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Title: Numa Roumestan

Author: Alphonse Daudet

Translator: Charles de Kay

Release Date: January 15, 2023 [eBook #69808]

Language: English

Produced by: Henry Flower and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
             at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NUMA ROUMESTAN ***





[Illustration:

  _Copyright, 1898, by Little Brown & C^o._      _Goupil & C^o. Paris_
]




[Illustration: “‘_Qué, Valmajour! suppose you play something for the
pleasure of the pretty lady._’”

Drawn by ADRIEN MOREAU. Photogravured by GOUPIL & CO.

  NUMA ROUMESTAN. _Frontispiece._
]




  NUMA
  ROUMESTAN

  BY
  ALPHONSE DAUDET

  TRANSLATED BY
  CHARLES DE KAY

  [Illustration]

  BOSTON
  LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY
  PUBLISHERS




  _Copyright, 1899, 1900_,
  BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

  _All rights reserved._

  University Press:
  JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.




NUMA ROUMESTAN.




CHAPTER I.

TO THE ARENA!


That Sunday--it was a scorching hot Sunday in July at the time of the
yearly competitions for the department--there was a great open-air
festival held in the ancient amphitheatre of Aps in Provence. All the
town was there--the weavers from the New Road, the aristocrats of the
Calade quarter, and some people even came all the way from Beaucaire.

“Fifty thousand persons at the lowest estimate,” said the _Forum_ in
its account the next day; but then we must allow for Provençal puffing.

The truth was that an enormous crowd was crushed together upon the
sun-baked stone benches of the old amphitheatre, just as in the palmy
days of the Antonines, and it was evident that the meet of the Society
of Agriculture was far from being the main attraction to this overflow
of the folk. Something more than the Landes horse-races was needed,
or the prize-fights for men and “half men,” the athletic games of
“strangle the cat” and “jump the swineskin,” or the contests for
fifers and tabor-players, as old a story to the townspeople as the
ancient red stones of the Arena; something more was needed to keep this
multitude standing for two hours under that blinding, murderous sun,
upon those burning flags, breathing in an atmosphere of flame and dust
flavored with gunpowder, risking blindness, sunstroke, fevers and all
the other dangers and tortures attendant on what is called down there
in Provence an open-air festival.

The grand attraction of the annual competitions was Numa Roumestan.

Ah, well; the proverb “No man is a prophet” etc. is certainly true when
applied to painters and poets, whose fellow-countrymen in fact are
always the last to acknowledge their claims to superiority for whatever
is ideal and lacking in tangible results; but it does not apply to
statesmen, to political or industrial celebrities, those mighty
advertised fames whose currency consists of favors and influence, fames
that reflect their glory on city and townsmen in the form of benefits
of every sort and kind.

For the last ten years Numa, the great Numa, leader and Deputy
representing all the professions, has been the prophet of Provence;
for ten years the town of Aps has shown toward her illustrious son
the tender care and effusiveness of a mother, one of those mothers of
the South quick in her expressions, lively in her exclamations and
gesticulatory caresses.

When he comes each summer during the vacation of the Chamber of
Deputies, the ovation begins as soon as he appears at the station!
There are the Orpheons swelling out their embroidered banners as they
intone their heroic choral songs. The railway porters are in waiting,
seated on the steps until the ancient family coach which always comes
for the “leader” has made a few turns of its big wheels down the alley
of big plane-trees on the Avenue Berchère; then they take the horses
out and put themselves into the shafts and draw the great man with
their own hands, amid the shouts of the populace and the waving of
hats, as far as the Portal mansion, where he gets out. This enthusiasm
has so completely passed into the stage of tradition in the rites of
his arrival that the horses now stop of themselves, like a team in a
post-chaise, at the exact corner where they are accustomed to be taken
out by the porters; no amount of beating could induce them to go a step
farther.

From the first day the whole city has changed its appearance. Here is
no longer that melancholy palace of the prefect where long siestas are
lulled by the strident note of the locusts in the parched trees on
the Cours. Even in the hottest part of the day the esplanade is alive
and the streets are filled with hurrying people arrayed in solemn
black suits and hats of ceremony, all sharply defined in the brilliant
sunlight, the shadows of their epileptic gestures cut in black against
the white walls.

The carriages of the Bishop and the President shake the highroad; then
delegations arrive from the aristocratic Faubourg where Roumestan is
adored because of his royalist convictions; next deputations from the
women warpers march in bands the width of the street, their heads held
high under their Arlesian caps.

The inns overflow with the country people, farmers from the Camargue or
the Crau, whose unhitched wagons crowd the small squares and streets
as on a market day. In the evening the cafés crowded with people
remain open well on into the night, and the windows of the club of the
“Whites,” lighted up until an impossible hour, vibrate with the peals
of a voice that belongs to the popular god.

Not a prophet in his own country? ’Twas only necessary to look at the
Arena under the intense blue sky of that Sunday of July 1875, note the
indifference of the crowd to the games going on in the circus below,
and all the faces turned in the same direction, toward the municipal
platform, where Roumestan was seated surrounded by braided coats and
sunshades for festivals and gay dresses of many-colored silks. ’Twas
only necessary to listen to the talk and cries of ecstasy and the
simple words of admiration coming in loud voices from this good people
of Aps, some expressed in Provençal and some in a barbarous kind of
French well rubbed with garlic, but all uttered with an accent as
implacable as is the sun down there, an accent which cuts out and gives
its own to every syllable and will not so much as spare us the dot over
an “i.”

“_Diou! qu’es bèou!_ God! how beautiful he is!”

“He is a bit stouter than he was last year.”

“That makes him look all the more imposing.”

“Don’t push so! there is room for everybody!”

“Look at him, my son; there’s our Numa. When you are grown up you can
say that you have seen him, _qué!_”

“His Bourbon nose is all there! and not one of his teeth missing!”

“Not a single gray hair, either!”

“_Té_, I should say not! he is not so very old yet. He was born in
’32--the year that Louis Philippe pulled down the mission crosses,
_pecaïré!_”

“That scoundrel of a Philippe!”

“They scarcely show, those forty-three years of his.”

“Sure enough, they certainly don’t.... _Té!_ here, great star--”

And with a bold gesture a big girl with burning eyes throws a kiss
toward him from afar that resounds through the air like the cry of a
bird.

“Take care, Zette--suppose his wife should see you.”

“The one in blue, is that his wife?”

No, the lady in blue was his sister-in-law, Mlle. Hortense, a pretty
girl just out of the convent, but one, they say, who already straddled
a horse just as well as a dragoon. Mme. Roumestan was more dignified,
more thoroughbred in appearance, but she looked much haughtier.
These Parisian ladies think so much of themselves! And so, with the
picturesque impudence of their half-Latin language, the women,
standing and shading their eyes with their hands, proceeded in loud
voices deliberately to pick the two Parisians to pieces--their simple
little travelling hats, their close-fitting dresses worn without
jewelry, which were so great a contrast to the local toilettes, in
which gold chains and red and green skirts puffed out by enormous
bustles prevailed.

The men talked of the services rendered by Numa to the good cause, of
his letter to the Emperor, and his speeches for the White Flag. Oh, if
we had only a dozen men in the Chamber like him, Henry V would have
been on his throne long ago!

Intoxicated by this circumambient enthusiasm and wrought up by these
remarks, Numa could not remain quiet in one spot. He threw himself back
in his great arm-chair, his eyes shut, his expression ecstatic, and
swayed himself restlessly back and forth; then, rising, he strode up
and down the platform and leaned over toward the arena to breathe in as
it were all the light and cries, and then returned to his seat. Jovial
and unceremonious, his necktie loose, he knelt on his chair, his back
and his boot-soles turned to the crowd, and conversed with his Paris
ladies seated above and behind him, trying to inoculate them with his
own joy and satisfaction.

Mme. Roumestan was bored--that was evident from the expression of
abstracted indifference on her face, which though beautiful in lines
seemed cold and a little haughty when not enlivened by the light of
two gray eyes, two eyes like pearls, true Parisian eyes, and by the
dazzling effect of the smile on her slightly open mouth.

All this southern gayety, made up of turbulence and familiarity, and
this wordy race all on the outside and the surface, whose nature was
so much the opposite of her own, which was serious and self-contained,
grated on her perhaps unconsciously, because she saw in them multiplied
and vulgarized the same type as that of the man at whose side she had
lived ten years, whom she had learned to know to her cost. The glaring
hot blue sky, so excessively brilliant and vibrating with heat, was
also not to her liking. How could these people breathe? Where did they
find breath enough to shout so? She took it into her head to speak her
thought aloud, how delightful a nice gray misty sky of Paris would be,
and how a fresh spring shower would cool the pavements and make them
glisten!

“Oh, Rosalie, how can you talk so!”

Her husband and sister were quite indignant, especially her sister, a
tall young girl in the full bloom of youth and health, who, the better
to see everything, was making herself as tall as possible. It was her
first visit to Provence, and yet one might have thought that these
shouts and gestures beneath the burning Italian sky had stirred within
her some secret fibre, some dormant instinct, her southern origin,
in fact, which was revealed in the heavy eyebrows meeting over her
houri-like eyes, and her pale complexion, on which the fierce summer
sun left not one red mark.

“Do, please, Rosalie!” pleaded Roumestan, who was determined to
persuade his wife. “Get up and look at that. Did Paris ever show you
anything like that?”

In the vast theatre widening into an ellipse that made a great jag
in the blue sky, thousands of faces were packed together on the many
rows of benches rising in terraces; bright eyes made luminous points,
while bright colored and picturesque costumes spangled the whole mass
with butterfly tints. Thence, as from a huge caldron, rose a chorus
of joyous shouts, the ringing of voices and the blare of trumpets
volatilized, as it were, by the intense light of the sun. Hardly
audible on the lower stories, where dust, sand and human breath formed
a floating cloud, this din grew louder as it rose and became more
distinct and unveiled itself in the purer air. Above all rang out the
cry of the milk-roll venders, who bore from tier to tier their baskets
draped with white linen: “_Li pan ou la, li pan ou la!_” (Here’s your
milk bread, here’s your milk bread!) The sellers of drinking-water,
cleverly balancing their green glazed pitchers, made one thirsty just
to hear them cry: “_L’aigo es fresco! Quau voù beùre?_” (The water’s
fresh! Who will drink?)

Up on the highest brim of the amphitheatre, high up, groups of children
playing and running noisily added a crown of sharp calls to the mass of
noise below, much like a flock of martins soaring high above the other
birds.

And over all of it, how wonderful was the play of light and shadow, as
with the advance of day the sun turned slowly in the hollow of the vast
amphitheatre as it might on the disk of a sundial, driving the crowd
along, and grouping it in the zone of shade, leaving empty those parts
of the vast structure exposed to a terrible heat--broad stretches of
red flags fringed with dry grass where successive conflagrations have
left their mark in black.

At times a stone would detach itself in the topmost tier of the ancient
monument, and, rolling down from story to story, cause cries of terror
and much crowding among the people below, as if the whole edifice were
about to crumble; then on the tiers there was a movement like the
assault of a raging sea on the dunes, for with this exuberant race the
effect of a thing never has any relation to its cause, enlarged as it
is by dreams and perceptions that lack all sense of proportion.

Thus peopled and thus animated once more, the ancient ruin seemed to
live again, and no longer retain its appearance of a showplace for
tourists. Looking thereon, it gave one the sensation of a poem by
Pindar recited by a modern Greek, which means a dead language come
to life again, having lost its cold scholarly look. The clear sky,
the sun like silver turned to vapor, these Latin intonations still
preserved in the Provençal idiom, and here and there, particularly in
the cheap seats, the poses of the people in the opening of a vaulted
passage--motionless attitudes made antique and almost sculptural by the
vibration of the air, local types, profiles standing out like those on
ancient coins, with the short aquiline nose, broad shaven cheeks and
upturned chin that Numa showed; all this filled out the idea of a Roman
festival--even to the lowing of the cows from the Landes which echoed
through the vaults below--those vaults whence in olden days lions and
elephants were wont to issue to the combat. Thus, when the great black
hole of the _podium_, closed by a grating, stood open to the arena all
empty and yellow with sand, one almost expected to see wild beasts
spring out instead of the peaceful bucolic procession of men and of the
animals that had received prizes in the competitions.

At the moment it was the turn of the mules led along in harness,
sumptuously arrayed in rich Provençal trappings, carrying proudly their
slender little heads adorned with silver bells, rosettes, ribbons
and feathers, not in the least alarmed at the fierce cracking of
whips clear and sharply cut, swung serpent-like or in volleys by the
muleteers, each one standing up full length upon his beast. In the
crowd each village recognized its champions and named each one aloud:

“There’s Cavaillon! There’s Maussane!”

The long, richly-colored file rolled its slow length around the arena
to the sound of musical bells and jingling, glittering harness, and
stopped before the municipal platform and saluted Numa with a serenade
of whip-crackings and bells; then passed along on its circular course
under the leadership of a fine-looking horseman in white tights and
high top-boots, one of the gentlemen of the local club who had planned
the function and quite unconsciously had struck a false note in its
harmony, mixing provincialism with Provençal things and thus giving to
this curious local festival a vague flavor of a procession of riders
at Franconi’s circus. However, apart from a few country people, no
one paid much attention to him. No one had eyes for anything but the
grand stand, crowded just then with persons who wished to shake hands
with Numa--friends, clients, old college chums, who were proud of
their relations with the great man and wished all the world to see
them conversing with him and proposed to show themselves there on the
benches, well in sight.

Flood of visitors succeeded flood without a break. There were old
men and young men, country gentlemen dressed all in gray from their
gaiters to their little hats, managers of shops in their best clothes
creased from much lying away in presses, _ménagers_ or farmers from
the district of Aps in their round jackets, a pilot from Port St.
Louis twirling his big prisoner’s cap in his hands--all bearing their
“South” stamped upon their faces, whether covered to the eyes with
those purple-black beards which the Oriental pallor of their complexion
accentuates, or closely shaven after the ancient French fashion,
short-necked ruddy people sweating like terra cotta water coolers;
all of them with flaming black eyes sticking well out from the face,
gesticulating in a familiar way and calling each other “thee” and
“thou”!

And how Roumestan did receive them, without distinction of birth or
class or fortune, all with the same unquenchable effusiveness! It was:
“_Té_, Monsieur d’Espalion! and how are you, Marquis?” “_Hé bé!_ old
Cabantous, how goes the piloting?” “Delighted to see you, President
Bédarride!”

Then came shaking of hands, embraces, solid taps on the shoulder that
give double value to words spoken, which are always too cold for the
intense feeling of the Provençal. To be sure, the conversations were
of short duration. Their “leader” gave but a divided attention, and as
he chatted he waved how-d’ye-do with his hand to the new-comers. But
nobody resented this unceremonious way of dismissing people with a few
kind words: “Yes, yes, I won’t forget--send in your claim--I will take
it with me.”

There were promises of government tobacco shops and collectors’
offices; what they did not ask for he seemed to divine; he encouraged
timid ambitions and provoked them with kindly words:

“What, no medal yet, my old Cabantous, after you have saved twenty
lives? Send me your papers. They adore me at the Navy Department. We
must repair this injustice.”

His voice rang out warm and metallic, stamping and separating each
word. One would have said that each one was a gold piece rolling out
fresh from the mint. And every one went away delighted with this
shining coin, leaving the platform with the beaming look of the pupil
who has been awarded a prize. The most wonderful thing about this
devil of a man was his prodigious suppleness in assuming the air and
manner of the person to whom he was speaking, and perfectly naturally,
too, apparently in the most unconscious way in the world.

With President Bédarride he was unctuous, smooth in gestures, his mouth
fixed affectedly and his arm stretched forth in a magisterial fashion
as if he were tossing aside his lawyer’s toga before the judge’s seat.
When talking to Colonel Rochemaure he assumed a soldierly bearing, his
hat slapped on one side; while with Cabantous he thrust his hands into
his pockets, bowed his legs and rolled his shoulders as he walked, just
like an old sea-dog. From time to time, between two embraces as it
were, he turned to his Parisian guests, beaming and wiping his steaming
brow.

“But, my dear Numa!” cried Hortense in a low voice with her pretty
laugh, “where will you find all these tobacco shops you have been
promising them?”

Roumestan bent his large head with its crop of close curling hair
slightly thinned at the top and whispered: “They are promised, little
sister, not given.”

And, fancying a reproach in his wife’s silence, he added:

“Do not forget that we are in Provence, where we understand each
other’s language. All these good fellows understand what a promise is
worth. They don’t expect to get the shops any more positively than
I count on giving them. But they chatter about them--which amuses
them--and their imaginations are at work: why deprive them of that
pleasure? Besides, you must know that among us Southerners words have
only a relative meaning. It is merely putting things in their proper
focus.” The phrase seemed to please him, for he repeated several times
the final words, “in their proper focus--in their proper focus--”

“I like these people,” said Hortense, who really seemed to be amusing
herself immensely; but Rosalie was not to be convinced. “Still, words
do signify something,” she murmured very seriously, as if communing
with her own soul.

“My dear, it is a simple question of latitude.” Roumestan accompanied
his paradox with a jerk of the shoulder peculiar to him, like that of
a peddler putting up his pack. The great orator of the aristocracy
retained several personal tricks of this kind, of which he had never
been able to break himself--tricks that might have caused him in
another political party to seem a representative of the common folk;
but it was a proof of power and of singular originality in those
aristocratic heights where he sat enthroned between the Prince of
Anhalt and the Duc de la Rochetaillade. The Faubourg St. Germain went
wild over this shoulder-jerk coming from the broad stalwart back that
carried the hopes of the French monarchy.

If Mme. Roumestan had ever shared the illusions of the Faubourg she
did so no longer, judging from her look of disenchantment and the
little smile with which she listened to her husband’s words, a smile
paler with melancholy than with disdain. But he left them suddenly,
attracted by the sound of some peculiar music that came to them from
the arena below. The crowd in great excitement was on its feet shouting
“Valmajour! Valmajour!”

Having taken the musicians’ prize the day before, the famous Valmajour,
the greatest taborist of Provence, had come to honor Numa with his
finest airs. In truth he was a handsome youth, this same Valmajour, as
he stood in the centre of the arena, his coat of yellow wool hanging
from one shoulder and a scarlet belt standing out against the white
linen of his shirt. Suspended from his left arm he carried his long
light tabor by a strap and with his left hand held a small fife to
his lips, while with his right hand and his right leg held forward he
played on his tabor with a brave and gallant air. The fife, though but
small, filled the whole place like a chorus of locusts; appropriate
music in this limpid crystalline atmosphere in which all sounds
vibrate, while the deep notes of the tabor supported this peculiar
singing and its many variations.

The sound of the wild, sharp music brought back his childhood to
Numa more vividly than anything else that he had seen that day; he
saw himself a little Provence boy running about to country fairs,
dancing under the leafy shadow of the plane-trees, on village squares,
in the white dust of the highroads, or over the lavender flowers of
sun-parched hillsides. A delicious emotion passed through his eyes,
for, notwithstanding his forty years and the parching effects of
political life, he still retained a good portion of imagination, thanks
to the kindliness of nature, a surface-sensibility that is so deceptive
to those who do not know the true bottom of a man’s character.

And besides, Valmajour was not an everyday taborist, one of those
common minstrels who pick up music-hall catches and odds and ends of
music at country fairs, degrading their instrument by trying to cater
to modern taste. Son and grandson of taborists, he played only the
songs of his native land, songs crooned during night watches over
cradles by grandmothers; and these he did know; he never wearied of
them. After playing some of Saboly’s rhythmical Christmas carols
arranged as minuets and quadrilles, he started the “March of the
Kings,” to the tune of which, during the grand epoch, Turenne conquered
and burned the Palatinate. Along the benches where but a moment before
one heard the humming of popular airs like the swarming of bees, the
delighted crowd began keeping time with their arms and heads, following
the splendid rhythm which surged along through the grand silences of
the theatre like mistral, that mighty wind; silences only broken by
the mad twittering of swallows that flew about hither and thither in
the bluish green vault above, disquieted, and as it were crazy, as
if trying to discover what unseen bird it was that gave forth these
wonderfully high and sharp notes.

When Valmajour had finished, wild shouts of applause burst forth.
Hats and handkerchiefs flew into the air. Numa called the musician up
to the platform, and throwing his arms around his neck exclaimed: “You
have made me weep, my boy.” And he showed his big golden-brown eyes all
swimming in tears.

Very proud to find himself in such exalted company, among embroidered
coats and the mother-of-pearl handles of official swords, the musician
accepted these praises and embraces without any great embarrassment.
He was a good-looking fellow with a well shaped head, broad forehead,
beard and moustache of lustrous black against a swarthy skin, one of
those proud peasants from the valley of the Rhône who have none of the
artful humility of the peasants of central France.

Hortense had noticed at once how delicately formed were his hands under
their covering of sunburn. She examined the tabor with its ivory-tipped
drum-stick and was astonished at the lightness of the old instrument,
which had been in his family for two hundred years, and whose case
curiously carved in walnut wood, decked with light carvings, polished,
thin and sonorous, seemed to have grown pliable under the patina time
had lent it. They admired above all the little old fife, that simple
rustic flute with three stops only, such as the ancient taborists used,
to which Valmajour had returned out of respect for tradition and the
management of which he had conquered after infinite pains and patience.
Nothing more touching than to hear the little tale of his struggles and
victory in an odd sort of French.

“It come to me in the night,” he said, “as I listened me to the
nightingawles. Thought I in meself--look there, Valmajour, there’s a
little birrd o’ God whose throat alone is equal to all the trills. Now,
what he can do with one stop, can’t you accomplish with the three holes
in your little flute?”

He talked quietly, with a perfectly confident tone of voice, without a
suspicion of being ridiculous. No one indeed would have dared to smile
in the face of Numa’s enthusiasm, for he was throwing up his arms and
stamping so that he almost went through the platform. “How handsome he
is! What an artist!” And after him the Mayor and President Bédarride
and the General and M. Roumavage, the big brewer from Beaucaire,
vice-consul of Peru, tightly buttoned into a carnival costume all over
silver, echoed the sentiments of the leader, repeating in convinced
tones: “What a great artist!”

Hortense agreed with them, and in her usual impulsive manner expressed
her sentiments: “Oh, yes, a great artist indeed” while Mme. Roumestan
murmured “You will turn his head, poor fellow.”

But there seemed to be no fear of this for Valmajour, to judge by his
tranquil air; he was not even in the least excited on hearing Numa
suddenly exclaim:

“Come to Paris, my boy, your fortune is assured!”

“Oh, my sister never would let me go,” he explained with a quiet smile.

His mother was dead and he lived with his father and sister on a farm
that bore the family name some three leagues distant from Aps on the
Cordova mountain. Numa swore he would go to see him before he returned
to Paris; he would talk to his relations--he was sure to make it a go.

“And I will help you, Numa,” said a girlish voice behind him.

Valmajour bowed without speaking, turned on his heel and walked down
the broad carpet of the platform, his tabor under his arm, his head
held high and in his gait that light, swaying motion of the hips
common to the Provençal, a lover of dancing and rhythm. Down below his
comrades were waiting for him and shook him by the hand.

Suddenly a cry arose, “The farandole, the farandole,” a shout without
end doubled by the echoes of the stone passages and corridors from
which the shadows and freshness seemed to come which were now invading
the arena and ever diminishing the zone of sunlight. In a moment the
arena was crowded, crammed to suffocation with merry dancers, a regular
village crowd of girls in white neckscarfs and bright dresses, velvet
ribbons nodding on lace caps, and of men in braided blouses and colored
waistcoats.

At the signal from the tabor that mob fell into line and filed off in
bands, holding each other’s hands, their legs all eager for the steps.
A prolonged trill from the fife made the whole circus undulate, and
led by a man from Barbantane, a district famous for its dancers, the
farandole slowly began its march, unwinding its rings, executing its
figures almost on one spot, filling with its confused noise of rustling
garments and heavy breathing the huge vaulted passage of the outlet in
which, bit by bit, it was swallowed up.

Valmajour followed them with even steps, solemnly, managing his long
tabor with his knee, while he played louder and louder upon the fife,
as the closely packed crowd in the arena, already plunged in the bluish
gray of the twilight, unwound itself like a bobbin filled with silk and
gold thread.

“Look up there!” said Roumestan all of a sudden.

It was the head of the line of dancers pouring in through the arches
of the second tier, while the musician and the last line of dancers
were still stepping about in the arena. As it proceeded the farandole
took up in its folds everybody whom the rhythm forced to join in the
dance. What Provençal could have resisted the magic flute of Valmajour?
Upborne and shot forward by the rebounding undernote of the tabor, his
music seemed to be playing on every tier at the same time, passing the
gratings and the open donjons, overtopping the cries of the crowd.
So the farandole climbed higher and higher, and reached at last the
uppermost tier, where the sun was yet glowing with a tawny light.
The outlines of the long procession of dancers, bounding in their
solemn dance, etched themselves against the high panelled bays of the
upper tier in the hot vibration of that July afternoon, like a row of
fine silhouettes or a series of bas-reliefs in antique stone on the
sculptured pediment of some ruined temple.

Down below on the deserted platform--for people were beginning to leave
and the lower tiers were empty--Numa said to his wife as he wrapped a
lace shawl about her to protect her from the evening chill:

“Now, really, is it not beautiful?”

“Very beautiful,” answered the Parisian, moved this time to the depths
of her artistic nature.

And the great man of Aps seemed prouder of this simple word of
approbation than of all the noisy homage with which he had been
surfeited for the last two hours.




CHAPTER II.

THE SEAMY SIDE OF A GREAT MAN.


Numa Roumestan was twenty-two years old when he came to Paris to
complete the law studies which he had begun at Aix. At that time
he was a good enough kind of a fellow, light-hearted, boisterous,
full-blooded, with big, handsome, prominent eyes of a golden-brown
color and somewhat frog-like, and a heavy mop of naturally curling hair
which grew low on his forehead like a woollen cap without a visor.
There was not the shadow of an idea, not the ghost of an ambition
beneath that encroaching thatch of his. He was a typical Aix student,
a good billiard and card player, without a rival in his capacity for
drinking champagne and “going on the cat-hunt with torches” until three
o’clock in the morning through the wide streets of the old aristocratic
and Parliamentary town. But he was interested in absolutely nothing.
He never read a book nor even a newspaper, and was deep in the mire
of that provincial folly which shrugs its shoulders at everything and
hides its ignorance under a pretence of plain common-sense.

Arrived in Paris, the Quartier Latin woke him up a little, although
there was small reason for it. Like all his compatriots Numa installed
himself as soon as he arrived at the Café Malmus, a tall and noisy
barrack of a place with three stories of tall windows, as high as those
in a department shop, on the corner of the Rue Four Saint Germain.
It filled the street with the noise of billiard playing and the
vociferations of its clients, a regular horde of savages. The entire
South of France loomed and spread itself there; every shade of it!
Specimens of the southern French Gascon, the Provençal, the Bordeaux
man, the Toulousian and Marseilles man, samples of the Auvergnat
and Perigordian Southerner, him of Ariège, of the Ardèche and the
Pyrenees, all with names ending in “as,” “us” and “ac,” resounding,
sonorous and barbarous, such as Etcheverry, Terminarias, Bentaboulech,
Laboulbène--names that sounded as if hurled from the mouth of a
blunderbuss or exploded as from a powder mine, so fierce were the
ejaculations. And what shouts and wasted breath merely to call for a
cup of coffee; what resounding laughter, like the noise of a load of
stones shunted from a cart; what gigantic beards, too stiff, too black,
with a bluish tinge, beards that defied the razor, growing up into the
eyes and joining on to the eyebrows, sprouted in little tufts in the
broad equine nostrils and ears, but never able utterly to conceal the
youth and innocence of these good honest faces hidden beneath such
tropical growths.

When not at their lectures, which they attended conscientiously, these
students passed their entire time at Malmus’s, falling naturally into
groups according to their provinces or even their parishes, seated
around the same old tables handed down to them by tradition, which
might have retained the twang of their patois in the echoes of their
marble tops, just as the desks of school-rooms retain the initials
carved on them by school-boys.

Women in that company were few and far between, scarcely two or three
to a story, poor girls whom their lovers brought there in a shamefaced
way only to pass an evening beside them behind a glass of beer, looking
over the illustrated papers, silent and feeling very out of place
among these Southern youths who had been brought up to despise _lou
fémélan_--females. Mistresses? _Té!_ By Jove, they knew where to get
them whenever they wanted them for an hour or a night; but never for
long. Bullier’s ball and the “howlers” did not tempt them, nor the late
suppers of the _rôtisseuse_. They much preferred to stay at Malmus’s,
talk patois, and roll leisurely from the café to the schools and then
to the table d’hôte.

If they ever crossed the Seine it was to go to the Théâtre Français to
a performance of one of the old plays; for the Southerner always has
the classic thing in his blood. They would go in a crowd, talking and
laughing loudly in the street, though in reality feeling rather timid,
and then return silent and subdued, their eyes dazed by the dust of the
tragic scenes they had just witnessed, and with closed blinds and gas
turned low would have another game before they went to bed.

Sometimes, on the occasion of the graduation of one of their number,
an impromptu feed would make the whole house redolent of garlic stews
and mountain cheeses smelling strong and rotting nicely in their blue
paper wrappers. After his farewell dinner the new owner of a sheepskin
would take down from the rack the pipe that bore his initials and sally
forth to be notary or deputy in some far-away hole beyond the Loire,
there to talk to his friends in the provinces about Paris--Paris which
he thought he knew, but in which really he had never set his foot!

In this narrow local circle Numa readily assumed the eagle’s place.
To begin with, he shouted louder than the others, and then his music
was looked upon as a sign of superiority; at any rate there was some
originality in his very lively taste for music. Two or three times a
week he treated himself to a stall at the opera and when he came back
he overflowed with recitatives and arias, which he sang quite agreeably
in a pretty good throaty voice that rebelled against all cultivation.
When he strode into the Café Malmus in a theatrical manner, singing
some bit of Italian music as he passed the tables, peals of admiration
welcomed him: “Hello, old artist!” the boys would shout from every
gang. It was just like a club of ordinary citizens in this respect:
owing to his reputation as a musical artist all the women gave him
a warm look, but the men would use the term enviously and with a
suggestion of irony. This artistic fame did him good service later
when he came to power and entered public life. Even now the name of
Roumestan figures high on the list of all artistic commissions, plans
for popular operas, reforms in exhibitions of paintings proposed in
the Chamber of Deputies. All that was the result of evenings spent in
haunting the music-halls. He learned there self-confidence, the actor’s
pose, and a certain way of taking up a position three-quarters front
when talking to the lady at the cashier’s desk; then his wonder-struck
comrades would exclaim: “_Oh! de ce Numa, pas moins!_” (Oh, that Numa!
what a fellow he is!)

In his studies he had the same easy victory; he was lazy and hated
study and solitude, but he managed to pass his examination with no
little success through sheer audacity and Southern slyness, the slyness
which made him discover the weak spot in his professor’s vanity and
work it for all it was worth. Then his pleasant, frank expression and
his amiability were also in his favor, and it seemed as if a lucky star
lighted the pathway before him.

As soon as he obtained his lawyer’s diploma his parents sent for him
to return home, because the slender pocket money which he cost them
meant privations they could no longer bear. But the prospect of burying
himself alive in the old dead town of Aps crumbling to dust with its
ancient ruins, an existence composed of a humdrum round of visits and
nothing more exciting than a few lawsuits over a parcel of party-walls,
held out no inducements to that undefined ambition that the southern
youth vaguely felt underlying his love for the stir and intellectual
life of Paris.

With great difficulty he obtained an extension of two years more, in
which to complete his studies, and just as these two years had expired
and the irrevocable summons home had come, at the house of the Duchesse
de San Donnino he met Sagnier during a musical function to which he had
been asked on account of his pretty voice--Sagnier, the great Sagnier,
the Legitimist lawyer, brother of the duchess and a musical monomaniac.
Numa’s youthful enthusiasm appearing in the monotonous round of society
and his craze for Mozart’s music carried Sagnier off his feet. He
offered him the position of fourth secretary in his office. The salary
was merely nominal, but it was being admitted into the employment
of the greatest law office in Paris, having close relations with
the Faubourg Saint Germain and also with the Chamber of Deputies.
Unluckily old Roumestan insisted on cutting off his allowance, hoping
to force him to return when hunger stared him in the face. Was he not
twenty-six, a notary, and fit to earn his own bread? Then it was that
landlord Malmus came to the front.

A regular type was this Malmus; a large, pale-faced, asthmatic man,
who from being a mere waiter had become the proprietor of one of the
largest restaurants in Paris, partly by having credit, partly by usury.
It had been his custom in early days to advance money to the students
when they were in need of it, and then when their ships came in, allow
himself to be repaid threefold. He could hardly read and could not
write at all; his accounts were kept by means of notches cut in a
piece of wood, as he had seen the baker boys do in his native town
of Lyon; but he was so accurate that he never made a mistake in his
accounts, and, more than all, he never placed his money badly. Later,
when he had become rich and the proprietor of the house in which he
had been a servant for fifteen years, he established his business, and
placed it entirely upon a credit basis, an unlimited credit that left
the money-drawer empty at the close of the day but filled his queerly
kept books with endless lines of orders for food and drink jotted down
with those celebrated five-nibbed pens which are held in such sovereign
honor in the world of Paris trade.

And the honest fellow’s system was simplicity itself. A student kept
all his pocket money, all his allowance from home. All had full
credit for meals and drinks and favorites were even allowed a room in
his house. He did not ask for a penny during term time, letting the
interest mount up on very high sums. But he did not do this carelessly
or without circumspection. Malmus passed two months every year, his
vacation, in the provinces, making secret inquiry into the health and
wealth of the families of his debtors. His asthma was terrible as he
mounted the peaks of the Cévennes and descended the low ranges of
Languedoc. He was to be seen, gouty and mysterious, prowling about
among forgotten villages, with suspicious eyes lowering under the heavy
lids that are peculiar to waiters in all-night restaurants. He would
remain a few days in each place, interview the notary and the sheriff,
inspect secretly the farm or factory of his debtor’s father, and then
nothing was heard of him more.

What he learned at Aps gave him full confidence in Numa. The latter’s
father, formerly a weaver, had ruined himself with inventions and
speculations and lived now in modest circumstances as an insurance
agent, but his aunt, Mme. Portal, the childless widow of a rich town
councillor, would doubtless leave all her property to her nephew; so,
naturally, Malmus wished Numa to remain in Paris.

“Go into Sagnier’s office; I will help you.”

As a secretary of a man in Sagnier’s position he could not live in the
Quartier Latin, so Malmus furnished a set of bachelor chambers for
him on the Quai Voltaire, on the courts, paying the rent and giving
him his allowance on credit. Thus did the future leader face his
destiny, everything on the surface seemingly easy and comfortable,
but in reality in the direst need; lacking pin and pocket money. The
friendship of Sagnier helped him to fine acquaintances. The Faubourg
welcomed him. But this social success, the invitations in Paris and to
country houses in summer, where he had to arrive in perfect fashionable
outfit, only added to his expense. After repeated prayers his Aunt
Portal helped him a little, but with great caution and stinginess,
always accompanying her gifts with long flighty stupidities and
Bible denunciations against “that ruinous Paris.” The situation was
untenable.

At the end of a year he looked for other employment. Besides, Sagnier
required pioneers, regular navvies for hard work, and Roumestan was not
that sort of man. The Provençal’s indolence was ineradicable, and above
all things he had a loathing for office work or any hard and continuous
labor. The faculty of attention, which is nothing if not deep, was
absolutely wanting to this volatile Southerner. That was because his
imagination was too vivid, his ideas too jumbled-up beneath his dark
brows, his mind too fickle, as even his writing showed; it was never
twice the same. He was all on the surface, all voice, gestures, like a
tenor at the opera.

“When I am not speaking I cannot think,” he said naïvely, and it was
true. Words with him never rushed forth propelled by the force of his
thought; on the contrary, at the mechanical sound of his own words the
thoughts formed themselves in advance. He was astonished and amused at
chance meetings of words and ideas in his mind which had been lost in
some corner of his memory, thoughts which speech would discover, pick
up and marshal into arguments. Whilst he held forth he would suddenly
discover emotions of which he had been unconscious; the vibrations
of his own voice moved him to such a degree that there were certain
intonations which touched his heart and affected him to tears. These
were the qualities of an orator, to be sure, but he did not recognize
them, as his duties at Sagnier’s had hardly been such as to give him a
chance to practise them.

Nevertheless, the year spent with the great Legitimist lawyer had a
decisive effect upon his after life. He acquired convictions and a
political party, the taste for politics and a longing for fortune and
glory.

Glory came to him first.

A few months after he left his master, that title of “Secretary to
Sagnier,” which he clung to as an actor who has appeared once on the
boards of the Comédie Française forever calls himself “of the Comédie
Française,” was the means of getting him his first case, the defence of
a little Legitimist newspaper called “The Ferret,” much patronized in
the best society. His defence was cleverly and brilliantly made. Coming
into court without the slightest preparation, his hands in his pockets,
he talked for two hours with such an insolent “go” to him, and so much
good-natured sarcasm, that the judges were forced to listen to him to
the end. His dreadful southern accent, with its rolling “r’s,” which he
had always been too indolent to correct, seemed to make his irony only
bite the deeper. It had a power of its own, this eloquence with its
very Southern swing, theatrical and yet familiar, but above all lucid
and full of that broad light which is found in the works of people down
South, as in their landscapes, limpid to their remotest parts.

Of course the paper was non-suited; Numa’s success was paid for by
costs and imprisonment. So from the ashes of many a play that has
ruined manager and author one actor may snatch a reputation. Old
Sagnier, who had come to hear Numa plead, embraced his pupil before
the assembled crowd. “Count yourself from this day on a great man, my
dear Numa!” said he, and seemed surprised that he had hatched such a
falcon’s egg. But the most surprised man was Numa himself, as with the
echo of his own words still sounding in his ears he descended the broad
railless staircase of the Palais de Justice, quite stunned, as if in a
dream.

After this success and this ovation, after showers of eulogistic
letters and the jaundiced smiles of his brethren, the coming lawyer
naturally felt he was indeed launched upon a triumphal career. He sat
patiently waiting in his office looking out on the courtyard, before
his scanty little fire; but nothing came save a few more invitations to
dinner, and a pretty bronze from the foundry of Barbédienne, a donation
from the staff of _Le Furet_.

The new great man found himself still facing the same difficulties,
the same uncertain future. Oh! these professions called liberal, which
cannot decoy and entrap their clients, how hard are their beginnings,
before serious and paying customers come to sit in rows in their little
rooms furnished on credit with dilapidated furniture and the symbolical
clock on the chimney-piece flanked by tottering candelabra! Numa was
driven to giving lessons in law among his Catholic and Legitimist
acquaintances; but he considered work like this beneath the dignity
of the man whose name had been so covered with glory by the party
newspapers.

What mortified him most of all and made him feel his wretched plight
was to be obliged to go and dine at Malmus’s when he had no invitation
elsewhere, and no money for a dinner at a fashionable restaurant.
Nothing had changed at Malmus’s; the same cashier’s lady was enthroned
among the punch-bowls as of old; the same pottery stove rumbled away
near the old pipe-rack; the same shouts and accents, the same black
beards from every section of the South prevailed; but his generation
had passed, and he looked on the new generation with the disfavor which
a man at maturity, but without a position, feels for the youths who
make him seem old.

How could he have existed in so brainless a set? Surely the students of
his day could not have been such fools! Even their admiration, their
fawning round him like a lot of good-natured dogs, was insupportable to
him.

While he ate, Malmus, proud of his guest, came and sat on the little
red sofa which shook under his fits of asthma, and talked to him, while
at a table near by a tall, thin woman took her place, the only relic
of the old days left--a bony creature destitute of age known in the
quarter as “everyone’s old girl.” Some kind-hearted student now married
and settled far away had opened a credit for her at Malmus’s before
he went. Confined for so many years to this one pasture, the poor
creature knew nothing of what was going on in the outside world; she
had not even heard of Numa’s triumph, and spoke to him pityingly as to
one whom fortune had passed by, and in the same rank and category as
herself.

“Well, poor old chum, how are things a-getting on? You know Pompon is
married, and Laboulbène has passed his deputy at Caen.”

Roumestan hardly answered a word, hurried through his dinner and rushed
away through the streets, noisy with many beershops and fruit stalls,
feeling the bitterness of a life of failure and a general impression of
bankruptcy.

Several years passed thus, during which his name became better known
and more firmly established, but with little profit to himself, except
for an occasional gift of a copy of some statuette in Barbédienne
bronze. Then he was called upon to defend a manufacturer of Avignon,
who had made seditious silk handkerchiefs. There was some sort of a
deputation pictured on them standing about the Comte de Chambord, but
very confusedly done in the printing, only with great imprudence he had
allowed the initials “H. V.” (Henry Fifth) to be left, surrounded by a
coat of arms.

Here was Numa’s chance for a good bit of comedy. He thundered against
the stupidity that could see the slightest political allusion in that
H. V.! Why, that meant Horace Vernet--there he was, presiding over a
meeting of the French Institute!

This “tarasconade” had a great local success that did him more service
than any advertisement won in Paris could; above all, it gained him the
active approbation of his Aunt Portal. At first this was expressed
by presents of olive oil and white melons, followed by a lot of other
articles of food--figs, peppers, potted ducks from Aix, caviar from
Martigues, jujubes, elderberry jam and St. John’s-bread, a lot of
boyish goodies of which the old lady herself was very fond, but which
her nephew threw into a cupboard to spoil.

Shortly after arrived a letter, written with a quill in a large
handwriting, which displayed the brusque accents and absurd phrases
customary with his aunt, and betrayed her puzzle-headed mind by its
absolute freedom from punctuation and by the lively way in which she
jumped from one subject to the other.

Still, Numa was able to discover the fact that the good woman desired
to marry him off to the daughter of a Councillor in the Court of
Appeals in Paris, one M. Le Quesnoy, whose wife, a Mlle. Soustelle
from Aps, had gone to school with her at the Convent of la Calade--big
fortune--the girl handsome, good morals, somewhat cool and haughty--but
marriage would soon warm that up. And if the marriage took place, what
would his old Aunt Portal give her Numa? One hundred thousand francs in
good clinking tin--on the day of the wedding!

Under its provincialisms the letter contained a serious proposition, so
serious indeed that the next day but one Numa received an invitation to
dine with the Le Quesnoys. He accepted, though with some trepidation.

The Councillor, whom he had often seen at the Palais de Justice, was
one of those men who had always impressed him most. Tall, slender,
with a haughty face and a mortal paleness, sharp, searching eyes, a
thin-lipped, tightly-closed mouth--the old magistrate, who originally
came from Valenciennes, seemed like that town to be surrounded by an
impregnable wall and fortified by Vauban. His cool Northern manner
was most disconcerting to Numa. His high position, gained by his
exhaustive study of the Penal Code, his wealth and his spotless life
would have given him a yet higher position had it not been for the
independence of his views and a morose withdrawal from the world and
its gayeties ever since the death of his only son, a lad of twenty. All
these circumstances passed before Numa’s mental vision as he mounted
the broad stone steps with their carved hand-rail of the Le Quesnoy
residence, one of the oldest houses on the Place Royale.

The great drawing-room into which he was shown, with its lofty ceiling
reaching down to the doors to meet the delicate paintings of its piers,
the straight hangings with stripes in brown and gold-colored Chinese
silk framing the long windows that opened upon an antique balcony,
and also on one of the rose-colored corners of brick buildings on the
square--all this was not calculated to change his first impressions.

But the welcome given him by Mme. Le Quesnoy soon put him at his ease.

This fragile little woman with her sad sweet smile, wrapped in many
shawls and crippled by rheumatism, from which she had suffered ever
since she came to live in Paris, still preserved the accent and habits
of her dear South, and she loved anything that reminded her of it.
She invited Numa to sit down by her side, and looking affectionately
at him in the dim light, she murmured: “The very picture of Evelina!”
This pet name of his aunt, so long unheard by him, touched his quick
sensibility like an echo of his childhood. It appeared that Mme. Le
Quesnoy had long wished to know the nephew of her old friend, but her
house had been so mournful since her son’s death, and they had been so
entirely out of the world, that she had never sought him out. Now they
had decided to entertain a little, not because their sorrow was less
keen, but on account of their two daughters, the eldest of whom was
almost twenty years old; and turning toward the balcony whence they
could hear peals of girlish laughter, she called, “Rosalie, Hortense,
come in--here is Monsieur Roumestan!”

Ten years after that visit Numa remembered the calm and smiling picture
that appeared, framed by the long window in the tender light of the
sunset, of that beautiful young girl, and the absence of all affected
embarrassment as she came towards him, smoothing the bands of her hair
that her little sister’s play had ruffled--her clear eyes and direct
gaze.

He felt an instant confidence in and sympathy with her.

Once or twice during dinner, nevertheless, when he was in the full
flow of animated conversation he was conscious that a ripple as of
disdain passed over the clear-cut profile and pure complexion of the
face beside him--without question that “cool and haughty” air which
Aunt Portal had mentioned, and which Rosalie got through her striking
resemblance to her father. But the little grimace of her pretty mouth
and the cold blue of her look softened quickly to a kindly attention,
and she was again under the charm of a surprise she did not try to
conceal. Born and brought up in Paris, Rosalie had always felt a fixed
aversion to the South; its accent, its manners, even the country
itself as she saw it in the vacations she occasionally spent at
Aps--everything was antipathetic to her. It seemed to be an instinct of
race, and was the cause of many gentle disputes with her mother.

“Nothing would induce me to marry a Southerner,” Rosalie had laughingly
declared, and she arranged in her own mind a type--a coarse, noisy,
vacant fellow, combining an opera tenor and a drummer for Bordeaux
wines, but with a fine head and well-cut features. Roumestan came
pretty near to this clear-cut vision of the mocking little Parisian,
but his ardent musical speech, taking on that evening an irresistible
force by reason of the sympathy of those around him, inspired and
aroused him, seeming even to make his face more refined. After the
usual talk in low voices between neighbors at the table, those
_hors-d’œuvres_ of conversation that circulate with caviar and
anchovy, the Emperor’s hunting parties at Compiègne became the general
topic of conversation; those hunts in costume at which the invited
guests appeared as grandees and grand ladies of the Court of Louis
XV. Knowing M. Le Quesnoy to be a Liberal, Numa launched forth into a
magnificent diatribe, almost a prophetic one. He drew a picture of the
Court as a set of circus riders, women performers, grooms and jockeys
riding hard under a threatening sky, pursuing the stag to its death to
the accompaniment of lightning-flash and distant claps of thunder, and
then--in the midst of all this revelry--the deluge, the hunting horns
drowned, all this monarchical harlequinade ending in a morass of blood
and mire!

Perhaps this piece was not entirely impromptu; probably he had got
it off before at the committee meeting; but never before had his
brilliant speech and tone of candor in revolt roused anywhere such
enthusiasm and sympathy as he suddenly saw reflected in one sweet,
serious countenance, that he felt turning toward him, while the gentle
face of Mme. Le Quesnoy lit up with a ray of fun and seemed to ask her
daughter: “Well, how do you like my Southerner now?”

Rosalie was captivated. Deep in her inmost heart she bowed to the power
of that voice and to generous thoughts that accorded so well with all
her youthful enthusiasms, her passion for liberty and justice. As women
at a play will confound the singer with his song, the actor with his
_rôle_, so she forgot to make allowances for the artist’s imagination.
Oh, if she could but have known what an abyss of nothing lay below
these professional phrases, how little he troubled himself about the
hunting-parties at Compiègne! She did not know that he merely needed
an invitation with the imperial crest on it, and he would have joined
these self-same parties, in which his vanity, his tastes as actor and
pleasure-seeker, would have found complete satisfaction. But she was
under the charm. As he talked, it seemed to her the table grew larger,
the dull, sleepy faces of the few guests, a certain President of the
Chamber and an old physician, were transfigured; and when they returned
to the drawing-room, the chandelier, lighted for the first time since
her brother’s death, had almost the dazzling effect upon her of the sun
itself.

The sun was Roumestan.

He woke up the majestic old house, drove away mourning and the gloom
that was piled in all the corners, the particles of sadness that
accumulate in old dwellings; he seemed to make the facets of the
mirrors glisten and give new life to the delightful panel paintings on
the walls, which had been scarce visible for a hundred years.

“Are you fond of painting, Monsieur?”

“Fond of it, Mademoiselle? Oh, I should think so!”

The truth was that he knew absolutely nothing about it, but he had a
stock of words and phrases ready for use on that subject as on all
others, and while the servants were arranging the card tables he made
the paintings on the well-preserved Louis XIII walls the pretext for a
quiet talk very near to the young girl.

Of the two, Rosalie knew much the more about art. Having lived always
in an atmosphere of cultivation and good taste, the sight of a fine bit
of sculpture or a great painting thrilled her with a special vibratory
emotion which she felt rather than expressed, because of her reserved
character and because the false emotions in the world are apt to keep
down the real ones. At sight of them a superficial observer, however,
noting the eloquent assurance with which the lawyer talked and the
wide professional gestures he used, as well as the rapt attention of
Rosalie, might have taken him for some great master giving a lesson to
a pupil.

“Mamma, can we go into your room? I want to show Monsieur Roumestan the
hunting panel.”

At the whist table Mme. Le Quesnoy gave a quick inquiring glance at
him whom she always called, with a peculiar tone of renunciation
and humility in her voice, “Monsieur Le Quesnoy,” and, receiving an
affirmative nod from him which meant that the thing was in order, gave
the desired permission.

They crossed a passage lined with books and found themselves in the
old people’s chamber, an immense room as majestic and antique as the
drawing-room. The panel was above a small door beautifully carved.

“It is too dark to see it well,” said Rosalie.

As she spoke she held up a double candlestick she had taken from
a card table, and with her arm raised, her graceful figure in fine
relief, she threw the light upon the picture which showed Diana, the
crescent on her brow, among her huntress maidens in the landscape of a
pagan Paradise. But at this gesture of a Greek torch-bearer the light
from the double candles fell upon her own head with its simple coiffure
and sparkled in her clear eyes with their high-bred smile and on the
virginal curves of her slender yet stately bust. She seemed more of
a Diana than the pictured goddess herself. Roumestan looked at her;
carried away by her charm of youthful innocence and candid chastity,
he forgot who she was and what his purpose had been in coming, yes,
all his dreams of fortune and ambition! He felt an insane desire to
clasp this supple form in his arms, to shower kisses on her fine hair,
the delicate fragrance of which intoxicated him, to carry off this
enchanting being to be the safeguard and joy of his whole life; and
something told him that if he attempted it she would permit it, and
that she was his, his entirely, conquered, vanquished at the first
sight.

Fire and wind of the South, you are irresistible!




CHAPTER III.

THE SEAMY SIDE OF A GREAT MAN (_continued_).


If ever people were unsuited for life side by side it was these two.
Opposites by instinct, by education and temperament, thinking alike on
no one subject, they were the North and the South face to face without
the slightest chance of fusion. Love feeds on contrasts like this and
laughs when they are pointed out, so powerful does it feel itself. But
later, when everyday life sets in, during the monotony of days and
nights passed beneath the same roof, that mist which constitutes love
disappears; the veil is lifted; they begin to see each other, and, what
is worse, to judge each other!

It was some time before the awakening came to these young people; at
least with Rosalie the illusion lasted. Clear-sighted and clever on all
other subjects, for a long while she remained blind to Numa’s faults
and could not see how far in many ways she was his superior. It had not
taken him long to relapse into his old self again. Passion in the South
is short-lived because of its very violence. And then the Southerner is
so perfectly assured of the inferiority of women that, once married and
sure of his happiness, he installs himself like a bashaw in his home,
receiving love as homage due and not of much importance; for, after
all, it takes up a good deal of time to be loved, and Numa was much
preoccupied just then arranging the new life which his marriage, his
wealth and the high position in the law courts as son-in-law to M. Le
Quesnoy necessitated.

The one hundred thousand francs given him by Aunt Portal sufficed to
pay his debts to Malmus and the furnisher and to wipe out forever the
dreary record of his straitened bachelor days. It was a delightful
change from the humble _frichti_ (lunch) at Malmus’s on the old sofa
with its worn red velvet, in company of “every one’s old girl,” to the
dining-room in his new house in the Rue Scribe where, opposite his
dainty little Parisian wife, he presided over the sumptuous dinners
that he offered to the magnates of the law and of music.

The Provençal loved a life of eating, luxury and display, but he liked
it best in his own house, without any trouble or ceremony, where a
certain looseness was possible over a cigar and risky stories might be
told. Rosalie resigned herself to keeping open house, the table always
set, ten or fifteen guests every evening, and never anybody but men,
among whose black coats her evening dress made the only point of color.
There she stayed until with the serving of the coffee and the opening
of cigar boxes she would slip away, leaving them to their politics
and the coarse roars of laughter that accompany the close of bachelor
dinners.

Only the mistress of a house knows what domestic complications arise
when such constant and unusual services are required every day of the
servants. Rosalie struggled uncomplainingly with this problem and
tried to bring some order out of chaos, carried away as she was by the
whirlwind of her terrible genius of a husband, who did not spare her
the turbulence of his own nature, yet between two storms had a smile
of approbation for his little wife. Her only regret was that she never
had him enough to herself. Even at breakfast, that hasty morning’s
meal for a busy lawyer, there was always a guest between them, namely
that male comrade without whom the man of the South could not exist,
that inevitable some one to answer a bright remark and call forth a
flash from his own wits, the arm on which condescendingly to lean, some
henchman to catch his handkerchief as he sallied forth to the Palace of
Justice!

Ah, how she longed to accompany him across the Seine, how glad she
would have been to call for him on rainy days, wait, and bring him home
in her carriage, nestled up to him behind the windows blurred with
raindrops! She did not dare to suggest such things any more, so sure
was she of some excuse, an appointment in the Lawyers’ Hall with some
one of three hundred intimate friends of whom the Provençal would say
with deep emotion:

“He adores me! He would go through fire and water for me!”

That was his idea of friendship. But in other respects, no selection
whatever as to his friends! His easy good-nature and lively
capriciousness caused him to throw himself into the arms of each man
he met, but made him as easily drop him. Every week there was a new
craze for someone whose name came up incessantly, a name which Rosalie
wrote down conscientiously on the little menu card, but which presently
disappeared as suddenly as if the new favorite’s personality had been
as flimsy and as easily burned as the little colored card itself.

Among these birds of passage one alone remained stationary, more
from force of childish habit than from anything else, for Bompard
and Roumestan were born in the same street at Aps. Bompard was an
institution in the house, found there in a place of honor when the
bride came home. He was a cadaverous creature with Don Quixote’s head
and a big eagle’s nose and eyes like balls of agate set in a pitted,
saffron-colored complexion that looked like Cordova leather; it was
lined and seamed with the wrinkles one sees only in the faces of clowns
and jesters which are forced constantly into contortions.

Bompard had never been a comedian, however. Numa had found him again
in the chorus of the opera where he had sung for a short time. Beyond
this, it was impossible to say what was real in the shifting sands of
that career. He had been everywhere, seen everything and practised all
trades. No great man or great event could be mentioned without his
saying: “He is a friend of mine,” or “I was present at the time,” and
then would follow a long story to prove his assertion.

In piecing together these fragments of his history most astonishing
chronological conclusions were arrived at; thus, at the same date
Bompard led a company of Polish and Caucasian deserters at the siege of
Sebastopol and was choir-master to the King of Holland and very close
to the king’s sister, for which latter indiscretion he was imprisoned
for six months in the fortress at The Hague--which did not prevent him
at the same time from making a forced march from Laghouat to Gadamès
through the great African desert.

He told these wonderful tales with rare gestures, in a solemn tone,
using a strong Southern accent, but with a continual twitching and
contortion of his features as trying to the eyes as the shifting of the
bits of glass in a kaleidoscope.

The present life of Bompard was as mysterious as his past. How and
where did he live? And on what? He was forever talking of wonderful
schemes for making money, such as a new and cheap manner of asphalting
one corner of Paris, or, all of a sudden, he was deep in the discovery
of an infallible remedy for the phylloxera and was only waiting for a
letter from the Minister to receive the prize of one hundred thousand
francs in order to be in funds to pay his bill at the little dairy
where he took his meals, whose managers he had almost driven insane
with his false hopes and extravagant dreams.

This crazy Southerner was Roumestan’s delight. He took him about,
making a butt of him, egging him on, warming him up and exciting his
folly. If Numa stopped in the street to speak to any one, Bompard
stepped aside with a dignified air as if about to light a cigar. At
funerals or first nights he was always turning up to ask every one
in the most impressive haste: “Have you seen Roumestan anywhere?”
He came to be as well known as Numa himself. This type of parasite
is not uncommon in Paris; each great man has a Bompard dragging at
his heels, who walks on in his shadow and comes to have a kind of
personality reflected from that of his patron. It was a mere chance
that Roumestan’s Bompard really had a personality of his own, not
a reflection of his master. Rosalie detested this intruder on her
happiness, always between her and her husband, appropriating to himself
the few precious moments that might have been hers alone. The two old
friends always talked a patois that seemed to set her apart and laughed
uproariously at untranslatable local jokes. What she particularly
disliked about him was the necessity he was under of telling lies. At
first she had believed these inventions, so unsuspicious was her true
and candid nature, whose greatest charm was its harmony in word and
thought, a combination that was audible in the crystalline clearness
and steadiness of her musical voice.

