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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ink-Stain, Complete, by Rene Bazin

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Title: The Ink-Stain, Complete

Author: Rene Bazin

Release Date: October 5, 2006 [EBook #3975]
Last updated: August 23, 2016

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INK-STAIN, COMPLETE ***



Produced by David Widger





THE INK STAIN

(Tache d’Encre)

By RENE BAZIN


Preface by E. LAVISSE




RENE BAZIN

RENE-NICHOLAS-MARIE BAZIN was born at Angers, December 26, 1853. He
studied for the bar, became a lawyer and professor of jurisprudence at
the Catholic University in his native city, and early contributed to
‘Le Correspondant, L’Illustration, Journal des Debats, Revue du Deux
Mondes,’ etc. Although quietly writing fiction for the last fifteen
years or so, he was not well known until the dawn of the twentieth
century, when his moral studies of provincial life under the form of
novels and romances became appreciated. He is a profound psychologist,
a force in literature, and his style is very pure and attractive.
He advocates resignation and the domestic virtues, yet his books are
neither dull, nor tiresome, nor priggish; and as he has advanced in
years and experience M. Bazin has shown an increasing ambition to deal
with larger problems than are involved for instance, in the innocent
love-affairs of ‘Ma Tante Giron’ (1886), a book which enraptured Ludovic
Halevy. His novel, ‘Une Tache d’Encre’ (1888), a romance of scholarly
life, was crowned by the French Academy, to which he was elected in
1903.

It is safe to say that Bazin will never develop into an author dangerous
to morals. His works may be put into the hands of cloistered virgins,
and there are not, to my knowledge, many other contemporary French
imaginative writers who could endure this stringent test. Some critics,
indeed, while praising him, scoff at his chaste and surprising optimism;
but it is refreshing to recommend to English readers, in these days of
Realism and Naturalism, the works of a recent French writer which do not
require maturity of years in the reader. ‘Une Tache d’Encre’, as I have
said, was crowned by the French Academy; and Bazin received from the
same exalted body the “Prix Vitet” for the ensemble of his writings in
1896, being finally admitted a member of the Academy in June, 1903. He
occupies the chair of Ernest Legouve.

Bazin’s first romance, ‘Stephanette’, was published under the pseudonym
“Bernard Seigny,” in 1884; then followed ‘Victor Pavie (1887); Noellet
(1890); A l’Aventure (1891) and Sicile (1892)’, two books on Italy, of
which the last mentioned was likewise crowned by the French Academy;
‘La Legende de Sainte-Bega (1892); La Sarcelle Bleue (1892); Madame
Corentine (1893); Les Italiens d’aujourd’hui (1894); Humble Amour
(1894); En Province (1896); De toute son Ame (1897)’, a realistic but
moderate romance of a workingman’s life; ‘Les Contes de Perrette (1898);
La Terre qui Meurt (1899); Le Guide de l’Empereur (1901); Les Oberle
(1902), a tale from Alsace of to-day, sketching the political situation,
approximately correct, and lately adapted for the stage; ‘Donatienne’
(1903).

With Bazin literary life does not become a mirage obscuring the vision
of real life. Before being an author Rene Bazin is a man, with a family
attached to the country, rooted in the soil; a guaranty of the dignity
of his work as well as of the writer, and a safeguard against many
extravagances. He has remained faithful to his province. He lives in the
attractive city of Angers. When he leaves it, it is for a little tour
through France, or a rare journey-once to Sicily and once to Spain.
He is seldom to be met on the Parisian boulevards. Not that he has any
prejudice against Paris, or fails to appreciate the tone of its society,
or the quality of its diversions; but he is conscious that he has
nothing to gain from a residence in the capital, but, on the contrary,
would run a risk of losing his intense originality and the freshness of
his genius.

                  E. LAVISSE
               de l’Academie Francaise.



THE INK-STAIN




BOOK 1.




CHAPTER I. THE ACCIDENT

All I have to record of the first twenty-three years of my life is the
enumeration of them. A simple bead-roll is enough; it represents their
family likeness and family monotony.

I lost my parents when I was very young. I can hardly recall their
faces; and I should keep no memories of La Chatre, our home, had I not
been brought up quite close to it. It was sold, however, and lost to
me, like all the rest. Yes, fate is hard, sometimes. I was born at La
Chatre; the college of La Chatre absorbed eighteen years of my life. Our
head master used to remark that college is a second home; whereby I have
always fancied he did some injustice to the first.

My school-days were hardly over when my uncle and guardian, M. Brutus
Mouillard, solicitor, of Bourges, packed me off to Paris to go through
my law course. I took three years over it: At the end of that time,
just eighteen months ago, I became a licentiate, and “in the said
capacity”--as my uncle would say took an oath that transformed me into
a probationary barrister. Every Monday, regularly, I go to sign my name
among many others on an attendance list, and thereby, it appears, I am
establishing a claim upon the confidence of the widow and the orphan.

In the intervals of my legal studies I have succeeded in taking my Arts
Degree. At present I am seeking that of Doctor of Law. My examinations
have been passed meritoriously, but without brilliance; my tastes run
too much after letters. My professor, M. Flamaran, once told me the
truth of the matter: “Law, young man, is a jealous mistress; she allows
no divided affection.” Are my affections divided? I think not, and I
certainly do not confess any such thing to M. Mouillard, who has not yet
forgotten what he calls “that freak” of a Degree in Arts. He builds some
hopes upon me, and, in return, it is natural that I should build a few
upon him.

Really, that sums up all my past: two certificates! A third diploma
in prospect and an uncle to leave me his money--that is my future. Can
anything more commonplace be imagined?

I may add that I never felt any temptation at all to put these things
on record until to-day, the tenth of December, 1884. Nothing had ever
happened to me; my history was a blank. I might have died thus. But who
can foresee life’s sudden transformations? Who can foretell that the
skein, hitherto so tranquilly unwound, will not suddenly become tangled?
This afternoon a serious adventure befell me. It agitated me at the
time, and it agitates me still more upon reflection. A voice within me
whispers that this cause will have a series of effects, that I am on
the threshold of an epoch, or, as the novelists say, a crisis in my
existence. It has struck me that I owe it to myself to write my
Memoirs, and that is the reason why I have just purchased this brown
memorandum-book in the Odeon Arcade. I intend to make a detailed
and particular entry of the event, and, as time goes on, of its
consequences, if any should happen to flow from it.

“Flow from it” is just the phrase; for it has to do with a blot of ink.

My blot of ink is hardly dry. It is a large one, too; of abnormal shape,
and altogether monstrous, whether one considers it from the physical
side or studies it in its moral bearings. It is very much more than an
accident; it has something of the nature of an outrage. It was at
the National Library that I perpetrated it, and upon--But I must not
anticipate.

I often work in the National Library; not in the main hall, but in that
reserved for literary men who have a claim, and are provided with a
ticket, to use it. I never enter it without a gentle thrill, in which
respect is mingled with satisfied vanity. For not every one who chooses
may walk in. I must pass before the office of the porter, who retains my
umbrella, before I make my way to the solemn beadle who sits just inside
the doorway--a double precaution, attesting to the majesty of the place.
The beadle knows me. He no longer demands my ticket. To be sure, I am
not yet one of those old acquaintances on whom he smiles; but I am
no longer reckoned among those novices whose passport he exacts. An
inclination of his head makes me free of the temple, and says, as
plainly as words, “You are one of us, albeit a trifle young. Walk in,
sir.”

And in I walk, and admire on each occasion the vast proportions of the
interior, the severe decoration of the walls, traced with broad foliated
pattern and wainscoted with books of reference as high as hand can
reach; the dread tribunal of librarians and keepers in session down
yonder, on a kind of judgment-seat, at the end of the avenue whose
carpet deadens all footsteps; and behind again, that holy of holies
where work the doubly privileged--the men, I imagine, who are members
of two or three academies. To right and left of this avenue are rows of
tables and armchairs, where scatters, as caprice has chosen and habit
consecrated, the learned population of the library. Men form the large
majority. Viewed from the rear, as they bend over their work, they
suggest reflections on the ravages wrought by study upon hair-clad
cuticles. For every hirsute Southerner whose locks turn gray without
dropping off, heavens, what a regiment of bald heads! Visitors who look
in through the glass doors see only this aspect of devastation. It gives
a wrong impression. Here and there, at haphazard, you may find a few
women among these men. George Sand used to come here. I don’t know the
names of these successors of hers, nor their business; I have merely
observed that they dress in sober colors, and that each carries a
number of shawls and a thick veil. You feel that love is far from their
thoughts. They have left it outside, perhaps--with the porter.

Several of these learned folk lift their heads as I pass, and follow
me with the dulled eye of the student, an eye still occupied with the
written thought and inattentive to what it looks on. Then, suddenly,
remorse seizes them for their distraction, they are annoyed with me, a
gloomy impatience kindles in their look, and each plunges anew into his
open volume. But I have had time to guess their secret ejaculations:
“I am studying the Origin of Trade Guilds!” “I, the Reign of Louis the
Twelfth!” “I, the Latin Dialects!” “I, the Civil Status of Women
under Tiberius!” “I am elaborating a new translation of Horace!” “I am
fulminating a seventh article, for the Gazette of Atheism and Anarchy,
on the Russian Serfs!” And each one seems to add, “But what is thy
business here, stripling? What canst thou write at thy age? Why
troublest thou the peace of these hallowed precincts?” My business,
sirs? Alas! it is the thesis for my doctor’s degree. My uncle and
venerated guardian, M. Brutus Mouillard, solicitor, of Bourges,
is urging me to finish it, demands my return to the country, grows
impatient over the slow toil of composition. “Have done with theories,”
 he writes, “and get to business! If you must strive for this degree,
well and good; but what possessed you to choose such a subject?”

I must own that the subject of my thesis in Roman law has been
artistically chosen with a view to prolonging my stay in Paris: “On the
‘Latini Juniani.’” Yes, gentle reader, a new subject, almost incapable
of elucidation, having no connection--not the remotest--with the
exercise of any profession whatsoever, entirely devoid of practical
utility. The trouble it gives me is beyond conception.

It is true that I intersperse my researches with some more attractive
studies, and one or two visits to the picture-galleries, and more than
an occasional evening at the theatre. My uncle knows nothing of this.
To keep him soothed I am careful to get my reader’s ticket renewed every
month, and every month to send him the ticket just out of date, signed
by M. Leopold Delisle. He has a box full of them; and in the simplicity
of his heart Monsieur Mouillard has a lurking respect for this nephew,
this modern young anchorite, who spends his days at the National
Library, his nights with Gaius, wholly absorbed in the Junian Latins,
and indifferent to whatsoever does not concern the Junian Latins in this
Paris which my uncle still calls the Modern Babylon.

I came down this morning in the most industrious mood, when the
misfortune befell. Close by the sanctum where the librarians sit are two
desks where you write down the list of the books you want. I was doing
so at the right-hand desk, on which abuts the first row of tables. Hence
all the mischief. Had I written at the left-hand desk, nothing would
have happened. But no; I had just set down as legibly as possible the
title, author, and size of a certain work on Roman Antiquities, when, in
replacing the penholder, which is attached there by a small brass chain,
some inattentiveness, some want of care, my ill-luck, in short, led
me to set it down in unstable equilibrium on the edge of the desk. It
tumbled-I heard the little chain rattle-it tumbled farther-then stopped
short. The mischief was done. The sudden jerk, as it pulled up, had
detached an enormous drop of ink from the point of the pen, and that
drop--Ah! I can see him yet, as he rose from the shadow of the desk,
that small, white-haired man, so thin and so very angry!

“Clumsy idiot! To blot an Early Text!”

I leaned over and looked. Upon the page of folio, close to an
illuminated capital, the black drop had flattened itself. Around the
original sphere had been shed splashes of all conceivable shapes-rays,
rockets, dotted lines, arrowheads, all the freakish impromptu of chaos.
Next, the slope lending its aid, the channels had drained into one, and
by this time a black rivulet was crawling downward to the margin. One or
two readers near had risen, and now eyed me like examining magistrates.
I waited for an outbreak, motionless, dazed, muttering words that did
not mend the case at all. “What a pity! Oh, I’m so sorry! If I had only
known--” The student of the Early Text stood motionless as I. Together
we watched the ink trickle. Suddenly, summoning his wits together, he
burrowed with feverish haste in his morocco writing-case, pulled out
a sheet of blotting-paper, and began to soak up the ink with the
carefulness of a Sister of Mercy stanching a wound. I seized the
opportunity to withdraw discreetly to the third row of tables, where
the attendant had just deposited my books. Fear is so unreasoning. Very
likely by saying no more about it, by making off and hiding my head
in my hands, like a man crushed by the weight of his remorse, I might
disarm this wrath. I tried to think so. But I knew well enough that
there was more to come. I had hardly taken my seat when, looking up,
I could see between my fingers the little man standing up and
gesticulating beside one of the keepers. At one moment he rapped the
damning page with his forefinger; the next, he turned sidewise and flung
out a hand toward me; and I divined, without hearing a word, all the
bitterness of his invective. The keeper appeared to take it seriously.
I felt myself blushing. “There must be,” thought I, “some law against
ink-stains, some decree, some regulation, something drawn up for the
protection of Early Texts. And the penalty is bound to be terrible,
since it has been enacted by the learned; expulsion, no doubt, besides a
fine--an enormous fine. They are getting ready over there to fleece me.
That book of reference they are consulting is of course the catalogue of
the sale where this treasure was purchased. I shall have to replace the
Early Text! O Uncle Mouillard!”

I sat there, abandoned to my sad reflections, when one of the
attendants, whom I had not seen approaching, touched me on the shoulder.

“The keeper wishes to speak to you.”

I rose up and went. The terrible reader had gone back to his seat.

“It was you, sir, I believe, who blotted the folio just now?”

“It was, sir.”

“You did not do so on purpose?”

“Most certainly not, sir! I am indeed sorry for he accident.”

“You ought to be. The volume is almost unique; and the blot, too, for
that matter. I never saw such a blot! Will you, please, leave me your
Christian name, surname, profession, and address?”

I wrote down, “Fabien Jean Jacques Mouillard, barrister, 91 Rue de
Rennes.”

“Is that all?” I asked.

“Yes, sir, that is all for the present. But I warn you that Monsieur
Charnot is exceedingly annoyed. It might be as well to offer him some
apology.”

“Monsieur Charnot?”

“Yes. It is Monsieur Charnot, of the Institute, who was reading the
Early Text.”

“Merciful Heavens!” I ejaculated, as I went back to my seat; “this must
be the man of whom my tutor spoke, the other day! Monsieur Flamaran
belongs to the Academy of Moral and Political Science, the other to the
Institute of Inscriptions and the Belles-Lettres. Charnot? Yes, I
have those two syllables in my ear. The very last time I saw
Monsieur Flamaran he let fall ‘my very good friend Charnot, of the
‘Inscriptions.’ They are friends. And I am in a pretty situation;
threatened with I don’t know what by the Library--for the keeper told me
positively that this was all ‘for the present’--but not for the future;
threatened to be disgraced in my tutor’s eyes; and all because this
learned man’s temper is upset.

“I must apologize. Let me see, what could I say to Monsieur Charnot? As
a matter of fact, it’s to the Early Text that I ought to apologize. I
have spilled no ink over Monsieur Charnot. He is spotless, collar and
cuffs; the blot, the splashes, all fell on the Text. I will say to him,
‘Sir, I am exceedingly sorry to have interrupted you so unfortunately
in your learned studies! ‘Learned studies’ will tickle his vanity, and
should go far to appease him.”

I was on the point of rising. M. Charnot anticipated me.

Grief is not always keenest when most recent. As he approached I saw he
was more irritated and upset than at the moment of the accident. Above
his pinched, cleanshaven chin his lips shot out with an angry twitch.
The portfolio shook under his arm. He flung me a look full of tragedy
and went on his way.

Well, well; go your way, M. Charnot! One doesn’t offer apologies to a
man in his wrath. You shall have them by-and-bye, when we meet again.




CHAPTER II. THE JUNIAN LATINS

                       December 28, 1884.

This afternoon I paid M. Flamaran a visit. I had been thinking about
it for the last week, as I wanted him to help my Junian Latins out of a
mess. I am acquiring a passion for that interesting class of freedmen.
And really it is only natural. These Junian Latins were poor slaves,
whose liberation was not recognized by the strict and ancient laws of
Rome, because their masters chose to liberate them otherwise than by
‘vindicta, census, or testamentum’. On this account they lost their
privileges, poor victims of the legislative intolerance of the haughty
city. You see, it begins to be touching, already. Then came on the scene
Junius Norbanus, consul by rank, and a true democrat, who brought in a
law, carried it, and gave them their freedom. In exchange, they gave him
immortality. Henceforward, did a slave obtain a few kind words from his
master over his wine? he was a Junian Latin. Was he described as
‘filius meus’ in a public document? Junian Latin. Did he wear the cap
of liberty, the pileus, at his master’s funeral? Junian Latin. Did
he disembowel his master’s corpse? Junian Latin, once more, for his
trouble.

What a fine fellow this Norbanus must have been! What an eye for
everything, down to the details of a funeral procession, in which he
could find an excuse for emancipation! And that, too, in the midst of
the wars of Marius and Sylla in which he took part. I can picture
him seated before his tent, the evening after the battle. Pensive, he
reclines upon his shield as he watches the slave who is grinding notches
out of his sword. His eyes fill with tears, and he murmurs, “When peace
is made, my faithful Stychus, I shall have a pleasant surprise for you.
You shall hear talk of the Lex Junia Norband, I promise you!”

Is not this a worthy subject for picture or statue in a competition for
the Prix de Rome?

A man so careful of details must have assigned a special dress to these
special freedmen of his creation; for at Rome even freedom had its
livery. What was this dress? Was there one at all? No authority that
I know of throws any light on the subject. Still one hope remains: M.
Flamaran. He knows so many things, he might even know this.

M. Flamaran comes from the south-Marseilles, I think. He is not a
specialist in Roman law; but he is encyclopedic, which comes to the same
thing. He became known while still young, and deservedly; few lawyers
are so clear, so safe, so lucid. He is an excellent lecturer, and his
opinions are in demand. Yet he owes much of his fame to the works which
he has not written. Our fathers, in their day, used to whisper to one
another in the passages of the Law School, “Have you heard the news?
Flamaran is going to bring out the second volume of his great work. He
means to publish his lectures. He has in the press a treatise which will
revolutionize the law of mortgages; he has been working twenty years at
it; a masterpiece, I assure you.” Day follows day; no book appears,
no treatise is published, and all the while M. Flamaran grows in
reputation. Strange phenomenon! like the aloe in the Botanical Gardens.
The blossoming of the aloe is an event. “Only think!” says the gaping
public, “a flower which has taken twenty springs, twenty summers, twenty
autumns, and twenty winters to make up its mind to open!” And meanwhile
the roses bloom unnoticed by the town. But M. Flamaran’s case is still
more strange. Every year it is whispered that he is about to bloom
afresh; he never does bloom; and his reputation flourishes none the
less. People make lists of the books he might have written. Lucky
author!

M. Flamaran is a professor of the old school, stern, and at examination
a terror to the candidates. Clad in cap and gown, he would reject his
own son. Nothing will serve. Recommendations defeat their object. An
unquestioned Roumanian ancestry, an extraction indisputably Japanese,
find no more favor in his eyes than an assumed stammer, a sham deafness,
or a convalescent pallor put on for the occasion. East and west are
alike in his sight. The retired registrar, the pensioned usher aspiring
late in life to some petty magistrature, are powerless to touch his
heart. For him in vain does the youthful volunteer allow his uniform to
peep out beneath his student’s gown: he will not profit by the patriotic
indulgence he counted on inspiring. His sayings in the examination-room
are famous, and among them are some ghastly pleasantries. Here is one,
addressed to a victim: “And you, sir, are a law student, while our
farmers are in want of hands!”

For my own part I won his favor under circumstances that I never shall
forget. I was in for my first examination. We were discussing, or rather
I was allowing him to lecture on, the law of wardship, and nodding my
assent to his learned elucidations. Suddenly he broke off and asked,
“How many opinions have been formulated upon this subject?”

“Two, sir.”

“One is absurd. Which? Beware how you give the wrong answer!”

I considered for three agonizing seconds, and hazarded a guess. “The
first, sir.” I had guessed right. We were friends. At bottom the
professor is a capital fellow; kindly, so long as the dignity of
the Code is not in question, or the extent of one’s legal knowledge;
proverbially upright and honorable in his private life.

At home he may be seen at his window tending his canaries, which, he
says, is no change of occupation. To get to his house I have only to go
by my favorite road through the Luxembourg. I am soon at his door.

“Is Monsieur Flamaran at home?”

The old servant who opened the door eyed me solemnly. So many young
freshmen come and pester her master under the pretext of paying their
respects. Their respects, indeed! They would bore him to death if he
had to see them all. The old woman inferred, probably from my moustache,
that I had taken at least my bachelor’s degree.

“I think he is.”

He was very much at home in his overheated study, where he sat wrapped
up in a dressing-gown and keeping one eye shut to strengthen the other.

After a moment’s hesitation he recognized me, and held out his hand.

“Ah! my Junian Latin. How are you getting on?”

“I am all right, sir; it’s my Junian Latins who are not getting on.”

“You don’t say so. We must look into that. But before we begin--I forget
where you come from. I like to know where people come from.”

“From La Chatre. But I spend my vacations at Bourges with my Uncle
Mouillard.”

“Yes, yes, Mouillart with a t, isn’t it?”

“No, with a d.”

“I asked, you know, because I once knew a General Mouillart who had been
through the Crimea, a charming man. But he can not have been a relative,
for his name ended with a t.”

My good tutor spoke with a delightful simplicity, evidently wishing to
be pleasant and to show some interest in me.

“Are you married, young man?”

“No, sir; but I have no conscientious objections.”

“Marry young. Marriage is the salvation of young men. There must be
plenty of pretty heiresses in Bourges.”

“Heiresses, yes. As to their looks, at this distance--”

“Yes, I understand, at this distance of course you can’t tell. You
should do as I did; make inquiries, go and see. I went all the way to
Forez myself to look for my wife.”

“Madame Flamaran comes from Forez?”

“Just so; I stayed there a fortnight, fourteen days exactly, in the
middle of term-time, and brought back Sidonie. Bourges is a nice town.”

“Yes, in summer.”

“Plenty of trees. I remember a grand action I won there. One of my
learned colleagues was against me. We had both written opinions,
diametrically opposed, of course. But I beat him--my word, yes!”

“I dare say.”

“My boy, there was nothing left of him. Do you know the case?”

“No.”

“A magnificent case! My notes must be somewhere about; I will get them
out for you.”

The good man beamed. Evidently he had not had a talk all day, and felt
he must expand and let himself out to somebody. I appeared in the nick
of time, and came in for all his honey. He rose, went to a bookcase,
ran his eye along a shelf, took down a volume, and began, in a low tone:
“‘Cooperation is the mighty lever upon which an effete society relies to
extricate itself from its swaddling-clothes and take a loftier flight.’
Tut, tut! What stuff is this? I beg your pardon. I was reading from a
work on moral philosophy. Where the deuce is my opinion?”

He found it and, text in hand, began a long account of the action, with
names, dates, moments of excitement, and many quotations in extenso.

“Yes, my young friend, two hundred and eighteen thousand francs did I
win in that action for Monsieur Prebois, of Bourges; you know Prebois,
the manufacturer?”

“By name.”

At last he put the note-book back on its shelf, and deigned to remember
that I had come about the Junian Latins.

“In which of the authorities do you find a difficulty?”

“My difficulty lies in the want of authorities, sir, I wish to find out
whether the Junian Latins had not a special dress.”

“To be sure.” He scratched his head. “Gaius says nothing on the point?”

“No.”

“Papinian?”

“No.”

“Justinian?”

“No.”

“Then I see only one resource.”

“What is that?”

“Go to see Charnot.”

I felt myself growing pale, and stammered, with a piteous look:

“Monsieur Charnot, of the Acad--”

“The Academy of Inscriptions; an intimate friend of mine, who will
welcome you like a son, for he has none himself, poor man!”

“But perhaps the question is hardly important enough for me to trouble
him like this--”

“Hey? Not important enough? All new questions are important. Charnot
specializes on coins. Coins and costumes are all one. I will write to
tell him you are coming.”

“I beg, sir--”

“Nonsense; Nonsense; I’ll write him this very evening. He will be
delighted to see you. I know him well, you understand. He is like me; he
likes industrious young men.”

M. Flamaran held out his hand.

“Good-by, young man. Marry as soon as you have taken your degree.”

I did not recover from the shock till I was halfway across the
Luxembourg Gardens, near the Tennis Court, when I sat down, overcome.
See what comes of enthusiasm and going to call on your tutor! Ah, young
three-and-twenty, when will you learn wisdom?




CHAPTER III. AN APOLOGY

                            9 P.M.

I have made up my mind. I shall go to see M. Charnot. But before that
I shall go to his publisher’s and find out something about this famous
man’s works, of which I know nothing whatever.

                         December 31st

He lives in the Rue de l’Universite.

I have called. I have seen him. I owe this to an accident, to the
servant’s forgetting her orders.

As I entered, on the stroke of five, he was spinning a spiral twist of
paper beneath the lamplight to amuse his daughter--he a member of the
Institute, she a girl of eighteen. So that is how these big-wigs employ
their leisure moments!

The library where I found them was full of book cases-open bookcases,
bookcases with glass doors, tall bookcases, dwarf bookcases, bookcases
standing on legs, bookcases standing on the floor--of statuettes yellow
with smoke, of desks crowded with paper-weights, paper-knives, pens, and
inkstands of “artistic” pat terns. He was seated at the table, with his
back to the fire, his arm lifted, and a hairpin between his finger
and thumb--the pivot round which his paper twist was spinning briskly.
Across the table stood his daughter, leaning forward with her chin on
her hands and her white teeth showing as she laughed for laughing’s
sake, to give play to her young spirits and gladden her old father’s
heart as he gazed on her, delighted.

I must confess it made a pretty picture; and M. Charnot at that moment
was extremely unlike the M. Charnot who had confronted me from behind
the desk.

I was not left long to contemplate.

The moment I lifted the ‘portiere’ the girl jumped up briskly and
regarded me with a touch of haughtiness, meant, I think, to hide a
slight confusion. To compare small things with great, Diana must have
worn something of that look at sight of Actaeon. M. Charnot did not
rise, but hearing somebody enter, turned half-round in his armchair,
while his eyes, still dazzled with the lamplight, sought the intruder in
the partial shadow of the room.

I felt myself doubly uneasy in the presence of this reader of the Early
Text and of this laughing girl.

“Sir,” I began, “I owe you an apology--”

He recognized me. The girl moved a step.

“Stay, Jeanne, stay. We shall not take long. This gentleman has come to
offer an apology.”

This was a cruel beginning.

She thought so, too, perhaps, and withdrew discreetly into a dim corner,
near the bookcase at the end of the room.

“I have felt deep regret, sir, for that accident the other day--I
set down the penholder clumsily, in equilibrium--unstable
equilibrium--besides, I had no notion there was a reader behind the
desk. Of course, if I had been aware, I should--I should have acted
differently.”

M. Charnot allowed me to flounder on with the contemplative satisfaction
of an angler who has got a fish at the end of his line. He seemed to
find me so very stupid, that as a matter of fact I became stupid. And
then, there was no answer--not a word. Silence, alas! is not the reproof
of kings alone. It does pretty well for everybody. I stumbled on two or
three more phrases quite as flatly infelicitous, and he received them
with the same faint smile and the same silence.

To escape from my embarrassment:

“Sir,” I said, “I came also to ask for a piece of information.”

“I am at your service, sir.”

“Monsieur Flamaran has probably written to you on the matter?”

“Flamaran?”

“Yes, three days ago.”

“I have received no letter; have I, Jeanne?”

“No, father.”

“This is not the first time that my excellent colleague has promised
to write a letter and has not written it. Never mind, sir; your own
introduction is sufficient.”

“Sir, I am about to take my doctor’s degree.”

“In arts?”

“No, in law; but I have a bachelor’s degree in arts.”

“You will follow it up with a degree in medicine, no doubt?”

“Really, sir--”

“Why--Why not, since you are collecting these things? You have, then, a
bent toward literature?”

“So I have been told.”

“A pronounced inclination--hey? to scribble verse.”

“Ah, yes!”

“The old story; the family driving a lad into law; his heart leaning
toward letters; the Digest open on the table, and the drawers stuffed
with verses! Isn’t that so?”

I bowed. He glanced toward his daughter.

“Well, sir, I confess to you that I don’t understand--don’t understand
at all--this behavior of yours. Why not follow your natural bent? You
youngsters nowadays--I mean no offence--you youngsters have no longer
any mind of your own. Take my case; I was seventeen when I began to take
an interest in numismatics. My family destined me for the Stamp Office;
yes, sir, the Stamp Office. I had against me two grandfathers, two
grandmothers, my father, my mother, and six uncles--all furious. I held
out, and that has led me to the Institute. Hey, Jeanne?”

Mademoiselle Jeanne had returned to the table, where she was standing
when I entered, and seemed, after a moment, to busy herself in arranging
the books scattered in disarray on the green cloth. But she had a
secret object--to regain possession of the paper spiral that lay there
neglected, its pin sticking up beside the lamp-stand. Her light hand,
hovering hither and thither, had by a series of cunning manoeuvres
got the offending object behind a pile of duodecimos, and was now
withdrawing it stealthily among the inkstands and paperweights.

M. Charnot interrupted this little stratagem.

She answered very prettily, with a slight toss of the head:

“But, father, not everybody can be in the Institute.”

“Far from it, Jeanne. This gentleman, for instance, devotes himself to
one method of inking parchment that never will make him my colleague.
Doctor of Laws and Master of Arts,--I presume, sir, you are going to be
a notary?”

“Excuse me, an advocate.”

“I was sure of it. Jeanne, my dear, in country families it is a standing
dilemma; if not a notary, then an advocate; if not an advocate, then a
notary.”

M. Charnot spoke with an exasperating half-smile.

I ought to have laughed, to be sure; I ought to have shown sense enough
at any rate to hold my tongue and not to answer the gibes of this
vindictive man of learning. Instead, I was stupid enough to be nettled
and to lose my head.

“Well,” I retorted, “I must have a paying profession. That one or
another--what does it matter? Not everybody can belong to the Institute,
as your daughter remarked; not everybody can afford himself the luxury
of publishing, at his own expense, works that sell twenty-seven copies
or so.”

I expected a thunderbolt, an explosion. Not a bit of it. M. Charnot
smiled outright with an air of extreme geniality.

“I perceive, sir, that you are given to gossiping with the booksellers.”

“Why, yes, sir, now and then.”

“It’s a very pretty trait, at your age, to be already so strong in
bibliography. You will permit me, nevertheless, to add something to your
present stock of notions. A large sale is one thing to look at, but
not the right thing. Twenty-seven copies of a book, when read by
twenty-seven men of intelligence, outweigh a popular success. Would you
believe that one of my friends had no more than eight copies printed
of a mathematical treatise? Three of these he has given away. The other
five are still unsold. And that man, sir, is the first mathematician in
France!”

Mademoiselle Jeanne had taken it differently. With lifted chin and
reddened cheek she shot this sentence at me from the edge of a lip
disdainfully puckered:

“There are such things as ‘successes of esteem,’ sir!”

Alas! I knew that well, and I had no need of this additional lesson to
teach me the rudeness of my remark, to make me feel that I was a brute,
an idiot, hopelessly lost in the opinion of M. Charnot and his daughter.
It was cruel, all the same. Nothing was left for me but to hurry my
departure. I got up to go.

“But,” said M. Charnot in the smoothest of tones, “I do not think we
have yet discussed the question that brought you here.”

“I should hesitate, sir, to trespass further on your time.”

“Never mind that. Your question concerns?”

“The costume of the Latini Juniani.”

“Difficult to answer, like most questions of dress. Have you read the
work, in seventeen volumes, by the German, Friedchenhausen?”

“No.”

“You must have read, at any rate, Smith, the Englishman, on ancient
costume?”

“Nor that either. I only know Italian.”

“Well, then, look through two or three treatises on numismatics, the
‘Thesaurus Morellianus’, or the ‘Praestantiora Numismata’, of Valliant,
or Banduri, or Pembrock, or Pellerin. You may chance upon a scent.”

“Thank you, thank you, sir!”

He saw me to the door.

As I turned to go I noticed that his daughter was standing motionless
still, with the face of an angry Diana. She held between her fingers the
recovered spiral.

I found myself in the street.

I could not have been more clumsy, more ill-bred, or more unfortunate. I
had come to make an apology and had given further offence. Just like
my luck! And the daughter, too--I had hurt her feelings. Still, she had
stood up for me; she had said to her father, “Not every one can be in
the Institute,” evidently meaning, “Why are you torturing this poor
young man? He is bashful and ill at ease. I feel sorry for him.”
 Sorry--yes; no doubt she felt sorry for me at first. But then I came out
with that impertinence about the twenty-seven copies, and by this time
she hates me beyond a doubt. Yes, she hates me. It is too painful to
think of.

Mademoiselle Charnot will probably remain but a stranger to me, a
fugitive apparition in my path of life; yet her anger lies heavy upon
me, and the thought of those disdainful lips pursues me.

I had rarely been more thoroughly disgusted with myself, and with all
about me. I needed something to divert me, to distract me, to make me
forget, and so I set off for home by the longest way, going down the Rue
de Beaune to the Seine.

I declare, we get some perfect winter days in Paris! Just now, the folks
who sit indoors believe that the sun is down and have lighted their
lamps; but outside, the sky--a pale, rain-washed blue--is streaked with
broad rays of rose-pink. It is freezing, and the frost has sprinkled
diamonds everywhere, on the trees, the roofs, the parapets, even on the
cabmen’s hats, that gather each a sparkling cockade as they pass along
through the mist. The river is running in waves, white-capped here and
there. On the penny steamers no one but the helmsman is visible. But
what a crowd on the Pont de Carrousel! Fur cuffs and collars pass and
repass on the pavements; the roadway trembles beneath the endless line
of Batignolles--Clichy omnibuses and other vehicles. Every one seems in
a hurry. The pedestrians are brisk, the drivers dexterous. Two lines of
traffic meet, mingle without jostling, divide again into fresh lines
and are gone like a column of smoke. Although slips are common in this
crowd, its intelligent agility is all its own. Every face is ruddy,
and almost all are young. The number of young men, young maidens, young
wives, is beyond belief, Where are the aged? At home, no doubt, by the
chimney-corner. All the city’s youth is out of doors.

Its step is animated; that is the way of it. It is wide-eyed, and in its
eyes is the sparkle of life. The looks of the young are always full of
the future; they are sure of life. Each has settled his position, his
career, his dream of commonplace well-being. They are all alike; and
they might all be judges, so serious they appear about it. They walk in
pairs, bolt upright, looking neither right nor left, talking little as
they hurry along toward the old Louvre, and are soon swallowed out of
sight in the gathering mist, out of which the gaslights glimmer faintly.

They are all on their way to dine on the right bank.

I am going to dine on the left bank, at Carre’s, where one sees many odd
customers. Farewell, river! Good night, old Charnot! Blessings on you,
Mademoiselle Jeanne!




CHAPTER IV. THE STORY OF SYLVESTRE

                            8 P.M.

I am back in my study. It is very cold; Madame Menin, my housekeeper,
has let the fire out. Hallo! she has left her duster, too, lying on the
manuscript of my essay.

Is it an omen, a presage of that dust which awaits my still unfinished
work? Who can fathom Dame Fortune’s ironic humor?

Eight o’clock.... Counsellor Mouillard has finished his pleadings and
must be sitting down to a game of whist with Counsellors Horlet and
Hublette, of the Court of Bourges. They wait for me to make up the four.
Perish the awful prospect!

And M. Charnot? He, I suppose, is still spinning the paper spiral. How
easily serious people are amused! Perhaps I am a serious person. The
least thing amuses me. By the way, is Mademoiselle Jeanne fair or dark?
Let me try to recollect. Why, fair, of course. I remember the glint of
gold in the little curls about her temples, as she stood by the lamp.
A pleasant face, too; not exactly classic, but rosy and frank; and then
she has that animation which so many pretty women lack.

Madame Menin has forgotten something else. She has forgotten to shut my
window. She has designs upon my life!

I have just shut the window. The night is calm, its stars twinkling
through a haze. The year ends mournfully.

I remember at school once waking suddenly on such a night as this, to
find the moonlight streaming into my eyes. At such a moment it is
always a little hard to collect one’s scattered senses, and take in the
midnight world around, so unhomely, so absolutely still. First I cast
my eyes along the two rows of beds that stretched away down the
dormitory--two parallel lines in long perspective; my comrades huddled
under their blankets in shapeless masses, gray or white according as
they lay near or far from the windows; the smoky glimmer of the oil
lamp half-way down the room; and at the end, in the deeper shadows, the
enclosure of yellow curtains surrounding the usher’s bed.

Not a sound about me; all was still. But without, my ear, excited and
almost feverishly awake, caught the sound of a strange call, very sweet,
again and again repeated--fugitive notes breathing appeal, tender
and troubled. Now they grew quite distant, and I heard no more than a
phantom of sound; now they came near, passed over my head, and faded
again into the distance. The moon’s clear rays invited me to clear up
the mystery. I sprang from my bed, and ran in my nightshirt to open the
window. It was about eleven o’clock. Together the keen night-air and
the moonlight wrapped me round, thrilling me with delight. The large
courtyard lay deserted with its leafless poplars and spiked railings.
Here and there a grain of sand sparkled. I raised my eyes, and from one
constellation to another I sought the deep blue of heaven in vain; not
a shadow upon it, not one dark wing outlined. Yet all the while the
same sad and gentle cry wandered and was lost in air, the chant of an
invisible soul which seemed in want of me, and had perhaps awakened me.

