In the lower town of Limoges, at the corner of the rue de la
Vieille-Poste and the rue de la Cite might have been seen, a generation
ago, one of those shops which were scarcely changed from the period of
the middle-ages. Large tiles seamed with a thousand cracks lay on the
soil itself, which was damp in places, and would have tripped up those
who failed to observe the hollows and ridges of this singular flooring.
The dusty walls exhibited a curious mosaic of wood and brick, stones and
iron, welded together with a solidity due to time, possibly to chance.
For more than a hundred years the ceiling, formed of colossal beams,
bent beneath the weight of the upper stories, though it had never given
way under them. Built _en colombage_, that is to say, with a wooden
frontage, the whole facade was covered with slates, so put on as to
form geometrical figures,--thus preserving a naive image of the burgher
habitations of the olden time.
None of the windows, cased in wood and formerly adorned with carvings,
now destroyed by the action of the weather, had continued plumb; some
bobbed forward, others tipped backward, while a few seemed disposed to
fall apart; all had a compost of earth, brought from heaven knows where,
in the nooks and crannies hollowed by the rain, in which the spring-tide
brought forth fragile flowers, timid creeping plants, and sparse
herbage. Moss carpeted the roof and draped its supports. The corner
pillar, with its composite masonry of stone blocks mingled with brick
and pebbles, was alarming to the eye by reason of its curvature; it
seemed on the point of giving way under the weight of the house, the
gable of which overhung it by at least half a foot. The municipal
authorities and the commissioner of highways did, eventually, pull the
old building down, after buying it, to enlarge the square.
The pillar we have mentioned, placed at the angle of two streets, was
a treasure to the seekers for Limousin antiquities, on account of its
lovely sculptured niche in which was a Virgin, mutilated during the
Revolution. All visitors with archaeological proclivities found traces
of the stone sockets used to hold the candelabra in which public piety
lighted tapers or placed its _ex-votos_ and flowers.
At the farther end of the shop, a worm-eaten wooden staircase led to the
two upper floors which were in turn surmounted by an attic. The house,
backing against two adjoining houses, had no depth and derived all its
light from the front and side windows. Each floor had two small chambers
only, lighted by single windows, one looking out on the rue de la Cite,
the other on the rue de la Vieille-Poste.
In the middle-ages no artisan was better lodged. The house had evidently
belonged in those times to makers of halberds and battle-axes, armorers
in short, artificers whose work was not injured by exposure to the
open air; for it was impossible to see clearly within, unless the iron
shutters were raised from each side of the building; where were also two
doors, one on either side of the corner pillar, as may be seen in many
shops at the corners of streets. From the sill of each door--of fine
stone worn by the tread of centuries--a low wall about three feet high
began; in this wall was a groove or slot, repeated above in the beam by
which the wall of each facade was supported. From time immemorial
the heavy shutters had been rolled along these grooves, held there by
enormous iron bars, while the doors were closed and secured in the same
manner; so that these merchants and artificers could bar themselves into
their houses as into a fortress.
Examining the interior, which, during the first twenty years of this
century, was encumbered with old iron and brass, tires of wheels,
springs, bells, anything in short which the destruction of buildings
afforded of old metals, persons interested in the relics of the old town
noticed signs of the flue of a forge, shown by a long trail of soot,--a
minor detail which confirmed the conjecture of archaeologists as to the
original use to which the building was put. On the first floor (above
the ground-floor) was one room and the kitchen; on the floor above that
were two bedrooms. The garret was used to put away articles more choice
and delicate than those that lay pell-mell about the shop.
This house, hired in the first instance, was subsequently bought by a
man named Sauviat, a hawker or peddler who, from 1786 to 1793, travelled
the country over a radius of a hundred and fifty miles around Auvergne,
exchanging crockery of a common kind, plates, dishes, glasses,--in
short, the necessary articles of the poorest households,--for old iron,
brass, and lead, or any metal under any shape it might lurk in. The
Auvergnat would give, for instance, a brown earthenware saucepan worth
two sous for a pound of lead, two pounds of iron, a broken spade or hoe
or a cracked kettle; and being invariably the judge of his own cause, he
did the weighing.