“I do not like him--he tells lies,” she said in deep disgust to
Roumestan, who only laughed. To defend his friend, he said:

“No, he’s not a liar; he’s only gifted with a vivid imagination. He is
a sleeper awake who talks out his dreams. My country is full of just
such people. It is the effect of the sun and the accent. There is my
Aunt Portal--and even I myself--if I did not have myself well in hand--”

She placed her little hand over his mouth:

“Hush, hush! I could not love you if you came from that side of
Provence!”

The sad fact was that he did come from that very countryside. His
assumed Paris manners and the veneer of society restrained him
somewhat, but she was soon to see that terrible South appear in him
after all, commonplace, brutal, illogical. The first time that she
realized it was in regard to religion, about which, as about everything
else, Numa was entirely in line with the traditions of his province.

Numa was the Provençal Roman Catholic who never goes to communion,
never confesses himself except in cholera times, never goes to church
except to bring his wife home after mass, and then stands in the
vestibule near the holy-water basin with the superior air of a father
who has taken his children to a show of Chinese shadows--yet a man who
would let himself be drawn and quartered in defence of a faith he does
not feel, which in no way controls his passions or his vices.

When he married he knew that his wife was of the same church as himself
and that at the wedding in St. Paul’s the priest had eulogized them in
due form as befitted all the candles and carpets and gorgeous flowers
that go with a first-class wedding. He had never worried further about
it. All the women whom he knew--his mother, his cousins, his aunt,
the Duchesse de San Donnino, were devout Catholics; so he was much
surprised after several months of marriage to observe that his wife
never went to church. He spoke of it:

“Do you never go to confession?”

“No, my dear,” she answered quietly, “nor you either, so far as I can
see.”

“Oh, I--that is quite different!”

“Why so?”

She looked at him with such a sincerely puzzled expression--she seemed
so far from understanding her own inferiority as a woman, that he made
no reply and waited for her to explain.

No, she was not a free-thinker, nor a strong-minded woman. Educated
in Paris at a good school, she had had for confessor a priest of
Saint-Laurent up to seventeen; when she left school, and even for some
time after, she had fulfilled all her religious duties at the side of
her mother, who was a bigoted Southerner. Then, one day, something
within her seemed suddenly to give way, and she declared to her parents
that she felt an insuperable repulsion for the confessional. Her pious
mother would have tried to overcome what she looked upon as a whim, but
her father had interfered:

“Let her alone; it took hold of me just as it has seized her and at the
same age.”

And since then she had consulted only her own pure young conscience
in regard to her actions. Otherwise she was a Parisian, a woman of the
world to her finger-tips, and disliked the bad taste in displays of
independence. If Numa wished to go to church she would go with him, as
for a long while she had gone with her mother; but at the same time
she would not lie or pretend to believe that in which she had lost all
faith.

Numa listened to her in speechless amazement, alarmed to hear such
sentiments expressed with a firmness and conviction in her own moral
being that dissipated all his Southern ideas about the dependency of
women.

“Then you don’t believe in God?” he asked in his best forensic
manner, his raised finger pointed solemnly toward the moldings of
the ceiling. She gave a cry of astonishment: “Is it possible to do
so?”--so spontaneously and with such conviction that it was as good as
a confession of faith. Then he fell back on what the world would say,
on social conventions, on the intimate connection between religion and
monarchy. All the ladies whom they knew went to church, the duchess
and Mme. d’Escarbès; they had their confessors to dine and at evening
parties. Her strange views would have a bad effect upon them socially,
were they known. He suddenly ceased speaking, feeling that he was
floundering about in commonplaces, and the discussion ended there.
For several Sundays in succession he went through a grand and hollow
form of taking his wife to mass, whereby Rosalie gained the boon of
a pleasant walk on her husband’s arm; but he soon wearied of the
business, pleaded important engagements and let the religious question
drop.

This first misunderstanding made no breach between them. As if seeking
pardon, the young wife redoubled her devotion to her husband and her
usual clever, smiling deference to his wishes. No longer so blind as
in the earlier days, perchance she sometimes felt a vague premonition
of things that she would not admit even to herself; but she was happy
still, because she wished to be so, and because she lived in that
dreamlike atmosphere enveloping the new life of a young married woman
still surrounded by the dreams and uncertainty which are like the
clouds of white tulle of the wedding dress that drape the form of
a bride. The awakening was bound to come; to her it was sudden and
frightful.

One summer day--they were staying at Orsay, a country seat belonging
to the Le Quesnoys--her father and husband had already gone up to
Paris, as they did every morning, when Rosalie discovered that the
pattern for a little garment she was making was not to be found. The
garment was part of the outfit for the expected heir. It is true there
are beautiful things to be bought ready-made at the shops, but real
mothers, the women who feel the mother-love in advance, like to plan
and cut and sew; and as the pile of little clothes increases in the
box, as each garment is finished, feel that they are hastening the
matter and each object is bringing the advent of the longed-for birth
one step nearer. Rosalie would not for worlds have allowed any other
hand to touch this tremendous work which had been begun five months
before--as soon as she was sure of her coming happiness. On the bench
where she sat under the big catalpa tree down there at Orsay were
spread out dainty little caps that were only big enough to be tried on
one’s fist, little flannel skirts and dresses, the straight sleeves
suggesting the stiff gestures of the tiny form for which they were
designed--and now, here she was without this most important pattern!

“Send your maid up town for it,” suggested her mother.

A maid, indeed! What should she know about it? “No, no, I shall go
myself. I will have finished my shopping by noon, and then I shall go
and surprise Numa and eat up half his luncheon.”

It was a beautiful idea, this bachelor luncheon with her husband, alone
in the half-darkened house in the Rue Scribe, with the curtains all
gone and the furniture covered up; it would be a regular spree! She
laughed to herself as all alone she ran up the steps, her errands done,
and put her key softly in the lock so that she might surprise him. “It
is pretty late, he has probably finished.”

Indeed, she did find only the remnants of a dainty meal for two upon
the table in the dining room, and the footman in his checked jacket
hard at it emptying all the bottles and dishes. She thought of nothing
at first but that her want of punctuality had spoiled her little plan.
If only she had not loafed so long in that shop over those adorable
little garments, all lace and embroideries!

“Has your master gone out?”

The slowness of the servant in answering, the sudden pallor that
overspread his big impudent face framed in long whiskers, did not at
first strike her. She only saw a servant embarrassed at being caught
helping himself to his master’s wines and good things. Still it was
absolutely necessary to say that his master was still there, but that
he was very much occupied and would be occupied for quite a while. But
it took him some time to stammer out this information. How the fellow’s
hands trembled as he cleared off the table and began to rearrange it
for his mistress’s luncheon!

“Has he been lunching alone?”

“Yes, Madame; at least, only Monsieur Bompard.”

She had suddenly caught sight of a black lace scarf lying on a chair.
The foolish fellow saw it at the same moment, and as their eyes were
fixed on the same object the whole thing stood before her in a flash.
Quickly, without a word, she crossed the little waiting room, went
straight to the door of the library, opened it wide, and fell flat on
the floor. They had not even troubled themselves to lock the door!

And if you had seen the woman! Forty years old, a washed-out blonde
with a pimply complexion, thin lips and eyelids wrinkled like an old
glove! Under her eyes were purple scars, signs of her evil life; her
shoulders were bony and her voice harsh. But--she was high-born, the
Marquise d’Escarbès! which to the Southerner means everything. The
escutcheon concealed her defects as a woman. Separated from her husband
through an unsavory divorce suit, disowned by her family and no longer
received in the great houses of the Faubourg, Mme. d’Escarbès had gone
over to the Empire and had opened a political diplomatic salon, one
of those which are for the police rather than politicians, where one
could find the most notorious persons of the day--without their wives.
Then, after two years of intrigues, having gathered together quite a
following, she determined to appeal her law case. Roumestan, who had
been her lawyer in the first suit, could not very well refuse to take
up the second. He hesitated, nevertheless, for public opinion was
very strong against her. But the entreaties of the Marquise took such
convincing steps and the lawyer’s vanity was so flattered by the steps
themselves that he had yielded. Now that the case was soon to be on,
they saw each other every day, either at her house or his own, pushing
the affair vigorously and from two standpoints.

This terrible discovery nearly killed Rosalie; it struck her doubly in
her sensibility to pain as a woman with child, bearing as she did two
hearts within her, two spots for suffering. The child was killed, but
the mother lived. But after three days of unconsciousness, when she
regained memory and the power of suffering, her tears poured forth in a
torrent, a bitter flood that nothing could stem. When she had wept her
heart out over the faithlessness of her husband, the empty cradle and
the dainty little garments resting useless under the transparent blue
curtains caused her anguish to break forth again in tears--but without
a cry or lament!

Poor Numa was in almost as deep despair as she was. The hope of a
little Roumestan, “the eldest,” who is always a great personage in
Provençal families, was gone forever, destroyed by his own fault. The
pale face of his wife with its resigned expression, her compressed lips
and smothered sobs, nearly broke his heart--her grief was so different
from his way of acting, from the coarse, superficial sensibility
that he showed as he sat at the foot of his victim’s bed, saying at
intervals with swimming eyes and trembling lips, “Come now, Rosalie,
come now!” That was all he could find to say; but what vanity in that
“Come now,” uttered with the Southern accent that so easily takes on
a sympathetic tone; yet beneath it all one seemed to hear: “Don’t let
it worry you, my darling little pet! Is it really worth while? Does it
keep me from loving you just the same?”

It is true that he did love her just as much as his shallow nature was
capable of loving constantly any one. He could not bear to think of any
one else presiding over his house, caring for him, or petting him.

“I must have devotion about me,” he said naïvely, and he well knew that
the devotion she had to give was the perfection of everything that a
man could desire; so the idea of losing her was horrible to him. If
that is not love, what is?

Rosalie, alas, was thinking on quite another line. Her life was
wrecked, her idol fallen, her confidence in him forever lost. And yet
she had forgiven him. She had forgiven him, however, as a mother yields
to the child that cries and begs for her pardon; also for the sake of
their name, her father’s honored name that the scandal of a separation
would have tarnished, and because every one believed her happy and she
could not let them know the truth.

But let him beware! After this pardon so generously accorded, she
warned him, a repetition of such an outrage would not find the same
clemency. Let him never try it again, or their lives would be separated
cruelly and forever under the eyes of the whole world. There was a
firmness in her tone and look as she said this, which showed her
capable of revenging her wounded woman’s pride upon a society that held
her imprisoned in its bonds.

Numa understood; he swore in perfect good faith that he would sin no
more. He was still upset at the risk he had run of losing his happiness
and that repose which was so necessary to him, all for an intrigue
which had only appealed to his vanity. It was an immense relief to
be rid of his great lady, his bony marquise, who but for her noble
coat-of-arms was hardly more desirable than poor “every one’s old
girl” at the Café Malmus; to have no more love-letters to write and
rendezvous to make and keep. The knowledge that this silly sentimental
nonsense which had so tried his ease-loving nature was over and done
with enchanted him as much as his wife’s forgiveness and the restored
peace of his household.

He was as happy as before all this had happened. No apparent change
took place in their mode of life--the table always laid, the same crowd
of guests, the same round of entertainments and receptions at which
Numa sang and declaimed and strutted, unconscious that at his side sat
one whose beautiful eyes were evermore open and aware of facts under
their veil of actual tears. She understood her great man now: all words
and gestures, kind-hearted and generous at times, but kind only a
little while, made up of caprice, a love of showing off and a desire to
please like a coquette. She realized the shallowness of such a nature,
undecided in his beliefs as in his dislikes; above all she feared for
both their sakes the weakness hidden under his swelling words and
resounding voice, a weakness which angered and yet endeared him to her,
because, now that her wifely love had vanished, she felt the yearning
towards him that a mother feels to a wayward child. Always ready to
sacrifice herself and to be devoted in spite of treachery, the secret
fear haunted her still: “If only he does not wear out my patience!”

Clear-sighted as she was, Rosalie quickly observed a change in her
husband’s political opinions. His relations with the Faubourg St.
Germain had begun to cool. The nankin waistcoat and fleur-de-lis pin
of old Sagnier no longer awed him. Sagnier’s mind, he said, was not
what it had been. It was his shadow alone that presided at the Palace,
a sleepy ghost that recalled far too well the epoch of the Legitimacy
and its morbid inactivity, the next thing to death.

So it was that Numa slowly, gently developed towards the Empire,
opening his doors to notable men among the Imperialists whom he had met
at the house of Mme. d’Escarbès, whose influence had prepared him for
this very change.

“Look out for your great man; I am afraid he is going to moult,” said
the councillor to his daughter at dinner one day, when the lawyer
had been letting his coarse satire loose regarding the affair of
Froschdorf, which he compared to the wooden horse of Don Quixote,
stationary and nailed down, while his rider with bandaged eyes believed
he was careering far through heavenly space.

She did not have to ask many questions. Deceitful as he might be, his
lies, which he scorned to cover with complications or with finesse,
were so careless that they betrayed him at once.

Going into the library one morning she found him absorbed in writing a
letter, and leaning over him with her head near his she inquired:

“To whom are you writing?”

He stammered, tried to invent something, but the clear eyes searched
him through and through like a conscience; he had an impulse to be
frank because he could not help it.

It was a letter to the emperor accepting the position of councillor of
state, written in the dry but emphatic style, that style at the bar
which he employed when addressing the Bench whilst he gesticulated with
his long sleeves. It began thus: “A Vendean of the South, raised in the
belief in the monarchy and a respectful reverence for the past, I feel
that I shall not do violence to my honor or to my conscience--”

“You must not send that!” said she quickly.

He flew into a rage, talked loudly and brutally like a shopman at Aps
laying down the law in his own household. What business was it of hers,
after all was said and done? What did she mean by it? Did he interfere
with her about the shape of her bonnets or the models of her gowns?
He stormed and thundered as if he had a public audience, but Rosalie
maintained a tranquil, almost disdainful silence at such violence as
this, mere remnant of a will already broken, sure of her victory in the
end. These crises which weaken and disarm them are themselves the ruin
of exuberant natures.

“You must not send that letter. It would give the lie to your whole
life, to all your obligations--”

“My obligations! and to whom?”

“To me. Remember how we first knew each other, how you won my heart by
your protestations and disgust at the emperor’s masquerades. It was not
so much the sentiments that I admired in you as the fixed purpose that
you showed to uphold a righteous cause once adopted--your steady manly
will!”

But he defended his conduct. Ought he eat his heart out all his life
long in a party frozen stiff, without springs of action, a camp
deserted and abandoned under the snow? Besides, it was not he who went
to the Empire, it was the Empire that came to him. The emperor was an
excellent man, full of ideas, much superior to his court--in fine,
he brought to bear all the good arguments for playing the traitor.
But Rosalie would accept none of them, and tried to show him that his
conduct would not only be treacherous but short-sighted:

“Do you not see how uneasy these people are, how they feel that the
earth is mined and hollow beneath their feet? The slightest jar from a
rolling stone and the whole thing will crumble! And into what a gulf!”

She talked with perfect clearness, gave details, repeated many things
that she, always a silent person, had picked up after dinner from
the talks when the men would leave the women, intelligent or not, to
languish over toilets and worldly scandal in conversation that even
such topics could not enliven.

“Odd little woman!” thought Roumestan. Where had she learned all that
she was saying? He could not get over the fact that she was so clever;
and, following one of those sudden changes that make these gusty
natures so lovable, he took this reasoning little head, so charming
with youth and yet so intelligent, between his hands and covered it
with a passion of tender kisses.

“You are right, a thousand times right! I ought to write just the
opposite!”

He was going to tear up the rough copy, but he noted that in the
opening sentence there was a phrase that pleased him, one that might
still serve his turn if it were changed a bit, somewhat in this way:

“A Vendean of the South, raised in the belief in the monarchy and a
respectful reverence for the past, I feel that I should do violence to
my honor and conscience, if I accepted the post which your Majesty--”
etc.

This polite but firm refusal published in all the Legitimist papers
raised Roumestan to a very different place in public opinion; it made
his name a synonym for incorruptibility. “Cannot be rent,” wrote the
_Charivari_ under an amusing cartoon which represented the toga of the
great jurist resisting the violent tugging of the several political
parties.

Shortly after this the Empire went to pieces and when the Assembly
of Bordeaux met Numa had the choice between three departments which
had elected him their Deputy to the House, entirely on account of his
letter to the emperor. His first speeches, delivered with a somewhat
forced and turgid eloquence, soon made him leader of all the parties of
the Right.

He was only the small change of old Sagnier, but in these days of
middle-class races, blue blood rarely came to the front, and so the
new leader triumphed on the benches of the Chamber as easily as on the
old red divans at Father Malmus’s café.

Councillor-general in his own department, the idol of the entire South,
and raised still higher by the position of his father-in-law, who
after the fall of the Empire had become first president of the court
of appeals, Numa without doubt was marked out to become sooner or
later a cabinet minister. In the meantime a great man in the eyes of
every one but his own wife, he carried his fresh glories about, from
Paris to Versailles and down to Provence, amiable, familiar, jolly and
unconventional, bringing his aureola with him, it is true, but only too
willing to leave it in its band-box, like an opera hat when no ceremony
calls for its presence.




CHAPTER IV.

A SOUTHERN AUNT--REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOOD.


The Portal mansion in which the great man dwells when he is in
Provence is one of the show-places of Aps. It is mentioned by the
Joanne guide-book in the same category as the temple of Juno, the
amphitheatre, the old theatre and the tower of the Antonines, relics
of the old Roman days of which the town is very proud and always keeps
well furbished up. But it is not the heavy ancient arched gate of the
old provincial residence itself, embossed with immense nails, nor the
high windows, bristling with iron bars, spikes and pike-heads of a
threatening sort, that they point out to the stranger who comes to see
the town. It is only a little balcony with its black iron props on the
first floor, corbelled out above the porch. For it is here that Numa
shows himself to the crowd when he arrives and it is from here that he
speaks. The whole town is witness that the iron balcony, which was once
as straight as a rule, has been hammered into such an original shape,
into such capricious curves, by the blows showered upon it by the
powerful fist of the orator.

“_Té, vé!_ our Numa has molded the iron!”

This they will say with bulging eyes and so much earnestness as to
leave no room for doubt--say it with that imposing rolling of the “r”
thus: _pétrrri le ferrr!_

They are a proud race, these good people of Aps, and kindly withal, but
vivid in their impressions and most exaggerated in their language, of
which Aunt Portal, a true type of the local citizenry, gave a very fair
idea.

Immensely fat, apoplectic, her blood rushing to her pendulous cheeks
purple like the lees of wine in fine contrast with her pale complexion,
the skin of a former blonde. So far as one saw it the throat was very
white, and her neat handsome iron-gray curls showed from beneath a
cap decorated with lilac ribbon. Her bodice was hooked awry, but
she was imposing nevertheless, having a majestic air and a pleasant
smile and manner. It was thus that she appeared in the half-light of
her drawing-room, always kept hermetically sealed after the Southern
custom. You would say she looked like an old family portrait, or one
of Mirabeau’s old marquises, and very appropriate to her old house,
built a hundred years ago by Gonzague Portal, chief councillor of the
Parliament of Aix.

It is not uncommon to find people and houses in Provence that seem as
if they belong to olden times, as if the last century, while passing
out through those high panelled doors, had let a bit of her gown full
of furbelows stick in the crack of the door.

But if in conversing with Aunt Portal you should be so unlucky as to
hint that Protestants are as good as Catholics, or that Henry V may not
ascend the throne at any moment, the old portrait will spring headlong
out of its frame, and with the veins on its neck swelling and the hands
tearing at the neatly hanging curls, will fly into an ungovernable
passion, swear, threaten and curse! These outbursts have passed into
tradition in the town and many wonderful tales are told upon the
subject. At an evening party in her house a servant let fall a tray of
wineglasses; Aunt Portal fell into one of her fits of rage, shouting
and exciting herself with cries, reproaches and lamentations; finally
her voice failed, and almost choking in her frenzy, unable to beat the
unlucky servant, who had promptly fled, she raised the skirt of her
dress and wrapped it about her head and face to conceal her groans
and her visage disfigured by rage, quite regardless of the voluminous
display of a portly, white-fleshed lady to which she was treating her
guests.

In any other part of the country she would have been considered
mad, but in Aps, the land of hot brains and explosive natures, they
were satisfied to say that she “rode a high horse.” It is true that
passers-by on the quiet square before her doors on restful afternoons,
when the cloistral stillness of the town is only broken by the chirping
of the locusts or a few notes on a piano, are wont to hear such words
as “monster,” “thief,” “assassin,” “stealers of priests’ property,”
“I’ll cut your arm off,” “I’ll rip the skin off your stomach!”
Then doors would slam and stairways tremble beneath the vaults of
whitewashed stone; windows would open noisily, as though the mutilated
bodies of the unhappy servants were to be thrown from them! But nothing
happens; the servants placidly continue their work, accustomed to these
tempests, knowing perfectly that they are mere habits of speech.

An excellent person, all things considered, ardent, generous, with a
great desire to please and to sacrifice herself--a noble trait in these
impulsive people, and one by which Numa had profited. Since he had been
chosen deputy the house on the Place Cavalerie belonged to him, his
aunt only reserving the right to remain there the rest of her life. And
then, what a delight it was to her when the party from Paris arrived,
with the receptions, the visits, the morning music and the serenades
which the presence of the great man brought into that lonely life of
hers, eager for excitement! Besides, she adored her niece Rosalie,
partly because they were so entirely the opposite of each other and
also because of the respect she felt for the daughter of the chief
magistrate of France.

It really needed a world of patience on Rosalie’s part and all the love
of family inculcated in her by her parents to endure for two whole
months the whims and tiresome caprices of this disordered imagination,
always over-excited and as restless in mind as she was indolent in
her big body. Seated in the large vestibule, as cool as a Moorish
court, but yet close and musty from the exclusion of air and sunshine,
Rosalie, holding a bit of embroidery in her hands--for like a true
Parisian she never could be idle--was obliged to listen for hours at
a time to her surprising confidences. The enormous lady sat before
her in an arm-chair, with her hands free in order to gesticulate,
and recapitulated breathlessly the chronicles of the whole town.
She sometimes depicted her maid-servants and coachman as monsters,
sometimes as angels, according to the caprice of the moment. She would
select some one against whom she apparently had some grudge, and cover
the detested one with the foulest, bloodiest, most venomous abuse,
relating stories like those in the _Annals of the Propagation of the
Faith_. Rosalie, who had lived with Numa, had luckily become accustomed
to these frantic objurgations. She listened abstractedly; for the most
part they passed in at one ear and out at the other; hardly did she
stop to wonder how it came about that she, so reserved and discreet,
could ever have entered such a family of theatrical persons who draped
themselves with phrases and overflowed with gestures. It had to be a
very strong bit of gossip to make her hold up Aunt Portal with an “Oh,
my dear aunt!” thrown out with a far-away air.

“Perhaps you are right, my dear, perhaps I do exaggerate a little.”

But Aunt Portal’s tumultuous imagination was soon off again, recounting
some comic or tragic tale with so much mimicry and dramatic effect
that she gave one the impression of wearing alternately the two masks
borne by ancient actors of tragedy and of comedy. She only calmed down
when she described her one visit to Paris and related the wonders of
the arrival in the “Passage Somon,” where she had stopped at a small
hotel patronized by all the travelling salesmen of her native province,
where they “took the air” in a glass-covered passage as stuffy and hot
as a melon-frame. Of all her remarkable stories of Paris this place
was the central point from which everything else evolved--it was the
elegant, fashionable spot beyond all others.

These tiresome, empty tirades had at least the spice of being uttered
in the strangest and most amusing kind of language, in which an
old-school stilted French, the French of books of rhetoric, was mixed
with the oddest provincialisms. Aunt Portal detested the Provençal
tongue, that dialect so admirable in color and sonorousness, which only
the peasants and people talk, which contains an echo of Latin vibrating
across the deep blue sea. She belonged to the burgher class of Provence
who translate _pécaïré_ by _péchère_ (sinner) and fancy they talk
correctly.

When her coachman Ménicle (Dominick) in his frank way said to her in
Provençal:

“_Voù baia de civado au chivaou_” (I am going to give the horses
oats)--she would assume an austere air and say:

“I do not understand you--speak French, my good fellow!”

Then Ménicle, like a docile schoolboy, would say:

“_Je vais bayer dé civade au chivau._”

“That is right, now I understand you!”--and he would go away thinking
that he had been speaking the language. It is a fact that most of the
people in the South below Valence only know this hybrid kind of French.

But besides all this Aunt Portal played upon her words by no means
according to her fancy but in accordance with the rules of some local
grammar. Thus she said _déligence_ for _diligence_, _achéter_ for
_acheter_, _anédote_ for _anecdote_, _régitre_ for _régistre_. She
called a pillow-slip (_taie d’oreiller_) a _coussinière_, an umbrella
was an _ombrette_, the foot-warmer which she used at all seasons of
the year was a _banquette_. She did not cry, she “fell to tears;” and
though very “overweighted” she never took more than “half hour” for
her round of the city. All this twaddle was larded with those little
words and expressions without precise meaning which Provençals scatter
through their speech, those verbal snips which they stuff between
sentences to lessen their stress or increase their strength, or keep up
the multifold character of the accent, such as

“_Aie, ouie, avai, açavai, au moins, pas moins, différemment, allons!_”

This contempt of Mme. Portal for the language of her province extended
to its usages and its traditions and even to its costume. Just as she
did not permit her coachman to lapse into Provençal, in the same way
she never would have allowed a servant to enter her house wearing the
head-dress and neck-kerchief of Arles.

“My house is neither a _mas_ (farm) nor a weaver’s loft,” said she.
Nor would she let them wear a _chapo_ either. To wear a bonnet is
the distinctive hieratic sign of the ascendancy of the citizen in
the provinces. The title of “madame” is one of its attributes, a
title refused to any of the baser sort. It is amusing to see the
condescension of the wife of a retired officer or municipal employee
who earns eight hundred francs a year, doing her own marketing in an
enormous bonnet, when she speaks to the wife of an immensely rich
farmer from the Crau, in her picturesque headgear trimmed with real old
thread lace. In the Portal mansion the ladies had worn bonnets for over
a century. This made Mme. Portal very arrogant toward poor people and
was the cause of a terrible scene between her and Roumestan a few days
after the festival in the amphitheatre.

It was a Friday morning at breakfast, a regular Provençal breakfast,
pretty and attractive to the eye although strictly a fast-day meal,
for Aunt Portal was very keen about her orders. On the white cloth
in picturesque array were big green peppers, alternating with
blood-red figs, almonds and carved water-melons, that looked like big
rose-colored magnolias, anchovy patties and little white rolls such as
are to be found nowhere else--all very light dishes set among decanters
of fresh water and bottles of light home-made wine. Outside in the sun
the locusts and rays were chirping and glittering, and a broad band of
golden light slid through a crevice into the great dining-room, vaulted
and resounding like the refectory of a convent.

In the middle of the table on a chafing dish were two large cutlets
designed for Numa. Notwithstanding that his name was uttered in all the
prayers, perhaps because of it, the great man of Aps, alone of all the
family, had obtained a dispensation from fasting from the cardinal. So
there he sat feasting and carving his juicy cutlets, while his aunt and
his wife and sister-in-law breakfasted on figs and watermelon.

Rosalie was used to it. The two days’ fast every week was but a part
of her yearly burden, as much a matter of course as the sunshine, the
dust, the hot mistral wind, the mosquitoes, her aunt’s gossip and
the Sunday services at the church of St. Perpétue. But the youthful
appetite of Hortense revolted against this continual fasting and
it took all the gentle authority of the elder sister to prevent an
outburst from the spoiled child, which would have shocked all Aunt
Portal’s ideas of the conduct becoming to a young person of refinement
and education. So Hortense had to content herself with her husks,
revenging herself by making the most awful grimaces, rolling up her
eyes, snuffing up the smell of the cutlets and murmuring under her
breath for Rosalie’s benefit alone:

“It always happens so. I took a long ride this morning. I am as hungry
as a tramp!”

She still wore her habit, which was as becoming to her tall, slim
figure as was the straight, high collar to her irregular saucy little
face, still flushed by her exercise in the open air. Her ride had given
her an idea.

“Oh Numa, how about Valmajour? When are we going to see him?”

“Who is Valmajour?” answered Numa, whose fickle brain had already
discarded all memory of the taborist. “_Té_, that’s a fact, Valmajour!
I had forgotten all about him. What a genius he is!”

It all came back to him--the arches of the amphitheatre echoing to the
farandole with the dull vibration of the tabor; it fired his memory and
so excited him that he called out decisively:

“Aunt Portal, do lend us the landau; we will set off directly after
breakfast.”

His aunt’s brow darkened above her big eyes, flaming like those of a
Japanese idol.

“The landau? _Avai!_ What for? At least you’re not going to take your
wife and sister to see that player of the _tutu-panpan!_”

This word “tutu-panpan” so perfectly mimicked the sound of the fife
and tabor that Roumestan burst out laughing, but Hortense took up the
defence of the old Provençal tabor with much earnestness. Nothing that
she had seen in the South had impressed her so much. Besides, it would
not be honest to break one’s word to the nice boy.

“He is a great artist! Numa, you said so yourself.”

“Yes, yes, little sister, you are right; we must certainly go.”

Aunt Portal in a towering rage said that she could not understand
how a man like her nephew, a deputy, could put himself out for
peasants, farmers, whose people from father to son had made music for
the villages. Then, in her usual spirit of mimicry, she stuck out a
disdainful lip and played with the fingers of one hand on an imaginary
fife, while with the other she beat upon the table to represent the
tabor, taking off the tabor-player’s gestures.

“Nice people to take ladies to see! No one but Numa would dream of
doing such a thing. Calling on the Valmajours! Holy mother of angels!”
And becoming more and more excited, she accused them of crimes enough
to make them out a brood of monsters as bloody and dreadful as the
Trestaillon family, when suddenly across the table she caught the eye
of her butler Ménicle, who came from the same village as the Valmajours
and was listening to her lies, every feature strained in astonishment.
At once she shouted to him in a terrible voice to “go and change
himself quickly” and have the landau at the door at “two o’clock a
quarter off.” All the rages of Aunt Portal ended in this fashion.

Hortense threw down her napkin and ran and kissed the old lady
rapturously on her fat cheeks. She was in a tumult of gayety and
bounded for joy:

“Come, Rosalie, let us hurry!”

Aunt Portal looked at her niece:

“Well, I hope, Rosalie, that you are not going to vagabondize with
these feather-heads!”

“No, no, aunt, I will stay with you” answered Rosalie, amused at
the character of elderly relative that her unvarying amiability and
resignation had created for her in that house.

At the right moment the carriage came promptly to the door, but they
sent it on ahead, telling Ménicle to wait for them at the amphitheatre
square, and Roumestan set out on foot with his little sister on his
arm, full of curiosity and pride at seeing Aps in his company, to visit
the house in which he was born and to retrace with him the streets
through which he had so often walked when a child.

It was the hour of the midday rest. The whole town slept, silent
and deserted, rocked by the south wind blowing in great fanlike
gusts, cooling and freshening the fierce Provençal summer heat, but
making walking difficult, especially along the Corso, which offered
no resistance to it, where it roared round the little city with the
bellowings of a loosened bull. Hortense, with her head down, her
hands tightly clasped about her brother’s arm, out of breath and
bewildered, enjoyed the sensation of being raised and borne along by
the gusts which were like resistless waves, noisy and complaining,
white with foamlike dust. Sometimes they had to stop and cling to the
ropes stretched along the ramparts for use on windy days. Owing to
the whirlwinds in which bits of bark and plane-tree seeds spun round,
and owing to its solitude the Corso had an air of distress in its
wide desolation, still soiled as it was with the remains of the recent
market, strewn with melon-rinds, straw litters, empty casks, as if the
mistral alone had charge of the street cleaning.

Roumestan was anxious to reach the carriage as soon as possible, but
Hortense enjoyed this battle with the hurricane and insisted on walking
farther, panting and overborne by the gust that curled her blue veil
three times around her hat and molded her short walking skirt against
her figure as she walked. She was saying:

“It is queer how different people are! Rosalie, now, hates the wind.
She says it blows away all her ideas, keeps her from thinking. Now me
the wind excites, intoxicates!”

“So it does me!” said Numa, clinging on to his hat, his eyes full of
water, and then suddenly, as they turned a corner:

“Ah, here is my street--I was born here.”

The wind was going down, at least they felt it less; it was blowing
farther away with a sound as of billows breaking on a beach, as
one hears them from the quiet inner bay. The street was a largish
one, paved with pointed stones, without sidewalks, and the house an
insignificant little gray structure standing between an Ursuline
convent shaded with big plane-trees and a fine old seignorial mansion
on which was carved a coat of arms and the inscription “Hôtel de
Rochemaure.” Opposite stood a very old and characterless building
with broken columns, defaced statues and grave-stones with Roman
inscriptions carved on them; it had the word “Academy” in faded gilt
letters over a green door.

In that little gray house the great orator first saw the light on the
15th of July, 1832; it was easy to draw more than one parallel between
his narrow, classical talent and his education as a Catholic and a
Legitimist, and that little house of needy citizens with a convent on
one side and a seignorial residence on the other, and a provincial
academy in front of it.

Roumestan was filled with emotion, as he always was over anything
concerning himself. He had not visited this spot for perhaps thirty
years; it needed the whim of this young girl to bring him here. He was
much struck with the immutability of things. He recognized in the wall
a shutter-catch that his childish hand had turned and played with every
morning as he passed on his way up the street. The columns and precious
torsos of the academy threw their shadows on the same spot as of old.
The rose-laurel bushes had the same spicy odor and he showed Hortense
the narrow window where his mother had sat and signed to him to hurry
when he came from the friars’ school:

“Come up quickly, father has come in!” His father did not like to be
kept waiting.

“Tell me, Numa, is it really true? were you really educated by the
friars?”

“Yes, little sister, until I was twelve years old, and then Aunt Portal
sent me to the Assumption, the most fashionable boarding-school in the
town; but it was the Ignorantins over there in that big barrack with
yellow shutters who taught me to read.”

As he called to mind the pail of brine under the Brother’s chair in
which were soaked the straps with which they beat the boys, to make the
pain greater, he shuddered; he remembered the large paved class-room
where they were made to say their lessons on their knees and had to
crawl up holding out their hands to be punished on the slightest
pretext; he recalled how the Brother in his shabby black gown stood
stiff and rigid, with his habit rolled up beneath his arm, the better
to strike his pitiless blows--Brother Crust-to-cook, as he was called,
because he was the cook. He remembered how the dear Brother cried “ha!”
and how his little inky fingers tingled with the pain as if ants were
biting them. As Hortense cried aloud in dismay at the brutality of such
punishments, he related others still more dreadful; for example, they
were obliged to clean the freshly watered pavements with their tongues,
the dust and water making a muddy substance that injured the tender
palates of the naughty children.

“It is shameful! and you defend such people and speak in their favor in
the Chamber?”

“Ah, my dear, that is politics!” said Roumestan calmly.

As they talked they were threading a labyrinth of small, dingy streets,
almost oriental in their character, where old women lay asleep on their
doorsteps, and other streets, though not so sombre, where long pieces
of printed calicoes fluttered in explanation of signboards on which
were painted: “Haberdashery,” “Shoes,” “Silks.”

Thence they came out on what was called in Aps the “Little Square,”
with its asphalt melting in the hot sun and surrounded by shops, at
this hour closed and silent, in the narrow shadow of whose walls
boot-blacks slept peacefully, their heads resting on their boxes, their
limbs stretched out like those of drowned people, wrecks of the tempest
that has just swept over the town. An unfinished monument occupied
the centre of the little square. Hortense wished to know what was
ultimately to be the statue placed upon it and Roumestan smiled in an
embarrassed way.

“It is a long story!” he answered, hurrying on.

The town of Aps had voted a statue to Numa, but the Liberals of the
“Vanguard” had strongly disapproved of this apotheosis of a living man
and so his friends had not dared to go on with it. The statue was all
ready, but now probably they would wait for his death before raising
it. Surely it’s a glorious thought that after your funeral you will
have civic recognition and that you die only to rise again in bronze or
marble; but this empty pedestal shining in the sun seemed to Roumestan,
whenever he passed it, as gloomy as a majestic family vault; it was
not until they had reached the amphitheatre that he could dispel his
funereal thoughts.

The old structure, divested of its Sunday cheerfulness and returned to
its solemnity of a great and useless ruin, seemed damp and cheerless
as it loomed darkly against the rays of the setting sun, with its dark
corridors and floors caved in here and there and stones crumbling
beneath the footsteps of the centuries.

“How dreadfully sad it is!” said Hortense, regretting the music of
Valmajour’s fife; but to Numa it did not seem sad. His happiest days
had been passed there--his childish days with all their pleasures and
longings. Oh, the Sundays at the bull-fights, prowling around the
gates with other poor children who lacked ten sous to pay for their
tickets! In the hot afternoon sun they crawled into some corner where
a glimpse of the arena could be obtained. What pleasures of forbidden
fruits!--the red-stockinged legs of the bull-fighters, the wrathful
hoofs of the bull, the dust of the combat rising from the arena amid
the cries of “Bravo!” and the bellowings and the roar of the multitude!
The yearning to get inside was not to be resisted. While the sentinel’s
back was turned the bravest of them would wriggle through the iron bars
with a little effort.

“I always got through!” said Roumestan in ecstasy. The history of
his whole life was expressed in those few words. By chance or by
cleverness--no matter how close were the bars--the Southerner always
wriggled through.

“I was thinner in those days, all the same,” he said with a sigh and he
looked with comic regret at the narrow bars of the grille and then at
his big white waistcoat, within which lay the solid sign of his forty
years.

Behind the enormous amphitheatre they found the carriage, safely
harbored from wind and sun. They had to wake up Ménicle, who was
sleeping peacefully on the box between two large baskets of provisions,
wrapped in his heavy cloak of royal blue. But before getting in Numa
pointed out to Hortense an old inn at a distance whose sign read: “To
the Little St. John, coach and express office,” the whitewashed front
and large open sheds of which took up one whole corner of the square.
In these sheds were ancient stage-coaches and rural chaises long
unused, covered with dust, their shafts raised high in air from beneath
their gray covers.

“Look there, little sister,” he cried with emotion. “It was from this
spot that I set out for Paris one-and-twenty years ago. There was no
railway then; we went by coach as far as Montélimar, then up the Rhône.
Heavens, how happy I was! and how your big Paris frightened me! It was
evening--I remember it so well....”

He spoke quickly, reminiscences crowding each other in his mind.

“The evening, ten o’clock, in November, beautiful moonlight. The
guard’s name was Fouque, a great person! While he was harnessing we
walked about with Bompard--yes, Bompard--you know we were already
great friends. He was, or thought he was, studying for a druggist and
meant to join me in Paris. We made many plans for living together and
helping each other along in the world to get ahead quicker--in the
meantime he encouraged me, gave me good advice--he was older than I. My
great bugbear was the fear of being ridiculous--Aunt Portal had ordered
for me a travelling wrap called a Raglan; I was a little dubious about
that Raglan, so Bompard made me put it on and walk before him in it.
_Té!_ I can see yet my shadow beside me as I walked, and gravely, with
that knowing air he has, he said: ‘That is all right, old boy; you
don’t look ridiculous.’--Ah, youth, youth!”

Hortense, who was beginning to fear that they should never get away
from this town where every stone was eloquent of reminiscences for the
great man, led the way gently towards the carriage.

“Let us get in, Numa. We can talk just as well as we drive along.”




CHAPTER V.

VALMAJOUR.


It takes hardly more than two hours to drive from Aps to Cordova
Mountain provided the wind is astern. Drawn by the two old horses from
the Camargue, the carriage went almost by itself, propelled by the
mistral which shook and rattled it, beating on its leather hood and
curtains or blowing them out like sails.

Out here it did not bellow any more as it did round the ramparts and
through the vaulted passages of the town; but, free of all obstacles,
driving before it the great plain itself, where a solitary farm and
some peasant manses here and there, forming gray spots in the green
landscape, seemed the scattering of a village by the storm, the wind
passed in the form of smoke before the sky, and like sudden dashes of
surf over the tall wheat and olive orchards, whose silvery leaves it
made to flutter like a swarm of butterflies. Then with sudden rebounds
that raised in blond masses the dust that crackled under the wheels
it fell upon the files of closely pressed cypresses and the Spanish
reeds with their long rustling leaves, which made one feel that there
was a river flowing beside the road. When for one moment it stopped,
as if short of breath, one felt all the weight of summer; then a
truly African heat rose from the earth, which was soon driven off by
the wholesome, revivifying hurricane, extending its jovial dance to
the very farthest point on the horizon, to those little dull, grayish
mounds which are seen on the horizon in all Provençal landscapes, but
which the sunset turns to iridescent tints of fairyland.

They did not meet many people. An occasional huge wagon from the
quarries filled with hewn stones, blinding in the sunlight; an old
peasant woman from Ville-des-Baux bending under a great _couffin_ or
basket of sweet-smelling herbs; the robe of a mendicant friar with
a sack on his back and a rosary round his waist, his hard, tonsured
head sweating and shining like a Durance pebble; or else a group of
people returning from a pilgrimage, a wagon-load of women and girls in
holiday attire, with fine black eyes, big chignons and bright-colored
ribbons, coming from Sainte Baume or Notre-Dame-de-Lumière. Well, the
mistral gave to all these people, to hard labor, to wretchedness and
to superstition the same flow of health and good spirits, gathering up
and scattering again during its rushes the hymn of the monk, the shrill
canticles of the pilgrims, the bells and jingling blue glass beads of
the horses and the “_Dia! hue!_” of the carters, as well as the popular
refrain that Numa, intoxicated by the breeze of his native land, poured
forth with all the power of his lungs and with wide gesticulations that
were waved from both the carriage doors at once:

    “_Beau soleil de la Provence,
    Gai compère du mistral!_”
    (Splendid sun of old Provence,
    Of the mistral comrade gay!)

Suddenly he cried to the coachman: “Here! Ménicle, Ménicle!”

“Monsieur Numa?”

“What is that stone building on the other side of the Rhône?”

“That, Monsieur Numa, is the _jonjon_ of Queen Jeanne.”

“Oh, yes, that’s so--I remember; poor _jonjon!_ Its name is as much of
a ruin as the tower itself!”

And then he told Hortense the story of the royal dungeon, for he was
thoroughly grounded in his native legends.

That ruined and rusty tower up there dated from the time of the Saracen
invasion, although more modern than the ruin of the abbey near it, a
bit of whose half crumbled wall still remained standing near at hand,
with its row of narrow windows showing against the sky and its big
ogival doorway. He showed her, against the rocky slope, a worn pathway
leading to a pond that shone like a cup of crystal, where the monks
used to go to fish for eels and carp for the table of the abbot. As
they looked at the lovely spot Numa remarked that the men of God had
always known how to select the choicest spots in which to pass their
comfortable, restful lives, generally choosing the summits where they
might soar and dream, but whence they descended upon the quiet valleys
and levied their toll on all the good things from the surrounding
villages.

Oh, Provence in the Middle Ages! land of the troubadours and courts of
beauty!

Now briers dislocate the stones of the terraces erstwhile swept by
the trains of courtly beauties--Stephenettes or Azalaïses--while
ospreys and owls scream at night in the place where the dead and gone
troubadours used to sing! But was there not still a perfume of delicate
beauty, a charming Italian coquetry pervading this landscape of the
Alpilles, like the quiver of a lute or viol floating through the pure,
still air?

Numa grew excited, forgetting that he had only his sister-in-law and
old Ménicle’s blue cloak for audience, and, after a few commonplaces
fit for local banquets and meetings of the Academy, broke forth into
one of those ingenious and brilliant impromptus that proved him to be
indeed the descendant of the light Provençal troubadours.

“There is Valmajour!” said Ménicle all at once, pointing upwards with
his whip as he leaned round on the box.

They had left the highroad and were climbing a zigzag path up the
side of Cordova Mountain, narrow and slippery with the lavender whose
fragrance filled the air with a smell of burnt incense as the carriage
wheels passed. On a plateau half way up, at the foot of a black,
dilapidated tower, the roofs of the farmstead could be seen. Here it
was that for years and years the Valmajours had lived, from father
to son, on the site of the old château whose name abided with them.
And who knows? perhaps these peasants really were the descendants of
the princes of Valmajour, related to the counts of Provence and to
the house of Baux. This idea, imprudently expressed by Roumestan, was
eagerly taken up by Hortense, who thus accounted to herself for the
really high-bred manners of the taborist.

As they conversed in the carriage on the subject Ménicle listened to
their talk in amazement from his box. The name of Valmajour was common
enough in the province; there were mountain Valmajours and Valmajours
of the valley, according as they dwelt on upland or on plain. “So they
are all noblemen!” he wondered. But the astute Provençal kept his
thoughts on the subject to himself.

As they advanced further into this desolate but beautiful landscape the
imagination of the young girl, excited by Numa’s animated conversation,
gave free vent to its romantic impressions, stimulated by the
brightly-colored fantasies of the past; and looking upward and seeing
a peasant woman sitting on a buttress of the ruined tower, watching
the approach of the strangers, her face in profile, her hand shading
her eyes from the sun, she imagined she saw some princess wearing the
mediæval wimple gazing down upon them from her feudal tower--like an
illustration in an old book.

The illusion was hardly dispelled when, on leaving the carriage, they
saw before them the sister of the taborist, who was making willow
screens for silk worms. She did not rise, although Ménicle had shouted
to her from a distance: “_Vé!_ Audiberte, here are visitors for your
brother!” Her face with its delicate, regular features, long and green
as an unripe olive, expressed neither pleasure nor surprise, but kept
the concentrated look that brought the heavy black eyebrows together in
front and seemed to tie a knot below her obstinate brows, as if with a
hard, fixed line. Numa, somewhat taken aback by this frigid reception,
said hastily: “I am Numa Roumestan, the deputy--”

“Oh, I know who you are well enough,” she answered gravely, and
throwing down her work in a heap by her side: “Come in a moment, my
brother will be here presently.”

When she stood up their hostess lost her imposing appearance; short of
stature, with a large bust, she walked with an ungraceful waddle that
spoiled the effect of her pretty head charmingly set off by the little
Arles head-dress and the picturesque fichu of white muslin with its
bluish shadow in every fold which she wore over her shoulders. She led
her guests into the house. This peasant’s cottage, leaning up against
its ruined tower, seemed to have imbibed a distinguished air, with its
coat-of-arms in stone over a door shaded by an awning of reeds cracked
by the heat of the sun and its big curtain of checked muslin stretched
across the door to keep out the mosquitoes. The old guard-room, with
its ceiling riddled by cracks, its tall, ancient chimneypiece and its
white walls, was lighted only by small green-glass windows and the
curtain stretched across the door.

In the dim light could be seen the black wooden kneading-trough, shaped
like a sarcophagus, carved with designs of wheat and flowers; over it
hung the open-work wicker bread-basket, ornamented with little Moorish
bells, in which the bread is kept fresh in Provençal farm-houses. Two
or three sacred images, the Virgin, Saint Martha and the _tarasque_,
a small red copper lamp of antique form hanging from the beak of a
mocking-bird carved in white wood by one of the shepherds, and on each
side of the fireplace the salt and the flour boxes, completed the
furniture of the big room, not forgetting a large sea-shell, with which
they called the cattle home, glittering on the mantelpiece above the
hearth.

A long table ran lengthwise through the hall, on each side of which
were benches and stools. From the ceiling hung strings of onions black
with flies, that buzzed loudly whenever the door curtain was raised.

“Take a seat, sir--a seat, madame; you must share the _grand boire_
with us.”

The _grand boire_ or “big drink” is the lunch partaken of wherever the
peasants are working--out in the fields, under the trees, in the shade
of a mill, or in a roadside ditch. But the Valmajours took theirs in
the house, as they were at work near by. The table was already laid
with little yellow earthen dishes in which were pickled olives and
romaine salad shining with oil. In the willow stand where the bottles
and glasses are kept Numa thought he saw some wine.

“So you still have vineyards up here?” he asked smilingly, trying to
ingratiate himself with this queer little savage. But at the word
“vineyards” she sprang to her feet like a goat bitten by an asp, and in
a moment her voice struck the full note of indignation. Vines! oh, yes!
nice luck they had had with their vineyards! Out of five only one was
left to them--the smallest one, too, and that they had to keep under
water half the year,--water from the _roubine_ at that, costing them
their last sou! And all that--who was to blame for it? the Reds, those
swine, those monsters, the Reds and their godless republic, that had
let loose all the devils of hell upon the country!

As she spoke in this passionate manner her eyes grew blacker with
the murky look of an assassin; her pretty face was all convulsed and
disfigured, her mouth was distorted and her black eyebrows made with
their knot a big lump in the middle of her brow. The strangest of all
was that in spite of her fury she continued her peaceful avocations,
making the coffee, blowing the fire, coming and going, gesticulating
with whatever was in her hand, the bellows or the coffee-pot, or a
blazing brand of vine-wood from the fire, which she brandished like the
torch of a Fury. Suddenly she calmed down.

“Here is my brother,” she said.

The rustic curtain, brushed aside, let in a flood of white sunlight
against which appeared the tall form of Valmajour, followed by a little
old man with a smooth face, sunburned until it was as black and gnarled
as the root of a diseased vine. Neither father nor son showed any more
excitement at the sight of the visitors than Audiberte.

The first greeting over, they seated themselves at the table, on which
had been spread the contents of the two baskets that Roumestan had
brought in the carriage, at sight of which the eyes of old Valmajour
shone with little joyous sparkles. Roumestan, who could not recover
from the want of enthusiasm about himself shown by these peasants,
began at once to speak of the great success on the Sunday at the
amphitheatre. That must have made him proud of his son!

“Yes, yes,” mumbled the old man, spearing his olives with his
knife. “But I too in my time used to get prizes myself for my
tabor-playing”--and he smiled the same wicked smile that had played on
his daughter’s lips in her recent gust of temper. Very peaceful just
now, Audiberte sat upon the hearthstone with her plate upon her knees;
for, although she was the mistress of the house and a very tyrannical
one at that, she still obeyed the ancient Provençal custom that did
not allow the women to sit at the table and eat with their men. But
from that humble spot she listened attentively all the while to what
they were saying and shook her head when they spoke of the festival
at the amphitheatre. She did not care for the tabor, herself--_nani!_
no indeed! Her mother had been killed by the bad blood her father’s
love for it had occasioned. It was a profession, look you, fit for
drunkards; it kept people from profitable work and cost more money than
it made.

“Well then, let him come to Paris,” said Roumestan. “Take my word for
it, his tabor will coin money for him there....”

Spurred on by the utter incredulity of the country girl, he tried to
make her understand how capricious Paris was and how the city would pay
almost anything to gratify its whims. He told her of the success of old
Mathurin, who used to play the bagpipes at the “Closerie des Genets,”
and how inferior were the Breton bagpipes, coarse and shrieking, fit
only for Esquimaux in the Polar Circle to dance to, when compared
with the tabor of Provence, so pretty, so delicate and high-bred! He
could tell them that all the Parisian women would go wild over it and
all wish to dance the _farandole_. Hortense also grew excited and put
in her oar, while the taborist smiled vaguely and twirled his brown
moustache with the fatuous air of a lady-killer.

“Well now, come! Give me an idea what he would earn by his music!”
cried the peasant girl. Roumestan thought a moment. He could not say
precisely. One hundred and fifty to two hundred francs--

“A month?” quoth the old man excitedly.

“Heavens! no--a day!”

The three peasants started and then looked at each other. From any one
else but M. Numa the deputy, member of the General Council, they would
have suspected a joke, a _galéjade!_ But with him of course the matter
was serious. Two hundred francs a day--_foutré!_ The musician himself
wished to go at once, but his more prudent sister would have liked to
draw up a paper for Roumestan to sign; and then quietly, with lowered
eyelids, that the money greed in her eyes might not be seen, she began
to canvass the matter in her hypocritical voice.

Valmajour was so much needed at home, _pécaïré!_ He took care of the
property, ploughed, dressed the vines, his father being too old now for
such work. What should they do if her brother went away? And he--he
would be sure to be homesick alone in Paris, and his money, his two
hundred francs a day, who would take care of it in that awful great
city? And her voice hardened as she spoke of money that she could not
take care of and stow carefully away in her most secret drawer.

“Well,” said Roumestan, “come to Paris with him.”

“And the house?”

“Leave it or sell it. You can buy a much better one when you come back.”

He hesitated as Hortense glanced warningly at him, and, as if
remorseful for disturbing the quiet life of these simple people, he
said:

“After all, there is a great deal besides money in this life. You are
lucky enough as you are.”

Audiberte interrupted him sharply: “Lucky? Existence is a struggle;
things are not as they used to be!”--and she began again to whine about
the vineyards, the silk-worms, the madder, the vermilion and all the
other vanished riches of the country. Nowadays one had to work in the
sun like cart-horses. It is true that they expected to inherit the
fortune of Cousin Puyfourcat, the colonist in Algiers, but Algeria
is so far away; and then the astute little peasant, in order to warm
Numa up, whom she reproached herself for causing to lose some of his
enthusiasm on the subject, turned in a catty way to her brother and
said in her coaxing, singsong voice:

“_Qué_, Valmajour! suppose you play something for the pleasure of the
pretty young lady.”

Ah, clever girl! she was not mistaken. At the first blow of the stick,
at the first pearly notes of the fife Roumestan was trapped once more
and went into raptures.

The musician leaned against the curb of an old well in front of
the farmhouse door. Over the well was an iron frame, round which a
wild fig-tree had wound itself and made a marvellously picturesque
background for his handsome figure and swarthy face. With his bare
arms, his dusty, toil-worn garments, his uncovered sun-browned breast,
he looked nobler and prouder than he had appeared when in the arena,
where his natural grace had a somewhat tawdry touch through a certain
striving after theatrical effect. The old airs that he played on his
rustic instrument, made poetic by the solitude and silence of the
mountains and waking the ancient golden ruins from their slumbers in
stone, floated like skylarks round the slopes all gray with lavender or
checkered with wheat and dead vines and mulberry-trees with their broad
leaves casting longer but lighter shadows on the grass at their feet.
The wind had gone down. The setting sun played upon the violet line of
the Alpilles and poured into the hollows of the rocks a very mirage of
lakes, of liquid porphyry and of molten gold.

All along the horizon there seemed as it were a luminous vibration,
like the stretched cords of a lyre, to which the song of the crickets
and the hum of the tabor furnished the sonorous base. Silent and
delighted, Hortense, seated on the parapet of the old tower, leaning
her elbow on the fragment of a broken column near which a pomegranate
grew, listened and admired while she let her romantic little mind
wander, filled with the legends and stories that Roumestan had told her
on the way to the farm.

She pictured to herself the old château rising from its ruins, its
towers rebuilt, its gates renewed, its cloister-like arches peopled
with lovely women in long-bodiced gowns, with those pale, clear
complexions that the sun cannot injure. She herself was a princess of
the house of Baux with a pretty name of some saint in a missal and the
musician who was giving her a morning greeting was also a prince, the
last of the Valmajours, dressed in the costume of a peasant.

“Of a certes, ywis, the song once finished,” as the chroniclers of the
courts of love of old used to say, she broke from the tree above her a
bunch of pomegranate blossoms and held it out to the musician as the
prize won by his playing. He received it with gallantry and wound it
round the strings of his tabor.




CHAPTER VI.

CABINET MINISTER!


Three months have passed since that expedition to Mount Cordova.

Parliament had met at Versailles in a deluge of November rain, which
brought the low cloudy sky down to the lakes in the parks, enveloped
everything in mist and wrapped the two Chambers in a dreary dampness
and darkness; but it had done nothing to cool the heat of political
hatreds. The opening was stormy and threatening. Train after train
filled with deputies and senators followed and crossed each other,
hissing, whistling, spluttering, blowing defiant smoke at each other
as if animated by the same passions and intrigues they were carrying
through the torrents of rain. During this hour in the train, discussion
and loud-voiced conversation prevail above all the tumult of rushing
wheels in the different carriages, as violently and furiously as if
they were in the Chamber.

The noisiest, the most excited of all is Roumestan. He has already
delivered himself of two speeches since Parliament met. He addresses
committees, talks in the corridors, in the railway station, in the
café, and makes the windows tremble in the photographer’s shop where
all the Rights assemble. Little else is seen but that restless outline
and heavy form, his big head always in motion, the roll of his broad
shoulders, so formidable in the eyes of the Ministry, which he is about
to “down” according to all the rules, like one of the stoutest and most
supple of his native Southern wrestlers.

Ah! the blue sky, the tabors, the cicadas, all the bright pleasures of
his vacation days--how far away they seem, how utterly dislocated and
vanished! Numa never gives them a moment’s thought nowadays, entirely
carried away as he is by the whirl of his double life as politician and
man of the law. Like his old master Sagnier, when he went into politics
he did not renounce the law, and every evening from six o’clock to
eight his office in the Rue Scribe is thronged with clients.

It looked like a legation, this office managed by Roumestan. The
first secretary, his right-hand man, his counsellor and friend, was a
very good legal man of business named Méjean, a Southerner, as were
all Numa’s following; but from the Cévennes, the rocky region of the
South, which is more like Spain than Italy, where the inhabitants
have retained in their manners and speech the prudent reserve and
level-headed common-sense of the renowned Sancho.

