quietly:

“Do you admit with me that war is a barbarous thing; that this custom of

killing off people constitutes a condition of savagery; that it is

odious, when life is the only real good, to see governments, whose duty

is to protect the lives of their subjects, persistently looking for

means of destruction? Am I not right? Well, if war is a terrible thing,

what about patriotism, which is the idea at the base of it? When a

murderer kills he has a fixed idea; it is to steal. When a good man

sticks his bayonet through another good man, father of a family, or,

perhaps, a great artist, what idea is he following out?”

Everybody was shocked.

“When one has such thoughts, one should not express them in public.”

M. Patissot continued:

“There are, however, monsieur, principles which all good people

recognize.”

M. Rade asked: “Which ones?”

Then very solemnly, M. Patissot pronounced: “Morality, monsieur.”

M. Rade was beaming; he exclaimed:

“Just let me give you one example, gentlemen, one little example. What

is your opinion of the gentlemen with the silk caps who thrive along the

boulevard's on the delightful traffic which you know, and who make a

living out of it?”

A look of disgust ran round the table:

“Well, gentlemen! only a century ago, when an elegant gentleman, very

ticklish about his honor, had for—friend—a beautiful and rich lady, it

was considered perfectly proper to live at her expense and even to

squander her whole fortune. This game was considered delightful. This

only goes to show that the principles of morality are by no means

settled—and that—”

M. Perdrix, visibly embarrassed, stopped him:

“M. Rade, you are sapping the very foundations of society. One must

always have principles. Thus, in politics, here is M. de Sombreterre,

who is a Legitimist; M. Vallin, an Orleanist; M. Patissot and myself,

Republicans; we all have very different principles, and yet we agree

very well because we have them.”

But M. Rade exclaimed:

“I also have principles, gentlemen, very distinct ones.”

M. Patissot raised his head and coldly asked:

“It would please me greatly to know them, monsieur.”

M. Rade did not need to be coaxed.

“Here they are, monsieur:

“First principle—Government by one person is a monstrosity.

“Second principle—Restricted suffrage is an injustice.

“Third principle—Universal suffrage is idiotic.

“To deliver up millions of men, superior minds, scientists, even

geniuses, to the caprice and will of a being who, in an instant of

gaiety, madness, intoxication or love, would not hesitate to sacrifice

everything for his exalted fancy, would spend the wealth of the country

amassed by others with difficulty, would have thousands of men

slaughtered on the battle-fields, all this appears to me—a simple

logician—a monstrous aberration.

“But, admitting that a country must govern itself, to exclude, on some

always debatable pretext, a part of the citizens from the administration

of affairs is such an injustice that it seems to me unworthy of a

further discussion.

“There remains universal suffrage. I suppose that you will agree with me

that geniuses are a rarity. Let us be liberal and say that there are at

present five in France. Now, let us add, perhaps, two hundred men with a

decided talent, one thousand others possessing various talents, and ten

thousand superior intellects. This is a staff of eleven thousand two

hundred and five minds. After that you have the army of mediocrities

followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools

always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an

intelligent government.

“In order to be fair I admit that logically universal suffrage seems to

me the only admissible principle, but it is impracticable. Here are the

reasons why:

“To make all the living forces of the country cooperate in the

government, to represent all the interests, to take into account all the

rights, is an ideal dream, but hardly practicable, because the only

force which can be measured is that very one which should be neglected,

the stupid strength of numbers, According to your method, unintelligent

numbers equal genius, knowledge, learning, wealth and industry. When you

are able to give to a member of the Institute ten thousand votes to a

ragman's one, one hundred votes for a great land-owner as against his

farmer's ten, then you will have approached an equilibrium of forces and

obtained a national representation which will really represent the

strength of the nation. But I challenge you to do it.

“Here are my conclusions:

“Formerly, when a man was a failure at every other profession he turned

photographer; now he has himself elected a deputy. A government thus

composed will always be sadly lacking, incapable of evil as well as of

good. On the other hand, a despot, if he be stupid, can do a lot of

harm, and, if he be intelligent (a thing which is very scarce), he may

do good.

“I cannot decide between these two forms of government; I declare myself

to be an anarchist, that is to say, a partisan of that power which is

the most unassuming, the least felt, the most liberal, in the broadest

sense of the word, and revolutionary at the same time; by that I mean

the everlasting enemy of this same power, which can in no way be

anything but defective. That's all!”

Cries of indignation rose about the table, and all, whether Legitimist,

Orleanist or Republican through force of circumstances, grew red with

anger. M. Patissot especially was choking with rage, and, turning toward

M. Rade, he cried:

“Then, monsieur, you believe in nothing?”

The other answered quietly:

“You're absolutely correct, monsieur.”

The anger felt by all the guests prevented M. Rade from continuing, and

M. Perdrix, as chief, closed the discussion.

“Enough, gentlemen! We each have our opinion, and we have no intention

of changing it.”

All agreed with the wise words. But M. Rade, never satisfied, wished to

have the last word.

“I have, however, one moral,” said he. “It is simple and always

applicable. One sentence embraces the whole thought; here it is: 'Never

do unto another that which you would not have him do unto you.' I defy

you to pick any flaw in it, while I will undertake to demolish your most

sacred principles with three arguments.”

This time there was no answer. But as they were going home at night, by

couples, each one was saying to his companion: “Really, M. Rade goes

much too far. His mind must surely be unbalanced. He ought to be

appointed assistant chief at the Charenton Asylum.”

A RECOLLECTION

How many recollections of youth come to me in the soft sunlight of early

spring! It was an age when all was pleasant, cheerful, charming,

intoxicating. How exquisite are the remembrances of those old

springtimes!

Do you recall, old friends and brothers, those happy years when life was

nothing but a triumph and an occasion for mirth? Do you recall the days

of wanderings around Paris, our jolly poverty, our walks in the fresh,

green woods, our drinks in the wine-shops on the banks of the Seine and

our commonplace and delightful little flirtations?

I will tell you about one of these. It was twelve years ago and already

appears to me so old, so old that it seems now as if it belonged to the

other end of life, before middle age, this dreadful middle age from

which I suddenly perceived the end of the journey.

I was then twenty-five. I had just come to Paris. I was in a government

office, and Sundays were to me like unusual festivals, full of exuberant

happiness, although nothing remarkable occurred.

Now it is Sunday every day, but I regret the time when I had only one

Sunday in the week. How enjoyable it was! I had six francs to spend!

On this particular morning I awoke with that sense of freedom that all

clerks know so well—the sense of emancipation, of rest, of quiet and of

independence.

I opened my window. The weather was charming. A blue sky full of

sunlight and swallows spread above the town.

I dressed quickly and set out, intending to spend the day in the woods

breathing the air of the green trees, for I am originally a rustic,

having been brought up amid the grass and the trees.

Paris was astir and happy in the warmth and the light. The front of the

houses was bathed in sunlight, the janitress' canaries were singing in

their cages and there was an air of gaiety in the streets, in the faces

of the inhabitants, lighting them up with a smile as if all beings and

all things experienced a secret satisfaction at the rising of the

brilliant sun.

I walked towards the Seine to take the Swallow, which would land me at

Saint-Cloud.

How I loved waiting for the boat on the wharf:

It seemed to me that I was about to set out for the ends of the world,

for new and wonderful lands. I saw the boat approaching yonder, yonder

under the second bridge, looking quite small with its plume of smoke,

then growing larger and ever larger, as it drew near, until it looked to

me like a mail steamer.

It came up to the wharf and I went on board. People were there already

in their Sunday clothes, startling toilettes, gaudy ribbons and bright

scarlet designs. I took up a position in the bows, standing up and

looking at the quays, the trees, the houses and the bridges disappearing

behind us. And suddenly I perceived the great viaduct of Point du Jour

which blocked the river. It was the end of Paris, the beginning of the

country, and behind the double row of arches the Seine, suddenly

spreading out as though it had regained space and liberty, became all at

once the peaceful river which flows through the plains, alongside the

wooded hills, amid the meadows, along the edge of the forests.

After passing between two islands the Swallow went round a curved

verdant slope dotted with white houses. A voice called out: “Bas Meudon”

and a little further on, “Sevres,” and still further, “Saint-Cloud.”

I went on shore and walked hurriedly through the little town to the road

leading to the wood.

I had brought with me a map of the environs of Paris, so that I might

not lose my way amid the paths which cross in every direction these

little forests where Parisians take their outings.

As soon as I was unperceived I began to study my guide, which seemed to

be perfectly clear. I was to turn to the right, then to the left, then

again to the left and I should reach Versailles by evening in time for

dinner.

I walked slowly beneath the young leaves, drinking in the air, fragrant

with the odor of young buds and sap. I sauntered along, forgetful of

musty papers, of the offices, of my chief, my colleagues, my documents,

and thinking of the good things that were sure to come to me, of all the

veiled unknown contained in the future. A thousand recollections of

childhood came over me, awakened by these country odors, and I walked

along, permeated with the fragrant, living enchantment, the emotional

enchantment of the woods warmed by the sun of June.

At times I sat down to look at all sorts of little flowers growing on a

bank, with the names of which I was familiar. I recognized them all just

as if they were the ones I had seen long ago in the country. They were

yellow, red, violet, delicate, dainty, perched on long stems or close to

the ground. Insects of all colors and shapes, short, long, of peculiar

form, frightful, and microscopic monsters, climbed quietly up the stalks

of grass which bent beneath their weight.

Then I went to sleep for some hours in a hollow and started off again,

refreshed by my doze.

In front of me lay an enchanting pathway and through its somewhat scanty

foliage the sun poured down drops of light on the marguerites which grew

there. It stretched out interminably, quiet and deserted, save for an

occasional big wasp, who would stop buzzing now and then to sip from a

flower, and then continue his way.

All at once I perceived at the end of the path two persons, a man and a

woman, coming towards me. Annoyed at being disturbed in my quiet walk, I

was about to dive into the thicket, when I thought I heard someone

calling me. The woman was, in fact, shaking her parasol, and the man, in

his shirt sleeves, his coat over one arm, was waving the other as a

signal of distress.

I went towards them. They were walking hurriedly, their faces very red,

she with short, quick steps and he with long strides. They both looked

annoyed and fatigued.

The woman asked:

“Can you tell me, monsieur, where we are? My fool of a husband made us

lose our way, although he pretended he knew the country perfectly.”

I replied confidently:

“Madame, you are going towards Saint-Cloud and turning your back on

Versailles.”

With a look of annoyed pity for her husband, she exclaimed:

“What, we are turning our back on Versailles? Why, that is just where we

want to dine!”

“I am going there also, madame.”

“Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!” she repeated, shrugging her shoulders,

and in that tone of sovereign contempt assumed by women to express their

exasperation.

She was quite young, pretty, a brunette with a slight shadow on her

upper lip.

As for him, he was perspiring and wiping his forehead. It was assuredly

a little Parisian bourgeois couple. The man seemed cast down, exhausted

and distressed.

“But, my dear friend, it was you—” he murmured.

She did not allow him to finish his sentence.

“It was I! Ah, it is my fault now! Was it I who wanted to go out without

getting any information, pretending that I knew how to find my way? Was

it I who wanted to take the road to the right on top of the hill,

insisting that I recognized the road? Was it I who undertook to take

charge of Cachou—”

She had not finished speaking when her husband, as if he had suddenly

gone crazy, gave a piercing scream, a long, wild cry that could not be

described in any language, but which sounded like 'tuituit'.

The young woman did not appear to be surprised or moved and resumed:

“No, really, some people are so stupid and they pretend they know

everything. Was it I who took the train to Dieppe last year instead of

the train to Havre—tell me, was it I? Was it I who bet that M.

Letourneur lived in Rue des Martyres? Was it I who would not believe

that Celeste was a thief?”

She went on, furious, with a surprising flow of language, accumulating

the most varied, the most unexpected and the most overwhelming

accusations drawn from the intimate relations of their daily life,

reproaching her husband for all his actions, all his ideas, all his

habits, all his enterprises, all his efforts, for his life from the time

of their marriage up to the present time.

