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Title: The house

Author: Henry Bordeaux

Translator: Louise Seymour Houghton

Release date: December 12, 2023 [eBook #72388]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Duffield & company

Credits: Laura Natal Rodrigues (Images generously made available by Hathi Trust Digital Library.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE ***



                               THE HOUSE

                            _EORUM MEMORIÆ_

                     _QUI DOMUM ET ÆDIFICA VERUNT
                         ET SALVAM SERVAVERUNT
                                SACRUM_




                               THE HOUSE




                                  By

                            HENRY BORDEAUX

           Author of “The Parting of the Ways,” “The Woollen
               Dress,” “The Fear of Living,” “Footprints
                          Beneath the Snow.”




                            _Translated by
                       Louise Seymour Houghton_




              Omne regnum divisum contra se desolabitur;
              et omnis civitas vel domus divisa contra se
              non stabit.               --Matt. XII., 25.




                               NEW YORK
                          DUFFIELD & COMPANY
                                 1914




                          Copyright, 1915, by
                        PLON-NOURRIT & COMPANY

                          Copyright, 1914, by
                          DUFFIELD & COMPANY




                               CONTENTS

 BOOK I

 I   THE KINGDOM                              3

 II  THE DYNASTY                             26

 III THE ENEMIES                             57

 IV  THE TREATY                              74

 V   THE ABDICATION                          94

 BOOK II

 I   THE PICTURES                           109

 II  THE DESIRE                             134

 III THE DISCOVERY OF THE EARTH             149

 IV  THE CAFÉ OF THE NAVIGATORS             170

 V   THE RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY              186

 BOOK III

 I   POLITICS                               203

 II  THE CIRCUS                             228

 III THE PLOT                               244

 IV  MY BETRAYAL                            259

 V   THE DOUBLE LIFE                        282

 VI  A WALK WITH FATHER                     298

 VII THE FIRST DEPARTURE                    317

 BOOK IV

 I   THE EPIDEMIC                           337

 II  THE ALPETTE                            358

 III THE END OF A REIGN                     378

 IV  THE HEIR                               401





                              BOOK FIRST




                               THE HOUSE




                                   I

                              THE KINGDOM


“WHERE are you going?”

“Oh, up to the house.”

Put this question to little girls and boys that you see along the
country roads, on their way from school or coming in from the fields,
and you will get this answer.

Their bright eyes glisten like grass after a shower; their speech,
unless they are timid, shoots straight out, like plants that claim all
space to grow in undisturbed.

“Where are you going?”

They do not answer “home”; nor do they even say “to our house.” They
say “_the house_.” It may be a wretched, tumble-down shed: all the
same it is the house, the only house in all the world. Some day there
will be others,--perhaps. But that is not so certain, after all.

Even young men and women, and quite grown persons, married folk, if
you please, use the same expression. _At the house_ they used to
do this, _at the house_ there was that. One might suppose they
were speaking of their present house. Not at all; they are speaking of
the house of their childhood, the house where their father and mother
lived, and which they have not been able to keep, or the customs of
which they have changed--it’s all one--but which in their memory is
always the same. You quite understand that there cannot be two.


I was a school-boy then; oh, just a little primary school child,
perhaps seven or eight years old,--seven or eight I think. I always
said “the house” just as people say _la patrie_ when they mean
France. Still, I knew very well that there were people who called it by
other names, names which sound grander to a child. The baby’s Italian
nurse used to call it _il palazzo_, rounding her mouth for the
second _a_, and letting the last syllable die gently away in a
lingering whisper. The farmer who brought the rent, or more probably an
instalment of it, or even a fowl of some sort, to encourage the master
to have patience, would say _the château_, with several circumflex
accents. A lady who came from Paris to visit us--you would know she
was from Paris by the lorgnette which she carried--had given it the
dignified title _your mansion_. And during the crisis of which I
shall have presently to tell, any one might read on the humiliating
bill that was posted on our front gate the words _Villa for sale_.
Villa, mansion, château, palace, how colourless are all these majestic
words, notwithstanding their fine sound! What was the use of tangling
up the truth in words? “The house” is quite enough. “The house” tells
the whole story.

It is still there: it has an ancient habit of being there. You would
have no trouble in finding it--the whole country knows the Rambert
house, because our family has always lived in it. It has been carefully
repaired--too carefully, indeed--from garret to cellar, furbished and
decorated, repainted and polished outside and in. Of course it will not
do to let houses go on forever wearing themselves out, and a decaying
homestead has poetic charm only to passing travellers. Every-day life
has its indispensabilities. But nobody cares that one’s house should be
new any more than that one’s parents should be young. If they are young
they are less entirely ours. They feel a right to an existence of their
own, whereas later, our life is their life, and that is all that we ask
of them, for we are not exacting.

Before the house was restored I was showing it to a lady, a lady
from Paris like her of the lorgnette. It is probable, quite likely,
certain, indeed, that I had previously sung its praises in no modest
tones. My description doubtless lacked neither the farmer’s circumflex
accents nor the lingering susurration of the Italian nurse. She may
have expected to see another Versailles, or at the very least another
Chantilly. So when, all alive with interest, duly instructed, and her
anticipation keyed up to pitch, she was introduced to the incomparable
edifice, she had the effrontery to exclaim in a tone of surprise, “Is
this it?”

I felt her disappointment. With the utmost courtesy I escorted her
to her carriage--even when boiling over with rage one is polite to
a woman--but I have never seen her since that day: I should not
be able to endure the sight of her. Perfect understanding with a
stranger concerning the places and things of one’s childhood is simply
impossible. It is a case of different dimensions. They are to be
pitied, for their eyes are incapable of seeing. They do not see _the
house_, they see only a house. How then are they to understand?

You come upon an iron gateway between two square granite columns;--the
gate freshly painted and in three sections, those on either side bolted
to the ground, permitting the use of only that in the centre. The three
are opened only on grand occasions, for carriages and limousines. In
old times they were opened for hay waggons. In old times, for that
matter, you had only to push a little and you could go in by any gate
you pleased, the bolts being out of commission. All sorts of unbidden
folk used to come into the court, and to me their intrusions were
highly disagreeable. Children are strongly conservative in their sense
of proprietorship.

“What difference does it make?” grandfather would say.

Grandfather detested enclosures of any sort.

The stone columns used to be covered with moss, but now they are draped
with climbing plants. The trees have been trimmed of the too-exuberant
branches that used to seem to bend in blessing above the roof, or to
tap upon the window panes. One never realises the vigour of a tree;
grant it a few square yards and it soon overshadows them, and gradually
draws nearer and nearer, like a friend who has the right of entrance.
Now that our trees have been trimmed--for the time being--the sunlight
caresses the walls of the old house, and this is better, in the matter
of hygiene. Humidity is unwholesome, especially in autumn. But here
is a puzzle; in my time, I mean in the time when I was young, there
was a sun-dial carved in high relief upon the wall. Above it was a
tarnished and half-effaced inscription, the secret of which I refused
to penetrate: ME LUX, VOS UMBBA. Father had translated it for
me and I made haste to forget it that I might still feel the thrill of
the mysterious syllables. Above it was the iron finger whose slender
shadow marked the hour all day long, and encircling it were the names
of unknown cities, London, Boston, Pekin, and the rest, intended to
show the differences in time the whole world round, as if the whole
world were merely a dependance of the house, which dictated the laws
of time to them all. But a linden tree, in an inadvertent moment, had
rendered useless all this labour of light. The linden had indeed been
pruned, but by an unlucky mischance, when the front of the house was
restored the entire dial had been covered with a coat of whitewash. Oh,
ill-starred restoration! But am not I responsible, for was it not I who
ordered it? Grown people are capable of just such profanities. They do
it without meaning any harm. No doubt I had said, carelessly, “That
poor dial is of no use.” (The trees had not been trimmed then.) It is a
mistake to let fall a thought; some one is sure to pick it up. A mason
who had chanced to hear me actually thought to give me pleasure with
his whitewash brush, and when I tried to restrain his zeal it was too
late.

As a matter of fact, all these changes which I force myself to set
down hardly affect me. Don’t think me stoical to that degree. I simply
do not see the house as it is. It might be besmeared from cornice to
foundation and I should not notice it. I always see it as it was in my
time--the time, of course you understand, when I was little. I have it
thus before my eyes for all the rest of my life.

The nice old cracks that used to look, not like wrinkles but like
smiles, have all been closed up. A wing has been added for the
convenience of the domestic economy; and as the tiles were falling off
the roof they have been replaced by slates. I have no quarrel with
slates. There are some of an almost lilac grey, like the throat of a
turtle-dove, that are very prisms for reflecting the light. But slate
roofs are flat and monotonous, uniform and without character, while
tiles, rounded, irregular, humped, seem actually to stir, to move, to
stretch themselves like the good old turtles in the garden, that sigh
for fair weather, and hump their backs in protest against wind and
rain. The colour of tiles shades from red to black, passing gradually
or abruptly through all the diminishing tones between. And those who
have eyes to see can guess at the age of the house entirely from the
degree of their incrustation.

However, its age is accurately set down on the blackened tablet in the
great chimney which is the glory of the kitchen. As soon as I rightly
knew my letters and figures, father had set me to read the date, and I
quite understood that he took pride in it, whereas grandfather sneered
at the little ceremony, murmuring in the background, below his voice by
way of not attracting too much attention, but quite distinctly enough
for me to hear, “Do leave the child in peace!”

Was it 1610 or 1670? No one could be quite certain, short of calling
together all our local academies. The stroke at the left of the upright
was too horizontal for a 1 and not sufficiently so for a 7.

“It’s not of the slightest importance,” said grandfather, to whom I
referred the matter.

However, I no longer doubted that it was 1610, when my history book
informed me that this was the year of the assassination of Henry IV.
My imagination demanded the association of a historic event with the
building of our house. “_The King left the Louvre in a coach. He
occupied the back seat, the panels of which were open. The stopping
of two carts at the entrance of the rue de la Ferronnerie, which was
extremely narrow, forced the royal equipage to halt. At that very
moment a man of thirty-two, of a sinister countenance, tall and very
corpulent, red bearded and black haired, François Ravaillac, stepped
with one foot upon the curb, the other upon the spoke of the wheel,
and stabbed the King with two blows of a dagger, the second of which
severed the pulmonary vein. Henri cried, ‘I am wounded,’ and almost
instantly expired_.” I can recall word for word the account in the
history-book which I have not been able to find. No doubt the terrible
picture of the murder which it gave aids my memory. And I was able
to appreciate the importance of the dates by the significant detail
that the rascal’s face infallibly proved that he was thirty-two years
old--thirty-two, and not thirty-one or thirty-three. The rapidity of
the drama in no wise prevented the accurate recognition of this detail.
And when the historian added that the King was hastily carried back to
the Louvre, bleeding from Ravaillac’s poniard, I pictured to myself the
procession as at the door of the house. The house was our Louvre.

The kitchen was probably, was surely, the finest, largest, most
comfortable, most honourable room in the house; banquets and balls
might have been given in it. Such had been the custom in old times,
and I should be the last to find fault with it. Though I have since
dared to transform that kitchen into a hall paved with black and
white marble, the walls handsomely done in panels of hard wood, and
well lighted by a glass bay which occupies the entire side toward
the sunset, I still find myself looking about me for stew-pans and
frying-pans, and above all for the spit that used to turn there. I
still smell the odours of ragouts and roasts, and whenever I see
my guests entering the room I have an impulse to cry out upon the
stupidity of the servants, exclaiming, “What possesses you to bring
them in here!”

Here Mariette the cook held sway. Her power was absolute. Before her
despotism people and furniture alike trembled. Happily, the wide
spaces afforded room to escape her vigilant eye. There were shadowed
corners where one could manage to keep out of sight, especially under
the vast chimney mantel. The chimney had been put upon the retired
list like an aged servant. I used not to know why; but I divine that
it was from reasons of economy, for it was capable of consuming whole
forests. Under its shelter one could make oneself quite comfortable on
the old stone fire-dogs, that were cemented into their place. Bending
back the head, one could see daylight at the top. In autumn, when
night comes early, I used to look up to watch for a star. One night
even, reluctantly crossing the kitchen, then dark and deserted, I was
terrified by a square of light lying white upon the hearth-stone like
an unfolded sheet. Was it the cast-off garment of a ghost? Perhaps they
throw them off that way, at the moment of vanishing, leaving them as an
incontrovertible witness to their visit. The moon was playing upon the
roof.

The more coming and going there was, the better Mariette was pleased.
Her tongue itched in solitude. As a general thing the postman, the
farmer, the men who worked in the garden made their appearance there at
regular intervals. Each and all were served with a glass of red wine,
which they drank with unfailing observance of the rites. They lifted
the elbow and said, “To your health,” after which it was permitted
to drain the glass; and if a second were desired, even without the
slightest interval, the same formula must be observed. Never a one of
them balked at its repetition. I have sometimes drunk in their company,
no doubt from the same glass.

Folk would come also from the mountain villages to get father when
a case was serious. Father, who was a doctor, never demurred at
going with them. I can still hear his words of greeting, at once
compassionate and resolute, when he crossed Mariette’s empire and found
it occupied.

“What is wrong now, friend?”

Mariette would scan all new-comers with a wary yet perspicacious eye,
which unmasked frauds and congealed the blood in the veins of those
unlucky wights whose arrival coincided with the sacred hour of a meal.
I have been present at many an outpouring of peasant woes. They came
out little by little, with a certain reticence of grief, as if illness
were a disgraceful thing. I did not understand this reserve; indeed, it
seemed to me simply slowness of speech.

The high-tide of the year, to the cook, was October, the vintage
season. What comings and goings through the kitchen of vintagers at
work in the wine-press! How important that their strength should be
kept up by large reinforcements of boiled beef and potatoes, and how
warm and savoury the steam that filled the kitchen from the great
kettles! We children used to make the most of the confusion to settle
ourselves upon the fire-dogs, our pockets full of nuts which the
wind had scattered over the farm lane, or which we had ourselves
surreptitiously knocked off with switches. A bit of flint served to
crack them upon the hearth-stone. If they were still in their green
husk a juice would squirt out, staining our hands and clothes with
a pigment of which not the best soap could obliterate the tell-tale
tokens. But the kernels, white as a fowl well dressed for a doll’s
dinner, would crunch most deliciously between our teeth. Or we would
stealthily pop our chestnuts on a corner of the stove, revelling in
the warmth after coming in, chilled through, from kicking dead leaves
before us in the face of the autumn winds; for in my country the winds
are harsh and rude.

Many a time, too, have I curiously watched Mariette’s movements as she
killed a fowl. Her dexterity and her indifference were alike extreme.
Like the most experienced headsman she would decapitate ducks that
continued to run around, headless, to my great admiration. One day she
asked me to hold a reluctant victim during the operation. I indignantly
refused my co-operation, whereupon she exclaimed, with the contempt
which she often affected:

“Ho! how squeamish we are! You are ready enough to eat them!”

I am not going to conduct you through the whole house. It would take
too long, for there are two stories above the ground floor, the second
being much less ancient than the first, and above that a garret and
the tower. The tower, which you reach by a winding stair, has four
windows commanding the four quarters of the horizon. This diversified
view, too extensive for my taste, never interested me much. I suppose
that children care little for things that extend indefinitely, things
that do nothing, clouds, vague landscapes. On stormy days the wind
made an infernal hubbub around the tower; one might have fancied it
a living creature, ill-mannered and strong, heaping insults upon the
walls before throwing them down. The staircase was none too light; at
nightfall it was easy to get frightened there, and as the steps were
very narrow on the side of the supporting pillar, you were likely to
get a fine _carabosse_ if you hurried. _Carabosse_ was a word
which Aunt Deen had invented for severe falls occasioned by hurrying;
falls from which one picked oneself up lame, bruised and swollen; the
word no doubt came from the wicked fairy Carabosse.

As for the garret, not one of us would have gone there without company.
A single dormer window grudgingly admitted an insufficient light,
just enough to give to the heaps of wood, faggots and cast-off things
of all sorts that gradually accumulated there to wear out a useless
existence, the appearance of instruments of torture or fearsome
personages. Moreover, it was the battle ground of hosts of rats. From
the rooms below one might have supposed they were amusing themselves
with regularly organised obstacle races. Once in a while the cat was
carried up there--a superb, lazy Angora, fond of good eating and little
disposed to warfare. He was no doubt afraid of spoiling his fine coat,
and would _meow_ in terror until Aunt Deen, whose special care he
was, released him from military duty, at no long delay.

The drawing room, the shades of which were generally drawn and which
was only opened on ceremonial occasions or on reception days, was
forbidden ground to us; and likewise my father’s study, crowded
with books, apparatus and vials. We ventured into it only for hasty
explorations, but I used to see all sorts of forlorn creatures going
in there, who usually came out looking much happier. By way of
compensation, the dining room was given over to us. It was the scene of
many a tumult, and the chairs had more than once to be re-seated and
their backs strengthened. Into mother’s room, which was very large,
we used to rush at all times. It was so centrally situated that every
sound in the house reached it, and from it our mother quietly, and
without attracting attention, watched over her whole domain; nothing
went on in it that she did not know at once. In our eagerness for
conquest we even took possession of the music room, a small octagon
parlour, of marvellous acoustic properties, which opened upon a balcony
looking southward. The family usually spent the summer evenings in this
room, on account of the balcony.

I have still to tell of the garden. But if I describe it as it seems
to me, you will think, like the lady from Paris, that it is one of
those vast domains that surround historic châteaux. I have never yet
been able to understand, as I walk in it now, how it could once have
seemed so large to me; but as soon as I am no longer there it regains
its true importance in my memory. Perhaps it is because in those days
it was so ill kept that one easily gained the impression of being lost
in it. With the exception of the kitchen-garden, the beds of which
were straight and orderly, every part of it was at haphazard. In the
orchard, where pears and peaches that our insinuating fingers were
forever testing never succeeded in ripening before they were picked,
the grass grew thick and tall, as tall as me, upon my word! Always, in
the orchard, I used to think of the virgin forests that the Children of
Captain Grant travelled through. A rose garden, the _chef d’œuvre_
of a flower-loving ancestor, bloomed in a corner whenever it felt so
disposed, and with no aid either from pruning shears or watering pot.
Mother used to work in it in her moments of rare leisure, but it really
needed an expert in the art. The alleys were overgrown with weeds--one
had to search to find a path. On the other hand, other walks that had
never been laid out appeared in the very midst of the grass plots. And
just under mother’s windows there was a fountain; you didn’t hear it
in the daytime, you were so used to it, but in the night, when all was
still, its monotonous wail filled all the silence and made me sad, I
did not know why.

I have forgotten to mention the vines that were trained against the
farm buildings, and which interested us only when we could relieve
them of their grapes. And now at last I come to the loveliest tangle
imaginable of bushes, brambles, nettles, and all sorts of wild plants,
that was our own special domain. There we were masters and sovereign
lords. There was nothing more before you reached the surrounding wall
except a chestnut grove, which was simply an extension of our own
empire. When I say chestnut grove, I mean four or five chestnut trees.
But one alone could cast a wide shade. There was one whose roots had
overthrown a section of the wall. By this open breach, which I never
approached without a sense of discomfort, I used to imagine that
robbers might come in.

To be sure, I was armed. Father had told us the stories of the Iliad
and the Odyssey, the story of Roland and various other tales of
adventure, from the hearing of which I would sally forth all on fire,
impetuous and heroic. By turns I would be the furious Roland or the
magnanimous Hector. With my wooden sword I would give mortal combat to
Greeks or Saracens, impersonated by certain shrubs, but of which the
peaceable cabbages and unoffending beets sometimes bore the brunt as I
cut right and left among them.

My arms were provided by one of the queer labourers we used to employ
in the garden or about the vines. There were three of them, each
working by himself in his corner, each with his special qualifications
but with undefined duties, though care was taken to keep them apart.
They detested one another. Where had they been picked up? Their
selection was no doubt due to grandfather’s inveterate indifference,
for he let every one, including the property, go his own way. Or
perhaps it was due to mother’s tender heart, for she was easily capable
of having fished up such pitiful wrecks of humanity as these.

The first and earliest in my memory, the one who was my armourer into
the bargain, went by the name of Tem Bossette. Both appellations
were nicknames, I suppose, and their origin is not hard to discover.
_Tem_ must have been derived from Anthelmus, who is a saint
venerated in our province. As for the nickname Bossette, I long
supposed it to be an indelicate allusion to the curve of his back, due
to long leaning over the spade. But I have found an etymology that
better suits his character, especially his laziness, and I humbly
submit it to messieurs the philologers, who will be able, according
to their custom, to consecrate to it several folio volumes. In our
country the word _bosse_ has more than one meaning; it especially
designates the cask in which the vintage is deposited for convenient
removal from the vineyard, and I can still see the bewilderment stamped
upon the countenance of a friend to whom I was doing the honours of my
native town, on reading a poster, a simple little poster, containing
the words _For sale, an oval bosse_. “Happy region,” he commented,
“where hunchbacks can carry their gibbosities to market.” He thought
himself very clever when he added, “But do they find purchasers?” I
explained to him his mistake. Now Tem was a notable drunkard. Our
cellar knew that better than any one. _Bossette_, little wine
cask; he also could contain a grape harvest; and even, toward the close
of his life, the diminutive might have been suppressed.

He used to make swords for me out of the stakes on which the vines were
tied. In recompense I used to bring him extra bottles of wine, which I
procured from Aunt Deen, who had special charge of the cellar, urging
upon her the splendour of my armament. From time to time there arose
a complaint that the vine trellises were defective and the untrained
branches trailing on the ground, absorbing dampness. But grandfather,
good naturedly indifferent, never blamed any one, and please reckon
up how many stakes were necessary to my complete equipment. I needed
them for my panoplies, I needed them for my stables. The number of my
horses bore witness to my magnificence. With a stick between my legs
I acquired an astonishing velocity, and for each battle I must needs
change horses.

Tem Bossette would have been tall if he had stood up straight, but as
to his stoutness there was no question, and his round head greatly
resembled a pumpkin. “Big head, little wit,” Mimi Pachoux used to say
of him, pursing up his lips. Mimi Pachoux was gardener, orchard man,
lamp man, smoke doctor, locksmith, cabinet maker, mender of clocks
and china, floor-waxer, wood-sawyer, errand man and I know not what
more. Oh, yes, in the winter he used to be bearer of the dead. Did any
difficulty arise, was any help needed? “Call Mimi!” grandfather would
say. And they would call Mimi--a matter of several hours, for no one
ever knew where he was, so that when he at last arrived the work would
be done; but every one gave him the credit of it.

“That Mimi, he no sooner comes than everything goes well!”

Picture to yourself a little scrap of a man, thin, clean, prompt,
lively and invisible into the bargain. Invisible, that is what I mean,
unless you would prefer to grant him the gift of ubiquity. Every
morning he would begin a half dozen days’ works; here at six o’clock,
and perhaps earlier--oh, that Mimi! What zeal!--At five past six at
another job, and before the quarter hour at a third, loudly announcing
himself at the first, running to the second, flying to the third,
slipping in here, stealing out secretly, running back furtively,
replying here, explaining there, protesting elsewhere, appearing,
disappearing, reappearing, beginning in haste, going on in a hurry,
finishing nothing, and at evening getting paid in three places at once.
Grandfather used to say that several persons among his acquaintance
could see their double. Father would observe that it was a well known
malady, requiring nothing but drink for its production. I tried it
once, but I saw everything shifting about. It was Tem Bossette who used
to drink, but our Mimi Pachoux could see his triple.

As to the third member of our force, it was essential never to lose
sight of him for a minute, because of his fixed determination to hang
himself. He had made several attempts that had ended in failure. We
used to watch him in relays. Mariette would refuse him the slightest
bit of cord, however pressing his need of it, and he was carefully
assigned to work where the uncovered spaces were largest. In early
days he used to be called Dante, but his name was really Beatrix. His
nickname was given him by the keeper of our departmental archives, a
man of wit. His face was long and woe-begone, and he was so possessed
with the desire to hie him to the lower regions that it was continually
necessary to cut his rope. By degrees he came to be called Le Pendu,
or the Hanged, and was known by no other name. Very few were willing
to employ him because of the police force requisite to ward off his
catastrophes. Mother was his providence. The heavy jobs were intrusted
to him, but he generally gave them over to Aunt Deen, who was strong,
active, and capable of moving even the heavy casks, while he looked
on with admiration, open-mouthed and with swinging arms. His mouth
contained only two teeth, which by marvellous good luck were precisely
one above the other, so that when one met the other you might suppose
that it was one tooth uniting the two jaws.

You can understand to what a degree our garden was neglected. Should
I have loved it more, blooming with flowers and fruits, than in this
lamentable condition, in which it seemed to me immense and measureless
and mysterious?

Dear old garden, with your crazy weeds, always a little too damp and
much too shady because of branches left to their own will, where I
have played so much and invented so many games, where I have known the
glory of combat, the wonders of exploration, the pride of conquest, the
intoxication of freedom; not to mention the friendship of trees and
the pleasantness of fruit gathered in secret! Who would recognise you
to-day? Raked, reduced to order, pruned, watered, your alleys sanded,
your turf cut close around the flower urns, never flatter yourself that
you can dazzle me with your beauty!

When I walk in my garden I still go as I please, trampling down the
borders, treading underfoot the grass plots, endangering the flowers,
until the new gardener--who by himself alone only too ably replaces
Tem Bossette, Mimi Pachoux, and the Hanged--cries out in a voice of
consternation:

“Do take care, sir!”

I must excuse him. He does not know that I am walking in my garden of
long ago.


To complete this portrait of the house, there still is lacking--oh,
almost nothing! Almost nothing yet almost everything, two things
indeed, a shadow and a footstep.

The footstep was my father’s; no one ever mistook it. Rapid, regular,
resonant, it was his and no other’s. Once it was heard on the threshold
a magic change passed over everything. Tem Bossette plied his spade
with unsuspected vigour, Mimi Pachoux, till then invisible, popped up
like an imp out of a bottle. The Hanged tackled the heaviest casks,
Mariette stirred her fire, all of us children came to order, and
grandfather--I don’t know why--went out. Was there a difficulty to
solve, a trouble to bear, a danger to fear? Let some one say, “Here he
is,” and it was all over, every anxiety dissipated, every one taking
a long breath as after a victory. Aunt Deen especially had a way of
saying, “Here he is,” which would have put to flight the most daring
aggressor. It was as much as to say, “Just wait! You will see what
will happen. It won’t take long: Another minute and justice will be
done!” Once aware of his presence, we felt in ourselves an invincible
strength, a sense of security, of protection, of an armed peace,
and also a sense of being under command. Each had his own part. But
grandfather loved neither to command nor to be commanded.

And the shadow--it was my mother’s, there behind the half closed window
blind, whenever all the family was not gathered around her. She is
waiting for father, or for our return from school. Some one is absent,
and she is anxious. Or the weather is threatening--she is looking at
the sky? wondering whether to light the blessed candle.

A different sort of peace emanates from her, a peace--how shall I
describe it?--that reaches beyond the things of life, that enters into
one and calms the nerves and heart, the peace of love and prayer. That
shadow, which I used to look for every time I came in, that I look
for now, though well enough I know that it is not there, that it is
elsewhere--that shadow was the soul of the house, showing through it as
thought shows in a face.

Thus were we guarded.

Beyond the house was the town, on a lower level, as was fitting, and
still beyond a great lake and the mountains, and more distant still,
the rest of the world. But all these were simply dependencies of The
House.




                                  II

                              THE DYNASTY


THOSE days were in the reign of my grandfather.

A long line of ancestors must have reigned before him, to judge by the
portraits in the drawing room. Most of these portraits were now much
blackened, so that unless there was a flood of light it was pretty
difficult to guess what the frames held. One of the most defaced of
them was the one that most commanded my admiration. Only the face and
one hand were visible--they might have been a woman’s face and hand;
but I had been told of the important part their owner had borne in the
wars, and I wondered how so young and handsome a man could have fought
so much. The lady with the rose attracted me, too. No matter on what
side of her I stood, from every side she smiled upon me and showed me
her flower. I pass over certain stem faces trussed up in high collars,
swathed in huge neckcloths, as if afflicted with colds, and come to
two portraits which occupied the place of honour on the right and left
of the chimney. One wore a blue coat laced with silver, a scarlet
waistcoat, white knee breeches and the three-cornered hat of the French
Guard. The other wore the bear-skin cap and the blue great coat with
gilt buttons and red braid on sleeves and collar of a grenadier of the
Old Guard. The soldier of the King and the soldier of the Emperor were
companion pictures. To judge by their decorations, both had well served
France. Father had proudly told me of their exploits, and explained
their grade. I could not look at them without a sort of reverential
fear. They were not handsome, having more bone than flesh, and features
all out of drawing, but I should not have dared to call them ugly.
Their eyes, severely fixed upon me, troubled me. They reproached me
for not having achieved wonderful victories like that of the grenadier
at Moscow, or for at least not having undergone heroic defeat like the
French Guard at Malplaquet. For a long time these two were the only
names of battles that I knew. And I used to blush for Tem Bossette’s
wooden sabres and the laths that I bestrode. I understood that my feats
of horsemanship in the garden were not serious, were not real. Those
two redoubtable portraits sometimes puffed me up with pride and again
overwhelmed me with their importance. One day when I was gazing upon
them with some uneasiness grandfather came by, and with his little dry
smile and his most impertinent pursing of the lips, let fall the words,

“Pooh! They are only bad paintings.”

It is dangerous to teach too much esthetics to a child. I was glad that
they were bad paintings. In a moment the soldier of the King with his
three-cornered hat and the soldier of the Emperor with his bear-skin
cap lost all their fascination. Thenceforth their story was nothing to
me. I was set free from the servitude of a compelled admiration. I at
once felt my superiority over a badly painted past, and could judge the
gallery of ancestors with insolence.

One day the subject of exiling them to the garret was agitated.
Grandfather desired to replace them with engravings.

“They are of the eighteenth century,” he observed, by way of settling
the question, making the statement simply and courteously, as the most
natural thing in the world. But Aunt Deen exclaimed indignantly and
father exerted that calm authority that broke down all resistance.
Grandfather did not insist; he never insisted. But I understood him,
since they were bad paintings.

Grandfather’s government was negligent and fitful. As well say he
had no government. When I read in my history book, or in that of
my elder brothers, the chapter consecrated to the sluggard kings I
immediately thought of grandfather. He made no point at all of his
prerogatives. And yet his name was Augustus. I knew it, because
great-aunt Bernardine, she whom we called Aunt Deen, and who was his
sister, called him Augustus, though as seldom as possible, for his name
irritated him.

“Yes,” he said one day, “they named me Augustus--why the mischief I
don’t know. That’s another trick that ancestors have. They fasten a
ridiculous label upon you for all your days.”

Though of medium height, grandfather gave the impression of being tall,
because of his fine head, which he was not in the least proud of and
carried with indifference. His well-cut nose was slightly aquiline.
His white hair, which he would never have had cut but for Aunt Deen’s
abrupt interventions, curled a little, and he was continually thrusting
his fingers through his long beard,--which waved like that of the
Emperor Charlemagne in the pictures,--lest some grains of tobacco
should be caught in it, for he smoked and took snuff. On a nearer view
the impression as of a prophet which he first gave gradually faded away
and vanished. He looked down too often, or lifted upon you vague eyes
that refused to see you. You felt that you did not exist, so far as he
was concerned, and nothing is more irritating than that. He cared for
nothing and for no one. His clothes hung upon his body by the grace
of God and Aunt Deen. He never knew whether they were well or ill
fitting, and as to changing them he would gladly have worn them till
they left him first. The more worn they were the more was he at ease
in them. I fancy that he had never known the use of suspenders, and
cravats seemed to him a wretched concession to fashion. He detested
whatever restricted his movements and would have been content to wear
all day long the green dressing gown and the black velvet Greek cap in
which he felt at ease, and which he did sometimes wear to the midday
breakfast. When my brothers and I saw him appear in this accoutrement
we would be bursting with laughter which a glance from our father
forced us to smother; but the same glance seemed to include a reproof
of the famous dressing gown.

It was with great difficulty that grandfather could be induced to be
regular at meals.

“Oh,” he would say good-naturedly, “one eats when he is hungry. Rules
for meal times are absurd.”

“Still,” father would urge, evidently not pleased, but endeavouring to
speak gently--yet even in our father’s gentleness we felt an impression
of authority--“still there must be order in a household.”

“Order, order, oho!”

You should have heard his “ohos!” uttered softly, warily, in a sort
of aside, yet striking at all established order, and accompanied by a
little dry laugh. That little laugh at once placed grandfather above
his interlocutors. Nothing have I ever met in all the forms of human
expression more disquieting, more mocking, more ironical, than that
little laugh. It at once gave you the idea that you were a beast. It
produced upon me the effect of the sharp clip of the shears when the
rose bushes are pruned; _ric_, _rac_, the flowers fall;
_ric_, _rac_, there are none left. By his little laugh,
involuntarily, no doubt, grandfather offered an insult to all the world.

His presiding at table was honorary and not effective. Not only did
he not direct the conversation, he followed it but fitfully, when it
interested him. For that matter, he assumed no responsibility about
anything. When he walked in the garden, visited the vines, Tem, Mimi
and The Hanged utterly failed to extract from him any directions. He
would simply make a vague gesture which signified “Let me alone.” The
trio did not make a point of receiving instructions, for his silence
suited them, but matters went none the better in consequence.

Besides his laugh, he had another claim to superiority, his violin. Was
he not in the drawing room among the portraits, young and curly-haired,
with a guitar in his hands?

“Never in my life have I twanged that odious instrument,” he one day
protested. “But a wandering Italian felt impelled to make a daub of me.”

“You were so beautiful,” asserted Aunt Deen. “The artist was all
enthusiasm over you.”

“Oh, the artist!”

He would spend long hours in his room playing his instrument, but
he devoted still more time to examining it lovingly, handling it,
tightening or loosening the strings, touching the bow with resin, as
mowers in the fields so often spend more time whetting their scythes
than in mowing, indefinitely making music upon them with a stone.

When grandfather played he turned every one out of his room. He played
for himself alone, and in general the same airs, for I often listened
at the door; and in after years I used to recognise passages that he
played from the Freischütz and Euryanthe, the Magic Flute and the
Marriage of Figaro. Mozart’s pure rhythms were to me like that joy in
breathing that one takes in childhood without noticing it, as limpid
water takes on the contours of a vase; but Weber gave me a vague desire
for things which I could not describe. I seemed to be in the heart of a
forest, with paths stretching away interminably into the lost distances.

The pieces that he played were not all of equal merit, though I could
not know that. Everything is good to a child in the springtime of
sentiment. To this day I can not hear the overture to Poet and Peasant
without emotion. One evening at Lucerne, by the lake side, the most
ordinary of orchestras in the most ordinary of hotels began that
overture. Around me men in dinner jackets and ladies in evening gowns
went on chatting and laughing as if they heard nothing, as if they were
deaf, yet I felt utterly alone, my heart melting and I thought I should
weep. The orchestra was not playing for the public, it was playing for
me alone, no longer the mediocre art of the Austrian composer, but the
memory of my entrance as a child into the mysterious realm of sound and
dreams, in the forest whose paths stretch away into the infinite.

At the same period the singing of one of my school comrades quite
overcame me. It was at a first communion service. I had not yet been
admitted to the Holy Table and was at leisure to listen. He sang that
melody of Gounod, _Heaven Has Visited the Earth_, and quite truly
heaven was visiting me, taking me by storm, carrying me away. My
whole enraptured being made a part of that song. The voice rose high,
higher, it seemed that it must break, that it was not strong enough to
bear up those mighty notes that filled all the chapel. It seemed like
those tall fountains, so slender that the wind carries them away, so
that they never fall to earth. That voice was indeed broken as the boy
became a youth; death carried away my comrade in his sixteenth year.

Then there was a music box that father had brought me from Milan
whither he had been summoned for a consultation. When the screw was
turned it gave forth soft, thin, somewhat quavering notes, and a little
dancer would pirouette upon the cover. Gravely and in cadence with the
music she would point her toes and take her position as if she were
accomplishing a sacred rite, a sweet yet sad little spectacle. How many
times have I been disenchanted in later years when I discovered that
my partners in the ball were frivolous, when I had expected to find in
them tender sweetness, that sacred sadness of the little dancer of my
music box.


The sluggard kings in my history book were accompanied by mayors of
the palace, who, at first mere officers charged with the interior
government, became prime ministers and even masters of their masters.
In school we heard eulogiums upon Pepin d’Heristal and Pepin the
Short, who became the father of Charlemagne. Grandfather was not
a very serious king and I quite expected father to take over the
power. But why did he treat grandfather with so much respect, instead
of dispossessing him? History had taught me to expect a different
attitude. To the farmers, labourers and servant folk grandfather was
just _Monsieur_, or _Monsieur Rambert_, and father was _Monsieur
Michel_. It would never have entered any one’s head to call upon
monsieur, to consult monsieur, to ask monsieur for an order. Monsieur
would have been the first to protest. “What do you want of me? Leave
me in peace. I have no time (I could never understand why he had no
time). Go to Monsieur Michel.” Thus he himself set the example. I had
concluded like every one else that he was good for nothing. Yet once
in a while, no one knew why, he would protest against being left out
in matters of the palace--I mean to say, of the house. But whenever
a serious matter was in question, an important order to be given,
one would hear on all sides the cry, “Where is Monsieur Michel? Call
Monsieur Michel!”

I have spoken of my father’s step. There was also his voice, sonorous,
thrilling, cheery. He never raised it, he knew that there was no need.
It opened doors, penetrated to the most distant rooms, and at the
same time poured into the heart new strength, like a good glass of red
wine--as folk declare who understand such things. When he came late to
dinner because of the crowd of patients who hung upon him, there was
no need to ring the bell,--from his ante-room he would proclaim, as it
were an edict, “Dinner!”

And the dispersed family would make haste to assemble.

“What a voice!” grandfather would protest, starting as if in amazement.

I can never read expressions like the following, which occur more or
less in all manuals of history, save in those of the present day in
which battles are juggled with as if they gained themselves--_At the
voice of their chief the soldiers rushed to the assault_.--_At
the voice of their general the troops rallied_--without hearing
my father’s voice echoing through all the house. Tem Bossette, who
was fearfully afraid of it, would hear it from the uttermost vines.
The step announced a presence, but the voice gave orders. And yet the
labourers were not under my father; all the same every one of them
felt that he was the head. Everything about him conspired to give this
impression; his height, his clear cut features, crossed by a short
stiff moustache, his piercing eyes, the gaze of which one did not like
to encounter. A sort of fascination emanated from his person. Aunt
Deen, who shared the general sentiment, would say _my nephew_,
as if bursting with pride. The grenadier in the drawing-room could
not have pursed up his lips otherwise to speak of the Emperor. I had
not escaped this fascination, and even in my days of revolt I never
ceased to pay him secret worship. But the spirit of liberty impels us
to act contrary to our surest instincts, under pretext of asserting our
liberty.

Do not think he was severe with us. He became terrible only when we
were taking the wrong direction. Only, I have never known in any one
else such an aptitude for command. In spite of his absorbing profession
he found time to look after our studies and plays, and even to add to
both by the epic stories which with consummate art he used to tell us.
My memory retains them to this day, and will retain them always. It was
easy to see that he honoured the family portraits. He made the past of
our ancestors live again for us, but I could never forget that they
were bad paintings.

When we felt ourselves observed by father we understood that in his
glance, which encompassed our weakness with his strength, there was
something besides tenderness and perhaps pride, but what was it? I know
now that he was seeking in each one of us forecasts of our future. The
antiquity of our race was not enough to satisfy his love of permanence;
he would fain follow it into the obscure travail of the future and
consolidate its unity. Even our happiness was less dear to him than the
obedience of our will to the common task. The father’s glance enfolds
within it the child’s image; the child knows that well, and it is all
he needs to know.

While we were very little he taught us reverence for what he called our
vocation. From our earliest years we felt its importance. My sister
Mélanie, who was oldest of all, my brothers Bernard and Stephen had
early decided upon theirs--for Bernard the army, for the other two the
mission field. Father never thought of opposing them, although perhaps
these choices forced him to resign hopes that he had cherished. The
laughing Louise would marry, there was no hurry about that. As for
Nicola and James, they were still too little for much thought about
their future.

“And you?” my father had asked me.

As I had no answer ready, he gave utterance to his desire.

“You will remain with us.”

Thus it was agreed that I was to remain, to take charge of the
household. The part assigned to me hardly allured me; it seemed tame
and commonplace, whereas the destinies of the others were adorned with
all the glamour of leaving home. I neither confirmed nor opposed the
plan proposed for my future, but within myself I felt a wild desire to
be set free from these arrangements, from this power that dominated me.
Secret longings to rebel even against those I loved began to germinate
within me. Later they were destined to grow, under an influence at that
time unforeseen.

I ought now to tell about The Queen. Is it not her turn? Yet in truth
I can not do it and you must not ask me to. That shadow which I always
seek as I return to the house, and which our absence was always enough
to disquiet--I can only invoke her presence there. It is indeed she,
but remote and hidden. When I try to draw near her I can find no words.

Have you observed, on fine summer days, the blue haze that floats
over the hillsides and helps to bring out the delicate contours of
the earth? If I could throw a transparent veil like that over my
mother’s face, it seems to me that I should have more courage to tell
of her sweetness, to describe the pureness of those eyes which could
not believe in evil. What unknown strength was concealed beneath that
sweetness? Grandfather, who could ward off any influence merely by
his irritating little laugh, and who never laid aside this weapon of
defence even with his son, invariably abandoned it before my mother.
And my father, whose authority seemed to be absolute and infallible,
would turn to her as if he recognised in her some mysterious power.

I know now what that power was: it was God dwelling in her, whether
she had been to meet him at early mass, before any one else was up and
stirring, or whether she had offered to him her daily labours in the
house....

My brothers and sisters and I were the people. In every kingdom there
must be a people. It is true that in most houses now-a-days one wonders
what has become of the people. The king and queen, dejected as two
weeping willows, are wearily watching one another grow old. They have
no one to govern and they will not lay aside their crown. At our house
the people were numerous and noisy. If you can count, you already know
that there were seven of us, from Mélanie who was seven years older
than I, to James, who was six years younger.

Before being led into action, the whole battalion used to undergo a
preliminary inspection from Aunt Deen, who was in charge of the review
of details.

Aunt Deen was endowed with an activity which years could not abate,
and of which all the servants except Mariette shamelessly took
advantage. Always coming and going, from cellar to garret, always on
the stairs--for she invariably forgot half the things she intended to
do, or suddenly interrupted whatever she might be doing--beginning to
sweep, leaving off to hunt dust under a piece of furniture, warring
against spider’s webs with a wolf’s head--a sort of brush fastened to
the end of a long pole,--or rushing to the aid of one of us who had
cried out, she had rocked, washed, dressed, cuddled, watched over,
amused, kept busy, cared for and caressed all seven of us, and even an
eighth, who had died before I could remember.

To this imposing number must also be added grandfather, whom she
shielded from all care. He was not exacting. Provided he could have at
hand whatever he might desire he asked no favours of any one. To be
sure, the disorder of his room must always be respected; he watched
over it jealously, insisting that no one could ever find things that
had been put away. He took the indulgence of his whims as a matter
of course, paying no attention except when he was irritated by an
exaggerated degree of consideration.

As for our education and training, our moral guidance, Aunt Deen,
notwithstanding her advantage in the matter of age, placed herself
at the service of our mother, for whom she entertained unlimited
admiration and affection. Even in old age she would accept the
functions of a subaltern only. When she had said “Valentine wishes
this; Valentine says that” (Valentine was our mother), there was no
room for discussion. She herself obeyed to the very letter, without
even seeking to enter into the spirit. Not one of her thoughts was for
herself; she distributed them all, without exception, among the others.
She could see no good in scolding, and hung her head when any of us was
reprimanded, as if in protest against the harshness of authority. She
not only never carried tales about us, she found unimagined excuses
for our worst faults, such wonderful excuses as sometimes to ward off
punishment merely by the surprise which they awakened.

“That child has taken some pears.”

“The tree needed relief, it was too heavily loaded.”

“That child’s table manners aren’t nice. Did you see him put his hands
into his saucer of spinach?”

“He does so delight in green things!”

In our studies she took no interest. But she had that soul-culture
which bestows its delicate flower upon the mind. One knew quite enough
if one was well behaved and a good Catholic. Indeed it was her opinion
that our brains were too early crowded with a lot of useless knowledge.
She could find no manner of use for the history of pagans, and as for
arithmetic, she had never known how to add. But on the other hand our
health, our cleanliness, our happiness, were entirely her affair. She
sang to put us to sleep, she sang to amuse us, she sang to encourage
us to take our first steps. All my memories reverberate with the
tintinnabulation of her songs. There was one cradle song in which we
became by turns general, cardinal and emperor, and the refrain of which
was designed to encourage us to wait with patience for the brilliant
future.

  “_Meanwhile wait, and on my lap_.
  _Lovely cherub, take your nap_.”

The lovely cherubim, however, were seldom in haste to take their naps.

There was also the “Charming Nest” which “naughty little sharp-eyed
imps” tried to destroy, though it ought to be respected, for

  “_It was the hope of Spring time_
  _And all a mother’s love_.”

Sometimes it would be the prisoner Silvio Pellico who in heart-rending
strains longed for his Italian breezes. One of my earliest plays was
the escape of Silvio Pellico, though I had no idea who he was. My
favourite songs were perhaps “The Pool” and “Venice.” I call them thus
because I knew no other titles for them. “The Pool” told of a fearful
tragedy from drowning:

  _Little children, have a care_
  _When you run across and follow._
  _There’s a deep pool hidden there_
  _By the dark trees in the hollow._

  _Listen to what happened there_,
  _When a child with golden hair_,
  _Slipped away from his mamma-a-a._

The fair child was running after a dragon-fly, and “the maiden with
golden wings” enticed him into the cold water. That would teach him
not to steal away from the maternal arms! As for “Venice,” I remember
likewise the first lines, with all their doggerel:

  _If God should favor-ize_
  _My noble enterprise_,
  _I’ll hie me to Ven-ize_
  _And spend my days in joy._

Whether from the magic of the name of an unknown city, or the
melancholy air of the ritornello, I could in those days imagine no
more enchanting journey than to go to that Venice whose gondolas I had
been shown in a stereoscope. In later years, dreading disappointment,
I hesitated long before carrying out the plan born of that far-away
music--the music that we still hear within ourselves long after
childhood’s days are past. Can it be that this is one of the surest
guardians of the home?--that a simple lullaby, sung to quiet us, is
the first spark to kindle our imaginations? And when, long after, I
at last saw the city of flowing streets and rosy palaces, I entered
it with respect, recalling to mind that my visit represented a “noble
enterprise”; as if all its wondrous charm had been enfolded in Aunt
Deen’s cradle-song.

I imagine that some of her innumerable songs were of her own invention.
Or at least, having forgotten their precise words, I suppose that she
recomposed them after her own fashion. There was especially a certain
“Father Gregory,” half recited, half sung, which is hardly likely to
be found in any collection. A charming old lady to whom I repeated it
one day assured me that Father Gregory was known also in Berry, in the
neighbourhood of Châtre, under the name of Father Christopher. The
song, a sort of rhythmical prose, was declaimed in a singsong, suddenly
bursting into a tune in the final syllables. A whole little comedy of
vanity is summed up in a few phrases. You may judge for yourself from
the version of it that I tell from memory.

_Father Gregory came out of his house this morning_. Perfectly
natural thus far; Father Gregory is going to take a walk, as is
his right; but wait till you hear a detail that characterises this
promenade: _in his hat a fine bouquet of poppies_. You must swell
out your voice with the poppies. This field flower becomes a symbol of
pomp and ostentation. Aha! Father Gregory is no longer a worthy fellow
who goes out to inhale the breezes of the country-side; he is an old
beau who puts on airs; he parades, he struts, he capers, he expects
to be gazed at and admired. But you will be punished, Father Gregory;
ill-luck awaits you!

_On the way his dog began to fight with mine_. This bit of news
is simply announced. It seems at first to be of slight importance. A
bad thing nevertheless,--a dog fight in a little town. What! you don’t
know that? You have never lived in the country? A dog fight is a matter
of special gravity. The masters intervene, they take sides, and the
defeated one swears that the matter shall not end here. Whole families
have been embroiled through a dog fight. What was the origin of the
enmity between the Montagus and the Capulets? Perhaps a dog fight. And
just this way our Father Gregory undertakes to interfere; his dog is
getting the worst of it, rolled in the dust as a dumpling in flour.
_Father Gregory, trying to part them, tumbles, nose first, in the
filth_. He rushes to the rescue with uplifted cane, his foot slips,
and behold him on the ground in a lamentable posture, especially his
nose, having made a most unlucky choice of a spot upon which to fall.
At this point it is proper to assume a melancholy tone, the apostrophe
which follows reaching a note of heart-rending grief. _Poor Father
Gregory_! A pause. He is to be pitied, for his misfortune is great.
But suddenly, pity becomes sarcasm, pointing to his pride. _See his
bunch of poppies, far from his hat_! The emblems of his vanity are
soiled. He himself may go home, and wash and brush himself, but he
can never use the poppies again, and but for them nothing would have
happened to him.

I attribute Father Gregory to Aunt Deen because of the fertility of
her imagination, which daily provided her with new stories for our
delectation. Grown persons are not often on a level with children:
they take too low a place. Aunt Deen had an instinct for what was
suited to us. Her stories kept us breathless. When I try to rescue them
from the past, for her credit, they fly before me, smiling. “No, no,”
they say--for I get close to them, only between us is a great chasm,
deep, though not wide, which is the common grave of all my vanished
years--“what is the use? You can never do anything with us. See: we
have taken the colour of that time: how are you to describe that?”

When grandfather came upon us sitting in a circle around our
story-teller, he would shake his head disapprovingly.

“_Fiddle-faddles_”, he would murmur; “_fiddle-faddles_. One
owes it to children to tell them the truth.”

We would ask Aunt Deen what _fiddle-faddles_ were, and she would
answer, by way of getting her revenge, “It’s what one does when one
plays the violin.”

Between her songs and grandfather’s violin there was sometimes a
deafening discord.

Aunt Deen possessed another marvellous faculty--that of inventing
words. I have already told you of _carabosser_, but she invented
them by the hundred, so well adapted to their purpose that we
understood them at once. I can not transcribe them--they lose their
value when written down. Indeed I don’t know how to spell them; spoken
language is not the same as written language, and her picturesque
words had all the savour and crispness of popular speech. Aunt Deen
also used rare words--where she found them is a mystery for she seldom
read--strange and sonorous words and phrases that seemed her special
property, and which since then, to my surprise and amusement, I have
discovered in the dictionary, where I should never have thought of
looking for them. Thus, to call down my pride, she one day called me
a hospodar, and another day, “the purveyor in chief of mustard to the
Pope.” I did not know that the hospodars were the tyrants of Wallachia,
and that to believe oneself purveyor of mustard to the Pope meant to
have a high opinion of oneself. These strange titles with which she
invested me used to make me think of some big man, all in red, issuing
commands in a loud voice, and I did not enjoy being likened to him.

Dear great-aunt Deen, let me apostrophise you after the manner of
poor Father Gregory! If my early childhood rings musically in my
memory, as if it were mounted upon one of those mules all bedight with
sleigh-bells, that can not move without giving forth a multitudinous
jingle from far away as if to announce the approach of a great train, I
owe it to your stories and your songs. As soon as thought summons it,
and that is daily, here it comes, loudly ringing its joy-bells, because
of which I shall never have reason to complain of fate. Before I see
it, I hear it--that merry procession of memory; and when, at some turn
of the road that leads from the past to the present, it suddenly comes
upon me, it bears in its arms all the flowers of the springtide. You
well deserve the bouquet of them that I pick for you, even a bouquet of
poppies, as a guerdon for all the stories that you added to your care
and prayers. For you were always praying audibly, on the stairs or in
church or even under the banner of the wolf’s head itself. Silence was
painful to you. That is why, dear Aunt Deen, I break it this evening
and talk to you.


Aunt Deen kept strenuous watch outside of the house. To get inside you
had, like the wolf in Hans Christian Andersen, to show a white paw like
a sheep. She designated by the name of _they_ the invisible foes
that were supposed to be investing it. For a long time these mysterious
_they_ terrified us. We used to look around whenever she spoke of
them. By dint of never meeting them we at last came to laugh at them,
little thinking that this laugh disarmed us, and that thus disarmed we
should surely meet them later in flesh and blood. Her loyalty was never
caught napping. The moment the family was in question she would insist
upon a meed of praise being at once awarded it, failing which she
promptly assumed the defensive, ready for battle. A certain person who
ventured to speak of it in colourless terms found himself scanned from
head to foot, and to mask his sense of defeat took refuge in sarcasm:

“I forgot,” said he, “that your house was the Ark of the Covenant.”

“And yours Noah’s Ark,” she retorted with a _tic_ for his
_tac_, knowing that her interlocutor harboured all sorts of shady
folk.

In those days the bread was made in the kitchen in a kneading trough
nearly a hundred years old, before being carried for baking to the town
oven. Aunt Deen, who loved all sorts of cookery, used to oversee the
operation, and even at times take a hand in it herself. One day when I
was looking on, at the moment when the servant was about to mingle the
flour, water and leaven, my aunt suddenly gave her a vigorous shake.

“What are you thinking of, girl?”

“Mixing the bread, miss.”

“You are forgetting the sign of the cross.”

For in serious houses no one omitted the sign of the cross over white
flour that was on the point of being made into bread. At table, before
cutting the loaf, father never failed to trace upon it a cross, with
two strokes of the knife. When it fell to grandfather to cut the bread
I was quick to notice that he did nothing of the kind.

That was one of my first surprises. From my earliest days I understood
the importance of differences of opinion in matters religious.