Vigorous, robust, already a little bald, with the sallow complexion
of sedentary workers, Méjean alone did all the work of the office,
clearing away papers, preparing speeches, trying to reconcile
facts with his friend’s sonorous phrases--some say his future
brother-in-law’s. The other secretaries, Messieurs de Rochemaure and
de Lappara, two young graduates related to the noblest families in the
province, are only there for show, in training for political life under
Roumestan’s guidance.

Lappara, a handsome tall fellow with a neat leg, a ruddy complexion
and a blond beard, son of the old Marquis de Lappara, chief of the
Right in the Bordeaux district, is a fair type of that Creole South; he
is a gabbler and adventurer, with a love for duels and prodigalities
(_escampatives_). Five years of life in Paris, one hundred thousand
francs gone in “bucking the tiger” at the clubs, paid for with his
mother’s diamonds, had sufficed to give him a good boulevard accent and
a fine crusty tone of gold on his manners.

Viscount Charlexis de Rochemaure, a compatriot of Numa, is of a very
different kind. Educated by the Fathers of the Assumption, he had made
his law studies at home under the superintendence of his mother and an
abbé; he still retained from that early education a candid look and the
timid manners of a theological student that contrasted vividly with his
goatee in the style of Louis XIII, the combination making him seem at
one and the same time foxy and a muff.

Big Lappara tries hard to initiate this young Tony Lumpkin into the
mysteries of Parisian life. He teaches him how to dress himself, what
is _chic_ and what is not _chic_, to walk with his neck forward and
his mouth drawn down and to seat himself all of a piece, as it were,
with his legs extended in order not to wrinkle his trousers at the
knees. He would like to shake his simple faith in men and things, to
cure him of that love of superstitions which simply classes him among
the quill-drivers.

Not a bit of it! the viscount likes his work and when he is not at the
Palace or the Chamber with Roumestan, as to-day for instance, he sits
for hours at the secretaries’ table in the office next to the chief’s
and practises engrossing. The Bordeaux man, on the contrary, has drawn
an arm-chair up to the window, and in the twilight, with a cigar in
his mouth and his legs stretched out, lazily watches through the
falling rain and the steaming asphalt the long procession of carriages
driving up to the doors with every whip in the air; for to-day is Mme.
Roumestan’s Thursday.

What a lot of people! and still they come; more and more carriages!
Lappara, who boasts of knowing thoroughly the liveries of the great
people in Paris, calls out the names as he recognizes them: “Duchesse
de San Donnino, Marquis de Bellegarde--hello! the Mauconseils, too! Now
I’d like to know what that means?” and turning towards a tall, thin
person who stands by the mantelpiece drying his worsted gloves and his
light-colored trousers, too thin for the season, carefully turned up
over his cloth shoes: “Have you heard anything, Bompard?”

“Heard anythink? Sartainly I have,” was the answer in a broad accent.

Bompard, Roumestan’s mameluke, has the honorary position of a fourth
secretary who does outside business, goes to look for news and sings
his patron’s praises about the streets. This occupation does not
seem to be a lucrative one, judging from his appearance, but that is
really not Numa’s fault. Aside from the midday meal and an occasional
half-louis, this singular kind of parasite could never be induced to
accept anything; and how he supported existence remained as great a
mystery as ever to his best friends. To ask him if he knows anything,
to doubt the imagination of Bompard, is to show a fine simplicity of
soul!

“Yes, gentlemen, and somethink vary serious.”

“What is it?”

“The Marshal has just been shot at.” For one moment consternation
reigns; the young men look at each other. Then Lappara stretches
himself in his chair and asks languidly:

“How about your asphalt affair, old man--how is it getting on?”

“_Vai!_ the asphalt--I have something much better than that.”

Not at all surprised that his news of the attempted assassination of
the Marshal had produced so little effect, he now proceeded to unfold
to them his new scheme. A wonderful thing, and so simple! It was to
scoop the prizes of one hundred and twenty thousand francs that the
Swiss governments offers yearly at the Federal shooting-matches. He had
been a crack shot at larks in his day; with a little practice he could
easily get his hand in again and secure a hundred and twenty thousand
francs annually to the end of his life. Such an easy way to do it, _au
moins!_ Traversing Switzerland by short marches, going slowly, from
canton to canton, rifle on _showlder_.

The man of schemes grew warm with his subject, climbed mountains,
crossed glaciers, descended vales and torrents and shook down
avalanches before his astonished young listeners. Of all the imaginings
of that disordered brain this was certainly the most astonishing,
delivered with an air of perfect conviction, with a fire and flame
that, burning inwardly, covered his brow with corrugated wrinkles.

His ravings were only hushed by the breathless arrival of Méjean, who
came rushing in much excited:

“Great news!” he said throwing his bag upon the table. “The Ministry is
fallen!”

“It can’t be possible!”

“Roumestan takes the Ministry of Public Instruction....”

“I knew that,” said Bompard; and as they smiled, he added:
“_Par-fait-emain_, gentlemen! I was there; I have just come from there.”

“And you didn’t mention it before!”

“Why should I? No one ever believes me. I think it is my _agsent_,” he
added resignedly and with a candid air, the fun of which was lost in
the prevailing excitement.

Roumestan a Cabinet Minister!

“Ah, my boys, what a shifty, smart fellow the chief is!” Lappara kept
saying, throwing himself back in his chair with his legs near the
ceiling. “Hasn’t he played his cards well!”

Rochemaure looked up indignant:

“Don’t talk of smartness and shiftiness, my friend; Roumestan is
conscientiousness itself. He goes straight ahead like a bullet--”

“In the first place, there are no bullets nowadays, my child--only
shells; and shells do this--” and with the tip of his boot he indicated
the curving course of a trajectory:

“Scandal-monger!”

“Idiot!”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen!”

Méjean wondered to himself over this extraordinary man Roumestan, this
complicated nature whom even those who knew him most intimately could
judge so differently.

“A shifty fellow!--conscientiousness itself!”

The public judged of him in the same double way. He who knew him
thoroughly was conscious of the shallowness and indolence that modified
his tireless ambition and made him at the same time better and
worse than his reputation. But was it really true, this news of his
Ministerial portfolio? Anxious to know the truth, Méjean glanced in the
glass to see if he was in proper shape, and, stepping across the hall,
entered the apartments of Mme. Roumestan.

From the antechamber where the footmen waited with their ladies’ wraps
could be heard the hum of many voices deadened by the heavy, luxurious
hangings and high ceilings. Rosalie generally received in her little
drawing-room, furnished as a winter garden with cane seats and pretty
little tables, the light just filtering in between the green leaves
of the plants that filled the windows. That had always sufficed her
in her lowly position as a simple lady overshadowed by her husband’s
greatness, perfectly without social ambition and passing among those
who did not know her superiority for a good-enough person of no great
importance. But to-day the two large drawing-rooms were humming and
crowded to overflowing; new people were constantly arriving, friends to
the remotest degree, even to the slightest acquaintanceship, people to
whose faces it would have puzzled Rosalie to attach a name.

Dressed very simply in a gown of violet, most becoming to her slender
figure and the whole harmonious personality of her being, she received
every one alike with her gentle little smile, her manner somewhat
haughty--her _réfréjon_, or “uppish” air, as Aunt Portal had once
expressed it. Not the slightest elation at her new position--rather a
little surprise and uneasiness, but her feelings kept well concealed!

She went from group to group as the daylight faded rapidly in the lower
story of the city house and the servants brought lamps and lighted
the candles. The rooms assumed their festal air as at their evening
receptions, the rich shining hangings and oriental rugs and tapestries
glittering like colored stones in the light.

“Ah, Monsieur Méjean!” and Rosalie came up to him, glad to feel an
intimate friend near her in this crowd of strangers. They understood
each other perfectly. This Southerner who had learned to be cool and
the emotional Parisian had similar ways of seeing and judging things,
and together they acted as counterweights to the weaknesses and
extravagances of Numa.

“I came in to see if the news were true. But there is no doubt about
it,” said he, glancing at the crowded rooms. She handed him the
telegram she had received from her husband and said in a low voice:

“What do you think of it?”

“It is a great responsibility, but you will be there.”

“And you too,” she answered, pressing his hand, and then turned away to
meet other new-comers.

The fact was that more people kept arriving but no one went away. They
were waiting for Roumestan; they wished to hear all the particulars
of the affair from his own lips--how with one lift of his shoulder he
had managed to upset them all. Some of the new arrivals who had just
come from the Chamber were already bringing with them bits of news and
scraps of conversations. Every one crowded about them in pleasurable
excitement. The women especially were wildly interested. Under the big
hats which came into fashion that winter their pretty cheeks flushed
with that fine rosy tint, that fever one sees in the players round the
tables at the gambling house at Monte Carlo. The fashion of hats this
year was a revival of the days of the Fronde, soft felt hats with long
feathers; perhaps it was this that made their wearers so interested in
politics. But all these ladies appeared well up in such matters; they
talked in purest parliamentary language, emphasizing their remarks with
blows from their little muffs; all of them sang the praises of the
leader. In fact this exclamation could be heard on every side: “What a
man! what a man!”

In a corner sat old Béchut, a professor at the Collège de France, a
very ugly man all nose--an immense scientist’s nose that seemed to have
elongated itself from poking into books. He was taking the success
of Roumestan as the text for one of his favorite theories--that all
the weakness in the modern world comes from the too prominent place
in it given to women and children. Ignorance and toilets, caprice and
brainlessness! “You see, sir, that is where Roumestan is so strong!
He has no children and he has known how to escape the influence of
woman. So he has followed one straight, firm path; no turning aside,
no deviation!” The solemn personage whom he was addressing, councillor
at the Court of Cassation, a simple-looking, round-headed little man
whose ideas rattled about in his empty skull like corn in a gourd, drew
himself up approvingly in a magisterial way, as who should say: “I also
am a superior man, sir! I also have escaped from the influences to
which you refer.”

Seeing that people were listening, the professor spoke louder and cited
the great names of history, Cæsar, Richelieu, Frederick, Napoleon,
scientifically proving at the same time that in the scale of thinking
creatures woman was on a much lower grade than man. “And, as a matter
of fact, if we examine the cellular tissues....”

But what was much more amusing to examine was the expression on the
faces of the wives of these two gentlemen, who were sitting side by
side, all attention, taking a cup of tea--which genial meal, with its
goodies hot from the oven, its steaming samovar and rattle of spoons
on costly china, was just being served to the guests. The younger
lady, Mme. de Boë, had made of her gourd-headed husband, a used-up
nobleman with nothing but debts, a magistrate in the Court of Cassation
through the influence of her family; people shuddered to think of this
spendthrift, who had quickly wasted all his wife’s fortune and his own,
having the public moneys in his control. Mme. Béchut, a former beauty
and still beautiful, with long-lidded, intelligent eyes and delicate
features, showed only by a contraction of her mouth that she had been
at war with the world for years and was consumed with a tireless and
unscrupulous ambition. Her sole effort had been to push into the front
rank her very commonplace professor. By means that unfortunately were
only too well known she had compelled the doors of the Institute
and the Collège de France to open to him. There was a whole world
of meaning in the grim smile that these two women exchanged over
their teacups--and perhaps, if one were to search carefully among the
gentlemen, there were a good many other men in the throng who had not
been exactly injured by feminine influence.

Suddenly Roumestan appeared. Disregarding the shouts of welcome and
congratulations of the guests, he crossed the room quickly, went
straight to his wife and kissed her on both cheeks before she could
prevent this rather trying demonstration before the public. But what
could have better disproved the assertion of the professor? All the
ladies cried “bravo!” Much hand-shaking and embracing ensued and then
an attentive silence as Numa, leaning against the chimney-piece, began
to relate briefly the results of the day.

The great blow arranged a week ago to be struck to-day, the plots
and counter-plots, the wild rage of the Left at its defeat, his own
overwhelming triumph, his rush to the tribune, even to the very
intonation he had used to the Marshal when he replied: “That depends on
you, Mr. President”--he told everything, forgot nothing, with a gayety
and warmth that were contagious.

Then, becoming grave, he enumerated the great responsibilities of his
position; the reform of the University with its crowd of youths to be
brought up hoping for the realization of better things--this allusion
was understood and greeted with loud applause; but he meant to surround
himself with enlightened men, to beg for the good will and devotion of
all. With moist eyes he mustered the groups about him. “I call on you,
friend Béchut, and you, my dear De Boë--”

They were all so in earnest that no one stopped to ask in what manner
the dull wits of the councillor at the Court of Cassation could aid
in the reform of the University. But then the number of persons of
that sort whom Roumestan had urged that afternoon to aid him in his
tremendous duties of the Public Instruction was really incalculable.
As regards the fine arts, however, he felt more at ease, so he said;
there they would not refuse help! A flattering murmur of laughter and
exclamations stopped his further words.

As to that department there was but one voice in all Paris, even
among his worst enemies--Numa was the man for the work. Now at last
there would be a jury for art, a lyric theatre, an official art! But
the Minister cut these dithyrambics off and remarked in a gay and
familiar tone that the new Cabinet was composed almost exclusively of
Southerners. Out of eight members Provence, Bordeaux, Périgord and
Languedoc had supplied six; and then, growing excited: “Aha, the South
is climbing, the South is climbing! Paris is ours. We have everything.
It rests with you, gentlemen, to profit by it. For the second time the
Latins have conquered Gaul!”

He looked indeed like a Latin of the conquest, his head like a
medallion with broad flat surfaces on the cheeks, with his dark
complexion and unceremonious ways, his carelessness, so out of place in
this Parisian drawing-room. In the midst of the cheers and laughter
greeting his last speech Numa, always a good actor, knowing well how to
leave as soon as he had shot his bolt, suddenly quitted the fireplace
and signing to Méjean to follow him passed from the room by one of the
smaller doors, leaving Rosalie to make his excuses for him. He was to
dine at Versailles with the Marshal; he had hardly the time to dress
and sign a few papers.

“Come and help me dress,” said he to a servant who was laying the
table with three plates, for Roumestan, Madame and Bompard, around
that basket of flowers which Rosalie had fresh at every meal. He felt
a thrill of delight that he was not to dine there; the tumult of
enthusiasm that he had left behind him in the drawing-room excited in
him the desire for more gayety and more brilliant company. Besides, a
Southerner is never a domestic man. The Northern nations alone have
invented to meet their wretched climate the word “home,” that intimate
family circle to which the Provençal and the Italian prefer the gardens
of cafés and the noise and excitement of the streets.

Between the dining-room and the office was a small reception room,
usually full of people at this hour, anxiously watching the clock and
looking abstractedly at the illustrated papers, but quite preoccupied
by their legal woes. Méjean had sent them all away to-day, for he did
not think Numa could attend to them. One, however, had refused to
go: a big fellow in ready-made garments and awkward as a corporal in
citizen’s dress.

“Ah, God be with ye, Monsieur Roumestan; how are things? I have been
hoping so long that you would come!”

The accent, the swarthy face, that jaunty air--Numa had seen them
somewhere before, but where?

“You have forgotten me?” said the stranger. “Valmajour, the taborist.”

“Oh yes, yes, of course.”

He was about to pass on, but Valmajour planted himself before him and
informed him that he had arrived the day before yesterday. “I couldn’t
get here before, because when one moves a whole family, it takes a
little time to get installed.”

“A whole family?” said Numa with bulging eyes.

“_Bé!_ yes; my father and my sister. We have done as you advised.”

Roumestan looked distressed and embarrassed, as he always did when
called upon to redeem notes like this or fulfil a promise, lightly
given in order to make himself agreeable, but with little idea of
future acceptance. Dear me, he was only too glad to be of use to
Valmajour! He would consider it and see what he could do. But this
evening he was very much hurried--exceptional circumstances--the
invitation of the President. But as the peasant made no sign of going:
“Come in here,” said he, and they went into the study.

As Numa sat at his desk reading over and signing several papers
Valmajour glanced about the handsome room, richly furnished and
carpeted, with book-shelves covering all the walls, surmounted by
bronzes, busts and works of art, reminiscences each one of glorious
causes--a portrait of the king signed by his own royal hand. And he was
much impressed by the solemnity of it all--the stiffness of the carved
chairs, the rows of books, above all the presence of the servant,
correct in his severe black costume, coming and going and arranging
quickly on chairs his master’s evening clothes and immaculate linen.
But over there in the light of the lamps the big kind face and familiar
profile of Roumestan that he knew so well reassured him. His letters
finished, Roumestan began to dress, and while the servant drew off his
master’s trousers and shoes he asked Valmajour questions and learned to
his dismay that before leaving home they had sold everything that they
owned in the world--mulberry-trees, vineyards, farm, everything!

“You sold your farm, foolish fellow?”

“Well, my sister was somewhat afraid, but my father and I insisted upon
it. I said to them, ‘What risk is it when we are going to Numa and when
he is getting us to come?’”

It needed all the taborist’s naïveté to dare talk in that free and
easy way before a Minister. It was not Valmajour’s simplicity that
struck Numa most; it was the thought of the great crowd of enemies
that he had made for himself by this incorrigible mania for promises.
Now I ask you--what need was there to go and disturb the quiet life
of these poor people? and he went over in his memory all the details
of his visit to Mount Cordova, the scruples of the peasant girl and
the pains that he took to overcome them. What for? what devil tempted
him? He, this peasant, was dreadful. And as to his talent, he did
not remember much about it, concerned as he was at having this whole
family on his shoulders. He knew beforehand how his wife would reproach
him--remembered her cold look as she said: “Still, words must mean
_something!_” And now, in his new position at the source and spring of
favors, what a lot of trouble he was going to create for himself as a
result of his own fatal benevolence!

But the gladsome thought that he was a Minister and the consciousness
of his power restored his spirits almost at once. On such pinnacles as
his, why should such small things worry him? Master of all the fine
arts, with all the theatres and places of amusement under his thumb,
it would be a trifle to make the fortune of these luckless people.
Restored to his own self-complacency, he changed his tone and in order
to keep the peasant in his place told him solemnly and from a lofty
place to what important distinction he had been that day appointed.
Unhappily he was at that moment only half dressed, his feet in silk
stockings rested on the floor and his portly form was arrayed in
white flannel underclothes trimmed with pink ribbons. Valmajour could
not connect the word “Minister” in his mind with a fat man in his
shirt-sleeves, so he continued to call him _Moussu_ Numa, to talk to
him about his own “music” and the new songs that he had learned. Ah,
he feared no tabor-player in all Paris now!

“Listen, I will show you.”

He flew toward the next room to get his tabor but Roumestan stopped him.

“I tell you I am in a great hurry, deuce take you!”

“All right, all right, another time then,” said the peasant
good-naturedly.

And seeing Méjean approaching he thought it necessary to begin to tell
him the story of the fife with three stops.

“It come to me right in the middle of the night, listening to the
singing of the nightingoyle; thought I to meself: ‘How is it,
Valmajour--’”

It was the same little story that he had told them in the amphitheatre:
having found it successful, he cleverly clung to it, repeating it word
for word. But this time his manner became less assured, a certain
embarrassment gaining from moment to moment as Roumestan finished his
toilet and stood before him in all the severity of his black evening
clothes and enormous shirt-front of fine linen with its studs of
Oriental pearls, which the valet handed him piece by piece.

Moussu Numa seemed to him to have grown taller, his head, held stiffly,
solemnly, for fear of disarranging his immaculate white muslin tie,
seemed lighted up by the pale beams radiating from the cross of Saint
Anne around his neck and the big order of Isabella the Catholic, like
a sun, pinned upon his breast. And suddenly the peasant, seized by
a wave of respect and fright, realized that he stood in the presence
of one of those privileged beings of the earth, that strange, almost
superhuman creature, the powerful god to whom the prayers and desires
and supplications of his worshippers are sent only on large stamped
paper, so high up, indeed, that humbler devotees are never privileged
to see him, so haughty that they only whisper his name with fear and
trembling, in a sort of restrained fear and ignorant emphasis--the
Minister!

Poor Valmajour! He was so upset by this idea that he hardly heard
Roumestan’s kind words of farewell, asking him to come again in a
fortnight when he would be installed in his new quarters at the
Ministry.

“All right, all right, your Excellency.”

He backed towards the door, still dazzled by the orders and
extraordinary expression of his transfigured compatriot. Numa was
delighted at this sudden timidity, which was a tribute to what he
henceforward called his “ministerial air,” his curling lip, his
frowning brow and his severe, reserved manner.

A few moments later his Excellency was rolling towards the railway
station, forgetting this tiresome episode and lulled by the gentle
motion of the coupé with its bright lamps as he flew to meet his new
and exalted engagements. He was already preparing the telling points in
his first speech, composing his plan of campaign, his famous letter to
the rectors and thinking of the excitement caused all over Europe when
they should read his nomination in to-morrow’s papers, when, at the
turn of the boulevard, in the light of a gas-lamp reflected in the wet
asphalt, he caught sight of the taborist, his tabor hanging from his
arm, deafened and frightened, waiting for an opportunity to cross the
street which was at that hour, as all Paris hastened to re-enter its
gates, a moving mass of carriages and wagons, while crowded omnibuses
jolted swaying along and the horns of the tramway conductors sounded
at intervals. In the falling shades of night and the steam of dampness
which the rain threw up from the hurrying crowd, in this great jostling
crowd the poor boy seemed so lost, exiled and overwhelmed by the tall,
unfriendly buildings around him--he seemed so pitifully unlike the
handsome Valmajour at the door of his _mas_, giving the rhythm to the
locusts with his tabor, that Roumestan turned away his head and, for
a few moments, a feeling of remorse threw a cloud over the radiant
pathway of his triumph.




CHAPTER VII.

THE PASSAGE DU SAUMON.


While awaiting a more complete settling than was possible before the
arrival of their furniture, which was coming by slow freight, the
Valmajours had taken rooms temporarily at the famous Passage du Saumon,
where from time immemorial teachers from Aps and its district have
stopped, and of which Aunt Portal still retained such astonishing
recollections. There, up under the roof, they had two small rooms,
one of which was without light or air, a kind of wood-closet which
was occupied by the men; the other was not much larger but seemed to
them fine in comparison, with its worm-pierced black walnut furniture,
its moth-eaten ragged carpet on the worn wooden floor and the dormer
windows that let in only a bit of a sky as lowering and yellow as the
long donkey-backed skylight over the Passage.

In these poor quarters they kept up the memory of home with a strong
smell of garlic and fried onions, which foreign food they cooked for
themselves on a little stove. Old Valmajour, who loved good eating and
was also fond of company, would have liked to dine at the hotel table,
where the white linen and plated salt-cellars and service seemed very
handsome to him, and also to have joined in the noisy conversations
and mingled with shouts of laughter of the commercial gentlemen who at
meal times filled the house to the very top floor with their noise and
jollity. But Audiberte opposed this flatly.

Amazed not to find at once on their arrival the promises of Numa
fulfilled and the two hundred francs an evening which had filled her
little head with piles of money ever since the visit of the Parisians;
horrified at the high price of everything, from the first day she had
been seized with the craze that the Parisians call “fear of wanting.”
For herself she could get along with anchovies and olives as in
Lent--_té, pardi!_ but her men were perfect wolves, worse than in their
own country because it is colder in Paris, and she was obliged to be
constantly opening her _saquette_, a large calico pocket made by her
own hands, in which she carried the three thousand francs that they had
received for their farm and chattels.

Each coin that she spent was a struggle, a pang, as if she were handing
over the stones of her farmhouse or the last vines of her vineyard.
Her peasant greed and her suspiciousness, that fear of being cheated
by a tenant which caused her to sell her farm instead of letting it,
were redoubled in this gloomy, unknown Paris, this city which from her
garret she heard roaring with a sound that did not cease day or night
at this noisy corner of the city market, causing the glasses near the
hotel water-bottle on the table to rattle at every hour.

No traveller lost in a wood of sinister repute ever clung more
convulsively to his baggage than did Audiberte to her _saquette_ as she
walked through the streets in her green skirt and her Arles head-dress,
which the passers-by turned to stare at. When she entered a shop with
her countrywoman’s gait, the way she had of calling things by a lot of
outlandish names, saying _api_ for celery, _mérinjanes_ for aubergines,
made her, a woman from the south of France, as much a stranger in her
country’s capital as if she had been a Russian from Nijni Novgorod or a
Swede from Stockholm.

Sweet and humble of manner at first, if she detected a smile on the
face of a clerk or received a rough answer on account of her mania
for bargaining, she would suddenly fly into a gust of rage; her
pretty virginal brown face twitching with frantic gesticulations she
would pour forth a torrent of noisy, vainglorious words. Then she
would tell about the expected legacy from Cousin Puyfourcat, the two
hundred francs a night to be earned by her brother, the friendship
that Roumestan had for them--sometimes calling him Numa, sometimes
the _Menister_--all this with an emphasis more grotesque than her
familiarity. Everything was jumbled together in a flood of gibberish
composed of the _langue d’oil_ tinged with French.

Then her habitual caution would return to her; she would fear that
she had talked imprudently, and, seized by a superstitious terror at
her own gossip, she would stop, suddenly mute, and close her lips as
tightly as the strings of her _saquette_.

At the end of a week she had become a legendary character in the
quarter of the Rue Montmartre, a street of shops where, at their
ever-open doors, the vendors of meats, green-groceries and colonial
wares discussed the affairs and secrets of all the inhabitants of the
neighborhood. The constant teasing of these people, the saucy questions
with which they plied her as she made her frugal purchases each
morning--as to why her brother’s appearance was delayed and when the
legacy was coming from the Arab--all these insults to her self-respect,
more than the fear of poverty staring them in the face, exasperated
Audiberte against Numa, against those promises which at first she had
suspected, true child of the South that she was, knowing well that the
promises of her country-people down South vanish easier than those of
other folks--all because of the lightness of the air.

“Oh, if we had only made him sign a paper!”

This idea became a fixture in her mind and she felt daily in her
brother’s pockets for the stamped document when Valmajour set out for
the Ministry, in order to be sure it was there.

But Roumestan was engaged in signing another kind of paper and had many
things to think of more important than the taborist. He was settling
down in his new office with the generous ardor and enthusiasm, with
the fever of a man who comes to his own. Everything was a novelty to
him--the enormous rooms of the Ministry as well as the large ideas
necessitated by his position. To arrive at the top, to “reconquer
Gaul,” as he had said, that was not so difficult; but to sustain
himself satisfactorily, to justify his elevation by intelligent reforms
and attempts at progress! Full of zeal, he studied, questioned,
consulted, literally surrounded himself with shining lights. With
Béchut, that great professor, he studied the evils of the college
system and the means to extirpate the spirit of free-thinking in the
schools. He employed the experience of his chief in the fine arts, M.
de la Calmette, who had behind him twenty-nine years of office, and of
Cadaillac, the manager of the grand opera, who was still erect after
three failures, in order to remodel the Conservatory, the Salon and the
Academy of Music in accordance with brand-new plans.

The trouble was that he never listened to these counsellors, but
talked himself for hours at a time and then, suddenly glancing at his
watch, would rise and hastily dismiss them: “Bad luck to it--I had
forgotten the council meeting! What a life, not a moment to oneself! I
understand--just send me your memorial right off!”

Memorials were piling up on Méjean’s desk, who, notwithstanding his
good intentions and intelligence, had none too much time for current
work and so permitted these grand reforms to slumber in their dust.
Like all Ministers when they arrive at a portfolio, Roumestan had
brought with him all his clerks from the Rue Scribe--Baron de Lappara
and Viscount de Rochemaure, who gave a flavor of aristocracy to the new
Ministry, but who were otherwise perfectly incompetent and ignorant of
their duties.

The first time that Valmajour came there he was received by Lappara,
who occupied himself by preference with the fine arts and whose
duties consisted principally in sending invitations in large official
envelopes at all hours by staff officers, dragoons or cuirassiers
to the young ladies of the minor theatres, asking them to supper.
Sometimes the envelope was empty, being merely a pretext to display in
front of the lady’s door that reassuring orderly from the Ministry the
day before some debt came due.

Lappara received him with a kindly, easy air, a bit top-loftical,
like that of a feudal lord receiving one of his vassals. His legs
outstretched, so as not to crease his gray-blue trousers, he talked
mincingly without stopping a moment the polishing of his nails.

“Not easy just now--the Minister is busy--perhaps in a few days. We’ll
let you know, my good fellow!”

And when in his simplicity the musician ventured to say that his matter
was somewhat urgent, that they only had enough for a short time left,
the baron, carefully placing his file upon the edge of the desk with
his most serious air, suggested to him to have a crank attached to his
tabor.

“A crank attached to my tabor?--for what purpose?”

“Why, my dear fellow, so as to use it as a box for _plaisirs_ (cakes)
while you are out of work.”

The next time Valmajour came to see Roumestan he was received by
Rochemaure. The viscount raised his head of hair frizzed with hot
irons from the dusty ledger over which he was bending and in his
conscientious manner asked to have the mechanism of the fife explained
to him, took notes, tried to understand and said finally that he was
not there for art matters, but more especially for religious questions.

After that the unhappy peasant never could find any one--they had all
betaken themselves to that inaccessible retreat where His Excellency
had hidden himself. Still he did not lose calmness or heart and always
responded to the evasive answers and shrugging shoulders of the
attendants with the surprised but steady look and shrewd half-smile
peculiar to the Provençal.

“All right, I will come again.”

And he did come again. But for his high gaiters and the tabor hanging
on his arm, he might have been taken for an employee of the house, he
came so regularly. But each time he came it was harder than the last.

Now the mere sight of the great arched door made his heart beat.
Beyond the arch was the old Hôtel Augereau with its large courtyard
where they were already stacking wood for the winter and the double
staircase so hard to ascend under the mocking gaze of the servants.
Everything combined to harass him--the silver chains of the porters,
the gold-laced caps, the endless gorgeous things that made him feel the
distance that separated him from his patron. But he dreaded more than
all this the dreadful scenes that he went through at home, the terrible
frowning brows of Audiberte; that is why he still desperately insisted
on coming. At last the hall porter took pity upon him and gave him the
advice to waylay the Minister at the Saint-Lazare station when he was
going down to Versailles.

He took his advice and did sentry work in the big lively waiting room
on the first story at the hour of the Parliament train when it took
on a very special look of its own. Deputies, senators, journalists,
members of the Left, of the Right and all the parties jostled each
other there, forming as variegated a throng as the blue, red and green
placards that covered the walls. They watched each other, talked,
screamed, whispered, some sitting apart rehearsing their next speech,
others, the orators of the lobbies, making the windows rattle with
loud voices that the Chamber was never destined to hear. Northern
accents and Southern accents, divers opinions and sentiments, swarming
ambitions and intrigues, the noisy tramp of the restless crowd--this
waiting-room with its delays and uncertainties was an appropriate
theatre for politics, this tumult of a journey at a fixed hour which
would soon, at bid of the whistle, be speeding over the rails down a
perspective of tracks, disks and locomotives, over a country full of
accidents and surprises.

Five minutes later he saw Numa enter, leaning on the arm of one of his
secretaries who carried his portfolio. His coat was flung open, his
face beaming just as he had looked that day on the platform in the
amphitheatre and at a distance he recognized the facile voice, the warm
words, his protestations of friendship: “Count on me,--put yourself in
my hands,--it is as good as granted....”

The Minister just then was in the honey-moon of prosperity. Except for
political enmities--not always as bitter as they are supposed to be,
simply the result of rivalry between public speakers or quarrels of
lawyers on opposite sides of a case--Numa had no enemies, not having
been in power long enough to discourage those who sought his services.
His credit was still good. Only a few had begun to be impatient and dog
his footsteps. To these he threw a loud, hasty “How are you, friend?”
that anticipated their reproaches and in a way denied their arguments,
while his familiar manner flattered the baffled office-seekers and yet
kept their demands at a distance. It was a great idea, was this “How
are you?” It sprang from instinctive duplicity.

At sight of Valmajour, who came swinging towards him, his smile showing
his white teeth, Numa felt inclined to throw him his fatal, careless
“How are you, friend?”--but how could he treat this peasant lad in
a little felt hat as a friend as he stood there in his gray jacket,
from the sleeves of which his brown hands protruded like those in a
cheap village photograph? He preferred to pass him by without a word,
with his “Ministerial air,” leaving the poor boy amazed, crushed
and knocked about by the crowd that was following the great man.
Still Valmajour returned to his station the next day and several days
thereafter, but he did not dare approach the Minister; he sat on the
edge of a bench with that touching air of sorrowful resignation that
one so often sees in a railway station on the faces of soldiers and
emigrants, who are going to a strange country, prepared to meet all the
chances of their evil destiny.

Roumestan could not evade that silent figure on his path with its
dumb appeal. He might pretend not to see it, turn aside his glance,
talk louder as he passed; the smile on his victim’s face was there
and remained there until the train had gone. Of a certainty he would
have preferred a noisy demand and a row, when he could have called a
policeman and given the disturber of his complacency in charge and so
got rid of him. He, the Minister, went so far as to take a different
station on the left bank of the Seine to avoid this trouble of his
conscience. Thus in many instances is the greatest man’s life made
wretched by some little thing of no account, like a pebble in the
seven-league boots.

But Valmajour would not despair.

“He must be ill,” he said to himself and stuck obstinately to his post.
At home his sister watched for his coming in a fever of impatience.

“Well, _bé!_ have you seen the Menister? Has he signed that paper?”

His eternal “No, not yet!” exasperated her, but more his calmness
as he threw into a corner his tabor whose strap left a dent on his
shoulder--it was the calmness of indolence and shiftlessness, as common
as vivacity among Southern nations. Then the queer little creature
would fall into one of her furious fits. What had he in his veins in
place of blood?--was there to be no end to this?--“Look out, or I
will attend to it myself!” Very calm, he made no answer, but let the
storm blow over, took his instruments from their cases, his fife and
mouth-piece with its ivory tip, and rubbed them well with a bit of
cloth for fear of dampness and promised to try at the Ministry again
to-morrow, and, if he could not see Numa, ask to see Mme. Roumestan.

“O, _vaï!_ Mme. Roumestan! You know she does not like your music--but
the young lady, though--she will be sure to help you; yes indeed!” And
she tossed her head.

“Madame or Mademoiselle, they don’t either of them care anything about
you,” said the old man, who was cowering over a turf fire that his
daughter had economically covered with ashes, a fire about which they
were eternally quarrelling.

In the bottom of his heart the old man was not displeased at his son’s
want of success, from professional jealousy. All these complications
and the uprooting of their lives had been most welcome to the Bohemian
tastes of the old wandering minstrel; he was delighted at first with
the journey and the idea of seeing Paris, that “Paradise of females and
purgatory of hosses,” as the carters of his country put it, imagining
that in Paris one would see women like houris arrayed in transparent
garments and horses distorted, leaping about in the midst of flames.

Instead he had found cold, privations and rain. From fear of Audiberte
and respect for Roumestan he had contented himself with grumbling and
shivering in a corner, only an occasional word or wink hinting at his
dissatisfaction. But Numa’s treachery and his daughter’s fits of wrath
gave him also an excuse for opening hostilities. He revenged himself
for all the blows to his vanity that his son’s musical proficiency had
inflicted on him for ten years and shrugged his shoulders as he heard
him trying his fife.

“Music, music, oh, yes--much good your music is going to do you!”

And then in a loud voice he asked if it wasn’t a sin to bring an old
man like him so far--into this _Sibelia_, this wilderness, to let him
perish of cold and hunger. He called on the memory of his sainted wife,
whom, by the way, he had killed with unhappiness--“made a goat of her,”
as Audiberte put it. He would whine for hours at a time, his head in
the fire, red-faced and sullen, until his daughter, wearied with his
lamentations, gave him a few pennies and sent him out to get a glass
of country wine for himself. In the wine-shop his sorrows fled away.
It was comfortable by the roaring stove; in the warmth the old wretch
soon recovered his low vein of an actor in Italian comedy, which his
grotesque figure, big nose and thin lips made more apparent, taken in
connection with his little wiry body, like Punch in the show.

He was soon the delight of the customers in the wine-shop with his
buffooneries and his boasting. He jeered his son’s tabor and told them
how much trouble it gave them at the hotel; for in order to be ready
for his coming out Valmajour, kept at tension by the delay of hopes,
persisted in practising up to midnight; but the other tenants objected
to the continual thunder of the tabor and the ear-piercing cry of the
fife--the very stairs shook with the sound, as if an engine were in
motion on the fifth floor.

“Go ahead,” Audiberte would say to her brother when the proprietor came
to them with complaints. It was pretty queer if one hadn’t the right to
make music in this Paris that makes so much noise one cannot sleep at
night! So he continued to practise. Then the proprietor demanded their
rooms. But when they left the Passage du Saumon, the hostelry so well
known in their native province, one that recalled their native land,
they felt as if their exile were heavier to bear and that they had
journeyed still a bit farther North.

The night before they left, after another long, unfruitful journey
taken by Valmajour, Audiberte hurried her men through dinner without
speaking a word, but with the light of firm resolution shining in
her eyes. When it was over she threw her long brown cloak over her
shoulders and went out, leaving the washing of the dishes to the men.

“Two months, almost two months since we came to Paris,” she muttered
through her clenched teeth. “I’ve had enough, I am going to speak to
this Menister myself--”

She arranged the ribbon of her head-dress, that, perched over her wavy
hair in high bows, stood up like a helmet, and rushed violently from
the room, her well-blacked boot-heels kicking at every step the heavy
material of her gown. Father and son stared at each other alarmed, but
did not dare to restrain her; they knew that any interference would but
exasperate her anger. They passed the afternoon alone together, hardly
speaking as the rain battered against the windows, the one polishing
his bag and fife, the other cooking the stew for supper over a good,
big fire that he took advantage of Audiberte’s absence to kindle, and
over which he was for once getting thoroughly warm.

Finally her quick steps, the short steps of a dwarf, were heard in the
corridor. She entered beaming.

“Too bad our windows do not look out upon the street,” she said,
removing her cloak, which was perfectly dry. “You might have seen the
beautiful carriage in which I came home.”

“A carriage! you are joking!”

“_And_ two servants, _and_ liveries--it is making a great stir in the
hotel!”

Then in a wondering silence she described and acted out her
adventure. In the first place and to start with--instead of going to
the Minister, who would not have received her, she found out the
address--one can get anything if one talks politely--of the sister of
Mme. Roumestan, the tall young lady who came to see them at Valmajour.
She did not live at the Ministry but with her parents in a quarter
full of little, badly-paved streets that smelt of drugs and reminded
Audiberte of her own province. It was ever so far away and she was
obliged to walk. She found the place at last in a little square
surrounded with arcades like the _placette_ at Aps.

The dear young lady--how well she had received her, without any
haughtiness, although everything looked very rich and handsome in the
house, much gilding, and many silken curtains hung round on this side
and that, in every direction:

“Ah, God be with you! So you have come to Paris? Where from? Since
when?”

Then, when she heard how Numa had disappointed them, she rang for her
governess, she too a lady in a bonnet, and all three set off for the
Ministry. It was something to see the bows and reverences made to them
by all those old beadles who ran ahead of them to open the doors.

“So you have seen him, then, the Minister?” timidly ventured Valmajour
as his sister stopped to breathe.

“Seen him! I certainly have; what did I tell you, you poor _bédigas_
(calf), that you must get the young lady on your side! She arranged the
whole thing in no time. There is to be a great musical function next
week at the Minister’s and you are to play before the directors of the
Conservatory of Music. And after that, _cra-cra!_ the contract drawn up
and signed!”

But the best of all was that the young lady had driven her home in the
carriage of the Minister.

“And she was very anxious to come upstairs with me,” added the peasant
girl, winking at her father and distorting her pretty face with a
meaning grimace. The father’s old face, with its complexion like a
dried fig, wrinkled up in a look of slyness which meant: “I understand;
not a word!” He no longer taunted the taborist. Valmajour himself, very
quiet, did not understand his sister’s perfidious meaning; he could
think only of his coming appearance, and, taking down his instruments,
he passed all his pieces in review, sending the notes as a farewell all
over the house and down the glass-covered passage in floods of trills
on rolling cadences.




CHAPTER VIII.

RENEWAL OF YOUTH.


The Minister and his wife had finished breakfast in their dining-room
on the first floor, a room much too big and showy, that never could
be thoroughly thawed out, even with heavy curtains and the heat of a
furnace that warmed the whole house, and the steam from the hot dishes
of a copious repast. By some chance that morning they were alone
together. On the table amidst the dessert, always a great feature
in the Southerner’s meal, lay a box of cigars and a cup of vervain,
which is the tea of the Provençal, and large boxes filled with cards
of invitation to a series of concerts to be given by the Minister.
They were addressed to senators, deputies, clergymen, professors,
academicians, people of society--all the motley crowd that is generally
bidden to public receptions; and some larger boxes for the cards to the
privileged guests asked to the first series of “little concerts.”

Mme. Roumestan was running them over, occasionally pausing at some
name, watched by her husband out of the corner of his eye as he
pretended to be absorbed in selecting a cigar, while really his furtive
glance was noting the disapprobation and reserve on her quiet face at
the promiscuous way this first batch of invitations had been selected.

But Rosalie asked no questions; all these preparations did not
interest her. Since their installation at the Ministry she had felt
herself farther off than ever from her husband, separated by his
many engagements, too many guests and a public way of living that
had destroyed all intimacy. To this was added the ever-bitter sorrow
of childlessness; never to hear about her the pattering of tireless
little feet, nor any of those peals of baby laughter that would have
banished from their dining-room that icy look as if a hotel where they
were stopping for a day or two, with its impersonal air on tablecloth,
furniture, silver and all the sumptuous things to be found in any
public place.

In the embarrassing silence could be heard the distant sound of hammers
interspersed with music and singing. The musicians were rehearsing,
while carpenters were busy putting up and hanging the stage on which
the concert was to take place. The door opened; Méjean entered, his
hands full of papers.

“Still more petitions!”

Roumestan flew into a rage: No, it was really too bad!--if it were the
Pope himself there would be no place to give him. Méjean calmly placed
before him the heap of letters, cards and scented notes:

“It is very difficult to refuse--you promised them, you know--”

“I promised? I haven’t spoken to one of them!”

“Listen a moment: ‘My dear Minister--I beg to remind you of your kind
speech,’ and this one, ‘The General informs me that you were so kind as
to offer him,’ and this, ‘Reminding the Minister of his promise.’”

“I must be a somnambulist, then!” said Roumestan in astonishment.

The fact was that as soon as the day for the concert was decided upon
Numa had said to every one whom he met in the Senate or Chamber: “I
count on you for the 10th, you know,” and as he added “Quite a private
affair,” no one had failed to accept the flattering invitation.

Embarrassed at being caught in the act by his wife, he vented his
irritability upon her as usual.

“It’s the fault of your sister with her taborist. What need have I
of all this fuss? I did not intend to give our concerts until much
later--but that girl, such an impatient little person! ‘No, no, right
away;’ and you were in as much of a hurry as she was! _L’azé me fiche_
if I don’t believe this taborist has turned your heads.”

“O no, not mine,” answered Rosalie gayly. “Indeed I am dreadfully
afraid that this foreign music may not be understood by the Parisians.
We ought to have brought the atmosphere of Provence, the costumes, the
farandole--but first of all,” she added seriously, “it is necessary
that you must keep your promise.”

“Promise, promise? It will be impossible to talk at all very soon!”

Turning towards his secretary, who was smiling, he added:

“By Jove, all Southerners are not like you, Méjean, cold and
calculating and taciturn. You are a false one, a renegade Southerner,
a _Franciot_, as they say with us. A Southerner?--you? A man who
has never lied and who does not like vervain tea!” he added with a
comically indignant tone.

“I am not so _franciot_ as I seem, sir,” answered Méjean calmly.
“When I first came to Paris twenty years ago I was a terrible
Southerner--impudence, gesticulations, assurance--as talkative and
inventive as--”

“As Bompard,” prompted Roumestan, who never liked other people to
ridicule his dearest friend, but did not deny himself the privilege.

“Yes, really, almost as bad as Bompard. A kind of instinct urged me
never to tell the truth. One day I began to feel ashamed of this and
resolved to correct it. Outward exaggeration could be mastered at least
by speaking in a low voice and keeping my arms pressed tightly against
my sides; but the inward--the boiling, bubbling torrent--that was
more difficult. Then I made an heroic resolution. Every time I caught
myself in an untruth I punished myself by not speaking for the rest of
the day; that is how I was able to reform my nature. Nevertheless the
instinct is there under all my coolness. Sometimes I have broken off
short in the middle of a sentence--it isn’t the words I lack, quite the
contrary--I hold myself in check because I feel that I am going to lie.”

“The terrible South--there is no way of escaping from it!” said the
genial Numa, philosophically, blowing a cloud of smoke from his cigar
up to the ceiling. “The South holds me through the mania I have to
make promises, that craziness of throwing myself at people’s heads and
insisting on their happiness whether they want it or not--”

A footman interrupted him, opened the door and announced with a knowing
and confidential air:

“M. Béchut is here.”

The Minister was furious at once. “Tell him I am at breakfast! I wish
people would let me alone.”

The footman asked pardon, but said M. Béchut claimed that he had an
appointment with his Excellency. Roumestan softened visibly:

“Well, well, I will come. Let him wait in the library.”

“Not in the library,” said Méjean, “it is occupied; there’s the
Superior Council! You appointed this hour to see them.”

“Well, in M. de Lappara’s room, then--”

“I have put the Bishop of Tulle in there,” said the footman timidly;
“your Excellency said--”

Every place was occupied with office-seekers whom he had confidentially
told that the breakfast hour was the time when they would be sure to
find him--and most of them were personages that could not be made to
“do antechamber” like the ordinary herd.

“Go into my morning room,” said Rosalie as she rose. “I am going out.”

And while the secretary and the footman went to reassure and quiet the
waiting petitioners Numa hastily swallowed his cup of vervain, scalding
himself badly, exclaiming: “I am at my wits’ end, overwhelmed.”

“What can that sorry fellow Béchut be after now?” asked Rosalie,
instinctively lowering her voice in that crowded house where a stranger
was lurking behind every door.

“What is he after? After the manager’s position of course. _Té!_ he
is Dansaert’s shark--he expects him to be thrown overboard for him to
devour.”

She approached him hastily:

“Is M. Dansaert to be dropped from the Cabinet?”

“Do you know him?”

“My father often spoke of him--he was a compatriot and old friend of
his. He considers him an upright man and very clever.”

Roumestan stammered out his reasons: “Bad tendencies--free-thinker--it
was necessary to make reforms, and then, he was a very old man.”

“And you will put Béchut in his place?”

“O, I know the poor man lacks the gift of pleasing the ladies.”

She smiled a fine scornful smile.

“His impertinences are as indifferent to me as his compliments would
be. What I cannot forgive in him is his assumption of clerical learning
and piety. I respect all forms of religion--but if there is one thing
more detestable in this world than another, it is hypocrisy and deceit.”

Unconsciously her voice rose warm and vibrating; her rather cold
features beamed with a glow of honesty and rectitude and flushed with
righteous indignation.

“Hush, hush,” said Numa pointing towards the door. Perhaps it was not
perfectly just; he allowed that old Dansaert had rendered good service
to his country; but what was to be done? He had given his word.

“Take it back,” said Rosalie. “Come, Numa, for my sake--I implore you!”

The tender request was emphasized by the gentle pressure of her little
hand upon his shoulder. He was much touched. His wife had not seemed
interested in his affairs of late; she had given only an indulgent
but silent attention to his plans, which were ever changing their
direction. This urgent request was flattering to him.

“Can any one resist you, my darling?”

He pressed upon her finger tips a kiss so fervid that she felt it all
up her narrow sleeve. She had such beautiful arms! It was most painful,
however, to say anything disagreeable to a man’s face and he rose
reluctantly:

“I will be here, listening!” she said with a pretty threatening
gesture.

He went into the next room, leaving the door ajar to give himself
courage and so that she might hear all that was said. Oh, the beginning
was firm and to the point!

“I am in despair, my dear Béchut--but it is utterly impossible for me
to do for you as I promised--”

The answer of the professor was inaudible, but rendered in a tearful,
supplicating voice through his huge tapir-like nose. To her surprise
Roumestan did not waver, but began to sound the praises of Dansaert
with a surprising accent of conviction for a man to whom all his
arguments had only just been suggested. True, it was very hard for him
to take back a promise once given, but was it not better than to do
an act of injustice? It was his wife’s thought modulated and put to
music and uttered with wide, heartfelt gestures that made the hangings
vibrate.

“Of course I will make up to you in some way this little
misunderstanding,” he added, changing his tone hastily.

“Oh, good Lord!” cried Rosalie under her breath. Then came a shower
of new promises--the cross of commander in the Legion of Honor on
the first of January next, the next vacancy in the Superior Council,
the--the--Béchut tried to protest, just for decency’s sake, but said
Numa: “Permit me, permit me, it’s only an act of justice--such men as
you are too uncommon--”

Intoxicated with his own benevolence, stammering from sheer
affectionateness--if Béchut had not gone Numa would have offered him
his own portfolio next. But suddenly remembering the concert, he called
to him from the door:

“I count on seeing you next Sunday, my dear professor; we are starting
a series of little concerts, very unceremonious you know--the very ‘top
of the basket’--”

Then returning to Rosalie, he said:

“Well, what do you think of it? I hope I have been firm enough!”

It was really so amusing that she burst into a peal of laughter. When
he understood her amusement and that he had made a number of new
promises, he seemed alarmed.

“Well, well, people are grateful to one all the same.”

She left him, smiling one of her old smiles, quite gay from her kind
deed and perhaps above all delighted to find a feeling for him reviving
in her heart that she had long thought dead.

“Angel that you are!” said Numa to himself as he watched her go, tears
of tenderness in his eyes; and when Méjean came in to remind him of the
waiting council:

“My friend, listen: when one has the luck to possess a wife like
mine--marriage is an earthly Paradise. Hurry up and marry!”

Méjean shook his head without answering.

“How now? Isn’t your affair prospering?”

“I fear not. Mme. Roumestan promised to sound her sister for me, but as
she has never said anything more--”

“Don’t you want me to manage it for you? I get on splendidly with my
little sister-in-law.... I bet you I can make her decide....”

There was still a little vervain left in the teapot, and as he poured
out a fresh cup Roumestan overflowed with protestations to his first
secretary. “Ah! no, success had not altered him; as always, Méjean was
his best, his chosen friend! Between him and Rosalie he indeed felt
himself stronger and more complete....

“O, my friend, that woman, that woman--if you only knew what her
goodness is! how noble and forgiving! When I think that I was capable
of--”

Positively it was with difficulty that he restrained himself from
launching the confidence that rose to his lips along with a heavy sigh.
“If I did not love her, I should be guilty indeed.”

Baron de Lappara came in quickly and whispered with a mysterious air:

“Mlle. Bachellery is here.”

Numa turned scarlet and a flash dried the tenderness from his eyes in a
moment.

“Where is she? In your room?”

“Monsignor Lipmann was there already,” said Lappara, smiling a little
at the idea of the possible meeting. “I put her downstairs in the large
drawing-room. The rehearsal is over.”

“Very well; I will go.”

“Don’t forget the Council,” Méjean tried to say, but Roumestan did
not hear and sprang down the steep stairway leading to the Minister’s
private apartments on the reception floor.

He had steered clear of serious entanglements since the trouble over
Mme. d’Escarbès, avoiding adventures of the heart or of vanity, because
he feared an open rupture that might ruin his household forever. He
was not a model husband, certainly, but the marriage contract, though
soiled and full of holes, was still intact. Though once well warned,
Rosalie was much too honest and high-minded to spy jealously upon her
husband, and although she was always anxious, never sought for proofs.
Even at that moment, if Numa had had any idea of the influence this
new fancy of his was to have upon his life, he would have hastened to
ascend the stairs much more quickly than he had come down them; but
our destiny delights to come to us in mask and domino, doubling the
pleasure of the first meeting with the touch of mystery. How could Numa
divine that any danger threatened from the pretty little girl whom he
had seen from his carriage window crossing the courtyard several days
before, jumping over the puddles, holding her umbrella in one hand and
her coquettish skirts gathered up in the other, with all the smartness
of a true Parisian woman, her long lashes curving above a saucy,
turned-up nose, her blond hair, twisted in an American knot behind,
which the moist air had turned to curls at the ends, and her shapely,
finely-curved leg quite at ease above her high-heeled boot--that was
all he had seen of her. So during the evening he had said to De Lappara
as if it were a matter of very little importance:

“I will wager, that little charmer I met in the courtyard this morning
was on her way to see you.”

“Yes, your Excellency, she came to see me, but it was on your account
she came.”

And then he had named little Bachellery.

“What! the _débutante_ at the Bouffes? How old is she? Why, she’s
hardly more than a child!”

The papers were talking a great deal that winter about this Alice
Bachellery, whom a fashionable _impresario_ had discovered in a small
theatre in the provinces, whom all the world was crowding to hear when
she sang the “Little Baker’s Boy,” the chorus to which--

    “Hot, hot, little oat-cakes”--

she gave with an irresistible drollery. She was one of those divas half
a dozen of whom the boulevard devours each season, paper reputations
inflated by gas and puffery, which make one think of the little
rose-colored balloons that live their single day of sunshine and dust
in the public gardens. And what think you she had come to ask for at
the Minister’s? Permission to appear on the programme at his first
concert! Little Bachellery and the Department of Public Instruction!
It was so amusing and so crazy that Numa wanted to hear her ask it
himself; so by a Ministerial letter that smelt of the leather and
gloves of the orderly who took it he gave her to understand that he
would receive her next day. But the next day Mlle. Bachellery did not
appear.

“She must have changed her mind,” said Lappara, “she is such a child!”

But Roumestan felt piqued, did not mention the subject for two days and
on the third sent for her.

And now she was awaiting him in the great drawing-room for official
functions, all in gold and red, so imposing with its long windows
opening into the garden now bereft of flowers, its Gobelin tapestries
and its marble statue of Molière sitting in a dreamy posture in the
background. A grand piano, a few music-stands used at the rehearsal,
scarcely filled one corner of the big room whose dreary air, like an
empty museum, would have disconcerted any one but little Bachellery;
but then she was such a child!

Tempted by the broad floor, all waxed and shiny, here she was, amusing
herself by taking slides from one end of the room to the other, wrapped
in her furs, her hands in a muff too small for them, her little nose
upraised under her jaunty pork-pie hat, looking like one of the dancers
of the “ice ballet” in _The Prophet_. Roumestan caught her at the game.

“Oh! Your Excellency!”

She was dreadfully embarrassed, her eyelashes quivering, all out of
breath. He had come in with his head up and a solemn step in order
to give some point to a somewhat irregular interview and put this
impertinent huzzy, who had kept Ministers waiting, in her proper place.
But the sight of her quite disarmed him. What could you expect?

She laid her simple ambition so cleverly before him as an idea that had
come to her suddenly, to appear at the concerts which every one was
talking about so much--it would be of so much advantage to her to be
heard otherwise than in comic opera and music hall extravaganzas, which
bored her to death! But then, on reflection, a panic had seized her:
“Oh, I tell you, a regular panic! Wasn’t it, Mamma?”

Then for the first time Roumestan perceived a stout woman in a velvet
cloak and a much beplumed bonnet advancing toward him with regular
reverences every three steps. Mme. Bachellery, the mother, had been
a singer in a concert-garden. She had the Bordeaux accent, a little
nose like her daughter’s sunk in a large face like a dish--one of
those terrible mothers, who, in the company of their daughters, seem
the hideous prophecy of what their beauty will come to! But Numa was
not engaged in a philosophical study. He was too much engrossed by the
grace of this hoyden that shone from a finished body, a body adorably
finished, as well as by her theatrical slang mingled with her childlike
laugh, “her sixteen-year-old laugh,” as the ladies of her acquaintance
called it.

“Sixteen! then how old could she have been when she went on the stage?”

“She was born there, your Excellency. Her father, now retired, was the
manager of the Folies Bordelaises.”

“A daughter of the regiment,” said Alice, showing thirty-two sparkling
teeth, as close and evenly ranked as soldiers on parade.

“Alice, Alice, you forget yourself in the presence of his Excellency.”

“Let her alone--she is only a child!”

He made her sit down by him on the sofa in a kindly, almost paternal
manner, complimented her on her ambition and her sentiment for real
art, her desire to escape from the easy and demoralizing successes of
comic opera; but then she would have to work hard and study seriously.

“O, as for that,” she answered, brandishing a roll of music, “I study
two hours every day with Mme. Vauters.”

“Mme. Vauters? Yes, hers is an excellent method,” and he opened the
roll of music and examined its contents with a knowing air.

“What are we singing now? Aha! The waltz of _Mireille_, the song of
Magali. Why, they are the songs of my part of the country!”

He half closed his eyes and keeping time with his head he began softly
to hum:

      “O Magali, ma bien-aimée,
    Fuyons tous deux sous la ramée
    Au fond du bois silencieux....”

And she took it up:

    “La nuit sur nous étend ses voiles
    Et tes beaux yeux--”

And Roumestan sang out loud:

    “Vont faire pâlir les étoiles....”

“Do wait a moment,” she cried, “Mamma will play us the accompaniment.”