The thought came upon me that it was the soul of my mother calling to
me--my mother, whose voice was soft and very musical.

“I am caring for thee,” said the voice. “I am caring for thee; I can see
thee,” it said, “I can see thee. I love thee! I love thee!”

“Reveal thyself!” I called back. “Oh, mother, reveal thyself!” And I
strove feverishly to catch sight of her, following the voice as it swept
around in circles; and seeing nothing, I burst into tears.

Suddenly I was seized roughly by the ear.

“What are you doing here, you young rascal? Are you mad? The wind is
blowing right on to my bed. Five hundred lines!”

The usher, in nightdress and slippers, was rolling his angry eyes on me.

“Yes, sir; certainly, sir! But don’t you hear her?”

“Who is it?”

“My mother.”

He looked to see whether I were awake; cocked his head to one side
and listened; then shut the window angrily and went off shrugging his
shoulders.

“It’s only the plovers flying about the moon,” said he. “Five hundred
lines!”

I did my five hundred lines. They taught me that dreaming was illegal
and dangerous, but they neither convinced nor cured me.

I still believe that there are scattered up and down in nature voices
that speak, but which few hear; just as there are millions of flowers
that bloom unseen by man. It is sad for those who catch a hint of it.
Perforce they come back and seek the hidden springs. They waste their
youth and vigor upon empty dreams, and in return for the fleeting
glimpses they have enjoyed, for the perfect phrase half caught and
lost again, will have given up the intercourse of their kind, and even
friendship itself. Yes, it is sad for the schoolboys who open their
windows to gaze at the moon, and never drop the habit! They will find
themselves, all too soon, solitaries in the midst of life, desolate as I
am desolate tonight, beside my dead fire.

No friend will come to knock at my door; not one. I have a few comrades
to whom I give that name. We do not loathe one another. At need they
would help me. But we seldom meet. What should they do here? Dreamers
make no confidences; they shrivel up into themselves and are caught away
on the four winds of heaven. Politics drive them mad; gossip fails to
interest them; the sorrows they create have no remedy save the joys that
they invent; they are natural only when alone, and talk well only to
themselves.

The only man who can put up with this moody contrariety of mine is
Sylvestre Lampron. He is nearly twenty years older than I. That explains
his forbearance. Besides, between an artist like him and a dreamer like
myself there is only the difference of handiwork. He translates his
dreams. I waste mine; but both dream. Dear old Lampron! Kindly, stalwart
heart! He has withstood that hardening of the moral and physical fibre
which comes over so many men as they near their fortieth year. He
shows a brave front to work and to life. He is cheerful, with the manly
cheerfulness of a noble heart resigned to life’s disillusions.

When I enter his home, I nearly always find him sitting before a
small ground-glass window in the corner of his studio, bent over some
engraving. I have leave to enter at all hours. He is free not to stir
from his work. “Good-day,” he calls out, without raising his head,
without knowing for certain who has come in, and goes on with the
engraving he has in hand. I settle down at the end of the room, on
the sofa with the faded cover, and, until Lampron deigns to grant me
audience, I am free to sleep, or smoke, or turn over the wonderful
drawings that lean against the walls. Among them are treasures beyond
price; for Lampron is a genius whose only mistake is to live and act
with modesty, so that as yet people only say that he has “immense
talent.” No painter or engraver of repute--and he is both--has served a
more conscientious apprenticeship, or sets greater store on thoroughness
in his art. His drawing is correct beyond reproach--a little stiff, like
the early painters. You can guess from his works his partiality for the
old masters--Perugino, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Memling, Holbein--who,
though not the masters in fashion, will always be masters in vigor of
outline, directness, in simple grace, and genuine feeling. He has copied
in oils, water-colors, pen, or pencil, nearly all the pictures of these
masters in the Louvre, in Germany, in Holland, and especially in Italy,
where he lived for many years. With tastes such as his came the habit,
or rather the fixed determination, never to paint or engrave any but
sacred subjects. Puffs and cliques are his abomination. His ideal is
the archaic rendered by modern methods. An artist of this type can but
obtain the half-grudging esteem of his own profession, and of the few
critics who really understand something about art. Gladly, and with
absolute disdain, he leaves to others the applause of the mob, the
gilded patronage of American purchasers, and the right to wear lace
cuffs. In short, in an age when the artist is often half a manufacturer
and half a charlatan, he is an artist only.

Now and then he is rich, but never for long. Half of his earnings goes
in alms; half into the pockets of his mendicant brethren. They hear the
gold jingle before it is counted, and run with outstretched palms. Each
is in the depths of misfortune; on the eve of ascending the fatal slope;
lost, unless the helpful hand of Lampron will provide, saved if he will
lend wherewithal to buy a block of marble, to pay a model, to dine that
evening. He lends--I should say gives; the words mean the same in many
societies. Of all that he has gained, fame alone remains, and even this
he tries to do without--modest, retiring, shunning all entertainments.
I believe he would often be without the wherewithal to live were it not
for his mother, whom he supports, and who does him the kindness to need
something to live on. Madame Lampron does not hoard; she only fills the
place of those dams of cut turf which the peasants build in the channels
of the Berry in spring; the water passes over them, beneath them, even
through them, but still a little is left for the great droughts.

I love my friend Lampron, though fully aware of his superiority. His
energy sets me up, his advice strengthens me, he peoples for me the vast
solitude of Paris.

Suppose I go to see him? A lonely watch to-night would be gloomier than
usual. The death of the year brings gloomy thoughts, the thirty-first of
December, St. Sylvester’s day--St. Sylvester! Why, that is his birthday!
Ungrateful friend, to give no thought to it! Quick! my coat, my stick,
my hat, and let me run to see these two early birds before they seek
their roost.

When I entered the studio, Lampron was so deep in his work that he did
not hear me. The large room, lighted only in one corner, looked weird
enough. Around me, and among the medley of pictures and casts and the
piles of canvases stacked against the wall, the eye encountered only
a series of cinder-gray tints and undetermined outlines casting long
amorphous shadows half-way across the ceiling. A draped lay figure
leaning against a door seemed to listen to the whistling of the wind
outside; a large glass bay opened upon the night. Nothing was alive in
this part of the room, nothing alight except a few rare glints upon
the gold of the frames, and the blades of two crossed swords. Only in
a corner, at the far end, at a distance exaggerated by the shadows, sat
Lampron engraving, solitary, motionless, beneath the light of a lamp.
His back was toward me. The lamp’s rays threw a strong light on his
delicate hand, on the workmanlike pose of his head, which it surrounded
with a nimbus, and on a painting--a woman’s head--which he was copying.
He looked superb like that, and I thought how doubly tempted Rembrandt
would have been by the deep significance as well as by the chiaroscuro
of this interior.

I stamped my foot. Lampron started, and turned half around, narrowing
his eyes as he peered into the darkness.

“Ah, it’s you,” he said. He rose and came quickly toward me, as if to
prevent me from approaching the table.

“You don’t wish me to look?”

He hesitated a moment.

“After all, why not?” he answered.

The copper plate was hardly marked with a few touches of the needle. He
turned the reflector so as to throw all its rays upon the painting.

“O Lampron, what a charming head!”

It was indeed a lovely head; an Italian girl, three quarter face,
painted after the manner of Leonardo, with firm but delicate touches,
and lights and shades of infinite subtlety, and possessing, like all
that master’s portraits of women, a straightforward look that responds
to the gazer’s, but which he seeks to interrogate in vain. The hair,
brown with golden lights, was dressed in smooth plaits above the
temples. The neck, somewhat long, emerged from a dark robe broadly
indicated.

“I do not know this, Sylvestre?”

“No, it’s an old thing.”

“A portrait, of course?”

“My first.”

“You never did better; line, color, life, you have got them all.”

“You need not tell me that! In one’s young days, look you, there are
moments of real inspiration, when some one whispers in the ear and
guides the hand; a lightness of touch, the happy audacity of the
beginner, a wealth of daring never met with again. Would you believe
that I have tried ten times to reproduce that in etching without
success?”

“Why do you try?”

“Yes, that is the question. Why? It’s a bit foolish.”

“You never could find such a model again; that is one reason.”

“Ah, no, you are right. I never could find her again.”

“An Italian of rank? a princess, eh?”

“Something like it.”

“What has become of her?”

“Ah, no doubt what becomes of all princesses. Fabien, my young friend,
you who still see life through fairy-tales, doubtless you imagine her
happy in her lot--wealthy, spoiled, flattered, speaking with disdainful
lips at nightfall, on the terrace of her villa among the great pines, of
the barbarian from across the Alps who painted her portrait twenty years
since; and, in the same sentence, of her--last new frock from Paris?”

“Yes, I see her so--still beautiful.”

“You are good at guessing, Fabien. She is dead, my friend, and that
ideal beauty is now a few white bones at the bottom of a grave.”

“Poor girl!”

Sylvestre had used a sarcastic tone which was not usual with him. He
was contemplating his work with such genuine sadness that I was awed.
I divined that in his past, of which I knew but little, Lampron kept a
sorrow buried that I had all unwittingly revived.

“My friend,” said I, “let that be; I come to wish you many happy
returns.”

“Many happy returns? Ah, yes, my poor mother wished me that this
morning; then I set to work and forgot all about it. I am glad you
came. She would feel hurt, dear soul, if I forgot to pass a bit of this
evening with her. Let us go and find her.”

“With all my heart, Sylvestre, but I, too, have forgotten something.”

“What?”

“I have brought no flowers.”

“Never mind, she has plenty; strong-scented flowers of the south, a
whole basketful, enough to keep a hive of bees or kill a man in
his sleep, which you will. It is a yearly attention from an unhappy
creditor.”

“Debtor, you mean.”

“I mean what I say--a creditor.”

He lifted the lamp. The shadows shifted and ran along the walls like
huge spiders, the crossed swords flashed, the Venus of Milo threw us a
lofty glance, Polyhymnia stood forth pensive and sank back into shadow.
At the door I took the draped lay figure in my arms. “Excuse me,” I
said as I moved it--and we left the studio for Madame Lampron’s little
sitting-room.

She was seated near a small round table, knitting socks, her feet on a
hot-water bottle. Her kind old rough and wrinkled face beamed upon us.
She thrust her needles under the black lace cap she always wore, and
drew them out again almost immediately.

“It needed your presence, Monsieur Mouillard,” said she, “to drag him
from his work.”

“Saint Sylvester’s day, too. It is fearful! Love for his art has changed
your son’s nature, Madame Lampron.”

She gave him a tender look, as on entering the room he bent over the
fire and shook out his half-smoked pipe against the bars, a thing he
never failed to do the moment he entered his mother’s room.

“Dear child!” said she.

Then turning to me:

“You are a good friend, Monsieur Fabien. Never have we celebrated a
Saint Sylvester without you since you came to Paris.”

“Yet this evening, Madame, I have failed in my traditions, I have no
flowers. But Sylvestre tells me that you have just received flowers from
the south, from an unfortunate creditor.”

My words produced an unusual effect upon her. She, who never stopped
knitting to talk or to listen, laid her work upon her knees, and fixed
her eyes upon me, filled with anxiety.

“Has he told you?”

Lampron who was poking the fire, his slippered feet stretched out toward
the hearth, turned his head.

“No, mother, I merely told him that we had received a basket of flowers.
Not much to confide. Yet why should he not know all? Surely he is our
friend enough to know all. He should have known it long since were it
not cruel to share between three a burden that two can well bear.”

She made no answer, and began again to twist the wool between her
needles, but nervously and as if her thoughts were sad.

To change the conversation I told them the story of my twofold mishap
at the National Library and at M. Charnot’s. I tried to be funny, and
fancied I succeeded. The old lady smiled faintly. Lampron remained
grave, and tossed his head impatiently. I summed my story thus:

“Net gain: two enemies, one of them charming.”

“Oh, enemies!” said Sylvestre, “they spring up like weeds. One can not
prevent them, and great sorrows do not come from them. Still, beware of
charming enemies.”

“She hates me, I swear. If you could have seen her!”

“And you?”

“Me? She is nothing to me.”

“Are you sure?”

He put the question gravely, without looking in my face, as he twisted a
paper spill.

I laughed.

“What is the matter with you to-day, misanthrope? I assure you that she
is absolutely indifferent to me. But even were it otherwise, Sylvestre,
where would be the wrong?”

“Wrong? No wrong at all; but I should be anxious for you; I should be
afraid. See here, my friend. I know you well. You are a born man of
letters, a dreamer, an artist in your way. You have to help you on
entering the redoubtable lists of love neither foresight, nor a cool
head, nor determination. You are guided solely by your impressions; by
them you rise or fall. You are no more than a child.”

“I quite agree. What next?”

“What next?” He had risen, and was speaking with unusual vehemence.
“I once knew some one like you, whose first passion, rash, but deep as
yours would be, broke his heart forever. The heart, my friend, is liable
to break, and can not be mended like china.”

Lampron’s mother interrupted him afresh, reproachfully.

“He came to wish you a happy birthday, my child.”

“One day, mother, is as good as another to listen to good advice.
Besides, I am only talking of one of my friends. ‘Tis but a short story,
Fabien, and instructive. I will give it you in very few words. My friend
was very young and enthusiastic. He was on his way through the galleries
of Italy, brush in hand, his heart full of the ceaseless song of youth
in holiday. The world never had played him false, nor balked him. He
made the future bend to the fancy of his dreams. He seldom descended
among common men from those loftier realms where the contemplation of
endless masterpieces kept his spirit as on wings. He admired, copied,
filled his soul with the glowing beauty of Italian landscape and
Italian art. But one day, without reflection, without knowledge, without
foresight, he was rash enough to fall in love with a girl of noble birth
whose portrait he was painting; to speak to her and to win her love. He
thought then, in the silly innocence of his youth, that art abridges all
distance and that love effaces it. Crueller nonsense never was uttered,
my poor Fabien. He soon found this; he tried to struggle against the
parent’s denial, against himself, against her, powerless in all alike,
beaten at every point.... The end was--Do you care to learn the end?
The girl was carried off, struck down by a brief illness, soon dead; the
man, hurled out of heaven, bruised, a fugitive also, is still so weak in
presence of his sorrow that even after these long years he can not think
of it without weeping.”

Lampron actually was weeping, he who was so seldom moved. Down his brown
beard, tinged already with gray, a tear was trickling. I noticed that
Madame Lampron was stooping lower and lower over her needles. He went
on:

“I have kept the portrait, the one you saw, Fabien. They would like to
have it over yonder. They are old folk by now. Every year they ask me
for this relic of our common sorrow; every year they send me, about this
time a basket of white flowers, chiefly lilacs, the dead girl’s
flower, and their meaning is, ‘Give up to us what is left of her, the
masterpiece built up of your youth and hers.’ But I am selfish, Fabien.
I, like them, am jealous of all the sorrows this portrait recalls to me,
and I deny them. Come, mother, where are the flowers? I have promised
Fabien to show them to him.”

But his old mother could not answer. Having no doubt bewept this sorrow
too often to find fresh tears, her eyes followed her son with restless
compassion. He, beside the window, was hunting among the chairs and
lounges crowded in this corner of the little sitting-room.

He brought us a box of white wood. “See,” said he, “‘tis my wedding
bouquet.”

And he emptied it on the table. Parma violets, lilacs, white camellias
and moss rolled out in slightly faded bunches, spreading a sweet smell
in which there breathed already a vague scent of death and corruption. A
violet fell on my knees. I picked it up.

He looked for a moment at the heap on the table.

“I keep none,” said he: “I have too many reminders without them. Cursed
flowers!”

With one motion of his arm he swept them all up and cast them upon
the coals in the hearth. They shrivelled, crackled, grew limp and
discolored, and vanished in smoke.

“Now I am going back to my etching. Good-by, Fabien. Good-night,
mother.”

Without turning his head, he left the room and went back to his studio.

I made a movement to follow him and bring him back.

Madame Lampron stopped me. “I will go myself,” said she, “later--much
later.”

We sat awhile in silence. When she saw me somewhat recovered from the
shock of my feelings she went on:

“You never have seen him like this, but I have seen it often. It is so
hard! I knew her whom he loved almost as soon as he, for he never hid
anything from me. You can judge from her portrait whether hers was not
the face to attract an artist like Sylvestre. I saw at once that it
was a trial, in which I could do nothing. They were very great people;
different from us, you know.”

“They refused to let them marry?”

“Oh, no! Sylvestre did not ask; they never had the opportunity of
refusing. No, no; it was I. I said to him: ‘Sylvestre, this can never
be-never!’ He was convinced against his will. Then she spoke to her
parents on her own account. They carried her off, and there was an end
of it.”

“He never saw her again.”

“Never; he would not have wished it; and then she lived a very little
time. I went back there two years later, when they wanted to buy the
picture. We were still living in Italy. That was one of the hardest
hours of my life. I was afraid of their reproaches, and I did not feel
sure of myself. But no, they suffered for their daughter as I for
my son, and that brought us together. Still, I did not give up the
portrait; Sylvestre set too great store by it. He insists on keeping
it, feeding his eyes on it, reopening his wound day by day. Poor child!
Forget all this, Monsieur Fabien; you can do nothing to help. Be true to
your youth, and tell us next time of Monsieur Charnot and Mademoiselle
Jeanne.”

Dear Madame Lampron! I tried to console her; but as I never knew my
mother, I could find but little to say. All the same, she thanked me and
assured me I had done her good.




CHAPTER V. A FRUITLESS SEARCH

                       January 1, 1885.

The first of January! When one is not yet an uncle and no longer a
godson, if one is in no government employ and goes out very little, the
number of one’s calls on New Year’s Day is limited. I shall make five or
six this afternoon. It will be “Not at home” in each case; and that will
be all my compliments of the season.

No, I am wrong. I have received the compliments of the season. My
porter’s wife came up just now, wreathed in smiles.

“Monsieur Mouillard, I wish you a Happy New Year, good health, and
Heaven to end your days.” She had just said the same to the tenants on
the first, second, and third floors. My answer was the same as theirs.
I slipped into her palm (with a “Many thanks!” of which she took no
notice) a piece of gold, which brought another smile, a curtsey, and she
is gone.

This smile comes only once a year; it is not reproduced at any other
period, but is a dividend payable in one instalment. This, and a tear on
All Souls’ Day, when she has been to place a bunch of chrysanthemums on
her baby’s grave, are the only manifestations of sensibility that I have
discovered in her. From the second of January to the second of November
she is a human creature tied to a bell-rope, with an immovably stolid
face and a monosyllabic vocabulary in which politer terms occur but
sparsely.

This morning, contrary to her habits, she has brought up by post two
letters; one from my Uncle Mouillard (an answer), and the other--I don’t
recognize the other. Let’s open it first: big envelope, ill-written
address, Paris postmark. Hallo! a smaller envelope inside, and on it:

          ANTOINE AND MARIE PLUMET.

Poor souls! they have no visiting-cards. But kind hearts are more than
pasteboard.

Ten months ago little Madame Plumet, then still unmarried, was in a
terrible bother. I remember our first meeting, on a March day, at the
corner of the Rue du Quatre-Septembre and the Rue Richelieu. I was
walking along quickly, with a bundle of papers under my arm, on my
way back to the office where I was head clerk. Suddenly a dressmaker’s
errand-girl set down her great oilcloth-covered box in my way. I nearly
went head first over it, and was preparing to walk around it, when the
little woman, red with haste and blushes, addressed me. “Excuse me, sir,
are you a lawyer?”

“No, Mademoiselle, not yet.”

“Perhaps, sir, you know some lawyers?”

“To be sure I do; my master, to begin with, Counsellor Boule. He is
quite close, if you care to follow me.”

“I am in a terrible hurry, but I can spare a minute or two. Thank you
very much, Monsieur.”

And thus I found myself escorted by a small dressmaker and a box of
fashions. I remember that I walked a little ahead for fear of being
seen in such company by a fellow-clerk, which would have damaged my
reputation.

We got to the office. Down went the box again. The little dressmaker
told me that she was engaged to M. Plumet, frame-maker. She told her
tale very clearly; a little money put by, you see, out of ten years’
wages; one may be careful and yet be taken in; and, alas! all has been
lent to a cousin in the cabinetmaking trade, who wanted to set up shop;
and now he refuses to pay up. The dowry is in danger, and the marriage
in suspense.

“Do not be alarmed, Mademoiselle; we will summons this atrocious
cabinet-maker, and get a judgment against him. We shall not let him go
until he has disgorged, and you shall be Madame Plumet.”

We kept our word. Less than two months later--thanks to my efforts--the
dowry was recovered; the banns were put up; and the little dressmaker
paid a second visit to the office, this time with M. Plumet, who was
even more embarrassed than she.

“See, Antoine! this is Monsieur Mouillard, who undertook our case! Thank
you again and again, Monsieur Mouillard, you really have been too kind!
What do I owe you for your trouble?”

“You must ask my master what his fees come to, Mademoiselle.”

“Yes, but you? What can I do for you?”

The whole office, from the messenger to the clerk who came next to me,
had their eyes upon me. I rose to the occasion, and in my uncle’s best
manner I replied:

“Be happy, Mademoiselle, and remember me.”

We laughed over it for a week.

She has done better, she has remembered it after eight months. But she
has not given her address. That is a pity. I should have liked to see
them both again. These young married folk are like the birds; you hear
their song, but that does not tell you the whereabouts of their nest.

Now, uncle, it’s your turn.

Here it is again, your unfailing letter anticipated, like the return of
the comets, but less difficult to analyze than the weird substance of
which comets are composed. Every year I write to you on December 28th,
and you answer me on the 31st in time for your letter to reach me on New
Year’s morning. You are punctual, dear uncle; you are even attentive;
there is something affectionate in this precision. But I do not know
why your letters leave me unmoved. The eighteen to twenty-five lines of
which each is composed are from your head, rather than your heart. Why
do you not tell me of my parents, whom you knew; of your daily life; of
your old servant Madeleine, who nursed me as a baby; of the Angora cat
almost as old as she; of the big garden, so green, so enticing, which
you trim with so much care, and which rewards your attention with
such luxuriance. It would be so nice, dear uncle, to be a shade more
intimate.

Ah, well! let us see what he writes:

                  “BOURGES, December 31, 1884.

   “MY DEAR NEPHEW:

   “The approach of the New Year does not find me with the same
   sentiments with which it leaves you. I make up my yearly accounts
   from July 31st, so the advent of the 31st of December finds me as
   indifferent as that of any other day of the said month. Your
   repinings appear to me the expressions of a dreamer.

   “It would, however, not be amiss if you made a start in practical
   life. You come of a family not addicted to dreaming. Three
   Mouillards have, if I may say so, adorned the legal profession at
   Bourges. You will be the fourth.

   “As soon as you have taken your doctor’s degree-which I presume
   should not be long--I shall expect you the very next day, or the day
   after that at the furthest; and I shall place you under my
   supervision.

   “The practice is not falling off, I can assure you. In spite of
   age, I still possess good eyes and good teeth, the chief
   qualifications for a lawyer. You will find everything ready and in
   good order here.

   “I am obliged to you for your good wishes, which I entirely
   reciprocate.

        “Your affectionate uncle,

                    “BRUTUS MOUILLARD.”

   “P. S.--The Lorinet family have been to see me. Mademoiselle Berthe
   is really quite pretty. They have just inherited 751,351 francs.

   “I was employed by them in an action relating thereto.”

Yes, my dear uncle, you were employed, according to the formula, “in
virtue of these and subsequent engagements,” and among the “subsequent
engagements” you are kind enough to reckon one between Mademoiselle
Berthe Lorinet, spinster, of no occupation, and M. Fabien Mouillard,
lawyer. “Fabien Mouillard, lawyer”--that I may perhaps endure, but
“Fabien Mouillard, son-in-law of Lorinet,” never! One pays too dear for
these rich wives. Mademoiselle Berthe is half a foot taller than I, who
am moderately tall, and she has breadth in proportion. Moreover, I
have heard that her wit is got in proportion. I saw her when she was
seventeen, in a short frock of staring blue; she was very thin then, and
was escorted by a brother, squeezed inside a schoolboy’s suit; they
were out for their first walk alone, both red-faced, flurried, shuffling
along the sidewalks of Bourges. That was enough. For me she will always
wear that look, that frock, that clumsy gait. Recollections, my good
uncle, are not unlike instantaneous photographs; and this one is a
distinct negative to your designs.

                    March 3d.

The year is getting on. My essay is growing. The Junian Latin emerges
from the fogs of Tiber.

I have had to return to the National Library. My first visits were not
made without trepidation. I fancied that the beadle was colder, and that
the keepers were shadowing me like a political suspect. I thought
it wise to change my side, so now I make out my list of books at the
left-hand desk and occupy a seat on the left side of the room.

M. Charnot remains faithful to his post beneath the right-hand inkstand.

I have been watching him. He is usually one of the first to arrive, with
nimble, almost springy, step. His hair, which he wears rather long, is
always carefully parted in the middle, and he is always freshly shaven.
His habit of filling the pockets of his frock-coat with bundles of notes
has made that garment swell out at the top into the shape of a basket.
He puts on a pair of spectacles mounted in very thin gold, and reads
determinedly, very few books it is true, but they are all bound in
vellum, and that fixes their date. In his way of turning the leaves
there is something sacerdotal. He seems popular with the servants. Some
of the keepers worship him. He has very good manners toward every one.
Me he avoids. Still I meet him, sometimes in the cloakroom, oftener in
the Rue Richelieu on his way to the Seine. He stops, and so do I, near
the Fontaine Moliere, to buy chestnuts. We have this taste in common.
He buys two sous’ worth, I buy one; thus the distinctions of rank are
preserved. If he arrives after me, I allow him the first turn to be
served; if he is before me, I await my turn with a patience which
betokens respect. Yet he never seems to notice it. Once or twice,
certainly, I fancied I caught a smile at the corners of his mouth, and a
sly twinkle in the corners of his eyes; but these old scholars smile so
austerely.

He must have guessed that I wish to meet him. For I can not deny it. I
am looking out for an opportunity to repair my clumsy mistake and show
myself in a less unfavorable light than I did at that ill-starred visit.
And she is the reason why I haunt his path!

Ever since M. Mouillard threatened me with Mademoiselle Berthe Lorinet,
the graceful outlines of Mademoiselle Jeanne have haunted me with a
persistence to which I have no objection.

It is not because I love her. It does not go as far as that. I am
leaving her and leaving Paris forever in a few months. No; the height of
my desire is to see her again--in the street, at the theatre, no matter
where--to show her by my behavior and, if possible, by my words that I
am sorry for the past, and implore her forgiveness. Then there will no
longer be a gulf betwixt her and me, I shall be able to meet her without
confusion, to invoke her image to put to flight that of Mademoiselle
Lorinet without the vision of those disdainful lips to dash me. She will
be for me at once the type of Parisian grace and of filial affection. I
will carry off her image to the country like the remembered perfume of
some rare flower; and if ever I sing ‘Hymen Hymnaee’! it shall be with
one who recalls her face to me.

I do not think my feelings overpass these bounds. Yet I am not quite
sure. I watch for her with a keenness and determination which surprise
me, and the disappointment which follows a fruitless search is a shade
too lively to accord with cool reason.

After all, perhaps my reason is not cool.

Let me see, I will make up the account of my ventures.

One January afternoon I walked up and down the Rue de l’Universite eight
times in succession, from No. 1 to No. 107, and from No. 107 to No. 1.
Jeanne did not come out in spite of the brilliancy of the clear winter
day.

On the nineteenth of the same month I went to see Andromache, although
the classic writers, whom I swear by, are not the writers I most care to
hear. I renewed this attempt on the twenty-seventh. Neither on the first
nor on the second occasion did I see Mademoiselle Charnot.

And yet if the Institute does not escort its daughters in shoals to
applaud Andromache, where on earth does it take them?

Perhaps nowhere.

Every time I cross the Tuileries Garden I run my eyes over the groups
scattered among the chestnut-trees. I see children playing and falling
about; nursemaids who leave them crying; mothers who pick them up again;
a vagrant guardsman. No Jeanne.

To wind up, yesterday I spent five hours at the Bon Marche.

The spring show was on, one of the great occasions of the year; and I
presumed, not without an apparent foundation of reason, that no young
or pretty Parisian could fail to be there. When I arrived, about one
o’clock, the crowd already filled the vast bazaar. It was not easy
to stand against certain currents that set toward the departments
consecrated to spring novelties. Adrift like a floating spar I was swept
away and driven ashore amid the baby-linen. There it flung me high
and dry among the shop-girls, who laughed at the spectacle of an
undergraduate shipwrecked among the necessaries of babyhood. I felt shy,
and attaching myself to the fortunes of an Englishwoman, who worked her
elbows with the vigor of her nation, I was borne around nearly twenty
counters. At last, wearied, mazed, dusty as with a long summer walk, I
took refuge in the reading-room.

Poor simpleton! I said to myself, you are too early; you might have
known that. She can not come with her father before the National Library
closes. Even supposing they take an omnibus, they will not get here
before a quarter past four.

I had to find something to fill up the somewhat long interval which
separated me from that happy moment. I wrote a letter to my Uncle
Mouillard, taking seven minutes over the address alone. I had not shown
such penmanship since I was nine years old. When the last flourish was
completed I looked for a paper; they were all engaged. The directory was
free. I took it, and opened it at Ch. I discovered that there were
many Charnots in Paris without counting mine: Charnot, grocer; Charnot,
upholsterer; Charnot, surgical bandage-maker. I built up a whole family
tree for the member of the Institute, choosing, of course, those persons
of the name who appeared most worthy to adorn its branches. Of what
followed I retain but a vague recollection. I only remember that I felt
twice as if some inquisitive individual were looking over my shoulder.
The third time I woke up with a start.

“Sir,” said a shopwalker, with the utmost politeness, “a gentleman has
been waiting three quarters of an hour for the directory. Would you
kindly hand it to him if you have quite finished with it?”

It was a quarter to six. I still waited a little while, and then I left,
having wasted my day.

O Jeanne! where do you hide yourself? Must I, to meet you, attend mass
at St. Germain des Pres? Are you one of those early birds who, before
the world is up, are out in the Champs Elysees catching the first rays
of the morning, and the country breeze before it is lost in the smoke of
Paris? Are you attending lectures at the Sorbonne? Are you learning to
sing? and, if so, who is your teacher?

You sing, Jeanne, of course. You remind me of a bird. You have all
the quick and easy graces of the skylark. Why should you not have the
skylark’s voice?

Fabien, you are dropping into poetry!




CHAPTER VI. THE FLOWER-SHOW

                         April 3d.

For a month I have written nothing in this brown notebook. But to-day
there is plenty to put down, and worth the trouble too.

Let me begin with the first shock. This morning, my head crammed with
passages from Latin authors, I leaned my brow against the pane of my
window which looks on the garden. The garden is not mine, of course,
since I live on the fourth floor; but I have a view of the big
weeping-willow in the centre, the sanded path that runs around it, and
the four walls lined with borders, one of which separates it from the
huge premises of the Carmelites. It is an almost deserted garden. The
first-floor tenant hardly ever walks there. His son, a schoolboy of
seventeen, was there this morning. He stood two feet from the street
wall, motionless, with head thrown back, whistling a monotonous air,
which seemed to me like a signal. Before him, however, was nothing but
the moss on the old wall gleaming like golden lights. People do not
whistle to amuse stones nor yet moss. Farther off, on the other side of
the street, the windows of the opposite houses stretched away in long
straight lines, most of them standing open.

I thought: “The bird is somewhere there. Some small Abigail with her
white cap will look out in a moment.”

The suspicion was stupid and ill-natured. How rash are our lightest
judgments! Suddenly the school-boy took one step forward, swept his hand
quickly along the moss as if he were trying to catch a fly, and ran off
to his mother triumphant, delighted, beside himself, with an innocent
gray lizard on the tips of his fingers.

“I’ve got him! I’ve got him! He was basking in the sun and I charmed
him!”

“Basking in the sun!” This was a revelation to me. I flung up the
window. Yes, it was true. Warmth and light lay everywhere: on the roofs
still glistening with last night’s showers; across the sky, whose gay
blue proclaimed that winter was done. I looked downward and saw what
I had not seen before: the willow bursting into bud; the hepatica in
flower at the foot of the camellias, which had ceased to bloom; the
pear-trees in the Carmelites’ garden flushing red as the sap rose within
them; and upon the dead trunk of a fig-tree was a blackbird, escaped
from the Luxembourg, who, on tiptoe, with throat outstretched, drunk
with delight, answered some far-off call that the wind brought to him,
singing, as if in woodland depths, the rapturous song of the year’s new
birth. Then, oh! then, I could contain myself no longer. I ran down the
stairs four at a time, cursing Paris and the Junian Latins who had been
cheating me of the spring. What! live there cut off from the world which
was created for me, tread an artificial earth of stone or asphalt, live
with a horizon of chimneys, see only the sky chopped into irregular
strips by roofs smirched with smoke, and allow this exquisite spring to
fleet by without drinking in her bountiful delight, without renewing
in her youthfulness our youth, always a little staled and overcast by
winter! No, that can not be; I mean to see the spring.

And I have seen it, in truth, though cut and tied into bouquets, for my
aimless steps led me to the Place St. Sulpice, where the flower-sellers
were. There were flowers in plenty, but very few people; it was already
late. None the less did I enjoy the sight of all the plants arranged by
height and kind, from the double hyacinths, dear to hall-porters, to the
first carnations, scarcely in bud, whose pink or white tips just peeped
from their green sheaths; then the bouquets, bundles of the same kinds
and same shades of flowers wrapped up in paper: lilies-of-the-valley,
lilacs, forget-me-nots, mignonette, which being grown under glass has
guarded its honey from the bees to scent the air here. Everyone had
a look of welcome for those exiles. The girls smiled at them without
knowing the reason why. The cabdrivers in line along the sidewalk seemed
to enjoy their neighborhood. I heard one of them, with a face like
a halfripened strawberry, red, with a white nose, say to a comrade,
“Hallo, Francis! that smells good, doesn’t it!”

I was walking along slowly, looking into every stall, and when I came to
the end I turned right about face.

Great Heavens! Not ten feet off! M. Flamaran, M. Charnot, and
Mademoiselle Jeanne!

They had stopped before one of the stalls that I had just left. M.
Flamaran was carrying under his arm a pot of cineraria, which made his
stomach a perfect bower. M. Charnot was stooping, examining a superb
pink carnation. Jeanne was hovering undecided between twenty bunches of
flowers, bending her pretty head in its spring hat over each in turn.

“Which, father?”

“Whichever you like; but make up your mind soon; Flamaran is waiting.”

A moment more, and the elective affinities carried the day.

“This bunch of mignonette,” she said.

I would have wagered on it. She was sure to choose the mignonette--a
fair, well-bred, graceful plant like herself. Others choose their
camellias and their hyacinths; Jeanne must have something more refined.

She put down her money, caught up the bunch, looked at it for a moment,
and held it close to her breast as a mother might hold her child, while
all its golden locks drooped over her arm. Then off she ran after her
father, who had only changed one carnation for another. They went on
toward St. Sulpice--M. Flamaran on the right, M. Charnot in the middle,
Jeanne on the left. She brushed past without seeing me. I followed
them at a distance. All three were laughing. At what? I can guess; she
because she was eighteen, they for joy to be with her. At the end of
the marketplace they turned to the left, followed the railings of the
church, and bent their steps toward the Rue St. Sulpice, doubtless to
take home M. Flamaran, whose cineraria blazed amid the crowd. I
was about to turn in the same direction when an omnibus of the
Batignolles-Clichy line stopped my way. In an instant I was overwhelmed
by the flood of passengers which it poured on the pavements.

“Hallo, you here! How goes it? What are you staring at? My stovepipe?
Observe it well, my dear fellow--the latest invention of Leon; the
patent ventilating, anti-sudorific, and evaporating hat!”

It was Larive who had just climbed down from the knifeboard.

Every one knows Larive, head clerk in Machin’s office. He is to be
seen everywhere--a tall, fair man, with little closetrimmed beard, and
moustache carefully twisted. He is always perfectly dressed, always in a
tall hat and new gloves, full of all the new stories, which he tells
as his own. If you believe him, he is at home in all the ministries,
whatever party is in power; he has cards for every ball, and tickets for
every first night. With all that he never misses a funeral, is a good
lawyer, and as solemn when in court as a dozen old mandarins.

“Come, Fabien, will you answer? What are you staring at?”

He turned his head.

“Oh, I see--pretty Mademoiselle Charnot.”

“You know her?”

“Of course I do, and her father, too. A pretty little thing!”

I blushed with pleasure.

“Yes, a very pretty little thing; but wants style--dances poorly.”

“An admirable defect.”

“A little big, too, for her eyes.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Her eyes are a little too small, you understand me?”

“What matters that if they are bright and loving?”

“No matter at all to me; but it seems to have some effect on you. Might
you be related?”

“No.”

“Or connected by marriage?”

“No.”

“So much the better--eh, my boy? And how’s uncle? Still going strong?”

“Yes; and longing to snatch me from this Babylon.”

“You mean to succeed him?”

“As long hence as possible.”

“I had heard you were not enthusiastic. A small practice, isn’t it?”

“Not exactly. A matter of a thousand a year!”

“Clear profit?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good enough. But in the country, my poor fellow, in the
country!”

“It would be the death of you, wouldn’t it?”

“In forty-eight hours.”

“However did you manage to be born there, Larive? I’m surprised at you.”

“So am I. I often think about it. Good-by. I must be off.”

I caught him by the hand which he held out to me.

“Larive, tell me where you have met Mademoiselle Charnot?”

“Oh, come!--I see it’s serious. My dear fellow, I am so sorry I did not
tell you she was perfection. If I had only known!”

“That’s not what I asked you. Where have you seen her?”