He strove to check her, to calm her and stammered:

“But, my dear, it is useless—before monsieur. We are making ourselves

ridiculous. This does not interest monsieur.”

And he cast mournful glances into the thicket as though he sought to

sound its peaceful and mysterious depths, in order to flee thither, to

escape and hide from all eyes, and from time to time he uttered a fresh

scream, a prolonged and shrill “tuituit.” I took this to be a nervous

affection.

The young woman, suddenly turning towards me: and changing her tone with

singular rapidity, said:

“If monsieur will kindly allow us, we will accompany him on the road, so

as not to lose our way again, and be obliged, possibly, to sleep in the

wood.”

I bowed. She took my arm and began to talk about a thousand things

—about herself, her life, her family, her business. They were glovers in

the Rue Saint-Lazare.

Her husband walked beside her, casting wild glances into the thick wood

and screaming “tuituit” every few moments.

At last I inquired:

“Why do you scream like that?”

“I have lost my poor dog,” he replied in a tone of discouragement and

despair.

“How is that—you have lost your dog?”

“Yes. He was just a year old. He had never been outside the shop. I

wanted to take him to have a run in the woods. He had never seen the

grass nor the leaves and he was almost wild. He began to run about and

bark and he disappeared in the wood. I must also add that he was greatly

afraid of the train. That may have driven him mad. I kept on calling

him, but he has not come back. He will die of hunger in there.”

Without turning towards her husband, the young woman said:

“If you had left his chain on, it would not have happened. When people

are as stupid as you are they do not keep a dog.”

“But, my dear, it was you—” he murmured timidly.

She stopped short, and looking into his eyes as if she were going to

tear them out, she began again to cast in his face innumerable

reproaches.

It was growing dark. The cloud of vapor that covers the country at dusk

was slowly rising and there was a poetry in the air, induced by the

peculiar and enchanting freshness of the atmosphere that one feels in

the woods at nightfall.

Suddenly the young man stopped, and feeling his body feverishly,

exclaimed:

“Oh, I think that I—”

She looked at him.

“Well, what?”

“I did not notice that I had my coat on my arm.”

“Well—?”

“I have lost my pocketbook—my money was in it.”

She shook with anger and choked with indignation.

“That was all that was lacking. How stupid you are! how stupid you are!

Is it possible that I could have married such an idiot! Well, go and

look for it, and see that you find it. I am going on to Versailles with

monsieur. I do not want to sleep in the wood.”

“Yes, my dear,” he replied gently. “Where shall I find you?”

A restaurant had been recommended to me. I gave him the address.

He turned back and, stooping down as he searched the ground with anxious

eyes, he moved away, screaming “tuituit” every few moments.

We could see him for some time until the growing darkness concealed all

but his outline, but we heard his mournful “tuituit,” shriller and

shriller as the night grew darker.

As for me, I stepped along quickly and happily in the soft twilight,

with this little unknown woman leaning on my arm. I tried to say pretty

things to her, but could think of nothing. I remained silent, disturbed,

enchanted.

Our path was suddenly crossed by a high road. To the right I perceived a

town lying in a valley.

What was this place? A man was passing. I asked him. He replied:

“Bougival.”

I was dumfounded.

“What, Bougival? Are you sure?”

“Parbleu, I belong there!”

The little woman burst into an idiotic laugh.

I proposed that we should take a carriage and drive to Versailles. She

replied:

“No, indeed. This is very funny and I am very hungry. I am really quite

calm. My husband will find his way all right. It is a treat to me to be

rid of him for a few hours.”

We went into a restaurant beside the water and I ventured to ask for a

private compartment. We had some supper. She sang, drank champagne,

committed all sorts of follies.

That was my first serious flirtation.

OUR LETTERS

Eight hours of railway travel induce sleep for some persons and insomnia

for others; with me, any journey prevents my sleeping on the following

night.

At about five o'clock I arrived at the estate of Abelle, which belongs

to my friends, the Murets d'Artus, to spend three weeks there. It is a

pretty house, built by one of their grandfathers in the style of the

latter half of the last century. Therefore it has that intimate

character of dwellings that have always been inhabited, furnished and

enlivened by the same people. Nothing changes; nothing alters the soul

of the dwelling, from which the furniture has never been taken out, the

tapestries never unnailed, thus becoming worn out, faded, discolored, on

the same walls. None of the old furniture leaves the place; only from

time to time it is moved a little to make room for a new piece, which

enters there like a new-born infant in the midst of brothers and

sisters.

The house is on a hill in the center of a park which slopes down to the

river, where there is a little stone bridge. Beyond the water the fields

stretch out in the distance, and here one can see the cows wandering

around, pasturing on the moist grass; their eyes seem full of the dew,

mist and freshness of the pasture. I love this dwelling, just as one

loves a thing which one ardently desires to possess. I return here every

autumn with infinite delight; I leave with regret.

After I had dined with this friendly family, by whom I was received like

a relative, I asked my friend, Paul Muret: “Which room did you give me

this year?”

“Aunt Rose's room.”

An hour later, followed by her three children, two little girls and a

boy, Madame Muret d'Artus installed me in Aunt Rose's room, where I had

not yet slept.

When I was alone I examined the walls, the furniture, the general aspect

of the room, in order to attune my mind to it. I knew it but little, as

I had entered it only once or twice, and I looked indifferently at a

pastel portrait of Aunt Rose, who gave her name to the room.

This old Aunt Rose, with her curls, looking at me from behind the glass,

made very little impression on my mind. She looked to me like a woman of

former days, with principles and precepts as strong on the maxims of

morality as on cooking recipes, one of these old aunts who are the

bugbear of gaiety and the stern and wrinkled angel of provincial

families.

I never had heard her spoken of; I knew nothing of her life or of her

death. Did she belong to this century or to the preceding one? Had she

left this earth after a calm or a stormy existence? Had she given up to

heaven the pure soul of an old maid, the calm soul of a spouse, the

tender one of a mother, or one moved by love? What difference did it

make? The name alone, “Aunt Rose,” seemed ridiculous, common, ugly.

I picked up a candle and looked at her severe face, hanging far up in an

old gilt frame. Then, as I found it insignificant, disagreeable, even

unsympathetic, I began to examine the furniture. It dated from the

period of Louis XVI, the Revolution and the Directorate. Not a chair,

not a curtain had entered this room since then, and it gave out the

subtle odor of memories, which is the combined odor of wood, cloth,

chairs, hangings, peculiar to places wherein have lived hearts that have

loved and suffered.

I retired but did not sleep. After I had tossed about for an hour or

two, I decided to get up and write some letters.

I opened a little mahogany desk with brass trimmings, which was placed

between the two windows, in hope of finding some ink and paper; but all

I found was a quill-pen, very much worn, and chewed at the end. I was

about to close this piece of furniture, when a shining spot attracted my

attention it looked like the yellow head of a nail. I scratched it with

my finger, and it seemed to move. I seized it between two finger-nails,

and pulled as hard as I could. It came toward me gently. It was a long

gold pin which had been slipped into a hole in the wood and remained

hidden there.

Why? I immediately thought that it must have served to work some spring

which hid a secret, and I looked. It took a long time. After about two

hours of investigation, I discovered another hole opposite the first

one, but at the bottom of a groove. Into this I stuck my pin: a little

shelf sprang toward my face, and I saw two packages of yellow letters,

tied with a blue ribbon.

I read them. Here are two of them:

So you wish me to return to you your letters, my dearest friend. Here

they are, but it pains me to obey. Of what are you afraid? That I might

lose them? But they are under lock and key. Do you fear that they might

be stolen? I guard against that, for they are my dearest treasure.

Yes, it pains me deeply. I wondered whether, perhaps you might not be

feeling some regret! Not regret at having loved me, for I know that you

still do, but the regret of having expressed on white paper this living

love in hours when your heart did not confide in me, but in the pen that

you held in your hand. When we love, we have need of confession, need of

talking or writing, and we either talk or write. Words fly away, those

sweet words made of music, air and tenderness, warm and light, which

escape as soon as they are uttered, which remain in the memory alone,

but which one can neither see, touch nor kiss, as one can with the words

written by your hand.

Your letters? Yes, I am returning them to you! But with what sorrow!

Undoubtedly, you must have had an after thought of delicate shame at

expressions that are ineffaceable. In your sensitive and timid soul you

must have regretted having written to a man that you loved him. You

remembered sentences that called up recollections, and you said to

yourself: “I will make ashes of those words.”

Be satisfied, be calm. Here are your letters. I love you.

MY FRIEND:

No, you have not understood me, you have not guessed. I do not regret,

and I never shall, that I told you of my affection.

I will always write to you, but you must return my letters to me as soon

as you have read them.

I shall shock you, my friend, when I tell you the reason for this

demand. It is not poetic, as you imagined, but practical. I am afraid,

not of you, but of some mischance. I am guilty. I do not wish my fault

to affect others than myself.

Understand me well. You and I may both die. You might fall off your

horse, since you ride every day; you might die from a sudden attack,

from a duel, from heart disease, from a carriage accident, in a thousand

ways. For, if there is only one death, there are more ways of its

reaching us than there are days or us to live.

Then your sisters, your brother, or your sister-in-law might find my

letters! Do you think that they love me? I doubt it. And then, even if

they adored me, is it possible for two women and one man to know a

secret—such a secret!—and not to tell of it?

I seem to be saying very disagreeable things, speaking first of your

death, and then suspecting the discreetness of your relatives.

But don't all of us die sooner or later? And it is almost certain that

one of us will precede the other under the ground. We must therefore

foresee all dangers, even that one.

As for me, I will keep your letters beside mine, in the secret of my

little desk. I will show them to you there, sleeping side by side in

their silken hiding place, full of our love, like lovers in a tomb.

You will say to me: “But if you should die first, my dear, your husband

will find these letters.”

Oh! I fear nothing. First of all, he does not know the secret of my

desk, and then he will not look for it. And even if he finds it after my

death, I fear nothing.

Did you ever stop to think of all the love letters that have been found

after death? I have been thinking of this for a long time, and that is

the reason I decided to ask you for my letters.

Think that never, do you understand, never, does a woman burn, tear or

destroy the letters in which it is told her that she is loved. That is

our whole life, our whole hope, expectation and dream. These little

papers which bear our name in caressing terms are relics which we adore;

they are chapels in which we are the saints. Our love letters are our

titles to beauty, grace, seduction, the intimate vanity of our

womanhood; they are the treasures of our heart. No, a woman does not

destroy these secret and delicious archives of her life.

But, like everybody else, we die, and then—then these letters are found!

Who finds them? The husband. Then what does he do? Nothing. He burns

them.

Oh, I have thought a great deal about that! Just think that every day

women are dying who have been loved; every day the traces and proofs of

their fault fall into the hands of their husbands, and that there is

never a scandal, never a duel.

Think, my dear, of what a man's heart is. He avenges himself on a living

woman; he fights with the man who has dishonored her, kills him while

she lives, because, well, why? I do not know exactly why. But, if, after

her death, he finds similar proofs, he burns them and no one is the

wiser, and he continues to shake hands with the friend of the dead

woman, and feels quite at ease that these letters should not have fallen

into strange hands, and that they are destroyed.

Oh, how many men I know among my friends who must have burned such

proofs, and who pretend to know nothing, and yet who would have fought

madly had they found them when she was still alive! But she is dead.

Honor has changed. The tomb is the boundary of conjugal sinning.

Therefore, I can safely keep our letters, which, in your hands, would be

a menace to both of us. Do you dare to say that I am not right?

I love you and kiss you.

I raised my eyes to the portrait of Aunt Rose, and as I looked at her

severe, wrinkled face, I thought of all those women's souls which we do

not know, and which we suppose to be so different from what they really

are, whose inborn and ingenuous craftiness we never can penetrate, their

quiet duplicity; and a verse of De Vigny returned to my memory:

“Always this comrade whose heart is uncertain.”