Pushing aside the music-stands and opening the piano, she led her
reluctant mother to the piano-stool. Ah, she was such a determined
little person! The Minister hesitated a moment with his finger on the
page of the duet--what if any one should hear them? Never mind; there
had been rehearsals going on every day in the big salon.... They began.

They were singing together from the same sheet of music as they stood,
while Mme. Bachellery played from memory. Their heads were almost
touching, their breaths mingled together with caressing modulations of
the music. Numa got excited and dramatic, raising his arms to bring
out the high notes. For many years now, ever since his political life
had absorbed him, he had done more talking than singing. His voice had
become heavy like his figure, but he still loved to sing, especially
with this child.

He had completely forgotten the Bishop of Tulle and the Superior
Council which was wearily awaiting him round the big green table.
Several times the pallid face of the chamberlain on duty, his official
silver chain clanking, peered into the room but quickly disappeared
again, terrified lest he should be caught gazing at the Minister of
Public Instruction and Religions singing a duet with an actress from
one of the minor theatres. But a Minister Numa was no longer, only
Vincent the basket-maker pursuing the unapproachable Magali through
all her coquettish transformations. And how well she fled! how well,
with childish malice, she did make her escape, her ringing laughter
clear as pearls rippling over her sharp little teeth, until at last,
overcome, she yields and her mad little head, made dizzy by her rapid
course, sinks on her lover’s shoulder!...

Mme. Bachellery broke the charm and recalled them to their senses as
soon as the song was finished. Turning round, she cried:

“What a voice, Excellency! What a noble voice!”

“Yes, I used to sing when I was young” he said, somewhat fatuously.

“But you still sing _maganifisuntly!_ Say, Baby, what a contrast to M.
de Lappara!”

Baby, who was rolling up her music, shrugged her shoulders as much
as to say, that was too much of a truism to be discussed or to need
further answer. A little anxious, Roumestan asked:

“Indeed? M. de Lappara?”

“O, he sometimes comes to eat _bouillabaise_ with us; then after dinner
Baby and he sing duets together.”

Hearing the music no longer, the chamberlain ventured at last into the
room, as cautiously as a lion-tamer going into a cage of lions.

“Yes, yes, I am coming,” said Roumestan, and addressing the little
actress with his best “Excellency air” in order to make her feel the
difference in position between him and his secretary:

“I am very much pleased with your singing, Mademoiselle; you have a
great deal of talent, a great deal! And if you care to sing for us on
Sunday next, I gladly grant you that favor.”

She gave a joyful, childlike cry: “Really? O, how lovely of you!”--and
in an instant flung her arms about his neck.

“Alice! Alice! Well, I declare!” cried her mother.

But she was gone; she had taken flight through the great rooms where
she looked so tiny in the long perspective--a child! O, such a perfect
child!

Much agitated by her caress, Roumestan paused a few moments before he
went upstairs. Outside in the wintry garden one pale sun-ray shone on
the withered lawn and seemed to warm and revive the winter. He felt
penetrated to the heart by a similar warmth as if the contact with this
supple youthful form communicated some of its spring-like vitality to
him. “Ah! how charming is youth!”

Instinctively he glanced at himself in the mirror; a mournfulness came
over him that he had not felt for years. How changed things were, _boun
Diou!_ He had grown very stout from want of exercise, much sitting at
his desk and the too constant use of his carriage; his complexion was
injured by staying up late at night, his hair thin and grizzled at the
temples; he was even more horrified at the fatness of his cheeks and
the vast flat expanse between his nose and his ears. “I have a mind to
grow a beard to cover that.” But then the beard would be white--and
yet he was only forty-five. Alas, politics age one so!

He was suffering there, in those few moments, the frightful anguish a
woman feels when she realizes that all is over--her power of inspiring
love is gone, while her own power to love still remains. His reddened
lids swelled with tears; there in the midst of his masterful place
this sorrow profoundly human, in which ambition had no part, seemed to
him bitter almost beyond endurance. But with his usual versatility of
feeling he consoled himself quickly by thinking of his talents, his
fame and his high position. Were they not just as strong as beauty or
as youth in order to make him loved?

“Come, come!”

He quite despised himself for his folly, and, driving off his troubles
with the customary jerk of his shoulder, went upstairs to dismiss the
Council, for he had no time left to preside to-day.

       *       *       *       *       *

“What has happened to you, my dear Excellency, you seem to have renewed
your youth?”

This question was asked him a dozen times in the lobby of the Chambers,
where his good humor was remarked upon and where he caught himself
humming, “O Magali, my well-beloved.” Sitting on the Bench he listened
with an attention most flattering to the speaker during a long-winded
discourse about the tariff, smiling beatifically beneath his lowered
eyelids.

So the Left, whom his character for astuteness held in awe, said
timidly one to the other: “Let us hold fast, Roumestan is preparing a
coup!” In reality he was engaged in bringing before his mental vision,
through the empty hum of the wearying discourse, the outlines of little
Bachellery, trotting her out, as it were, before the Ministerial Bench,
passing her attractions in review, her hair waving like a golden net
across her brow, her wild-rose complexion, her bewitching air of a girl
who was already a woman!

Nevertheless, that evening he had another attack of moodiness on the
train returning from Versailles with some of his colleagues of the
Cabinet. In the heated carriage where every one was smoking they were
discussing, in the free and easy manner that Numa always carried about
with him, a certain orange-colored velvet bonnet in the diplomats’
gallery that framed a pale Creole face; it had proved an agreeable
diversion from the tariff question and caused all the honorable noses
to rise, just as the sudden appearance of a butterfly in a school-room
will fix the attention of the class in the middle of a Greek lesson.
Who was she? No one knew.

“You must ask the General,” said Numa gayly, turning to the Marquis
d’Espaillon d’Aubord, Minister of War, an old rake, tireless in love.
“That’s all right--do not try to get out of it--she never looked at any
one but you.”

The General cut a sinister grimace that caused his old yellow goat’s
moustache to fly up under his nose as if it were moved by springs.

“It is a good while since women have bothered themselves about
me--they only care for bucks like that!”

In this extremely choice language peculiar to noblemen and soldiers
he indicated young De Lappara, sitting modestly in a corner of the
carriage with Numa’s portfolio on his lap, respectfully silent in the
company of the big-wigs.

Roumestan felt piqued, he did not know exactly why, and replied hotly.
In his opinion there were many other things that women preferred to
youth in a man.

“They tell you that, of course.”

“I ask the opinion of these gentlemen.”

These gentlemen were all elderly, some so fat that their coats would
hardly meet across their stomachs, some thin and dried up, bald or
quite white, with defective teeth and ugly mouths, many of them
in failing health--these Ministers and Under-secretaries of State
all agreed with Numa. The discussion became very animated as the
Parliamentary train rushed along with its noise of wheels and loud talk.

“Our Ministers are having a great row,” said the people in the
neighboring compartments.

Several newspaper reporters tried to hear through the partitions what
they were saying.

“The well-known man, the man in power!” thundered Numa, “that is what
they like. To know that the man who is kneeling before them with his
head on their knees is a great man, a powerful man, one who moves the
world--that works them up!”

“Yes, indeed!”

“You are right, quite right.”

“I am of your opinion, my dear colleague.”

“Well, as for me, I tell you that when I was only a poor little
lieutenant on the staff and went out on my Sunday leave, dressed in my
best, with my five and twenty years and my new shoulder-straps, I used
to get many long, fond glances from the women whom I met, those glances
like a whip that make your whole body tingle from head to foot, looks
that cannot be got by a big epaulette of my age. And so, now, when I
want to feel the warmth and sincerity in looks of that sort from lovely
eyes, silent declarations in the open street, do you know what I do? I
take one of my aides-de-camp, young, cocky, with a fine figure and--get
them by promenading by his side, S--d--m--s--!”

Roumestan did not speak again until they reached Paris. As in the
morning, he was again plunged in gloom, but furious also against those
fools of women who could be so blind as to go crazy over boobies and
fops.

What was there particularly fascinating about De Lappara he would like
to know? Throughout the discussion he had sat fingering his beard with
a fatuous air, looking conceited in his perfect clothes and low-cut
shirt collar, and not saying a word. He would have liked to slap him.
Probably it was that air he took when he sang _Mireille_ with little
Bachellery--who was probably his mistress. The idea was horrible to
him--but still he would have liked to know the truth about it and
convince himself.

As soon as they were alone and driving to the Ministry in the coupé he
said to Lappara suddenly, brutally, without looking at him:

“Have you known these women long?”

“Which women, your Excellency?”

“The Bachellerys, of course; O, come!”

He had been thinking of them so constantly himself that he felt as if
every one else must be doing the same thing. Lappara laughed.

O, yes--he had known them a long time; they were countrywomen of his.
The Bachellery family and the Folies Bordelaises were part of the
jolliest souvenirs of his youth. He had been desperately enough in love
with the mother when he was a lad to make all his school-boy buttons
split.

“And to-day in love with the daughter?” asked Roumestan playfully,
rubbing the misty window with his glove to look out into the dark rainy
street.

“Ah!--the daughter is a horse of another color. Although she seems to
be so light and frisky, she is really a very serious and cool young
person. I don’t know what she is aiming at, but I feel that it is
something that I can never have the chance to offer her.”

Numa felt comforted: “Really--and yet you continue to go there!”

“O, yes, they are so amusing, the Bachellery family. The father, the
retired manager, writes comic songs for the concert-gardens. The
mother sings and acts them while frying eels in oil and making a
_bouillabaise_ that Roubion’s own isn’t a patch on. Noise, disorder,
bits of music, rows--there you have the Folies Bordelaises at home.
Alice rules the roost, rushes about like mad, runs the supper, sings;
but never loses her head for one moment.”

“Well, gay boy, you expect her to lose it some day, do you not? and in
your favor!” Suddenly becoming very serious the Minister added: “It is
not a good place for you to go to, young man. The devil! You must learn
to take life more seriously than you do. The Bordelaise folly cannot
last all your life.”

He took his hand: “Do you never think of marrying?”

“No, indeed, Excellency. I am perfectly content as I am--unless,
indeed, I should find some uncommon bonanza.”

“We could find you the bonanza--with your name, your connections ...
what would you say to Mlle. Le Quesnoy?”

“O, Excellency--I never should have dared....”

Notwithstanding all his boldness, the Bordeaux man grew pale with joy
and astonishment.

“Why not? You must, you must--you know how highly I esteem you, my dear
boy; I should like to have you as a member of my family--I should feel
stronger, more rounded out--”

He stopped suddenly, remembering that he had used these same words to
Méjean that same morning.

“Well, I can’t help it--it’s done now.”

He jerked his shoulder and sank into a corner of the coupé.

“After all, Hortense is free to choose for herself; she can decide.
I shall have saved this boy anyhow from spending his time in bad
company.” And in fact Roumestan really thought that this motive alone
had made him act as he did.




CHAPTER IX.

AN EVENING PARTY AT THE MINISTRY.


There was an unusual look to the Faubourg St. Germain that evening.
Quiet little streets that were sleeping peacefully at an early hour
were awakened by the jolting of omnibuses turned from their usual
course; while other streets, where usually the uninterrupted stream and
roar of great Parisian arteries prevail, were like a river-bed from
which the water has been drained. Silent, empty, apparently enlarged,
the entrance was guarded by the outline of a mounted policeman or by
the sombre shadows across the asphalt of a line of civic guards, with
hoods drawn up over their caps and hands muffled in their long sleeves,
saying by a gesture to carriages as they approached: “No one can pass.”

“Is it a fire?” asked a frightened man, putting his head out of the
carriage window.

“No, sir; it is the evening party of the Public Instruction.”

The sentry passed on and the coachman drove off, swearing at being
obliged to go so far out of his way on that left bank of the Seine,
where the little streets planned without system are still somewhat
confusing, after the fashion of old Paris.

At a distance, sure enough, the brilliant lights from the two fronts
of the Ministry, the bonfires lighted in the middle of the streets
because of the cold, the gleam from lines of lanterns on the carriages
converging to one spot, threw a halo round the whole quarter like the
reflection of a great conflagration, made more brilliant by the limpid
blueness of the sky and the frosty dryness of the air. On approaching
the house, however, one was reassured by the perfect arrangements of
the party; for the conflagration was but the glare of the even white
light rising to the eaves of the nearer houses, that rendered visible,
as distinctly as by day, the names in gold upon the different public
buildings--“Mayory of the Seventh District,” “Ministry of Posts and
Telegraphs,” fading off in Bengal flames and fairylike illumination
among the branches of some big and leafless trees.

Among those who lingered notwithstanding the chill wind and formed
a hedge of curious gazers near the hotel gates was a little pale
shadow with awkward, ducklike gait, wrapped from head to foot in a
long peasant’s cloak, which allowed nothing of her but two piercing
eyes to be visible. She walked up and down, bent with the cold, her
teeth chattering, but insensible to the biting frost in the fever and
intoxication of her excitement. Occasionally she would rush at some
carriage in the row advancing slowly up the Rue de Grenelle with a
luxurious noise of jingling harness and champing bits of impatient
horses, where dainty forms clad in white were dimly seen behind the
misty carriage windows. Then she would return to the entrance where the
privilege of a special ticket allowed the carriage of some dignitary to
break the line and enter. She pushed the people aside: “Excuse me--just
let me look a moment.” Under the blaze from the lamp-stands built in
the form of yew trees, under the striped awning of the marquees, the
carriage doors, opening with a bang, discharged upon the carpets their
freight of rustling satin, billowy tulle and glowing flowers.

The little figure leaned eagerly forward and hardly withdrew herself
quickly enough to avoid being crushed by the next carriage to come on.

Audiberte was determined to see for herself how such an entertainment
was managed. How proudly she gazed on this crowd and these lights, the
soldiers ahorse and afoot, the police and these brilliant goings-on,
all this part of Paris turned topsy-turvy in honor of Valmajour’s
tabor! For it was being given in his honor and she was sure that his
name was on the lips of all these fine and beautiful gentlemen and
ladies. From the front entrance on Grenelle Street she rushed to that
on Bellechasse Street, through which the empty carriages drove out;
there she mingled with the civic guards and the coachmen in immense
coats with capes round a _brasero_ flaming in the middle of the street,
and was astonished to hear these people talking of every-day matters,
the sharp cold of that winter, potatoes freezing in the cellars,
of things absolutely foreign to the function and her brother. The
slowness of the crawling line of carriages particularly irritated her;
she longed to see the last one drive up and be able to say: “Ready at
last! Now it will begin. This time it is really commencing.”

But with the deepening of the night the cold became more penetrating;
she could have cried with the pain of her nearly frozen feet; but it is
pretty rough to cry when one’s heart is so happy!

At last she made up her mind to go home, after taking in all this
gorgeousness in one last look and carrying it off in her poor, savage
little head as she passed along the dismal streets through the icy
night. Her temples throbbed with the fever of ambition and almost burst
with dreams and hopes, whilst her eyes were forever dazzled and, as
it were, blinded by that illumination to the honor and glory of the
Valmajours.

But what would she have said, had she gone in, had she seen all those
drawing-rooms in white and gold unfolding themselves in perspective
beneath their arcaded doorways, enlarged by mirrors on which fell
the flames of the chandeliers, the wall decorations, the dazzling
glitter of diamonds and military trappings, the orders of all
kinds--palm-shaped, in tufted form, broochlike, or big as Catherine
wheels, or small as watch-charms, or else fastened about the neck with
those broad red ribbons which make one think of bloody decapitations!

Pell-mell among great names belonging to the Faubourg St. Germain there
were present ministers, generals, ambassadors, members of the Institute
and the Superior Council of the University. Never in the arena at Aps,
no, not even at the tabor matches in Marseilles, had Valmajour had such
an audience. To tell the truth, his name did not occupy much space at
this festival which was given in his honor. The programme was decorated
with marvellous borders from the pen of Dalys, and certainly mentioned
“Various Airs on the Tabor” with the name of Valmajour in combination
with that of several lyrical pieces; but people did not look at the
programme. Only the intimate friends, only those people who are
acquainted with everything that is going on, said to the Minister as he
stood to receive at the entrance to the first drawing-room:

“So you have a tabor-player?” And he answered, with his thoughts
elsewhere:

“Yes, a whim of the ladies.”

He was not thinking much of poor Valmajour that evening, but of another
appearance much more important to him. What would people say? Would
she be a success? Had not the interest he had taken in the child made
him exaggerate her talent? And, very much in love, although he would
not have owned it yet to himself, bitten to the bone by the absorbing
passion of an elderly man, he felt all the anxiety of the father,
husband, lover or milliner of a _débutante_, one of those sorrowful
anxieties such as one often sees in somebody restlessly wandering
behind the scenes on the night of a first representation. That did not
prevent him from being amiable, warm and meeting his guests with both
hands outstretched; and what guests, _boun Diou!_ nor from simpering,
smiling, neighing, prancing, throwing back his body, twisting and
bending with unfailing if somewhat monotonous effusion--but with shades
of difference, nevertheless.

Suddenly quitting, almost pushing aside, the guest to whom he was
speaking in a low voice and promising endless favors, he flew to meet a
stately lady with crimson cheeks and authoritative manner: “Ah, Madame
la Maréchale,” and placing in his own the august arm encased in a
twenty-button glove, he led his noble guest through the rooms between
a double row of obsequious black coats to the concert room, where Mme.
Roumestan presided, assisted by her sister.

As he passed through the rooms on his return he scattered kind
words and hand-shakes right and left. “Count on me! It’s a settled
thing!”--or else he threw rapidly his “How are you, friend?”--or again,
in order to warm up the reception and put a sympathetic current flowing
through all this solemn society crowd, he would present people to each
other, throwing them without warning into each other’s arms: “What! you
do not know each other? The Prince of Anhalt!--M. Bos, Senator!” and
never noticed that the two men, their names hardly uttered, after a
hasty duck of the head and a “Sir”--“Sir,” merely waited till he was
gone to turn their backs on each other with a ferocious look.

Like the greater number of political antagonists, our good Numa had
relaxed and let himself out when he had won the fight and come to
power. Without ceasing to belong to the party of moral order, this
Vendean from the South had lost his fine ardor for the Cause, permitted
his grand hopes to slumber, and began to find that things were not
so bad after all. Why should these savage hatreds exist between nice
people? He yearned for peace and a general indulgence. He counted on
music to operate a fusion among the parties, his little fortnightly
concerts becoming a neutral ground for artistic and sociable enjoyment,
where the most bitterly hostile people might meet each other and learn
to esteem one another in a spot apart from the passions and torments of
politics.

That was why there was such a queer mixture in the invitations; thence
also the embarrassment and lack of ease among the guests; therefore
also colloquies in low tones suddenly interrupted and that curious
going and coming of black coats, the assumed interest seen in looks
raised to the ceiling, examining the gilded fluting of the panels, the
decorations of the time of the Directory, half Louis XVI, half Empire,
with bronze heads on the upright lines of the marble chimneypieces.
People were hot and at the same time cold, as if, one might believe,
the terrible frost outside, changed by the thick walls and the wadding
of the hangings, had been converted into moral cold. From time to time
the rushing about of De Lappara and De Rochemaure to find seats for the
ladies broke in upon the monotonous strolling about of bored men, or
else a stir was made by the sensational entrance of the beautiful Mme.
Hubler, her hair dressed with feathers, her profile dry like that of an
indestructible doll, with a smile like a stamped coin drawn up to her
very eyebrows--a wax doll in a hair-dresser’s window. But the cold soon
returned again.

“It is the very devil to thaw out these rooms of the Public
Instruction. I am sure the ghost of Frayssinous walks here at night.”

This remark in a loud tone was made by one of a group of young
musicians gathered obsequiously round Cadaillac, the manager of the
opera, who was sitting philosophically on a velvet couch with his back
against the statue of Molière. Very fat, half deaf, with a bristling
white moustache, his face puffy and impenetrable, it was hard to find
in him the natty and politic young _impresario_ under whose care
the “Nabob” had given his entertainments; his eyes alone told of
the Parisian joker, his ferocious science of life, his spirit, hard
as a blackthorn with an iron ferule, toughened in the fire of the
footlights. But full and sated and content with his place and fearful
of losing it at the end of his contract, he sheathed his claws and
talked little and especially little here; his only criticism on this
official and social comedy being a laugh as silent and inscrutable as
that of Leather-Stocking.

“Boissaric, my good fellow,” he asked in a low voice of an ambitious
young Toulousian who had just had a ballet accepted at the opera after
only ten years of waiting--a thing nobody could believe--“you who know
everything, tell me who that solemn-looking man with a big moustache
is who talks familiarly to every one and walks behind his nose with as
thoughtful an air as if he were going to the funeral of that feature:
he must belong to the shop, for he talked theatre to me as one having
authority.”

“I don’t think he is an actor, master, I think he is a diplomat. I just
heard him say to the Belgian Minister that he had been his colleague a
long time.”

“You are mistaken, Boissaric. He must be a foreign general; only a
moment ago I heard him perorating in a crowd of big epaulettes and he
was saying: ‘Unless one has commanded a large body of men--’”

“Strange!”

They asked Lappara, who happened to pass; he laughed.

“Why, it’s Bompard!”

“_Quès aco Bompard?_” (Who is this Bompard?)

“A friend of Roumestan’s. How is it you have never met him?”

“Is he from the South?”

“_Té!_ I should say so!”

In truth, Bompard, buttoned tightly into a grand new suit with a
velvet collar, his gloves thrust into his waistcoat, was really trying
to help his friend in the entertainment of his guests by a varied but
continuous conversation. Quite unknown in the official world, where
he appeared to-day for the first time, he may be said to have made a
sensation as he carried his faculty for invention from group to group,
telling his marvellous visions, his stories of royal love affairs,
adventures and combats, triumphs at the Federal shooting-matches
in Switzerland, all of which produced the same effects upon his
audience--astonishment, embarrassment and disquiet. Here at least there
was an element of gayety, but it was only for a few intimates who knew
him. Nothing could dispel the cloud of _ennui_ that penetrated even
into the concert room, a large and very picturesque apartment with its
two tiers of galleries and its glass ceiling that gave the impression
of being under the open sky.

A decoration of green palms and banana-trees, whose long leaves hung
motionless in the light of the chandeliers, made a fresh background to
the toilettes of the women sitting on numberless rows of chairs placed
close together. It was a wave of white moving necks, arms and shoulders
rising from their bodices like half-opened flowers, heads dressed with
jewelled stars, diamonds flashing against the blue depths of black
tresses or waves of gold from the locks of blondes; a mass of lovely
figures in profile, full of health, with lines of beauty from waist
to throat, or fine slender forms, from a narrow waist clasped by a
little jewelled buckle up to a long neck circled with velvet. Fans of
all colors, bright with spangles, shot with hues, danced in butterfly
lightness over all and mingled the perfumes of “white rose” or opoponax
with the feeble breath of white lilacs and natural fresh violets.

The bored expression on the faces of the guests was deeper here as
they reflected that for two mortal hours they must sit thus before the
platform on which was spread out in a semicircular row the chorus, the
men in black coats, the women in white muslin, impassive as if sitting
in front of a camera, while the orchestra was concealed behind copses
of green leaves and roses, out of which the arms of the bass-viols
reared themselves like instruments of torture. Oh, the torment of the
“music stocks”! All of them knew it, for it was one of the cruelest
fatigues of the season and of their worldly burden. That is why,
looking everywhere, the only happy, smiling face to be found in the
immense room was that of Mme. Roumestan--not that ballet-dancer’s
smile, common to professional hostesses, which so easily changes to a
look of angry fatigue when no one is watching. Hers was the face of a
happy woman, a woman loved, just starting on a new life.

O, the endless tenderness of an honest soul which has never throbbed
but for one person! She had begun to believe again in her Numa; he
had been so kind and tender for some time back. It was like a return;
it seemed as if their two hearts were closely knit again after a long
parting. Without asking whence came this renewal of affection in her
husband, she found him loverlike and young once more, as he was the
night that she showed him the panel of the hunt; and she herself was
still the same fair young Diana, supple and charming in her frock of
white brocade, her fair hair simply banded on her brow, so pure and
without an evil thought, looking five years younger than her thirty
summers!

Hortense was very pretty to-night also; all in blue--blue tulle that
enveloped her slender figure like a cloud and lent a soft shade to
her brunette face. She was much preoccupied with the début of her
musician. She wondered how the spoiled Parisians would like this music
from the provinces and whether, as Rosalie had said, the tabor-player
ought not to be framed in a landscape of gray olive-trees and hills
that look like lace. Silently, though very anxious in the rustle of
fans, conversations in low voice and the tuning of the instruments, she
counted the pieces that must come before Valmajour appeared.

A blow from the leader with his bow on his desk, a rustling of paper
on the platform as the chorus rises, music in hand, a long look of
the victims toward the high doorway clogged with black coats, as if
yearning to flee, and the first notes of a choral by Glück ring through
the room and soar upward to the glassy ceiling where the winter’s night
lays its blue sheets of cold.

“_Ah, dans ce bois funeste et sombre...._”

The concert has begun.

The taste for music has increased greatly in France within the last
few years. Particularly in Paris, the Sunday concerts and those given
during Holy Week, and the numberless musical clubs, have aroused the
public taste and made the works of the great masters known to all,
making a musical education the fashion. But at bottom Paris is too
full of life, too given over to intellect, really to love music, that
absorbing goddess who holds you motionless without voice or thought in
a floating web of harmony, and hypnotizes you like the ocean; in Paris
the follies that are done in her name are like those committed by a fop
for a mistress who is the fashion; it is a passion of _chic_, played to
the gallery, commonplace and hollow to the point of _ennui!_

_Ennui!_

Yes, boredom was the prevailing note of this concert at the Ministry of
Public Instruction. Beneath that forced admiration, that expression of
simulated ecstasy which belongs to the worldly side of the sincerest
woman, the look of boredom rose higher and higher; there soon appeared
unmistakable signs that dimmed the brilliant smile and shining eyes
and changed completely their charming, languishing poses, like the
motion of birds upon the branches or when sipping water drop by drop.
On the long rows of endless chairs these fine ladies, one woman after
the other, would make their fight, trying to reanimate themselves with
cries of “Bravo! Divine! Delicious!” and then, one after another, would
succumb to the rising torpor which ascended like the mists above a
sounding sea, driving far away into the distance of indifference all
the artists who defiled before them one by one.

And yet the most famous and illustrious artists of Paris were there,
interpreting classical music with all the scientific exactness it
demands, which, alas, cannot be acquired save at the expense of years.
Why, it is thirty years now that Mme. Vauters has been singing that
beautiful romanza of Beethoven “L’Apaisement,” and yet never has she
done it with more passion than this evening. But it seems as if strings
were lacking to the instrument; one can hear the bow scraping on the
violin. And behold! of the great singer of former days and of that
famous classical beauty there remains nothing else but well studied
attitudes, an irreproachable method and that long white hand which at
the last stanza brushes aside a tear from the corner of her eye, made
deep with charcoal--a tear that translates a sob which her voice can no
longer render.

What singer save Mayol, handsome Mayol, has ever sighed forth the
serenade from “Don Juan” with such ethereal delicacy--that passion
which is like the love of a dragon-fly? Unfortunately people don’t
hear it any longer. There is no use for him to rise atiptoe with
outstretched neck and draw out the note to its very end, while
accompanying it with the easy gesture of a yarn-spinner seizing her
wool with two fingers--nothing comes out, nothing! Paris is grateful
for pleasures which are past and applauds all the same; but these
used-up voices, these withered and too well-known faces, medals whose
design has been gradually eaten away by passing from hand to hand,
can never dissipate the heavy fog which infests the Minister’s party.
No, notwithstanding every effort which Roumestan makes to enliven it,
notwithstanding the enthusiastic bravos which he hurls in his loudest
voice into the phalanx of black coats, nor the “Hush!” with which he
frightens people who attempt to converse two apartments away, and who
thereafter prowl about silent as spectres in that strong illumination
and change their places with every precaution in the hopes of finding
some distraction, their backs rounded and their arms swinging--or fall
completely crushed upon the low arm-chairs, their opera hats suspended
between their legs--idiotic and with faces empty of expression!

At one time, it is true, the appearance of Alice Bachellery on the
stage wakes up and enlivens the audience; a struggling bunch of curious
people assails each of the two doors of the hall in order to see the
little diva in her short skirt on the platform, her mouth half open
and her long lashes quivering as if with surprise at seeing all this
multitude.

“_Chaud! chaud! les p’tits pains d’ gruau!_” hum the young club-men
as they imitate the low-lived gesture that accompanies the end of her
refrain. Old gentlemen belonging to the University approach, trembling
all over, and turning their good ear toward her, in order not to lose a
bit of the fashionable vulgarity. So there is a disappointment when,
in her somewhat shrill and limited voice, the little pastry-cook’s boy
begins to produce one of the grand airs from “Alceste,” prompted by
Mme. Vauters, who is encouraging her from the flies. Then the faces
fall and the black coats disperse and begin once more their wandering
with all the more freedom, now that the Minister is not watching them;
for he has slipped off to the end of the last drawing-room on the arm
of M. de Boë, who is quite stunned by the honor accorded him.

Eternal infancy of Love! What though you may have twenty years of law
at the Palace of Justice behind you and fifteen years on the Bench;
what though you may be sufficiently master of yourself to preserve
in the midst of the most agitated assemblies and most ferocious
interruptions the fixed idea and the cold-bloodedness of a gull that
is fishing in the heart of a storm--nevertheless, if passion shall
once enter into your life, you will find yourself the feeblest among
the feeble, trembling and cowardly to the point of hanging desperately
to the arm of some fool, rather than listen bravely to the slightest
criticism of your idol.

“Excuse me--I must leave you--here is the _entr’acte_--” and the
Minister hurries away, casting the young _maître des requêtes_ back
into that original obscurity of his from which he shall never emerge
again. The crowd struggles toward the sideboards; the relieved
expression on the faces of all these unfortunate listeners, who have
at last regained the right to move and speak, is sufficient to make
Numa believe that his little _protégée_ has just won a tremendous
success. People press about him and felicitate him--“Divine!
Delicious!” But there is nobody to talk positively to him about the
thing that interests him, so that at last he grabs hold of Cadaillac,
who is passing near him, walking sidewise and splitting the human
stream with his enormous shoulder as a lever.

“Well? well? How did you like her?”

“Why, whom do you mean?”

“The little girl,” said Numa in a tone which he tries to make perfectly
indifferent. The other man, who is good enough at fencing, comprehends
at once and says without blenching:

“A revelation!”

The lover flushes up as if he were twenty years old--as when, at the
Café Malmus, “everybody’s old girl” pressed his foot under the table.

“Then--you think that at the opera--?”

“No sort of question!--but she would have to have a good one to put
her on the stage,” said Cadaillac with his silent laugh. And while the
Minister rushes off to congratulate Mlle. Alice, the “good one to put
her on the stage” continues his march in the direction of the buffet
which can be seen, framed by an enormous mirror without a border, at
the end of a drawing-room which is all brown and gilded woodwork.
Notwithstanding the severity of the hangings and the impudent and
pompous air of the butlers, who are certainly chosen from University
men who have missed their examination, at this spot the nasty tempers
and boredom have disappeared in front of the enormous counter crammed
with delicate glasses, fruits and pyramids of sandwiches; humanity
has regained its rights and these evil looks give way to attitudes of
desire and voracity. Through the narrowest space that remains open
between two busts or between two heads bending over toward the bit
of salmon or chicken wing on their little plate, an arm intrudes,
attempting to seize a tumbler or fork or roll of bread, scraping off
rice powder on shoulders or on a black sleeve or a brilliant, crude
uniform. People chatter and grow animated, eyes glitter, laughter rises
under the influence of the foaming wines. A thousand bits of speech
cross each other--interrupted remarks, answers to questions already
forgotten. In one corner one hears little screams of indignation: “What
a brute! How disgusting!” about the scientist Béchut, that enemy of
women, who is going on reviling the weaker sex. Then a quarrel among
musicians. “But, my dear fellow, beware--you are denying altogether the
increase of the _quinte_.”

“Is it really true she is only sixteen?”

“Sixteen years of the cask and some few extra years of the bottle.”

“Mayol!--O, come now! Mayol!--finished, empty! and to think that the
opera gives two thousand francs every night to that thing!”

“Yes, but he has to spend a thousand francs of seats to get his
auditorium warm, and then, on the sly, Cadaillac gets all the rest of
it away from him playing écarté.”

“Bordeaux!--chocolate!--champagne!--”

“--will have to come and explain himself before the commission.”

“--by raising the ruche a little with bows of white satin.”

In another part of the house Mlle. Le Quesnoy, closely surrounded by
friends, recommends her tabor player to a foreign correspondent with
an impudent head as flat as that of a _choumacre_ and begs him not
to leave before the end of the play; she scolds Méjean, who is not
supporting her properly, and calls him a false Southerner, a _franciot_
and a renegade. In the group near by a political discussion has
started. One mouth opens in a hateful way with foam about the teeth and
says, chewing on the words as if they were musket balls and he would
like to poison them:

“Whatever exists in the most destructive of demagogies--”

“--Marat the conservative!” said a voice--but the rest of the sentence
was lost in a confused noise of conversations mixed with clattering of
plates and glasses, which the coppery tones of Roumestan’s voice all
of a sudden dominated: “Ladies! hurry, ladies!--or you will miss the
sonata in _fa!_”

There is a silence as of the dead. Then the long procession of trailing
trains begins to cross the drawing-room and settle itself once more
into the rows of chairs. The women have that despairing face one sees
on captives who are returned to prison after an hour’s walk in the open
fields. And so the concertos and symphonies follow each other, note
after note. Handsome Mayol begins again to draw out that intangible
note of his and Mme. Vauters to touch again the loosened cords of her
voice. All of a sudden a sign of life appears, a movement of curiosity,
just as it was a little while ago when the small Mlle. Bachellery made
her entrance. It is the tabor-player Valmajour, the apparition of that
proud peasant, his soft felt hat over one ear, his red belt around
his waist and his plainsman’s jacket on one shoulder. It was an idea
of Audiberte’s, an instinct in her natural feminine taste, to dress
him in this way in order to give him greater effect in the midst of
all the black coats. Well, well, at last, this at least is new and
unexpected--this long tabor which hangs to the arm of the musician, the
little fife on which his fingers move hither and yon, and the charming
airs to the double music whose movement, rousing and lively, gives a
moire-like shiver of awakening to the satin of those lovely shoulders!
That worn-out public is delighted with these songs of morning, so fresh
and embalmed with country fragrances--these ballads of Old France.

“Bravo! Bravo! Encore!”

And when, with a large and victorious rhythm which the orchestra
accompanies in a low note, he attacks the “March of Turenne,” deepening
and supporting his somewhat shrill instrument, the success is wild.
He has to come back twice, ten times, being applauded first of all
by Numa, whom this solitary success has warmed completely and who now
takes credit to himself for this “fancy of the ladies.” He tells them
how he discovered this genius, explains the great mystery of the fife
with three holes and gives various details concerning the ancient
castle of the Valmajours.

“Then he really is called Valmajour?”

“Certainly--belongs to the Princes des Baux--he is the last of the
line.”

And so this legend starts, scatters, expands, enlarges and becomes at
last a regular novel by George Sand.

“I have the _parshemints_ at my house,” corroborates Bompard in a tone
which permits of no question.

But in the midst of all this worldly enthusiasm more or less fabricated
there is one little heart which is moved, one young head which is
completely intoxicated and takes all these bravos and fables seriously.
Without speaking a word, without even applauding, her eyes fixed and
lost, her long, supple figure following in the balancing motion of a
dream the bars of the heroic march, Hortense finds herself once more
down there in Provence on the high terrace overlooking the sun-baked
plain, whilst her musician plays for her a morning greeting, as if
to one of those ladies in the Courts of Love, and then sticks her
pomegranate flower on his tabor with a savage grace. This recollection
moves her delightfully, and leaning her head on her sister’s shoulder
she murmurs very low: “O, how happy I am!” uttering it with a deep and
true accent which Rosalie does not notice at once, but which later on
shall become more definite in her memory and shall haunt her like the
stammered news of some misfortune.

“_Eh! bé!_ My good Valmajour, didn’t I tell you? What a success!--eh?”
cried Roumestan in the little drawing-room where a stand-up supper was
being served for the performers. As to this success, the other stars
of the concert considered it a bit exaggerated. Mme. Vauters, who
was seated in readiness to leave while she waited for her carriage,
concealed her spite in a great big cape of lace filled with violent
perfumes, while handsome Mayol, standing in front of the buffet,
showing in his back his slack nerves and weariness by a peculiar
gesture, tore to pieces with the greatest ferocity a poor little plover
and imagined that he had the tabor-player under his knife. But little
Bachellery did not stoop to any such bad temper. In the midst of a
group of young fops, laughing, fluttering and digging her little white
teeth into a ham sandwich, like a schoolboy assailed by the hunger of a
growing child, she played her game of infancy. She tried to make music
on Valmajour’s fife.

“Just see, M’sieur le ministre!”

Then, noticing Cadaillac behind his Excellency, with a sharp twirl of
her feet she advanced her forehead like that of a little girl for him
to kiss.

“Howdy, uncle!--”

It was a relationship purely fantastic such as they adopt behind the
scenes.

“What a make-believe madcap!” grunted the “right man to put one on the
stage” behind his white moustache, but not in too loud a voice, because
in all probability she was going to become one of his pensioners and a
most influential pensioner.

Valmajour stood erect before the chimneypiece with a fatuous
air, surrounded by a crowd of women and journalists. The foreign
correspondent put his questions to him brutally, not at all in that
hypocritical tone he used when interrogating ministers in special
audiences; but, without being troubled in the least thereby, the
peasant answered him with the stereotyped account his lips were
used to: “It all come to me in the night while I listened me to the
_nightingawles_ singin’--”

He was interrupted by Mlle. Le Quesnoy, who offered him a glass of wine
and a plate heaped up with good things especially for him.

“How do you do? You see this time I myself am bringing you the
_grand-boire_.” She had made her speech for a purpose, but he answered
her with a slight nod of the head, and, pointing to the chimneypiece,
said “All right, all right, put it down there,” and went on with his
story.

“So, what the birrud of the Lord could do with one hole....” Without
being discouraged, Hortense waited to the end and then spoke to him
about his father and his sister.

“She will be very much delighted, will she not?”

“O, yes; it has gone pretty well.”

With a silly smile he stroked his moustache while looking about
him with restless eyes. He had been told that the director of the
opera desired to make him an offer and he was on the watch for him
afar, feeling even at this early moment the jealousy of an actor
and astonished that anybody could spend so much time with that
good-for-nothing little singing-girl. Filled with his own thoughts, he
took no trouble to answer the beautiful young girl standing before him,
her fan in her hand, in that pretty, half-audacious attitude which the
habit of society gives. But she loved him better as he was, disdainful
and cold toward everything which was not his art; she admired him for
accepting loftily the compliments which Cadaillac poured upon him with
his off-hand roundness:

“Yes, I tell you ... yes, indeed!... I tell you exactly what I mean
... great deal of talent ... very original, very new; I hope no other
theatre save the Opera shall have your first appearance.... I must find
some occasion to bring you forward. From to-day on, consider yourself
as one of the House!”

Valmajour thought of the paper with the government stamp on it which
he had in the pocket of his jacket; but the other man, just as if he
divined the thought that possessed him, stretched out his supple hand:
“There, that engages us both, my dear fellow;” and pointing out Mayol
and Mme. Vauters--who were luckily occupied elsewhere, for they would
have laughed too loud--he continued:

“Ask your comrades what the given word of Cadaillac means!” At this he
turned on his heel and went back into the ball.

Now it had become a party which had spread into less crowded but
more animated rooms, and the fine orchestra was taking its revenge
for three hours of classical music by giving waltzes of the purest
Viennese variety. The lofty personages and solemn people having left,
the floors now belonged to the young people, those maniacs of pleasure
who dance for the love of dancing and for the intoxication of flying
hair and swimming eyes and trains whipped round about their feet. But
even then politics could not lose its rights and the fusion dreamt
of by Roumestan did not take place. Even of the two rooms where they
danced one of them belonged to the Left Centre and the other to the
White, a flower de luce White without a stain, in spite of the efforts
Hortense made to bind the two camps together! Much sought out as the
sister-in-law of the Minister and daughter of the Chief Judge, she
saw about her big marriage portion and her influential connections a
perfect flock of waistcoats with their hearts outside.

While dancing with her, Lappara, greatly excited, declared that His
Excellency had permitted him--but just there the waltz ended and she
left him without listening to the rest and came toward Méjean, who did
not dance and yet could not make up his mind to leave.

“What a face you make, most solemn man, man most reasonable!”

He took her by the hand: “Sit down here; I have something to say to
you--by the authority of my Minister--”

Very much overcome, he smiled, and while noting the trembling of his
lips Hortense understood and rose very quickly.

“No, no, not this evening--I can listen to nothing--I am dancing--”

She flew away on the arm of Rochemaure, who had just come to fetch her
for the cotillion. He too was very much taken; just in order to imitate
Lappara, the good young fellow ventured to pronounce a word which
caused her to break out in a gale of gayety that went whirling with her
round the entire room, and when the shawl figure was finished she went
over toward her sister and whispered in her ear:

“Here we are in a nice mess! Here is Numa, who has promised me to each
of his three secretaries!”

“Which one are you going to take?”

Her answer was cut short by the rolling of the tabor.

“The farandole! The farandole!”

It was a surprise for his guests from the Minister--the farandole to
close the cotillion--the South to the last go! and so--_zou!_ But
how do people dance it? Hands meet each other and join and the two
dancing-rooms come together this time. Bompard gravely explains: “This
is the way, young ladies,” and he cuts a caper.

And then, with Hortense at its head, the farandole unrolls itself
across the long rows of rooms, followed by Valmajour playing with a
superb solemnity, proud of his success and of the looks which his
masculine and robust figure in that original costume earn for him.

“Isn’t he beautiful!” cried Roumestan, “isn’t he handsome! a regular
Greek shepherd!”

From room to room the rustic dance, more and more crowded and lively,
follows and chases the spectre of Frayssinous. Reawakened to life by
these airs from the ancient time, the figures on the great tapestries,
copied from the pictures of Boucher and Lancret, agitate themselves and
the little naked backs of the cupids who are rolling about along the
frieze take on a movement in the eyes of the dancers as of a rushing
hunt as wild and crazy as their own.

Away down there at the end of the vista Cadaillac has edged up to the
buffet with a plate and a glass of wine in his hand; he listens, eats
and drinks, penetrated to the very centre of his scepticism by that
sudden heat of joy:

“Just remember this, my boy,” said he to Boissaric, “you must always
remain to the end at a ball. The women are prettier in their moist
pallor, which does not reach the point of fatigue any more than that
little white line there at the windows has reached the point of being
daylight. There is a little music in the air, some dust that smells
nicely, a semi-intoxication which refines a sensation and which
one ought to savor as one eats a hot chicken wing washed down with
champagne frappé.--There! just look at that, will you.”

Behind the big mirror without a frame the farandole was lengthening
out, with all arms stretched, into a chain alternate of black and
light notes softened by the disorder of the toilets and hair and the
mussiness that comes from two hours’ dancing.

“Isn’t that pretty, eh?--And the bully boy at the end there, isn’t he
smart!” Then he added coldly, as he put down his glass:

“All the same, he will never make a cent.”




CHAPTER X.

THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH.


There never had been any great sympathy between President Le Quesnoy
and his son-in-law. The lapse of time, frequent intercourse and the
bonds of relationship had not been able to narrow the gap between
these two natures, or to vanquish the intimidating coolness which
the Provençal felt in the presence of this big, silent man, with his
pale and haughty face, from whose height a steely-gray look, which
was the look of Rosalie without her tenderness and indulgence, fell
upon his lively nature with freezing effect. Numa, with his mobile and
floating nature, always overwhelmed by his own conversation, at one
and the same time a fiery and a complicated nature, was in a state of
constant revolt against the logic, the uprightness, the rigidity of his
father-in-law. And while he envied him these qualities, he placed them
to the credit of the coldness of nature in this man of the North, that
extreme North which the President represented to him.

“Beyond him, there’s the wild polar bear--beyond that, nothing at
all--the north pole and death.”

All the same he flattered the President, endeavored to cajole him with
adroit, feline tricks, which were his baits to catch the Gaul. But
the Gaul, subtler than he was himself, would not permit himself to be
taken in, and on Sunday, in the dining-room at the Place Royale, at the
moment when politics were discussed, whenever Numa, softened by the
good dinner, attempted to make old Le Quesnoy believe that in reality
the two were very close to an understanding, because both wanted the
same thing, namely, liberty--it was a sight to see the indignant toss
of the head with which the President penetrated his armor.

“Oh! Not at all, not the same by any means!”

In half-a-dozen clear-cut, hard arguments, he established the distances
between them, unmasked fine phrases and showed that he was not the man
to be taken in by their humbuggery. Then the lawyer got out of the
affair by joking, though extremely angry at bottom and particularly on
account of his wife, who looked on and listened without ever mixing
herself up with political talk. But then in the evening, while going
home in the carriage, he took great pains to prove to her that her
father was lacking in common-sense. Ah! if it had not been for her
presence, how finely he would have put the President to his trumps! In
order not to irritate him, Rosalie avoided taking part with either.

“Yes, it is unfortunate--you don’t understand each other....” But in
her own heart she agreed with the President.

When Roumestan arrived at a Minister’s portfolio the coolness between
the two men only became greater. M. Le Quesnoy refused to show himself
at his son-in-law’s receptions in the Rue de Grenelle and he explained
the matter very precisely to his daughter.

“Now, please tell your husband this--let him continue to visit me here,
and as often as possible; I shall be most delighted. But you must not
expect ever to see me at the Ministry. I know well enough what those
people are preparing for us: I don’t want to have the appearance of
being an accomplice.”

After all, the situation between them was saved in the eyes of
society by that heartfelt sorrow, that mourning of the heart, which
had imprisoned the Le Quesnoys in their own home for so many years.
Probably the Minister of Public Instruction would have been very much
embarrassed to feel the presence in his drawing-room of that sturdy
old contradictor, in whose presence he always remained a little boy.
Still, he made believe to appear wounded by that decision; he struck an
attitude on account of it, a thing which is very precious to an actor,
and he found a pretext for not coming to the Sunday dinners except
very irregularly, making as a plea one of those thousand excuses,
engagements, meetings, political banquets, which offer so wide a
liberty to husbands in politics.

Rosalie, on the contrary, never missed a Sunday, arriving early in the
afternoon, delighted to find again in the home circle of her parents
that taste of the family which her official life hardly permitted her
the leisure to satisfy. Mme. Le Quesnoy being still at vespers and
Hortense at church with her mother, or carried off to some musical
matinée by friends, she was always certain to find her father in his
library, a long room crammed from top to bottom with books. There he
was, shut in with his silent friends, his intellectual intimates, the
only ones with whom his sorrow had never found fault. The President did
not seat himself to read; he passed the shelves in review, stopping
in front of some finely bound books; standing there, unconscious what
he did, he would read for an hour at a time without recognizing the
passage of time or that he was weary. When he saw his eldest daughter
enter, he would give a pale smile. After a few words were exchanged,
because neither one nor the other was exactly garrulous, she also
passed in review her beloved authors, choosing and turning over the
leaves of some book in his immediate neighborhood in that somewhat
dusky light of the big courtyard in the Marais, where the bells,
sounding vespers near by, fell in heavy notes amidst the stillness that
Sunday brings to the commercial quarters of a city. Sometimes he gave
her an open book:

“Read that!” and put his finger under a passage; and when she had read
it:

“That’s fine, is it not?”

There was no greater pleasure for that young woman, to whom life was
offering whatever there was of brilliant and luxuriant things, than
the hour passed beside that mournful and aged father in whom her
daughterly adoration was raised to a double power by other and intimate
bonds altogether intellectual.

It was to him she owed the uprightness of her thought and that feeling
for justice which made her so courageous; to him also her taste for
the fine arts, her love of painting and of fine poetry--because with
Le Quesnoy the continuous pettifoggery of the law had not succeeded in
ossifying the man in him.

Rosalie loved her mother and venerated her, not without some little
revolt against a nature which was too simple, too gentle, annihilated
as it were in her own home; a nature which sorrow, that elevates
certain souls, had crushed to the earth and forced into the most
ordinary feminine occupations--into practical piety, into housekeeping
in its smallest details. Although she was younger than her husband, she
appeared to be the elder of the two, judged by her old woman’s talk;
she was like one rendered old and sorrowful, who searched all the warm
corners of her memory and all the souvenirs of her infancy in a land
hot with the sun of Provence. But above all things the church had taken
possession of her; since the death of her son she was in the habit of
going to church in order to put her sorrow to slumber in the silent
freshness and half-light and half-noise of the lofty naves, as though
it were in the peace of a cloister barred by heavy double gates against
the roar of the outer life. This she did with that devout and cowardly
egotism of sorrows which kneel upon a _prie-Dieu_ and are released
from all anxieties and duties.

Rosalie, who was a young girl already at the moment of their mishap,
had been struck by the very different way in which her parents
suffered. Mme. Le Quesnoy, renouncing everything, was steeped in a
tearful religion, but Le Quesnoy set out to obtain strength from daily
work accomplished. Her tender preference for her father arose in her
through the exercise of her reason. Marriage, life in common with all
the exaggerations, lies and lunacies of her Southerner, caused her to
feel the shelter of the silent library all the more pleasantly because
it was a change from the grandiose, cold and official interior of the
Ministry. In the midst of their quiet chat, the noise of a door was
heard, a rustling of silk, and Hortense would enter.

“Ah, ha! I knew I should find you here!”

She did not love to read, Hortense did not. Even novels bored her; they
were never romantic enough to suit her exalted frame of mind. After
running up and down for about five minutes with her bonnet on, she
would cry:

“How these old books and papers do smell stuffy! Don’t you find it so,
Rosalie? Come on, come a little with me! Papa has had you long enough.
Now it’s my turn.”

And so she would carry her off to her bedroom, their bedroom; for
Rosalie also had used it until she was twenty years old.

There, during an hour of delightful chat, she saw about her all those
things which had been a part of herself--her bed with cretonne
curtains, her desk, her étagère, her library, where a bit of her
childhood still lingered about the titles of the volumes and about the
thousand childish things preserved with all due devotion. Here she
found again her old thoughts lying about the corners of that young
girl’s bedroom, more coquettish and ornamented, it is true, than it was
in her time. There was a rug on the floor; a night lamp in the shape of
a flower hung from the ceiling and fragile little tables stood about
for sewing or writing, against which one knocked at every step; there
was more elegance and less order. Two or three pieces of work begun
were hanging over the backs of the chairs and the open desk showed a
windy scattering of note-paper with monograms. When you entered there
was always a minute or two of trouble.

“O, it’s the wind,” said Hortense with a peal of laughter. “The wind
knows I adore him; he must have come to see if I was at home.”

“They must have left the window open,” answered Rosalie quietly. “How
can you live in such an interior? For my part I am not able to think if
anything is out of place.”

She rose to straighten the frame of a picture fastened to the wall; it
irritated her eyes, which were as exact as her nature.

“O, well! it’s just the contrary with me. It puts me in form. It seems
to me that I am travelling.”

This difference in their natures was reflected on the faces of the two
sisters. Rosalie had regular features with great purity in their lines,
calm eyes of a color changing constantly like that of a deep lake;
the other’s features were very irregular, her expression clever, her
complexion the pale tint of a Creole woman. There were the North and
the South in the father and the mother, two very different temperaments
which had united without merging together; each was perpetuating its
own race in one of the children, and all this, notwithstanding the
life in common, the similar education in a great boarding-school for
young girls, where, under the same masters, and only a few years
later, Hortense was taking up the scholastic tradition which had
made of her sister an attentive, serious woman, always ready to the
minute, absorbed in her smallest acts. That same education had left
her tumultuous, fantastic, unsteady of soul and always in a hurry.
Sometimes, when she saw her so agitated, Rosalie cried out:

“I must say I am very lucky; I have no imagination.”

“As for me, I haven’t anything else,” said Hortense; and she reminded
her how at boarding school, when M. Baudouy was given the task of
teaching them style and the development of thought, during that course
which he pompously termed his imagination class, Rosalie had never had
any success, because she expressed everything in a few concise words,
whereas she, on the other hand, given an idea as big as your nail, was
able to blacken whole volumes with print.

“That’s the only prize I ever got--the imagination prize!”

Despite it all they were a tenderly united couple, bound to each other
by one of those affections between an elder and a younger sister into
which an element of the filial and maternal enters. Rosalie took her
about with her everywhere, to balls, to her friends’ houses, on her
shopping trips in which the taste of Parisian women is exercised; even
after leaving the boarding-school she remained her younger sister’s
little mother. And now she is occupying herself with getting her
married, with finding for her some quiet and trustworthy companion,
indispensable for such a madcap as she is, the powerful arm which is
needed to offset her enthusiasms.

It was plain that the man she meant was Méjean; but Hortense, who at
first did not say no, suddenly showed an evident antipathy. They had a
long talk about it the day following the ministerial reception, when
Rosalie had detected the emotion and trouble of her sister.

“O, he is kind and I like him well enough,” said Hortense, “he is one
of those loyal friends such as one would like to have about one all
one’s life; but that is not the sort of husband that will do for me.”

“Why?”

“You will laugh at me. He does not appeal to my imagination enough;
there it is! A marriage with him--why it makes me think of the house
of a burgher, right-angled and stiff, at the end of an alley of trees
which stand as straight as the letter I; and you know well enough that
I love something else--the unexpected, surprises--”

“Well, who then? M. de Lappara?”

“Thank you! In order that I should be just a wee bit preferred to his
tailor?”

“M. de Rochemaure?”

“What, that model red-tapist?--and I who have a perfect horror of red
tape!”

And when the disquiet which Rosalie showed pushed her to the wall, for
she wished to know everything and interrogated her closely:

“What I should like to do,” said the young girl, while a faint flame
like a fire in straw rose into the pallor of her complexion, “what I
should like to do--” Then in a changed voice and with an expression of
fun:

“I should like to marry Bompard! Yes, Bompard; he is the husband of my
dreams--at any rate he has imagination, that fellow, and some resources
against deadly dulness!”

She rose to her feet and passed up and down the room with that gait, a
little inclined over, which made her seem even taller than her figure
warranted. People did not recognize Bompard’s worth; but what pride and
what dignity of existence were his, and, with all his craziness, what
logic!

“Numa wanted to give him a place in the office close to him; but he
would not take it, he preferred to live in honor of his chimera. And
people actually accuse the South of France of being practical and
industrious!--but there is the man to give that legend the lie. Why,
look here--he was telling me this the other night at the ball--he is
going to brood out ostrich eggs--an artificial brood machine--he is
positive that he will make millions,--and he is far more happy than if
he had those millions! Why, it is a perpetual life in fairy-land with a
man of that sort. Let them give me Bompard; I want nobody but Bompard!”

“Well, well, I see I shall learn nothing more to-day either,” said the
big sister to herself, who divined underneath these lively sallies
something deep down below.

One Sunday when she reached her old home Rosalie found Mme. Le Quesnoy
awaiting her in the vestibule, who told her with an air of mystery:

“There’s somebody in the drawing-room--a lady from the South.”

“Aunt Portal?”

“You shall see--”

It was not Mme. Portal, but a saucy Provençal girl whose deep curtsy in
the rustic way came to an end in a peal of laughter.

“Hortense!”

Her skirt reaching to the tops of her black shoes, her waist increased
by the folds of tulle belonging to the big scarf, her face framed among
the falling waves of hair kept in place by a little bonnet made of cut
velvet and embroidered with butterflies in jet, Hortense looked very
like the _chatos_ whom one sees on Sunday practising their coquetries
on the Tilting Field at Arles, or else walking, two and two, with
lowered lashes, through the pretty columns of St. Trophyme cloisters,
whose denticulated architecture goes very well with those ruddy Saracen
reds and with the ivory color of the church in which a flame of a
consecrated candle trembles in the full daylight.

“Just see how pretty she is!” said her mother, standing in ecstasy
before that lively personification of the land of her youthful days.
Rosalie, on the other hand, shuddered with an inexplicable sadness, as
if that costume had taken her sister far, far away from her.

“Well, that is a fantastic idea! It is very becoming to you, but I like
you far better as a Parisian girl. And who dressed you so well?”

“Audiberte Valmajour. She has just gone out.”

“How often she comes here!” said Rosalie, going into their room to take
off her bonnet. “What a friendship it is! I shall begin to get jealous.”

Hortense excused herself, a little bit embarrassed; this head-dress
from Provence gave so much pleasure to their mother in the sober house.

“Is it not true, mother?” cried she, going from one room into the
other. “Besides, that poor girl feels so outlandish in Paris and is so
interesting with her blind devotion to the genius of her brother.”

“Oh! Genius, is it?” said the big sister, tossing her head a bit.

“What! You saw it yourself the other night at your house, the effect it
produced--everywhere just the same thing!”

And when Rosalie answered that one must estimate at their real value
these successes won in the world of society and due to politeness, a
caprice of an evening, the last fad:

“Well, I don’t care, he is in the opera!”

The velvet band on the little head-dress bristled up in sign of
revolt, as if it were really covering one of those enthusiastic heads
above whose profile it floats, down there in Provence. Besides, the
Valmajours were not peasants like others, but the last remnants of a
reduced family of nobles.

Rosalie, standing in front of the tall mirror, turned about laughing:

“What! You believe in that legend?”