“In society, of course. Where do you expect me to see young girls except
in society? My dear Fabien!”

He went off laughing. When he was about ten yards off he turned, and
making a speaking-trumpet of his hands, he shouted through them:

“She’s perfection!”

Larive is decidedly an ass. His jokes strike you as funny at first;
but there’s nothing in him, he’s a mere hawker of stale puns; there’s
nothing but selfishness under his jesting exterior. I have no belief
in him. Yet he is an old school friend; the only one of my twenty-eight
classmates whose acquaintance I have kept up. Four are dead,
twenty-three others are scattered about in obscure country places; lost
for want of news, as they say at the private inquiry offices. Larive
makes up the twenty-eight. I used to admire him, when we were low in the
school, because of his long trousers, his lofty contempt of discipline,
and his precocious intimacy with tobacco. I preferred him to the good,
well-behaved boys. Whenever we had leave out I used to buy gum-arabic at
the druggist’s in La Chatre, and break it up with a small hammer at the
far end of my room, away from prying eyes. I used there to distribute
it into three bags ticketed respectively: “large pieces,” “middle-sized
pieces,” “small pieces.” When I returned to school with the three bags
in my pocket, I would draw out one or the other to offer them to my
friends, according to the importance of the occasion, or the degrees of
friendship. Larive always had the big bits, and plenty of them. Yet
he was none the more grateful to me, and even did not mind chaffing me
about these petty attentions by which he was the gainer. He used to make
fun of everything, and I used to look up to him. He still makes fun
of everything; but for me the age of gumarabic is past and my faith in
Larive is gone.

If he believes that he will disparage this charming girl in my eyes by
telling me that she is a bad dancer, he is wrong. Of great importance it
is to have a wife who dances well! She does not dance in her own house,
nor with her husband from the wardrobe to the cradle, but at others’
houses, and with other men. Besides, a young girl who dances much has
a lot of nonsense talked to her. She may acquire a taste for Larive’s
buffooneries, for a neat leg, or a sharp tongue. In that case what
welcome can she give to simple, timid affection? She will only laugh
at it. But you would not laugh, Jeanne, were I to tell you that I loved
you. No, I am quite convinced that you would not laugh. And if you loved
me, Jeanne, we should not go into society. That would just suit me. I
should protect you, yet not hide you. We should have felicity at home
instead of running after it to balls and crushes, where it is never to
be found. You could not help being aware of the fascination you exert;
but you would not squander it on a mob of dancers, and bring home only
the last remnants of your good spirits, with the last remnants of your
train. Jeanne, I am delighted to hear that you dance badly.

Whither away, Fabien, my friend, whither away? You are letting your
imagination run away with you again. A hint from it, and off you go.
Come, do use your reason a little. You have seen this young lady again,
that is true. You admired her; that was for the second time. But she,
whom you so calmly speak of as “Jeanne,” as if she were something to
you, never even noticed you. You know nothing about her but what you
suspect from her maiden grace and a dozen words from her lips. You do
not know whether she is free, nor how she would welcome the notions
you entertain if you gave them utterance, yet here you are saying, “We
should go here,” “We should do this and that.” Keep to the singular,
my poor fellow. The plural is far away, very far away, if not entirely
beyond your reach.




CHAPTER VII. A WOODLAND SKETCH

April 27th.

The end of April. Students, pack and be off! The first warm breezes
burst the buds. Meudon is smiling; Clamart breaks into song; the air in
the valley of Chevreuse is heavy with violets; the willows shower their
catkins on the banks of the Yvette; and farther yet, over yonder beneath
the green domes of the forest of Fontainebleau, the deer prick their
ears at the sound of the first riding-parties. Off with you! Flowers
line the pathways, the moors are pink with bloom, the undergrowth teems
with darting wings. All the town troops out to see the country in its
gala dress. The very poorest have a favorite nook, a recollection of the
bygone year to be revived and renewed; a sheltered corner that invited
sleep, a glade where the shade was grateful, a spot beside the river’s
brink where the fish used to bite. Each one says, “Don’t you remember?”
 Each one seeks his nest like a home-coming swallow. Does it still hold
together? What havoc has been made by the winter’s winds, and the rain,
and the frost? Will it welcome us, as of old?

I, too, said to Lampron, “Don’t you remember?” for we, too, have our
nest, and summer days that smile to us in memory. He was in the mood for
work, and hesitated. I added in a whisper, “The blackbird’s pool!” He
smiled, and off we went.

Again, as of old, our destination was St. Germain--not the town, nor the
Italian palace, nor yet the terrace whence the view spreads so wide over
the Seine, the country dotted with villas, to Montmartre blue in the
distance--not these, but the forest. “Our forest,” we call it; for we
know all its young shoots, all its giant trees, all its paths where
poachers and young lovers hide. With my eyes shut I could find the
blackbird’s pool, the way to which was first shown us by a deer.

Imagine at thirty paces from an avenue, a pool--no, not a pool (the
word is incorrect), nor yet a pond--but a fountain hollowed out by the
removal of a giant oak. Since the death of this monarch the birches
which its branches kept apart have never closed together, and the
fountain forms the centre of a little clearing where the moss is thick
at all seasons and starred in August with wild pinks. The water, though
deep, is deliciously clear. At a depth of more than six feet you can
distinguish the dead leaves at the bottom, the grass, the twigs, and
here and there a stone’s iridescent outline. They all lie asleep there,
the waste of seasons gone by, soon to be covered by others in their
turn. From time to time out of the depths of these submerged thickets
an eft darts up. He comes circling up, quivering his yellowbanded tail,
snatches a mouthful of air, and goes down again head first. Save for
these alarms the pool is untroubled. It is guarded from the winds by a
juniper, which an eglantine has chosen for its guardian and crowns each
year with a wreath of roses. Each year, too, a blackbird makes his nest
here. We keep his secret. He knows we shall not disturb him. And when I
come back to this little nook in the woods, which custom has endeared to
us, merely by looking in the water I feel my very heart refreshed.

“What a spot to sleep in!” cried Lampron. “Keep sentry, Fabien; I am
going to take a nap.”

We had walked fast. It was very hot. He took off his coat, rolled it
into a pillow, and placed it beneath his head as he lay down on the
grass. I stretched myself prone on a velvety carpet of moss, and gave
myself up to a profound investigation of the one square foot of ground
which lay beneath my eyes. The number of blades of grass was
prodigious. A few, already awned, stood above their fellows, waving
like palms-meadowgrass, fescue, foxtail, brome-grass--each slender stalk
crowned with a tuft. Others were budding, only half unfolded, amid
the darker mass of spongy moss which gave them sustenance. Amid
the numberless shafts thus raised toward heaven a thousand paths
crisscrossed, each full of obstacles-chips of bark, juniper-berries,
beech-nuts, tangled roots, hills raised by burrowing insects, ravines
formed by the draining off of the rains. Ants and beetles bustled along
them, pressing up hill and down to some mysterious goal. Above them a
cunning red spider was tying a blade of grass to an orchid leaf, the
pillars it had chosen for its future web; and when the wind shook the
leaves and the sun pierced through to this spot, I saw the delicate roof
already mapped out.

I do not know how long my contemplation lasted. The woods were still.
Save for a swarm of gnats which hummed in a minor key around the
sleeping Lampron, nothing stirred, not a leaf even. All nature was
silent as it drank in the full sunshine.

A murmur of distant voices stole on my ear. I rose, and crept through
the birches and hazels to the edge of the glade.

At the top of the slope, on the green margin of the glade, shaded by the
tall trees, two pedestrians were slowly advancing. At the distance they
still were I could distinguish very little except that the man wore a
frock-coat, and that the girl was dressed in gray, and was young, to
judge by the suppleness of her walk. Nevertheless I felt at once that it
was she!

I hid at they came near, and saw her pass on her father’s arm, chatting
in low tones, full of joy to have escaped from the Rue de l’Universite.
She was looking before her with wide-open eyes. M. Charnot kept his
eyes on his daughter, more interested in her than in all the wealth of
spring. He kept well to the right of the path as the sun ate away the
edge of the shadows; and asked, from time to time:

“Are you tired?”

“Oh, no!”

“As soon as you are tired, my dear, we will sit down. I am not walking
too fast?”

She answered “No” again, and laughed, and they went on.

Soon they left the avenue and were lost in a green alley. Then a sudden
twilight seemed to have closed down on me, an infinite sadness swelled
in my heart. I closed my eyes, and--God forgive my weakness, but the
tears came.

“Hallo! What part do you intend me to play in all this?” said Lampron
behind me.

“‘What part’?”

“Yes. It’s an odd notion to invite me to your trysting-place.”

“Trysting-place? I haven’t one.”

“You mean to tell me, perhaps, that you came here by chance?”

“Certainly.”

“And chanced upon the very moment and the spot where she was passing?”

“Do you want a proof? That young lady is Mademoiselle Charnot.”

“Well?”

“Well, I never have said another word to her since my one visit to her
father; I have only seen her once, for a moment, in the street. You
see there can be no question of trysting-places in this case. I was
wondering at her appearance when you awoke. It is luck, or a friendly
providence, that has used the beauty of the sunlight, the breeze, and
all the sweets of April to bring her, as it brought us, to the forest.”

“And that is what fetched the tears?”

“Well, no.”

“What, then?”

“I don’t know.”

“My full-grown baby, I will tell you. You are in love with her!”

“Indeed, Sylvestre, I believe you’re right. I confess it frankly to you
as to my best friend. It is an old story already; as old, perhaps,
as the day I first met her. At first her figure would rise in my
imagination, and I took pleasure in contemplating it. Soon this phantom
ceased to satisfy; I longed to see her in person. I sought her in the
streets, the shops, the theatre. I still blinded myself, and pretended
that I only wanted to ask her pardon, so as to remove, before I left
Paris, the unpleasant impression I had made at our first meeting. But
now, Sylvestre, all these false reasons have disappeared, and the true
one is clear. I love her!”

“Not a doubt of it, my friend, not a doubt of it. I have been through it
myself.”

He was silent, and his eyes wandered away to the faroff woods, perhaps
back to those distant memories of his. A shadow rested on his strong
face, but only for an instant. He shook off his depression, and his old
smile came back as he said:

“It’s serious, then?”

“Yes, very serious.”

“I’m not surprised; she is a very pretty girl.”

“Isn’t she lovely?”

“Better than that, my friend; she is good. What do you know about her?”

“Only that she is a bad dancer.”

“That’s something, to be sure.”

“But it isn’t all.”

“Well, no. But never mind, find out the rest, speak to her, declare your
passion, ask for her hand, and marry her.”

“Good heavens, Sylvestre, you are going ahead!”

“My dear fellow, that is the best and wisest plan; these vague idyls
ought to be hurried on, either to a painless separation or an honorable
end in wedlock. In your place I should begin to-morrow.”

“Why not to-day?”

“How so?”

“Let’s catch them up, and see her again at least.”

He began to laugh.

“Run after young girls at my age! Well, well, it was my advice. Come
along!”

We crossed the avenue, and plunged into the forest.

Lampron had formerly acquired a reputation for tireless agility among
the fox-hunters of the Roman Campagna. He still deserves it. In twenty
strides he left me behind. I saw him jumping over the heather, knocking
off with his cane the young shoots on the oaks, or turning his head to
look at me as I struggled after, torn by brambles and pricked by gorse.
A startled pheasant brought him to a halt. The bird rose under his feet
and soared into the full light.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” said he. “Look out, we must be more careful; we
are scaring the game. We should come upon the path they took, about
sixty yards ahead.”

Five minutes later he was signalling to me from behind the trunk of a
great beech.

“Here they are.”

Jeanne and M. Charnot were seated on a fallen trunk beside the path,
which here was almost lost beneath the green boughs. Their backs were
toward us. The old man, with his shoulders bent and his gold-knobbed cane
stuck into the ground beside him, was reading out of a book which we
could not see, while Jeanne, attentive, motionless, her face half turned
toward him, was listening. Her profile was outlined against a strip of
clear sky. The deep silence of the wood wrapped us round, and we could
hear the old scholar’s voice; it just reached us.

“Straightway the godlike Odysseus spake these cunning words to the fair
Nausicaa: ‘Be thou goddess or mortal, O queen, I bow myself before thee!
If thou art one of the deities who dwell in boundless heaven, by thy
loveliness and grace and height I guess thee to be Artemis, daughter of
high Zeus. If thou art a mortal dwelling upon earth, thrice blessed thy
father and thy queenly mother, thrice blessed thy dear brothers! Surely
their souls ever swell with gladness because of thee, when they see a
maiden so lovely step into the circle of the dance. But far the most
blessed of all is he who shall prevail on thee with presents and lead
thee to his home!’”

I turned to Lampron, who had stopped a few steps in front of me, a
little to the right. He had got out his sketch-book, and was drawing
hurriedly. Presently he forgot all prudence, and came forth from the
shelter of a beech to get nearer to his model. In vain I made sign upon
sign, and tried to remind him that we were not thereto paint or sketch.
It was useless; the artist within him had broken loose. Sitting down at
the required distance on a gnarled root, right in the open, he went on
with his work with no thought but for his art.

The inevitable happened. Growing impatient over some difficulty in
his sketch, Lampron shuffled his feet; a twig broke, some leaves
rustled-Jeanne turned round and saw me looking at her, Lampron sketching
her.

What are the feelings of a young girl who in the middle of a forest
suddenly discovers that two pairs of eyes are busy with her? A little
fright at first; then--when the idea of robbers is dismissed, and a
second glance has shown her that it is her beauty, not her life, they
want--a touch of satisfied vanity at the compliment, not unmixed with
confusion.

This is exactly what we thought we saw. At first she slightly drew
back, with brows knitted, on the verge of an exclamation; then her brows
unbent, and the pleasure of finding herself admired, confusion at being
taken unawares, the desire of appearing at ease, all appeared at once on
her rosy cheeks and in her faintly troubled smile.

I bowed. Sylvestre pulled off his cap.

M. Charnot never stirred.

“Another squirrel?” he said.

“Two this time, I think, father,” she answered, in a low voice.

He went on reading.

“‘My guest,’ made answer the fair Nausicaa, ‘for I call thee so since
thou seemest not base nor foolish, it is Zeus himself that giveth weal
to men--’”

Jeanne was no longer listening. She was thinking. Of what? Of several
things, perhaps, but certainly of how to beat a retreat. I guessed it by
the movement of her sunshade, which was nervously tracing figures in the
turf. I signalled to Lampron. We retired backward. Yet it was in vain;
the charm was broken, the peace had been disturbed.

She gave two coughs--musical little coughs, produced at will.

M. Charnot broke off his reading.

“You are cold, Jeanne?”

“Why, no, father.”

“Yes, yes, you’re cold. Why did you not say so before? Lord, Lord, these
children! Always the same--think of nothing!”

He rose without delay, put his book in his pocket, buttoned up his coat,
and, leaning on his stick, glanced up a moment at the tree-tops. Then,
side by side, they disappeared down the path, Jeanne stepping briskly,
upright and supple, between the young branches which soon concealed her.

Still Lampron continued to watch the turning in the path down which she
had vanished.

“What are you thinking about?” said I.

He stroked his beard, where lurked a few gray hairs.

“I am thinking, my friend, that youth leaves us in this same way, at
the time when we love it most, with a faint smile, and without a word to
tell us whither. Mine played me this trick.”

“What a good idea of yours to sketch them both. Let me see the sketch.”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“It can scarcely be called a sketch; it’s a mere scratch.”

“Show it, all the same.”

“My good Fabien, you ought to know that when I am obstinate I have my
reasons, like Balaam’s ass. You will not see my sketch-book to-day, nor
to-morrow, nor the day after.”

I answered with foolish warmth:

“Please yourself; I don’t care.”

Really I was very much annoyed, and I was rather cool with Lampron when
we parted on the platform.

What has come to the fellow? To refuse to show me a sketch he had made
before my eyes, and a sketch of Jeanne, too!

                    April 28th, 9 A.M.

Hide your sketches, Sylvestre; stuff them away in your portfolios, or
your pockets; I care little, for I bear Jeanne’s image in my heart, and
can see it when I will, and I love her, I love her, I love her!

What is to become of her and of me I can not tell. I hope without
knowing what or why, or when, and hope alone is comforting.

                       9 P.M.

This afternoon, at two o’clock, I met Lampron in the Boulevard St.
Michel. He was walking fast with a portfolio under his arm. I went up
to him. He looked annoyed, and hardly seemed pleased when I offered to
accompany him. I grew red and angry.

“Oh, very well,” I said; “good-by, then, since you don’t care to be seen
with me.”

He pondered a moment.

“Oh, come along if you like; I am going to my framemaker’s.”

“A picture?”

“Something of the kind.”

“And that’s all the mystery! Yesterday it was a sketch I mustn’t
look at; to-day it’s a picture. It is not nice of you, Sylvestre; no,
decidedly it is not nice.”

He gave me a look of friendly compassion.

“Poor little chap!” said he.

Then, in his usual clear, strong voice:

“I am in a great hurry; but come if you like. I would rather it were
four days later; but as it is, never mind; it is never too soon to be
happy.”

When Lampron chooses to hold his tongue it is useless to ask him
questions. I gave myself up to meditating on the words, “It is never too
soon to be happy.”

We went down the boulevard, past the beer-houses. There is distinction
in my friend’s walk; he is not to be confused with the crowd through
which he passes. You can tell, from the simple seriousness of the man,
his indifference to the noise and petty incidents of the streets, that
he is a stout and noble soul. Among the passers-by he is a somebody. I
heard from a group of students seated before a cafe the following words,
which Sylvestre did not seem to notice:

“Look, do you see the taller of those two there? That’s Sylvestre
Lampron.”

“Prix du Salon two years ago?”

“A great gun, you know.”

“He looks it.”

“To the left,” said Lampron.

We turned to the left, and found ourselves in the Rue Hautefeuille,
before a shabby house, within the porch of which hung notices of
apartments to let; this was the framemaker’s. The passage was dark, the
walls were chipped by the innumerable removals of furniture they had
witnessed. We went upstairs. On the fourth floor a smell of glue and
sour paste on the landing announced the tenant’s profession. To
make quite certain there was a card nailed to the door with “Plumet,
Frame-Maker.”

“Plumet? A newly-married couple?”

But already Madame Plumet is at the door. It is the same little woman
who came to Boule’s office. She recognizes me in the dim light of the
staircase.

“What, Monsieur Lampron, do you know Monsieur Mouillard?”

“As you apparently do, too, Madame Plumet.”

“Oh, yes! I know him well; he won my action, you know.”

“Ah, to be sure-against the cabinet-maker. Is your husband in?”

“Yes, sir, in the workshop. Plumet!”

Through the half-opened door giving access to an inner room we could
see-in the midst of his molders, gilders, burnishers, and framers--a
little dark man with a beard, who looked up and hurriedly undid the
strings of his working-apron.

“Coming, Marie!”

Little Madame Plumet was a trifle upset at having to receive us in
undress, before she had tidied up her rooms. I could see it by
her blushes and by the instinctive movement she made to smooth her
disordered curls.

The husband had hardly answered her call before she left us and went
off to the end of the room, into the obscure recesses of an alcove
overcrowded with furniture. There she bent over an oblong object, which
I could not quite see at first, and rocked it with her hand.

“Monsieur Mouillard,” said she, looking up to me--“Monsieur Mouillard,
this is my son, Pierre!”

What tender pride in those words, and the smile which accompanied them!
With a finger she drew one of the curtains aside. Under the blue muslin,
between the pillow and the white coverlet, I discovered two little black
eyes and a tuft of golden hair.

“Isn’t he a little rogue!” she went on, and began to caress the waking
baby.

Meanwhile Sylvestre had been talking to Plumet at the other end of the
room.

“Out of the question,” said the frame-maker; “we are up to our knees in
arrears; twenty orders waiting.”

“I ask you to oblige me as a friend.”

“I wish I could oblige you, Monsieur Lampron; but if I made you a
promise, I should not be able to keep it.”

“What a pity! All was so well arranged, too. The sketch was to have been
hung with my two engravings. Poor Fabien! I was saving up a surprise for
you. Come and look here.”

I went across. Sylvestre opened his portfolio.

“Do you recognize it?”

At once I recognized them. M. Charnot’s back; Jeanne’s profile, exactly
like her; a forest nook; the parasol on the ground; the cane stuck into
the grass; a bit of genre, perfect in truth and execution.

“When did you do that?”

“Last night.”

“And you want to exhibit it?”

“At the Salon.”

“But, Sylvestre, it is too late to send in to the Salon. The Ides of
March are long past.”

“Yes, for that very reason I have had the devil of a time, intriguing
all the morning. With a large picture I never should have succeeded; but
with a bit of a sketch, six inches by nine--”

“Bribery of officials, then?”

“Followed by substitution, which is strictly forbidden. I happened to
have hung there between two engravings a little sketch of underwoods not
unlike this; one comes down, the other is hung instead--a little bit
of jobbery of which I am still ashamed. I risked it all for you, in the
hope that she would come and recognize the subject.”

“Of course she will recognize it, and understand; how on earth could she
help it? My dear Sylvestre, how can I thank you?”

I seized my friend’s hand and begged his forgiveness for my foolish
haste of speech.

He, too, was a little touched and overcome by the pleasure his surprise
had given me.

“Look here, Plumet,” he said to the frame-maker, who had taken the
sketch over to the light, and was studying it with a professional eye.
“This young man has even a greater interest than I in the matter. He is
a suitor for the lady’s hand, and you can be very useful to him. If you
do not frame the picture his happiness is blighted.”

The frame-maker shook his head.

“Let’s see, Antoine,” said a coaxing little voice, and Madame Plumet
left the cradle to come to our aid.

I considered our cause as won. Plumet repeated in vain, as he pulled his
beard, that it was impossible; she declared it was not. He made a move
for his workshop; she pulled him back by the sleeve, made him laugh and
give his consent.

“Antoine,” she insisted, “we owe our marriage to Monsieur Mouillard; you
must at least pay what you owe.”

I was delighted. Still, a doubt seized me.

“Sylvestre,” I said to Lampron, who already had his hand upon the
door-handle, “do you really think she will come?”

“I hope so; but I will not answer for it. To make certain, some one must
send word to her: ‘Mademoiselle Jeanne, your portrait is at the Salon.’
If you know any one who would not mind taking this message to the Rue de
l’Universite--”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Come on, then, and trust to luck.”

“Rue de l’Universite, did you say?” broke in little Madame Plumet, who
certainly took the liveliest interest in my cause.

“Yes; why?”

“Because I have a friend in the neighborhood, and perhaps--”

I risked giving her the number and name under the seal of secrecy; and
it was a good thing I did so.

In three minutes she had concocted a plan. It was like this: her friend
lived near the hotel in the Rue de l’Universite, a porter’s wife of
advanced years, and quite safe; by means of her it might be possible to
hint to Mademoiselle Jeanne that her portrait, or something like it, was
to be seen at the Salon--discreetly, of course, and as if it were the
merest piece of news.

What a plucky, clever little woman it is! Surely I was inspired when I
did her that service. I never thought I should be repaid. And here I am
repaid both capital and interest.

Yet I hesitated. She snatched my consent.

“No, no,” said she, “leave me to act. I promise you, Monsieur Mouillard,
that she shall hear of it, and you, Monsieur Lampron, that the picture
shall be framed.”

She showed us to the top of the stairs, did little Madame Plumet,
pleased at having won over her husband, at having shown herself so
cunning, and at being employed in a conspiracy of love. In the street
Lampron shook me by the hand. “Good-by, my friend,” he said; “happy men
don’t need company. Four days hence, at noon, I shall come to fetch you,
and we will pay our first visit to the Salon together.”

Yes, I was a happy man! I walked fast, without seeing anything, my eyes
lost in day dreams, my ears listening to celestial harmonies. I seemed
to wear a halo. It abashed me somewhat; for there is something insolent
in proclaiming on the housetops: “Look up at me, my heart is full,
Jeanne is going to love me!” Decidedly, my brain was affected.

Near the fountain in the Luxembourg, in front of the old palace where
the senate sits, two little girls were playing. One pushed the other,
who fell down crying,

“Naughty Jeanne, naughty girl!” I rushed to pick her up, and kissed her
before the eyes of her astonished nurse, saying, “No, Mademoiselle, she
is the most charming girl in the world!”

And M. Legrand! I still blush when I think of my conversation with M.
Legrand. He was standing in a dignified attitude at the door of his
shop.

        “ITALIAN WAREHOUSE; DRESSED PROVISIONS;
          SPECIALTY IN COLONIAL PRODUCE.”

He and I are upon good terms; I buy oranges, licorice from him, and rum
when I want to make punch. But there are distinctions. Well, to-day
I called him “Dear Monsieur Legrand;” I addressed him, though I had
nothing to buy; I asked after his business; I remarked to him, “What
a heavenly day, Monsieur Legrand! We really have got fine weather at
last!”

He looked up to the top of the street, and looked down again at me, but
refrained from differing, out of respect.

And, as a matter of fact, I noticed afterward that there was a most
unpleasant drizzle.

To wind up with, just now as I was coming home after dinner, I passed a
workman and his family in the Rue Bonaparte, and the man pointed after
me, saying:

“Look! there goes a poet.”

He was right. In me the lawyer’s clerk is in abeyance, the lawyer of
to-morrow has disappeared, only the poet is left--that is to say, the
essence of youth freed from the parasitic growths of everyday life.
I feel it roused and stirring. How sweet life is, and what wonderful
instruments we are, that Hope can make us thus vibrate by a touch of her
little finger!




BOOK 2.




CHAPTER VIII. JOY AND MADNESS

                         May 1st.

These four days have seemed as if they never would end--especially the
last. But now it wants only two minutes of noon. In two minutes, if
Lampron is not late--

Rat-a-tat-tat!

“Come in.”

“It is twelve o’clock, my friend; are you coming?”

It was Lampron.

For the last hour I had had my hat on my head, my stick between my legs,
and had been turning over my essay with gloved hands. He laughed at me.
I don’t care. We walked, for the day was clear and warm. All the world
was out and about. Who can stay indoors on May Day? As we neared the
Chamber of Deputies, perambulators full of babies in white capes came
pouring from all the neighboring streets, and made their resplendent way
toward the Tuileries. Lampron was in a talkative mood. He was pleased
with the hanging of his pictures, and his plan of campaign against
Mademoiselle Jeanne.

“She is sure to have heard of it, Fabien, and perhaps is there already.
Who can tell?”

“Oh, cease your humbug! Yes, very possibly she is there before us. I
have had a feeling that she would be for these last four days.”

“You don’t say so!”

“I have pictured her a score of times ascending the staircase on
her father’s arm. We are at the foot, lost in the crowd. Her noble,
clear-cut profile stands out against the Gobelin tapestries which frame
it with their embroidered flowers; one would say some maiden of bygone
days had come to life, and stepped down from her tapestried panel.”

“Gentlemen!” said Lampron, with a sweep of his arm which took in the
whole of the Place de la Concorde, “allow me to present to you the
intending successor of Counsellor Mouillard, lawyer, of Bourges. Every
inch of him a man of business!”

We were getting near. Crowds were on their way to the exhibition from
all sides, women in spring frocks, many of the men in white waistcoats,
one hand in pocket, gayly flourishing their canes with the other,
as much as to say, “Look at me-well-to-do, jaunty, and out in fine
weather.” The turnstiles were crowded, but at last we got through. We
made but one step across the gravel court, the realm of sculpture where
antique gods in every posture formed a mythological circle round the
modern busts in the central walk. There was no loitering here, for my
heart was elsewhere. We cast a look at an old wounded Gaul, an ancestor
unhonored by the crowd, and started up the staircase--no Jeanne to lead
the way. We came to the first room of paintings. Sylvestre beamed like a
man who feels at home.

“Quick, Sylvestre, where is the sketch? Let’s hurry to it.”

But he dragged me with him around several rooms.

Have you ever experienced the intoxication of color which seizes the
uninitiated at the door of a picture-gallery? So many staring hues
impinge upon the eyes, so many ideas take confused shape and struggle
together in the brain, that the eyes grow weary and the brain harassed.
It hovers undecided like an insect in a meadow full of flowers. The
buzzing remarks of the crowd add to the feeling of intoxication. They
distract one’s attention before it can settle anywhere, and carry it off
to where some group is gathered before a great name, a costly frame, an
enormous canvas, or an outrage on taste; twenty men on a gallows
against a yellow sky, with twenty crows hovering over them, or an aged
antediluvian, some mighty hunter, completely nude and with no property
beyond a loaded club. One turns away, and the struggle begins again
between the eye, attracted by a hundred subjects, and the brain, which
would prefer to study one.

With Lampron this danger has no existence; he takes in a room at a
glance. He has the sportsman’s eye which, in a covey of partridges,
marks its bird at a glance. He never hesitates. “That is the thing to
make for,” he says, “come along”--and we make for it. He plants himself
right in front of the picture, with both hands in his overcoat pockets,
and his chin sunk in his collar; says nothing, but is quite happy
developing an idea which has occurred to him on his way to it; comparing
the picture before him with some former work by the same artist which
he remembers. His whole soul is concentrated on the picture. And when he
considers that I have understood and penetrated the meaning of the work,
he gives his opinion in few words, but always the right ones, summing up
a long sequence of ideas which I must have shared with him, since I see
exactly as he does.

In this way we halted before the “Martyrdom of Saint Denis,” by Bonnat,
the two “Adorations,” by Bouguereau, a landscape of Bernier’s, some
other landscapes, sea pieces, and portraits.

At last we left the oil paintings.

In the open gallery, which runs around the inside of the huge oblong and
looks on the court, the watercolors, engravings, and drawings slumbered,
neglected. Lampron went straight to his works. I should have awarded
them the medaille d’honneur; an etching of a man’s head, a large
engraving of the Virgin and Infant Jesus from the Salon Carre at the
Louvre, and the drawing which represents--

“Great Heavens! Sylvestre, she’s perfectly lovely; she will make a great
mistake if she does not come and see herself!”

“She will come, my dear sir; but I shall not be there to see her.”

“Are you going?”

“I leave you to stalk your game; be patient, and do not forget to come
and tell me the news this evening.”

“I promise.”

And Lampron vanished.

The drawing was hung about midway between two doorways draped with
curtains, that opened into the big galleries. I leaned against the
woodwork of one of them, and waited. On my left stretched a solitude
seldom troubled by the few visitors who risk themselves in the realms of
pen and pencil. These, too, only came to get fresh air, or to look down
on the many-colored crowd moving among the white statues below.

At my right, on the contrary, the battling currents of the crowd kept
passing and repassing, the provincial element easily distinguished by
its jaded demeanor. Stout, exhausted matrons, breathless fathers of
families, crowded the sofas, raising discouraged glances to the walls,
while around them turned and tripped, untiring as at a dance, legions
of Parisiennes, at ease, on their high heels, equally attentive to the
pictures, their own carriage, and their neighbors’ gowns.

O peaceful functionaries, you whose business it is to keep an eye upon
this ferment! unless the ceaseless flux of these human phenomena lull
you to a trance, what a quantity of silly speeches you must hear! I
picked up twenty in as many minutes.

Suddenly there came a sound of little footsteps in the gallery. Two
little girls had just come in, two sisters, doubtless, for both had
the same black eyes, pink dresses, and white feathers in their hats.
Hesitating, with outstretched necks, like fawns on the border of a
glade, they seemed disappointed at the unexpected length of the gallery.
They looked at each other and whispered. Then both smiled, and turning
their backs on each other, they set off, one to the right, the other to
the left, to examine the drawings which covered the walls. They made a
rapid examination, with which art had obviously little to do; they were
looking for something, and I thought it might be for Jeanne’s portrait.
And so it turned out; the one on my side soon came to a stop, pointed
a finger to the wall, and gave a little cry. The other ran up; they
clapped their hands.

“Bravo, bravo!”

Then off they went again through the farther door.

I guessed what they were about to do.

I trembled from head to foot, and hid myself farther behind the
curtains.

Not a minute elapsed before they were back, not two this time, but
three, and the third was Jeanne, whom they were pulling along between
them.

They brought her up to Lampron’s sketch, and curtsied neatly to her.

Jeanne bent down, smiled, and seemed pleased. Then, a doubt seizing her,
she turned her head and saw me. The smile died away; she blushed, a tear
seemed ready to start to her eyes. Oh, rapture! Jeanne, you are touched;
Jeanne, you understand!

A deep joy surged across my soul, so deep that I never have felt its
like.

Alas! at that instant some one called, “Jeanne!”

She stood up, took the two little girls by the hand, and was gone.

Far better had it been had I too fled, carrying with me that dream of
delight!

But no, I leaned forward to look after them. In the doorway beyond I saw
M. Charnot. A young man was with him, who spoke to Jeanne. She answered
him. Three words reached me:

“It’s nothing, George.”

The devil! She loves another!

                         May 2d.

In what a state of mind did I set out this morning to face my examiners!
Downhearted, worn out by a night of misery, indifferent to all that
might befall me, whether for good or for evil.

I considered myself, and indeed I was, very wretched, but I never
thought that I should return more wretched than I went.

It was lovely weather when at half past eleven I started for the Law
School with an annotated copy of my essay under my arm, thinking more
of the regrets for the past and plans for the future with which I had
wrestled all night, than of the ordeal I was about to undergo. I met in
the Luxembourg the little girl whom I had kissed the week before. She
stopped her hoop and stood in my way, staring with wideopen eyes and
a coaxing, cunning look, which meant, “I know you, I do!” I passed by
without noticing. She pouted her lip, and I saw that she was thinking,
“What’s the matter with him?”

What was the matter? My poor little golden-locks, when you are grown a
fair woman I trust you may know as little of it as you do to-day.

I went up the Rue Soufliot, and entered the stuffy courtyard on the
stroke of noon.

The morning lectures were over. Beneath the arcades a few scattered
students were walking up and down. I avoided them for fear of meeting
a friend and having to talk. Several professors came running from their
lunch, rather red in the face, at the summons of the secretary. These
were my examiners.

It was time to get into costume, for the candidate, like the criminal,
has his costume. The old usher, who has dressed me up I don’t know how
many times in his hired gowns, saw that I was downcast, and thought I
must be suffering from examination fever, a peculiar malady, which is
like what a young soldier feels the first time he is under fire.

We were alone in the dark robing-room; he walked round me, brushing and
encouraging me; doctors of law have a moral right to this touch of the
brush.

“It will be all right, Monsieur Mouillard, never fear. No one has been
refused a degree this morning.”

“I am not afraid, Michu.”

“When I say ‘no one,’ there was one refused--you never heard the
like. Just imagine--a little to the right, please, Monsieur
Mouillard--imagine, I say, a candidate who knew absolutely nothing. That
is nothing extraordinary. But this fellow, after the examination was
over, recommended himself to mercy. ‘Have compassion on me, gentlemen,’
he said, ‘I only wish to be a magistrate!’ Capital, isn’t it?”

“Yes, yes.”

“You don’t seem to think so. You don’t look like laughing this morning.”

“No, Michu, every one has his bothers, you know.”

“I said to myself as I looked at you just now, Monsieur Mouillard has
some bother. Button up all the way, if you please, for a doctor’s essay;
if-you-please. It’s a heartache, then?”

“Something of the kind.”

He shrugged his shoulders and went before me, struggling with an
asthmatic chuckle, until we came to the room set apart for the
examination.

It was the smallest and darkest of all, and borrowed its light from
a street which had little enough to spare, and spared as little as it
could. On the left against the wall is a raised desk for the candidate.
At the end, on a platform before a bookcase, sit the six examiners
in red robes, capes with three bands of ermine, and gold-laced caps.
Between the candidate’s desk and the door is a little enclosure for
spectators, of whom there were about thirty when I entered.

My performance, which had a chance of being brilliant, was only fair.

The three first examiners had read my essay, especially M. Flamaran, who
knew it well and had enjoyed its novel and audacious propositions. He
pursed up his mouth preparatory to putting the first question, like an
epicure sucking a ripe fruit. And when at length he opened it, amid
the general silence, it was to carry the discussion at once up to
such heights of abstraction that a good number of the audience, not
understanding a word of it, stealthily made for the door.

Each successive answer put fresh spirit into him.

“Very good,” he murmured, “very good; let us carry it a step farther.
Now supposing--”

And, the demon of logic at his heels, we both went off like inspired
lunatics into a world of hypotheses where never man had set foot. He
was examining no longer, he was inventing and intoxicating himself with
deductions. No one was right or wrong. We were reasoning about chimeras,
he radiant, I cool, before his gently tickled colleagues. I never
realized till then what imagination a jurist’s head could contain.

Perspiring freely, he set down a white mark, having exceeded by ten
minutes the recognized time for examination.

The second examiner was less enthusiastic. He made very few
suppositions, and devoted all his art to convicting me of a
contradiction between page seventeen and page seventy-nine. He
kept repeating, “It’s a serious matter, sir, very serious.” But,
nevertheless, he bestowed a second white mark on me. I only got half
white from the third. The rest of the examination was taken up in
matters extraneous to the subject of my essay, a commonplace trial
of strength, in which I replied with threadbare arguments to outworn
objections.

And then it ended. Two hours had passed.

I left the room while the examiners made up their minds.

A few friends came up to me.

“Congratulations, old man, I bet on six whites.”

“Hallo, Larive! I never noticed you.”

“I quite believe you; you didn’t notice anybody, you still look
bewildered. Is it the emotion inseparable from--”

“I dare say.”

“The candidate is requested to return to the examination room!” said the
usher.

And old Michu added, in a whisper, “You have passed. I told you so. You
won’t forget old Michu, sir.”

M. Flamaran conferred my degree with a paternal smile, and a few kind
words for “this conscientious study, full of fresh ideas on a difficult
subject.”

I bowed to the examiners. Larive was waiting for me in the courtyard,
and seized me by the arm.

“Uncle Mouillard will be pleased.”