At the close of his third year Sauviat added the hawking of tin and
copper ware to that of his pottery. In 1793 he was able to buy a chateau
sold as part of the National domain, which he at once pulled to pieces.
The profits were such that he repeated the process at several points of
the sphere in which he operated; later, these first successful essays
gave him the idea of proposing something of a like nature on a larger
scale to one of his compatriots who lived in Paris. Thus it happened
that the “Bande Noire,” so celebrated for its devastations, had its
birth in the brain of old Sauviat, the peddler, whom all Limoges
afterward saw and knew for twenty-seven years in the rickety old shop
among his cracked bells and rusty bars, chains and scales, his twisted
leaden gutters, and metal rubbish of all kinds. We must do him the
justice to say that he knew nothing of the celebrity or the extent
of the association he originated; he profited by his own idea only
in proportion to the capital he entrusted to the since famous firm of
Bresac.
Tired of frequenting fairs and roaming the country, the Auvergnat
settled at Limoges, where he married, in 1797, the daughter of a
coppersmith, a widower, named Champagnac. When his father-in-law died he
bought the house in which he had been carrying on his trade of old-iron
dealer, after ceasing to roam the country as a peddler. Sauviat was
fifty years of age when he married old Champagnac’s daughter, who was
herself not less than thirty. Neither handsome nor pretty, she was
nevertheless born in Auvergne, and the _patois_ seemed to be the mutual
attraction; also she had the sturdy frame which enables women to bear
hard work. In the first three years of their married life Sauviat
continued to do some peddling, and his wife accompanied him, carrying
iron or lead on her back, and leading the miserable horse and cart
full of crockery with which her husband plied a disguised usury.
Dark-skinned, high-colored, enjoying robust health, and showing when
she laughed a brilliant set of teeth, white, long, and broad as
almonds, Madame Sauviat had the hips and bosom of a woman made by Nature
expressly for maternity.
If this strong girl were not earlier married, the fault must be
attributed to the Harpagon “no dowry” her father practised, though
he never read Moliere. Sauviat was not deterred by the lack of dowry;
besides, a man of fifty can’t make difficulties, not to speak of the
fact that such a wife would save him the cost of a servant. He added
nothing to the furniture of his bedroom where, from the day of his
wedding to the day he left the house, twenty years later, there was
never anything but a single four-post bed, with valance and curtains
of green serge, a chest, a bureau, four chairs, a table, and a
looking-glass, all collected from different localities. The chest
contained in its upper section pewter plates, dishes, etc., each article
dissimilar from the rest. The kitchen can be imagined from the bedroom.
Neither husband nor wife knew how to read,--a slight defect of education
which did not prevent them from ciphering admirably and doing a most
flourishing business. Sauviat never bought any article without the
certainty of being able to sell it for one hundred per cent profit.
To relieve himself of the necessity of keeping books and accounts, he
bought and sold for cash only. He had, moreover, such a perfect memory
that the cost of any article, were it only a farthing, remained in his
mind year after year, together with its accrued interest.
Except during the time required for her household duties, Madame Sauviat
was always seated in a rickety wooden chair placed against the corner
pillar of the building. There she knitted and looked at the passers,
watched over the old iron, sold and weighed it, and received payment
if Sauviat was away making purchases. When at home the husband could be
heard at daybreak pushing open his shutters; the household dog rushed
out into the street; and Madame Sauviat presently came out to help
her man in spreading upon the natural counter made by the low walls
on either side of the corner of the house on the two streets, the
multifarious collection of bells, springs, broken gunlocks, and the
other rubbish of their business, which gave a poverty-stricken look
to the establishment, though it usually contained as much as twenty
thousand francs’ worth of lead, steel, iron, and other metals.
Never were the former peddler and his wife known to speak of their
fortune; they concealed its amount as carefully as a criminal hides a
crime; and for years they were suspected of shaving both gold and
silver coins. When Champagnac died the Sauviats made no inventory of his
property; but they rummaged, with the intelligence of rats, into every
nook and corner of the old man’s house, left it as naked as a corpse,
and sold the wares it contained in their own shop.