Grandfather played his violin whenever he pleased. But he did not like
to be disturbed. We learned this by experience. My sister Mélanie and
my brother Stephen, who had retained from their first communion an
ardent and somewhat aggressive piety, had built up a little chapel in
a cupboard in that octagon parlour which we used to call the music
room because in former days concerts used to be given there, and an
old grand piano still stood there. It had been agreed among us that
when Mélanie and Stephen were grown up they were to evangelise the
savages, just as Bernard was to be an officer and win back Alsace and
Lorraine, and Louise, the second sister, always generous, was to marry
a champagne grower so that we might always drink as much as we chose of
that sparkling golden wine to which we had never put our lips except on
occasions of family festival. Thus the future was beautifully arranged
for, except my own personal career which remained uncertain. Mélanie
had been named for the little shepherdess of Dauphiny who at that time
was much in people’s minds; the mystery of La Salette was talked of
in guarded words. Sometimes I would ask her if she was not afraid of
being eaten by cannibals, the existence of which had been revealed
to me by my illustrated geography. Far from cooling her zeal, this
frightful prospect simply warmed it. Stephen aspired no less ardently
to martyrdom, notwithstanding that an unlucky adventure had happened
to him in school: his comrades, admiring his devotion, had counted
upon his performing a miracle on the day of his first communion, and
the miracle not coming off, he was consequently held in some slight
contempt.

I can never remember what sort of vespers or complines we used to say
before the cupboard. The ceremonies consisted of hymns vociferated in
chorus. Notwithstanding my tender years I was invited to share in these
clerical manifestations. On that occasion we used to hold forth with
all the energy of neophytes. Mélanie in particular would pitch her
voice in its highest key, her piety being proportionate to the noise
she made. Unluckily the music room was near grandfather’s chamber.
All of a sudden, as we were at the utmost height of fervour, the door
opened and grandfather appeared. He never used to pay much attention
to us, though when we came within his visual angle he would look
affably upon us. But this time he appeared to be greatly irritated.
His dressing-gown flowing behind him, his Greek cap awry, his beard
all disorder, gave him a fearsome aspect, greatly in contrast with his
usual manner. He exclaimed harshly, “It’s impossible to have a moment’s
peace in this house. Shut that cupboard, quick!”

We had disturbed his siesta, and his usually even temper was the worse
for it. We hastily closed the cupboard. And we knew in that moment
all the horror of arbitrary decrees and special laws. The devotion of
Mélanie and Stephen was but increased, as always happens in time of
persecution, but mine, less lively, or of younger growth, was cooled, I
greatly fear.

Not long after it experienced another blow. In our town the Fête-Dieu
was celebrated with incomparable pomp and display. People came from
afar to take part in it. Where shall we have again such nobly imposing
and magnificent spectacles? They have been replaced by gymnastic
contests, or processions of mutual aid societies, the bad taste of
which is heart-breaking. I pity the children of to-day who have never
had opportunity to feel, amid popular acclamations and universal
emotion, the imminent presence of God.

The town was divided in rivalry of its wayside altars; each quarter
felt its reputation at stake. They were composed of moss and flowers,
lilies, hortensias, geraniums and violets arranged in the form of a
cross, or ingeniously combined in pious designs of a more complicated
nature. All the gardens and groves were ruthlessly despoiled on their
account. The finest one was always promoted to the terrace overshadowed
by ancient trees that overlooked the lake.

When the morning came every window was watching the daybreak, imploring
heaven for favourable weather. The streets were bordered with pines and
larches which the peasants, on the previous evening or the one before
that, had brought from the mountain in their ox-carts. Wreaths hung
upon ribbons were thrown across the street like light cables above a
stream, so that one walked about under hundreds of improvised triumphal
arches. Here and there, the better to adorn the house fronts, some
one had set out a table covered with a white cloth bearing pictures,
vases, statuettes with a lamp, and had made ready baskets of roses for
the refreshment of the angel battalion. In the poorest alleys the good
wives set forth before their houses all their precious possessions,
even to daguerreotypes of relatives, or their most artistically
decorated caps, the better to honour the passing of the Holy Sacrament.
Thus the entire town adorned itself, like a bride for her marriage.

Every one gathered before the church; the confraternities in costume
with their banners, the brass band, their well polished instruments
shining in the sunlight, the school children, girls and boys, the
very smallest of them waving banners and all the population massed
behind these official groups, all drawn up in good order. Then, upon
the pavement before the church slowly advanced the sacred procession,
while all the bells rang together; angels with wings of silver paper
strewing the way with flower-petals drawn from little baskets suspended
from their necks, clerks and sacristans in red cassocks, swinging
censers whence arose blue smoke and a spicy odour, surpliced priests,
canons in ermine rochets, and finally, upon a dais the colour of pure
gold, or of ripe wheat, its four corners decorated with tufts of white
plumes, escorted by four black-coated notables holding its cords, came
Monsignor arrayed in a golden chasuble and bearing upon his breast the
great golden monstrance.

It was a solemn moment, and yet there was one even more impressive.
After having traversed the entire town, the procession would draw up
for the last benediction upon the open place that forms a terrace above
the lake, upheld by the walls of an ancient fortress. It would be
near noon. The rays of the sun, falling directly upon the lake, were
mirrored back, brightening all the colours, and flashing out in stars
from every fleck of gold. Around the flower-decked altar the various
bands were grouped, their standards all unfurled. Around these stood
the soldiers in a large circle, the troops taking part for the last
time in a religious ceremonial. They closed up, and at the command
_genou terre_! they fell upon one knee, the officers waved their
swords, and the clarions sounded loudly over all the fields. Many an
old woman wept with joy as she prostrated herself, needing to see
nothing more to know that God was there. Yet there was more; a priest,
mounting upon a stool, drew the monstrance from its flower-decked niche
and handed it to Monsignor, and the august officiant, lifting it high
in air, traced above the great congregation the sign of the cross.
The tremor with which I was at that moment shaken thrilled through
the entire crowd, a great wave of emotion, such as reveals to a whole
people that they are one in faith.

When I went home in my school-boy uniform I was still all a-thrill.
Mother was waiting for me. She perceived what I had just been
experiencing, and I saw tears rush to her eyes as she proudly kissed
me. She, sacrificing herself, had not witnessed the ceremony. Some
one must take care of the house and prepare for the guests who always
came to us on that day. But she had come out and knelt before the
door, hidden by the pines, when the procession went by. I had seen her
through the branches. For a short moment she had united Mary’s part
with that of Martha.

Father presently came home, warm and tired. He had had the honour of
being chosen to hold one of the cords of the dais, and though he was
bald, he had remained bareheaded, at the risk of a sunstroke.

“Dear wife!” he said simply, pressing mother to his heart. He had never
given expression to his love for her before me, and that is why I
remember this. He too was stirred with high enthusiasm.

Then came grandfather, smiling, spruce, his frock coat buttoned awry
and his black hat a little on one side, but except for these minor
matters dressed with almost irreproachable care.

“Well!” mother asked him in gentle triumph, “were you there this time?”

It appeared that in former years he had gone out for a walk and had
not returned before evening. I had already perceived, from a thousand
slight indications, that there was not absolute agreement in religious
matters in our house and that the subject was usually avoided.
Grandfather could not repress the little sardonic laugh which he seldom
bestowed upon my mother:

“Superb, superb!” he said. “One might have thought oneself at the
festival of the sun. The pagans could not have done it better.”

Mother’s face crimsoned. She turned and sent me away on some pretext of
an errand. As I was going I heard my father’s clear voice:

“I beg you not to jest upon this subject before the children.”

And the sarcastic voice replying:

“But I am not jesting.”

In the street the nearest extemporised altar was already lying on
the ground, like the useless shell of a firework. Everything had
disappeared but the scaffoldings, crosses of flowers, moss. Candelabra
had been hastily put under cover because of the threatening rain, for
clouds had suddenly overspread the sky, and also because every one had
gone home to dinner. My enthusiasm had fallen too, beneath a word of
doubt.

At the Feast of the Epiphany every one had to imitate the acts of the
king who had been designated by the bean. If he drank every one cried,
“The king drinks,” and each one seized his glass. If the king began to
laugh every one burst into laughter. Ought not a king to know when one
should laugh and when he should keep his face straight?




                                  III

                              THE ENEMIES


THERE was one Saturday evening, I remember....

I can not fix the precise date, but I know it must have been a Saturday
because on coming home from school I met at the door Oui-oui, shaking
his head, and Zeez Million counting the amount of her interest, on her
open palm.

Saturday was the day for the poor. We usually watched the procession
under shelter of a closed window, for Aunt Deen, who was a stickler for
class distinctions, prudently kept us shielded from their verminous
contact. Zeez, or Louise, was a crazy woman to whom was regularly given
every week the modest subsidy of fifty centimes, which she called her
interest. Insanity did not affect her exactions: a new servant, not
sufficiently instructed having insulted her by doling out two sous, had
received back the inadequate money in her face. Her reason had been
affected by the expectation of a large prize in the lottery. She now
spoke only of millions and the name had stuck by her.

As for Yes-yes, he owed the soubriquet to his nodding head, the
weight of which he could ill sustain, and which incessantly wagged
up and down like those articulated animals exhibited at bazars, their
motions extolled by artful merchants by way of increasing their price.
My sister Mélanie and I had incurred his wrath, under memorable
circumstances. Mélanie having read in the gospels that a glass of water
given to the poor would be paid back a hundred fold, conceived the idea
of offering one to Oui-oui. In the goodness of her heart, she was even
willing to let me participate in her beneficence. I held the caraffe,
ready to offer a second draught. But he considered our gift an insult.
Grandfather, when he heard of our ill-starred effort, completed our
discomfiture:

“Offering water to that drunkard! He would rather never wash again than
touch water.”

And in our presence he tendered to Oui-oui a glass of red wine, which
was swallowed at a draught, followed by a second and a third till the
entire bottle was gone. If grandfather was to receive back his offering
a hundred fold, his thirst would be copiously quenched in the celestial
kingdom.

Whenever grandfather, going out for his daily walk, met beggars at the
door, he would desire that bread and not money should be given them.

“Money is immoral,” he would insist. “Let us share our bread with these
good folk.”

I could not understand how money could be immoral. And we always found
at the foot of the stone columns, broken into bits, all the bread that
had been given, the poor having received it with contempt.

It must have been a Saturday in June. It was still broad day, though it
was past seven o’clock when I came back to the house, and on the edge
of the garden there was still a haycock which Tem Bossette must have
mown, taking plenty of time. I just muttered, “How d’ye do, Yes-yes;
how d’ye do, Zeez,” without so much as waiting for their reply; did
not close the door which they had left open, and slipped into the
passage that led to the kitchen, for I had lingered on the way home
from school to play with some schoolmates in a narrow street that we
called “behind the walls,” because it bordered a row of houses shut in
like fortresses. I had no quarrel with this unsocial way of shutting
every one out, though I preferred such fences or hedges as permit one
to satisfy his curiosity, and do not so abruptly shut off the view; but
grandfather, when he passed that way, never concealed his disgust. “The
earth is for everybody, and they mew her up as if they feared she would
run away!”

He spoke of it as of a living person. Except for our house I should
have been quite willing to do away with all enclosures. Did not the
earth belong to me?

“Behind the walls” we used to have great games of marbles in the very
middle of the street, certain of not being disturbed. If a chance cart
should enter the street, the driver, held up by our protests, would
wait patiently until we had finished our game, sometimes he would even
interest himself in the process; after which he would go on his way.
Nobody was in a hurry in those days. At the present time that road
is the Boulevard of the Constitution, and one has to look out for
automobiles. I have no idea where children go to play now-a-days.

My haste was not due to fear of being scolded for being late. I
was sure that no one had so much as thought of me. But merely by
approaching the gate I had felt the strange uneasiness which at that
time seemed to pervade the house like some formal guest whose presence
makes every one feel ill at ease. Domestic tragedies make their
approach felt long in advance by signs somewhat like those of a coming
storm: a breathless atmosphere, intermittent showers of tears, the
distant murmur of recriminations and laments. There was electricity
in the air. My mother, who never failed to light her blessed candle
as soon as thunder began to growl, was praying more often than ever,
and I could see that she was anxious, for her pure eyes could never
hide anything. Aunt Deen tore up and down stairs with feverish, almost
war-like, ardour, inflamed with a rage that gave her an invincible
strength, amazing The Hanged, and making those spiders that thought
themselves just beyond reach suffer the ruthlessly avenging wolf’s
head. She was continually uttering threats against invisible enemies.
Ah! the wretches! They would soon know with whom they had to deal!
“They” were certainly getting vigorous castigation in advance. Even
our father, generally so self-controlled, appeared absorbed. At table
he would sometimes throw back his head as if to drive away troublesome
thoughts. And more than once I had perceived him conversing in a low
voice with our mother, giving her documents on blue paper to read, the
words of which I did not understand. Every one was on the alert for
something to happen, perhaps a bulletin of victory or of disaster, such
as comes to a country where the armies are on the frontier.

Alone among these secret parleyings, these evident anxieties,
grandfather maintained the most complete indifference. Evidently the
approaching event was no affair of his. He played the violin, smoked
his pipe, consulted his barometer, inspected the sky, predicted the
weather, as if nothing could be more important, and he went regularly
for his walk. Nothing was changing, nothing could change for him except
the clouds across the sun. As for things of earth, they were utterly
without importance.

Once father attempted to ask his opinion, or present to him the peril
of a situation which I could not in the least understand. His words
were supplicating, moving, pathetic, yet full of a respect which in no
degree lessened their emphasis. Eying on the floor with my school book
I lost nothing of the conversation, instead of studying my lesson.
But I could catch only detached words which by degrees filled me with
terror: “careless administration,” “responsibility,” “mortgage,”
“sentence,” “total ruin,” “auction,” and at last the terrifying
conclusion, like the blow of a cane on my head.

“Then we must leave the house?”

Leave the house! I can still see grandfather lifting his arm wearily,
as if to drive away a fly, letting it fall again as he replied with a
great gentleness which at first deceived me as to his thought:

“Oh, as far as I am concerned, it’s all one whether we live in this
house or in another”; adding with his everlasting little laugh:

“Ha, ha! when one hires a house one can ask for repairs. In one’s own
house one never gets any.”

At that moment father perceived me. His eyes were so dreadful that
I was terrified and broke out into gooseflesh; but he simply said,
without raising his voice:

“Run away, child. This is no place for you.”

I ran away, stupefied with a gentleness that was in such contrast with
his face. Now I recognise it as a witness to his tremendous mastery
of himself. I rushed out into the garden, carrying, like a bomb under
my arm, the formidable utterance, _Whether we live in this house
or another_. The idea had never occurred to me, could never have
come to me, that we could live in another house. I felt as if I had
been witnessing a sacrilege, but at the same time the sacrilege found
harbour in my brain because it had had no immediate sanction, had been
accompanied by no solemnity, was like any indifferent act, like an act
of no consequence at all. Was it possible that such words could have
been uttered as a mere aside, negligently, even smilingly!

For the first time my notions of life were turned topsy-turvey. I
confided my bewilderment to Tem Bossette, who was ruminating, leaning
upon the handle of his spade. He lent me a complaisant ear, but took
the opportunity to impart to me a bit of his personal history:

“I had a son in the hospital. When I saw that he was going to die, I
rolled him up in a quilt and went away with my bundle. He died at home.”

I could not grasp the immediate applicability of his story, which
he had told proudly, as if recalling an act of heroism. He shortly
condescended to explain:

“It’s your lawsuit that is worrying them.”

Our lawsuit? We had a lawsuit? I had no idea what it was, and though I
felt shame for my ignorance I asked the vinedresser:

“What is a lawsuit?”

He scratched his nose, no doubt in search of a definition.

“It’s something about justice. One loses, one wins, just as it happens.
But when one loses it’s a great bother. On account of the sheriffs, who
walk into your house as into a mill.”

The sheriffs were to walk into our house as into a mill! In an instant
I pictured them under the guise of gigantic insects, enormous mole
crickets swarming into the garden through the breach made by the
chestnut tree, advancing in serried ranks to invest the house. I
was particularly afraid of mole-crickets, which have a long clammy
body and two antennae on the head, and enjoy a detestable reputation
in agricultural circles: all sorts of misdeeds are attributed to
them--they ravage whole garden beds. I had actually seen some crawling
through the breach, and in the face of their invasion not all the arms
manufactured by Tem Bossette sufficed to reassure me. I had turned
tail, so to speak, upon my riding pole.

“It’s all Monsieur’s fault,” concluded the labourer, upon whose heart
the affair hung heavy. “But what will you have? He doesn’t care for
anything, and when one doesn’t care for anything nothing goes right.
It’s lucky there’s Master Michael.”

Then, on one side there were the mole-crickets and on the other there
was my father. A fearsome battle was to take place of which the house
was the stake. And during the battle grandfather, indifferent, would be
looking in the air, according to his custom, to see which way the wind
blew. Up to that time I had supposed that, like the sluggard kings,
he had nothing to do, but behold, he could bring about catastrophes!
With one word he could close chapels, belittle ancestral portraits,
and above all, it was quite the same to him to live in one house as
in another! Why not in a _roulotte_, one of those waggon houses
overflowing with bronzed gipsies, such as I had seen passing the gate,
to the great terror of Aunt Deen, who used to call us in hastily, and
give orders to bolt all the doors and look after the vegetables and
fruits.

I was going in, greatly depressed by this conversation when I ran
against Aunt Deen herself, whose assistance had been invoked by The
Hanged for some arduous task requiring nerve and muscle.

“The lawsuit,” I cried, by way of relieving my mind. She stopped short.

“Who has been talking to you?”

“Tem Rossette.”

“That fellow must be sent away. Beatrix and Pachoux will have to do by
themselves.”

She did not count herself. She simply called Beatrix by his right name.

Did she perceive from my tone or my face the inward tragedy through
which I was passing? She shook me, laughing:

“Child, when your father is here, there is never anything to be afraid
of--do you hear?”

And I was at once consoled.

She was already hastening after the labourer with a ball of red string
in her hand which Mariette had doubtless refused to intrust to him. As
she went she tossed her head proudly, like a horse that snuffs the
wind and I heard her muttering to herself.

“Well, I declare, if that isn’t the last drop!”


By what signs, that Saturday evening, did I discern that the battle
had been fought, that we were only waiting to learn the result? In
the kitchen there was no Mariette over the stove. She was debating,
vehemently, with Philomena, the waitress, who was carrying the soup
tureen all awry, at great risk of spilling its contents, and with my
old friend Tem, redder even than usual, who was doing his best to
reassure the household by a word of prophecy.

“No, no, things will go well. To begin with, for my part, I will not
leave the garden.”

As soon as they saw me there was silence, and Mariette quickly
recovered her usual coolness and began to scold me.

“You are late, Master Francis. The second bell has rung. You will be
scolded.” And to Philomena:

“Why are you standing there like a stock?”

Thus were we dispersed. I was counting upon meeting Aunt Deen in the
vestibule before the dining-room; she was always the last to come to
table because on the way she would find thirty-six different things
to be begun or finished, and dash upstairs and down an indefinite
number of times. My tactics succeeded. To forestall inquiry I took the
offensive:

“What about the lawsuit?”

“Hush; we are waiting to hear.”

“To hear what?”

“It is being decided to-day in the Court.”

She uttered the words “The Court” with instructive stateliness, that
reminded me of the Court of the Emperor Charlemagne, in my history
book. A grand personage, a king with a golden crown on his head and
wearing a golden chasuble like Monsignor the bishop in the procession,
was concerning himself with our matter. It was awe-inspiring but
flattering.

Under Aunt Deen’s shadow I slipped into my seat, endeavouring to put
on a natural air. In the spirit of good fellowship my brothers and
sisters refrained from calling attention to my arrival, so that I could
swallow my soup without being noticed. Usually our mother came into the
dining-room before us, to serve the soup. Philomena’s loquacity had
interfered with this preliminary operation and I reaped the benefit of
it. In fact, my parents paid not the slightest attention to me, from
which I could infer that something was going on. I hastily gulped down
my food, and my plate emptied, I cast a comprehensive glance around the
table.

In the seat of honour, grandfather, the reigning king, was leaning
over the table in order to drop no soup upon his beard, the precaution
evidently quite absorbing him. I should learn nothing from him; nor
anything more from my father, who commanded the table from one of
the corners, and whose glance made me drop my eyes, for I could see
distinctly that he was aware of my fault. After having inquired of
one another as to his occupations during the day, he tried to make
the conversation general. But he was almost the only one who spoke.
His calm, his cheerfulness, soon completely restored the confidence
which two or three spoonfuls of warm soup had already begun to awaken
in me. Aunt Deen, who could not remain inactive during the intervals
of the service, was busying herself in advance by mixing the salad,
which she considered her special function, although there had often
been some talk of withdrawing it from her because of her prodigality in
the matter of vinegar. She tossed the green leaves and muttered vague
exorcisms against bad luck. My sister Louise was teasing the little
priest, the absent-minded Stephen, whom one might serve indefinitely
with the same dish. But Bernard and Mélanie, the two eldest, often
turned their eyes in one direction, and mine followed them: they were
looking at our mother and our mother was looking at our father, upon
whom in this hour all our safety seemed to depend.

The lamp had been lighted but it was not yet dark out of doors. Only
the trees seemed to draw nearer, their branches to grow thicker and to
cast a deeper shadow. Through the open windows a fresh breeze came from
the garden, bringing on its wings pellmell, the odour of flowers, and
a cloud of night-moths, which, attracted by the light, wheeled about
under the lamp shade. I watched their flight, at times more deeply
interested in them than in the disturbed expression of the faces around
the table.

The meal was drawing to a close; the dessert was already being served.
I had begun to think that nothing was going to happen. Suddenly
Mariette rushed into the dining-room, a telegram in her hand. She had
not waited to put it on a tray, she had not given it to the maid who
served at table, but brought it in person just as she had received it
from the postman. She, too, scented important news in the air, and
would learn what it was without delay.

“It is for Monsieur Rambert,” she said.

She passed by grandfather’s place, and crossed the entire length of
the room, as if she was but doing her duty in handing the blue paper
to father, who was on the side toward the windows. Father took it from
her, but handed it at once to the actual addressee.

“Do you want it?” he asked.

“Oh, no thank you,” said grandfather with his little laugh. “Open it
yourself.”

Nevertheless I caught him casting a quick, alert glance upon the
telegram. His little laugh at once recalled to my mind a rattle which
had been taken away from me because it disturbed everybody. That little
laugh was the last sound. An almost solemn silence ensued, so complete
that I could hear the tearing of the envelope. How could father open
it with so little impatience? I imagined myself opening it in his
place, err--err ... it was done. All eyes converged upon the deliberate
motions of his two hands--all except those of grandfather, who quite as
peacefully removed the crust from a bit of cheese, and seemed to take
pleasure in the trifling task. Father felt our anxiety and doubtless
wished to relieve it at all hazards; instead of reading he raised his
eyes to us.

“Go on eating,” he said. “It does not concern you.”

Then turning to the cook who had remained behind his chair, leaning
over like an interrogation point:

“Thank you, Mariette, you may go.”

She went, vexed, knowing nothing, but sent in Philomena who learned no
more than she.

Finally my father read. Deliberate as he had been in the preliminaries
he was quick enough in reading. He must have taken in the whole at
a glance. He was already putting the telegram in his pocket without
a word, without the movement of a muscle, when he looked around the
table, and under his gaze we bent our eyes upon our plates.

“Come, come, children!” he exclaimed almost gaily. “It is still light.
Make haste to finish your dessert and run play in the garden.”

He spoke in his usual tone, at once cheery and commanding. It was so
simple that for a moment our mother quite brightened up. I saw that as
I raised my head, but it was only for a moment, like the afterglow
upon the mountain tops after sunset. Then the shadow again swept over
her face, and I even saw in her eyes two water drops that glistened and
disappeared without falling. She had understood, and after her and by
her I understood, too. The mysterious Court had decided against us. The
lawsuit, the terrible lawsuit, was lost.

We were all in consternation without knowing precisely why; we had felt
the wind of defeat pass over us.

Still, our father manifested no trouble, no sadness, and grandfather
after his gruyère was dipping his biscuit in his wine, as he
particularly liked to do because of his teeth, which were bad. He
seemed to have paid no attention to the affair of the telegram. The
nerve of the one amazed me as much as the aloofness of the other. By
different ways they had reached the same calmness. As for Aunt Deen,
she was biting viciously into a peach which was unripe and crackled.

We left the table and went into the garden into which darkness was
stealthily creeping. I tried to linger behind, but was drawn along
by my sister Mélanie; she divined that our parents wished to talk by
themselves.

I could find no pleasure in any play, and I was soon flocking by
myself, my imagination revelling over the approaching ruin. “They”
were driving us from our house as the angel drove Adam and Eve out of
Eden. “They” were coming into our house as into a mill. “They” were
dividing our treasures among themselves as the Greeks divided the
spoils of the Trojans. “They?” Who? Aunt Deen’s “they”; I knew no more
than that. And in this catastrophe one remark kept coming back to me,
incomprehensible, terrifying, and yet not to be put away: _What’s the
difference whether one lives in one house or in another_?

These words of my grandfather, revolting and at the same time
stupefying, almost mesmerized me by their audacity, almost made me
giddy. How could one consent to abandon his house without defending it
to his utmost ability? In my heart I cried to arms. By way of acting
out what was going on within me, I seized one of Tem Bossette’s swords,
bestrode my favourite pole, and notwithstanding the rapid approach
of darkness, extinguishing the last rays of twilight, of which I was
greatly in dread, I rushed at a gallop to the very top of the garden,
to the chestnut grove, to the breach in the wall. The shadow of night
had already entered by it, and after it all the shadows. They were
creeping along, climbing the trees, swarming over the paths, filling
the clumps of trees. There was a whole army of them. They were the
mole-crickets, giant mole-crickets, the enemies of the house. With all
my might I tried to scatter them to right and left with great sword
thrusts. But I met nothing, and that was the worst of it. Then, in
desperation, I took to my heels. I was conquered.

It was a comfort to hear a voice coming my way, my mother’s voice
calling,

“François, François!”

That call saved my honour; my hasty return ceased to be a flight.

My bedroom, the vast proportions of which distressed me, but which
happily I shared with Bernard and Stephen, was near our mother’s
chamber. It was long before I could sleep. Beneath the door of
communication I could perceive a streak of light. The lamp must
have burned very late and I could hear the alternating sound of two
carefully subdued voices,--my father’s and my mother’s voices. With all
calmness the destiny of the family was being discussed close beside me.




                                  IV

                              THE TREATY


WHEN one is a child one imagines that events are going to rush one upon
another like the two opposite camps of a game of prison-bars. The next
morning I expected something extraordinary to happen, the first result
of which would be a holiday from school. Surely no one would work when
the house was threatened! I was astonished on being called at the usual
hour, when I was settling myself to make up my lost sleep, and sent to
school just as usual. Stephen, always absent minded and absorbed in his
prayers, had noticed nothing. But Bernard, the eldest, appeared to me
to lack his usual high spirits; no doubt he considered me too young to
share his dejection. None of us exchanged any confidences on the way to
school.

This silence was the beginning of forgetting. I soon recovered from
the alarm of the preceding evening, and very soon, as we continued to
live in the house, I concluded that our enemies had beat an unexpected
retreat.

“They wouldn’t dare,” Aunt Deen had declared.

Nevertheless, a few days later, happening to be in mother’s room, she
received a visit from her dressmaker, a maiden of a certain age with
mahogany coloured hair, such as I have never seen on any other head.
Mother excused herself for having summoned her for so small a matter,
simply a making-over, and not a new gown.

“When one has seven children,” she added prettily, “one must be
reasonable. And besides I am no longer very young.”

“Madame is always young and beautiful,” protested the artist.

From my corner I considered this protest misplaced. Neither the age nor
the face of my mother belonged to this lady of the mahogany hair, but
well and duly to me and my brothers and sisters. Whether she was pretty
or ugly, young or old, concerned us alone.

“So,” concluded my mother, “here is a gown which you can easily alter a
little. You are so clever.”

“Madame has worn it a good deal already.”

“Precisely, I am attached to it.”

This time I thought the dressmaker was right, in putting on a
disdainful air as she accepted the work so unworthy of her. Without
question the gown in question had been often worn.

At the moment I saw no connection between this episode and our domestic
drama. My mother would always be beautiful enough, and clothes could
make no difference. Family discussions, however, usually took place in
the octagon parlour, which could only be entered by passing through
our bedroom. It was quite isolated, and one could be sure of not being
interrupted. We hardly ever went there except for our music lessons,
since the cupboard chapel had been put out of commission.

It was there that I had lost my faith in the Christmas miracle. It is
true that grandfather’s dry laugh, whenever the descent of the little
Jesus was anticipated, had prepared me for incredulity. The morning
of the festival day desired and expected by all children, we used to
find in this room a pine tree, its branches bent down under the weight
of toys, and lighted up by blue and pink candles. At the foot of the
tree a wax baby would be lying upon straw, holding out to us his little
arms. The ox and the ass were there, too, but the child was larger than
they. Their smaller proportions simply put them in their proper place
of subordination. Without seeking to penetrate the mystery I always
supposed that the tree grew there of itself during the night, with all
the strange fruits, which were quite enough to distract my curiosity.
But on the night of December 24, lying awake from curiosity, I saw my
father and mother pass through the room, walking on tiptoe, only in old
houses there are always planks that cry out and betray the presence of
people. It even happens that they cry out when no one is there, as if
they were supporting invisible persons, the steps of all those who had
trodden upon them while living. My parents were laden with all sorts
of packages. From that time I understood their collaboration with the
little Jesus.

Now, I again believe in the miracle, though like Jesus himself it
descended from heaven upon the earth. It was a miracle of love.

How did our father and mother manage to realise at one time all the
dreams of our excited imaginations and distribute to each one the
paradisaical things that he longed for? How, above all, did they manage
to diminish nothing from the divine generosity which they represented
during the sorrowful times that we were soon to know? My wonder never
ceases when I see, on Christmas day, in the quarters where the poor
live, children running about with their hands full of gifts. They are
only cheap little toys, but they bear in themselves the virtue of a
miracle....

Of the secret consultations in the music room, notwithstanding its
remarkable acoustic properties, I could hear nothing. Neither of the
two spoke above a low murmur: they were always of one mind. Yet I
divined that they were talking of the lawsuit. Something serious was
lurking in the darkness. Preparations were being made to repel the
enemy. And I wondered why the enemy did not make his appearance.

One morning--it was a Thursday--as we came home for the midday
breakfast, my brothers and I, what was our stupefaction, our horror, on
perceiving on one of the stone columns into which the entrance gates
were set, an enormous bill, which bore the outrageous inscription:

                            VILLA FOR SALE

We looked at one another, all alike indignant.

“It’s an insult!” exclaimed Bernard, who already had a sense of
military honour.

“No, it’s a mistake,” affirmed Stephen, with unbounded amazement.

Absent-minded and unobservant, he had not for one moment reflected
upon the trifling incidents which Bernard and I had been observing,
and which, inspiring us with a holy horror, had prepared us for this
catastrophe.

We should not have felt more overcome with shame if we had all three
been slapped in the face. Bernard, the boldest of us, tried to tear
down the bill, but it was glued fast and resisted the attempt. Like a
reinforcing army we rushed into the besieged house, which I expected
to find full of mole-crickets. The first person we met was Aunt Deen,
gesticulating and talking to herself. We had hardly opened our lips
when she perceived our agitation and at once her fury put ours into the
shade.

“Yes, _they_ want to rob us of everything! _They_ propose to
take possession of our property. I would rather have died than live to
see this.”

On her lips the word _property_ took on a solemn grandeur. Then
they had passed through the breach; _they_ were advancing upon
us in serried ranks. Beyond this assurance it was needless to expect
anything more intelligible from Aunt Deen.

We turned for further explanation to grandfather, coming in from his
walk. He waved us off with a gesture of superb indifference; he seemed
to us to be soaring in a region far above our agitations. Had he not
declared that it was all one to him whether he lived in one house or
another? He had been out for a walk on this fine July morning, when the
whole sunny country-side seemed swimming in light; he looked healthy,
radiant; why should he permit us to spoil his pleasure by inopportune
remarks? On the contrary he proposed to share some of his pleasure with
us.

“I love this good summer sun,” he said. “And no one can rob us of it.”

His remark was not calculated to quiet our alarm. Its singularity
struck me: in such a moment as this, when all our combative energies
were not enough to resist the danger that hung over us, he would draw
our attention to a simple source of happiness which had no lawful owner
and was beyond attack. When one is a child one never thinks that the
sun is something he may enjoy.

Mother was clasping my two elder sisters in her arms, trying to
console them and not succeeding, for she shared their sorrow. At her
feet the two little ones, Nicola and Jamie, were lamenting themselves
indiscriminately. Imagine the effect upon us of this weeping group!
Even Louise, the laughing Louise, was abandoning herself to tears.

“Here comes your father,” suddenly exclaimed mamma. “Stop crying, I beg
of you. He has trouble enough already.”

She had been the first to hear his step. The effect of her words was
instantaneous. We all controlled ourselves as quickly as we could, and
went down to the dining-room with faces in good order.

At table The Father began to be absorbed in his thoughts, the course
of which we followed. We used to call him _the father_ among
ourselves, as we used to say _the house_. Did he see the anxiety
in all those faces turned toward him? Did he read in our eyes the
dishonouring inscription, _Villa for sale_? He looked us full in
the face one by one and his frank smile reassured us. Come! He still
had his air as of the chief who commands. We had the feeling that he
could not consent to such a downfall. Peace and appetite returned to us
at the same time, and seldom was luncheon more gay than this one. We
enjoyed the relief to our strained nerves, under the shelter of that
protecting strength.

After the meal, while my brothers, whose studies were already of
importance, completed a task, I ran into the garden; the afternoon was
mine. The figure of Tem Bossette emerged from the vines. I went to him.
He was tying the too luxuriant branches to poles with bands of straw,
but he asked nothing better than to interrupt his work which, to judge
by the number of branches already tied, was not making much headway. An
empty bottle at his feet bore witness to the obstinate struggle against
the heat which he had maintained.

He evidently saw my approach with satisfaction. I could hear from a
distance his hoarse voice muttering to himself like Aunt Deen. At a
later time I understood better the secret reason of his indignation. He
was acknowledging to himself, not being as stupid as Mimi Pachoux, his
rival, insisted, that his whims and his drink habits would make him of
no use anywhere else; his destiny was closely allied with the destiny
of the house. So he lost none of his rage and did not cease to lift up
his head, his great pumpkin shaped head, against the reigning king,
whose idleness, whose home and foreign politics and above all, whose
financial condition he never ceased to deplore. As soon as I was near
enough to hear him, he put into words the griefs which were obscurely
struggling within him:

“You have read the bill, Master Francis?”

“To be sure I have read it.”

And I added, bitter with family pride,

“What is that to you?”

The question suffocated him. His eyes started from his head. “To me? To
me?” he exclaimed, foaming at the mouth with fury.

The ancient habit of respect recalled him to himself, and in a
lamentable tone he began to set forth his own claim to a part in the
family sorrows.

“I have chopped wood here for forty years (he exaggerated everything).
It was I who planted these vines and this garden.”

As a matter of fact there was not much to be proud of in that. Our
garden sometimes looked like a field and sometimes like a forest, and
the prematurely yellowed leaves of the vines revealed a chlorotic
condition which would doubtless have been the better for a vigorous
medication. But grandfather and his gardener were of one mind in
distrusting medicines, as well for plants as for people.

“Where should I go if I left you?” Tem continued frankly. “I might as
well throw myself into the water and done with it.”

It would have been his only opportunity to take a good drink of it.
Would it then be necessary henceforth to watch him, too?--as if we
hadn’t enough with the tiresome propensity of The Hanged? I confess,
however, that I did not take this threat very seriously. I had indeed
no difficulty in convincing Tem of the advantage of continuing to live.
Then his lamentation took another turn.

“What need had Monsieur (that was grandfather) to plunge into all those
schemes? Paving the town, and dealing in slates, and agricultural
credit. Agricultural credit! As if any one ever paid when you gave them
credit. What would be the use of credit, then, if you had to pay in the
end like any one else? Not to speak of other bad luck here and there,
when all he needs is the sun and the fresh air. Won’t do to undertake
to manage things when the third or the quarter is all the same to one.
The thing is to keep quiet in a corner with one’s income and let other
folks work for you. If it were Monsieur Michel, that’s another pair of
sleeves; Monsieur Michel, that’s all right, he’s one who understands
governing things. With him there’s nothing to fear, everything goes as
if on wheels. But what’s to be done when the other won’t see it?”

I began confusedly to understand that grandfather’s philanthropic
enterprises and the unfortunate results of his administration were
ending in the ruin of us all. Tem’s long harangue, uttered without
interruption, had at once comforted him and made him thirsty. He gazed
upon the empty bottle that lay at the foot of a vine and constituted
his sole supply for the day. Taking advantage of the respite, I tried
to understand more about our discomfiture.

“But why should the house be sold?”

“Why, it’s the lawsuit. When you lose a lawsuit they seize you, they
arrest you, they strangle you, they turn you out of doors, they take
possession of your house, and you are good for nothing but to throw to
the dogs.”

This deplorable picture was not calculated to reassure me. And far from
being sorry for us, Tem, perceiving my grandfather who was majestically
coming down the garden walk, cheerful, erect, flourishing his cane,
grew doubly irritated with him, as the cause of all the trouble.

“All right--all right! When one has got himself into a mess he is
prosecuted, arrested, condemned. No good to embrace every one like a
brother when one has good land to look after. One has bother enough
with the land--there are plenty of folk to prowl about it. Just look at
him! He doesn’t even see us--it’s all the same to him--everything’s all
the same to him.”

As a general thing Tem had no desire to be observed. Now he was making
a great racket to attract attention and not succeeding. This failure
completed his disgust--his failure combined, I think, with the prospect
of finishing the afternoon without a drink. He deliberately laid down
the straw of which he made his ligatures, and deserting his post he
abandoned me into the bargain.

“I won’t see it! I won’t see it!” he exclaimed as he went, irritated
and discouraged.

See what? The invasion of the mole-crickets? Neither did I want to see
it.

I followed the deserter as far as the gate, where I read the bill three
or four times over the better to understand the extent of our disaster,
and then came slowly back. What could I do now? My horses--the
poles--my wooden sword, my plays, were no longer anything to me. For
the first time in my life, perhaps, I let my arms hang useless by my
sides. By this feeling of the vanity of all things I was being born
into grief. I was learning to separate myself from things. Since that
moment I have always felt the pang of separation as soon as I see it
coming and long before it actually reaches me.

I went back to the garden and threw myself down in the long grass
which Tem had neglected to mow, and there I lay, face downward, I know
not how long. All the garden enveloped me in perfume, and I breathed
the garden. The house, from its open windows, looked at me across the
grass, and I wept for the house. The strength of my love for the house
had been as unknown to me as my own heart.

It was a warm, still summer afternoon, full of the hum of insects
in the sunshine. Little by little I felt myself drowned in a soft
sweetness, as a fly is drowned in honey. And little by little I
became happy in spite of my pain. Later I came to know that debasing
consolation that comes to us from the beauty of the day, when death has
passed that way.

I fell asleep at last, like a baby in its tears. When I awoke evening
had come into the garden, noiselessly, and was hiding under the trees.
I got up and ran to seek it in the chestnut grove. The dinner bell rang
and I turned back. A quantity of things that I had never noticed before
impressed themselves upon my mind: the tone of the bell, the rosy tint
of the sky between the branches, the long sprays of clematis drooping
from the balcony, the lack of symmetry in the windows, and even the
creaking of the door as I pushed it open, though it must always have
creaked just so. With fierce ardour I was discovering all that I was
about to lose.


We could never get used to seeing without indignation, on returning
from school, the ill-omened bill that dishonoured the entrance. Tem
Bossette had not returned; we learned that he was drinking himself
drunk in all the wine-shops. Mimi Pachoux was working elsewhere; the
ship was leaking at every joint and the crew was escaping. Only the
long, woe-begone face of The Hanged occasionally showed itself here and
there like a sign of distress, or an abhorrent symbol of the evil fate
which was pursuing us.

“He is faithful,” Aunt Deen would say, overshadowing him with her
protection and aiding him in his work.

More faithful than he, and keeping vigilant guard over the menaced
home, she met us at the gate one day in an unusual state of agitation.

“I was watching for you, children,” she said, “to warn you.”

What was going on now? We were not kept long in ignorance.

“A wretch has come, a wretch from Paris (that was an aggravating
circumstance, for nothing good could come out of that notorious
Babylon, corrupt as it was and fit only for the flames), who has taken
upon himself to go through every part of the house, from cellar to
garret. Your father is going with him. I can’t imagine how he can keep
from throwing him out of window. He must have a patience quite beyond
me!”

We were thunderstruck. A stranger dared to come into our house! And
our father,--The Father--consented to escort him through it! Aunt Deen
might well be terrified: the laws of the universe were turned upside
down. As we followed her dejectedly into the house, with hanging heads
and shame-flushed cheeks, we came upon this visitor descending the
stairs on his way to the kitchen. He was loudly criticising, laying his
plans, estimating the size of the rooms, with manifold gesticulations,
as if already building a house of his own on the ruins of ours.

“The stairs are too narrow. The kitchen is out of proportion to the
other rooms; I shall convert it into a drawing-room.”

My father was showing him about politely, though without alacrity,
preserving a calm and distant manner that checked the loquacity of the
other when he turned to him, the better to set forth his plans. We went
straight up to mother’s room as to our natural refuge. Our mother,
who was kneeling at her faldstool, rose when she heard us coming. Her
emotion appeared in her face.

“God will protect us,” she said.

When she uttered the name of God she was, as it were, illumined.
At that moment I understood what it is to hate the foreigner--the
invader. My father’s subordination, my mother’s tears, and our house
trodden, judged, appraised, by a stranger--those are sights that I
can never forget. Later, when I read in my History of France that the
Allies had crossed the frontiers in 1814 and 1815, and had come and
encamped in our capital, when I learned that the Prussians had torn
Alsace and Lorraine from us, like a part of our very flesh, I had no
difficulty in giving material form to those past woes; I could most
distinctly see that gentleman who went from top to bottom of our house
as if he were at home.

“Why did you bow to him?” Aunt Deen asked grandfather, who came in with
his usual deliberate indifference.

“I am polite to every one.”

“One doesn’t compound with the enemy.”

How could our father, who was not generally considered easy-going, have
endured this outrage without faltering? He was in charge of our safety,
and the exercise of power imposes obligations which irresponsible folk
are apt to neglect. His good humour amazed us also on another occasion.
One day at table he suddenly said to mamma:

“Do you know what news is going about the town?”

“I have seen no one.”

“They say we are leaving town; the house being sold, we shall
disappear. Our pride would never endure a less conspicuous
establishment. And who do you suppose has spread the report? I give you
a thousand guesses. But no, you have too much faith in human goodness.
It is my beloved colleagues. They have discovered a practical method of
sharing my practice among them. One after another my patients ask, ‘Is
it true that you are going away? Stay with us! What will become of us?’
It is very touching. But I have reassured them.”

He laughed,--the hearty laugh of a man accustomed to the fray. We
were too young to perceive all the contempt and force that resounded
in this victorious laugh, which in our indignation almost scandalised
us. Especially Bernard and Louise, hasty and impressionable, protested
vehemently against the odious implication, though indeed their opinion
had not been asked. Our mother, even she, had blushed for the harm that
had been devised against us, and which she herself would never have
imagined. As for Aunt Deen, she doubled her fist at the enemy--“they”
indeed had at last been discovered:

“Oh, the monsters! I’m not a bit surprised. It would be no more than
they deserve if they were compelled to swallow all their own medicines.”

Her aspiration moved grandfather to hilarity. Till then he had been
passive, but he was too much the enemy of doctors not to relish his
sister’s prescription for vengeance.

It was she who, a few days later, told us of our deliverance. She had
placed herself outside of the gate, like an advanced sentinel, and
made to us from afar unintelligible signs, which as we drew near we
interpreted unfavourably. Assuredly the invader had taken possession of
the fortress. The house was sold. We had no longer a roof to shelter
us. As Tem had prophesied, we were good for nothing but to be thrown to
the dogs.

When we were within hearing distance she hailed us:

“Come quick, come quick! The house is ours! The house is ours!”

We rushed wildly forward.

“The bill isn’t there,” cried Bernard, who was ahead.

Only the marks of nails remained upon the pillar.

“Aha!” continued Aunt Deen’s voice, bursting out in a triumphant
cadence. “_They_ thought they had it! But they won’t get it!”

_They_ were no longer the doctors, but the gentleman from Paris
and other purchasers, who had appeared while we were in school. With
uplifted arm she sketched the flight of the dispersed troop.

With a step that was rapid in spite of her years she led us to the
music room where the family was assembled, with the exception of
grandfather, who no doubt had made no change in his hour of walking,
and who was probably ignorant of our salvation. Mariette followed us at
a respectful distance. Her long service gave her the right to a place
in the procession.

Our mother, deeply moved, was caressing the hair of my two elder
sisters, whom joy, like grief, had moved to tears. But I attached
no importance to the tears of my sisters, which used to flow for
nothing at all. My father standing, his hand upon the back of my
mother’s chair, was smiling. I had never seen his face so radiant, and
through the window, behind the group, the sun was coming in like a
distinguished guest.

“The bill isn’t there,” repeated Bernard without the usual greeting.

“Yes,” said our father; “we shall keep the house.”

And as our enthusiasm was about to burst forth, he added:

“You owe it to your mother and also to your Aunt Bernardine.”

The latter, whose parchment cheeks would crimson for no reason but that
some one spoke of her, while she kept neither her thoughts nor her
property for herself, and daily robbed herself as a matter of course,
stoutly refused all praise.

“How you talk, Michel! For nothing but a signature! You mustn’t mislead
these children.”

Mother at once approved:

“She is right; it is your father who has saved us all.”

And lowering her voice she turned to him, murmuring--but I heard her:

“Is not all that I have, yours?”

I paid little heed, I acknowledge, to this debate. Of course the
saving of the house was due solely to our father. How could our mother
and Aunt Been have helped? It had been necessary to throw out the
gentleman from Paris and the other invaders, as Ulysses on his return
to Ithaca had thrown out the lovers. That was an exercise of strength
which belonged only to a man. My notions of life were simple: the man
governed, the woman’s sole charge was of domestic matters. That Aunt
Deen had her rights, however diminished, in the building that “they”
were trying to get away from us I could never have understood, any more
than I could understand what a dowry was, and how the consent of the
wife was necessary to enable the husband to dispose of property.

Nevertheless I recalled the incident of the dressmaker. Mother had no
doubt made some savings in the matter of clothes and turned them in.
Does not every one make his contribution to the wars? I immediately
slipped out of the room and came back bringing the savings bank in
which I had been encouraged to drop such little sous as I received. I
expected an ovation for the magnanimity of my sacrifice. Without a word
I handed it to my father.

“What do you want me to do with it?” was all his response.

Somewhat abashed, being gazed upon by all present, I said, blushing
furiously:

“It is for the house.”

This time my father drew me to him and publicly gave me the
_accolade_ with the dazzling Order of the Day.

“This child will be our joy.”

Thus the Emperor rewarded his marshals on the field of battle; nothing
in history is surprising to one who has had a childhood like mine.

Coming in while the bell was ringing, grandfather was the last one to
learn what had happened. Aunt Deen informed him in a fiery harangue.
He heard her with interest but without emotion, his serenity all
undisturbed. And when the heroic story was finished he nodded his head,
vouchsafing merely the words of faint admiration:

“Well, well! so much the better!”

Things had been arranged with no help from him.




                                   V

                            THE ABDICATION


IN the days that followed I came to understand by all sorts of small
tokens, not to speak of the remarks of servants, that the house no
longer belonged to grandfather, but to my parents, and that only a
simple formality remained to be accomplished for the treaty to be
final. Grandfather no longer having the responsibility--though in truth
the responsibility had never weighed heavily upon him--had no desire to
keep the honours of headship. More than once I heard father speaking to
him to the following effect:

“I do not want anything to be changed--I want everything to be as it
has always been--I want to take from you nothing but your cares.”

“Oho!” grandfather would reply with his little laugh, “you are lucky if
you know just what you want.”

And he would run his fingers carelessly through his beard, as if
nothing were worth any trouble. Still, a plan was simmering in his
mind, of which we were speedily advised. When once he had hold of an
idea nothing, neither entreaties nor protests, would induce him to let
it go. Aunt Deen’s tumultuous reproaches, father’s brief, clear-cut,
unanswerable arguments, mother’s entreaties,--he received them all
with equal tranquillity of temper and heeded none of them. From his
amiable and detached air one would have deemed him easily amenable to
persuasion, if it had not been for his wicked little laugh which upset
everything.

One fine morning we were all informed of his decision to give up the
room with two windows which he occupied in the very heart of the
house, which was vast, comfortable and easy to keep warm, and to take
possession of what?--no one could have guessed--the tower chamber!
This room had long been unoccupied, and all the winds of heaven blew
through it. No sooner had he made known his intention than the entire
household, after fruitless attempts to make him abandon his purpose,
must needs bend every nerve to help him move without delay. Without
waiting for any of us he was already leading the way to the staircase
laden with the most precious of his possessions.

“Wait at least until we sweep, clean and dust,” urged Aunt Deen, armed
with the wolf’s head.

“It’s not worth while,” he assured her. “One can live very comfortably
with spiders and dust.”

This scandal at least was avoided. Aunt Deen was ahead of him, and
he was obliged to have a few minutes’ patience, little as he liked
it; after which he resolutely laid hold of the bannister, bearing
his barometer, violin case and pipes. Down he came again for his
spy-glass. The rest of the removal did not interest him at all. His
clothes, linen and furniture might follow him or not, as it happened.
He showed his confidence in me by requesting me to carry a treatise on
astronomy, a volume about cryptograms, the coloured illustrations of
which I already knew, showing the principal species of mushrooms, and
another work which from its title I believed to be a book of devotion:
the “Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau”--I had almost forgotten
the “Prophecies of Michel Nostradamus,” and a collection of the “True
Limping Messenger of Berne and Vevey,” an almanac famous and precious
from every point of view, but chiefly for its meteorological bulletins.
For grandfather was greatly interested in the condition of the
atmosphere. He would snuff it up, so to speak, from his window morning
and night, at whatever risk of taking cold; and he was always observing
the movements of the clouds and the shining of the stars. He loved to
cite the authority of a certain Mathew de la Drôme, with whom he was
in correspondence, and whom we children had come to believe to be a
sorcerer or a mender of weather. He himself used to make forecasts--and
if you wanted to flatter him, you would ask him to predict the weather.
He was seldom mistaken, whether it was that luck was on his side or
that he really had rightly interpreted the direction of the winds. This
trivial reputation, which he enjoyed, seemed to make him one with the
mysterious laws of nature, whose oracles he uttered.

As soon as he had moved his books and instruments thither he found
himself at home in the tower chamber and declared himself pleased with
it. It had a view of the sky and at the same time of all four quarters
of the horizon; and would capture the slightest ray of the sun, from
whatsoever direction it might come. As for the direction of the wind,
that would be easily ascertained.

A great clatter informed him that his furniture was following him
upstairs. Aunt Deen was presiding over the removal in person, not
without mutterings and grumblings. With the bedside steps under one
arm, a bolster under the other, and a candle-stick in each hand, she
preceded, with stimulating remarks, a squad which followed in Indian
file, but without much team work in their manœuvres. Tem Bossette
came first with an easy chair on his head (he had consented to a
reconciliation, sealed by a bottle of red wine). Then appeared a
wardrobe oscillating on four legs, which on reaching the top of the
stairs were revealed as half belonging to The Hanged and half (the
smaller half) to Mimi Pachoux, whom also victory had recalled to the
fold.

“Upon my word,” said Aunt Deen to her brother during the defiling
of her troops, “I’d like to know why you couldn’t stay downstairs!
Hoisting all your things up this narrow staircase!”

And as grandfather indifferently acknowledged her remark merely by a
vague gesture she resorted next to sarcasm:

“Of course, that doesn’t distress Monsieur! Monsieur would never put
himself out for a trifle like that! Comfortably seated in the easy
chair that poor Tem has drenched with sweat, Monsieur will observe the
progress of events! And meanwhile, I shall have to come up and down a
hundred times a day. And the maids likewise. But you don’t care what
trouble you make us: you’ll always find everything you need ready at
your hand.”

The attack was direct and severe. Before replying grandfather cast a
startled glance upon the seat which Tem had transported, fearful of the
reported deluge. When he perceived it to be dry and intact he recovered
his serenity and replied with the utmost calmness:

“I ask nothing of any one.”

“Because you never lack for anything; you live like a pig in clover.”

They were both right. Grandfather never made any demands, but every
one was eager to anticipate his slightest wish. Thus he uttered no
complaint against the piercing winds that besieged his tower; but the
day after his removal all the chinks around the doors and windows were
carefully stopped up.

Aunt Deen’s dissatisfaction had given voice to the general opinion.
This unexpected exodus, utterly without necessity, cast a shadow over
our father and mother, who vainly sought for its reason.

“Why must you be up so high?”

“Altitude has always agreed with me.”

I admit that on this occasion I sided with grandfather. The tower
chamber with its four views, its isolation, its special odour (it had
never been opened except when some one went for apples, which used to
ripen there all winter long) had long had an irresistible attraction
for me. Since it was henceforth to be inhabited I promised myself to
visit it frequently.


This episode was soon put into the shade by another, much more
important and of a character to make a much deeper impression upon my
imagination. Coming home from school one morning, I learned from my
usual source of information, Aunt Deen, that this time it was settled.
She imparted this news with an air of great mystery, but mystery itself
with her was noisy in its manifestation. The word settled assumed upon
her lips a formidable importance. What was settled?

“The deed is signed. Just now. I am very glad.”

What deed? I didn’t understand a word of it all.

“Well, we are to remain in our house. _They_ can never trouble us
again.”