“I suppose so.”

“Better pleased than you.”

“That’s very likely.”

“He might easily be that. Upon my word I can’t understand you. These two
years you have been working like a gang of niggers for your degree, and
now you have got it you don’t seem to care a bit. You have won a smile
from Flamaran and do not consider yourself a spoiled child of Fortune!
What more did you want? Did you expect that Mademoiselle Charnot would
come in person--”

“Look here, Larive--”

“To look on at your examination, and applaud your answers with her
neatly gloved hands? Surely you know, my dear fellow, that that is no
longer possible, and that she is going to be married.”

“Going to be married?”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t know it.”

“I have suspected as much since yesterday; I met her at the Salon, and
saw a young man with her.”

“Fair?”

“Yes.”

“Tall?”

“Rather.”

“Good-looking?”

“H’m--well”

“Dufilleul, old chap, friend Dufilleul. Don’t you know Dufilleul?”

“No.”

“Oh, yes you do--a bit of a stockjobber, great at ecarte, studied law in
our year, and is always to be seen at the Opera with little Tigra of the
Bouffes.”

“Poor girl!”

“You pity her?”

“It’s too awful.”

“What is?”

“To see an unhappy child married to a rake who--”

“She will not be the first.”

“A gambler!”

“Yes, there is that, to be sure.”

“A fool, as it seems, who, in exchange for her beauty, grace, and youth,
can offer only an assortment of damaged goods! Yes, I do pity girls
duped thus, deceived and sacrificed by the very purity that makes them
believe in that of others.”

“You’ve some queer notions! It’s the way of the world. If the innocent
victims were only to marry males of equal innocence, under the
guardianship of virtuous parents, the days of this world would be
numbered, my boy. I assure you that Dufilleul is a good match, handsome
for one thing--”

“That’s worth a deal!”

“Rich.”

“The deuce he is!”

“And then a name which can be divided.”

“Divided?”

“With all the ease in the world. A very rare quality. At his marriage
he describes himself as Monsieur du Filleul. A year later he is Baron
du Filleul. At the death of his father, an old cad, he becomes Comte
du Filleul. If the young wife is pretty and knows how to cajole her
husband, she may even become a marquise.”

“Ugh!”

“You are out of spirits, my poor fellow; I will stand you an absinthe,
the only beverage that will suit the bitterness of your heart.”

“No, I shall go home.”

“Good-by, then. You don’t take your degree cheerfully.”

“Good-by.”

He spun round on his heels and went down the Boulevard St. Michel.

So all is over forever between her and me, and, saddest of all, she is
even more to be pitied than I. Poor girl! I loved her deeply, but I did
it awkwardly, as I do everything, and missed my chance of speaking. The
mute declaration which I risked, or rather which a friend risked for me,
found her already engaged to this beast who has brought more skill to
the task, who has made no blots at the National Library, who has dared
all when he had everything to fear--

I have allowed myself to be taken by her maiden witchery. All the fault,
all the folly is mine. She has given me no encouragement, no sign of
liking me. If she smiled at St. Germain it was because she was surprised
and flattered. If she came near to tears at the Salon it was because she
pitied me. I have not the shadow of a reproach to make her.

That is all I shall ever get from her--a tear, a smile. That’s all;
never mind, I shall contrive to live on it. She has been my first love,
and I shall keep her a place in my heart from which no other shall drive
her. I shall now set to work to shut this poor heart which did so wrong
to open.... I thought to be happy to-night, and I am full of sorrow.
Henceforward I think I shall understand Sylvestre better. Our sorrows
will bring us nearer. I will go to see him at once, and will tell him
so.

But first I must write to my uncle to tell him that his nephew is a
Doctor of Law. All the rest, my plans, my whole future can be put off
till to-morrow, or the day after, unless I get disgusted at the very
thought of a future and decide to conjugate my life in the present
indicative only. That is what I feel inclined to do.

                       May 4th.

Lampron has gone to the country to pass a fortnight in an out-of-the-way
place with an old relative, where he goes into hiding when he wishes to
finish an engraving.

But Madame Lampron was at home. After a little hesitation I told her
all, and I am glad I did so. She found in her simple, womanly heart
just the counsel that I needed. One feels that she is used to giving
consolation. She possesses the secret of that feminine deftness which
is the great set-off to feminine weakness. Weak? Yes, women perhaps are
weak, yet less weak than we, the strong sex, for they can raise us to
our feet. She called me, “My dear Monsieur Fabien,” and there was
balm in the very way she said the words. I used to think she wanted
refinement; she does not, she only lacks reading, and lack of reading
may go with the most delicate and lofty feelings. No one ever taught her
certain turns of expression which she used. “If your mother was alive,”
 said she, “this is what she would say.” And then she spoke to me of God,
who alone can determinate man’s trials, either by the end He ordains,
or the resignation He inspires. I felt myself carried with her into
the regions where our sorrows shrink into insignificance as the horizon
broadens around them. And I remember she uttered this fine thought, “See
how my son has suffered! It makes one believe, Monsieur Fabien, that the
elect of the earth are the hardest tried, just as the stones that crown
the building are more deeply cut than their fellows.”

I returned from Madame Lampron’s, softened, calmer, wiser.




CHAPTER IX. A VISIT FROM MY UNCLE

                         May 5th.

A letter from M. Mouillard breathing fire and fury. Were I not so low
spirited I could laugh at it.

He would have liked me, after taking my degree at two in the afternoon,
to take the train for Bourges the same evening, where my uncle, his
practice, and provincial bliss awaited me. M. Mouillard’s friends had
had due notice, and would have come to meet me at the station. In short,
I am an ungrateful wretch. At least I might have fixed the hour of my
imminent arrival, for I can not want to stop in Paris with nothing there
to detain me. But no, not a sign, not a word of returning; simply the
announcement that I have passed. This goes beyond the bounds of mere
folly and carelessness. M. Mouillard, his most elementary notions of
life shaken to their foundations, concludes in these words:

   “Fabien, I have long suspected it; some creature has you in bondage.
   I am coming to break the bonds!

                  “BRUTUS MOUILLARD.”

I know him well; he will be here tomorrow.

                  May 6th.
No uncle as yet.

                  May 7th.
No more uncle than yesterday.

                  May 8th.
Total eclipse continues. No news of M. Mouillard. This is very strange.

                  May 9th.
This evening at seven o’clock, just as I was going out to dine, I saw,
a few yards away, a tall, broad-brimmed hat surmounting a head of lank
white hair, a long neck throttled in a white neckcloth, a frock-coat
flapping about a pair of attenuated legs. I lifted up my voice:

“Uncle!”

He opened his arms to me and I fell into them. His first remark was:

“I trust at least that you have not yet dined.”

“No, uncle.”

“To Foyot’s, then!”

When you expect to meet a man in his wrath and get an invitation to
dinner, you feel almost as if you had been taken in. You are heated,
your arguments are at your fingers’ ends, your stock of petulance is
ready for immediate use; and all have to be stored in bond.

When I had recovered from my surprise, I said:

“I expected you sooner, from your letter.”

“Your suppositions were correct. I have been two days here, at the
Grand Hotel. I went there on account of the dining-room, for my friend
Hublette (you remember Hublette at Bourges) told me: ‘Mouillard, you
must see that room before you retire from business.’”

“I should have gone to see you there, uncle, if I had known it.”

“You would not have found me. Business before pleasure, Fabien. I had to
see three barristers and five solicitors. You know that business of that
kind can not wait. I saw them. Business over, I can indulge my feelings.
Here I am. Does Foyot suit you?”

“Certainly, uncle.”

“Come on, then nephew, quick, march! Paris, makes one feel quite young
again!”

And really Uncle Mouillard did look quite young, almost as young as he
looked provincial. His tall figure, and the countrified cut of his coat,
made all who passed him turn to stare, accustomed as Parisians are to
curiosities. He tapped the wood pavement with his stick, admired
the effects of Wallace’s philanthropy, stopped before the enamelled
street-signs, and grew enthusiastic over the traffic in the Rue de
Vaugirard.

The dinner was capital--just the kind a generous uncle will give to a
blameless nephew. M. Mouillard, who has a long standing affection for
chambertin, ordered two bottles to begin with. He drank the whole of one
and half of the other, eating in proportion, and talked unceasingly
and positively at the top of his voice, as his wont was. He told me the
story of two of his best actions this year, a judicial separation--my
uncle is very strong in judicial separations--and the abduction of a
minor. At first I looked out for personal allusions. But no, he told
the story from pure love of his art, without omitting an interlocutory
judgment, or a judgment reserved, just as he would have told the story
of Helen and Paris, if he had been employed in that well-known case. Not
a word about myself. I waited, yet nothing came but the successive steps
in the action.

After the ice, M. Mouillard called for a cigar.

“Waiter, what cigars have you got?”

“Londres, conchas, regalias, cacadores, partagas, esceptionales. Which
would you like, sir?”

“Damn the name! a big one that will take some time to smoke.”

Emile displayed at the bottom of a box an object closely resembling a
distaff with a straw through the middle, doubtless some relic of the
last International Exhibition, abandoned by all, like the Great Eastern,
on account of its dimensions. My uncle seized it, stuck it in the amber
mouthpiece that is so familiar to me, lighted it, and under the pretext
that you must always first get the tobacco to burn evenly, went out
trailing behind him a cloud of smoke, like a gunboat at full speed.

We “did” the arcades round the Odeon, where my uncle spent an eternity
thumbing the books for sale. He took them all up one after another, from
the poetry of the decedents to the Veterinary Manual, gave a glance at
the author’s name, shrugged his shoulders, and always ended by turning
to me with:

“You know that writer?”

“Why, yes, uncle.”

“He must be quite a new author; I can’t recall that name.”

M. Mouillard forgot that it was forty-five years since he had last
visited the bookstalls under the Odeon.

He thought he was a student again, loafing along the arcades after
dinner, eager for novelty, careless of draughts. Little by little he
lost himself in dim reveries. His cigar never left his lips. The ash
grew longer and longer yet, a lovely white ash, slightly swollen at the
tip, dotted with little black specks, and connected with the cigar by a
thin red band which alternately glowed and faded as he drew his breath.

M. Mouillard was so lost in thought, and the ash was getting so long,
that a young student--of the age that knows no mercy-was struck by these
twin phenomena. I saw him nudge a friend, hastily roll a cigarette, and,
doffing his hat, accost my uncle.

“Might I trouble you for a light, sir!”

M. Mouillard emitted a sigh, turned slowly round, and bent two terrible
eyes upon the intruder, knocked off the ash with an angry gesture, and
held out the ignited end at arm’s length.

“With pleasure, sir!”

Then he replaced the last book he had taken up--a copy of Musset--and
called me.

“Come, Fabien.”

Arm in arm we strolled up the Rue de Medicis along the railings of the
Luxembourg.

I felt the crisis approaching. My uncle has a pet saying: “When a thing
is not clear to me, I go straight to the heart of it like a ferret.”

The ferret began to work.

“Now, Fabien, about these bonds I mentioned? Did I guess right?”

“Yes, uncle, I have been in bondage.”

“Quite right to make a clean breast of it, my boy; but we must break
your bonds.”

“They are broken.”

“How long ago?”

“Some days ago.”

“On your honor?”

“Yes.”

“That’s quite right. You’d have done better to keep out of bondage. But
there, you took your uncle’s advice; you saw the abyss, and drew back
from it. Quite right of you.”

“Uncle, I will not deceive you. Your letter arrived after the event. The
cause of the rupture was quite apart from that.”

“And the cause was?”

“The sudden shattering of my illusions.”

“Men still have illusions about these creatures?”

“She was a perfect creature, and worthy of all respect.”

“Come, come!”

“I must ask you to believe me. I thought her affections free.”

“And she was--”

“Betrothed.”

“Really now, that’s very funny!”

“I did not find it funny, uncle. I suffered bitterly, I assure you.”

“I dare say, I dare say. The illusions you spoke of anyhow, it’s all
over now?”

“Quite over.”

“Well, that being the case, Fabien, I am ready to help you. Confess
frankly to me. How much is required?”

“How much?”

“Yes, you want something, I dare say, to close the incident. You know
what I mean, eh? to purchase what I might call the veil of oblivion. How
much?”

“Why, nothing at all, uncle.”

“Don’t be afraid, Fabien; I’ve got the money with me.”

“You have quite mistaken the case, uncle; there is no question of
money. I must tell you again that the young lady is of the highest
respectability.”

My uncle stared.

“I assure you, uncle. I am speaking of Mademoiselle Jeanne Charnot.”

“I dare say.”

“The daughter of a member of the Institute.”

“What!”

My uncle gave a jump and stood still.

“Yes, of Mademoiselle Charnot, whom I was in love with and wished to
marry. Do you understand?”

He leaned against the railing and folded his arms.

“Marry! Well, I never! A woman you wanted to marry?”

“Why, yes; what’s the matter?”

“To marry! How could I have imagined such a thing? Here were matters of
the utmost importance going on, and I knew nothing about them.
Marry! You might be announcing your betrothal to me at this moment if
you’d-Still you are quite sure she is betrothed?”

“Larive told me so.”

“Who’s Larive?”

“A friend of mine.”

“Oh, so you have only heard it through a friend?”

“Yes, uncle. Do you really think there may still be hope, that I still
have a chance?”

“No, no; not the slightest. She is sure to be betrothed, very much
betrothed. I tell you I am glad she is. The Mouillards do not come to
Paris for their wives, Fabien--we do not want a Parisienne to carry on
the traditions of the family, and the practice. A Parisienne! I shudder
at the thought of it. Fabien, you will leave Paris with me to-morrow.
That’s understood.”

“Certainly not, uncle.”

“Your reasons?”

“Because I can not leave my friends without saying goodby, and because
I have need to reflect before definitely binding myself to the legal
profession.”

“To reflect! You want to reflect before taking over a family practice,
which has been destined for you since you were an infant, in view of
which you have been working for five years, and which I have nursed for
you, I, your uncle, as if you had been my son?”

“Yes, uncle.”

“Don’t be a fool! You can reflect at Bourges quite as well as here. Your
object in staying here is to see her again.”

“It is not.”

“To wander like a troubled spirit up and down her street. By the way,
which is her street?”

“Rue de l’Universite.”

My uncle took out his pocketbook and made a note, “Charnot, Rue de
l’Universite.” Then all his features expanded. He gave a snort, which
I understood, for I had often heard it in court at Bourges, where it
meant, “There is no escape now. Old Mouillard has cornered his man.”

My uncle replaced his pencil in its case, and his notebook in his
pocket, and merely added:

“Fabien, you’re not yourself to-night. We’ll talk of the matter another
time. Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.” He was counting on his
fingers. “These return tickets are very convenient; I need not leave
before to-morrow evening. And, what’s more, you’ll go with me, my boy.”

M. Mouillard talked only on indifferent subjects during our brief walk
from the Rue Soufflot to catch the omnibus at the Odeon. There he shook
me by the hand and sprang nimbly into the first bus. A lady in black,
with veil tightly drawn over a little turned up nose, seeing my uncle
burst in like a bomb, and make for the seat beside her, hurriedly drew
in the folds of her dress, which were spread over the seat. My uncle
noticed her action, and, fearing he had been rude, bent over toward her
with an affable expression. “Do not disturb yourself, Madame. I am
not going all the way to Batignolles; no farther, indeed, than the
Boulevards. I shall inconvenience you for a few moments only, a very few
moments, Madame.” I had time to remark that the lady, after giving her
neighbor a glance of Juno-like disdain, turned her back upon him, and
proceeded to study the straps hanging from the roof.

The brake was taken off, the conductor whistled, the three horses, their
hoofs hammering the pavement, strained for an instant amid showers of
sparks, and the long vehicle vanished down the Rue de Vaugirard, bearing
with it Brutus and his fortunes.




CHAPTER X. A FAMILY BREACH

May 10th.

It is an awful fate to be the nephew of M. Mouillard! I always knew he
was obstinate, capable alike of guile and daring, but I little imagined
what his intentions were when he left me!

My refusal to start, and my prayer for a respite before embarking in his
practice, drove him wild. He lost his head, and swore to drag me off,
‘per fas et nefas’. He has mentally begun a new action--Mouillard v.
Mouillard, and is already tackling the brief; which is as much as to say
that he is fierce, unbridled, heartless, and without remorse.

Some might have bent. I preferred to break.

We are strangers for life. I have just seen him to the landing of my
staircase.

He came here about a quarter of an hour ago, proud, and, I may say,
swaggering, as he does over his learned friends when he has found a flaw
in one of their pleadings.

“Well, nephew?”

“Well, uncle?”

“I’ve got some news for you.”

“Indeed?”

M. Mouillard banged his hat down furiously upon my table.

“Yes, you know my maxim: when anything does not seem quite clear to
me--”

“You ferret it out.”

“Quite so; I have always found it answer. Your business did not seem
clear to me. Was Mademoiselle Charnot betrothed, or was she not? To what
extent had she encouraged your attentions? You never would have told me
the story correctly, and I never should have known. That being so, I put
my maxim into practice, and went to see her father.”

“You did that?”

“Certainly I did.”

“You have been to see Monsieur Charnot?”

“In the Rue de l’Universite. Wasn’t it the simplest thing to do?
Besides, I was not sorry to make the acquaintance of a member of the
Institute. And I must admit that he behaved very nicely to me--not a bit
stuck up.”

“And you told him?”

“My name to begin with: Brutus Mouillard. He reflected a bit, just a
moment, and recalled your appearance: a shy youth, a bachelor of arts,
wearing an eyeglass.”

“Was that all his description?”

“Yes, he remembered seeing you at the National Library, and once at his
house. I said to him, ‘That is my nephew, Monsieur Charnot.’ He replied,
‘I congratulate you, sir; he seems a youth of parts.’--‘That he is, but
his heart is very inflammable.’--‘At his age, sir, who is not liable to
take fire?’ That was how we began. Your friend Monsieur Charnot has a
pretty wit. I did not want to be behindhand with him, so I answered,
‘Well, sir, it caught fire in your house.’ He started with fright
and looked all round the room. I was vastly amused. Then we came to
explanations. I put the case before him, that you were in love with his
daughter, without my consent, but with perfectly honorable intentions;
that I had guessed it from your letters, from your unpardonable neglect
of your duties to your family, and that I hurried hither from Bourges
to take in the situation. With that I concluded, and waited for him to
develop. There are occasions when you must let people develop. I could
not jump down his throat with, ‘Sir, would you kindly tell me whether
your daughter is betrothed or not?’ You follow me? He thought, no doubt,
I had come to ask for his daughter’s hand, and passing one hand over his
forehead, he replied, ‘Sir, I feel greatly flattered by your proposal,
and I should certainly give it my serious attention, were it not that my
daughter’s hand is already sought by the son of an old schoolfellow
of mine, which circumstance, as you will readily understand, does not
permit of my entertaining an offer which otherwise should have received
the most mature consideration.’ I had learned what I came for without
risking anything. Well, I didn’t conceal from him that, so far as I was
concerned, I would rather you took your wife from the country than that
you brought home the most charming Parisienne; and that the Mouillards
from father to son had always taken their wives from Bourges. He entered
perfectly into my sentiments, and we parted the best of friends. Now, my
boy, the facts are ascertained: Mademoiselle Charnot is another’s;
you must get your mourning over and start with me to-night. To-morrow
morning we shall be in Bourges, and you’ll soon be laughing over your
Parisian delusions, I warrant you!”

I had heard my uncle out without interrupting him, though wrath,
astonishment, and my habitual respect for M. Mouillard were struggling
for the mastery within me. I needed all my strength of mind to answer,
with apparent calm.

“Yesterday, uncle, I had not made up my mind; today I have.”

“You are coming?”

“I am not. Your action in this matter, uncle--I do not know if you are
aware of it--has been perfectly unheard-of. I can not acknowledge your
right to act thus. It puts between you and me two hundred miles of rail,
and that forever. Do you understand me? You have taken the liberty of
disclosing a secret which was not yours to tell; you have revealed
a passion which, as it was hopeless, should not have been further
mentioned, and certainly not exposed to such humiliation. You went to
see Monsieur Charnot without reflecting whether you were not bringing
trouble into his household; without reflecting, further, whether
such conduct as yours, which may perhaps be usual among your business
acquaintances, was likely to succeed with me. Perhaps you thought it
would. You have merely completed an experiment, begun long ago, which
proves that we do not understand life in the same way, and that it
will be better for both of us if I continue to live in Paris, and you
continue to live at Bourges.”

“Ha! that’s how you take it, young man, is it? You refuse to come? you
try to bully me?”

“Yes.”

“Consider carefully before you let me leave here alone. You know the
amount of your fortune--fourteen hundred francs a year, which means
poverty in Paris.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, then, attend to what I am about to say. For years past I have
been saving my practice for you--that is, an honorable and lucrative
position all ready for you to step into. But I am tired at length of
your fads and your fancies. If you do not take up your quarters at
Bourges within a fortnight from now, the Mouillard practice will change
its name within three weeks!” My uncle sniffed with emotion as he looked
at me, expecting to see me totter beneath his threats. I made no
answer for a moment; but a thought which had been harassing me from the
beginning of our interview compelled me to say:

“I have only one thing to ask you, Monsieur Mouillard.”

“Further respite, I suppose? Time to reflect and fool me again? No, a
hundred times no! I’ve had enough of you; a fortnight, not a day more!”

“No, sir; I do not ask for respite.”

“So much the better, for I should refuse it. What do you want?”

“Monsieur Mouillard, I trust that Jeanne was not present at the
interview, that she heard none of it, that she was not forced to
blush--”

My uncle sprang to his feet, seized his gloves, which lay spread out
on the table, bundled them up, flung them passionately into his hat,
clapped the whole on his head, and made for the door with angry strides.

I followed him; he never looked back, never made answer to my “Good-by,
uncle.” But, at the sixth step, just before turning the corner, he
raised his stick, gave the banisters a blow fit to break them, and went
on his way downstairs exclaiming:

“Damnation!”

                         May 20th.

And so we have parted with an oath, my uncle and I! That is how I have
broken with the only relative I possess. It is now ten days since then.
I now have five left in which to mend the broken thread of the family
tradition, and become a lawyer. But nothing points to such conversion.
On the contrary, I feel relieved of a heavy weight, pleased to be free,
to have no profession. I feel the thrill of pleasure that a fugitive
from justice feels on clearing the frontier. Perhaps I was meant for a
different course of life than the one I was forced to follow. As a child
I was brought up to worship the Mouillard practice, with the fixed idea
that this profession alone could suit me; heir apparent to a lawyer’s
stool--born to it, brought up to it, without any idea, at any rate for a
long time, that I could possibly free myself from the traditions of the
law’s sacred jargon.

I have quite got over that now. The courts, where I have been a frequent
spectator, seem to me full of talented men who fine down and belittle
their talents in the practice of law. Nothing uses up the nobler
virtues more quickly than a practice at the bar. Generosity, enthusiasm,
sensibility, true and ready sympathy--all are taken, leaving the man,
in many instances nothing but a skilful actor, who apes all the emotions
while feeling none. And the comedy is none the less repugnant to me
because it is played through with a solemn face, and the actors are
richly recompensed.

Lampron is not like this. He has given play to all the noble qualities
of his nature. I envy him. I admire his disinterestedness, his broad
views of life, his faith in good in spite of evil, his belief in poetry
in spite of prose, his unspoiled capacity for receiving new impressions
and illusions--a capacity which, amid the crowds that grow old in mind
before they are old in body, keeps him still young and boyish. I think
I might have been devoted to his profession, or to literature, or to
anything but law.

We shall see. For the present I have taken a plunge into the unknown. My
time is all my own, my freedom is absolute, and I am enjoying it.

I have hidden nothing from Lampron. As my friend he is pleased, I can
see, at a resolve which keeps me in Paris; but his prudence cries out
upon it.

“It is easy enough to refuse a profession,” he said; “harder to find
another in its place. What do you intend to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“My dear fellow, you seem to be trusting to luck. At sixteen that might
be permissible, at twenty-four it’s a mistake.”

“So much the worse, for I shall make the mistake. If I have to live on
little--well, you’ve tried that before now; I shall only be following
you.”

“That’s true; I have known want, and even now it attacks me sometimes;
it’s like influenza, which does not leave its victims all at once; but
it is hard, I can tell you, to do without the necessaries of life; as
for its luxuries--”

“Oh, of course, no one can do without its luxuries.”

“You are incorrigible,” he answered, with a laugh. Then he said no more.
Lampron’s silence is the only argument which struggles in my heart in
favor of the Mouillard practice. Who can guess from what quarter the
wind will blow?




CHAPTER XI. IN THE BEATEN PATH

                         June 5th.

The die is cast; I will not be a lawyer.

The tradition of the Mouillards is broken for good, Sylvestre is
defeated for good, and I am free for good--and quite uncertain of my
future.

I have written my uncle a calm, polite, and clearly worded letter to
confirm my decision. He has not answered it, nor did I expect an answer.

I expected, however, that he would be avenged by some faint regret on my
part, by one of those light mists that so often arise and hang about our
firmest resolutions. But no such mist has arisen.

Still, Law has had her revenge. Abandoned at Bourges, she has recaptured
me at Paris, for a time. I realized that it was impossible for me
to live on an income of fourteen hundred francs. The friends whom I
discreetly questioned, in behalf of an unnamed acquaintance, as to
the means of earning money, gave me various answers. Here is a fairly
complete list of their expedients:

“If your friend is at all clever, he should write a novel.”

“If he is not, there is the catalogue of the National Library: ten hours
of indexing a day.”

“If he has ambition, let him become a wine-merchant.”

“No; ‘Old Clo,’ and get his hats gratis.”

“If he is very plain, and has no voice, he can sing in the chorus at the
opera.”

“Shorthand writer in the Senate is a peaceful occupation.”

“Teacher of Volapuk is the profession of the future.”

“Try ‘Hallo, are you there?’ in the telephones.”

“Wants to earn money? Advise him first not to lose any!”

The most sensible one, who guessed the name of the acquaintance I was
interested in, said:

“You have been a managing clerk; go back to it.”

And as the situation chanced to be vacant, I went back to my old master.
I took my old seat and den as managing clerk between the outer office
and Counsellor Boule’s glass cage. I correct the drafts of the inferior
clerks; I see the clients and instruct them how to proceed. They often
take me for the counsellor himself. I go to the courts nearly every day,
and hang about chief clerks’ and judges’ chambers; and go to the theatre
once a week with the “paper” supplied to the office.

Do I call this a profession? No, merely a stop-gap which allows me to
live and wait for something to turn up. I sometimes have forebodings
that I shall go on like this forever, waiting for something which
will never turn up; that this temporary occupation may become only too
permanent.

There is an old clerk in the office who has never had any other
occupation, whose appearance is a kind of warning to me. He has a red
face--the effect of the office stove, I think--straight, white hair,
the expression when spoken to of a startled sheep-gentle, astonished,
slightly flurried. His attenuated back is rounded off with a stoop
between the neck and shoulders. He can hardly keep his hands from
shaking. His signature is a work of art. He can stick at his desk for
six hours without stirring. While we lunch at a restaurant, he consumes
at the office some nondescript provisions which he brings in the morning
in a paper bag. On Sundays he fishes, for a change; his rod takes the
place of his pen, and his can of worms serves instead of inkstand.

He and I have already one point of resemblance. The old clerk was once
crossed in love with a flowergirl, one Mademoiselle Elodie. He has told
me this one tragedy of his life. In days gone by I used to think this
thirty-year-old love-story dull and commonplace; to-day I understand
M. Jupille; I relish him even. He and I have become sympathetic. I no
longer make him move from his seat by the fire when I want to ask him a
question: I go to him. On Sundays, on the quays by the Seine, I pick him
out from the crowd intent upon the capture of tittlebats, because he is
seated upon his handkerchief. I go up to him and we have a talk.

“Fish biting, Monsieur Jupille?”

“Hardly at all.”

“Sport is not what it used to be?”

“Ah! Monsieur Mouillard, if you could have seen it thirty years ago!”

This date is always cropping up with him. Have we not all our own date,
a few months, a few days, perhaps a single hour of full-hearted joy, for
which half our life has been a preparation, and of which the other half
must be a remembrance?

                       June 5th.

“Monsieur Mouillard, here is an application for leave to sign judgment
in a fresh matter.”

“Very well, give it me.”

“To the President of the Civil Court:

“Monsieur Plumet, of 27 Rue Hauteville, in the city of Paris, by
Counsellor Boule, his advocate, craves leave--”

It was a proceeding against a refractory debtor, the commonest thing in
the world.

“Monsieur Massinot!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who brought these papers?”

“A very pretty little woman brought them this morning while you were
out, sir.”

“Monsieur Massinot, whether she was pretty or not, it is no business of
yours to criticise the looks of the clients.”

“I did not mean to offend you, Monsieur Mouillard.”

“You have not offended me, but you have no business to talk of a ‘pretty
client.’ That epithet is not allowed in a pleading, that’s all. The lady
is coming back, I suppose?”

“Yes, sir.”

Little Madame Plumet soon called again, tricked out from head to foot in
the latest fashion. She was a little flurried on entering a room full of
jocular clerks. Escorted by Massinot, both of them with their eyes fixed
on the ground, she reached my office. I closed the door after her. She
recognized me.

“Monsieur Mouillard! What a pleasant surprise!”

She held out her hand to me so frankly and gracefully that I gave her
mine, and felt sure, from the firm, expressive way in which she clasped
it, that Madame Plumet was really pleased to see me. Her ruddy cheeks
and bright eyes recalled my first impression of her, the little
dressmaker running from the workshop to the office, full of her love for
M. Plumet and her grievances against the wicked cabinetmaker.

“What, you are back again with Counsellor Boule? I am surprised!”

“So am I, Madame Plumet, very much surprised. But such is life! How is
Master Pierre progressing?”

“Not quite so well, poor darling, since I weaned him. I had to wean him,
Monsieur Mouillard, because I have gone back to my old trade.”

“Dressmaking?”

“Yes, on my own account this time. I have taken the flat opposite to
ours, on the same floor. Plumet makes frames, while I make gowns. I have
already three workgirls, and enough customers to give me a start. I do
not charge them very dear to begin with.

“One of my customers was a very nice young lady--you know who! I have
not talked to her of you, but I have often wanted to. By the way,
Monsieur Mouillard, did I do my errand well?”

“What errand?”

“The important one, about the portrait at the Salon.”

“Oh, yes; very well indeed. I must thank you.”

“She came?”

“Yes, with her father.”

“She must have been pleased! The drawing was so pretty. Plumet, who is
not much of a talker, is never tired of praising it. I tell you, he and
I did not spare ourselves. He made a bit of a fuss before he would take
the order; he was in a hurry--such a hurry; but when he saw that I was
bent on it he gave in. And it is not the first time he has given in.
Plumet is a good soul, Monsieur Mouillard. When you know him better
you will see what a good soul he is. Well, while he was cutting out the
frame, I went to the porter’s wife. What a business it was! I am glad my
errand was successful!”

“It was too good of you, Madame Plumet; but it was useless, alas! she is
to marry another.”

“Marry another? Impossible!”

I thought Madame Plumet was about to faint. Had she heard that her son
Pierre had the croup, she could not have been more upset. Her
bosom heaved, she clasped her hands, and gazed at me with sorrowful
compassion.

“Poor Monsieur Mouillard!”

And two tears, two real tears, coursed down Madame Plumet’s cheeks. I
should have liked to catch them. They were the only tears that had been
shed for me by a living soul since my mother died.

I had to tell her all, every word, down to my rival’s name. When she
heard that it was Baron Dufilleul, her indignation knew no bounds. She
exclaimed that the Baron was an awful man; that she knew all sorts of
things about him! Know him? she should think so! That such a union was
impossible, that it could never take place, that Plumet, she knew, would
agree with her:

“Madame Plumet,” I said, “we have strayed some distance from the
business which brought you here. Let us return to your affairs; mine are
hopeless, and you can not remedy them.”

She got up trembling, her eyes red and her feelings a little hurt.

“My action? Oh, no! I can’t attend to it to-day. I’ve no heart to talk
about my business. What you’ve told me has made me too unhappy. Another
day, Monsieur Mouillard, another day.”

She left me with a look of mystery, and a pressure of the hand which
seemed to say: “Rely on me!”

Poor woman!




CHAPTER XII. I GO TO ITALY

June 10th.

In the train. We have passed the fortifications. The stuccoed houses of
the suburbs, the factories, taverns, and gloomy hovels in the debatable
land round Paris are so many points of sunshine in the far distance.
The train is going at full speed. The fields of green or gold are being
unrolled like ribbons before my eyes. Now and again a metallic sound and
a glimpse of columns and advertisements show that we are rushing through
a station in a whirlwind of dust. A flash of light across our path is
a tributary of the river. I am off, well on my way, and no one can stop
me--not Lampron, nor Counsellor Boule, nor yet Plumet. The dream of
years is about to be realized. I am going to see Italy--merely a corner
of it; but what a pleasure even that is, and what unlooked-for luck!

A few days ago, Counsellor Boule called me into his office.

“Monsieur Mouillard, you speak Italian fluently, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” “Would you like a trip at a client’s expense?”

“With pleasure, wherever you like.”

“To Italy?”

“With very great pleasure.”

“I thought so, and gave your name to the court without asking your
consent. It’s a commission to examine documents at Milan, to prove some
copies of deeds and other papers, put in by a supposititious Italian
heir to establish his rights to a rather large property. You remember
the case of Zampini against Veldon and others?”

“Quite well.”

“It is Zampini’s copies of the deeds on which he bases his claim which
you will have to compare with the originals, with the help of a clerk
from the Record Office and a sworn translator. You can go by Switzerland
or by the Corniche route, as you please. You will be allowed six hundred
francs and a fortnight’s holiday. Does that suit you?”

“I should think so!”

“Then pack up and be off. You must be at Milan by the morning of the
eighteenth.”

I ran to tell the news to Lampron, who was filled with surprise and not
a little emotion at the mention of Italy. And here I am flying along
in the Lyons express, without a regret for Paris. All my heart leaps
forward toward Switzerland, where I shall be to-morrow. I have chosen
this green route to take me to the land of blue skies. Up to the last
moment I feared that some obstacle would arise, that the ill-luck which
dogs my footsteps would keep me back, and I am quite surprised that it
has let me off. True, I nearly lost the train, and the horse of cab
No. 7382 must have been a retired racer to make up for the loss of time
caused by M. Plumet.

Counsellor Boule sent me on a business errand an hour before I started.
On my way back, just as I was crossing the Place de l’Opera in the
aforesaid cab, a voice hailed me:

“Monsieur Mouillard!”

I looked first to the right and then to the left, till, on a refuge, I
caught sight of M. Plumet struggling to attract my attention. I
stopped the cab, and a smile of satisfaction spread over M. Plumet’s
countenance. He stepped off the refuge. I opened the cab-door. But a
brougham passed, and the horse pushed me back into the cab with his
nose. I opened the door a second time; another brougham came by; then a
third; finally two serried lines of traffic cut me off from M. Plumet,
who kept shouting something to me which the noise of the wheels and the
crowd prevented me from hearing. I signalled my despair to M. Plumet. He
rose on tiptoe. I could not hear any better.

Five minutes lost! Impossible to wait any longer! Besides, who could
tell that it was not a trap to prevent my departure, though in friendly
guise? I shuddered at the thought and shouted:

“Gare de Lyon, cabby, as fast as you can drive!”

My orders were obeyed. We got to the station to find the train made up
and ready to start, and I was the last to take a ticket.

I suppose M. Plumet managed to escape from his refuge.

                         GENEVA.

On my arrival I found, keeping order on the way outside the station, the
drollest policeman that ever stepped out of a comic opera. At home
we should have had to protect him against the boys; here he protects
others.

Well, it shows that I am really abroad.

I have only two hours to spare in this town. What shall I see? The
country; that is always beautiful, whereas many so-called “sights” are
not. I will make for the shores of the lake, for the spot where the
Rhone leaves it, to flow toward France. The Rhone, which is so muddy at
Avignon, is clean here; deep and clear as a creek of the sea. It rushes
along in a narrow blue torrent compressed between a quay and a line of
houses.

The river draws me after it. We leave the town together, and I am soon
in the midst of those market-gardens where the infant Topffer lost
himself, and, overtaken by nightfall, fell to making his famous analysis
of fear. The big pumping wheels still overtop the willows, and cast
their shadows over the lettuce-fields. In the distance rise slopes of
woodland, on Sundays the haunt of holiday-makers. The Rhone leaps and
eddies, singing over its gravel beds. Two trout-fishers are taxing all
their strength to pull a boat up stream beneath the shelter of the bank.

Perhaps I was wrong in not waiting to hear what M. Plumet had to tell
me. He is not the kind of man to gesticulate wildly without good reason.

                       ON THE LAKE.

The steamer is gaining the open water and Geneva already lies far
behind. Not a ripple on the blue water that shades into deep blue behind
us. Ahead the scene melts into a milky haze. A little boat, with idle
sails embroidered with sunlight, vanishes into it. On the right rise
the mountains of Savoy, dotted with forests, veiled in clouds which cast
their shadows on the broken slopes. The contrast is happy, and I can
not help admiring Leman’s lovely smile at the foot of these rugged
mountains.

At the bend in the banks near St. Maurice-en-Valais, the wind catches
us, quite a squall. The lake becomes a sea. At the first roll an
Englishwoman becomes seasick. She casts an expiring glance upon Chillon,
the ancient towers of which are being lashed by the foam. Her husband
does not think it worth his while to cease reading his guide-book or
focusing his field-glass for so trifling a matter.