THE LOVE OF LONG AGO

The old-fashioned chateau was built on a wooded knoll in the midst of

tall trees with dark-green foliage; the park extended to a great

distance, in one direction to the edge of the forest, in another to the

distant country. A few yards from the front of the house was a huge

stone basin with marble ladies taking a bath; other, basins were seen at

intervals down to the foot of the slope, and a stream of water fell in

cascades from one basin to another.

From the manor house, which preserved the grace of a superannuated

coquette, down to the grottos incrusted with shell-work, where slumbered

the loves of a bygone age, everything in this antique demesne had

retained the physiognomy of former days. Everything seemed to speak

still of ancient customs, of the manners of long ago, of former

gallantries, and of the elegant trivialities so dear to our

grandmothers.

In a parlor in the style of Louis XV, whose walls were covered with

shepherds paying court to shepherdesses, beautiful ladies in hoop-

skirts, and gallant gentlemen in wigs, a very old woman, who seemed dead

as soon as she ceased to move, was almost lying down in a large easy-

chair, at each side of which hung a thin, mummy-like hand.

Her dim eyes were gazing dreamily toward the distant horizon as if they

sought to follow through the park the visions of her youth. Through the

open window every now and then came a breath of air laden with the odor

of grass and the perfume of flowers. It made her white locks flutter

around her wrinkled forehead and old memories float through her brain.

Beside her, on a tapestried stool, a young girl, with long fair hair

hanging in braids down her back, was embroidering an altar-cloth. There

was a pensive expression in her eyes, and it was easy to see that she

was dreaming, while her agile fingers flew over her work.

But the old lady turned round her head, and said:

“Berthe, read me something out of the newspapers, that I may still know

sometimes what is going on in the world.”

The young girl took up a newspaper, and cast a rapid glance over it.

“There is a great deal about politics, grandmamma; shall I pass that

over?”

“Yes, yes, darling. Are there no love stories? Is gallantry, then, dead

in France, that they no longer talk about abductions or adventures as

they did formerly?”

The girl made a long search through the columns of the newspaper.

“Here is one,” she said. “It is entitled 'A Love Drama!'”

The old woman smiled through her wrinkles. “Read that for me,” she said.

And Berthe commenced. It was a case of vitriol throwing. A wife, in

order to avenge herself on her husband's mistress, had burned her face

and eyes. She had left the Court of Assizes acquitted, declared to be

innocent, amid the applause of the crowd.

The grandmother moved about excitedly in her chair, and exclaimed:

“This is horrible—why, it is perfectly horrible!

“See whether you can find anything else to read to me, darling.”

Berthe again made a search; and farther down among the reports of

criminal cases, she read:

“'Gloomy Drama. A shop girl, no longer young, allowed herself to be led

astray by a young man. Then, to avenge herself on her lover, whose heart

proved fickle, she shot him with a revolver. The unhappy man is maimed

for life. The jury, all men of moral character, condoning the illicit

love of the murderess, honorably acquitted her.'”

This time the old grandmother appeared quite shocked, and, in a

trembling voice, she said:

“Why, you people are mad nowadays. You are mad! The good God has given

you love, the only enchantment in life. Man has added to this gallantry

the only distraction of our dull hours, and here you are mixing up with

it vitriol and revolvers, as if one were to put mud into a flagon of

Spanish wine.”

Berthe did not seem to understand her grandmother's indignation.

“But, grandmamma, this woman avenged herself. Remember she was married,

and her husband deceived her.”

The grandmother gave a start.

“What ideas have they been filling your head with, you young girls of

today?”

Berthe replied:

“But marriage is sacred, grandmamma.”

The grandmother's heart, which had its birth in the great age of

gallantry, gave a sudden leap.

“It is love that is sacred,” she said. “Listen, child, to an old woman

who has seen three generations, and who has had a long, long experience

of men and women. Marriage and love have nothing in common. We marry to

found a family, and we form families in order to constitute society.

Society cannot dispense with marriage. If society is a chain, each

family is a link in that chain. In order to weld those links, we always

seek metals of the same order. When we marry, we must bring together

suitable conditions; we must combine fortunes, unite similar races and

aim at the common interest, which is riches and children. We marry only

once my child, because the world requires us to do so, but we may love

twenty times in one lifetime because nature has made us like this.

Marriage, you see, is law, and love is an instinct which impels us,

sometimes along a straight, and sometimes along a devious path. The

world has made laws to combat our instincts—it was necessary to make

them; but our instincts are always stronger, and we ought not to resist

them too much, because they come from God; while the laws only come from

men. If we did not perfume life with love, as much love as possible,

darling, as we put sugar into drugs for children, nobody would care to

take it just as it is.”

Berthe opened her eyes wide in astonishment. She murmured:

“Oh! grandmamma, we can only love once.”

The grandmother raised her trembling hands toward Heaven, as if again to

invoke the defunct god of gallantries. She exclaimed indignantly:

“You have become a race of serfs, a race of common people. Since the

Revolution, it is impossible any longer to recognize society. You have

attached big words to every action, and wearisome duties to every corner

of existence; you believe in equality and eternal passion. People have

written poetry telling you that people have died of love. In my time

poetry was written to teach men to love every woman. And we! when we

liked a gentleman, my child, we sent him a page. And when a fresh

caprice came into our hearts, we were not slow in getting rid of the

last Lover—unless we kept both of them.”

The old woman smiled a keen smile, and a gleam of roguery twinkled in

her gray eye, the intellectual, skeptical roguery of those people who

did not believe that they were made of the same clay as the rest, and

who lived as masters for whom common beliefs were not intended.

The young girl, turning very pale, faltered out:

“So, then, women have no honor?”

The grandmother ceased to smile. If she had kept in her soul some of

Voltaire's irony, she had also a little of Jean Jacques's glowing

philosophy: “No honor! because we loved, and dared to say so, and even

boasted of it? But, my child, if one of us, among the greatest ladies in

France, had lived without a lover, she would have had the entire court

laughing at her. Those who wished to live differently had only to enter

a convent. And you imagine, perhaps, that your husbands will love but

you alone, all their lives. As if, indeed, this could be the case. I

tell you that marriage is a thing necessary in order that society should

exist, but it is not in the nature of our race, do you understand? There

is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how you

misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as something solemn

like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a dress.”

The young girl caught the old woman's trembling hands in her own.

“Hold your tongue, I beg of you, grandmamma!”

And, on her knees, with tears in her eyes, she prayed to Heaven to

bestow on her a great passion, one sole, eternal passion in accordance

with the dream of modern poets, while the grandmother, kissing her on

the forehead, quite imbued still with that charming, healthy reason with

which gallant philosophers tinctured the thought of the eighteenth

century, murmured:

“Take care, my poor darling! If you believe in such folly as that, you

will be very unhappy.”

FRIEND JOSEPH

They had been great friends all winter in Paris. As is always the case,

they had lost sight of each other after leaving school, and had met

again when they were old and gray-haired. One of them had married, but

the other had remained in single blessedness.

M. de Meroul lived for six months in Paris and for six months in his

little chateau at Tourbeville. Having married the daughter of a

neighboring squire, he had lived a good and peaceful life in the

indolence of a man who has nothing to do. Of a calm and quiet

disposition, and not over-intelligent he used to spend his time quietly

regretting the past, grieving over the customs and institutions of the

day and continually repeating to his wife, who would lift her eyes, and

sometimes her hands, to heaven, as a sign of energetic assent: “Good

gracious! What a government!”

Madame de Meroul resembled her husband intellectually as though she had

been his sister. She knew, by tradition, that one should above all

respect the Pope and the King!

And she loved and respected them from the bottom of her heart, without

knowing them, with a poetic fervor, with an hereditary devotion, with

the tenderness of a wellborn woman. She was good to, the marrow of her

bones. She had had no children, and never ceased mourning the fact.

On meeting his old friend, Joseph Mouradour, at a ball, M. de Meroul was

filled with a deep and simple joy, for in their youth they had been

intimate friends.

After the first exclamations of surprise at the changes which time had

wrought in their bodies and countenances, they told each other about

their lives since they had last met.

Joseph Mouradour, who was from the south of France, had become a

government official. His manner was frank; he spoke rapidly and without

restraint, giving his opinions without any tact. He was a Republican,

one of those good fellows who do not believe in standing on ceremony,

and who exercise an almost brutal freedom of speech.

He came to his friend's house and was immediately liked for his easy

cordiality, in spite of his radical ideas. Madame de Meroul would

exclaim:

“What a shame! Such a charming man!”

Monsieur de Meroul would say to his friend in a serious and confidential

tone of voice; “You have no idea the harm that you are doing your

country.” He loved him all the same, for nothing is stronger than the

ties of childhood taken up again at a riper age. Joseph Mouradour

bantered the wife and the husband, calling them “my amiable snails,” and

sometimes he would solemnly declaim against people who were behind the

times, against old prejudices and traditions.

When he was once started on his democratic eloquence, the couple,

somewhat ill at ease, would keep silent from politeness and good-

breeding; then the husband would try to turn the conversation into some

other channel in order to avoid a clash. Joseph Mouradour was only seen

in the intimacy of the family.

Summer came. The Merouls had no greater pleasure than to receive their

friends at their country home at Tourbeville. It was a good, healthy

pleasure, the enjoyments of good people and of country proprietors. They

would meet their friends at the neighboring railroad station and would

bring them back in their carriage, always on the lookout for compliments

on the country, on its natural features, on the condition of the roads,

on the cleanliness of the farm-houses, on the size of the cattle grazing

in the fields, on everything within sight.

They would call attention to the remarkable speed with which their horse

trotted, surprising for an animal that did heavy work part of the year

behind a plow; and they would anxiously await the opinion of the

newcomer on their family domain, sensitive to the least word, and

thankful for the slightest good intention.

Joseph Mouradour was invited, and he accepted the invitation.

Husband and wife had come to the train, delighted to welcome him to

their home. As soon as he saw them, Joseph Mouradour jumped from the

train with a briskness which increased their satisfaction. He shook

their hands, congratulated them, overwhelmed them with compliments.

All the way home he was charming, remarking on the height of the trees,

the goodness of the crops and the speed of the horse.

When he stepped on the porch of the house, Monsieur de Meroul said, with

a certain friendly solemnity:

“Consider yourself at home now.”

Joseph Mouradour answered:

“Thanks, my friend; I expected as much. Anyhow, I never stand on

ceremony with my friends. That's how I understand hospitality.”

Then he went upstairs to dress as a farmer, he said, and he came back

all togged out in blue linen, with a little straw hat and yellow shoes,

a regular Parisian dressed for an outing. He also seemed to become more

vulgar, more jovial, more familiar; having put on with his country

clothes a free and easy manner which he judged suitable to the

surroundings. His new manners shocked Monsieur and Madame de Meroul a

little, for they always remained serious and dignified, even in the

country, as though compelled by the two letters preceding their name to

keep up a certain formality even in the closest intimacy.

After lunch they all went out to visit the farms, and the Parisian

astounded the respectful peasants by his tone of comradeship.

In the evening the priest came to dinner, an old, fat priest, accustomed

to dining there on Sundays, but who had been especially invited this day

in honor of the new guest.

Joseph, on seeing him, made a wry face. Then he observed him with

surprise, as though he were a creature of some peculiar race, which he

had never been able to observe at close quarters. During the meal he

told some rather free stories, allowable in the intimacy of the family,

but which seemed to the Merouls a little out of place in the presence of

a minister of the Church. He did not say, “Monsieur l'abbe,” but simply,

“Monsieur.” He embarrassed the priest greatly by philosophical

discussions about diverse superstitions current all over the world. He

said: “Your God, monsieur, is of those who should be respected, but also

one of those who should be discussed. Mine is called Reason; he has

always been the enemy of yours.”

The Merouls, distressed, tried to turn the trend of the conversation.

The priest left very early.

Then the husband said, very quietly:

“Perhaps you went a little bit too far with the priest.”

But Joseph immediately exclaimed:

“Well, that's pretty good! As if I would be on my guard with a

shaveling! And say, do me the pleasure of not imposing him on me any

more at meals. You can both make use of him as much as you wish, but

don't serve him up to your friends, hang it!”