Didn’t I already know that _they_ had been utterly routed,
dispersed, chastised, overcome, beaten, reduced to nothingness, like
the Persians in my ancient history whom a handful of Greeks had chased
into the sea? How should she think to surprise me by telling me a
secret already several days old, perhaps several weeks old, and about
which every one had been talking freely? A child does not enter the
region of preparations, delays, formalities and judicial scribblings.
But a capital event shortly illustrated Aunt Deen’s declaration.

Grandfather returned earlier than usual from his walk, and as one of
us remarked upon his abnormal punctuality he took himself off without
a word. When, after the second bell, we entered the dining-room with
empty stomachs and ravenous appetites, what was our surprise to find
him already there, sitting at table, but not in his official place,
the place of honour in the centre opposite our mother, as is fitting
for the head of the family, the reigning king. Without confiding his
intention to any one, he had changed the napkin rings and had taken
his place at the end of the table, opposite the window. It is true
that he had chosen a very good place whence he could see the trees in
the garden and even a bit of sky between their branches. To a lover
of sunshine the view was not unimportant. But all the same it was a
revolution in the family life and the entire domestic economy. Or
rather, I was not mistaken, it was an abdication.

I was well up in abdications. Had I not been obliged to study in my
history book those of the sluggard kings, whose hair they cut off
before immuring them in a cloister?--and in spite of myself I gazed
at grandfather’s slightly curling white hair. Above all I had heard
my brother Bernard reciting the story of Charles V, by which I had
been strongly impressed. That master of the world, laying aside his
grandeur, had retired to a monastery of Estramadura, where he mended
clocks, and to give himself a foretaste of death had had his funeral
celebrated while he was still alive. Historians that dote upon truth
have since then assured me that these details are fabulous. I am
sorry, for I have not forgotten them, whereas an innumerable number of
demonstrated facts have dropped out of my memory. But at that time I
believed with iron conviction in the retirement of Charles V, the false
obsequies and the clocks. Grandfather also knew how to mend clocks, and
I at once established relations between the two sovereigns.

Aunt Deen, punctual for once, and our mother, who was not far behind
us, shared our astonishment. Then all eyes were fixed upon our father,
who was just then entering the room. At a glance he took in the
situation, and with him decision was never slow to follow. He came
forward with rapid steps.

“No, no,” he said, “I will not have this. Nothing should be changed
here. Father, take your own place, I beg.”

Assuredly not one of us would have resisted an entreaty which was also
a command. But our father’s energetic regulating force had before our
very faces come in contact with another force the power of which I had
never dreamed of, that of immovability. Grandfather did not stir. He
had resolved not to stir.

Father, receiving no reply, repeated his request more gently,--I can
not say more humbly, for at all times, in spite of himself, he wore
an air of pride. He received in the face an outburst of that eternal
little laugh, with the added accompaniment of the words:

“Oho! what a fuss about nothing.”

“Father, give me this proof of your affection!”

“One place or another, what’s the odds? I am very comfortable here, and
here I stay,” he said, adding in a tone of superb disdain, “if you only
knew, my poor Michel, how little I care!”

He cared for nothing: Tem Bossette had told me so; everything was all
one to him; one seat or another, one house or another. Such words
as these, uttered before us children, were enough to exasperate our
father, but he controlled himself.

“There must be a headship in the family,” he urged.

“Bah! We live under a republic, and I believe in liberty.”

Father saw that it was perfectly useless to insist, and he merely added:

“Then you do really refuse to come back to your own place?”

“I shall not move.”

Philomena, the waitress, offered the platter. Father signed to her to
offer it to grandfather, after which there was nothing for him but to
take the seat of honour. It was a relief to us all; we all felt that
the place belonged to him by right and that he alone deserved to occupy
it. He and no one else had long been the head of the family. At the
slightest difficulty or vexation every one turned to him, every one
appealed to him. Now the disquietude which had weighed upon the house
for so long a time would be ended. Now we should be directed. No more
sluggard kings! The reins of government, as my history book expressed
it, would be held in strong hands. And it was right that the head of
the house should have all the insignia of authority. A king does not
occupy the second place, and evidently my father would not have crowned
himself of his own accord.

Thus the transferrence of power had taken place in our presence.

I should not have anticipated the change of feeling which took place
within me, almost suddenly. Grandfather’s government had always seemed
to me precarious and derisory. But as soon as he refused to exercise
it I began to admire his disinterestedness and to discover the poetry
of abdication. His sovereign disdain of material things appeared to
me full of grandeur, and I even went so far as to interpret to myself
the expression which had once seemed sacrilegious to me--“whether one
lives in one house or another.” If he had done nothing to protect our
house, perhaps it was because he cared for higher and more distant
things. From his tower chamber he was entering into communication
with the winds and the stars, predicting the future. The weather and
the universe were absorbing him; he could no longer devote himself
to common tasks. There was another mode of interpreting life, which
I vaguely felt without understanding it, and which attracted me by
its unusualness, and its enigma. The deposed king, clothed in the
mystery which was conferred upon him by an unimaginable learning, was
recovering his prestige and even assuming, all unaware to himself, a
degree of ascendancy over my spirit.

I gazed by turns at father and grandfather: father in his normal
place, thinking of each of us, diffusing peace and order about him;
the light of his marvellous aptitude at command shining from his clear
cut features and especially from his piercing eyes; grandfather, the
delicate lines of his face, almost feminine notwithstanding his long
white beard, his eyes always slightly clouded, often abstracted,
indifferent to all around him, and more interested in the trees of the
garden or the bit of sky that he saw through the window than in us. For
the first time I was astonished to find such a difference between the
two men. I had never observed it before, or had not thought about it.
Now it struck me so strongly that I almost uttered my surprise aloud.
It doubtless would have escaped me had I not felt the unseemliness of
the fact. A son ought to resemble his father--there could be no doubt
upon the subject. Or else it wasn’t worth while to be the son of some
one. And whom was I like?




                                BOOK II




                                   I

                             THE PICTURES


ALL these events, still so fresh in my imagination, grew dim and were
temporarily lost in the current of the days which, during the long
vacation upon which we were entering, began to flow by like a beautiful
stream, full to the brim.

As a general thing our father took his vacation at the same time with
us, and made the most of it for getting nearer to us. We saw him much
less often this year, and became somewhat weaned from those stories of
heroism with which he used to enliven our walks, kindling and stirring
us up with fierce desire to fight battles and win victories. When we
heard him tell them we used to toss our heads, our eyes would sparkle,
we would walk faster, and our steps fell into cadence. But to meet the
new expenses which he had assumed he had given up his annual rest. Once
in a while he would snatch an afternoon, and make a hasty attempt to
re-establish the old nearness to us. But his patients came to seek him
at all hours of the day, or lay in wait for him as he passed along.
Everything conspired to deprive us of him.

Yet it was evident that his authority was everywhere in exercise. When
cracks had appeared in the front of the house iron supports were placed
underneath before it was repainted. The rooms were repapered--mine
with pleasant pictures of cats and dogs--and the floors were mended
where the boards had shrunken apart. Even the kitchen, where for years
Mariette had been obstinately insisting on repairs, without producing
any effect upon grandfather, who would invariably answer her with the
old proverb, “One wastes one’s suds in washing a negro’s head”--even
the kitchen was thoroughly repaired and paved with wonderful red
bricks. The entrance gate which would not close had been repaired,
and even provided with a key, a key which really turned in the lock!
The linden was trimmed, permitting the sun-dial once more to mark
the hours. The break in the wall, by which the mole-crickets used to
penetrate, by which, one memorable evening, I had seen our enemies
introducing themselves into the place, was closed by a balustrade, set
into the trunk of the chestnut tree. And now too was seen what had
never before been seen: the three labourers at their post, and--still
more marvellous sight--all three working at once!

Little by little the garden--my old garden that used to be a perfect
forest of weeds, in which there was never an end to discovering new
trees or plants--so well were they hidden--was transformed and reduced
to order. The alleys were cleaned out and sanded, the beds remade
and the rose bushes trimmed. The trees, reduced to their proper
proportions, cast a well defined shade. A useless field became an
orchard. A fountain, set in the heart of a grass plot, sent up a shaft
of water to fall in a fine musical rain into its basin. There were
flowers and fruits to gather for banquets and desserts. But we no
longer dared to feel of the pears and peaches--still less to give to
their stems that slight see-saw motion which made them fall. In the
wide newly-opened space our larceny would have been discovered. And
I vainly sought to lay low with my sword the underbrush that used to
grow thick on the edge of the chestnut grove. Tem Bossette refused to
whittle me out the smallest wooden sword, and watched over the stakes
as if he had paid for them himself.

These changes were not made all at once, and no doubt I have their
chronology mixed. We hardly noticed them during their slow and gradual
progress, and when they were all made we ceased to remember how
things were before. Indeed they were not accomplished without many
perturbations. Tem wiped his brow unceasingly and sweated out all his
wine. Mimi Pachoux stole away no longer but made a great noise to
attest the certainty of his presence; and The Hanged bent his dantesque
countenance over obscure and useful tasks. The community of their fate
had by no means brought about their reconciliation. They were always
observing, spying upon one another, but all three observed and watched
the house still more closely. What did they fear to see emerging from
it?

I discovered one day. My father, who had become their master, drew near
with rapid step. He spoke to each with kindly encouragement, but he
examined their work as one who knew.

“All the same, he knows what he is about,” Mimi admiringly confessed.

I learned from Tem that after having severely admonished them he had
raised their wages. But he insisted upon good work. In a word, he drew,
them back to himself whenever they demurred at a task, or soured upon
it. But without doubt he upset all the old habits of a region where
people love to drift along, taking life as easily as they drink its new
wine. This is why Tem Bossette, more than any of them, sighed for the
ancient reign of the Sluggard Kings, when he had lived tranquil and
forgotten among his vines.

Once he tried in my presence to move grandfather to pity for his sad
fate.

“Friend,” was the answer, “I am nobody here; go to some one else.”

Never had grandfather seemed so full of spirits as since his
abdication. No, certainly he did not regret his lost authority, but
he made a point of knowing nothing of the acts of the new régime.
Did he travel over the kingdom? He seemed never to perceive that
its very pebbles were blossoming. But one day, when he was taking
the air in the garden, I saw him combing his beard and rubbing his
eyebrows--a sure token that he was dissatisfied; he spat, as a sign of
contempt, and the little impertinent laugh accompanied words which were
incomprehensible to me.

“Oho! everything is being put to rights--what they need is a
geometrician rather than a gardener.”

What was he finding fault with? The garden beds, the trees, obedient
to the hand of man, made a richly disposed picture. My little ideas of
life had here grouped themselves and taken form with unwonted pleasure.
I was provoked with grandfather’s lack of enthusiasm.

“See,” I said to him, not knowing just what to say, “those beautiful
red cannas around the basin of the fountain.”

He took me by the arm with unexpected roughness.

“Look out, child, you’ll spoil the grass!”

I had indeed set my foot upon the grass border of the path. And I
clearly perceived that grandfather was ridiculing my admiration and the
garden both at once. Suddenly, under the influence of his sarcasm, I
recalled the old garden, the old garden as it had been, a wild mass of
foliage, when I might trample on the very borders, with their sparse
flowers growing helter-skelter, where I had known the wild joy of
liberty.

Grandfather would never have permitted himself such a criticism before
my father. My mind having been drawn to observe the dissimilarity
between them, I had noticed the constraint in their relations.
Father was always making advances; treating grandfather with extreme
deference; never failing to inquire as to his health, his walks,
and even, indulgent to his meteorological hobby, asking him as to
weather prospects. Grandfather would reply briefly, without making
the slightest attempt to continue the conversation, which soon fell
flat,--or he would bring forward his little wounding smile, as soon as
a subject was introduced on which it was not certain that they were in
agreement.

One day father asked for his account books, explaining that he needed
to verify certain memoranda of claims upon the property which had not
yet been settled and which appeared to be exorbitant. Grandfather
opened his eyes:

“My account books?”

“Yes.”

“I never kept any.”

Father hesitated for a second. “Very well,” he said simply and turned
away.

In his tower where he had settled himself, grandfather took great
comfort in wearing his famous green dressing gown and Greek cap of
black velvet with its silk tassel. With his telescope fixed upon a
pedestal, he would watch by day the boats that ploughed the waters of
the lake, and at night he would bring the stars nearer--but only those
which moved in the southern half of the sky, because from his former
room he had only had a view of this part of the heavens, and knew it
better. Much more frequently than in the old days he would come down
stairs in this astrologer’s costume, like a deposed monarch who no
longer sets store by majesty. It was with great difficulty that Aunt
Deen prevented him from going into town, or walking in the country, in
this accoutrement.

“It does no one any harm,” he would observe.

Nevertheless, after many entreaties, he would consent to replace the
cap with a broad brimmed felt hat, and the dressing gown with a frock
coat which had to be almost daily rubbed with benzine, in spite of him,
to keep it decent. He would bring home from his walks aromatic plants
of which he used to make decoctions which he would mix with brandy,
and mushrooms which awakened Aunt Deen’s misgivings. I used to look
at them, smell them, but for nothing in the world would I have tasted
them. I could not think, in those days, that anything good to eat could
be found outside a provision store, except, on a pinch, in our garden.


My father’s reign had lasted three good years, perhaps, indeed, nearer
four than three, when an event occurred of large importance in my child
life--I fell ill. The previous year I had made my first communion, with
such deep fervour that my mother had confidentially wondered to Aunt
Deen:

“Is he going to follow the example of Mélanie and Stephen? Will God
require of us a third child? His will be done!”

My adventure was almost that of _the fair child who escaped from the
arms of his mother_. In the course of a walk of our “division” I
had tumbled into a brook which we had been forbidden to approach, and
rather than be blamed had decided to say nothing about it, though I was
soaked up to the chest. Fever set in the next day or the day after. I
learned later that it was a severe attack of pneumonia, which in time
degenerated into pleurisy. My life was believed to be in danger, and my
malady became the occasion of a change in the family arrangements which
had almost altered the whole direction of my youth. In a half-slumber I
heard whisperings around me, the meaning of which I at once interpreted.

“Am I going to die?” I asked mother and Aunt Deen who were at my
bedside.

“Be quiet, naughty boy!” murmured Aunt Deen blowing her nose with a sob
and deep sighs, which she doubtless supposed herself to be suppressing.

Mother laid her hand upon my brow--its touch refreshed me as her gentle
and persuasive voice said,

“Don’t be uneasy; we are here.”

I knew very well what death was. The school porter having died, a weird
whim of our religious director had constrained us to defile, class by
class, before the bier upon which the corpse had been laid, before
the cover of the coffin was screwed down. Now this porter was a short
stout man, whose mortal remains required a cubic receptacle in which
he looked to us so comical and smirking that we burst into a laugh
that, though it scandalised us, we found it impossible to repress.
The indignant professor who was acting as marshal to this abortive
pilgrimage overwhelmed us with the severest reproaches, not hesitating
to add thereto in due time a sermon upon our final destiny. With no
circumlocution he informed us that we were all to die, and perhaps very
soon, that our parents would die, and that we should lose every one we
loved. By degrees our laughter died away. A vague fear took possession
of us, heightened by the monotonous repetition of the word death,
continually thrown at our heads. When I went back to the house that
morning, greatly moved in spite of myself by that vehement discourse,
I looked at my father and mother as I had never looked at them before.
They were coming and going as usual, without dreaming that I was
watching them. They even laughed at one of Bernard’s remarks: I heard
them laugh--a hearty laugh very like that which the unlucky porter in
his box had aroused in us. Ah, that laugh! especially our father’s
laugh, strong and sonorous, giving a splendid impression of health--how
it comforted me, and how it put to flight the terrified curiosity which
had taken possession of me.

“Aha!” I thought in my little brain, “the teacher was lying like a
dentist! They will not die--that is certain. They can’t die. To begin
with, when people laugh, that means that they don’t die.”

This evident conclusion set my heart at rest. So far as I was concerned
there was no longer any question on the subject. They were in front and
I behind them. And since there was no risk for them how could death
touch me, passing them by?

My question “Am I going to die?” was therefore simply designed to make
myself interesting. In their presence I was safe.

Mother and Aunt Deen watched me by turns, that I might see no strange
face; mother took two nights out of three, and I liked her best. She
glided into the room like a mist over the lake, without the slightest
sound. I was never aware of any of her movements. Her cares and her
caresses mingled; while Aunt Deen, the dear woman, at the cost of
tremendous effort, disturbed and irritated me.

The important part which I myself was playing was by no means irksome
to me. I seemed to myself to have become smaller than my brother James
and my sister Nicola, and that I might just as well be rocked to sleep
with lullabies. I used to ask for Venice and The Pool, because of my
own drenching, and they thought I was delirious. I distinctly see in
memory those two faces bending over me, and still more clearly that
of my father, who was continually coming to see me; the attentive,
fixed, almost severe expression with which he noted the effects of my
disease upon my body was quite strange to me. It was his professional
expression; the examination once over, his features would relax,
lightened up by fatherhood.

One day father brought in another doctor, but I clearly saw that the
little man stood in awe of him, and invariably repeated what he said to
him. With implacable logic I observed to my faithful nurses,

“What’s the use of troubling that gentleman? Father knows much more
about it than he. Father doesn’t need any one.”

I probably uttered these words or something like them in a low voice.
Aunt Deen promptly approved.

“The child is right. He speaks so sensibly that he is surely getting
well.”

She repeated my remark to father, who was still anxious, and who
smiled, as he had not done of late.

“Yes,” he said; “we shall save him.”

I had no need of any such assurance. I felt it so strongly that that
was enough. He never dreamed that this very illness, over which he was
triumphing by skill and will-power, was later to be the origin of the
home tragedy in which I wandered away from him.

My brothers and sisters were brought into my room, two by two, in
succession, guarded with all sorts of advice--not to stay long, to make
no noise, not to touch the medicine bottles. Naturally they were soon
bored and departed. Each of them took some credit for my cure, which
I owed to the prayers of Stephen and Mélanie, to Bernard’s martial
exhortations and to the comfortable gaiety of Louise. As for the two
little ones, they were prudently kept in the background after James,
no doubt repeating what he had heard among the servants, had shouted,
jumping up and down with enthusiasm,

“Fançois” (he could hardly say _r_) “will soon be dead.”

Grandfather never appeared at my bedside. Perhaps he apprehended no
danger. I think it was rather that he had an invincible horror of
illness and all that might result from it. Deeply concerned with his
own health, he kept careful account of his bodily functions, and with
that perfect courtesy from which he never departed he never failed to
inform the entire household of the state of his internal economy; when
that went ill he would lament grievously and Aunt Deen would produce
from a cupboard a venerable instrument which when rubbed up and mended
was still good for use.

“Nothing is more important,” he would say, in our presence, gazing upon
the instrument with a satisfied air.

My convalescence was a period of enchantment, not for the new zest
that it lent to life, the savour of which only he can taste who has
deemed his life put in jeopardy, but because it truly opened to me
the mysterious realm of books. I was not unfamiliar with the _Rose
Library_. I knew Canon Schmid, and Jules Verne’s romances, and even
the fairy tales of Perrault and Andersen, but I had never found in
any of them that heart thrill which keeps you awake in bed at night,
expecting, fearing some unknown delight not unmingled with danger, such
as I had found in Aunt Deen’s amazing stories, and above all in the
epic tales that father used to tell.

Not to weary me, they began by bringing me illustrated books. Bernard
let me look over the Epinal albums which he was collecting for the sake
of the military costumes, and which it cost him some self-denial to
lend. I begged for Gustave Doré’s Bible, of which once in the parlour
by special favour I had been shown the pictures without being permitted
to touch it. The two heavy volumes were propped up on the table, in
great state, and I passed long hours in turning the pages. Mother would
come and go in the room, somewhat surprised at my being so good, and
even a little disturbed by my silence. She would approach noiselessly
and look over my shoulder.

“You are not getting tired?”

“Oh, no!”

“You are not bored?”

“Oh, mamma!”

“Are they beautiful?”

“I don’t know.”

When one is a child one doesn’t know what is beautiful. The beautiful
thing is to have the heart satisfied. What a sudden uplift my entire
æsthetic nature received from them! The unframed outlines of nature
had never impressed me; now that, copied, transferred to a square of
paper, I could look at them, I saw them, not only on the motionless
page, but everywhere, and all alive. The house with its great stones,
the walled-in garden--I had often used to touch them, understand them,
possess them;--and besides, they belonged to me. But beyond our house
the universe began, and its limitlessness had repelled me, so that I
could never think of it as having definite outlines. And here those
outlines were, before my eyes; through the open Bible I discovered them.

At thirty years’ distance I find again in my memory, with no need of
verification, the pictures of Gustave Doré. The pages turn of their
own accord and my beloved phantoms reappear. Here are those visions of
dread, Leviathan upheaving the sea, the destroying Angel exterminating
Sennacherib’s army, the long train of Nicannor’s elephants between
which Judas Maccabeus has to pass, and Death in the Apocalypse on his
pale horse. They were not my favourites, and in the evening I used
even to avoid them. My favourites were those quiet, reposeful, almost
shadowy Oriental landscapes, where the summer sunlight seemed to draw
up mists, where strange plants grew most unlike our oaks and chestnuts,
where in the background were shadows of oxen and camels, far away like
boats upon the lake in time of fog.

The birth of Eve seemed lovely to me. While Adam sleeps among the
flowers of Eden, she uprises erect and unclothed, with floating hair.
One of her knees--look at it, I am sure of it!--slightly bent, is
caressed by the sunlight. Through her, by this light upon her knee,
I felt something of the pure perfection of nudity long before I even
dreamed of its desire. Abraham leads his flocks to the land of Canaan,
and the backs of the huddled sheep undulate like the waves that I had
seen from the lake shore. The cradle of Moses floats upon the Nile;
Pharaoh’s daughter has come out from the palace that stands basking in
the sun; she draws near the river; one of her waiting women takes up
the little bark. Rebecca, in a long white veil, rests her pitcher upon
the margin of the well and talks with Eliezer, a venerable old man; but
I don’t distinguish her from the Samaritan woman who takes the same
position. Ruth, kneeling, gleans the wheat ears. The great cedars of
Lebanon, cut down, lie upon the earth which their shadow overspreads;
they are waiting to be used in building the temple in Jerusalem. The
angel of the Annunciation hovers in the air, like a falling leaf upheld
by the wind. Jesus in the house of Lazarus is sitting on the window
ledge, the moonlight stealing through the palm trees. Mary crouching
at his feet is drinking in his words, Martha, standing, is busy with
household cares. Pictures through which peace flows like a limpid
stream, and which are but the transposition of every-day scenes,
almost like those which I might have seen at our house and in the
country,--pictures of obscure lives, through which God passes.

One day when I declined to be present at the return of the prodigal
son to the paternal home, my mother, who loved that parable, asked the
reason of this disdain.

“Why don’t you look at this page?”

I made a gesture of disgust. It seemed commonplace to me--a father
forgiving his son--what was there surprising in that?

Athalia wringing her hands in despair beside the temple wall, while the
soldiers come running to kill her, recalled to my mother her convent.
She had herself taken part in the chorus of that tragedy which Racine
had written for the young pupils of Saint-Cyr, and which by a happy
tradition all girls’ boarding schools used to present in those days;
the Unes came back to her with a rush:

  The universe is full of His magnificence:
  Let us praise God and worship Him forever.

She would recite them with that emotion which religious things always
awakened in her, and her tones touched me more directly than that
sophisticated art which was beyond my powers.

Another little book had a part in opening my mind to poetry,--it was
a book of ballads. A knight wandering in the forest, snatched away
from Titania, queen of the elves and sylphs, her cup of happiness and
carried it off to his castle on his galloping horse. A little girl
on the bank of a stream sang the romance of the swan’s nest hidden
among the reeds, and dreamed of a knight who should come upon a red
roan steed. The Lord of Burleigh married a shepherdess, who languished
in the palace to which he took her, and died of longing for her
village and her cottage. How I entered into their longings and their
melancholy! Their heartaches poured into my heart a delicious pain,
which I could not fathom. Yet I was beginning to discern that we have
within ourselves an upspringing fountain of infinitely delicate joys.

Did my father distrust these exciting readings as he did grandfather’s
music? He brought me short, simple biographies of great men. It is
never too early to make acquaintance with such. One forms a habit of
comparing himself with the heroes, and doesn’t fail to say to oneself:
“I have time before me; when I am their age I mean to have surpassed
them....” By degrees one begins to look for those whose exploits
come late in life. I do not know which of these exemplary personages
it was of whom I read that he entered the school of adversity. I
imagined that school to be at least as severe as the Polytechnic, or
Saint-Cyr, to which my brother Bernard was destined, and I burned to
present myself there for admission. I did not know that it is the only
one that requires no examination, no preliminaries, above all, no
recommendation. I confided my desire to my mother. She smiled, which
vexed me, and assured me that I should indeed present myself there for
admission, but she hoped it would be as late as possible.

These readings transported me into a glorious state of enthusiasm. I
could not have understood sarcasm. No one made use of it in our family.
There was only grandfather’s little laugh. Our parents loved gaiety,
took pleasure even in the noise that we made, but they never used
ridicule. They took life seriously, as an opportunity for well-doing,
and deemed that it deserved the greatest respect. Grandfather, running
through my books, on the first visit that he deigned to pay me after
being assured that I was recovering, let fall certain exclamations:

“Oho! the Bible! and the Famous Men! Poor child! Just wait, I’ll bring
you some books.”

And in fact he brought me “Scenes from the Public and Private Life of
Animals,” and the “Adventures of Three Old Sailors,” both adorned with
illustrations. The latter volume was in a sad condition, the stitches
loose, the leaves falling out, and the end entirely gone as well as the
cover. It must have been translated from the English and its humour
perplexed me. Those three sailors, who had escaped from shipwreck,
landed on a desert island where they were pursued by a tiger. They
climbed a tree, by way of refuge from the ferocious creature, and
the picture showed them clinging to the trunk perched one above the
other, with hair standing on end, eyes staring, toes curled up. The
wild beast was springing up toward them, it was easy to see that with
a little exertion he would have them. Then with fierce resolution
inspired by the most imperative necessity, the two uppermost bore down
with all their weight upon the lowermost one, in order to force him to
let go, hoping that this prize would suffice to satisfy the assailant’s
fury. And while bearing down with all their might they addressed to
their unhappy companion the most touching words of parting:

“Good-bye, Jeremiah” (such was his unpropitious name), “we will go and
console your poor father and your betrothed.”

But Jeremiah, like Rachel, refused to be comforted, and stiffened
himself, to cling the tighter. Accustomed as I was to tales of heroism
I was much displeased with these traitorous friends.

“Scenes in the Life of Animals” appeared to me to have more sense.
It was a motley collection such as all old-time libraries prided
themselves on containing. Grandville’s vignettes revealed to me traces
of animal characteristics in men, whom till then I had thought of only
as in the image of God. The animals in the book were dressed like
men and women and looked like them. I soon became accustomed to this
treatment, the disguises were so natural! Here were the nightingale
as a postman, the dog as a lackey, the rabbit as a petty subaltern
employe, and there were the vulture as a landed proprietor, the lion
as an old beau, the turkey as a banker, the ass as an academician.
The centipedes were playing the piano for a young lady dancing on the
tight rope, while the cricket was making a trumpet of the carolla of
the bindweed. The chameleon, as a deputy, mounted the tribune to state
that he was proud and happy to be always of everybody’s opinion. The
shark and the saw-fish had on surgeons’ blouses, and frankly declared,
“We are going to cut muscles, saw bones--in a word, heal the sick.”
The wolf, having murdered a sheep, is reading in his prison the
_Idylls_ of Mme Deshoulières, while celebrity comes to him under
the form of a complaint sold by hawkers, to be sung to the air of
_Fualdès_:

  Hearken, Woodpeckers and Ducks,
  Jays and Turkeys, Crows and Rooks;
  The story of a frightful crime
  Worthy of Harpies, in their time.
  Who performed the direful act?
  A wolf, indelicate, in fact.

The bear was enjoying retirement in the bosom of his family; he could
be seen warming his youngest born by holding him before the fire by the
paws; his wife was hanging linen before the fire and a young cub in
a corner was lifting up his little shirt by way of precaution before
retiring; some one is knocking at the door, but the legend explains:

“We live by ourselves; we detest visitors and bores.”

A parroquet flapping his wings without being able to fly represented
the illustrious poet Kacatogan. And the martlet with the magpie and
the crow made a trio of women of letters. I did not know what a woman
of letters could be, but the White Blackbird, who like the parroquet
was a poet, taught me in his memoirs:

_While I was composing my poems she was bedaubing reams of paper
with her scribblings. I would recite my verses to her aloud, and
she, indifferent, kept on writing while I was doing so. She produced
romances with a facility almost equal to mine, always choosing the
most dramatic subjects: parricides, kidnappings, murders, and even
pocket-picking, always taking pains to attack the government, in
passing, and to preach the emancipation of Martlets. In one word, no
effort was too great for her mind, no clap-trap for her modesty; it
never occurred to her to erase a line, nor to work out a plan before
setting to work. She was the typical lettered Martlet._

Aunt Deen also produced stories with marvellous facility; she, too,
preferred terrible subjects and was not averse to attacking the
government. I even suspected her of not knowing, when she began, how
she was going to end up, and of inventing the plots of her stories as
she went along. Then why didn’t she bedaub paper? The simplest way was
to ask her.

“Aunt Deen, are you a woman of letters?”

She asked me twice to repeat my question, as if women of letters really
belonged to the zoological kingdom, in the category of monsters. After
which she shrugged her shoulders, not even deigning to reply directly.

“The child is certainly crazy. Augustus’s books have addled his brain.”

There was some talk of taking away the “Scenes in the Life of Animals,”
the caricatures in which had amused even my father and brought a smile
to his lips. The effect of the incident was to attach me all the more
strongly to the White Blackbird, who had nearly caused the book to be
placed upon the Index. And I soon came to see what it undoubtedly was
that distinguished Aunt Deen from the Lettered Martlet. The latter,
with immaculate plumage, was in fact merely painted--covered over with
a layer of flour which gave her that appearance of having fallen from
the sky. The White Blackbird, who never suspected it, and thought he
had discovered in the Martlet a creature unique in all the world,
becoming suspicious of a mysterious pot of some white mixture, had a
disastrous experience. His poems moving him to tenderness, he shed such
profuse tears over his companion as to dissolve the plaster of paris
with which she was covered, and reveal her as the most commonplace of
blackbirds. Now I had often wept in Aunt Deen’s arms; she had bewailed
my sorrows without losing anything of her colour. She made use neither
of paste nor flour; no, decidedly, however beautiful the stories she
made up, she would never be a woman of letters.

Another bit of knowledge came to me from the White Blackbird. I learned
from him to enjoy the charm of words for their own sake, independently
of their meaning. After his conjugal mishap, he fled to the forest
to confide his woes to the Nightingale, uttering to her this plaint:
_I was co-ordinating fooleries while you were in the woods_. I
did not clearly grasp the meaning, because of the co-ordination of
fooleries, which eluded me, and yet I loved the melody of this phrase,
and repeated it over and over to myself. The reply of the Nightingale,
still more deeply charged with mystery, completely upset me. _I love
the Rose_, he sighed. _Sadi the Persian has sung of her: I wear
out my throat all night singing to her, but she sleeps, and hears
me not. Her chalice is at this moment closed; she is cherishing an
old Beetle there; and to-morrow morning, when I go back to my couch,
exhausted with suffering and weariness, then she will open her petals
that a bee may devour her heart_. I took no interest either in the
old Beetle or in Sadi the Persian; the exhausted Nightingale, and
that Rose with the devoured heart, communicated to me, by the magic
of syllables, a sort of far-off presentiment of love-pain, in which I
found a vague and ineffable sadness.

Such sadness was very quick to pass. Much sooner, however, I had
borrowed from my new friends, the animals, an art of ridiculing which
I found most delightful. I could see no one without finding his double
among the beasts. Tem Bossette with his flat face and goggle eyes
became a frog--the very frog that tried to make himself as big as the
ox; Mimi Pachoux with his furtive step and sudden disappearance I
compared to a rat, and The Hanged, who always seemed to find difficulty
in using his arms, to a kangaroo, with his very short front legs.

This turn of mind shocked and disturbed my mother. One day she
received in my presence a visit from a person of a certain age who
was superintending a work room, founding an orphan asylum, building a
school, in a word, directing more works in the parish than actually
existed. Her name was Mlle Tapinois. She was tall and dried up, with
a pointed nose, sloping shoulders and a frigid air. She cooed softly
without a moment’s interruption. When she was gone I showed mother, in
my book, an old dove in a night gown, with a candle-stick in its claw:

“Mademoiselle Tapinois,” I said triumphantly.

Mother protested against my unseemly comparison.

“She is a holy woman,” she concluded, by way of arousing my sympathy.

But though she did not admit it, I saw that she had recognised the
likeness.

Encouraged by the degree of success I had achieved with Mlle Tapinois,
I thenceforth watched our visitors to deal out to them the same
treatment, and the facility of this game amazed me. I had no difficulty
in finding a stout landed proprietor for the elephant, a woe-begone
collector of mortgages for the owl, a pianist for the centipede. An
old nobleman with a Roman nose reminded me of the falcon whom the
_Revolutions had ruined_. In a very short while my collection was
further enriched by the bear, the chameleon, and several rabbits, drawn
from the registry or the tax office. But the region at that time had no
departmental muse worthy to be catalogued among the martlets. They tell
me that there are swarms of them now-a-days.

Grandfather, to whom I confided my observations, gave them his full
approbation.

“Now you know,” he said, “that animals and men are brothers. But the
animals are better fellows than we.”

Nevertheless a secret instinct warned me not to consult my parents on
this subject.




                                  II

                              THE DESIRE


FINE weather had come. Three months still lay between us and the long
vacation. Father, agreeing with the timid little colleague whom he had
again called in to support his own opinion, declared that I was not to
return to school until the end of the vacation next October.

“The child needs out-of-door air. The first thing is to build up his
health.”

I was pained by this decision, which wounded my pride. If I were not
in school during the last quarter, I could not hope for a wreath at
the distribution of prizes. For I was full of emulation, and loved to
take the first place, though this brought down upon me grandfather’s
ridicule.

“Those classifications mean nothing. First or last it’s all one.”

Father laid out for me a very simple plan of life. A country walk
morning and evening, far from the microbes of the town, where you can
breath fresh air uncontaminated by human beings. Thus I should recover
strength and appetite. But who would walk with me and be my guide? Who
would undertake a peripatetic preceptorship of this sort? Father,
already behind in his duties because of my long illness, belonged to
his absorbing profession; mother, whose presence was certainly required
by the whole family, especially the little ones, could hardly ever
leave the house except to go to church. Aunt Deen had no out-of-door
legs, a deficiency which did not prevent her going up and down
stairs, from kitchen to tower, a hundred times a day. There remained
grandfather. He always took a walk morning and evening on his own
account; what would it cost him to take me along? This would suit all
round; the plan was evidently the best possible.

I perceived, however, that it met a serious resistance, for I overheard
my parents discussing it in the calm and confident tone which they
always used when regulating, in perfect accord, all questions
concerning us.

“I would not have him turn him against the house,” said my father.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, as if it were wrong to admit such a thought, “he
wouldn’t do that! You don’t think that of your own father, surely! Of
course he has his whims, and his ideas are not always ours. What he
needs is God. But he is good hearted; he will be grateful to you for
your confidence. And we could not ask such a thing of a stranger.”

“I am not quite satisfied with the plan,” said father.

A little later he resumed the subject. “I will speak to him; there
seems to be no other way.”

When this proposition concerning me was broached to him, grandfather
acceded to it without either enthusiasm or hostility, with an
indifference that wounded me.

“I’d just as soon. It’s the same to me whether I take my walk alone
or with some one.” (Naturally!) “Children ought to live out of doors.
Study does no good. No more do medicines.”

Father no doubt had an interview with him at which I was not present,
and the affair was decided. How would he act toward his new companion?
He always treated my brothers and sisters and me, even the two
youngest, like reasonable persons, though a little more interesting
than others, lending to our remarks as much attention as to those of
grown persons; but we had an impression that he couldn’t always tell us
apart, and that he would cheerfully have dispensed with us all, which
seemed to us an affront.

Why had father told mother that he was not quite satisfied? On the
morning of my first walk with grandfather he was waiting for us at the
door on our return. He inspected me, looking me over from head to foot,
then, as if resolved, he took my hand and placed it in grandfather’s
with a certain solemnity--as a reigning king might do, I thought.

“Here is my son,” he said; “I entrust him to you; he holds the future
of our house.”

Grandfather received the precious trust indifferently, replying in a
slightly sarcastic tone, thus at once putting the incident upon an
every-day footing:

“Don’t worry, Michel; no one is going to rob you of him.”

I smiled, standing between the two. How could grandfather rob my father
of me?

The smallest details of that walk are present with me now. And rightly,
so great was its importance in my life. But everything is important
when one is little. After a rain the drenched fields seem to draw
nearer to one another, and the plants reflect the sunlight from all
their pendant drops. My eyes, purged by illness, must have thus shone.

“Where are we going, grandfather?”

I inclined to the direction of the town, where we should find
attractions of all sorts, shops, bazars, show-windows, faces, noise and
movement.

At the outset we were stopped by the closed gate, the key of which we
had forgotten to bring.

“Run and get it, child. But why the devil should they barricade the
gate?”

It was one of Aunt Deen’s thousand precautions; the previous evening,
or the one before, she had seen from afar a gipsy waggon, and since
then she had been keeping prudent guard over the household. I ran,
somewhat scandalised by grandfather’s remark. Wasn’t it necessary to
guard the house against enemies? A kingdom has frontiers which must be
respected; was it not enough that shadows crossed them every evening in
spite of gates and bolts?

We are off at last, and grandfather at once turns his back upon the
town:

“Child, I don’t like towns.”

Good-bye to shops and people! We had not walked ten minutes when he
took it into his head to leave the highroad, along which we were
walking at our ease, quite properly, without hurry, and took a footpath
which crossed the fields haphazard.

“You’re taking the wrong road, grandfather.”

“Not at all. Child, I detest roads!”

Well, well! he was more surprising than when he used to come down
to the dining-room in his dressing gown and Greek cap. I had always
supposed that roads were made to be used, not despised. And besides,
how could one get along without them when one went out?

The hardly perceptible path which we had taken obliged us to walk
single file. I went first, in the capacity of scout. The wheat on
one side was already tall, on the other side were oats, quivering on
their slender stems. I had learned to know the various grains from our
farmer. Wheat and oats soon mingled fraternally before me.

“Grandfather, there is no more path.”

We might have expected it. Our path had vanished. Grandfather quietly
passed before me, appeared to take his bearings, snuffed the wind,
trampled down a few stalks, and reached a hedge which he overleaped
with an ease that was surprising at his age.

“My boy,” he said, helping me to scramble through it, “I abhor fences.”

Our comradeship was beginning well! No roads, no fences! We soon
entered a chestnut wood, not in the least like the four or five trees
which were the pride of our domain. Here, above us, was a great vault
supported by trunks and intermingled branches like so many colossal
columns. I saw grandfather stoop and gather from the moss a mushroom
that looked like a little white umbrella, wide open.

“This is a sort of amanita,” he said. “It is supposed to be poisonous,
whereas it is edible.” (He tasted it to prove his words.) “It isn’t the
season, yet. I will teach you to know all the cryptogams. There are
very few noxious ones. Nature is good, and never wishes us harm. It is
men who spoil her. I know a priest who lives on Satan bolets, and is
never the worse.”

He laughed to himself at the priest who could swallow the devil without
indigestion.

At last we reached an open space whence no house was to be seen, nor
even a cultivated field,--not a trace of humanity. The woods separated
us from the town and the lake, upon which a few craft were always
sailing. At our back was a rocky hill, half covered with furze and
brambles. A slender cascade fell from the summit and was transformed at
our feet into a clear, noiseless rill. We were tramping through bracken
and a coarse grass, starred with all the flowers of spring. The brook
had given a rare exuberance to all this vegetation. The monotonous
sound of the waterfall by no means disturbed the solitude of the spot,
at once wild and gentle and so secluded. One might have thought oneself
at the very end of the earth--or at its beginning. I felt at once happy
and desolate.

I had of course taken many a walk with my father. But he always took
us to heights that commanded a view; he would point out by name the
mountains on the edge of the horizon, the villages in the plain below,
the ports on both sides of the lake. He made us feel that the earth was
inhabited, and that it was interesting and beautiful because it was
inhabited. Now I suddenly discovered the charm of wild nature.

“What is its name?” I asked grandfather to reassure myself.

“The name of what?” he asked, not comprehending.

“The place where we are.”

The question surprised him, and provoked a little laugh that I did not
enjoy.

“It has no name.”

“Who owns it?”

“Nobody.”

Nobody! That was very strange. Just as the house must always have
belonged to us, I had supposed that the whole earth was divided into
properties.

“To us, if you like,” grandfather went on.

And his laugh, his terrible little laugh, began to undermine my notions
about life, my beliefs. It produced upon me the effect of the touch
of the finger that I used to give when I erected great buildings with
my blocks. The edifice grew higher, higher,--I barely touched with my
finger one of the columns at the base, and down it all came.

“Oh, to us!” I protested.

People were not to take possession of other people’s property like
that, simply because they did not know the owner’s name. Everything
that I had been taught protested.

“Why, yes, little simpleton,” he replied. “Every one takes his own in
the world. Do you like this bit of land? It is yours,--like the sun
that warms us, the air that we breath, the loveliness of these early
spring days.”

I was not convinced. Dim resistances awoke within me, shivering; I
found no words to express them, and could only bring forward the poor
objection:

“Yes, but I couldn’t take anything from it.”

“You take your pleasure from it, that’s the important thing.”

Confident of victory, he clinched it by invoking the testimony of a
third party.

“Jean-Jacques would explain to you better than I can, that nature holds
within itself the happiness of man. Jean-Jacques would have loved this
retreat.”

He uttered the name _Jean-Jacques_ with devout unction, pursing
his lips. He spoke of him as Aunt Deen spoke of the best known and most
useful saints, Saint Christopher, for example, who protects against
accidents, or Saint Antony, who helps to find lost objects. Puzzled, I
at once asked:

“Who is that--Jean-Jacques?”

“A friend; a friend whom you do not know.”

Why, I knew, or thought I knew, all grandfather’s friends. He received
few visits, mostly from other old men, who appeared older than he, who
seemed to be sad and who soon bored him. There was one who would sit
down without saying a word, and would just sit a long time, motionless
and mute. One day grandfather forgot that he was there and left the
room. On his return he found him in the same place, fast asleep.
Grandfather would complain openly about the visits of all these “old
fogies” as he called them, not one of whom, I was certain, was named
Jean-Jacques. On the other hand, he always liked to come down to the
drawing-room when he thought he might meet ladies there.

Time pressing, we returned through the chestnut grove, but went out
on another side, passing through a second hedge, this one of young
acacias. It was with manifest pleasure that I saw houses and cultivated
fields again.

“Come! here are private properties for you,” said grandfather when we
reached the cultivated grounds. His lips curled with disdain. Not at
all disconcerted I asked for landmarks.

“Where is ours?”

“I don’t know. Look over there, at the left. You’ll see it all right as
we go on. As for me, when I take a walk I go where fancy leads me. One
always gets home somehow.”

When we reached the highroad a strange and disquieting apparition
presented itself. I clung to my new preceptor:

“Grandfather, look up the road!”

It seemed to be coming toward us from over the hill, with a slow
uniform motion. In a few minutes it would be here. Grandfather shaded
his eyes with his hands, the better to concentrate his vision, and
explained the phenomenon:

“It’s the sheep that leave Provence every spring and go up to the high
pastures. They are led there by easy stages. Let us get to the side of
the road, beyond this pile of stones, and watch them go past.”

Thus instructed, I was soon able to distinguish between the almost
white road and the yellow-grey and brown flock which composed a single
moving mass,--repeated above all those regularly swaying backs by a
thin cloud of dust which spread over the fields on either side. At once
I saw again the picture in my Bible which showed Abraham travelling to
the land of Canaan.

In front of the flock marched a shepherd, wrapped in a great cape
which must have been many a time exposed to wind and rain, for it was
of the greenish colour of a thatched roof over which many winters
have passed. Notwithstanding the sun, his ample covering appeared not
to inconvenience him. No doubt our sun was not as warm as that which
he had left behind. His hat pulled down over his eyes cast a dark
shadow over the upper part of his face, only his grey beard being
distinctly visible. He was an old man, and he advanced slowly with
a slight swaying of the whole body. He might have been taken for a
beggar but for an unconscious air of majesty which covered him like his
cloak--that of a captain leading his company, that of a sower sowing
his seed. He took no one step faster than another, and the rhythm of
his regular advance seemed to communicate itself to the entire column.
It gave an impression as of the whole landscape following, obeying
in cadence a law which he fixed, the oxen tracing the furrows, the
reapers laying bare the fields, the morning and the evening obedient
to the time of returning, and even the stars at night traversing,
unhastingly, a part of the sky which I had thought I could see moving
in grandfather’s spy-glass.

He seemed to me so important that I bowed to him, but he did not return
my salutation, nor deign to detach his attention from his absorbing
task. Grandfather began a sentence:

“Tell me, shepherd ...” but deemed it useless to go on, recognising
the intense seriousness of the man.

A black dog walked almost under his feet, and behind came, in a
triangular group, three lean, hairless donkeys, laden with objects
which could not be seen since they were covered with an awning. Their
heads hung almost to the ground as if they would fain have snuffed it
up, or browsed upon it. The main body of the army followed them, the
sheep-people, crowding close to one another, eight or ten in a row
when one could manage to count them, but most of the time the rows
were indistinct, subject to flux and reflux, the great mass of wool
undulating as if it were that of a single rampant and interminable
animal, over which continual shivers passed.

I did not at first distinguish anything in this uniform and agitated
mass. Then I noticed little black spots that were ears. By degrees, as
I got used to them, certain individualities emerged from the compact,
monotonous throng. There were rams, generally taller, with long horns
rolled in a circle, and bells hanging from their necks by a wooden
horseshoe shaped collar. There were sheep with white or black coats,
better cared for than the others, walking with a certain ostentation.
There were also vagabond animals, capricious as goats, which would
gladly have escaped from the road but for the vigilance of the dogs
that operated on the flanks of the procession, long-haired grey dogs,
with eyes shining from cavernous depths under overhanging brows,
attentive and active, not to be by any means distracted from their duty
as sergeants. One of the sheep climbed upon the stones that protected
us, and was immediately imitated by several of her companions. One of
the guardians, open-mouthed, cut short the escapade, and forced them to
return to their proper place.

They passed and they passed. I thought they would never be done,
estimating their number at several thousands. Perhaps there really were
three or four hundred of them. At last the flood slackened, the ranks
grew thinner, seven or eight isolated sheep closed the procession. Last
of all came the rearguard, composed of four pack mules and a second
shepherd, less august and solemn than the first. When he had come
opposite us grandfather, grown braver, put the question to which the
other one had paid no heed:

“Well, shepherd, where are you going like that?”

He was a young man, supple, thin and muscular, wearing a short jacket,
red sash, and hat on the back of his head,--one who cared neither for
heat nor cold. His bronzed face was exposed to the full rays of the
sun. He was whistling to pass away the time, and smiling while he
whistled, as if he enjoyed his music--though perhaps it was the curve
of his lips that made him look as if he were smiling.

At grandfathers question he burst into a frank laugh; his teeth shone
between his lips--such teeth as I had seen in wolves or other wild
beasts in a menagerie to which I was once taken. He simply replied:

“To the mountain.”

How strange the resonance that certain syllables have for us! He might
have designated by its name the mountain where his flocks were to
pasture, and I should not have noticed it, but the unexpected lack of
precision communicated to me by some sorcery a longing for the heights.
It attacked me as suddenly and unexpectedly as a lightning shock. I had
not felt the charm of the wild, bare place from which I was returning
with grandfather; but now I was not only instantaneously initiated
into it,--I augmented its wildness and isolation. I felt upon my brow
a colder, sterner breath, the wind of summits which I had never seen.
Later in my life poems and symphonies have given me this imaginary
sensation, though more faintly. In each discovery that it makes the
heart, like a virgin, gives of its freshness.

Before the passing of the sheep I had managed to discover where we
were. Notwithstanding its surrounding trees, I had proudly recognised
the house below us in the edge of the town. It had always appeared very
large to me, vast as a kingdom, and now I seemed to find it small and
insignificant, simply because I had heard within me the music of three
words, “To the mountain.”

A few years later it was my lot to climb over mountains, those that are
covered with pines and larches, and those whose only vegetation is
ice, those that are carpeted with grass, soft as rosy flesh, those that
are all bone and muscle, like Michel Angelo’s figures, and again those
whose treacherous whiteness only loses its immobility under the warming
glow of the setting sun. They have taught me patience, calmness, and
perhaps also contempt, though one of the most difficult of Christian
precepts obliges us to despise no man. There I have met and tasted
by turns war and peace, struggle and serenity, the intoxication of
solitude and the glory of conquest in the blinding splendour of the
snow. They have never given me anything that was not contained in germ
in the shepherd’s reply.

On our return home, when we opened the gate, there were Tem Bossette
and his two acolytes digging, their faces bent on the ground. One of
them having perceived us, they rested with one accord, sure of our
complicity.

Aunt Deen congratulated me on my red cheeks; mother thanked grandfather
for his care of me. Father asked:

“Did you enjoy it?” and rejoiced when I answered in the affirmative.
No one suspected, I least of all, that that little boy, till then
contented, and never dreaming of anything outside of The House, had
brought desire home with him from his walk.




                                  III

                      THE DISCOVERY OF THE EARTH


THAT period of my life is quite luminous in my memory: only later
it seems as if the sun must have been a little dimmed. I walked out
with grandfather morning and evening, I came into closer relations
with nature, and I had a new suit of clothes. It was the first. Up to
that time I had worn those of my elder brothers cut down to fit me. A
seamstress used to come to the house to alter and mend the garments
destined for me. She was as homely as heart could wish, and had been
recommended by Mlle Tapinois, who flattered herself that she had formed
her in her work-rooms.

I had grown rapidly during my illness. What was then my surprise when
I was informed that a tailor, a real tailor, was coming to take my
measures, mine, not Bernard’s nor Stephen’s! The tailor’s name was
Plumeau. Tall and thin as a lath, he floated in an immense frock coat.
Did he propose, like God when he created man, to make me in his own
image and after his likeness? He fabricated for me a full suit of olive
green which emphasised my leanness, to which end he had neglected
nothing. The coat, rivalling an overcoat, reached to my knees: the
cloth was of a solidity calculated to defy time. It was very evident
that I had a suit that would last till I took my baccalaureate. I
somehow had the impression that it favoured me too much, and my vanity
rebelled. The whole family had been summoned to see me in my new suit,
and ratify its acceptance. I was constrained to turn round and round
like a horse in the market, and my rebellious face became almost as
long as my coat.

“It will do,” father finally pronounced.

It would do? Yes, in two or three years, when I had grown a great deal
more. Mother was cautious about speaking too approvingly. My brothers
kept silence, but I perceived that they were smothering their laughter,
a self-denial which Louise by no means exercised. Aunt Deen saved the
situation which was becoming painful. She arrived late upon the scene,
for she had been putting to rights in the tower chamber when notified
of the arrival of M. Plumeau. We heard her on the stairs before we saw
her. Hope at once revived. Her coming was like the arrival of fresh
troops upon the field of battle--she decided the fortunes of the day.

Hardly had she perceived me, lost in my new suit, when she cried:

“It’s admirable, Francis; I won’t keep it from you; never have I seen
any one so becomingly dressed.”

Every one drew a long breath and I was comforted; so greatly, indeed,
that, unwilling to part with my fine garments, I put them on for
our next walk. Grandfather did not notice. But at the gate Aunt Deen
overtook us all out of breath.

“Naughty boy!” she exclaimed, “putting on your best clothes for a walk!”

She almost undressed me with her own hands in the street; I must needs
go back to the house under her escort, to exchange my costume for less
distinguished raiment, and the walk that day was spoiled. But those
that came afterward made it up to me.

There was the forest and there was the lake....


The forest, with certain farms and vineyards, made part of a historic
domain, the château of which, after enduring sieges and entertaining
great personages of the army or the church, was half in ruins and no
longer habitable. The whole property belonged to a retired colonel
of cavalry, son of a Baron of the Empire, whose fortune not being
sufficient to keep it up decently, he was permitting it to fall into
decay. He lived alone and spent the whole day riding about on one or
another of his old horses, without ever going beyond his estate. Though
it was entirely surrounded with a wall grandfather and I used to find
our way in by breaches which we had discovered.

He led me about among the trees, taught me to distinguish their
characteristics, and encouraged me to sit down under their shade,
on the moss and not on the treacherous benches which we perceived
sparsely scattered here and there, the woodwork of which was rotten
with damp. Grass was growing in the alleys, which under over-arching
trees guided the gaze to portals of light, that seemed on one side to
be blue, because of the lake which they framed in.

It was the month of June. A thousand tones of green were mingling,
marrying, all around us, from the pale green of the parasite mistletoe
to the almost black of the ivy which climbed the oak trunks. Spring
was singing its whole gamut around us. And under the trees there still
remained heaps of red leaves, vestiges of the former season.

I felt a vague fear at being thus alone, we two, amidst so imposing and
silent an assembly, and I tried to talk, in order to make our presence
there seem more real.

“Hush!” said grandfather; “be still and listen.”

Listen to what? And yet, little by little, I began to perceive a
multitude of soft sounds. We were no longer alone, as I had thought;
innumerable living things were all around us.

Far away two chaffinches were calling to one another at regular
intervals. The more distant one took up softly the couplet which the
other was pouring forth from a full throat. From tree to tree the
latter drew nearer. I saw him, my eye met his--so little and round! As
I did not stir, he remained. But what could be those dull, reiterated
blows? Woodpeckers, tapping the trunks with their bills.