“Why, of course I do. They descend in direct line from the Princes des
Baux. There are the parchments and there are the coats of arms at their
rustic doorway. Any day that they should wish--”

Rosalie shuddered. Behind the peasant who played the flute there was
the prince besides. Given a strong imagination--and that might become
dangerous.

“None of that story is true,” and this time she did not laugh any more.
“In the district of Aps there are ten families bearing that so-called
princely name. Anybody who told you otherwise told a falsehood through
vanity or through--”

“But it was Numa--it was your husband. The other night at the Ministry
he gave us all sorts of details.”

“O! You know how it is with him--you have got to consider the focus, as
he says himself.”

Hortense was not listening. She had gone back into the drawing-room,
and, seated at the piano, she began in a loud voice:

    “Mount’ as passa ta matinado,
      Mourbieù, Marioun....”

It was an old popular ballad of Provence, sung to an air as grave as
a church recitative, that Numa had taught his sister-in-law; one that
he enjoyed hearing her sing with her Parisian accent, which, sliding
over the Southern articulations, made one think of Italian spoken by an
Englishwoman.

    “Où as-tu passé ta matinée, morbleu, Marion?
    A la fontaine chercher de l’eau, mon Dieu, mon ami.
    Quel est celui qui te parlait, morbleu, Marion?
    C’est une de mes camarades, mon Dieu, mon ami.
    Les femmes ne portent pas les brayes, morbleu, Marion.
    C’est sa robe entortillée, mon Dieu, mon ami.
    Les femmes ne portent pas l’épée, morbleu, Marion.
    C’est sa quenouille qui pendait, mon Dieu, mon ami.
    Les femmes ne portent pas les moustaches, morbleu, Marion.
    C’est des mûres qu’elle mangeait, mon Dieu, mon ami.
    Le mois de mai ne porte pas de mûres, morbleu, Marion.
    C’était une branche de l’automne, mon Dieu, mon ami.
    Va m’en chercher une assiettée, morbleu, Marion.
    Les petits oiseaux les ont toutes mangées, mon Dieu, mon ami.
    Marion! ... je te couperai ta tête, morbleu, Marion.
    Et puis que ferez-vous du reste, mon Dieu, mon ami?
    Je le jetterai par la fenêtre, morbleu, Marion,
    Les chiens, les chats en feront fête....”

She interrupted herself in order to fling out his words with the
gesture and intonation that Numa used when he got excited. “There, look
you, me children! ’tis as foine as Shakespeare.”

“Yes, a picture of manners and customs,” said Rosalie, coming up to
her, “the husband gross and brutal, the wife catlike and mendacious--a
true household in Provence!”

“Oh, my dear child,” said Mme. Le Quesnoy, in a tone of gentle reproof,
the tone that is used when ancient quarrels have become the habit.
The piano-stool whisked quickly around and brought face to face with
Rosalie the cap of the furious little Provence girl.

“’Tis really too much! what harm has it ever done to you, our South?
as for me, I adore it! I did not know it at the time, but that voyage
you made me take revealed to me my real country. It is no use to have
been baptized at St. Paul’s; I belong down there, I do--I am a child
of the ‘little square.’ Do you know, Mamma, some one of these days we
will just leave these cold Northerners planted right here, and we two
will go down to live in our beautiful South, where people sing and
dance--the South of the winds, of the sun, of the mirage, of everything
that makes one poetic and widens one’s life--

    ‘It is there I would wish to dw-e-e-ll.’”

Her two agile hands fell back upon the piano, scattering the end of her
dream in a tumult of resounding notes.

“And not one word about the tabor-player!” thought Rosalie. “That’s a
serious thing!”

It was a good deal more serious than she imagined.

From the day when Audiberte had seen Mlle. Le Quesnoy fasten a flower
on the tabor of her brother, from that very moment there arose in her
ambitious soul a splendid vision of the future, which had not been
without its effect on their transplantation to Paris. The reception
which Hortense gave her, when she came to complain about her brother’s
obstination in running after Numa, defined and strengthened her in her
still vague hope. And since then, gradually, without opening her mind
to her men-folks otherwise than through half words, she prepared the
path with the duplicity of the peasant woman who is nearly an Italian,
gliding and crawling forward. From her seat in the kitchen in the Place
Royale, where she began by waiting timidly in a corner on the edge of
a chair, she crept into the drawing-room and installed herself, always
neat and trig, in the position of a poor relation.

Hortense was crazy about her, showed her to her friends as if she were
a pretty piece of bric-à-brac brought from that land of Provence which
she always spoke of with enthusiasm. And the other girl played herself
off as more simple than nature allows, exaggerated her savage rages,
her tirades of wrath with clenched fist against the muddy sky of Paris,
and would often use a charming little exclamation, _Boudiou_, the
effect of which she arranged and watched like a kittenish girl on the
stage. The President himself had smiled at this _Boudiou_, and just to
think of having made the President smile!

But it was in the young girl’s bedroom, when they were alone, that she
put all her tricks in play. All of a sudden she would kneel at her
feet, would seize her hand, go into ecstasies over the smallest points
of her toilet, her way of making a bow in a ribbon, her manner of
dressing her hair, letting slip those heavy compliments directly in her
face, which give great pleasure all the same, so spontaneous and naïve
do they appear.

Oh, when the young lady stepped out of the carriage in front of the
_mas_ [the farm-house], she thought she saw the queen of the angels
in person! and she was for a time speechless at the sight, and her
brother, _pécaïré_, when he heard on the stones of the descending
road the noise of the carriage which took back the little Parisian,
he said it was as if those stones, one by one, were falling on his
heart. She played a great rôle with regard to this brother, his pride
and his anxieties--his anxieties, now why? I just ask you why--since
that reception at the “Menistry” he was being talked about in all the
papers and his portrait was seen everywhere and such invitations as
he got in the Faubourg Saint-Germoine--why he couldn’t meet them all!
Duchesses, countesses, wrote him notes on splendid paper--they had
coronets on their letters just like those on the carriages which they
sent to bring him in; and still--well, no, he wasn’t happy, the “pore”
man! All these things whispered in Hortense’s ear gave her some share
of the fever and magnetic will-power of the peasant girl. Then, without
looking at Audiberte, she asked if perhaps Valmajour did not have down
there in Provence a betrothed who was waiting for him.

“He a betrothed?--_avaï!_ you do not know him--he has much too much
belief in himself to desire a peasant girl. The richest girls have been
on his track, the Des Combette girl, and then still another, and a lot
of gay ladies--you know what I mean! He did not even look at them. Who
knows what it is he is revolving in his head? Oh, these artists--”

And that word, a new one for her, assumed on her ignorant lips an
expression hard to define, somewhat like the Latin spoken at mass, or
some cabalistic formula picked up in a book of magic. The heritage
which would come from Cousin Puyfourcat returned again and again during
the course of this adroit gossip.

There are very few families in the South of France, whether artisans
or burghers, who do not possess a Cousin Puyfourcat, an adventurer who
has departed in early youth in search of fortune and has never written
since, whom they love to imagine enormously rich. He is like a lottery
ticket running for an indefinite time, a chimerical vista opening up
fortune and hope in the distance, which at last they end by taking for
a fact. Audiberte believed firmly in the fortune of that cousin and
she talked about it to the young girl, less for the purpose of dazzling
her than in order to diminish the social gap which separated them. When
Puyfourcat should die, her brother was to buy Valmajour back again,
cause the castle to be rebuilt and his patent of nobility acknowledged,
because everybody said that the necessary papers were extant.

At the close of such chats as these, which were sometimes prolonged
deep into the twilight, Hortense remained for a long time silent, her
forehead pressed against the pane, and saw the high towers of that
reconstructed castle as they lifted themselves in the rose-colored
winter sunset, the terrace shining with torches and resounding with
concerts in honor of the chatelaine.

“_Boudiou_, how late it is,” cried the peasant girl, seeing that she
had brought her to the point where she desired, “and the dinner for my
men is not ready yet! I must fly!”

Very often Valmajour came and waited for her downstairs; but she never
allowed him to come upstairs. She felt that he was so awkward and
coarse, and cold, besides, toward any idea of flattering. She had no
use for him yet.

Somebody who was very much in her way, too, but difficult to escape,
was Rosalie, with whom her feline ways and her false innocency did not
take at all. In her presence Audiberte, her terrible black brows knit
across her forehead, did not say a single word; and in that Southern
silence there rose up along with the racial hatred that anger of the
weak person, underhand and vindictive, which turns against the obstacle
most dangerous to its projects. Her real grievance was Rosalie, but
she talked about quite other ones to her little sister. For example,
Rosalie did not like tabor-playing; then “she did not do her religious
duties--and a woman who does not do her religion, you know....”
Audiberte did her religion and in the most tremendous way; she never
missed a single mass and she went to communion on the proper days. But
all that did not hinder in any way her actions; intriguer, liar and
hypocrite as she was, violent to the verge of crime, she drew from the
Bible texts nothing but excuses for vengeance and hatred. Only she kept
her honor in the feminine sense of the word. With her twenty-eight
years and her pretty face, in those low quarters where the Valmajours
were moving nowadays, she preserved the severe chastity of her thick
peasant’s scarf, bound about a heart which had never beat with any
emotion beside ambition for her brother.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Hortense makes me anxious--look at her there.”

Rosalie, to whom her mother whispered this confidentially in a corner
of the drawing-room at the Ministry, thought that Mme. Le Quesnoy
shared her own anxiety, but the observation made by the mother referred
merely to the physical condition of Hortense, who had not been able to
cure herself of a bad cold. Rosalie looked at her sister; always the
same dazzling complexion, liveliness and gayety; she coughed a little,
but what of that? only as all Parisian girls do after the ball season!
The summer would certainly put her back again in good shape very
quickly.

“And have you spoken to Jarras about her?”

Jarras was a friend of Roumestan, one of the old boys of the Café
Malmus. He assured her that it was nothing and suggested a course at
the waters of Arvillard.

“All right, then; you must get off quickly,” said Rosalie with
vivacity, delighted with this pretext of getting Hortense away.

“Yes, but there is your father, who would be alone--”

“I will go and see him every day--”

Then, sobbing, the poor mother acknowledged the horror which such a
trip with her daughter caused her. During an entire year it had been
necessary for her to run from one watering place to another for the
sake of the child they had already lost. Was it possible that she
would have to begin again the same pilgrimage, with the same frightful
results in prospect? And the other, too,--the disease had seized him at
the age of twenty, in his full health, in his full powers--

“Oh Mamma, do be quiet!”

And Rosalie scolded her gently: Come, now; Hortense was not ill; the
doctor said that the trip would only be a pleasure party; Arvillard,
in the Alps of Dauphiny, was a marvellous country; she herself would
like nothing better than to accompany Hortense in her mother’s place;
unfortunately, she could not do it. Reasons most serious--

“Yes, yes. I understand--your husband, the Ministry--”

“O, no. It isn’t that at all!”

And to her mother, in that nearness of heart which they so seldom found
affecting them: “Listen, then, but for you alone--nobody knows it, not
even Numa ...” she acknowledged a still very fragile hope of a great
happiness which she had quite despaired of, the happiness which made
her wild with joy and fear, the entirely new hope of a baby who might
perhaps be born to them.




CHAPTER XI.

A WATERING-PLACE.


  ARVILLARD LES BAINS,
  2d August, ’76.

“Well, it is queer enough, this place from which I am writing to
you. Imagine a square hall, very lofty, paved with stones, done in
stucco work--a sonorous hall, where the daylight falling through two
enormous windows is veiled down to the lowest pane with blue curtains
and further obscured by a sort of floating vapor, having a taste of
sulphur in it, which clings to one’s clothes and tarnishes one’s gold
ornaments. In this hall are people seated near the walls, on benches,
chairs and stools round little tables--people who look at their watches
every minute, get up and go out, leaving their seats to others, letting
one see each time through the half-open door a mob of bathers moving
about in the brightly lit vestibule and the flowing white aprons of the
serving women who dash here and there. In spite of all this movement,
no noise, but a continual murmur of conversation in low voices,
newspapers being unfolded, badly oxidized pens scratching on paper, a
solemnity as in a church--the whole place bathed and refreshed by the
big stream of mineral water arranged in the middle of the hall, the
rush of which breaks itself against a disk of metal, is crushed to
pieces, separates in jets and turns to powder above the great basins
placed one upon the other and all dripping with moisture. This is the
inhalation hall.

“I must let you know, my dear girl, that everybody does not inhale in
the same way. For instance, the old gentleman who sits in front of me
at this moment follows the prescriptions of the doctor to the letter,
for I recognize them all. Our feet placed upon a stool and our chest
pushed forward, let us pull in our elbows and keep our mouth open all
the time to make the inspiration easy. Poor, dear man! How he does
inhale, with what a confidence in the result! What little round eyes he
has, credulous and devout, which seem to be saying to the spring:

“‘O spring of Arvillard, cure me well; see how I inhale you, see what
faith I have in you--’

“Then we have the skeptic, who inhales without inhaling, his back
bent, shrugging his shoulders and rolling up his eyes. Then there are
the discouraged ones, the people who are really sick and feel the
uselessness and nothingness of all this. One poor lady, my neighbor,
I see putting her finger quickly to her mouth every little while to
see if her glove is not stained at the tip with a red blot. But, all
the same, people find some means to be gay. Ladies who belong in the
same hotel push their chairs near to each other, form groups, do their
embroidery, gossip in a low voice, discuss the newspaper of the baths
and the list of strangers just arrived. Young persons bring out their
English novels in red covers, priests read their breviaries--there are
a great many priests at Arvillard, particularly missionaries with big
beards, yellow faces, voices hoarse from having preached so long the
word of God. As to me, you know I don’t care about novels, particularly
those novels of to-day in which everything happens just like things in
everyday life. So for my part I take up my correspondence with two or
three designated victims--Marie Tournier, Aurélie Dansaert and you,
great big sister whom I adore! Look out for regular journals! Just
think, two hours of inhalation in four times, and that every day!
Nobody here inhales as much as I do, which is as much as saying that I
am a real phenomenon. People look at me a good deal for this reason and
I have no little pride in it.

“As to the rest of the treatment--nothing else except the glass of
mineral water which I go and drink at the spring in the morning and
evening, and which ought to triumph over the obstinate veil which this
horrid cold has thrown over my voice. There is the special point of the
Arvillard waters and for that reason the singers and songstresses make
this place their rendezvous. Handsome Mayol has just left us, with his
vocal cords entirely renewed. Mlle. Bachellery, whom you remember--the
little diva at your reception--has found herself so well in consequence
of the treatment that after having finished three regular weeks she
has begun three more, wherefore doth the newspaper of the baths bestow
upon her great praise. We have the honor of dwelling in the same hotel
with that young and illustrious person, adorned with a tender Bordeaux
mother, who at the _table d’hôte_ advertises ‘good appetites’ in the
salad and talks of the one-hundred-and-forty-franc bonnet which her
young lady wore at the last Longchamps races--a delicious couple, and
greatly admired among us all! We go into ecstasies over the childish
graces of Bébé, as her mother calls her, over her laughter, her trills,
the tossings of her short skirt. We crowd together in front of the
sanded courtyard of the hotel in order to see her do her game of
croquet with the little girls and little boys--she will play with none
but the little ones--to see her run and jump and send her ball like a
real street boy.

“‘Look out, I’m going to roquet you, Master Paul!’

“Everybody says of her, ‘What a child she is!’ As for me, I believe
that those false childish ways are a part of a rôle which she is
playing, just like her skirts with big bows on them and her hair looped
up postillon-style. Then she has such an extraordinary way of kissing
that great big Bordeaux woman, of suspending herself to her neck, of
allowing herself to be cradled and held in her lap before all the
world! You know well enough how caressing I am--well, honor bright! it
makes me feel embarrassed when I kiss mamma.

“A very singular family, too, but less amusing, consists of the
Prince and Princess of Anhalt, of Mademoiselle their daughter, and
the governess, chamber-women and suite, who occupy the entire first
floor of the hotel and are the grand personages thereof. I often meet
the princess on the stair going up step by step on the arm of her
husband--a handsome gallant, bursting with health under his military
hat turned up with blue. She never goes to the bathing-hall except in
a sedan chair and it is heartrending to see that wrinkled and pale
face behind the little pane of the chair; father and child walk at the
side, the child very wretched-looking, with all the features of her
mother and very likely also all of her malady. This little creature,
eight years old, who is not allowed to play with the other children and
who looks down sadly from the balcony on the games of croquet and the
riding-parties at the hotel, bores herself to death. They think that
her blood is too blue for such common joys and prefer to keep her in
the gloomy atmosphere of that dying mother, by the side of that father
who shows his sick wife to the public with an impudent and worn-out
face, or give the child over to the servants.

“But heavens, it’s a kind of pest, it’s an infectious disease, this
nobility business! These people take their meals by themselves in
a little dining-room; they inhale by themselves--because there are
separate halls for families--and you can imagine the mournfulness of
that companionship--that woman and the little girl together in a great
silent vault!

“The other evening we were together in considerable number in the
big room on the ground floor where the guests unite to play little
games, sing and even occasionally to dance. Mamma Bachellery had just
accompanied Bébé in a cavatina from an opera--you know ‘we’ want to
enter the opera; in fact, we have come to Arvillard to ‘cure up our
voice for that’ according to the elegant expression of the mother. All
of a sudden the door opened and the princess made her appearance, with
that grand air which is her own--near her end but elegant, wrapped in
the lace mantle which hides the terrible and significant narrowness of
her shoulders. The little girl and the father followed.

“‘Go on, I beg of you--’ coughed the poor woman.

“And would you believe it? that idiot of a little singer must choose
out of all her repertory the most harrowing, the most sentimental
ballad ‘_Vorrei morir_,’ something like our ‘Dying Leaves’ in Italian,
a ballad of a sick woman who fixes the date of her death in autumn, in
order to give herself the illusion that all nature will die along with
her, enveloped in the first autumnal fog as in a winding sheet!

    “‘_Vorrei morir nella stagion dell’ anno._’
    (Oh! let me pass away when dies the year.)

“It is a graceful air, but with a sadness in it which is increased by
the caressing sound of the Italian words; and there in the middle of
that big drawing-room, into which penetrated all sorts of perfumes
through the open window, the little breezes, too, and the freshness of
a fine summer night, this longing to live on until autumn, this truce
and surcease asked of the malady took on something too poignant to
bear. Without saying a word, the princess stood up and quickly left the
room. In the shadows of the garden I heard a sob, one long sob, then
the voice of a man scolding, and then those tearful complaints which a
child makes when it sees its mother sorrowing.

“That is the mournfulness of such watering-places: these miseries
concerning health which meet one everywhere, these persistent coughs
scarcely deadened by the hotel partitions, these precautions taken with
handkerchiefs pressed upon the mouth in order to keep off the air,
these chats and confidences, the miserable meaning of which one divines
from the hand moving toward the chest or toward the back near the
shoulder-blade, from the sleepy manner, the dragging gait and the fixed
idea of misfortune.

“Mamma, poor mamma, who knows the stages in sickness of the lungs,
says that at Eaux-Bonnes or at Mont Dore it is a very different thing
from what it is here. To Arvillard people send only convalescents
like myself or else desperate cases for which nothing can do any more
good. Luckily at our hotel Alpes Dauphinoises we have only three sick
persons of that sort, the princess and two young Lyon people, brother
and sister, orphans and very rich, they say, who appear to be on their
last legs; especially the sister, with that pallid complexion of the
Lyon women, as if seen under water; she’s wound up in morning gowns
and knit shawls, without one jewel or ribbon--not a single glimpse of
coquetry about her!

“She looks poverty-stricken, that rich girl; she is certainly lost and
she knows it; she is in despair and abandons herself to despair. On
the other hand, in the bent figure of the young man, tightly squeezed
into a fashionable jacket, there is a certain terrible determination to
live, an incredible force of resistance to the malady.

“‘My sister has no spring in her--but I have plenty!’ said he the other
day at the _table d’hôte_, in a voice quite eaten away, which is as
difficult to hear as the _ut_ note of Vauters the diva when she sings.
And the fact is, he does have springs in the most surprising way; he
is the make-fun of the hotel, the organizer of games, card-parties
and excursions; he goes out riding and driving in sleds, that kind of
little sled laden with fagots on which the mountaineers of this country
toboggan you down the steepest slopes; he waltzes and fences, shaken
with the terrible spasms of coughing which never stop him for a moment.

“We have, beside, a medical luminary here--you remember him--Dr.
Bouchereau, the man whom mamma went to consult about our poor Andrew. I
do not know whether he has recognized us, but he never bowed--a regular
old bear!

“I have just come from drinking my half-glass of water at the spring.
This precious spring is ten minutes away, as one ascends in the
direction of the high peak, in a gorge where a torrent all feathery
with foam rolls and thunders, having come from the glacier which closes
the view, a glacier shining and clear between the blue Alps that
seems to be forever crumbling and dissolving its invisible and snowy
base into that white mass of beaten water. Great black rocks dripping
constantly among the ferns and lichens, the groves of pine and a dark
green foliage, a soil in which spicules of mica glitter in the coal
dust--that is the place; but something that I cannot express to you
is the tremendous noise of the torrent tearing among the stones and
of the steam-hammer of a lumber mill, which the water sets in action;
and then, besides, in this narrow gorge, on its single road, which
is always crowded, there are coal-carts, long files of mules, riding
parties of excursionists and the water drinkers going and coming. I
forgot to mention the apparition at the doors of wretched dwellings of
some horrible male or female cretin, displaying a hideous goitre, a
great big idiotic face with an open and grumbling mouth! Cretinism is
one of the products of the country; it seems that Nature here is too
strong for human beings and that the minerals and the rest--copper,
iron and sulphur--seize, strangle and suffocate them; that that water
flowing from the peaks chills them as it does those wretched trees
which one sees growing all dwarfed between two crags. There’s another
of those impressions made upon a new arrival, the mournfulness and
horror of which disappear in the course of a few days.

“For now, instead of flying from them, I have my special pet sufferers
from goitre, one in particular, a frightful little monster, perched on
the border of the road in a chair fit for a child of three years old;
but he is sixteen, exactly the age of Mlle. Bachellery. When I near
him, he dodders about his head, as heavy as a stone, and gives forth
a hoarse cry, a crushed cry without understanding and without style;
and as soon as he has received his piece of silver, he raises it in
triumph toward a charcoal-woman, who is watching him from the corner of
a window. He is a piece of good fortune envied by a great many mothers,
for this hideous creature takes in, by himself alone, more than his
three brothers do, who are at work at the furnaces of La Debout. His
father does nothing at all; afflicted with consumption, he passes the
winter by his poor man’s hearth and in summer installs himself on a
bench with other unhappy ones in the warm mist which the hot springs
create as they pour forth.

“The young lady of the springs, in her white apron and with dripping
hands, fills the glasses which are held out to her, as they come along,
while in the courtyard near by, separated from the road by a low wall,
heads are seen, the bodies of which one cannot perceive, heads thrown
backward, contorted with their efforts, grinning in the sunshine, their
mouths wide open; ’tis an illustration for the Inferno of Dante: the
sinners damned to gargling!

“Sometimes, when we leave, we go the big round while returning to the
establishment and descend by the country way. Mamma, whom the noise of
the hotel fatigues and who particularly fears lest I should dance too
much in the drawing-room, had indulged the dream of hiring a little
house in Arvillard, where there is plenty of choice at every door; on
every story there are bills, which flutter among the potted plants
between the fresh and tempting curtains. One asks oneself what on earth
becomes of the inhabitants during the season; do they camp in bands
on the surrounding mountains, or do they go and live in the hotel at
fifty francs a day? It would surprise me if it were so, for that magnet
which they carry in their eye when they look at the bather seems to me
terribly rapacious--there is something in it which glitters and catches
hold.

“Yes, that same shining something, that sudden gleam on the forehead of
my little boy with the goitre, reflected from his piece of silver--I
find it everywhere; on the spectacles of the little nervous doctor
who auscults me every morning, in the eyes of the good sugarly-sweet
ladies who ask you in to examine their houses, their most convenient
little gardens, crammed with holes full of water and kitchens on the
ground floor to serve the apartments in the third story; in the eyes
of carmen with their short blouses and lacquered hats decked with big
ribbons, who make signs to you from the boxes of their carryalls; in
the look cast by the donkey-boy standing in front of the wide-open barn
in which long ears switch to and fro; yes, even in the glances of these
donkeys, in their long look of obstinacy and gentleness, I have seen
that metallic hardness which the love of money gives; I have seen it,
it exists.

“After all, their houses are frightful, huddled together and mournful,
having no outlook, full of disagreeable points of all kinds which are
impossible to ignore, because your attention has been drawn to them
in the house next door. Decidedly we shall stick to our caravansary,
the Alpes Dauphinoises, which lies hot in the sun on its height and
steeps its red bricks and uncountable green shutters in the middle
of an English park not yet of age, a park with hedges, labyrinth and
sanded roads, the enjoyment of which it shares with five or six other
overgrown hotels of the country--La Chevrette, La Laita, Le Bréda, La
Planta.

“All these hotels with Savoy names are in a state of ferocious rivalry;
they spy upon each other, watch each other across the copses, and there
is a merry war as to which shall put on the most style with its bells,
its pianos, the whip-cracking of its postilions, its expenditure of
fireworks; or which one shall throw its windows widest open in order
that the animation there, the laughter, songs and dances shall appeal
to the visitors lodged in the opposite hotel and make them say:

“‘How they do amuse themselves down there! What a lot of people they
must have!’

“But the place where the hottest battle goes on between the rival
taverns is in the columns of the _Bathers’ Gazette_, where those lists
of new arrivals are printed, which the little sheet gives with minute
exactness, twice a week.

“What envious rage at the Laita or the Planta when, for example, they
read:

“‘_Prince and Princess of Anhalt and their suite, ... Alpes
Dauphinoises._’

“Everything becomes colorless in the light of that crushing line. What
response can there be? They rack their brains; they try their wits; if
you are possessed of a _de_ or some title, they drag it out and flaunt
it. Why, here’s La Chevrette has been serving us up the very same
Inspector of Forests three times under as many different species, as
Inspector, as Marquis, and as Chevalier of Saints Maurice and Lazarus;
but the Alpes Dauphinoises is still wearing the cockade, though you may
be sure it is not on our account. Great heavens! You know how retiring
mamma always is, and afraid of her shadow; well, she took good care
to forbid Fanny saying who we were, because the position of papa and
that of your husband might have drawn about us too much idle curiosity
and social riffraff. The newspaper said merely _Mesdames Le Quesnoy
de Paris, ... Alpes Dauphinoises_; and as Parisians are few and far
between our incognito has not been unveiled.

“We are very simply arranged, but comfortably enough--two rooms on
the second floor, the whole valley lying before us, an amphitheatre
of mountains black with pine woods far below--mountains which show
various shades and get lighter and lighter as they rise with their
streaks of eternal snow; barren steeps close upon little farms which
look like squares in green and yellow and rose, among which the
haycocks look no larger than bee-hives.

“But this beautiful landscape does little to keep us in our rooms.
In the evening there is the drawing-room, in the day time we wander
through the park to carry out the treatment. In connection with an
existence so full and yet so empty, the treatment takes hold of
and absorbs you. The amusing hour is the one after breakfast, when
groups are formed about the little tables for coffee under the big
lime-tree at the entrance of the garden; this is the hour for arrivals
and departures. People exchange good-byes and shake hands about the
carriage which is taking off the bathers; the hotel people press
forward, their eyes brilliant with that shiny look, that famous sheen
of the Savoyard; we kiss people whom we hardly know; handkerchiefs are
waved; the horse-bells jangle, and then the heavy and crowded wagon
disappears, swaying along the narrow road on the side of the hill,
carrying off with it those names and faces which for a moment have
made a part of our life in common, those faces unknown yesterday and
to-morrow forgot.

“Others come and install themselves after their own fashion. I imagine
that this is like the monotony of packet-ships, with the change of
faces at every port. All this going and coming amuses me, but poor
dear mamma continues to be very sorrowful, very much absorbed, in spite
of the smile which she tries to give when I look at her. I can guess
that every detail of our lives brings with it for her a heartrending
souvenir, a memory of the gloomiest images. Poor thing, she saw so
many of those caravansaries of sick people during that year when she
followed her poor dying boy from stage to stage, in the lowlands or on
the mountains, beneath the pines or at the edge of the sea, with hope
always deceived and that eternal resignation which she was ever obliged
to show during her martyrdom.

“I do think that Jarras might have arranged to save her from the memory
of this sorrow; for as for me, I am not sick, I cough hardly at all,
and with the exception of my disgusting huskiness, which leaves me with
a voice fit for crying vegetables in the street, I have never been so
well in my life. A real devilish appetite, would you believe it? fits
of hunger so terrible that I can hardly wait for a meal! Yesterday,
after a breakfast with thirty dishes, with a menu more involved than
the Chinese alphabet, I saw a woman stemming raspberries before our
door. All of a sudden a desire seized me; two bowls full, my dear girl,
two bowls full of the great big fresh raspberries, ‘the fruit of the
country,’ as our waiter calls them, and there you have my appetite!

“All the same, my dear, how lucky it is that neither you nor I have
taken the malady of that poor brother of ours, whom I hardly knew
and whose discouraged expression, which is shown on his portrait in
our parents’ chamber, comes back to me here, when I see other faces
with their drawn features! And what an odd fish is this doctor who
formerly took care of him, this famous Bouchereau! The other day
mamma wanted to present me to him; in order to obtain a consultation
with him we prowled around the park in the neighborhood of the old,
long-legged fellow with his brutal and harsh face. But he was very much
surrounded by the Arvillard doctors, who were listening to him with
all the humbleness of pupils. Then we waited for him at the close of
the inhalation; all our labor in vain! The fellow set off walking at
such a pace that it seemed as if he wished to avoid us. You know with
mamma one does not get over ground fast; so we missed him again this
time. Finally, yesterday morning, Fanny went on our part to ask of his
housekeeper if he could receive us; he sent back word that he was at
the baths to care for his own health and not to give medical advice!
There’s a boor for you! It is quite true that I have never seen such
a pallor as he presents; it is like wax; papa is a highly-colored
gentleman by the side of him. He lives only upon milk, never comes
down to the dining-room and still less to the drawing-room. Our little
nervous doctor, the one whom I call M. That’s-what-you-need, will
have it that he is the victim of a very dangerous heart malady and it
is only the waters of Arvillard which have for the past three years
permitted him to stay alive.

“‘That’s what you need! That’s what you need!’

“That is all that one can make out in the babble of this funny little
man, as vain as he is garrulous, who whirls round our apartments every
morning.

“‘Doctor, I don’t sleep--I believe this treatment agitates me’....
‘That’s what you need!’ ‘Doctor, I am always so sleepy--I think it must
be that mineral water.’... ‘That’s what you need!’

“What he seems to need more than anything else is that his tour
of visits should be made quickly, in order that he may be at his
consultation office before ten o’clock, in that little fly-box where
the patients are crammed together as far out as the stairs and down
the steps as far as the curb-stone. And I can tell you he doesn’t
loaf much, but whips you off a prescription without stopping for one
moment his jumping and prancing, like a bather who is trying to get his
‘reaction.’

“O, yes, that reaction! That’s another story, too. As for me, I shall
take neither baths nor douches, so I don’t make my reaction, but I
remain sometimes a quarter of an hour under the lindens of the park,
looking at the march up and down of all these people who walk with
long, regular steps and a deeply absorbed look, passing each other
without saying one word. My old gentleman of the inhalation hall, the
man who tries to propitiate the springs, carries on this exercise with
the same punctuality and conscientiousness. At the entrance to the
shaded walk he comes to a full stop, shuts his white umbrella, turns
down the collar of his coat, looks at his watch, and--forward, march!
Each leg stiff, elbows to his side, one, two! one, two! as far as
the long pencil of white light which the absence of a tree, forming
there an opening, throws across the alley at that point. He never goes
farther than that, raises his arms three times as if he had dumb-bells
in his hands, then returns in the same fashion, brandishes dumb-bells
once more, and does this for fifteen turns, one after the other. I have
an idea that the department for the crazy people at Charenton must have
somewhat the same features that my alley presents about eleven o’clock
in the morning.”

  6 August.

“So it is true, after all, Numa is coming to see us? O, how delighted
I am! how delighted I am! Your letter has just come by the one o’clock
mail which is distributed at the office of the hotel. It is a solemn
moment which is decisive of the hue and color of the entire day. The
office is crammed and people arrange themselves in a semicircle around
fat Mme. Laugeron, who is very imposing in her morning gown of blue
flannel, whilst in her authoritative voice with a bit of manner in it,
the voice of a former lady’s companion, she reads off the many-colored
addresses of the mail. At the call each one advances, and it is my duty
to tell you that we put a certain amount of personal pride in having
a big mail. In what does one not show some personal pride, for the
matter of that, during this perpetual rubbing shoulders of vanities and
of follies? Just to think that I should reach the point of being proud
of my two hours of inhalation!

“‘The Prince of Anhalt--M. Vasseur--Mlle. Le Quesnoy--’ Deceived again!
it is only my fashion journal. ‘Mlle. Le Quesnoy--’ I give a glance to
see if there is nothing more for me and skip with your dear letter away
down to the end of the garden, where there is a bench surrounded by big
walnuts.

“Here it is--this is my own bench, the corner where I go to be alone in
order to dream and build my Spanish castles; for it is a singular thing
that in order to invent well and to develop oneself intellectually
according to the precepts laid down by M. Baudouy, I do not need very
wide horizons. If my landscape is too big, I lose myself in it, I
scatter myself, ’tis all up with me. The only bore about my bench is
the neighborhood of the swing, where that little Bachellery girl passes
half her day in letting herself be swung into space by the young man
who believes in having springs. I should think he must have plenty of
spring in order to push her that way by the hour together; at every
moment come babyish cries and musical roulades: ‘Higher, higher yet, a
little more--’

“Heavens! How that girl does get on my nerves! I wish that swing would
pass her off and up into a cloud and that she would never come back
again!

“Things are so nice upon my bench, so far away, when she is not there!
I have thoroughly enjoyed your letter, the postscript of which made me
utter a cry of delight.

“O, blessed be Chambéry and its new college and that corner-stone to
be laid, which brings the Minister of Public Instruction into our
district. He will be very comfortable here for the preparation of his
speech, either walking about our shady alley, the ‘reaction alley,’
(come, that wasn’t bad for a pun!) or else beneath my walnuts, when
Miss Bachellery is not scaring them with her cries. My dear Numa! I
get on so well with him; he is so lively, so gay! How we shall chat
together about our Rosalie and the serious motive which prevents her
from travelling at this time--O great Heavens, that was a secret!--and
poor mamma, who has made me swear so often about it! she is the one who
will be glad enough to see dear Numa again. On this occasion she quite
lost every sort of timidity or modesty; you ought to have seen the
majesty with which she entered the office of the hotel in order to take
an apartment for her son-in-law, the Minister! O, what fun, the face of
our landlady hearing this news!

“‘Why--what--my ladies, you are--you were--?’

“‘Yes, we were--yes, we are--’

“Her broad face turned lilac and poppy-colored--a very palette for an
impressionist painter. And so with M. Laugeron and the entire hotel
service. Since our arrival we have been demanding an extra candlestick
in vain; now there are five on the chimneypiece. I can promise you that
Numa will be well served and installed; they will give him the first
story, occupied by the Prince of Anhalt, which will be vacant in three
days. It appears that the waters of Arvillard are bad for the princess;
and even the little doctor himself believes it is better that she
should leave as quickly as possible. That is what is best--because if
a tragedy should occur the Alpes Dauphinoises would never recover from
the blow.

“It is really pitiable, the hurry there is about the departure of these
wretched people, the way they edge them off, the way they shove them
along in consequence of that magnetic hostility which places seem to
exhale where a person is no longer wanted. Poor Princess of Anhalt,
whose arrival here was made such a festival! a little more and they
would have her conducted to the borders of the department between two
policemen--that is the hospitality of watering places!

“And by the way, how about Bompard? You haven’t told me whether he
is coming too or not. Dangerous Bompard! If he should come I am
quite capable of eloping with him on some glacier. What intellectual
development might we not discover between us, as we approached the
snowy peaks! I laugh, I am so delighted--and I go on inhaling, a
little embarrassed, it is true, by the neighborhood of that terrible
Bouchereau, who has just come in and seated himself two seats away from
me.

“What an obdurate air he has, that man, to be sure! His hands crossed
on the knob of his cane and chin resting on his hands, he talks away
in a high voice, looking straight ahead, without really speaking to
anybody. Do you suppose that I must take it as a lesson for me, what
he says of the lack of prudence among the ladies who bathe, about
their gowns of thin linen, about the folly of going out of doors after
dinner in a country where the evenings are mortally cold? Horrid man,
one would believe he is aware that I propose this evening to beg for
charities at the Arvillard church in aid of the work of the propaganda!
Father Olivieri is to describe from the pulpit his missionary trips
into Thibet, his captivity and martyrdom, while Mlle. Bachellery will
sing the ‘Ave Maria’ of Gounod, and I am going to have the greatest
fun on our return to the hotel, marching through all the little dark
streets by lantern-light, just like a regular ‘retreat’ with torches.

“If that is a consultation on my health which M. Bouchereau was giving
me, I don’t want it; it is too late. In the first place, my very dear
sir! I have full permission from my little doctor, who is far more
amiable than you are and has even allowed me to take a turn at a waltz
in the drawing-room at the close. Oh, only a little one, of course;
besides, if I dance a little too much, everybody goes for me! They do
not understand that I am robust, notwithstanding a figure like a long
lead-pencil and that a Parisian girl never gets ill from dancing too
much. ‘Look out now--don’t tire yourself too much.’ This woman will
bring me up my shawl, that man will close the window at my back for
fear that I should catch cold; but the most interested of all is the
youth with springs, because he has discovered that I have a devilish
deal more springs than his sister.

“Poor girl, that would not be difficult! Between you and me, I believe
that, rendered desperate by the frigidity of Alice Bachellery, this
young gentleman has retired upon me and proposes to make love to
me--but alas, how he loses his labor; for my heart is taken, it is all
Bompard’s!--O, well, after all, no, it is _not_ Bompard’s, and you know
that too. The personage in my romance is not Bompard, it is--it is--ha,
ha! so much the worse for you! my hour is up; I will tell you some
other day, Miss Haughtiness!”




CHAPTER XII.

A WATERING-PLACE (_continued_).


The morning on which the _Bathers’ Gazette_ announced that his
Excellency, the Minister of Public Instruction, with his secretary
Bompard and staff, had taken quarters in the Alpes Dauphinoises, great
was the demoralization in the surrounding hotels. It just happened
that La Laita had been keeping dark for two days a Catholic bishop
from Geneva in order to produce him at the proper moment, as well as a
Councillor-General from the Department of the Isère, a Lieutenant-Judge
from Tahiti, an architect from Boston--in fact, a whole cargo; La
Chevrette was on the point of receiving also a “Deputy from the Rhône
and family.” But the Deputy, the Lieutenant-Judge and all disappeared,
lost in the illustrious mass of flame, the flame of glory, which
followed Numa Roumestan everywhere!

People talked only of him, occupied themselves about him only.
Any pretext was good enough to introduce oneself into the Alpes
Dauphinoises in order to pass before the little drawing-room on the
ground floor looking into the garden where the Minister took his
meals with his ladies and his secretary; to see him taking a hand in
a game of bowls, dear to Southern Frenchmen, with Father Olivieri
of the Missions, a holy man and terribly hairy, who, along of having
lived among savages, had taken unto himself their manners and customs,
uttering terrible cries when taking aim and brandishing the balls above
his head when letting fly as if they were tomahawks.

The Minister’s handsome features, the oiliness of his manners, won
him all hearts, but more especially his sympathy for the poor. The
day after his arrival the two waiters who served on the first floor
announced at the hotel office that the Minister was going to take them
to Paris for his personal servants. Now, as they were good workmen,
Mme. Laugeron pulled a very wry face, but allowed nothing to be seen by
his Excellency, whose presence was of such great importance and honor
to her hotel. The prefect and the rector made their appearance from
Grenoble in full fig to present their respects to Roumestan. The Abbot
of La Grande Chartreuse--for Roumestan made a pleading on their side
against the Prémontrés and their liqueur--sent him with the greatest
pomp a case of extra-fine chartreuse; and finally the Prefect of
Chambéry came to get his orders for the laying of the corner-stone for
the new college, a good occasion for a manifesto in a speech and for a
revolution in the methods at the universities.

But the Minister asked for a little rest. The labors of the session
had wearied him; he wanted to have a chance to get a breath, to live
quietly in the midst of his family and prepare at leisure this
Chambéry speech, which had such a considerable importance. And the
prefect understood that perfectly well; he only asked to be notified
forty-eight hours before in order that he might give the necessary
brilliancy to the ceremony. The corner-stone had been waiting for
two months and would naturally wait longer for the good-will of the
illustrious orator.

As a matter of fact, what kept Roumestan at Arvillard was neither
the necessity for rest nor the leisure needed by that marvellous
improvisator--upon whom time and reflection had the same effect as
humidity upon phosphorus--but the presence of Alice Bachellery. After
five months of an impassioned flirtation, Numa had got no further
with his little one than he was on the day of their first meeting.
He haunted the house, enjoyed the savory bouillabaisse cooked by
Mme. Bachellery, listened to the songs of the former director of the
Folies Bordelaises, and repaid these slight favors with a flood of
presents, bouquets, Ministerial theatre boxes, tickets to meetings of
the Institute and the Chamber of Deputies, and even with the diploma of
Officer of Academy for the song-writer--all this without getting his
love affair one bit ahead.

Nevertheless, he was not one of those fresh hands who are ready to
go fishing at every hour without having tried the water beforehand
and thoroughly baited it; only he was engaged in an affair with the
cleverest kind of trout, who amused herself with his precautions, now
and then nibbled at the bait and sometimes gave him the impression
that she was caught; but then, all of a sudden, with one of her bounds
she would skip away, leaving him with his mouth dry with longing and
his heart shaken by the motions of her undulating, subtle and tempting
spine.

Nothing was more enervating than this little game. Numa could have
caused it to stop at any minute by giving the little girl what she
demanded, namely, a nomination as prima donna at the opera, a contract
for five years, large extras, allowance for fire, the right to have her
name displayed--all that stipulated on paper bearing the government
stamp, and not merely by a simple clasp of the hand, or by Cadaillac’s
“Here’s my hand on it!” She believed no more in that than she did
in the expressions, “You may depend upon me for it”--“It’s just the
same as if you had it”--phrases with which for the past five months
Roumestan had been trying to dupe her.

Roumestan found himself between two pressing demands. “Yes,” said
Cadaillac, “all right--if you will renew my own lease.” Now Cadaillac
was used up and done with; his presence at the head of the first
musical theatre was a scandal, a blot, a rotten heritage from the
Imperial administration. The press would certainly raise an outcry
against a gambler who had failed three times and was not allowed to
wear his officer’s cross, against a cynical _poseur_ who dissipated the
public money without any shame.

Finally, wearied out with not being able to allow herself to be
captured, Alice broke the fish-line and skipped away, carrying the
fish-hook with her.

One day the Minister arrived at the Bachellery house and found it
empty, except for the father, who, in order to console him, sang his
last popular refrain for his benefit:

    “_Donne-moi d’quoi q’t’as, t’auras d’quoi qu’ j’ai._”
    (Gimme a bite o’ yourn, my boy, I’ll gi’ you a bite o’ mine.)

He forced himself to be patient for a month, and then went to see the
fertile song-writer again, who was good enough to sing him his new song
beginning--

    “_Quand le saucisson va, tout va,_”
    (Sausage gone, all is gone,)--

and let him know that the ladies, finding themselves delightfully
situated at the baths, had announced their intention to double the term
of their sojourn.

Then it was that Roumestan remembered that he was expected for the
laying of the corner-stone of the college at Chambéry, a promise he
had made off-hand and which probably would have remained off-hand if
Chambéry had not been in the neighborhood of Arvillard, whither, by
a providential piece of chance, Jarras, the doctor and friend of the
Minister, had just sent Mlle. Le Quesnoy.

Immediately upon his arrival they met each other in the garden of the
hotel. She was tremendously surprised to see him, just as if that very
morning she had not read the pompous announcement of his coming in the
daily gazette, just as if for eight days past, through the thousand
voices of its forests, its fountains, its innumerable echoes, the whole
valley had not been announcing the arrival of his Excellency.

“What! you here?”

Roumestan, with his Ministerial air, imposing and stiff:

“I am here to see my sister-in-law.”

Moreover he was surprised to find that Miss Bachellery was still at
Arvillard; he had thought her gone this long while.

“Well, come now, I have got to take care of myself, haven’t I? since
Cadaillac pretends that my voice is so sick!”

Then she gave him a little Parisian nod with the ends of her eyelashes
and waltzed off, uttering a clear roulade, a delicious undersong like
the note of a blackbird, which one hears long after one loses the bird
from sight.

Only from that day on she changed her manner. It was no longer the
precocious child forever bouncing about the hotel, roqueting Master
Paul, playing with the swing and other innocent games; it was no longer
the girl who was only happy with the children, disarmed the most severe
mammas and most morose ecclesiastics by the ingenuousness of her laugh
and her promptness at the sacred services. In place of that appeared
Alice Bachellery, the diva of the Bouffes, the pretty tomboy, lively
in manners and setting the pace, who surrounded herself with young
whipper-snappers, got up impromptu festivities, picnics and suppers,
whose doubtful reputation her mother, who was always present, only
partly succeeded in making respectable.

Every morning a basket-wagon with a white canopy bordered with fringed
curtains drew up to the front door an hour before these fine ladies
came downstairs in their light-toned gowns. Meanwhile about them
pranced and caracoled a jolly cavalcade consisting of everybody in the
way of a free and unmarried person in the Alpes Dauphinoises and the
neighboring hotels--the Assistant Justice, the American architect and
more especially the young man on springs, whom the young diva seemed
no longer to be driving to despair by her innocent infantilities. The
carriage well-crammed with cloaks against their return, a big basket
of provisions on the box, they swept through the country at a sharp
rate on the road for the Chartreuse of St. Hugon. Three hours were
spent on the mountain along zigzag, precipitous roads on a level with
the black tops of pines that scramble down precipices toward torrents
all white with foam; or else in the direction of Brame-farine, where
one breakfasts on mountain cheese washed down by a little claret
very lively in its nature, which makes the Alps dance before one’s
eyes--Mont Blanc and all that marvellous horizon of glaciers and
blue peaks which one discovers up there, together with little lakes,
fragments shining at the foot of the crags like so many broken pieces
of sky.

Then they came down “_à la ramasse_,” seated upon sledges of branches
without any backs to lean against, which made it necessary to grasp
the branches frantically, launched headlong as they were down the
declivities, steered by a mountaineer who goes straight ahead over
the velvet of the upland pastures and the pebbly bed of dry torrents,
and passing with the same swiftness a section of rock or the big gap
of a river. At last it lands you down below overwhelmed, bruised and
suffocated, your whole body in a quiver and your eyes rolling with the
sensation of having survived a most horrible earthquake.

And the day’s trip was not complete unless the entire cavalcade had
been drenched on the way by one of those mountain storms, bright with
lightning flashes and streaks of hail, which frighten the horses,
make the landscape dramatic and prepare a sensational return. Little
Bachellery would be seated on the box in some man’s overcoat, the
tassel of her cap decorated with a feather of the Pyrennean partridge.
She would hold the reins, whip the horses hard in order to warm herself
and, when once landed from the coach, recount all the dangers of the
excursion with the greatest vivacity, a high sharp voice and brilliant
eyes, showing the lively reaction of her youthful body against the cold
downpour--all with a little shudder of fear.

It would have been well if then at least she had felt the need of a
good sleep, one of those leaden slumbers which trips in the mountains
produce. Not at all; till early morning, in the rooms of these women,
there were goings on without end--laughter, songs, popping bottles,
meals brought up at improper hours, card-tables pushed around for
baccarat--and all this over the head of the Minister, whose room
happened to be just underneath.

Several times he complained of it to Mme. Laugeron, who was very much
torn between her desire to be agreeable to his Excellency and fear
of causing clients with such good paying qualities discontent. And
besides, has any one the right to be very exacting in these hotels at
the baths which are always being turned upside down by departures and
arrivals in the midst of the night, by trunks that are dragged about,
by big boots and iron-bound Alpine sticks of mountain climbers, who
are engaged in making ready for the ascent long before daybreak? And
then, besides, the fits of coughing of the sick people, those horrible,
incessant coughs which seem to tear people in spasms, appearing to
combine the elements of a sob, a death rattle and the crowing of a
husky cock.

These giddy nights, heavy July nights, which Roumestan passed turning
and twisting on his bed, filled with pressing thoughts, while upstairs
sounded clear in the night the laughter of his neighbors, broken by
single notes and snatches of song--these nights he might have employed
writing his speech for Chambéry; but he was too much agitated and too
angry. He had to control himself not to run upstairs to the next floor
and drive off at the tips of his boots the young man on springs, the
American and that shameless Assistant Justice, that dishonor to French
jurisprudence in the colonies, so as to be able to seize that naughty
little scoundrel by the neck, by her turtle-dove’s neck puffed out with
roulades, and at the same time say to her just once for all:

“Isn’t it about time that you ceased making me suffer in this way?”

In order to quiet himself and drive off these dreams and other visions
even more vivid and painful he lit his candle again, called to Bompard,
asleep in the adjoining room--his comrade, his echo, always ready
at command--and then the two would talk about the girl. It was for
that very purpose he had brought him along, having torn him away with
no little trouble from the business of establishing his artificial
hatcher. Bompard consoled himself by talking of his venture to Father
Olivieri, who was thoroughly acquainted with the raising of ostriches,
having lived at Cape Town a long while. The tales told by the priest
interested the imaginative Bompard very much more than Numa’s affair
with little Bachellery--the Father’s voyages, his martyrdom, the
different ways in which the robust body of the man had been tortured
in different countries--that buccaneer’s body burnt and sawed and
stretched on the wheel, a sort of sample card of refinements in human
cruelty--and all that along with the cool fan of silky and tickly
ostrich plumes dreamt of by the promoter. But Bompard was so well
trained to his business of shadow that even at that time of night Numa
found him ready to warm up and be indignant in sympathy with him and
to express, with his magnificent head under the silken ends of a night
scarf, the emotions of anger, irony or sorrow, according as the talk
fell upon the false eyelashes of the artificial little girl, on her
sixteen years, which certainly were equal to twenty-four, or on the
immorality of a mother who could take part in such scandalous orgies.
Finally, when Roumestan, having declaimed and gesticulated well and
laid bare the weakness of his amorous heart, put out his candle, saying
“Let’s try to sleep, come on,” then Bompard would use the advantage of
the darkness to say to him before going to bed:

“Well, in your place, I know well enough what I would do.”

“What?”

“I would renew the contract with Cadaillac.”

“Never!”

And then he would plunge violently under the bed-clothes in order to
protect himself from the rowdy-dow overhead.

One afternoon at the time for music, that hour during life at the baths
which is given over to coquetry and gossip, whilst all the bathers,
crowded in front of the establishment as if on the poop of a ship, came
and went, slowly circled about, or took their seats on the camp-chairs
arranged in three rows, the Minister had darted into an empty alley in
order to avoid Mlle. Bachellery, whom he saw coming clad in a stunning
toilet of blue and red, escorted by her staff. There, all alone, seated
in the corner of a bench and with his pre-occupation strong upon him,
infected by the melancholy of the hour and that distant music, he
was mechanically stirring about with his umbrella the spots of fire
with which the alley was strewn by the setting sun, when a slow shade
passing across his sunlight made him raise his eyes. It was Bouchereau,
the celebrated doctor, very pale and puffy, dragging his feet after
him. They knew each other in the way that all Parisians at a certain
height of society know each other. It chanced that Bouchereau, who
had not been out for several days, felt in a sociable frame of mind;
he took a seat; they fell to talking: “Is it true that you are ill,
Doctor?”

“Very ill,” said the other with his manner of a wild boar, “a
hereditary disease--a hypertrophy of the heart. My mother died of it
and my sisters also. Only, I shall last less long than they, because of
my horrible business; I have about a year to live--or two years at the
most.”

There was nothing except useless phrases with which to answer this
great scientist, this infallible diagnoser who was talking of his death
with such quiet assurance. Roumestan understood it, as in silence he
pondered that there indeed were sorrows a good deal more serious than
his own. Bouchereau went on without looking at him, having that vague
eye and that relentless sequence of ideas which the habit of the
professorial chair and his lectures give to a professor:

“We physicians, you see, are supposed not to feel anything because we
have such an air with us. They think that in the sick person we are
taking care of the sickness only, never the being, the human creature
suffering pain. What an error! I have seen my master Dupuytren, who was
supposed to be a pretty tough chicken, weeping hot tears before a poor
little sufferer from diphtheria who told him very quietly that it was
an awful bore to die ... and then those heart-breaking appeals from
anguished mothers, those passionate hands which clasp your arm: ‘My
child, save my child!’ ... and then the fathers who stiffen themselves
up and say to you in a very masculine voice, but with great big tears
running down their cheeks: ‘You will pull him through, won’t you,
Doctor?’ It is all very well to harden oneself, but such despairs break
your heart, and that is a nice thing, isn’t it, when one’s own heart is
already attacked? Forty years of practice and every day becoming more
nervous and sensitive--it is my patients who have killed me! I am dying
from the sufferings of other people!”

“But I thought you did not accept patients any more, Doctor,” said the
Minister, who was deeply moved.

“Oh, no; never any more, for nobody’s sake! I might see a man fall dead
to the ground there in front of me and I wouldn’t even bend down. You
understand? It is enough to turn one’s blood at last, this sickness of
mine, which I have increased by all the sicknesses of others! Why, I
want to live; there is nothing else but life!”

With all his pallor he excited himself and his nostrils, pinched with a
look of morbidness, drank in the light air filled with lukewarm aromas,
vibrating musical instruments and cries of birds. He continued with a
heart-broken sigh:

“I do not practise any more, but I always remain the doctor. I preserve
that fatal gift of diagnosis, that horrible second sight for the latent
symptom, for suffering which the sufferer hopes to conceal, and which
at a mere glance at the passer-by I perceive in the person who walks
and talks and acts in the full force of his being, showing me the man
about to die to-morrow, the motionless corpse. And all that just as
clearly as I see _it_ advancing towards me, the fit which is going to
do for me, that last fainting-fit from which nothing can ever bring me
back.”

“It is frightful!” murmured Numa, who felt himself turning pale. A
poltroon in the face of sickness and death, like all Provençal people,
those people so crazy to live, he turned his face away from the
redoubtable scientist and did not dare look him in the face for fear
he might read on his own rubicund features the warning signs of his,
Numa’s, approaching end.

“Oh! this terrible skill at diagnosis, which they all envy me, how sad
it makes me, how it ruins the little remnant of life which remains to
me! Why, look here: I know a luckless woman here whose son died of
laryngeal consumption ten or twelve years ago. I had seen him twice and
I alone among all the physicians gave warning of the seriousness of
the malady. Well, to-day I come across that same mother with her young
daughter; and I may say that the presence of those unfortunate ones
destroys the good of my sojourn at the baths and does me more harm than
my treatment will ever do me good. They pursue me, they wish to consult
me, and as for me I absolutely refuse to do it. No good of auscultating
that child in order to read her condemnation! It was enough the other
day to have seen her voracity while seizing a bowl of raspberries, and
during the inhalation to have seen her hand lying on her knees, a thin
hand, the nails of which are puffed up and rise above the fingers as if
they were ready to detach themselves. That girl has the consumption her
brother had; she will die before the year is out. But let other people
tell them that; I have given enough of those dagger-stabs which have
turned again to stab me. I want no more.”

Roumestan had got up, very much frightened.

“Do you know the name of those ladies, Doctor?”

“No; they sent me their card and I would not even see them. I only know
that they are at our hotel.”

And all of a sudden, looking down the alley, he cried:

“By George, there they are!--I am off--”

Away down there at the end of the alley, on the little gravelled circle
whence the band was sending its last note, there was a movement of
umbrellas and light-colored gowns among the foliage, just as the first
strokes of the dinner bells were heard from the hotels. The ladies Le
Quesnoy detached themselves from a group of lively, chatting people,
Hortense tall and slender in the sunlight, in a toilet of muslin and
valenciennes, a hat trimmed with roses and in her hand a bouquet of the
same kind of rose bought in the park.

“With whom were you talking just now, Numa? We thought it was Dr.
Bouchereau.”

There she was before him, dazzling in her youth and so brilliant, on
that happy day, that her mother herself began to lose her fears and
allowed a little of that infectious gayety to be reflected on her
ancient face.

“Yes, it was Bouchereau, who was recounting to me his miseries; he’s
pretty low, poor fellow!”

And Numa, looking at her, reassured himself.

“The man is crazy; it is not possible; it’s his own death he is
dragging about with him and prognosticates everywhere.”

At that moment Bompard appeared, walking very quickly and brandishing a
newspaper.

“What is up?” asked the Minister.

“Great news! The tabor-player has made his début--”

They heard Hortense murmur: “At last!” and Numa was radiant.

“Success, was it not?”

“Do you think so? I have not read the article; but here are three
columns on the front sheet of the _Messenger!_”

“There’s one more whom I discovered!” said the Minister, who had seated
himself again with his thumbs in the armholes of his waist-coat. “Come
on, read it to us.”