“But, my friends, think of his holy—”

Joseph Mouradour interrupted him:

“Yes, I know; they have to be treated like 'rosieres.' But let them

respect my convictions, and I will respect theirs!”

That was all for that day.

As soon as Madame de Meroul entered the parlor, the next morning, she

noticed in the middle of the table three newspapers which made her start

the Voltaire, the Republique-Francaise and the Justice. Immediately

Joseph Mouradour, still in blue, appeared on the threshold, attentively

reading the Intransigeant. He cried:

“There's a great article in this by Rochefort. That fellow is a wonder!”

He read it aloud, emphasizing the parts which especially pleased him, so

carried away by enthusiasm that he did not notice his friend's entrance.

Monsieur de Meroul was holding in his hand the Gaulois for himself, the

Clarion for his wife.

The fiery prose of the master writer who overthrew the empire, spouted

with violence, sung in the southern accent, rang throughout the peaceful

parsons seemed to spatter the walls and century-old furniture with a

hail of bold, ironical and destructive words.

The man and the woman, one standing, the other sitting, were listening

with astonishment, so shocked that they could not move.

In a burst of eloquence Mouradour finished the last paragraph, then

exclaimed triumphantly:

“Well! that's pretty strong!”

Then, suddenly, he noticed the two sheets which his friend was carrying,

and he, in turn, stood speechless from surprise. Quickly walking toward

him he demanded angrily:

“What are you doing with those papers?”

Monsieur de Meroul answered hesitatingly:

“Why—those—those are my papers!”

“Your papers! What are you doing—making fun of me? You will do me the

pleasure of reading mine; they will limber up your ideas, and as for

yours—there! that's what I do with them.”

And before his astonished host could stop him, he had seized the two

newspapers and thrown them out of the window. Then he solemnly handed

the Justice to Madame de Meroul, the Voltaire to her husband, while he

sank down into an arm-chair to finish reading the Intransigeant.

The couple, through delicacy, made a pretense of reading a little, they

then handed him back the Republican sheets, which they handled gingerly,

as though they might be poisoned.

He laughed and declared:

“One week of this regime and I will have you converted to my ideas.”

In truth, at the end of a week he ruled the house. He had closed the

door against the priest, whom Madame de Meroul had to visit secretly; he

had forbidden the Gaulois and the Clarion to be brought into the house,

so that a servant had to go mysteriously to the post-office to get them,

and as soon as he entered they would be hidden under sofa cushions; he

arranged everything to suit himself—always charming, always good-

natured, a jovial and all-powerful tyrant.

Other friends were expected, pious and conservative friends. The unhappy

couple saw the impossibility of having them there then, and, not knowing

what to do, one evening they announced to Joseph Mouradour that they

would be obliged to absent themselves for a few days, on business, and

they begged him to stay on alone. He did not appear disturbed, and

answered:

“Very well, I don't mind! I will wait here as long as you wish. I have

already said that there should be no formality between friends. You are

perfectly right-go ahead and attend to your business. It will not offend

me in the least; quite the contrary, it will make me feel much more

completely one of the family. Go ahead, my friends, I will wait for

you!”

Monsieur and Madame de Meroul left the following day.

He is still waiting for them.

THE EFFEMINATES

How often we hear people say, “He is charming, that man, but he is a

girl, a regular girl.” They are alluding to the effeminates, the bane of

our land.

For we are all girl-like men in France—that is, fickle, fanciful,

innocently treacherous, without consistency in our convictions or our

will, violent and weak as women are.

But the most irritating of girl—men is assuredly the Parisian and the

boulevardier, in whom the appearance of intelligence is more marked and

who combines in himself all the attractions and all the faults of those

charming creatures in an exaggerated degree in virtue of his masculine

temperament.

Our Chamber of Deputies is full of girl-men. They form the greater

number of the amiable opportunists whom one might call “The Charmers.”

These are they who control by soft words and deceitful promises, who

know how to shake hands in such a manner as to win hearts, how to say

“My dear friend” in a certain tactful way to people he knows the least,

to change his mind without suspecting it, to be carried away by each new

idea, to be sincere in their weathercock convictions, to let themselves

be deceived as they deceive others, to forget the next morning what he

affirmed the day before.

The newspapers are full of these effeminate men. That is probably where

one finds the most, but it is also where they are most needed. The

Journal des Debats and the Gazette de France are exceptions.

Assuredly, every good journalist must be somewhat effeminate—that is, at

the command of the public, supple in following unconsciously the shades

of public opinion, wavering and varying, sceptical and credulous, wicked

and devout, a braggart and a true man, enthusiastic and ironical, and

always convinced while believing in nothing.

Foreigners, our anti-types, as Mme. Abel called them, the stubborn

English and the heavy Germans, regard us with a certain amazement

mingled with contempt, and will continue to so regard us till the end of

time. They consider us frivolous. It is not that, it is that we are

girls. And that is why people love us in spite of our faults, why they

come back to us despite the evil spoken of us; these are lovers'

quarrels! The effeminate man, as one meets him in this world, is so

charming that he captivates you after five minutes' chat. His smile

seems made for you; one cannot believe that his voice does not assume

specially tender intonations on their account. When he leaves you it

seems as if one had known him for twenty years. One is quite ready to

lend him money if he asks for it. He has enchanted you, like a woman.

If he commits any breach of manners towards you, you cannot bear any

malice, he is so pleasant when you next meet him. If he asks your pardon

you long to ask pardon of him. Does he tell lies? You cannot believe it.

Does he put you off indefinitely with promises that he does not keep?

One lays as much store by his promises as though he had moved heaven and

earth to render them a service.

When he admires anything he goes into such raptures that he convinces

you. He once adored Victor Hugo, whom he now treats as a back number. He

would have fought for Zola, whom he has abandoned for Barbey and

d'Aurevilly. And when he admires, he permits no limitation, he would

slap your face for a word. But when he becomes scornful, his contempt is

unbounded and allows of no protest.

In fact, he understands nothing.

Listen to two girls talking.

“Then you are angry with Julia?” “I slapped her face.” “What had she

done?” “She told Pauline that I had no money thirteen months out of

twelve, and Pauline told Gontran—you understand.” “You were living

together in the Rue Clanzel?” “We lived together four years in the Rue

Breda; we quarrelled about a pair of stockings that she said I had worn

—it wasn't true—silk stockings that she had bought at Mother Martin's.

Then I gave her a pounding and she left me at once. I met her six months

ago and she asked me to come and live with her, as she has rented a flat

that is twice too large.”

One goes on one's way and hears no more. But on the following Sunday as

one is on the way to Saint Germain two young women get into the same

railway carriage. One recognizes one of them at once; it is Julia's

enemy. The other is Julia!

And there are endearments, caresses, plans. “Say, Julia—listen, Julia,”

etc.

The girl-man has his friendships of this kind. For three months he

cannot bear to leave his old Jack, his dear Jack. There is no one but

Jack in the world. He is the only one who has any intelligence, any

sense, any talent. He alone amounts to anything in Paris. One meets them

everywhere together, they dine together, walk about in company, and

every evening walk home with each other back and forth without being

able to part with one another.

Three months later, if Jack is mentioned:

“There is a drinker, a sorry fellow, a scoundrel for you. I know him

well, you may be sure. And he is not even honest, and ill-bred,” etc.,

etc.

Three months later, and they are living together.

But one morning one hears that they have fought a duel, then embraced

each other, amid tears, on the duelling ground.

Just now they are the dearest friends in the world, furious with each

other half the year, abusing and loving each other by turns, squeezing

each other's hands till they almost crush the bones, and ready to run

each other through the body for a misunderstanding.

For the relations of these effeminate men are uncertain. Their temper is

by fits and starts, their delight unexpected, their affection turn-

about-face, their enthusiasm subject to eclipse. One day they love you,

the next day they will hardly look at you, for they have in fact a

girl's nature, a girl's charm, a girl's temperament, and all their

sentiments are like the affections of girls.

They treat their friends as women treat their pet dogs.

It is the dear little Toutou whom they hug, feed with sugar, allow to

sleep on the pillow, but whom they would be just as likely to throw out

of a window in a moment of impatience, whom they turn round like a

sling, holding it by the tail, squeeze in their arms till they almost

strangle it, and plunge, without any reason, in a pail of cold water.

Then, what a strange thing it is when one of these beings falls in love

with a real girl! He beats her, she scratches him, they execrate each

other, cannot bear the sight of each other and yet cannot part, linked

together by no one knows what mysterious psychic bonds. She deceives

him, he knows it, sobs and forgives her. He despises and adores her

without seeing that she would be justified in despising him. They are

both atrociously unhappy and yet cannot separate. They cast invectives,

reproaches and abominable accusations at each other from morning till

night, and when they have reached the climax and are vibrating with rage

and hatred, they fall into each other's arms and kiss each other

ardently.

The girl-man is brave and a coward at the same time. He has, more than

another, the exalted sentiment of honor, but is lacking in the sense of

simple honesty, and, circumstances favoring him, would defalcate and

commit infamies which do not trouble his conscience, for he obeys

without questioning the oscillations of his ideas, which are always

impulsive.

To him it seems permissible and almost right to cheat a haberdasher. He

considers it honorable not to pay his debts, unless they are gambling

debts—that is, somewhat shady. He dupes people whenever the laws of

society admit of his doing so. When he is short of money he borrows in

all ways, not always being scrupulous as to tricking the lenders, but he

would, with sincere indignation, run his sword through anyone who should

suspect him of only lacking in politeness.

OLD AMABLE

PART I

The humid gray sky seemed to weigh down on the vast brown plain. The

odor of autumn, the sad odor of bare, moist lands, of fallen leaves, of

dead grass made the stagnant evening air more thick and heavy. The

peasants were still at work, scattered through the fields, waiting for

the stroke of the Angelus to call them back to the farmhouses, whose

thatched roofs were visible here and there through the branches of the

leafless trees which protected the apple-gardens against the wind.

At the side of the road, on a heap of clothes, a very small boy seated

with his legs apart was playing with a potato, which he now and then let

fall on his dress, whilst five women were bending down planting slips of

colza in the adjoining plain. With a slow, continuous movement, all

along the mounds of earth which the plough had just turned up, they

drove in sharp wooden stakes and in the hole thus formed placed the

plant, already a little withered, which sank on one side; then they

patted down the earth and went on with their work.

A man who was passing, with a whip in his hand, and wearing wooden

shoes, stopped near the child, took it up and kissed it. Then one of the

women rose up and came across to him. She was a big, red haired girl,

with large hips, waist and shoulders, a tall Norman woman, with yellow

hair in which there was a blood-red tint.

She said in a resolute voice:

“Why, here you are, Cesaire—well?”

The man, a thin young fellow with a melancholy air, murmured:

“Well, nothing at all—always the same thing.”

“He won't have it?”

“He won't have it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What do you say I ought to do?”

“Go see the cure.”

“I will.”

“Go at once!”

“I will.”

And they stared at each other. He held the child in his arms all the

time. He kissed it once more and then put it down again on the woman's

clothes.

In the distance, between two farm-houses, could be seen a plough drawn

by a horse and driven by a man. They moved on very gently, the horse,

the plough and the laborer, in the dim evening twilight.

The woman went on:

“What did your father say?”

“He said he would not have it.”

“Why wouldn't he have it?”

The young man pointed toward the child whom he had just put back on the

ground, then with a glance he drew her attention to the man drawing the

plough yonder there.

And he said emphatically:

“Because 'tis his—this child of yours.”

The girl shrugged her shoulders and in an angry tone said:

“Faith, every one knows it well—that it is Victor's. And what about it

after all? I made a slip. Am I the only woman that did? My mother also

made a slip before me, and then yours did the same before she married

your dad! Who is it that hasn't made a slip in the country? I made a

slip with Victor because he took advantage of me while I was asleep in

the barn, it's true, and afterward it happened between us when I wasn't

asleep. I certainly would have married him if he weren't a servant man.