                    ON THE DILIGENCE

I am crossing the Simplon at daybreak, with rosepink glaciers on every
side. We are trotting down the Italian slope. How I have longed for the
sight of Italy! Hardly had the diligence put on the brake, and begun
bowling down the mountain-side, before I discovered a change on the
face of all things. The sky turned to a brighter blue. At the very first
glance I seemed to see the dust of long summers on the leaves of the
firs, six thousand feet above the sea, in the virgin atmosphere of the
mountain-tops: and I was very near taking the creaking of my loosely
fixed seat for the southern melody of the first grasshopper.

                       BAVENO

No one could be mistaken; this shaven, obsequious, suavely jovial
innkeeper is a Neapolitan. He takes his stand in his mosaic-paved
hall, and is at the service of all who wish for information about Lago
Maggiore, the list of its sights; in a word, the programme of the piece.

                  ISOLA BELLA, ISOLA MADRE.

Yes, they are scraped clean, carefully tended, pretty, all a-blowing and
a-growing; but unreal. The palm trees are unhomely, the tropical plants
seem to stand behind footlights. Restore them to their homes, or give me
back Lake Leman, so simply grand.

                    MENAGGIO.

After the sky-blue of Maggiore and the vivid green of Lugano, comes the
violet-blue of Como, with its luminous landscape, its banks covered with
olives, Roman ruins, and modern villas. Never have I felt the air so
clear. Here for the first time I said to myself: “This is the spot where
I would choose to dwell.” I have even selected my house; it peeps out
from a mass of pomegranates, evergreens, and citrons, on a peninsula
around which the water swells with gentle murmur, and whence the view is
perfect across lake, mountain, and sky.

A nightingale is singing, and I can not help reflecting that his fellows
here are put to death in thousands. Yes, the reapers, famed in poems
and lithographs, are desperate bird-catchers. At the season of migration
they capture thousands of these weary travellers with snares or limed
twigs; on Maggiore alone sixty thousand meet their end. We have but
those they choose to leave us to charm our summer nights.

Perhaps they will kill my nightingale in the Carmelite garden. The idea
fills me with indignation.

Then my thoughts run back to my rooms in the Rue de Rennes, and I see
Madame Menin, with a dejected air, dusting my slumbering furniture;
Lampron at work, his mother knitting; the old clerk growing sleepy with
the heat and lifting his pen as he fancies he has got a bite; Madame
Plumet amid her covey of workgirls, and M. Plumet blowing away with
impatient breath the gold dust which the gum has failed to fix on the
mouldings of a newly finished frame.

M. Plumet is pensive. He is burdened with a secret. I am convinced I did
wrong in not waiting longer on the Place de L’Opera.

                    MILAN.

At last I am in Milan, an ancient city, but full of ideas and energy, my
destination, and the cradle of the excellent Porfirio Zampini, suspected
forger. The examination of documents does not begin till the day after
to-morrow, so I am making the best of the time in seeing the sights.

There are four sights to see at Milan if you are a musician, and three
if you are not: the Duomo, ‘vulgo’, cathedral; “The Marriage of the
Virgin,” by Raphael; “The Last Supper,” by Leonardo; and, if it suits
your tastes, a performance at La Scala.

I began with the Duomo, and on leaving it I received the news that still
worries me.

But first of all I must make a confession. When I ascended through the
tropical heat to the marble roof of the cathedral, I expected so much
that I was disappointed. Surprise goes for so much in what we admire.
Neither this mountain of marble, nor the lacework and pinnacles which
adorn the enormous mass, nor the amazing number of statues, nor the
sight of men smaller than flies on the Piazza del Duomo, nor the vast
stretch of flat country which spreads for miles on every side of the
city--none of these sights kindled the spark of enthusiasm within me
which has often glowed for much less. No, what pleased me was something
quite different, a detail not noticed in the guide-books, I suppose.

I had come down from the roof and was wandering in the vast nave from
pillar to pillar, when I found myself beneath the lantern. I raised
my eyes, but the flood of golden light compelled me to close them.
The sunlight passing through the yellow glass of the windows overhead
encircled the mighty vault of the lantern with a fiery crown, and played
around the walls of its cage in rays which, growing fainter as they
fell, flooded the floor with their expiring flames, a mysterious
dayspring, a diffused glory, through which litany and sacred chant
winged their way up toward the Infinite.

I left the cathedral tired out, dazed with weariness and sunlight, and
fell asleep in a chair as soon as I got back to my room, on the fifth
floor of the Albergo dell’ Agnello.

I had been asleep for about an hour, perhaps, when I thought I heard a
voice near me repeating “Illustre Signore!”

I did not wake. The voice continued with a murmur of sibilants:

“Illustrissimo Signore!”

This drew me from my sleep, for the human ear is very susceptible to
superlatives.

“What is it?”

“A letter for your lordship. As it is marked ‘Immediate,’ I thought I
might take the liberty of disturbing your lordship’s slumbers.”

“You did quite right, Tomaso.”

“You owe me eight sous, signore, which I paid for the postage.”

“There’s half a franc, keep the change.”

He retired calling me Monsieur le Comte; and all for two sous--O
fatherland of Brutus! The letter was from Lampron, who had forgotten to
put a stamp on it.

   “MY DEAR FRIEND:

   “Madame Plumet, to whom I believe you have given no instructions so
   to do, is at present busying herself considerably about your
   affairs. I felt I ought to warn you, because she is all heart and
   no brains, and I have often seen before the trouble into which an
   overzealous friend may get one, especially if the friend be a woman.

   “I fear some serious indiscretion has been committed, for the
   following reasons.

   “Yesterday evening Monsieur Plumet came to see me, and stood pulling
   furiously at his beard, which I know from experience is his way of
   showing that the world is not going around the right way for him.
   By means of questions, I succeeded, after some difficulty, in
   dragging from him about half what he had to tell me. The only thing
   which he made quite clear was his distress on finding that Madame
   Plumet was a woman whom it was hard to silence or to convince by
   argument.

   “It appears that she has gone back to her old trade of dress-making,
   and that one of her first customers--God knows how she got there!--
   was Mademoiselle Jeanne Charnot.

   “Well, last Monday Mademoiselle Jeanne was selecting a hat. She was
   blithe as dawn, while the dressmaker was gloomy as night.

   “‘Is your little boy ill, Madame Plumet?’

   “‘No, Mademoiselle.’

   “‘You look so sad.’

   “Then, according to her husband’s words, Madame Plumet took her
   courage in her two hands, and looking her pretty customer in the
   face, said:

   “‘Mademoiselle, why are you marrying?’

   “‘What a funny question! Why, because I am old enough; because I
   have had an offer; because all young girls marry, or else they go
   into convents, or become old maids. Well, Madame Plumet, I never
   have felt a religious vocation, and I never expected to become an
   old maid. Why do you ask such a question?’

   “‘Because, Mademoiselle, married life may be very happy, but it may
   be quite the reverse!’

   “After giving expression to this excellent aphorism, Madame Plumet,
   unable to contain herself any longer, burst into tears.

   “Mademoiselle Jeanne, who had been laughing before, was now amazed
   and presently grew rather anxious.

   “Still, her pride kept her from asking any further questions, and
   Madame Plumet was too much frightened to add a word to her answer.
   But they will meet again the day after to-morrow, on account of the
   hat, as before.

   “Here the story grew confused, and I understood no more of it.

   “Clearly there is more behind this. Monsieur Plumet never would
   have gone out of his way merely to inform me that his wife had given
   him a taste of her tongue, nor would he have looked so upset about
   it. But you know the fellow’s way; whenever it’s important for him
   to make himself clear he loses what little power of speech he has,
   becomes worse than dumb-unintelligible. He sputtered inconsequent
   ejaculations at me in this fashion:

   “‘To think of it, to-morrow, perhaps! And you know what a
   business! Oh, damnation! Anyhow, that must not be! Ah! Monsieur
   Lampron, how women do talk!’

   “And with this Monsieur Plumet left me.

   “I must confess, old fellow, that I am not burning with desire to
   get mixed up in this mess, or to go and ask Madame Plumet for the
   explanation which her husband was unable to give me. I shall bide
   my time. If anything turns up to-morrow, they are sure to tell me,
   and I will write you word.

   “My mother sends you her love, and begs you to wrap up warmly in the
   evening; she says the twilight is the winter of hot climates.

   “The dear woman has been a little out of sorts for the last two
   days. Today she is keeping her bed. I trust it is nothing but a
   cold.

   “Your affectionate friend,

                    “SYLVESTRE LAMPRON.”




CHAPTER XIII. STARTLING NEWS FROM SYLVESTRE

                    MILAN, June 18th.

The examination of documents began this morning. I never thought we
should have such a heap to examine, nor papers of such a length. The
first sitting passed almost entirely in classifying, in examining
signatures, in skirmishes of all kinds around this main body.

My colleagues and I are working in a room in the municipal Palazzo del
Marino, a vast deserted building used, I believe, as a storehouse. Our
leathern armchairs and the table on which the documents are arranged
occupy the middle of the room. Along the walls are several cupboards,
nests of registers and rats; a few pictures with their faces to the
wall; some carved wood scutcheons, half a dozen flagstaffs and a
triumphal arch in cardboard, now taken to pieces and rotting--gloomy
apparatus of bygone festivals.

The persons taking part in the examination besides the three Frenchmen,
are, in the first place, a little Italian judge, with a mean face,
wrinkled like a winter apple, whose eyelids always seem heavy with
sleep; secondly, a clerk, shining with fat, his dress, hair, and
countenance expressive of restrained jollity, as he dreams voluptuous
dreams of the cool drinks he means to absorb through a straw when the
hour of deliverance shall sound from the frightful cuckoo clock, a relic
of the French occupation, which ticks at the end of the room; thirdly,
a creature whose position is difficult to determine--I think he must
be employed in some registry; he is here as a mere manual laborer. This
third person gives me the idea of being very much interested in the
fortunes of Signore Porfirio Zampini, for on each occasion, when his
duties required him to bring us documents, he whispered in my ear:

“If you only knew, my lord, what a man Zampini is! what a noble heart,
what a paladin!”

Take notice that this “paladin” is a macaroni-seller, strongly suspected
of trying to hoodwink the French courts.

Amid the awful heat which penetrated the windows, the doors, even the
sun-baked walls, we had to listen to, read, and compare documents.
Gnats of a ferocious kind, hatched by thousands in the hangings of this
hothouse, flew around our perspiring heads. Their buzzing got the upper
hand at intervals when the clerk’s voice grew weary and, diminishing in
volume, threatened to fade away into snores.

The little judge rapped on the table with his paperknife and urged the
reader afresh upon his wild career. My colleague from the Record
Office showed no sign of weariness. Motionless, attentive, classing the
smallest papers in his orderly mind, he did not even feel the’ gnats
swooping upon the veins in his hands, stinging them, sucking them, and
flying off red and distended with his blood.

I sat, both literally and metaphorically, on hot coals. Just as I came
into the room, the man from the Record Office handed me a letter which
had arrived at the hotel while I was out at lunch. It was a letter from
Lampron, in a large, bulky envelope. Clearly something important must
have happened.

My fate, perhaps, was settled, and was in the letter, while I knew it
not. I tried to get it out of my inside pocket several times, for to me
it was a far more interesting document than any that concerned Zampini’s
action. I pined to open it furtively, and read at least the first few
lines. A moment would have sufficed for me to get at the point of this
long communication. But at every attempt the judge’s eyes turned slowly
upon me between their half-closed lids, and made me desist. No--a
thousand times no! This smooth-tongued, wily Italian shall have no
excuse for proving that the French, who have already such a reputation
for frivolity, are a nation without a conscience, incapable of
fulfilling the mission with which they are charged.

And yet.... there came a moment when he turned his back and began to
sort a fresh bundle with the man of records. Here was an unlooked-for
opportunity. I cut open the envelope, unfolded the letter, and found
eight pages! Still I began:

   “MY DEAR FRIEND:

   “In spite of my anxiety about my mother, and the care her illness
   demands (to-day it is found to be undoubted congestion of the
   lungs), I feel bound to tell you the story of what has happened in
   the Rue Hautefeuille, as it is very important--”

“Excuse me, Monsieur Mou-il-ard,” said the little judge, half
turning toward me, “does the paper you have there happen to be number
twenty-seven, which we are looking for?”

“Oh, dear, no; it’s a private letter.”

“A private letter? I ask pardon for interrupting you.”

He gave a faint smile, closed his eyes to show his pity for such
frivolity, and turned away again satisfied, while the other members of
the Zampini Commission looked at me with interest.

The letter was important. So much the worse, I must finish it:

   “I will try to reconstruct the scene for you, from the details which
   I have gathered.

   “The time is a quarter to ten in the morning. There is a knock at
   Monsieur Plumet’s door. The door opposite is opened half-way and
   Madame Plumet looks out. She withdraws in a hurry, ‘with her heart
   in her mouth,’ as she says; the plot she has formed is about to
   succeed or fail, the critical moment is at hand; the visitor is her
   enemy, your rival Dufilleul.

   “He is full of self-confidence and comes in plump and flourishing,
   with light gloves, and a terrier at his heels.

   “‘My portrait framed, Plumet?’

   “‘Yes, my lord-yes, to be sure.’

   “‘Let’s see it.’

   “I have seen the famous portrait: a miniature of the newly created
   baron, in fresh butter, I think, done cheap by some poor girl who
   gains her living by coloring photographs. It is intended for
   Mademoiselle Tigra of the Bouffes. A delicate attention from
   Dufilleul, isn’t it? While Jeanne in her innocence is dreaming of
   the words of love he has ventured to utter to her, and cherishes but
   one thought, one image in her heart, he is exerting his ingenuity to
   perpetuate the recollection of that image’s adventures elsewhere.

   “He is pleased with the elaborate and costly frame which Plumet has
   made for him.

   “‘Very nice. How much?’

   “‘One hundred and twenty francs.’

   “‘Six louis? very dear.’

   “‘That’s my price for this kind of work, my lord; I am very
   busy just now, my lord.’

   “‘Well, let it be this once. I don’t often have a picture framed;
   to tell the truth, I don’t care for pictures.’

   “Dufilleul admires and looks at himself in the vile portrait
   which he holds outstretched in his right hand, while his left hand
   feels in his purse. Monsieur Plumet looks very stiff, very unhappy,
   and very nervous. He evidently wants to get his customer off the
   premises.

   “The rustling of skirts is heard on the staircase. Plumet turns
   pale, and glancing at the half-opened door, through which the
   terrier is pushing its nose, steps forward to close it. It is too
   late.

   “Some one has noiselessly opened it, and on the threshold stands
   Mademoiselle Jeanne in walking-dress, looking, with bright eyes and
   her most charming smile, at Plumet, who steps back in a fright, and
   Dufilleul, who has not yet seen her.

   “‘Well, sir, and so I’ve caught you!’

   “Dufilleul starts, and involuntarily clutches the portrait to his
   waistcoat.

   “‘Mademoiselle--No, really, you have come--?’

   “‘To see Madame Plumet. What wrong is there in that?’

   “‘None whatever--of course not.’

   “‘Not the least in the world, eh? Ha, ha! What a trifle flurries
   you. Come now, collect yourself. There is nothing to be frightened
   at. As I was coming upstairs, your dog put his muzzle out; I
   guessed he was not alone, so I left my maid with Madame Plumet, and
   came in at the right-hand door instead of the left. Do you think it
   improper?’

   “‘Oh, no, Mademoiselle.’

   “‘However, I am inquisitive, and I should like to see what you are
   hiding there.’

   “‘It’s a portrait.’

   “‘Hand it to me.’

   “‘With pleasure; unfortunately it’s only a portrait of myself.’

   “‘Why unfortunately? On the contrary, it flatters you--the nose is
   not so long as the original; what do you say, Monsieur Plumet?’

   “‘Do you think it good?’

   “‘Very.’

   “‘How do you like the frame?’

   “‘It’s very pretty.’

   “‘Then I make you a present of it, Mademoiselle.’

   “‘Why! wasn’t it intended for me?’

   “‘I mean--well! to tell the truth, it wasn’t; it’s a wedding
   present, a souvenir--there’s nothing extraordinary in that, is
   there?’

   “‘Nothing whatever. You can tell me whom it’s for, I suppose?’

   “‘Don’t you think that you are pushing your curiosity too far?’

   “‘Well, really!’

   “‘Yes, I mean it.’

   “‘Since you make such a secret of it, I shall ask Monsieur Plumet to
   tell me. Monsieur Plumet, for whom is this portrait?’

   “Plumet, pale as death, fumbled at his workman’s cap, like a naughty
   child.

   “‘Why, you see, Mademoiselle--I am only a poor framemaker.’

   “‘Very well! I shall go to Madame Plumet, who is sure to know, and
   will not mind telling me.’

   “Madame Plumet, who must have been listening at the door, came in at
   that moment, trembling like a leaf, and prepared to dare all.

   “I beg you won’t, Mademoiselle,’ broke in Dufilleul; ‘there is no
   secret. I only wanted to tease you. The portrait is for a friend
   of mine who lives at Fontainebleau.’

   “‘His name?’

   “‘Gonin--he’s a solicitor.’

   “‘It was time you told me. How wretched you both looked. Another
   time tell me straight out, and frankly, anything you have no reason
   to conceal. Promise you won’t act like this again.’

   “‘I promise.’

   “‘Then, let us make peace.’

   “She held out her hand to him. Before he could grasp it, Madame
   Plumet broke in:

   “‘Excuse me, Mademoiselle, I can not have you deceived like this in
   my house. Mademoiselle, it is not true!’

   “‘What is not true, Madame?’

   “‘That this portrait is for Monsieur Gonin, or anybody else at
   Fontainebleau.’

   “Mademoiselle Charnot drew back in surprise.

   “‘For whom, then?’

   “‘An actress.’

   “‘Take care what you are saying, Madame.’

   “‘For Mademoiselle Tigra of the Bouffes.’

   “‘Lies!’ cried Dufilleul. ‘Prove it, Madame; prove your story,
   please!’

   “‘Look at the back,’ answered Madame Plumet, quietly.

   “Mademoiselle Jeanne, who had not put down the miniature, turned it
   over, read what was on the back, grew deathly pale, and handed it to
   her lover.

   “‘What does it say?’ said Dufilleul, stooping over it.

   “It said: ‘From Monsieur le Baron D-----to Mademoiselle T-----,
   Boulevard Haussmann. To be delivered on Thursday.’

   “‘You can see at once, Mademoiselle, that this is not my writing.
   It’s an abominable conspiracy. Monsieur Plumet, I call upon you to
   give your wife the lie. She has written what is false; confess it!’

   “The frame-maker hid his face in his hands and made no reply.

   “‘What, Plumet, have you nothing to say for me?’

   “Mademoiselle Charnot was leaving the room.

   “‘Where are you going, Mademoiselle? Stay, you will soon see that
   they lie!’

   “She was already half-way across the landing when Dufilleul caught
   her and seized her by the hand.

   “‘Stay, Jeanne, stay!’

   “‘Let me go, sir!’

   “‘No, hear me first; this is some horrible mistake. I swear’

   “At this moment a high-pitched voice was heard on the staircase.

   “‘Well, George, how much longer are you going to keep me?’

   “Dufilleul suddenly lost countenance and dropped Mademoiselle
   Charnot’s hand.

   “The young girl bent over the banisters, and saw, at the bottom of
   the staircase, exactly underneath her, a woman looking up, with head
   thrown back and mouth still half-opened. Their eyes met. Jeanne at
   once turned away her gaze.

   “Then, turning to Madame Plumet, who leaned motionless against the
   wall:

   “‘Come, Madame,’ she said, ‘we must go and choose a hat.’ And she
   closed the dressmaker’s door behind her.

   “This, my friend, is the true account of what happened in the Rue
   Hautefeuille. I learned the details from Madame Plumet in person,
   who could not contain herself for joy as she described the success
   of her conspiracy, and how her little hand had guided old Dame
   Fortune’s. For, as you will doubtless have guessed, the meeting
   between Jeanne and her lover, so dreaded by the framemaker, had been
   arranged by Madame Plumet unknown to all, and the damning
   inscription was also in her handwriting.

   “I need not add that Mademoiselle Charnot, upset by the scene, had a
   momentary attack of faintness. However, she soon regained her usual
   firm and dignified demeanor, which seems to show that she is a woman
   of energy.

   “But the interest of the story does not cease here. I think the
   betrothal is definitely at an end. A betrothal is always a
   difficult thing to renew, and after the publicity which attended the
   rupture of this one, I do not see how they can make it up again.
   One thing I feel sure of is, that Mademoiselle Jeanne Charnot will
   never change her name to Madame Dufilleul.

   “Do not, however, exaggerate your own chances. They will be less
   than you think for some time yet. I do not believe that a young
   girl who has thus been wounded and deceived can forget all at once.
   There is even the possibility of her never forgetting--of living
   with her sorrow, preferring certain peace of mind, and the simple
   joys of filial devotion, to all those dreams of married life by
   which so many simple-hearted girls have been cruelly taken in.

   “In any case do not think of returning yet, for I know you are
   capable of any imprudence. Stay where you are, examine your
   documents, and wait.

   “My mother and I are passing through a bitter trial. She is ill, I
   may say seriously ill. I would sooner bear the illness than my
   present anxiety.

             “Your friend,

                    “SYLVESTRE LAMPRON.

   “P. S.--Just as I was about to fasten up this letter, I got a note
   from Madame Plumet to tell me that Monsieur and Mademoiselle Charnot
   have left Paris. She does not know where they have gone.”

I became completely absorbed over this letter. Some passages I read a
second time; and the state of agitation into which it threw me did not
at once pass away. I remained for an indefinite time without a notion
of what was going on around me, entirely wrapped up in the past or the
future.

The Italian attendant brought me back to the present with a jerk of his
elbow. He was replacing the last register in the huge drawers of the
table. He and I were alone. My colleagues had left, and our first
sitting had come to an end without my assistance, though before my
eyes. They could not have gone far, so, somewhat ashamed of my want of
attention, I put on my hat, and went to find them and apologize. The
little attendant caught me by the sleeve, and gave a knowing smile at
the letter which I was slipping into my pocketbook.

“E d’una donna?” he asked.

“What’s that to you?”

“I am sure of it; a letter from a man would never take so long to read;
and, ‘per Bacco’, you were a time about it! ‘Oh, le donne, illustre
signore, le downe!’”

“That’s enough, thank you.”

I made for the door, but he threw himself nimbly in my way, grimacing,
raising his eyebrows, one finger on his ribs. “Listen, my lord, I can
see you are a true scholar, a man whom fame alone can tempt. I could
get your lordship such beautiful manuscripts--Italian, Latin, German
manuscripts that never have been edited, my noble lord!”

“Stolen, too!” I replied, and pushed past him.

I went out, and in the neighboring square, amicably seated at the same
table, under the awning of a cafe, I found my French colleagues and the
Italian judge. At a table a little apart the clerk was sucking something
through a straw. And they all laughed as they saw me making my way
toward them through the still scorching glare of the sun.

                  MILAN, June 25th.

Our mission was concluded to-day. Zampini is a mere rogue. Brought face
to face with facts he could not escape from, he confessed that he had
intended to “have a lark” with the French heirs by claiming to be the
rightful heir himself, though he lacked two degrees of relationship to
establish his claim.

We explained to him that this little “lark” was a fraudulent act which
exposed him at least to the consequence of having to pay the costs of
the action. He accepted our opinion in the politest manner possible. I
believe he is hopelessly insolvent. He will pay the usher in macaroni,
and the barrister in jests.

My colleagues, the record man and the translator, leave Milan to-morrow.
I shall go with them.




CHAPTER XIV. A SURPRISING ENCOUNTER

                    MILAN, June 26th.

I have just had another letter from Sylvestre. My poor friend is very
miserable; his mother is dead--a saint if ever there was one. I was
very deeply touched by the news, although I knew this lovable woman very
slightly--too slightly, indeed, not having been a son, or related in any
way to her, but merely a passing stranger who found his way within the
horizon of her heart, that narrow limit within which she spread abroad
the treasures of her tenderness and wisdom. How terribly her son must
feel her loss!

He described in his letter her last moments, and the calmness with which
she met death, and added:

   “One thing, which perhaps you will not understand, is the remorse
   which is mingled with my sorrow. I lived with her forty years, and
   have some right to be called ‘a good son.’ But, when I compare the
   proofs of affection I gave her with those she gave me, the
   sacrifices I made for her with those she made for me; when I think
   of the egoism which found its way into our common life, on which I
   founded my claims to merit, of the wealth of tenderness and sympathy
   with which she repaid a few walks on my arm, a few kind words, and
   of her really great forbearance in dwelling beneath the same roof
   with me--I feel that I was ungrateful, and not worthy of the
   happiness I enjoyed.

   “I am tortured by the thought that it is impossible for me to repair
   all my neglect, to pay a debt the greatness of which I now recognize
   for the first time. She is gone. All is over. My prayers alone
   can reach her, can tell her that I loved her, that I worshipped her,
   that I might have been capable of doing all that I have left undone
   for her.

   “Oh, my friend, what pleasant duties have I lost! I mean, at least,
   to fulfil her last wishes, and it is on account of one of them that
   I am writing to you.

   “You know that my mother was never quite pleased at my keeping at
   home the portrait of her who was my first and only love. She would
   have preferred that my eyes did not recall so often to my heart the
   recollection of my long-past sorrows. I withstood her. On her
   death-bed she begged me to give up the picture to, those who should
   have had it long ago. ‘So long as I was here to comfort you in the
   sorrows which the sight of it revived in you,’ she said, ‘I did not
   press this upon you; but soon you will be left alone, with no one to
   raise you when your spirits fail you. They have often begged you to
   give up the picture to them. The time is come for you to grant
   their prayers.’

   “I promised.

   “And now, dear friend, help me to keep my promise. I do not wish to
   write to them. My hand would tremble, and they would tremble when
   they saw my writing. Go and see them.

   “They live about nine miles from Milan, on the Monza road, but
   beyond that town, close to the village of Desio. The villa is
   called Dannegianti, after its owners. It used to be hidden among
   poplars, and its groves were famous for their shade. You must send
   in your card to the old lady of the house together with mine. They
   will receive you. Then you must break the news to them as you think
   best, that, in accordance with the dying wish of Sylvestre Lampron’s
   mother, the portrait of Rafaella is to be given in perpetuity to the
   Villa Dannegianti. Given, you understand.

   “You may even tell them that it is on its way. I have just arranged
   with Plumet about packing it. He is a good workman, as you know.
   To-morrow all will be ready, and my home an absolute void.

   “I intend to take refuge in hard work, and I count upon you to
   alleviate to some extent the hardships of such a method of
   consolation.

                    “SYLVESTRE LAMPRON.”

When I got Lampron’s letter, at ten in the morning, I went at once to
see the landlord of the Albergo dell’ Agnello.

“You can get me a carriage for Desio, can’t you?”

“Oh, your lordship thinks of driving to Desio? That is quite right. It
is much more picturesque than going by train. A little way beyond Monza.
Monza, sir, is one of our richest jewels; you will see there--”

“Yes,” said I, repeating my Baedeker as accurately as he, “the Villa
Reale, and the Iron Crown of the Emperors of the West.”

“Exactly so, sir, and the cathedral built--”

“By Theodolinda, Queen of the Lombards, A.D. 595, restored in the
sixteenth century. I know; I only asked whether you could get me a
decent carriage.”

“A matchless one! At half-past three, when the heat is less intense,
your lordship will find the horses harnessed. You will have plenty of
time to get to Desio before sunset, and be back in time for supper.”

At the appointed time I received notice. My host had more than kept his
word, for the horses sped through Milan at a trot which they did not
relinquish when we got into the Como road, amid the flat and fertile
country which is called the garden of Italy.

After an hour and a half, including a brief halt at Monza, the coachman
drew up his horses before the first house in Desio--an inn.

It was a very poor inn, situated at the corner of the main street and
of a road which branched off into the country. In front of it a few
plane-trees, trained into an arbor, formed an arch of shade. A few feet
of vine clambered about their trunks. The sun was scorching the leaves
and the heavy bunches of grapes which hung here and there. The shutters
were closed, and the little house seemed to have been lulled to sleep by
the heat and light of the atmosphere and the buzzing of the gnats.

“Oh, go in; they’ll wake up at once,” said the coachman, who had divined
my thoughts.

Then, without waiting for my answer, like a man familiar with the
customs of the country, he took his horses down the road to the stable.

I went in. A swarm of bees and drones were buzzing like a whirlwind
beneath the plane-trees; a frightened white hen ran cackling from her
nest in the dust. No one appeared. I opened the door; still nobody was
to be seen. Inside I found a passage, with rooms to right and left and
a wooden staircase at the end. The house, having been kept well closed,
was cool and fresh. As I stood on the threshold striving to accustom my
eyes to the darkness of the interior, I heard the sound of voices to my
right:

“Picturesque as you please, but the journey has been a failure! These
people are no better than savages; introductions, distinctions, and I
may say even fame, had no effect upon them!”

“Do you think they have even read your letters?” “That would be still
worse, to refuse to read letters addressed to them! No, I tell you,
there’s no excuse.”

“They have suffered great trouble, I hear, and that is some excuse for
them, father.”

“No, my dear, there is no possible excuse for their keeping hidden
treasures of such scientific interest. I do not consider that even an
Italian nobleman, were he orphan from his cradle, and thrice a widower,
has any right to keep locked up from the investigation of scholars an
unequalled collection of Roman coins, and a very presentable show
of medallions and medals properly so-called. Are you aware that this
boorish patrician has in his possession the eight types of medal of the
gens Attilia?”

“Really?”

“I am certain of it, and he has the thirty-seven of the gens Cassia, one
hundred and eighteen to one hundred and twenty-one of the gens Cornelia,
the eleven Farsuleia, and dozens of Numitoria, Pompeia, and Scribonia,
all in perfect condition, as if fresh from the die. Besides these, he
has some large medals of the greatest rarity; the Marcus Aurelius with
his son on the reverse side, Theodora bearing the globe, and above
all the Annia Faustina with Heliogabalus on the reverse side, an
incomparable treasure, of which there is only one other example, and
that an imperfect one, in the world--a marvel which I would give a day
of my life to see; yes, my dear, a day of my life!”

Such talk as this, in French, in such an inn as this!

I felt a presentiment, and stepped softly to the right-hand door.

In the darkened room, lighted only by a few rays filtered between the
slats of the shutters, sat a young girl. Her hat was hung upon a nail
above her head; one arm rested on a wretched white wood table; her
head was bent forward in mournful resignation. On the other side of the
table, her father was leaning back in his chair against the whitewashed
wall, with folded arms, heightened color, and every sign of extreme
disgust. Both rose as I entered--Jeanne first, M. Charnot after her.
They were astonished at seeing me.

I was no less astounded than they.

We stood and stared at each other for some time, to make sure that we
were not dreaming.

M. Charnot was the first to break the silence. He did not seem
altogether pleased at my appearance, and turned to his daughter, whose
face had grown very red and yet rather chilling:

“Jeanne, put your hat on; it is time to go to the station.” Then he
addressed me:

“We shall leave you the room to yourself, sir; and since the most
extraordinary coincidence”--he emphasized the words--“has brought you to
this damnable village, I hope you will enjoy your visit.”

“Have you been here long, Monsieur?”

“Two hours, Monsieur, two mortal hours in this inn, fried by the sun,
bored to death, murdered piecemeal by flies, and infuriated by the want
of hospitality in this out-of-the-way hole in Lombardy.”

“Yes, I noticed that the host was nowhere to be seen, and that is the
reason why I came in here; I had no idea that I should have the honor of
meeting you.”

“Good God! I’m not complaining of him! He’s asleep in his barn over
there. You can wake him up; he doesn’t mind showing himself; he even
makes himself agreeable when he has finished his siesta.”

“I only wish to ask him one question, which perhaps you could answer,
Monsieur; then I need not waken him. Could you tell me the way to the
Villa Dannegianti?”

M. Charnot walked up to me, looked me straight in the eyes, shrugged his
shoulders, and burst out laughing.

“The Villa Dannegianti!”

“Yes, Monsieur.”

“Are you going to the Villa Dannegianti?”

“Yes, Monsieur.”

“Then you may as well turn round and go home again.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s no admission.”

“But I have a letter of introduction.”

“I had two, Monsieur, without counting the initials after my name, which
are worth something and have opened the doors of more than one foreign
collection for me; yet they denied me admission! Think of it! The porter
of that insolent family denied me admission! Do you expect to succeed
after that?”

“I do, Monsieur.”

My words seemed to him the height of presumption.

“Come, Jeanne,” he said, “let us leave this gentleman to his youthful
illusions. They will soon be shattered--very soon.”

He gave me an ironical smile and made for the door.

At this moment Jeanne dropped her sunshade. I picked it up for her.

“Thank you, Monsieur,” she said.

Of course these words were no more than ordinarily polite. She would
have said the same to the first comer. Nothing in her attitude or her
look displayed any emotion which might put a value on this common form
of speech. But it was her voice, that music I so often dream of. Had it
spoken insults, I should have found it sweet. It inspired me with the
sudden resolution of detaining this fugitive apparition, of resting, if
possible, another hour near her to whose side an unexpected stroke of
fortune had brought me.

M. Charnot had already left the room; his rotund shadow rested on the
wall of the passage. He held a travelling-bag in his hand.

“Monsieur,” said I, “I am sorry that you are obliged to return already
to Milan. I am quite certain of admission to the Villa Dannegianti, and
it would have given me pleasure to repair a mistake which is clearly due
only to the stupidity of the servants.”

He stopped; the stroke had told.

“It is certainly quite possible that they never looked at my card or my
letters. But allow me to ask, since my card did not reach the host, what
secret you possess to enable yours to get to him?”

“No secret at all, still less any merit of my own. I am the bearer of
news of great importance to the owners of the villa, news of a purely
private nature. They will be obliged to see me. My first care, when
I had fulfilled my mission, would have been to mention your name. You
would have been able to go over the house, and inspect a collection of
medals which, I have heard, is a very fine one.”

“Unique, Monsieur!”

“Unfortunately you are going away, and to-morrow I have to leave Milan
myself, for Paris.”

“You have been some time in Italy, then?”

“Nearly a fortnight.”

M. Charnot gave his daughter a meaning look, and suddenly became more
friendly.

“I thought you had just come. We have not been here so long,” he added;
“my daughter has been a little out of sorts, and the doctor advised us
to travel for change of air. Paris is not healthful in this very hot
weather.”

He looked hard at me to see whether his fib had taken me in. I replied,
with an air of the utmost conviction, “That is putting it mildly. Paris,
in July, is uninhabitable.”

“That’s it, Monsieur, uninhabitable; we were forced to leave it. We soon
made up our minds, and, in spite of the time of the year, we turned our
steps toward the home of the classics, to Italy, the museum of Europe.
And you really think, then, that by means of your good offices we should
have been admitted to the villa?”

“Yes, Monsieur, but owing only to the missive with which I am
entrusted.”

M. Charnot hesitated. He was probably thinking of the blot of ink,
and certainly of M. Mouillard’s visit. But he doubtless reflected that
Jeanne knew nothing of the old lawyer’s proceedings, that we were far
from Paris, that the opportunity was not to be lost; and in the end his
passion for numismatics conquered at once his resentment as a bookworm
and his scruples as a father.

“There is a later train at ten minutes to eight, father,” said Jeanne.

“Well, dear, do you care to try your luck again, and return to the
assault of that Annia Faustina?”

“As you please, father.”

We left the inn together by the by-road down the hill. I could not
believe my eyes. This old man with refined features who walked on my
left, leaning on his malacca cane, was M. Charnot. The same man who
received me so discourteously the day after I made my blot was now
relying on me to introduce him to an Italian nobleman; on me, a lawyer’s
clerk. I led him on with confidence, and both of us, carried away by our
divers hopes, he dreaming of medals, I of the reopened horizon full of
possibilities, conversed on indifferent subjects with a freedom hitherto
unknown between us.

And this charming Parisienne, whose presence I divined rather than saw,
whom I dared not look in the face, who stepped along by her father’s
side, light of foot, her eyes seeking the vault of heaven, her ear
attentive though her thoughts were elsewhere, catching her Parisian
sunshade in the hawthorns of Desio, was Jeanne, Jeanne of the
flower-market, Jeanne whom Lampron had sketched in the woods of St.
Germain! It did not seem possible.

Yet it was so, for we arrived together at the gates of the Villa
Dannegianti, which is hardly a mile from the inn.

I rang the bell. The fat, idle, insolent Italian porter was beginning
to refuse me admission, with the same words and gestures which he had so
often used. But I explained, in my purest Tuscan, that I was not of the
ordinary kind of importunate tourist. I told him that he ran a serious
risk if he did not immediately hand my card and my letter--Lampron’s
card in an envelope--to the Comtesse Dannegianti.

From his stony glare I could not tell whether I had produced any
impression, nor even whether he had understood. He turned on his heel
with his keys in one hand and the letter in the other, and went on his
way through the shady avenue, rolling his broad back from side to side,
attired in a jacket which might have fitted in front, but was all too
short behind.

The shady precincts of which Lampron wrote did not seem to have been
pruned. The park was cool and green. At the end of the avenue of
plane-trees, alternating with secular hawthorns cut into pyramids, we
could see the square mass of the villa just peeping over the immense
clumps of trees. Beyond it the tops and naked trunks of a group of
umbrella pines stood silhouetted against the sky.

The porter returned, solemn and impassive. He opened the gate without
a word. We all passed through--M. Charnot somewhat uneasy at entering
under false pretenses, as I guessed from the way he suddenly drew up his
head. Jeanne seemed pleased; she smoothed down a fold which the wind had
raised in her frock, spread out a flounce, drew herself up, pushed back
a hairpin which her fair tresses had dragged out of its place, all
in quick, deft, and graceful movements, like a goldfinch preening its
feathers.

We reached the terrace, and arranged that M. and Mademoiselle Charnot
should wait in an alley close at hand till I received permission to
visit the collections.