Long bands of light glided here and there between the branches and
lay upon the ground; in their rays, which brought out the shapes of
the leaves, spiders’ webs were swinging, their finest threads plain
to see, and wasps, buzzing as they flew about. At last I could even
hear the rustling of the grass;--the secret labour of the earth under
the influence of heat. I was discovering a life of which I had never
dreamed.

“What is that call, grandfather?” I asked in a low tone.

“It must be a hare; let’s hide, and perhaps, if you are very quiet, we
shall see it before long.”

Upon this dialogue we softly dragged ourselves behind a bush. I knew
hares only from having eaten of them on rare occasions of ceremony,
though Aunt Deen deplored giving rabbit to children, because of the
soiling of napkins and faces. The cry sounded again--nearer us this
time.

“He is calling his doe,” whispered grandfather.

“His doe?”

“Yes, his wife. Be quiet.”

It was a gentle call, infinitely tender and languishing. Far away we
heard another call, like it, but hardly audible. From opposite sides of
the forest the duet went on; and I began to understand that animals,
like people, love to see and talk to one another. Suddenly, before me,
crossing the path, I saw two long ears and a little ball of a brown
body which seemed to bound over it. At the very edge the hare stopped,
hearkened to the distant, guiding voice, once again uttered his
heart-breaking cry, and disappeared in the neighbouring underbrush.
He was hastening to join his mate, but I had had time to see him quite
plainly.

Another time it was a fox. He must have scented us with his pointed
muzzle, for he fled at top speed, his tail between his legs. Being
learned in such matters through La Fontaine’s fables, and the “Scenes
in Animal Life,” I informed grandfather that this was a plot and it
would be well for us to make off.

“How stupid you are!” he exclaimed. “The fox is harmless.”

At which I was somewhat scandalised. But our walks were not always
calm to this degree. From our favourite nook we sometimes heard, like
a heavy rain, the galloping of a horse, and we would hardly manage to
hide behind the trunk of a beech, when the colonel would appear, on
horse-back. He had a short nose, a stiff moustache and hollow cheeks.
He sat upright, knees out, looking at nothing, and as he passed he
seemed to me a fearful man. Grandfather hastened to reassure me.

“He’s an old beast,” he said, “and his mount can’t trot any longer.”

I later learned that both had fought at Reichhoffen.

But on a graver occasion grandfather himself gave the signal for
retreat. I saw him cock his ear after the fashion of the hare, then
rise hastily from the grass on which we were sitting.

“Dogs,” he murmured, fearfully. “Let’s go.”

We made for the wall as fast as his old legs and my too-new ones would
permit. The dogs were already rushing upon us, barking and threatening,
when grandfather, who had pushed me before him, reached the top. The
alarm had agitated him and our safety by no means pacified him.

“Pretty proprietors!” he fulminated; “a little more and their dogs
would have devoured us!”

Their ferocity furnished him the material for a lesson; he turned
toward me:

“You see, my boy, men become wicked in towns, like apples that rot when
they are heaped together. And then they turn round and pervert animals!”

In truth I could have brought forward two opposing arguments; the
isolation of their estate and the ferocious nature of their beasts. He
granted only the second, and overturned that in the next breath:

“You have seen the chaffinch, the hare and the fox. In their natural
state they are incapable of doing harm. Tamed, all beasts sooner or
later become dangerous, perfidious, ferocious and false. Well! it’s
just the same with men! Free, they are kind and generous. Brutalised by
discipline, like that old soldier, they become terrific!”

Never had he spoken so much at length, nor, to my mind, so
enigmatically. No doubt the emotion caused by the dogs had made him
forget, in a direct way, the promise my father had exacted from him.
I was surprised at his eloquence, for which nothing had prepared me,
and I at once drew practical conclusions from it. I had been brought
up to believe in the benefits of authority; that of parents and school
teachers. And now it appeared that to be good one must obey nobody.

This adventure disgusted us with “our” forest, and we frequented less
extensive and more peaceful pieces of woods, preferably those situated
on the communal lands, all the more agreeable to grandfather because
of his hatred of private property. According to him, property was the
great obstacle to human happiness, but I hesitated to adopt his views;
I was pretty fond of owning things--for which he cared not at all.

As he had promised at the time of our first walk, he communicated to me
his knowledge of mushrooms, the round-stemmed fleshy bolet, its dome
the colour of a not quite ripe chestnut, the laseras, most beautiful
of mushrooms, like an egg of which the shell has just been broken,
the yellow, flower-shaped chanterelle were his favourites. I saw him
bite, like the priest whose story he had told me, one of those Satan
bolets, which turns blue when it is cut, the gash at once taking on
the appearance of a frightful wound. Taught by Aunt Deen’s contagious
fears, I was persuaded that his lips also would soon turn blue. I gazed
at him all terror and curiosity, seeking for the symptoms of danger.
But he digested his poison with marvellous ease.

“You see,” he observed in triumph, “the worthy priest for once was
right. Nature is a mother to us.”

Emboldened by this experiment, I gathered from the bushes some red
berries that were very pleasing to the eye, but which gave me a sharp
colic. Grandfather must be a bit of a sorcerer.

If ever we brought home from our hunt a handkerchief full of
cryptogams, Aunt Deen, suspicious, would not fail to cry out:

“Those horrors again!”

She would look them over most carefully, keeping only those that were
notoriously good to eat; she excelled in cooking them in butter, or
preparing them as an hors-d’œuvre, with a sauce of wine, salt, pepper
and herbs, and a dash of vinegar. Thus prepared the little balls,
fresh, white and crisp, melted in the mouth. Now that I gathered them
I, too, began to eat them.

I avenged myself of my hurtful berries by the strawberries and
whortleberries that I found among the moss. I loved to fill my hand
with them and then lick them up as goats do salt when it is given them.
It is true that indigestible things had been forbidden me; the notion
of duty was beginning to change in me, and I preferred to trust to that
mother nature so much praised by grandfather, and whom he only had to
invoke to be fed to heart’s content. Grandfather was constantly lauding
her, offering to her litanies of eulogiums. And yet he ridiculed the
chaplet that Aunt Deen and mother used to recite! And he took every
opportunity to instil into me an aversion to towns and love for the
delights of the fields. Cities, he said, were full of ferocious, greedy
folk, who would murder you for a piece of money, whereas in a village
men lived peaceful and happy, and loved one another with brotherly love.

One day a peasant invited us into his half ruined arbour to eat one of
those white cheeses over which they pour sweet cream. A bowl of wood
strawberries accompanied this frugal and innocent repast. They made so
delicious a mixture that I was inclined to believe blindly in universal
happiness, provided, indeed, that every one would consent to leave the
plague and leprosy infected city. In the country every one was kind,
obliging and free into the bargain. We would have no more enemies. Aunt
Deen’s they existed only in her old-woman’s imagination. Her ideas were
narrow, she did not, like grandfather, rise above petty, every-day
cares. I was peaceful, devout, disarmed. And now I knew the flower of
rural pleasure, of which I have never lost the flavour.

“Stuff yourselves,” said our host genially; “the doctor cured me of
chills and fever.”

We owed his kindliness to my father, but we preferred to suppose it
the usual thing by way of verification of our theories. Having stuffed
myself only too well, in fact, I suffered from indigestion on the way
home, aggravated by grandfather’s unkindly humour.

“You will not boast of this,” he observed, when I was relieved.

I understood the significance of his advice, and resolved to preserve
a prudent silence which would shield us in any whim we might indulge
in future excursions. We reached home late: the want of punctuality
seemed to me an elegant indifference. Why dine at one hour rather than
at another? One could even do without dinner entirely, if one’s stomach
was full of white cheese and cream. Grandfather explained where we had
been and extolled peasant hospitality in choice terms.

“Ah, yes,” cried father, “you happened upon that rascal Barbeau. I
think I did save him from death. He lives mostly by poaching and
smuggling and owes me his bill yet. I am just as willing he should not
pay it. The colour of his money is not clean.”

I considered that he was too severe upon so polite and generous a man.
We went again to visit Barbeau, and were received by his wife. She was
an aged, grey, gnarled, blear-eyed woman, who found nothing better to
offer us than a miserable crust of gruyère cheese, which greatly vexed
us. She said nothing as to her husband’s occupation but pursed up her
lips to confide to us the fine places that her sons enjoyed. The eldest
was postman in town, the second an employe at the railway station, and
as for the third, oho! he was earning thousands and hundreds.

“Waiter in a hotel in Paris, Monsieur Rambert, waiter in a furnished
hotel. He sends us money.”

“Bad trade,” observed grandfather.

“There is no bad trade,” insisted the old woman. “The one thing is to
get money.”

“And you have none left?”

“Surely not,--there is none left. There is nobody any more who eats
chestnuts and drinks cider, Monsieur Rambert. As for the land, see! I
spit upon it!”

And the old hag did in fact spit upon the growing grain, now a pale
green about to change to gold, which grew close around her hovel. One
would have said that she was banning all the country-side.

It did not occur to me that this grain was the flour which at our house
was blessed before being kneaded into dough, the bread which my father
never cut before tracing upon the loaf the sign of the cross. All I
saw was a disgusting act and involuntarily I laid down my share of the
cheese which I had been eating without pleasure.

“Let’s go,” said grandfather abruptly.

Mother Barbeau’s remarks vexed him. At least I had no attack of nausea
this time.


After this conversation he abandoned agricultural life for a time and
decided to take me to the lake which we had not yet explored. He led me
thither with no enthusiasm.

“It is a closed-in water,” he said contemptuously.

Were there open waters then? Of course--there was the sea. Until now
the word had not impressed me and I attributed no meaning to it. When
the mist hid the opposite shore the lake used to seem endless, and
I had heard people around me say, “it’s like the sea.” I had paid
no attention. Grandfather’s disdainful description brought to my
imagination by contrast a free immensity. Later, when at last I saw the
sea--it was at Dieppe, from the top of the cliff--I felt no surprise.
It was simply an open water.

“Would you like a row?” grandfather asked one day.

Would I! I desired it all the more because such an expedition
represented to me in some sort a substitution of the individual life
for the family life. My parents had forbidden me to go out in a boat,
after the fall into the water which had brought on my pleurisy. They
were afraid both of the dampness and of my awkwardness. Once again,
then, _I was the fair child who had escaped from his mother’s
arms_. The _maiden with golden wings_ who enticed me was my own
good pleasure.

We took a canoe and rowed out of the port. Grandfather, who used the
oars irregularly (which by no means reassured me), soon laid them down
and left us to float.

“Where are we going?” I asked, somewhat uneasily.

“I don’t know.”

Uncertainty increased the mystery of the water. I amused myself with
leaning over the gunwale, and dipping my hands in the water. The cold
caress it gave me and the small danger we were encountering, or which
I thought we were encountering, gave me a mingled but very exciting
sensation.

What was the meaning of these brief flashes of silver which were
lighted on the surface and at once went out? Around their dying spark
a circle appeared, which grew ever larger and finally was lost. It was
made by fish which came up to breathe. One of them, quite near, showed
his little mouth and the shining scales on his head. I had come into
contact with a new world--the submarine world.

When the wind began to blow grandfather would make me sit in the bottom
of the boat, upon the boards, which would be pretty wet. From thence,
being still not tall, I could perceive nothing but the sky. I could the
better discern its dome and on fine days the continuous vibration of
the ether. While grandfather was dreaming I would sit there motionless
and happy. I formed the habit of being excessively happy without
knowing why, as if existence had no limits and no purpose.

Grandfather made friends also with the fishermen who were setting their
nets.

“They are good fellows,” he would say; “the lake is like the country.
As man leaves the city he approaches the happy state of nature.”

We came to know the manners of the trout, the perch, the voracious pike
and the char, the flesh of which is as savoury as the pink flesh of the
salmon.

“Aha!” said one of these artless fishermen joyfully, “all my char is
engaged by the Bellevue Hotel. We rake it in night and day. They are
the customers for my money.”


Thus was I initiated into the life of the land and the water.
Grandfather began to be interested in my progress in the friendship
of nature. He had a disciple whom he had not sought. I was the first
now to turn my back upon the town, leap over walls, cross the fields
without the slightest care for the crops. He treated me as an heir,
or a child worthy of being one of those sluggard kings who possess
the world. And one hot day in July, after we had painfully climbed a
hillock whence one could overlook the plain, the forest and the lake,
he began to laugh at a notion that had occurred to him.

“You know, my boy, they think I have nothing, that I am just one of
those clatter-clogs that shuffle along the road with a tramp’s bundle
on his back. What a joke! There is no landed proprietor richer than
I--do you hear?”

His words did not surprise me. I had lost that notion of _mine_
and _thine_ that divides riches from poverty.

“This water, these woods, these fields,” he went on, “all these are
mine. I never take any care of them, and they are mine all the same.”
And like an act of investiture he laid his hand upon my head, saying:

“They are mine; I give them to you.”

It was a playful, unceremonious presentation. Both of us amused
ourselves with the idea. And yet, in spite of our laughter, I had a
very clear impression that the world did in fact belong to me. I would
no longer consent to have a small, narrow place in the world.

As we were going down from our hilltop we met upon the road a young
woman who lived in a villa in the neighbourhood. She wore a white
gown which left her forearms and neck bare, and on her head was a hat
decorated with red cherries. Her parasol, a little behind her, made an
aureola or background for a face which was as clear cut and delicate
as one of those magnolia flowers in the garden that I loved for their
colour, odour and form as of white birds with outspread wings. Still I
should not have noticed her if grandfather had not stopped, riveted to
the spot with admiration, and exclaimed aloud, “How lovely she is!”

The fair face crimsoned. But the young woman smiled at the too
direct homage. I looked at her then, and so fixedly that I have
never forgotten that vision, not even the cherries. But I made my
reservations. To me she seemed already old, perhaps thirty. That is
an advanced age in the pitiless eyes of a child. Her flower-like
complexion made me think of that avowal of the nightingale from which
one day when I was reading the “Scenes in Animal Life,” I had drawn a
fitful melancholy: _I am in love with the Rose--I strain my throat
all the night long for her, but she sleeps, and hears me not_. And
for the first time, and not without a secret anticipation, I associated
an unknown woman with a yet more unknown love.


After this incident grandfather led me to a wooded slope where we had
never been, and which he had represented to me as without interest when
I proposed it as the object of a walk. We had to cross a little brook
before reaching its foot. On the way he was self-absorbed and said not
a word. At the top he turned to the east and led the way directly to a
pavilion near a farm house but half-hidden in a clearing.

“There it is,” he said.

I understood that he was not speaking to me. This pavilion, one story
above the ground floor, appeared to be in a miserable condition. The
roof lacked slates, a surrounding gallery was rotting away. It must
have been long since abandoned. Grandfather delighted in its ruinous
and uninhabitable condition,--a thing which would have surprised me
more if I had not grown accustomed to his whims.

“So much the better,” he murmured; “there is no one there.”

Returning to the farmhouse he perceived an old man who was warming
himself upon a bench in the sun and dipping soup from a pot with
a wooden spoon. With this old man he entered upon an interminable
conversation which bored me, but which ended in some questions as to
the pavilion.

“It is good for nothing but firewood,” said the peasant.

“There were people in it formerly,” insinuated grandfather.

“Formerly--a good many years ago.”

Grandfather appeared to hesitate as to continuing the conversation, but
then resumed:

“Yes--a good many years ago. But you and I were not born to-day. Tell
me, don’t you remember a lady?”

I at once thought of the lady in white with the cherries in her hat,
and I summed up her figure in that clearing, at the door of the
pavilion. My imagination was already at work upon this new theme.

“Oh,” said the old man, before swallowing the spoonful that he held in
his hand--“as for women, I despise them.”

A gleam of rage shot across grandfather’s eyes, and I thought he was
going to overset the old man and his pot. He at once cut short the
conversation without another word. But as he turned away he took me to
witness the beauty of the place.

“All the same, it’s sweet and wild here. The trees have hardly changed.
They are all that is left.”

I never learned the adventure of the pavilion. But one day when we were
passing the colonel’s tottering château another memory, less direct no
doubt, awoke in his mind and without preparation he began:

“They called her the beautiful Alixe.”

“Who, grandfather?”

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

“You saw her, grandfather?”

“Oh, I; no! That’s too long ago. I am speaking of the first Emperor.
Those who had seen her were old when I was young. Those who had seen
her were bursting with pride merely at mentioning her name.”

These brief evocations of the past threw for me a lovely veil of
romance over our walks, which had “_happened_” like history.

He never said more about either, as I expected him to do. He never
supposed that I was watching his slightest words, and exaggerating
their importance. Save the white lady with the cherries in her hat,
who perhaps resembled, who doubtless resembled, some far-away picture
of his past, he greeted women the most frankly in the world and never
made any remark about them. When, several years later, one evening at
school, I read the famous passage of the Iliad about the old men of
Troy being disposed to forgive Helen because of her beauty, like that
of the immortal goddesses, while my comrades were dozing over their
Homer, I was seeing myself once more at my grandfather’s side on the
road by which the lady in white came to us. And ever since I have
called that unknown one Helen.


Grandfather, who began to enjoy our friendship, consented to receive
me in the tower chamber. He took no notice of my presence, however,
now enveloping me with the smoke of his pipe, and again playing upon
his violin, the notes of which mingled in my mind with the forest, the
lake and all our secret retreats. That room was to me a continuation of
my free out-of-door life. On stormy days, very rare in the course of
that bright summer predicted by Mathieu de la Drôme, I used to watch
the falling rain and the changing skies, lulled and softened by this
spectacle of the uselessness of things. When the west was clear I could
see the sun shooting into the waters of the lake a pillar of fire,
which by degrees was changed into a sword and finally was reduced to a
golden point, the reflection of the star resting upon the shoulder of
the mountain, which was what the sun became for one second before it
disappeared. In the evenings, after dinner, I used to obtain the favour
of looking at the constellations through the telescope. As his former
room had faced the south, grandfather, as I have said, was acquainted
with only half the heavens, and refused to puzzle out the other half.
Therefore I knew only Altair and Vega, Arcturus and the Virgin’s sheaf,
which may be seen in the south in July. I was obliged to lean out to
distinguish Antares on the edge of the roof. The other months all is
confused to my eyes, and the same if I look toward the north.

The household was pleased with my new regimen. More than once father
asked of grandfather:

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

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

And father would express his gratitude for my recovered health, Aunt
Deen would declare that I no longer had my papier-mâché face, and would
rub my cheeks to make them redder. My mother saw in grandfather’s
affection a guarantee of peace and reconciliation. As for me, life had
been insensibly changed. School, lessons, emulation, regular hours,
work--all that no longer existed. I had only to turn my back upon the
town and give myself up to lovely nature. I felt that, though I cannot
explain it, at once clearly and confusedly: confusedly in my mind and
clearly as a matter of practice.

And yet, on our return from our walks, grandfather would pretty often
simply bring me back as far as the gate, and slip away in the direction
of the accursed city.




                                  IV

                      THE CAFÉ OF THE NAVIGATORS


WHERE did grandfather go after bringing me back to the house? To the
café, and one day he took me there.

I did not know precisely what a café was, and I was secretly afraid of
it. Father used to speak of cafés in a tone of contempt which admitted
no contradiction, no favourable reservation. When he said of any one,
“he spends his time at the café,” or “he is a pillar of the café,” that
some one was judged and condemned: he wasn’t worth the rope to hang
him. I could not have imagined my father entering one. Such audacity
on the part of grandfather surprised me the less, since I had already
noticed that in everything he took the opposite view from my father.

We went to the café instead of going to walk, one very warm morning;
this seemed to me a sort of outrage, as we were doubly failing in
the course marked out for us. Its name appeared in letters of gold,
_Café of the Navigators_; the inscription being framed in with
billiard cues. Pleasantly situated on the shore of the lake, it was
composed of a long arbour whence one could see the port, and a great
room whence one could see nothing. We chose the room; to me it seemed
most luxurious because of its mirrors and white marble tables. Two or
three groups were conversing, smoking, drinking, and I was at once
nearly choked by a pungent odour of tobacco mingled with the perfume of
anisette. Yet such was the attraction of the place that after having
coughed I found the combination pleasant. We joined the least noisy
group, who greeted grandfather with transports of delight, calling him
familiarly _Father Rambert_:

Father Rambert here!--Father Rambert there!

They installed him on the sofa, in the middle seat, and began by asking
news of Mathieu de la Drôme. Grandfather replied that he was at “set
fair” with a tendency to rise, and that favourable winds would probably
keep him so; at which every one rejoiced, on account of the vines; the
wine would be famous if Mathieu continued to behave well. Presently I
perceived that the barometer was in question, and that grandfather was
consulted as to the weather because of its prophecies. These gentlemen
used among themselves a conventional language to which it was important
to have the key, and which complicated the conversation so far as I was
concerned. No one paid any attention to me, and I was still standing,
vexed at this neglect, when I was suddenly addressed.

“Well, youngster, what will _you_ take?”

The appellative and the familiar tone completed my displeasure. I
drew myself up, and put on a stern expression, but I remained “the
youngster” to every one present. Grandfather with a detached air
replied with majesty:

“A green.”

“With white wine?” somebody asked.

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

The reply was received with enthusiasm. At The House every one was
particularly polite to a guest, but these gentlemen here laid aside
all ceremony in their mutual relations. Meanwhile, the maid set before
grandfather a number of things which she took one by one from a tray: a
tall, deep glass, a little iron spade pierced with holes; a sugar bowl,
a caraffe of water, and finally a bottle, the contents of which I could
not guess. There was a deep silence and I received an impression of
being present at a solemn rite, which no one might disturb. Decidedly
their ways were all topsy-turvy: they treated one another without
courtesy, but they venerated the drink.

Grandfather, his calm not in the least embarrassed by all the eyes
fixed upon him, poured a quarter of a glass of liquid from the
mysterious bottle, then placed the perforated spade across the glass
and upon it two pieces of sugar in perfect equilibrium, moistened them
drop by drop until they dissolved, after which he suddenly inclined the
caraffe. A pleasant odour of anise caressed my nostrils. The mixture
grew more clouded as the water fell, like those beautiful opaque clouds
that lie along the horizon before the rain, and finally took on a pale
green tint which I had never met in our walks. Immediately the talking
began again: the operation was completed.

At my new guardian’s order they brought “the youngster” a grenadine
with a bottle of seltzer water. The rite observed in this case was
shorter and not of sufficient importance to overcome the general
indifference. The rival “green” enjoyed a particular celebrity. One
discharge from the seltzer bottle into the syrup which was languishing
in the bottom of the glass and my mixture rose up, frothy, boiling,
tossing, first light rose colour, then, after the gases had been
dissipated, a golden rose. What touched me most wets the straw that was
given me for imbibing it from a distance: one had only to bend the head
over and breathe it in.

Merely by that breath I was initiated into a higher form of existence.
Perfectly happy, I felt a great desire to tell my neighbours so. They
were sucking up divers concoctions. Most of them had kindly, rubicund
faces, and eyes somewhat bleared. They too were all perfectly happy.
Why had grandfather taught me that people in towns were not happy? To
become so, all they had to do was to go to the café.

Among the heads which I was examining at leisure and with entire
sympathy was one which I thought I knew. It belonged to grandfather’s
left-hand neighbour, the very one whom he had qualified as a wine-sack.
The face was sprinkled with red spots, which, however, were hardly to
be distinguished from his blood-shot skin. Hair, beard and skin were
all of the same red colour which overspread his entire head, even
threatening the nose, which, the central point of the spectacle, shone
resplendent. In spite of myself I thought of the picture in my Bible
where the prophet Elijah is being carried by a chariot of fire into the
glory of the setting sun; but I repelled the comparison as unseemly.
Where could I have seen that incandescent head? By degrees my memories
cleared themselves up. It had happened at our house: a man had come out
from the consulting room, not proud and flaming like him of the café,
but abashed, pitiful, discomfited. Yet it must have been the same: that
hairy skin, those red blotches. I could not be mistaken. Father was
escorting him out, and trying to encourage him, saying, as he tapped
him on the shoulder:

“Keep your money, friend. You are in a sense a part of the house. Your
parents and mine said thou to one another. But you must quit drinking
at any cost. Promise me never again to set your foot in a café.”

“I swear to you I won’t, doctor.”

“Don’t swear, but hold out.”

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

And yet here he was, drinking and laughing, and as healthy as possible.
Father was certainly too severe. Forgetting that he had cured me, I
inwardly blamed him for frightening people, finding in him a certain
hardness of heart. Why should he wish to deprive this good fellow of
his pleasure?

My rubicund friend answered to the name of Casenave, but he was
generally called by a symbolical nickname--nothing other than
“Pour-the-drink,” which might serve a double purpose. “Pour-the-drink”
at once won my heart by the surprising adventures through which he
had passed: stories of which he most unaffectedly poured forth. He
might have figured in the narratives of the “Three Old Mariners,” in
which case his weight would assuredly have assured Jeremy’s descent
into the jaws of the tiger. Having in his youth learned through the
newspapers of the idleness and good cheer which inhered in the monkish
estate, he resolved to adopt it, and presented himself at the door of
a Capuchin monastery, where he soon learned to moderate his hopes.
To be routed out in the night by a barbarous brother to take part in
singing the service, to be fed on vegetables half cooked by a brother
suffering from incurable catarrh, made him grow thin and waste away.
His ingenuity alone saved him from a still greater disaster. When the
monks, placed in a circle, were invited to inflict the discipline
upon one another, piously reciting the penitential psalms the while,
he managed to get his rope so entangled in that of his nearest
fellow-sufferer that while they were deliberately disentangling them
“the ‘_miserere_’ ran along.”

But the prior declined to keep him, and generously restored him to
civil life. He there formed the most brilliant relations, which he
proved to the admiring listeners by telling of the beautiful women who
came every evening to visit him in his modest abode. They used to come
down through the ceiling, in which, however, no aperture was afterward
visible. One moment he was alone, the next, there they were in silk
gowns and hoop skirts, for they still adhered to the fashions of the
Second Empire. Far from remaining inactive, they would put into his
hands a bowl of reasonable dimensions, into which, bending their arms,
they would empty--_fz-z-z-z_!--several bottles of champagne. This
_fz-z-z-z_, which expressed the flowing of the wine into the bowl,
took upon his lips a caressing, musical sound. One could almost hear
the pop of the cork and the bubbling out of the froth.

He imparted to us still more astounding biographical details. One
night, mistaking the gas light in the street for his candle, he had
sprung out of the window to blow it out, and had been picked up in his
nightshirt somewhat bruised but safe and sound. And had he not a double
who walked out with him? Only the evening before he had had a long
and most interesting conversation with his double, who never left him
till they had returned to the outskirts of the town, when he bade him
good-bye till next time.

Every one listened without interrupting him, except by signs of
approval or requests to go on. Why should I not believe all those
marvellous things, when no one around me showed the slightest sign of
incredulity?

I did not know the nature of Casenave’s business, for he could converse
upon all subjects with great competence, and might be supposed to have
practised the most diverse industries. Whereas I very soon discovered
that two other members of the company--Gallus and Merinos--were
distinguished artists. Gallus, the musician, directed his remarks
especially to grandfather, as if only they two, in the midst of the
general imbecility, could understand one another and fraternise in
matters musical. The pair affected to hold themselves apart, though in
their asides they appeared to utter only a few brief cabalistic words:
understanding thus established, they would roll the whites of their
eyes when one or the other alluded to the allegro of the symphony in C
minor, the andante of the fourteenth sonata, or the scherzo in B flat
of the seventh trio, over which they would clasp one another’s hands as
if in mutual congratulation, calling it the Archduke Rodolpho’s divine
trio. No one interrupted them in the state of exultation to which a
mere numeral was enough to lift them; at such times indeed every one
gazed upon them with respect. From time to time some one would inquire
of Gallus, somewhat diffidently, as if fearful of being pitied for not
having used the proper terms:

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

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

“How far along are you?”

“Still in the prelude. There is no hurry. A lifetime is hardly long
enough for the completion of such a work and I have only been at it
some ten years.”

It must be a prodigious opera that demanded such efforts! For that
matter, one could see, merely by looking at Gallus, that he was
breaking down under the weight of so vast an undertaking. His frame
was puny, stunted, sickly, like a pear tree that my father had ordered
rooted up from the court. A lock of hair fell across his stormy brow,
and when he passed his hand through his disorderly locks a shower of
scurf would fall upon his shoulders. Though the season was warm he wore
a black velvet coat, and around his neck an enormous blue scarf such
as women wear, the spots upon which were innumerable. All my aunt’s
benzine would not have sufficed to clean them. But I told myself that
artists could not be expected to dress like other folk,--for if they
did they might not be known to be artists. This dirty little man,
who looked peaceable enough, would sometimes fall into a fury, and
figuratively drag through mud and dirt by the napes of their necks
certain abominable criminals such as Ambroise Thomas, and Gounod, who
were guilty of having fraudulently robbed him of public admiration,
and irremediably corrupted the public taste. He also brought
accusations against the _bourgeois_ of our town, whose plots and
treacheries he enumerated at length. I observed that the designation
_bourgeois_ was by itself alone a disgrace, and I trembled at the
thought that I was one, and my father also. Only grandfather, stout
against being classified, might perhaps be spared. I afterward learned
that Gallus was by profession an examiner of weights and measures. In
its turn society in general came in for severe condemnation; but that
it deserved this I had already learned in the course of my walks with
grandfather. And thus I came to know that my new friends of the café,
whom I had imagined to be even more fortunate than the peasants with
their white cheeses and their fresh cream, were in reality persecuted
martyrs.

How could I have the slightest doubt of this in face of the injustice
which had befallen the second artist, Merinos? Whether this was his
name or a nickname I never knew. If a nickname, it miraculously fitted
his mutton face, at once long and full, rosy as the cheeks of a nursing
baby, and crowned with curly hair. He vaguely resembled Mariette,
our cook, though without her martial aspect. But these somewhat
prepossessing features were liable to misconstruction. Merinos was a
ravaged soul, and I caught allusions to the extraordinary passions
which he had experienced. Up to this time I had supposed that passion
showed itself by a lugubrious face and tearful eyes, but he was shining
and jovial, with not a trace of tears in his protruding orbits, though
they were plain to see in those of Casenave, Gallus and nearly all the
others. Thus my childish imagination found itself nonplussed.

Both Merinos and Gallus had lived long in Paris, in the mysterious
Montmartre quarter, of which both spoke as of the promised land.
Merinos was a portrait painter, but he had given up painting, a fact
for which he gave convincing reasons.

“You understand: now-a-days people make such ridiculous demands. They
insist upon a likeness. As if the likeness ever mattered to an artist!”

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

My mind at once reverted to the collection of ancestors that covered
the walls of the drawing room and that were bad paintings. Assuredly
they must be likenesses.

Thus defrauded of glory by the stupidity of the bourgeois, Merinos
none the less continued to give evidence of genius. He always carried
about with him a piece of coloured paper and a stick of charcoal. While
talking and smoking he would carelessly rub his charcoal on the paper,
and draw a few lines below the spots thus obtained. It was curious, but
when one studied these masterpieces patiently and with good will, one
could get a notion of distorted faces, barely indicated, but which
the admiring group recognised as faces in torment, ill disposed folk,
disturbers of society. Certain art-lovers in the town--there were some
all the same, it seemed--would buy these at a high price, declaring
them to be wonderful; and there was an enthusiastic and slender witted
lady, who, as every one knew, used regularly to visit Merinos’s studio,
which, it appeared, was a perfect dog-hole, humbly to gather up his
slightest sketches, even going down upon her knees on the floor to hunt
them under the furniture. I too admired him, on trust.

One day when grandfather at our house was praising this underrated
genius, he brought upon himself this remark from my father:

“Yes, that’s the great fad--unfinished works! For my part, I care
neither for scaffoldings nor for ruins.”

What did he mean by that? I concluded simply that he was incapable of
appreciating, as we did, the art of the Café des Navigateurs.

It was the proper thing to maintain a certain distance between
these two misunderstood beings and Galurin, who was only a decayed
photographer. The latter was no more a stranger to me than Casenave
had been. People used to employ him in their houses for this and that
supplementary duty, and especially as an extra man at table. As he
was once deploring this sort of servitude in our presence grandfather
reminded him that Jean-Jacques had endured the same. The example of
Jean-Jacques appeared to soothe his recalcitrant pride. Who in the
world was this Jean-Jacques, I wondered.

At our house they had given up taking advantage of Galurin’s services
after a great dinner at which he was put in charge of the wines, with
instructions to name them as he served them. He triumphantly opened
the dining-room door, waving the bottle in the air and crying in
stentorian tones, “I announce the _Moulin-à-vent_”--an effort
which was received with a burst of laughter that wounded him, for he
was very sensitive. He abandoned the napkin and became process-server,
which coercive though somewhat obscure title seemed to be one of
honour. To add to his income he vouchsafed to carry around wedding or
funeral invitations when such occasions occurred. One evening, before
an important funeral, he forgot himself at the Café of the Navigators,
and left the entire parcel of mourning invitations upon the sofa. When
he found them it was too late to make his rounds. At once adopting the
radical measures which circumstances demanded, he hastened to plunge
the compromising parcel in the lake. As the result of this immersion
the defunct was obliged to take possession of his last abode in almost
complete solitude. Never had such forlorn obsequies been witnessed, and
many coolnesses arose among relatives and friends who had not received
invitations, and who were not slow to assume that they had been
purposely and maliciously neglected.

Galurin used to heap anathemas upon the social system which constrained
him to adopt such base industries, the duties of which he performed
but capriciously and intermittently. Furthermore, he advocated the
partition of all property, for he had nothing of his own.

But the one who cast all others into the shade when he took the floor,
who excelled in transposing the incoherent lamentations of Gallus and
Merinos and the scatter-brained diatribes of Galurin into the rounded
forms of oratorical periods, was Martinod. Martinod, the youngest of
all, had a marvellous gift of gravity. Solemn by nature, he wore a long
beard and never laughed. One could easily imagine him upon a mausoleum
proclaiming the last judgment through a conch-shell. The melancholy
that emanated from his entire person enveloped him in all the prestige
of a grand funeral, the serious character of which is not to be denied.
In the beginning I did not like Martinod. He never looked nice in the
face and I suspected him of dark designs. But like all the others I
fell under the spell of his utterances. He would begin in a melancholy
tone, which would move one to tears. One might suppose him to have
but just escaped from a terrible catastrophe. What a beggar he would
have made, and how many half-francs he would have extracted from the
most tightly closed fists! Then his voice would grow deeper, opening
hearts and minds, and from his inexhaustible lips would flow the most
resonant harmonies. He would discant upon the future, a golden age
when equality would be the rule in every sphere,--equality of fortune,
equality of happiness. Nothing would belong to any one, everything
would belong to all. I felt a degree of shame at not understanding very
well, because every one else in our group understood and approved. And
even at the other tables people would stop drinking and playing cards
to listen. The picture which he drew was admirably simple: men in their
best clothes praising nature and embracing one another like brothers.
Rapt in admiration, I would compare him to my music box, the notes of
which made a dancer pirouette upon the cover.

At other times Martinod would be gloomy, bitter and vindictive, heaping
threats and sarcasms upon the social fabric of the day, unless it were
immediately made over after his ideas. In the name of liberty he would
give all Europe over to fire and sword. I would listen in terror, but
on the way home grandfather would reassure me.

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

Thus the new and varied society with which I was mingling appeared
very different from that in which until then I had been living at home
or in school. When we reached the house my cheeks would be full of
colour--they thought it was the good country air. Grandfather had no
need to counsel me to say nothing about our visits to the Café of the
Navigators. An infallible instinct warned me to say nothing about them
at our house. It was a secret between him and me. We were accomplices.




                                   V

                       THE RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY


“YOU are in luck,” my brothers would say to me as they prepared to face
the dreaded examinations for the baccalaureate, bending from morning
till night over their books through all the trying July heat; “no
school, no examinations, no possible failures for you.”

“And no piano,” Louise would add, for having given evidence of an
aptitude for music she had been set to work at never-ending five-finger
exercises.

Even little James, rebellious under his first lessons in reading and
writing, confided to his inseparable Nicola that when he was big he
would do like François.

“What does Francis do?” she would ask.

“Nothing.”

The month of August drew on without awaking that impatience which its
approach had never failed to arouse in me until this year; I even felt
a selfish regret as it came nearer. Vacation would rob me of that
superiority which convalescence had conferred upon me, and would put me
back into my place, the common life. Or rather, I supposed it would do
so, being incompetent to measure the chasm that had opened between the
little boy that I had been yesterday, and what I had now become. Some
one had measured it before me.

I had become much absorbed between my walks and my visits to the
Café of the Navigators, whither grandfather, who was no longer happy
without my companionship, was taking me regularly. Though I was rather
unobservant of the acts and doings of the family, I again became aware
of an atmosphere of anxiety at our house, and of secret conferences
that recalled to me the days when the destiny of our property had been
at stake.

Father’s voice was penetrating, even when he moderated it and believed
himself to be speaking softly.

“We shall have no fortune to leave them,” he was saying. “We must
neglect nothing in their education. They must be armed for life.”

We, armed? Why should we be armed? Nothing was easier than life. I
had outgrown wooden swords, heroic biographies, epic stories. All I
should need would be a few tools for working in the ground, which
furnishes men abundantly with all they need. One would harvest so much
as was necessary, one would live on white cheese, sweet cream and wild
strawberries, and listen to Martinod, preaching universal peace and
proclaiming the arrival of the golden age. How simple the programme!
What need was there of arms?

Mother was answering father.

“You are right. We must neglect nothing. Their faith and their union
will be their only fortune.”

Far from being touched by this declaration of principles, I was
imagining the little laugh with which grandfather would meet it, and
one morning while combing my hair I practised my face in assuming a
satirical expression.

In conversations which I accidentally overheard, the names of Parisian
schools or lycées would recur, those especially that prepared boys for
the great schools, Stanislas on Post-office Street, Louis-le-grand or
Saint-Louis. My parents would have preferred a religious institution,
and in this Aunt Deen emphatically acquiesced.

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

“Oho!” grandfather would protest, greatly amused at her vehemence. “I
was educated in a lycée.”

He received his bouquet without a moment’s delay.

“And you are not worth so very much!”

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

“I must confess that you have become good for something, now that you
take the boy out walking.”

Father, who seemed always to be glad of anything which might bring
him and grandfather together, heightened the reluctant admission into
praise.

“Yes, François owes his health to you. And all these lovely walks that
you are giving him will attach him the more firmly to the region in
which he is to live, and which he will know the better because of them.”

As a matter of fact I felt myself entirely aloof from the region and
even from our house. What I loved was the earth, the vast unnamed
earth, and not this place or that; most of all I loved the uncultivated
places, the wild places in the woods, the copses, the secret nooks,
and in less degree the pasture lands, any untilled, unsowed: bit of
earth. In the matter of people, I had accepted grandfather’s new gospel
which catalogued them as peasants and towns people. The nice people
were in the country, whereas towns were inhabited by wicked individuals
and notably by _bourgeois_, who persecute men of genius like my
friends of the café. And in the towns were the schools where you were
reduced to a state of slavery.

While I was giving myself up to these reflections my mother’s gaze had
fallen upon me; it seemed to me that she was reading my thoughts, and I
blushed--a proof that I was not unaware of my inward insubordination.

“He has grown quite robust,” she said. “Could he not begin gradually to
take up his lessons? We could arrange him a place in the garden, where
he would be in the out-door air, and yet not be entirely idle. Idleness
is never good.”

I was astounded to hear my mother uttering so direful a proposition--my
mother, so careful to spare me all fatigue, so expert in nursing me, so
minute in her watchfulness! Decidedly, they had changed parts; father
had appeared suspicious of my walks with grandfather, and now he was
not only authorising, he was encouraging them.

“No, no,” he exclaimed, “pleurisy is too grave a matter. He would still
risk losing strength and colour. See how well he looks now!” adding
aside to mother, “Father is so happy in his little companion! Since he
has had charge of him he has quite changed and grown younger. Haven’t
you noticed it?”

Mother, who always agreed with him, did not express her opinion. I
divined that she was uneasy about me, but why? Had she not rejoiced in
my good spirits and my round, rosy cheeks? Grandfather never attempted
to monopolise me; he took me on his walks, and helped in that way, and
in addition, he taught me a thousand things about trees, mushrooms,
botany: the things he knew were much more interesting than the history,
geography and catechism that my teachers used to teach me.

Now that my attention had been attracted to mother’s uneasiness I
continually noticed that she was always following me like a shadow. At
the bottom of my heart I was pleased. Even a child loves to inspire
fear in those who love him; it puts him at a sort of vantage point,
gives him a feeling as of being a man, and understanding life better
than a weak woman can do.

One day mother was talking in her room with Aunt Deen. I heard only the
reply of the latter, who never could conceal anything.

“Come, come! my poor Valentine; don’t you go to troubling your head
about that good-for-nothing boy. In the first place, I know perfectly
what those two talk to one another about--country things, the pleasures
of the fields, the peace of the earth, the goodness of the animals; all
humbug, to be sure, but what of that? It’s just like poultices,--it
can’t do any harm.”

I had not the slightest doubt that they were talking of me, and I was
not at all displeased at having my share in the family interest, for
in these days there was a great deal of discussion about my brothers,
who, having graduated from school, would start for Paris in the autumn,
Bernard for the military school at Saint-Cyr, and Stephen, who was not
yet sixteen, to complete his studies in mathematics, unless indeed
he persisted in wishing to enter the Seminary. Aunt Deen was greatly
distressed over the exorbitant cost of board and outfit, and was
continually discanting with emotion upon the merits of our parents, who
shrank from no financial sacrifice to complete our education.

“Aha!” sneered grandfather. “These great religious institutions don’t
take in a pupil for nothing. They bleed their patrons at all four veins
for the love of God.”

Furthermore, it was arranged that Louise was to go for two or three
years to the convent school of the Ladies of the Retreat at Lyons.
She would sober down there, and when she came home she would be an
accomplished young lady, like Mélanie, who at that time was in the
very flower of her youth--Mélanie, who long ago had invited me to sing
vespers before a wardrobe, or to run after Yes-Yes, the drunkard, with
a glass of water, and whose persistent piety foreshadowed a vocation
which she had professed as a child, but concerning which she was now
silent, unless, perhaps, to our mother.

Altogether the future of the family now demanded much reflection and
many decisions. Grandfather and I remained quite apart from it all.
Once beyond the gate we never looked back, except when my companion,
laughing derisively, would say:

“And as to you, boy; what is being cooked up for you? Are you still
inclined to enter the school of adversity?”

There had been much pleasantry over that incident, and I found it by
no means amusing. I had given up all my fine plans, and had no thought
of commanding some brilliant situation like my brothers. I was content
with the sort of property which one enjoys without ever taking trouble,
after grandfather’s fashion,--the lake, the forest, the mountain; not
to speak of the stars and those fine July nights. I am not even sure
that I did not prefer to them all the red benches of the Café of the
Navigators, when I had the feeling of being a man, admitted to hear
utterances concerning painting, music and politics.

Yet I never ceased to feel my mother’s gaze resting upon me. By way
of not acknowledging it I began to put on airs of independence. Like
the “Scenes in Animal Life,” I would work up offensive resemblances
for all the people with whom we were familiar; turning men and things
to ridicule and even affecting when with my brothers and sisters an
incurious air, as if I had formed my views of life and had nothing
more to learn. By a singular phenomenon, as I now see clearly, the
more deeply I was initiated into the simplicity of rural life and
the benevolence of nature the more complicated I became. And always,
through all my newly assumed ways, that gaze followed me, as if it were
seeking my heart.


Grandfather and I had a fright one day when we came upon my mother
in the street. She was going to church for benediction and we to the
café for our pleasure. She so rarely left the house that we had never
thought of meeting her. Noses in air, already inhaling the special
odour of tobacco and anise which awaited us, we paid no attention to
the woman who was approaching, so modest, so grave that no one thought
of looking at her, and we were much surprised when she accosted us,
asking,

“Where are you going?”

What would grandfather say? I wondered. We had so loudly proclaimed
our disdain of the town which we were now lightheartedly crossing.
Would he betray the secret which I had kept so well? Without the least
embarrassment in the world he replied:

“To buy a paper, daughter.”

Then he would not own up about our visits to the Café of the
Navigators, either. Mother let us go on our way. When she had turned to
the left, in the direction of the church, grandfather chuckled over the
fine trick he had played her, but she had not wished to appear to doubt
the truth of his reply: it had not deceived her. I knew it, for I had
seen her blush at our falsehood.

Another circumstance directly revealed her penetration and her anxiety.
One Sunday morning as I was going out of the door of the house with
grandfather, she admonished us to come back in time for Mass. She
would go with me herself, she said, although she had already heard
mass at daybreak, as was her habit. All would have been well if
grandfather and I, on our way home, had not met Gallus and Merinos,
amiable and thirsty pair, who urged us, in spite of ourselves, to take
a morning draught. We need only stay two or three minutes, at most,
and we were really early. But at the Café was Martinod, perorating in
full vein. All the tables were listening to him, drinking to him,
applauding him, surrounding him with an atmosphere of admiration, the
smoke of the pipes rising like incense around him. He was describing
with picturesque and highly coloured details the approaching era of
Nature and Reason, so that every one seemed to be already living, by
anticipation, in that glorious time. What festival it would be!--a
generous humanity renouncing all divisions of caste, class or race,
all frontiers and wars, fraternally sharing all riches of earth! The
transfigured orator tore away the evil from the future, and showed the
sun of that day like the golden monstrance in a religious procession.
It was all so beautiful that we quite forgot about Mass, and when,
sated with eloquence, we turned our steps homeward, the hour was long
past.

At the gate, grandfather, descending from his exalted mood, began to
show some anxiety. As for me, I felt not the slightest remorse, being
under the shelter of an older responsibility. Still, when I saw, behind
the half-closed blind, that shadow that was so easily disquieted about
the absent one, I too felt my pride droop, and became conscious that
I had done wrong. Mother came down to meet us. We found her on the
doorstep, so pale that we could no longer mistake the importance of our
defection. Her voice betrayed her anxiety as she asked:

“What can have happened?”

“Why, nothing at all,” replied grandfather.

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

“Oh, we forgot how time was passing.”

This time grandfather rubbed his nose and excused himself as if he had
done wrong. A shadow passed over mother’s eyes. A moment before they
had been limpid, and now the light that shone through their humidity
pierced my heart. Softened as it was by the mist of tears it can not
have been very formidable, there was nothing in it by itself so to
affect me, but I have never forgotten its power. It must have been
with eyes like these that Confessors of the faith looked upon their
torturers. I know that I, too, have seen that divine flame.

Young as I was I understood that my mother was shaken by filial
respect: yet a more imperious obligation constrained her to speak, and
she spoke:

“We did not entrust this child to you, father, to withdraw him from his
religious duties. You should not have forgotten this, for the sake both
of his soul and of us.”

She spoke with mingled firmness and gentleness, and her face, already
pale when we arrived, became so white from the effort she was making,
as to seem absolutely bloodless.

... Long, very long after this, when I was a young man, I was getting
ready to go out to meet a woman. The woman whom I loved--for how
long?--had promised to betray her husband for my pleasure, but I was
thinking only of her beauty. My mother came into my room. She had not
the courage to say a word; as so long ago she was trembling, this time
with that other sort of respect which is respect for oneself. I did not
know why she had come, and I felt uneasy at being detained. She laid
her hand on my shoulder:

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

I protested my innocent intentions, and as I went my way I shook off
the importunate words, which however met me again on the road and went
with me. By what clairvoyance of love had my mother divined where I
was going? She had looked at me with those same eyes, faintly shadowed
by mist. Grief, rather than years, had already made her almost an old
woman. And I distinctly saw the evil of the light love to which I was
hastening with a song upon my lips....

Grandfather made no attempt to defend himself. He did not call to his
aid the little dry laugh which usually served him so conveniently in
shaking off his opponent without argument. He only murmured, somewhat
weakly, “Oh! goodness, what a fuss about nothing,” and hastened toward
the staircase, to go up to his tower where, at least, he would be
sheltered from reproach. But my father, who was coming down, seemed to
close the way. A conflict appeared to be imminent. And by the natural
inclination of my childish logic I suddenly recalled that return from
the procession which had first revealed to me this same antagonism:--my
parents all a-thrill from the ceremony which grandfather compared to
the festival of the sun, and my suddenly chilled enthusiasm. But I was
in a mood to take this recollection lightly; without knowing it, I had
changed sides.

Grandfather appeared to me all the more embarrassed on hearing steps
upon the stairs. He could not avoid the meeting. But as a matter
of fact it passed off the most quietly in the world. A few words
were exchanged about the weather, the crops, our walk. Generosity,
deference, the desire to avoid a domestic dispute, or to spare my
father an anxiety, kept my mother silent as to our late return.

But after this she never saw me going out with grandfather without
fixing upon me that look, the anxiety of which I still feel. By some
ingenious artifice she used to add Louise to our party, or even little
Nicola, who would trot behind us, her seven year old legs finding some
difficulty in keeping up with us. The whole troop would set forth,
grandfather clearly showing his displeasure over the new recruits.

“I don’t propose to drag the whole camp after me,” he would mutter. “I
am not a child’s nurse.”

“Come, come!” Aunt Deen would reply, “such pretty children! You are
only too proud to show yourself in their company.”

None the less I agreed with him that the presence of my sisters spoiled
our walks. One can never talk about anything with women along. They
don’t understand out-of-door things, and they get cross as soon as
one touches upon religion. I was not very far--I who had shown such
fervour at my first communion--from thinking that mother exaggerated
the importance of our having missed that service. I thought myself
free, because I had closed my mind against all teaching except what
came to me from grandfather. Being free, one could do as he pleased.
We were not hindering the others from going to church, and even to the
communion, and vespers into the bargain.

Vacation came and completely interrupted our walks by ourselves. After
vacation school would begin, and I should resume my place among the
little school boys of my own age, without so much as knowing that the
previous three months had quite changed my heart.




                               BOOK III




                                   I

                               POLITICS


AFTER my long convalescence I did indeed return to school. It was
an ancient institution in which kindly monks imparted antiquated
instruction. It was possible to work there, when one’s schoolfellows
did not positively put obstacles in the way, but it was easier to
devote oneself to clandestine industries, such as training flies and
cockchafers, drawing caricatures, reading forbidden books, and even
carrying on explorations through the passages. The discipline was no
better than the teaching. Up to this time the idea had never occurred
to me to view as a prison this great building with its numerous doors
and windows where one came and went as one pleased under the paternal
eye of a new porter, entirely absorbed in the care of his flowers and
of a tortoise whose manners he was studying. But I was now new-born to
the sentiment of liberty, and consequently to that of slavery. I made
every effort therefore to discover that I was unhappy.

On holidays I resumed my walks with grandfather. An involuntary
complicity established itself between us. If one or another of my
brothers or sisters joined us we spoke only of indifferent things.
When we were alone we went into rhapsodies over the joys of the fields
and the brotherhood of men, only hindered by property with all its
enclosures. I learned that money was the cause of all ills, that one
should despise and do away with it, and that the only necessary good
things cost nothing, namely, health, the sunlight, pure air, the songs
of birds and all the pleasures of the eye. My teachers, who were much
more interested in Latin than in philanthropy, neglected to teach me
the latter except by their example, to which I paid no attention.
No more towns, no more armies (and Bernard, who was preparing at
Saint-Cyr, and who had never been informed of these truths!), no more
judges, no more lost lawsuits, no more houses. But here I thought that
grandfather was going rather too far. No more houses! What about ours,
then? Ours which had been repaired and all done over! It mattered
little about the others, so long as ours was spared.

“Why no, little dunce; pastoral peoples used to sleep out of doors.
It’s more hygienic.”

When Abraham journeyed to the land of Canaan he must have slept out of
doors, and so must the shepherds whom we had met leading their flock to
the mountains.

We made another pilgrimage to the pavilion which I had come to call
Helen’s pavilion, and from time to time we put in an appearance
together at the Café of the Navigators, so that I did not entirely lose
contact with my friends.

I was entering my fourteenth year, I think, or it may have been a
little later, when our town became the scene of great events. The
mayor’s office was contested in an election, and the Marinetti Circus
set up its tent and waggon-houses in the market-place. I do not know
which of these two dissimilar facts seemed the more important to me.

At our house, in view of the new preoccupations as to our future, the
tone of conversation became more serious. More than once I came upon
our father and mother mysteriously discussing Mélanie’s approaching
majority.

“The time is coming,” father would say. “I have promised and I shall
keep my promise. But it will be hard.”

And mother would answer,

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

Nevertheless, she seemed less sad than father, when she spoke about my
sister. What promise were they talking about, and what was it that God
willed? I used often to think of the picture in the Bible representing
the sacrifice of Isaac, but since the time of our missing church I was
less inclined to believe that God was so very strict.

Mélanie went often to church, visited the poor, and dipped her brush
in water every morning to smooth down her blond hair which curled
naturally and refused to lie in straight bands. I knew these details
through Aunt Deen, who was always saying:

“That child is an angel.”

It had become impossible to quarrel with Mélanie. Our parents no longer
gave her orders; they spoke to her gently, as if they were consulting
her. Even I, without knowing why, dared not speak roughly to her, and
growing less and less inclined to be respectful, I kept aloof from her,
and no longer sought her company.

The others were not to return until the long vacation. Louise, from her
boarding school in Lyons, wrote loving letters which I found somewhat
silly, because they often alluded to religious ceremonies and visits
of the Superior, or of some passing missionary. Bernard’s letters
briefly described the life at Saint-Cyr which he had just entered, and
Stephen’s contained numerous obscure allusions to his plans, which
seemed to harmonise with those of Mélanie. I could not condescend so
far as to play with the younger children, the delicate Nicola who was
always disturbing mother while she was writing to the absent ones, and
the tumultuous Jamie, in whose behalf I would cheerfully have seen
the establishment of the severe discipline which I did not care about
for myself. I treated them as from a higher level--they could not
understand me. So that my real comrade was grandfather.

Two or three times my father, displeased by my silences or my superior
airs, observed in those family councils of which somehow children
generally manage to catch scraps,

“That child is growing secretive.”