Mme. Le Quesnoy having called attention to the fact that the
dinner-bell had sounded, Hortense hastily answered that it was only
the first bell, and, her cheek resting on her hand, she listened in a
pretty attitude of smiling expectancy. Bompard read:

“Is it due to the Minister of the Fine Arts or to the Director of the
Opera that the Parisian public suffered such a grotesque mystification
as that with which it was victimized last night?--”

They all started, with the exception of Bompard, who, under the impetus
of his gait as a fine reader, lulled by the sonorous sound of his own
voice and without taking in what he was reading, looked from one to the
other, surprised at their astonishment.

“Well,” said Numa, “go on, go on!”

“In any case, it is the Honorable Roumestan who must shoulder the
responsibility. He it is who has lugged up from his province this
savage and odd-looking piper, this goat-whistler--”

“Well, there certainly are some people who are very mean,” interrupted
the young girl, who had turned quite pale under her roses. The reader
continued, with eyes staring in horror at the dreadful things he saw
coming:

“--this goat whistler; to him is due that our Academy of Music appeared
for the space of an evening like the return from the fair at Saint
Cloud. In truth it would take a very crack fifer indeed to believe that
Paris--”

The Minister rudely dragged the newspaper from his hand.

“I hope you don’t intend to read us that idiocy to the bitter end, do
you? it is quite enough to have brought it to us at all.”

He ran down the article with his eye, with one of those quick glances
of the public man who is used to reading the invectives of the daily
press. “A provincial Minister--a pretty clog-dancer--Valmajour’s own
Roumestan--hissed the Ministry and smashed his tabor--”

He had enough of it, thrust the virulent paper down into the bottom of
his pocket, then rose, puffing with the rage that swelled his face, and
taking Mme. Le Quesnoy by the arm:

“Come, let’s go to dinner, Mamma--this should teach me not to fret
myself for the sake of a parcel of nobodies.”

All four marched along together, Hortense with her eyes upon the ground
in a state of consternation.

“This is a matter concerning an artist of great talent,” said she,
trying to strengthen her voice, a little veiled in its tone. “One ought
not to hold him responsible for the injustice done him by the public
nor for the irony of the newspapers.”

Roumestan came to a dead stop.

“Talent--talent!--_bé_, yes--I don’t deny that--but much too exotic--”
and, raising his umbrella:

“Let us beware of the South, little sister, let’s beware of the
South--don’t work it too hard--Paris will grow weary.”

And he resumed his walk with measured steps, quiet and cool as if he
were a citizen of Copenhagen. The silence was unbroken save for the
crackling of the gravel under his feet, which in certain circumstances
seems to indicate the crushing or crumbling effect of a fit of rage or
of a dream.

When they reached the front of the hotel, from the ten windows of whose
enormous dining-room there came the noise of hungry spoons clattering
on bottoms of plates, Hortense stopped, and, raising her head:

“So then, this poor boy--you’re going to abandon him?”

“What is to be done?--there is no use fighting against it--since Paris
doesn’t care for him.”

She gave him an indignant glance which was almost one of disdain.

“Oh, it is horrible, what you are saying; well, as for me, I am prouder
than you are; I am true to my enthusiasms!”

She crossed the porch of the hotel with two skips.

“Hortense, the second bell has sounded!”

“Yes, yes, I know--I am coming down.”

She ran up to her room and locked the door in order not to be
interfered with. Opening her desk, one of those natty trifles by the
aid of which a Parisian woman can make personal to herself even the
chamber of an inn, she pulled out one of the photographs of herself
which she had had taken in the head-dress and scarf of an Arles woman,
wrote a line underneath it and affixed her name. Whilst she was
putting on the address the bell in the tower of Arvillard sounded the
hour across the sombre violet that filled the valley, as if to give
solemnity to what she had dared to do.

“Six o’clock.”

From the torrent the mist was rising in wandering and flaky masses of
white. In the amphitheatre of forests and mountains and the silver
plume of the glacier, in the rose-colored evening, she took note of the
smallest details of that silent and reposeful moment, just as on the
calendar one marks some single date among all others; just as in a book
one underscores a passage which has caused one emotion; dreaming aloud
she said:

“It is my life, my entire life I am risking at this moment.”

She took as witness the solemnity of the evening, the majesty of
nature, the tremendous repose of everything about her.

Her entire life that she was engaging? Poor little girl! if she had
only known how little that was!

       *       *       *       *       *

A few days after this the Le Quesnoy ladies left the hotel, Hortense’s
treatment having ended. Although reassured by the healthy look of
her child and by what the little doctor said concerning the miracle
performed by the nymph of the waters, her mother was only too glad to
have done with that life, which in its smallest details recalled to her
a past martyrdom.

“And how about you, Numa?”

O, as for him, he intended to stay a week or two longer, finish a
bit of medical treatment and take advantage of the quiet which their
departure would afford him in order to write that famous speech. It
would make a tremendous row, the news of which they would get at Paris.
By George! Le Quesnoy would not like it much!

Then all of a sudden, Hortense, though ready to leave, and
notwithstanding she was happy at returning home to see the beloved
absent ones whom distance made even more dear to her--for her
imagination reached even to her heart--Hortense suddenly felt sorrow
at leaving this beautiful country and all the hotel society and her
friends of three weeks, to whom she had no idea she had become so much
attached. Ah, ye loving natures! how you give yourselves out! how
everything grasps you and then what pain ensues when breaking these
invisible yet sensitive threads!

People had been so kind to her, so full of attention; and at the last
hour so many outstretched hands pressed about the carriage, so many
tender expressions! Young girls would kiss her: “We shall have no
more fun without you.” Then they promised to write to each other and
exchanged mementos, sweet-smelling boxes and paper-cutters made of
mother-of-pearl with this inscription in a shimmering blue like the
lakes: “Arvillard, 1876.” And while M. Laugeron slipped a bottle of
superfine Chartreuse into her travelling-sack, she saw, up there behind
the pane of her chamber window, the mountaineer’s wife who had been her
servant dabbing her eyes with an enormous handkerchief of the color of
wine-lees and heard a husky voice murmur in her ear: “Plenty of spring,
my dear young lady, always plenty of spring!” It was her friend the
consumptive, who, having jumped up on the wheel, poured out upon her a
look of good-bye from two haggard and feverish eyes, but eyes sparkling
with energy, will and a bit of emotion besides. O, what kind people!
what kind people!...

Hortense could not speak for fear of crying.

“Good-bye, good-bye, all!”

The Minister accompanied the ladies as far as the distant railway
station and took his seat in front of them. Crack goes the whip, jingle
go the bells! All of a sudden Hortense cries out:

“Oh, my umbrella!” She had had it in her hand not a moment before.
Twenty people rush off to find it: “The umbrella, the umbrella”--not in
the bedroom, not in the drawing-room; doors slam; the hotel is searched
from top to bottom.

“Don’t look for it; I know where it is.”

Always lively, the young girl jumps out of the carriage and runs to the
garden, toward the grove of walnuts, where even that morning she had
been adding several chapters to the romance that was being written in
her crazy little head. There lay the umbrella, thrown across the bench,
a bit of herself left in that favorite spot, something which was very
like her. What delicious hours had been passed in this nook of rich
verdure! what confidences had gone off on the wings of the bees and
butterflies! Without a doubt she would never return thither again. This
thought caused her heart to contract and kept her there. At that moment
she found everything charming, even the long grinding sound of the
swing.

“Get out! you make me weary--”

It was the voice of Mlle. Bachellery who was furious at being left
because of this departure and, believing herself alone with her mother,
was talking to her in her habitual tongue. Hortense thought of the
filial flatteries which had so often jarred upon her nerves and laughed
to herself while returning to the carriage. Then, at the turn of an
alley, she found herself face to face with Bouchereau. She stepped
aside, but he laid hold of her arm.

“So you are going to leave us, my child?”

“Why, yes, sir.”

She hardly knew what to answer, startled by this meeting and surprised
because it was the first time that he had ever spoken to her. Then he
took her two hands in his own and held her that way in front of him,
his arms wide apart, and gazed upon her fixedly from his piercing eyes
under their brushy white brows. Then his lips and hands, his whole
body trembled, while a rush of blood colored deeply his pallid face.

“Well, then, good-bye, happy journey!” And without another word he
drew her to him and pressed her to his breast with the tenderness of a
grandfather and then hastened away with both hands pressed against his
heart, which seemed about to break.




CHAPTER XIII.

THE SPEECH AT CHAMBÉRY.

    “_Non, non, je me fais hironde--e--elle
    Et je m’envo--o--le à tire d’ai--le--_”


The little Bachellery girl, clad in a fantastic cloak with a blue silk
capuchon, to go with a little toque wound round with a great big veil,
sang before her glass while finishing the buttoning of her gloves; her
clear, sharp voice had risen that morning in full limpidity and in the
best of humors. Spick and span for the excursion, the gay little body
of her had a pleasant fragrance of fresh toilet and new gown, very
neat and trig in contrast with the sloppy state of the hotel bedroom,
where the remainder of a late supper was to be seen on the table,
higgledy-piggledy with poker chips, cards and candles--all this close
to the tumbled bed and a big bath-tub full of that gleaming “little
milk” of Arvillard, so fine for calming the nerves and making the
skin of the ladies bathing there as smooth as satin. Downstairs the
basket-wagon was waiting, the horses shaking their bells and a full
escort of youths caracoling in front of the porch.

Just as the toilet was finished a knock came at the door.

“Come in!”

Roumestan came in, much excited, and held out to her a large envelope:

“There, Mlle--O! read--read--”

It was her engagement at the opera for five years, with all the
appointments she had wished, with the right of having her name printed
big, and everything. When she had read it, article by article,
coldly and with perfect poise, down to the great coarse signature of
Cadaillac, then and only then she took one step towards the Minister,
and, raising her veil, which was drawn closely about her face to keep
out the dust on the trip, standing very close to him, her rosy beak in
the air:

“You are very good--I love you--”

Nothing more than that was needed to make the man of the public forget
all the embarrassments which this engagement was going to cause him. He
restrained himself, however, and remained stiff, cold and frowning like
a crag.

“Now, I have kept my promise and I withdraw--I do not care to
disarrange your picnic party--”

“My picnic? Oh, yes, that’s so--we’re going to Château Bayard.”

And then, casting both her arms around his neck, she said in a
wheedling voice:

“You’ve got to come with us; yes--O, yes, I tell you.”

She brushed her long pencilled eyelashes across his cheek and even
nibbled a little at his statuesque chin, but not very hard, with the
ends of her little teeth.

“What! with those young people? Why, it is impossible. You cannot dream
of it?”

“Those young people? Much do I care for those young people! I will just
let them rip--Mamma will let them know--oh, they are used to it!--You
hear, Mamma?”

“I’m going,” said Mme. Bachellery, whom one could see in the next
chamber with her foot on a chair, trying to force over her red
stockings a pair of cloth gaiters much too small for her. She made the
Minister one of her famous courtesies from the Folies Bordelaises and
hurried downstairs to send the young gentlemen flying.

“Keep a horse for Bompard; he will come with us,” cried the little girl
after her; and Numa, touched by this attention, enjoyed the delicious
pleasure of holding this pretty girl in his arms and hearing all that
impertinent gang of young people walk off at a funeral pace with their
ears drooping. Many a time had their jumpings and skippings caused his
heart a lively time. One kiss applied for a long moment on a smile
which promised everything--then she disengaged herself.

“Hurry up and dress yourself; I’m in haste to be on the way.”

What a buzz of curiosity through the hotel, what a movement behind the
green blinds, when it was known that the Minister had joined the picnic
at Château Bayard and that his big white waistcoat and the Panama
hat shading his Roman face were seen displayed in the basket-wagon in
front of the little singer! After all, just as Father Olivieri who
had learned a lot during his voyages remarked, what harm was there
in it, anyhow? Didn’t her mother accompany them, and Château Bayard,
a historical monument, did it or did it not belong to the public
buildings under Ministerial control? So let us not be so intolerant,
great Heavens! especially in regard to men who give up their entire
life to the defence of the right doctrines and our holy religion!

“Bompard is not coming--what’s the matter with him?” murmured
Roumestan, impatient at having to wait there before the hotel
exposed to all those plunging glances which volleyed upon him
notwithstanding the canopy of the carriage. At a window in the first
story an extraordinary something appeared, a something white and
round and exotic, which spake in the voice of the former chieftain of
Circassians, “Go on ahead, I’ll _rejine_ you!”

Just as if they had only been waiting for the word, the two mules, low
in shoulder but solid in hoof, got away shaking their travelling-bells,
crossed the park in three jumps and whirled past the bathing
establishment.

“Ware! ware!”

The frightened bathers and sedan-chairs hurried to one side; the
bathing-maids, the big pockets of their aprons full of money and
colored tickets, appeared at the entrance of the galleries; the
massage men, as naked as Bedoweens under their woollen blankets, showed
themselves up to the waist on the stairway of the furnaces; the blue
shades of the inhalation halls were thrust aside; everybody wished to
see the Minister and the diva pass.

But already they are far away, whirled at railway speed through the
intersecting labyrinth of Arvillard’s little black streets, over the
sharp cobblestones, close together and veined with sulphur and fire,
out of which the carriage strikes sparks as it bounds along, shaking
the low walls of the leprous-colored houses and causing heads to
appear at the windows decked with placards. At the thresholds of the
shops where they sell iron-pointed canes, parasols, climbing-irons,
chalk stones, minerals, crystals and other catch-penny things for
bathers appear heads which bow and brows that uncover at the sight of
the Minister. The very people affected with goitre recognize him and
salute with their foolish and raucous cries the grand master of the
University of France, while the good ladies seated with him proudly
draw themselves up stiff and most worshipful opposite, feeling well the
honor which is being done them. They only lounge at their ease when
they are quite clear of the village lands, on the fine turnpike toward
Pontcharra, where the mules stop to blow at the foot of the tower of Le
Truil, which Bompard had fixed upon as a trysting-place.

The minutes pass, but no Bompard! They know he is a good horseman
because he has so often boasted of it; they are astonished and
irritated--particularly Numa--who is impatient to get on down that
even white road which seems absolutely without an end, and get farther
into that day which seems to open up like a life full of hopes and
adventures. Finally, from a cloud of dust out of which rises a
frightened voice that pants out _Ho! la! Ho! la!_ emerges the head of
Bompard, covered by one of those pith helmets spread with white cloth,
having a vague look of a life-boat, like those used by the British army
in India, which the Provençal had brought along with the intention of
dramatizing and making imposing his trip to the baths, having allowed
his hatter to believe that he was off for Bombay or Calcutta.

“Come on, my dear boy!”

Bompard tosses his head with a tragical air. Evidently at his departure
things had taken place; the Circassian must have been giving the people
of the hotel a very queer idea of his powers of equilibrium, because
his back and arms are soiled with large spots of dust.

“Wretched horse!” said he, bowing to the ladies, while the basket-wagon
started once more, “wretched horse! but I have forced him to a walk!”

He had forced him so well to a walk that now the strange beast would
not go ahead at all, prancing and turning about on one spot like a sick
cat, notwithstanding all the efforts made by his rider. The carriage
was already far away.

“Are you coming, Bompard?”

“Go on ahead, I’ll _rejine_ you!” cried he once more in his finest
Marseilles twang; then he made a despairing gesture and they saw him
rushing off in the direction of Arvillard in a furious whirl of hoofs.
Everybody thought: “He must have forgotten something,” and nobody
thought about him further.

The turnpike curved about the hills, a broad highroad of France set
with walnut-trees, having to the left forests of chestnut and pines
growing on terraces and on the right tremendous slopes rolling down as
far as one could see, down to the plain where villages appear crowded
together in the hollows of the landscape. There were the vineyards,
fields of wheat and corn, mulberries, almond-trees and dazzling carpets
of Spanish broom, the seeds of which, exploding in the heat, kept up a
constant popping as if the very soil were crackling and all on fire.
One could readily suppose it were so, considering the heavy air and
the furnace heat that did not seem to come from the sun--which was
almost invisible, having retired behind a sort of haze--but appeared to
emanate from burning vapors of the earth; it made the sight of Glayzin
and its top, surmounted with snows which one might touch, as it seemed,
with the end of one’s umbrella, look deliciously refreshing to the
sight.

Roumestan could not remember ever to have seen a landscape to be
compared with that one; no, not even in his dear Provence; and he
could not imagine happiness more complete than his own. No anxiety,
no remorse. His wife faithful and believing, the hope of a child, the
prediction Bouchereau had uttered concerning Hortense, the ruinous
effect which the appearance in the _Journal Officiel_ of the decree as
to Cadaillac would produce--none of these had any existence so far as
he was concerned. His entire destiny was wrapt up in that beautiful
girl whose eyes reflected his own, whose knees touched his, and who,
beneath her blue veil turned to a rose-color by her blond flesh, sang
to him while pressing his hand:

    “_Maintenant je me sens aimée,
    Fuyons tous deux sous la ramée._”
    (Now I trust my lover’s vows,
    Let us fly beneath the boughs.)

While they were rapidly whirling away in the breeze made by their
motion, the turnpike, gradually becoming lonelier, widened out their
horizons little by little, permitting them to see an immense plain in a
semicircle with its lakes and villages and then mountains differing in
shade according to their distance; it was Savoy beginning.

“O! how beautiful! O! how beautiful!” said the little singer; and he
answered in a low voice: “How I do love you!”

At the last halt Bompard came up to them once more, but very piteously,
on foot, dragging his horse after him by the bridle.

“This brute is most extraordinary,” said he without further
explanation, and when the ladies asked him if he had fallen: “No--it’s
my old wound which has opened again.”

Wounded! where and when? He had never spoken of it before. But with
Bompard one had to expect any surprise. They made him get into the
carriage; and with his very mild-mannered horse quietly fastened behind
they set off toward Château Bayard, whose two pepper-box towers,
wretchedly restored, could be seen on a high piece of ground.

A maid servant came to meet them, a quick-witted mountaineer’s woman
in the service of an old priest formerly in charge of parishes in
the neighborhood, who dwells in Château Bayard with the proviso that
tourists may enter freely. When a visitor is announced the priest goes
up to his bed-chamber in a very dignified way, unless indeed it is a
question of personages of note; but the Minister, sly fellow, took good
care not to give his title, so that it was in the guise of ordinary
visitors that they were shown by the servant--with her phrases learned
by heart and the canting tone of people of this sort--all that is left
of the old manor of the _chevalier sans peur et sans reproche_, whilst
the driver laid out breakfast under an arbor in the little garden.

“Here you have the antique chapel where our good chevalier morning and
evening.... Ladies and gentlemen will kindly notice the thickness of
the walls.”

But they didn’t notice anything at all. It was very dark and they
stumbled against the broken bits of wall which were dimly lit from a
loophole, the light of which fell through a hay-loft established above
the beams of the ceiling. Numa, his little girl’s arm under his own,
made some fun of the Chevalier Bayard and of “his worthy mother,” dame
Hélène des Allemans. The odor of ancient things bored them to death,
and actually, at one time, in order to try the echo of the vaulted
ceiling in the kitchen, Mme. Bachellery started to sing the last ballad
composed by her husband, but really a very naughty one--

    _J’tiens ça a’papa ... j’tiens ça d’maman...._
    (That’s me legacy from Popper ... that’s me legacy from Mommer....)

and yet nobody was scandalized; quite the contrary.

But outside, when breakfast was served on a massive stone table,
and after their first hunger had been appeased, the valley of
the Graisivaudan, Les Bauges, the severe buttresses of the
Grande-Chartreuse and the contrast made by that landscape full of
tremendous lines with the little terrace grass-plot where this solitary
old man dwelt--given up entirely to prayer, to his tulip-trees and
to his bees--affected little by little their spirits with something
sweet and grave which was akin to reflection. At dessert the Minister,
opening his guide-book to refresh his memory, spoke about Bayard “and
of his poor dame mother who did tenderly weep” on that day when the
child, setting out for Chambéry to be page at the Court of the Duke of
Savoy, caused his little bay nag to prance in front of the north gate,
on that very place where the shadow of the great tower was lengthening
itself, slender but majestic, like the phantom of the old vanished
castle.

And Numa, exciting himself, read to them the fine sentiments of Madame
Hélène to her son at the moment of his departure:

“Pierre, my friend, I recommend to thee that before everything else
thou shalt love, fear and serve God without in any wise doing Him
offence, if that be possible.”

Standing there on the terrace, sweeping off a gesture which carried as
far as Chambéry:

“That is what should be said to children, that is what all parents,
that is what all schoolmasters--”

He stopped short and struck his brow with his hand:

“My speech!--why, that is my speech!--I have it! splendid! the Château
Bayard, a local legend--for fifteen days have I been looking for
it--and here it is!”

“Why, it is pure Providence,” cried Mme. Bachellery, full of
admiration, but thinking all the same that the breakfast was ending
rather solemnly. “What a man! What a man!”

The little girl seemed also very much excited, but of this impression
Roumestan took no heed; the orator was boiling in him, behind his brow
and in his breast; so, completely absorbed with his idea:

“The fine thing,” said he, casting his eyes about him, “the fine thing
would be to date the speech from Château Bayard--”

“O, if Mr. Lawyer should want a little corner in which to write--”

“Why, yes, only to jot down a few notes. You’ll excuse me, ladies, just
for the time that will do to drink your coffee, and I will be back.
It’s merely to be able to put the date to my speech without telling a
lie.”

The servant placed him in a little room on the ground floor, most
ancient in appearance, whose domelike, vaulted ceiling still carries
traces of gilding; an ancient room which they pretend was Bayard’s
oratory, just as they present to you as his bedroom the big hall to one
side in which an enormous peasant’s bed, with a canopy and dark blue
curtains, is set up.

It was very nice to write between those thick walls into which the
heavy atmosphere of the day could not penetrate, behind that half-open
shutter which threw a pencil of light across the page and allowed the
perfumes from the little garden to enter. At first the orator’s pen was
not quick enough to keep pace with the flow of his ideas; he poured
out his phrases headlong, in a mass--well worn but eloquent phrases of
a Provençal lawyer, filled with a hidden heat and the sputtering of
sparks here and there, like the outflow of molten metal. Suddenly he
stopped, his head emptied of words or rendered heavy by the fatigue
of the journey and the weight of the breakfast. Then he marched up
and down from the oratory to the bedroom, talking in a high voice,
lashing himself, listening to his footsteps under the sonorous vaults
as if they were those of some illustrious revenant, and then he set
himself down again without the thoughts to put down a line. Everything
swam about him, the walls brilliantly white-washed and that pencil of
sunlight which seemed to hypnotize him. He heard the noise of plates
and laughter in the garden, far, far away, and presently, with his nose
on the paper, he had fallen fast asleep.

A tremendous thunder-clap made him start to his feet. How long had
he been there? His head a little confused, he stepped out into the
deserted and motionless garden. The fragrance of the tulip-trees made
the air heavy. Under the vacant arbor wasps were heavily flying about
the heeltaps in the champagne glasses and the bits of sugar left in the
cups, which the mountaineer’s woman was hurriedly clearing off, seized
by the nervous fear of an animal at the approach of a thunder-storm
and making the sign of the cross each time the lightning flashed. She
informed Numa that the young lady had found herself with a bad headache
after breakfast and so she had taken her to Bayard’s chamber to sleep
a little, closing the door “_vary_ gently” in order not to bother the
gentleman at his work. The two others, the fat lady and the man with
the white hat, had gone down toward the valley and without any doubt
they would catch it, because there was going to be a terrible ... “just
look!”

In the direction she indicated, on the choppy crest of Les Bauges
and the chalky peaks of the Grande-Chartreuse, which were enveloped
in lightning flashes like some mysterious Mount Sinai, the sky was
darkened by an enormous blot of ink that grew larger every instant,
under which the whole valley took on an extraordinary luminous value,
like the light from a white and oblique reflector, according as this
sombre and growling threat continued to advance. All the valley shared
in the change, the reflux of wind in the tops of the green trees, the
golden masses of grain, the highways indicated by feathery clouds of
white dust raised by the wind and the silver surface of the river
Isère. In the far distance Roumestan perceived the canvas pith helmet
of Bompard, which shone like a lighthouse reflector.

He went in again but could not take hold of his work. For the moment
sleep no longer paralyzed his pen; on the contrary he felt himself
strangely excited by the presence of Alice Bachellery in the next
chamber. By the way, was she still there? He opened the door a little
and did not dare to shut it again for fear of disturbing the charming
slumber of the singer, who had thrown herself with loosened clothes on
the bed in a troubling disorder of tumbled hair, open corset and white,
half-seen curves.

“Come, come, Numa, beware! it is the bedroom of Bayard; what the deuce!”

Positively he seized himself by the collar like a malefactor, dragged
himself back and forcibly seated himself at the table. He put his head
between his hands, closing his eyes and his ears in order to absorb
himself completely in the last phrase, which he repeated in a low voice:

“Yes, gentlemen, the sublime advice of the mother of Bayard, which has
come down to us in that mellifluous tongue of the middle ages--would
that the University of France....”

The storm was so heavy and depleting, like the shade of certain
trees in the tropics, it took away his nerve. His head was swimming,
intoxicated by the exquisite perfumes given forth by the bitter flowers
of the tulip-trees or else by that armful of blond hair scattered
over the bed not far off. Wretched Minister! It was all very well to
cling to his speech and to invoke the aid of the _chevalier sans peur
et sans reproche_, public instruction, religious culture, the rector
of Chambéry--nothing was of any use. He had to return into Bayard’s
bedchamber, and this time so close to the sleeping girl that he could
hear her gentle breathing and touch with his hand the tassel stuff of
the curtains which framed this provoking slumber, this mother-of-pearl
flesh with the shadows and the rosy undercolor of a naughty drawing in
red chalk by Fragonard.

But even there, on the brink of temptation, the Minister still fought
with himself and in a mechanical murmur his lips continued to mumble
that sublime advice which the University of France--when a sudden roll
of thunder, whose claps came nearer and nearer, woke the singer all of
a jump.

“Oh, what a fear I was in--hello! is it you?” She recognized him with
a smile, with those clear eyes of a child which wakes up without the
slightest embarrassment at its own disorder; and there they remained
motionless and affected by the silence and growing flame of their
desire. But the bedroom was suddenly plunged in a big dark shadow by
the clapping-to of the tall shutters, which the wind banged shut one
after the other. They heard the doors slam, a key fall, the whirling
of leaves and flowers over the sand as far as the lintel of the door
through which the hurricane plaintively moaned.

“What a storm!” said she in a very low voice, taking hold of his
burning hand and almost dragging him beneath the curtains--

       *       *       *       *       *

“Yes, gentlemen, this sublime advice of Bayard’s mother, which has come
down to us in that mellifluous tongue of the middle ages--”

It was at Chambéry this time, in sight of the old Château of Savoy
and of that marvellous amphitheatre formed of green hills and snowy
mountains which Châteaubriand remembered when he saw Mount Taygetus,
that the grand master of the University was speaking, thickly
surrounded by embroidered coats, by palm decorations, by orders with
ermine, by epaulettes decked with big tassels; there he was, dominating
an enormous crowd excited by the power of his will and the gesture of
his strong hand that still grasped a little ivory-handled trowel with
which he had just spread the mortar for the first stone of the new
Lyceum.

“Would that the University of France might speak those words to
every one of its boys: ‘Pierre, my friend, I recommend to thee before
everything else that....’”

And whilst he quoted those touching words emotion caused his hand,
his voice and his broad cheeks to tremble at the memory of that great
perfumed room in which, during the agitation caused by a most memorable
thunder-storm, the Chambéry speech had been composed.




CHAPTER XIV.

THE VICTIMS.


A morning at ten o’clock. The antechamber at the Ministry of Public
Instruction; a long corridor badly lighted, with dark hangings and
an oaken wainscot. The gallery is full of a crowd of office-seekers,
seated or sauntering about, who from minute to minute become more
numerous; each new arrival gives his card to the solemn clerk wearing
his chain of office, who receives it, examines and without a word
deposits it by his side on the slab of the little table where he is
writing; all this in the haggard light from a window dripping from a
gentle October rain.

One of the last arrivals, however, has the honor of stirring the august
impassiveness of this clerk. He is a great big man, weather-beaten,
sunburned and of a tarry aspect, with two little silver anchors in
his ears for rings and with the voice of a seal that has caught a
cold--just such a voice as one hears in the transparent early morning
mists in the seaports of Provence.

“Let him know that it is Cabantous, the pilot--he knows what is up; he
expects me.”

“You are not the only one,” answers the clerk, who smiles discreetly at
his own joke.

Cabantous does not appreciate the delicacy of the joke; but he laughs
in good humor, his mouth opening back as far as the silver anchors;
and, making use of his shoulders, he pushes through the crowd, which
falls aside before his wet umbrella, and installs himself on a bench
alongside a sufferer who is almost as weather-beaten as himself.

“_Té! vé!_--why, it is Cabantous. Hello, how are you?”

The pilot begs his pardon--cannot recall who it is.

“Valmajour, you remember; we used to know each other down there in the
arena.”

“That is true, by gad.--_Bé_, my good fellow, you at least can say that
Paris has changed you--”

The tabor-player has now become a gentleman with very long black hair
pushed behind his ears in the manner of the musical person, and that,
along with his swarthy complexion and his blue-black moustache, at
which he is constantly pulling, makes him look like one of the gypsies
at the Ginger-bread Fair. On top of all this a constant look of the
village cock with its crest up, a conceit like that of village beau
and musician combined, in which the exaggeration of his Southern
origin betrays itself and slops over, notwithstanding his tranquil and
ungarrulous appearance.

His lack of success at the opera has not frightened him off; like
all actors in such cases he attributes his failure to a cabal, and
for his sister and himself that word “cabal” has taken on barbaric
and extraordinary proportions, and moreover a Sanscrit spelling--the
_khabbala_--a mysterious monster which combines the traits of the
rattlesnake and the pale horse of the Apocalypse.

And so he relates to Cabantous that he is about to appear in a few days
at a great variety show in a café on the boulevard--“An _eskating-rink_
I would have you understand!” where he is to figure in some living
pictures, at two hundred francs the evening.

“Two hundred francs an evening!” The eyes of the pilot roll in his head.

“And besides that, they will cry my _bography_ in the street and my
portrait in life size will be on all the walls of Paris, _wid_ my
costume of a troubadour of the old times, which I shall put on every
evening when I do my music.”

What flatters him most in all of this is the costume. What a bore that
he is not able to put on his crenelated cap and his long-pointed shoes
in order that he might show the Minister what a splendid engagement he
has, and this time on good government stamped paper which was signed
without Roumestan’s aid! Cabantous looks at the stamped paper, smudged
on both its faces, and sighs.

“You are mighty lucky; why, look at me--it’s more than a year that I
am _’oping_ for my medal. Numa told me to send my papers on here and
I did send my papers here--after that I never heard anything more
about the medal, nor about the papers, nor about anything else. I
wrote to the Ministry of Marine; they don’t know me at the Marine. I
wrote to the Minister himself; the Minister did not answer. And what
beats me is this, that now, when I haven’t my papers with me and a
discussion arises among the mercantile captains as to pilotage, the
port councilmen won’t listen to my arguments. So, finding that was the
way of it, I put my ship in dry dock and says I to myself: Come, let’s
go and see Numa.”

He was almost in tears about it, was this wretched pilot. Valmajour
consoles and reassures him and promises to speak for him with the
Minister; he does this in an assured tone, his finger on his moustache,
like a man to whom people can refuse nothing. But after all the haughty
attitude is not peculiar to him; all these people who are waiting for
an audience--old priests of pious manners in their visiting cloaks;
methodical and authoritative professors; dudish painters with their
hair cut Russian fashion; thick-set sculptors with broad ends to their
fingers--they all have this same triumphant air--special friends of the
Minister and sure of their business. All of them, as they came in, have
said to the clerk: “He expects me.”

Each one is filled with a conviction that if only Roumestan knew that
he was there!--This it is that gives a very particular physiognomy to
the antechamber of the Ministry of Public Instruction, without a trace
of those feverish pallors, of those trembling anxieties, which one
perceives in the waiting-rooms at other Ministries.

“Who is he engaged with?” asks Valmajour in a loud voice, going up to
the little table.

“The Director of the Opera.”

“Cadaillac--all right, I know--it is about my business!”

After the failure made by the tabor-player in his theatre Cadaillac had
refused to let him appear again. Valmajour wished to bring suit, but
the Minister, who was afraid of the lawyers and the little newspapers,
had begged the musician to withdraw his plea, guaranteeing him a
round sum as damages. There is no doubt whatever with Valmajour that
they are at this moment discussing these damages and not without a
certain animation, too, for every few moments the clarion voice of Numa
penetrates the double door of his sitting room, which at last is rudely
torn open.

“She is not my protegée, she is yours!”

Big fat Cadaillac leaves the room, hurling this taunt, crosses the
antechamber with an angry gait and passes the clerk who is coming up
between two lines of solicitors.

“You have only to give my name.”

“Let him only know that I am here.”

“Tell ’im it’s Cabantous.”

The clerk listens to nobody, but marches very solemnly on with a few
visiting cards in his hand and the door which he leaves partly open
behind him shows the Minister’s sitting-room filled with light from
its three windows overlooking the garden, all of one panel of the wall
covered by the cloak turned up with ermine of M. de Fontanes, painted
standing at full length.

A trace of astonishment showing on his cadaverous face, the clerk comes
back and calls:

“Monsieur Valmajour.”

The musician is not at all astonished at passing in this way over the
heads of the others.

Since early morning his portrait has appeared placarded on all the
walls of Paris. Now he is a personage and hereafter the Minister
will no longer cause him to languish among the draughts in a railway
station. Conceited and smiling, there he stands in the centre of the
luxurious bureau where secretaries are occupied in pulling out drawers
and cardboard pigeon-holes in a frantic search for something. Roumestan
in a terrible rage scolds, thunders and curses, both hands in his
pockets:

“Come now, be done with it! those papers, what the devil!--So they have
been lost, have they, that pilot’s papers?... Really, gentlemen, there
is an absence of order here!...”

He catches sight of Valmajour: “Ha, it’s you, is it?” and he springs
upon him with one leap, the while the backs of the secretaries are
disappearing by the side doors in a state of terror, each carrying off
an armful of boxes.

“Now look here, are you never going to stop persecuting me with your
dog-at-the-fair music? Haven’t you had enough with one chance at it?
How many do you require? Now they tell me that there you are on all the
walls in your hybrid costume. And what is all this bosh that they have
brought me here?--that your biography? A mass of blunders and lies. You
know perfectly well that you are no more a Prince than I am and that
those parchments which are talked about here have never existed save in
your own imagination!”

With the brutal gesture of the man who loves argument he grabbed the
wretched fellow by the flap of his jacket with both hands and as he
talked kept shaking him. In the first place this “eskating-rink” didn’t
have a penny--perfect fakirs! They would never pay him and all he would
get would be the shame of this dirty advertisement on the strength of
_his_ name, the name of his protector. Now the newspapers could begin
their jokes again--Roumestan and Valmajour the fifer for the Ministry;
and, growing excited at the memory of these attacks, his big cheeks
quivering with the anger hereditary in his family, with a fit of rage
like those of Aunt Portal, more scaring in the solemn surroundings of
an office where the personality of a man should disappear before the
public situation, he screamed at the top of his voice:

“But for God’s sake get out of here, you wretched creature, get out of
here! We have had enough of your shepherd’s fife!”

Stunned and silly, Valmajour let the flood go on, stuttering, “All
right, all right,” and appealed to the pitying face of Méjean, the only
man whom the Master’s rage had not sent into headlong flight, and then
gazed piteously on the big portrait of Fontanes, who looked scandalized
at excesses of this sort and seemed to accentuate his grand Ministerial
air the more, in proportion as Roumestan lost his own dignity. At last,
escaping from the powerful fist which clutched him, the musician was
able to reach the door and fly half-crazed with his tickets for the
“eskating.”

“Cabantous, pilot!” said Numa, reading the name which the impassive
clerk presented to him, “There’s another Valmajour! But no, I won’t
have it; I have had enough of being their tool--enough for to-day--I am
no longer in....”

He continued to march up and down his office, trying to get rid of what
remained of that furious rage, the shock of which Valmajour had very
unfairly received. That Cadaillac, what impudence! daring to come and
reproach him about the little girl, in his own office, in the Ministry
itself, and before Méjean, before Rochemaure! “Well, certainly, I am
too weak; the nomination of that man to the directorship of the opera
was a terrible blunder!”

His chief clerk was entirely of that opinion but he would have taken
good care not to say so; for Numa was no longer the good fellow he used
to be, who was the first to laugh at his own embarrassments and took
railleries and remonstrances in good part. Having become the practical
chief of the cabinet in consequence of his speech at Chambéry and a few
other oratorical triumphs, the intoxication that comes with heights
gained, that royal atmosphere where the strongest heads are turned, had
changed him quite, had made him nervous, splenetic and irritable.

A door beneath a curtain opened and Mme. Roumestan appeared, ready to
go out, her hair fashionably dressed and a long cloak concealing her
figure. With that serene air which for five months back lit up her
pretty face: “Have you your council to-day, my dear? Good-morning,
Monsieur Méjean.”

“Why, yes, council--a meeting--everything!”

“I wanted to ask you to come as far as Mamma’s house; I am breakfasting
there; Hortense would have been so glad!”

“But you see it is impossible.” He looked at his watch: “I ought to be
at Versailles at noon.”

“Then I will wait for you and take you to the station.”

He hesitated a second, not more than a second:

“All right, I will put my signature here and then we will go.”

While he was writing Rosalie was giving Méjean news of her sister in a
low tone. The coming of winter affected her spirits; she was forbidden
to go out. Why did he not call upon her? She had need of all her
friends. Méjean gave a gesture of discouragement and woe: “Oh, so far
as I am concerned....”

“But I tell you yes, there is a good deal more chance for you. It is
only caprice on her part; I am sure that it cannot last.”

She saw everything in a rosy light and wanted to have all the world
about her as happy as she was--O, how happy! and glad with so perfect
a joy that she indulged in a certain superstition never to acknowledge
the fulness of her joy to herself. As for Roumestan, he talked about
his affair everywhere with a comical sort of pride, to indifferent
people as well as to his intimates:

“We are going to call it the child of the Ministry!” and then he would
laugh at his joke till the tears came.

And of a truth those who knew about his existence outside, the
household in the city impudently established with receptions and an
open table, this husband who was so sensitive and tender and who talked
of his coming fatherhood with tears in his eyes, appeared a character
not to be defined, perfectly at peace in his lies, sincere in his
expansiveness, putting to the rout the conclusions of those who did not
understand the dangerous complications of Southern natures.

“Certainly, I will take you there,” said he to his wife as they got
into the carriage.

“But if they are waiting for you?”

“Well, so much the worse for them; let them wait for me--we shall be
together all the longer.”

He took Rosalie’s arm under his own and pressing against her as if he
were a child:

“_Té!_ do you know that I am happy only in this place? Your gentleness
rests me, your coolness comforts me. That Cadaillac put me into such
a state of rage! He’s a fellow without any conscience, he’s a fellow
without any morality--”

“You didn’t know his character, then?”

“The way he is carrying on that theatre is a burning shame!”

“It is true that the engagement of that Mlle. Bachellery ... why did
you let him do it? A girl who is false in everything, her youth, her
voice, even her eyelashes.”

Numa felt his cheeks reddening; it was he himself who fastened them on,
now, with his own great big fingers, those eyelashes! The little girl’s
mamma had taught him how to do it.

“Whom does this little good-for-nothing belong to, anyhow? The
_Messenger_ was talking the other day of influences in high circles, of
some mysterious protection--”

“I don’t know; to Cadaillac, undoubtedly.”

He turned away in order to conceal his embarrassment and suddenly threw
himself back horrified.

“What is it?” asked Rosalie, looking out of the window too.

There was the placard of the skating-rink, enormous, printed in crying
colors which showed out under the rainy and gray sky, repeating itself
at every street corner, on every vacant space of a naked wall and
on the planks of temporary fences. It showed a gigantic troubadour
encircled with living pictures as a border--all blotches in yellow,
green and blue, with the ochre color of the tabor placed across the
figure. The long hoarding which surrounded the new building of the city
hall, past which their carriage was going at the moment, was covered
with this coarse and noisy advertisement, which was stupefying even to
Parisian idiocy.

“My executioner!” said Roumestan with an expression of comic dismay.
Rosalie found fault with him gently.

“No--your victim! and would that he were the only one! But somebody
else has caught fire from your enthusiasm--”

“Who can that be?”

“Hortense.”

Then she told him what she had finally proved to be a certainty,
notwithstanding the mysteries made by the young girl--namely, her
affection for this peasant, a thing which at first she had believed a
mere fancy, but which worried her now like a moral aberration in her
sister.

The Minister was in a state of indignation.

“How can it be possible? That hobnail, that bog-trotter!”

“She sees him with her imagination, and especially in the light of your
legends and inventions which she has not been able to put in the right
focus. That is why this advertisement and grotesque coloring which
enrage you fill me on the contrary with joy. I believe that her hero
will appear so ridiculous to her that she will no longer dare to love
him. If it were not for that, I hardly know what would become of us.
Can you imagine the despair of my father; can you imagine yourself the
brother-in-law of Valmajour?--oh, Numa, Numa! poor involuntary maker of
dupes.”

He did not put up any defence, but indulged in anger against himself,
against his “cussed Southernism” which he was not able to overcome.

“Look here, you ought to stay always just as you are, right up against
my side as my beloved councillor and my holy protection. You alone are
good and indulgent, you alone understand and love me.”

He held her little gloved hand to his lips and said this with such a
firm conviction that tears, real tears, reddened his eyelids: then,
warmed up and refreshed by this effusion, he felt better; and so, when
they reached the Place Royale and with a thousand tender precautions
he had helped his wife out of the carriage, it was with a joyous tone
and one free of all remorse that he threw the address to his coachman:
“London Street, hurry, quick!”

Moving slowly, Rosalie vaguely caught this address and it gave her
pain. Not that she had the slightest suspicion; but he had just said
that he was going to the Saint-Lazare station. Why was it that his acts
were never in accordance with his words?

In her sister’s bedroom another cause for anxiety met her: she felt on
entering that there had been a sudden stoppage of a discussion between
Hortense and Audiberte, who still kept the traces of fury on her face
while her peasant’s head-dress still quivered on her hair bristling
with rage. Rosalie’s presence kept her in bounds, that was clear enough
from her lips and eyebrows viciously drawn together. Still, as the
young wife asked her how she did, she was forced to answer and so began
to talk feverishly of the _eskating_, of the advantageous terms which
were offered them, and then, surprised at Rosalie’s calm, demanded in
an almost insolent tone:

“Aren’t you coming to hear my brother? It is something that is at least
worth while, if for nothing more than to see him in his costume!”

This ridiculous costume as it was described by her in her peasant
dialect, from the dents in the cap down to the high curving points of
the shoes, put poor Hortense in a state of agony; she did not dare
raise her eyes to her sister’s face. Rosalie asked to be excused from
going; the state of her health did not permit her to visit the theatre.
Besides, in Paris there were certain places of entertainment where all
women could not go. The peasant woman stopped her short at the first
suggestion.

“Beg your pardon, I go perfectly well and I hope I am as good as
anybody else--I have never done any wrong, I have not; _I_ have always
fulfilled my religious duties.”

She raised her voice without a trace of her old bashfulness, just as if
she had acquired rights in the house. But Rosalie was much too kind and
far too superior to this poor ignorant thing to cause her humiliation,
particularly as she was thinking about the responsibility that rested
on Numa. So, with the entire intelligence of her heart and revealing
as usual the uncommon delicacy of her mind, in those truthful words
that heal although they may sting a little, she endeavored to make
Audiberte understand that her brother had not succeeded and never would
succeed in Paris, the implacable city, and that rather than obstinately
continue a humiliating struggle, falling into the mire and mud of
artistic existence, it would be far better for them to return to their
Provence and buy their farm back again, the means to accomplish which
would be furnished them, and so, in their laborious life surrounded by
nature, forget the unhappy results of their trip to Paris.

The peasant girl let her talk to the very end without interrupting her
a single moment, merely darting at Hortense a look of irony from her
wicked eyes as though to challenge her to make some reply. At last,
seeing that the young girl did not wish to say anything more, she
coldly declared that they would not go, because her brother had all
kinds of engagements in Paris--all kinds which it was impossible for
him to break. Upon that she threw over her arm the heavy wet cloak
which had been lying on the back of a chair, made a hypocritical curtsy
to Rosalie, “Wishing you a very good day, Madame, and thanking you very
much, I am sure,” and left the room, followed by Hortense.

In the antechamber, lowering her voice on account of the servants:

“Sunday evening, _qué?_ half past ten without fail!” And in a pressing,
authoritative voice: “Come now, you certainly owe that to your _pore_
friend! Just to give him a little heart ... and to start with, what do
you risk, anyhow? I am coming to get you and I am going to bring you
back!”

Seeing that Hortense still hesitated, she added almost aloud in a tone
of menace: “Come now, I would like to know: are you his betrothed or
not?”

“I’ll come, I’ll come,” said the young girl greatly alarmed.

When she returned to the room, seeing that she looked worried and sad,
Rosalie asked her:

“What are you thinking about, my dear girl? are you still dreaming the
continuation of your novel? It ought to be getting pretty well forward
in all these months,” added she, taking her gayly around the waist.

“Oh, yes, pretty well forward--”

After a silence Hortense continued in an obscure tone of melancholy:
“But the trouble is, I can’t see my way to the close of the novel.”

       *       *       *       *       *

She didn’t care for him any more: it may be that she never had loved
him. Under the transforming power of absence and that “tender glory”
which misfortune gave to the Moor Abencerage he had appeared to her
from a distance as her man of destiny. It seemed a proud act on her
part to knit her own existence with that of one who was abandoned by
everything, success and protectors together. But when she got back to
Paris, what a pitiless clearness of things! What a terror to perceive
how absolutely she had made a mistake!

To start with, Audiberte’s first visit had shocked her because of the
new manners of the girl, too familiar and free and easy, and because of
the look of an accomplice which she gave when telling her in whispers:
“Hush, don’t say anything! he’s coming to get me....”

That kind of action seemed to her rather hasty and rather bold, more
especially the idea of presenting this young man to her parents.
But the peasant girl wanted to hurry things. And then, all at once,
Hortense perceived her error when she looked upon this artist of
the variety stage with his long hair behind his ears, full of stage
movements, denting in and shifting his sombrero of Provence on his
characteristic head--always handsome, of course, but full of a plain
preoccupation to appear so.

Instead of taking a lowly manner in order to make her forgive him
for that generous spirit of interest which she had felt for him, he
preserved his air of a conqueror, his silly look of the victor, and
without saying a word--for he would hardly have known what to say--he
treated this finely organized Parisian girl just as he would in similar
conditions have treated _her_, the Des Combette girl--took her by the
waist with the motion of a soldier and troubadour and wanted to press
her to his breast. She disengaged herself with a sudden repulsion and
a letting go of all her nerves, leaving him there looking foolish and
astonished, while Audiberte quickly intervened and scolded her brother
violently. What kind of manners had he, anyhow? It must have been in
Paris that he learned such manners, in the Faubourg Saint _Germoyne_,
without a doubt, among his duchesses?

“Come now, wait at least until she is your wife!”

And turning to Hortense:

“O, he is so in love with you; his blood is parching with his love,
_pécaïré!_”

From that time on, when Valmajour came to get his sister he considered
it necessary to assume the sombre and desperate air of an illustration
to a ballad: “‘The ocean waits for me,’ the Knight _hadjured_.” In
other conditions the young girl might have been touched, but really
the poor fellow seemed too much of a nullity. All he knew how to do
was to smooth the nap of his soft hat while reciting the list of his
successes in the faubourg of the nobles, or else the rivalries of the
stage. One day he talked to her for a whole hour about the vulgarity of
handsome Mayol, who had refrained from congratulating him at the end of
a concert; and all the while he kept repeating:

“There you are with your Mayol!... _Bé!_ he is not very polite, your
Mayol isn’t!”

And all this was accompanied by Audiberte’s attitudes of watchfulness,
her severity of a policeman of morals, and this in the face of these
very cold lovers! O, if she had been able to divine what a terror
possessed the soul of Hortense, what a loathing for her frightful
mistake!

“Ho! what a capon--what a capon of a girl--” she would sometimes say
to her, trying to laugh, with her eyes brimming with rage, because she
considered that this love-affair was dragging too much and believed
that the young girl was hesitating for fear of meeting the reproaches
and anger of her parents. Just as if that would have weighed a straw
in the balance for such a free and proud nature, had there been a real
love in her heart; but how can one say: “I love him,” and buckle on
one’s armor, rouse one’s spirits and fight, when one does not love at
all?

However, she had promised, and every day she was harassed by new
demands. For instance there was that first night at the skating-rink,
to which the peasant girl insisted upon taking her, whether or no,
counting upon the singer’s success and the sympathy of the applause
to break down the last objections. After a long resistance the poor
little girl ended by consenting to skip out secretly for that one night
behind the back of her mother, making use of lies and humiliating
complications. She had given way through fear and weakness, perhaps
also with the hope of getting her first impression back again at the
theatre--that mirage which had vanished; of lighting up again, in fact,
that flame of love which was so desperately quenched.




CHAPTER XV.

THE SKATING-RINK.


Where was it? Whither was she being taken? The cab had been going for
a long, long time; seated at her side, Audiberte had been holding her
hands, reassuring her and talking to her with a feverish violence. She
did not look at anything, she did not hear anything; the noise of the
wheels, the sharp tones of that shrill little voice had no sense for
her mind whatever; nor did the streets and boulevards and house-fronts
seem to her to wear their usual aspect, but were discolored by the
lively emotion within, as if she were looking at them out of the
carriage in a funeral or marriage procession.

Finally they brought up with a jerk and stopped before a wide pavement
inundated by white light which carved the crowd of people swarming here
into black sharp-cut shadows. At the entrance of the large corridor was
a wicket for the tickets, then a double door of red velvet, and right
upon that a hall, an enormous hall, which with its nave and its side
aisles and the stucco on its high walls, recalled to her an Anglican
church which she had once visited on the occasion of a marriage. Only
in this case the walls were covered with placards and advertisements
in every color, setting forth the virtues of pith helmets, shirts
made to measure for four francs and a half and announcements of
clothing-shops, alternating with the portrait of the tabor-player,
whose biography one could hear cried in that voice of a steam-valve
used by programme-sellers. They were in the midst of a stunning noise
in which the murmur of the circulating mob, the humming of the tops on
the cloth of the English billiard tables, calls for drinks, snatches of
music broken by patriotic gunshots coming from the back of the hall,
were dominated by a constant noise of roller skates going and coming
across a broad asphalted space surrounded by balustrades, the centre of
a perfect storm of crush hats and bonnets of the time of the Directory.

Hortense walked behind the Provençal girl, anxious and frightened, now
turning pale and now turning red beneath her veil, following her with
difficulty through a perfect labyrinth of little round tables at which
women were seated two and two drinking, their elbows on the table,
cigarettes in their mouths and their knees up, overwhelmed with a look
of boredom. Against the wall from point to point stood crowded counters
and behind each was a girl standing erect, her eyes blackened with
kohl, her mouth red as blood and little flashes of steel coming from a
bang of black or russet hair plastered over her brow. And this white
and black of painted skin, this smile with its painted vermilion-point,
were to be found on all the women, as if it were a livery belonging to
nocturnal and pallid apparitions which all were forced to wear.

Sinister also was the slow strolling of the men who elbowed their
way in an insolent and brutal manner between the tables, puffing the
smoke of their thick cigars right and left with the insult of their
marketing as they pushed about to look as closely as possible at the
wares. And what gave it still more the impression of a market was
the cosmopolite public talking all kinds of French, a hotel public
which had just arrived and run into the place in their travelling
clothes--Scotch bonnets, striped jackets, tweeds still full of the fog
of the Channel and Muscovite furs thawing fast in the Paris air. And
there were the long black beards and insolent airs of people from the
banks of the Spree covering satyr grins and Tartar mugs; there too were
Turkish fezzes surmounting coats without any collars, negroes in full
evening dress gleaming like the silk of their tall hats and little
Japanese men dressed like Europeans, dapper and correct, like tailors’
advertisements fallen into the fire.

“_Bou Diou!_ How ugly he is,” said Audiberte suddenly, as they passed a
very solemn Chinaman with his long pigtail hanging down the back of his
blue gown; or else she would stop and, nudging her companion with her
elbow, cry “_Vé! vé!_ see the bride!” and show her some woman dressed
entirely in white lounging on two chairs--one of which supported her
white satin shoes with silver heels--the waist of her dress wide open,
the train of her gown all which-way, and orange flowers fastening
the lace of a short mantilla in her hair. Then, suddenly scandalized
by certain words which gave her the clue to these very chance bridal
flowers, the Provençal girl would add in a mysterious manner: “A
regular snake, you know!” Then suddenly, in order to drag Hortense away
from a bad example, she would hurry her toward the central part of the
building where a theatre rose far in the back, occupying the same place
as the choir in a church. The stage was there under electric flames
which came and went in two big glass spheres away up in the ceiling,
like two gleaming, starry eyes of an Eternal Father in a book of holy
images.

Here they could compose themselves after the tumultuous wickedness
of the lobbies. Families of little citizens, the shopkeepers of the
quarter, filled the orchestra stalls. There were few women. It might
have been possible to believe oneself in some kind of an auditorium,
were it not for the horrible noise all about, which was always being
overborne by the regular rolling of the skaters on the asphalt floor,
drowning even the brass instruments and the drums of the orchestra, so
that really on the boards all that was possible was the dumb-show of
living pictures.

As they seated themselves the curtain went down on a patriotic scene:
an enormous Belfort lion made of cardboard, surrounded by soldiers
in triumphant poses on crumbling ramparts, their military caps stuck
on the ends of their guns, gesticulating to the measure of the
Marseillaise, which nobody could hear. This performance and this wild
excitement stimulated the Provençal girl; her eyes were bulging in her
head; as she found a place for Hortense she exclaimed:

“_Qué!_ we are nice here, _qué!_ But do haul up your veil--don’t
tremble so, there is no danger _wid_ me!”

The young girl did not answer, still overwhelmed by the impression of
that slow, insulting crowd of strollers where she had been confounded
with the rest, among all those livid masks of women. And behold, right
in front of her, she found those horrible masks once more, with their
blood-stained lips--found them in the grimacing faces of two clowns in
tights who were dislocating all their joints, a bell in each hand with
which they were sounding out, whilst they frolicked about, an air from
“Martha”--a veritable music of the gnomes, formless and stuttering,
very much in its place in the musical babel of the skating-rink. Then
the curtain fell again, and for the tenth time the peasant girl stood
up and sat down again, fussed about, fixed her head-dress anew and
suddenly exclaimed, as she looked down the programme: “There, the
Cordova Mount--the summer locusts, the farandole--there, there, it is
beginning, _vé, vé!_”

Rising once more, the curtain displayed upon the background of the
scenery a lilac mountain, up which mounted buildings of stone most
weird in construction, partly castle, partly mosque, here a minaret and
there a terrace; they rose in ogival arches, crenelations and Moorish
work, with aloes and palm-trees of zinc rising at the foot of towers
sharply cut against the indigo blue of a very crude sky. One may see
just such absurd architecture in the suburbs of Paris among villas
inhabited by newly enriched merchants. In spite of all, in spite of
the crying tones of the slopes blossoming with thyme and exotic plants
placed there by mistake because of the word “Cordova,” Hortense was
rather embarrassed at sight of that landscape which held for her the
most delightful recollections. And that palace of the Turk perched
upon the mountain all rose-colored porphyry, and that reconstructed
castle, really did seem to her the realization of her dreams, but quite
grotesque and overdone, as it happens when one’s dream is about to slip
into the oppression of a nightmare.

At a signal from the orchestra and from an electric jet, long
devil’s-darning-needles, personated by girls in an undress of
tightly-fitting silks, a sort of emerald-green tights, rushed upon the
stage waving their long membranous wings and whirling their wooden
rattles.

“What! those are locusts? Not much!” said the Provençal girl
indignantly.

Already they had arranged themselves in a half circle, like a
crescent-shaped mass of seaweed, all the time whirling their rattles,
which sounded very distinctly now, because the row made by the parlor
skates was softened and for a moment the noise of the lobby was hushed
in a close wall of heads leaning toward the stage, their eyes glaring
under every kind of head-dress in the world. The wretchedness which
tore Hortense’s heart grew deeper when she heard coming, at first from
afar and gradually increasing, the low sound of the tabor.

She would have liked to flee in order not to have seen what was coming.
In its turn the shepherd’s pipe sounded out its high notes and the
farandole, raising under the cadence of its regular steps a thick dust
the color of the earth, unrolled itself with all the fantastic costumes
imaginable, short skirts meant to lure the eye, red stockings with gold
borders, spangled waists, head-dresses of Arab coins, of Indian scarfs,
of Italian kerchiefs or those from Brittany or Caux, all worn with a
fine Parisian disdain of truth to locality.