I entered the house, and following a lackey, crossed a large
mosaic-paved hall, divided by columns of rare marbles into panels filled
with mediocre frescoes on a very large scale. At the end of this hall
was the Countess’s room, which formed a striking contrast, being small,
panelled with wood, and filled with devotional knick-knacks that gave it
the look of a chapel.

As I entered, an old lady half rose from an armchair, which she could
have used as a house, the chair was so large and she was so small. At
first I could distinguish only two bright, anxious eyes. She looked at
me like a prisoner awaiting a verdict. I began by telling her of the
death of Lampron’s mother. Her only answer was an attentive nod. She
guessed something else was coming and stood on guard, so to speak. I
went on and told her that the portrait of her daughter was on its way
to her. Then she forgot everything--her age, her rank, and the mournful
reserve which had hitherto hedged her about. Her motherly heart alone
spoke within her; a ray of light had come to brighten the incurable
gloom which was killing her; she rushed toward me and fell into my arms,
and I felt against my heart her poor aged body shaking with sobs. She
thanked me in a flood of words which I did not catch. Then she drew back
and gazed at me, seeking to read in my eyes some emotion responsive to
her own, and her eyes, red and swollen and feverishly bright, questioned
me more clearly than her words.

“How good are you, sir! and how generous is he! What life does he lead?
Has he ever lived down the sorrow which blasted his youth here? Men
forget more easily, happily for them. I had given up all hope of
obtaining the portrait. Every year I sent him flowers which meant,
‘Restore to us all that is left of our dead Rafaella.’ Perhaps it was
unkind. I did reproach myself at times for it. But I was her mother, you
know; the mother of that peerless girl! And the portrait is so good, so
like! He has never altered it? tell me; never retouched it? Time has not
marred the lifelike coloring? I shall now have the mournful consolation
I have so long desired; I shall always have before me the counterpart
of my lost darling, and can gaze upon that face which none could depict
save he who loved her; for, dreadful though it be to think of, the image
of the best beloved will change and fade away even in a mother’s heart,
and at times I doubt whether my old memory is still faithful, and
recalls all her grace and beauty as clearly as it used to do when the
wound was fresh in my heart and my eyes were still filled with the
loveliness of her. Oh, Monsieur, Monsieur! to think that I shall see
that face once more!”

She left me as quickly as she had come, and went to open a door on the
left, into an adjoining room, whose red hangings threw a ruddy glow upon
the polished floor.

“Cristoforo!” she cried, “Cristoforo! come and see a French gentleman
who brings us great news. The portrait of our Rafaella, Cristoforo, the
portrait we have so long desired, is at last to be given to us!”

I heard a chair move, and a slow footstep. Cristoforo appeared, with
white hair and black moustache, his tall figure buttoned up in an
old-fashioned frockcoat, the petrified, mummified remains of a once
handsome man. He walked up to me, took both my hands and shook them
ceremoniously. His face showed no traces of emotion; his eyes were dry,
and he had not a word to say. Did he understand? I really do not know.
He seemed to think the affair was an ordinary introduction. As I looked
at him his wife’s words came back to me, “Men forget sooner.” She gazed
at him as if she would put blood into his veins, where it had long
ceased to flow.

“Cristoforo, I know this will be a great joy to you, and you will join
with me in thanking Monsieur Lampron for his generosity. You, sir,
will express to him all the Count’s gratitude and my own, and also the
sympathy we feel for him in his recent loss. Besides, we shall write to
him. Is Monsieur Lampron rich?”

“I had forgotten to tell you, Madame, that my friend will accept nothing
but thanks.”

“Ah, that is truly noble of him, is it not, Cristoforo?”

All the answer the old Count made was to take my hands and shake them
again.

I used the opportunity to put forward my request in behalf of M.
Charnot. He listened attentively.

“I will give orders. You shall see everything--everything.”

Then, considering our interview at an end, he bowed and withdrew to his
own apartments.

I looked for the Countess Dannegianti. She had sunk into her great
armchair, and was weeping hot tears.

Ten minutes later, M. Charnot and Jeanne entered with me into the
jealously guarded museum.

Museum was the only name to give to a collection of such artistic value,
occupying, as it did, the whole of the ground floor to the right of
the hall. Two rooms ran parallel to each other, filled with pictures,
medals, and engravings, and were connected by a narrow gallery devoted
to sculpture.

Hardly was the door opened when M. Charnot sought the famous medals with
his eye. There they were in the middle of the room in two rows of cases.
He was deeply moved. I thought he was about to make a raid upon them,
attracted after his kind by the ‘auri sacra fames’, by the yellow gleam
of those ancient coins, the names, family, obverse and reverse of which
he knew by heart. But I little understood the enthusiast.

He drew out his handkerchief and spectacles, and while he was wiping the
glasses he gave a rapid and impatient glance at the works that adorned
the walls. None of them could charm the numismatist’s heart. After he
had enjoyed the pleasure of proving how feeble in comparison were the
charms of a Titian or a Veronese, then only did M. Charnot walk step by
step to the first case and bend reverently over it.

Yet the collection of paintings was unworthy of such disdain. The
pictures were few, but all were signed with great names, most of them
Italian, a few Dutch, Flemish, or German. I began to work systematically
through them, pleased at the want of a catalogue and the small number of
inscriptions on the frames. To be your own guide doubles your pleasure;
you can get your impression of a picture entirely at first hand; you
are filled with admiration without any one having told you that you
are bound to go into ecstasies. You can work out for yourself from a
picture, by induction and comparison, its subject, its school, and
its author, unless it proclaims, in every stroke of the brush, “I am a
Hobbema,” “a Perugino,” or “a Giotto.”

I was somewhat distracted, however, by the voice of the old numismatist,
as he peered into the cases, and constrained his daughter to share in
the exuberance of his learned enthusiasm.

“Jeanne, look at this; crowned head of Cleopatra, Mark Antony on the
reverse; in perfect condition, isn’t it? See, an Italian ‘as-Iguvium
Umbriae’, which my friend Pousselot has sought these thirty years! Oh,
my dear, this is important: Annius Verus on the reverse of Commodus,
both as children, a rare example--yet not as rare as--Jeanne, you must
engrave this gold medal in your heart, it is priceless: head of Augustus
with laurel, Diana walking on the reverse. You ought to take an interest
in her. Diana the fair huntress.

“This collection is heavenly! Wait a minute; we shall soon come to the
Annia Faustina.”

Jeanne made no objection, but smiled softly upon the Cleopatra, the
Umbrian ‘as’, and the fair huntress.

Little by little her father’s enthusiasm expanded over the vast
collection of treasures. He took out his pocketbook and began to make
notes. Jeanne raised her eyes to the walls, took one glance, then a
second, and, not being called back to the medals, stepped softly up to
the picture at which I had begun.

She went quickly from one to another having evidently no more than a
child’s untutored taste for pictures. As I, on the contrary, was getting
on very slowly, she was bound to overtake me. You may be sure I took no
steps to prevent it, and so in a very short time we were both standing
before the same picture, a portrait of Holbein the younger. A subject of
conversation was ready to hand.

“Mademoiselle,” said I, “do you like this Holbein?”

“You must admit, sir, that the old gentleman is exceedingly plain.”

“Yes, but the painting is exquisite. See how powerful is the drawing
of the head, how clear and deep the colors remain after more than three
hundred years. What a good likeness it must have been! The subject tells
his own story: he must have been a nobleman of the court of Henry VIII,
a Protestant in favor with the King, wily but illiterate, and wishing
from the bottom of his heart that he were back with the companions of
his youth at home in his country house, hunting and drinking at his
ease. It is really the study of a man’s character. Look at this Rubens
beside it, a mere mass of flesh scarcely held together by a spirit, a
style that is exuberantly material, all color and no expression.
Here you have spirituality on one side and materialism on the other,
unconscious, perhaps, but unmistakable. Compare, again, with these two
pictures this little drawing, doubtless by Perugino, just a sketch of
an angel for an Annunciation; notice the purity of outline, the ideal
atmosphere in which the painter lives and with which he impregnates his
work. You see he comes of a school of poets and mystics, gifted with
a second sight which enabled them to beautify this world and raise
themselves above it.”

I was pleased with my little lecture, and so was Jeanne. I could tell
it by her surprised expression, and by the looks she cast toward her
father, who was still taking notes, to see whether she might go on with
her first lesson in art.

He smiled in a friendly way, which meant:

“I’m happy here, my dear, thank you; ‘va piano va sano’.”

This was as good as permission. We went on our way, saluting, as we
passed, Tintoretto and Titian, Veronese and Andrea Solari, old Cimabue,
and a few early paintings of angular virgins on golden backgrounds.

Jeanne was no longer bored.

“And is this,” she would say, “another Venetian, or a Lombard, or a
Florentine?”

We soon completed the round of the first room, and made our way into the
gallery beyond, devoted to sculpture. The marble gods and goddesses,
the lovely fragments of frieze or cornice from the excavations at
Rome, Pompeii, or Greece, had but a moderate interest for Mademoiselle
Charnot. She never gave more than one glance to each statue, to some
none at all.

We soon came to the end of the gallery, and the door which gave access
into the second room of paintings.

Suddenly Jeanne gave an exclamation of surprise.

“What is that?” she said.

Beneath the large and lofty window, fanned on the outside by leafy
branches, a wooden panel, bearing an inscription, stood upright against
the wall. The words were painted in black on a white ground, and
arranged with considerable skill, after the style of the classic
epitaphs which the Italians still cultivate.

I drew aside the folds of a curtain:

“It is one of those memorial tablets, Mademoiselle, such as people hang
up in this part of the country upon the church doors on the day of the
funeral. It means:

“To thee, Rafaella Dannegianti--who, aged twenty years and few
months--having fully experienced the sorrows and illusions of this
world--on January 6--like an angel longing for its heavenly home--didst
wing thy way to God in peace and happiness--the clergy of Desioand the
laborers and artificers of the noble house of Dannegianti--tender these
last solemn offices.”

“This Rafaella, then, was the Count’s daughter?”

“His only child, a girl lovely and gracious beyond rivalry.”

“Oh, of course, beyond rivalry. Are not all only daughters lovely and
perfect when once they are dead?” she replied with a bitter smile. “They
have their legend, their cult, and usually a flattering portrait. I
am surprised that Rafaella’s is not here. I imagine her portrait as
representing a tall girl, with long, well-arched eyebrows, and brown
eyes--”

“Greenish-brown.”

“Green, if you prefer it; a small nose, cherry lips, and a mass of light
brown hair.”

“Golden brown would be more correct.”

“Have you seen it, then? Is there one?”

“Yes, Mademoiselle, and it lacks no perfection that you could imagine,
not even that smile of happy youth which was a falsehood ere the paint
had yet dried on the canvas. Here, before this relic, which recalls it
to my thoughts, I must confess that I am touched.”

She looked at me in astonishment.

“Where is the portrait? Not here?”

“No, it is at Paris, in my friend Lampron’s studio.”

“O--oh!” She blushed slightly.

“Yes, Mademoiselle, it is at once a masterpiece and a sad reminder. The
story is very simple, and I am sure my friend would not mind my telling
it to you--to you if to no other--before these relics of the past.

“When Lampron was a young man travelling in Italy he fell in love with
this young girl, whose portrait he was painting. He loved her, perhaps
without confessing it to himself, certainly without avowing it to her.
Such is the way of timid and humble men of heart, men whose love is
nearly always misconstrued when it ceases to be unnoticed. My friend
risked the happiness of his life, fearlessly, without calculation--and
lost it. A day came when Rafaella Dannegianti was carried off by her
parents, who shuddered at the thought of her stooping to a painter, even
though he were a genius.”

“So she died?”

“A year later. He never got over it. Even while I speak to you, he in
his loneliness is pondering and weeping over these very lines which you
have just read without a suspicion of the depth of their bitterness.”

“He has known bereavement,” said she; “I pity him with all my heart.”

Her eyes filled with tears. She repeated the words, whose meaning was
now clear to her, “A to Rafaella.” Then she knelt down softly before the
mournful inscription. I saw her bow her head. Jeanne was praying.

It was touching to see the young girl, whom chance had placed before
this simple testimony of a sorrow now long past, deeply moved by the sad
tale of love, filled with tender pity for the dead Rafaella, her fellow
in youth and beauty and perhaps in destiny, finding in her heart the
tender impulse to kneel without a word, as if beside the grave of
a friend. The daylight’s last rays streaming in through the window
illumined her bowed head.

I drew back, with a touch of awe.

M. Charnot appeared.

He went up to his daughter and tapped her on the shoulder. She rose with
a blush.

“What are you doing there?” he said.

Then he adjusted his glasses and read the Italian inscription.

“You really take unnecessary trouble in kneeling down to decipher a
thing like that. You can see at once that it’s a modern panel, and of
no value. Monsieur,” he added, turning to me, “I do not know what your
plans are, but unless you intend to sleep at Desio, we must be off, for
the night is falling.”

We left the villa.

Out of doors it was still light, but with the afterglow. The sun was out
of sight, but the earth was still enveloped, as it were, in a haze of
luminous dust.

M. Charnot pulled out his watch.

“Seven minutes past eight. What time does the last train start, Jeanne?”

“At ten minutes to eight.”

“Confusion! we are stranded in Desio! The mere thought of passing the
night in that inn gives me the creeps. I see no way out of it unless
Monsieur Mouillard can get us one of the Count’s state coaches. There
isn’t a carriage to be got in this infernal village!”

“There is mine, Monsieur, which luckily holds four, and is quite at your
service.”

“Upon my word, I am very much obliged to you. The drive by moonlight
will be quite romantic.”

He drew near to Jeanne and whispered in her ear:

“Are you sure you’ve wraps enough? a shawl, or a cape, or some kind of
pelisse?”

She gave a merry nod of assent.

“Don’t worry yourself, father; I am prepared for all emergencies.”

At half-past eight we left Desio together, and I silently blessed the
host of the Albergo dell’ Agnello, who had assured me that the carriage
road was “so much more picturesque.” I found it so, indeed.

M. Charnot and Jeanne faced the horses. I sat opposite to M. Charnot,
who was in the best of spirits after all the medals he had seen.
Comfortably settled in the cushions, careless of the accidents of the
road, with graphic and untiring forefinger, he undertook to describe his
travels in Greece, whither he had been sent on some learned enterprise
by the Minister of Education, and had carried an imagination already
prepossessed and dazzled with Homeric visions. He told his story well
and with detail, combining the recollections of the scholar with the
impressions of an artist. The pediment of the Parthenon, the oleanders
of the Ilissus, the stream “that runs in rain-time,” the naked peak of
Parnassus, the green slopes of Helicon, the blue gulf of Argus, the
pine forest beside Alpheus, where the ancients worshipped “Death the
Gentle”--all of them passed in recount upon his learned lips.

I must acknowledge, to my shame, that I did not listen to all he said,
but, in a favorite way I have, reserved some of my own freedom of
thought, while I gave him complete freedom of speech. And I am bound
to say he did not abuse it, but consented to pause at the frontiers
of Thessaly. Then followed silence. I gave him room to stretch. Soon,
lulled by the motion of the carriage, the stream of reminiscence ran
more slowly--then ran dry. M. Charnot slept.

We bowled at a good pace, without jolting, over the white road. A warm
mist rose around us laden with the smell of vegetation, ripe corn, and
clover from the overheated earth and the neighboring fields, which had
drunk their full of sunlight. Now and again a breath of fresh air was
blown to us from the mountains. As the darkness deepened the country
grew to look like a vast chessboard, with dark and light squares of
grass and corn land, melting at no great distance into a colorless and
unbroken horizon. But as night blotted out the earth, the heaven lighted
up its stars. Never have I seen them so lustrous nor in such number.
Jeanne reclined with her eyes upturned toward those limitless fields of
prayer and vision; and their radiance, benignly gentle, rested on her
face. Was she tired or downcast, or merely dreaming? I knew not. But
there was something so singularly poetic in her look and attitude that
she seemed to me to epitomize in herself all the beauty of the night.

I was afraid to speak. Her father’s sleep, and our consequent isolation,
made me ill at ease. She, too, seemed so careless of my presence, so far
away in dreamland, that I had to await opportunity, or rather her leave,
to recall her from it.

Finally she broke the silence herself. A little beyond Monza she drew
closer her shawl, that the night wind had ruffled, and bent over toward
me:

“You must excuse my father; he is rather tired this evening, for he has
been on his feet since five o’clock.”

“The day has been so hot, too, Mademoiselle, and the medals ‘came not
in single spies, but in battalions’; he has a right to sleep after the
battle.”

“Dear old father! You gave him a real treat, for which he will always be
obliged to you.”

“I trust the recollection of to-day will efface that of the blot of ink,
for which I am still filled with remorse.”

“Remorse is rather a serious word.”

“No, Mademoiselle, I really mean remorse, for I wounded the feelings
of a gentleman who has every claim on my respect. I never have dared to
speak of this before. But if you would be kind enough to tell Monsieur
Charnot how sorry I have been for it, you would relieve me of a burden.”

I saw her eyes fixed upon me for a moment with a look of attention not
previously granted to me. She seemed pleased.

“With all my heart,” she said.

There was a moment’s silence.

“Was this Rafaella, whose story you have told me, worthy of your
friend’s long regret?”

“I must believe so.”

“It is a very touching story. Are you fond of Monsieur Lampron?”

“Beyond expression, Mademoiselle; he is so openhearted, so true a
friend, he has the soul of the artist and the seer. I am sure you would
rate him very highly if you knew him.”

“But I do know him, at least by his works. Where am I to be seen now, by
the way? What has become of my portrait?”

“It’s at Lampron’s house, in his mother’s room, where Monsieur Charnot
can go and see it if he likes.”

“My father does not know of its existence,” she said, with a glance at
the slumbering man of learning.

“Has he not seen it?”

“No, he would have made so much ado about nothing. So Monsieur Lampron
has kept the sketch? I thought it had been sold long ago.”

“Sold! you did not think he would sell it!”

“Why not? Every artist has the right to sell his works.”

“Not work of that kind.”

“Just as much as any other kind.”

“No, he could not have done that. He would no more sell it than he would
sell the portrait of Rafaella Dannegianti. They are two similar relics,
two precious reminiscences.”

Mademoiselle Charnot turned, without a reply, to look at the country
which was flying past us in the darkness.

I could just see her profile, and the nervous movement of her eyelids.

As she made no attempt to speak, her silence emboldened me.

“Yes, Mademoiselle, two similar relics, yet sometimes in my hours of
madness--as to-day, for instance, here, with you near me--I dare to
think that I might be less unfortunate than my friend--that his dream is
gone forever--but that mine might return to me--if you were willing.”

She quickly turned toward me, and in the darkness I saw her eyes fixed
on mine.

Did the darkness deceive me as to the meaning of this mute response? Was
I the victim of a fresh delusion? I fancied that Jeanne looked sad, that
perhaps she was thinking of the oaths sworn only to be broken by her
former lover, but that she was not quite displeased.

However, it lasted only for a second. When she spoke, it was in a higher
key:

“Don’t you think the breeze is very fresh this evening?”

A long-drawn sigh came from the back part of the carriage. M. Charnot
was waking up.

He wished to prove that he had only been meditating.

“Yes, my dear, it’s a charming evening,” he replied; “these Italian
nights certainly keep up their reputation.”

Ten minutes later the carriage drew up, and M. Charnot shook hands with
me before the door of his hotel.

“Many thanks, my dear young sir, for this delightful drive home! I hope
we shall meet again. We are off to Florence to-morrow; is there anything
I can do for you there?”

“No, thank you.”

Mademoiselle Charnot gave me a slight bow. I watched her mount the first
few steps of the staircase, with one hand shading her eyes from the
glare of the gaslights, and the other holding up her wraps, which had
come unfolded and were falling around her.




BOOK 3.




CHAPTER XV. BACK TO PARIS

               MILAN, June 27th. Before daybreak.

He asked me whether there was anything he could do for me at Florence.
There is something, but he would refuse to do it; for I wish him to
inform his charming daughter that my thoughts are all of her; that I
have spent the night recalling yesterday’s trip--now the roads of Desio
and the galleries of the villa, now the drive back to Milan. M. Charnot
only figured in my dreams as sleeping. I seemed to have found my tongue,
and to be pouring forth a string of well-turned speeches which I never
should have ready at real need. If I could only see her again now that
all my plans are weighed and thought out and combined! Really, it is
hard that one can not live one’s life over twice--at least certain
passages in it-this episode, for instance....

What is her opinion of me? When her eyes fixed themselves on mine I
thought I could read in their depths a look of inquiry, a touch of
surprise, a grain of disquiet. But her answer? She is going to Florence
bearing with her the answer on which my life depends. They are leaving
by the early express. Shall I take it, too? Florence, Rome, Naples--why
not? Italy is free to all, and particularly to lovers. I will toss my
cap over the mill for the second time. I will get money from somewhere.
If I am not allowed to show myself, I will look on from a distance,
hidden in the crowd. At a pinch I will disguise myself--as a guide at
Pompeii, a lazzarone at Naples. She shall find a sonnet in the bunch of
fresh flowers offered her by a peasant at the door of her hotel. And at
least I shall bask in her smile, the sound of her voice, the glints of
gold about her temples, and the pleasure of knowing that she is near
even when I do not see her.

On second thoughts; no; I will not go to Florence. As I always distrust
first impulses, which so often run reason to a standstill, I had
recourse to a favorite device of mine. I asked myself: What would
Lampron advise? And at once I conjured up his melancholy, noble face,
and heard his answer: “Come back, my dear boy.”

                       PARIS, July 2d.

When you arrive by night, and from the windows of the flying train, as
it whirls past the streets at full speed, you see Paris enveloped in
red steam, pierced by starry lines of gas-lamps crisscrossing in every
direction, the sight is weird, and almost beautiful. You might fancy it
the closing scene of some gigantic gala, where strings upon strings
of colored lanterns brighten the night above a moving throng, passing,
repassing, and raising a cloud of dust that reddens in the glow of
expiring Bengal lights.

Moreover, the illusion is in part a reality, for the great city is in
truth lighted for its nightly revel. Till one o’clock in the morning it
is alight and riotous with the stir and swing of life.

But the dawn is bleak enough.

That, delicious hour which puts a spirit of joy into green field
and hedgerow is awful to look upon in Paris. You leave the train
half-frozen, to find the porters red-eyed from their watch. The customs
officials, in a kind of stupor, scrawl cabalistic signs upon your trunk.
You get outside the station, to find a few scattered cabs, their drivers
asleep inside, their lamps blinking in the mist.

“Cabby, are you disengaged?”

“Depends where you want to go.”

“No. 91 Rue de Rennes.”

“Jump in!”

The blank streets stretch out interminably, gray and silent; the shops
on either hand are shuttered; in the squares you will find only a dog
or a scavenger; theatre bills hang in rags around the kiosks, the wind
sweeps their tattered fragments along the asphalt in yesterday’s dust,
with here and there a bunch of faded flowers. The Seine washes around
its motionless boats; two great-coated policemen patrol the bank and
wake the echoes with their tramp. The fountains have ceased to play, and
their basins are dry. The air is chilly, and sick with evil odors. The
whole drive is like a bad dream. Such was my drive from the Gare de Lyon
to my rooms. When I was once at home, installed in my own domains, this
unpleasant impression gradually wore off. There was friendliness in my
sticks of furniture. I examined those silent witnesses, my chair, my
table, and my books. What had happened while I was away? Apparently
nothing important. The furniture had a light coating of dust, which
showed that no one had touched it, not even Madame Menin. It was funny,
but I wished to see Madame Menin. A sound, and I heard my opposite
neighbor getting to work. He is a hydrographer, and engraves maps for a
neighboring publisher. I never could get up as early as he. The willow
seemed to have made great progress during the summer. I flung up the
window and said “Good-morning!” to the wallflowers, to the old wall of
the Carmelites, and the old black tower. Then the sparrows began. What
o’clock could it be? They came all together with a rush, chirping, the
hungry thieves, wheeling about, skirting the walls in their flight,
quick as lightning, borne on their pointed wings. They had seen the
sun--day had broken!

And almost immediately I heard a cart pass, and a hawker crying:

“Ground-SEL! Groundsel for your dickey-birds!”

To think that there are people who get up at that unearthly hour to buy
groundsel for their canaries! I looked to see whether any one had
called in my absence; their cards should be on my table. Two were
there: “Monsieur Lorinet, retired solicitor, town councillor, of
Bourbonnoux-les-Bourges, deputy-magistrate”; “Madame Lorinet, nee
Poupard.”

I was surprised not to find a third card: “Berthe Lorinet, of no
occupation, anxious to change her name.” Berthe will be difficult to
get rid of. I presume she didn’t dare to leave a card on a young man, it
wouldn’t have been proper. But I have no doubt she was here. I scent a
trick of my uncle’s, one of those Atlantic cables he takes for spider’s
threads and makes his snares of. The Lorinet family have been here, with
the twofold intention of taking news of me to my “dear good uncle,” and
discreetly recalling to my forgetful heart the charms of Berthe of the
big feet.

“Good-morning, Monsieur Mouillard!”

“Hallo! Madame Menin! Good-morning, Madame Menin!”

“So you are back at last, sir! How brown you have got--quite sunburnt.
You are quite well, I hope, sir?”

“Very well, thank you; has any one been here in my absence?”

“I was going to tell you, sir; the plumber has been here, because the
tap of your cistern came off in my hand. It wasn’t my fault; there had
been a heavy rain that morning. So--”

“Never mind, it’s only a tap to pay for. We won’t say any more about it.
But did any one come to see me?”

“Ah, let me see--yes. A big gentleman, rather red-faced, with his wife,
a fat lady, with a small voice; a fine woman, rather in my style, and
their daughter--but perhaps you know her, sir?”

“Yes, Madame Menin, you need not describe her. You told them that I was
away, and they said they were very sorry.”

“Especially the lady. She puffed and panted and sighed: ‘Dear Monsieur
Mouillard! How unlucky we are, Madame Menin; we have just come to Paris
as he has gone to Italy. My husband and I would have liked so much to
see him! You may think it fanciful, but I should like above all things
to look round his rooms. A student’s rooms must be so interesting.
Stay there, Berthe, my child.’ I told them there was nothing very
interesting, and that their daughter might just as well come in too, and
then I showed them everything.”

“They didn’t stay long, I suppose?”

“Quite long enough. They were an age looking at your photograph album.
I suppose they haven’t got such things where they come from. Madame
Lorinet couldn’t tear herself away from it. ‘Nothing but men,’ she said,
‘have you noticed that, Jules?’--‘Well, Madame,’ I said, ‘that’s just
how it is here; except for me, and I don’t count, only gentlemen come
here. I’ve kept house for bachelors where--well, there are not many--’

“That will do, Madame Menin; that will do. I know you always think too
highly of me. Hasn’t Lampron been here?”

“Yes, sir; the day before yesterday. He was going off for a fortnight
or three weeks into the country to paint a portrait of some priest--a
bishop, I think.”

                       July 15th.

“Midi, roi des etes.” I know by heart that poem by “Monsieur le Comte
de l’Isle,” as my Uncle Mouillard calls him. Its lines chime in my ears
every day when I return from luncheon to the office I have left an
hour before. Merciful heaven, how hot it is! I am just back from a hot
climate, but it was nothing compared to Paris in July. The asphalt melts
underfoot; the wood pavement is simmering in a viscous mess of tar; the
ideal is forced to descend again and again to iced lager beer; the walls
beat back the heat in your face; the dust in the public gardens, ground
to atoms beneath the tread of many feet, rises in clouds from under
the water-cart to fall, a little farther on, in white showers upon the
passers-by. I wonder that, as a finishing stroke, the cannon in the
Palais Royal does not detonate all day long.

To complete my misery, all my acquaintances are out of town: the Boule
family is bathing at Trouville; the second clerk has not returned from
his holiday; the fourth only waited for my arrival to get away himself;
Lampron, detained by my Lord Bishop and the forest shades, gives no sign
of his existence; even Monsieur and Madame Plumet have locked up their
flat and taken the train for Barbizon.

Thus it happens that the old clerk Jupille and I have been thrown
together. I enjoy his talk. He is a simplehearted, honorable man, with a
philosophy that I am sure can not be in the least German, because I can
understand it. I have gradually told him all my secrets. I felt the need
of a confidant, for I was stifling, metaphorically as well as literally.
Now, when he hands me a deed, instead of saying “All right,” as I used
to, I say, “Take a chair, Monsieur Jupille”; I shut the door, and we
talk. The clerks think we’re talking law, but the clerks are mistaken.

Yesterday, for instance, he whispered to me:

“I have come down the Rue de l’Universite. They will soon be back.”

“How did you learn that?”

“I saw a man carrying coals into the house, and asked for whom they
were, that’s all.”

Again, we had a talk, just now, which shows what progress I have made in
the old clerk’s heart. He had just submitted a draft to me. I had read
it through and grunted my approval, yet M. Jupille did not go.

“Anything further, Monsieur Jupille?”

“Something to ask of you--to do me a kindness, or, rather, an honor.”

“Let’s hear what it is.”

“This weather, Monsieur Mouillard, is very good for fishing, though
rather warm.”

“Rather warm, Monsieur Jupille!”

“It is not too warm. It was much hotter than this in 1844, yet the
fish bit, I can tell you! Will you join us next Sunday in a fishing
expedition? I say ‘us,’ because one of your friends is coming, a great
amateur of the rod who honors me with his friendship, too.”

“Who is he?”

“A secret, Monsieur Mouillard, a little secret. You will be surprised.
It is settled then--next Sunday?”

“Where shall I meet you?”

“Hush, the office-boy is listening. That boy is too sharp; I’ll tell you
some other time.”

“As you please, Monsieur Jupille; I accept the invitation
unconditionally.”

“I am so glad you will come, Monsieur Mouillard. I only wish we could
have a little storm between this and then.”

He spoke the truth; his satisfaction was manifest, for I never have seen
him rub the tip of his nose with the feathers of his quill pen so often
as he did that afternoon, which was with him the sign of exuberant joy,
all his gestures having subdued themselves long since to the limits of
his desk.

                       July 20th.

I have seen Lampron once more. He bears his sorrow bravely. We spoke for
a few moments of his mother. I spoke some praise of that humble soul for
the good she had done me, which led him to enlarge upon her virtues.

“Ah,” he said, “if you had only seen more of her! My dear fellow, if I
am an honest man; if I have passed without failing through the trials
of my life and my profession; if I have placed my ideal beyond worldly
success; in a word, if I am worth anything in heart or brain, it is
to her I owe it. We never had been parted before; this is our first
separation, and it is the final one. I was not prepared for it.”

Then he changed the subject brusquely:

“What about your love-affair?”

“Fresher than ever.”

“Did it survive half an hour’s conversation?”

“It grew the stronger for it.”

“Does she still detest you?”

I told him the story of our trip to Desio, and our conversation in the
carriage, without omitting a detail.

He listened in silence. At the end he said:

“My dear Fabien, there must be no delay. She must hear your proposal
within a week.”

“Within a week! Who is to make it for me?”

“Whoever you like. That’s your business. I have been making inquiries
while you were away; she seems a suitable match for you. Besides, your
present position is ridiculous; you are without a profession; you have
quarrelled, for no reason, with your only relative; you must get out of
the situation with credit, and marriage will compel you to do so.”




CHAPTER XVI. A FISHING-TRIP AND AN OLD FRIEND

July 21st.

M. Jupille had written to tell me where I was to meet him on the Sunday,
giving me the most minute directions. I might take the train to Massy,
or to Bievres. However, I preferred to take the train to Sceaux and walk
from there, leaving Chatenay on my left, striking across the woods
of Verrieres toward the line of forts, coming out between Igny and
Amblainvilliers, and finally reaching a spot where the Bievre broadens
out between two wooded banks into a pool as clear as a spring and as
full of fish as a nursery-pond.

“Above all things, tell nobody where it is!” begged Jupille. “It is our
secret; I discovered it myself.”

When I left Sceaux to meet Jupille, who had started before daybreak, the
sun was already high. There was not a cloud nor a breath of wind; the
sway of summer lay over all things. But, though the heat was broiling,
the walk was lovely. All about me was alive with voice or perfume.
Clouds of linnets fluttered among the branches, golden beetles crawled
upon the grass, thousands of tiny whirring wings beat the air--flies,
gnats, gadflies, bees--all chorusing the life--giving warmth of the day
and the sunshine that bathed and penetrated all nature. I halted from
time to time in the parched glades to seek my way, and again pushed
onward through the forest paths overarched with heavy-scented leafage,
onward over the slippery moss up toward the heights, below which the
Bievre stole into view.

There it lay, at my feet, gliding between banks of verdure which seemed
a season younger than the grass I stood on. I began to descend the
slope, knowing that M. Jupille was awaiting me somewhere in the valley.
I broke into a run. I heard the murmur of water in the hollows, and
caught glimpses of forget-me-not tufts in low-lying grassy corners.
Suddenly a rod outlined itself against the sky, between two trees. It
was he, the old clerk; he nodded to me and laid down his line.

“I thought you never were coming.”

“That shows you don’t know me. Any sport?”

“Not so loud! Yes, capital sport. I’ll bait a line for you.”

“And where is your friend, Monsieur Jupille?”

“There he is.”

“Where?”

“Staring you in the face; can’t you see him?”.

Upon my word, I could see nobody, until he directed my gaze with his
fishing-rod, when I perceived, ten yards away, a large back view of
white trousers and brown, unbuckled waistcoat, a straw hat which seemed
to conceal a head, and a pair of shirt-sleeves hanging over the water.

This mass was motionless.

“He must have got a bite,” said Jupille, “else he would have been here
before now. Go and see him.”

Not knowing whom I was about to address, I gave a warning cough as I
came near him.

The unknown drew a loud breath, like a man who wakes with a start.

“That you, Jupille?” he said, turning a little way; “are you out of
bait?”

“No, my dear tutor, it is I.”

“Monsieur Mouillard, at last!”

“Monsieur Flamaran! Jupille told the truth when he said I should be
surprised. Are you fond of fishing?”

“It’s a passion with me. One must keep one or two for one’s old age,
young man.”

“You’ve been having sport, I hear.”

“Well, this morning, between eight and nine, there were a few nibbles;
but since then the sport has been very poor. However, I’m very glad to
see you again, Mouillard. That essay of yours was extremely good.”

The eminent professor had risen, displaying a face still red from his
having slept with his head on his chest, but beaming with good-will. He
grasped my hand with heartiness and vigor.

“Here’s rod and line for you, Monsieur Mouillard, all ready baited,”
 broke in Jupille. “If you’ll come with me I’ll show you a good place.”

“No, no, Jupille, I’m going to keep him,” answered M. Flamaran; “I
haven’t uttered a syllable for three hours. I must let myself out a
little. We will fish side by side, and chat.”

“As you please, Monsieur Flamaran; but I don’t call that fishing.”

He handed me the implement, and sadly went his way.

M. Flamaran and I sat down together on the bank, our feet resting on the
soft sand strewn with dead branches. Before us spread the little pool
I have mentioned, a slight widening of the stream of the Bievre, once a
watering-place for cattle. The sun, now at high noon, massed the trees’
shadow close around their trunks. The unbroken surface of the water
reflected its rays back in our eyes. The current was barely indicated
by the gentle oscillation of a few water-lily leaves. Two big blue
dragonflies poised and quivered upon our floats, and not a fish seemed
to care to disturb them.

“Well,” said M. Flamaran, “so you are still managing clerk to Counsellor
Boule?”

“For the time.”

“Do you like it?”

“Not particularly.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“For something to turn up.”

“And carry you back to Italy, I suppose?”

“Then you know I have just been there?”

“I know all about it. Charnot told me of your meeting, and your romantic
drive by moonlight. By the way, he’s come back with a bad cold; did you
know that?”

I assumed an air of sympathy:

“Poor man! When did he get back?”

“The day before yesterday. Of course I was the first to hear of it, and
we spent yesterday evening together. It may surprise you, Mouillard, and
you may think I exaggerate, but I think Jeanne has come back prettier
than she went.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I really do. That southern sun--look out, my dear Mouillard, your line
is half out of water--has brought back her roses (they’re brighter than
ever, I declare), and the good spirits she had lost, too, poor girl. She
is cheerful again now, as she used to be. I was very anxious about her
at one time. You know her sad story?”

“Yes.”

“The fellow was a scoundrel, my dear Mouillard, a regular scoundrel! I
never was in favor of the match, myself. Charnot let himself be drawn
into it by an old college friend. I told him over and over again, ‘It’s
Jeanne’s dowry he’s after, Charnot--I’m convinced of it. He’ll treat
Jeanne badly and make her miserable, mark my words.’ But I wasted my
breath; he wouldn’t listen to a word. Anyhow, it’s quite off now. But
it was no slight shock, I can tell you; and it gave me great pain to
witness the poor child’s sufferings.”

“You are so kind-hearted, Monsieur Flamaran!”

“It’s not that, Mouillard; but I have known Jeanne ever since she was
born. I watched her grow up, and I loved her when she was still a little
mite; she’s as good as my adoptive daughter. You understand me when I
say adoptive. I do not mean that there exists between us that legal
bond in imitation of nature which is permitted by our codes--‘adoptio
imitatur naturam’; not that, but that I love her like a
daughter--Sidonie never having presented me with a daughter, nor with a
son either, for that matter.”

A cry from Jupille interrupted M. Flamaran:

“Can’t you hear it rattle?”

The good man was tearing to us, waving his arms like a madman, the folds
of his trousers flapping about his thin legs like banners in the wind.

We leaped to our feet, and my first idea, an absurd one enough, was that
a rattlesnake was hurrying through the grass to our attack.

I was very far from the truth. The matter really was a new line,
invented by M. Jupille, cast a little further than an ordinary one, and
rigged up with a float like a raft, carrying a little clapper. The fish
rang their own knell as they took the hook.