Am I a worse woman for that?”

The man said simply:

“As for me, I like you just as you are, with or without the child. It's

only my father that opposes me. All the same, I'll see about settling

the business.”

She answered:

“Go to the cure at once.”

“I'm going to him.”

And he set forth with his heavy peasant's tread, while the girl, with

her hands on her hips, turned round to plant her colza.

In fact, the man who thus went off, Cesaire Houlbreque, the son of deaf

old Amable Houlbreque, wanted to marry, in spite of his father, Celeste

Levesque, who had a child by Victor Lecoq, a mere laborer on her

parents' farm, who had been turned out of doors for this act.

The hierarchy of caste, however, does not exist in the country, and if

the laborer is thrifty, he becomes, by taking a farm in his turn, the

equal of his former master.

So Cesaire Houlbieque went off, his whip under his arm, brooding over

his own thoughts and lifting up one after the other his heavy wooden

shoes daubed with clay. Certainly he desired to marry Celeste Levesque.

He wanted her with her child because she was the wife he wanted. He

could not say why, but he knew it, he was sure of it. He had only to

look at her to be convinced of it, to feel quite queer, quite stirred

up, simply stupid with happiness. He even found a pleasure in kissing

the little boy, Victor's little boy, because he belonged to her.

And he gazed, without hate, at the distant outline of the man who was

driving his plough along the horizon.

But old Amable did not want this marriage. He opposed it with the

obstinacy of a deaf man, with a violent obstinacy.

Cesaire in vain shouted in his ear, in that ear which still heard a few

sounds:

“I'll take good care of you, daddy. I tell you she's a good girl and

strong, too, and also thrifty.”

The old man repeated:

“As long as I live I won't see her your wife.”

And nothing could get the better of him, nothing could make him waver.

One hope only was left to Cesaire. Old Amable was afraid of the cure

through the apprehension of death which he felt drawing nigh; he had not

much fear of God, nor of the Devil, nor of Hell, nor of Purgatory, of

which he had no conception, but he dreaded the priest, who represented

to him burial, as one might fear the doctors through horror of diseases.

For the last tight days Celeste, who knew this weakness of the old man,

had been urging Cesaire to go and find the cure, but Cesaire always

hesitated, because he had not much liking for the black robe, which

represented to him hands always stretched out for collections or for

blessed bread.

However, he had made up his mind, and he proceeded toward the

presbytery, thinking in what manner he would speak about his case.

The Abbe Raffin, a lively little priest, thin and never shaved, was

awaiting his dinner-hour while warming his feet at his kitchen fire.

As soon as he saw the peasant entering he asked, merely turning his

head:

“Well, Cesaire, what do you want?”

“I'd like to have a talk with you, M. le Cure.”

The man remained standing, intimidated, holding his cap in one hand and

his whip in the other.

“Well, talk.”

Cesaire looked at the housekeeper, an old woman who dragged her feet

while putting on the cover for her master's dinner at the corner of the

table in front of the window.

He stammered:

“'Tis—'tis a sort of confession.”

Thereupon the Abbe Raffin carefully surveyed his peasant. He saw his

confused countenance, his air of constraint, his wandering eyes, and he

gave orders to the housekeeper in these words:

“Marie, go away for five minutes to your room, while I talk to Cesaire.”

The servant cast on the man an angry glance and went away grumbling.

The clergyman went on:

“Come, now, tell your story.”

The young fellow still hesitated, looked down at his wooden shoes, moved

about his cap, then, all of a sudden, he made up his mind:

“Here it is: I want to marry Celeste Levesque.”

“Well, my boy, what's there to prevent you?”

“The father won't have it.”

“Your father?”

“Yes, my father.”

“What does your father say?”

“He says she has a child.”

“She's not the first to whom that happened, since our Mother Eve.”

“A child by Victor Lecoq, Anthime Loisel's servant man.”

“Ha! ha! So he won't have it?”

“He won't have it.”

“What! not at all?”

“No, no more than an ass that won't budge an inch, saving your

presence.”

“What do you say to him yourself in order to make him decide?”

“I say to him that she's a good girl, and strong, too, and thrifty

also.”

“And this does not make him agree to it. So you want me to speak to

him?”

“Exactly. You speak to him.”

“And what am I to tell your father?”

“Why, what you tell people in your sermons to make them give you sous.”

In the peasant's mind every effort of religion consisted in loosening

the purse strings, in emptying the pockets of men in order to fill the

heavenly coffer. It was a kind of huge commercial establishment, of

which the cures were the clerks; sly, crafty clerks, sharp as any one

must be who does business for the good God at the expense of the country

people.

He knew full well that the priests rendered services, great services to

the poorest, to the sick and dying, that they assisted, consoled,

counselled, sustained, but all this by means of money, in exchange for

white pieces, for beautiful glittering coins, with which they paid for

sacraments and masses, advice and protection, pardon of sins and

indulgences, purgatory and paradise according to the yearly income and

the generosity of the sinner.

The Abbe Raffin, who knew his man and who never lost his temper, burst

out laughing.

“Well, yes, I'll tell your father my little story; but you, my lad,

you'll come to church.”

Houlbreque extended his hand in order to give a solemn assurance:

“On the word of a poor man, if you do this for me, I promise that I

will.”

“Come, that's all right. When do you wish me to go and find your

father?”

“Why, the sooner the better-to-night, if you can.”

“In half an hour, then, after supper.”

“In half an hour.”

“That's understood. So long, my lad.”

“Good-by till we meet again, Monsieur le Cure; many thanks.”

“Not at all, my lad.”

And Cesaire Houlbreque returned home, his heart relieved of a great

weight.

He held on lease a little farm, quite small, for they were not rich, his

father and he. Alone with a female servant, a little girl of fifteen,

who made the soup, looked after the fowls, milked the cows and churned

the butter, they lived frugally, though Cesaire was a good cultivator.

But they did not possess either sufficient lands or sufficient cattle to

earn more than the indispensable.

The old man no longer worked. Sad, like all deaf people, crippled with

pains, bent double, twisted, he went through the fields leaning on his

stick, watching the animals and the men with a hard, distrustful eye.

Sometimes he sat down on the side of the road and remained there without

moving for hours, vaguely pondering over the things that had engrossed

his whole life, the price of eggs, and corn, the sun and the rain which

spoil the crops or make them grow. And, worn out with rheumatism, his

old limbs still drank in the humidity of the soul, as they had drunk in

for the past sixty years, the moisture of the walls of his low house

thatched with damp straw.

He came back at the close of the day, took his place at the end of the

table in the kitchen and when the earthen bowl containing the soup had

been placed before him he placed round it his crooked fingers, which

seemed to have kept the round form of the bowl and, winter and summer,

he warmed his hands, before commencing to eat, so as to lose nothing,

not even a particle of the heat that came from the fire, which costs a

great deal, neither one drop of soup into which fat and salt have to be

put, nor one morsel of bread, which comes from the wheat.

Then he climbed up a ladder into a loft, where he had his straw-bed,

while his son slept below stairs at the end of a kind of niche near the

chimneypiece and the servant shut herself up in a kind of cellar, a

black hole which was formerly used to store the potatoes.

Cesaire and his father scarcely ever talked to each other. From time to

time only, when there was a question of selling a crop or buying a calf,

the young man would ask his father's advice, and, making a speaking-

trumpet of his two hands, he would bawl out his views into his ear, and

old Amable either approved of them or opposed them in a slow, hollow

voice that came from the depths of his stomach.

So one evening Cesaire, approaching him as if about to discuss the

purchase of a horse or a heifer, communicated to him at the top of his

voice his intention to marry Celeste Levesque.

Then the father got angry. Why? On the score of morality? No, certainly.

The virtue of a girl is of slight importance in the country. But his

avarice, his deep, fierce instinct for saving, revolted at the idea that

his son should bring up a child which he had not begotten himself. He

had thought suddenly, in one second, of the soup the little fellow would

swallow before becoming useful on the farm. He had calculated all the

pounds of bread, all the pints of cider that this brat would consume up

to his fourteenth year, and a mad anger broke loose from him against

Cesaire, who had not bestowed a thought on all this.

He replied in an unusually strong voice:

“Have you lost your senses?”

Thereupon Cesaire began to enumerate his reasons, to speak about

Celeste's good qualities, to prove that she would be worth a thousand

times what the child would cost. But the old man doubted these

advantages, while he could have no doubts as to the child's existence;

and he replied with emphatic repetition, without giving any further

explanation:

“I will not have it! I will not have it! As long as I live, this won't

be done!” And at this point they had remained for the last three months

without one or the other giving in, resuming at least once a week the

same discussion, with the same arguments, the same words, the same

gestures and the same fruitlessness.

It was then that Celeste had advised Cesaire to go and ask for the

cure's assistance.

On arriving home the peasant found his father already seated at table,

for he came late through his visit to the presbytery.

They dined in silence, face to face, ate a little bread and butter after

the soup and drank a glass of cider. Then they remained motionless in

their chairs, with scarcely a glimmer of light, the little servant girl

having carried off the candle in order to wash the spoons, wipe the

glasses and cut the crusts of bread to be ready for next morning's

breakfast.

There was a knock, at the door, which was immediately opened, and the

priest appeared. The old man raised toward him an anxious eye full of

suspicion, and, foreseeing danger, he was getting ready to climb up his

ladder when the Abbe Raffin laid his hand on his shoulder and shouted

close to his temple:

“I want to have a talk with you, Father Amable.”

Cesaire had disappeared, taking advantage of the door being open. He did

not want to listen, for he was afraid and did not want his hopes to

crumble slowly with each obstinate refusal of his father. He preferred

to learn the truth at once, good or bad, later on; and he went out into

the night. It was a moonless, starless night, one of those misty nights

when the air seems thick with humidity. A vague odor of apples floated

through the farmyard, for it was the season when the earliest applies

were gathered, the “early ripe,” as they are called in the cider

country. As Cesaire passed along by the cattlesheds the warm smell of

living beasts asleep on manure was exhaled through the narrow windows,

and he heard the stamping of the horses, who were standing at the end of

the stable, and the sound of their jaws tearing and munching the hay on

the racks.

He went straight ahead, thinking about Celeste. In this simple nature,

whose ideas were scarcely more than images generated directly by

objects, thoughts of love only formulated themselves by calling up

before the mind the picture of a big red-haired girl standing in a

hollow road and laughing, with her hands on her hips.

It was thus he saw her on the day when he first took a fancy for her. He

had, however, known her from infancy, but never had he been so struck by

her as on that morning. They had stopped to talk for a few minutes and

then he went away, and as he walked along he kept repeating:

“Faith, she's a fine girl, all the same. 'Tis a pity she made a slip

with Victor.”

Till evening he kept thinking of her and also on the following morning.

When he saw her again he felt something tickling the end of his throat,

as if a cock's feather had been driven through his mouth into his chest,

and since then, every time he found himself near her, he was astonished

at this nervous tickling which always commenced again.

In three months he made up his mind to marry her, so much did she please

him. He could not have said whence came this power over him, but he

explained it in these words:

“I am possessed by her,” as if the desire for this girl within him were

as dominating as one of the powers of hell. He scarcely bothered himself

about her transgression. It was a pity, but, after all, it did her no

harm, and he bore no grudge against Victor Lecoq.

But if the cure should not succeed, what was he to do? He did not dare

to think of it, the anxiety was such a torture to him.

He reached the presbytery and seated himself near the little gateway to

wait for the priest's return.

He was there perhaps half an hour when he heard steps on the road, and

although the night was very dark, he presently distinguished the still

darker shadow of the cassock.

He rose up, his legs giving way under him, not even venturing to speak,

not daring to ask a question.

The clergyman perceived him and said gaily:

“Well, my lad, it's all right.”

Cesaire stammered:

“All right, 'tisn't possible.”

“Yes, my lad, but not without trouble. What an old ass your father is!”

The peasant repeated:

“'Tisn't possible!”

“Why, yes. Come and look me up to-morrow at midday in order to settle

about the publication of the banns.”