Behind them, pushing forward on his knee a tabor covered with gold
paper, came the great troubadour of the placards--his legs incased in
tights, one leg yellow with a blue shoe on and one leg blue shod in
yellow, with his satin waistcoat covered with puffs and his crenelated
velvet cap overshadowing a countenance which remained quite brown
despite cosmetics, and of which nothing could be seen well except a big
moustache stiffened with Hungarian pomade.

“Ah!” said Audiberte in perfect ecstasy.

When the farandole had taken up its place on the two sides of the stage
in front of the locusts with their big wings, the troubadour, standing
alone in the centre, saluted with an air of assurance and victory under
the glaring eyes of the Eternal Father whose rays poured a luminous
hoarfrost upon his coat.

The aubade began, rustic and shrill, yet it went forward into the
halls hardly farther than the footlights; there it lived a very short
life, fighting for a moment with the flamboyant banners on the ceiling
and the columns of the enormous interior, and then fell flat into a
great and bored silence. The public looked on without the slightest
comprehension. Valmajour began another piece, which at the first sounds
was received with laughter, murmurs and cat-calls. Audiberte took
Hortense’s hand:

“Listen! that’s the cabal!”

At this point the cabal consisted merely of a few “Heh! louder!” and of
jokes of this sort, which were called out by a husky voice belonging
to some low woman on seeing the complicated dumb-show that Valmajour
employed: “Oh, give us a rest, you chump!”

Then the rink took up again its sound of parlor skates and of English
billiards and its ambulatory marketing, overwhelming the shepherd’s
pipe and the tabor which the musician insisted upon using until the
very end of the aubade. After this he saluted again, marched forward
toward the footlights, always accompanied by that mysterious grand air
which never quitted him. His lips could be seen moving and a few words
came here and there into ear-shot: “It came to me all of a sudden ...
one hole ... three holes ... the good God’s _birrd_....”

His despairing gesture was understood by the orchestra and gave the
signal for a ballet in which the locusts twined themselves about
the odalisques from Caux and formed plastic poses, undulatory and
lascivious dances beneath Bengal flames which threw their rainbow
light as far as the pointed shoes of the troubadour, who continued his
dumb-show with the tabor in front of the castle of his ancestors in a
great glory and apotheosis.

There lay the romance of poor little Hortense! That is what Paris had
made of it.

       *       *       *       *       *

The clear bell of the old clock hanging on the wall of her chamber
sounded one as Hortense roused herself from the arm-chair into which
she had fallen utterly crushed when she entered. She looked around her
gentle maiden’s nest, warm with the reassuring gleams of a dying fire
and of an expiring night-lamp.

“What am I doing here? Why did I not go to bed?”

She could not remember at first what had happened, only feeling a
complete sickness through her entire being and in her head a noise
which made it ache. She stood up and walked a step or two before she
perceived that she still wore her hat and mantle; then all came back
to her. She remembered then their departure after the curtain fell,
their return through the hideous market, more brilliantly illumined
than before, among drunken book-makers fighting with each other in
front of a counter, through cynical voices whispering a sum of money
as she passed--and then the scene at the exit, with Audiberte who
wished her to come and felicitate her brother; then Audiberte’s wrath
in the coach, the abuse which the creature heaped upon her, only ended
by Audiberte humiliating herself before her, and kissing her hands for
pardon; all that and still other things danced through her memory along
with the horrible faces of the clowns, harsh noises of bells, cymbals
and rattles, and the rising up of many-colored flames about that
ridiculous troubadour to whom she had given her heart! A terror that
was physical roused her at that idea:

“No, no; never! I’d far rather die!”

All of a sudden, in the looking-glass in front of her, she caught sight
of a ghost with hollow cheeks and narrow shoulders drawn together in
front with the gesture of a person shuddering with cold. The spectre
looked a little like her, but much more like that poor Princess of
Anhalt who had so roused her curiosity and pity at Arvillard that she
had described her sad symptoms in a letter. The princess had just died
at the opening of winter.

“Why, look--look!” She bent forward, came nearer to the glass and
recalled the inexplicable kindness that everybody down there had shown
her, the fright her mother evinced, the tenderness of old Bouchereau at
her departure--and understood! Now at last she knew what it was, she
knew the end of the game! It was here without any one to aid it. Surely
it was long enough she had been looking for its coming.




CHAPTER XVI.

“AT THE PRODUCTS OF THE SOUTH.”


“Mlle. Hortense is very ill. Madame will receive nobody.”

For the tenth time during the ten days that had passed Audiberte had
received the same answer, motionless before that heavy-timbered door
with its knocker, the like of which can scarcely be found except
beneath the arcades of the Place Royale, a door which once shut seemed
to her to refuse forever an entrance to the old house of the Le
Quesnoys.

“Very well,” said she, “I am not coming back; it must be they now who
shall call me back.”

In great agitation she set out again through the lively turmoil of
that commercial quarter, where drays laden with cases and barrels and
iron bars, noisy and flexible, were forever passing the pushcarts that
rolled under the porches and back into the courtyards where the coopers
were nailing up the cases for export. But the peasant girl was not
aware of this infernal row and of the rumbling of labor which shook
the high houses to their very topmost floors; in her venomous head a
very different kind of row was going on, a clashing of brutal thoughts
and a terrible clangor of foiled wishes. So she set forth, feeling no
fatigue, and in order to economize the ’bus fare crossed on foot the
entire distance from the Marais to Abbaye-Montmartre Street.

After a fierce and lively peregrination from one lodging to the other,
hotels and furnished apartments of all kinds, from which they were
expelled each time on account of the tabor-playing, they had just
recently made shipwreck in that quarter. It was a new house which had
allured, at the cheap prices for housewarmers, a temporary horde of
girls, Bohemians and business agents, and those families of adventurers
such as one sees at the seaports, a floating population which shows
its lack of work on the balconies, watching arrivals and departures in
hopes that there may be something to be gained for them in the flood.
Fortune is here the flood on which they cast their watchful eyes.

The rent was very high for them to pay, especially now that the
skating-rink had failed and it was necessary to sue upon government
stamped paper for the price of Valmajour’s few appearances. But the
tabor did not bother anybody in that freshly-painted barrack whose
door was open at every hour of the night for the different crooked
businesses of the tenants--not to speak of all the quarrels and rows
that were going on. On the contrary, it was the tabor-player who was
bothered. The advertising on placards, the many-colored tights and
his fine moustaches had aroused perilous interest among the ladies
of the skating-rink less coy than that prude of a girl down there
in the Marais. He was acquainted with actors at the Batignolles, all
that sweet-scented crowd which met in a pot-house on the Boulevard
Rochechouart called the Straw-Lair. This same Straw-Lair, where people
passed their time in loafing fatly, playing cards, drinking lager beer
and passing from one to the other the scandal of the little theatres
and the lowest class of gallantry, was the enemy and the horror of
Audiberte. It was the cause of savage rages, under the stormy blows
of which the two Southerners bent their backs as under a tempest in
the tropics, merely revenging themselves by cursing their tyrant in a
green skirt and talking about her in that mysterious and hateful tone
which schoolboys and servants use: “What did she say? how much did she
give you?” and playing into each other’s hands in order to slip away
behind her back. Audiberte knew this well and watched them; she did her
business outside quickly, impatient to get home; and particularly was
it so that day, because she had left them early in the morning. As she
ascended the stairs she stopped a moment, hearing neither tabor nor
shepherd’s pipe.

“Oh, the beggarly wretch, he’s off again to his Straw-Lair!”

But as she came in at the door her father ran up to her and headed the
explosion off.

“Now don’t squeal, somebody’s come to visit you; a gentleman from the
_Munistry!_”

The gentleman was waiting in the drawing-room; for, as it always
happens in these buildings, cheaply built and made by machinery, with
every room on each floor exactly the same, one above the other, they
too had a drawing-room hung with a cheap paper, creamy and waffled into
patterns till it looked like a dish of beaten eggs, a drawing-room
which made the peasant girl a very proud woman. Méjean was passing in
review most compassionately the Provençal furniture scattered about
this dentist’s waiting-room, full of the crude light from two windows
guiltless of curtains--the _coco_ and the _moco_ (tumbler-holder and
lamp-holder), the kneading-trough, the bread-basket much banged about
by house-movings and by travel--these showed their rural rustiness
alongside of the cheap gilding and wall paintings. The haughty profile
of Audiberte, very pure in its lines, surmounted by her Sunday
head-dress, which seemed just as out-of-place in the fifth story of a
Parisian apartment house, completed the feeling of pity which he had
concerning these victims of Roumestan; and so he introduced very gently
the cause of his visit.

The Minister, wishing to spare the Valmajours new misfortunes, for
which up to a certain point he felt himself responsible, sent them five
thousand francs to pay for their losses in having changed their home
and to carry them back again to their own place. He took the bills from
his purse and laid them on the old dark kneading-trough of nutwood.

“So, then, we’ll have to leave?” asked the peasant girl without
budging an inch and pondering a while.

“The Minister desires that you should go as soon as possible; he is
anxious to know that you have returned to your home as happy as you
were before.”

Old Valmajour cast his eye around at the bank-notes:

“As for me, that seems reasonable enough--_de qué n’en disés?_”

But she would not say anything and waited for the sequel, which Méjean
introduced by twisting and turning his purse:

“And to those five thousand francs we will add five thousand more which
are here, in order to get back again--to get back again--”

His emotion choked him. Cruel was the commission which Rosalie
had given him. Ah, how often it costs a lot to be considered a
quiet-loving, strong man; much more is demanded of such a one than of
other people! Then he added very rapidly--“the photograph of Mlle. Le
Quesnoy.”

“At last! now we have got to it. The photograph--didn’t I know it,
by heavens?” At every word she bounded up like a goat. “And so you
really believe that you can make us come from the other end of France,
that you can promise everything to us--to us who never asked for
anything--and then that you can put us out of doors like so many dogs
who have done their worst and left their dirt everywhere? Take back
your money, gentleman! You can be dead sure that we sha’n’t leave, and
you can say so there, and also that the photograph won’t be returned to
them! That’s a paper and a proof, that is. I keep it safe in my little
bag; it never leaves me and I shall show it about through Paris and
what is written upon it, so that all the world may know that all those
Roumestans are no better than a family of liars--of liars--”

She was foaming with rage.

“Mlle. Le Quesnoy is very, very ill,” said Méjean, with great solemnity.

“_Avaï!_”

“She is leaving Paris, and in all probability will never return--alive!”

Audiberte said not a word, but the silent laugh of her eyes, the
implacable _no_ which was written upon her classic brow, on which the
hair grew low beneath the little lace head-dress, were sufficient to
warrant the firmness of her refusal. Then a temptation seized Méjean
to throw himself upon her, tear the little Indian bag from her girdle
and fly with it; still, he restrained himself, attempted a few useless
expostulations, and then, quivering with rage likewise, he said, “You
will repent of this,” and to the great regret of Father Valmajour, left
the house.

“Look out, little girl, you are going to bring us into some misfortune!”

“Not much! It’s them that we’ll give trouble to; I am going to ask the
advice of Guilloche.”

  GUILLOCHE, CONTENTIEUX.

Behind the yellow card bearing those two words, fastened on the door
which was opposite their own, was one of those terrible business men
whose entire instalment consists of an enormous leather portfolio
containing the minutes and notes of rancid lawsuits, sheets of white
paper for secret denunciations and begging letters, bits of pie-crust,
a false beard and sometimes even a hammer with which to strike
milkwomen dead, as was seen recently in a famous lawsuit. This type
of man, of whom many exist in Paris, would not be worthy of a single
line if said Guilloche, a name which was as good as a signboard when
one considered his countenance divided up into a thousand little
symmetrical wrinkles, had not added to his profession an entirely new
and characteristic department.

Guilloche did the business of penalties for schoolboys and collegians.
A poor devil of an usher, when the classes came out from recitation,
went about collecting the penalties in the way of copies to be turned
in. He stayed awake far into the night copying lines of the Æneid or
the various forms of the Greek verb _luo_. When there was lack of
regular business Guilloche, who was a graduate of college, harnessed
himself up for this original work, which he found fairly profitable.

Audiberte’s matter having been explained to him, he declared that
it was excellent. The Minister might be legally held up and the
newspapers might be made to come down; the photograph alone was worth
a mine of gold; only it was necessary to use time to go hither and
thither and he must have advances of money which must be paid down in
good coin; as for the Puyfourcat inheritance, that seemed to him a pure
Fata Morgana, a dictum which mortified terribly the peasant girl’s love
of lucre already so terribly tried, all the more because Valmajour, who
had been much asked to swell drawing-rooms during the first winter, no
longer set foot in a single house of the Faubourg St. _Germoyne_.

“So much the worse! I will work the harder, I will economize--_zou!_”

That energetic little Arlesian head-dress flew about in the great new
building, ran up and down stairs, carrying from story to story her tale
of adventure _wid_ the Menister. She excited herself, squealed, pounced
about, and then in a mysterious voice would say: “And _thin_ there’s
the photograph,” and with a furtive and sidelong glance, such as the
sellers of photographs in the arcades employ when old libertines call
for tights, she would show the picture:

“A pretty girl, at any rate! And you have read what is written there
underneath?”

This kind of thing happened in the bosom of the temporary families and
with the roller-skating ladies of the rink or at the Straw-Lair--ladies
whom she pompously called Mme. Malvina or Mme. Éloïse, being deeply
impressed by their velvet skirts, their chemises edged with holes for
ribbons and all the implements of their business, without bothering
herself otherwise as to what that business might be. And thus the
picture of this lovely creature, so distinguished and delicate,
passed through these critical and curious defilements; they picked
her to pieces; they read laughing the silly avowal of love, until the
Provençal girl took her treasure back again and thrust it into the
mouth of her money-bag with a furious gesture and in a strangled voice
exclaimed:

“Well, I guess we have got them with that!”

_Zou!_ off she flew to the bailiff--the bailiff for the affair of the
skating-rink, the bailiff used to hunt Cadaillac, the bailiff for
Roumestan. And as if that were not sufficient for her quarrelsome
disposition, she had a host of troubles with janitors, the unending
fight about the tabor-playing, which ended this time in the exile of
Valmajour to one of those basements leased by a wine merchant where
the sounding of hunting-horns alternate with lessons in kicking and
boxing. From that time forth it was in this cellar, by the light of a
gas jet which cost them so much per hour, and while looking about at
the vests and fencing-gloves and copper horns hung on the wall, that
the tabor-player passed his hours of exercise, pale and lonely like a
captive, sending forth from below the pavement all kinds of variations
on the shepherd’s pipe, not at all unlike the mournful and piercing
notes of a baker’s cricket.

One day Audiberte received an invitation to call upon the Commissary
of Police in her quarter. She ran thither quickly, quite certain that
it referred to her cousin Puyfourcat, and entered smiling with her
head-dress tossing; but after a quarter of an hour she crept out,
overwhelmed by a very peasant-like horror of the policeman, who, at his
very first word, had forced her to deliver up the photograph and sign a
receipt for ten thousand francs in which she absolutely renounced all
and any suits at law. All the same she obstinately refused to leave,
insisted upon believing in the genius of her brother and kept always
alive in the depths of her memory the delicious astonishment caused
one winter evening by that long file of carriages passing through the
courtyard of the Ministry, where all the windows were alight.

When she came back she notified her two men, who were much more
frightened than she was, that not another word was to be spoken about
that business; but she never piped a word about the money. Guilloche,
who suspected that there was some money, employed every means in his
power to get a portion of it, and having obtained only the slenderest
commission, felt a frightful rancor in regard to the Valmajours.

“Well,” said he one morning to Audiberte while she was brushing on the
staircase the finest clothes belonging to the musician, who was still
in bed, “well, I hope you are satisfied at last. He is dead!”

“Who is dead?”

“Why, Puyfourcat, your cousin; it is in the paper.”

She gave a screech, rushed into the apartment, calling aloud and almost
in tears:

“Father! Brother! Hurry quick, the inheritance!”

As all of them clustered terribly moved and panting in a circle about
that infernal fellow Guilloche, the latter slowly unfolded the _Journal
Officiel_ and in a very leisurely manner read to them as follows:

“‘On this first day of October 1876, the Court at Mostaganem has
ordered the publication and advertisement of the following inheritances
at the order of the Ministry of the Interior.--Popelino (Louis),
day-laborer--’ No, it isn’t that one--‘Puyfourcat (Dosithée)--’”

“Yes, that’s him,” said Audiberte.

The old bird thought it was necessary to wipe his eyes a bit.

“_Pécaïré!_ Poor Dosithée--!”

“----died at Mostaganem the 14th of January, 1874, born at Valmajour in
the commune of Aps--”

In her eagerness and impatience the peasant girl asked:

“How much is it?”

“Three francs, thirty-five _cintimes!_” cried Guilloche in the voice
of a fruit-peddler; and leaving in their hands the paper, in order
that they might thoroughly verify the disappointment which had come to
them, he flew off with a roar of laughter which seemed infectious,
for it rang from story to story down into the street and delighted
all that great big village called Montmartre, where the legend of the
Valmajours’ inheritance had been widely circulated.

The inheritance from Puyfourcat, only three francs thirty-five!
Audiberte pretended to laugh at it harder than the others, but the
frightful desire for vengeance upon the Roumestans, who were in her
eyes responsible for all their troubles, burned within her and now only
increased in fury and looked about for some pretext or means, for the
first weapon that lay to hand.

Most singular was the countenance of papa during this disaster. The
while his daughter pined away with weariness and fury, and the captive
musician became paler with every day passed in his cellar, papa,
expanding like a rose, careless of what happened, did not even show his
old professional envy and jealousy; he seemed to have arranged some
quiet existence for himself outside and away from his family. Hardly
had he stowed away the last mouthful of breakfast than off he went;
and sometimes in the morning, when she was brushing his clothes, she
noticed that a dried fig or a prune or some preserve or other would
fall out of his pockets, and when she asked how they came there, the
old fellow had one story or another for an explanation.

He had met a peasant woman from their country in the street, or he had
run across a man from down there who was coming to see them.

Audiberte tossed her head: “_Avaï!_ Wait till I follow you once!”

The truth was that while strolling about Paris the old man had
discovered in the St. Denis quarter a big shop of food-stuffs, where
he had entered, lured by the sign and by the temptations of the exotic
shop-front, which was full of colored fruits and of silver and painted
papers; it made a brilliant bit of color in the foggy, populous street.
This shop, where he had ended by becoming a crony and friend of the
family, was well known to Southerners quartered in Paris and had for
its sign:

  AUX PRODUITS DU MIDI.

“At the products of the South”--never was a sign more truthful.
Everything in that shop was the product of the South, from the
shopkeepers, M. and Mme. Mèfre, who were two products of the Fat South,
having the prominent nose of Roumestan, the flaring eyes, the accent,
the phrases and demonstrative welcome of Provence, down to their
shop-boys, who were familiar and called people by their first names
and did not hesitate in their guttural voices to call out to the desk:
“I say, Mèfre, where did youse put the sausages?”--yes, down to the
little Mèfre children, whining and dirty, who passed their lives amid
a constant menace of being disembowelled or scalped or made into soup,
but who nevertheless kept right on sticking their little dirty fingers
into all the open barrels; nay, even to the buyers, gesticulating and
gossiping by the hour together in order at last to buy a _barquette_
(boat shaped cake) for two cents, or taking their seats on chairs in a
circle in order to discuss the merits of garlic sausage or of pepper
sausage. Here one might listen to the “none the less, at least, come
now, other ways”--the whole vocabulary, in fact, belonging to Aunt
Portal, exchanged in the most noisy voices, whilst the “dear brother”
in a dyed-over black coat, a friend of the family, haggled over some
salt fish, and the flies, the vast horde of flies, drawn hither by
all the sugar of these fruits and the candies and the almost Oriental
pastries, buzzed and boomed right in the middle of the winter, kept
alive by that steady heat. And when some busy Parisian grew impatient
at the attendants all down at heel and the sublime indifference these
shop people showed, continuing their gossip from one counter to the
other whilst weighing and doing up things all wrong, it was a sight to
see how that Parisian was put in his place by some remark uttered in
the strongest country accent:

“_Té! vé!_ if you are in a hurry the door is always open, you know, and
the tram-cars are passing in front of the shop.”

Father Valmajour was received with open arms by this gang of
compatriots. M. and Mme. Mèfre remembered that they had seen him in the
old time at the Fair of Beaucaire in a competition of tabor-players.

Between old people from the South that Fair at Beaucaire, now no more
and existing merely as a name, has remained like a Masonic bond of
brotherhood. In our Southern provinces it was the fairy-tale for the
whole year, the one distraction for all those narrow lives; people got
ready for it a long time in advance, and for a long time after they
talked about it. It formed a reward which could be promised to wife
and children, and if it was not possible to take them along, one might
bring them a bit of Spanish lace or a toy, which took little place in
one’s bag. The Beaucaire Fair, moreover, under pretext of business,
meant a whole month or a fortnight at least of the free, exuberant and
unexpected life of a camp of gypsies. One got a bed here or there from
the citizens or in the shops or on top of desks, or else in the open
street under the canvas hood of wagons or even below the warm light of
the July stars.

O, for the business without the boredom of the shop, matters treated
while one dines, or at the door in shirt sleeves, or at the booths
ranged along the _Pré_, on the banks of the Rhône! The river itself
was nothing but a moving fair-ground, supporting its boats of all
shapes, its _lahuts_, lute shaped boats with lateen sails which came
from Arles, Marseilles, Barcelona, the Balearic Islands, filled
with wines, anchovies, oranges and cork, decorated with banners and
standards and streamers which sounded in the fresh wind and reflected
their colors in the swiftly flowing water. And what a clamor there
was in that variegated crowd of Spaniards, Sardinians, Greeks in
long tunics and embroidered slippers, Armenians with their furred
hats and Turks with their befrogged jackets, their fans and wide
trousers of gray linen! All these were jammed together in the open-air
restaurants, the booths for children’s toys and canes and umbrellas,
for jewelry and Oriental pastils and caps. And then to think of what
was called the “fine Sunday,” that is to say, the first Sunday after
the opening of the fair--the orgies on the quays and the boats and in
the famous restaurants, such as La Vignasse or the Grand Jardin or the
Café Thibaut! Those who have once seen that fair have always felt a
home-sickness for it to the end of their days.

One felt free and easy at the shop of the Mèfre couple, somewhat as
at the Beaucaire Fair. And as a matter of fact, in its picturesque
disorder the shop did resemble an improvised grand fair for the sale
of foreign and southern products. Here all full and bending were sacks
of meal in a golden powder, dried peas as big and hard as buck-shot
and big chestnuts all wrinkled and dusty looking, like little faces
of old female charcoal-burners; there stood jars of black and green
olives preserved in the Picholini manner, tin cans of red oil with the
taste of fruit, barrels of preserves from Apt made of melon rinds, of
figs, of quinces and of apricots--all the remains of fruit from a fair
dropped into molasses. Up there on the shelves among the salted goods
and preserves, in a thousand bottles and a thousand tin boxes, were
the special relishes belonging to each city--the shells and little
ships of Nîmes, the nougat of Montélimar, the ducklings and biscuits of
Aix--all in gilded envelopes ticketed and signed.

Then there were the early vegetables, an outpouring of Southern
gardens without shadows, in which the fruits hanging in slender green
foliage have a factitious look of jewels--firm looking jujubes with a
fine sheen of newly lacquered walnut side by side with pale azeroles,
figs of every sort, sweet lemons, green or scarlet peppers, great big
swelling melons, enormous onions with flowerlike hearts, muscat grapes
with long berries so transparent that the flesh of them trembles like
wine in a flask, rows of bananas striped black and yellow, regular
landslides of oranges and pomegranates with their red gold tones, like
little bombs made of red copper with their fuses issuing from a small
crenelated crown. And finally, everywhere, on the walls and ceilings,
on both sides of the door, in the tangle of burnt palms, chaplets of
leeks and onions and dried carobs, packages of sausages, bunches of
corn on the cob, there was a constant stream of warm hues, there was
the entire summer, there was the Southern sunshine fastened up in
boxes, sacks and jars radiating color out to the very sidewalk through
the muddiness of the windows.

Old Valmajour would enter this shop with his nostrils dilated,
quivering and most excited. This man, who refused the slightest work in
the presence of his children and would wipe his brow for hours over a
single button that he had to sew on his waistcoat, boasting of having
accomplished a labor like one of “Caesar’s,” in this shop was always
ready to lend a helping hand, throw off his coat to nail up or open
cases, picking up here and there an olive or a bit of berlingot candy
and lightening the labor with his monkey tricks and stories. On one day
in the week, indeed, the day of the arrival of codfish _à la brandade_,
he stayed very late at the store in order to aid them in sending out
the orders.

Among them all this particular Southern dish, codfish _à la brandade_,
could hardly be found elsewhere in Paris except at the _Produits du
Midi_; but it was the true article, white, carded fine, creamy, with
just a touch of garlic, the way it is done at Nîmes, from which city
indeed the Mèfres had it forwarded. On Thursday evening it reaches
Paris at seven o’clock by the lightning express and Friday morning it
is distributed throughout the city to all the good customers whose
names are on the big book of the store. Nay, it is on that very
commercial ledger with its tumbled leaves, smelling of spices and
soiled with oil, that is inscribed the history of the conquest of
Paris by the Southerners; there appear one after the other all the big
fortunes, political and industrial posts, names of celebrated lawyers,
deputies, ministers, and among them all especially that of Numa
Roumestan, the Vendean of the South, the pillar of the altar and the
throne.

For the sake of that single line on which Roumestan’s name is written
the Mèfres would toss the whole book into the fire. He it is who
represents best their ideas in religion, politics and everything. It is
just as Mme. Mèfre says, and she is more enthusiastic than her husband:

“For that man, I tell you, anybody would imperil their eternal soul.”

They are very fond of recalling the period when Numa, already on
the road to fame, did not disdain to come there himself to buy his
stores. And how he did understand the way of choosing by the touch
a pasty! or a sausage that sweats nicely under the knife! Then such
kind-heartedness! and that imposing, handsome face! and always a
compliment for Madame, a pleasant word for his “dear brother,” a
caressing touch for the little Mèfres who accompanied him as far as
the carriage bearing his parcels. Since his elevation to the Ministry,
since those scoundrels of Reds had given him so much bother in the two
Chambers, they did not see anything more of him, _pécaïré!_ but he
always remained faithful to the _Produits_, and it was always he who
got the first distribution.

One Thursday evening about ten o’clock, when all the pots of codfish _à
la brandade_ had been wrapped and tied and placed in fine alignment on
the counter, the whole Mèfre family, the shop boys, old Valmajour and
all the products of the South were in full number on hand, perspiring
and blowing. They were taking a rest with the peculiar air of people
who have accomplished a difficult task and were “dipping a bit” with
ladyfingers and biscuits steeped in thick wine or orgeat syrup--“Come
now, just something mild”--for as to anything strong, Southerners do
not care for that at all. Among the townspeople as in the country
parts drunkenness from alcohol is almost unknown. Instinctively this
race has a fear and horror of it; it feels itself intoxicated from its
birth--drunk without drinking.

For it is most certainly true that the wind and the sun distil for
them a terrible kind of natural alcohol whose effect is felt more or
less by all those born down there. Some of them have only that little
drop too much which loosens the tongue and gestures and causes one
to see life rosy in color and discover sympathetic souls everywhere,
which brightens the eye, widens the streets, sweeps away obstacles,
doubles audacity and strengthens the timid; others who are violently
affected, like the little Valmajour girl or Aunt Portal, reach at any
minute the limits of a stuttering, stammering and blind delirium. To
understand it one must have seen our festivals in Provence with the
peasants standing up on the tables yelling and pounding with their
big yellow shoes, screaming: “Waiter, _dé gazeuse!_” (lemon soda)--an
entire village raving drunk over a few bottles of lemonade. And where
is the Southerner who has not experienced those sudden prostrations of
the intoxicated, those breakings-down of the whole being, right on the
heels of wrath or of enthusiasm--changes as sudden as a sunburst or a
shadow across a March sky?

Without possessing the delirious Southern quality of his daughter,
Father Valmajour was born with a pretty lively case of it. And that
evening his ladyfingers dipped in orgeat affected him with a crazy
jollity which made him reel off, standing with his glass in his hand
and his mouth all twisted in the middle of the shop, all the farcical
performances of an old sponge who pays his scot without money. The
Mèfres and their shopmen were rolling around on the flour sacks with
delight:

“_Oh! de ce Valmajour, pas moins!_” (O! that Valmajour, what a fellow
he is!)

Suddenly the liveliness of the old fellow stopped short and his
gesture, like that of a jumping-jack, was brought to a dead pause by
the apparition before him of a Provençal head-dress trembling with rage.

“What are you doing here, father?”

Madame Mèfre raised her arms toward the sausages suspended from the
ceiling:

“What! this is your young lady? And you have never told us about her!
Well, how teeny-weeny she is! but a good girl, I’ll be bound. Take a
seat Miss, do!”

Owing as much to his habit of lying as to a desire to keep himself
free, the old man had never spoken about his children, but had given
himself out as an old bachelor who lived on his income; but among
Southern people nobody is at a loss for one invention or another; if
an entire caravan of little Valmajours had marched in on the heels of
Audiberte the welcome would have been just the same, just as warm and
demonstrative; they rushed forward and made a place for her.

“_Différemment_, you must eat some dipped ladyfingers with us, too.”

The Provençal girl stood embarrassed. She had just come from outside,
from the cold and blackness of the night, a hard night of December,
where the feverish life of Paris continued to pulsate in spite of
the late hour and could be felt through the heavy fog torn in every
direction by swiftly moving shadows, the colored lanterns of the
omnibuses and the hoarse horns of the street cars; she arrived from
the North, she arrived from winter, and then all of a sudden, without
transition, she found herself in the midst of Italian Provence, in this
shop of the Mèfres glowing just previous to Christmas with all kinds
of toothsome and sun-filled articles, in the midst of the well-known
accents and fragrances of home! It was her own country suddenly found
again, a return to the motherland after a year of exile, of struggles
and trials far away among the barbarians. A warmth gradually invaded
her and slackened her nerves, the while she broke her _barquette_ cake
in a thimbleful of Carthagène and answered the questions of all this
kindly set of people, as much at ease and familiar with her as if
everybody had known each other for twenty years or more. She felt a
return to her life and usual habits; tears rose to her eyes--those hard
eyes with veins of fire which never wept.

The name “Roumestan” uttered at her side dried up this emotion
suddenly. It came from Mme. Mèfre, who was looking over the addresses
of her clients and was warning her shop-boys not to make any mistake
and especially not to take the codfish _à la brandade_ for Numa to
Grenelle Street, but to the Rue de Londres.

“Seems as if codfish is not in the odor of sanctity in the Rue de
Grenelle,” remarked one of the cronies at the Products.

“Yes, indeed,” said M. Mèfre. “The lady belongs up North--just as
northerly as possible--uses nothing but butter in her kitchen,
eh?--while in the Rue de Londres there’s the nicest kind of South,
jollity, singing and everything cooked in oil--I understand why Numa
enjoys himself most there.”

So they were talking in the lightest of tones of this second household
established by the Minister in a very convenient little house quite
close to the railway station where he could repose after the fatigues
of the Chamber, free from visitors and the greater botherations. You
may be sure that the excitable Mme. Mèfre would have uttered fine
screeches if just the same sort of thing had occurred in her family;
but for Numa there was something very attractive and natural in it.

He loved the tender passion; but didn’t all our kings, Charles X and
Henry IV, play the gay Lothario? _Té! pardi!_ He got that from his
Bourbon nose.

And mixed in with this light tone, this air of delight in spicy talk
with which the South treats all affairs of the heart, there was a race
hatred, the antipathy they felt against the woman of the North, the
strange woman and her food cooked with butter. They grew excited, they
went into a variety of _anédotes_, the charms of little Alice and her
successes in grand opera.

“Why, I knew Mother Bachellery in the old time of the Fair at
Beaucaire,” said old Valmajour. “She used to sing ballads at the Café
Thibaut.”

Audiberte listened without breathing, never losing a single word and
engraving in her mind names and addresses; her little eyes glittered
with a diabolical intoxication in which the Carthagène wine had no
part.




CHAPTER XVII.

THE BABY CLOTHES.


At the light knock heard on her chamber door Mme. Roumestan trembled as
if she had been caught in a crime, and pushing in again the gracefully
moulded drawer of her Louis XV bureau over which she had been leaning
almost on her knees, she cried:

“Who’s there? What do you want, Polly?”

“A letter for Madame; there is great haste,” answered the Englishwoman.

Rosalie took the letter and closed the door sharply. The writing was
unknown and coarse, traced upon wretched paper, and there was the
“urgent and personal” which accompanies begging letters. A Parisian
chambermaid would never have disturbed her for such a little thing as
that. She pitched it on the bureau, postponing the reading of it till
later, and returned quickly to her drawer which contained the marvels
of the baby’s old layette. For the last eight years, ever since the
tragedy, she had not opened it, fearing to find her tears there again;
nor even since her new happiness had she done so owing to a very
maternal superstition, fearing lest she should come to grief once more
by means of a premature caress given by way of its little layette to
the child that was yet to come.

This courageous lady had all the nervous feelings of the woman, all her
tremblings, all the shivery drawing-together of the mimosa. The world,
which judges without understanding anything, found her cold, just as
the dull and stupid suppose that flowers are not endowed with life. But
now, her happiness having endured for six months, she must make up her
mind to bring all these little articles out from their mourning and
enclosure, shake out their pleats, go over and perhaps change them; for
even in the case of baby clothes fashion changes and the ribbons are
adjusted differently at different times. It was for this most intimate
work that Rosalie had carefully locked herself in; throughout that big
bustling Ministry, rustling with papers and humming with reports and
the feverish flitting hither and thither from offices to departments,
there was assuredly nothing quite so serious, nothing quite so moving
as that woman on her knees before an open drawer, her heart beating and
her hands trembling.

She took up the laces somewhat yellow with time which preserved along
with the perfume all this white mass of innocent clothes--baby caps and
undershirts arranged according to age and size, the gown for baptism,
the robe full of little pleats and the doll stockings. She recalled her
life down there at Orsay, gently languid and at work for hours together
in the shadow of the big catalpa whose white petals dropped into her
work-basket among her spools and delicate embroidery scissors, her
entire thought concentrated upon some one point of tailoring which gave
her the measure of her dreams and the passage of time. What illusions
she had then had, what belief and trust! What a delicious murmuring
throughout the foliage above her head and what a rising up of tender
and novel sensations in herself! In a single day life had suddenly
taken all that from her. And so despair flowed back again to her heart
as little by little she pulled forth the layette--the treason of her
husband, the loss of her child.

The appearance of the first little dress all ready to be pulled on,
that which is laid on the cradle at the moment of birth, the sleeves
pushed one within the other, the arms spread apart, the little caps
blown up to a round shape, made her burst into tears. It seemed to her
that her child had lived and that she had known it and held it to her
heart. A son, O, certainly it was a boy, a strong and beautiful one,
and from his very birth he had the mysterious and deep eyes of his
grandfather! To-day he would have been eight years old and have had
long curls falling round his shoulders; at that age they still belong
to the mother, who takes them walking, dresses them, makes them work.
Ah, cruel, cruel life!

But after a while, as she pulled out and twitched into shape these
little objects tied together with microscopic bows, with their
embroidered flowers and snowy laces, she began to be calm. Well, no;
after all, life is not so evil, and while it lasts one must keep up
one’s courage. At that terrible turn of her life she had lost all of
hers, imagining that the end had come, so far as she was concerned, for
believing, loving, being wife and mother; thinking in fact that there
only remained for her the pleasure of looking back upon the shining
past and watching it disappear in the distance like some shore which
one regrets to leave. Then after gloomy years the spring had shot out
its fruits slowly beneath the cold snow of her heart; lo and behold,
it flowered again in this little creature who was about to live and
whom she felt was already vigorous from the terrible little kicks which
it gave her during the night. And then her Numa, so changed, so good,
quite cured of his brutality and violence! To be sure he still showed
weaknesses which she did not like, those roundabout Italian ways which
he could not help having, but, even as he said--“O, that?--that is
politics!” Besides that, she was no longer the victim of the illusions
of her early years; she knew that in order to live happily one must be
contented with coming near to what one desires in everything and that
complete happiness can only be quarried from the half-happinesses which
existence affords us.

A new knock at the door. It is M. Méjean who would like to speak to
Madame.

“Very good, I’m coming.”

She found him in the little drawing-room which he was measuring from
end to end with excited steps.

“I have a confession to make to you,” said he, using a somewhat brusque
tone of familiarity which their old friendship authorized and which
both of them would have liked to have turned into a relationship of
brother and sister. “Some days ago I put an end to this wretched
affair--and did not withhold the statement from you for the sake of
keeping this longer in my possession--”

He held out to her the portrait of Hortense obtained from Audiberte.

“Well, at last! O, how happy she is going to be, poor dear!”

She softened at the sight of her sister’s pretty face, her sister
sparkling with health and youth in that Provençal disguise, and read at
the bottom of the picture in her fine and very firm writing: “I believe
in you and I love you--Hortense Le Quesnoy.” Then, remembering that the
wretched lover had also read it and that he must have been intrusted
with a very sorrowful commission in procuring it, she grasped his hand
affectionately:

“Thank you.”

“No, do not thank me, Madame.--Yes, it was hard--but for the last eight
days I have lived with that ‘I believe in you and I love you,’ and at
times I could imagine that it was meant for me.” And then very low and
timidly: “How is she getting on?”

“Oh, not well at all--Mamma is taking her South. Now she is willing to
do whatever anybody wishes--it is just as if a spring had broken in
her.”

“Altered?”

Rosalie made a gesture: “Ah!”

“Till we meet again, Madame,” said Méjean very quickly, moving away
with hurried steps; he turned back again at the door and squaring his
solid shoulders beneath the half-raised curtain:

“It is the luckiest thing in the world that I have no imagination. I
should be altogether too unhappy!”

Rosalie returned to her room deeply dejected. There was no use in
fighting against it by recalling her sister’s youth and the encouraging
words of Jarras, who persisted in looking upon it merely as a crisis
which it was necessary to cross; black thoughts invaded her which
would not tally with the festive white in the baby’s layette. She
hastened to tie up, lay in order and turn the key upon these little
scattered articles, and as she got up she perceived the letter lying
on the bureau, took and read it mechanically, expecting to find the
commonplace begging statement which she received every day from so many
different hands, and which would have come at a lucky moment during one
of those spells of superstition, when charity seems a bringer of good
luck. That was why she did not understand it at first and was obliged
to read again these lines, which had been written out as a copy by the
ignorant pen of a schoolboy, the boy employed by Guilloche:

“If you are fond of codfish _à la brandade_, delicious is that which
is eaten to-night at the house of Mme. Bachellery in the Rue de
Londres. Your husband pays for the supper. Ring three times and enter
straight ahead.”

From these foolish phrases, from this slimy and perfidious abyss,
the truth arose and appeared to her, helped by coincidences and
recollections--that name “Bachellery” pronounced so often during the
past year, enigmatical articles in the papers concerning her engagement
at the opera, that address which she had heard Numa himself give, and
the long stay at Arvillard. In a second, doubt crystallized itself in
her to certainty. And besides, did not the past throw a light for her
upon this present and all its actual horror? Lies and grimace--he was
not and could not be anything but that. Why should this eternal maker
of dupes spare her? It was her fault; she had been the fool to allow
herself to be caught by his lying voice and vulgar caresses. And in the
same second certain details came to her mind which made her red and
pale by turns.

This time it was no longer despair showing itself with heavy, pure
tears as in the early deceptions, but anger against herself for having
been so feeble and cowardly as to have been able to pardon him, and
against him who had duped her in contempt of the promises and oaths
in connection with the former crime. She would like to have convicted
him of his villainy there, on the moment, but he was at Versailles in
the Chamber of Deputies. It occurred to her to call Méjean, but then
she felt a repugnance to force that honest fellow to lie. And being
thus reduced to crushing down a swarm of contrary feelings, prevent
herself from crying out and surrendering to the terrible nerve-crisis
which she felt rising in her, she strode to and fro on the carpet, her
hands with a familiar action resting against the loosened waist of her
dressing-gown. All of a sudden she stopped and shuddered, seized by a
crazy fear.

Her child!

He was suffering too and he was calling to his mother with all the
power of a life which is struggling to exist. Oh, my God, if he also,
if he was going to die like the other one at the same age, and under
exactly similar conditions! Destiny, which people call blind, has
sometimes savage combinations, and she began to reason with herself in
half-broken words and tender exclamations. “Dear little fellow!--poor
little fellow!--” and attempted to look upon everything coldly as it
exists, in order to conduct herself in a dignified way and above all
not to destroy that solitary good thing which remained to her. She even
took in hand some work, that embroidery of Penelope which the Parisian
woman keeps about her, being always in action; for it was necessary to
wait for Numa’s return and have an explanation with him, or rather to
discover in his attitude a conviction of his crime, before it came to
the irremediable scandal of a separation.

O, those brilliant wools and that regular and colorless canvas--what
confidences may they not receive, what regrets, joys and desires
form the complicated and knotted reverse of the canvas full of broken
threads in these feminine products, with their flowers peacefully
interwoven!

Coming back from the Chamber of Deputies, Numa Roumestan found his wife
embroidering beneath the narrow gleam of a single lighted lamp, and
this quiet picture, her lovely profile softened by her chestnut-colored
hair, in that luxurious shade of cushioned furniture where the lacquer
screens and old bronzes, the ivories and potteries, caught the warm and
shooting rays from a wood fire, overcame him by contrast with the noise
of the Assembly, where the brilliantly lighted ceilings are swathed in
a dust full of movement that floats above the hall of debate like the
smoke from powder above a field where military are manœuvring.

“How do you do, Mamma; it’s pleasant here with you.”

The day’s meeting had been a hot one; always that wretched
appropriation bill, and the Left fastened for five hours on the coat
tails of that poor General d’Espaillon, who didn’t know enough to put
two ideas together when he wasn’t saying g--d--, etc., etc. Well,
anyhow, the Cabinet would get through this time; but after the vacation
at New Year’s, when the Assembly would reach the question of the Fine
Arts--then was the time to look out!

“They are counting very much on the Cadaillac business to upset me!...
Rougeot is the one who will talk.... He’s no chicken, that Rougeot; he
has a backbone!”

Then with his famous jerk of the shoulder: “Rougeot against
Roumestan--the North against the South--all the better! It will amuse
me. It will be a hand-to-hand fight.”

Excited by his political matters, he talked on in a monologue without
noticing how silent Rosalie was. Then he approached her and, sitting
very near her on a footstool, made her stop her work by trying to kiss
her hand.

“You seem to be in a terrible hurry with what you are embroidering. Is
it for my New Year’s present? I have bought yours. Just guess what it
is!”

She pulled her hand gently away and looked him steadily in the face in
an embarrassing manner without answering him. His features were drawn
and weary from his days of work in the Assembly, showing that loosened
look of the face and revealing in the corners of the eyes and the mouth
a character at once weak and violent--all the passions and nothing to
resist them. Faces down south are like the Southern landscape. It is
better not to look at them unless the sun is shining.

“Are you dining at home?” asked Rosalie.

“No, I’m sorry to say--I’m expected at Durand’s--a tiresome
dinner--_té!_ I’m already late,” added he as he rose. “Luckily it is
not necessary to dress there.”

That fixed look in his wife’s face followed him. “Dine with me, I beg
of you--” and her harmonious voice hardened into insistence and sounded
threatening and implacable.

But Roumestan was no observer. “And besides, business is business, is
it not so? O, this life of a public man cannot be arranged as one would
wish!”

“Well then, goodbye,” said she gravely, completing that farewell within
her own mind with a “since it is our destiny.”

She listened to the coupé roll off beneath the vaulted passage and
then, having carefully folded up her work, she rang.

“A carriage, right away--a hackney-coach--and you, Polly, give me my
mantle and bonnet--I’m going out.”

Quickly ready to start, she embraced in one look the chamber she
was quitting, where she neither regretted anything nor left behind
her any part of herself, for it was merely the room of a furnished
apartment-house despite all the pomp of its cold yellow brocades.

“See that the big cardboard box is put in the carriage.”

Of what belonged to both, the baby’s layette was all that she carried
off.

Standing at the door of the coach the mystified Englishwoman asked if
Madame was not going to dine at home. No, she will dine at her father’s
where probably she will also pass the night.

On the way a doubt overcame her, or rather a scruple. Suppose nothing
of all this were true? Suppose that Bachellery girl did not live in
the Rue de Londres. She gave the coachman the address, but without much
hope; still, she must have certainty on this point.

The carriage stopped before a little house two stories high, crowned
by a terrace for a summer garden; it was the old home in Paris of a
Cairo man who had just died a bankrupt. There was about it the look
of a little house with shutters closed and curtains drawn; a strong
odor of the kitchen rose from the brightly lit and noisy basement.
Rosalie understood what it was just from noting how the front door
obeyed three strokes of the bell and of itself seemed to turn upon its
hinges. A Persian tapestry caught up by heavy cords in the centre of
the antechamber allowed a glimpse of the stair with its soft carpet and
its lamps in which the gas was burning at the highest point. She heard
laughter, took two steps forward and saw what never more in her life
she could forget.

At the turn of the stairs on the first floor Numa was leaning over the
banisters red and excited, in his shirt sleeves, with his arm round the
waist of that girl, who was also very much excited, her hair loosened
and falling down her back upon the frills of a rose-colored silk
morning-gown. And there he was, calling out in his violent way:

“Bompard, bring up the _brandade!_”

That was where he could be seen as he really was, the Minister of
Public Instruction and Religion, the great proclaimer of religious
morality, the defender of sound doctrines! It was there he showed
himself without mask or hypocritical grimace--all his South turned
outside for inspection!--at ease and in his shirt-sleeves as if at the
Fair of Beaucaire.

“Bompard, bring up the _brandade!_” repeated the giddy girl,
intentionally exaggerating Numa’s Provençal accent. Without a question
that was Bompard, the improvised cookshop boy who came up from the
kitchen, a napkin over his shoulder and his arms surrounding a great
big dish. It was he who caused the sounding wing of the door to turn on
its hinges.




CHAPTER XVIII.

NEW YEAR’S DAY.


“Gentlemen of the Central Administration!”

“Directors of the Academy of the Fine Arts!”

“Gentlemen of the Academy of Medicine!”

In grand gala dress, with his short hose and sword by his side, the
chamberlain was announcing the arrivals in a mournful voice that
resounded through the solemn drawing-rooms. As he called out, lines
of black coats crossed the immense hall all red and gold and ranged
themselves in a half-circle before the Minister, who stood with his
back to the chimneypiece, having near him his Under-Secretary of State,
M. de la Calmette, and his chief of cabinet, his foppish attachés
and a few directors belonging to the Ministry such as Dansaert and
Béchut. His Excellency addressed compliments and congratulations for
the decorations and academic palms granted to some of those present,
according as each organization arrived and was presented by its dean
or president; then the organization turned right about and gave way to
another set, some bodies retiring whilst others arrived, causing no
little confusion at the doors of the hall.

For it was late; it was past one o’clock and each man was thinking of
the breakfast which was waiting for him at home. In the concert hall
which had been turned into a vestiary, impatient groups were looking at
their watches, buttoning their gloves, adjusting their white cravats
below their drawn faces; gaping and weariness, bad temper and hunger
were on every side. Roumestan himself felt the weariness of this
important day. He had lost his fine warmth of spirit shown at the same
time last year, his faith in the future and in reform, and he let his
little speeches off slowly, pierced through to his very marrow by the
cold, despite the radiators and the enormous flaming wood fire; indeed,
that little flaky snow which whirled about the panes of the windows
seemed to fall upon his light heart and congeal it even as it fell upon
the greensward of the garden.

“Gentlemen of the Comédie-Française!”

Closely shaved and solemn, distributing bows just as the fashion was
in the grand epoch, they posed themselves in majestic attitudes about
their dean, who in a cavernous voice presented the company, talked
about the endeavors and vows the company had made--“the” company,
without any epithet or qualifying word, just as we say “God” or as we
say “the” Bible--exactly as if no other company existed in the world
except that alone! And it must be said that poor Roumestan needs be
very much enfeebled if this same company could not excite his eloquence
and grand theatrical phrases, this company to which he himself seemed
to belong with his bluish chin, his jowls and his distinguished but
most conventional poses!

The fact was that for the last eight days, since the departure of
Rosalie, he was like a gambler who has lost his mascot; he was
frightened and suddenly felt himself inferior to his fortune and thus
ready to be crushed. Mediocrities who have been favored by chance
have such panics and nervous crises and they were increased in him by
the terrible scandal which was about to break out, the scandal of a
lawsuit for separation which the young wife insisted upon absolutely,
notwithstanding all his letters and visits, his grovelling prayers
and oaths. To keep up appearances it was said at the Ministry that
Mme. Roumestan had gone to live with her father because of the near
departure of Mme. Le Quesnoy and Hortense. But nobody was taken in
by that, and the luckless man saw his adventure reflected in pity or
curiosity or sarcasm from all these faces which were defiling before
him, as well as from certain broadly marked smiles and from various
shakes of the hand, a little more energetic than usual. There was not
a single one of the lowest employees who had come to the reception in
jacket and overcoat who was not thoroughly posted in this matter. Among
the offices couplets were circulating from mouth to mouth in which
Chambéry rhymed with Bachellery; more than one porter discontented with
his pay was humming one of these couplets within himself whilst making
a deep bow to his supreme chief.

Two o’clock! Still the organized bodies kept presenting themselves and
the snow kept deepening whilst the man with the chains over his uniform
introduced pell-mell and without any kind of order:

“Gentlemen of the School of Laws!”

“Gentlemen of the Conservatory of Music!”

“Directors of the Subsidized Theatres!”

By favor of seniority and his three failures Cadaillac arrived at the
head of this delegation. Roumestan longed far more to fall with fist
and foot upon the cynical _impresario_ whose nomination had occasioned
such serious embarrassment to him than to listen to the fine speech to
which the ferocious insolence of his look gave the lie and to answer
him with a forced compliment, half of which stuck in the big folds of
his cravat:

“Greatly touched, gentlemen ... _mn mn mn_ ... progress of art ... _mn
mn mn_ ... still better in the future....”

And the _impresario_ as he moved off:

“Poor old Numa--he’s got a charge of lead in his wing this time!”

When these had left, the Minister and his comrades did honor to
the usual breakfast; but this meal which had been so gay and full
of effusion the year before was weighted down by the gloom of the
chief and bad temper on the part of his intimates, who were all of
them enraged with him on account of their own situations which he
had already begun to compromise. This scandalous lawsuit coming just
in the midst of the debate over Cadaillac would be sure to make
Roumestan impossible as a member of the cabinet. That very morning at
the reception in the Palace of the Élysées the Marshal had said two
words about it with the laconic and brutal eloquence natural to an old
cavalryman: “A dirty business!”

Without precisely having heard this speech from an august mouth, which
was murmured in Numa’s ear in an alcove, the gentlemen round him saw
very clearly their own fall coming behind that of their chief.

“Oh, women, women!” grunted the learned Béchut over his plate. M. de la
Calmette with his thirty years of official life grew melancholy as he
pondered over a retiring from office like unto Tircis, and below his
breath the long-legged Lappara amused himself by frightening Rochemaure
out of his wits:

“Viscount, we must look out for ourselves; we shall be decapitated
before eight days are over!”

After a toast had been given by the Minister to the New Year and his
dear collaborators, uttered with a shaky voice in which one heard
the tears, they separated. Méjean, who stayed to the last, walked
two or three times up and down beside his friend without having the
courage to say a single word; then he too left. Notwithstanding his
wish to keep by his side during that day a man like Méjean whose
straightforward nature forced his respect like a reproach uttered by
his own conscience, but at the same time sustained and reassured him,
Numa could not stand in the way of Méjean’s duty, which was to run his
round of visits and distribute good wishes and presents for the New
Year, any more than he could prevent his chamberlain from going back to
his family and unburdening himself of his sword and short-clothes.

What a howling solitude was that Ministry! It was like Sunday in
a factory with the boiler cold and silent. In all the departments
upstairs and downstairs, in his own cabinet, where he vainly attempted
to write, in his bed-chamber, which he began once more to fill with his
sobs, everywhere that little January snow was whirling about the big
windows, veiling the horizon and increasing the silence which was like
that of the Eastern steppes.

Oh, the misery of men in lofty positions!

A clock struck four and then another answered and then still others
replied through the vast desert of the palace until it seemed as if
there was nothing alive there except the hour. The idea of remaining
there till evening face to face with his wretchedness frightened him.
He felt that he must thaw himself a little with a bit of friendship
and tenderness. Steam radiators and warm-air registers and half trees
flaming in the chimneypiece did not constitute a hearth; for a moment
he thought of the Rue de Londres. But he had sworn to his lawyer--for
the lawyers were already at work--to keep quiet until the suit was
decided. All of a sudden a name flashed across his mind: “Bompard!
Why had he not come?” Generally he was observed to arrive the first
on mornings of feast-days, his arms full of bouquets and paper sacks
with candies for Rosalie, Hortense and Mme. Le Quesnoy, wearing on his
lips a smile which expressed his character of grandpapa or of Santa
Claus. Of course Roumestan paid the bill of these surprises, but friend
Bompard was possessed of imagination enough to forget that fact, and,
notwithstanding her antipathy, Rosalie could not help being touched
when she thought of the privations which the poor devil must have
undergone in order to be so generous.

“Suppose I go and get him and we dine together.”

He was reduced to that. He rang, took off his evening dress, all his
medals and orders and went out on foot by the Rue Bellechasse.

The quays and bridges were all white; but when he had crossed the
courtyard of the Carrousel neither ground nor air betrayed a trace
of snow. It disappeared under the wheels that crowded the street,
in the swarming myriads of the mob covering the sidewalks at the
shop-fronts and pushing round the offices of the omnibus lines. This
tumult of a feast-day evening, the calls of the coachmen, the shrill
cries of peddlers in the luminous confusion of the shop-fronts, where
the lilac-colored jets from the Jablochkoff burners extinguished the
twinkling yellow of the gas and the last reflections from the pale
afternoon, lulled the despair of Roumestan and dissolved it, as it
were, by means of the agitation of the street. Meantime he directed his
steps toward the Boulevard Poissonnière where the old Circassian, very
sedentary like all men of imagination, had lived for the last twenty
years, in fact since his arrival in Paris.

Nobody had ever seen the interior of Bompard’s home, of which
nevertheless he talked a good deal, as well as of his garden and his
artistic furniture, to complete which he haunted all the auctions at
the Hôtel Drouot.

“Do come to breakfast one of these days and eat a chop with me!”

That was the regular form of invitation which he scattered right and
left, but any one who took him at his word never found anybody at home;
he came up standing against signs left by the janitor, against bells
wrapped in paper or deprived of their wire. During an entire year
Lappara and Rochemaure obstinately continued to try to reach Bompard’s
rooms and overcome the extraordinary stratagems of the Provençal who
was guarding the mystery of his apartment--but all in vain. One day
he even took out some of the bricks near the front door in order to
be able to say across this species of barricade to the friends he had
invited:

“Awfully sorry, dear boys--we have had an escape of gas--everything
blown up last night!”

After having mounted numberless stories and wandered through long
corridors, tumbled over invisible steps and intruded upon veritable
assemblies of witches among the servants’ bedrooms, Roumestan, quite
blown from that arduous ascent, to which his legs of an illustrious man
were no longer equal, tumbled against a great big washbowl fastened to
the wall.

“Who’s there?” spoke out a well-known voice coming from far down the
throat.

The door opened slowly, weighed down by a clothes-rack upon which hung
the entire wardrobe of the lodger for winter and summer; the room was
small and Bompard did not lose the benefit of an eighth of an inch and
was compelled to keep his toilet table in the corridor. His friend
found him lying on a little iron bed, his brow decorated with a scarlet
head-dress, a sort of Dantesque cap which rose up in astonishment at
sight of the distinguished visitor.

“It can’t be you!”

“Are you ill?” said Roumestan.

“Ill? not much!”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“You see I am taking stock of things,” and then he added, to explain
his thought: “I have so many plans in my head, so many inventions! Now
and then I get dispersed and lose myself; it is only when I lie abed
that I can gather myself together a little.”

Roumestan looked about for a chair, but none was there except the
single one in use as a night table; it was covered with books and
newspapers and had a candlestick wobbling on top of them all. He sat
down on the foot of the bed.

“Why do we never see anything more of you?”

“Pshaw! you must be joking. After what happened I could not meet
your wife face to face. Just think a little! There I was right before
her, the codfish _à la brandade_ in my hand. It took a mighty lot of
coolness, I can tell you, not to let everything drop.”

“Rosalie is no longer at the Ministry,” said Numa quite overwhelmed.

“You astonish me; do you mean to say that it has not been arranged?”

And indeed it did not seem possible to him that Madame Numa, a person
of so much good sense ... for after all, what was all this business
anyhow? “Come now, just a mere fancy!”

The other interrupted him:

“You don’t understand her--she is an implacable woman--the perfect
image of her father--Northern race, my dear fellow--with them it is not
as it is with us, where the greatest anger evaporates in gesticulations
and threats and then there is nothing left and we face about. But they
keep everything in mind; it is terrible.”

He did not say that she had already forgiven him once before; and then,
in order to escape from his sorrowful thoughts:

“Get your clothes on; you must come and dine with me.”