Once a year, in December, Sauviat went to Paris in one of the public
conveyances. The gossips of the neighborhood concluded that in order to
conceal from others the amount of his fortune, he invested it himself on
these occasions. It was known later that, having been connected in his
youth with one of the most celebrated dealers in metal, an Auvergnat
like himself, who was living in Paris, Sauviat placed his funds with
the firm of Bresac, the mainspring and spine of that famous association
known by the name of the “Bande Noire,” which, as we have already said,
took its rise from a suggestion made by Sauviat himself.
Sauviat was a fat little man with a weary face, endowed by Nature with
a look of honesty which attracted customers and facilitated the sale of
goods. His straightforward assertions, and the perfect indifference of
his tone and manner, increased this impression. In person, his naturally
ruddy complexion was hardly perceptible under the black metallic dust
which powdered his curly black hair and the seams of a face pitted
with the small-pox. His forehead was not without dignity; in fact, it
resembled the well-known brow given by all painters to Saint Peter,
the man of the people, the roughest, but withal the shrewdest, of the
apostles. His hands were those of an indefatigable worker,--large,
thick, square, and wrinkled with deep furrows. His chest was of
seemingly indestructible muscularity. He never relinquished his
peddler’s costume,--thick, hobnailed shoes; blue stockings knit by his
wife and hidden by leather gaiters; bottle-green velveteen trousers; a
checked waistcoat, from which depended the brass key of his silver watch
by an iron chain which long usage had polished till it shone like steel;
a jacket with short tails, also of velveteen, like that of the trousers;
and around his neck a printed cotton cravat much frayed by the rubbing
of his beard.
On Sundays and fete-days Sauviat wore a frock-coat of maroon cloth, so
well taken care of that two new ones were all he bought in twenty years.
The living of galley-slaves would be thought sumptuous in comparison
with that of the Sauviats, who never ate meat except on the great
festivals of the Church. Before paying out the money absolutely needed
for their daily subsistence, Madame Sauviat would feel in the two
pockets hidden between her gown and petticoat, and bring forth a
single well-scraped coin,--a crown of six francs, or perhaps a piece
of fifty-five sous,--which she would gaze at for a long time before she
could bring herself to change it. As a general thing the Sauviats ate
herrings, dried peas, cheese, hard eggs in salad, vegetables seasoned in
the cheapest manner. Never did they lay in provisions, except perhaps
a bunch of garlic or onions, which could not spoil and cost but little.
The small amount of wood they burned in winter they bought of itinerant
sellers day by day. By seven in winter, by nine in summer, the household
was in bed, and the shop was closed and guarded by a huge dog, which got
its living from the kitchens in the neighborhood. Madame Sauviat used
about three francs’ worth of candles in the course of the year.
The sober, toilsome life of these persons was brightened by one joy, but
that was a natural joy, and for it they made their only known outlays.
In May, 1802, Madame Sauviat gave birth to a daughter. She was confined
all alone, and went about her household work five days later. She nursed
her child in the open air, seated as usual in her chair by the corner
pillar, continuing to sell old iron while the infant sucked. Her milk
cost nothing, and she let her little daughter feed on it for two years,
neither of them being the worse for the long nursing.
Veronique (that was the infant’s name) became the handsomest child in
the Lower town, and every one who saw her stopped to look at her. The
neighbors then noticed for the first time a trace of feeling in the old
Sauviats, of which they had supposed them devoid. While the wife cooked
the dinner the husband held the little one, or rocked it to the tune
of an Auvergnat song. The workmen as they passed sometimes saw him
motionless gazing at Veronique asleep on her mother’s knees. He softened
his harsh voice when he spoke to her, and wiped his hands on his
trousers before taking her up. When Veronique tried to walk, the father
bent his legs and stood at a little distance holding out his arms and
making little grimaces which contrasted funnily with the rigid furrows
of his stern, hard face. The man of iron, brass, and lead became a being
of flesh and blood and bones. If he happened to be standing with his
back against the corner pillar motionless, a cry from Veronique would
agitate him and send him flying over the mounds of iron fragments to
find her; for she spent her childhood playing with the wreck of ancient
castles heaped in the depths of that old shop. There were other days on
which she went to play in the street or with the neighboring children;
but even then her mother’s eye was always on her.