“It’s rattling like mad!” cried Jupille, “and you don’t stir! I couldn’t
have thought it of you, Monsieur Flamaran.”

He ran past us, brandishing a landing-net as a warrior his lance; he
might have been a youth of twenty-five. We followed, less keen and also
less confident than he. He was right, though; when he drew up his line,
the float of which was disappearing in jerks, carrying the bell along
with it beneath the water, he brought out a fair-sized jack, which he
declared to be a giant.

He let it run for some time, to tire it, and to prolong the pleasure of
playing it.

“Gentlemen,” he cried, “it is cutting my finger off!”

A stroke from the landing-net laid the monster at our feet, its strength
all spent. It weighed rather under four pounds. Jupille swore to six.

My learned tutor and I sat down again side by side, but the thread of
our conversation had been broken past mending. I tried to talk of her,
but M. Flamaran insisted on talking of me, of Bourges, of his election
as professor, and of the radically distinct characteristics by which you
can tell the bite of a gudgeon from that of a stickleback.

The latter part of this lecture was, however, purely theoretical, for he
got up two hours before sunset without having hooked a fish.

“A good day, all the same,” he said. “It’s a good place, and the fish
were biting this morning. We’ll come here again some day, Jupille; with
an east wind you ought to catch any quantity of gudgeons.” He kept pace
beside me on our way home, but wearied, no doubt, with long sitting,
with the heat, and the glare from the water, fell into a reverie, from
which the incidents of the walk were unable to rouse him.

Jupille trotted before us, carrying his rod in one hand, a
luncheon-basket and a fish-bag in the other. He turned round and gave us
a look at each cross-road, smiled beneath his heavy moustache, and went
on faster than before. I felt sure that something out of the way was
about to happen, and that the silent quill-driver was tasting a quiet
joke.

I had not guessed the whole truth.

At a turn of the road M. Flamaran suddenly pulled up, looked all around
him, and drew a deep breath.

“Hallo, Jupille! My good sir, where are you taking us? If I can believe
my eyes, this is the Chestnut Knoll, down yonder is Plessis Piquet, and
we are two miles from the station and the seven o’clock train!”

There was no denying it. A donkey emerged from the wood, hung with
tassels and bells, carrying in its panniers two little girls, whose
parents toiled behind, goad in hand. The woods had become shrubberies,
through which peeped the thatched roofs of rustic summerhouses, mazes,
artificial waterfalls, grottoes, and ruins; all the dread handiwork
of the rustic decorator burst, superabundant, upon our sight, with shy
odors of beer and cooking. Broken bottles strewed the paths; the bushes
all looked weary, harassed, and overworked; a confused murmur of voices
and crackers floated toward us upon the breeze. I knew full well from
these signs that we were nearing “ROBINSON CRUSOE,” the land of rustic
inns. And, sure enough, here they all were: “THE OLD ROBINSON,” “THE NEW
ROBINSON,” “THE REAL ORIGINAL ROBINSON,” “THE ONLY GENUINE ROBINSON,”
 “ROBINSON’s CHESTNUT GROVE,” “ROBINSON’S PARADISE,” each unique and each
authentic. All alike have thatched porches, sanded paths, transparencies
lighted with petroleum lamps, tinsel stars, summerhouses, arrangements
for open-air illumination and highly colored advertisements, in which
are set forth all the component elements of a “ROBINSON,” such as
shooting-galleries, bowling-alleys, swings, private arbors, Munich beer,
and dinner in a tree.

“Jupille!” exclaimed M. Flamaran, “you have shipwrecked us! This is
Crusoe’s land; and what the dickens do you mean by it?”

The old clerk, utterly discomfited, and wearing that hangdog look which
he always assumed at the slightest rebuke from Counsellor Boule, pulled
a face as long as his arm, went up to M. Flamaran and whispered a word
in his ear.

“Upon my word! Really, Jupille, what are you thinking of? And I a
professor, too! Thirty years ago it would have been excusable, but
to-day! Besides, Sidonie expects me home to dinner--”

He stopped for a moment, undecided, looking at his watch.

Jupille, who was eying him intently, saw his distinguished friend
gradually relax his frown and burst into a hearty laugh.

“By Jove! it’s madness at my age, but I don’t care. We’ll renew our
youth for an hour or so. My dear Mouillard, Jupille has ordered dinner
for us here. Had I been consulted I should have chosen any other place.
Yet what’s to be done? Hunger, friendship, and the fact that I can’t
catch the train, combine to silence my scruples. What do you say?”

“That we are in for it now.”

“So be it, then.” And led by Jupille, still carrying his catch, we
entered THE ONLY GENUINE ROBINSON.

M. Flamaran, somewhat ill at ease, cast inquiring glances on the
clearings in the sgrubberies. I thought I heard stifled laughter behind
the trees.

“You have engaged Chestnut Number Three, gentlemen,” said the
proprietor. “Up these stairs, please.”

We ascended a staircase winding around the trunk. Chestnut Number 3 is
a fine old tree, a little bent, its sturdy lower branches supporting a
platform surrounded by a balustrade, six rotten wooden pillars, and a
thatched roof, shaped like a cocked hat, to shelter the whole. All
the neighboring trees contain similar constructions, which look from a
little distance like enormous nests. They are greatly in demand at
the dinner hour; you dine thirty feet up in the air, and your food is
brought up by a rope and pulley.

When M. Flamaran appeared on the platform he took off his hat, and
leaned with both hands on the railing to give a look around. The
attitude suggested a public speaker. His big gray head was conspicuous
in the light of the setting sun.

“He’s going to make a speech!” cried a voice. “Bet you he isn’t,”
 replied another.

This was the signal. A rustling was heard among the leaves, and numbers
of inquisitive faces peeped out from all corners of the garden. A
general rattling of glasses announced that whole parties were leaving
the tables to see what was up. The waiters stopped to stare at Chestnut
Number 3. The whole population of Juan Fernandez was staring up at
Flamaran without in the least knowing the reason why.

“Gentlemen,” said a voice from an arbor, “Professor Flamaran will now
begin his lecture.”

A chorus of shouts and laughter rose around our tree.

“Hi, old boy, wait till we’re gone!”

“Ladies, he will discourse to you on the law of husband and wife!”

“No, on the foreclosure of mortgages!”

“No, on the payment of debts!”

“Oh, you naughty old man! You ought to be shut up!”

M. Flamaran, though somewhat put out of countenance for the moment, was
seized with a happy inspiration. He stretched out an arm to show that he
was about to speak. He opened his broad mouth with a smile of fatherly
humor, and the groves, attentive, heard him thunder forth these words:

“Boys, I promise to give you all white marks if you let me dine in
peace!”

The last words were lost in a roar of applause.

“Three cheers for old Flamaran!”

Three cheers were given, followed by clapping of hands from various
quarters, then all was silence, and no one took any further notice of
our tree.

M. Flamaran left the railing and unfolded his napkin.

“You may be sure of my white marks, young men,” he said, as he sat down.

He was delighted at his success as an orator, and laughed gayly.
Jupille, on the other hand, was as pale as if he had been in a street
riot, and seemed rooted to the spot where he stood.

“It’s all right, Jupille; it’s all right, man! A little ready wit is all
you need, dash my wig!”

The old clerk gradually regained his composure, and the dinner grew
very merry. Flamaran’s spirits, raised by this little incident, never
flagged. He had a story for every glass of wine, and told them all with
a quiet humor of his own.

Toward the end of dinner, by the time the waiter came to offer us
“almonds and raisins, pears, peaches, preserves, meringues, brandy
cherries,” we had got upon the subject of Sidonie, the pearl of Forez.
M. Flamaran narrated to us, with dates, how a friend of his one day
depicted to him a young girl at Montbrison, of fresh and pleasing
appearance, a good housekeeper, and of excellent family; and how he--M.
Flamaran--had forthwith started off to find her, had recognized her
before she was pointed out to him, fell in love with her at first sight,
and was not long in obtaining her affection in return. The marriage had
taken place at St. Galmier.

“Yes, my dear Mouillard,” he added, as if pointing a moral, “thirty
years ago last May I became a happy man; when do you think of following
my example?”

At this point, Jupille suddenly found himself one too many, and vanished
down the corkscrew stair.

“We once spoke of an heiress at Bourges,” M. Flamaran went on.

“Apparently that’s all off?”

“Quite off.”

“You were within your rights; but now, why not a Parisienne?”

“Yes, indeed; why not?”

“Perhaps you are prejudiced in some way against Parisiennes?”

“I? Not the least.”

“I used to be, but I’ve got over it now. They have a charm of their own,
a certain style of dressing, walking, and laughing which you don’t find
outside the fortifications. For a long time I used to think that these
qualities stood them in lieu of virtues. That was a slander; there are
plenty of Parisiennes endowed with every virtue; I even know a few who
are angels.”

At this point, M. Flamaran looked me straight in the eyes, and, as I
made no reply, he added:

“I know one, at least: Jeanne Charnot. Are you listening?”

“Yes, Monsieur Flamaran.”

“Isn’t she a paragon?”

“She is.”

“As sensible as she is tender-hearted?”

“So I believe.”

“And as clever as she is sensible?”

“That is my opinion.”

“Well, then, young man, if that’s your opinion--excuse my burning my
boats, all my boats--if that’s your opinion, I don’t understand why--Do
you suppose she has no money?”

“I know nothing about her means.”

“Don’t make any mistake; she’s a rich woman. Do you think you’re too
young to marry?”

“No.”

“Do you fancy, perhaps, that she is still bound by that unfortunate
engagement?”

“I trust she is not.”

“I’m quite sure she is not. She is free, I tell you, as free as you.
Well, why don’t you love her?”

“But I do love her, Monsieur Flamaran!”

“Why, then, I congratulate you, my boy!”

He leaned across the table and gave me a hearty grasp of the hand. He
was so agitated that he could not speak--choking with joyful emotion, as
if he had been Jeanne’s father, or mine.

After a minute or so, he drew himself up in his chair, reached out, put
a hand on each of my shoulders and kept it there as if he feared I might
fly away.

“So you love her, you love her! Good gracious, what a business I’ve had
to get you to say so! You are quite right to love her, of course, of
course--I could not have understood your doing otherwise; but I must say
this, my boy, that if you tarry too long, with her attractions, you know
what will happen.”

“Yes, I ought to ask for her at once.”

“To be sure you ought.”

“Alas! Monsieur Flamaran, who is there that I can send on such a mission
for me? You know that I am an orphan.”

“But you have an uncle.”

“We have quarrelled.”

“You might make it up again, on an occasion like this.”

“Out of the question; we quarrelled on her account; my uncle hates
Parisiennes.”

“Damn it all, then! send a friend--a friend will do under the
circumstances.”

“There’s Lampron.”

“The painter?”

“Yes, but he doesn’t know Monsieur Charnot. It would only be one
stranger pleading for another. My chances would be small. What I want--”

“Is a friend of both parties, isn’t it? Well, what am I?”

“The very man!”

“Very well. I undertake to ask for her hand! I shall ask for the hand
of the charming Jeanne for both of us; for you, who will make her happy;
and for myself, who will not entirely lose her if she marries one of my
pupils, one of my favorite graduates--my friend, Fabien Mouillard. And I
won’t be refused--no, damme, I won’t!”

He brought down his fist upon the table with a tremendous blow which
made the glasses ring and the decanters stagger.

“Coming!” cried a waiter from below, thinking he was summoned.

“All right, my good fellow!” shouted M. Flamaran, leaning over the
railings. “Don’t trouble. I don’t want anything.”

He turned again toward me, still filled with emotion, but somewhat
calmer than he had been.

“Now,” said he, “let us talk, and do you tell me all.”

And we began a long and altogether delightful talk.

A more genuine, a finer fellow never breathed than this professor let
loose from school and giving his heart a holiday--a simple, tender
heart, preserved beneath the science of the law like a grape in sawdust.
Now he would smile as I sang Jeanne’s praises; now he would sit and
listen to my objections with a truculent air, tightening his lips till
they broke forth in vehement denial. “What! You dare to say! Young man,
what are you afraid of?” His overflowing kindness discharged itself in
the sincerest and most solemn asseverations.

We had left Juan Fernandez far behind us; we were both far away in that
Utopia where mind penetrates mind, heart understands heart. We heard
neither the squeaking of a swing beneath us, nor the shouts of laughter
along the promenades, nor the sound of a band tuning up in a neighboring
pavilion. Our eyes, raised to heaven, failed to see the night descending
upon us, vast and silent, piercing the foliage with its first stars. Now
and again a warm breath passed over us, blown from the woods; I tasted
its strangely sweet perfume; I saw in glimpses the flying vision of a
huge dark tulip, striped with gold, unfolding its petals on the moist
bank of a dyke, and I asked myself whether a mysterious flower had
really opened in the night, or whether it was but a new feeling, slowly
budding, unfolding, blossoming within my heart.




CHAPTER XVII. PLEASURES OF EAVESDROPPING

                       July 22d.

At two o’clock to-day I went to see Sylvestre, to tell him all the great
events of yesterday. We sat down on the old covered sofa in the shadow
of the movable curtain which divides the studio, as it were, into two
rooms, among the lay figures, busts, varnish-bottles, and paint-boxes.
Lampron likes this chiaroscuro. It rests his eyes.

Some one knocked at the door.

“Stay where you are,” said Sylvestre; “it’s a customer come for the
background of an engraving. I’ll be with you in two minutes. Come in!”
 As he was speaking he drew the curtain in front of me, and through the
thin stuff I could see him going toward the door, which had just opened.

“Monsieur Lampron?”

“I am he, Monsieur.”

“You don’t recognize me, Monsieur?”

“No, Monsieur.”

“I’m surprised at that.”

“Why so? I have never seen you.”

“You have taken my portrait!”

“Really!”

I was watching Lampron, who was plainly angered at this brusque
introduction. He left the chair which he had begun to push forward,
let it stand in the middle of the studio, and went and sat down on
his engraving-stool in the corner, with a somewhat haughty look, and a
defiant smile lurking behind his beard. He rested his elbow on the table
and began to drum with his fingers.

“What I have had the honor to inform you is the simple truth, Monsieur.
I am Monsieur Charnot of the Institute.”

Lampron gave a glance in my direction, and his frown melted away.

“Excuse me, Monsieur; I only know you by your back. Had you shown me
that side of you I might perhaps have recognized--”

“I have not come here to listen to jokes, Monsieur; and I should have
come sooner to demand an explanation, but that it was only this morning
I heard of what I consider a deplorable abuse of your talents. But
picture-shows are not in my line. I did not see myself there. My
friend Flamaran had to tell me that I was to be seen at the last Salon,
together with my daughter, sitting on a tree-trunk in the forest of
Saint-Germain. Is it true, Monsieur, that you drew me sitting on a
trunk?”

“Quite true.”

“That’s a trifle too rustic for a man who does not go outside of
Paris three times a year. And my daughter you drew in profile--a good
likeness, I believe.”

“It was as like as I could make it.”

“Then you confess that you drew both my daughter and myself?”

“Yes, I do, Monsieur.”

“It may not be so easy for you to explain by what right you did so; I
await your explanation, Monsieur.”

“I might very well give you no explanation whatever,” replied Lampron,
who was beginning to lose patience. “I might also reply that I no more
needed to ask your permission to sketch you than to ask that of the
beeches, oaks, elms, and willows. I might tell you that you formed part
of the landscape, that every artist who sketches a bit of underwood has
the right to stick a figure in--”

“A figure, Monsieur! do you call me a figure?”

“A gentleman, I mean. Artists call it figure. Well, I might give you
this reason, which is quite good enough for you, but it is not the real
one. I prefer to tell you frankly what passed. You have a very beautiful
daughter, Monsieur.”

M. Charnot made his customary bow.

“One of my friends is in love with her. He is shy, and dares not tell
his love. We met you by chance in the wood, and I was seized with the
idea of making a sketch of Mademoiselle Jeanne, so like that she could
not mistake it, and then exhibiting it with the certainty of her seeing
it and guessing its meaning. I trusted she would recall to her mind, not
myself, for my youth is past, but a young friend of mine who is of the
age and build of a lover. If this was a crime, Monsieur, I am ready to
take the blame for it upon myself, for I alone committed it.”

“It certainly was criminal, Monsieur; criminal in you, at any
rate--you who are a man of weight, respected for your talent and your
character--to aid and abet in a frivolous love-affair.”

“It was the deepest and most honorable sentiment, Monsieur.”

“A blaze of straw!”

“Nothing of the sort!”

“Don’t tell me! Your friend’s a mere boy.”

“So much the better for him, and for her, too! If you want a man of
middle age for your son-in-law, just try one and see what they are
worth. You may be sorry that you ever refused this boy, who, it is true,
is only twenty-four, has little money, no decided calling, nor yet that
gift of self-confidence which does instead of merit for so many people;
but who is a brave and noble soul, whom I can answer for as for myself.
Go, Monsieur, you will find your daughter great names, fat purses,
gold lace, long beards, swelling waistbands, reputations, pretensions,
justified or not, everything, in short, in which he is poor; but him you
will never find again! That is all I have to tell you.”

Lampron had become animated and spoke with heat. There was the slightest
flash of anger in his eyes.

I saw M. Charnot get up, approach him, and hold out his hand.

“I did not wish you to say anything else, Monsieur; that is enough for
me. Flamaran asked my daughter’s hand for your friend only this morning.
Flamaran loses no time when charged with a commission. He, too, told me
much that was good of your friend. I also questioned Counsellor Boule.
But however flattering characters they might give him, I still needed
another, that of a man who had lived in complete intimacy with Monsieur
Mouillard, and I could find no one but you.”

Lampron stared astonished at this little thin-lipped man who had just
changed his tone and manner so unexpectedly.

“Well, Monsieur,” he answered, “you might have got his character from me
with less trouble; there was no need to make a scene.”

“Excuse me. You say I should have got his character; that is exactly
what I did not want; characters are always good. What I wanted was a cry
from the heart of a friend outraged and brought to bay. That is what I
got, and it satisfies me. I am much obliged to you, Monsieur, and beg
you will excuse my conduct.”

“But, since we are talking sense at present, allow me to put you a
question in my turn. I am not in the habit of going around the point. Is
my friend’s proposal likely to be accepted or not?”

“Monsieur Lampron, in these delicate matters I have decided for the
future to leave my daughter entirely free. Although my happiness is at
stake almost as entirely as hers, I shall not say a word save to advise.
In accordance with this resolve I communicated Flamaran’s proposal to
her.”

“Well?”

“I expected she would refuse it.”

“But she said ‘Yes’?”

“She did not say ‘No;’ if she had, you can guess that I should not be
here.”

At this reply I quite lost my head, and was very near tearing aside the
curtain, and bursting forth into the studio with a shout of gratitude.

But M. Charnot added:

“Don’t be too sure, though. There are certain serious, and, perhaps,
insurmountable obstacles. I must speak to my daughter again. I will
let your friend know of our final decision as soon as I can. Good-by,
Monsieur.”

Lampron saw him to the street, and I heard their steps grow distant in
the passage. A moment later Sylvestre returned and held out both hands
to me, saying:

“Well, are you happy now?”

“Of course I am, to a certain extent.”

“‘To a certain extent’! Why, she loves you.”

“But the obstacles, Sylvestre!”

“Nonsense!”

“Perhaps insurmountable--those were his words.”

“Why, obstacles are the salt of all our joys. What a deal you young men
want before you can be called happy! You ask Life for certainties, as if
she had any to give you!”

And he began to discuss my fears, but could not quite disperse them, for
neither of us could guess what the obstacles could be.

                       August 2d.

After ten days of waiting, during which I have employed Lampron and M.
Flamaran to intercede for me, turn and turn about; ten days passed in
hovering between mortal anguish and extravagant hopes, during which I
have formed, destroyed, taken up again and abandoned more plans than
I ever made in all my life before, yesterday, at five o’clock, I got a
note from M. Charnot, begging me to call upon him the same evening.

I went there in a state of nervous collapse. He received me in his
study, as he had done seven months before, at our first interview, but
with a more solemn politeness; and I noticed that the paper-knife, which
he had taken up from the table as he resumed his seat, shook between his
fingers. I sat in the same chair in which I had felt so ill at ease.
To tell the truth, I felt very much the same, yesterday. M. Charnot
doubtless noticed it, and wished to reassure me.

“Monsieur,” said he, “I receive you as a friend. Whatever may be the
result of our interview, you may be assured of my esteem. Therefore do
not fear to answer me frankly.”

He put several questions to me concerning my family, my tastes, and my
acquaintance in Paris. Then he requested me to tell the simple story of
my boyhood and my youth, the recollections of my home, of the college at
La Chatre, of my holidays at Bourges, and of my student life.

He listened without interruption, playing with the ivory paperknife.
When I reached the date--it was only last December--when I saw Jeanne
for the first time--

“That’s enough,” said he, “I know or guess the rest. Young man, I
promised you an answer; this is it--”

For the moment, I ceased to breathe; my very heart seemed to stop
beating.

“My daughter,” went on M. Charnot, “has at this moment several proposals
of marriage to choose from. You see I hide nothing from you. I have
left her time to reflect; she has weighed and compared them all, and
communicated to me yesterday the result of her reflections. To richer
and more brilliant matches she prefers an honest man who loves her for
herself, and you, Monsieur, are that honest man.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you, Monsieur!” I cried.

“Wait a moment, there are two conditions.”

“Were there ten, I would accept them without question!”

“Don’t hurry. You will see; one is my daughter’s, the other comes from
both of us.”

“You wish me to have some profession, perhaps?”

“No, that’s not it. Clearly my son-in-law will never sit idle. Besides,
I have some views on that subject, which I will tell you later if I have
the chance. No, the first condition exacted by my daughter, and dictated
by a feeling which is very pleasant to me, is that you promise never to
leave Paris.”

“That I swear to, with all the pleasure in life!”

“Really? I feared you had some ties.”

“Not one.”

“Or dislike for Paris.”

“No, Monsieur; only a preference for Paris, with freedom to indulge it.
Your second condition?”

“The second, to which my daughter and I both attach importance, is that
you should make your peace with your uncle. Flamaran tells me you have
quarrelled.”

“That is true.”

“I hope it is not a serious difference. A mere cloud, isn’t it?”

“Unfortunately not. My uncle is very positive--”

“But at the same time his heart is in the right place, so far as I could
judge from what I saw of him--in June, I think it was.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t mind taking the first step?”

“I will take as many as may be needed.”

“I was sure you would. You can not remain on bad terms with your
father’s brother, the only relative you have left. In our eyes this
reconciliation is a duty, a necessity. You should desire it as much as,
and even more than, we.”

“I shall use every effort, Monsieur, I promise you.”

“And in that case you will succeed, I feel sure.”

M. Charnot, who had grown very pale, held out his hand to me, and tried
hard to smile.

“I think, Monsieur Fabien, that we are quite at one, and that the hour
has come--”

He did not finish the sentence, but rose and went to open a door between
two bookcases at the end of the room.

“Jeanne,” he said, “Monsieur Fabien accepts the two conditions, my
dear.”

And I saw Jeanne come smiling toward me.

And I, who had risen trembling, I, who until then had lost my head at
the mere thought of seeing her, I, who had many a time asked myself in
terror what I should say on meeting her, if ever she were mine, I felt
myself suddenly bold, and the words rushed to my lips to thank her, to
express my joy.

My happiness, however, was evident, and I might have spared my words.

For the first half-hour all three of us talked together.

Then M. Charnot pushed back his armchair, and we two were left to
ourselves.

He had taken up a newspaper, but I am pretty sure he held it upside
down. In any case he must have been reading between the lines, for he
did not turn the page the whole evening.

He often cast a glance over the top of the paper, folded in four, to the
corner where we were sitting, and from us his eyes travelled to a pretty
miniature of Jeanne as a child, which hung over the mantelpiece.

What comparisons, what memories, what regrets, what hopes were
struggling in his mind? I know not, but I know he sighed, and had not we
been there I believe he would have wept.

To me Jeanne showed herself simple as a child, wise and thoughtful as
a woman. A new feeling was growing every instant within me, of perfect
rest of heart; the certainty of happiness for all my life to come.

Yes, my happiness travelled beyond the present, as I looked into the
future and saw along series of days passed by her side; and while she
spoke to me, tranquil, confident, and happy too, I thought I saw the
great wings of my dream closing over and enfolding us.

We spoke in murmurs. The open window let in the warm evening air and the
confused roar of the city.

“I am to be your friend and counsellor?” said she.

“Always.”

“You promise that you will ask my advice in all things, and that we
shall act in concert?”

“I do.”

“If this very first evening I ask you for a proof of this, you won’t be
angry?”

“On the contrary.”

“Well, from what you have told me of your uncle, you seem to have
accepted the second condition, of making up your quarrel, rather
lightly.”

“I have only promised to do my best.”

“Yes, but my father counts upon your success. How do you intend to act?”

“I haven’t yet considered.”

“That’s just what I foresaw, and I thought it would perhaps be a good
thing if we considered it together.”

“Mademoiselle, I am listening; compose the plan of campaign, and I will
criticise it.”

Jeanne clasped her hands over her knees and assumed a thoughtful look.

“Suppose you wrote to him.”

“There is every chance that he would not answer.”

“Reply paid?”

“Mademoiselle, you are laughing; you are no counsellor any longer.”

“Yes, I am. Let us be serious. Suppose you go to see him.”

“That’s a better idea. He may perhaps receive me.”

“In that case you will capture him. If you can only get a man to
listen--”

“Not my uncle, Mademoiselle. He will listen, and do you know what his
answer will be?”

“What?”

“This, or something like it: ‘My worthy nephew, you have come to tell
me two things, have you not? First, that you are about to marry a
Parisienne; secondly, that you renounce forever the family practice.
You merely confirm and aggravate our difference. You have taken a step
further backward. It was not worth while your coming out of your way to
tell me this, and you may return as soon as you please.’”

“You surprise me. There must be some way of getting at him, if he is
really good-hearted, as you say. If I could see your uncle I should soon
find out a way.”

“If you could see him! Yes, that would be the best way of all; it
couldn’t help succeeding. He imagines you as a flighty Parisienne; he is
afraid of you; he is more angry with me for loving you than for refusing
to carry on his practice. If he could only see you, he would soon
forgive me.”

“You think so?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Do you think that if I were to look him in the face, as I now look at
you, and to say to him: ‘Monsieur Mouillard, will you not consent to my
becoming your niece?’ do you think that then he would give in?”

“Alas! Mademoiselle, why can not it be tried?”

“It certainly is difficult, but I won’t say it can not.”

We explained, or rather Jeanne explained, the case to M. Charnot, who is
assuredly her earliest and most complete conquest. At first he cried out
against the idea. He said it was entirely my business, a family matter
in which he had no right to interfere. She insisted. She carried his
scruples by storm. She boldly proposed a trip to Bourges, and a visit to
M. Mouillard. She overflowed with reasons, some of them rather weak, but
all so prettily urged! A trip to Bourges would be delightful--something
so novel and refreshing! Had M. Charnot complained on the previous
evening, or had he not, of having to stop in Paris in the heat of
August? Yes, he had complained, and quite right too, for his colleagues
did not hesitate to leave their work and rush off to the country. Then
she cited examples: one off to the Vosges, another at Arcachon, yet
another at Deauville. And she reminded him, too, that a certain old
lady, one of his old friends of the Faubourg St. Germain, lived only a
few miles out of Bourges, and had invited him to come and see her, she
didn’t know how many times, and that he had promised and promised and
never kept his word. Now he could take the opportunity of going on from
Bourges to her chateau. Finally, as M. Charnot continued to urge the
singularity of such behavior, she replied:

“My dear father! not at all; in visiting Monsieur Mouillard you will be
only fulfilling a social duty.”

“How so, I should like to know?”

“He paid you a visit, and you will be returning it!”

M. Charnot tossed his head, like a father who, though he may not be
convinced, yet admits that he is beaten.

As for me, Jeanne, I’m beginning to believe in the fairies again.




CHAPTER XVIII. A COOL RECEPTION

August 3d.

I have made another visit to the Rue de l’Universite. They have decided
to make the trip. I leave for Bourges tomorrow, a day in advance of M.
and Mademoiselle Charnot, who will arrive on the following morning.

I am sent on first to fulfil two duties: to engage comfortable rooms at
the hotel--first floor with southern aspect--and then to see my uncle
and prepare him for his visitors.

I am to prepare him without ruffling him. Jeanne has sketched my plan
of campaign. I am to be the most affectionate of nephews, though he show
himself the crustiest of uncles; to prevent him from recurring to the
past, to speak soberly of the present, to confess that Mademoiselle
Charnot is aware of my feelings for her, and shows herself not entirely
insensible to them; but I am to avoid giving details, and must put off a
full explanation until later, when we can study the situation together.
M. Mouillard can not fail to be appeased by such deference, and to
observe a truce while I hint at the possibility of a family council.
Then, if these first advances are well received, I am to tell him that
M. Charnot is actually travelling in the neighborhood, and, without
giving it as certain, I may add that if he stops at Bourges he may like
to return my uncle’s visit.

There my role ends. Jeanne and M. Charnot will do the rest. It is with
Jeanne, by the light of her eyes and her smile, that M. Mouillard is “to
study the situation;” he will have to struggle against the redoubtable
arguments of her youth and beauty. Poor man!

Jeanne is full of confidence. Her father, who has learned his lesson
from her, feels sure that my uncle will give in. Even I, who can not
entirely share this optimism, feel that I incline to the side of hope.

When I reached home, the porter handed me two cards from Larive. On the
first I read:

               CH. LARIVE,
              Managing Clerk.
                P. P. C.

The second, on glazed cardboard, announced, likewise in initials,
another piece of news:

               CH. LARIVE,
            Formerly Managing Clerk.
               P. F. P. M.

So the Parisian who swore he could not exist two days in the country
is leaving Paris. That was fated. He is about to be married; I’m sure
I don’t object. The only consequence to me is that we never shall meet
again, and I shall not weep over that.

                    BOURGES, August 4th.

If you have ever been in Bourges, you may have seen the little Rue
Sous-les-Ceps, the Cours du Bat d’Argent and de la Fleur-de-lys, the
Rues de la Merede-Dieu, des Verts-Galants, Mausecret, du Moulin-le-Roi,
the Quai Messire-Jacques, and other streets whose ancient names,
preserved by a praiseworthy sentiment or instinctive conservatism,
betoken an ancient city still inhabited by old-fashioned people, by
which I mean people attached to the soil, strongly marked with the stamp
of the provincial in manners as in language; people who understand all
that a name is to a street--its honor, its spouse if you will, from
which it must not be divorced.

My Uncle Mouillard, most devoted and faithful citizen of Bourges,
naturally lives in one of these old streets, the Rue du Four, within the
shadow of the cathedral, beneath the swing of its chimes.

Within fifteen minutes after my arrival at Bourges I was pulling the
deer’s foot which hangs, depilated with long use, beside his door. It
was five o’clock, and I knew for certain that he would not be at home.
When the courts rise, one of the clerks carries back his papers to
the office, while he moves slowly off, his coat-tails flapping in the
breeze, either to visit a few friends and clients, respectable dames who
were his partners in the dance in the year 1840, or more often to take
a “constitutional” along the banks of the Berry Canal, where, in the
poplar shade, files of little gray donkeys are towing string after
string of big barges.

So I was sure not to meet him.

Madeleine opened the door to me, and started as if shot.

“Monsieur Fabien!”

“Myself, Madeleine. My uncle is not at home?”

“No, Monsieur. Do you really mean to come in, Monsieur?”

“Why not?”

“The master’s so changed since his visit to Paris, Monsieur Fabien!”

Madeleine stood still, with one hand holding up her apron, the other
hanging, and gazed at me with reproachful anxiety.

“I must come in, Madeleine. I have a secret to tell you.”

She made no answer, but turned and walked before me into the house.

It was not thus that I used to be welcomed in days gone by! Then
Madeleine used to meet me at the station. She used to kiss me, and tell
me how well I looked, promising the while a myriad sweet dishes which
she had invented for me. Hardly did I set foot in the hall before my
uncle, who had given up his evening walk for my sake, would run out of
his study, heart and cravat alike out of their usual order at seeing
me--me, a poor, awkward, gaping schoolboy: Today that is ancient
history. To-day I am afraid to meet my uncle, and Madeleine is afraid to
let me in.

She told me not a word of it, but I easily guessed that floods of tears
had streamed from her black eyes down her thin cheeks, now pale as wax.
Her face is quite transparent, and looks as if a tiny lamp were lighting
it from within. There are strong feelings, too, beneath that impassive
mask. Madeleine comes from Bayonne, and has Spanish blood in her. I have
heard that she was lovely as a girl of twenty. With age her features
have grown austere. She looks like a widow who is a widow indeed, and
her heart is that of a grandmother.

She glided before me in her slippers to that realm of peace and silence,
her kitchen. I followed her in. Two things that never found entrance
there are dust and noise. A lonely goldfinch hangs in a wicker cage from
the rafters, and utters from time to time a little shrill call. His note
and the metallic tick-tick of Madeleine’s clock alone enliven the silent
flight of time. She sat down in the low chair where she knits after
dinner.

“Madeleine, I am about to be married; did you know it?”

She slowly shook her head.

“Yes, in Paris, Monsieur Fabien; that’s what makes the master so
unhappy.”

“You will soon see her whom I have chosen, Madeleine.”

“I do not think so, Monsieur Fabien.”

“Yes, yes, you will; and you will see that it is my uncle who is in the
wrong.”

“I have not often known him in the wrong.”

“That has nothing to do with it. My marriage is fully decided upon, and
all I want is to get my uncle’s consent to it. Do you understand? I want
to make friends with him.”

Madeleine shook her head again.

“You won’t succeed.”

“My dear Madeleine!”

“No, Monsieur Fabien, you won’t succeed.”

“He must be very much changed, then!”

“So much that you could hardly believe it; so much that I can hardly
keep myself from changing too. He, who had such a good appetite, now has
nothing but fads. It’s no good my cooking him dainties, or buying him
early vegetables; he never notices them, but looks out of the window as
I come in at the door with a surprise for him. In the evening he often
forgets to go out in the garden, and sits at table, his elbows on his
rumpled napkin, his head between his hands, and what he thinks of he
keeps to himself. If I try to talk of you--and I have tried, Monsieur
Fabien--he gets up in a rage, and forbids me to open my mouth on the
subject. The house is not cheerful, Monsieur Fabien. Every one notices
how he has changed; Monsieur Lorinet and his lady never enter the doors;
Monsieur Hublette and Monsieur Horlet come and play dummy, looking all
the time as if they had come for a funeral, thinking it will please the
master. Even the clients say that the master treats them like dogs, and
that he ought to sell his practice.”

“Then it isn’t sold?”

“Not yet, but I think it will be before long.”

“Listen to me, Madeleine; you have always been good and devoted to me;
I am sure you still are fond of me; do me one last service. You must
manage to put me up here without my uncle knowing it.”

“Without his knowing it, Monsieur Fabien!”

“Yes, say in the library; he never goes in there. From there I can study
him, and watch him, without his seeing me, since he is so irritable and
so easily upset, and as soon as you see an opportunity I shall make use
of it. A sign from you, and down I come.”

“Really, Monsieur Fabien--”

“It must be done, Madeleine; I must manage to speak to him before ten
o’clock to-morrow morning, for my bride is coming.”

“The Parisienne? She coming here!”

“Yes, with her father, by the train which gets in at six minutes past
nine to-morrow.”

“Good God! is it possible?”

“To see you, Madeleine; to see my uncle, to make my peace with him.
Isn’t it kind of her?”

“Kind? Monsieur Fabien! I tremble to think of what will happen. All the
same, I shall be glad to have a sight of your young lady, of course.”

And so we settled that Madeleine was not to say a word to my uncle about
my being in Bourges, within a few feet of him. If she perceived any
break in the gloom which enveloped M. Mouillard, she was to let me know;
if I were obliged to put off my interview to the morrow, and to pass the
night on the sofa-bed in the library, she was to bring me something to
eat, a rug, and “the pillow you used in your holidays when you were a
boy.”

I was installed then in the big library on the first-floor, adjoining
the drawing-room, its other door opening on the passage opposite M.
Mouillard’s door, and its two large windows on the garden. What a look
of good antique middle-class comfort there was about it, from the
floor of bees’-waxed oak, with its inequalities of level, to the
four bookcases with glass doors, surmounted by four bronzed busts of
Herodotus, Homer, Socrates, and Marmontel! Nothing had been moved; the
books were still in the places where I had known them for twenty years;
Voltaire beside Rousseau, the Dictionary of Useful Knowledge,
and Rollin’s Ancient History, the slim, well bound octavos of the
Meditations of St. Ignatius, side by side with an enormous quarto on
veterinary surgery.

The savage arrows, said to be poisoned, which always used to frighten
me so much, were still arranged like a peacock’s tail over the
mantel-shelf, each end of which was adorned by the same familiar lumps
of white coral. The musical-box, which I was not allowed to touch till
I was eighteen, still stood in the left-hand corner, and on the
writing-table, near the little blotting-book that held the note-paper,
rose, still majestic, still turning obedient to the touch within its
graduated belts, the terrestrial globe “on which are marked the three
voyages of Captain Cook, both outward and homeward.” Ah, captain, how
often have we sailed those voyages together! What grand headway we
made as we scoured the tropics in the heel of the trade-wind, our ship
threading archipelagoes whose virgin forests stared at us in wonder, all
their strange flowers opening toward us, seeking to allure us and put us
to sleep with their dangerous perfumes. But we always guessed the snare,
we saw the points of the assegais gleaming amid the tall grasses; you
gave the word in your full, deep voice, and our way lay infinite before
us; we followed it, always on the track of new lands, new discoveries,
until we reached the fatal isle of Owhyhee, the spot where this
terrestrial globe is spotted with a tear--for I wept over you, my
captain, at the age when tears unlock themselves and flow easily from a
heart filled with enchantment!