Mother, still somewhat uneasy about me, did not protest, but Aunt Deen,
fertile in excuses, would authoritatively affirm that I would blossom
out before long. Far from being grateful to this steadfast ally, I
laughed in my sleeve at her fanatical loyalty, by way of proving my
superior intelligence.

The circus and the elections stirred up the town at the same time.
Every day as I crossed the market-place I would stop to watch the slow
erection of the tent and the placing of the raised seats, necessary
preliminaries of the show. At our house the conversation was more
likely to turn upon the future of the country. I was not so ignorant of
politics as they might have supposed, though my opinions vacillated. I
knew that certain days, like the Fourth of September and the Sixteenth
of May, were anniversaries variously celebrated, that all the monks
except ours had been expelled, and that there was an expedition to
China,--which as it happened, aroused only criticism at our house.

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

Father would shake his head:

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

I was not ignorant of his having taken part in the war--we used to
speak of it simply as “the war”--and I could easily imagine him at the
head of an army, whereas grandfather must always have preferred his
violin and his telescope to swords, guns, pistols and other murderous
engines. In vain had the Café des Navigateurs poured contempt upon
all military glory: it still kept its prestige for me. Yet I could
not easily understand how the French Guard and the grenadier in the
drawing-room could have died, one for the King and the other for the
Emperor, and yet both deserve the same praise, while the partisans of
the Emperor were always exchanging opprobrious remarks with those of
the King.

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

Grandfather, being present, declared that in his opinion the
noblest thing was to die for liberty. But he did not insist, and
notwithstanding the silence which followed I saw that he had displeased
my father.

The idea seemed to haunt him, for he returned to it on our next walk,
and described, with more enthusiasm than usual, a splendid epoch which
he had known, compared with which our own period was but darkness.
Our own period seemed to me quite endurable, between our walks and
the Café. It appeared that at that time, as under the Revolution,
liberty had a second time been set free, and when liberty is set free
an era of universal peace and concord begins. Citizens moved by a
fraternal impulse were working together in vast national workshops,
a modest remuneration, the same for all, weak and strong, robust and
malingerers, giving to each that contentment which arises from being
sure of one’s daily bread.

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

“Martinod is right,” replied my companion, “but will he succeed where
we came to grief?”

“You came to grief, grandfather!”

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

_We failed in the blood of the days of June_. The meaning of the
words might escape me, but they made music in my ears like the rolling
of a drum. Long ago--three or four years perhaps--I had been excited
over other mysterious words, such as the lament of the White Blackbird,
_I was arranging trifles while you were in the woods_, and also
that of the Nightingale, _All night long I strain my throat for her,
but she sleeps and hears me not_. Now I found their melancholy
somewhat insipid, and preferred this new rhythm, so war-like and full
of pain. Touched to the heart I at once asked, as with Aunt Deen’s
stories when I was little,

“And what happened after that?”

“A tyrant came.”

Ah, this time it was all clear! A tyrant, a hospodar, to be sure! Aunt
Deen’s hospodar, the famous man all dressed in red, who gave commands
with loud shouts.

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

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

No; certainly I could not understand. The glimmer of truth which I had
half seen died out. Our father, at table or in other conversations with
us, had never failed to instil into our minds respect and love for
the long line of kings who had ruled France, and whom nearly all the
bad paintings in the drawing-room, save the grenadier and the latest
portraits, had served. He used to talk as often of the power of nations
as grandfather of their happiness. Napoleon the Great, whose epic story
all school boys know by heart, had ruined the country, but all the same
he was the greatest genius of modern times. As for Napoleon the Little,
it was to him we owed defeat and the loss of territory. Curiously
enough these events, when they were spoken of at our house, never
seemed to me to have the slightest connection with those that figured
in my history book. One never recognises in the plants of a herbarium
those that are growing in the fields. And when father spoke in praise
of the kings grandfather had never made any objection. He had neither
approved nor disapproved. And here he was declaring in peremptory tones
that all kings were tyrants! Why did he keep silence at table when he
was so sure of his opinion? No doubt he did not wish to oppose any one.
Thenceforth I accounted to myself for his self-effacement by delicacy,
and was moved to consider him right.

Once again he spoke to me of those mysterious days of June when people
fought to break the chains that bound the proletariat. I had no
distinct notion of what the proletariat was. Tem Bossette, Mimi Pachoux
and The Hanged, for instance, were they proletaires? I pictured them to
myself loaded with chains and shut up in a cellar full of empty wine
casks--because if the casks had been full they would never have come
out of their own accord. Grandfather had rushed to their aid. I learned
from his own lips that he had taken part in the insurrection in Paris,
and had carried a gun.

“Did you fire it off, grandfather?” I asked in surprise and perhaps in
admiration, for I should never have thought him capable of so vigorous
an act.

He modestly explained that he had never had an opportunity.

Aunt Deen had shown me, in a cupboard, the sabre which my father had
worn during the war. Why had no one ever showed me that gun? Was not
it too a family trophy? Grandfather concluded his somewhat vague story
with the familiar reflection:

“Papa wasn’t pleased.”

He seemed so old that I should never have had an idea of thinking
of his parents, who were nothing but paintings in the drawing-room.
And here he was saying _papa_, like little Jamie, not even
_father_ like my elder brothers and me. Greatly amused I exclaimed,

“Your papa, grandfather?”

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

He spoke of him without the slightest respect, and this to me
unimaginable audacity seemed a thing so prodigious that by itself it
was enough to obliterate all distinctions of rank. By it he at once
placed himself above all other men, of whom he could make light with
impunity. I promised myself to be disrespectful, too, to show my spirit.

Grandfather proceeded to enlighten me with certain particulars
concerning the displeasure of his “papa.”

“Yes, indeed! he insisted that a king is as necessary to a nation as
a gardener to a garden. And all the bad paintings in the drawing-room
thought the same.”

What! all the family! Grandfather was deliberately taking his stand
apart from all the ancestors! He proposed to flock by himself, to walk
alone, far from the road, as in our walks. What’s the use of being a
grown-up person if one must still consider others, may not do as he
chooses, must heed counsels and remonstrances? He had done mighty well
to carry a gun, seeing it was for liberty.

His impertinent little laugh seemed to break with paternal opinion and
invoke nature:

“It’s absurd! As if it was necessary to trim trees and cut plants into
shape! See how they grow without any help, and if these don’t knock out
all the gardens in the world!”

We had reached a grove of beeches, aspens and other trees. The
tender little spring leaves were not large enough yet to hide the
ramifications of the branches. Before my convalescence I should have
disagreed with grandfather. The transformation of our garden since
our father took the reins of government, the arrangement of the
grass-plots, the form of the groves, the harmonious order of the whole,
had given me great satisfaction. But our wanderings in the country
had by degrees opened my eyes to the beauty of wilder things. A clump
of ferns and reeds, a tangle of vines and bushes, rocks crowned with
ruddy bracken, and hidden nooks had won my preference, so that I
unhesitatingly accepted his view. But I was in a measure stunned by the
discovery that one might be of a different mind from one’s parents and
even sit in judgment upon them, like this, in all quietness of mind.
Grandfather had not been afraid to condemn his father in my presence.
It was the most effective lesson in independence that I had yet
received, and this discovery, far from gratifying me, inspired me with
fear, and aroused again the feeling of sacrilege which I had felt with
respect to the dead man. Irreverence was not liberty. One might scorn
and at the same time obey, still, one really had a right to be free,
not to accept his father’s ideas, not obey his orders.

I dared not give form to the thoughts which were assailing me and
therefore returned to politics.

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

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

“How about the Count de Chambord?”

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

To speak of the Count de Chambord like that! The pleasantry shocked,
rather than amused me. The Count de Chambord had always seemed to me a
legendary personage, as far away and illusory as the chevaliers in the
ballads which had thrilled me during my convalescence. To be sure he
had not filched the cup of happiness from Titania, the fair queen of
the elves, he had not come on a red roan steed to see the young girl
of the romance of the Swan’s Nest; but I knew that he was living in
exile, endued with the martyr’s aureola, and that he was expected. Aunt
Deen never spoke of him except as “our prince,” and raised her head
proudly whenever he was mentioned, as if he belonged to her. From time
to time conferences were held in our drawing-room for the discussion
of his approaching return. And he would not come back alone; God would
come with him, and he would bring back the white flag. My imagination
found no difficulty in picturing him at the head of a multitude waving
banners, though I could not quite determine whether it was an army or a
religious procession.

Of all these conferences one of the members was Mlle Tapinois, she
who resembled the old dove in my picture book; there were also M.
de Hurtin, an old gentleman who looked like the falcon who had been
ruined by Revolutions, and divers other personages also drawn from my
“Scenes from Animal Life,” and who are now somewhat mixed in my memory.
There was also a certain impetuous priest, Abbé Heurtevant, who was
always scenting the battle from afar, and whose prominent round eyes
could see only things at a distance, so that he was always bumping
into the furniture, and always restless, carrying on war against vases
and Chinese curiosities. When he upset a knickknack he never excused
himself but simply remarked:

“That’s one less.”

Small frivolous objects of that sort interfered with his actions and
he detested them. Aunt Deen forgave even his destructiveness for the
sake of his eloquence. When he was standing his head was perched so
high that I would look for it as for a mountain top. On the other
hand, when he sat down he would almost disappear in an easy chair,
his knees on a level with his chin, as if he had been folded in three
parts of equal length. He was as emaciated as an ascetic, which was not
surprising since his only food was roots. It was he, indeed, who during
the mushroom season, lived upon Satan bolets. They did him no harm, but
neither did they fatten him. Grandfather was greatly interested in his
diet, considering him a phenomenon, and upholding his opinions because
of his eccentricities. He never called him anything but Nostradamus. On
the contrary, father thought comparatively little of such an ally, and
indeed did not greatly care for these quasi secret meetings.

“Our good abbé,” he would say, “is always up in the air. He studies the
heavens, but knows nothing of what is going on down here.”

What need had he of knowing, since he could foresee the future?
In fact, he was making a collection of predictions concerning the
restoration of the monarchy, and could cite from memory all the
important ones. I can remember a good many of them, having heard them
so often. The most celebrated of them all was that from the Abbey
of Orval, which had predicted the downfall of Napoleon, the return
of the Bourbons and even the reign of Louis-Philippe and the war.
How then, could it have been mistaken in the apostrophe which Abbé
Heurtevant would whisper in a moving tone, bringing tears from the eyes
of the ladies. _Come, young prince, leave the island of captivity
... unite the lion with the white flower_. He had found a subtle
interpretation of the island of captivity and the lion, which on the
first investigation had been obscure. I was however in no haste to have
the young prince obey this injunction, because of the events which were
bound to follow, namely, the conversion of England and of the Jews, and
to finish up with, Antichrist. Antichrist terrified me: he also, like
Death in my Bible, was to ride, on a pale horse.

“The young prince, indeed,” grandfather would sneer when I related all
these marvels to him, for he refused to be present at the assemblies
over which Abbé Nostradamus presided, “young prince of sixty springs!”

There were also the visions of a certain Rose-Colombe, a Dominican nun,
deceased upon the Italian coast. A great revolution was to burst out
in Europe, the Russians and Prussians would turn their churches into
stables, and peace would hot appear again until the lilies, descendants
of Saint Louis, were again blossoming upon the throne of France, which
would happen. _Which would happen_ closed the paragraph, proving
that it was not a mere hypothesis, as learned men might construe it,
but an incontestable truth, proved by ecstatic visions.

“Yes, the lilies will bloom again,” Aunt Deen loved to repeat, for she
attached especial credit to the sayings of Sister Rose Colombe.

This conviction caused her to rush up and downstairs all the more
proudly, since she might suppose that her services would be needed. She
had a habit of accompanying the innumerable labours to which, without
respite, she gave herself, with interjections and exclamations. We
could hear her psalmodies as she swept or scoured, for she turned her
hand to everything.

“They will bloom again, to the salvation of religion and of France.”

The Abbé did not stop at predictions which re-established monarchs
among ourselves. His solicitude extended even over unhappy Poland, and
one evening he triumphantly brought in a Roman newspaper, in which was
recorded the apparition of the Blessed Andrew Bobola, who informed
a monk of the restoration of that kingdom, after a war which would
involve all nations.

“At last Poland is saved,” he concluded in a tone of satisfaction.

“Poor Poland, it is high time!” chimed in Aunt Deen, who had compassion
upon all unfortunates.

Nevertheless, in order to attain to these miraculous renascences many
catastrophes must be endured. Our abbé heroically put the torch to all
Europe, and consented to drench it in blood if only the lilies would
bloom again at the end.

The ladies enjoyed his vaticinations. His nostrils would expand like
sails under a favourable breeze, and his round eyes would bulge with so
much ardour that it almost seemed as if they might fall out, all in a
flame. He used also to break a lance with the party that admitted the
escape of Louis XVII from the prison of the Temple and the authenticity
of Naundorff. Mlle Tapinois, especially, preached Naundorffism, which
won her many a stinging retort. She almost drew Aunt Deen after her,
but one glance from Abbé Heurtevant sufficed to keep her firm in
the good cause. Mlle Tapinois invoked Providence, of whom every one
knew that she was the right arm, declaring him--it was impossible to
say why--hostile to the return of the Count de Chambord. By way of
eclipsing her adversary she would state that Jules Favre, the advocate
of her Naundorff, had received from him as a token of gratitude the
seal of the Bourbons, and happening to have no other one with him on
that historic day, he had set the royal seal to the Treaty of Paris
after the signature of Count Bismarck, as if he were acting simply as
the delegate of his prince. This anecdote having obtained the success
of curiosity, in spite of father’s remark, “No Bourbon would have
signed such a treaty,” Abbé Heurtevant, broken-hearted at having been
interrupted in his predictions by such fiddle-faddles, shrugged his
shoulders in token of his incredulity, and from the corner where I was
playing with a pack of cards, I heard him murmur,

“When Balaam’s ass spoke, the prophet kept silence.”

I knew the adventure of Balaam from a picture in my Bible. But our abbé
came in also for his own, and was recompensed for his brief overthrow.
Old M. Hurtin, whose bird of prey profile deceived people as to the
obstinacy of his temper, shaken by the stories and asseverations of
Mlle Tapinois, began on his part to bring up objections to Monseigneur,
for no one failed to give him his title if only to dispute it. He went
so far as to reproach him for having no children.

“One will be made for him,” M. Heurtevant declared in a moment of
sudden illumination.

This remark, most forcibly uttered, raised a great outcry. The ladies
manifested their indignation by various little ejaculations, and Mlle
Tapinois, covering her face, protested against a man of God daring to
scandalise a respectable and well-meaning company, and with children
present. The abbé, blushing and quite out of countenance, being much
more accustomed to reprimand others than to be reprimanded, lifted up
his hands while Mlle Tapinois was haranguing, as a sign that he desired
to explain. The opportunity was not immediately given, and he was
forced to have patience until the excitement was calmed. He had simply
meant to say that the continuity of the dynasty would be provided
for, and that the royal race was not threatened with extinction.
A legitimate successor would do as well as a child of a king. His
explanations were received with ill grace, and Mlle Tapinois, who was
seated near me, turned to M. de Hurtin, and put him through a course of
questions, to certify that the prophet had found a very bad mouthpiece;
thus taking her revenge on Balaam’s ass, which had not escaped her
acute ear.

This incident which fastened itself on my memory though I did not
very well understand it, as sometimes happens with memories, had cast
a damper on these royalist meetings, when the approaching elections
reanimated them.

“I do not believe in salvation by election,” father remarked, “still we
must neglect nothing for the welfare of the country.”

A rumour was going round that the mayor’s chair would be contested,
the actual occupant being unworthy. But who would lead the conflict?
It must be a man of mettle, able and firm. Thenceforth I never passed
the municipal building on my way to school without imagining it endowed
with machicolations and cannons and bearing its part in a great
confusion of historic sieges.

The bell at our gate was incessantly ringing, and it was not always
some one for the doctor. Well dressed gentlemen who seemed to prefer
to slip in at nightfall with the shadows, peasants, working men, were
invading the house, and the same words were constantly repeated:

“Won’t you come forward, doctor?”

“Doctor, you must come forward.”

The old men of the suburbs would say more familiarly, “Get a move on,
Monsieur Michel.”

I observed that the peasants and working men put more earnestness and
conviction into their entreaties. The well-dressed gentlemen, better
mannered, and more discreet, did not insist, and one of them, stout and
dignified, carried his devotion so far as to propose himself.

“To be sure, we understand your scruples, your hesitations. It’s a
weighty undertaking and very expensive. If it must be, I will consent
to be candidate in your place--just to please you.”

“Not you,” spoke up with authority a bearded individual in a blue
blouse. “You wouldn’t get four votes. Monsieur Michel is another story.”

The gentleman, thus turned down, majestically buttoned up his frock
coat.

When the intruders had retired, a discussion arose between father and
mother, peaceful, grave and confidential. So absorbed were they that
they did not notice that we were present.

“You can not,” said mother gently, almost quoting the stout gentleman.
“Think of the expenses that we are bearing. You were obliged to buy
the property in order to spare your father, and I encouraged your
doing so, remember. In a family, all stand or fall together. The great
schools are very expensive, for we do not get scholarships, though we
have seven children. You are known to be hostile to the institutions
under which we are governed. Within a few years we shall need to settle
Louise, even though Mélanie will need but a small dowry. And besides,
think of yourself. You are already working too hard, your patients
absorb all your strength. I am afraid you will overdo. We are no longer
in our first youth, my dear. The family is enough for us. The family is
our first duty.”

Father was silent for a moment, as if weighing the pros and cons. Then
he said:

“I do not forget the family. Don’t distress yourself about my health,
Valentine. I have never felt myself more robust nor better able to
endure fatigue. And I can not help thinking of the useful part which
is offered me,--for to be mayor to-day is to be deputy to-morrow: to
denounce to the country the gang that is cheating it and fattening upon
it, to prepare the public mind for the return of the king--so necessary
if we are to recover from defeat. All these plain folk who rely upon
me touch my heart, and shake my resolution to hold myself aloof from
public life. I have no personal ambition. But even here, surely here,
there is a duty to fulfil.”

They were like alternating strophes in which the family and the country
by turns made their pressing appeals.

My father’s picture of a restored France did not closely resemble that
of Abbé Heurtevant, who trusted to miracles. He added circumstantial
details which I could not follow, but in the end, without knowing
exactly how, we got the impression that the aroused provinces would
march promptly and joyfully under the authority of the prince who would
address himself directly to them, and who at the same time would refer
all religious matters to the Pope of Rome.

Father was so well able to command that I found it quite natural that
the government should be entrusted to him, since the realm of the house
was not enough for him, and he desired another. And besides, in that
case he would be too busy to watch over my studies and my thoughts,
which I well knew he talked over anxiously with mother, in the evenings.

Things were even more changed at the Café des Navigateurs than at our
house, where only a faint note of coming events reached my ear. I went
thither with grandfather, one holiday, when we were not expected.
Casenave, prematurely aged, apart from the others, was still drinking
for pleasure, in the midst of the general inattention, the other
members of the group being occupied with loftier things. They were
not talking of the king, but of liberty. I learned that the hydra of
reaction which had been supposed to be crushed after the Sixteenth of
May, was beginning to lift up its head. Galurin was openly demanding
the partition of goods, which was his hobby, Gallus and Merinos were
repudiating a bourgeois Republic, desiring it to be at once Athenian
and popular, one which would assure to each person a minimum wage for
an indeterminate amount of work, and at the same time would be open
to beauty, and a protector of the arts. They were both sketching, in
the intervals of their labours, one a symphony, the other a charcoal
drawing in which the new era was symbolised. But I hardly recognised
Martinod. Instead of presenting to our dazzled eyes, as in former
days, the marriage of the People and Reason, he left all phrase-making
to the two artists. With unexpected coherence he was enumerating
urgent reforms, the diminution of military service with a view to its
complete suppression, the independence of syndicates, State monopoly
of education, not to mention the revision of the Constitution, a
matter upon which every one was agreed. The independence of syndicates
especially struck me because no matter how much my neighbour explained
to me in what it consisted, I could not in the least understand it,
and therefore set a particularly high value upon it. Leaving his
reforms, notwithstanding their urgency, Martinod, who was continually
bringing in recruits and treating them, worked himself up into a great
excitement upon a subject of more immediate importance, which was the
next mayor.

Decidedly, I understood one thing, the battle would be carried on there
and not elsewhere.

Soon the entire conversation began to turn upon proper names. Forgotten
was the Athenian and popular Republic, forgotten were reforms, only
individuals were spoken of, and very few of these found grace in the
eyes of the company. Most of them were considered suspicious; they
were not deemed pure enough,--and all sorts of fatal defects were
brought up against them, notably consorting with priests, and sending
their children to clerical schools. Then there were discussions in an
undertone (and I clearly saw Martinod directing furtive glances, now in
grandfather’s direction and now in mine, which flattered me, for in
general I did not exist for so great a man), of a redoubtable leader
who would be the worst adversary and not easily to be overcome.

“There is only he,” Martinod concluded. “The others are all knaves or
thieves.”

“He is the only one,” repeated the chorus in approval.

Yet nobody mentioned his name. I found no difficulty, however, in
picturing him to myself formidable and mysterious, leading his forces
to certain victory. Grandfather was negligently listening to Casenave’s
dialogue with his double. Martinod, who had been observing him for a
moment or two, now secretly and again full in the face, suddenly leaned
toward him, and said abruptly:

“Do you know one thing, Father Rambert? You are the one to lead us in
this fight.”

“I!” exclaimed grandfather, quite taken aback. “Oho!”

And he gurgled out his little laugh. They let him laugh at his ease,
after which Martinod repeated his offer.

“To be sure, you. Who deserves it better? In ’48 you came near dying
for liberty.”

“Not at all. I did not come near dying.”

This proposition was not further pressed. But as we were going back to
the house at the dinner hour he stood still, saying:

“That was a good thing, Martinod! I their candidate? Insane!”

He laughed again with all his heart. A little further on he repeated,

“I, their candidate!”

This time he did not laugh. I understood that all the same he was not
displeased with Martinod’s suggestion.




                                  II

                              THE CIRCUS


MY attention was distracted from these election concerns by the
circus which had been set up in the Market Place. Its immense white
tent, at last secured in place by solid pegs, bore above the entrance
curtain, in letters of gold against a blue background, the inscription
_Marinetti’s Circus_. A drummer plied his drumsticks at short
intervals to attract the attention of the public, and from time to
time the portière was raised and a princess in a spangled robe and
rose-coloured stockings emerged like an apparition. I used to pass that
way on my return from school, merely to hear that unceasing drum and to
see that lady, who was sometimes old and sometimes very young. How I
longed to get inside the tent! I indulged my desire for this forbidden
paradise by lingering as long as possible and then speeding away at my
best pace, so as not to be late at home.

Once I made the circuit of the tent and got “behind the scenes.” The
waggon-houses were drawn up side by side at the back. Thick smoke was
pouring from their slender chimneys--as if from green wood, and from
the odour some witch’s broth must have been in course of preparation.
Several raw-boned horses were wandering at liberty, as if they had
not the strength to go far, under the indulgent watch of dogs whose
indolence reassured me. A parroquet was fluttering from roof to roof.
On the steps of one waggon a woman was sitting clothed in rags which
unblushingly revealed her amber skin, combing her hair in the sun; the
black mass which she drew forward cast a shadow over all her face,
hiding it from me, though it alone interested me. A bronzed old fellow
was smoking his pipe with a majesty like that of the old shepherd in
his russet mantle, walking before his sheep with even pace toward the
mountain. Some half-naked children, brown and curly-headed, crawling
among the waggons, were hustling one another, exchanging thumps, when
suddenly a door opened and out bounced a termagant, holding a stewpan
in her left hand and with her right restoring peace by means of a few
sound slaps.

This spectacle in no way cooled my curiosity. Has the wrong side of a
theatre ever cooled the interest of amateurs or the zeal of actors?
What was not my delight then when grandfather, returning from a walk,
proposed to take me inside. I imagine he was going in on his own
account and was far from suspecting my longings.

We entered. The orchestra, composed of a cornopean, two small flutes
and a clavier which some one struck with two rulers--I was unfamiliar
with the dulcimer--were making such a clatter as quite to drown out the
faithful and monotonous drum outside. Little by little we grew used
to it and through all the noise I soon became aware of a sort of call,
at once indescribably sad, sweet and authoritative, and so insistent
that no one could resist it. In later years the Hungarian dances gave
me a better understanding of the longing which I then felt. The sound
brought before me unknown, far distant lands, and all the pleasures of
vague pain. I longed to extend my arms to hasten the future. It was,
as it were, a new apprehension of the still more vague sensation which
Aunt Deen’s cradle song had awakened in me:

  Si Dieu favorise
  Ma noble entreprise
  J’irai-z-à Venise
  Couler d’heureux jours.

And I dimly realised that The House would never fulfil my dream. We
didn’t hear such music there.

Powdered clowns in parti-coloured red and yellow costumes and little
pointed caps played tricks upon one another which excited the laughter
of the crowd and disgusted me. I had not come to witness buffoonery,
but had expected, without quite knowing what, a noble and moving
spectacle. Happily a tight-rope dancer restored my serenity, for it was
with difficulty that she preserved her equilibrium, seeming likely at
any moment to fall to the ground.

But the sensational number was the flying trapeze of the two Marinetti
brothers. More than one celebrated acrobat has doubtless begun his
career in a travelling circus. The two Marinetti brothers later became
celebrated; one was killed in London by a fall; the other is to-day one
of the first mimics of the world. At that time they were very young
fellows, hardly older than I. One might have thought that they were
simply amusing themselves, with no thought of the spectators. They
played into each other’s hands with touching solicitude and arranged by
a slight signal for the execution of their joint turns--I had almost
said their duet, for there was so much rhythm in the supple movements
of their two bodies that they really seemed to sing. During their whole
glorious or tragic career, did they ever do anything more daring than
those flights from one trapeze to another, without the security of the
net, always laid in wait for by death, for which they seemed to care no
more than a sparrowhawk for a knife?

The stifled cry of a woman in the audience awoke me to the danger to
which I had been as indifferent as they, but of which I became suddenly
aware. I was full of admiration and envy of them, soaring thus through
the air. I could conceive of nothing more heroic, and my notion of
courage underwent a change. Until now, through the epic stories father
had told me, I had imagined it as always serving a cause. Hector was
defending his city against the Greeks and Roland his faith against the
Saracens. But was it not finer to juggle thus with oneself, for no
reason, for one’s own pleasure?--for the public had ceased to count.
In that ill-lighted circus, to the sound of that strange, exciting
orchestra, I came to feel the charm of the danger that serves no
purpose.

But clowns, rope dancer and even the Marinetti brothers were eclipsed
in my imagination as by enchantment, when into the ring there dashed
a little horsewoman standing erect upon a black horse whose saddle
was large and flat like a table. I had been looking down during the
interval, that is why I noticed the horse, for otherwise I should
surely have seen only the rider. She wore a robe of gold. If the lamps
had emitted less smoke and more light it is probable that that frayed
dress would not have given me such a vision of luxury. The girl’s arms
were bare and her hair unbound. Alone among all those tawny performers
she was fair like the heroines of all my ballads. Merely by her leap
into the ring she gave me what no woman had ever given me before, not
even she whom I had met with grandfather and whom I had called the lady
of the pavilion before I named her Helen;--not the sense of beauty--to
that I had already attained; but the fear of approaching her and not
keeping her. Yet I search my memory in vain for her features--I can
not find them. I must have seen her often, and now I wonder if I
ever looked at her, if I ever really dared to look at her. I think
she had golden eyes--the golden tint of a virgin in a stained glass
window through which the sun is shining. How old was she? Sixteen
or seventeen--not older, and perhaps not so old. The fruits of her
country do not need many months for ripening. She appeared taller than
she was, by reason of her slenderness. It would be unjust to call her
thin; slight, yes, but her slight form was full and muscular, and I
wondered at the nascent roundness of her bosom. She was leaping through
hoops that were held before her, and at each spring I trembled lest
the horse should get away or she should miss the large saddle. It made
me happy to tremble for her. Reassured by her skill I began to watch
the movement of her hair, which each time she bounded rose and fell
in cadence upon her shoulders. If a lock fell over her face she would
throw it back with a gesture of annoyance.

The gravity of her countenance showed that she was wholly absorbed in
her work. From time to time her lips would part with the little words
hop, hop, designed to warm up her horse, who was apathetically rounding
the circle. Then she would seat herself on the saddle for a moment’s
rest, her legs hanging, while she indifferently bowed her head in
answer to the applause, her bosom, unconfined by her clinging gown,
rising and falling with her quickened breath. She seemed completely
isolated from all around by her gravity, her indifference. The young
girls whom I knew, my sisters’ friends, used to talk, chatter, laugh,
play, put their arms around each others’ waists. This one was passive
as an idol.

The show ended with a pantomime, every scene of which I remember.
When we went back to the house I repeated it as well as I could by
mobilising my sister Nicola, and even little Jamie for a minor part,
pressing two little schoolfellows into the service, and with this
improvised troop I proposed to treat our parents on the festival of
one or the other. Our performance was ruthlessly stopped in the very
middle without the slightest respect for dramatic art. Grandfather
alone was clamorously delighted with it, for which Aunt Deen reproved
him. Reflecting upon the incident, I at last recognised that the plot
turned upon a hoodwinked husband. The innocent Nicola had been charged
with this part, and under my instructions performed it with wonderful
success. But I was forbidden to return to the circus.

The little circus queen who had made a single spring from her horse’s
back into my imagination was doubtless destined to remain a magnificent
and remote memory for me. But grandfather loved the company of artists
and unconventional folk. I can see him now at the Café des Navigateurs,
taking sides with all the Martinod group against the bourgeois. One day
as we were crossing the Market Place he went round the tent to where
the waggons were drawn up.

“Where are we going, grandfather?” I murmured, with throbbing heart.

“I want to get a nearer view of these people.”

In fact, he stopped and talked with the men who were smoking their
pipes, while the women were preparing the soup or mending clothes.
He spoke to them in an unknown tongue, which must have been Italian.
This language upon his lips seemed to me simply incomprehensible. He
pronounced it almost like the words that we use, only dwelling upon
certain syllables and gliding over those that followed. But when those
bronzed men spoke their words took on a strange accent, sometimes low
and sometimes sharp, like gay music.

Were these clowns or acrobats? The Marinetti brothers were absent. To
see them there would have filled me with pride. The only important
personage whom I seemed to recognise was the rope dancer, and she
was somewhat disconcertingly crowned with grey hair, and was sadly
repairing a dirty skirt of puffed gauze. I was not aware that its
proper name is _tulle_.

Timidly my eyes sought the little horsewoman, though I should have
preferred not to find her. I had looked too far away; she was at my
side, peeling potatoes with a broken knife. Instead of her golden
tunic, she was in an ugly striped gown. Her bare feet--that had been
shod with gold--were covered with dust. But in this humiliation she
seemed to me as beautiful as in her glory, on the pedestal of her
large saddle, springing through hoops amid multitudinous applause. My
eyes still enlightened by illusion, I found her just as beautiful, and
yet my first impulse was to move away, of course from timidity--but
also, I confess, because I had got from Aunt Deen, in the matter of
gipsies and beggars, her fear of vermin, which she always said, are
easily caught.

Let him who can explain these inconsistencies. I found a new and
obscure feeling awaking within me, merely from the shame I felt at that
recoil, and in my eagerness to be able to forgive myself, I could at
once have shared with her even her insects.

I admired the nobility and also the dexterity with which she peeled
her potatoes, never making two beginnings, but removing an entire skin
with a single operation. She was condescending without impatience to
this mean occupation, and I was grateful to her for her humility. As
the other day in the ring, during her hippie exercises, she was serious
and impassive, absorbed in her work. Yet did she not observe my fixed
observation? She deigned to be the first to speak.

“Peeling is slow work,” she observed.

“Yes, indeed,” I replied, at the very summit of happiness; “peeling is
slow work.”

I should have liked to help her. I ought to have helped her, but I
dared not. A pharisaic scruple withheld me. Though my zeal might carry
me even to the vermin which you catch without knowing it, I had not
the courage to endure the obloquy of peeling potatoes in the public
square, before all those _roulottes_.

Our mutual confidences went no further. Suddenly a guttural voice
called,

“Nazzarena!”

She left her vegetables and went away without saying good-bye. I was
greatly moved; at least I knew her name. I rushed back to the house at
a gallop, leaving behind me grandfather, waving his arms and crying,

“Halloa! Wait!”

It was impossible for me not to run. Wings had sprouted from my
shoulders, and during my wild race my whole being was surging, like
our music box when the spring was released. I rushed into the garden,
bumping against Tem Bossette, who had not stepped aside quickly enough,
and who shouted,

“What’s the matter with you, Master Francis?”

I replied laughing, but without checking my speed:

“Why, nothing at all. Nothing is the matter with me.”

I leaped over the cannas, flew to the orchard like a run-away chicken,
and threw myself, breathless, against a young apple tree. The trees
were in blossom--it was springtime. The branches trembled at the shock,
and a shower of rosy petals rained down upon me.

I was far from suspecting that I was also gathering the blossom of
love, the love that does not ripen.


At school the Marinetti circus had become the object of all our
interest and conversation. In the playground, between two games of
prison-bars, the big boys discussed sometimes the flying trapeze, which
had dazzled the lovers of sport, and sometimes the little horsewoman,
preferred by the clan of philosophers. I would catch fragments of their
remarks as I passed, and I was burning to arouse the envy of my elders
with the superiority which I had achieved over them. Thus torn between
my secret and my vanity, it was the latter which won out, and one day,
with feigned modesty, I admitted that I had spoken to her. My object
was at once attained and even exceeded: they all crowded around me,
congratulating me, plying me with questions. I was forced to embroider
the truth a little, in order to satisfy their curiosity.

“You are a lucky fellow,” said Fernand de Montraut, whose jealousy I
divined.

Fernand de Montraut was the ornament of the rhetoric division and at
the same time the lowest in the class. He passed for the most elegant
fellow in school because of his cravats, and every one bowed to his
superior experience in all matters of sentiment, for he boasted the
friendship of several girls. Unfortunately, he added,

“Then you are in love?”

Not knowing until that moment what it was to be in love, I at once
learned its meaning from his question, and gave myself up to the
melancholy which I deemed the proper thing.

Grandfather having struck up an acquaintance with the circus folk, whom
he supplied with tobacco, I found myself again in Nazzarena’s presence.
The desire to give her something tortured me, the more so because
Fernand de Montraut, an acknowledged judge, had assured me that one
always gave presents to ladies. The only embarrassment was the choice
of gift. Now I had in a drawer a collection of cornelian marbles which
I treasured as if they had been jewels. There were spotted red ones,
and black ones with white circles. Nothing that I possessed was more
precious to me. For a moment I hesitated at so great a sacrifice, and
thought of at least keeping back that flame-coloured agate that the
light shone through and which was my favourite. But it was clear to
me that if I kept back that one my offering would be worthless. In a
moment of resignation rather than of enthusiasm I gathered up the whole
lot and ran to my new friend, awkwardly presenting them to her without
a word of explanation. She seemed somewhat surprised, but accepted them
without hesitation.

“Zat’s pretty,” she said, “you ’z cute.”

She used familiar words, which I had always heard without noticing
their sound, and it seemed as if she had transformed them into another
language, all flowers and music. I was emboldened to speak to her in
reply, urged on perhaps by a notion of justice: having sacrificed my
marbles I had a right to some compensation.

“I know your name,” I said with some emphasis. “Your name is Nazzarena.”

She was greatly delighted at the extent of my knowledge.

“Aha! he knows my name. But it isn’t Nazzarena, it’s Nazzaré-na. Say
it!”

I must needs learn her accent. After which she asked,

“What’s your name?”

“Francis.”

“Like the saint of Assisi. And where are you from?”

“Why, from here, of course.”

How should I be from anywhere else? One lives in his own town and his
own house. Perhaps she perceived her blunder, for she asked no more
questions and it was I who bashfully resumed the conversation, not
without timidity.

“Where are you from?”

“I don’t know.”

What a curious answer! One always knows where one is from. Well!

“Then you have no house of your own?”

“That’s our house.”

She pointed to one of the waggons, the front of which was painted
green. I could not mistake her expression of scorn. She suddenly
turned away and gazed at the great buildings of cut stone which
surrounded the market place on all four sides; my town is ancient and
rugged, and its houses were built to last for centuries. Perhaps she
was estimating the security of a stationary life, but I was picturing
to myself the joys of a nomad existence when I went on:

“It must be very amusing.”

“What must?”

“To keep changing your locality.”

I used the word _locality_ purposely, to give her a high idea of
me.

“That depends,” she said. “There are places where the receipts are bad.
One time we made only seven francs and a half.”

Details of that sort were of no interest, but I went on to confess to
an unbounded admiration for this mode of life. At this declaration she
opened her eyes wide, doubtless amazed that one could envy her when one
lived in one of those great buildings, capable of enduring all sorts of
bad weather.

“All the same you wouldn’t come with us.” The mere suggestion seemed to
please her, but she at once put it away as an absurdity.

“Besides you can’t know much. But you’z cute.”

Again that expression which seemed offensive to my self-love. I could
not remain silent under so unworthy an estimate, and I retorted proudly,

“I can ride horse-back.”

I had sometimes been hoisted upon our farmer’s blind mare, and had even
experienced a disquietude akin to fear when long shivers ran through
her body. My friend appeared enchanted and promised to lend me her
black steed.

How does the grown-up heart differ from that of childhood? I had not
the least idea of going with her. She did not suppose I was going. I
had not the slightest equestrian ability. She had no authority over her
horse; without mutual agreement each was conniving at luring the other
on. It was a delicious foretaste of the falsehoods which lurk beneath
all lovers’ conversations.

Just then, as we both sat silent, a fearful and torturing memory came
to me. One phrase--just a short phrase from the book of ballads which I
had read and reread during my convalescence, until they seemed to form
part of the very atmosphere of my existence, suddenly detached itself
from the rest--I heard it within myself as if another than myself had
uttered it. It was a line in the legend of The Lord of Burleigh. The
Lord of Burleigh is speaking to a peasant girl, who is the prettiest
and most modest girl in the village, and what he says is,

_There is no one in the world whom I love like thee._

To be sure, I should never in the world have spoken those words aloud;
I should even have closed my lips tight to make sure of not uttering
them. But I felt them as living things, and they thrilled through me.
Now I discovered their prodigious meaning. How could one say such words
to some one who was not of one’s family, and whom one hardly knew?
_No one in the world_! What about father--and mother? I dimly
perceived the sacrilegious power of love, and while I was leaning over
that abyss, Nazzarena, usually so grave, was laughing and showing her
teeth.

One of the bronzed men of the troop passed, and stopped before us,
scrutinising us. Then suddenly he knocked our two heads together,
uttering in his jargon a word or two that I did not understand.

The touch of her cheek burned me, and violently pulling myself free I
felt myself reddening to the very roots of my hair. She only laughed
the more.

“What did he say?” I stammered, tossed between anger and a totally new
emotion.

“Oh, nothing,” said she. “That you were my little lover.”

“I!” I protested. “What an idea!”

I could not consent that it should be possible. The love that one
expressed must lose all importance. And what next? That way everything
would be over. Surely, for love to be love one must keep it to oneself
and it must hurt....




                                  III

                               THE PLOT


HOW was it that no one noticed, when I returned to the house, that
I had suddenly changed and grown? I was almost scandalised at their
blindness.

“Well, here you are!” observed my father, who was beginning to be
uneasy about my absences.

Aunt Deen ran after me to make me put on another coat, more obviously
worn. I had hastily slipped on my best, for my visit to Nazzarena. It
may have been the memorable olive-green of my convalescence, at last
become better adapted to my size after three or four years of growth,
unless it had already been retired to a clothes press, in camphor and
naphtha, until such time as James should grow to it. I commanded not
the slightest respect, although the entire household ought to have been
struck with my changed countenance. Instead of thinking only of my
adventure, which indeed I could not quite understand, I was vexed with
the familiarity with which I was treated.

We were all gathered in mother’s room because of little Nicola, who was
somewhat grippy, and who, being a delicate child, needed watchful care.
Notwithstanding my absorbing secret I felt that some important event
was impending. The too turbulent Jamie was admonished to keep quiet in
a corner. Mélanie, always somewhat in the moon--Aunt Deen insisted that
she was listening to her voices, like Jeanne d’Arc--quietly undertook
to amuse her sick sister, so that father was finally able to show
mother the letter which he had in his hand.

“It is from Monsignor’s secretary,” he said as he opened it.

I thought he was speaking of the bishop, who always dined with us once
a year. But the name of the Count de Chambord occurred in it. When he
had finished reading it--I had not heard it distinctly--father added
simply:

“Very well; I will present myself, since the prince desires that
nothing be neglected for the welfare of the country.”

“Oh, the prince!” murmured grandfather, smothering his little laugh.

Father looked at him with that straightforward, penetrating gaze which
was always hard to bear. But grandfather at once put on his most
innocent air, such as I remembered him to have assumed the time we met
mamma in the street — when he said, “We are going to buy a paper.”

I at once divined that father was the mysterious and terrible leader
whose intervention in the assault upon the mayor’s office Martinod had
so feared. It could be no one but he, and how was it possible that he
should not win the battle? A look at him was enough. He bore victory
about with him. My childish eyes, still loyal and clear-sighted, could
see the signs of superiority radiating from his brow. How should I have
guessed that superiority is a small factor in success, since all sorts
of dubious weapons against it are being forged in dark places? I might
indeed endeavour to escape from my father’s influence, but at least I
never dreamed of underrating it.

The watchful care usually extended to me was diminished by the illness
of Nicola, who was always asking for her mother. I had remarked that
father was making the most of his infrequent moments of leisure to talk
with Mélanie, go out with Mélanie, take walks with Mélanie. More than
ever he treated her with an affection at once tender and reserved,
almost respectful, and seemed to extend his strength over her, as if
some one was endangering his daughter or seeking to take her from
him. As for Aunt Deen, who almost worshipped her nephews and nieces,
individually and collectively, she remarked between going up and down
stairs that I was a model child and an exemplary son, and even placed
to her brother’s credit a large part in this happy state of things.

I made the most of this relaxed vigilance, which in fact was merely
comparative, to continue my visits to the circus in spite of the
prohibition which had been put upon them. With a hypocrisy which had
already become perspicacious, I had persuaded myself that I was not
disobeying when I walked around the tent to where the waggons were
stationed. The side scenes are not the theatre. Thus from argument to
argument I went on until at last I actually entered the tent. Had not
grandfather taken me there the first time? He was the oldest, he ought
to know better than any one else what was good for me. Besides, no one
would know; there was no risk of any member of the family meeting me
there, unless, indeed, grandfather. And Nazzarena rode her horse for me
alone, and when she bowed courteously in response to the applause it
was still for me alone. With all the ease in the world I suppressed the
existence of the surrounding public.

Nevertheless, as my conscience was not perfectly easy, I clung to
grandfather, who in case of need could ward off suspicions or bear
the burden of responsibility. I even went with him to the Café des
Navigateurs, though I had exhausted its pleasures and should have
preferred another society. Martinod was unusually glad to see us.

“Father Rambert! What a pleasure to see you again! Father Rambert, sit
here beside me in the place of honour.”

I observed that if he had formerly excelled in passing over the bills
to others, he now kept open purse not only for his own drinks but for
those of others. Gallus and Merinos perceived it sooner than I did
and refused themselves no indulgence. As for Casenave and Galurin,
they had never troubled themselves about the score. I had already
before this remarked a complete change in Martinod; he was less and
less concerned with oratorical effect, and no longer sought to dazzle
us with descriptions of festivals where fraternal embraces were the
general order. He produced lists and figures, enumerated proper names
and with a bit of pencil which he moistened at his lips industriously
addressed himself to checking them up.

A newspaper man having laid the local gazette upon a table, he called
the servant to bring it to him in so imperious a voice that the girl
was startled and came near upsetting a dish of food which she was
carrying. Hardly had he unfolded the sheet when he cried:

“There it is! I was sure of it! _He_ presents himself.”

_He_ had no need of being more definitely designated. Every
one in the café unhesitatingly recognised him, and I as well as the
others. Our group, which up to that moment had probably not felt sure
that he would be a candidate, appeared to be deeply impressed and
indeed quite demoralised. All wore long faces as they bent over their
tumblers. Secretly scanning them one by one, as an impartial outsider,
I considered their party, however numerous, quite incapable of carrying
on a contest against my father.

Martinod permitted the others, and especially the neophytes who formed
a sort of court around him, and for whose drinks he paid, to start
up, exclaim, though without naming the enemy, while he, inattentive or
meditative, fixed grandfather with his eyes. As he continued for some
time in this attitude, a passage from my natural history recurred to
my mind, concerning a serpent that fascinated birds, and I laughed to
myself at this absurd idea. For a long time he maintained his fixed
gaze; then, after ordering drinks all around, except for me, whom he
had forgotten, he leaned forward and in a fawning voice spoke in his
neighbour’s ear, but not so softly but that I heard.

“So, Father Rambert, you are no longer in your own house?”

“How so?” replied grandfather indifferently.

“Why, no; that fine château that you live in isn’t yours now.”

He pronounced the word _château_ like the farmer, only omitting
a few circumflex accents. Grandfather observed it, and it amused him.
“Oho! the château,” he said; “why not the palace?”

“Call it what you like, for all me,” replied Martinod; “the fact
remains that it is the finest residence in the country. And well
situated--town and country at once. All the same, ha! ha! They have
played you a trick, and you are no longer master of the house.”

Grandfather scratched his eyebrow, then pulled his beard. He never
spoke to any one of his abdication, not even to me in our walks, and I
had perceived that allusions to this old story, several years old now,
did not interest him. I knew that he despised property and deemed it
detrimental to the general good. But wasn’t that a sacred dogma at the
Café of the Navigators, too?

“Well, yes,” he replied with a forced laugh. “I am no longer in my own
house; there’s a discovery for you! My poor Martinod, you are behind
the times! It’s many a long day since I’ve been in my own house and
glad I am, as you see. No more bother, no more care. I am no longer the
master, but I am my own master.”

Upon this the dialogue proceeded, more and more gaily.

“Ta, ta, ta! At your age it’s not easy to get used to camping in other
folks’ houses.”

“At my age one likes peace and quiet.”

“Yes, I know. They have relegated you to the end of the table.”

“I put myself there of my own accord, and food tastes just as good
there as in the middle.”

“But here, Father Rambert, you have the place of honour.”

“There is no place of honour in a café.”

“And your room?--every one knows that you have been hoisted to the
garret.”

“Every one knows that I love heights.”

All of which was said banteringly. They were playing at tossing
questions and answers to and fro, as we tossed balls at school.
Listening to them, my mind was for a moment distracted from its
absorbing sentiment, and I inwardly condemned myself for this as for a
fault.

The subject soon became a theme for cheap pleasantries. Every one
in the café began to talk of Father Rambert’s end of the table,
Father Rambert’s garret. He would shrug his shoulders and take it all
laughingly.

“Really, isn’t all that true, Father Rambert?” asked Martinod one day.

“Why, to be sure it is true in a sense. If you make a point of it, it
is true. But what is it that is true?”

As if everybody didn’t know what is true and what is not true!
Grandfather was rather fond of dark sayings. That same afternoon we
went home together, he gay and sprightly, I downcast because I had not,
even at a distance (which I preferred), seen Nazzarena. At the top of
the steps we met father, who was waiting for us, and who seemed much
disturbed. He had a newspaper crumpled up in his hand, and handed it
without a word to grandfather, who made no motion to take it.

“Do you know who wrote _that_?” he asked. How contemptuously
he pronounced the word _that_! I felt that he was controlling
himself, but that something serious was going on at our house.

“How should I know?” asked grandfather. “I never read the local papers.”

“Very well, read this one.”

“No, thank you; I’m not interested.”

“Then I’ll read it to you.”

“If you insist upon it.”

I saw them go together into father’s consulting room, leaving the
door open, and I had no notion of going away. Grandfather sat down
resignedly in an easy chair, and father began to read at once. I felt
ill rewarded for the curiosity which had kept me there, for I couldn’t
understand a word of that dull, prosy and ill-worded article, which
seemed to leave a bad taste in your mouth like grated cheese that melts
in onion soup and turns into a sticky glue that clings to your gums.
It was about the approaching elections, and a certain omnipotent and
despotic personage, eager to rule the public with a rod of iron as he
ruled his household. After this there was something about a garret
full of rats, exposed to all the winds of heaven, yet good enough, it
appeared, for the miserable old man who had been relegated to it, and
who was expiating his social kindliness by being treated with contempt
and forced into the meanest position in his own house. The article
closed with a warm appeal to justice and sympathy. No name, no place,
was mentioned. How could I have understood the illusions? It was too
complicated an act of perfidy for a child to see through.

“Is that all?” asked grandfather when the indignant voice was silent.

“It seems to me that it is enough.”

“Oh, there isn’t enough there to whip a cat for--mere vague
generalities.”

“Is that your opinion?” asked father. “Don’t you feel how venomous, and
how dishonouring to me it all is? Have not you always been well treated
here? Whose wish was it to sit at the end of the table? Who took
possession of the tower chamber in spite of all we could say? Which of
us has ever been lacking in respect to you? When has any one neglected
to care for you most tenderly and deferentially? Of whom, of what, do
you complain? Father, I entreat you,--tell me; this is a grave matter.”

Entreaty followed entreaty, hurrying one upon another, in a voice which
gave them a pathetic intonation that thrilled me from head to foot.
The obscure article suddenly became clear to me, and I grasped its
entire significance. Some one was accusing my father of harshness to
grandfather. The scene of the abdication rose up before me, and the
morning in which I had borne a part by carrying the pile of _Limping
Messengers of Berne and Vevey_.

“I am not complaining,” said grandfather; “I have never complained.”

“And of what could you have complained? This house has continued to be
yours. I have taken upon myself only the duties and expenses which were
a burden to you. But these calumnies have not been invented.”

“My dear Michel, all these stories bore me to death. I don’t read the
newspapers, and get along very comfortably without them. I advise you
to follow my example.”

“Because it is not you who are attacked. Because I shall never permit
any one to attack you. This attack upon me comes from the Café of the
Navigators. I am sure that you still go there, though I have informed
you that it is the headquarters of our enemies. But you place in those
people all the confidence that you refuse to me.”

“As for that, I go where I please and I see whom I like.”

“You are free, father, without the slightest doubt. But in a family all
the members stand or fall together. Whoever aims at you strikes me.
Whoever defames me insults you.”

“I have no such narrow views as to the family. I have never opposed
you; do the same to me.”

At that moment father saw me through the half-open door, and a
suspicion must have crossed his mind, for he cut the discussion short,
and pointing to me said,

“I hope you never take that child there!”

“Where, pray?”

“To the Café of the Navigators.”

And turning to me father added in a tone which admitted of no reply,
“Go away!”

So that I did not hear the reply.

I have forgotten no incident of that scene and am certain of having
reconstructed it in its integrity, and if not in the same words
at least in equivalent ones. As I had been successively born into
a mysterious longing by a word of the shepherd who was leading his
sheep to the mountain, into the knowledge of liberty by a walk with
grandfather in the wild forest, into the sense of beauty by having
met the lady in white, into the disquietude of love because Nazzarena
had told me with a laugh that I was her little lover, so now I was
born into a knowledge of human wickedness, to which all my childhood
had been a stranger. Aunt Deen’s famous they, at whom I scoffed after
having vainly sought them around me, did then exist, and Martinod was
one of them, and the gentle and gay Casenave, whom my father had cured,
and the old photographer Galurin, and the two artists!

This unexpected revelation completely upset me. People went to the café
to enjoy themselves and not to hatch plots. They drank vari-coloured
drinks and made jokes the while. No, it could not be possible! A doubt
swept over me, both because of grandfather’s calmness, and because the
“go away” which dismissed me had been somewhat brusque and aroused in
me a desire to take the other side. Perhaps that scrap of paper was
indeed not worth reading.

The next day I was in mother’s room when father came in with his hat
on, coming straight in from outside without stopping in the vestibule.
He took off his hat hastily, and we saw that his face was animated and
suffused with colour. He had his grand air of a battle, and he laughed
as if pleased.

“I have slapped Martinod’s face,” he said simply, as if he had said, “I
have been to see such and such a patient.”

“Oh, dear, oh, dear!” murmured my mother; “what will he invent against
you now?”

I heard Aunt Deen running heavily, shaking the floor, rushing in like a
whirlwind. She had heard my father’s words from a distance.

“Well done, Michel; well done!” she cried, all out of breath. “They
are beaten; well done!”

There was one who didn’t haggle over the defence of the house!

I made the most of the unusual excitement to steal away. I had no
objection to Martinod being slapped, so long as I profited by it in
some way. I had been feeling myself more closely watched; opportunities
to slip away were becoming rare. With all speed I made off to the
street and rushed in the direction of the town. But as soon as I
reached the Market Place I began to walk slowly, even putting on
an unconcerned, indifferent manner, as of a loiterer who has no
special point in view and doesn’t quite know where he is going. Thus
I proceeded toward the circus, and started to walk around it, being
careful to look about me carelessly, to show plainly that I was
walking without a purpose. No one could be mistaken. How many times
had I executed this little manœuvre and not always with success! If
Nazzarena was there, occupied with some household duty, that was no
reason why I should approach her, or even greet her. As a general
thing I went past her without speaking, stiff as a poker. Our first
conversation had exhausted my courage, and moreover I did not know
what to talk about next. Sometimes she would laugh at me as she saw me
pass--for when it came to playing with me or mocking at me she would
lay aside her professional gravity as a horsewoman. Sometimes she would
call me. I always went to her at her call, but not for worlds would I
have spoken first.