The young man seized the cure's hand. He pressed it, shook it, bruised

it as he stammered:

“True-true-true, Monsieur le Cure, on the word of an honest man, you'll

see me to-morrow-at your sermon.”

PART II

The wedding took place in the middle of December. It was simple, the

bridal pair not being rich. Cesaire, attired in new clothes, was ready

since eight o'clock in the morning to go and fetch his betrothed and

bring her to the mayor's office, but it was too early. He seated himself

before the kitchen table and waited for the members of the family and

the friends who were to accompany him.

For the last eight days it had been snowing, and the brown earth, the

earth already fertilized by the autumn sowing, had become a dead white,

sleeping under a great sheet of ice.

It was cold in the thatched houses adorned with white caps, and the

round apples in the trees of the enclosures seemed to be flowering,

covered with white as they had been in the pleasant month of their

blossoming.

This day the big clouds to the north, the big great snow clouds, had

disappeared and the blue sky showed itself above the white earth on

which the rising sun cast silvery reflections.

Cesaire looked straight before him through the window, thinking of

nothing, quite happy.

The door opened, two women entered, peasant women in their Sunday

clothes, the aunt and the cousin of the bridegroom; then three men, his

cousins; then a woman who was a neighbor. They sat down on chairs and

remained, motionless and silent, the women on one side of the kitchen,

the men on the other, suddenly seized with timidity, with that

embarrassed sadness which takes possession of people assembled for a

ceremony. One of the cousins soon asked:

“Is it not the hour?”

Cesaire replied:

“I am much afraid it is.”

“Come on! Let us start,” said another.

Those rose up. Then Cesaire, whom a feeling of uneasiness had taken

possession of, climbed up the ladder of the loft to see whether his

father was ready. The old man, always as a rule an early riser, had not

yet made his appearance. His son found him on his bed of straw, wrapped

up in his blanket, with his eyes open and a malicious gleam in them.

He bawled into his ear: “Come, daddy, get up. It's time for the

wedding.”

The deaf man murmured-in a doleful tone:

“I can't get up. I have a sort of chill over me that freezes my back. I

can't stir.”

The young man, dumbfounded, stared at him, guessing that this was a

dodge.

“Come, daddy; you must make an effort.”

“I can't do it.”

“Look here! I'll help you.”

And he stooped toward the old man, pulled off his blanket, caught him by

the arm and lifted him up. But old Amable began to whine, “Ooh! ooh!

ooh! What suffering! Ooh! I can't. My back is stiffened up. The cold

wind must have rushed in through this cursed roof.”

“Well, you'll get no dinner, as I'm having a spread at Polyte's inn.

This will teach you what comes of acting mulishly.”

And he hurried down the ladder and started out, accompanied by his

relatives and guests.

The men had turned up the bottoms of their trousers so as not to get

them wet in the snow. The women held up their petticoats and showed

their lean ankles with gray woollen stockings and their bony shanks

resembling broomsticks. And they all moved forward with a swinging gait,

one behind the other, without uttering a word, moving cautiously, for

fear of losing the road which was-hidden beneath the flat, uniform,

uninterrupted stretch of snow.

As they approached the farmhouses they saw one or two persons waiting to

join them, and the procession went on without stopping and wound its way

forward, following the invisible outlines of the road, so that it

resembled a living chaplet of black beads undulating through the white

countryside.

In front of the bride's door a large group was stamping up and down the

open space awaiting the bridegroom. When he appeared they gave him a

loud greeting, and presently Celeste came forth from her room, clad in a

blue dress, her shoulders covered with a small red shawl and her head

adorned with orange flowers.

But every one asked Cesaire:

“Where's your father?”

He replied with embarrassment:

“He couldn't move on account of the pains.”

And the farmers tossed their heads with a sly, incredulous air.

They directed their steps toward the mayor's office. Behind the pair

about to be wedded a peasant woman carried Victor's child, as if it were

going to be baptized; and the peasants, in pairs now, with arms linked,

walked through the snow with the movements of a sloop at sea.

After having been united by the mayor in the little municipal house the

pair were made one by the cure, in his turn, in the modest house of God.

He blessed their union by promising them fruitfulness, then he preached

to them on the matrimonial virtues, the simple and healthful virtues of

the country, work, concord and fidelity, while the child, who was cold,

began to fret behind the bride.

As soon as the couple reappeared on the threshold of the church shots

were discharged from the ditch of the cemetery. Only the barrels of the

guns could be seen whence came forth rapid jets of smoke; then a head

could be seen gazing at the procession. It was Victor Lecoq celebrating

the marriage of his old sweetheart, wishing her happiness and sending

her his good wishes with explosions of powder. He had employed some

friends of his, five or six laboring men, for these salvos of musketry.

It was considered a nice attention.

The repast was given in Polyte Cacheprune's inn. Twenty covers were laid

in the great hall where people dined on market days, and the big leg of

mutton turning before the spit, the fowls browned under their own gravy,

the chitterlings sputtering over the bright, clear fire filled the house

with a thick odor of live coal sprinkled with fat—the powerful, heavy

odor of rustic fare.

They sat down to table at midday and the soup was poured at once into

the plates. All faces had already brightened up; mouths opened to utter

loud jokes and eyes were laughing with knowing winks. They were going to

amuse themselves and no mistake.

The door opened, and old Amable appeared. He seemed in a bad humor and

his face wore a scowl as he dragged himself forward on his sticks,

whining at every step to indicate his suffering. As soon as they saw him

they stopped talking, but suddenly his neighbor, Daddy Malivoire, a big

joker, who knew all the little tricks and ways of people, began to yell,

just as Cesaire used to do, by making a speaking-trumpet of his hands.

“Hallo, my cute old boy, you have a good nose on you to be able to smell

Polyte's cookery from your own house!”

A roar of laughter burst forth from the throats of those present.

Malivoire, excited by his success, went on:

“There's nothing for the rheumatics like a chitterling poultice! It

keeps your belly warm, along with a glass of three-six!”

The men uttered shouts, banged the table with their fists, laughed,

bending on one side and raising up their bodies again as if they were

working a pump. The women clucked like hens, while the servants

wriggled, standing against the walls. Old Amable was the only one that

did not laugh, and, without making any reply, waited till they made room

for him.

They found a place for him in the middle of the table, facing his

daughter-in-law, and, as soon as he was seated, he began to eat. It was

his son who was paying, after all; it was right he should take his

share. With each ladleful of soup that went into his stomach, with each

mouthful of bread or meat crushed between his gums, with each glass of

cider or wine that flowed through his gullet he thought he was regaining

something of his own property, getting back a little of his money which

all those gluttons were devouring, saving in fact a portion of his own

means. And he ate in silence with the obstinacy of a miser who hides his

coppers, with the same gloomy persistence with which he formerly

performed his daily labors.

But all of a sudden he noticed at the end of the table Celeste's child

on a woman's lap, and his eye remained fixed on the little boy. He went

on eating, with his glance riveted on the youngster, into whose mouth

the woman who minded him every now and then put a little morsel which he

nibbled at. And the old man suffered more from the few mouthfuls sucked

by this little chap than from all that the others swallowed.

The meal lasted till evening. Then every one went back home.

Cesaire raised up old Amable.

“Come, daddy, we must go home,” said he.

And he put the old man's two sticks in his hands.

Celeste took her child in her arms, and they went on slowly through the

pale night whitened by the snow. The deaf old man, three-fourths tipsy,

and even more malicious under the influence of drink, refused to go

forward. Several times he even sat down with the object of making his

daughter-in-law catch cold, and he kept whining, without uttering a

word, giving vent to a sort of continuous groaning as if he were in

pain.

When they reached home he at once climbed up to his loft, while Cesaire

made a bed for the child near the deep niche where he was going to lie

down with his wife. But as the newly wedded pair could not sleep

immediately, they heard the old man for a long time moving about on his

bed of straw, and he even talked aloud several times, whether it was

that he was dreaming or that he let his thoughts escape through his

mouth, in spite of himself, not being able to keep them back, under the

obsession of a fixed idea.

When he came down his ladder next morning he saw his daughter-in-law

looking after the housekeeping.

She cried out to him:

“Come, daddy, hurry on! Here's some good soup.”

And she placed at the end of the table the round black earthen bowl

filled with steaming liquid. He sat down without giving any answer,

seized the hot bowl, warmed his hands with it in his customary fashion,

and, as it was very cold, even pressed it against his breast to try to

make a little of the living heat of the boiling liquid enter into him,

into his old body stiffened by so many winters.

Then he took his sticks and went out into the fields, covered with ice,

till it was time for dinner, for he had seen Celeste's youngster still

asleep in a big soap-box.

He did not take his place in the household. He lived in the thatched

house, as in bygone days, but he seemed not to belong to it any longer,

to be no longer interested in anything, to look upon those people, his

son, the wife and the child as strangers whom he did not know, to whom

he never spoke.

The winter glided by. It was long and severe.

Then the early spring made the seeds sprout forth again, and the

peasants once more, like laborious ants, passed their days in the

fields, toiling from morning till night, under the wind and under the

rain, along the furrows of brown earth which brought forth the bread of

men.

The year promised well for the newly married pair. The crops grew thick

and strong. There were no late frosts, and the apples bursting into

bloom scattered on the grass their rosy white snow which promised a hail

of fruit for the autumn.

Cesaire toiled hard, rose early and left off work late, in order to save

the expense of a hired man.

His wife said to him sometimes:

“You'll make yourself ill in the long run.”

He replied:

“Certainly not. I'm a good judge.”

Nevertheless one evening he came home so fatigued that he had to get to

bed without supper. He rose up next morning at the usual hour, but he

could not eat, in spite of his fast on the previous night, and he had to

come back to the house in the middle of the afternoon in order to go to

bed again. In the course of the night he began to cough; he turned round

on his straw couch, feverish, with his forehead burning, his tongue dry

and his throat parched by a burning thirst.

However, at daybreak he went toward his grounds, but next morning the

doctor had to be sent for and pronounced him very ill with inflammation

of the lungs.

And he no longer left the dark recess in which he slept. He could be

heard coughing, gasping and tossing about in this hole. In order to see

him, to give his medicine and to apply cupping-glasses they had to-bring

a candle to the entrance. Then one could see his narrow head with his

long matted beard underneath a thick lacework of spiders' webs, which

hung and floated when stirred by the air. And the hands of the sick man

seemed dead under the dingy sheets.

Celeste watched him with restless activity, made him take physic,

applied blisters to him, went back and forth in the house, while old

Amable remained at the edge of his loft, watching at a distance the

gloomy cavern where his son lay dying. He did not come near him, through

hatred of the wife, sulking like an ill-tempered dog.

Six more days passed, then one morning, as Celeste, who now slept on the

ground on two loose bundles of straw, was going to see whether her man

was better, she no longer heard his rapid breathing from the interior of

his recess. Terror stricken, she asked:

“Well Cesaire, what sort of a night had you?”

He did not answer. She put out her hand to touch him, and the flesh on

his face felt cold as ice. She uttered a great cry, the long cry of a

woman overpowered with fright. He was dead.

At this cry the deaf old man appeared at the top of his ladder, and when

he saw Celeste rushing to call for help, he quickly descended, placed

his hand on his son's face, and suddenly realizing what had happened,

went to shut the door from the inside, to prevent the wife from re-

entering and resuming possession of the dwelling, since his son was no

longer living.

Then he sat down on a chair by the dead man's side.

Some of the neighbors arrived, called out and knocked. He did not hear

them. One of them broke the glass of the window and jumped into the

room. Others followed. The door was opened again and Celeste reappeared,

all in tears, with swollen face and bloodshot eyes. Then old Amable,

vanquished, without uttering a word, climbed back to his loft.

The funeral took place next morning. Then, after the ceremony, the

father-in-law and the daughter-in-law found themselves alone in the

farmhouse with the child.