Seven o’clock sounded from the cathedral; the garden door slammed to; my
uncle was returning.

I saw him coming down the winding path, hat in hand, with bowed head.
He did not stop before his graftings; he passed the clump of petunias
without giving them that all-embracing glance I know so well, the
glance of the rewarded gardener. He gave no word of encouragement to the
Chinese duck which waddled down the path in front of him.

Madeleine was right. The time was not ripe for reconciliation; and more,
it would need a great deal of sun to ripen it. O Jeanne, if only you
were here!

“Any one called while I’ve been out?”

This, by the way, is the old formula to which my uncle has always been
faithful. I heard Madeleine answer, with a quaver in her voice:

“No, nobody for you, sir.”

“Someone for you, then? A lover, perhaps, my faithful Madeleine? The
world is so foolish nowadays that even you might take it into your
head to marry and leave me. Come, serve my dinner quickly, and if the
gentleman with the decoration calls--you know whom I mean?”

“The tall, thin gentleman?”

“Yes. Show him into the drawing-room.”

“A gentleman by himself into the drawing-room?

“No, sir, no. The floor was waxed only yesterday, and the furniture’s
not yet in order.”

“Very well! I’ll see him in here.”

My uncle went into the dining-room underneath me, and for twenty minutes
I heard nothing more of him, save the ring of his wineglass as he struck
on it to summon Madeleine.

He had hardly finished dinner when there came a ring at the street door.
Some one asked for M. Mouillard, the gentleman with the decoration, I
suppose, for Madeleine showed him in, and I could tell by the noise of
his chair that my uncle had risen to receive his visitor.

They sat down and entered into conversation. An indistinct murmur
reached me through the ceiling. Occasionally a clearer sound struck my
ear, and I thought I knew that high, resonant voice. It was no doubt
delusion, still it beset me there in the silence of the library,
haunting my thoughts as they wandered restlessly in search of
occupation. I tried to recollect all the men with fluty voices that I
had ever met in Bourges: a corn-factor from the Place St. Jean; Rollet,
the sacristan; a fat manufacturer, who used to get my uncle to draw up
petitions for him claiming relief from taxation. I hunted feverishly in
my memory as the light died away from the windows, and the towers of St.
Stephen’s gradually lost the glowing aureole conferred on them by the
setting sun.

After about an hour the conversation grew heated.

My uncle coughed, the flute became shrill. I caught these fragments of
their dialogue.

“No, Monsieur!”

“Yes, Monsieur!”

“But the law?”

“Is as I tell you.”

“But this is tyranny!”

“Then our business is at an end.”

Apparently it was not, though; for the conversation gradually sank down
the scale to a monotonous murmur. A second hour passed, and yet a third.
What could this interminable visit portend?

It was near eleven o’clock. A ray from the rising moon shone between the
trees in the garden. A big black cat crept across the lawn, shaking its
wet paws. In the darkness it looked like a tiger. In my mind’s eye I saw
Madeleine sitting with her eyes fixed on her dead hearth, telling her
beads, her thoughts running with mine: “It is years since Monsieur
Mouillard was up at such an hour.” Still she waited, for never had any
hand but hers shot the bolt of the street door; the house would not be
shut if shut by any other than herself.

At last the dining-room door opened. “Let me show you a light; take care
of the stairs.”

Then followed the “Good-nights” of two weary voices, the squeaking of
the big key turning in the lock, a light footstep dying away in the
distance, and my uncle’s heavy tread as he went up to his bedroom. The
business was over.

How slowly my uncle went upstairs! The burden of sorrow was no
metaphor in his case. He, who used to be as active as a boy, could now
hardly-support his own weight.

He crossed the landing and went into his room. I thought of following,
him; only a few feet lay between us. No doubt it was late, but his
excited state might have predisposed him in my favor. Suddenly I heard
a sigh--then a sob. He was weeping; I determined to risk all and rush to
his assistance.

But just as I was about to leave the library a skirt rustled against the
wall, though I had heard no sound of footsteps preceding it. At the same
instant a little bit of paper was slipped in under the door--a letter
from the silent Madeleine. I unfolded the paper and saw the following
words written across from one corner to the other, with a contempt for
French spelling, which was thoroughly Spanish:

          “Ni allais pat ceux soire.”

Very well, Madeleine, since that’s your advice, I’ll refrain.

I lay down to sleep on the sofa. Yet I was very sorry for the delay. I
hated to let the night go by without being reconciled to the poor old
man, or without having attempted it at least. He was evidently very
wretched to be affected to tears, for I had never known him to weep,
even on occasions when my own tears had flowed freely. Yet I followed my
old and faithful friend’s advice, for I knew that she had the peace of
the household as much at heart as I; but I felt that I should seek long
and vainly before I could discover what this latest trouble was, and
what part I had in it.




CHAPTER XIX. JEANNE THE ENCHANTRESS

                    BOURGES, August 5th.

I woke up at seven; my first thought was for M. Mouillard. Where could
he be? I listened, but could hear no sound. I went to the window; the
office-boy was lying flat on the lawn, feeding the goldfish in the
fountain. This proved beyond a doubt that my uncle was not in.

I went downstairs to the kitchen.

“Well, Madeleine, has he gone out?”

“He went at six o’clock, Monsieur Fabien.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“How could I guess? Never, never does he go out before breakfast. I
never have seen him like this before, not even when his wife died.”

“What can be the matter with him?”

“I think it’s the sale of the practice. He said to me last night, at
the fool of the staircase: ‘I am a brokenhearted man, Madeleine, a
broken-hearted man. I might have got over it, but that monster
of ingratitude, that cannibal’--saving your presence, Monsieur
Fabien--‘would not have it so. If I had him here I don’t know what I
should do to him.’”

“Didn’t he tell you what he would do to the cannibal?”

“No. So I slipped a little note under your door when I went upstairs.”

“Yes. I am much obliged to you for it. Is he any calmer this morning?”

“He doesn’t look angry any longer, only I noticed that he had been
weeping.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know at all. Besides, you might as well try to catch up with a
deer as with him.”

“That’s true. I’d better wait for him. When will he be in?”

“Not before ten. I can tell you that it’s not once a year that he goes
out like this in the morning.”

“But, Madeleine, Jeanne will be here by ten!”

“Oh, is Jeanne her name?”

“Yes. Monsieur Charnot will be here, too. And my uncle, whom I was to
have prepared for their visit, will know nothing about it, nor even that
I slept last night beneath his roof.”

“To tell the truth, Monsieur Fabien, I don’t think you’ve managed well.
Still, there is Dame Fortune, who often doesn’t put in her word till the
last moment.”

“Entreat her for me, Madeleine, my dear.”

But Dame Fortune was deaf to prayers. My uncle did not return, and I
could find no fresh expedient. As I made my way, vexed and unhappy, to
the station, I kept asking myself the question that I had been turning
over in vain for the last hour:

“I have said nothing to Monsieur Mouillard. Had I better say anything
now to Monsieur Charnot?”

My fears redoubled when I saw Jeanne and M. Charnot at the windows of
the train, as it swept past me into the station.

A minute later she stepped on to the platform, dressed all in gray, with
roses in her cheeks, and a pair of gull’s wings in her hat.

M. Charnot shook me by the hand, thoroughly delighted at having escaped
from the train and being able to shake himself and tread once more the
solid earth. He asked after my uncle, and when I replied that he was in
excellent health, he went to get his luggage.

“Well!” said Jeanne. “Is all arranged?”

“On the contrary, nothing is.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Not even that. I have been watching for a favorable opportunity without
finding one. Yesterday evening he was busy with a visitor; this morning
he went out at six. He doesn’t even know that I am in Bourges.”

“And yet you were in his house?”

“I slept on a sofa in his library.”

She gave me a look which was as much as to say, “My poor boy, how very
unpractical you are!”

“Go on doing nothing,” she said; “that’s the best you can do. If my
father didn’t think he was expected he would beat a retreat at once.”

At this instant, M. Charnot came back to us, having seen his two trunks
and a hatbox placed on top of the omnibus of the Hotel de France.

“That is where you have found rooms for us?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It is now twelve minutes past nine; tell Monsieur Mouillard that we
shall call upon him at ten o’clock precisely.”

I went a few steps with them, and saw them into the omnibus, which was
whirled off at a fast trot by its two steeds.

When I had lost them from my sight I cast a look around me, and noticed
three people standing in line beneath the awning, and gazing upon me
with interest. I recognized Monsieur, Madame, and Mademoiselle Lorinet.
They were all smiling with the same look of contemptuous mockery.
I bowed. The man alone returned my salute, raising his hat. By some
strange freak of fate, Berthe was again wearing a blue dress.

I went back in the direction of the Rue du Four, happy, though at
my wits’ end, forming projects that were mutually destructive; now
expatiating in the seventh heaven, now loading myself with the most
appalling curses. I slipped along the streets, concealed beneath my
umbrella, for the rain was falling; a great storm-cloud had burst over
Bourges, and I blessed the rain which gave me a chance to hide my face.

From the banks of the Voizelle to the old quarter around the cathedral
is a rather long walk. When I turned from the Rue Moyenne, the Boulevard
des Italiens of Bourges, into the Rue du Four, a blazing sun was
drying the rain on the roofs, and the cuckoo clock at M. Festuquet’s--a
neighbor of my uncle--was striking the hour of meeting.

I had not been three minutes at the garden door, a key to which had been
given me by Madeleine, when M. Charnot appeared with Jeanne on his arm.

“To think that I’ve forgotten my overshoes, which I never fail to take
with me to the country!”

“The country, father?” said Jeanne, “why, Bourges is a city!--”

“To be sure--to be sure,” answered M. Charnot, who feared he had hurt my
feelings.

He put on his spectacles and began to study the old houses around him.

“Yes, a city; really quite a city.”

I do not remember what commonplace I stammered.

Little did I care for M. Charnot’s overshoes or the honor of Bourges at
that moment! On the other side of the wall, a few feet off, I felt the
presence of M. Mouillard. I reflected that I should have to open the
door and launch the Academician, without preface, into the presence
of the lawyer, stake my life’s happiness, perhaps, on my uncle’s first
impressions, play at any rate the decisive move in the game which had
been so disastrously opened.

Jeanne, though she did her best to hide it, was extremely nervous. I
felt her hand tremble in mine as I took it.

“Trust in God!” she whispered, and aloud: “Open the door.”

I turned the key in the lock. I had arranged that Madeleine should go at
once to M. Mouillard and tell him that there were some strangers waiting
in the garden. But either she was not on the lookout, or she did not at
once perceive us, and we had to wait a few minutes at the bottom of the
lawn before any one came.

I hid myself behind the trees whose leafage concealed the wall.

M. Charnot was evidently pleased with the view before him, and turned
from side to side, gently smacking his lips like an epicure. And, in
truth, my uncle’s garden was perfection; the leaves, washed by the
rain, were glistening in the fulness of their verdure, great drops were
falling from the trees with a silvery tinkle, the petunias in the beds
were opening all their petals and wrapping us in their scent; the
birds, who had been mute while the shower lasted, were now fluttering,
twittering, and singing beneath the branches. I was like one bewitched,
and thought these very birds were discussing us. The greenfinch said:

“Old Mouillard, look! Here’s Princess Goldenlocks at your garden gate.”

The tomtit said:

“Look out, old man, or she’ll outwit you.”

The blackbird said:

“I have heard of her from my grandfather, who lived in the Champs
Elysees. She was much admired there.”

The swallow said:

“Jeanne will have your heart in the time it takes me to fly round the
lawn.”

The rook, who was a bit of a lawyer, came swooping down from the
cathedral tower, crying:

“Caw, caw, caw! Let her show cause--cause!”

And all took up the chorus:

“If you had our eyes, Monsieur Mouillard, you would see her looking at
your study; if you had our ears, you would hear her sigh; if you had our
wings, you would fly to Jeanne.”

No doubt it was this unwonted concert which attracted Madeleine’s
attention. We saw her making her way, stiffly and slowly, toward the
study, which stood in the corner of the garden.

M. Mouillard’s tall figure appeared on the threshold, filling up the
entire doorway.

“In the garden, did you say? Whatever is your idea in showing clients
into the garden? Why did you let them in?”

“I didn’t let them in; they came in of themselves.”

“Then the door can’t have been shut. Nothing is shut here. I’ll have
them coming in next by the drawing-room chimney. What sort of people are
they?”

“There’s a gentleman and a young lady whom I don’t know.”

“A young lady whom you don’t know--a judicial separation, I’ll
warrant--it’s indecent, upon my word it is. To think that there are
people who come to me about judicial separations and bring their young
ladies with them!”

As Madeleine fled before the storm and found shelter in her kitchen,
my uncle smoothed back his white hair with both his hands--a surviving
touch of personal vanity--and started down the walk around the
grass-plot.

I effaced myself behind the trees. M. Charnot, thinking I was just
behind him, stepped forward with airy freedom.

My uncle came down the path with a distracted air, like a man
overwhelmed with business, only too pleased to snatch a moment’s leisure
between the parting and the coming client. He always loved to pass for
being overwhelmed with work.

On his way he flipped a rosebud covered with blight, kicked off a snail
which was crawling on the path; then, halfway down the path, he suddenly
raised his head and gave a look at his disturber.

His bent brows grew smooth, his eyes round with the stress of surprise.

“Is it possible? Monsieur Charnot of the Institute!”

“The same, Monsieur Mouillard.”

“And this is Mademoiselle Jeanne?”

“Just so; she has come with me to repay your kind visit.”

“Really, that’s too good of you, much too good, to come such a way to
see me!”

“On the contrary, the most natural thing in the world, considering what
the young people are about.”

“Oh! is your daughter about to be married?”

“Certainly, that’s the idea,” said M. Charnot, with a laugh.

“I congratulate you, Mademoiselle!”

“I have brought her here to introduce her to you, Monsieur Mouillard, as
is only right.”

“Right! Excuse me, no.”

“Indeed it is.”

“Excuse me, sir. Politeness is all very well in its way, but frankness
is better. I went to Paris chiefly to get certain information which you
were good enough to give me. But, really, it was not worth your while to
come from Paris to Bourges to thank me, and to bring your daughter too.”

“Excuse me in my turn! There are limits to modesty, Monsieur Mouillard,
and as my daughter is to marry your nephew, and as my daughter was in
Bourges, it was only natural that I should introduce her to you.”

“Monsieur, I have no longer a nephew.”

“He is here.”

“And I never asked for your daughter.”

“No, but you have received your nephew beneath your roof, and
consequently--”

“Never!”

“Monsieur Fabien has been in your house since yesterday; he told you we
were coming.”

“No, I have not seen him; I never should have received him! I tell you I
no longer have a nephew! I am a broken man, a--a--a--”

His speech failed him, his face became purple, he staggered and
fell heavily, first in a sitting posture, then on his back, and lay
motionless on the sanded path.

I rushed to the rescue.

When I got up to him Jeanne had already returned from the little
fountain with her handkerchief dripping, and was bathing his temples
with fresh water. She was the only one who kept her wits about her.
Madeleine had raised her master’s head and was wailing aloud.

“Alas!” she said, “it’s that dreadful colic he had ten years ago which
has got him again. Dear heart! how ill he was! I remember how it came
on, just like this, in the garden.”

I interrupted her lamentations by saying:

“Monsieur Charnot, I think we had better take Monsieur Mouillard up to
bed.”

“Then why don’t you do it?” shouted the numismatist, who had completely
lost his temper. “I didn’t come here to act at an ambulance; but, since
I must, do you take his head.”

I took his head, Madeleine walked in front, Jeanne behind. My uncle’s
vast proportions swayed between M. Charnot and myself. M. Charnot, who
had skilfully gathered up the legs, looked like a hired pallbearer.

As we met with some difficulty in getting upstairs, M. Charnot said,
with clenched teeth:

“You’ve managed this trip nicely, Monsieur Fabien; I congratulate you
sincerely!”

I saw that he intended to treat me to several variations on this theme.

But there was no time for talk. A moment later my uncle was laid, still
unconscious, upon his bed, and Jeanne and Madeleine were preparing a
mustard-plaster together, in perfect harmony. M. Charnot and I waited
in silence for the doctor whom we had sent the office-boy to fetch.
M. Charnot studied alternately my deceased aunt’s wreath of
orange-blossoms, preserved under a glass in the centre of the
chimney-piece, and a painting of fruit and flowers for which it would
have been hard to find a buyer at an auction. Our wait for the doctor
lasted ten long minutes. We were very anxious, for M. Mouillard showed
no sign of returning consciousness. Gradually, however, the remedies
began to act upon him. The eyelids fluttered feebly; and just as the
doctor opened the door, my uncle opened his eyes.

We rushed to his bedside.

“My old friend,” said the doctor, “you have had plenty of people to look
after you. Let me feel your pulse--rather weak; your tongue? Say a word
or two.”

“A shock--rather sudden--” said my uncle.

The doctor, following the direction of the invalid’s eyes, which were
fixed on Jeanne, upright at the foot of the bed, bowed to the young
girl, whom he had not at first noticed; turned to me, who blushed like
an idiot; then looked again at my uncle, only to see two big tears
running down his cheeks.

“Yes, I understand; a pretty stiff shock, eh? At our age we should only
be stirred by our recollections, emotions of bygone days, something
we’re used to; but our children take care to provide us with fresh ones,
eh?”

M. Mouillard’s breast heaved.

“Come, my dear fellow,” proceeded the doctor; “I give you leave to give
your future niece one kiss, and that in my presence, that I may be quite
sure you don’t abuse the license. After that you must be left quite
alone; no more excitement, perfect rest.”

Jeanne came forward and raised the invalid’s head.

“Will you give me a kiss, uncle?”

She offered him her rosy cheek.

“With all my heart,” said my uncle as he kissed her; “good girl--dear
girl.”

Then he melted into tears, and hid his face in his pillow.

“And now we must be left alone,” said the doctor.

He came down himself in a moment, and gave us an encouraging account of
the patient.

Hardly had the street door closed behind him when we heard the lawyer’s
powerful voice thundering down the stairs.

“Charnot!”

The old numismatist flew up the flight of stairs.

“Did you call me, Monsieur?”

“Yes, to invite you to dinner. I couldn’t say the words just now, but it
was in my mind.”

“It is very kind of you, but we leave at nine o’clock.”

“I dine at seven; that’s plenty of time.”

“It will tire you too much.”

“Tire me? Why, don’t you think I dine everyday?”

“I promise to come and inquire after you before leaving.”

“I can tell you at once that I am all right again. No, no, it shall
never be said that you came all the way from Paris to Bourges only to
see me faint. I count upon you and Mademoiselle Jeanne.”

“On all three of us?”

“That makes three, with me; yes, sir.”

“Excuse me, four.”

“I hope the fourth will have the sense to go and dine elsewhere.”

“Come, come, Monsieur Mouillard; your nephew, your ward--”

“I ceased to be his guardian four years ago, and his uncle three weeks
ago.”

“He longs to put an end to this ill feeling--”

“Allow me to rest a little,” said M. Mouillard, “in order that I may be
in a better condition to receive my guests.”

He lay down again, and showed clearly his intention of saying not
another word on the subject.

During the conversation between M. Charnot and my uncle, to which we had
listened from the foot of the staircase, Jeanne, who had a moment before
been rejoicing over the completeness of the victory which she thought
she had achieved, grew quite downhearted.

“I thought he had forgiven you when he kissed me,” she said. “What can
we do now? Can’t you help us, Madeleine?”

Madeleine, whose heart was beginning to warm to Jeanne, sought vainly
for an expedient, and shook her head.

“Ought he to go and see his uncle?” asked Jeanne.

“No,” said Madeleine.

“Well, suppose you write to him, Fabien?”

Madeleine nodded approval, and drew from the depths of her cupboard a
little glass inkstand, a rusty penholder, and a sheet of paper, at the
top of which was a dove with a twig in its beak.

“My cousin at Romorantin died just before last New Year’s Day,” she
explained; “so I had one sheet more than I needed.”

I sat down at the kitchen table with Jeanne leaning over me, reading
as I wrote. Madeleine stood upright and attentive beside the clock,
forgetting all about her kitchen fire as she watched us with her black
eyes.

This is what I wrote beneath the dove:

   “MY DEAR UNCLE:

   “I left Paris with the intention of putting an end to the
   misunderstanding between us, which has lasted only too long, and
   which has given me more pain than you can guess. I had no possible
   opportunity of speaking to you between five o’clock yesterday
   afternoon, when I arrived here, and ten o’clock this morning. If I
   had been able to speak with you, you would not have refused to
   restore me to your affection, which, I confess, I ought to have
   respected more than I have. You would have given your consent to
   my, union, on which depends your own happiness, my dear uncle, and
   that of your nephew,

                    “FABIEN.”

“Rather too formal,” said Jeanne. “Now, let me try.”

And the enchantress added, with ready pen:

“It is I, Monsieur Mouillard, who am chiefly in need of forgiveness.
Mine is the greater fault by far. You forbade Monsieur Fabien to love
me, and I took no steps to prevent his doing so. Even yesterday, when
he came to your house, it was my doing. I had assured him that your kind
heart would not be proof against his loving confession.

“Was I really wrong in that?

“The words that you spoke just now have led me to hope that I was not.

“But if I was wrong, visit your anger on me alone. Forgive your nephew,
invite him to dinner instead of us, and let me depart, regretting only
that I was not judged worthy of calling you uncle, which would have been
so pleasant and easy a name to speak.

                       “JEANNE.”

I read the two letters over aloud. Madeleine broke into sobs as she
listened.

A smile flickered about the corners of Jeanne’s mouth.

We left the house, committing to Madeleine the task of choosing a
favorable moment to hand M. Mouillard our joint entreaty.

And here I may as well confess that from the instant we got out of the
house, all through breakfast at the hotel, and for a quarter of an hour
after it, M. Charnot treated me, in his best style, to the very hottest
“talking-to” that I had experienced since my earliest youth. He ended
with these words: “If you have not made your peace with your uncle by
nine o’clock this evening, Monsieur, I withdraw my consent, and we shall
return to Paris.”

I strove in vain to shake his decision. Jeanne made a little face at me,
which warned me I was on the wrong track.

“Very well,” I said to her, “I leave the matter in your hands.”

“And I leave it in the hands of God,” she answered. “Be a man. If
trouble awaits us, hope will at any rate steal us a happy hour or two.”

We were just then in front of the gardens of the Archbishop’s palace, so
M. Charnot walked in. The current of his reflections was soon changed
by the freshness of the air, the groups of children playing around their
mothers--whom he studied ethnologically and with reference to the
racial divisions of ancient Gaul--by the beauty of the landscape--its
foreground of flowers, the Place St. Michel beyond, and further yet,
above the barrack-roofs, the line of poplars lining the Auron. He ceased
to be a father-in-law, and became a tourist again.

Jeanne stepped with airy grace among the groups of strollers, and the
murmurs which followed her path, though often envious, sounded none the
less sweetly in my ears for that. I hoped to meet Mademoiselle Lorinet.

After we had seen the gardens, we had to visit the Place Seraucourt, the
Cours Chanzy, the cathedral, Saint-Pierrele-Guillard, and the house of
Jacques-Coeur. It was six o’clock by the time we got back to the Hotel
de France.

A letter was waiting for us in the small and badly furnished
entrance--hall. It was addressed to Mademoiselle Jeanne Charnot.

I recognized at once the ornate hand of M. Mouillard, and grew as white
as the envelope.

M. Charnot cried, excitedly:

“Read it, Jeanne. Read it, can’t you!”

Jeanne alone of us three kept a brave face.

She read:

   “MY DEAR CHILD:

   “I treated you perhaps with undue familiarity this morning, at a
   moment when I was not quite myself. Nevertheless, now that I have
   regained my senses, I do not withdraw the expressions of which I
   made use--I love you with all my heart; you are a dear girl.

   “You will not get an old stager like me to give up his prejudices
   against the capital. Let it suffice that I have surrendered to a
   Parisienne. My niece, I forgive him for your sake.

   “Come this evening, all three of you.

   “I have several things to tell you, and several questions to ask
   you. My news is not all good. But I trust that all regrets will be
   overwhelmed in the gladness you will bring to my old heart.

                       “BRUTUS MOUILLARD.”

When we rang at M. Mouillard’s door, it was opened to us by Baptiste,
the office-boy, who waits at table on grand occasions.

My uncle received us in the large drawing-room, in full dress, with his
whitest cravat and his most camphorous frock-coat: “not a moth in ten
years,” is Madeleine’s boast concerning this garment.

He saluted us all solemnly, without his usual effusiveness; bearing
himself with simple and touching dignity. Strong emotion, which excites
most natures, only served to restrain his. He said not a word of the
past, nor of our marriage. This, the decisive engagement, opened with
polite formalities.

I have often noticed this phenomenon; people meeting to “have it out”
 usually begin by saying nothing at all.

M. Mouillard offered his arm to Jeanne, to escort her to the
dining-room. Jeanne was in high spirits. She asked him question after
question about Bourges, its dances, fashions, manufactures, even about
the procedure of its courts.

“I am sure you know that well, uncle,” she said.

“Uncle” smiled at each question, his face illumined with a glow like
that upon a chimney-piece when someone is blowing the fire. He answered
her questions, but presently fell into a state of dejection, which even
his desire to do honor to his guests could not entirely conceal. His
thoughts betrayed themselves in the looks he kept casting upon me, no
longer of anger, but of suffering, almost pleading, affection.

M. Charnot, who was rather tired, and also absorbed in Madeleine’s feats
of cookery, cast disjointed remarks and ejaculations into the gaps in
the conversation.

I knew my uncle well enough to feel sure that the end of the dinner
would be quite unlike the beginning.

I was right. During dessert, just as the Academician was singing the
praises of a native delicacy, ‘la forestine’, my uncle, who had been
revolving a few drops of some notable growth of Medoc in his glass for
the last minute or two, stopped suddenly, and put down his glass on the
table.

“My dear Monsieur Charnot,” said he, “I have a painful confession to
make to you.”

“Eh? What? My dear friend, if it’s painful to you, don’t make it.”

“Fabien,” my uncle went on, “has behaved badly to me on certain
occasions. But I say no more of it. His faults are forgotten. But I have
not behaved to him altogether as I should.”

“You, uncle?”

“Alas! It is so, my dear child. My practice, the family practice, which
I faithfully promised your father to keep for you--”

“You have sold it?”

My uncle buried his face in his hands.

“Last night, my poor child, only last night!”

“I thought so.”

“I was weak I listened to the prompting of anger; I have compromised
your future. Fabien, forgive me in your turn.”

He rose from the table, and came and put a trembling hand on my
shoulder.

“No, uncle, you’ve not compromised anything, and I’ve nothing to forgive
you.”

“You wouldn’t take the practice if I could still offer it to you?”

“No, uncle.”

“Upon your word?”

“Upon my word!”

M. Mouillard drew himself up, beaming:

“Ah! Thank you for that speech, Fabien; you have relieved me of a great
weight.”

With one corner of his napkin he wiped away two tears, which, having
arisen in time of war, continued to flow in time of peace.

“If Mademoiselle Jeanne, in addition to all her other perfections,
brings you fortune, Fabien, if your future is assured--”

“My dear Monsieur Mouillard,” broke in the Academician with
ill-concealed satisfaction. “My colleagues call me rich. They slander
me. Works on numismatics do not make a man rich. Monsieur Fabien, who
made some investigations into the subject, can prove it to you. No; I
possess no more than an honorable competence, which does not give me
everything, but lets me lack nothing.”

“Aurea mediocritas,” exclaimed my uncle, delighted with his quotation.
“Oh, that Horace! What a fellow he was!”

“He was indeed. Well, as I was saying, our daily bread is assured; but
that’s no reason why my son-in-law should vegetate in idleness which I
do not consider my due, even at my age.”

“Quite right.”

“So he must work.”

“But what is he to work at?”

“There are other professions besides the law, Monsieur Mouillard. I
have studied Fabien. His temperament is somewhat wayward. With special
training he might have become an artist. Lacking that early moulding
into shape, he never will be anything more than a dreamer.”

“I should not have expressed it so well, but I have often thought the
same.”

“With a temperament like your nephew’s,” continued M. Charnot, “the best
he can do is to enter upon a career in which the ideal has some part;
not a predominant, but a sufficient part, something between prose and
poetry.”

“Let him be a notary, then.”

“No, that’s wholly prose; he shall be a librarian.”

“A librarian?”

“Yes, Monsieur Mouillard; there are a few little libraries in Paris,
which are as quiet as groves, and in which places are to be got that are
as snug as nests. I have some influence in official circles, and that
can do no harm, you know.”

“Quite so.”

“We will put our Fabien into one of those nests, where he will be
protected against idleness by the little he will do, and against
revolutions by the little he will be. It’s a charming profession; the
very smell of books is improving; merely by breathing it you live an
intellectual life.”

“An intellectual life!” exclaimed my uncle with enthusiasm. “Yes, an
intellectual life!”

“And cataloguing books, Monsieur Mouillard, looking through them,
preserving them as far as possible from worms and readers. Don’t you
think that’s an enviable lot?”

“Yes, more so than mine has been, or my successor’s will be.”

“By the way, uncle, you haven’t told us who your successor is to be.”

“Haven’t I, really? Why, you know him; it’s your friend Larive.”

“Oh! That explains a great deal.”

“He is a young man who takes life seriously.”

“Very seriously, uncle. Isn’t he about to be married?”

“Why, yes; to a rich wife.”

“To whom?”

“My dear boy, he is picking up all your leavings; he is going to marry
Mademoiselle Lorinet.”

“He was always enterprising! But, uncle, it wasn’t with him you were
engaged yesterday evening?”

“Why not, pray?”

“You told Madeleine to admit a gentleman with a decoration.”

“He has one.”

“Good heavens! What is it?”

“The Nicham Iftikar, if it please you.”

   [A Tunisian order, which can be obtained for a very moderate sum.]

“It doesn’t displease me, uncle, and surprises me still less. Larive
will die with his breast more thickly plastered with decorations than
an Odd Fellow’s; he will be a member of all the learned societies in the
department, respected and respectable, the more thoroughly provincial
for having been outrageously Parisian. Mothers will confide their
anxieties to him, and fathers their interests; but when his old
acquaintances pass this way they will take the liberty of smiling in his
face.”

“What, jealous? Are you jealous of his bit of ribbon?”

“No, uncle, I regret nothing; not even Larive’s good fortune.”

M. Mouillard fixed his eyes on the cloth, and began again, after a
moment’s silence:

“I, Fabien, do regret some things. It will be mournful at times, growing
old alone here. Yet, after all, it will be some consolation to me to
think that you others are satisfied with life, to welcome you here for
your holidays.”

“You can do better than that,” said M. Charnot. “Come and grow old
among us. Your years will be the lighter to bear, Monsieur Mouillard.
Doubtless we must always bear them, and they weigh upon us and bend our
backs. But youth, which carries its own burden so lightly, can always
give us a little help in bearing ours.”

I looked to hear my uncle break out with loud objections.

“It is a fine night,” he said, simply; “let us go into the garden, and
do you decide whether I can leave roses like mine.”

M. Mouillard took us into the garden, pleased with himself, with me,
with Jeanne, with everybody, and with the weather.

It was too dark to see the roses, but we could smell them as we passed.
I had taken Jeanne’s arm in mine, and we went on in front, in the cool
dusk, choosing all the little winding paths.

The birds were all asleep. But the grasshoppers, crickets, and all
manner of creeping things hidden in the grass, or in the moss on the
trees, were singing and chattering in their stead.

Behind us, at some distance--in fact, as far off as we could manage--the
gravel crackled beneath the equal tread of the two elders, and in a
murmur we could catch occasional scraps of sentences:

“A granddaughter like Jeanne, Monsieur Charnot....”

“A grandson like Fabien, Monsieur Mouillard....”




CHAPTER XX. A HAPPY FAMILY

                    PARIS, September 18th.

We are married. We are just back from the church. We have said good-by
to all our friends, not without a quick touch or two of sadness, as
quickly swallowed up in the joy which for the first time in the history
of my heart is surging there at full tide, and widening to a limitless
horizon. In the two hours I have to spare before starting for Italy, I
am writing the last words in this brown diary, which I do not intend to
take with me.

Jeanne, my own Jeanne, is leaning upon me and reading over my shoulder,
which distracts the flow of my recollections.

There were crowds at the church. The papers had put us down among the
fashionable marriages of the week. The Institute, the army, men of
letters, public officials, had come out of respect for M. Charnot;
lawyers of Bourges and Paris had come out of respect for my uncle. But
the happiest, the most radiant, next to ourselves, were the people
who came only for Jeanne’s sake and mine; Sylvestre Lampron,
painter-in-ordinary to Mademoiselle Charnot, bringing his pretty sketch
as a wedding-present; M. Flamaran and Sidonie; Jupille, who wept as he
used to “thirty years ago;” and M. and Madame Plumet, who took it in
turns to carry their white-robed infant.

Jeanne and I certainly shook hands with a good many persons, but not
with nearly as many as M. Mouillard. Clean-shaven, his cravat tied with
exquisite care, he spun round in the crowd like a top, always dragging
with him some one who was to introduce him to some one else. “One should
make acquaintances immediately on arrival,” he kept saying.

Yes, Uncle Mouillard has just arrived in Paris; he has settled down near
us on the Quai Malaquais, in a pretty set of rooms which Jeanne chose
for him. He thinks them perfect because she thought they would do. The
tastes and interests of old student days have suddenly reawakened within
him, and will not be put to sleep again. He already knows the omnibus
and tramway lines better than I; he talks of Bourges as if it were
twenty years since he left it: “When I used to live in the country,
Fabien--”

My father-in-law has found in him a whole-hearted admirer, perhaps even
a future pupil in numismatics. Their friendship makes me think of that--

   [“You don’t mind, Jeanne?”

   “Of course not, my dear; the brown diary is for our two selves
   alone.” J.]
--of that of the town mouse and the country mouse. Just now, on their
way back to the house, they had a conversation, by turns pathetic and
jovial, in which their different temperaments met in the same feeling,
but at opposite ends of the scale of its shades.

I caught this fragment of their talk:

“My dear Charnot, can you guess what I’m thinking about?”

“No, I haven’t the least idea.”

“I think it is very queer.”

“What is queer?”

“To see a librarian begin his career with a blot of ink. For you can not
deny that Fabien’s marriage and situation, and my return to the capital,
are all due to that. It must have been sympathetic ink--eh?”

“‘Felix culpa’, as you say, Monsieur Mouillard. There are some blunders
that are lucky; but you can’t tell which they are, and that’s never any
excuse for committing them.”

I could hardly get hold of Lampron for a moment in the crowd he so
dislikes. He was more uncouth and more devoted than ever.

“Well, are you happy?” he said.

“Quite.”

“When you’re less happy, come and see me.”

“We shall always be just as happy as we are now,” said Jeanne.

And I think she is right.

Lampron smiled.

“Yes, I am quite happy, Sylvestre, and I owe my happiness to you, to
her, and to others. I have done nothing myself to deserve happiness
beyond letting myself drift on the current of life. Whenever I tried to
row a stroke the boat nearly upset. Everything that others tried to do
for me succeeded. I can’t get over it. Just think of it yourself. I owed
my introduction to Jeanne to Monsieur Flamaran, who drove me to call on
her father; his friend; you courted her for me by painting her portrait;
Madame Plumet told her you had done so, and also removed the obstacle
in my path. I met her in Italy, thanks entirely to you; and you clinched
the proposal which had been begun by Flamaran. To crown all, the very
situation I desired has been obtained for me by my father-in-law. What
have I had to do? I have loved, sorrowed, and suffered, nothing more;
and now I tremble at the thought that I owe my happiness to every one I
know except myself.”

“Cease to tremble, my friend; don’t be surprised at it, and don’t alter
your system in the least. Your happiness is your due; what matter how
God chooses to grant it? Suppose it is an income for life paid to you
by your relatives, your friends, the world in general, and the natural
order of things? Well, draw your dividends, and don’t bother about where
they come from.”

Since Lampron said so, and he is a philosopher, I think I had better
follow his advice. If you don’t mind, Jeanne, I will cherish no ambition
beyond your love, and refrain from running after any increase in wealth
or reputation which might prove a decrease in happiness. If you agree,
Jeanne, we shall see little of society, and much of our friends; we
shall not open our windows wide enough for Love, who is winged, to fly
out of them. If such is your pleasure, Jeanne, you shall direct the
household of your own sweet will--I should say, of your sweet wisdom;
you shall be queen in all matters of domestic economy, you shall rule
our goings-out and our comings-in, our visits, our travels. I shall
leave you to guide me, as a child, along the joyous path in which I
follow your footsteps. I am looking up at Jeanne. She has not said “No.”


     ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:

     All that a name is to a street--its honor, its spouse
     Came not in single spies, but in battalions
     Distrust first impulse
     Felix culpa
     Happy men don’t need company
     Hard that one can not live one’s life over twice
     He always loved to pass for being overwhelmed with work
     I don’t call that fishing
     If trouble awaits us, hope will steal us a happy hour or two
     Lends--I should say gives
     Men forget sooner
     Natural only when alone, and talk well only to themselves
     Obstacles are the salt of all our joys
     One doesn’t offer apologies to a man in his wrath
     People meeting to “have it out” usually say nothing at first
     Silence, alas! is not the reproof of kings alone
     Skilful actor, who apes all the emotions while feeling none
     Sorrows shrink into insignificance as the horizon broadens
     Surprise goes for so much in what we admire
     The very smell of books is improving
     The looks of the young are always full of the future
     There are some blunders that are lucky; but you can’t tell
     To be your own guide doubles your pleasure
     You a law student, while our farmers are in want of hands
     You must always first get the tobacco to burn evenly
     You ask Life for certainties, as if she had any to give you






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