That day she was leading her horse to water at the public fountain.
Seen without his trappings and the blaze of torches with which the tent
was lighted during performances, this steed appeared to me singularly
like our farmer’s old blind mare that I had occasionally bestridden; it
was a long bony beast, continually wrinkling his skin all over his body
to shake off the flies. But I immediately closed my eyes to so pitiful
a sight, and imagined in its place the red roan steed of the Romance of
the Swan’s Nest which, in my book of ballads, bore the Knight to the
young girl sitting in the grass by the river side, her bare feet in the
water.

My adored one was absorbed in her work, or pretended to be, and did
not deign to observe my presence. There was nothing for it but to keep
on my way, since she would not turn her eyes toward me. And that horse
kept on drinking, as if he were capable of drinking the fountain dry.
It was enough to make one desperate! At last she turned her head. She
was laughing. The naughty girl! She had seen me then! But in her most
natural tone, as if she had suddenly discovered me, she bade me good
morning.

Having given up hope of her speaking, I found nothing to say. My
discomfited face no doubt betrayed my feelings, for she seemed not
displeased with my silence, and even spoke of it:

“So, you are dumb to-day?” she asked, laughing all the more heartily as
she added, “Aha! so you aren’t my little lover any more?”

I hung my head to conceal my embarrassment. Not love her any more!
The foolish question! When one loved it was for always. The word
_always_, which my lips could never have uttered, made a strange
music in my heart, so sweet that nothing sweeter could ever be heard in
the world.

Reassured as to my condition, and no doubt as to the effect she
produced upon me, she calmly pulled the halter. Her horse had ceased to
drink and from his moist nostrils drops of water were falling back into
the basin.




                                  IV

                              MY BETRAYAL


BECAUSE of that word _always_, continually singing in my heart,
the days that followed were at once delicious and bitter, like the
fruit that I used to gather too early in the garden. I was sure of the
future and indeed of all eternity, enjoying to the full the love that
as yet asks for nothing outside of itself. For the slight distress
that I had felt at the contact of Nazzarena’s cheek when our heads
had been jokingly bumped together had soon passed; nothing indeed was
lacking to fill the cup of my happiness but never to see my beloved;
my embarrassment returned whenever we met. If at least I had not been
obliged to speak to her! I could not have endured to kiss her--I never
so much as touched her hand. Each of us--so I think now--perhaps
believed in the superiority of the other: she because my house was so
solid, and I because of her horse, her golden robe, her talent as a
horsewoman, her wandering life, and that indefinable something with
which love endowed her. She soon perceived that the two sides were
not equal: she could appear in public and be applauded; I was a mere
spectator.

Conscious of her domination, she no longer shrank from laying commands
upon me. She would ask little services of me,--to buy her a thimble in
town, or gold thread and needles to mend her fine robe; and to ask for
things used by girls and not by boys made me blush in the shop. If I
Had to add some complementary explanations, I didn’t know where to turn
to hide myself. She made me help her peel potatoes and delighted in my
embarrassment when she saw me casting furtive glances toward the open
square.

“Don’t worry, little man; no one is passing,” she would say, robbing me
at a blow of all the benefit of my heroism.

Every day, either morning or evening, I would somehow manage to come
home from school by way of the Market Place where she was living.
What stratagems were mine to avoid suspicion! Sometimes my parents
would come to walk home with me, or, the distance not being great,
would merely meet me a few steps from the gate. How did I manage
not to arouse their misgivings? One or another of my school fellows
having discovered my manœuvres tried to make fun of me, but Fernand
de Montraut’s intervention spared me the vexation of practical jokes.
As the boys urged upon him that I refused to talk about the little
horsewoman he pronounced my silence chivalrous; and this opinion, from
so competent a judge, filled me with pride.

The same tawny young man who had knocked our heads together, finding me
one day in conversation with Nazzarena, jabbered something again in
their jargon, pointing his finger at me, and both burst out laughing.
As for me, I could have cried.

By degrees this passion, greater than I, and too serious for my
fourteen years, made a chasm between me and my family, all unawares
to myself. I forgot the elections, and the newspaper article, and
Martinod’s slapped face, which had brought about none of the immediate
results that mother had dreaded. At the same time I would gladly have
made a confidant of grandfather, because of our visits to the pavilion
and also because of the lady in white, the memory of whom, until then
somewhat vague, was now definitely fixed in my mind. Like a bouquet of
fresh flowers I breathed in all the romance of our former walks. Their
charm mysteriously affected me--was it not to them that I owed the
precocious emotions of my excited sensibilities? But for them I should
probably have been thinking only of playing tricks upon my teachers, or
at most of enjoying these first days of spring without knowing why.


One Thursday afternoon--our holiday was Thursday--as I had with some
difficulty escaped to the circus, to enjoy the performance and gaze
upon my horsewoman, who that day did not deign to notice me, not
knowing how to go back to the house without attracting attention, I
decided to go to the Café of the Navigators, where there was some
chance of meeting grandfather. The discussion between him and my
father on this subject had already slipped my mind, and my only object
was to get home without questionings, with no thought of Martinod and
his acolytes. I half opened the door with beating heart; it was the
first time that I had entered such a place alone. Grandfather was
there; I was saved! So long as I went home under his protection no
questions would be asked, and my absence would be justified by the very
fact.

I seated myself in a corner to wait until he was ready to go. Near me
Martinod was talking with the head of the establishment. I knew him,
for he used to mingle familiarly with the patrons, and even in his days
of prodigal humour, he would treat them all round.

“You see,” he was saying in a tearful voice, “the bill has been running
several years.”

“Send it to the son,” Martinod advised.

“It is not his affair.”

“All the same, you’ll see that he will pay it. That I can guarantee.
It’s a good trick to pay him against the elections. And besides, the
boy has had some.”

Whom was he talking about? I had not noticed. But suddenly Martinod
gazed at me, and under that gaze I at once remembered the slap he had
received. I even felt a vague remorse at being in his company; but
grandfather had surely kept on going with him. After all, he had
received and not given the slap, and here he was, raising his arm to
heaven as if some one had committed an unpardonable crime against me:

“That child has nothing to drink!”

I should never have believed him so solicitous with regard to me.
Everybody had neglected me for a long time, and in fact, but for the
passion which absorbed me, and inclined me to privations for the
very love of suffering, I should have observed the infrequency of
the glasses of syrup. The oversight was immediately repaired. The
materials generally reserved for full grown men were set before me; I
was solemnly offered a _verte_--of course an attenuated, diluted,
inoffensive _verte_.

“I will mix it myself,” declared Martinod.

“I’ll leave it to you,” observed grandfather indifferently,
interrupting himself in a heated discussion with Gallus as to the
Andante of Bach’s second sonata for piano and violin. “And no practical
jokes.”

“Father Rambert, don’t you worry!”

Certainly that Martinod was a good fellow, agreeable and slow to take
offence. His cheek was perhaps still warm from that slap, and he was
caring for me as for his own youngster!

He didn’t mix it the same way grandfather did. The superimposed lumps
of sugar were melted; now he might pour the absinthe. Upon my word! He
surely was treating me seriously and not like a baby gorged with milk!
That brew must be extraordinary!

I tasted it and pronounced it delicious, without knowing why, the
better to play my own part; and this gained me the suffrages of
Casenave and Galurin.

“That’s the first,” they declared, “but it shall not be the last.”

I was almost the object of an ovation, and in gratitude I turned upon
Martinod a humid eye. But why did he look at me in silence with that
compassionate look? Had I a papier-mâché countenance? He finally leaned
over me and whispered in my ear a few simple words that completed my
disquietude:

“Poor little fellow!”

Why under the sun did he call me poor little fellow? Did I look as
wretched as that? No doubt I hadn’t succeeded in seeing Nazzarena the
whole day long. Yes, to be sure, I was unhappy, since everybody noticed
it. Only no one ought to notice it. This was a secret, hidden in the
very bottom of my heart, and no one had any right to speak to me of it.
I at once assumed a repellant face, intended to discourage sympathy.
But I couldn’t keep up this attitude. Ever since I emptied my glass,
I felt, as it were, a veil before my eyes, and a warmth through all
my body, an enervating torpor, and a sort of longing for confidence
and affection. Furthermore, I had been mistaken as to Martinod’s
intentions. He was not thinking of my love, he knew nothing about it,
and with small respect to consistency I began now to regret that I
didn’t hear him pronounce Nazzarena’s name. He was fascinating me with
his gaze, as the serpent in my natural history must have fascinated the
birds, and in a voice of caressing inflections, insinuating, coaxing,
he gave me to understand that in my family I was misunderstood. In
ambiguous words, with all sorts of circumlocutions, hesitations,
reticences, he revealed to me that my father cared more for one of his
older sons than for me. Which one? Stephen or Bernard? At this distance
of time I do not remember which one he indicated. Was it Bernard, for
his military air, his decided manner, his gaiety, his enthusiasm, and
his resemblance to father? Or Stephen, for his fine and even temper,
his good marks, his application, even his absence of mind? Upon my word
I can not say which, now. Our parents treated us without the slightest
difference, and each one was the object of special attention which he
was free to consider a favour. Still, I did not hesitate to believe
this stranger who did not know us, who had never set foot in our house,
and who, I knew, had been chastised by my father for his perfidy.

Yes, I was misunderstood by my family. Imperceptible proofs started
up from the shadows, and grew like clouds chased before the wind.
My father was always talking about the absent ones, and when he
received news of them he was radiant. Their letters were bulletins
of victory. He wore paternal pride upon his forehead. I, I alone,
was systematically kept in the background, I was of no consequence.
How severely, the other week, he had cried “go away!” Did he know
that I was frequenting the circus in spite of his prohibition, and
that I peeled potatoes in the public square? If Bernard or Stephen
had been the offender he would have come to know it, and would have
scolded them, whereas he treated me with outrageous contempt; I, who
was bearing the burden of so noble a love, I was treated only with
humiliation and insult. Worst of all, worst of all, my father did not
love me--nobody loved me. Everything conspired to make me think so,
since I had not once met Nazzarena that whole day long! There was only
grandfather, and grandfather was absorbed in his conversations, his
music, in smoking his pipe, in his telescope and his almanacs.

I cast an imploring glance in his direction. Now he was waxing warm
with Gallus over a quintette by Schumann. At such a time the world did
not exist for him.

I would have consented to get along without the existence of the world,
provided he would concern himself with me. I had the horrible sensation
of being abandoned by every one, and that this man close at hand who
insinuated his sympathy in a moved and compassionate voice had just
informed me of an irreparable misfortune. I could have cried, but in
the face of curious looks I kept back my tears. But on that bench, in
that café, I learned to know the sadness of being misunderstood, of
solitude in the midst of a crowd, of despair. Life is made up of many
griefs; have I ever experienced a more intense pain than this imaginary
despair?

Thus disarmed by the very tenderness that bared my sensibility to the
quick, and fascinated by the serpent, I unconsciously entered into the
plot which was being concocted against my father. Having accomplished
his purpose--more easily than he had believed possible, for he was
unaware that love was his ally--Martinod repeated in a heart-rending
tone,

“Poor little fellow!”

My stifled sobs were suffocating me. He might blazen his triumph
abroad, for he had succeeded even beyond his hopes; the seed of his
suggestions was destined to spring up later and bear noxious fruit. But
had he not found an easy prey?

I was still too unsophisticated to know that hate can flatter and
smile, look pleasant, appear sympathetic or compassionate, and enwrap
its object in fine phrases as bandits bind ropes about the man they
would render powerless. Hatred of this sort, which with affected
sympathy addresses itself to the friends and relations of the man it
pursues, certain of wounding him on the rebound, can not always be
denounced even later. There are few sentinels like Aunt Deen to keep
guard over the sacred ark of the family.

It has been said that circumstances conspired to further Martinod’s
plan. One Sunday afternoon, as I was idling at the window instead of
finishing a task--I usually preferred grandfather’s tower chamber,
but he was absent--I suddenly beheld a wonderful, a terrifying sight!
The circus troop was invading our garden! They had come through the
gate, which, notwithstanding Aunt Deen’s vigilance, had been left open
because of the more frequent comings and goings of a holiday. The whole
company was swarming over the grass plats and shamelessly trampling
the flower borders. There were ragged women with babies in their arms,
there were the two clowns whom I had in time come to identify, there
was the grey-headed rope dancer and there--oh, woe! there was Nazzarena
herself! Nazzarena without a hat, her hair unbound and her dress in
rags. For the first time I realised that she was poor. In our garden,
in the carefully tended alley, one might have taken her for a poor
country girl.

Dumb with amazement, I dared neither hide nor lean out of the window.
Terror at what was sure to happen paralysed me. Why had they come?
What did they want? What ill wind had brought them? Our garden was not
a place for wandering folk, bohemians, people whose only knowledge of
land was to walk upon it. If only it had been the old-time garden,
overgrown with weeds, never pruned nor watered! Or if only grandfather
had been there to receive these suspicious guests! Nazzarena,
Nazzarena, hasten back to your _roulotte_ and the white tent in
which you reign! I assure you that this is no place for you!

I was actually undergoing martyrdom on seeing them thus shamelessly
making merry over our grass and flowers. I longed at heart to cry out,
to warn them, but I could not. And in infinite agony I measured the
distance which separated the house from my love.

One of the clowns was already ringing the door bell. My God! what would
happen next? They had hardly begun to parley with Mariette, whose
uncompromising humours I knew, when the catastrophe fell upon us. Aunt
Deen came flying to the rescue and stoutly made head against the whole
band. The dialogue was distinctly audible at my window:

“What do you people want?”

A chirping voice replied:

“This is Father Rambert’s house, isn’t it?”

“What do you want with Father Rambert? Go about your business. Get out!”

What abominable injustice! All the beggars of our town were always
kindly treated by us; they even had their days, like society ladies,
and Zeeze Million, who was crazy, and that drunkard Yes-Yes received
a regular allowance at our door. Then why not give these honourable
acrobats a chance to explain? Aunt Deen, always so charitable and
ready to help, was turning them out with harsh words merely because
they were strangers!

Thus ignominiously ordered out, they rebelled, and poured invectives
upon their persecutor, who, I must admit, was not mute.

An infernal uproar arose. The rope dancer yelled, beating her sides.
At last I resolved to intervene in behalf of my friends, Nazzarena’s
friends. Suddenly, at the very moment when I was about to quit my
post of observation to fly to the fray, my father, no doubt drawn by
the uproar, appeared upon the scene. Without so much as opening his
lips, with a single gesture--but how unanswerable!--he pointed to the
entrance. And the whole roaring troop retreated, crowding between the
two pillars that supported the gate, and fled, immediately and most
astonishingly.

I was furious at so sudden and complete a rout. Since it was thus,
I, by myself alone, would resist that authority which no one ever
dared to brave. All my new-found enthusiasm again sweeping over me, I
rushed to the stairs, flew down four steps at a time at the risk of
_carabossing_ myself, to overtake my beloved.

“Where are you going?” asked father, still at his post, and barring my
way.

I was silent. My enthusiasm was already falling flat.

“Go back at once,” he went on. “I forbid you to go out.”

Unhesitatingly, but swelling with wrath, I went upstairs, gnawing my
fists with rage. Was no one to resist him, then? I, too, like those
others, had been immediately vanquished, overthrown, petrified, merely
by having faced him. People think it is easy to revolt against the
powers that be: I had just learned that that depends upon the character
of the government. Again and again I went over Martinod’s insinuations.
How true they were! _He_ understood; _he_ was a true friend!

I had only obeyed in appearance. I had hardly reached the tower when
I began to listen for the sound of closing doors, and no sooner was I
convinced that my father had gone back to his study than I furtively
crept down and slipped out of the house. Once beyond the gate new
courage inspired me: I straightened up and breathed freely. This
time, I had no thought of taking a roundabout way, putting on airs of
indifference, deceiving any whom I might meet, but ran by the shortest
road to the Market Square. The gipsies were rolling up the tent,
piling up the benches, the Sunday loiterers looking on with interest.
This raising of the camp boded ill--I saw Nazzarena at last; she was
gathering together the scattered household utensils. This was no time
to be bashful: it called for heroic resolution. In the very face of all
the spectators, most of whom doubtless knew the Rambert boy, I flew to
my beloved, like one of the knights of my ballads. When she saw me she
cast a heart-broken glance upon me.

“They drove us out of your garden,” she said before I had spoken a word.

How reply to this grievous statement? No doubt she included me among
her persecutors.

“It wasn’t I!” I cried, hasting to separate myself from my family.

“Of course it wasn’t you,” she replied philosophically. “You are
too little. We went to tell your grandfather that we are going away
to-morrow. To-morrow morning.”

“To-morrow!” I repeated, as if I had not heard, or had not understood.

“Yes, to-morrow. See for yourself. They are loading the things on
the waggons now. The Marinetti brothers have left us. There’ll be no
matinée to-day--that’s one good haul lost.”

To my surprise, she was not angry with me for her expulsion, and even
in my grief I observed an unexpected reversal of parts: she was showing
an unaccustomed consideration for me, and I was taking on a little
protecting air. The prestige of power was doing its work all unawares
to myself. Thus she did not suggest that I should help her in her work,
though the day before she would not have failed to do so.

One of the old hags stuck her long yellow face out of the nearest
waggon, and upbraided her for wasting her time.

“I must go,” said Nazzarena. “Such a job to get ready for moving!
Good-bye, good-bye, my little lover! I wish you another sweetheart;
you’s cute; you’ll find one.”

She did not offer her hand; perhaps she dared not, because of the
respect for me which the sight of the house had inspired in her. And
I found no words in which to reply to her. I smiled foolishly at her
strange wish for me: it seemed abominable and sacrilegious, though
the affectionate way in which she uttered it was as sweet to me as a
caress. Her departure floored me--seemed to cut my legs and arms and
empty my brain. I stood there like a dolt. Time and place were nothing
to me--she was going away!

I saw her in the distance, stumbling under the heavy trappings of her
horse, and she made a little gesture of adieu as she disappeared behind
one of the waggons. It seemed to me as if she was already far off, and
I managed to walk away.

Where should I go? Associating the cruelty of my family with
Nazzarena’s departure, I could not go back home. What consolation, what
support would I have found there? Father had forbidden me to go out: I
could judge of the reception which awaited me. I wandered up and down
the streets among the people in their Sunday best, absent-mindedly
bumping against one or another, who hurled at me the epithet of
blockhead, or boor. I almost enjoyed it, so tempestuously did I long
to change the character of my pain. Powerless to direct my steps, I
automatically found myself at the Café des Navigateurs. Grandfather
would understand me; grandfather was the embodiment of that security
for which that dear Martinod was working.

The room was crowded, and I suddenly felt comforted by the atmosphere
of tobacco and anise, the stir and movement. I lost the immediate sense
of my grief, I was even able to perceive distinctly that something
solemn and unusual was going on. A decision of capital importance had
been arrived at, and from the way they were talking it seemed to me
that this was one of those historic events that by and by boys would
study in school. Grandfather was the object of a thousand testimonials
of honour and admiration. They were crowding around him, congratulating
him, shaking hands with him, though this he resisted. And champagne was
being brought--highest favour! Champagne on a day like this! I began to
feel deeply moved, all the more that no one offered me any.

“A goblet!” cried Martinod, that dear Martinod who certainly _was_
good to me; “a goblet for the little fellow!”

And lifting high his own, with a grand gesture he proclaimed,

“To the election of Father Rambert! To the victory of the Republic!”

“Bravo!” exclaimed the faithful Galurin.

Callus and Merinos were overflowing with happiness: no doubt they were
foreseeing that era of Beauty which they had so often anticipated in my
hearing. As for Casenave, he was supporting the weight of his head with
both hands, his vague eyes perhaps fixed upon some vision. The barmaid
was inclining the bottle over his glass: he may have seen in her one of
those beautiful ladies in empire gowns who used to come down through
the ceiling of his garret to give him drinks and visit him openly.

“_Ziou_!” he exclaimed, sitting up.

As he gazed upon the frothing beverage, and the golden stream, he was
seized with a convulsive shudder. His trembling hands failed to grasp
the goblet, and he hiccoughed with impotent greed.

Grandfather alone showed no enthusiasm nor even pleasure. His
ill-humour was evident. He found small enjoyment in popularity or
applause. All this open-mouthed, drinking, shouting crowd got on his
nerves. I am sure he would rather have been somewhere else--in the
country--for instance, eating strawberries and sweet cream. Still, he
was constrained to yield before the general enthusiasm.

“After all, it is perhaps well,” he conceded. “No tyrants, above all;
liberty!”

No, indeed; no tyrants! In an instant the vision of my father rose
before me, standing on the doorstep, his extended arm driving away
those poor gipsies. And by way of protest, I emptied my goblet.

At that precise moment--so long as I live I shall never forget the
sight--father entered the Café des Navigateurs. Unheard-of act! My back
was turned to the door, so that I could only see him in the mirror.
But it was Martinod’s face that told me of his presence. Martinod
had suddenly turned pale, and the hand which held his glass trembled
like that of Casenave, so that a little champagne slopped over.
Father, before whom every one hastily gave way as before an important
personage, or as if in fear, was already at our table. He raised his
hat, saying most courteously,

“Good day, gentlemen. I have come for my son.”

No one spoke. There was utter silence, not only in our group but all
through the room, every one attentive to the incident. The apparition
of Nazzarena in the circus upon her black horse would not have aroused
so much interest. The only sound was the exclamation, “Oh!” uttered by
the proprietor, who, napkin in hand, stood motionless behind the bar.

Grandfather was the first to regain self-possession. He remarked,
calmly, almost impertinently:

“Good afternoon, Michel. Will you take something with us?”

The offer was received by the bystanders with mocking little laughs and
all tongues were unloosed. But the diversion was of brief duration.
Father merely replied, “Thank you, I came for my son. It is nearly
dinner time, and we are expecting you both.”

Thus he invited grandfather to go with us. Perceiving that his
invitation was not accepted, he turned to Martinod, who was giggling,
and measured him from head to foot.

“See here, Monsieur Martinod, since I have removed my hat, I beg you to
remove yours.”

It is true that Martinod had kept his hat on, but I knew that it was
the custom in the café. Far from complying with the order--no one could
mistake that it was an order, notwithstanding the “I beg you”--he
hastened to pull his hat lower on his head. Interested and enthralled,
every one in the room was watching, and a wag in the corner ejaculated:

“He will. He will not.”

My father took a step forward, and to me he seemed a very giant. Alone
among them all, it was he who spread terror. In that clear voice that
I so well knew, the voice that moved Tem Bossette in the depths of his
vines and brought the whole household together in an instant, he said:

“Do you wish me to knock off your hat with my cane, Monsieur Martinod?
For my hand will never touch you again.”

This time the laughs ceased. The case was becoming tragic: one might
have heard a spider spinning her web. Grandfather saved the situation.

“Come, Martinod,” he said; “one must be polite.”

“Then it’s for you, Father Rambert,” Martinod replied, suddenly
uncovering. His face was bloodless, and no one could doubt of his
defeat.

My father, having conquered, turned to Casenave, lost in his dreams.

“You, too, friend, would do well to go home.”

The terrified Casenave cried in a melancholy voice which broke the
tension, so droll did it seem.

“I haven’t been drinking, Doctor. I swear I haven’t.”

Thereupon we went out, father and I; I behind him, and though the
crowded tables were full of company, I moved between them without
difficulty, so large was the place respectfully made for my guide. By
way of not resembling Martinod, whose cowardice disgusted me, I forced
myself to hold up my head and appear indifferent. At the bottom of my
heart I was in unspeakable dread of what might happen in the street,
when we were alone. Never, save perhaps in my earliest childhood, had
my parents inflicted corporal punishment upon us: self-esteem was a
part of our education. But now I expected it. If only he didn’t slap
my face like Martinod! Martinod was an enemy of the house and I had
drunk his champagne. Little did I care for the house, however; like
grandfather, I proposed to be free. Hadn’t grandfather taken a gun
when he had failed _in the blood of the days of June_, against
the prohibition of his own father, the magistrate, the nurseryman,
whom he held in such slight esteem? They might beat me, might abuse
me, but they should get nothing out of me. I braced myself against the
terror which was gripping me, until I at last came to feel a sort of
insensibility, a strength of resistance which enabled one to endure
anything without uttering a complaint.

I had, however, no occasion to make use of the provision of energy
which I was laying in against my martyrdom. As we walked along father
merely asked me, without raising his voice,

“Have you often been to that café?”

“Sometimes.”

“Never set foot in it again.”

I felt that indeed I never could set foot in it again. But would that
be all my punishment? We were walking side by side, very fast. Though
he gave no sign of what he was thinking, I understood,--I can not tell
how--that a great tempest was inwardly agitating him. He had it in
his power to crush me, to break me in two, and he kept silent. Thus
we crossed the Market Place, and I seemed to myself like one of those
criminals whom I had seen escorted to prison by a gendarme. If only
Nazzarena did not see me! To me she represented the life of liberty, as
I was slavery in person.

At last we reached the door of the house. Before opening it father
turned to me, covering me from head to foot with a look, under which I
hung my head in spite of myself, like one guilty.

“Poor child!” he said--it was Martinod’s very expression--“what are
they trying to make of you?”

In my tense condition this sudden pity conquered my rebellion, and I
was on the point of throwing myself into his arms with tears. But he
had already regained his self-control, and in his tone of command he
went on:

“You simply must obey. You simply must.”

I at once hardened my heart again. He was affirming his authority: and
though he had certainly not abused it, there was for me only the sacred
war for independence.

Mother, whose anxious shadow I had distinguished behind the window, was
watching for our return, and came to the top of the steps to meet us.

“He was there,” said my father simply. “I was not mistaken.”

“Oh, my God!” she murmured, as if she could not have imagined so tragic
a misfortune.

Aunt Deen, who was close behind her, lifted up her hands to heaven:

“It’s not possible! It’s not possible!”

Beyond this I was not scolded. With his will or against his will the
prodigal son had been brought back. But, far from being grateful for
this indulgence, which now I better understand as being due to the
uncertainty of my parents as to the influences to which I had been
subject, and the best way of winning me back, I tried to revive with
all my recovered strength the love-pain which had been dulled by all
these incidents, saying over and over to myself,

“Nazzarena is going to-morrow. Nazzarena is going to-morrow.”




                                   V

                            THE DOUBLE LIFE


I HARDLY slept that night, and in my half slumber I confused the holy
war for independence with my loss of Nazzarena. My love was a part of
that liberty which grandfather vaunted, and for which he had carried a
gun. When morning came it found me firmly resolved not to go to school,
but to take my last chance of being present when the circus troop
departed. The farewell of the evening before had been disappointing.
Not being prepared, I had found nothing to say. Surely, things couldn’t
end that way.

I complained of a headache, and found ready credence. I understood that
I was supposed to be upset by the scene in the Café of the Navigators.
Aunt Deen even brought me secretly a frothing and tasty mulled egg,
good for headaches, and so delicious that I enjoyed it in spite of my
grief--at which I was inwardly humiliated.

“You’ll stay in bed till noon,” she said, as she carried away the cup,
adding--she, too!--

“Poor child!”

At which my gratitude to her immediately vanished, for I had no idea
of being considered a child any longer, since I was in love.

As soon as she was gone I dressed hastily, but not without a certain
care, and ran up to the tower chamber, where grandfather received me
with surprise, and some signs of pleasure.

“They let you come up?” he asked.

Why should he ask? I had asked permission of no one. He merely shrugged
his shoulders and became the philosopher once more--“Oh, it’s all the
same to me.”

The four windows of the tower commanded all the roads. It was my plan
to watch from this lookout for the train of waggons. They were loaded,
they would advance slowly. I calculated that I should have time to
overtake them. Which way would they go? I had no notion. I imagined
that they would take the road for Italy, and I watched that one
especially.

I had stationed myself before one of the windows, half hidden by a
piece of furniture, when there came a knock at the door and father
entered. I thought he had come for me, and I at once knew that in
spite of my resolutions I should not resist. He had the same calm and
irresistible air of authority that he had had the evening before;
but, absorbed in his purpose, he did not so much as see me, and as he
walked directly to grandfather he even turned his back to me. Unless I
intervened he would not know I was there. After a brief but courteous
salutation he showed the newspaper he had in his hand--a local journal.

“This paper announces that you are presenting yourself for election at
the head of the list of the Left. Is that so, father?”

I could divine under the interrogative form of the simple phrase that
he was inwardly boiling with restrained anger.

At the gate of the town there was a blank wall overlooking the lake,
which was always swept by waves on windy or stormy days. My school
fellows and I used sometimes to amuse ourselves by running across
between two waves, at the risk of being wet by spray or even drenched
by some larger wave. On certain days when the storm, was severe, such
bravado was impossible. We used to say then that the tempest-tossed
lake was smoking. I had the sensation now that my way would be barred
in the same manner.

How can I have forgotten one traitor word of the conversation that
followed? Grandfather, according to his habit, merely replied--at once
gently and bravely (he detested scenes and usually avoided them, but
Martinod’s cowardice was not his style):

“I am free, I suppose.”

“No one is free,” replied my father, with a determined evenness of
voice which chilled me to the marrow. “All of us depend upon one
another. And you are aware that you are presenting yourself against
me.”

This time grandfather’s retort was more sharp. He would not give way,
he would defend himself. At last!

“I am presenting myself against no one,” he replied. “I simply present
myself--that is all. And I hinder no one from presenting himself. I say
again, Michel, every one is free to act according to his good pleasure.”

With an eloquence which gradually grew warm, and which he then
interrupted, as if determined not to depart from the most respectful
form of speech, constantly struggling to control himself against the
vehemence of his own words, father sought to convince him by a line of
argument which even at this distance I believe I can recall. Why this
candidacy at the last moment when grandfather had never dreamed of
taking any part in politics, and when he knew that his son was the head
of the conservative party? How was it that he did not see that this was
a manœuvre of Martinod, who was only too happy to take revenge for the
blow he had received, and to effect the disintegration of the Rambert
family? Surely no one would allow himself to be taken in Martinod’s
coarse trap!

“And besides,” he concluded, “we can not be candidates against one
another.”

Grandfather’s little laugh accompanied his answer: “Oho! Why not? It
will be something new, and for my part I see no harm in it.”

“Because a family can not be divided.”

“A family! A family! You always have that word in your mouth.
Individuals are of some account, too, I suppose. And besides, why
aren’t your convictions the same as mine, since you are my son?”

“You forget that my convictions are the same as those of all our family
down to your father.”

“Yes, the nurseryman. You forget the soldier of the Emperor ...”

“He served France. France comes first. I do not include those who
emigrated.”

“And your great uncle Philippe Rambert, the _sans-culotte_?”

“Don’t let us speak of him; he is our shame. Every family has its
tradition. Ours, until you, was simple and fine. ‘God and the King.’”

“Well, liberty is enough for me. Once for all, I leave you your way;
let me have mine.”

“But I repeat to you that the solidarity of our name and our race lays
an obligation upon you. Besides, your liberty is a mere chimera. We are
all in a state of dependence. Will you force me to remind you that I
have accepted this dependence with all its cost? The very house which
shelters us, and which I have saved, is a witness to the permanence and
unity of the family under one roof.”

By degrees the conversation became a battle. Father seemed to me so
big and powerful that he could have crushed grandfather with a snap of
the finger, and yet grandfather held out against him, with his sharp
little voice, and with a vigour such as I hardly recognised in him.
To see them thus drawn up against each other frightened me and gave
me horrible torment. In my new-born rebellion against authority my
heart was with grandfather. I pictured to myself, under Nazzarena’s
features, that liberty of which they were speaking in attack and
defence. It seemed to me that I should be committing a cowardly act
like that of Martinod in the Café des Navigateurs when he took off his
hat in obedience to orders, showing his white, terrified face, if I
did not intervene in behalf of my companion, my comrade in walks, who
had transmitted to me as a brilliant inheritance--the only one he had
to give--his love of simple nature, of the wandering life, of that
independence which proudly refuses to submit to rule, and perhaps also
that love of love which by itself alone includes all these. I did not
conceal from myself the risk I was running. I foresaw the punishment
which would follow, and yet I came forward like a little martyr asking
for death.

“Grandfather is free!” I cried at the top of my voice.

I had thought to utter a tremendous shout, but I could hardly hear my
own voice, and was astonished and vexed that I had not made more noise.
Nevertheless, I perceived the immediate effect, which though quite
enough to satisfy me, was far from reassuring. My father had turned
suddenly, amazed at my presence and audacity. This time the road was
closed, like that of the lakeside on stormy days. He gazed at us both
by turns as if to discover some complicity, some understanding between
us. Face to face with him we were really just nothing at all. He was
strong enough to crush us both. His eyes flashed fire; his voice would
roll over us like thunder; the storm that was about to overwhelm us
would be terrible.

Why did he keep silent? What was he waiting for? Still he said nothing,
and the silence became more distressing, more tragic. I could hear my
own terror like the tick tock of a clock.

Having taken time to regain his self-control, by what must have been a
superhuman effort, he turned from me that gaze that so terrified me,
and spoke to grandfather:

“Very well,” he said, so calmly and gently that it disconcerted me; “I
am no longer a candidate. We will not amuse the city with the sight of
our divisions. But I will permit myself to give you one bit of advice.
By my retirement Martinod will have secured what he wants; that was
all he was after; now do not permit yourself to be any longer the tool
of the man who has slandered me; do you on your side give up this
candidacy, which is not at all in your line.”

If grandfather was surprised by this change of tactics, he did not show
it in the least.

“Oh, it would be a great mistake for you to retire. You would perhaps
have been elected, and as for me, it’s all one. My principal object
is to disavow your political opinions. The family can’t command our
ideas.”

Father seemed to hesitate a moment as to resuming the subject before
deciding to let it go. He let it go because there was another matter
even nearer to his heart.

“Let us say no more about it,” he said. “Something of far greater
importance has been going on in my house, something that I can not
tolerate. You have robbed me of this child whom I entrusted to you.”

The conflict was suddenly taking another form, and I had become its
object. In a flash arose before me the scene when I was setting out
for my first walk after my convalescence. We were all three upon
the doorstep. Father was putting my hand into grandfather’s with
the bewildering words, _Here is my son--it is the future of the
house_. And grandfather answered with his little laugh, _Don’t
worry, Michel, no one will rob you of him_. What did they mean? How
could any one rob him of me?

“How absurd!” grandfather was saying. “I never robbed any one of
anything. So I am accused of stealing children, am I? Why not of eating
them?”

Mockery and irony were, however, too weak a weapon not to be broken
in the attack that followed. Not one detail of that scene has faded
from my memory. I can see them both, one strong and high-coloured, in
the fulness of strength and vigour, and yet uttering such a groan as
trees give forth under the woodman’s axe, the other so old, fragile and
shrivelled, and yet all insolence, holding up his head and jeering, and
I between the two like the stake in a game they were playing.

“Yes,” father replied; “I gave you my son to make him well, not to
lead him astray. You yourself promised to do nothing which might one
day put him in opposition to our household and religious traditions.
Have you kept your promise? I have for some time been doubtful as to
what was going on in this little head. I spoke to Valentine about it,
and learned that she too was fearful of this misfortune, though in
her respect for you she dreaded to make the mistake of attributing an
unfortunate influence to you. I do not know how you have managed to
take possession of the child’s mind. But I can not but know that you
have been taking Francis to the very place where our opponents are in
the habit of meeting, and where they take advantage of your weakness
and your generosity.”

“I can’t permit you--” grandfather tried to interrupt.

“Of your generosity,” the voice went on more firmly, “or of mine. This
morning I received a bill from that place. It is a large one. Martinod
no doubt thinks it a joke to treat his heelers at my expense.”

“Who sent you the bill?”

“The proprietor of the café. To whom should he send it? He brought it
himself, and by way of argument he simply said, ‘The boy had some of
it.’ My son was a partaker as well as my father; I am responsible,
since, for my part, I believe in the solidarity of the family. I paid
for Casenave, whose body bears already the promise of a drunkard’s
death; for Gallus and Merinos, poor wretches, incapable of the
slightest work; for that idle Galurin and that scoundrel Martinod.
Paying is of no consequence--I have been through worse than that, as
you know. But what errors have you taught this child? I must know all,
now, that I may uproot them from his heart like weeds from the garden.
Where is he going? What will he make of his life with that utopia of
liberty to which every hour of real life gives the lie--without the
stern discipline of home, without our faith? Don’t you know that what
maintains our race, every race, is the spirit of the family? Has not
life taught you that?”

I was moved by the tone in which he spoke. Always sensitive to the
melody of words, I caught them as they were uttered, and by them I can
now easily rise to the ideas which they expressed but which then passed
over my head.

“Have you finished?” asked grandfather, with an impertinence that moved
me to admiration.

“Yes, I have finished. I beg pardon for having raised my voice in the
presence of this child. He should at least know--you can bear witness
to that--that I have always been a respectful son.”

“Oh, you have paid my debts. And you are still paying them.”

“Is that all? And have you not at all times had the support of my
filial affection?”

“Of your protection.”

“My protection is extended only to shield you from those who desire
your ruin. And can’t you understand that in withdrawing this child from
my authority, disarming him for future conflicts, you are preparing the
way for the ruin of us all?”

Grandfather exclaimed, “Oh! oh!”--and went on in his turn:

“I should like to know what you are blaming me for. I took the boy to
walk when he needed it, and instilled into him the love of nature.”

“And not the love of his home.”

“Is it my fault that he prefers my society? I never try to teach,
for my part--I don’t go about preaching at all times and seasons
subordination, tradition, the principles of religion. I simply have
respect for life, for liberty if you prefer the word.”

“But liberty is not life. It destroys everything that should be
preserved.”

“Oh, don’t let us go over that discussion. What has happened to your
son happened to mine.”

“To me?”

“Yes, to you. When you were little another influence was substituted
for mine. The magistrate, the nurseryman, the lover of roses--”

“Your father.”

“Yes; he gave you a taste for trimmed trees, raked alleys, for laws,
human and divine, and what more!”

“Why do you lay it up against me that I am like all our race?”

“I saw you changing under my very eyes. Do you know whether I too did
not suffer to see it?”

“Oh, you were always so detached from me, and from--”

My father did not finish his sentence, and I shall not finish it now,
though I am only too fearful of having discovered its meaning. The
respect which he then maintained lays its command upon me, even at this
distance. They had both laid bare a hidden wound, which had never quite
ceased to bleed. They stood there face to face with that memory between
them, terrified perhaps with what they were discovering in the past,
not wishing to go farther before me, when an unexpected relief arrived.

Mother came in. She had probably heard their voices from her room and
had hastened, all a-tremble, to prevent the conflict going farther.
With her came the household peace.

“What is the matter?” she asked gently.

Her mere presence had parted them, and it was impressed upon me that
the conversation would have no further interest for any one.

“I am here to claim my son,” said father.

“Take him, take him,” said grandfather, abandoning me to my fate. But
he could not refrain from adding, defiantly:

“Take him back if you can.”

“He ought not to be parted from God,” said my mother simply,
remembering the time I had failed to come to Mass. Then, feeling that
this was not the place for me, she pushed me toward them, as a token of
reconciliation, with the words:

“Kiss them, and go down to Aunt Deen.”

I obeyed, and after being negligently or reluctantly kissed I rushed
down stairs, not caring how the peace was made, thinking only of
Nazzarena who was going away. A little later I heard some one in the
garden calling me, but I did not answer.

I flew to the chestnut grove on the edge of the domain, and scrambled
upon the wall, near the breach that one of the trees had once made
merely by the push of its roots, and which had been closed by a
grating. From this point I could see the road to Italy. Only one chance
was left to me--would the circus troop go that way? I waited long, but
not in vain.

They are coming, they are coming! First the waggons carrying the tent,
the benches, and all the accessories. What wretched horses were drawing
them! I looked about for Nazzarena’s black courser, but he was not
to be distinguished from the rest of the sorry jades. Then came the
_roulottes_ that the folk lived in. Smoke was rising from one
or another of the slender chimneys. They were getting dinner ready
for the long journey. On one of the rear balconies an old woman was
combing a little girl’s hair, the well known parroquet beside them. I
was looking, with all my eyes I was looking, for the blond hair of my
beloved.

Ah, I saw her at last! It was she, there, bareheaded--her clear-cut
face and golden tint. She was herself driving one of the waggons. A
mission of importance had been entrusted to her. She held her whip
upright in the air, but she loved animals too much to strike them. She
was sitting very straight, holding her head proudly--how lovely were
the lines of her throat! Why had I never noticed that before? I had
never really seen her, so to speak--I must see her, I must see her!

When she emerged from the shadow of the chestnuts the sun made a golden
nimbus through her curly hair, that seemed to blend with the light,
so that one could not tell where her curls began or the light ended.
Beside her on the seat sat a little boy. They were talking to one
another, laughing together. I saw her white teeth, but her glance, her
golden glance, would she not turn it toward me? Nazzarena, Nazzarena,
don’t you feel that I am here, so close to you, perched upon the wall,
this wall just above you?

She laughed, she was passing, she had passed. Now the roof of the
_roulotte_ hid her. I had not called her, she had not looked at
me. Was it possible that I no longer saw her face, nor her eyes, nor
her golden colour? Is it possible that so tremendous a thing lasted
only a tiny little minute?

My heart was bursting in my breast, and I sat there motionless. Why did
I not leap from the wall to the road? Why did I not run after her? Was
I nailed to my place? Now I knew that she was lost to me; now I knew
that she was always lost to me. Like the shepherd leading his flock to
the mountain, whose chance word taught me to know desire, so she, only
by going away, taught me the pain of love-partings.

The pain of love-partings is fixed for me in that picture, a little boy
astride of the wall of his ancestral home, and a little girl who in the
morning light goes away along the road, goes away without turning her
head....


How fast we hold to our memories! Long after, when I had become the
master, the farmer came to ask permission to cut down that tree which
had covered her with its shadow that last time. “Monsieur,” he urged,
“the leaves are rusty, it is all rotten inside, it bears no more fruit,
it is losing value every day, and before long it won’t bring anything.”
I resisted his entreaties, alleging vague reasons. How make an honest
farmer understand that one would preserve a dead chestnut tree merely
because a little gipsy passed under it, so many years ago that one
dares not count them? If there are inexplicable things, this surely is
one.

My man wouldn’t give up. “Monsieur, Monsieur, one of these fine days
it will fall and break down the wall.” I opine that a wall may be
replaced. “Monsieur, Monsieur, one of these fine days it will crush
some one passing by.” Come, that’s more serious. A passer-by can’t be
made over again. Oh, well, let’s be reasonable. If it falls, it will
crush nothing but my heart.

I gave the order to cut down the witness of my first love sorrow. I
leaned over the hole which its torn-up roots left in the earth, and
was not surprised that it occupied so much room. Now the newly-built
wall has closed up the breach, and I feel myself more than ever shut
up within my property. As one advances in life, it seems that the
surrounding walls draw in.

Nature changes before we do. Nature dies before we do. Little by little
we lose all that gave the past its character. Nothing is left to bear
witness to the truth of our memories. Little by little other shadows
than those of trees descend upon us. And it is hard to believe that one
has been--as perhaps every one was once--a boy astride of a wall, not
knowing whether he will jump over, to the free life, to the young girl
who is laughing, to love, or whether he will go back, like a good boy,
to The House....




                                  VI

                          A WALK WITH FATHER


DURING my long convalescence, as I was not permitted to read all the
time, I had constructed, with the aid of Aunt Deen, who used patiently
to put on her glasses, which she was not fond of wearing, in order to
be more accurate in the use of her big scissors, which sometimes gave
an unlucky slip in the cardboard--all sorts of edifices, châteaux,
farmhouses, cottages, and even cathedrals. I used to set them up on a
great table which had been appropriated to me. The whole represented to
my mind a town which my lead soldiers were to besiege. These soldiers,
some of them a legacy from my brother Bernard, who even as a small
child had begun to make a collection of uniforms, others which had
been brought to me some Christmas Eve by the war-like Little Jesus,
were innumerable; there were whole regiments of them, large and tiny,
thin and plump, infantry, cavalry and artillery. Among the cavalry
some were of one piece with their horses, others were detachable, a
sharp pointed appendix in their rear permitting them to be fixed at
will upon the perforated backs of their horses. One evening there was
a tragic assault. The detached general (he was one of those provided
with an appendix) had been the first to enter the breach, after which
he remounted his chestnut charger, which had been by I know not what
subterfuge hoisted into the interior. In the excitement of victory I
set fire to the four corners of the conquered city, and when I sought
to check its ravages it was too late. In another minute the fire had
consumed everything, and all those houses that had cost me so many
weeks’ work, and upon which I had so prided myself, were only a heap
of black ashes. I was severely reprimanded for having so nearly burned
the furniture, and yet I just sat there in stupefied amazement at the
rapidity of the burning, compared with the time it had taken me to
build.

The abrupt end of my first love affair, that poor little minute in
which it was given me to see Nazzarena in the sunlight--caused me
a like amazement, a like discouragement. Day after day I had been
building up within myself my love story, so vague at first and then
so rich and serious, continually adding something to it--a smile, a
word, a meeting, and even a bit of scoffing on her part; now it was
admiration for her feats of horsewomanship--now that I had merely
passed through the Market Square and seen her _roulotte_. She had
filled a larger place in my life than I suspected, and now nothing more
happened. This void, so new to me, was harder to bear than real pain.
Unavailingly I tried to shake it off, for I could not as yet imagine
how much of comfort one may have remembering things. How should I
have known that it is possible to live outside of the present moment?
All that was left to me of Nazzarena gone, Nazzarena forever lost, it
was less the thought of her than an all pervading lassitude caused by
her absence--a lassitude which was dear to me, in which I seemed to
find her again, and which made me incapable of taking an interest in
anything whatever.

This condition of mind prevented my paying much attention to the
changes which were taking place at our house. I accommodated myself to
them without effort and every one spoke of my yielding disposition.
Since the tower scene a certain embarrassment had existed between
my father and my grandfather, which only my mother’s tact rendered
endurable to either. Though I had not been formally forbidden, I ceased
to walk out with grandfather or even to go to his room. He would
shut himself up a good part of the day to play on his violin. When
we assembled at table he made no attempt to come near me,--it was as
if he had entirely given up our intimacy. That seemed to me somewhat
ungrateful, in view of the important part I had taken in defending
him. Meal times became stupid. One held aloof, another was absorbed
in thought. I understood that both of them, by a tacit understanding,
had retired from the municipal campaign. No one dared to speak of the
elections, which were close at hand, but the notices posted on the
walls which I read on the way to school, told me how things were.
Martinod’s name appeared, and even Galurin’s, but Pour-the-drink and
the two artists had been left out. Aunt Deen talked to herself on the
staircase of extraordinary events and horrible traitors. In the end
Martinod had accomplished his purpose: the candidate whom he dreaded,
the only one he dreaded, had refused to run.

I also understood that grandfather had not gone again to the Café of
the Navigators, either by way of observing the truce, or to avoid
entreaties to which he would doubtless have been inclined to yield.
When he heard that father had been called to the bedside of Casenave,
who was delirious, he seemed surprised and even moved; he had therefore
not seen that old companion.

“Casenave ill!” he exclaimed. “He must have drunk too much.”

At luncheon father announced to us that Casenave was dead.

“I warned him,” he said. “He ought to have given up the bottle long
ago.”

“He chose for himself,” said grandfather.

He chose for himself! That was enough to excuse and justify all
actions, good or bad, and so I understood it. I saw a reply spring to
my father’s lips, but he repressed it, and merely added:

“I have warned Tem Bossette. He will come to the same end, if he does
not take care. It is already pretty late for him.”

“All of them drunkards,” summed up Aunt Deen, who liked to deal in
generalities.

Election Sunday came at last. I knew it by the multicoloured posters
which decorated the fronts of buildings and the greater affluence of
those that I had to wade through on the way to the School Mass. At
the house no one had made the slightest allusion to it. After the
spiritless luncheon grandfather put on his hat and grasped his cane.

“Where are you going?” asked Aunt Deen.

“Into the country.”

“You have voted already?”

“Indeed I have not.”

“It’s a duty.”

“That’s all the same to me.”

“After all, so much the better,” my aunt added; “you would have been
capable of voting for those scoundrels.”

She deemed it useless to designate them more definitely.

He had almost “solicited the suffrages of voters,” to quote from the
posters, and he didn’t even vote. He chose for himself and I could see
no reason to object. Every one had a right to do as he chose and to
change as he fancied,--otherwise what would become of liberty? As he
was going out he suddenly turned to me and proposed that I should go
with him.

“Just let me get my cap,” I cried, starting up, as if I had totally
forgotten the scene in the tower.

Father, who was observing us, checked my enthusiasm by saying:

“Thank you. To-day I will take him for a walk. I am at leisure.”

He very seldom allowed himself leisure. His patients were more and
more absorbing him. His reputation must have extended far and wide,
for he was sent for from great distances; his absences, his journeys
multiplied.

“I am no longer my own master,” he said to mother. “And life is
passing.”

“My dear,” she murmured. “I beg of you don’t overtire yourself so.”

She was always devising ways of caring for him, of finding means for
him to rest. To reassure her he would laugh, drawing himself up to
full height, rounding out his chest. He never needed rest. His robust
shoulders might have borne up the world; and in fact did he not
carry the burden of the house and of our seven futures? By a strange
complication of feeling, though inwardly I was always in a state of
revolt against him, I never ceased to admire him. I could not imagine
him beaten, or complaining. Life was for him one perpetual victory.

I admired him only at a distance. The prospect of this walk with him
appalled me, and I remained on the stairs, waiting for some unknown
event to interpose an obstacle.

“Come,” he said encouragingly, “run get your cap--make haste. The days
are long--we can take a good walk.”

There was no harshness in his sonorous voice, but rather that
encouraging tone that always brought hope to his patients. In fact,
neither when he took me home from the Café of the Navigators, nor in
the tower chamber, had he treated me harshly. But his kindness had
no softening effect upon me. I was not in the least grateful for it,
but still considered him as a ruthless tyrant bent upon keeping me in
fetters. As soon as he appeared I ceased to be free. Had he taken me to
the wildest, most desolate place in the world, I should still have seen
walls rising up around me. With grandfather it always seemed to me as
if all enclosures disappeared, and the enfranchised earth belonged to
every one--or to no one.

Why did my father impose upon me this long walk with him, the mere
prospect of which chilled me? Hadn’t Martinod’s revelations showed me
what his preferences were? He was proud of Bernard and Stephen, he was
always thinking of Mélanie. I had sometimes seen him looking at her
with a strange earnestness, as if he had never seen her before, or as
if he were imprinting her upon his memory; as for me, I didn’t count.
With all the power of my will I was determined to be a misunderstood
son, an unhappy, unjustly neglected child. It was necessary that I
should play this rôle, to keep alive the love-sadness in which I found
my chief pleasure.

Therefore I set out reluctantly, and let him see that I did. He on
the contrary made every effort to be gay. Perceiving that he desired
to put me at my ease, I became all the more reserved, in a spirit of
opposition.

We were off at last, not with the slow pace of idlers who have no
particular point in view, as grandfather and I were in the habit of
walking, but with a light, quick step as if to military music.

“If we walk fast,” he said, “we can do it in two or three hours.”

Desiring him to understand that I was not in the least interested in
the walk, I did not inquire where we were going. It would surely not
be that secluded place where the ferns grew thick, where furze clung
to the rocks, where, apart from the rest of the world, far from houses
and cultivated fields, I had been introduced to wild nature by the soft
music of a cascade.

I remember that as we were passing through a village I gave a great
kick to a fragment of an old drain tile that lay in the road. In an
instant all the dogs were howling at our heels. Somewhat terrified by
their wide open mouths and the great hubbub that I had aroused, I drew
near to my companion.

“Let them bark,” he said reassuringly. “You will see that it is just so
in life. As soon as one makes a little noise in the world all the dogs
rush upon you. If you turn against them you make yourself ridiculous.
The best way is to take no notice, and just let the dogs bark.”

Somehow I knew that he was thinking of Martinod and the slap he had
given him. As soon as we were beyond reach of the dogs I was vexed with
my father for having noticed my movement of fear.

We began to climb a hill by a good mule path. By degrees as we went up
into a purer air, he recovered his fine spirits. It was a lovely day
in late May or early June, warm but with a good breeze. Spring comes
slowly in my country, and vegetation starts suddenly into life. It
might have begun the day before, or the day before that, so bright were
the leaves, so rich the grass, so gay the flowers. We crossed a grove
of oaks, beeches and birches; the ruddy brown oaks formed the pillars
of an immense vaulted temple, hiding the sky.

“Ah,” said father, pausing for breath, and taking off his hat, the
better to feel the coolness that fell from the trees, “how good it is
to be here, and what a beautiful day!”

I wondered at his raptures over so common a thing, which I had so often
enjoyed, not considering how seldom he had an opportunity for such
enjoyment. But he went on:

“It is terrible to be so busy! Not to have time to enjoy the sunshine
and the wide spaces, nor to talk with one’s sons as often as one would
wish. Do you remember the old times, Francis, when I used to tell you
about the wars in the Iliad and the return to Ithaca?”

I had not forgotten, but those epic stories seemed to me to belong
to a far-away and outgrown childhood. They dated from before that
convalescence which had changed my heart. They dated from before my
walks with grandfather, from before liberty and Nazzarena, from before
love. So I cared for them no longer. Hector had fought to guard his
home, and Ulysses had braved tempests to return to his, the smoke from
which he had seen afar, from the sea; but I was looking forward to my
individual future, when I should not be dependent upon any person or
anything.

We soon made our way through the cover of the trees and reached the
top of the hill. It was crowned by the ruins of an ancient fortress,
which, to judge by the broken and crumbling fragments of walls, and by
the height of the still upright and loop-holed towers, must have been
of considerable extent. Brambles and ivy were growing among the ruins,
which seemed to be standing out against the last assault, that of
vegetable growth, greedy to overwhelm them.

“I do not care much for ruins,” observed my father. “They are poetic,
but they weaken the desire for action. They remind us of the end of
things, and the object of life is to build up. Still, they have their
part to play, evoking the memory of a past of conflict and glory. This
was once the fortified château of Malpas. It commanded the road to the
frontier. What attacks and sieges it has endured! In 1814, when France
was assailed by three armies, though it was then entirely dismantled,
cannon were set upon the walls to resist the Austrians.”