It was the usual dinner hour. She lighted the fire, made some soup and

placed the plates on the table, while the old man sat on the chair

waiting without appearing to look at her. When the meal was ready she

bawled in his ear—

“Come, daddy, you must eat.” He rose up, took his seat at the end of the

table, emptied his soup bowl, masticated his bread and butter, drank his

two glasses of cider and then took himself off.

It was one of those warm days, one of those enjoyable days when life

ferments, pulsates, blooms all over the surface of the soil.

Old Amable pursued a little path across the fields. He looked at the

young wheat and the young oats, thinking that his son was now under the

earth, his poor boy! He walked along wearily, dragging his legs after

him in a limping fashion. And, as he was all alone in the plain, all

alone under the blue sky, in the midst of the growing crops, all alone

with the larks which he saw hovering above his head, without hearing

their light song, he began to weep as he proceeded on his way.

Then he sat down beside a pond and remained there till evening, gazing

at the little birds that came there to drink. Then, as the night was

falling, he returned to the house, supped without saying a word and

climbed up to his loft. And his life went on as in the past. Nothing was

changed, except that his son Cesaire slept in the cemetery.

What could he, an old man, do? He could work no longer; he was now good

for nothing except to swallow the soup prepared by his daughter-in-law.

And he ate it in silence, morning and evening, watching with an eye of

rage the little boy also taking soup, right opposite him, at the other

side of the table. Then he would go out, prowl about the fields after

the fashion of a vagabond, hiding behind the barns where he would sleep

for an hour or two as if he were afraid of being seen and then come back

at the approach of night.

But Celeste's mind began to be occupied by graver anxieties. The farm

needed a man to look after it and cultivate it. Somebody should be there

always to go through the fields, not a mere hired laborer, but a regular

farmer, a master who understood the business and would take an interest

in the farm. A lone woman could not manage the farming, watch the price

of corn and direct the sale and purchase of cattle. Then ideas came into

her head, simple practical ideas, which she had turned over in her head

at night. She could not marry again before the end of the year, and it

was necessary at once to take care of pressing interests, immediate

interests.

Only one man could help her out of her difficulties, Victor Lecoq, the

father of her child. He was strong and understood farming; with a little

money in his pocket he would make an excellent cultivator. She was aware

of his skill, having known him while he was working on her parents'

farm.

So one morning, seeing him passing along the road with a cart of manure,

she went out to meet him. When he perceived her, he drew up his horses

and she said to him as if she had met him the night before:

“Good-morrow, Victor—are you quite well, the same as ever?”

He replied:

“I'm quite well, the same as ever—and how are you?”

“Oh, I'd be all right, only that I'm alone in the house, which bothers

me on account of the farm.”

Then they remained chatting for a long time, leaning against the wheel

of the heavy cart. The man every now and then lifted up his cap to

scratch his forehead and began thinking, while she, with flushed cheeks,

went on talking warmly, told him about her views, her plans; her

projects for the future. At last he said in a low tone:

“Yes, it can be done.”

She opened her hand like a countryman clinching a bargain and asked:

“Is it agreed?”

He pressed her outstretched hand.

“'Tis agreed.”

“It's settled, then, for next Sunday?”

“It's settled for next Sunday”

“Well, good-morning, Victor.”

“Good-morning, Madame Houlbreque.”

PART III

This particular Sunday was the day of the village festival, the annual

festival in honor of the patron saint, which in Normandy is called the

assembly.

For the last eight days quaint-looking vehicles in which live the

families of strolling fair exhibitors, lottery managers, keepers of

shooting galleries and other forms of amusement or exhibitors of

curiosities whom the peasants call “wonder-makers” could be seen coming

along the roads drawn slowly by gray or sorrel horses.

The dirty wagons with their floating curtains, accompanied by a

melancholy-looking dog, who trotted, with his head down, between the

wheels, drew up one after the other on the green in front of the town

hall. Then a tent was erected in front of each ambulant abode, and

inside this tent could be seen, through the holes in the canvas,

glittering things which excited the envy or the curiosity of the village

youngsters.

As soon as the morning of the fete arrived all the booths were opened,

displaying their splendors of glass or porcelain, and the peasants on

their way to mass looked with genuine satisfaction at these modest shops

which they saw again, nevertheless, each succeeding year.

Early in the afternoon there was a crowd on the green. From every

neighboring village the farmers arrived, shaken along with their wives

and children in the two-wheeled open chars-a-bancs, which rattled along,

swaying like cradles. They unharnessed at their friends' houses and the

farmyards were filled with strange-looking traps, gray, high, lean,

crooked, like long-clawed creatures from the depths of the sea. And each

family, with the youngsters in front and the grown-up ones behind, came

to the assembly with tranquil steps, smiling countenances and open

hands, big hands, red and bony, accustomed to work and apparently tired

of their temporary rest.

A clown was blowing a trumpet. The barrel-organ accompanying the

carrousel sent through the air its shrill jerky notes. The lottery-wheel

made a whirring sound like that of cloth tearing, and every moment the

crack of the rifle could be heard. And the slow-moving throng passed on

quietly in front of the booths resembling paste in a fluid condition,

with the motions of a flock of sheep and the awkwardness of heavy

animals who had escaped by chance.

The girls, holding one another's arms in groups of six or eight, were

singing; the youths followed them, making jokes, with their caps over

their ears and their blouses stiffened with starch, swollen out like

blue balloons.

The whole countryside was there—masters, laboring men and women

servants.

Old Amable himself, wearing his old-fashioned green frock coat, had

wished to see the assembly, for he never failed to attend on such an

occasion.

He looked at the lotteries, stopped in front of the shooting galleries

to criticize the shots and interested himself specially in a very simple

game which consisted in throwing a big wooden ball into the open mouth

of a mannikin carved and painted on a board.

Suddenly he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Daddy Malivoire, who

exclaimed:

“Ha, daddy! Come and have a glass of brandy.”

And they sat down at the table of an open-air restaurant.

They drank one glass of brandy, then two, then three, and old Amable

once more began wandering through the assembly. His thoughts became

slightly confused, he smiled without knowing why, he smiled in front of

the lotteries, in front of the wooden horses and especially in front of

the killing game. He remained there a long time, filled with delight,

when he saw a holiday-maker knocking down the gendarme or the cure, two

authorities whom he instinctively distrusted. Then he went back to the

inn and drank a glass of cider to cool himself. It was late, night came

on. A neighbor came to warn him:

“You'll get back home late for the stew, daddy.”

Then he set out on his way to the farmhouse. A soft shadow, the warm

shadow of a spring night, was slowly descending on the earth.

When he reached the front door he thought he saw through the window

which was lighted up two persons in the house. He stopped, much

surprised, then he went in, and he saw Victor Lecoq seated at the table,

with a plate filled with potatoes before him, taking his supper in the

very same place where his son had sat.

And he turned round suddenly as if he wanted to go away. The night was

very dark now. Celeste started up and shouted at him:

“Come quick, daddy! Here's some good stew to finish off the assembly

with.”

He complied through inertia and sat down, watching in turn the man, the

woman and the child. Then he began to eat quietly as on ordinary days.

Victor Lecoq seemed quite at home, talked from time to time to Celeste,

took up the child in his lap and kissed him. And Celeste again served

him with food, poured out drink for him and appeared happy while

speaking to him. Old Amable's eyes followed them attentively, though he

could not hear what they were saying.

When he had finished supper (and he had scarcely eaten anything, there

was such a weight at his heart) he rose up, and instead of ascending to

his loft as he did every night he opened the gate of the yard and went

out into the open air.

When he had gone, Celeste, a little uneasy, asked:

“What is he going to do?”

Victor replied in an indifferent tone:

“Don't bother yourself. He'll come back when he's tired.”

Then she saw after the house, washed the plates and wiped the table,

while the man quietly took off his clothes. Then he slipped into the

dark and hollow bed in which she had slept with Cesaire.

The yard gate opened and old Amable again appeared. As soon as he

entered the house he looked round on every side with the air of an old

dog on the scent. He was in search of Victor Lecoq. As he did not see

him, he took the candle off the table and approached the dark niche in

which his son had died. In the interior of it he perceived the man lying

under the bed clothes and already asleep. Then the deaf man noiselessly

turned round, put back the candle and went out into the yard.

Celeste had finished her work. She put her son into his bed, arranged

everything and waited for her father-in-law's return before lying down

herself.

She remained sitting on a chair, without moving her hands and with her

eyes fixed on vacancy.

As he did not come back, she murmured in a tone of impatience and

annoyance:

“This good-for-nothing old man will make us burn four sous' worth of

candles.”

Victor answered from under the bed clothes:

“It's over an hour since he went out. We ought to see whether he fell

asleep on the bench outside the door.”

“I'll go and see,” she said.

She rose up, took the light and went out, shading the light with her

hand in order to see through the darkness.

She saw nothing in front of the door, nothing on the bench, nothing on

the dung heap, where the old man used sometimes to sit in hot weather.

But, just as she was on the point of going in again, she chanced to

raise her eyes toward the big apple tree, which sheltered the entrance

to the farmyard, and suddenly she saw two feet—two feet at the height of

her face belonging to a man who was hanging.

She uttered terrible cries:

“Victor! Victor! Victor!”

He ran out in his shirt. She could not utter another word, and turning

aside her head so as not to see, she pointed toward the tree with her

outstretched arm.

Not understanding what she meant, he took the candle in order to find

out, and in the midst of the foliage lit up from below he saw old Amable

hanging high up with a stable-halter round his neck.

A ladder was leaning against the trunk of the apple tree.

Victor ran to fetch a bill-hook, climbed up the tree and cut the halter.

But the old man was already cold and his tongue protruded horribly with

a frightful grimace.

ORIGINAL SHORT STORIES, Vol. 10.

GUY DE MAUPASSANT ORIGINAL SHORT STORIES Translated by ALBERT M. C.

McMASTER, B.A. A. E. HENDERSON, B.A. MME. QUESADA and Others

VOLUME X.

THE CHRISTENING “Well doctor, a little brandy?”

“With pleasure.”

The old ship's surgeon, holding out his glass, watched it as it slowly

filled with the golden liquid. Then, holding it in front of his eyes, he

let the light from the lamp stream through it, smelled it, tasted a few

drops and smacked his lips with relish. Then he said:

“Ah! the charming poison! Or rather the seductive murderer, the

delightful destroyer of peoples!

“You people do not know it the way I do. You may have read that

admirable book entitled L'Assommoir, but you have not, as I have, seen

alcohol exterminate a whole tribe of savages, a little kingdom of

negroes—alcohol calmly unloaded by the barrel by red-bearded English

seamen.

“Right near here, in a little village in Brittany near Pont-l'Abbe, I

once witnessed a strange and terrible tragedy caused by alcohol. I was

spending my vacation in a little country house left me by my father. You

know this flat coast where the wind whistles day and night, where one

sees, standing or prone, these giant rocks which in the olden times were

regarded as guardians, and which still retain something majestic and

imposing about them. I always expect to see them come to life and start

to walk across the country with the slow and ponderous tread of giants,

or to unfold enormous granite wings and fly toward the paradise of the

Druids.

“Everywhere is the sea, always ready on the slightest provocation to

rise in its anger and shake its foamy mane at those bold enough to brave

its wrath.

“And the men who travel on this terrible sea, which, with one motion of

its green back, can overturn and swallow up their frail barks—they go

out in the little boats, day and night, hardy, weary and drunk. They are

often drunk. They have a saying which says: 'When the bottle is full you

see the reef, but when it is empty you see it no more.'

“Go into one of their huts; you will never find the father there. If you

ask the woman what has become of her husband, she will stretch her arms

out over the dark ocean which rumbles and roars along the coast. He

remained, there one night, when he had had too much to drink; so did her

oldest son. She has four more big, strong, fair-haired boys. Soon it

will be their time.

“As I said, I was living in a little house near Pont-l'Abbe. I was there

alone with my servant, an old sailor, and with a native family which

took care of the grounds in my absence. It consisted of three persons,

two sisters and a man, who had married one of them, and who attended to

the garden.

“A short time before Christmas my gardener's wife presented him with a

boy. The husband asked me to stand as god-father. I could hardly deny

the request, and so he borrowed ten francs from me for the cost of the

christening, as he said.