While Bompard was making his toilet out in the corridor the Minister
looked about the mansard room lit by a little window like a
tobacco-box, over which the melting snow was running. Pity seized him
face to face with this penury, these damp rags, the whitewashed paper
and little stove worn with rust and fireless notwithstanding the
cold. And he asked himself, used as he was to the sumptuousness of his
palace, how people could live in such a place?

“Have you seen the _gardeen_?” cried Bompard joyfully from his basin.

His garden was the leafless tops of three plane-trees which could not
be seen unless one stood upon the solitary chair in the room.

“And my little museum?”

His museum he called a few ticketed knick-knacks upon a board, a
brick, a short pipe in brierwood, a rusty knife-blade and an ostrich
egg--but the brick came from the Alhambra, the sword had been used
in the vendettas of a famous Corsican bandit, the short pipe bore
an inscription, “Pipe of a Morocco criminal,” and finally the
ostrich egg represented the vanishing of a beautiful dream, all that
remained--along with a few laths and bits of plaster heaped in a
corner--of the famous Bompard Incubator and the scheme for artificial
hatching. But now, my dear boy, there is something much better on
hand--a marvellous scheme--millions in it--which he was not at liberty
to explain at present.

“What is it you are looking at? That?--That is my brevet of
membership--_bé_, yes, membership in the Aïoli.”

This club of the Aïoli had for its purpose the bringing together once
a month of all the Southerners living in Paris, in order to eat a
dinner cooked with garlic, a way of never losing either the fragrance
or the accent of home. It was a tremendous organization--a President
of Honor, Presidents, Vice-Presidents, Seniors, Questors, Treasurers,
all furnished with their diplomas as members brave with silver
streamers, and the flower of the leek as decoration upon rose-colored
paper. This precious document was displayed on the wall alongside
of advertisements of every sort of color, sales of houses, railway
placards and so forth, which Bompard liked to have always under his
nose, in order, as he ingenuously remarked, “to do his liver good.”
There might one read: “Château to sell, one hundred and fifty hectares,
meadows, hunting, river, pond full of fish.... Lovely little property
in Touraine, vineyards, luzernes, mill-on-the-Cize.... Round trip
through Switzerland, through Italy, to Lago Maggiore, to the Borromean
Islands....” These things excited him just as much as if he had had
fine landscapes in oil hanging on the wall. He believed he was in these
places--and he was there!

“By Jove!” said Roumestan with a shade of envy of this wretched
believer in chimeras, so happy in his rags--“You have a tremendous
imagination. Come, are you ready? Let’s get down. It is frightfully
cold up here.”

After a few turns through the brilliant streets across the jolly mob of
the boulevards the two friends settled themselves down in the heady,
radiating warmth of a little room in a big restaurant, in front of
oysters and a bottle of Château-Yquem very carefully uncorked.

“To your health, my comrade--I pray that it may be good and happy
forever.”

“_Té!_ why it’s a fact,” said Bompard; “we haven’t kissed each other
yet.”

Across the table they gave each other a hug with moistened eyes and
Roumestan felt himself quite gay again, despite the wrinkled and
swarthy hide of the Circassian. Ever since morning he had wanted
to kiss somebody. Besides, think of all the years they had known
each other--thirty years of their life in front of them on that
tablecloth--and through the vapor rising from delicate dishes and over
the straw wrappers of delicious wines they recalled their days of
youth, their fraternal recollections, races and picnics, saw once more
their own boyish faces and interlarded their effusions with words in
dialect which brought them still closer together.

“_T’en souvénès, digo?_” (I say, do you remember?)

In a room near by could be heard a noise of high laughter and little
screams.

“To the devil with females,” said Roumestan; “there is nothing worth
while but friendship!”

And then they drank to each other once more; nevertheless their talk
turned in another direction: “And how about the little girl?” asked
Bompard, winking his eye. “How is she getting on?”

“O, of course, I have not seen her again, you know.”

“Of course not, of course not,” said the other turning suddenly very
serious and putting on a solemn face.

Presently a piano behind the partition began to play scraps of waltzes,
fashionable quadrilles and bars of music from operettas, now crazy and
now languid. They stopped talking in order to listen, pulling off the
withered grapes, and Numa, all of whose sensations appeared to have two
faces and to be swung upon a pivot, began to think about his wife and
his child and his lost happiness. So he must needs unbosom himself at
the top of his voice with his elbows on the table.

“Eleven years of intimacy, trust and tenderness--all that flashed
away and vanished in a minute! how can it be possible? ah, Rosalie,
Rosalie--”

No one could ever know what she had been to him, and he himself had not
thoroughly understood it until after her departure. Such an upright
spirit, such a straightforward heart! And what shoulders and what arms!
No little gingerbread doll like little Bachellery; something full and
amber-tinted and delicate--

“Besides, don’t you see, my dear comrade, there’s no denying that when
we are young we need surprises and adventures--meetings in a hurry,
sharpened by the fear of being caught, staircases one comes down on all
fours with one’s boots in one’s arms--all that is part of love. But at
our age what we desire above everything else is peace and what the
philosophers call security in pleasure. It is only marriage which can
give you that.”

He jumped up all of a sudden, threw down his napkin: “Off with us,
_té!_”

“And we are going--?” asked the impassible Bompard.

“To walk by under her window just as I did twelve years ago--to this,
my dear boy, is he reduced, the grand Master of the University--”

Under the arcaded way of the Place Royale, whose square garden covered
with snow formed a white quadrilateral within its iron fence, these two
friends walked up and down for a long while, spying out in the broken
sky-line formed by the Louis XIII roofs, chimneys and balconies the
lofty windows of the Hôtel Le Quesnoy.

“To think that she is over there,” sighed Roumestan, “so near to me,
and yet I may not see her!”

Bompard was shivering with his feet in the mud and did not appreciate
very greatly this sentimental excursion; in order to bring it to a
close he used strategy, and knowing well that Numa was a soft one, in
deadly fear of the slightest illness:

“I’m afraid you’ll catch cold, Numa,” insinuated he like the traitor he
was.

The Southerner was struck with fear, and they quickly returned to the
carriage.

       *       *       *       *       *

She was there indeed, in that same drawing-room where he had seen her
for the first time. The furniture was just the same and held the same
place, having reached that age when furniture, like temperaments,
cannot be renewed. Scarcely were there a few more faded folds in
the fawn-colored hangings and a film over the dull reflections from
the mirrors like that one sees on deserted ponds which nothing ever
touches. The faces of the two old people under the two-branched
candlesticks at the card-table in company with their usual partners
showed likewise a little of the wear and tear of life. Madame Le
Quesnoy’s features were puffy and drooping as if the fibre had been
taken out of them, and the President’s pallor was still more pallid and
still prouder was the revolt that he preserved in the bitter blue of
his eyes. Seated near a big arm-chair, the cushions of which were still
crushed down by a light weight, her sister having gone to bed, Rosalie
continued in a low voice that reading aloud which she had been giving a
moment before for the benefit of her sister, reading on in a low voice
through the silence of whist broken by the half-words and interjections
of the players.

It was a book belonging to her youth, one of those poets of nature whom
her father had taught her to love. And she perceived the whole past of
her life as a young girl rising up from the pure white of the stanzas
as well as the fresh and penetrating impression of the books one has
read first in life.

    _La belle aurait pu sans souci
    Manger ses fraises loin d’ici
      Au bord d’une claire fontaine
    Avec un joyeux moissonneur
    Qui l’aurait prise sur son cœur,
      Elle aurait eu bien moins de peine._

    (In happy ease that damsel fair
    Her berries might have eaten where
      A fountain plashes o’er a stone;
    Some harvester at noontide rest
    Had clasped her to his stalwart breast--
      Ah! far less woe would she have known.)

The book slipped from her hands upon her knees, the last two lines
re-echoing their mournful song to the very depths of her being,
recalling to her the wretchedness which for one moment she had forgot.
There lies the cruelty that poets exercise; they lull and appease you,
but then with one word they envenom again the wound which they were by
way of healing.

She saw herself as she was in that same place twelve years before when
Numa paid his addresses to her with great big bouquets of roses; when,
clothed with her twenty years and the wish to be beautiful for his
sake, from that very window she watched him coming, just as one watches
one’s own destiny. In every corner of the house there remained echoes
of his warm and tender voice, so ready to lie. If one looked a moment
among the music scattered about the piano one would find the duos which
they sang together; everything which surrounded her seemed accomplices
of the disaster in her failure of a life. She thought of what that
life might have been by the side of an honest man and loyal comrade,
not brilliant and ambitious, but enjoying a simple and hidden existence
in which they would have courageously borne all bitternesses and all
sorrow to the very end of their days.

“_Elle aurait eu bien moins de peine._” (Ah, far less woe would she
have known.)

She had plunged so deep into her dream that when the whist party ended
and her parents’ old friends had left, almost without her remarking it,
answering mechanically the friendly and pitying farewells that each
one gave her, she failed to perceive that the President, instead of
conducting his friends to the front door as had been his habit every
evening, no matter what the time or season, was marching up and down
the drawing-room. At last he stopped before her and put a question to
her in a voice which caused her all of a sudden to tremble:

“Well, my child, where are you in this matter? have you made up your
mind?”

“Why, dear father, I am exactly where I was before.”

He seated himself beside her, took her hand and attempted to do the
persuasive:

“I have been to see your husband ... he consents to everything ... you
can live here with me the entire time that your mother and sister shall
be away, and even afterwards if your anger against him still continues.
But I tell you again, this suit for separation is impossible! I do
hope that you will not insist upon it.”

Rosalie tossed her head.

“My dear father, you do not understand that man. He will employ all
his cunning to surround me and get me back again, make me his dupe, a
voluntary dupe, who has accepted an undignified and degraded existence.
Your daughter is not a woman of that sort. I demand a complete and
irreparable rupture, openly announced to all the world.”

From the card-table where she sat ranging the cards and markers Mme. Le
Quesnoy, without turning round, gently interposed:

“Forgive, my child, forgive.”

“O yes, that is easy to say when one has a husband as upright and loyal
as yours, when one never has known the suffocating effect of lies and
treason, drawing their plots about one. He is a hypocrite, I tell you.
He has his Chambéry morality and his morality of the Rue de Londres.
His words and his acts are never in accord--two ways of speech, two
faces--all the seductive and catlike nature of his race--in a word, the
man of the South!”

And then, losing her head as her anger exploded, she said:

“Besides, I had already forgiven him once. Yes, two years after my
marriage. I never told you about it, I have never spoken to a single
person. I was very unhappy; and then we only remained together because
of an oath he made me.--But he only lives on perjuries! And now it is
completely at an end, completely at an end!”

The President did not insist further, but slowly rose and went over to
his wife. There was a whispering together and something like a debate,
surprising enough between that authoritative man and this humble,
annihilated creature: “You must tell her.... Yes, yes, I want you to
tell her....” Without adding another word M. Le Quesnoy left the room
and his sonorous regular step, his step of every evening, could be
heard mounting the solitary vaulted stairs, through all the solemn
spaces of the grand drawing-room.

“Come here,” said her mother to the daughter with a tender gesture,
“nearer to me, still nearer.”

She would never dare to tell her aloud; and even when they were so
close and heart was beating against heart, she still hesitated:

“Listen, dear; it is he who demands it--he wants me to tell you that
your destiny is the destiny of all women, and that even your mother has
not escaped it.”

Rosalie was overwhelmed with that secret confided to her which she had
divined in a flash at the first words of her mother, whilst her old
and very dear voice broken with tears could hardly articulate the very
sorrowful, very sorrowful story, similar in every way to her own--the
crime of her husband from the earliest years of their housekeeping,
just as if the motto of these wretched coupled beings must be “Deceive
me or else I deceive thee!”--the man hastening to begin the evil in
order to maintain his superior rank.

“Enough, enough, Mamma. Oh, how you are hurting me!”

This father whom she so admired, whom she placed far above any other
man, this sterlingly honest and firm magistrate! But what kind of
creatures were men, anyhow? At the North and down South, all were
alike, traitors and perjurers. She who had not wept a tear because of
the treason of her husband now felt herself invaded by a flood of hot
tears because of this humiliation of her father.... And so they were
counting upon this, were they? to make her yield! No, a hundred times
no; she would never forgive. Ha, ha! so that was marriage, was it? Very
well; dishonor and disdain upon marriage then! What cared she for fear
of scandal and the proprieties of the world, since it was a rivalry as
to who should treat them with the most contempt?

Her mother, taking her in her arms and pressing her against her heart,
endeavored to soften the revolt of this young conscience wounded in all
its beliefs, in its dearest superstitions; she caressed her gently as
if she were rocking a child:

“Yes, yes, you will forgive. You will do as I did--you see it is our
destiny. Ah, I also had a terrible bitterness in me during the first
moments and a great longing to throw myself out of the window. But
I thought of my child, my poor little Andrew who was just coming to
life, who since then grew up and died, loving and respecting all his
family. So you too will pardon in order that your child shall have the
same happy tranquillity which my own courage secured to you, so that he
shall not be one of those half-orphans whom parents share between them,
whom they bring up in hatred and disdain to one and the other. You
will also remember that your father and mother have already suffered
tremendously and that other bitter sorrows are menacing them now--”

She stopped short, suffocated by feeling, and then in a solemn accent:

“My daughter, all sorrows become softened and all wounds are capable of
being cured. There is only one sorrow which is irreparable and that is
the death of the person we love.”

In the failure of her agitated forces that followed these last words
Rosalie felt the figure of her mother grow in grandeur by as much
as her father had lost greatness in her eyes. She even reproached
herself for having so long misunderstood the sublime and resigned
self-abnegation concealed beneath that apparent feebleness which was
the result of bitter blows. Thus it came about that for her mother’s
sake, for her mother’s sake alone, she renounced the lawsuit in revenge
of her outraged rights, and renounced it in gentle words, almost as
if asking pardon: “Only do not insist that I go back to him--I should
be too ashamed. I will accompany my sister to the South. Afterwards,
later, we shall see.”

The President came back again, and when he saw the enthusiasm with
which the old mother was throwing her arms about the neck of her child
he understood that their cause was won.

“Thank you, my daughter,” he murmured, very much touched. Then after
a little hesitation he approached Rosalie for the usual kiss of
good-night. But the brow which ordinarily was so tenderly offered moved
aside and his kiss lost itself in her hair.

“Good-night, father.”

He said nothing in return, but went away hanging his head with a
convulsive shudder in his high shoulders. He who during his life had
accused so many people, had condemned so many--he, the First Magistrate
of France, had found a judge in his turn.




CHAPTER XIX.

HORTENSE LE QUESNOY.


Through one of those sudden shiftings of the scenery which are so
frequent in the comedy of Parliamentary government, the meeting of
January 8th, during which it was to be expected that the good luck of
Roumestan would go all to pieces, procured for him on the contrary
a striking success. When he marched up the steps of the platform in
order to answer the cruel sarcasms that Rougeot had been getting off
concerning the management of the opera, the mess that the department of
the fine arts had got into, the emptiness of those reforms which had
been trumpeted abroad by the supporters of the clerical Ministry, Numa
had just learned that his wife had left Paris, having renounced her
lawsuit.

This happy news, which was known to him alone, filled his answer with a
confidence that radiated from his whole being. He took a haughty air,
then a confidential, then a solemn one; he alluded to calumnies which
are whispered in people’s ears and to some scandal that was expected:

“Gentlemen, there will be no scandal!”

The tone with which he said this threw a lively disappointment over
the galleries crammed with all the sensation-loving, pretty women,
mad for strong emotions, who had come there in charming costumes to
see the conqueror devoured. The interpellation by Rougeot was torn to
bits, the South seduced once more the North, Gaul for yet another time
was conquered!--and when Roumestan ran down the steps again, worn out,
perspiring and almost without voice, he had the proud satisfaction
of seeing his party--but a moment ago so cold and even hostile--and
his colleagues in the Cabinet, who had been accusing him of having
compromised them, surround him with acclamations and enthusiastic
flatteries. And in the intoxication of his success the relinquishment
of her vengeance on the part of his wife kept returning to him always
in the light of a supreme salvation.

He felt himself relieved and gay and expansive, so much so that on
returning to the city the thought passed through his mind to run around
to the Rue de Londres. O, of course, entirely as a friend! in order to
reassure that poor little girl who had been as anxious as he over the
results of the interpellation, who bore their common exile with so much
bravery, sending him in her unformed writing, dryed with face-powder,
delightful little letters in which she related her existence day by day
and exhorted him to patience and prudence.

“No, no; do not come here, poor darling--write to me and think of me--I
shall be brave.”

It happened that the Opera was not open that evening, and during the
short passage from the station to the little house in the Rue de
Londres Numa was thinking, while he clutched in his hand that little
key which had been a temptation to him more than once for the last
fortnight:

“How happy she is going to be!”

Having opened the door and shut it noiselessly, he suddenly found
himself in deep obscurity, for the gas had not been lit. This neglect
gave to the little house an appearance of mourning and widowhood which
flattered him. The thick carpet on the stair softening his tread as he
ran up, he reached without being in any way announced the drawing-room
hung with Japanese stuffs of the most deliciously false shades just
suited to the artificial gold in the tresses of the little girl.

“Who is there?” asked a pretty voice but an angry one from the divan.

“It is I, by Jove!--”

He heard a cry and a sudden springing up, and in the uncertain light of
the evening by the white light of her skirts, the little singing girl
stood up straight in the greatest fright, whilst handsome Lappara in a
crushed but motionless position stood there looking hard at the flowers
in the carpet to avoid the eyes of his master. There was no denying the
situation.

“Gutter-snipes!” roared Roumestan hoarsely, seized by one of those
suffocating rages during which the beast growls inside the man with a
desire to tear in pieces and to bite far more than to strike.

Without knowing how it was he found himself outside the house, hurried
away by fear of his own frightful wrath. In that very place and at
that very hour some days before, his wife, just like himself, had
received the blow of treachery, the vulgar and the outrageous wound,
but a far more cruel and utterly unmerited one. But he never thought of
that for a moment, filled as he was with indignation at the personal
injury. No, never had such a villainy been seen beneath the sun! This
Lappara whom he loved like a child! This scoundrel of a girl for whose
sake he had gone the length of compromising his entire political
fortune!

“Gutter-snipes!--gutter-snipes!” he repeated aloud in the empty street
as he hurried through a fine, penetrating rain, which in fact calmed
him far better than the finest logic.

“_Té!_ why, I am all wet--”

He hurried to the cab-stand on the Rue d’Amsterdam, and in the crowd
which collects in that place owing to the constant arrival of trains at
the station he came up against the hard and tightly buttoned uniform of
General the Marquis d’Espaillon.

“Bravo, my dear colleague! I was not in the Chamber; but they tell me
that you charged the enemy like a ---- and routed him, horse and foot.”

As he stood as straight as a lath under his umbrella, the old fellow
had a devilish lively eye and moustaches gallantly twisted to the
correct angle for the evening of a lucky love adventure.

“G-- d-- m-- s--!” he went on, leaning over toward Numa’s ear with
a tone of confidence in gallantry, “you at least can boast of
understanding women, by Jove!”

And as the other looked at him sharply, supposing that he was speaking
sarcastically:

“Why yes, don’t you remember our discussion about love? You were
perfectly right. It is not only the fops and dudes that please the
women--I’ve got one now on the string. Never swallowed a better than
this one--G-- d-- m-- s--, not even when I was twenty-five and had just
left the Academy.”

Roumestan listened to him with his hand on the door of his cab and
thought that he was smiling at the old lovesick fool, but what he
produced was nothing more than a horrible grimace. His theories about
women were just then so extraordinarily upset.--Glory? genius? O, come
now! Those are not the things that make them care for you. He felt
himself outwitted and disgusted, and had a desire to weep and then
a longing to sleep in order not to think any more, especially not
to recall further the frightened laugh of that little rascally girl
standing straight before him with her waist in disorder and all her
neck red and trembling from the interrupted kisses.

But in the agitated course of our life, hours and events link
themselves together and follow each other like waves. In place of the
nice rest which he hoped to obtain on returning home a new blow was
awaiting him at the Ministry, a telegraphic despatch which Méjean had
opened in his absence and now handed him, deeply moved:

 Hortense dying. She wishes to see you. Come quickly.

  WIDOW PORTAL.


The whole of his frightful egotism broke from him with the dismayed
exclamation:

“Oh, what devoted fidelity am I losing in her!”

Then he thought of his wife who was present at that death-bed and had
allowed Aunt Portal to send the despatch. Her wrath had not yielded and
probably never would give way. Nevertheless, if she had been willing,
how thoroughly would he not have recommenced life at her side, giving
up all his imprudent follies and becoming a straightforward and almost
austere family man! And then, never giving a thought to the harm that
he had done, he reproached Rosalie for her hardness of heart, as if she
were treating him unjustly.

He passed the night correcting the proofs of his speech and
interrupting work every now and then to write bits of letters to that
little scoundrel of an Alice Bachellery, letters either raging or
sarcastic, scolding or abusive. Méjean was also up all night in the
Secretary’s office; overwhelmed with bitter sorrow, he tried to find
forgetfulness in unremitting toil, and Numa, who was pleased with his
company, experienced a veritable pain because he could not pour out to
him in confidence the deception he had met with. But then he would have
been forced to acknowledge that he had gone back to her and stand the
ridicule of the situation.

Nevertheless, he was not able to hold out, and in the morning whilst
his chief of cabinet was accompanying him to the station he committed
to him amongst other orders the charge of giving Lappara his
walking-papers. “O, he is expecting it, you may be sure! I caught him
in the very act of committing the blackest piece of ingratitude.--And
when I think how kind I have been to him, to the point of intending to
make him--” he stopped short; would it be believed that he was on the
point of telling the man in love with Hortense that he had promised the
girl’s hand to another person? Without going further into details, he
declared that he did not wish to find on his return such a wretchedly
immoral person at the Ministry. But on general principles he was
heart-broken at the duplicity of the world--all was ingratitude and
egotism. It was so bad, he would like to toss them into the street, all
his honors and business matters, in order to quit Paris and become the
keeper of a lighthouse on a horrible crag in the midst of the ocean.

“You have slept badly, my dear Master,” said Méjean with his tranquil
air.

“No, no, it is exactly as I tell you--Paris makes me sick at my
stomach....”

Standing on the platform near the cars, he turned about with a gesture
of supreme disgust aimed at that great city into which the provinces
pour all their ambitions and concupiscences, all their boiling and
sordid overflow--and then accuse it of degeneracy and moral taint. He
interrupted his tirade and then, with a bitter laugh, pointing to a
wall:

“How he does dog me everywhere, that fellow over there!”

On a vast gray wall pierced with hideous little windows at the angle of
the Rue de Lyon, there was the picture of a wretched troubadour. Washed
out by all the moisture of the winter and the filth from a barrack of
poor people, the advertisement showed on the second story a frightful
mess of blue, yellow and green through which one could still see the
pretentious and victorious gesture of the tabor-player. In Parisian
advertisements placards succeed each other quickly, one concealing the
other; but when they are of enormous dimensions, some bit or end will
stick out; wherefore it happened that in every corner of Paris during
the last fortnight the Minister had found before his eyes either a
leg or an arm, or a bit of the Provençal cap, or an end of the laced
peasant’s boots of Valmajour. These remnants threatened him even as in
that Provençal legend the victim of a murder with his various limbs
hacked and separated cries out against his murderer from all the
separate bits of his body. But in this case he was there entire, and
the horrible coloring seen through the chill morning air, forced as it
was to receive unflinchingly all kinds of filth before it dropped away
and disappeared under a final rush of wind, represented very well the
destiny of the unfortunate troubadour, driven forever from pillar to
post through the slums of that Paris which he could no longer quit, and
conducting the _farandole_ for a mob recruited from the unclassed and
exiled ones and the fools, those persons thirsting for notoriety whose
end is the hospital, the dissection table and the potter’s field.

Roumestan got into his coach frozen to the very bone by that morning
apparition and by the cold of his sleepless night, shivering at sight
through the car windows of those mournful vistas in the suburbs, those
iron bridges across streets that shone with rain, those tall houses,
barracks of wretchedness whose numberless windows were stuffed with
rags, and then those early morning figures, hollow cheeked, sorrowful
and sordid, those rounded backs and arms clutching breasts in order
to conceal something or warm themselves, those taverns with signs in
endless variety and the thick forest of factory chimneys vomiting
smoke that falls at once to earth. After that came the first gardens
of the outer suburb, black of soil, the coarse mortar in the low farm
buildings, villas closely shuttered in the midst of their little
gardens reduced by the winter to copses as dry as the bare wood of the
kiosks and arbors, and then, farther on, the country roads broken up by
puddles, where one saw files of overflowing tanks--a horizon the color
of rust, and flights of crows over the deserted fields.

He closed his eyes to keep out this sorrowful Northern winter through
which the whistle of the locomotive passed with long wails of distress,
but his own thoughts under his lowered eyelids were in no respect
happier. So near again to that fool of a girl--for the bond that held
him to her still contracted his heart though it had broken!--he
pondered over all the different things he had done for her and what the
support of an operatic star had cost him for the last six months. In
that life of the boards everything is false, but especially success,
which is only worth as much as one buys. The demands of the claque,
cost of tickets at the office, of dinners, receptions, presents to
reporters, publicity in all its varying forms, all these have their
price; then the magnificent bouquets at sight of which the singer
grows red and shows emotion, gathering them up against her arms and
nude neck and the shining satin of her gown; and then the ovations
prepared beforehand for the provincial tour, enthusiastic processions
to the hotel, serenades to the diva’s balcony and all the other things
calculated to dispel the gloomy indifference of the public--ah, all
these must not only be paid for but paid high!

For six months he had gone along with open pocketbook, never begrudging
the triumphs arranged for the little girl. He was present at
negotiations with the chief of the claque and the advertising agents
of the newspapers, as well as the flower-woman whose bouquets the diva
and her mother worked off on him three times without his knowledge
merely by decking them out with fresh ribbons; for these Bordeaux
Jewesses were possessed of a vulgar rapacity and a love of trickery
and expedients which caused them at times to remain at home for entire
days, clad in rags, old jackets over flowing skirts, with their feet
in ancient ball slippers. In fact it was thus that Numa found them
oftenest, passing their time playing cards and reviling each other as
if they were in a van of acrobats at a fair. For a good many months
past they had no longer put on any restraint in his presence. He knew
all the tricks and grimaces of the diva and the coarseness natural to
an affected and unneat woman of the South: also that she was ten years
older than her age on the boards and that in order to fix upon her face
that eternal smile in a Cupid’s bow she went to sleep each night with
her lips pulled up at the corners and streaked with coral lip-paint.

At this point at last he himself fell asleep--but I can assure you that
his mouth was not like a Cupid’s bow; on the contrary his every feature
was haggard from disgust and fatigue, while his entire body was shaken
by the bumps and swayings to and fro and by the shocks of the express
train whirled under full steam over the metals.

“_Valeïnce!--Valeïnce!_”

He opened his eyes like a child called by his mother. The South had
already begun to appear; between the clouds, which the wind was driving
apart, deep blue abysses were dug, and there was the sky! A ray of
sunlight warmed the car window and among the roadside pines one saw the
grayness of a few thin olive-trees. This produced a feeling of rest
throughout the sensitive nature of the Southerner and a complete polar
change of ideas. He was sorry that he had been so harsh to Lappara.
Think of having destroyed the future of that poor boy and plunged a
whole family in grief--and for what? A “_foutaise, allons!_” as Bompard
said. There was only one way of repairing it and correcting its look of
dismissal from the Ministry, and that was the Cross of the Legion of
Honor. And the Minister began to laugh at the idea of Lappara’s name
appearing in the _Officiel_ with this addition, “Exceptional services.”
But after all it was an exceptional service to have delivered his chief
from that degrading connection.

Orange!... Montelimar and its nougat!... Voices were already full of
vibration and words reinforced by lively gestures. Waiters from the
restaurant, paper sellers and station guards rushed upon the train with
their eyes sticking out of their heads. Certainly this was quite a
different people from that which one met thirty leagues farther North,
and the Rhône, the broad Rhône, with its waves like a sea, glistened
under the sunshine that turned to gold the crenelated ramparts of
Avignon, whose bells--which have never stopped ringing since the days
of Rabelais--saluted the big political man of Provence with their
clear-cut chimes. Numa took possession of a seat at the buffet in
front of a little white roll, a pasty and a bottle of the well known
wine from the Nerte that had ripened between the rocks and was capable
of inoculating even a Parisian with the accent of dwellers among the
scrub-oak barrens.

But his natal atmosphere rejoiced his heart the most--when he was
able to leave the main line at Tarascon and take a seat in a coach
on the small patriarchal railway with a single track which pushes its
way into the heart of Provence between the branches of mulberries and
olive-trees, while tufts of wild rose scrape against the side doors.
People were singing in the coaches; at every moment the train stopped
in order to allow a flock of sheep to pass or to pick up a belated
traveller or to ship some parcel which a boy from a _mas_ brought
up at a full run. And then what salutations and nice little bits of
gossip between the train hands and the peasant women in their Arles
head-dresses standing at their doors or washing clothes on the stone
near the well! At the station what cries and hustlings--an entire
village turning out to conduct to the cars some conscript or some girl
who was off to the town for service.

“_Té! vé!_ not good-bye, dear lass, ... but be very good, _au moins!_”

Then they weep and embrace each other without taking any notice of the
hermit in his cowl asking alms as he leans against the station fence
and mumbles his pater-noster; then, enraged at receiving nothing, turns
to go as he throws his sack upon his back.

“Well, there’s another _pater_ gone to pot!”

That phrase catches and is understood, all tears are dried and the
whole company roars with laughter, the begging monk harder than the
rest.

Hidden away in his coach in order to escape ovations, Roumestan
enjoyed immensely all this jollity, pleased with the sight of these
countenances all brown and hooked-nosed and alive with emotion and
sarcasm, these big fellows with their smart air, these _chatos_ as
amber-colored as the long berries of the muscat grape, who as they grow
older will turn into these crones, black and dried by the sun, who seem
to scatter a dust as from the tomb every time they make one of their
habitual gestures. So _zou_ then! and _allons!_ and all the _en avants_
in the world! Here he found once more his own people, his changeable
and nervous Provence, that race of brown crickets always at the door
and always singing!

But he himself was certainly a type of them, already recovered from his
terrible despair of that morning, from his disgust and his love--all
swept away at the first puff of the mistral which was growling in
a lively fashion through the valley of the Rhône. It met the train
midway, retarding its advance and driving everything before it, the
trees bent over in an attitude of flight as well as the far-away
Alpilles, the sun shaken by the sudden eclipses, whilst in the distance
under a rapid gleam of sunshine the town of Aps grouped its monuments
about the ancient tower of the Antonines, just as a herd of cattle
huddles on the wide plain of the Camargue about the oldest bull in
order to break the force of the wind.

So it was that Numa made his entrance into the station to the sound of
that magnificent trumpeting of the mistral.

The family had kept his arrival secret through a feeling of delicacy
like his own, in order to avoid the Orpheons and banners and solemn
deputations. Aunt Portal alone awaited him, majestically installed in
the arm-chair belonging to the keeper of the station, with a warmer
under her feet. As soon as she perceived her nephew the big rosy face
of the stout lady, which had expanded in her reposeful position, took
on a despairing expression and swelled up under the white lace cap, and
stretching out her arms she burst into sobs and lamentations:

“_Aie de nous_, what a misfortune!... Such a pretty little thing,
_péchère!_... and so good!... and so gentle!... you would take your
bread from your mouth for her sake....”

“Great Heavens, is it all over?” thought Roumestan as he reverted
quickly to the real purpose of his journey.

His aunt suddenly interrupted her vociferations and said coldly and in
a hard tone to the servant who had forgotten the foot-warmer:

“Ménicle, the _banquette!_” then she took up again on the pitch of a
frenzy of grief the story of the virtues of Mlle. Le Quesnoy, calling
with loud cries upon heaven and its angels to know why they had not
taken her in place of that child and shaking Numa’s arm with her
explosions of sorrow; for she was leaning on him in order to reach her
old coach at the slow gait of a funeral procession.

The horses advanced slowly under the leafless trees of the Avenue
Berchère in a whirlwind of branches and dry bits of bark which
the mistral was scattering as a poor sort of welcome before the
illustrious traveller. At the end of the road where the porters had
formed the habit of taking the horses out Ménicle was obliged to crack
his whip many times, so surprised at this indifference for the great
man did the horses seem to be. As for Roumestan, he was only thinking
of the horrible news which he had just learned, and holding the two
doll hands of his aunt, who kept constantly drying her eyes, he gently
asked: “When did it happen?”

“What happen?”

“When did she die, the poor little dear?”

Aunt Portal bounced up on her thick cushions:

“Die?--_Bou Diou!_--who ever told you that she was dead?”

Then she added at once with a deep sigh:

“Only, _péchère_, she will not be here for long.”

Ah, no, not for very long, for now she no longer got up, never leaving
the lace-covered pillows, on which from day to day her little thin head
became less and less recognizable, painted as it was on the cheek-bones
with a burning red cosmetic, whilst the eyes and nostrils were
outlined in blue. With her ivory-white hands lying on the linen of the
bed-clothes and a little hand-glass and comb near her to arrange from
time to time her beautiful brown hair, she lay for hours without a word
because of the wretched roughness that had invaded her voice, her look
lost off there on the tips of the trees and in the brilliant sky over
the old garden of the Portal mansion.

That evening her dreamy immobility lasted so long while the flames of
the setting sun reddened all the chamber that her sister grew anxious:

“Are you asleep?”

Hortense shook her head as if she wished to drive something away:

“No, I was not asleep, and yet I was dreaming--I was dreaming that I
am going to die. I was just on the borders of this world and leaning
over into the other. Yes, leaning over enough to fall. I could see you
still and some parts of my room, but all the same I was quite over on
the other side, and what struck me most was the silence of this life
in comparison with the tremendous sound that the dead were making.
A sound of a beehive, of flapping wings and the low rustling of an
ant-heap--the murmur which the sea leaves in the heart of its shells.
It was just as if the realms of death were far more thickly peopled and
encumbered than life. And all this noise was so intense that it seemed
to me my ears heard for the first time and that I had discovered in me
a new sense.”

She talked slowly in her rough and hissing voice. After a silence she
employed whatever there was left in the way of strength in that broken
and wretched instrument:

“O! my head is always on the journey.--First prize for
imagination--Hortense Le Quesnoy of Paris.” A sob was heard which was
drowned in the noise of a shutting door.

“You see,” said Rosalie, “Mamma had to leave the room. You hurt her
feelings so.”

“On purpose--every day a little--so that she shall have less to suffer
at the last,” answered the young girl in a whisper. The mistral was
galloping through the big corridors of the old Provençal mansion,
groaning under the doorways and shaking them with furious blows.
Hortense smiled.

“Do you hear that? O, I love that, it makes me feel as if I were far
away--off in the country. Poor darling,” added she, taking her sister’s
hand and carrying it with a weary gesture as far as her mouth, “what a
mean trick I have played you without intending to--here is your little
one coming who’ll be a Southerner all through my fault--and you will
never forgive me for it, _Franciote!_” Through the clamor of the wind
the whistle of a locomotive reached her and made her shiver.

“Ah, ha, the seven o’clock train!”

Like all sick people and prisoners, she knew what the slightest sounds
about her meant and mingled them with her motionless existence, just
as she did the horizon before her, the grove of pines and the old
weather-beaten Roman tower on the slope. From that moment on she became
anxious and agitated, watching the door at which at last a servant
appeared.

“That’s right,” said Hortense, in a lively way, and smiling at her big
sister: “Just a minute, will you?--I will call you again.”

Rosalie thought it was a visit from the priest bringing his parochial
Latin and his terrifying consolations, so she went down into the
garden, which was a truly Southern enclosure without any flowers, but
with alleys of box sheltered by high cypresses that withstood the wind.
Ever since she had been sick-nurse she had gone thither to get a breath
of air and to conceal her tears and to slacken a little all the nervous
contractions of her sorrow. Oh, how well she understood that speech
made by her mother:

“There is no sorrow which is irreparable but one, and that is the loss
of the person we love.”

Her other sorrow, her happiness as a woman all destroyed, was quite
in the background; she thought of nothing except that horrible and
inevitable thing which was approaching day by day. Was it the evening
hour, that red and deepening sun which left all the garden in shadow
and yet lingered on the panes of the house, or that mournful wind
blowing high up which she could hear without feeling it? At that
moment she felt a melancholy, an anguish which could not be expressed
in words. Hortense! her Hortense! more than a sister for her, almost
a daughter ... she had in Hortense the first happiness of a premature
mother’s love.

Sobs oppressed her, sobs without tears; she would have liked to cry
aloud and call for help, but on whom? The sky, toward which the
despairing raise their eyes, was so high, so far, so cold; it was as if
polished off by the hurricane. Through that sky a flight of migrating
birds was hurrying, but neither their cries nor their wings which made
as much noise as flapping sails could be heard below. How then could a
single voice from earth reach and attain those silent and indifferent
abysses?

Nevertheless she made a trial and with her face turned toward the light
which moved ever upward and was passing from the roof of the old house,
she made her prayer to Him who has thought fit to conceal Himself and
protect Himself from our sorrows and lamentations--Him whom some adore
confidentially with their brows against the earth, but others forlornly
search for with their arms wide apart, while others finally threaten
Him with their fists and revolt against Him, denying Him in order to be
able to forgive His cruelties.

And denial of this sort, blasphemy of this kind--that also is prayer.

She was called to the house and ran in trembling with fear because she
had reached that nervous terror when the slightest noise re-echoes from
the very depth of one’s being. The sick girl drew her near to her bed
with her smile, for she had neither strength nor voice, as if she had
just been talking a long time.

“I have a favor to ask of you, my darling--you know what I mean, that
final favor which people grant to one who is condemned to die--forgive
your husband! He has been very wicked and unworthy of you, but be
indulgent and return to his side. Do this for me, dear sister, and for
our parents, whom your separation grieves to death and who will soon
need greatly that all should close round about them and surround them
with tender care. Numa is so lively, there is no one like him for
putting a little spirit into them.... It is all over, is it not? You
forgive?”

Rosalie answered, “Yes, I give you my promise.”

Of what value was this sacrifice of her pride beside this irreparable
disaster? Standing straight beside the bed she closed her eyes a
moment, keeping back her tears--a hand which trembled rested upon hers.
There he was in front of her, trembling, wretched and overwhelmed by an
effusion of heart which he dared not show.

“Kiss each other,” said Hortense.

Rosalie bent her brow forward and Numa kissed it timidly. “No, no, not
that way--both arms, the way one does when one really loves.”

Numa seized his wife and clasped her with one long sob, whilst the
twilight fell in the great chamber as an act of pity for the girl who
had thrown them one upon the other’s heart.

This was her last manifestation of life. From that moment she remained
absorbed, indifferent and unaware of what passed about her, never
answering those disconsolate appeals of farewell to which there is
no answer, but still keeping upon her young face that expression of
haughty underlying anger which those show who die too early for the
ardor of the life that is in them--those to whom the disillusions of
existence have not had time to speak their last word.




CHAPTER XX.

THE BAPTISM.


The important day at Aps is Monday because it is market day.

Long before daylight the roads that lead to the city, the great
solitary turnpikes from Arles and Avignon, where the white dust lies
as quiet as a fall of snow, are enlivened by the slow grinding noise
of the carts and the squawking of chickens in their osier crates and
the barking of dogs running alongside; or by that rustling sound of a
shower which the passage of a flock of sheep produces, accompanied by
the long blouse of the shepherd which one perceives as he is carried
along by the bounding wave of his beasts. Then there are cries of the
cow-boys panting in the rear of their cattle and the dull sound of
sticks falling upon humpy backs and outlines of horsemen armed with
cowpunches in trident form. Slowly and gropingly all these phantoms
are swallowed up by the dark gateways whose crenelations are seen in
festoons against the starry sky; thence it spreads wide again into the
_corso_ which surrounds the sleepy city.

At that hour the town takes on itself again its character of an
old Roman and Saracen city, with its irregular roofs and pointed
moucharabies above the broken and dangerous stairways. This confused
murmur of men and sleepy beasts penetrates with but little noise
between the silvery trunks of the big plane-trees, overflows upon
the avenue and even into the courtyards of the houses and stirs up
warm odors of litters and fragrances of herbs and ripe fruit. When it
wakes, therefore, the town discovers that it has been captured in every
quarter by an enormous, lively and noisy market, just as if the entire
agricultural part of Provence, men and beasts, fruits and seeds, had
roused up and come together in one great nocturnal inundation.

In truth it is a magnificent sight, a pouring forth of rustic wealth
that changes with the seasons. In certain places set apart by
immemorial usage the oranges and pomegranates, golden colored quinces,
sorbs, green and yellow melons, are piled up near the booths in
rows and in heaps by the thousand; peaches, figs and grapes destroy
themselves by their own weight in their baskets of transportation side
by side with vegetables in sacks. Sheep and silky pigs and little
_cabris_ (kids) show airs of weariness within the palisades of their
small reservations. Oxen fastened to the yoke stride along before the
buyer, while bulls with smoking nostrils drag at the iron ring which
holds them to the wall. And farther on, quantities of horses, the
little horses from the Camargue--dwarf Arabs--prance about mingling
their brown, white or russet manes; upon being called by name, “_Té!_
Lucifer--_Té!_ l’Esterel--” they run up to eat oats from the hands of
their keepers, veritable Gauchos of the pampas with boots above the
knee. Then come the poultry two by two, red and fastened by the legs,
guinea fowl and chickens lying, not without much banging of the earth
with their wings, at the feet of their mistresses who are drawn up in
a line. Then there is the fish market, with eels alive on fennel and
trout from the Sorgue and the Durance, mixing their shining scales in
rainbow agonies with all the rest of the color. And last of all, at
the very end, in a sort of dry winter forest are the wooden spades and
hay-forks and rakes, new and very white, which rise between the plows
and harrows.

On the other side of the _corso_ against the rampart the unhitched
wagons stand in line, with their canopies and linen covers and high
curtains and dusty wheels, and all through the space left vacant the
noisy crowd circulates with difficulty, with calls and discussions and
chattering in all kinds of dialects and accents--the Provençal accent,
which is refined and full of airs and graces and requires certain
movements of the head and shoulder and a bold sort of mimicry, while
that of Languedoc is harder and heavier and almost Spanish in its
articulation. From time to time this mass of felt hats and head-dresses
from Arles or the Comté, this difficult circulation of a mob of buyers
and sellers, splits in two at the cries from some lagging cart which
comes slowly forward with great difficulty at a snail’s pace.

The burgesses of the city hardly appear, so full of scorn are they at
this invasion from the country, which nevertheless is the occasion of
its originality and the source of its wealth. From morning to night
the peasants are walking through the streets, stopping at the booths,
at the harness-makers, shoemakers and watchmakers, staring at the
metal figures of the clock on the City Hall and into the shop windows,
dazzled by the gilding and mirrors of the restaurants, just as the
rustics in Theocritus stood and stared at the Palace of the Ptolemies.
Some issue from the drug shops laden with parcels and big bottles;
others, and they form a wedding procession, enter the jeweller’s to
choose, after long and cunning bargains, ear-rings with long pendent
pieces and the necklace for the coming bride. And these coarse gowns,
these brown and wild-looking faces and their eager, businesslike manner
make one think of some town in La Vendée taken by the Chouans at the
time of the great wars.

That morning, the third Monday of February, animation was very lively;
the crowd was as thick as on the finest summer days, which indeed it
suggested through its cloudless sky warmed by a golden sun. People
were talking and gesticulating in groups, but what agitated them was
less the buying and selling than a certain event which caused all
traffic to cease and turned all looks and heads and even the broad
eyes of the oxen and the twitching ears of the little Camargue horses
toward the Church of Sainte Perpétue. The fact was that a rumor had
just spread through the market, where it occasioned an emotion that
ran to extraordinary height, to the effect that to-day the son of Numa
would be baptized--that same little Roumestan whose birth three weeks
before had been received with transports of joy in Aps and the entire
Provençal South. Unfortunately this baptism, which had been delayed
because of the deep mourning the family was in, had to preserve the
appearance of incognito for the very same reason, and it is probable
that the ceremony would have passed unperceived had it not been for
certain old sorceresses belonging to the country about Les Baux who
every Monday install upon the front steps of Sainte Perpétue a little
market of aromatic herbs and dried and perfumed simples culled among
the Alpilles. Seeing the coach of Aunt Portal stopping in front of
the church, the old herb-sellers gave the alarm to the women who sell
_aïets_ (garlic), who move about pretty much everywhere from one end
of the _corso_ to the other with their arms crammed with the shining
wreaths of their wares. The garlic women notified the fish dames and
very soon the little street which leads to the church poured forth upon
the little square all the gossip and excitement of the market-place.
They pressed about Ménicle, who sat erect on the box in deep mourning
with crape on his arm and hat and merely answered all questions with a
silent and indifferent play of his shoulders. Spite of everything, they
insisted upon waiting, and in the mercer’s street beneath the bands
of calico the crowd piled itself up to suffocation while the bolder
spirits mounted the well-curb--all eyes fixed on the grand portal of
the church, which at last opened.

There was a murmur of “ah!” as when fireworks are let off, a triumphant
and modulated sound which was cut short by the sight of a tall old
man dressed in black, very much overwhelmed and very melancholy, who
gave his arm to Madame Portal, who as far as she was concerned was
very proud to have served as godmother along with the First President,
proud of their two names side by side on the parish register; but she
was saddened by the recent mourning and the sorrowful impressions
which she had just renewed once more in the church. The crowd had a
feeling of severe deception at sight of this austere couple, who were
followed by the great man of Aps, also entirely in black and with
gloves on--Numa, penetrated by the solitude and cold of this baptism
performed in the midst of four candles without any other music than
the wailing of the little child, upon whom the Latin of the function
and the baptismal water dropping on a tender little head like that of
an unfledged bird had caused the most disagreeable impression. But the
appearance of a richly fed nurse, large, heavy and decked with ribbons
like a prize at an agricultural meet, and the sparkling little parcel
of laces and white embroidery which she carried like a sash, dissipated
the melancholy of the spectators and roused a new cry that sounded
like a mounting rocket, a joy scattered into a thousand enthusiastic
exclamations:

“_Lou vaqui!_--there he is! _Vé! vé!_”

Surprised and dazzled, winking in the bright sunlight, Numa stopped
a moment on the high porch in order to look at these Moorish faces,
this closely packed herding together of a black flock from which a
crazy tenderness mounted up to where he stood. And although tired of
ovations, at that moment he had one of the most lively emotions in his
existence as a public man, a proud intoxication which an entirely new
and already very lively sentiment of paternity ennobled. He was about
to speak and then remembered that this platform in front of the church
was not the place for it.

“Get in, nurse,” said he to the tranquil wet-nurse from Bourgogne,
whose eyes, like those of a milch cow, were staring wide open in
amazement. And while she was bestowing herself with her light burden in
the coach he advised Ménicle to return quickly by the cross streets.
But a tremendous clamor answered him:

“No, no, the grand round--the grand round!”

They meant that he should pass the entire length of the market place.

“Well then, the grand round be it!” said Roumestan after having
consulted his father-in-law with a look; for he wished to spare him
this joyful procession; and so the coach, starting with many crackings
of its ancient and heavy carcass, entered the little street and
debouched upon the _corso_ in the midst of _vivas_ from the crowd,
which grew excited over its own cries and culminated in a whirl
of enthusiasm so as to block the way of horses and wheels at every
moment. With the windows open they marched slowly on through these
acclamations, raised hats, fluttering handkerchiefs and all the odors
and hot breaths which the market exhaled as they passed. The women
stuck their ardent bronzed heads forward right into the carriage and at
seeing no more than the cap of the little baby would exclaim:

“_Diou! lou bèu drôle!_” (My God! what a lovely child!)

“He looks just like his father--_qué?_”

“Already has his Bourbon nose and his fine manners!”

“Show it to us, my darling, show us your beautiful man’s face.”

“He is as lovely as an egg!”

“You could drink him in a glass of water!”

“_Té!_ my treasure!”

“My little quail!”

“My lambkin--my guinea-hen!”

“My lovely pearl!”

And these women wrapped and licked him with the brown flame from their
eyes. But he, a child but one month old, was not scared in the least.
Waked up by all this noise and leaning back on the cushion with its
bows of pink ribbon, he regarded everything with his little cat eyes,
the pupils dilated and fixed, with two drops of milk at the corners
of his lips. And there he lay, calm and evidently pleased at these
apparitions of heads at the windows and these growing noises with
which soon mingled the baaing, mooing and braying of the cattle,
seized as they were by a formidable nervous imitation, all their
necks stretched out and mouths open and jaws yawning to the glory of
Roumestan and his offspring! Even then, at a time when everybody else
in the carriage was holding their stunned ears with both hands, the
little man remained perfectly impassible, so that his coolness even
broke up the solemn features of the old President, who said:

“Well, if that fellow was not born for the forum!”

On leaving the market they hoped to be rid of all this, but the
crowd followed them, being joined as they went by the weavers on the
Chemin-neuf, the yarn-makers in womanly bands and the porters from the
Avenue Berchère. The shopmen ran to the threshold of their stores, the
balcony of the Club of the Whites was flooded with people and presently
with their banners the Orphéons debouched from all the streets singing
their choral songs and giving musical bursts, just as if Numa had
arrived; but along with it all there went something gayer and more
unhackneyed, something beyond the habitual merry-making.

In the finest room belonging to the Portal Mansion, whose white
wainscots and rich silks belonged to the last century, Rosalie was
stretched upon an invalid’s chair, turning her eyes now upon the empty
cradle and then upon the deserted and sunny street; she grew impatient
as she waited for the return of her child. On her fine features,
pale and creased with fatigue and tears, one might see nevertheless
something like a happy restfulness; yet one could read there the whole
history of her existence throughout the last two months, her anxieties
and tortures, her rupture with Numa, the death of her dear Hortense
and at last the birth of the child, which swept everything else into
insignificance.

When this great happiness really came to her she did not believe it
possible; broken by so many blows, she did not believe herself capable
of giving life to anything. During the last days she even imagined that
she no longer felt the impatient movements of the little captive, and
although cradle and layette were all ready she hid them, moved by a
superstitious fear, and merely notified the Englishwoman who took care
of her:

“If child’s clothes are asked for, you will know where to find them.”

It is nothing to abandon oneself to a bed of torture with closed eyes
and clenched teeth for many, many long hours, interrupted every five
minutes by a terrible cry that tears and compels one; it is nothing to
undergo one’s destiny as a victim all of whose happy moments must be
dearly bought--if there is hope at the end of it all. But what horrible
martyrdom in the final pain when, struck by a supreme disillusionment,
the almost animal lamentations of the woman are mingled with the deeper
sobs of deceived maternity! Half dead and bleeding, she kept repeating
from the bottom of her annihilation: “He is dead--he is dead!”--when
she heard that trial of a voice, that respiration and cry in one,
that appeal for light which the newborn infant makes. Ah, with what
overflowing tenderness did she not respond!

“My little one!”

He lived and they brought him to her. So this was hers after all, this
little creature short of breath, dazzled and startled--almost blind!
This small affair in the flesh connected her again with life, and
merely by pressing it against her all the feverishness of her body was
drowned by a sensation of comfortable coolness. No more mourning, no
more wretchedness! Here was her son, that desire and regret which she
had endured for ten years and had burnt her eyes with tears whenever
she saw the children of other people, that very same baby which she
had kissed so often beforehand upon so many other lovely little rosy
cheeks! There he was, and he caused her a new ravishment and surprise
every time that she leaned from her bed over his cradle and swept
aside the covers that hid a slumber that could hardly be heard and the
shivery and contracted positions of a newly born child. She wanted to
have him always near her. When he went out she was anxious and counted
every minute. But never had she experienced quite so much anguish as
upon this morning of the baptism.

“What time is it?” asked she every minute. “How long they are! Heavens,
what a time they take!”

Mme. Le Quesnoy, who had remained behind with her daughter, reassured
her, although she was herself a little anxious; for this grandson, the
first and only one, was very close to the heart of his grandparents
and lighted up their mourning with a hope. A distant clamor which grew
deeper as it approached increased the trouble of the two women. Running
to the window they listened--choral songs, gunshots, clamors, bells
ringing like mad! And all of a sudden the Englishwoman who is looking
out on the street cries: “Madame, it is the baptism!”

And so it was the baptism, this noise like a riot and these howlings as
of cannibals around the stake.

“Oh, this South, this South!” repeated the young mother, now very much
frightened, for she feared that her little one would be suffocated in
the press.

But not at all; here he was, very alive indeed, in splendid case,
waving his short little arms with his eyes wide open, wearing the long
baptismal robe whose decorations Rosalie herself had embroidered and
whose laces she herself had sewed on; it was the robe meant for the
other; and so it is her two sons in one, the dead and the living one,
whom she owns to-day.

“He did not make a cry, or ask for milk a single time the whole
journey!” Aunt Portal affirms, and then goes on to relate in her
picturesque way the triumphal tour of the town, whilst in the old
hotel, which has suddenly become the old house for ovations, all
the doors slam and the servants rush out into the porch where the
musicians are being regaled with _gazeuse_. The musical bursts resound
and the panes tremble in every window. The old Le Quesnoys have gone
out into the garden to get away from this jollity which overwhelms them
with grief, and since Roumestan is about to make a speech from the
balcony, Aunt Portal and Polly the Englishwoman run quickly into the
drawing-room to listen.

“If Madame would be so kind as to hold the baby?” asks the wet-nurse,
as consumed with curiosity as a wild woman. And Rosalie is only too
happy to remain behind with her child upon her knees. From her window
she can see the banners glittering in the wind and the crowd densely
crushed together and spellbound by the words of her great man. Phrases
from his speech reach her now and then, but more than all else she
hears the tone of that captivating and moving voice, and a sorrowful
shudder passes through her at thought of all the evil which has come to
her by way of that eloquence, so ready to lie and to dupe others.

At last it is all over; she feels that she has reached a point where
deceptions and wounds can hurt her no more; she has a child, and that
sums up all her happiness, all her dreams! And holding him up like a
buckler she hugs the dear little creature to her breast and questions
him very low and very near by, as if she were looking for some
response, or some resemblance in the sketchy features of this unformed
little countenance, these dainty lineaments which seem to have been
impressed by a caress in wax and already show a sensual, violent mouth,
a nose curved in search of adventures and a soft and square chin.

“And will you also be a liar? Will you pass your life betraying others
and yourself, breaking those innocent hearts who have never done you
other evil than to believe in and love you? Will you be possessed of a
light and cruel inconstancy, taking life like an amateur and a singer
of cavatinas? Will you make a merchandise of words without bothering
yourself as to their real value and their connection with your thought,
so long as they are brilliant and resounding?”

And putting her lips in a kiss upon that little ear which the light
strands of hair surround:

“Tell me, are you going to be a Roumestan?”

The orator on the balcony had lashed himself up and had reached
the moment of effusiveness when nothing could be heard except the
final chords, accentuated in the Southern manner--“my soul”--“my
blood”--“morals”--“religion”--“our country”--punctuated by the applause
of that audience which was made according to his image and which he
summed up in his own self both in his qualities and his vices--an
effervescing South, mobile and tumultuous like a sea with many
currents, each of which spoke of him!

There was a final _viva_ and then the crowd was heard slowly passing
away. Roumestan came into the room mopping his brow; intoxicated
by his triumph and warmed by this endless tenderness of the whole
people, he approached his wife and kissed her with a sincere effusion
of sentiment. He felt himself very kind to her and as tender as on the
first day of their marriage; never a bit of remorse and never a bit of
rancor!

“_Bé!_ just see how they make much of him! How they applaud your son!”
Kneeling before the sofa the grand personage of Aps played with his
child and touched the little fingers that seized upon everything and
the little feet that kicked out into the air.

With a wrinkle on her brow Rosalie looked at him, trying to define his
contradictory and inexplicable nature. Then suddenly, as if she had
found something:

“Numa, what was that proverb you people use which Aunt Portal repeated
the other day? ‘_Joie de rue_’--how was it?”

“Oh yes, I remember: ‘_Gau de carriero, doulou d’oustau._’” (Happiness
of the street, sorrow of the home.)

“That is it,” said she with an expression of deep thought. And,
letting the words fall one by one as you drop stones into an abyss,
she slowly repeated, putting the while the sorrow of her life into it,
this proverb, in which an entire race has drawn its own portrait and
formulated its own being:

“Happiness of the street, sorrow of the home.”


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Transcriber's Note


The following apparent errors have been corrected:

p. 24 "who had been bought up" changed to "who had been brought up"

p. 34 "Wall, poor old chum" changed to "Well, poor old chum"

p. 70 "to lesson their stress" changed to "to lessen their stress"

p. 78 "a muddy subtance" changed to "a muddy substance"

p. 84 "a medicant friar" changed to "a mendicant friar"

p. 139 "“Take it back”" changed to "“Take it back,”"

p. 163 "unfailing if some what" changed to "unfailing if somewhat"

p. 196 "to day either" changed to "to-day either"

p. 200 "cold Northeners" changed to "cold Northerners"

p. 213 "choose out all of" changed to "choose out of all"

p. 224 "trys to propitiate" changed to "tries to propitiate"

p. 226 "tis all up" changed to "’tis all up"

p. 260 "which the Provencal" changed to "which the Provençal"


Inconsistent or archaic language has otherwise been kept as printed.



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