It is not unimportant to say here that the Sauviats were eminently
religious. At the very height of the Revolution they observed both
Sunday and fete-days. Twice Sauviat came near having his head cut off
for hearing mass from an unsworn priest. He was put in prison, being
justly accused of helping a bishop, whose life he saved, to fly the
country. Fortunately the old-iron dealer, who knew the ways of bolts
and bars, was able to escape; nevertheless he was condemned to death by
default, and as, by the bye, he never purged himself of that contempt,
he may be said to have died dead.
His wife shared his piety. The avariciousness of the household yielded
to the demands of religion. The old-iron dealers gave their alms
punctually at the sacrament and to all the collections in church. When
the vicar of Saint-Etienne called to ask help for his poor, Sauviat or
his wife fetched at once without reluctance or sour faces the sum they
thought their fair share of the parish duties. The mutilated Virgin on
their corner pillar never failed (after 1799) to be wreathed with holly
at Easter. In the summer season she was feted with bouquets kept fresh
in tumblers of blue glass; this was particularly the case after
the birth of Veronique. On the days of the processions the Sauviats
scrupulously hung their house with sheets covered with flowers, and
contributed money to the erection and adornment of the altar, which was
the pride and glory of the whole square.
Veronique Sauviat was, therefore, brought up in a Christian manner. From
the time she was seven years old she was taught by a Gray sister from
Auvergne to whom the Sauviats had done some kindness in former times.
Both husband and wife were obliging when the matter did not affect their
pockets or consume their time,--like all poor folk who are cordially
ready to be serviceable to others in their own way. The Gray sister
taught Veronique to read and write; she also taught her the history of
the people of God, the catechism, the Old and the New Testaments, and
a very little arithmetic. That was all; the worthy sister thought it
enough; it was in fact too much.
At nine years of age Veronique surprised the whole neighborhood with her
beauty. Every one admired her face, which promised much to the pencil of
artists who are always seeking a noble ideal. She was called “the Little
Virgin” and showed signs already of a fine figure and great delicacy of
complexion. Her Madonna-like face--for the popular voice had well named
her--was surrounded by a wealth of fair hair, which brought out the
purity of her features. Whoever has seen the sublime Virgin of Titian
in his great picture of the “Presentation” at Venice, will know that
Veronique was in her girlhood,--the same ingenuous candor, the same
seraphic astonishment in her eyes, the same simple yet noble attitude,
the same majesty of childhood in her demeanor.
At eleven years of age she had the small-pox, and owed her life to the
care of Soeur Marthe. During the two months that their child was in
danger the Sauviats betrayed to the whole community the depth of their
tenderness. Sauviat no longer went about the country to sales; he stayed
in the shop, going upstairs and down to his daughter’s room, sitting up
with her every night in company with his wife. His silent anguish seemed
so great that no one dared to speak to him; his neighbors looked at
him with compassion, but they only asked news of Veronique from Soeur
Marthe. During the days when the child’s danger reached a crisis, the
neighbors and passers saw, for the first and only time in Sauviat’s
life, tears in his eyes and rolling down his hollow cheeks; he did
not wipe them, but stood for hours as if stupefied, not daring to go
upstairs to his daughter’s room, gazing before him and seeing nothing,
so oblivious of all things that any one might have robbed him.
Veronique was saved, but her beauty perished. Her face, once exquisitely
colored with a tint in which brown and rose were harmoniously mingled,
came out from the disease with a myriad of pits which thickened the
skin, the flesh beneath it being deeply indented. Even her forehead did
not escape the ravages of the scourge; it turned brown and looked as
though it were hammered, like metal. Nothing can be more discordant
than brick tones of the skin surrounded by golden hair; they destroy all
harmony. These fissures in the tissues, capriciously hollowed, injured
the purity of the profile and the delicacy of the lines of the face,
especially that of the nose, the Grecian form of which was lost, and
that of the chin, once as exquisitely rounded as a piece of white
porcelain. The disease left nothing unharmed except the parts it was
unable to reach,--the eyes and the teeth. She did not, however, lose the
elegance and beauty of her shape,--neither the fulness of its lines nor
the grace and suppleness of her waist. At fifteen Veronique was still a
fine girl, and to the great consolation of her father and mother, a good
and pious girl, busy, industrious, and domestic.