I might have known that we were going there. The place is celebrated
through the entire province. For what it was celebrated I only vaguely
knew. Grandfather had never taken me there; he detested places that
every one visited, “where,” he used to say, “whole families go on
Sundays, places full of memories, great men, battles and greasy papers.”

Father grew animated when he talked of battles. Had not he too defended
the house against our enemies, against Aunt Deen’s they, so fiercely
bent upon its overthrow? Won to him for a moment, I had almost asked,
“And where were you during the war, father?” I knew that he had entered
the army and braved the snow with his company during a bitter winter.
But the question did not pass my lips. To have asked it would have
been to own that I was yielding to his influence, and I braced myself
to resist him. I would have given all this forest of oaks, birches and
beeches, all those ruins, so picturesque against the sky-line, for the
chestnut tree under which Nazzarena had passed.

He led me to the edge of the terrace that had once been the court of
the château, the wall of which had been thrown down. From here one
dominated the whole country; there was the lake with its indented
shores, its graceful little gulfs, its green promontories, the town
rising in terraces above it, easy to trace by its open squares and
public gardens; there were the villages of the plain, half hidden
in greenery, like flocks of sheep at rest, those on the hillsides
grouped around their sentry-like churches; and closing in the view, the
mountains, here clothed with forests, there rocky and bare. The pure
afternoon light, shimmering over all, sharpened their outlines. Here
and there a slate roof reflected back its arrows of gold. The various
crops could be distinguished by their different colours, by the various
shades of green, and all the boundaries of the indefinitely divided
properties, hedges, walls or fences, and the little white cemeteries
with their square plots, near the groups of houses, stood out clear.

Father named over all the inhabited places, and then the hills and
valleys. His way was not in the least like grandfather’s. Where
grandfather and I would have looked for such traces of nature as
we could find still surviving in its pristine simplicity between
the havoc wrought by plough and axe, the changes brought about by
agricultural toil, he, on the contrary, was pointing out the constant
intervention of man, the results of the toil of generations. Instead
of the free earth, it was the earth disciplined, constrained to serve,
obey, produce,--the earth that in the past had been watered by blood,
traversed by armed troops, protected by force against the foreigner,
as was meet for a frontier province of France, blessed by prayer. For
a very saint, a popular saint who had brought miracles into every-day
life, our Saint François de Sales had knelt upon this earth and offered
it to God. It was feeding the living; it was giving repose to the dead.

Glorious, fruitful, sacred earth, the eulogy of its threefold greatness
fell from his lips with such lucidity that in spite of myself I was
moved with him.

“And the house,” he concluded, “don’t you see the house?”

I looked for it without interest, realising that I had lost the habit
of looking in that direction. It was, however, easy enough to discover,
on the edge of the town, standing alone, and at its back the lovely
rural domain by which it joined the country.

Like the spirals of a soaring bird, father’s words had covered the
entire country, and now, drawing in its circles, had suddenly dropped
down upon our roof. He went on to describe the house in detail, as one
describes the features of a countenance.

It had not all been built at one time. At first there was only the
ground floor.

“You have seen the date on the tablet in the kitchen chimney--1610.”

“Or 1670,” I thought to myself, almost repeating, like grandfather,
whose reflection recurred to my mind: “It’s a matter of no importance.”
But I dared not risk this comment openly.

A century later our ancestors, having improved their fortunes, had
added a story and built the tower. Limited in one direction by the
town, the property had been extended toward the plain, then covered by
woods. Trees had been cut down to make room for the garden, for fields
and meadows. It had been a constant and oft repeated struggle against
difficulties, against mischance and against other foes. Did father,
then, believe in Aunt Deen’s _they_? I had almost smiled, but he
did not give me time. Each generation had brought its effort to the
common task, and one or another--that of the garde-français, that of
the grenadier,--its contribution of honour; the chain had not been
broken.

I felt a strong desire to object--“How about grandfather?” What would
he have said to that?

He answered without my question, with no bitterness in his voice,
when he went on. Sometimes the chain had been stretched almost to
the breaking point, and the house had seen bad days. He pictured it
ploughing the waves like a strong ship that has an unerring pilot at
the helm. His voice, which in the old days had so joyfully related the
exploits of heroes, seemed now to rise, with growing exaltation, into a
sort of hymn to the house. It was the poem of the land, the race, the
family, it was the history of our realm, our dynasty.

Through the years that have fled since then, the memory of that day,
far from weakening, has grown more full of meaning to my eyes. My
father had measured the length of the road which I had followed
in separating myself from him, and was endeavouring to recall me,
to overtake me, to attach me to himself again. Before resorting to
authority he was trying to kindle my imagination, awaken my heart, free
them from chimeras and set before them an object capable of moving
them. Only, hemmed in on all sides as he was by the pressure of daily
duty, he had felt the need of haste, he had only this one day, a part
of which was already gone, only a few fleeting hours in which to effect
my transformation. He was hoping to regain his lost son by a single
effort, counting upon his incomparable art of winning men, of subduing
them to himself.

Now, so late, I realise that all he was saying to convince me, to
awaken in me an emotion which should free me from my bonds, must have
been as noble as a Homeric song. Even then I had some inward intuition
of it. I do not know if ever more eloquent words were uttered than
those he spoke to me upon that hilltop, while evening was slowly
beginning to paint the sky and breathe peace upon the earth. I can find
no other words to express it,--he was paying court to me like a lover
who feels that he is not loved, who yet knows that his love alone can
bestow happiness. The affection of a father descends, calls to ours to
rise to it; but his, by a unique privilege which in no sense lowered
its pride, rose to me, enveloped me, implored me.

Yes, I really believe that my father was imploring me, and I remained
apparently unmoved while I should have interrupted him with a cry in
which my whole being was outpoured. Yet I was not in fact unmoved.
There was too much pathos in the tone of his voice not to thrill
through my early awakened sensibility. But by a singular inconsistency,
that in me which was moved by his voice was precisely the very desire,
all the desires, that he was trying to eradicate from my heart. That
voice was chanting the stones of the house that had been built to
triumph over time, the shelter of the roof, the unity of the family,
the strength of the race which maintains itself upon the soil, the
peace of the dead whom God has in his keeping. And while this canticle
was thus making melody I was distinctly hearing another, sung for me
alone by the music of the vagabond wind, the immensity of unknown
spaces, the words of the shepherd on his way to the mountain; the
apple blossoms showered upon my face the first day of my love, and
Nazzarena’s laugh, and the hopeless shadow of the chestnut tree under
which she had passed.

For one moment my father thought that he had conquered. His piercing
eyes, always studying me, discerned my emotion. An impulse of sincerity
moved me to turn away without speaking, and he understood that I was
far from him. His voice ceased. Surprised by the sudden silence I
looked at him in my turn, and I saw sadness sweeping over him like a
shadow, that heart-breaking shadow that rises from the hollows of the
valleys and slowly climbs the mountains as night draws on.


... Father, now I can interpret your sadness. Alone I have once more
made the pilgrimage of Malpas, and alone there, I could understand
you better. You were thinking of your two elder sons, who, burning
with sacrifice, would soon be far away, for the service of God and of
the fatherland. You were thinking of your dear Mélanie, who, drawn
by the severe serenity of the cloister, was awaiting the hour of her
majority. The main branches of the tree of life that you had planted
were detaching themselves from the trunk. You had been counting upon
me to continue your work and I was escaping you. By yourself alone you
had sustained the tottering house, and the house, overwhelming you
with labours and cares, was separating your own from you. It is the
penalty of material necessities,--they do not leave time enough for
the guardianship of souls. But you were thinking of triumphing over
time by the mere power of your virile love for me, and your eloquence.
In one walk, one conversation, you had hoped to regain the ground you
had lost, without violating the respect due to your father. The heart
of a child of fourteen years is an obscure heart, especially when love
has entered it too soon. I did feel the importance of what you were
teaching me, and yet I was considering how to shake it off. The less
clearly I understood the word liberty, the more it fascinated and
drew me. All the music to which I was listening was the music that it
made....


My father’s disappointment found expression in a gesture. Grieved at
his inability to win me he suddenly seized me by the two arms as if to
lift me from the ground, and prove that he possessed me.

“Oh, understand me, poor child,” he exclaimed. “You must indeed
understand me. Your whole future depends upon it.”

“Father, you hurt,” was my only reply.

I lied, for his grasp had merely surprised me. He tried to make light
of it.

“Oh, come, that’s not true! I didn’t hurt you in the least.”

“Yes, you did,” I insisted with temper.

He replied kindly, almost apologetically, “I did not mean to.”

Ah, I might well be proud of myself! That strength which I dreaded had
entreated instead of breaking me: it had not conquered me.

He laid his hand on my head, no doubt to clear my mind of any mistaken
interpretation of his former act, and though he did not lean hard upon
it, I felt it heavy upon me. A few years earlier, grandfather, by the
same imposition of hands, had invested me with the ownership of all
nature.

“Let us go back,” said my father. “Let us go back to the house.”

He said “the house,” like me. Until then the expression had been too
familiar to make an impression. This time it did impress me.

On the homeward way we heard the detonations of small cannon, fired in
honour of the elections.

“So soon!” he said. “The Martinod list is elected.”

The frustration of his public hopes had followed hard upon his paternal
disappointment. For a moment he bowed his head, but it was only for a
moment.

The church bell of a neighbouring village rang the Angelus. Another
replied, and then another, breathing over all the country-side the
serenity of evening and of prayer.

My father stood still to listen, and he smiled. Through this peaceful
reminder of the Annunciation God was speaking to him, and through it he
regained composure.

“Let’s walk fast,” he said, “your mother may be anxious over our delay.”

I was thinking within myself: “One of these days I shall go away. One
of these days I shall be my own master, like grandfather.”




                                  VII

                          THE FIRST DEPARTURE


A FEW days after this disappointing walk--perhaps even the next
day--I went to my mother’s room to get a forgotten school book. I was
already turning the latch of the door when I heard two voices. One, my
mother’s, was familiar to my ear, but its tones were almost new to me,
by reason of the firmness now mingled with its habitual gentleness;
when we were little she had sometimes spoken to us in that tone to
require more attention and earnestness in our little duties, or our
lessons. As for the other, it must have been that of a stranger, even
of some one asking for alms, for it came to my ear hushed, veiled,
melancholy. What visitor was this whom my mother received in her room
and not in the drawing-room? I dared neither go in nor let go of the
latch, lest in falling it should betray my presence. Hooted to the
spot, at once by timidity and curiosity, I listened to the dialogue
going on within.

“I am sure you are mistaken,” my mother was saying. “The child is
going through a crisis, but he is not different from his brothers and
sisters; he is not estranged from us.”

“The chasm is deeper than you think, Valentine,” replied the other
voice. “I feel that I am losing him. If you had seen him at Malpas,
how inflexible he was, how he resisted my exhortations, almost my
entreaties.”

“He is only a child.”

“Too mature a child. I can not yet be sure what it is that estranges
him from us, but I shall find out. Ah, poor dear, there is no use in
trying to reassure me; three years ago my father completed his cure by
keeping him out of doors, but he did not give back to us the same child
that we had entrusted to him: he has changed his heart, and it is in
childhood that the heart is formed. This child is no longer ours.”

_This child is no longer ours_. The statement lifted me up with a
sort of vanity. I belonged to no one. I was free. That liberty which
grandfather had not been able to command, even in the blood of the days
of June, had all of a sudden become mine!

I had recognised my father’s voice, and my parents were talking of
me. But why had they so interchanged their attitudes that I had not
at first recognised them? I had always supposed that they could not
change. Mother was always anxious about nothing at all--when the wind
blew or the thunder growled, even far away, she never failed to light
the blessed candle; or her shadow behind her chamber window told us
that she was watching for the return of the absent ones. She was never
wholly at peace, unless we were all grouped around her, except, indeed,
when praying, for she lived very near to God. It sometimes happened
that father would laugh at her for her endless anxieties. During my
illness, and longer ago, when the house had been put up for sale, it
was he, always he, who kept up her woman’s courage, who assured her
of the future, reminded her of the constant protection of Providence.
I had never imagined them otherwise, and now behold they had changed
parts,--it was mother who was uplifting father in his discouragement.

I should have been disgusted with myself if I had listened at doors.
Urged by self-esteem, mingled with a sense of honour, I should not have
hesitated to enter the room but for the next words, which were uttered
by my father, and which nailed me to the spot, the latch still in my
hand, powerless to go in or to draw back, so greatly was I impressed
and captivated.

“The same thing took place between him and me that long ago took place
between me and my father--the same family tragedy.”

“Oh, Michel, what do you mean?”

“Yes, my father was right when he recalled it the day that I found
Francis in his room, the day when Francis took his part against
me--unhappy child! When I was little, I, too, had felt the influence of
my grandfather. Only it was exercised in the other direction. He had
been president of the Chamber at the Court. Returning home at the age
of retirement, he amused himself with cultivating the garden. It was he
who planted the rose-garden. He taught me the importance, the beauty,
yes, the beauty of the order to which man may subject not only himself,
but nature. Perhaps it is to him that I owe it that I have been able to
direct my life, to dominate it. But my father, who was interested only
in his music and his utopias, used to laugh at us. ‘He will turn that
child into a geometrician,’ he used to say. It is he who has turned my
child into a rebel.”

He added, bitterly, “A father, in his own house, should never yield his
own authority to any one. To withdraw Francis from that influence which
has gained the upper hand of mine, I should not hesitate even to send
him to boarding school. It would only be anticipating by a year or two
the method we adopted for the older children. And in fact our school is
hardly advanced enough for him now.”

“It would be one more expense,” objected mother.

“Money is a small thing compared with education.”

Thus I learned that they were proposing to arrange my future without
consulting me! Boarding school--prison--was to punish me for my
independence. For the moment I was crushed,--then, in my pride I
refused to admit that I was crushed. Would not that be to admit the
attractions of the house? Since they were considering the possibility
of sending me away I would get ahead of them, and would myself ask to
go. Yes, that should be the punishment I would inflict upon my parents.
Upon my parents only?

But I could not remain there at the door and be surprised--and besides,
I was ashamed! I therefore finally turned the latch and went in. I went
in like an important personage, steeling myself against the emotion
which was getting the better of me.

“I have come for my book,” said I, by way of justifying my entrance.

Father and mother, sitting opposite one another, looked at me and then
exchanged a glance. I found my book--which a careful hand had put in
order upon the table, seized it hastily and turned to go.

“Francis,” said my mother.

I turned to her with an expressionless face, put on to keep back the
tears.

“Listen, my child,” she said,--and when she called me “child” I drew
myself up--“you must always obey your father.”

Obey! the word was odious to me. “Why, I always listen to him,” I said.

Father fixed me with his piercing eyes that hurt as if I felt the
points of their rays. He seemed to hesitate; no doubt he did hesitate
between his desire to explain and the sense of its uselessness.
Recovering his natural--and by that very fact, authoritative--voice, he
simply gave me a proof of confidence.

“We were talking of you just now,” he said.

“Yes, of you,” repeated mother, somewhat anxiously.

Then came a sort of interrogatory:

“What do you think of being when you are grown?” asked father. “You
think about it sometimes, don’t you? What sort of life would you
prefer? You have your own tastes and preferences. Have you chosen your
vocation, like your brothers?”

My vocation! Just what I expected! Vocations were often talked about at
our house, and how every one ought faithfully to fulfil his own. During
my illness, and in the early days of my convalescence, before my walks
with grandfather, I had often thought, and even announced, that when
I was grown up I would be a doctor, too. I could not imagine a finer
career. I had talked in the kitchen with the peasants who came for the
doctor, their faces all drawn with pain, and on the staircase I had met
the train of patients who came for consultation with dolorous faces,
and went away cheered. Though I had ceased to talk about it it was
understood at our house that I was to be my father’s successor.

“I don’t know,” I replied, turning away.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, in a surprised and disappointed tone. “I thought
you wanted to be a doctor.”

“Oh, no!” I replied, suddenly making up my mind in a spirit of
opposition.

He said nothing more of this hope which had been dear to him, but went
on:

“Oh, well, you have plenty of time to choose. Lawyer, perhaps? There
are noble causes to defend. Or architect? Building houses, restoring
old ones, constructing schools and churches--we have no good architects
about here; there is a vacancy for one.”

Thus by turns he extolled the various professions which might keep me
in my native town. As he spoke the dastardly thought came to me of
separating myself entirely from the house, of achieving the conquest
of my own liberty. I sought about in my mind for a calling which would
oblige me to leave home. In our part of the country there were no mines
nor any metallurgical establishments.

“I want to be an engineer,” I said.

I had but just made the discovery, and knew but vaguely the nature of
the profession. There had been some talk about it in the family for
Stephen.

“Really?” said my father, without pursuing the subject. “We will talk
about it another time.”

“Only,” I said, hanging my head and averting my eyes, somewhat
surprised to find how one thing followed another, “only I should need
another preparation than that of this school.”

“Your school isn’t sufficient?”

“Oh, the teachers are good fellows,” I replied contemptuously, “but as
for lessons, they are far from brilliant.”

Father said “ah!” and was silent. Raising my eyes I saw how surprised
he was, and that was as joyful to me as a victory. Perhaps there was
also in his countenance another expression than one of surprise. I was
giving him an opportunity to get rid of me, as I was pleased to think
was his wish; why did he not make the most of it? He turned to mother,
who seemed grieved.

“This requires reflection,” he said.

How could one, at such an early age, find pleasure in tormenting
those who loved him? Perhaps the picture in my Bible representing the
return of the Prodigal Son had taught me the inexhaustible resources
of paternal love. My father seemed to me so strong that I could have
no fear of hurting him. All through life it is those upon whom one
most depends whom one uses and misuses without mercy, not so much
as thinking that they may be weary, since they never complain. And
counting on their energy and health one always persuades oneself that
there will be plenty of time to make it up to them, in case of need.

And yet I had discerned my father’s sorrow as I stood at the door, and
the altered tone of his voice had revealed to me its depth. I am asking
myself now if that very confession of sorrow, far from touching me did
not lessen him in my eyes, accustomed as I had been to consider him an
invincible hero--whether it did not change for me that picture of him
which he had imprinted upon me from my earliest intelligence.


The long vacation did not bring its usual gaiety and diversions, that
year. Mélanie’s departure for the convent, and that of Stephen, young
as he was, for the Seminary had been finally decided upon. They were
merely waiting for the month of October; then father would take his
daughter to Paris and at the same time would place me in the school
where my two elder brothers had finished their preparatory studies--for
I had gained my point--and mother would go to Lyons with Stephen. This
knowledge cast over our games and our gatherings a shade of sadness,
which those concerned tried in vain to clear away. Aunt Deen, who was
growing a little heavier, climbed the stairs more slowly, blew her nose
noisily, prayed very loud and with a certain impetuosity which must
have shaken the saints in Paradise, and murmured Thy will be done in
a tone that could hardly pass for one of submission. Grandfather shut
himself up in his tower, playing his violin with hands that trembled,
adding other notes than those of the score, went out for his walk
at nightfall without a word to any one, and seemed to be living in
ignorance and indifference concerning all that was going on in the
family. When he met me he would simply make the remark, accompanied
with his little laugh,

“Ah, there you are!” while he never spoke to either of my brothers or
sisters as he passed them. But his laugh did not ring true; my ear was
quick to perceive that our separation weighed upon him. I would gladly
have rushed to him if he had not had an air of thinking lightly of all
the vexations in the world. The shadow of my father was always between
us. I had had no orders to avoid him; our alienation was by tacit
consent. We had never dared to confess to any complicity. One day,
however, he added:

“So, you are going to Paris?”

“Yes, grandfather, when schools open.”

“You are in luck. One feels more free in Paris than anywhere else. You
will see.”

Was he jesting again? For me Paris meant boarding school, prison. And
besides, had he not often told me that large cities are baneful, that
real happiness was to be found only in the fields? But grandfather
cared little enough for logic.

My approaching departure--that departure which I had proudly demanded,
and which inspired within me a secret repulsion against which I
hardened myself, made but small stir in the house--a fact that greatly
irritated my self-love--being lost in that of Mélanie and my brothers,
as a small boat is lost in the wake of a great vessel. Bernard, who
had graduated from Saint-Cyr with a high grade that put him in the
marine infantry, would go to Toulon, whence he would shortly embark for
Tonkin. Now his first word, on his return home had been--I heard him
say it to Aunt Deen, who had hastened, breathless, to open the door,

“You can’t imagine the pleasure with which I ring this bell.”

Then why did he ask to go to China? Mélanie and Stephen, too, exchanged
mystifying confidences.

“Do you really want to go?” Stephen asked his sister. “We are so happy
here. As for me, there are days when I am not sure.”

Mélanie, with illumined eyes, replied:

“I must, indeed, since God calls me,” adding, almost gaily,

“But I shall carry a lot of handkerchiefs, a dozen at least, for I feel
sure that I shall cry all the tears that are in me.”

Why, oh why, then, that craze to go away when they said they were
so happy at home? And I, too, why was I suffering in advance at the
thought of leaving the house, since I had discovered that I was
misunderstood and forlorn, and since I was determined to go?


One evening toward the end of August our friend Abbé Heurtevant came to
see us, with a lenten face, so long and dolorous that we all expected
to hear of some catastrophe. Mother hastily spoke for us all.

“Monsieur l’Abbé, for the love of God what has happened?”

“Ah, madame, Monseigneur is dead!”

I was the only one, except grandfather, who supposed him to be speaking
of his ecclesiastical superior. But all the others understood, and
bewailed the death of the Count de Chambord, who was known to have had
an affection of the stomach for several days, or rather, as our abbé
declared, to have been poisoned by strawberries. Aunt Deen burst out in
tumultuous despair, my sisters endeavouring to console her, and father
uttered a short obituary address which to me seemed lacking in heart.

“It is a misfortune for France, which he would have governed wisely.
Monseigneur the Count of Paris succeeds him: the two princes had become
reconciled, and that was the crown of a noble life. But what is the
matter with you, Abbé?”

The abbé appeared to be even more inconsolable than Aunt Deen.
Grandfather, who since the affair of the electoral lists had said less
and less concerning his political opinions, could not control his
tongue on this occasion:

“Why, don’t you see that his prophecies are choking him? He is thinking
of the Abbey of Orval and of Sister Rose-Colombe. No hope now of
hoisting his ‘young prince’ to the throne. There he is, dead from
eating too much fruit. And the new Pretender isn’t much younger than
the old one.”

“Father, I beg!” protested father.

The abbé, crushed and crumpled in the depths of an easy chair, suddenly
started up, drew up the long lines of his body till one might have
thought he had climbed upon something in order to orate, and in a
thundering voice made confession of his faith:

“The King is dead. Long live the King! And the lilies will bloom again!”

“They will bloom again,” repeated Aunt Deen, with conviction.


His public life checked, father was evidently transferring his ambition
to our future: he was fulfilling himself in us. I alone withdrew
myself from his solicitude, my suspicions having been aroused by
Martinod’s insinuations. It was not difficult for me to accumulate
causes of vexation. Thus I refused to consider my departure--that
departure which was my own doing--as any less important than that of
Bernard for the colonies, Stephen for the Seminary, or Mélanie for
the convent in the rue du Bac where the Sisters of Charity pass the
time of their novitiate. Mélanie’s going away especially wronged me,
because it coincided with my own. The people who came to visit my
mother on account of my sister’s “holocaust” as Mlle Tapinois called
it, exasperated me; they never alluded to me, no one condoled with my
parents for losing me, no one noticed me, and yet I was going away,
too. Even grandfather made not the slightest effort to keep me at
home--nor so much as expressed any regret.

The day of separation came, a grey, rainy day, in harmony with the
sadness that hung over the house. The laughing Louise followed,
weeping, every step of Mélanie, who clung closely to mother. Every one
said insignificant nothings--no one had any appropriate words, and the
time was slipping away. We must start for the station. We had begun
to think of it long before the time, and mother added to her other
anxieties her fear that we should be too late.

Neither grandfather nor Aunt Deen was to be of the escorting party. The
former dreaded emotional exhibitions, and Aunt Deen excused herself
to Mélanie; she simply could not weep silently, and she preferred to
remain in solitude where she could give way to her grief without making
a disturbance; having said which she began loudly to bewail herself.

I went up to the tower chamber with my sister.

“Till we meet again, grandfather,” murmured Mélanie.

“Adieu, rather, little girl.”

“No, grandfather; till we meet again in heaven, where we are all going.”

He made a vague gesture which said only too plainly, “I won’t spoil
your illusions,” adding,

“You are carrying out your own idea. You are right. Till we meet again,
then, in the valley of Jehoshaphat.”

He showed himself no more moved over me.

“Well, well, my boy; may Paris be good to you!”

We went out together, last of all. Mélanie kissed old Mariette, who
murmured, “Can it be possible!” and stepped across the threshold. Twice
she turned again toward the house, and the second time she made the
sign of the cross. We could hear Aunt Deen’s cries from her closed room.

We were too early at the station, and had to drag out the time in
the waiting-room and on the platform. Father busied himself with the
tickets and the baggage. A few family friends who had come to bid us
good-bye joined us with doleful faces and words of sympathy. Thus we
had to endure Mlle Tapinois,--whom I could never think of except in
her night dress with a candle in her hand, since I had recognised her
in the aged dove in “Scenes of Animal Life”--and Abbé Heurtevant,
who since the death of his monarch had grown bent, and could predict
nothing but misfortune. Nothing could take place in our town without
the whole population mixing in. Marriage, departure or death, the
public claimed its share. Mother was politely thanking all these people
whose presence so distressed her--she would fain have been alone with
her daughter, and I could see that she was enduring martyrdom. The last
moments of our being together were flying. Louise, Nicola and James
clung to Mélanie--Bernard was trying to brighten the conversation, but
his pleasantries fell wide of the mark. As for Stephen, absorbed, he
was doubtless thinking that it would soon be his turn, or perhaps he
was praying.

When the moment came, mother wanted to be the last to say good-bye; she
clasped her daughter to her breast without a word, then, relinquishing
her hold she whispered low,

“My child, I bless thee.”

I was beside her, waiting for my turn to say good-bye. I used to
imagine to myself a parent’s blessing as a solemn act, such as I had
seen it in pictures; but here it was given in the twinkling of an eye,
and without so much as the lifting of a hand.

But for the demonstrations of Mlle Tapinois, the abbé and several other
persons who made a point of uttering memorable words, one might have
thought that ours was just any ordinary going away. The train started.
Having got in last, I was nearest the door. My father invited me to
give that place to my sister. The invitation wounded me, for it sounded
too much like an order. Of course I ought to have thought first of
getting out of the way.

Mélanie extended her head from the window with no heed to the falling
rain. She waved her arm--then as the train rounded a curve she turned
back to the compartment with red eyes, but only to hasten to the other
window. I knew that she was looking for the house, which was visible
from that side. After that she sat down covering her face with her
hands. As she remained thus, without moving, father gently took her in
his arms.

“You know, my child, if it makes you too unhappy, I shall take you home
again.”

She raised her head, tears raining down her cheeks, and with a
heart-broken smile replied,

“Oh, father, it is truly my vacation. Only I have been so happy at
home,--and never again to see our mother, nor the house--it is hard?”

“And for us?” said my father.

He turned away his head. Perhaps if I had better appreciated his
grief, I should have suffered less, in my corner, from thinking myself
forgotten. But as he controlled himself, I was free to torment myself
to my heart’s content. My sister was going away to carry out her own
idea, as grandfather had said, whereas I was being sent to prison. I
quite forgot that I had myself asked to be sent. But had I not been a
prisoner already, at our house? And in my rebellion, working myself up
with the thought of Nazzarena on the high road, the sun shining through
her hair and her teeth parted in her smile, I repeated to myself the
phrase which chimed with the movement of the train,

“I want to be free! I want to be free!”




                                BOOK IV




                                   I

                             THE EPIDEMIC


I WAS being prepared for liberty by years of seclusion, the history
of which, after so many petty rebellions, I shall not set down here.
I never became wonted to that boarding school to which I had demanded
to be sent in a moment of pride which for nothing in the world would I
have disavowed. Yet I passed for a good scholar, whose only fault was a
little reserve or dissimulation.

I suffered frightfully during the first absence from home. I used to
cry in the dormitory, my head smothered in the covers, until I fell
asleep, enwrapped in my sorrow. But I never uttered a word of complaint.

My parents no doubt thought that I had accepted my new life without
difficulty. My father wrote to me regularly and at length: no doubt
this correspondence made an addition to his burdens for which I was
not in the least obliged to him. Self love urged me to repel all his
advances. Knowing nothing of Martinod’s insinuations, how should he
have guessed that I saw on every side injustice to myself, marks
of preference for my brothers? I systematically distorted phrases,
sentiments, thoughts. If, in his virile love, he avoided expressions
of affection, for fear of softening me, I accused him of harshness. If
on the other hand he gave way to his fondness for me, it was simply
to deceive me, and impose all the more upon me an authority which I
exaggerated to the point of imagining that it was everywhere about me,
an imagined persecution which became unsupportable. I usually wrote
to my mother, and he never remarked upon the fact. Yet he noticed
it, and several of his letters showed that he did. “I know,” he once
wrote, “that you do not care to confide in your father.” And mother,
who had also noticed it, missed no opportunity of writing about him,
emphasising his kindness of heart above all his other merits, reminding
me of instances of it, which exasperated me. If he had become aware of
my purposed and tenacious hostility, he had no suspicion of its cause;
and so the chasm which in the beginning a single step might easily have
crossed, grew ever wider between us.

This tension of my mind inspired in me a great ardour for work. I
achieved brilliant successes with perfect indifference, successes which
contributed to deceive my family, who found in them a proof that I had
accepted my new discipline. A good pupil, as my bulletins had it, could
not but be a fine child and the joy of his family. Aunt Deen sent me
extravagant compliments in bad handwriting, setting all down to the
account of my filial affection. From grandfather I never heard.

But what were these positive results in comparison with the inward
experiences that were going on in me? Little by little I relinquished
all religious practices, building up for myself a sort of mysticism
in which I formed a habit of taking refuge. Imagination substituted
for my walks in the forest and other wild retreats, and even for my
meetings with Nazzarena, a sort of abstract notion of nature and of
love in which I found intense joy. I invented elusive landscapes and
ideal passions. I was at the age in which one most easily lives in
metaphysical chimeras, when ideas are mistaken for affections, and
the sensibilities have no need of the spring-board of reality to leap
into action. In my dreams I was my own master, until such time as life
should make me independent. I had discovered the independence of the
brain, and that it can supply all that is lacking. And to crown all,
I threw myself into music as into an element which takes one’s own
shape; plastic and so to say liquid, it lent itself to all my longings
with a docility which filled me with wonder. I had come upon the
_Freischütz_ and _Euryanthe_, that forest where the alleys
reach beyond sight. It was more beautiful and especially more vast than
the one which long ago had awakened me to the latent life of things.
By it I scaled mountains higher and more inaccessible than that to
which the shepherd had been leading his flock. And sometimes the sharp
pain of the notes that I drew from my instrument brought back to me
the unforgettable lamentation of the nightingale in love with the
rose: _All night long I wear out my throat for her, but she sleeps
and hears me not_. For her? I did not know her name, I could not
perceive her face, but that she existed I had not the slightest doubt.
But--strange phenomenon--she was no longer Nazzarena: fidelity itself
was but one more chain to break.

With the help of music and of my thoughts I built for myself a palace
into which no visitor was admitted: they thought me present, and simply
absent-minded, when in fact I had retreated to my solitude, the only
place where I was actually myself. This faculty of concentration set me
apart from friendship. No schoolfellow was admitted to my friendship;
so that my family, against which I was in rebellion, by itself alone
represented to me all humanity.

Thus all the seeds dropped during my convalescence were germinating
in me after the lapse of a few years. I was free within myself, and
no one suspected it. My parents were satisfied with my conduct and my
place in school. I had the reputation of being quiet, obedient and
easy to manage, and under the shelter of that reputation I let myself
glide peacefully into a happy state in which I recognised no other law
than my own and which was pretty near to anarchy. I made sacrifices to
contingencies, but they courted for little in comparison with my inward
joys.

When I went home for vacations my coldness and indifference surprised
and saddened my family. Unable to understand them, they attributed
them to humility, to the reserve which was characteristic of me, and
they multiplied efforts to bring me back to natural ways--only to make
me all the more distant. The laugh of Louise, who was now the flower of
the house, was as powerless to thaw me out as the martial exhortations
of Bernard, at home on leave, which simply exasperated me. As for the
two younger children, Nicola and Jamie, I inspired in them a sort of
fear, so that they avoided me. After having alienated them, there was
nothing for me but to be vexed at their bad dispositions, which I was
not slow to do.

Aunt Deen, seeking for a flattering explanation of my changed humour,
discovered this:

“He is so superior!”

When my father got hold of me, with a little time to spare, he tried
all means to resume the conversation that we had had on the hill of
Malpas, that election day. With a secret disquietude which I felt, and
which in a spirit of opposition only anchored me the more firmly in
my attitude, he saw that I had closed my eyes to all that pertained
to the field of observation, whether it were history, the past,
tradition, laws, manners and customs, or practical every-day life, and
confined myself to abstract reading, philosophy, mathematics, or threw
myself still more absorbingly into music--an ambiguous and undefined
régime, the mirages of which he dreaded for me. Deeply affected by
the departure of Mélanie and Stephen and the approaching absence of
Bernard, who was at home merely for a few months before setting out for
his destination in Tonkin, where the war seemed likely to be unending,
he had hoped to talk intimately with me, to win me back, to guide
me. I would listen to him courteously, hardly replying, and he could
not misunderstand my silence and my distant manner. He never wearied
in pointing out to me the superiority which in every profession, in
all the course of human existence, is conferred by a clear vision of
realities. How much intelligence, tact, even diplomacy, he must have
expended in that effort to win me back which I constantly evaded, I now
realise as I recall it all.

Nicola and James, now grown beyond babyhood, used to accompany us in
these walks which were such a bore to me, and which recalled others,
that I had loved; they were interested in his conversation, which
almost became a monologue, and in after years I discovered in them the
impress of these teachings by which they had unconsciously profited,
while I was determinedly refractory to them. Sometimes I would hear in
his voice--suddenly grown imperious--the echo of that which on that
memorable day had thrilled me to the marrow, and I almost expected
to hear him say, as then, _But understand me, poor child. You must
indeed understand me--your future is at stake_--then the excited
voice would calm itself, or would be silent. My father had recognised
the uselessness of his effort.

I was able also effectively to evade the solicitations of my mother,
who sought my confidence and was troubled by my indifference to
religion.

“You don’t pray enough,” she would say to me. “You don’t know how
necessary it is. It is the most real thing in the world.”

I had, however, been clever enough to resume relations with grandfather
without awakening suspicion. We used to practise together, though he
trembled a little and his violin seemed tremulous. Or we would discuss
a sonata or a symphony for hours together. Thus I had watched him
admiringly years ago, in the Café des Navigateurs, getting off into a
corner with Gallus. If any member of the family undertook to join in
our conversation we would gaze at him in a superior manner, as at a
profane person incapable of an intelligent opinion. Music could have
meaning only for us; it belonged to us; and through it we resumed our
former intimacy.

I had entered upon my eighteenth year when the event occurred which
was to decide my future life. The baccalaureates had covered me with
honour, and for a year past I had been preparing for the Central
School, with no particular drawing toward it, and even with perfect
indifference. A certain taste for natural sciences, purposely
abandoned, had for a time given my father the false hope that I should
return to the plans of my childhood, and could even be his successor
some day. But I had chosen the calling of engineer because it would
take me away from home, and permit me to be my own master.


When the time came for us to return home the first figure that we never
failed to see on the platform at the station was that of our father,
who had hastened to meet us. His face would be actually illuminated
with paternal love. I used to greet him as if I had left him the day
before, but he would not let himself be put off so, and would always
open his arms to me as if he were finding me after I had long been
lost. These effusions in public appeared to me very vulgar, and I
evaded them most artfully.

It was the end of July. Examinations over, I had come home for the
vacation. Having thoroughly irritated me by clasping me to his breast,
my father had me get into a carriage, my valise at our feet, and we
took the road to the house, which was at the other end of the town, and
on its outskirts, as I have elsewhere described.

We were crossing the Market Square when a group of the lower sort of
people cast hostile glances at us, accompanied by low growls; then some
one cried,

“Down with Rambert.”

I turned in amazement to my father, who had made no reply, and was
even smiling at those who insulted him;--oh, not that smile that I had
already seen upon his lips when preparing for a conflict, but a smile
almost of sympathy, of commiseration. Why this sudden unpopularity?
They might refuse to elect him, but they had respected, and above all,
feared him. The coachman had already whipped up his horse, a few hoots
pursued us. I could not but ask what it all meant.

“Oh, nothing,” he said. “Some poor creatures. I will tell you about it.”

The household rushed to the steps to meet us. It was the usual
proceeding, at the return of each absent one. Grandfather alone did not
stir, and I heard his violin giving forth its plaintive melody from the
tower chamber. Father told of the manifestations of which we had been
victims.

“Oh, the wretches!” exclaimed Aunt Deen, who by reason of rheumatism
in the leg limped a little, but whom years had robbed of none of her
war-like virtue. “They came all the way here a while ago; they or some
others. Fortunately the gate was closed.”

She had barricaded us against “them,” our enemies.

“Oh, my God!” murmured mother--“if only nothing happens to you, Michel!”

Father explained the recent incident. The municipality which had
been elected three years previously had given orders for important
aqueducts to be built to bring water to the public fountains. These
works had been awarded to a somewhat unscrupulous and even disreputable
contractor, who had been put forward by important political influences.
It appeared that within a few days father had discovered two or three
cases of typhus, both in the hospital and in the working people’s
quarter, and he attributed them to the water recently introduced into
the city, which must have been either contaminated or ill trapped. If
he had been correct in his diagnosis of the origin of the disease he
dreaded an epidemic. He had therefore at once laid before the mayor a
request for the immediate closing of the suspected fountains, and had
asked for a decree enjoining the use of boiled water only, with other
precautionary measures. Whereupon the mayor, who was a grocer by the
name of Baboulin, being advised by his deputy, Martinod, had refused
the request out of deference to public sentiment. Our town, built like
an amphitheatre above the lake, was a chosen summer resort of a large
colony of strangers. If there should be any talk of contagion the
season’s business would be ruined at a stroke. And besides, it would
have been an avowal of the inadequacy of those famous improvements of
which, according to custom, much had been made to add to the fame of
the town. The quarrel had leaked out, and the public had violently
taken the side against the prophet of evil.

I listened to the story with the indulgence of a traveller whose
duty it is to share politely in the interests of his hosts. This was
provincial gossip, quick to be born, soon to die; and I had come from
Paris. Our friend Abbé Heurtevant dropped in at nightfall to lend
strength to them. Since the decease of the Count de Chambord he had
predicted nothing but plagues, wars, cyclones and catastrophes of all
sorts. He was in his element now, and scented from afar an odour of
cholera which would re-establish his blemished reputation and punish
the Republic.

“I hear,” he said to my father, “that they are going to give you a tin
pan serenade to-night.”

“A serenade,” repeated Aunt Deen. “I should like to see them! I’ll
empty a boiler of boiling water on their heads, since they won’t have
boiled water to drink.”

“Very well,” said my father. “I’ll wait.”

After dinner, mother, who was anxious, asked us to recite prayers
in common. I hesitated to join in these invocations which I deemed
puerile, and I only did repeat them with my lips, without heart,
merely, I said to myself, to avoid sowing discord the first day. As
for grandfather, he had valiantly mounted to his tower to direct his
telescope upon I know not what planet.

About nine o’clock we heard a formidable clamour, but it was far away.
For a time it neither drew nearer nor became more distant. The crowd
that made it must be marking time. We distinctly distinguished a sort
of refrain of two notes, the meaning of which we could not grasp.
Suddenly the bell rang at the gate.

“There they are!” exclaimed Aunt Deen.

But no; under the gas jet only one shadow was distinguishable, and that
a small one. Aunt Deen and mother were of opinion that the gate should
be opened only for a good reason.

“Probably some one is sick,” observed my father; and he himself went to
the gate. He recognised in the nocturnal visitor Mimi Pachoux, who had
furtively hastened thither to tell us:

“It appears, Doctor, that there are other cases; and they are
assaulting the mayor’s office.”

“Oh, truly? What is it that they are shouting?”

“Resign! Resign!”

“Very well, good friend. I am going.”

When this dialogue was reported to Aunt Deen she wanted to reward our
labourer’s devotion, but father checked her.

“Oh, don’t be in a hurry, aunt. He ran away from me these last days. He
simply anticipates the popular movement, when he is perfectly sure of
its direction.”

Then turning to me he asked, “Will you go with me? It will be a change
from your studies.”

It was one of those fine moonless nights of July when the stars seem to
hang low from the dark dome of heaven, like suspended lamps. We reached
the square of the City Hall, which was black with people, all the air
resounding with the one cry,

“Resign! Resign!”

We were at the back of the crowd, which was stamping and vociferating
before the fast-closed municipal building. There were groups of
citizens gathered from the cafés, into which the news had doubtless
spread, and there were also many family groups, with children in their
arms, the women more excited than the men, some of them demanding that
the mayor should be ducked in the fountain. To say truth, such an act
would have required considerable good will. To my mind, all those
Chinese shadows gesticulating in the uncertain light appeared supremely
ridiculous. Absorbed in my own interior life, I took not the slightest
interest in their goings on.

Suddenly a light shone forth from a room of the City Hall which
opened upon a balcony. Mayor Baboulin had decided to reassure his
constituency. But it was in vain that he essayed to make himself heard;
epithets of all sorts were flying through the air at him, prisoner,
traitor, knave, and others less elegant but even more sonorous.

Another man appeared beside him. My old friend Deputy Martinod,
trusting to his popularity and his gifts of speech, came forward. But
the hulla-baloos continued, while vituperations even more familiar and
offensive were showered upon him. In the gaslight I recognised near me
the inseparable Gallus and Merinos conscientiously reviling their old
friend.

“You see,” said my father, making no attempt, to moderate his voice,
“what to expect of the populace. Yesterday they were hurrahing for
them; to-day they insult them.”

I confess that I was surprised to hear him express himself so freely,
in that strong, ringing voice which always so disturbed grandfather.
Only a few hours ago, as we were driving from the station, hadn’t the
populace hooted at him, too? What if they should begin again? We were
not behind the shelter of walls nor under the protection of the police.
Just at that moment one of the demonstrators turned, crimson-faced and
open-mouthed. A light was reflected full upon him; it was Tem Bossette,
in person, facing us, full and overflowing like a wine-bottle,
gesticulating even more vigorously than the others. The moment he saw
us he cried aloud:

“Long live Rambert!”

All around him uprose a great tumult, and to my stupefaction every
one was crying, “Long live Rambert!” at the top of his lungs. Father
touched me on the shoulder, whispering,

“Let’s get out of this: we’ve had enough!”

A little more and our retreat would have been cut off, and we should
have been obliged to submit to the unexpected ovation. Rapidly, before
they could get into line to accompany us, we gained a cross street and
hastened to the house, where the family were awaiting us. The shadow
at the window told us of the disquietude which our absence had caused.
Father gaily related what had happened, describing Tem’s intervention.

“Good fellow!” exclaimed Aunt Deen approvingly.

“Oh, he is a worse case than Mimi. The last few days he hasn’t even
said good morning to me.”

“What business is it of his?” asked grandfather, who was troubled about
the epidemic. “He is in no danger. He has never been a hard drinker.”

“Hark!” exclaimed mother--so quick to be fearful for us.

The expected clamour was certainly approaching; the sounds were growing
more distinct; in a moment they would be intelligible.

“Oh, my God!” she added; “what is going to happen next!”

Father laughingly reassured her:

“This time, Valentine, they are cheering. It’s more than I asked for.
This afternoon I was only fit for a ducking; this evening I am a
saviour.”

How little he cared for public favour! He wore his battle smile, and
I thought it very contemptuous. In the mysticism in which I had taken
refuge I held myself aloof from all mankind; but so long as I was not
obliged to associate with them I was quite willing to grant them all
the virtues, even that of consistency. The crowd was already defiling
before the gate, singing,

  _It’s Rambert, Rambert, Rambert_,
  _It’s Rambert that we need_!

Was there then only one Rambert? Grandfather, for whom no one was
calling, slipped away, I alone observing his movement of retreat;
he was probably going back to his tower, returning quietly to his
telescope; the planet that he had been observing had not yet sunk below
the horizon.

I would fain have followed him, but father asked me to look out. I
looked, without interest, at the confused mass whose surges were
beating against the gate and the wall of enclosure. It might have been
a long, enormous serpent, a long, enormous mole-cricket whose body
filled the breadth of the street, and whose tail must have stretched
far away, beyond the turn of the road.

Suddenly the gate gave way, and the great beast, like the gipsies long
ago, invaded the short avenue and the flower borders. In a moment it
was assaulting the house. Aunt Deen, at my side, was torn between the
joys of popularity and the instinctive defence of our garden.

By way of checking the onrush of the multitude father opened the
window. He was saluted with a tempest of applause, but easily commanded
silence, his voice ringing out like a deep-toned church bell:

“My friends,” he said, “we shall do all we can to check the progress of
this scourge. Count upon me, go back home, and above all, invoke the
help of God.”

Invoke the help of God! But it was he whom they looked upon as
Providence! In all that manifestation my mother had been the only one
who had thought of praying. Aunt Deen was drinking in her nephew’s
words, but their eloquence touched me not at all. I could have wished
him to utter a few noble sentiments in praise of science, which alone
was capable of dealing with epidemics and preventing contagions; but
of science my father had said never a word. At that moment I noticed
how large a number of good women were in the crowd, some of them
brandishing their babies at arms’ length, as if offering them to my
father. No doubt he had been talking for the good women.

Nevertheless he had gained his point. Little by little the crowd was
calming down and gradually dribbling away. They passed out of the gate,
and the lovely summer night, but now torn with shoutings, slowly gained
its empire over the last lingerers in the garden, over the roads and
the fields, and gave them back to silence.


Events began to hurry one upon another, the very next morning. The
municipal council, responsible for the defective work upon the
aqueducts, resigned under general obloquy and contempt.

“There are your electors!” said our father at table. “First rejoicing
in the triumph of the mayor and council over conservatism, and now
demanding the disgrace of those very men and dragging them in the mud
with shame.”

In a flash I saw myself again in the Café des Navigateurs a few years
before, drinking champagne with Martinod and his heelers, in honour
of grandfather’s candidacy, and far from revolting me, the memory
touched my heart. Then, a child, I had quaffed a sort of delicious
recklessness, something like that love-languor that Nazzarena, passing
out of my life, had left with me, listening to those fine theories
which were not very clear to me but were preparing me for liberty
nevertheless.

The excitement increased in the town with the increase in the number
of deaths, which, however, were still few. The exact figures which my
father gave by no means corresponded with those that were printed in
the newspapers, or flew from lip to lip. He had forbidden us to go into
the town, grandfather approving:

“One never knows how those things get caught--a mere nothing is enough.
It’s quite enough to have so many sick persons coming here.”

I had found grandfather aging, when I came home. He was nearly eighty,
of course, but he had so long kept his air of youth, the alert step due
to his long walks, and even his bright eyes, their sarcastic glint only
emphasised by the gathering wrinkles. Now he was growing bent, and his
gaze seemed dimmed. Still he clung to life, and perhaps all the more as
he felt his strength failing.

The most absurd and contradictory rumours were flying about everywhere,
and political passions had free course. An individual had been caught
putting poison into the river;--a priest, said the anti-clericals; a
free mason, said the others. A frightful mania of suspicion began to
run wild. An unlucky fellow with a pimpled face just missed of being
strung up, on the pretext of spreading contagion, and was only saved by
my father’s intervention:

“Pimples on the face are the only ones that mean nothing!” he had
shouted, just in time.

He brought home to us all these incidents and rumours, for we went
nowhere; he even carefully disinfected himself on returning from his
rounds.

Next, the villages below the water-works thought the contagion had
reached them, and were struck with panic, their inhabitants crowding
to the town. We could see them passing with their carts, their cattle,
their furniture, like fugitives before the face of war. Brawls arose
from attempts to keep them out.

Then suddenly the epidemic, which until then had been under control,
its ravages greatly exaggerated, took on a disturbing character,
whether in consequence of the crowded state of the town and the lack
of hygiene, or because the air had really become tainted. The general
terror became itself a danger. Pestilence and famine were said to be
upon us. Abbé Heurtevant, who, all devotion to the sufferers, yet
seemed to breathe in a sort of consolation from the atmosphere of
catastrophe, seeing in all this the fulfilment of his prophecies, and
who could not but discern signs of divine intervention, was formally
accused of sorcery, and was obliged to run to earth in his own room for
several days, lest evil should befall him. Mlle Tapinois had given the
signal for departure, abandoning her work-rooms, which mother took up
without comment. The hotels were emptied, and all the people who could
fly from town fled.

The lack of organisation increased the evil. The municipality had
resigned and the prefect was taking the waters in Germany. The electors
were convoked on a call of urgency. Then came a rush for father. Every
day there was a crowd before the gate crying, _Long live Rambert_!
or _It’s Rambert we must have_. Aunt Deen was never surfeited with
this refrain, which was music to her ears. Only he--there was no one
but Michel.

I did not see and I cannot describe the despairing town, the shops
closed for fear of pillage, the inhabitants torn by party enmity,
haunted by all sorts of suspicion, clinging to every superstition,
ravaged by bitterness and poverty, and given over to terror. But I did
see with my own eyes, at our very feet, there under our very windows,
the town entreating one man, submitting to him, grovelling before him,
whom formerly they would have none of. The multitude dragged itself in
the dust, moaned, uttered howls of desire like an infuriated dog. And
not comprehending its distress I despised it.

My father had lost his authority over me, not from having abused it,
notwithstanding that I had imagined tyranny in some of his acts, but
perhaps--who can say?--for not having exerted it, that evening when he
brought me back from the Café des Navigateurs, that day when in the
tower chamber I had braved him in defence of grandfather. He had no
suspicion either of my first experience of love, which had played havoc
in my heart, nor of the intensity of those aspirations after liberty
which had been slowly infiltrated into it by all those walks and
conversations.

Yet he had felt my detachment from the house, and had trusted to
clemency to bring me back. And that clemency had belittled him in my
eyes. His prestige had been made up of his never-failing victories,
and had I not heard him in mother’s room, uttering the laments of one
conquered? By his pain I had measured my own importance. The greater
price he set upon the reconquest of myself, the stronger I felt to
resist him. Perhaps he would have kept his empire over me had he not
showed such an excess of paternal solicitude. Would it be dangerous for
a sovereign to take too much pains in training his heir and fitting him
to succeed to the throne? Must one put more confidence in words and
acts than in the influence which one tries to exert over minds? Each
generation differs from the former in the expression of its ideas if
not in the ideas themselves. It thinks to create all things anew: life
will teach it that nothing is created, and that everything goes on by
the same processes.

Now, in the time of danger, that authority from which I had withdrawn
myself imposed itself upon every one else. My father had been in
charge of the medical service. Now, elected almost unanimously, he was
entrusted with the town.




                                  II

                              THE ALPETTE


OUR father and mother held a council of war, in which the resolution
was taken that we should be sent away. The family owned, on the uplands
of one of the high valleys, a chalet which we called the Alpette,
standing by itself in a clearing in the pines. In favourable seasons
we used to spend a month of the long vacation there. A dilapidated
stagecoach used to climb to the nearest village in four or five hours.
It was not easy to get supplies up there, and we should have to be
content with frugal and modest fare; but the air was redolent of
balsam, and we should be beyond all danger of contagion.

“The epidemic is spreading,” father told us. “You will all go to-morrow
morning except your mother, who will not leave me.”

Perhaps he had resolved to remain alone, but had encountered her
refusal.

“That’s an excellent idea,” said grandfather approvingly. “We are good
for nothing here, but rather, in the way.”

“Well! I for one shall not go,” declared Aunt Deen, shaking her head.
“I am a part of the building.”

Father urged that she had her brother to take care of, but this
argument was by no means favourably received.

“He can take care of himself well enough. He is perfectly well. And
besides, Louise will look after him.”

Louise urged her desire to stay. We thought she was joking, for
she said it laughingly, but she firmly insisted. Couldn’t she be
of service, visiting the sick, nursing them even? Wasn’t every
willing person needed? Between her and Aunt Deen a debate arose, the
unselfishness of which was at the time unperceived by me; but Aunt Deen
insisted so hard that she carried her point.

Encouraged by this example, I signified to my parents my fixed
intention not to leave town, but to play my part in it also. This was
by way of affirming my personality--my personality of barely eighteen
years!--much more than as a boast of courage. The idea of death,
either my own or that of the others, had not occurred to me. I did not
apprehend the slightest danger. No doubt father was the most exposed,
both by his profession and his functions, but to me he seemed immortal.
I was simply thinking of gaining a little importance.

Father listened to me patiently, and then replied that if I had begun
to study medicine, as he had hoped, he should not have hesitated to
make use of me, notwithstanding his affection and his fears; it would
have been a right which I might have claimed; but that having taken
another course, I had no good reason for remaining in a vitiated
atmosphere, where I could be of no use, at the risk of succumbing to
the disease any day. He thanked me for my offer, but could not accept
it. The mountain air would be good for my health, which would improve
up there: I was somewhat delicate, I should return stronger.

The calm refusal simply exasperated me. I discerned in it a contempt
that was not to be endured, and I persisted in claiming the post as if
my honour was involved.

“I regret infinitely, father, my inability to yield in this matter, but
I judge that I ought to stay, and I shall stay.”

The words came grandly. He fixed me with his piercing eyes, and did not
even raise his voice:

“I rule in my house, before ruling in the town, my boy. I give you this
order: You will go to-morrow with your grandfather, Louise and the
two younger children. I am in charge of the whole city: we shall see
whether my son will be the first to disobey.”