“The second day of January was chosen as the date of the ceremony. For a

week the earth had been covered by an enormous white carpet of snow,

which made this flat, low country seem vast and limitless. The ocean

appeared to be black in contrast with this white plain; one could see it

rolling, raging and tossing its waves as though wishing to annihilate

its pale neighbor, which appeared to be dead, it was so calm, quiet and

cold.

“At nine o'clock the father, Kerandec, came to my door with his sister-

in-law, the big Kermagan, and the nurse, who carried the infant wrapped

up in a blanket. We started for the church. The weather was so cold that

it seemed to dry up the skin and crack it open. I was thinking of the

poor little creature who was being carried on ahead of us, and I said to

myself that this Breton race must surely be of iron, if their children

were able, as soon as they were born, to stand such an outing.

“We came to the church, but the door was closed; the priest was late.

“Then the nurse sat down on one of the steps and began to undress the

child. At first I thought there must have been some slight accident, but

I saw that they were leaving the poor little fellow naked completely

naked, in the icy air. Furious at such imprudence, I protested:

“'Why, you are crazy! You will kill the child!'

“The woman answered quietly: 'Oh, no, sir; he must wait naked before the

Lord.'

“The father and the aunt looked on undisturbed. It was the custom. If it

were not adhered to misfortune was sure to attend the little one.

“I scolded, threatened and pleaded. I used force to try to cover the

frail creature. All was in vain. The nurse ran away from me through the

snow, and the body of the little one turned purple. I was about to leave

these brutes when I saw the priest coming across the country, followed.

by the sexton and a young boy. I ran towards him and gave vent to my

indignation. He showed no surprise nor did he quicken his pace in the

least. He answered:

“'What can you expect, sir? It's the custom. They all do it, and it's of

no use trying to stop them.'

“'But at least hurry up!' I cried.

“He answered: 'But I can't go any faster.'

“He entered the vestry, while we remained outside on the church steps. I

was suffering. But what about the poor little creature who was howling

from the effects of the biting cold.

“At last the door opened. He went into the church. But the poor child

had to remain naked throughout the ceremony. It was interminable. The

priest stammered over the Latin words and mispronounced them horribly.

He walked slowly and with a ponderous tread. His white surplice chilled

my heart. It seemed as though, in the name of a pitiless and barbarous

god, he had wrapped himself in another kind of snow in order to torture

this little piece of humanity that suffered so from the cold.

“Finally the christening was finished according to the rites and I saw

the nurse once more take the frozen, moaning child and wrap it up in the

blanket.

“The priest said to me: 'Do you wish to sign the register?'

“Turning to my gardener, I said: 'Hurry up and get home quickly so that

you can warm that child.' I gave him some advice so as to ward off, if

not too late, a bad attack of pneumonia. He promised to follow my

instructions and left with his sister-in-law and the nurse. I followed

the priest into the vestry, and when I had signed he demanded five

francs for expenses.

“As I had already given the father ten francs, I refused to pay twice.

The priest threatened to destroy the paper and to annul the ceremony. I,

in turn, threatened him with the district attorney. The dispute was

long, and I finally paid five francs.

“As soon as I reached home I went down to Kerandec's to find out whether

everything was all right. Neither father, nor sister-in-law, nor nurse

had yet returned. The mother, who had remained alone, was in bed,

shivering with cold and starving, for she had had nothing to eat since

the day before.

“'Where the deuce can they have gone?' I asked. She answered without

surprise or anger, 'They're going to drink something to celebrate: It

was the custom. Then I thought, of my ten francs which were to pay the

church and would doubtless pay for the alcohol.

“I sent some broth to the mother and ordered a good fire to be built in

the room. I was uneasy and furious and promised myself to drive out

these brutes, wondering with terror what was going to happen to the poor

infant.

“It was already six, and they had not yet returned. I told my servant to

wait for them and I went to bed. I soon fell asleep and slept like a

top. At daybreak I was awakened by my servant, who was bringing me my

hot water.

“As soon as my eyes were open I asked: 'How about Kerandec?'

“The man hesitated and then stammered: 'Oh! he came back, all right,

after midnight, and so drunk that he couldn't walk, and so were Kermagan

and the nurse. I guess they must have slept in a ditch, for the little

one died and they never even noticed it.'

“I jumped up out of bed, crying:

“'What! The child is dead?'

“'Yes, sir. They brought it back to Mother Kerandec. When she saw it she

began to cry, and now they are making her drink to console her.'

“'What's that? They are making her drink!'

“'Yes, sir. I only found it out this morning. As Kerandec had no more

brandy or money, he took some wood alcohol, which monsieur gave him for

the lamp, and all four of them are now drinking that. The mother is

feeling pretty sick now.'

“I had hastily put on some clothes, and seizing a stick, with the

intention of applying it to the backs of these human beasts, I hastened

towards the gardener's house.

“The mother was raving drunk beside the blue body of her dead baby.

Kerandec, the nurse, and the Kermagan woman were snoring on the floor. I

had to take care of the mother, who died towards noon.”

The old doctor was silent. He took up the brandy-bottle and poured out

another glass. He held it up to the lamp, and the light streaming

through it imparted to the liquid the amber color of molten topaz. With

one gulp he swallowed the treacherous drink.

THE FARMER'S WIFE Said the Baron Rene du Treilles to me:

“Will you come and open the hunting season with me at my farm at

Marinville? I shall be delighted if you will, my dear boy. In the first

place, I am all alone. It is rather a difficult ground to get at, and

the place I live in is so primitive that I can invite only my most

intimate friends.”

I accepted his invitation, and on Saturday we set off on the train going

to Normandy. We alighted at a station called Almivare, and Baron Rene,

pointing to a carryall drawn by a timid horse and driven by a big

countryman with white hair, said:

“Here is our equipage, my dear boy.”

The driver extended his hand to his landlord, and the baron pressed it

warmly, asking:

“Well, Maitre Lebrument, how are you?”

“Always the same, M'sieu le Baron.”

We jumped into this swinging hencoop perched on two enormous wheels, and

the young horse, after a violent swerve, started into a gallop, pitching

us into the air like balls. Every fall backward on the wooden bench gave

me the most dreadful pain.

The peasant kept repeating in his calm, monotonous voice:

“There, there! All right all right, Moutard, all right!”

But Moutard scarcely heard, and kept capering along like a goat.

Our two dogs behind us, in the empty part of the hencoop, were standing

up and sniffing the air of the plains, where they scented game.

The baron gazed with a sad eye into the distance at the vast Norman

landscape, undulating and melancholy, like an immense English park,

where the farmyards, surrounded by two or four rows of trees and full of

dwarfed apple trees which hid the houses, gave a vista as far as the eye

could see of forest trees, copses and shrubbery such as landscape

gardeners look for in laying out the boundaries of princely estates.

And Rene du Treilles suddenly exclaimed:

“I love this soil; I have my very roots in it.”

He was a pure Norman, tall and strong, with a slight paunch, and of the

old race of adventurers who went to found kingdoms on the shores of

every ocean. He was about fifty years of age, ten years less perhaps

than the farmer who was driving us.

The latter was a lean peasant, all skin and bone, one of those men who

live a hundred years.

After two hours' travelling over stony roads, across that green and

monotonous plain, the vehicle entered one of those orchard farmyards and

drew up before in old structure falling into decay, where an old maid-

servant stood waiting beside a young fellow, who took charge of the

horse.

We entered the farmhouse. The smoky kitchen was high and spacious. The

copper utensils and the crockery shone in the reflection of the hearth.

A cat lay asleep on a chair, a dog under the table. One perceived an

odor of milk, apples, smoke, that indescribable smell peculiar to old

farmhouses; the odor of the earth, of the walls, of furniture, the odor

of spilled stale soup, of former wash-days and of former inhabitants,

the smell of animals and of human beings combined, of things and of

persons, the odor of time, and of things that have passed away.

I went out to have a look at the farmyard. It was very large, full of

apple trees, dwarfed and crooked, and laden with fruit which fell on the

grass around them. In this farmyard the Norman smell of apples was as

strong as that of the bloom of orange trees on the shores of the south

of France.

Four rows of beeches surrounded this inclosure. They were so tall that

they seemed to touch the clouds at this hour of nightfall, and their

summits, through which the night winds passed, swayed and sang a

mournful, interminable song.

I reentered the house.

The baron was warming his feet at the fire, and was listening to the

farmer's talk about country matters. He talked about marriages, births

and deaths, then about the fall in the price of grain and the latest

news about cattle. The “Veularde” (as he called a cow that had been

bought at the fair of Veules) had calved in the middle of June. The

cider had not been first-class last year. Apricots were almost

disappearing from the country.

Then we had dinner. It was a good rustic meal, simple and abundant, long

and tranquil. And while we were dining I noticed the special kind of

friendly familiarity which had struck me from the start between the

baron and the peasant.

Outside, the beeches continued sighing in the night wind, and our two

dogs, shut up in a shed, were whining and howling in an uncanny fashion.

The fire was dying out in the big fireplace. The maid-servant had gone

to bed. Maitre Lebrument said in his turn:

“If you don't mind, M'sieu le Baron, I'm going to bed. I am not used to

staying up late.”

The baron extended his hand toward him and said: “Go, my friend,” in so

cordial a tone that I said, as soon as the man had disappeared:

“He is devoted to you, this farmer?”

“Better than that, my dear fellow! It is a drama, an old drama, simple

and very sad, that attaches him to me. Here is the story:

“You know that my father was colonel in a cavalry regiment. His orderly

was this young fellow, now an old man, the son of a farmer. When my

father retired from the army he took this former soldier, then about

forty; as his servant. I was at that time about thirty. We were living

in our old chateau of Valrenne, near Caudebec-en-Caux.

“At this period my mother's chambermaid was one of the prettiest girls

you could see, fair-haired, slender and sprightly in manner, a genuine

soubrette of the old type that no longer exists. To-day these creatures

spring up into hussies before their time. Paris, with the aid of the

railways, attracts them, calls them, takes hold of them, as soon as they

are budding into womanhood, these little sluts who in old times remained

simple maid-servants. Every man passing by, as recruiting sergeants did

formerly, looking for recruits, with conscripts, entices and ruins them

—these foolish lassies—and we have now only the scum of the female sex

for servant maids, all that is dull, nasty, common and ill-formed, too

ugly, even for gallantry.

“Well, this girl was charming, and I often gave her a kiss in dark

corners; nothing more, I swear to you! She was virtuous, besides; and I

had some respect for my mother's house, which is more than can be said

of the blackguards of the present day.

“Now, it happened that my man-servant, the ex-soldier, the old farmer

you have just seen, fell madly in love with this girl, perfectly daft.

The first thing we noticed was that he forgot everything, he paid no

attention to anything.

“My father said incessantly:

“'See here, Jean, what's the matter with you? Are you ill?'

“He replied:

“'No, no, M'sieu le Baron. There's nothing the matter with me.'

“He grew thin; he broke glasses and let plates fall when waiting on the

table. We thought he must have been attacked by some nervous affection,

and sent for the doctor, who thought he could detect symptoms of spinal

disease. Then my father, full of anxiety about his faithful man-servant,

decided to place him in a private hospital. When the poor fellow heard

of my father's intentions he made a clean breast of it.

“'M'sieu le Baron'

“'Well, my boy?'

“'You see, the thing I want is not physic.'

“'Ha! what is it, then?'

“'It's marriage!'

“My father turned round and stared at him in astonishment.

“'What's that you say, eh?'

“'It's marriage.”

“'Marriage! So, then, you jackass, you're to love.'

“'That's how it is, M'sieu le Baron.'

“And my father began to laugh so immoderately that my mother called out

through the wall of the next room:

“'What in the world is the matter with you, Gontran?'

“He replied:

“'Come here, Catherine.'

“And when she came in he told her, with tears in his eyes from sheer

laughter, that his idiot of a servant-man was lovesick.

“But my mother, instead of laughing, was deeply affected.