After her convalescence and after she had made her first communion,
her parents gave her the two chambers on the second floor for her own
particular dwelling. Sauviat, so course in his way of living for himself
and his wife, now had certain perceptions of what comfort might be; a
vague idea came to him of consoling his child for her great loss, which,
as yet, she did not comprehend. The deprivation of that beauty which was
once the pride and joy of those two beings made Veronique the more dear
and precious to them. Sauviat came home one day, bearing a carpet he
had chanced upon in some of his rounds, which he nailed himself on
Veronique’s floor. For her he saved from the sale of an old chateau
the gorgeous bed of a fine lady, upholstered in red silk damask, with
curtains and chairs of the same rich stuff. He furnished her two
rooms with antique articles, of the true value of which he was wholly
ignorant. He bought mignonette and put the pots on the ledge outside
her window; and he returned from many of his trips with rose trees, or
pansies, or any kind of flower which gardeners or tavern-keepers would
give him.
If Veronique could have made comparisons and known the character, past
habits, and ignorance of her parents she would have seen how much there
was of affection in these little things; but as it was, she simply loved
them from her own sweet nature and without reflection.
The girl wore the finest linen her mother could find in the shops.
Madame Sauviat left her daughter at liberty to buy what materials she
liked for her gowns and other garments; and the father and mother
were proud of her choice, which was never extravagant. Veronique was
satisfied with a blue silk gown for Sundays and fete-days, and on
working-days she wore merino in winter and striped cotton dresses in
summer. On Sundays she went to church with her father and mother, and
took a walk after vespers along the banks of the Vienne or about the
environs. On other days she stayed at home, busy in filling worsted-work
patterns, the payment for which she gave to the poor,--a life of simple,
chaste, and exemplary principles and habits. She did some reading
together with her tapestry, but never in any books except those lent to
her by the vicar of Saint-Etienne, a priest whom Soeur Marthe had first
made known to her parents.
All the rules of the Sauviat’s domestic economy were suspended in favor
of Veronique. Her mother delighted in giving her dainty things to eat,
and cooked her food separately. The father and mother still ate their
nuts and dry bread, their herrings and parched peas fricasseed in salt
butter, while for Veronique nothing was thought too choice and good.
“Veronique must cost you a pretty penny,” said a hatmaker who lived
opposite to the Sauviats and had designs on their daughter for his son,
estimating the fortune of the old-iron dealer at a hundred thousand
francs.
“Yes, neighbor, yes,” Pere Sauviat would say; “if she asked me for ten
crowns I’d let her have them. She has all she wants; but she never asks
for anything; she is as gentle as a lamb.”
Veronique was, as a matter of fact, absolutely ignorant of the value of
things. She had never wanted for anything; she never saw a piece of gold
till the day of her marriage; she had no money of her own; her mother
bought and gave her everything she needed and wished for; so that even
when she wanted to give alms to a beggar, the girl felt in her mother’s
pocket for the coin.
“If that’s so,” remarked the hatmaker, “she can’t cost you much.”
“So you think, do you?” replied Sauviat. “You wouldn’t get off under
forty crowns a year, I can tell you that. Why, her room, she has at
least a hundred crowns’ worth of furniture in it! But when a man has but
one child, he doesn’t mind. The little we own will all go to her.”
“The little! Why, you must be rich, pere Sauviat! It is pretty nigh
forty years that you have been doing a business in which there are no
losses.”
“Ha! I sha’n’t go to the poorhouse for want of a thousand francs or so!”
replied the old-iron dealer.
From the day when Veronique lost the soft beauty which made her girlish
face the admiration of all who saw it, Pere Sauviat redoubled in
activity. His business became so prosperous that he now went to Paris
several times a year. Every one felt that he wanted to compensate his
daughter by force of money for what he called her “loss of profit.”
When Veronique was fifteen years old a change was made in the internal
manners and customs of the household. The father and mother went
upstairs in the evenings to their daughter’s apartment, where Veronique
would read to them, by the light of a lamp placed behind a glass globe
full of water, the “Vie des Saints,” the “Lettres Edifiantes,” and other
books lent by the vicar. Madame Sauviat knitted stockings, feeling that
she thus recouped herself for the cost of oil. The neighbors could see
through the window the old couple seated motionless in their armchairs,
like Chinese images, listening to their daughter, and admiring her with
all the powers of their contracted minds, obtuse to everything that was
not business or religious faith.