He turned away. So peremptorily had he spoken that a sense of the
impossibility of resistance took possession of me. He had been
humouring me this long time; he had thought from my reserve that I was
indifferent if not hostile, and he cherished the hope of regaining my
confidence. Now he suddenly abandoned all methods of conciliation and
put me back in the ranks like a mere soldier, not like a future chief.
Without caring the least in the world about taking active service
among the hospital staff, I champed my bit with rage, as if I had been
subjected to the most cruel abuse. Grandfather, delighted with this
outcome, consoled me good-naturedly.

“Oho! what do you care? He has a craze for giving orders. We shall be
very well off up there.”

Our preparations filled the afternoon. Grandfather himself brought
down from the tower his barometer, violin, pipes and almanacs. The
repeated journeys put him out of breath, but he would stop for no one.
The rest of the packing was of no interest to him, but concerned Aunt
Deen, to whom he had long ago given over the care of his clothes and
linen. At nightfall Abbé Heurtevant came for a visit. Father was at the
hospital, or the mayor’s office, and mother at the work-rooms where bed
clothing for the sick poor was being made. Grandfather, with new found
resolution, refused to have the door opened, and inquired from the
window whether our friend had been disinfected.

Nothing would do but for the abbé to pass through the disinfecting room
that had been set up in the house, after which he was welcomed with
gladness, and grandfather even offered him his copy of the prophecies
of Michel Nostradamus. M. Heurtevant accepted the gift with small
enthusiasm; he was acquainted with the Centuries and found them obscure
and contradictory.

“Yes, you prefer Sister Rose-Colombe and the Abbey of Orval. And what
catastrophes have you to report, Abbé?”

“In the first place, your labourer Tem Bossette died this morning of
the pestilence.”

“Ah!” said grandfather, quickly adding, as if finding an excuse for not
grieving, “he was a drunkard.”

“Poor Tem!” sighed Aunt Deen. “Had he confessed?”

“He had no time--the complaint seized him like a thunderclap.”

“An alcoholic,” observed grandfather.

My aunt went on questioning our guest about persons of our acquaintance:

“How about Beatrix? And Mimi Pachoux?”

“Don’t be uneasy about your Mimi, mademoiselle; he is helping to bury
the dead, and is even superintending the entire force of gravediggers.
His zeal is magnificent; he multiplies himself, he is at every funeral.
As for The Hanged, I think he is down with the fever.”

“I will go and see him,” said Aunt Deen simply, whereupon her brother
looked at her with surprise, and some disapprobation.

But the abbé, with incomparable ease, had already passed from special
misfortunes to general calamities. The contagion would be sure to
spread, it would not be checked until it had reached Paris. It would
decimate the capital, that sink of all iniquities, and would constrain
politicians to reflect. It would be as good as a war, in the matter of
moral renovation. And the lilies would bloom again.

“They will bloom again,” Aunt Deen did not fail to repeat gravely.

The description of these approaching misfortunes affected grandfather,
who changed the subject of conversation.

“I say, Abbé, if you will come to the Alpette to see us, we will
give you some Satan bolets, and even if you don’t bring too much bad
news, some negro head bolets, which are at least eatable and of a
savoury flavour. Or rather, no! don’t put yourself out to come. There
is no disinfecting apparatus up there, and you would be capable of
contaminating us all.”


The next morning a two-horse brake, ordered especially for us, came
to take us and our parcels. Father superintended the embarkation, and
hastened it, for he was being called upon from all quarters at once. At
the house, whenever any difficulty arose he had always been immediately
sought for, all calling in one voice, _Monsieur Michel_! _Where
is Monsieur Michel_! In these days, all through the city, the
rallying cry was, _Monsieur Rambert_! or more briefly, _the
doctor_, or _the mayor_.

“Oho!” said grandfather lightly, “he has enough to give orders to now.”

Grandfather climbed into the vehicle first, with his instruments, which
he would not let go, though the violin case was much in the way.
Like little Jamie, he had all the gaiety of a school boy on vacation.
Never had he seemed so to feel the attractions of the Alpette. Louise,
on the contrary, and Nicola, imitating her sister, whom she admired,
manifested an emotion which for my part I deemed excessive. They clung
to our parents with tears, as if it were a case of prolonged absence.

“Come, children,” said father, “make haste and have no fears.”

My own adieus to him were of marked coldness, because of the scene of
the previous day. He had constrained me to obedience, and had wounded
my pride; I could not forget it so soon; dignity obliged me to assume
an offended air.

The smallest details of that departure, upon which my memory has
dwelt so much, vainly seeking something to mitigate its bitterness,
stand out before me with a distinctness which time has never blurred.
Every one was more or less impatient, the horses because of the flies
that tormented them, the coachman out of compassion for his cattle,
grandfather and Jamie in their haste to enjoy the pleasures of the
journey, Louise and Nicola in their sadness over going away, Aunt Deen
because she dreaded the tumult of her feelings, and I, to get rid of
the uneasiness that was overcoming me. Mother was trying to keep calm.
Father alone did so, naturally. When my turn came to get in, last of
all, he seemed to hesitate for a brief moment as if he would have
detained me, spoken to me. I do not precisely know what it was that
showed me this, but I am sure of it. And once in my seat I felt an
unreasoning desire to get out again. Was it an instinctive longing for
reconciliation? How I long to feel sure that it was! But the feeling
was too vague for me to be sure of it now. Taking my place on the same
seat with grandfather, I gave expression to my inward feeling by an act
of ill humour, seizing hold of the violin case, which chafed my knees,
and laying it roughly in the bottom of the carriage.

“Be careful! It’s delicate,” observed grandfather protestingly.

I can still see the vibrating light in the air, and the shining of the
road in the sunlight.

“All right?” asked the coachman, clambering to his seat.

“Forward!” ordered father.

And mother added the prayer that she always uttered at each parting.

“God be with you!”

Our heavy vehicle was already in motion, and these were the last words
that we heard. _Forward_, and _God be with you_; they mingle,
become one, always accompany one another in my memory, and whenever to
this day I set out upon a journey, it seems to me that I hear them.

At the turn of the road, down below the entrance gate, I saw the three
figures standing out in the glaring day, Aunt Deen somewhat massive;
my mother’s, more delicate, and the tall, proud figure of my father,
lifting up his head. Why did I not call out? The one word, “Father!”
would have pleased him, and he would have understood. His figure
revealed such force, so rich a vitality, so dominant an authority,
that it was of course of no use to humiliate oneself to give him
satisfaction. I should always have time enough if I wanted to do
so,--later, later.

Grandfather was fumbling about my legs to rescue his violin case
and I had to help him. We passed under the chestnut tree that had
overshadowed--just one moment--the departing Nazzarena, Nazzarena
laughing and showing her teeth. And the house was lost behind us.


I was not slow to forget this uncomfortable parting in the enchantment
of my new life in the chalet of the Alpette. For the first time I was
absolute master of my days. Grandfather exercised not the slightest
oversight. He liked to sit for hours together on a bench on the
pleasantest side of the house, warming himself in the sun and smoking
his pipe. He took no walks except in the immediate neighbourhood,
going with difficulty even to the pine woods, for his legs had become
weak and could not carry him far. Once in the woods, he would devote
himself to his favourite pursuit, which had not changed, the hunt after
mushrooms. He especially pursued and not without success the negro head
bolet, which grows well in the shadow of the pines. Jamie and his
inseparable Nicola used to go with him, and stoop for him to retrieve
the game which he pointed out to them. He preferred their childhood to
my youth, and I was not jealous of them. He never tried to establish
with them the intimacy that had formerly existed between him and me. He
shrank from all fatigue, from any conversation which would have led to
discussions, explanations, was contented with trifling facts not open
to debate. For my part, I preferred my solitude.

Whether from sisterly affection or because she had received
instructions to this effect, Louise busied herself with us even to
obsession; she would have cut herself in two to be at the same time
with me and with the two little ones. When she had become convinced
of the peaceful, commonplace character of grandfather’s conversation,
she turned all the more to me, hoping to be my confidant, and to
gain a little influence over me. She was only two years my senior,
and her conduct filled me with wonder, for nothing down in the town
had given any indication that altitude would so totally change her.
Pretty, lively, care-free, I had deemed her rather volatile and even
a bit capricious--and had been not the less pleased with her for
that. At times she would rush at her piano with intense zeal, and
again she would not touch it for weeks. She filled the house with her
laughter, her charming spirits, her quick movements. “She won’t be one
to interfere with me,” I had thought in the carriage. And now, behold
her suddenly changed into something like the head of a community or
a family boarding house, thoughtful and kindly, but exacting, even
arbitrary. One must be punctual at meals, explain his absences, guard
his words before the children, not turn either principles or people
into ridicule. Had her responsibilities changed her and turned her
head? She assumed the place of our parents in matters of conscience,
but I gave her to understand that boys didn’t obey girls, and that any
directions she might have received did not concern me. She insisted,
and almost from the outset we were in a state of tension which was
almost conflict.

It was the Sunday after our arrival. The village was two kilometres
distant, and only one mass--high mass--was celebrated. Louise informed
us of the fact, and at what she judged the proper moment she called
to us to set out. Grandfather, who never went to church, raised a
disinterested objection.

“Public places are the most unhealthy. Beware of the epidemic.”

“There has not been a single case of typhus in the whole valley,” said
Louise triumphantly.

“Very well,” said grandfather, filling his morning pipe.

I then informed my sister that I had planned to take a walk
and regretted that I could not escort her. She looked at me in
astonishment, such astonishment that I can still see the surprise in
her limpid eyes.

“What, you are not going to mass, Francis? There is only one.”

“No,” I replied with my most assured manner.

“It isn’t possible!”

Her eyes, those limpid eyes, at once filled with tears, and I
remembered the first mass that I had missed. Pride forbade me to yield,
pride and also that new, vague belief which my imagination had built
up. Louise pushed Nicola and Jamie before her, and turned to me, her
book of hours in her hand, still hoping to move me.

“I beg you, come with us.”

If she had added, “to please me,” perhaps I would have yielded, so
alarmed did she appear. She no doubt would have deemed that plea
unworthy of its purpose. This time I refused still more emphatically.

“I shall be obliged to write to mamma,” she urged as a last argument.

“As you please.”

She did not, however, carry out her threat. Her sense of delicacy
warned her not to add to our parents’ anxieties in the midst of their
battle with the pestilence. On the contrary, she doubled her attention
to me, trying to win me to her, to gain my friendship, my confidence.
With innate art she became an improvised mother of the family, ever
trying to bring us together, to group us, warring against the isolation
in which I delighted.

When a letter came she would call us together and read it aloud to
us. We received letters from home very regularly, and they forwarded
Mélanie’s to us from the hospital in London, where she was caring for
the sick; Bernard’s from his expedition in Tonkin; Stephen’s, who was
completing his theological studies in Rome. Through her the absent ones
visited us, and if it had depended only upon her we should have carried
on at the Alpette the same life as at home. It was precisely that which
revolted me, and I rose in rebellion against the twenty-year-old will
which, with unlooked for tenacity, went counter to mine.

To place myself beyond her influence I formed the habit of leaving our
chalet with a book the first thing in the morning, returning only for
meals. Uneasy about me, she would remain upon the doorstep until I had
disappeared, and very often, at my return, I would find her in the same
place, as if she had never lost sight of me. Her interest extended even
to my reading. The library at the Alpette contained only a few books,
some odd volumes of Buffon and Lacépède, a “Dictionary of Conversation”
in fifty volumes, a copy of “Jocelyn,” and a few less important
works. Even the Dictionary did not terrify me and I would resolutely
carry with me the volumes containing biographical notices, or systems
of philosophy. I found myself at ease in the boldest or the most
obscure of their conceptions. I understood them before I had completed
their demonstration, whether they put the universe in subjection to
the ego, or whether they put man in subjection to the universe left
to itself. Still, I was inclined to believe that everything depended
upon our intelligence, and that it alone, by its sole power breathed
existence into things, the laws of which were fixed by it. I have never
since been able to regain such facility in moving in the abstract, nor
such pleasure and pride.

When wearied by these adventures in metaphysics, I would refresh
myself with the poetry of “Jocelyn.” It harmonised so perfectly with
the nature that surrounded me that it seemed to become its natural
expression and I ceased to think of distinguishing between them. How
many times, under the pines, have I repeated lines which from that time
have been fixed in my memory:

  I went from tree to tree and loved them all;
  I took from them a sense of tears and wept;
  Believing thus, so strong the deep heart’s call.
  That answering thrills through all their rough bark swept.

So greatly did I long to feel pervading everything around me, in the
soul of the trees or the spirit of the earth, the love which I refused
to receive from the family. When I reached the top of some hill, it was
in the apostrophe

  Oh, mountain tops, pure air and floods of light!

that my rapture found expression. The serenity of the night spoke to
me of _peace, love, eternity_. I dreamed of Laurence, and had no
difficulty in picturing him to myself, such a model of precision did
his portrait seem to me:

  Never the hand of God on fifteen years
  Had marked a soul more lovely or more human.

What more was wanting to feed a love which, having no object, created
its image for itself?

Another book, however, was destined to enter still more deeply into
my sensibility, corresponding as it did with that condition of
independence and enfranchisement to which I deemed myself to have
attained. Into the pile of almanacs brought thither by grandfather
had slipped that copy of the “Confessions” which had puzzled me as
a child, and which I had taken for a manual of piety. The innocent
_Limping Messenger of Berne and Vevey_ came leading by the hand
that Jean-Jacques whom, long before I knew him, I had heard spoken of
as if he were still living and we might meet him anywhere in our walks.
I had read in school only short fragments of his writings in which I
had found nothing personal. I fell upon the narrative of that troubled
life, which at first disgusted me. The theft of the ribbon in the house
of Mme de Vercellis and the cowardly accusation that followed, certain
physiological details which I could ill understand, the title of
_maman_ bestowed upon Mme de Warens, produced upon me the effect
of immodest confidences, and all alone as I was in the forest, or lying
in the grass on the top of the mountain, I felt myself blushing to the
ears. My deepest nature resisted, but by an insensible decline I came
even to admire the man who could humiliate himself by such avowals; not
perceiving their pride I felt giddied by their truth.

After that the volume never left me. Louise, disturbed by this
preoccupation, tried to wield some censorship. One evening as I came
in from gazing at the stars--those in the South, which I most easily
recognised--I found her under the lamp looking into the “Confessions.”
She did not see me and I watched her; she suddenly closed the book, and
perceiving me, her indignation burst forth:

“You have no right to read this book.”

“I read what I please.”

She appealed to grandfather, who declined all responsibility.

“Oh, every one is free. And at least Jean-Jacques is sincere.”

The love passages excited me, and what rendered them more precious and
more seductive to me was the writers lovely way of praising at once the
peace of the country and the happiness of bucolic life. In the peace
that environed me I felt more plainly the movements of my own heart. I
was at the feet of Mme Basile _without daring so much as to touch her
dress. A slight movement of her finger,--hand lightly pressed against
my lips, were the only favours I ever received from her, and the memory
of these slight favours transports me as I think of them_. I would
try to represent to myself the gentle air of those fair women whom
no heart could resist, and--shall I be believed?--I found a personal
application in a lament which touched my hardly completed and already
disquieted eighteen years. _Tormented with the desire to love without
ever finding its satisfaction, I saw myself drawing nigh to the gates
of old age and dying without having lived_. When I climbed high
enough to see the lake, far away at the foot of the hills, I would
repeat the simple aspiration, _All I desire is a sure friend, a
loving wife, a cow and a little boat_, and my growing exaltation of
sentiment seemed endowed with innocence. I could have wept for love
while eating strawberries smothered in sweet cream.

Thus the period through which I was passing was very closely linked
with that of my convalescence, of which it became in a sort the
completion. Alone by myself I resumed the walks which a few years
before I had taken with grandfather. His friend Jean-Jacques was with
me in his stead. These were not the same places, but in natural aspects
there was small difference between them. They had the same glamour of
wildness, that flutter of vegetation stirred by the slightest breath,
the sparkle of waters; and the greater altitude even added a more
exhilarating air, farther distances, less accessible to the works of
man, a new exaltation. In the mountains the holdings are without walls
or gates. No enclosure mars the beauty of the land, and individual
ownership is not apparent,--that ownership which, as I knew from
grandfather’s teachings, corrupts the heart of man and fills it with
greed, jealousy and cupidity. On the mountains field and forest belong
to every one and to no one, like the sun and the air, like health. The
upper pastures, whither the shepherd who in one sentence had revealed
longing to me, was leading his sheep,--now I was treading their short
grass. Mountain climbing thrilled me with an ardour for conquest, and
with each height gained I hoped to meet her whom I was awaiting but
who continually evaded me. She was not Nazzarena, whom I had loved and
whom now my dreams disdained; who seemed to me too young, too simple.
I thought rather of the unknown lady of the pavilion, or still more of
her who had appeared before me on the road, all in white with a hat
trimmed with cherries, and a flower-like face, she whose parasol made
an aureola about her, and whom I had called Helen since I knew that her
beauty was like that of the immortal goddesses.

I was alone, deliciously alone, and in love, with no beloved one. I
was perfectly happy, and never realised that I was torturing my sister
Louise, whose affection I misunderstood. I was free.


By reason of the difficulty of procuring provisions our table was the
most frugal in the world. We lived upon eggs, potatoes, cheese, and
on Sundays had the luxury of a fowl. Grandfather was never tired of
extolling the excellencies of this fare, and the benefits of pastoral
life. It was easy for me to persuade myself of the excellence of our
mode of living. I took less and less interest in the news from town
that reached us by the diligence. Once or twice, to give us fuller
intelligence, they sent up the farmer himself, so that in our hermitage
we knew the number of deaths and the ravages of the pestilence. The
Hanged, who was dead, had made a most edifying end, Aunt Deen being
with him to the last. Gallus and Merinos were safe and sound.

“They are always in luck,” observed grandfather.

The farmer shook his head as if to say that the last word hadn’t
been said yet, and that the ravages of the epidemic were not over.
Of Martinod he knew nothing; he was still in hiding. Our friend Abbé
Heurtevant had resisted but he was undermined; however he still had
life enough to predict catastrophes.

“May we go back?” Louise would ask each time. This astonished
grandfather and me, for we were in no hurry.

“Not yet, Miss; Master Michael has said like this, that the moment
hasn’t come yet.”

A lazaretto had been set up for doubtful cases, the two hospitals
were crowded, those who went in or out of the city were examined. A
series of edicts had been issued by the mayor, ordering the most minute
precautions.

“It’s awful,” concluded the farmer, who was giving these details.

Grandfather declared that we were perfectly comfortable at the
Alpette, but Louise was chafing with impatience.


Little by little the days grew shorter. After the month of August,
which was very warm, September came, with fresher breezes, and
September passed. The oaks and birches in the forest were changing
colour among the changeless pines, the oaks turning red and the birches
golden. The dried tufts of bushes on the rocks took on a scarlet tint.
I was sometimes overtaken by the darkness which rose rapidly from the
hollow of the valley, and losing my way was forced to seek the aid of a
shepherd in some hamlet whose twinkling lights shone out and guided me.

At last we were informed that the pestilence was abating, and we might
soon leave the Alpette. I heard the news without pleasure, intoxicated
with liberty as I had become during my long period of idleness. Still,
we were to remain a few days longer.




                                  III

                          THE END OF A REING


ALL night a high wind had been blowing, but by morning it had fallen.
October was coming in badly. After breakfast I went out to see what
damage the storm had wrought. Autumn had come suddenly. In the woods
the oak leaves and beech leaves, leaves red and golden, torn from the
trees where they had been glowing like flowers, rustled under my tread,
and as in old times when I was little and used to steal out to gather
forbidden nuts and crack them afterwards on the fire dogs, I let my
feet drag, delighting in their crisp and plaintive chime.

Returning at nightfall I saw a cart standing before the door of the
chalet. The headlight was not lighted and it was growing dark, so that
I did not perceive till I was close by that it was our farmer’s cart.
The horse had not been taken out, but no one was watching it, though
some one had taken the precaution to put a blanket over its back.

“Well, Stephen,” said I, entering the kitchen where the farmer was
warming himself, for it was already cold on the mountains, “what brings
you here?”

We always called him by his first name, as is the custom in our
country, although he was already old. His hands were outstretched
toward the stove, but he turned his wrinkled, shaven face toward me,
the lamp, that moment lighted, revealing it clearly to me.

His light eyes, faded through long service in all weathers, seemed not
to see me clearly.

“Ah, Master Francis,” he murmured low, as he rose.

I can not tell why, but the meaningless exclamation gave me a painful
impression.

“You haven’t come for us?” I asked.

He was about to reply when we were joined by my sister Louise, who had
been told of his arrival. She greeted him in a friendly way and asked
what news he brought from town. He seemed in no haste to reply.

“The news is,” he said at last, “that Madame wants you.”

“Madame?” asked Louise.

“Very well,” I observed, “and how soon?”

“To be sure it is too late for you to go down to-night. The beast is
tired and it is already dark. To-morrow morning, very early.”

Why such haste? We should hardly have time for our packing. I was
about to protest, but the farmer slipped away--he must put out the
horse, and get the cart under cover. During his absence I protested
against so hurried a departure. In fact the prospect of quitting this
place filled me with sadness, and I again lived through the sense of
desolation which had come over me in the wood, strewn with the dead
leaves. Louise paid no attention and I saw that she was crying. Was she
so sorry to go?

“I am afraid,” she said to me.

Afraid of what? Grandfather, being informed of our recall, showed as
little enthusiasm as I.

“We weren’t so badly off here,” he said. “We could do as we chose.”

As if he hadn’t always done as he chose! But what was Louise afraid of?
By degrees she told us. For the farmer to be sent for us, there must be
some one sick at our house, some one gravely ill. He had said “Madame
has sent for you.” Then it wasn’t mamma, it could be no one but father.
This was what she conjectured, as she confessed to us.

We tried to smile at her fears, comparing her to Abbé Heurtevant who
carried thunder about with him and set it off at the least provocation;
but by degrees her fear became ours. We waited feverishly for the
return of the farmer whom we at once questioned. It was Louise who
spoke.

“Father is sick, isn’t he, Stephen?”

“Ah, Miss, it’s a great misfortune.”

“Has he taken the disease?”

“It isn’t the disease that he has taken; it’s a chill and fever.”

Poor Louise burst into tears, calling upon our father as if he could
hear her. We had to comfort her, not without blaming her for giving
way, the farmer himself joining in.

“The young lady is mistaken. Master Michael is strong. There’s many a
one has had chills and fever who is fat and healthy to-day.”

The thought never occurred to me that there could be any real
danger. My self absorption prevented my thinking so. What an absurd
presentiment that poor Louise was torturing herself with! I could see
my father there, before the entrance, just as the carriage started. His
panama, slightly tilted, cast a shadow over half his face. The other,
in full sunlight, was radiant with life. He was giving brief orders
and hastening us into the vehicle because he was waited for at the
mayor’s office. How well he could command, and how every one hastened
to obey him! I was the only one who thought of withdrawing myself from
his power, his ascendency. He held himself upright like an oak in the
forest, one of those tall fine oaks that never shed their leaves till
the new ones come, that the tempest can never shake, that seem to stand
all the straighter and grow tougher by resistance. I could hear his
voice ringing out, his voice saying Forward! as in battle. I could not
admit that that strength could be overcome. I had counted upon that
strength. I must needs count upon it, because later, when I judged
best, and had achieved my liberty I wanted to go back, of my own free
will, and show my father a little love.

Yet I recalled to mind the day when I had heard him utter in mother’s
room a lament over me: “_That child is no longer ours_....”

But I would not dwell on that. No, no, I must exaggerate nothing.
Mother had recalled us because the abating epidemic no longer
threatened danger, and because father, being ill, would be glad to see
us; she had sent for us for these reasons and for none other....

We went down early next morning, Louise and I in the farmer’s cart,
grandfather and the children a little later by the diligence which
after all was more comfortable. I turned around many times to imprint
upon my memory the picture of that valley, where in solitude I had met
so many emotions created by myself, as it were a sort of happiness
in which the others had no part. Seated beside me Louise never spoke
except to lean toward our old Stephen and ask him gently,

“Couldn’t you go a little faster?”

“Yes, Miss, we’ll try. Biquette is a little like me, she’s not very
young.”

He let his whip play around the mare’s flanks, without actually
touching her. As we drew nearer to the town my sister’s anxiety
increased, and at last affected me. She repeated her contagious “I’m
afraid,” and only the fine October sunshine, warming us on our seat,
helped me to repel so absurd a presentiment.

We reached the gate at last. No one was waiting for us. How many times
had I found father at that place, gazing down the road, and as soon
as he saw us hailing us with word and gesture, with all the paternal
gladness of his heart! I looked up at the window. The usual shadow
was not there, behind the curtain, and for the first time I knew that
sorrow threatened us all.

Mother, as soon as she was informed of our arrival, came down to meet
us. Louise threw herself into her arms without a word. By a natural
intuition those kindred souls understood one another. I remained apart,
determined not to understand, refusing to admit even the possibility of
a calamity which would leave me no time to play, at my own convenience,
the drama of the return of the prodigal son. Mother came to me:

“He talks of you most of all,” she said. “In his delirium he was
calling for you.”

I was thunderstruck at this pre-eminence. Why did he talk most of me?
Why was I his chief preoccupation, and--my mind leaping forward, even
while awestricken at the sacrilegious thought,--perhaps his last?

“Mamma,” I cried, “it isn’t possible!”

But I at once regretted the involuntary exclamation. My mother was the
living proof that there was no danger, at least not yet. Of course
I remarked the circles round her eyes and her white cheeks, the
tokens of nights of watching. But though weariness was evident in her
every feature, it was as if it did not exist: one felt a higher will
dominating it, or utilising it so long as might be necessary. And by
a strange phenomenon, there was now in her manner of speaking, and
of treating us, something--I could not say what, but I knew it was
there--something of my father’s authority. Visibly, without knowing
it, she was replacing him. But if there had been any danger she would
have shown her woman’s weakness, she who was so quick to be anxious,
and often about nothing at all, she so prompt to hear the approaching
thunderstorm and light the blessed candle for our safety! I did not
even see the holy light that always when night came down kept watch in
her eyes like the little altar lamp in the sanctuary. No, no, if there
had been any danger she would have asked for our help, and I would have
sustained her with my youthful strength.

“Is what possible?” she replied to my question--thus completely
reassuring me. She made no other reply, as if she hadn’t quite heard,
but quite simply, in a gentle voice which endeavoured not to give pain,
she went on to tell us what had taken place in our long absence.

“He is resting just now. Your Aunt Deen is with him. She has helped me
much in nursing him. I’ll take you to his room presently. You can not
imagine the effort which these last months have required of him. That
is the cause of his illness, after he had overcome the pestilence,
when his task was finished. Until then, I had never been able to get
him to spare himself. Day and night he would be sent for, appealed to,
as if there were no one but he. The whole town waited on his orders,
begged for his help. His commands were the only ones that inspired
confidence, but the demands were more than human strength could endure,
and he did in fact go beyond human strength. They never gave him a
moment’s respite--they thought him stronger than the stones that bear
up the house, but even stones will break under too heavy a burden. One
evening, just six days ago, he came home with a heavy chill. And almost
immediately fever appeared. Oh, if he had not so overtaxed himself!”

She checked herself without completing her thought,--or did she not
follow it out when she added after a moment’s reflection,

“I have notified Stephen, in Rome. Last evening he telegraphed me that
he was setting out. I am glad that his Superior has permitted him to
leave--it is a very long journey: we must give him almost twenty-four
hours. I write every day to Bernard who is so far away. And Mélanie is
praying for us.”

Thus she was gathering the family around its head. I asked,

“Why does not Mélanie come?”

“The Sisters of Charity never go back to their homes.”

“They nurse strangers and may not nurse their father!”

“It is the rule, Francis.”

Since it was the rule she had no recriminations to make; she bowed to
it, accepted it, while I,--as soon as it became the rule, my first
impulse was to rebel. Timorous as she was when he was there, now with
unfaltering presence of mind she was preparing all that would be needed
in case of misfortune, without ever ceasing to bend all her energies to
ward it off. I felt shame for not having shared her anxieties and for
having sought to separate myself from the community of sorrow.

“The fever has diminished,” she went on, going over all the encouraging
symptoms for our sakes and her own. “The first days he was delirious
much of the time. He has been more calm since yesterday. He himself
keeps track of the progress of his disease. I see, but he says nothing
about it. This morning he asked for a priest. Abbé Heurtevant, whom he
cured, came.”

_He himself keeps track of the progress of his disease, and he asked
for a priest_; the poor woman did not connect the two, so natural
did it seem to her to ask the help of God. But I--how could I not
connect them? And for the third time I distinctly felt the danger.

We heard Aunt Deen’s step at the head of the stairs; it was growing
heavy. She called _Valentine_! in a subdued voice and we all
hastened to the staircase.

“Oh, he is doing well,” she explained, “but he is awake, and he always
asks for you if you are not there.”

“You may go with me,” mother said to Louise, then turning to me she
added that she would call me next; it wasn’t well for too many to enter
the room at once, lest our presence should agitate the sufferer.

As soon as we were alone Aunt Deen, who must greatly have held herself
in during her hours of watching, exploded:

“Ah, my boy, if you knew! ‘They’ have killed him--killed him without
mercy! The whole town was infected and had no hope except in him. I
have seen it, I tell you, those people with their dirty pustules all
over their bodies. They would be crying like lost souls, and when your
father entered the hospital they would be silent because he had ordered
it, but they would hold out their arms to him. How many he has cured!
It’s he who saved them all, he and no one else. And the fountains
closed, and the water analysed, and the clothing of the dead burned,
and the lazaretto set up, all sorts of hygienic measures. Indeed, the
very best there are. You should have seen how he commanded everything!
Monsieur Mayor, it’s impossible! ‘It must be done by to-morrow.’ But
for him there wouldn’t be a person in the streets to-day. And now, now,
it’s as much as ever if any one comes to ask how he is! The rumour has
spread that he has caught the typhus,--the last one. They are afraid
and they abandon him--the wretches!”

Thus she pictured the general cowardice and ingratitude. My father
stood out above this disorderly crowd. But Aunt Deen had begun on
another subject.

“Your mother is admirable. She has not gone to bed once since his
illness. And she keeps calm. You have seen how calm she is. For my part
I can’t understand her.”

As she had just left the room above I tried to get at the truth of the
case.

“Well, Aunt, is he--”

But I could not go on, and she caught up my inquiry, the impiety of
which had burned my lips, as if I had spoken against the Holy Ark.

“Oh, no, no, no! God will protect us! What would become of us, my poor
child, what would become of us! A man such as there are not two of in
the world!”

Just then Louise, coming softly down, joined us, all in tears. Father
was expecting me.

At the door of his room I paused, heavy of heart. By that oppression
I saw clearly that he was the essential actor in the inner drama of
my childhood and youth, my short but already so important life. I had
lived by him but I was living in opposition to him. From the day when
I had withdrawn myself from his influence, through all the exaltation
which had transported me and yet left me in a state of uneasiness, I
had felt myself free, but out of my frame. In what condition should
I find him? I was afraid, and that is why I paused for a time before
opening the door. On leaving home, after having seen him cheered by
the whole town, I had carried away with me the picture of my father
leaning against the house, assured victor over the pestilence as long
ago he had been victor over those dreaded mole-crickets, cheerfully
bearing the burden of a city in distress, counting upon the future
as on the past, in a word, immortal,--one to whom in his authority I
could therefore give pain without scruple,--and now, in a second, I
should see him--how? He was there, on the other side of that door,
motionless, laid low, humiliated, no longer leading every one like a
flock, fighting on his own account against the insidious disease that
was consuming him. I felt a sort of terror of this inevitable contrast,
mingled, I have to confess, with a personal horror of the sight of
humiliation.

Well, there was neither humiliation nor contrast. I went in and saw
him. Stretched at full length upon the bed he seemed even taller than
when standing--that was indisputable. His head was lying back upon
the bolster and I was especially struck with the forehead, that broad
forehead luminous with the light that sifted through the curtains. The
unwonted thinness only emphasised the nobility of the features. There
was no trace either of anxiety or fear, and as for suffering, if its
mark was there it had brought with it no inferiority. His eyes were
closed, but at times he opened them wide, almost startlingly. When had
I thus seen them take on the imprint of the things at which he was
gazing? Before Mélanie’s last farewell they used so to fix themselves
upon my sister, upon my sister who was to go away for always, and whom
he would never see again.

His whole attitude, his whole expression was gathering itself together,
or rather was fixing itself in its highest character: he had not ceased
to command. And my first word, my only word, was a consent to his
command.

“Father,” I said, standing beside the bed.

I did not utter the word in the sense of filial piety, but because
his ascendency subjugated me, overawed me. Yes, in this dimly lighted
chamber, heavy with the odour of medicines, suffering and fever,
that complex odour which is as it were the advance herald of death,
I mechanically came back into subordination, as a soldier about to
desert returns to his place in the ranks under the eye of his chief. I
was aware of this change in myself. That mysticism in which I had so
revelled and which isolated me from all the universe, melted away like
clouds before the first rays of dawn. I recognised my dependence, and
all the truth of my childish thoughts when they used to begin by making
the tour of the house, and the antiquity and the justice of the power
still held in those weakening hands, which clasped with pale rigid
fingers a little crucifix which at first I had not observed.

I thought I had spoken aloud, but he could not have heard me, for he
did not turn toward me. I could hear his low voice--that voice that I
remembered so ringing--whispering as if he were, reciting a litany.

“What is he saying?” I asked softly of my mother, who drew near.

“Your names,” she murmured. “Listen!”

Yes, one after another he was naming us all. Those of the three elder
had already passed his lips: he pronounced that of Louise. It was my
turn, but he passed it and named Nicola, then James. The omission
hurt me cruelly, but I had hardly had time to feel it when I heard
my name, last of all, detached and set apart. Suddenly I remembered
Martinod’s odious insinuations as to his preference for one of my
brothers; and I understood that no one of us was the favourite, but
that just because of the anxiety I had given I had been the object of
a special solicitude. The irresistible desire swept over me to reveal
to him, in a word, the change that had suddenly taken place in me.
He used to dwell with such interest and even such respect upon our
vocation--believing that it would be the basis of our whole life--I
had systematically put aside mine, to make sure of my liberty. Now,
with full conviction, I had recovered it. Taking a step forward I said
firmly:

“Father, I am here. It is I. Upon the mountain I reflected. Don’t you
know? I want to be a doctor, like you.”

On the mountain? That was not true, but did not piety command me to
conceal the cause of my change of mind? He did not show the joy that I
expected--perhaps he could no longer show joy over anything. Perhaps
another work, the last, that of detachment, was going on in him. He
lifted to me his almost terrifying eyes.

“Francis,” he repeated.

He tried to raise his hand to lay it upon my head. Though I leaned low
over him he could not do it, and his arm fell back. I kneeled, that
he might do it with less effort. He did not even try, as I had hoped,
but in that low voice in which he had named us one by one, he said
distinctly:

“Your turn has come.”

My mother, who was a little behind, drew near to ask me the same
question that I had asked her:

“What is he saying?”

I made an instinctive movement as if to say that I did not precisely
know--yet I had clearly heard him, and after a moment of hesitation,
the expression ceased to be mysterious to me. I could see in it an
evidence of confidence in the past. My father had not admitted my
treachery, my enfranchisement, he had been sure that I would return to
him; he counted upon me. But in its form as from beyond the tomb the
utterance had a still deeper significance, which completely overcame
me; my father was tendering to my weakness the royal crown of the
family, inviting me to wear it after him, because I should be, at home,
his successor, his heir. I had never thought of that.

Did my mother understand the emotion which bowed and shattered me? She
reminded me that I needed food after my long journey in the cold air,
and went with me to the door.

“Valentine,” murmured the sick man.

“I am not leaving you, dear.” And she turned from me to hurry back to
him.

I did not leave the room, but remained and witnessed a scene which
almost without words, apparently obscure and far away, was only all the
more clear to me.

My father began by saying:

“Listen!” He was looking at no one at the moment; his eyes were fixed
on the ceiling above him. He made no haste to speak, he was gathering
himself together. An indescribable anguish swept over me. I divined
that my presence had shaken him, and that he was collecting his
thoughts as to the future of the family. What he had to say to my
mother was doubtless his last wish on the subject. Had I not a right to
hear, since _my turn had come_?

Perhaps my mother, too, understood. She was at the bedside, leaning
over, and the sheet which hung out against her knee shook slightly. I
am sure I saw it shake--was it the trembling of her knee? And then I
saw nothing except one face.

My father was still silent. I could hear the monotonous moan of the
fountain in the court. Mother urged him tenderly:

“My love, my dear love ...”

His mind was entirely lucid. He had _himself followed the progress
of his disease_, he knew precisely how he was. At her words he
seemed to emerge from the thoughts in which he was plunged; he turned
his head slightly and looked at my mother with his almost awe-inspiring
gaze, which penetrated deeply into her heart.

“Valentine,” he repeated, simply.

“You had something to say to me?”

With infinite gentleness he murmured: “Oh, no, Valentine. I have
nothing to say to you.”

I am sure that he had meant to confide to her the future of the
house, and one gaze had been enough to silence him. That gaze alone
had told him that there was no need. She who was there, close beside
him, was she not his flesh and his heart? All those years together,
day by day, without one difference of opinion, one cloud, had made
them indissolubly one. What could one utterance add to all that? Was
ever greater evidence of love given to wife than that silence, that
confidence, that peace! ...


After those high moments I was overpowered by the human cowardice which
finds a sort of solace in absence from the scene of calamity. I left
the room. Grandfather was getting down from the diligence with Nicola,
already a big girl, growing serious, and Jamie, lighter minded, whose
twelve years were not yet troubled by any presentiment. Grandfather
was anxiously superintending the transportation of his violin case and
his almanacs; his collection of pipes was not to be entrusted to any
hands but his own. Aunt Deen attended in person to the heavy luggage.
Notwithstanding her years and declining strength, she still took upon
herself a servant’s duties. Physical effort alone could relieve her
mind; with her, sorrow expressed itself in increased activity.

Once in the house, grandfather wandered about like a soul in pain. He
hovered around the sick room without venturing to enter. He dared not
ask questions, and in his uncertainty he made his moan to any one whom
he saw:

“I am getting old. I am old.”

They saw one another, but I was not present. It was not necessary
to be present to realise what it must have been, and that the son,
inevitably, supported and comforted the father. If life does not draw
from a religious heart the fervour of a constant upward progress, one
must always remain what one has been. For some the burden, for others
the looking on. And even the approach of death does not change things.

As evening drew on, grandfather, who was dragging himself from room to
room, bemoaning himself, timidly proposed that we should take a walk.

“That’s a good idea,” said Aunt Deen, who understood him. “There are
two or three errands at the chemist’s and the grocer’s.”

He manifested a childish joy at being made useful and I did not refuse
to go with him. After the solitude of the mountain, with its silent
nights, we found a secret pleasure in the lighted streets and the
coming and going of people. The epidemic had been completely checked;
the sanitary measures which had been ordered left not the slightest
danger to be feared. Awakened from its nightmare, the town was giving
itself over to transports of joy the reaction from terror. I had seen
it in its consternation rushing with loud cries to seek salvation in
one man, and I found it now in all the heyday and thoughtlessness of
a festival. The autumn softness floated like a perfume over all. The
shops were lighted up. The pavements were crowded with people and the
cafés overflowed to the very street. The women were in light dresses
which they had not been able to wear all summer, and jaunty in their
fresh costumes transformed the season into a belated spring. After
so much mourning life was sweet, and funerals were relegated to the
background.

I was the son of their saviour. I expected tokens of popular favour,
and behold people avoided us, as I was not slow to see. The sight of
that old man and that youth forced upon them the thought of their
benefactor, and recalled the evil days through which they had passed.
Evidently no one wanted to think of them. We should have liked to talk
over all the troubles, but no one gave us an opportunity.

Finally, some one spoke to us. It was Martinod, Martinod with his
pursed-up mouth and sleek beard who, without giving me time to
shake him off, began to talk of my father admiringly, eloquently,
enthusiastically, awarding him full and entire justice, celebrating his
courage, his organising ability, his medical skill, his marvellous art
of directing men. I had resolved, on seeing him, to turn my back upon
him with contempt, and here I was, full of gratitude, drinking in his
words--forgetting his calumnies, his base manœuvres, his secret plots,
which had so nearly destroyed the unity of our family. I ought to have
been seeking upon his face the mark imprinted by my father’s hand, and
here I was listening to his brazen encomiums. I was still too simple
minded to imagine what he was designing.

Gallus and Merinos, who next met us, were quite ready to descant
upon themselves and the cruel trials from which they had fortunately
emerged. We tried to speak of poor Casenave and the unlucky Galurin,
but they changed the subject by informing us that one of them was
composing a Funeral March and the other a _Danse Macabre_, in
commemoration of the historic typhus. I have never learned that either
was finished.

When we returned home, somewhat cheered up by the change, we met
Mariette at the door, full of indignant wrath. She had served us for
more than twenty years, and never thought of controlling herself in our
presence. The little doctor who had long ago visited me in my attack of
pleurisy had attempted to slip a gold piece into her hand, begging her
to give his name and address to the patients who continued to crowd to
our house, and with an emphatic gesture she had thrown his gold at his
head.

“The wretched creature!” exclaimed Aunt Deen, who had witnessed the
incident from the staircase. “Ah! _they_ are all just alike!”

And I ceased to deny the existence of those who surrounded us, “they,”
and knew that calamity was impending over us.

A little later in the evening, just before the dinner hour, as the bell
rang I went myself to the door, thinking that it might be my brother
Stephen, arriving from Rome, whence he had been recalled the previous
evening. I saw before me in the shadow, for the vestibule lamp but
feebly lighted the doorstep, one of our poor people, old Yes-Yes, with
his ever-nodding head. I knew that he was still alive, though Zeeze
Million had carried her dreams of fortune with her to the grave. Why
did he come on another day than Saturday, the regular day of the poor?

“Wait,” I said. “I’ll go for some money.”

But he caught my arm almost familiarly.

“Yes, yes,” he began, “that’s not it.”

“What then?”

“Yes, yes, he cured me, you understand. So it’s to learn, yes, to learn
how he is.”

Full of gratitude he had come for information. I spoke more gently, as
I replied:

“Always the same, friend.”

“Ah, ah! yes, yes, so much the worse.”

I wondered why he did not go. Did he after all, hope for a little
money? Suddenly, like a stammerer who has succeeded in getting hold of
his words, and makes the most of it, he thrust his face close to mine,
exclaiming:

“He--he--he was a man! Yes, yes.”

And he at once disappeared in the darkness. I gazed into the shadows
which had swallowed him up, and then suddenly closed the door;--but too
late, for it seemed to me that some one had come in, an invisible some
one who took his way up the stairs, through the passage, to the room. I
tried to cry out, but my lips uttered no sound; and I thought to myself
that if I had cried out they would have thought me crazy. I stood there
paralysed, knowing that some one had come into the house before me, and
that I could not drive out him who was there, before me, who would not
go out, who was noiselessly going up the stairs, his actual presence
unsuspected by all but me.

Now I understood the true, the irreparable meaning of what I had
vaguely seen without admitting that I saw it. That poor stammering
creature had said “He was a man,” speaking of my father in the past
tense, speaking of my father as if my father was no longer living. Then
that invisible presence which had come in by the open door was Death.
For the first time it seemed to me an active thing, for the first time
Death seemed to me--there is no other word--_alive_. Until that
moment I had attached no importance to its acts. And in my horror and
impotence, I stood there, my arms hanging helpless at my sides.

Long ago, when we had been in danger of losing the house, I had been
born into the unknown sense of grief; now I was born into the sense of
death. And I felt all the cruelty of the parting, before it had come to
pass.

As in that long ago time, I fled into the garden and threw myself upon
the grass. The night was there before me; the earth was cold and seemed
to repel me. The wind which had risen was wrenching the branches of the
chestnut trees, and they groaned, uttering lamentations. Especially
one of them, the one of the breach in the wall, never ceased moaning,
and I thought to see it fall. I recalled to mind some that I had seen
in the forest of the Alpette after a storm, prone upon the ground, at
such length that the eye was astonished on measuring them from root to
tip. And I recalled, too, that picture in my Bible of the tall cedars
of Lebanon lying on the ground--those that were destined to be used in
building the Temple in Jerusalem.

The beams of the roof seemed to be complaining, like the trees, and
I expected to see the house fall into a heap. What would there be to
wonder at, if the house did fall, since my father was dying?




                                  IV

                               THE HEIR


SORROWS like these have their own modesty, and I throw a veil over
mine....

I resume my story at the time when we resumed our ordinary life. The
first meal by ourselves consecrated its permanence, after the comings
and goings of relatives and friends were over, with all the confusion
inseparable from a house of mourning. My brother Stephen, who had
hastened from Rome, had gone back to complete his theological studies.
Mélanie was doubtless finding expression for her own grief by more
complete devotion to all the sorrows of the hospital, and Bernard, far
away, had acknowledged the blow by a brief cablegram in which we could
measure his affection. We others, who remained, could now count one
another like the wounded after defeat.

The bell rang and we must go to the dining-room. Grandfather came
in from his walk; he was bent and broken, he leant upon his cane,
bemoaning himself about something, I can not tell what. Something had
gone wrong, he himself could not quite understand.

“Ah!” he sighed, all out of breath. “I thought I should never get back
to the house.”

He spoke as we used to speak when we were little. But had we ever left
off saying The House? I saw him so old and weak and hardly realised
that it was he who used to take me into the woods and on the lake, in
those days when both of us used to sally forth in all tranquillity
for the conquest of liberty. In my transformation, going to the other
extreme, I gazed upon him now with an excessive pity which bordered
upon contempt.

Yes, when the soldiers are on the ramparts the town may question and
discuss, may they not? It questions and discusses the utility of arms
and fortifications, their destruction appearing a slight thing. But
what if there are no soldiers and the enemy is at the gates?

Thus in the old days we could talk of our desires and our dreams, of
the commonwealth of the future, and above all, of our dear liberty. We
could, then, and now we can no more, for there is no one defending us,
and we are face to face with life, with our own destinies. He is no
longer here, grandfather, who used to mount guard on the ramparts for
the whole family.

Aunt Deen was putting finishing touches to the table. She was very old
to impose so much labour upon herself, never stopping to rest from
morning till night.

“Don’t, aunt, it is not your work.”

But she protested and muttered and began to weep aloud.

“You mustn’t prevent my working. I feel it less when I am working.”

Didn’t I know, too, that there was now no one in the kitchen but
Mariette, because things were changed with us? Each of us must do his
part, and Aunt Deen, as usual, began first.

Louise was no longer gay, as she used to be. She came in, leading her
sister Nicola, as if to protect her. Why did I look more lovingly at
their fair hair? Was I already thinking of the new uncertainties of
their future? Jamie, left mostly to himself these latter days, had not
been good, and my mother was reproving him. He probably thought that
she would never think of scolding him, and all astonishment, he obeyed.
And now we must take our seats around the table.

Mother had taken her old place in the middle, and I found in her
manner, in her voice gentle as always, an indescribable new authority,
inexplicable and yet to be felt. She turned to grandfather, who came
next.

“It is for you to take his place,” she said indicating my father’s
chair, opposite to hers.

“Oh, not I!” exclaimed grandfather with agitation. “Valentine, I can’t
take that place. I am nothing now but an old beast.”

She urged, but in vain; nothing would induce him to yield. Then my
mother turned to me with that expression, at once calm and frightened,
which she had worn ever since--since she became a widow.

“It must be you,” she said.

Without a word I seated myself in my father’s place and for a few
moments I found it impossible to speak. Why this emotion for so
simple and natural a thing? So simple and so natural indeed was the
transmission of authority.

I have compared the house to a kingdom, and the succession of heads
of the family to a dynasty. And now this dynasty had come to me. My
mother was exercising the regency, and I was wearing the crown. And
now I learned at the same time its weight and its honour. As before
this I had been born into sorrow and into death, I was now born into
the sense of my responsibility in life. Indeed I do not know whether
I can compare the feeling that took possession of me with any other
emotion. It pierced my heart with that sharp and cruel dart which is
generally attributed to love. And from my wound sprang up, as it were,
a gush of red blood, the sense of exaltation which was to colour all my
life--blood which, far from subtracting from life’s forces, would add
to the eternal defences of our race.

Thus, before I had attained the age of man, I entered, by anticipation,
upon the great struggle which without fail forms a part of every
human existence, the struggle between liberty and acceptance, between
the horror of servitude and the sacrifices which are the price of
permanence. A delightful but dangerous teacher had early revealed to
me the miraculous charm of nature, of that very love and pride with
which we think to bring the earth into subjection, but this too sweet
and enervating charm would never again entirely possess me. My life was
henceforth fixed to an iron ring: it would no longer depend upon my
own fancy. Toward the mirages of happiness I should henceforth reach
out only fettered hands. But these fetters are those which every man
must one day assume, whether he actually mounts a throne or whether his
empire is only over an acre or a name. Like a king I was responsible
for the decadence or the prosperity of the kingdom--The House.


A few days later, since I must begin my medical studies, I also was
obliged to go away, for a time. This parting tore my heart: in the
zeal of my new part, I would fain have believed my presence necessary
to my mother, who must be quite crushed by the loss of him who was her
life. Her calmness, however, surprised me, and also the clearness of
her judgment, and that mysterious new authority that every one felt. At
the time of the funeral Martinod had begged for the honour of making
a speech, reminding all present of my father’s devotion to the public
weal, but she had refused. I could not understand her repelling a
repentant enemy, and would willingly have given a contrary opinion.
But not long afterward we learned that Martinod, hoping to capture the
Mayor’s office, had counted upon thus making use of the dead to regain
his lost popularity. Aunt Deen’s _they_ had not laid aside their
arms. They would never lay them aside. But the hearth-stone had its
watchful guardians, neither to be duped nor lulled to sleep.

But there would be loneliness there, with only Nicola and Jamie.
Grandfather would hardly count, for he was failing from day to day. He
who had always had such horror of enclosures now asked almost every
evening if the doors were locked and bolted. What did he fear? Once,
arousing from a doze, he earnestly called for his father. Aunt Deen
took him up almost roughly:

“You know very well that he has been dead these thirty years!”

To our stupefaction he quickly replied,

“No, no, not him, the other.”

“What other? What do you mean?”

“The one who was there a little while ago,” he said, pointing in the
direction of the consulting room.

Then we understood that there was a confusion of generations in his
brain. He felt that he had lost his support, and very naturally our
father had become his.

Much affected by his confusion of mind, I became more just to him.
Together we had lost the empire of liberty.

The evening before my departure I went to my mothers room. I had
expected to lend her courage for our parting, and behold I was weaker
and more agitated than she.

“I shall come back,” I said positively, “and I shall try to follow
_him_.”

We never spoke of him otherwise, among ourselves.

“Yes,” she replied, “_your turn has come_.”

Then she had heard and understood. And as, my head on her shoulder, I
expressed my sorrow at leaving her in her trouble, she comforted me.

“Listen; we must not be sad.”

Was it she who spoke thus? I raised my head in surprise and looked at
her; her face, ravaged by trials, chiselled by the sorrow of the most
ardent love, was almost colourless. All its expression centred in her
eyes, so gentle, so pure, so limpid. She was changed and aged. And yet
there was in her an indescribable firmness which she imparted to all
around her, no one knew how.

“Don’t be surprised,” she said. “That first night I was so overwhelmed
with despair that I prayed God to take me. I cried unto Him and He
heard me. He sustained me, but in another way. I had not believed
enough. Now I believe as we ought to believe. We are not parted, don’t
you see?--We are going forward to meet again.”

A Book of Hours was lying on the work table beside her. I mechanically
took it up. It opened of itself to a page which she must have read
often.

“Read it aloud,” she said.

It was the prayer of the dying, to be recited during the approach of
death:

 “_Leave this world, Christian soul, in the name of God the Father
 Almighty who created thee; in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of
 the living God who suffered for thee; in the name of Angels and
 Archangels, of Thrones and Dominations; in the name of Principalities
 and Powers, of Cherubim and Seraphim; in the name of the Patriarchs
 and Prophets, and of the Holy Apostles and Evangelists; in the name
 of the Holy Martyrs and Confessors, in the name of the holy Monks and
 Solitaries, in the name of the holy Virgins, and of all the Saints of
 God. May thy dwelling be this day in peace and thy habitation in the
 Holy Places!_ ...”

All heaven assembled to receive the Soul to whom the portals of Life
were opened.

_We are not parted; we are going forward to meet again_; I
understood the meaning of her words.

In the silence that followed my reading, once more I heard the
monotonous lament of the fountain in the court, and I recalled my
father’s confidence when, about to speak, confidence had closed his
lips. What could he have said to my mother which she would not know
from him? She was still living with him. She would finish his work, and
then she would go to join him. It was so simple; and this was why she
was so at peace.

Her calmness communicated itself to Aunt Deen, always at work, and
ever on the lookout for the most humiliating duties, polishing floors
or blacking shoes, as if she would punish herself for having outlived
her nephew. And when mother gently took her to task for her excessive
devotion, she would protest with tears, as if begging a favour.

As at evening one sees the village lights come out, one by one, along
the slopes, so I could see the lights of our house shining out even
beyond our own horizon, to the ends of the world, and even beyond the
world. They were shining for the absent as well as for the present,
for Mélanie at the bedside of the poor, for Stephen at Rome, and for
Bernard, soldier of the outposts in his far distant colony. And they
were shining still higher.

And it seemed to me that the walls whose restrictions I had deplored
during my years of youth, during my mad search for liberty, were
opening of themselves to let me pass out. They no longer kept me
a prisoner. How should they keep me a prisoner? Wherever I might
henceforth go, I should carry with me a bit of earth, a bit of my
earth, as if I had been made of its dust, as God made the first man.

That evening, the eve of my departure, my faith in The House became
faith in The Eternal House where the dead live again in peace....


April, 1908--December, 1912.





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